Reduce Sub 20 City Costs

[Guest Epi]

548

Edited February 16, 2021 by Epi

[Diocletian]

24 minutes ago, Phino said:

yeah man, this game is hard .... alex should make this game more easy to play for me and my friend hurr hurrr

Damn micros !!

I'd say IQ is as far away as they come from a "micro," but yeah, rest of the statement is right on. This really just seems like an Ace post, complaining and begging to be propped up because of aforementioned party's poor economic plans. 

[Sir Scarfalot]

1 hour ago, Thomas Meagher said:

I'd say IQ is as far away as they come from a "micro"

You're right.

I've seen competent micros

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

7 hours ago, Sephiroth said:

.20 cities is a crazy high amount and making it possible to achieve that in less than a year is just crazy, what about everyone that had to put cold hard dedication into this game? most whales take pride in being large through their dedication to the game and their sharp thinking on how to best set economy to max output. (maybe something like what Shifty recommended is more reasonable.).

I don't think I've suggested anything aside from beating up IQ and keeping upper tier distinct from plebs.

You might have meant Sketchy.

However if you see the light, just remember Shifty supports stratification of the game and the elite sticking together. Plebs be gone.

[Clarke]

It makes sense to do this (up to city 10 or 15), especially the part about making city 35+ exponentially more expensive. Can't have people avoiding wars and outgrowing the game at a decent growth rate. 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Lightning

[Element]

10 hours ago, Ryoula said:

So there were a few points in this thread where I couldn't quite fathom why people even bother responding; Maybe it's because I don't buy into the grandstanding, political peacock fights, I'm not sure.  Before I even try to touch the meat of the OP content, there's some fundamental things that should be addressed:

1) There's at least one problem presented: retention

2) There's at least one solution presented: cost reduction of cities.

I think we can leave 1 alone, as anyone should be able to understand that it is a truthful issue. That brings us to 2, which hey sure, a lot of people have an issue with. That's fine, except instead of insulting everyone, OP and his lovely mother included, the focus should be switched to "Well that wouldn't work, why not doing X instead?" I'm not a terribly smart or creative individual, but I'm a fairly productive person that can spot room for improvement of the bigger picture. The biggest issues I've seen with retention (personally, as both of these have been reasons that I'm only marginally interested in PnW most of the time) have been the absolute cancerous cyst that most of the community encompasses (no fingers pointed, no alliances spared) and the fact that the type of game is very niche. Most people prefer quick gratification, that's how our society has become over the years. We can't do anything about the genre or scope of the game, but we sure can do something about the community. I think if we start there, we'd probably set foot on the right path to retention.

You're asking too much of this horrid community of very toxic and illiterate people.

[Justin076]

12 minutes ago, element85 said:

You're asking too much of this horrid community of very toxic and illiterate people.

Not to get off topic but this is really rich coming from you..... lmao. 

[Soxirella]

The suggestion puts the reason of newbies leaving entirely on the inability to buy new cities, which discounts other reasons such as more game features, more in-game strategy, natural loss of interest, real life commitments, etc. To justify reducing city cost on new player engagement, we'd first need to analyse player retention rate at the end of 2016 or something.

In general, I rather have fewer cities in the game than more, and perhaps even make it more expensive for 35+ cities. Right now, more cities means more revenue during peace time and more military units during war. It does not add anything more in terms of a variety of game play or strategy and just becomes a simple numbers game where the one with a higher number out ranks one with a lower. It also makes rebuilding a pain. Sure we have the ability to import city improvement configs across all cities, but we may not want the same config for every city. In any event, we also have to buy infra manually.

Making it more expensive to buy 35+ cities would in effect have the same result as lowering cost of current cities. Instead of increasing growth at the bottom, you slow down growth at the top making it relatively easier for people to catch up eventually.

Alliances should instead concentrate on building a community and making people feel welcome, and give out loans to encourage people to stay back. If you are going to have a 100-150+ players alliance, it's obviously going to be difficult building a personal and team environment.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Soxirella

[Sephiroth]

8 hours ago, ϟħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™ said:

I don't think I've suggested anything aside from beating up IQ and keeping upper tier distinct from plebs.

You might have meant Sketchy.

However if you see the light, just remember Shifty supports stratification of the game and the elite sticking together. Plebs be gone.

Thanks for the correction, I always confuse you and Sketchy. sorry about that.

