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Remove National Project Timer


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On 8/6/2018 at 3:21 PM, Mikey said:

I agree completely. Frankly I think even the city timer could be removed. All these timers do is benefit older nations by putting a hard cap on how quickly alliances or groups of new players can boost each other up. The exponential growth of cost for cities does a very good job on slowing the ability to grow into ever higher tiers, where the 10 day timer isn't really an issue. Where it is an issue is for alliances boosting up new players. or investing in beefing up active new alliances with young members. Not that people will necessarily start pumping new guys up to 16 cities rapidly without a timer, its a very risky and expensive investment. But there are some use cases, and in any event, if they want to spend the money, power to 'em. Moving the timeless to 10 cities was already a very good step though.

Honestly, good point. Any benefit that it may have had in the past is obsolete, now that there are nations that have upwards of 30 cities.

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20 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Honestly, good point. Any benefit that it may have had in the past is obsolete, now that there are nations that have upwards of 30 cities.

On 8/6/2018 at 6:21 PM, Mikey said:

I agree completely. Frankly I think even the city timer could be removed. All these timers do is benefit older nations by putting a hard cap on how quickly alliances or groups of new players can boost each other up. The exponential growth of cost for cities does a very good job on slowing the ability to grow into ever higher tiers, where the 10 day timer isn't really an issue. Where it is an issue is for alliances boosting up new players. or investing in beefing up active new alliances with young members. Not that people will necessarily start pumping new guys up to 16 cities rapidly without a timer, its a very risky and expensive investment. But there are some use cases, and in any event, if they want to spend the money, power to 'em. Moving the timeless to 10 cities was already a very good step though.

I agree with the project timer but not with the city timer. 
You really don’t want to have situation when someone at city 10 declares on rich smaller nations and then zooms up to city 14/15. Some might argue that big cities are cost prohibitive. But for rich and big alliances, this might not totally be the case. Yes it will increasingly get more cost prohibitive but to ensure that situations like that don’t occur it might be better to leave city timers. 

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3 minutes ago, Ratatarata said:

I agree with the project timer but not with the city timer. 
You really don’t want to have situation when someone at city 10 declares on rich smaller nations and then zooms up to city 14/15. Some might argue that big cities are cost prohibitive. But for rich and big alliances, this might not totally be the case. Yes it will increasingly get more cost prohibitive but to ensure that situations like that don’t occur it might be better to leave city timers. 

Well, for one thing I've been regularly declaring on 7 city nations while I've got 12 cities, and much deeper downdeclares are possible already. Don't underestimate how ridiculous it can get. For a second thing, what you describe can only happen once; if someone declares then builds cities, they can't ditch those cities to do it again.

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Definitely agree to this, the costs of most projects and the infra requirements are enough to keep them from being built up "too quickly" and even if you decide against removing in the end i hope you will seperate the city & project timers (after 10 cities) and possibly reduce them.



as to the city timer, im not so sure about removing it, i do get scarf's point about them not being able to just ditch those cities to keep doing it, buti still think it might be a tricky situation with counters. i personally would use the strategy alot against enemy alliances, and would get my members to do the same, attacking 5 nations in one alliance and then waiting for three counters then jumping 3 or 4 cities, fully militarize them and then curb stomp all 8. of course with any change should come adaptation so if it was removed i think alliances could rethink how they counter maybe just double counter until you are sure he isn't going to jump or get an intel report to know if he could buy a city with his onhand cash and if not triple counter then go for blockade in the first wave so his alliance doesn't just buy him another couple of cities.

maybe instead of getting rid of the city time completely we reduce it to somewhere around 3-5 days and reduce the reset city timer credit purchase to 1 or 2 credits

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4 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

...Well, for one thing I've been regularly declaring on 7 city nations while I've got 12 cities, and much deeper downdeclares are possible already. Don't underestimate how ridiculous it can get. ...

i once got triple countered at 7CC by a 13cc a 16cc and a 20cc right after the ayyslamic crusades. so yeah it most certainly can get more ridiculous.

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8 hours ago, Ukunaka said:

Definitely agree to this, the costs of most projects and the infra requirements are enough to keep them from being built up "too quickly" and even if you decide against removing in the end i hope you will seperate the city & project timers (after 10 cities) and possibly reduce them.



as to the city timer, im not so sure about removing it, i do get scarf's point about them not being able to just ditch those cities to keep doing it, buti still think it might be a tricky situation with counters. i personally would use the strategy alot against enemy alliances, and would get my members to do the same, attacking 5 nations in one alliance and then waiting for three counters then jumping 3 or 4 cities, fully militarize them and then curb stomp all 8. of course with any change should come adaptation so if it was removed i think alliances could rethink how they counter maybe just double counter until you are sure he isn't going to jump or get an intel report to know if he could buy a city with his onhand cash and if not triple counter then go for blockade in the first wave so his alliance doesn't just buy him another couple of cities.

maybe instead of getting rid of the city time completely we reduce it to somewhere around 3-5 days and reduce the reset city timer credit purchase to 1 or 2 credits

To be honest though, anything that adds more strategy to the war system is a good change, if removing the city timer creates more options in wars then I'm all for it. However, I understand not everyone feels this way about war, so as a secondary option, yes I think city timers should be reduced to 5 days (since that's the maximum amount of time a war can last).

Edited by Cianuro
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So, people are bringing up the idea of jumping cities immediately after starting a war as a negative to removing the timer, but I can't see this as anything other than an extremely niche strategy.

Firstly, unless I am mistaken, military takes time to build. I think its maybe 4-5 days to go from 0 to full militarization, so even if you bought a bunch of cities right after declaring, you'd not be able to just jump immediately to max mil in them. It would, to be sure, increase your daily buy, but its not as good a strat as I think some people make it out to be.

