Guest Frawley Posted April 21, 2019 Share Posted April 21, 2019 It's not really up for debate either. Political sims are all about people executing plan's within a political narrative, a key driver of which is how people feel about other players. BK generates strong feelings that one one way or another drive people to act on those feelings and create a narrative. Anyone who generates strong feelings tends to be good for these types of games (within reason). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buorhann Posted April 21, 2019 Share Posted April 21, 2019 56 minutes ago, Frawley said: It's not really up for debate either. Political sims are all about people executing plan's within a political narrative, a key driver of which is how people feel about other players. BK generates strong feelings that one one way or another drive people to act on those feelings and create a narrative. Anyone who generates strong feelings tends to be good for these types of games (within reason). Yes, building up a frickyuge consolidated tier with multiple alliances tied together is good for the game. That's where the most "feelings" have been generated from. How did that work out for CN? That's a dead game, right? 1 Quote Warrior of Dio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfPCFQfOnLg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Frawley Posted April 21, 2019 Share Posted April 21, 2019 1 hour ago, Buorhann said: Yes, building up a frickyuge consolidated tier with multiple alliances tied together is good for the game. That's where the most "feelings" have been generated from. How did that work out for CN? That's a dead game, right? I mean, for starters, IQ was never in a position where it could project power outside the initially low, but later mid tier, and certainly never held the same kind of hegemonic power that has already existed in this game. You also ignore that a large part of why IQ was formed, which was because the game was fighting the exact same war, again and again, with the same winners and an loosely correlated group of losers, who were banded together every time the powers that be wanted to make a war seem 'more even'. Those actions generated feelings that wanted a change up in dynamics, which is why the IQ tiering strategy was enacted, to deny people their easy consistent victories. I mean, IQ won one war in it's existence, hardly a slam dunk now was it. CN isn't relevant here, but if it were, you are still wrong. The games best political moments where when a lot of people hated the NPO, from 2006 to 2009/10 the game was a constant struggle between those two forces, and the political discourse and machinations were widely regards as at their peak. This continued to a lesser degree after the defeat of the 'big bad guys' with Umbrella and other powerhouses of the game for a number of years. Ultimately CN died of natural causes, the game wasn't updated, the game wasn't advertised, the mechanics were shown to be broken, cheating was rampant, and it drove many people out of the game, into groupings that could defend against those broken mechanics, or just into inactivity. Any game with only a handful of active players, broken upper tier mechanics, no new players, and a catch up time measured in years (5-8 years to catch the leaders at a minimum), is going to to die. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roquentin Posted April 21, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted April 21, 2019 (edited) 2 hours ago, Buorhann said: How did that work out for CN? That's a dead game, right? Symptoms =/= Cause Imagine if there was a certain material required to progress past city 10. We'll call it unobtanium. It is only profitable for nations below 10 cities to produce it. If you produce it at 10 or above, you will be running a huge loss and not be able to get anywhere. The material is only obtainable via a mechanism that makes it take 20 days to fully deliver and the seller has to manually send it to you twice at ten day intervals. Your ability to grow and your destructive capacity are wholly determined by how much unobtanium you can accumulate. You can also lose it too and you will lose the cities you bought with it as the unobtanium is required to sustain them. Most players who want to play long-term try to grow out of the city 10 range but find few sellers of unobtanium relative to their demand. This means it requires a decent amount of individual initiative to find the salesmen for it if your alliance does not recruit or have a contract with an alliance that does. Even if your alliance does recruit, as most people are trying to get out of the city 10 range because they want mechanical progression, any supply is temporary and contingent on additional new players joining the game. This also goes for external acquisitions, as a healthy population growth is required to replace the previous salesmen who move onto becoming buyers. Population growth slows over time and comes down to a trickle and at a certain point falls well below the replacement level and exacerbates the situation. Most people who began the game as teenagers or college-age with it being a large percentage of the playerbase decide to dial back their activity meaning even less people actively pursuing the unobtanium salesmen proactively when not many had before increasing the gap between those able to obtain and not. The game lasts for an additional 10 years with these trends continuing. There end up being two solutions: one is someone takes on the administrative burden of finding the external salesmen scarce as they are. Most external salesmen sell at much higher prices which mean you will obtain half the unobtanium you used to a month as you'll only get one shipment after a 10 day interval and then you'll need to pay again and wait another 10 days. There are two ways to get past it: the micromanagement approach where a government member seeks the best rate sellers compulsively and the other is having at least a 1:1 ratio of people who never stop being salesmen and don't go past city 10 fueling a wealth transfer to the other sector of the alliance. Most players are unwilling to give up the unobtanium they already have and either don't recruit or can't recruit enough people who can be convinced to remain as unobtanium salesmen at favorable rates to the bigger people. The alliances that do have this benefit end up having the newer players and people who remain as permanent salesmen funnel the unobtanium to the other members who grow at an exponential pace to radical heights and end up being way ahead. Many players quit over time for a variety of reasons and don't see a browser game in their long-term outlook, but many who stick around are playing it as a primarily single-player game where they check in on their stats or admire their join date occasionally. As most alliances never kick anyone out and the culture of avoidance of booting people for inactivity is prevalent, no one does so. Another culturally prevalent thing is to keep an alliance going past the point of it having sufficient activity due to a historical legacy or it being a service to the players wanting to continue to play inactively. Disbandment is seen as failure and no one wants to be the one who disbanded their alliance. Few new players join and as the only way to have an impact on the game is to be someone's perpetual unobtanium farm or be a high government official, but since most alliances are inactive, there's very little potential maneuvering to do for the remaining chiefs who no longer have the warbands they used to at their disposal and play conservatively and the scope for potential action is limited, making it even more pointless. Most alliances continue to lose large numbers of veteran players due to them forgetting to log in past a certain point and when war comes, they are too lazy to do much and it incentivizes more to quit. Fewer and fewer new players join with only a couple of alliances having the staff willing to service them. Nothing about the mechanics ever changes and the admin team is aware of the trends and is at peace with them as the game is not a focus as they did not project the game to last as long as it had. Edited April 21, 2019 by Roquentin spelling 8 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Epi Posted April 21, 2019 Share Posted April 21, 2019 (edited) 42 Edited February 17, 2021 by Epi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Placentica Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 On 4/20/2019 at 11:51 AM, Keegoz said: Never change. Keep on showing everyone why you are the sharpest mind in PW! Have to admit, I wish I'd changed many years back when we were allied. t$ would've been a much better path for us than Rose. You are just confirming what I'd reluctantly assumed about you. I've only defended your alliance when we were allied in losing wars and then didn't make a stink when you didn't defend us when we needed you or when you backed out of post-war aid you promised. Quote Hello! If you don't like this post please go here: https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=usercp&tab=core&area=ignoredusers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zei-Sakura Alsainn Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 2 minutes ago, Placentica said: Have to admit, I wish I'd changed many years back when we were allied. t$ would've been a much better path for us than Rose. You are just confirming what I'd reluctantly assumed about you. I've only defended your alliance when we were allied in losing wars and then didn't make a stink when you didn't defend us when we needed you or when you backed out of post-war aid you promised. Are you talking about SALT? Yes how dare Rose not fight TKRsphere AND IQ simultaneously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Placentica Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 4 minutes ago, Akuryo said: Are you talking about SALT? