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Color Trade Bloc Implementation; Free Flags


Alex
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I'm not going to make having a larger nation or higher score or anything give you more votes. One nation, one vote.

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@Alex If flags are free, will there be a limit to the amount of flags each alliance/player can upload? As of right now people can have multiple flags tied to their alliance/account.

Limiting it to one would remove alliances ability to use war/seasonal/etc flags.

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On 7/31/2018 at 10:54 PM, Culdee said:

So is it too late to donate to flags so that I can get the superstar award?

While everyone is discussing this trade stuff, I'm here waiting for an answer on this ... >_>

~ Doc

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9 hours ago, Sketchy said:

@Alex If flags are free, will there be a limit to the amount of flags each alliance/player can upload? As of right now people can have multiple flags tied to their alliance/account.

Limiting it to one would remove alliances ability to use war/seasonal/etc flags.

There will not be a limit. Uploading a custom flag will not add it to your dropdown list. You will only have 1 uploaded custom flag at a time; so if you upload Custom Flag A, then later decide to switch to Custom Flag B, you'll just have to re-upload Custom Flag A again if you want to switch back to it later.

Anything already purchased, along with the default flags, will be separately available on the existing dropdown. You can look at the screenshot of the interface in the OP, or make an account on the test server and try it out yourself if you're still curious about how it works.

4 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Out of curiosity, sheeps, i know you said that you need to be the same color as your alliance to get the bonus.  If you are a 2 city nation on lets say yellow than your alliance with is say red, will that drag down the bonus for yellow?

Yes.

4 hours ago, DaPhysicist said:

While everyone is discussing this trade stuff, I'm here waiting for an answer on this ... >_>

~ Doc

No, it is not too late.

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So if an alliance has a load of low level nations dragging the colour sphere down is war the only option to remove them or you going to enable a voting system for a senate/colour gov giving them the powers to kick someone from said colour 

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Hi! For a new player like me, how can i get the color trade bloc bonus if i'm at beige, i'm still getting ~10k per turn but it says should be ~60k? Do i have to join a beige alliance (which I think there is none?) or change to another color? And if I do change to another color, will i lose the protection for new nations? Thank you.

Edited by Dark Horse
Nice it seems good now
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On 8/4/2018 at 8:26 PM, MoonShadow said:

So if an alliance has a load of low level nations dragging the colour sphere down is war the only option to remove them or you going to enable a voting system for a senate/colour gov giving them the powers to kick someone from said colour 

you can always ask them nicely to leave.

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On 8/4/2018 at 7:26 PM, MoonShadow said:

So if an alliance has a load of low level nations dragging the colour sphere down is war the only option to remove them or you going to enable a voting system for a senate/colour gov giving them the powers to kick someone from said colour 

This game is called POLITICS and War; try forming a color government with the other alliances on your color sphere instead of forcing it's existence. This game isn't nearly as lame as CN and will only be as lame as you let it be. Coordinate with other alliances. Pretty simple.

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2 minutes ago, James II said:

This game is called POLITICS and War; try forming a color government with the other alliances on your color sphere instead of forcing it's existence. This game isn't nearly as lame as CN and will only be as lame as you let it be. Coordinate with other alliances. Pretty simple.

Lets be real here, talking to people is the worst, in the last few days, not only have I had to deal with you, but I have also had to deal with seeker too.  War would probably be easier.

 

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So, having misread the formula at first, I think the current system has some serious flaws that need tweaking. Dividing the average by the number of nations on a color makes it impossible to ever attain the bonus, and actively punishes alliances for growing, even if they only add high quality, high tier nations.

At present, the formula is total revenue / nations / nations (or r/n^2). For a color with n nations, you need an average income of n*100,000. Each new nation increases that requirement to n+1*100,000. Right now lime has the highest bonus and one of the smallest nation counts of the colors. At 152 nations, in order to hit the 100,000 cap, they would need an average income of around 15,000,000. Adding in another nation with 15,000,000 with drag down the bonus. As it is, if TEst were to join Lime, they might end up reducing the bonus.