Secondly, its extremely expensive. Maybe it would be viable in the low tiers, but for most alliances, the fighting in the 10 city range doesn't really matter anyway, and I can't see a scenario in which it makes sense to reserve a bunch of money and resources just to boost up a bunch of your 10 city guys to beat on the enemies. Much better to already have them at 15 and be able to have full mil and immediately fight the enemy 15 cities. Even in the 10 range, to go from city 10 to 15, assuming manifest destiny, would cost around 341mil. For what? getting the jump on some enemy 10 city nations? Maybe you do it in the mid tier, say having your 15s dec the enemies (maybe after waiting for counters so your slots are filled) then buying up to 18. Its only a boost of three cities, so it shouldn't be too expensive right? And anything that gives an advantage would be useful, no? Well it would cost just shy of 500mil each. Thats 5 billion to do that for just 10 nations, gaining a marginal advantage for a drop in the bucket of the total nations in a major war. A medium sized AA of 40 would need 20 billion to pull it off. I don't know why you'd ever just want to sit on that.

Not only is it costly in real terms, you have to think of the opportunity cost. If you could have bought your members up to city 15 or 18 or whatever it is, but choose to keep them at 12 just for this one strat, you are losing out on all the money and resources that could have been generated had you just built the cities when you could. Considering most alliances only fight every 6 months (at least the kind of major wars where you would be willing to do this), that's a lot of stalled growth. Even if you win and thrash your enemy, you probably lost more in lost income/rss than you dealt in damages anyway.

 

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26 minutes ago, Mikey said:

So, people are bringing up the idea of jumping cities immediately after starting a war as a negative to removing the timer, but I can't see this as anything other than an extremely niche strategy.

Firstly, unless I am mistaken, military takes time to build. I think its maybe 4-5 days to go from 0 to full militarization, so even if you bought a bunch of cities right after declaring, you'd not be able to just jump immediately to max mil in them. It would, to be sure, increase your daily buy, but its not as good a strat as I think some people make it out to be.

Secondly, its extremely expensive. Maybe it would be viable in the low tiers, but for most alliances, the fighting in the 10 city range doesn't really matter anyway, and I can't see a scenario in which it makes sense to reserve a bunch of money and resources just to boost up a bunch of your 10 city guys to beat on the enemies. Much better to already have them at 15 and be able to have full mil and immediately fight the enemy 15 cities. Even in the 10 range, to go from city 10 to 15, assuming manifest destiny, would cost around 341mil. For what? getting the jump on some enemy 10 city nations? Maybe you do it in the mid tier, say having your 15s dec the enemies (maybe after waiting for counters so your slots are filled) then buying up to 18. Its only a boost of three cities, so it shouldn't be too expensive right? And anything that gives an advantage would be useful, no? Well it would cost just shy of 500mil each. Thats 5 billion to do that for just 10 nations, gaining a marginal advantage for a drop in the bucket of the total nations in a major war. A medium sized AA of 40 would need 20 billion to pull it off. I don't know why you'd ever just want to sit on that.

 

Not only would it be costly to make that jump, but there's also the assumption that the counters dont immediately go for a blockade.

In fact, if an alliance tried to implement this strat, the opposing alliance would adapt by boosting their counters' navies to stop the other guy from receiving the money for more cities.

Edited by Cianuro
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49 minutes ago, Mikey said:

-snip-

 

23 minutes ago, Cianuro said:

-snip-

All solid points, but both of you are forgetting the more basic argument, which is that given competence and militarization on the part of the 3 counters... it quite simply wouldn't even work. If the counters were downdeclaring, then at best the nation that took the city jump would now be on par with those 3 counters, but it's still an 8v1 war. At best, the newly enlarged nation can beige a few of those before being zeroed and beiged, if they're lucky and they attacked marginally actives, or their opponents were attempting to pin as opposed to win.

Also, throwing a bil into one nation... that's one of those times when tanks really pay for themselves; nice job buying your enemy a bunch of cities lmao

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tbh im starting to see your points, with the timer already jumped from 5 to 10 cities, it is somewhat obsolete and people should just adapt to that change by having more devoted blockade breakers & blockaders in their military.

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On 8/7/2018 at 12:21 AM, Mikey said:

I agree completely. Frankly I think even the city timer could be removed. All these timers do is benefit older nations by putting a hard cap on how quickly alliances or groups of new players can boost each other up. The exponential growth of cost for cities does a very good job on slowing the ability to grow into ever higher tiers, where the 10 day timer isn't really an issue. Where it is an issue is for alliances boosting up new players. or investing in beefing up active new alliances with young members. Not that people will necessarily start pumping new guys up to 16 cities rapidly without a timer, its a very risky and expensive investment. But there are some use cases, and in any event, if they want to spend the money, power to 'em. Moving the timeless to 10 cities was already a very good step though.

Whales and old timers all had to endure city timers from city 1 to however many cities they are at now (Looking at Seb, Belisarius and Don Juan), and removing something that defined their gameplay and made them adapt just because we think it's now obsolete will obviously hurt those players as they had to invest time and be patient, in something that now everybody can get a shortcut to.

Also, city timers extend content. From a game perspective, removing city timers is a horrible idea. We have credits, and without timers you can just spam buy cities if you're in the low/mid tier. I know we all dick around and troll Sheepy, but he didn't design this game to be pay to win. I'm actually really proud that he didn't sell out like the CN admin, and knowing this game won't sell out in the future just makes it more appealing. Are we supposed to suggest removing credit caps after this so that everyone with a fat paypal account can have 30 cities now? 

It also allows larger alliances to shove money down their member's throats for growth, while micros don't have that privilege. Individual performances become less important, whats the point of playing the market for 10 hours a day when TKR/BK/TCW/NPO will just drop 500mil-1bil on you over 2 months. Coming back that, at that point the most efficient way to play the game is to just tax everyone a 100% and run a full command economy, trying to spend as much money as possible for long term benefit. You're talking about risk as a high deterrent, but risk is manageable. If you spread the risk over a hundred investments and 1/3 of them fail, you're still ahead of everyone else, and you've still made a huge profit.

Than you have to think about content in general. I don't mind project timers being removed that much, it wouldn't give anyone a significant advantage. But cities are literally all of the content in this game during peace. Buying through cities fast makes you miss a lot of content and grinding it instead makes you fulfilled when you see your nation. If we keep removing cooldowns on everything, it will defeat the purpose of the game, as Alex put those timers there for a reason.