 

8 hours ago, Lightning said:

It makes sense to do this (up to city 10 or 15), especially the part about making city 35+ exponentially more expensive. Can't have people avoiding wars and outgrowing the game at a decent growth rate. 

It already cost way over a billion after city 30, plus most whales need to keep a high warchest and a stable military at all times do to plebs being jelly of our money making capacity. so it takes a good while to continue growing.

 

1 hour ago, Soxirella said:

- snip -

Exactly, just take Grumpy for example, we are all large members, and we are all old timers, we don't even have a forum, yet we talk on discord daily and decide to stay within the alliance because we all get along and help each other constantly. for the last war when we attacked we literally had 95% of our members online at the time because even though in terms of numbers we arent too large, we have a great community that keeps us active and informed all the time.

As for the cost of cities to that point, if 3 nations with 10 cities got together and created a system to target one nation at a time to get a city they could easily make enough money to get a city every 10-20 days, (depending on factors like activity, infra and average wars per week) yet it takes someone with 30+ cities more than 45 days to get 1 city (much longer if you factor in military, imported goods and infra size per city), in which those 3 nations could already have gotten 3-5 cities easily. that is why a large alliance can catch up its all a matter of knowing how to efficiently use your money and direct it to the right players at the right time.

 

[Clarke]

1 hour ago, Sephiroth said:

 

It already cost way over a billion after city 30, plus most whales need to keep a high warchest and a stable military at all times do to plebs being jelly of our money making capacity. so it takes a good while to continue growing.

Military readiness isn't a valid argument, you could argue that about any nation at level even more so for lower - mid level nations as they experience more problems more frequently such as raiders and global wars. I don't know if you count as a whale but you certainly disprove a high military if you do, not that it makes a difference either way.  

High warchests are generally the same, most nations need one and the bigger you're the easier and faster it is to get a good warchest. This isn't unique to whales who hardly ever fight and are in the best position to grow one especially considering the lack of warring. 

It costs over a billion to build a city ok, but they can't be cheap as otherwise nations who don't fight will simply continue growing at a steady enough pace. You can't be building a new city every 30 days or whatever just like it was when you were buying city 12 or whatever city. Since a nation has reached 33 cities and most active players are under 20 cities that may be a sign that something is off and without screwing it up it can be fixed by making cities 35+ take longer to buy. You brag about your money making abilities then complain about spending money, it doesn't make sense.

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Lightning

[Buorhann]

4 hours ago, element85 said:

You're asking too much of this horrid community of very toxic and illiterate people.

Weren't you the person who kept throwing Ad Homs at other players?

[Sephiroth]

1 hour ago, Lightning said:

Military readiness isn't a valid argument, you could argue that about any nation at level even more so for lower - mid level nations as they experience more problems more frequently such as raiders and global wars. I don't know if you count as a whale but you certainly disprove a high military if you do, not that it makes a difference either way.  

High warchests are generally the same, most nations need one and the bigger you're the easier and faster it is to get a good warchest. This isn't unique to whales who hardly ever fight and are in the best position to grow one especially considering the lack of warring. 

It costs over a billion to build a city ok, but they can't be cheap as otherwise nations who don't fight will simply continue growing at a steady enough pace. You can't be building a new city every 30 days or whatever just like it was when you were buying city 12 or whatever city. Since a nation has reached 33 cities and most active players are under 20 cities that may be a sign that something is off and without screwing it up it can be fixed by making cities 35+ take longer to buy. You brag about your money making abilities then complain about spending money, it doesn't make sense.

 

military readiness I guess you can argue is fair game at any level, fair enough.

even though whales don't go to war as frequently as many other smaller nations we do deal and take a lot more damage than smaller players, a whale on the losing end of a war can take literally up to 3 months or more just to rebuild to where they were before, even if you won the war there is a good chance you took so much damage that it would take you anywhere between a month or 2 just to recover.

and lastly you completely ignored the fact that I also mentioned that teamwork and coordination can always outgrow a whale, it has been proved many times in the past where alliances used good coordination and teamwork to grow all their members to a certain size. it's more about being smart with what's available than begging for everything to become easier. making the game easier will still not make new players stay longer, since most new players decide if they want to stay in the game or not way before city 10.