As such it will never be feasible to keep a high bonus. To protect a color, you need some manpower in all tiers, especially the lower tiers where you most want to keep people off. Adding any lower tier nation is doubly poisoning your color because not only do they increase the divisor on the bonus, they also bring down the average income! Even if you could properly gatekeep, didn't mass recruit and only accepted applicants with 20+ cities, it would still hurt the color.

Just basing the bonus on the average income (total color revenue / color nations) is enough to incentivize gatekeeping against lower tier nations and make it worth guarding so as not to drag down the average. Further dividing that number again by total nations punishes alliances for growing their membership (regardless of tier), and punishes everyone as the game itself grows in players, swelling the ranks of the colors.

 

My solution: Divide the average by number of alliances on a color, not number of nations. I can see how just using the average would make it too easy to hit the caps. It would also incentivize alliances to think more carefully about how they structure their color, rather than just having all the higher tier AAs plus a few good lower tier fighters share the best color, with everyone else stuck out. I am assuming that was a concern which partly led to the decisions to further subdivide the bonus by the player count. By dividing by alliance count, it doesn't ruin the bonus just by growing your member or player base, but does incentivize inter-alliance conflict. You can't have one mega color with a bunch of AAs and keep a good bonus. Color leaders will have to be careful in adding new alliances, weighing the manpower and defensive gains against the potential bonus reduction from increasing the divisor.

Or we could just base it only off the average income, I'm not wedded to the alliance idea. But I think if we have to divide the average by something, that is a better idea than just dividing it again by the total nations on a color. The idea itself came from the system was adapted in the beta. I don't remember the details. but we went from a system that punished colors for having large numbers of nations to one that was based around number of alliances for I believe precisely these reasons.

 

 

Edited by Mikey
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Archduke Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Reach, Warden of the South, Breaker of Forums.

 

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@Alex

 

Some of my members are having issues with changing colors.  It doesn't give them the option to, even when there's no cooldown.  Some are permanently stuck at "60 turn cooldown" and some are unable to vote.

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On 8/5/2018 at 5:51 AM, Dark Horse said:

Hi! For a new player like me, how can i get the color trade bloc bonus if i'm at beige, i'm still getting ~10k per turn but it says should be ~60k? Do i have to join a beige alliance (which I think there is none?) or change to another color? And if I do change to another color, will i lose the protection for new nations? Thank you.

There was a bug earlier with the bonus getting applied to income; you should be receiving it now.

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

So, having misread the formula at first, I think the current system has some serious flaws that need tweaking. Dividing the average by the number of nations on a color makes it impossible to ever attain the bonus, and actively punishes alliances for growing, even if they only add high quality, high tier nations.

At present, the formula is total revenue / nations / nations (or r/n^2). For a color with n nations, you need an average income of n*100,000. Each new nation increases that requirement to n+1*100,000. Right now lime has the highest bonus and one of the smallest nation counts of the colors. At 152 nations, in order to hit the 100,000 cap, they would need an average income of around 15,000,000. Adding in another nation with 15,000,000 with drag down the bonus. As it is, if TEst were to join Lime, they might end up reducing the bonus.

As such it will never be feasible to keep a high bonus. To protect a color, you need some manpower in all tiers, especially the lower tiers where you most want to keep people off. Adding any lower tier nation is doubly poisoning your color because not only do they increase the divisor on the bonus, they also bring down the average income! Even if you could properly gatekeep, didn't mass recruit and only accepted applicants with 20+ cities, it would still hurt the color.

Just basing the bonus on the average income (total color revenue / color nations) is enough to incentivize gatekeeping against lower tier nations and make it worth guarding so as not to drag down the average. Further dividing that number again by total nations punishes alliances for growing their membership (regardless of tier), and punishes everyone as the game itself grows in players, swelling the ranks of the colors.

 

My solution: Divide the average by number of alliances on a color, not number of nations. I can see how just using the average would make it too easy to hit the caps. It would also incentivize alliances to think more carefully about how they structure their color, rather than just having all the higher tier AAs plus a few good lower tier fighters share the best color, with everyone else stuck out. I am assuming that was a concern which partly led to the decisions to further subdivide the bonus by the player count. By dividing by alliance count, it doesn't ruin the bonus just by growing your member or player base, but does incentivize inter-alliance conflict. You can't have one mega color with a bunch of AAs and keep a good bonus. Color leaders will have to be careful in adding new alliances, weighing the manpower and defensive gains against the potential bonus reduction from increasing the divisor.