A majority of the alliances currently in the top 20 or even 30 would be at a high disadvantage and have to adapt, as city timers provide breathing room where we can teach the players how to play the game at a slower pace, slowly balancing tiers and having a reason to why you grow during peace. I think an integral part of alliance's strategies in this game is to grow during peace to be ready for the next war, that's what most IA/Econ/Milcom planning really revolves around. If I know that we'll be fighting IQ in the next 2 weeks, why wouldn't I just dish out 10bil to grow a fat low tier of 14 city nations that give me a vital advantage, defeating the whole purpose of IQs tiers and whole war strategy that they built for 2 years?

You're not thinking about it the right way. You're thinking about it in the mindset of "Well it takes a lot more than 10 days to save up and buy a city, so why is the timer there in the first place?". That's not the point of the cooldown. The point of the timer being there at all is so that you can't instantly buy as many cities as you want if you have the cash. It's there for balance reasons, so that there is a sense of slow progression. So that alliances can't dump money during war to improve their chances,  and instead have to plan during peace. So that there is breathing room for players, and so that there can be a numerous amount of systems that all work just as well, for a wide range of alliances.
 

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22 hours ago, Mikey said:
 

So, people are bringing up the idea of jumping cities immediately after starting a war as a negative to removing the timer, but I can't see this as anything other than an extremely niche strategy.

Firstly, unless I am mistaken, military takes time to build. I think its maybe 4-5 days to go from 0 to full militarization, so even if you bought a bunch of cities right after declaring, you'd not be able to just jump immediately to max mil in them. It would, to be sure, increase your daily buy, but its not as good a strat as I think some people make it out to be.

Secondly, its extremely expensive. Maybe it would be viable in the low tiers, but for most alliances, the fighting in the 10 city range doesn't really matter anyway, and I can't see a scenario in which it makes sense to reserve a bunch of money and resources just to boost up a bunch of your 10 city guys to beat on the enemies. Much better to already have them at 15 and be able to have full mil and immediately fight the enemy 15 cities. Even in the 10 range, to go from city 10 to 15, assuming manifest destiny, would cost around 341mil. For what? getting the jump on some enemy 10 city nations? Maybe you do it in the mid tier, say having your 15s dec the enemies (maybe after waiting for counters so your slots are filled) then buying up to 18. Its only a boost of three cities, so it shouldn't be too expensive right? And anything that gives an advantage would be useful, no? Well it would cost just shy of 500mil each. Thats 5 billion to do that for just 10 nations, gaining a marginal advantage for a drop in the bucket of the total nations in a major war. A medium sized AA of 40 would need 20 billion to pull it off. I don't know why you'd ever just want to sit on that.

Not only is it costly in real terms, you have to think of the opportunity cost. If you could have bought your members up to city 15 or 18 or whatever it is, but choose to keep them at 12 just for this one strat, you are losing out on all the money and resources that could have been generated had you just built the cities when you could. Considering most alliances only fight every 6 months (at least the kind of major wars where you would be willing to do this), that's a lot of stalled growth. Even if you win and thrash your enemy, you probably lost more in lost income/rss than you dealt in damages anyway.

 

i agree with alot of your points, however i do not mean it as a strategy to be utilized repeatedly for defense but rather a massive blitz attack from an alliance with newer military members conducting a full assault and buying multiple cities for them.

either by massively rich alliances or one that used alot of pay to win credits.

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3 hours ago, Radoje said:

Whales and old timers all had to endure city timers from city 1 to however many cities they are at now (Looking at Seb, Belisarius and Don Juan), and removing something that defined their gameplay and made them adapt just because we think it's now obsolete will obviously hurt those players as they had to invest time and be patient, in something that now everybody can get a shortcut to.

While this is a good point, I don't believe it is that important at all, considering at the whale tier, it still takes longer than 10 days to make a new city. The biggest whale nations in the game would be over 150 cities if that were the case. It really isn't something that "defined their gameplay" by any means.

My counterpoint is that while they did have to endure the hurdles, they have now done so. Forcing newer and smaller players to run the same hurdles isn't productive, since it keeps everyone else just that much more permanently behind.

However...

3 hours ago, Radoje said:

Also, city timers extend content. From a game perspective, removing city timers is a horrible idea. We have credits, and without timers you can just spam buy cities if you're in the low/mid tier. I know we all dick around and troll Sheepy, but he didn't design this game to be pay to win. I'm actually really proud that he didn't sell out like the CN admin, and knowing this game won't sell out in the future just makes it more appealing. Are we supposed to suggest removing credit caps after this so that everyone with a fat paypal account can have 30 cities now?

That's just disingenuous. You say that the game isn't pay to win, (and I do at this time agree with that), but then you call out the premium currency as a solution to the issue? And you're making a strawman point as if removing the city timer is in any way even close to something as horrible as uncapping the paid bonuses? Downvote.

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3 hours ago, Radoje said:

It also allows larger alliances to shove money down their member's throats for growth, while micros don't have that privilege.

That's already a huge problem. Larger alliances shove money at their members all the time, and obviously to a far greater degree than micros can ever accomplish. And credits, as you already pointed out, allow you to do that anyway. In fact, removing the city timers would make it just that much cheaper and therefore potentially more accessible to micros, so as I see it you've made a solid argument towards removing the city timer, not against.

Edited by Sir Scarfalot
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Whales and old timers all had to endure city timers from city 1 to however many cities they are at now (Looking at Seb, Belisarius and Don Juan), and removing something that defined their gameplay and made them adapt just because we think it's now obsolete will obviously hurt those players as they had to invest time and be patient, in something that now everybody can get a shortcut to.


Timers are largely irrelevant to whales or anybody funding their own growth because you will always take longer than the timer to buy the growth in the first place. Which is to say, nobody among the cadre of older nations (or any nation that had to largely build on their own or is a net tax exporter to their AA) should have had their growth slow by timers in any significant way. The only thing timers do is hold back the ability of third parties to help a nation rapidly grow (be it their own alliance or another one).

 

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Also, city timers extend content. From a game perspective, removing city timers is a horrible idea. We have credits, and without timers you can just spam buy cities if you're in the low/mid tier. I know we all dick around and troll Sheepy, but he didn't design this game to be pay to win. I'm actually really proud that he didn't sell out like the CN admin, and knowing this game won't sell out in the future just makes it more appealing. Are we supposed to suggest removing credit caps after this so that everyone with a fat paypal account can have 30 cities now? 

