Population Mechanics

[Radoje]

So this topic was already brought up by a Polish dude in late September, but it just died down and got ignored, but I think it holds some merit.

The system we currently have is a (flat amount of population per infra level + % bonuses - % reductions) to determine our city population.
This is a relatively simple and good system, but I think it could be widely expanded on.

I think there's an argument to make about the actual roleplay side of our cities and populations. Now I know the serious playerbase in this game takes roleplay on an alliance and political level seriously, whereas nation roleplay isn't really that important for a lot of people, but it definitely could be.

When somebody destroy's your infra, you don't care, right? You know you'll just rebuild it and get more population later. But imagine if players cared about preserving their populations and not letting their people die and perish, like a real-life country would. I think it would add a whole another dimension to the game.

So what the player before me mentioned was a system similar to something that happens in real life (or sheepy's other game, Statekraft). Your population rises daily on a % basis because new babies are born and than -% the old people that die. That results in your population increasing or decreasing. Now, what if instead of your resource production bonus (the 50% bonus) depending on how many improvements you stack on the same resource, actually got affected by how many workers you have working in those coal mines, or those aluminum refineries, or even those farms?

Also, what if, when you recruited soldiers, tanks, aircraft and ships, you actually deducted from your city population limiting you to how much of each unit you could build? Wouldn't that make you legitimately care about conserving their lives and making sure you use them efficiently as possible because you'd care about them surviving?

Is this a good idea, or terrible balancing? Do you think it could be expanded on or should we stick with what we have? Let's discuss.

 

[Charlie Traveler]

I like the prospect of increasing immersion and emotional investment in our nations. At the least, it would be another factor to consider when planning moves in-game. It could add an exciting variable to the decision making process, but it also adds a layer of complexity that more casual or meta players might find cumbersome or tedious.

My first thought was in regard to the potential for this to further exacerbate the pixel-loving, conflict-stifling war avoidance behaviors that exist at both the individual and alliance levels. On the flip side of that coin, though, wars would be a lot more meaningful. If you drag your opponent through the mud for a month while they fruitlessly try to rebuild, you will hit them with seriously damaging economic repercussions by virtue of depleting their taxable workforce.

 

In regard to balance, there would be a very fine line between doing too little to create meaningful change in game play and making the damage of losing a war so extreme that we would see a massive power disparity between even the top alliances. Ideally, population could be damaged to the point where an aggressor could significantly increase their relative power vs their opponent, but not so badly damaged that the nation could never recover.

[Sir Scarfalot]

If this were to be implemented, we'd need to definitely see some serious diminishing returns as peace goes on and on, while also seeing some kind of rapid population growth occuring after a population drop-off due to war. It's unintuitive, but we cannot afford to have new mechanics that make war even more difficult to come back from.

[Chief Wiggum]

Hello Radoje,

Thanks for your suggestion. It's a quite interesting topic indeed.

14 hours ago, Radoje said:

Wouldn't that make you legitimately care about conserving their lives and making sure you use them efficiently as possible because you'd care about them surviving?

Leaving role-playing aside, are you trying to "fix" any issue appearing when we take in-game mechanics/politics under consideration?

In my opinion, this new change would just make it more difficult for the players to wage war. I believe though that the opposite should happen.

Most importantly though, knowing how Alex codes, if we go with your plan, I can already see all of the nations' cities having negative population.

 

 

[Radoje]

1 hour ago, Chief Wiggum said:

Hello Radoje,

Thanks for your suggestion. It's a quite interesting topic indeed.

Leaving role-playing aside, are you trying to "fix" any issue appearing when we take in-game mechanics/politics under consideration?

That's actually a really good question. I think the system would encourage different play-styles, where players specifically specialize in certain parts of their nations rather than everyone having the same exact nation copy pasted over 150 people. (I'm not saying that's a terrible system as it is, but it's pretty boring, right).

Pirates and other nations that specifically focus on fighting could generally become more important and feared, especially if there was some sort of experience level to determine how well trained your military is.

There could be nations that stray away from fighting and instead specifically focus on econ to fund their military counterparts (Although I do agree that, that would encourage pixelhugging which is already a huge problem. Keep in mind that alliances have to adapt to these systems and fight wars nonetheless, so how many of those would exist would be a different story all together. Some alliances might have 100 fighters and 3 pixelhuggers, or others might have 50 pixelhuggers and no fighters. The point is that this might add on different shades to the game. An alliance that's specifically focusing on fighting would be poor compared to a pixelhugging alliance, but would crush them in a war. And that makes sense).