Or we could just base it only off the average income, I'm not wedded to the alliance idea. But I think if we have to divide the average by something, that is a better idea than just dividing it again by the total nations on a color. The idea itself came from the system was adapted in the beta. I don't remember the details. but we went from a system that punished colors for having large numbers of nations to one that was based around number of alliances for I believe precisely these reasons.

 

 

I think dividing by alliances instead of nations would only promote "alliance colonies" where you have SK Red, SK Blue, etc. in order to maximize benefits, which is really tedious and confusing for everyone. I really, really want to avoid that; it killed the last "Color Stock" system.

And the bonus isn't meant to be terribly high in any case. If it becomes an issue where people are all shunning new players, we can change the divisor to the square root of nations on the color or something.

22 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

@Alex

 

Some of my members are having issues with changing colors.  It doesn't give them the option to, even when there's no cooldown.  Some are permanently stuck at "60 turn cooldown" and some are unable to vote.

I'll check out the cooldown issue, I know we were having bugs with that earlier but I thought it was fixed. You'll have to elaborate on the "unable to vote" issue (or post a bug report in the Tech Support subforum) because I don't know why they're unable to vote; most people seem to be voting no-problem.

@Buorhann As far as I can tell the cooldown issue has already been fixed. I'm presuming you are aware the cooldown was increased from 2 days to 5 days for nations changing colors?

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2 minutes ago, Alex said:

I'll check out the cooldown issue, I know we were having bugs with that earlier but I thought it was fixed. You'll have to elaborate on the "unable to vote" issue (or post a bug report in the Tech Support subforum) because I don't know why they're unable to vote; most people seem to be voting no-problem.

I'll let them know to post there, or elaborate more on the issue then.

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I'm not sure dividing by alliances would lead to color colonies. The main incentive would be to partner up with a limited number of other alliances on your color and work to keep further alliances off. As long as you were successful in that, there would be no reason to jettison part of the alliance to another color, especially if we are also going to still base the bonus off average income, which would your main color by sending off high tier guys elsewhere. You may be right that it would cause other issues, it was more a spur of the moment idea to find other ways to limit how easy it is to hit the bonus.

My main point regarding all this is just that the current scheme punishes alliances and colors for having lots of member nations. I don't see how any conflict will arise from this system. The bonuses you can actually get are negligible compared to the cost of war, so there's no point in putting too much effort into securing colors. They will never get higher, because its impossible to get any higher numbers a color with more than a handful people, even if they are all high tier. And there is a direct negative incentive to partnering with other alliances to defend it. To have the kind of manpower needed to actually gatekeep a color, you'd tank your bonus down to where it doesn't matter anyway.

I understand that the bonus isn't supposed to be huge. But if the goal is to drive more tension and add a further plane of competition between alliances, it has to be worth something. The current 100k cap, even the old 75k cap, I think was worth it. Its good enough money across an entire alliance over the long term to be worth fighting for, and even to pay for those wars in their entirety if you successfully get the cap. As it is though, with the likelihood of most colors settling around the same range in the 20,000's, there's not a huge reason to do anything about it.

Consider this: The current average income on lime is 5.8mil. If someone were to join that color with an income of 7mil - well higher than the current average - they would bring down the color bonus by $200. You could add 100 more nations making 15mil, 3X the current average, and it would still reduce the current bonus. So unless your color bonus is completely in the toilet, there isn't even incentive to bring in more high tier nations.

Edited by Mikey
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Archduke Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Reach, Warden of the South, Breaker of Forums.

 

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15 hours ago, Mikey said:

I'm not sure dividing by alliances would lead to color colonies. The main incentive would be to partner up with a limited number of other alliances on your color and work to keep further alliances off. As long as you were successful in that, there would be no reason to jettison part of the alliance to another color, especially if we are also going to still base the bonus off average income, which would your main color by sending off high tier guys elsewhere. You may be right that it would cause other issues, it was more a spur of the moment idea to find other ways to limit how easy it is to hit the bonus.