Equating city timer limits with credits is a completely absurd. I agree that we should not get rid of the timer on credits – and indeed I bet there are many who are not happy with the very idea of being able to pay for in-game resources at all, let alone the current system. But simply removing city timers to allow alliances to spend their own, in-game earned money, has absolutely nothing to do with being pay to win.


 

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It also allows larger alliances to shove money down their member's throats for growth, while micros don't have that privilege. Individual performances become less important, whats the point of playing the market for 10 hours a day when TKR/BK/TCW/NPO will just drop 500mil-1bil on you over 2 months.

Growth? Most alliances don't have a trillion lying around to boost all their members up to 35 cities. Even in cases where alliances would drop largess on some members, you’d still need to play the market and build well to earn that money in the first place, and to keep growing after you’ve hit the limit of what your alliance would provide. We fund people up to 15 cities in SK, it doesn’t stop anyone from needing to focus on their own growth to support war chests, infra, and cities beyond that point.

 

 

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Coming back that, at that point the most efficient way to play the game is to just tax everyone a 100% and run a full command economy, trying to spend as much money as possible for long term benefit. You're talking about risk as a high deterrent, but risk is manageable. If you spread the risk over a hundred investments and 1/3 of them fail, you're still ahead of everyone else, and you've still made a huge profit.

Command economy is neither here nor there. NPO and several alliances use it and swear by it, many others don’t. Whether it is or is not the most efficient has nothing to do with city timers. Any alliance now could run a command economy and funnel all their money into continually building cities for their nations. My point about risk was just to admit that alliances massively boosting up new nations will be relatively rare due to the cost and risk they will delete, but I still see no reason to limit those who wish to do so.


 

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Than you have to think about content in general. I don't mind project timers being removed

that much, it wouldn't give anyone a significant advantage. But cities are literally all of the content in this game during peace. Buying through cities fast makes you miss a lot of content and grinding it instead makes you fulfilled when you see your nation. If we keep removing cooldowns on everything, it will defeat the purpose of the game, as Alex put those timers there for a reason.

What content do you miss by buying cities quickly vs slowly? Not savoring clicking the “Buy City” button? Why not have time limits on buying infra and land while we’re at it? As far as loosing the satisfaction from not "grinding" it yourself, you could say the same thing about getting any city aid (or aid in general) from your alliance. Right now the only difference is that alliances who spend a lot on aid have to wait several days before sending out more. Its not going to change the extent to which nations must pay for things themselves vs getting it from someone else.

Which is not to say I disagree in large part about not micro managing or going full command economy. I suspect we share more than we don’t in that regard. But I believe it should be up to each alliance and nation to decide how best to handle that growth, and I just don’t see what value the timers add here.

 

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A majority of the alliances currently in the top 20 or even 30 would be at a high disadvantage and have to adapt, as city timers provide breathing room where we can teach the players how to play the game at a slower pace, slowly balancing tiers and having a reason to why you grow during peace. I think an integral part of alliance's strategies in this game is to grow during peace to be ready for the next war, that's what most IA/Econ/Milcom planning really revolves around. If I know that we'll be fighting IQ in the next 2 weeks, why wouldn't I just dish out 10bil to grow a fat low tier of 14 city nations that give me a vital advantage, defeating the whole purpose of IQs tiers and whole war strategy that they built for 2 years?

The breathing room is provided by you, the alliance. You can already buy up to 10 cities instantly. I know we don’t, we impose a limitation to see if nations will be active and ensure they get started with the game before dumping money into. You can give yourself whatever breathing room you want, or don’t want, without the game needing to do it for you.
 

Yes, an integral part of peace time is growth. Having or not having a timer on city growth will not change that or make IA/Econ useless. You ask why you wouldn’t just dish out 10bil to grow a bunch of 14 city nations to fight IQ – well, for reasons I already outlined, its not a smart strategy and by saving growth for a one time burst in one war, you likely lose out more in lost growth than you dish out in damages anyway. But even if it could work, I’m not sure its a problem allowing extra dimensions to strategy. And I don't think it would effect their strat anyway. Most of IQ's traditional enemies exist in tiers above them, preventing them from being able to launch significant assaults with all their force. Unless you can find 100 new, active members, and a good trillion to boost them all to city 15, you aren't going to be able to break through that wall just because there is no timer.

Though honestly if you could and it got them building up again, I'd say thats worth it in its own right lol.

 

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You're not thinking about it the right way. You're thinking about it in the mindset of "Well it takes a lot more than 10 days to save up and buy a city, so why is the timer there in the first place?". That's not the point of the cooldown. The point of the timer being there at all is so that you can't instantly buy as many cities as you want if you have the cash. It's there for balance reasons, so that there is a sense of slow progression. So that alliances can't dump money during war to improve their chances,  and instead have to plan during peace. So that there is breathing room for players, and so that there can be a numerous amount of systems that all work just as well, for a wide range of alliances.

Why should there be slow progression at all tiers? Obviously the timer has a purpose, the question is if it is a good one. Why are we trying to break and stall out growth in the low tier? The important thing was always breaking growth at the top. I was here in the very early days and I remember when cities were across the board much easier to aquire. Tweaks have come since, including the timers and changing the price formula. The idea being to prevent runaway growth from older nations, such that nobody would ever have any hope of catching up. That issue is dealt with via the logarithmic price increase.

 

I get that you have a personal preference that alliances shouldn't fund cities for their members, and let them grow slowly, and especially not run command economies. Thats fine, and I agree on the command thing since I find it boring. But we shouldn't be baking strategic limitations into the game just to ensure everybody plays the way we like, and I just don't see any serious balancing concerns with removing the timer.

Edited by Mikey

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2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

While this is a good point, I don't believe it is that important at all, considering at the whale tier, it still takes longer than 10 days to make a new city. The biggest whale nations in the game would be over 150 cities if that were the case. It really isn't something that "defined their gameplay" by any means.

You have missed the point. I was arguing "All these timers do is benefit older nations by putting a hard cap on how quickly alliances or groups of new players can boost each other up."
This is why I said that at the beginning, and not the end.

I think the point Mikey made is a pseudo "It's the Patriarchy" argument. Whales would rightfully be pissed if such a change occured, as it would take away from their achievement.