Resource production could see another shade of mechanics added as well, where it's more fun and there's more things to do.

And I think that holds true for this entire system. There's just more things to do, when you log in you can tinker with things and you can spend more than 5 minutes of your day on the game while at peace, I think that holds some merit.

But again, is this idea great? No fricking clue, I'm not a game designer. I'm generally just curious about what people think about it.

 

[Micchan]

I think we shouldn't try to make this game super realistic because in real life nations don't go at war for fun and stupid reasons... except that one

But if you want this maybe we could compensate with something else,like making infra cheaper to rebuild

For example if my nation has 1000 infra and I want to go to 1500 it cost me 10M and then I have 150k population

Then I go to war and I lose 500 infra going back to 1000

I rebuild and it cost me only 5M to go again to 1500 but my population is now 130k and to reach again 150k I need 1 month

 

[Shadowthrone]

6 hours ago, Radoje said:

That's actually a really good question. I think the system would encourage different play-styles, where players specifically specialize in certain parts of their nations rather than everyone having the same exact nation copy pasted over 150 people. (I'm not saying that's a terrible system as it is, but it's pretty boring, right).

Nice shade thrown our way. I mean apart from this clearly being a problem with our style of gameplay, as you've pointed out above, this proposal is terrible in balancing and goes after mass-member alliances who prefer doing different things than sitting and watching populations grow over years and not fight ever because omgpixels! There are games for this kind of thing likes Cities skyline or w/e and its best suited for that. 

All this does is further make war impossible and further stagnate things, instead of making the gameplay more conducive for everyone. 

[Radoje]

2 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

Nice shade thrown our way. I mean apart from this clearly being a problem with our style of gameplay, as you've pointed out above, this proposal is terrible in balancing and goes after mass-member alliances who prefer doing different things than sitting and watching populations grow over years and not fight ever because omgpixels! There are games for this kind of thing likes Cities skyline or w/e and its best suited for that. 

All this does is further make war impossible and further stagnate things, instead of making the gameplay more conducive for everyone. 

I didn't throw shade anyone's way, I was simply generalizing. You drew your conclusions very quickly there.

Nowhere did I mention an alliance. I was talking about individual players and they way they choose to build their nations. I was only suggesting that if we had more diversity in nation building, a person would be more compelled to tinker with the system and figure out his own nation build rather than copying over a template.

I think you're just looking for a reason to get offended, even though I didn't provide any.

[Daniel Storm]

Sounds like a massive incentive to hug pixels and never do shit, if that's what you're looking for there are some other games out there where war isn't even a mechanic.

[Shadowthrone]

6 minutes ago, Radoje said:

I didn't throw shade anyone's way, I was simply generalizing. You drew your conclusions very quickly there.

Nowhere did I mention an alliance. I was talking about individual players and they way they choose to build their nations. I was only suggesting that if we had more diversity in nation building, a person would be more compelled to tinker with the system and figure out his own nation build rather than copying over a template.

I think you're just looking for a reason to get offended, even though I didn't provide any.

 

I'm just pointing out, the examples you cite seem to point our way. The problem with this entire proposal is that you're taking a non-problem and turning it into a problem. The problem being, overcomplicating the game and therefore seriously curtailing war. By making a warring alliance have no money to fight or an econ alliance sucking at fighting, you're essentially turning the game into some sorta split entity, where nothing can happen because everybody too scare of losing something. What drives these games aren't the mechanics themselves but the community/politics. By further making things even more  complicated and slowing down in game mechanics, you're taking a wrecking ball at communities outside of serious paradox interactive folks or the like, when there exists enough number of games for that. 

[Edward I]

14 minutes ago, Radoje said:

I didn't throw shade anyone's way, I was simply generalizing. You drew your conclusions very quickly there.

Nowhere did I mention an alliance.

Not really. Is there a single alliance besides NPO this could possibly have been referring to?

7 hours ago, Radoje said:

I think the system would encourage different play-styles, where players specifically specialize in certain parts of their nations rather than everyone having the same exact nation copy pasted over 150 people. (I'm not saying that's a terrible system as it is, but it's pretty boring, right).