My main point regarding all this is just that the current scheme punishes alliances and colors for having lots of member nations. I don't see how any conflict will arise from this system. The bonuses you can actually get are negligible compared to the cost of war, so there's no point in putting too much effort into securing colors. They will never get higher, because its impossible to get any higher numbers a color with more than a handful people, even if they are all high tier. And there is a direct negative incentive to partnering with other alliances to defend it. To have the kind of manpower needed to actually gatekeep a color, you'd tank your bonus down to where it doesn't matter anyway.

I understand that the bonus isn't supposed to be huge. But if the goal is to drive more tension and add a further plane of competition between alliances, it has to be worth something. The current 100k cap, even the old 75k cap, I think was worth it. Its good enough money across an entire alliance over the long term to be worth fighting for, and even to pay for those wars in their entirety if you successfully get the cap. As it is though, with the likelihood of most colors settling around the same range in the 20,000's, there's not a huge reason to do anything about it.

Consider this: The current average income on lime is 5.8mil. If someone were to join that color with an income of 7mil - well higher than the current average - they would bring down the color bonus by $200. You could add 100 more nations making 15mil, 3X the current average, and it would still reduce the current bonus. So unless your color bonus is completely in the toilet, there isn't even incentive to bring in more high tier nations.

The change is just not helpful at all. It punishes having new players and new players have no way of knowing which bonus is the best. They aren't going to check the leaderboards. It's not intuitive.  Changes should reward having new players because as of now people shy away from having noobs. Even recruiting alliances shut down recruitment since noobs can be a drain.  Now they're a liability. With red,  it has lost its major alliances and none of the smaller nations are relocating for the best bonus.

You're right that it's not worth a war. I don't really know what the point of it was.  People should be making the game hospitable for new players, not unhospitable. The only people that can hit tiny nations are other tiny nations.  Basically, it's either that or intimidation that can only work by people not knowing score ranges. 

So yeah ditto this post.

The average income without dividing by total nations suggestion is much better than the current implementation.

Edited by Roquentin
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2 hours ago, Mikey said:

I'm not sure dividing by alliances would lead to color colonies. The main incentive would be to partner up with a limited number of other alliances on your color and work to keep further alliances off. As long as you were successful in that, there would be no reason to jettison part of the alliance to another color, especially if we are also going to still base the bonus off average income, which would your main color by sending off high tier guys elsewhere. You may be right that it would cause other issues, it was more a spur of the moment idea to find other ways to limit how easy it is to hit the bonus.

My main point regarding all this is just that the current scheme punishes alliances and colors for having lots of member nations. I don't see how any conflict will arise from this system. The bonuses you can actually get are negligible compared to the cost of war, so there's no point in putting too much effort into securing colors. They will never get higher, because its impossible to get any higher numbers a color with more than a handful people, even if they are all high tier. And there is a direct negative incentive to partnering with other alliances to defend it. To have the kind of manpower needed to actually gatekeep a color, you'd tank your bonus down to where it doesn't matter anyway.

I understand that the bonus isn't supposed to be huge. But if the goal is to drive more tension and add a further plane of competition between alliances, it has to be worth something. The current 100k cap, even the old 75k cap, I think was worth it. Its good enough money across an entire alliance over the long term to be worth fighting for, and even to pay for those wars in their entirety if you successfully get the cap. As it is though, with the likelihood of most colors settling around the same range in the 20,000's, there's not a huge reason to do anything about it.

Consider this: The current average income on lime is 5.8mil. If someone were to join that color with an income of 7mil - well higher than the current average - they would bring down the color bonus by $200. You could add 100 more nations making 15mil, 3X the current average, and it would still reduce the current bonus. So unless your color bonus is completely in the toilet, there isn't even incentive to bring in more high tier nations.

 

1 hour ago, Roquentin said:

The change is just not helpful at all. It punishes having new players and new players have no way of knowing which bonus is the best. They aren't going to check the leaderboards. It's not intuitive.  Changes should reward having new players as of now people shy away from having noobs. Even recruiting alliances shut down recruitment since noobs can be a drain.  Now they're a liability. With red,  it has lost its major alliances and none of the smaller nations are relocating for the best bonus.