[Clarke]

7 minutes ago, Sephiroth said:

military readiness I guess you can argue is fair game at any level, fair enough.

even though whales don't go to war as frequently as many other smaller nations we do deal and take a lot more damage than smaller players, a whale on the losing end of a war can take literally up to 3 months or more just to rebuild to where they were before, even if you won the war there is a good chance you took so much damage that it would take you anywhere between a month or 2 just to recover.

and lastly you completely ignored the fact that I also mentioned that teamwork and coordination can always outgrow a whale, it has been proved many times in the past where alliances used good coordination and teamwork to grow all their members to a certain size. it's more about being smart with what's available than begging for everything to become easier. making the game easier will still not make new players stay longer, since most new players decide if they want to stay in the game or not way before city 10.

 

The leader of your alliance disagrees and he is right, it only becomes tougher to rebuild if you build your infrastructure too high relative to the number of cities you own and don't have the knowledge of how to build a warchest that can help you recover. Sweeet Ronny D knows how to build a nation and he will recover easily.

Quote

and lastly you completely ignored the fact that I also mentioned that teamwork and coordination can always outgrow a whale, it has been proved many times in the past where alliances used good coordination and teamwork to grow all their members to a certain size. it's more about being smart with what's available than begging for everything to become easier. making the game easier will still not make new players stay longer, since most new players decide if they want to stay in the game or not way before city 10.

That was in response to someone else I think and I didn't read what they or you said. I don't care too much about making the game easier when buying cities but I wouldn't mind if my next cities cost less :). Wales are spread across numerous alliances, its more of a player problem than an alliance problem and player problems require a change to mechanics. 

[durmij]

Just saw this thread, not parsing through it so this might have already been said, but frick it.

The issue has never been score and pixels, the issue has been the lack of meaningful daily actions. The issue will never be score and pixels, the issue will always be the lack of meaningful daily actions.

There is next to nothing to do in this game for the average player on a day to day basis. How is lowering the cost of city 20 going to change the fact that most nations never make it beyond 2?

This is naked politicking. The reasoning in the OP is simple projection, a new nation literally can not fathom city count because it takes so long to see it in action and actually feel the difference.

Edit: Read it, the projection is running wild. Everyone dumping their feelings of inadequacy on noobs who literally often have to be walked through the tutorial again before the even get their nations functioning.

Real solution, make it so players get to city 5 through the tutorial alone, while adding bot nations that attack them so they have to beat an opponent on their own. Also, make forming an alliance more expensive. Still too many sink holes of suck.

Edited May 7, 2018 by durmij

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

Yeah Seph, not to undercut you there, but if you are a large ass nation that fights in a war, you should be able to recover pretty easily, as shown that after grumpy ate all those nukes, our entire alliance was basically rebuilt to prewar standings in a few days.  The only time it could be an issue is if you get hit right after you build a city.

As for warchests, if we had to go to war again next week, we could do it, we have a few that are a little low, but we could easily wage a full scale war again.  Warchest stockpiling at whale size is easy.  I spent 60k Gas and Munitions last war, and my gas/munition stockpile is now higher than it was pre-war.

As for getting attacked more often, all you have do is log in everyday, and the likely hood of getting hit outside of a major war is practically 0.  98% of raiders aren't interested in a real fight.

[Buorhann]

1 hour ago, durmij said:

Edit: Read it, the projection is running wild. Everyone dumping their feelings of inadequacy on noobs who literally often have to be walked through the tutorial again before the even get their nations functioning.

Real solution, make it so players get to city 5 through the tutorial alone, while adding bot nations that attack them so they have to beat an opponent on their own. Also, make forming an alliance more expensive. Still too many sink holes of suck.

Well, Sheepy did attempt to get himself and a couple of others to play in a NPC Alliance.

 

That's actually not a terrible idea.  I'd sign up to play a volunteer account to fight newly created nations, if he can't do bot ones.

@Alex - ^^

Perhaps looking into having volunteer low city accounts in the game for others to log in and play against newly created nations that want to explore the war mechanics, and teach them how military works early on?  (Or give them a nation to raid for some cash flow, kind of a risk/reward thing to keep them busy if they choose to go that path)

Edited May 7, 2018 by Buorhann

[Sephiroth]

2 hours ago, Lightning said:

- snip -

Old man SRD is too old, he can barely count the teeth he has dropped. Also just because he is the leader of Grumpy doesn't mean we agree with him on every little thing, that is what makes us a strong alliance, debating every matter with numbers.