 

[Radoje]

Just now, Shadowthrone said:

I'm just pointing out, the examples you cite seem to point our way. The problem with this entire proposal is that you're taking a non-problem and turning it into a problem. The problem being, overcomplicating the game and therefore seriously curtailing war. By making a warring alliance have no money to fight or an econ alliance sucking at fighting, you're essentially turning the game into some sorta split entity, where nothing can happen because everybody too scare of losing something. What drives these games aren't the mechanics themselves but the community/politics. By further making things even more  complicated and slowing down in game mechanics, you're taking a wrecking ball at communities outside of serious paradox interactive folks or the like, when there exists enough number of games for that. 

 

6 minutes ago, Dad said:

Sounds like a massive incentive to hug pixels and never do shit, if that's what you're looking for there are some other games out there where war isn't even a mechanic.

I was only starting a discussion. I wanted people to give me their ideas about this system and see if it could/should work at all, because the person before me brought up the idea and I think there is merit to it. You need not take it that personally.
 

On 10/26/2018 at 2:53 AM, Radoje said:

Is this a good idea, or terrible balancing? Do you think it could be expanded on or should we stick with what we have? Let's discuss.

 

7 hours ago, Radoje said:

But again, is this idea great? No fricking clue, I'm not a game designer. I'm generally just curious about what people think about it.

It has come to a point in this game where you can't organize a civil discussion without a bunch of people throwing hubris over party lines.

1 minute ago, Edward I said:

Not really. Is there a single alliance besides NPO this could possibly have been referring to?

I wasn't mentioning alliances at all.

But to entertain your argument, yes, there are other alliances that use a similar type of build over most of their nations including The Commonwealth, The Knights Radiant, The Syndicate, Rose, Black Knights or literally any other top 20 alliance.

[Dio Brando]

Except you know, the variance in builds we’ve seen in your alliances disproves your point. 

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

I don't understand why there's so much butthurt crybabying over someone thinking your alliance does something in a boring manner. Get the frick over it, Jesus. You're whiny bullshit isn't the topic here and I don't care about it, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Frankly, I told radoge what Charlie and wiggum have covered in DM already, and those are far more interesting than this twisted panties fest.

[Edward I]

3 minutes ago, Radoje said:

I was only starting a discussion. I wanted people to give me their ideas about this system and see if it could/should work at all, because the person before me brought up the idea and I think there is merit to it. You need not take it that personally.
 

It has come to a point in this game where you can't organize a civil discussion without a bunch of people throwing hubris over party lines.

I don't mind starting a discussion. If you or anyone else comes up with a way to implement this without making it overly complicated, buggy, or unbalancing, I'd be interested.

What does annoy me, and what Shadowthrone pointed out as well, is your pretty transparently ripping on a particular alliance.

6 minutes ago, Radoje said:

But to entertain your argument, yes, there are other alliances that use a similar type of build over most of their nations including The Commonwealth, The Knights Radiant, The Syndicate, Rose, Black Knights or literally any other top 20 alliance. 

This is not what you said. Your original description was not of similar nation builds, but rather of one nation build.  Your original description was not of a top 20 alliance, but rather of an alliance with 150 members. NPO is the only alliance that comes close to fitting the first criterion, and is certainly the only one famous for using a uniform nation build. At the time of the post quoted below, NPO was also the only alliance with a membership count close to 150.

7 hours ago, Radoje said:

I think the system would encourage different play-styles, where players specifically specialize in certain parts of their nations rather than everyone having the same exact nation copy pasted over 150 people. (I'm not saying that's a terrible system as it is, but it's pretty boring, right).

 

[Radoje]

1 minute ago, Edward I said:

I don't mind starting a discussion. If you or anyone else comes up with a way to implement this without making it overly complicated, buggy, or unbalancing, I'd be interested.

What does annoy me, and what Shadowthrone pointed out as well, is your pretty transparently ripping on a particular alliance.

This is not what you said. Your original description was not of similar nation builds, but rather of one nation build.  Your original description was not of a top 20 alliance, but rather of an alliance with 150 members. NPO is the only alliance that comes close to fitting the first criterion, and is certainly the only one famous for using a uniform nation build. At the time of the post quoted below, NPO was also the only alliance with a membership count close to 150.