And it has defined their gameplay, in the literal sense. That's the gameplay of the game. I think you forget the time where there were always city timers and having 7 cities was considered mid tier? 
 

2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

My counterpoint is that while they did have to endure the hurdles, they have now done so. Forcing newer and smaller players to run the same hurdles isn't productive, since it keeps everyone else just that much more permanently behind.

What hurdles? Waiting 10 days to buy a city? You consider that a hurdle?

Please read the rest of what I wrote.

2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

That's just disingenuous. You say that the game isn't pay to win, (and I do at this time agree with that), but then you call out the premium currency as a solution to the issue?

Even though I didn't make that point and you're being dyslexic, I'll follow up with that in my next point.

2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

And you're making a strawman point as if removing the city timer is in any way even close to something as horrible as uncapping the paid bonuses? Downvote.

I will entertain your argument. Not so long ago we have talked about removing city timers until city 20, remember? So Alex compromised and removed timers until city 10. Before that, it was city 5. He's decreased the cost of cities in the low tier and a long time ago he has also reduced the cost of infra. Saying that we're not far away from removing the cap on credits is not outlandish at all, we are heading in that direction, I am genuinely surprised you're willing to make any compromise on core game mechanics to appeal to the lower tier. You are calling me disingenuous yet you're acting like the fact I was being hyperbolic has flown over your head.

Going back to the previous thing, yes, credits are a viable solution if you think "if they have cash, more power to them!". Just buy 8 credits, reset your timer 2 times and buy 2 cities, I think that's a much better solution than causing a game breaking rift that is and will be abused to hell by every alliance in the top 5, just so you can buy yourselves and your mates up to 20 cities.

2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

That's already a huge problem. Larger alliances shove money at their members all the time, and obviously to a far greater degree than micros can ever accomplish. And credits, as you already pointed out, allow you to do that anyway. In fact, removing the city timers would make it just that much cheaper and therefore potentially more accessible to micros, so as I see it you've made a solid argument towards removing the city timer, not against.

The difference is whether it's progression and time invested in the game, or something you get given for free. I think you are completely missing the main point of my argument which I repeated 3 times. It's game balance. You're forgetting what makes a nation sim fun to play.

1. Roleplay: Indulgence in FA discussion, rivalries, friendships, ingame characters, and a sense of community.
2. The Sense of Progression (what we're talking about here): Something to look forward to, and feeling like you're growing. Waking up and feeling excited to buy a city, getting your 2000 infra for the first time and wondering what manufactured resources you're going to make, getting that shiny new 90 aircraft, seeing your warchest size increase. These are all integral parts of the game's progression. Removing all of that and just shoveling money down your throat will ultimately ruin your experience and decrease your retention and dedication to the game. When has getting everything for free without a sense of slow, grinding progression resulted to you enjoying the game more?
3. Fulfillment: Looking back at how hard you worked to get what you have and seeing your nation stand out above others. This is why we're enchanted when looking at war stats, alliance graphs going up or even simply refreshing your nation to check your soldiers killed count going up.

The difference between being in a micro and being in a top 5 alliance is that they are 2 completely different environments, and shouldn't be treated as the same game. When you're in a micro, you're creating something new, and you've consciously signed up to the fact that your alliance is top 80 and that they won't grow you. You've made a conscious choice, nobody forced you to do it. The line where that changes is when large alliances have to shovel money down their members to compete with other alliances that are doing the same, at that point, micros are far worse off for obvious reasons.

"Removing city timers would make it cheaper for and more accessible to micros" Would you care to explain how? And also, without your point even making sense, you've just contradicted yourself. You were literally arguing the "Well saving up for a city lasts longer than 10 days, so they're already meaningless" point a second ago.
 

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51 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Timers are largely irrelevant to whales or anybody funding their own growth because you will always take longer than the timer to buy the growth in the first place. Which is to say, nobody among the cadre of older nations (or any nation that had to largely build on their own or is a net tax exporter to their AA) should have had their growth slow by timers in any significant way. The only thing timers do is hold back the ability of third parties to help a nation rapidly grow (be it their own alliance or another one).

This is not what I was arguing. You were arguing that "All these timers do is benefit older nations by putting a hard cap on how quickly alliances or groups of new players can boost each other up." which is a "it's the patriarchy" argument. I was telling you that when you take somebody's achievement away and make it easier for everybody now starting to get to what took them close to 3 years to achieve, they're going to be rightfully pissed. Their point of view is very realistic. Calling out all veterans and saying the only reason a mechanic exists is to benefit them is the most childish and ignorant thing I've ever heard from you. The mechanic is there for game balance. Alliances being able to fund a large pool of nations to swing the tide of the war over night is game breaking, and no matter what argument you make won't change the fact that such a scenario would definitely happen, I would be the first person to do it, as there is no reason not to.

55 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Equating city timer limits with credits is a completely absurd. I agree that we should not get rid of the timer on credits – and indeed I bet there are many who are not happy with the very idea of being able to pay for in-game resources at all, let alone the current system. But simply removing city timers to allow alliances to spend their own, in-game earned money, has absolutely nothing to do with being pay to win.

"Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech."
 

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

Growth? Most alliances don't have a trillion lying around to boost all their members up to 35 cities. Even in cases where alliances would drop largess on some members, you’d still need to play the market and build well to earn that money in the first place, and to keep growing after you’ve hit the limit of what your alliance would provide. We fund people up to 15 cities in SK, it doesn’t stop anyone from needing to focus on their own growth to support war chests, infra, and cities beyond that point.

What are you talking about, have you no sense of econ?
I was talking about alliances boosting their members to the mid tier. After the last time Alex has balanced lower tier growth, it is more than affordable to drop 14-15 cities on someone. It would result into alliances hyper recruiting and streamlining members to 14-15 cities to build a steroid mid tier. And as soon as the change would go through, on the same day the average score of most alliances would jump up by a five hundred to a thousand from them dropping swaths of cash on their low tier members with potential.

How is this even being discussed, this is not a fun way to play the game, it's disgusting even thinking about it.

"We fund people up to 15 cities in SK, it doesn’t stop anyone from needing to focus on their own growth to support war chests, infra, and cities beyond that point."