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

- Old man ranting -

as for you SRD, if you take into consideration that we were on the winning side of the last war, its been a month and not all our members have fully recovered, the only ones that have recovered their warchest and infra are the ones that had a large amount of money stored (which also needs to be recovered to consider it a full recovery.) since we weren't really in the meat grinder in this last war, it will take most people about 30 - 60 days to fully recover to the point we were at before the war.

in the case of the whales that dropped less than 1k infra from the other side and in some cases got raided for resources and invested a lot into nukes (which were almost all destroyed by the end of the war), for one of them to recover back to the state they were before the war (assuming they didnt have extra money stored away) would take them a minimum of 60 days to recover everything (including the money that was invested in such a large stockpile of nukes of course.).

Edited May 8, 2018 by Sephiroth

[Element]

4 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Weren't you the person who kept throwing Ad Homs at other players?

Weren't you the person who kept whining and crying about everything that has an opposite opinion of you, and also weren't you the person who keeps imposing double standards just for the fact that it's IQ? 

I can tell you this much. I hate you with a passion.. I truly do. Every time I see any post from you, I cringe.

Edited May 7, 2018 by element85

[Buorhann]

Well, I'm happy to know you think of me, in a way.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

40 minutes ago, Sephiroth said:

Old man SRD is too old, he can barely count the teeth he has dropped. Also just because he is the leader of Grumpy doesn't mean we agree with him on every little thing, that is what makes us a strong alliance, debating every matter with numbers.

as for you SRD, if you take into consideration that we were on the winning side of the last war, its been a month and not all our members have fully recovered, the only ones that have recovered their warchest and infra are the ones that had a large amount of money stored (which also needs to be recovered to consider it a full recovery.) since we weren't really in the meat grinder in this last war, it will take most people about 30 - 60 days to fully recover to the point we were at before the war.

in the case of the whales that dropped less than 1k infra from the other side and in some cases got raided for resources and invested a lot into nukes (which were almost all destroyed by the end of the war), for one of them to recover back to the state they were before the war (assuming they didnt have extra money stored away) would take them a minimum of 60 days to recover everything (including the money that was invested in such a large stockpile of nukes of course.). 

it looks like your definition and my definition of recovering is not the same.

[Soxirella]

10 hours ago, durmij said:

The issue has never been score and pixels, the issue has been the lack of meaningful daily actions. The issue will never be score and pixels, the issue will always be the lack of meaningful daily actions.

While I upvoted and agree with your post in general, I strongly believe there is enough to do for new players in the game. Lack of meaningful daily actions are more a case for 15+ cities.

Apart from the initial discovery of all the features of the game, and baseball team management (which seemed interesting when I first tried it), a nation can go crazy raiding inactives and growing rapidly. When I first started playing this game, I got to 8-9 cities without a single help from my alliance. Basically I declared five wars every other day (6 GA days), and amassed enough to be able to buy 8-9 cities on my own with zero input from alliance.

Then from 10 - 15, I tried to trade, logging often to check for low prices and selling them high. I was able to earn considerable to get to my 10, 11, 12 cities relatively more easy, and my alliance leader was happy to give me a loan given my activity.

I am not saying everyone should be and can be like that, but alliance leaders surely can do some hand-holding and guiding initially. I later wrote a guide on how I felt anyone can get to 10 cities without city loans, and if Alex is OK with me having a duplicate account to test that, I would love to do so, to prove it's easy to get to at least 5-10 cities. I believe most are quitting below five.

[Clarke]

9 hours ago, Sephiroth said:

Old man SRD is too old, he can barely count the teeth he has dropped. Also just because he is the leader of Grumpy doesn't mean we agree with him on every little thing, that is what makes us a strong alliance, debating every matter with numbers.

as for you SRD, if you take into consideration that we were on the winning side of the last war, its been a month and not all our members have fully recovered, the only ones that have recovered their warchest and infra are the ones that had a large amount of money stored (which also needs to be recovered to consider it a full recovery.) since we weren't really in the meat grinder in this last war, it will take most people about 30 - 60 days to fully recover to the point we were at before the war.

in the case of the whales that dropped less than 1k infra from the other side and in some cases got raided for resources and invested a lot into nukes (which were almost all destroyed by the end of the war), for one of them to recover back to the state they were before the war (assuming they didnt have extra money stored away) would take them a minimum of 60 days to recover everything (including the money that was invested in such a large stockpile of nukes of course.).