As I stated previously, I was generalizing. It's just a number. The people you're fighting also strictly guide and recommend their players into building the same nation build. 100% commerce with raws early and manufactured after 13-14 cities with a rss project. NPO just takes it to the extreme.

I never mentioned your name, and this post has nothing to do with you.

 

[Shadowthrone]

20 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

I don't understand why there's so much butthurt crybabying over someone thinking your alliance does something in a boring manner. Get the frick over it, Jesus. You're whiny bullshit isn't the topic here and I don't care about it, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Frankly, I told radoge what Charlie and wiggum have covered in DM already, and those are far more interesting than this twisted panties fest.

Not really getting our panties twisted in a bunch as much as calling a spade a spade. The one who's offended that we're calling him out for what seems to be transparent attempts at throwing shade (not the first time he's said stuff like that) at the starting point of a discussion when there was no need to. The rest of my posts details my problem with even making this mechanic more complicated, and my reasoning why. My suggestion also exists within the second post, where I suggest the problem isn't the lack of complicated things and having those things only slowdown gameplay. So yeah, I took part in the discussion and so has Edward, while Radoje out for what seems to be a clear snipe at us. 

[Radoje]

3 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

The one who's offended that we're calling him out for what seems to be transparent attempts at throwing shade (not the first time he's said stuff like that) at the starting point of a discussion when there was no need to. 

I don't understand how you can compare me calling out IQ in a separate topic months ago about reducing city costs to benefit a group of alliances to me saying that having the same nation build over 150 nations is boring, without mentioning the name of your alliance or any alliance at all. The fact that you're getting offended over this speaks higher volumes about the lack of belief and insecurity in your own system than I ever mentioned in the past.
 

7 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

The rest of my posts details my problem with even making this mechanic more complicated, and my reasoning why. My suggestion also exists within the second post, where I suggest the problem isn't the lack of complicated things and having those things only slowdown gameplay. So yeah, I took part in the discussion and so has Edward, while Radoje out for what seems to be a clear snipe at us. 

" I mean apart from this clearly being a problem with our style of gameplay, as you've pointed out above, this proposal is terrible in balancing and goes after mass-member alliances who prefer doing different things than sitting and watching populations grow over years and not fight ever because omgpixels! There are games for this kind of thing likes Cities skyline or w/e and its best suited for that. "

"You're a pixelhugger and should play cities skylines if you prefer this system" 

Any point or discussion you were creating is completely washed out by the amount of aggression and hubris in your talk.

 

"By making a warring alliance have no money to fight or an econ alliance sucking at fighting, you're essentially turning the game into some sorta split entity, where nothing can happen because everybody too scare of losing something. What drives these games aren't the mechanics themselves but the community/politics. By further making things even more complicated and slowing down in game mechanics, you're taking a wrecking ball at communities outside of serious paradox interactive folks or the like, when there exists enough number of games for that. "

It's something called theory crafting and throwing ideas at a wall to see what people think about them, which I would assume you realize. You had a good point to make but it's a shame it gets lost over how personally you take the topic and your incredibly condescending reaction to a game suggestion.

[Shadowthrone]

4 minutes ago, Radoje said:

I don't understand how you can compare me calling out IQ in a separate topic months ago about reducing city costs to benefit a group of alliances to me saying that having the same nation build over 150 nations is boring, without mentioning the name of your alliance or any alliance at all. The fact that you're getting offended over this speaks higher volumes about the lack of belief and insecurity in your own system than I ever mentioned in the past.
 

" I mean apart from this clearly being a problem with our style of gameplay, as you've pointed out above, this proposal is terrible in balancing and goes after mass-member alliances who prefer doing different things than sitting and watching populations grow over years and not fight ever because omgpixels! There are games for this kind of thing likes Cities skyline or w/e and its best suited for that. "

"You're a pixelhugger and should play cities skylines if you prefer this system" 

Any point or discussion you were creating is completely washed out by the amount of aggression and hubris in your talk.

 

"By making a warring alliance have no money to fight or an econ alliance sucking at fighting, you're essentially turning the game into some sorta split entity, where nothing can happen because everybody too scare of losing something. What drives these games aren't the mechanics themselves but the community/politics. By further making things even more complicated and slowing down in game mechanics, you're taking a wrecking ball at communities outside of serious paradox interactive folks or the like, when there exists enough number of games for that. "

It's something called theory crafting and throwing ideas at a wall to see what people think about them, which I would assume you realize. You had a good point to make but it's a shame it gets lost over how personally you take the topic and your incredibly condescending reaction to a game suggestion.