You're being delusional. What you're proposing and the example you're making are 2 completely different scenarios. You don't fund people to 15 cities overnight. And how is anybody going to focus on their own growth and support their warchest when you're dropping 4-5 cities on them over night? If you want to test your theory, recruit a 1 city member and give him 10 cities. Than take a look at his warchest and see if it has changed, or if he can afford it in the next 2 months.

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

Command economy is neither here nor there. NPO and several alliances use it and swear by it, many others don’t. Whether it is or is not the most efficient has nothing to do with city timers. Any alliance now could run a command economy and funnel all their money into continually building cities for their nations. My point about risk was just to admit that alliances massively boosting up new nations will be relatively rare due to the cost and risk they will delete, but I still see no reason to limit those who wish to do so.

You're such a sweet, wholesome hipster guy, I can't even explain how much I envy your way of thought. I'm only now starting to get your vibe. It's the whole "Let everyone do what they want, freedom for all the alliances, let them fund their members if they want, who are we to stop them"

You're the hero of PnW, you're freeing alliances of our shackles, now we can freely roam the fields and shit cash onto our micro warriors all we want. Every point you make ends with "But if we do it, alliances can now do what they want". Yes Mikey, I too want TKR to have a mid tier of 50; 15 city nations, that sounds great to me. I also want my fiance to log into the game and be able to jump to 15 cities from the bat. There's just one problem, every other alliance would be doing the same thing, so we'd be stuck in a constant struggle to outgrow each other by shitting more money onto micros. It's impossible to balance.

You don't get it, do you? If the game could be a fairy land where everyone can run free and do whatever they want, we'd all be a knight in shining armor at 30 cities giving our friends free dough. There has to be some core mechanic that separates people from all being at the same tier and also giving people an incentive to grow in the first place and put time into learning the game and slowly developing over time. City prices increasing after every city doesn't alter the fact that half of the game would be accessible to you from the bat by just being able to rub 2 brain cells together and joining a top 3 alliance.
 

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

What content do you miss by buying cities quickly vs slowly? Not savoring clicking the “Buy City” button? Why not have time limits on buying infra and land while we’re at it? As far as loosing the satisfaction from not "grinding" it yourself, you could say the same thing about getting any city aid (or aid in general) from your alliance. Right now the only difference is that alliances who spend a lot on aid have to wait several days before sending out more. Its not going to change the extent to which nations must pay for things themselves vs getting it from someone else.

Which is not to say I disagree in large part about not micro managing or going full command economy. I suspect we share more than we don’t in that regard. But I believe it should be up to each alliance and nation to decide how best to handle that growth, and I just don’t see what value the timers add here.


"2. The Sense of Progression (what we're talking about here): Something to look forward to, and feeling like you're growing. Waking up and feeling excited to buy a city, getting your 2000 infra for the first time and wondering what manufactured resources you're going to make, getting that shiny new 90 aircraft, seeing your warchest size increase. These are all integral parts of the game's progression. Removing all of that and just shoveling money down your throat will ultimately ruin your experience and decrease your retention and dedication to the game. When has getting everything for free without a sense of slow, grinding progression resulted to you enjoying the game more?
3. Fulfillment: Looking back at how hard you worked to get what you have and seeing your nation stand out above others. This is why we're enchanted when looking at war stats, alliance graphs going up or even simply refreshing your nation to check your soldiers killed count going up."

"Right now the only difference is that alliances who spend a lot on aid have to wait several days before sending out more."
Where? Can I sign up?
If you're not a command economy alliance with a large wallet like NPO that makes 200mil a day, and you're giving people a new city every 10 days, you're a complete moron, which is why that never happens, I don't know which alliance you're talking about. Realistically, alliances expect to grow their member's city count every 20-30 days across the board, which is a cheap and easy plan of growing at peace time. Comparing the 2 is absolutely absurd. Why would you grow a 20 city nation when you can buy 5 cities in the low tier for your new nations off the bat? Why grow whales at all? 

"But I believe it should be up to each alliance and nation to decide how best to handle that growth, and I just don’t see what value the timers add here."

There he goes again.
 

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

The breathing room is provided by you, the alliance. You can already buy up to 10 cities instantly. I know we don’t, we impose a limitation to see if nations will be active and ensure they get started with the game before dumping money into. You can give yourself whatever breathing room you want, or don’t want, without the game needing to do it for you.
 

Yes, an integral part of peace time is growth. Having or not having a timer on city growth will not change that or make IA/Econ useless. You ask why you wouldn’t just dish out 10bil to grow a bunch of 14 city nations to fight IQ – well, for reasons I already outlined, its not a smart strategy and by saving growth for a one time burst in one war, you likely lose out more in lost growth than you dish out in damages anyway. But even if it could work, I’m not sure its a problem allowing extra dimensions to strategy. And I don't think it would effect their strat anyway. Most of IQ's traditional enemies exist in tiers above them, preventing them from being able to launch significant assaults with all their force. Unless you can find 100 new, active members, and a good trillion to boost them all to city 15, you aren't going to be able to break through that wall just because there is no timer.

Though honestly if you could and it got them building up again, I'd say thats worth it in its own right lol.


Yes, a 100% agree with you on the first block. We do the same thing, and actually very extensively. But if all of a sudden BK starts pumping half their alliance to 17 cities over night, everyone would be forced to do the same so they can compete. That's the issue. It's not "No, the old guard have to be better than us plebs", it's the fact that one alliance abusing this would force the rest of us to do the same.

I never said that it would make econ/ia useless, in fact econ/ia would be shivering in fear, biting their nails, looking at the alliance leaderboards hoping the person they're prepping to go to war against in the next 2 months isn't completely altering their tiers so they have to conjure up a plan to do the same.

"Its not a smart strategy and by saving growth for a one time burst in one war, you likely lose out more in lost growth than you dish out in damages anyway."

It's a brilliant strategy, it would ultimately be what wins you the war. Getting an air advantage before the update across 5-10 nations can swing the war to your side easily. It wouldn't have to be an instance of an alliance buying a hundred cities, giving one nation 2 or 3 cities overnight could change the tide of that tier. Can you even imagine the mayhem it would create, when in a war, your enemy builds 3 cities on 2 different nations and you have to drop 3 cities on the guys he's hitting. Than you wake up to another 3 nations having 2 or 3 more cities and than you have to drop cash on your guys to balance out the tier. How do you not see a problem in this? It's like the arcade version of the game.
 