Its not easy for anyone who fights to rebuild with an inadequate warchest especially on the losing side which I know a great deal about despite having a good warchest. Realistically its not going to take wales any longer unless they have too high of infrastructure which I also made the mistake of doing once before, other people did it worse than me though.

Edited May 8, 2018 by Lightning

[Spaceman Thrax]

14 hours ago, element85 said:

Weren't you the person who kept whining and crying about everything that has an opposite opinion of you, and also weren't you the person who keeps imposing double standards just for the fact that it's IQ? 

I can tell you this much. I hate you with a passion.. I truly do. Every time I see any post from you, I cringe.

Debating things in game and attacking someone's character more personally are almost completely distinct. I agree with some of what Buor says and the other parts I probably find about as silly as you might, in terms of in game things. But that doesn't change the fact that you're the one spraying the kind of toxicity you're supposedly complaining about everywhere. He's absolutely correct about that.

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

8 hours ago, Soxirella said:

While I upvoted and agree with your post in general, I strongly believe there is enough to do for new players in the game. Lack of meaningful daily actions are more a case for 15+ cities.

Apart from the initial discovery of all the features of the game, and baseball team management (which seemed interesting when I first tried it), a nation can go crazy raiding inactives and growing rapidly. When I first started playing this game, I got to 8-9 cities without a single help from my alliance. Basically I declared five wars every other day (6 GA days), and amassed enough to be able to buy 8-9 cities on my own with zero input from alliance.

Then from 10 - 15, I tried to trade, logging often to check for low prices and selling them high. I was able to earn considerable to get to my 10, 11, 12 cities relatively more easy, and my alliance leader was happy to give me a loan given my activity.

I am not saying everyone should be and can be like that, but alliance leaders surely can do some hand-holding and guiding initially. I later wrote a guide on how I felt anyone can get to 10 cities without city loans, and if Alex is OK with me having a duplicate account to test that, I would love to do so, to prove it's easy to get to at least 5-10 cities. I believe most are quitting below five.

What you think is irrelevant, the numbers aren't lying to you. Actually they disprove your opinion almost instantly because the majority of drop-off is during the point where they would be learning everything, which in your mind replaces the need for any daily engagement. For a time it may, but not very long. 

As mentioned already in this thread, by city 6, good luck, with that. As somebody who was at city 5 and 6 not long ago, i can assure you that there are not an abundance of targets there. More specifically, things start drying up at around 600-700 NS, where any number of remaining targets you might be allowed to attack given your alliance, become mostly long inactive, picked clean nations, or ones in irrelevant micros, who may or may not counter and even if they don't, usually have a large standing military to cut through. By your own definition, cities 6-10 at the least are snoresville. 

Which, unless they use credits, amounts to about 40 days. Of course, again, most don't even get to city 3, so there's that. 

You may consider trading fun, but from the opposite viewpoint, i just view it as tedious. Done only because it does make money if done correctly, i do not find it much enjoyable. Mostly irritating, especially when selling the product, the number of masterminds who undercut you by 100 PPU, to be succeeded by someone who cuts them under by 200, and all i can do is hope i have enough money to buy them out. I daresay, i am very, very likely not the only one who thinks this. Most probably lack the sense of pragmatism to get them to do it at all anyway.

As addressed by this entire thread, and Sketchy's 'Random Stats 3.0', most of them don't even make it past city 2. Getting yourself up to 5 is pretty easy itself, build as much coal, example, as possible, raid the plentiful inactives at your level, collect your login bonus, repeat for a few days. Beyond that, there won't be enough targets for consistent raiding, and it's doubtful you'll have the cash to start trading, unless like me, you happened to find somebody who looted Cornerstone's hidden bank. 

[Roquentin]

5 hours ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

Debating things in game and attacking someone's character more personally are almost completely distinct. I agree with some of what Buor says and the other parts I probably find about as silly as you might, in terms of in game things. But that doesn't change the fact that you're the one spraying the kind of toxicity you're supposedly complaining about everywhere. He's absolutely correct about that.

 Either people will get more aggressive in their response or simply drop the forums short of a change in regulation. The current atmosphere pretty much condones and fosters aggressive flaming as the main form of exchange.

Edited May 8, 2018 by Roquentin