 

Calling out my tone is fun and stuff, but its me being blunt. I usually don't wrap my thoughts around in a bowtie and present it to people, just because. Moreover, my intent is to call a spade a spade. I've seen you and other folk come at suggestions by throwing shade at our "gameplay style," using terms such as "boring" or "too easy" or some such. Easier to just call it such or make an actual generalisation, like you know "alliances have guides for everything and its time to change up the system." Thats a generalisation. Not "150 members who play the same style, ain't that boring?" Thats not when its a repeated pattern of suggestions or posts saying the same thing. I'm not particularly insecure over our system, just tired of people wrapping their suggestions or arguments around and then deflecting by trying to call me out for being aggressive. 

 

The problem with any such in game mechanic that overcomplicates and rises the cost of playing inherently shuts down war. There are folks who prefer pixel hugging and thats fine, many an alliance exists for econ purposes, especially folks who wish to be neutral or semi-neutral and thats fair game. Any system that forces people to choose between one style or the other, further compartmentalises and reduces the over opportunity for alliances to interact and in turn just leads to stagnation, turning this into some sorta turn based-RPG rather than a political sim. I'd prefer with not meddling with the population mechanic or infra as such for the sake of new complications. I mean, these kind of changes require an in game reason for such. In a PI game, you have an end-date, so theres a reason for such complicated mechanics, to achieve something. In Cities: Skylines its population growth = new perks, therefore theres a planned end game, or at least some point in complicated systems. In nation sims such as this, what drives it is the community and not complicated systems. The more complicated systems that leave us established folk who've played for years on top, reduces the chances for new members to come in and make a difference as much as they could. That reduces the intake of members and moreover leads to more overall stagnation. A population/infra change will definitely slow things down mechanically, like the resource change did in 2016? Or was that early last year? Either way, my overall opinion is to keep the basic core nation-building side of the game simple, rather than requiring heavy investment of time, unless Alex has a planned end game for the game, or he lets us as a community to figure out some sorta plan. An open ended, overly complicated infra/pop system, will turn off people and further entrench people like you or me who've played this game for a few years. 

 

There, I hope that is a clear answer to your suggestion, with a complete explanation of where I'm coming from. I don't think the system in this case is broken and therefore does not really need to be tinkered with for the sake of it. 

[Sphinx]

On 10/26/2018 at 11:53 AM, Radoje said:

-snip

This is actually a pretty good idea, however it'd like to expand on it a bit.

1: I think population should be integrated more into the game as a proper resource and not a number that provides x amount of tax each day. Any kind of Improvement could need an x number of workers to function at full efficiency, likewise as Rado said your armies will also draw on this pool of workers. Now to balance this system out, it should require as you grow your nations Infra to diversify you improvements and provide a greater range of them to meet the citizens daily needs. For example if crime/pollution/disease/density is too high then population grow will decline forcing the player if they really want to invest in nation building to build more of these structures. Smaller nations can get away with this leaving a greater % of the populace fit for military or industrial service. Basically make it so if you want large cities you need to have a strong services sector (Hospitals, Police (Maybe add education buildings to boost growth and provide an efficiency bonus?)

2: Adding a recuitable population mechanic and allowing large scale differences between the two systems. A larger industrialised/services based nation would have a declining % of recuitable population because as mentioned above more of these people would be tied up in the running of the nation. A smaller nation that bases it economy on raiding could survive entirely on basic raw resource production and a strong military and it would have a far larger % of its population as recuitable.

 The system of recuitable population in Hearts of Iron 4 (Especially the black ice mod) is a good example of this. In the base game the most effective economy law (That improves factory construction speed, and thus allows you to make equipment much faster) comes with a -2% to recuitable population. Likewise in the black Ice mod as you research Industrial techs that improve factory and naval dockyard construction speed you suffer increasing penalties to your recuitable population as more and more of your population is tied up in industry

3: Regarding war, after a war I reckon a "post war baby boom" could be added in which would provide for a length of time a set population growth bonus that would help reclaim some of those lost during war. It would also make wars against whales far more punishing as they would need a much larger work force to run their nation at full efficient, a couple Arrgh guys could come along and attack a bunch of Grumpy's and it would take weeks for them to recover from that pounding. Large nations couldn't sit on their laurels with the knowledge that money solves all and that they can rebuild their infra with ease. It also wouldn't cripple them as the population growth that whales would receive would be balanced to be proportional to their size.