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

Why should there be slow progression at all tiers? Obviously the timer has a purpose, the question is if it is a good one. Why are we trying to break and stall out growth in the low tier? The important thing was always breaking growth at the top. I was here in the very early days and I remember when cities were across the board much easier to aquire. Tweaks have come since, including the timers and changing the price formula. The idea being to prevent runaway growth from older nations, such that nobody would ever have any hope of catching up. That issue is dealt with via the logarithmic price increase.

 

I get that you have a personal preference that alliances shouldn't fund cities for their members, and let them grow slowly, and especially not run command economies. Thats fine, and I agree on the command thing since I find it boring. But we shouldn't be baking strategic limitations into the game just to ensure everybody plays the way we like, and I just don't see any serious balancing concerns with removing the timer.


We're not, you can now go from 1-10 cities all at once. There is no slow progression in the low tiers anymore. Waiting 10 days for your alliance to give you a free goodies is not slow progression.

Breaking the growth at the top doesn't mean that we should encourage growth in the low tier. That's like killing someone, burying them and than dancing on their grave. Slowing growth at the top was more than enough to catch up as it is, and no whale or veteran was complaining about it for obvious reasons. But if you tell them that now everyone can get to 30 cities if they have a rich friend/alliance, they'll have a reason to be pissed off.

"I get that you have a personal preference that alliances shouldn't fund cities for their members, and let them grow slowly, and especially not run command economies."

No Mikey, I'm just like you, I let the alliances run free and do what they want. But that has nothing to do with the topic. Removing timers would change that, as I've already said above.

"But we shouldn't be baking strategic limitations into the game just to ensure everybody plays the way we like,"

I've never said that. There are currently a thousand ways to run your alliance, and all of the systems will work to a degree, with of course different results depending on tiers and your wallet. What you're suggesting would directly be baking strategic limitations to ensure everybody plays the game the way we like, because they'd have no other choice.

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Ok dude. For starters, lets relax a bit. This is the game suggestion forums, its ok to make suggestions and debate and disagree. If you’re blood pressure is getting so worked up that you have to fling insults at me every other sentence to get through this, maybe you are taking this game just a bit too seriously. At the end of the day we're all just a bunch of dudes pretending to be nation leaders on the internetz. Nothing said or done here really matters when the tab is closed.

 

Anyway, in broad strokes, your points are this:

  1. I hate older players and am calling them out needlessly.
  2. This takes away the hard earned achievements of older players, who had to struggle with the city timer / people lose their sense of progression
  3. Dropping 14-15 cities at a time is super affordable and everyone will do it in war if we drop the timers.
  4. Reversing course from point three, you suggest its foolish to fund people up 15 cities at once (which you just said everyone would do), and that to learn a lesson in
  5. I am a naive idiot who wants everyone to have a bajillion cities and fart rainbows.
  6. Without city timers people lose their sense of progression
  7. This will make everyone command economies.
  8. Whales will be pissed that anyone with a rich friend can get to 30 cities

 

1. I don’t hate older players. I am an older player, I’ve been here since 2013. I remember when 10 cities made you such a super whale the entire rest of the game teamed up to take you down. I was simply pointing out that a mechanic devised in part to restrict run away high tier growth (preventing an unbridgeable city gap between early and newer players), is not doing anything to that effect and quite the opposite.

 

2. So there are two sides to this. First, the suggestion that we are screwing over older nations by removing a feature they had to struggle against to succeed. No we aren’t Cities aren’t cheap bud, and if the timer was all that mattered anybody over a year old would have 30+ cities. But we are ruining progression! What progression? Alliances already give aid and grants to their members. Doesn’t that take away progression? Shouldn’t we, then, prevent in-game anybody from giving aid to anybody else?

 

3. No, it really isn’t. By the most charitable estimate of dropping “15 cities” - that is, going from 1 city to 15 - it would cost about 400mil for each nation. Doable for a small number, but infeasible in aggregate. Again, if in war time you’d want to do that for just 40 nations - fraction of combatants in most major wars - it would cost 16 billion.

 

4.

Quote

“If you're not a command economy alliance with a large wallet like NPO that makes 200mil a day, and you're giving people a new city every 10 days, you're a complete moron, which is why that never happens, I don't know which alliance you're talking about”

 

We are not a command economy. For the cities we pay for (2-15), we pay for them as soon as the timer is up (after the first week or two they've been here, obviously you gotta make sure people will stick around). We’re doing just fine for it economically (wish I could say the same militarilly lol).

 

5. This entire paragraph was pretty much just calling me every name in the book with little substance behind it. Sorry your feathers are so ruffled by me offering my thoughts on a game mechanic. Next time I’ll hold my peace so papa TKR doesn’t get mad. Suffice it to say, a general belief that in-game mechanics should, as much as possible not hinder player action or prevent them from using their money as they see fit, is hardly the same as wanting a world where everybody has a million cities and we all sing kumbaya.

 

7. We’ll all just be command economies. No we won’t, where are you even getting this? The actual economies here - how much it costs to build a city, how long it takes to pay back, etc, are unchanged with or without timers. The rate at which new cities can be bought increases, true. But the rate at which the money to pay for them is generated, and the rate at which those cities eventually pay themselves back, is not. The benefits/drawbacks of boosting someone up without timers is the same with, the only difference is how long you have to wait if you decide its worth it. To the extent that command economies are more efficient, they are now as well. But of course, this being game, playstyles are as important as efficiencies. Many don’t run that style because it just isn’t fun even if it can in some circumstances provide benefits.

 

8. I honestly don’t care and I doubt most would either. EVE works exactly like this, you could have the biggest baddest shit from day one, in theory. Hell, it would be those very whales giving out the money! Not having timers is a restriction on them and the alliances they lead being able to do what they want with the money they generated, and even then it could still be done, it would just take a bit longer. Of course, I don’t know where you would ever find someone to give you the money, and I don’t know where in PW you are ever going to find an alliance or player willing to boost someone from 0-32 in one go. But if they want to, power to them.