You're right that it's not worth a war. I don't really know what the point of it was.  People should be making the game hospitable for new players, not unhospitable. The only people that can hit tiny nations are other tiny nations.  Basically, it's either that or intimidation that can only work by people not knowing score ranges. 

So yeah ditto this post.

The average income without dividing by total nations suggestion is much better than the current implementation.

 

This be a Ditto x3

Edited by Mad Max
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Simplify stuff. If you're not in an alliance, you simply don't get the bonus, or not being in an alliance reduces the bonus by half. That's pretty straight forward and promotes wanting to be in an alliance. With the new-comers bonuses, it hardly takes any effort to get them up to snuff so they're not much of a liability.

You could also just use only 10% of the avg of the turn revenues within a color, with the cap staying at 75k. That'd require a 750k turn revenue avg to even cap out. Nothing elaborate needed and still decently tough for the avg nation to attain. Not everything in the game needs some sorta complex formula to be more balanced, or even properly work. It's also significantly easier to adjust simple stuff if needed. 10% seem to high, just lower it some. Easy, quick, and less work.

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8 hours ago, Valdoroth said:

Simplify stuff. If you're not in an alliance, you simply don't get the bonus, or not being in an alliance reduces the bonus by half. That's pretty straight forward and promotes wanting to be in an alliance. With the new-comers bonuses, it hardly takes any effort to get them up to snuff so they're not much of a liability.

You could also just use only 10% of the avg of the turn revenues within a color, with the cap staying at 75k. That'd require a 750k turn revenue avg to even cap out. Nothing elaborate needed and still decently tough for the avg nation to attain. Not everything in the game needs some sorta complex formula to be more balanced, or even properly work. It's also significantly easier to adjust simple stuff if needed. 10% seem to high, just lower it some. Easy, quick, and less work.

Under this scheme, the non-alliance people wouldn't count towards the formula? The issue is it's not really about the snuff under the current system. Mikey showed even a higher income nation right now can lower the bonus.

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5 hours ago, Roquentin said:

Under this scheme, the non-alliance people wouldn't count towards the formula? The issue is it's not really about the snuff under the current system. Mikey showed even a higher income nation right now can lower the bonus.

You read wrong. Re-read it again. I said those not in alliance either don't get the bonus, or only half the bonus. The issue is that basically no matter how good your income is, more people on a color basically lowers the rates.

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1 hour ago, Valdoroth said:

You read wrong. Re-read it again. I said those not in alliance either don't get the bonus, or only half the bonus. The issue is that basically no matter how good your income is, more people on a color basically lowers the rates.

Your solution wouldn't do what you're describing.  What you're implicitly saying is that new/small/unaffiliated nations drag down the income, but old/large/affiliated nations don't.  Mikey's point was that almost any new nation - regardless of income  - would drag down the bonus on Lime.  The issue isn't that the bonuses aren't high enough (that could be fixed by multiplying the whole equation by a constant greater than 1); it's that the way they're calculated discourages being on the same color as other nations, almost regardless of their income.  The only real effect of this change has been to slightly pad the incomes of large nations who don't need the money and penalize anyone who is on the same color as small nations who could use it.  This is toxic for gameplay and almost unambiguously detrimental to the long-term health of the game.

 

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1 hour ago, Valdoroth said:

You read wrong. Re-read it again. I said those not in alliance either don't get the bonus, or only half the bonus. The issue is that basically no matter how good your income is, more people on a color basically lowers the rates.

It would help by lowering the number of nation's slightly, but it wouldn't be enough. Just having 100 nation's on a color would require everyone to have an income of 10mil (or a color avg of 10 at any rate) to get the bonus. That's 2 medium sized AAs (member wise) to say nothing of how this hurts larger ones.

I think there are two separate ideas being missed, because I believe you also mentioned changing the forumla itself to just be a percentage of the colors average income. Coupling that with only counting allianced nation's (or just changing the formula) would be fine. Cant remember if that was in your post or just something I remember from discord.

Regardless I think it's clear the formula needs to be changed somehow. It's going to be impossible to get any halfway decent bonus on a color with more than a handful of people on it. And if the bonus is worthless, it will just go back to being ignored like it was before.

 

Archduke Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Reach, Warden of the South, Breaker of Forums.

 

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