Just some ideas on this system,, but it would still need a lot of balancing, but its a good idea Rado. Don't worry too much would these guys who get triggered at the slightest thing that upsets theirs 1,500 day set in stone build guides. Also Shadow.... the point of the suggestions forum is to hear people out and give them constructive feedback on their ideas, not every idea is a sneaky plan to screw over NPO. 

2 hours ago, Shadowthrone said:

Nice shade thrown our way. I mean apart from this clearly being a problem with our style of gameplay, as you've pointed out above, this proposal is terrible in balancing and goes after mass-member alliances who prefer doing different things than sitting and watching populations grow over years and not fight ever because omgpixels! There are games for this kind of thing likes Cities skyline or w/e and its best suited for that. 

All this does is further make war impossible and further stagnate things, instead of making the gameplay more conducive for everyone. 

If anything this system would help NPO a lot more than most alliances. You have 150 members that's 150 members all with their own population growth metrics, by weight of numbers alone you and IQ would far out strip even the most ambitious growth plan that any whale alliance could conceive. A smaller nation would be able to bring to the table a greater portion of its manpower to bear on a larger nation that if it was forced to would have to sacrifice industrial and commerce production to maintain a larger army. Also you claim that this idea would make the gameplay stagnate further instead of your perceived desire to make it more "conductive" for everyone yet you yourself disparage the people who like to simply sit back and nation build. Once again I can use the same logic you used then and say not everyone wants to adhere to a cookie cutter nation build and funnel 100% of their production into a centrally planned mega-alliance. Despite not having the same centralisation, tCW and TKR all have their preferred nation builds and rarely do these builds stray from the norm. Any idea that further diversifies the game is good, whilst this Idea has some merits it would still need a massive amount of ironing out the details and testing before it could even come to the standard server.

Edited October 27, 2018 by Sphinx
Cutting quote down in size

[Radoje]

1 minute ago, Shadowthrone said:

Calling out my tone is fun and stuff, but its me being blunt. I usually don't wrap my thoughts around in a bowtie and present it to people, just because. Moreover, my intent is to call a spade a spade. I've seen you and other folk come at suggestions by throwing shade at our "gameplay style," using terms such as "boring" or "too easy" or some such. Easier to just call it such or make an actual generalisation, like you know "alliances have guides for everything and its time to change up the system." Thats a generalisation. Not "150 members who play the same style, ain't that boring?" Thats not when its a repeated pattern of suggestions or posts saying the same thing. I'm not particularly insecure over our system, just tired of people wrapping their suggestions or arguments around and then deflecting by trying to call me out for being aggressive. 

I am a very blunt person as well and I used to react the same way you do, but it doesn't really lead anywhere, take it from personal experience of me fricking up in the past, your post can turn off a lot of people and your point can easily be lost.

As soon as you suggested that I was calling you out, I immediately said I wasn't, and than you came after me again saying "no, you were". I was not deflecting anything, I was telling you that this post has nothing to do with you, there is no clearer way for me to put it. If I wanted to come after you, I would have done it in a widely different manner, but I have no such intentions.

 

10 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

The problem with any such in game mechanic that overcomplicates and rises the cost of playing inherently shuts down war. There are folks who prefer pixel hugging and thats fine, many an alliance exists for econ purposes, especially folks who wish to be neutral or semi-neutral and thats fair game. Any system that forces people to choose between one style or the other, further compartmentalises and reduces the over opportunity for alliances to interact and in turn just leads to stagnation, turning this into some sorta turn based-RPG rather than a political sim. I'd prefer with not meddling with the population mechanic or infra as such for the sake of new complications. I mean, these kind of changes require an in game reason for such. In a PI game, you have an end-date, so theres a reason for such complicated mechanics, to achieve something. In Cities: Skylines its population growth = new perks, therefore theres a planned end game, or at least some point in complicated systems. In nation sims such as this, what drives it is the community and not complicated systems. The more complicated systems that leave us established folk who've played for years on top, reduces the chances for new members to come in and make a difference as much as they could. That reduces the intake of members and moreover leads to more overall stagnation. A population/infra change will definitely slow things down mechanically, like the resource change did in 2016? Or was that early last year? Either way, my overall opinion is to keep the basic core nation-building side of the game simple, rather than requiring heavy investment of time, unless Alex has a planned end game for the game, or he lets us as a community to figure out some sorta plan. An open ended, overly complicated infra/pop system, will turn off people and further entrench people like you or me who've played this game for a few years. 