 

You are right that to an extent the no timer up to 10 cities helps with this. I was simply suggesting that perhaps there isn’t as much utility for having beyond as it would seem. But sorry, I forgot that people aren’t allowed to express opinions here :P

 

Anyway, if somebody else wants to continue a remotely civilized discussion about the mechanic, I am happy to do so. I think its an interesting question and I by no means believe I have all the answers or might not be wrong on this.

Edited by Mikey

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

 

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9 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Ok dude. For starters, lets relax a bit. This is the game suggestion forums, its ok to make suggestions and debate and disagree. If you’re blood pressure is getting so worked up that you have to fling insults at me every other sentence to get through this, maybe you are taking this game just a bit too seriously. At the end of the day we're all just a bunch of dudes pretending to be nation leaders on the internetz. Nothing said or done here really matters when the tab is closed.

I don't know what impression you got, but I can assure you that I am completely calm. This is just the way in which I talk, you can ask anyone that knows me. I am giving you fair criticism. I don't know how you talk at SK, but maybe somebody should give you criticism about something they care once in a while. I am being passionate about this topic for a reason.

This discussion has been ongoing for the past 6 months and every single time somebody suggests a crazy change that involves city timers, a large part of the game disagrees, me telling you that you're proposing something unrealistic is not the first nor the last time you'll hear it. The "it's just a game" spiel is old.

What is crazy is when you suggest something like this and 1 or 2 people agree with you, it starts a bandwagon, so I am trying to do my part for the discussion and be vocal and clear to why you're wrong. It's called disagreeing.

You've nitpicked my points to fit your agenda, so I'll be short and clear with you, so we can get this over with, and you can stop answering your own questions.

I'll do your format, why not.

1. It is extremely abusable and game breaking. Why?
  - If one alliance, any alliance in the top 10 starts abusing the system and getting incredible results, such as hyper recruiting and building rows and rows of low-mid tier nations,      switching to command economies to micromanage and shovel as much growth as possible with no repercussion, every alliance is going to feel compelled or even forced to do the same. Let's say you're right, and entertain your theory. Nobody competes for a while and this never happens. There is still a high chance that it will get abused in the future, and when it picks up, it'll shatter the game, it's irreversible. There is no reason to take on such a high risk for the sake of "being able to use money however you like". It can have serious consequences to the game in the long term future.
  - Wars. This will a 100% get abused in every single war that happens as soon as this gets implemented. I already mentioned that it could turn the tide of a war in an instant.
Being able to automatically beef up a tier and have a significant aircraft advantage in it would change how all wars are fought. I'm telling you, it would be absolute mayhem. People would drop cities on members, forcing the opposing side to do the same. The entire war would be a chess match of who can afford to build as many cities as possible to have strong tier disparities.

2. This would alter already existing game mechanics. This applies to player retention and progression, player growth, alliance tiers, alliance interactions and war.
  - Let's ignore alliances for now and focus on an individual member's game retention. The timer is there to prevent you from taking shortcuts, it forces you to experience the game, which is crucial. There is also a large difference between being able to buy the next 3 cities now, and actually doing it. You would burn through the game a lot faster, this is why city timers, and "cities" exist as a thing in the first place.

  - I told you that being an IA/Econ head after this change would be like sitting in a dark room, refreshing alliance leaderboards and biting on your nails. Planning ahead of time becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible. It would come down to playing mind games with the person you're trying to hit, trying to mix and mash tiers between each other preparing for the next war. Again, it would be absolute mayhem, as any side can completely alter their tiers right before the night of the blitz, forcing you to readjust, and this would go over and over again, and than continue during the war. That's what the whole game would revolve around.
 

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Removing city timers seem like it can be abused too much, and this suggestion is literally about project timers, so better than derail it more, agreed with the project timer remover (never understood its purpose in the first place)

Edited by Lordship
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35 minutes ago, Radoje said:

I don't know what impression you got, but I can assure you that I am completely calm. This is just the way in which I talk, you can ask anyone that knows me. I am giving you fair criticism. I don't know how you talk at SK, but maybe somebody should give you criticism about something they care once in a while. I am being passionate about this topic for a reason.

You're right, referring to anyone who disagrees with you as a naive, wishful thinking delusional hipster idiot with a hero complex, in a wall of text dripping with condescension, is a normal way to exchange ideas :P It's a shame because you do raise some interesting points, if only it was worth it to cut through all the sarcasm to get to them. In any event, thats the PW forums lol. I just pity the people that have to work with you and listen to this every day.

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

 

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9 minutes ago, Mikey said:

You're right, referring to anyone who disagrees with you as a naive, wishful thinking delusional hipster idiot with a hero complex, in a wall of text dripping with condescension, is a normal way to exchange ideas :P It's a shame because you do raise some interesting points, if only it was worth it to cut through all the sarcasm to get to them. In any event, thats the PW forums lol. I just pity the people that have to work with you and listen to this every day.

I was specifically referring to you. I hope you take no offense if I took the conversation into a different perspective to prove a point, but I meant no harm. But anyways, Lordship is right, let's just move on.

Edited by Radoje
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1) I agree with Radoje about this devaluing projects and the sense of achievement a player can get from obtaining it.  The city timer change devalued cities in a similar way.  When someone can instantly jump to 10 cities and several projects, they never get that same sense of achievement of that first project that it took them a while to get to.  When you go for instant gratification on everything for new players, you hasten the speed that those early achievements are all obtained and the game gets less interesting.

2) This could incentivize project swapping between peace and war, which devalues the fact that people have to make choices about what projects to have, econ vs military.

3) This has the same flawed reasoning as a lot of changes over the last year or two.  "Speeding up growth for small nations" and "Decreasing the gap".  The problem is you are NEVER going to get there because the game is constantly getting older.  The gap between how old, and thus how big, older nations are compared to new nations is going to consistently grow over time.  The constant devaluation to chase after it isn't good for the game.

There are better ways to deal with gameplay issues the gap has created.

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Building on the post above, I think it will make the game less interesting. There are quite a limited number of Projects, so being able to buy them all at once (infra cap allowing... maybe realistically a handful at a time) simply removes a goal. And then your whole game is reduced to 'save money, buy city, save money, buy city'

At least with a 10-day wait you can mix that up with Projects, and it forces you to plan which Projects to buy in what order to best suit your nation growth.

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