I agree that this suggestion could overcomplicate the game, but it doesn't necessarily have to.
The wider point of this is to give people more mechanics while still staying relatively similar to what we already have.

So if you take an infra amount like 1000 for example and say that gives your city a cap of 100k people, when you kill somebody's units it deducts them from the population and makes them have to breed those people back. The reason I suggested this initially is because there is a generally good argument to make about how little we actually give a shit about our infra or our populations. When somebody nukes your city, you don't give a frick, you'll just wait it out and rebuild your infra. The point I was trying to make is that this would make you care about preserving your population and make you more immersed and engaged with your nation. I'm not saying that it has to regrow over 10 years whatsoever lmao, Sheepy could make it that you breed 5% of your population back every day making your rebuild process last only a week. There is little difference to the current system and to this system, but it could add more depth to the game while still staying very simple.

I also agree with your point that having to choose one system over another is not always the right way to go about a system, but not necessarily in this case.

Because of the way pnw is already built, you can switch improvements any time you like, and the suggestion I was making when it came to different builds was about having nations focusing on using their population for making resources vs using their population in commerce vs using their population to fight. During peace, you could switch to commerce/resource and during war you could switch to a mobilized population. You don't necessarily have to pick one forever, you can switch them at any time. But if somebody attacked your infra, you'd lose your civilian population churning out those aluminium pipes or if your military units got crushed you'd lose your mobilized population. It would add another shade to the game, it would be more fun to play and strategize when your population was breathing in your factories or your army.

[Shadowthrone]

15 minutes ago, Sphinx said:

If anything this system would help NPO a lot more than most alliances. You have 150 members that's 150 members all with their own population growth metrics, by weight of numbers alone you and IQ would far out strip even the most ambitious growth plan that any whale alliance could conceive. A smaller nation would be able to bring to the table a greater portion of its manpower to bear on a larger nation that if it was forced to would have to sacrifice industrial and commerce production to maintain a larger army. Also you claim that this idea would make the gameplay stagnate further instead of your perceived desire to make it more "conductive" for everyone yet you yourself disparage the people who like to simply sit back and nation build. Once again I can use the same logic you used then and say not everyone wants to adhere to a cookie cutter nation build and funnel 100% of their production into a centrally planned mega-alliance. Despite not having the same centralisation, tCW and TKR all have their preferred nation builds and rarely do these builds stray from the norm. Any idea that further diversifies the game is good, whilst this Idea has some merits it would still need a massive amount of ironing out the details and testing before it could even come to the standard server.

 

Lol, good try there. I'll give you that. Twisting words is fun and all, but my point was the more costly you make it war, the more omgpixels! becomes a dominant narrative. If people want to play that way, thats their call and I do not particularly care. But to take the game entirely in that direction, is counter productive to what I see is a community driven, politics driven game. Thats me stating a point, not disparaging those who wish to solely grow. But go on, tell me more how I'm insulting folks who wish to solely grow. I know almost no one wants to do a centrally planned economy and thats fine by me. You don't see my posting everyday claiming 20/20 or 10/10 doesn't work. Yet I've had enough people here berate the NPO for being 100/100 or having you know common builds amongst 150 members, which makes it a boring playing style. That's really where the difference lies here. But feel free to twist things and continually insulting NPO lol. Proves my original point. 

 

 

19 minutes ago, Radoje said:

Because of the way pnw is already built, you can switch improvements any time you like, and the suggestion I was making when it came to different builds was about having nations focusing on using their population for making resources vs using their population in commerce vs using their population to fight. During peace, you could switch to commerce/resource and during war you could switch to a mobilized population. You don't necessarily have to pick one forever, you can switch them at any time. But if somebody attacked your infra, you'd lose your civilian population churning out those aluminium pipes or if your military units got crushed you'd lose your mobilized population. It would add another shade to the game, it would be more fun to play and strategize when your population was breathing in your factories or your army.

 

I mean people do look to wreck other improvements or harm folks cities in a manner that reduces their capabilities within the status quo. Sir Scarfalot has a complete guide to missiles solely for the point of hitting improvements/commerce etc etc. By having populations count in military actions, would that in turn affect military strategies such as up declares? Or make it harder for lower city folks/ lower infra folks strike up? How would different tiered folks be able to interact with one another? Would the affect of losing populations change with different military attacks and damage being done by larger numbers or roles of the dice or w/e? This kind of change simply put changes a whole host of things and further entrenches all of us into zones of play. The problem with these kind of changes to me is that it affects the ability of new players to catch up  with older folks. Moreover, the other problem really is the lack of an endgame. These kind of changes make sense if folks have the same starting point, or if come in late still have some way to at least reach/match up with older folks to keep things going. That can be better achieved looking at an actual endgame, or achievement cap of sorts. In Runescape you have them skillcapes. It takes years for folks to achieve complete mastery of the game, yet everyone still has a chance to do that. Thats inherent within the game. Within these games, setting up such large disadvantages, already makes a niche market, into a further narrower market, till we reach a point where theres no point in playing anymore. Thats my experience from other games and these kind of small changes having much larger unintended consequences. 

[Sphinx]

4 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

 

Lol, good try there. I'll give you that. Twisting words is fun and all, but my point was the more costly you make it war, the more omgpixels! becomes a dominant narrative. If people want to play that way, thats their call and I do not particularly care. But to take the game entirely in that direction, is counter productive to what I see is a community driven, politics driven game. Thats me stating a point, not disparaging those who wish to solely grow. But go on, tell me more how I'm insulting folks who wish to solely grow. I know almost no one wants to do a centrally planned economy and thats fine by me. You don't see my posting everyday claiming 20/20 or 10/10 doesn't work. Yet I've had enough people here berate the NPO for being 100/100 or having you know common builds amongst 150 members, which makes it a boring playing style. That's really where the difference lies here. But feel free to twist things and continually insulting NPO lol. Proves my original point. 

.................

I mean people do look to wreck other improvements or harm folks cities in a manner that reduces their capabilities within the status quo. Sir Scarfalot has a complete guide to missiles solely for the point of hitting improvements/commerce etc etc. By having populations count in military actions, would that in turn affect military strategies such as up declares? Or make it harder for lower city folks/ lower infra folks strike up? How would different tiered folks be able to interact with one another? Would the affect of losing populations change with different military attacks and damage being done by larger numbers or roles of the dice or w/e? This kind of change simply put changes a whole host of things and further entrenches all of us into zones of play. The problem with these kind of changes to me is that it affects the ability of new players to catch up  with older folks. Moreover, the other problem really is the lack of an endgame. These kind of changes make sense if folks have the same starting point, or if come in late still have some way to at least reach/match up with older folks to keep things going. That can be better achieved looking at an actual endgame, or achievement cap of sorts. In Runescape you have them skillcapes. It takes years for folks to achieve complete mastery of the game, yet everyone still has a chance to do that. Thats inherent within the game. Within these games, setting up such large disadvantages, already makes a niche market, into a further narrower market, till we reach a point where theres no point in playing anymore. Thats my experience from other games and these kind of small changes having much larger unintended consequences. 

Actually despite me being in Pantheon for 2 years and now 6 months in tCW, I've always supported a more central planned alliance. A centrally planned alliance can be a disaster if improperly run, however NPO is certainly far from that and its a testament to the dedication, effort and time that its leaders have put into the alliance that make it work. I think you underestimate the effect that this change would have for lower tiered nations, you could legit grind whale growth to a halt through causing simply population lose that would overtime curb their growth. As of now the only limiting factor after a war to whale growth is if they have the cash on hand to be able to repair their infra and then continue growth. If a whale had to wait for population to recover to a much larger level than what a smaller player would require then it would drag that whales rebuilding process out. Whales would be forced to engage with the community and build trade ties and political ties or risk isolation that would have grave impacts upon their future growth plans. 

[Sketchy]

Alex already has a massive to do list. If we lived in an ideal world sure, but when time is limited I'd rather see updates that fix things that are important.

Also, clearly I need to be able to individually name all 2.3m of my population so I can feel emotionally devastated when Bob dies.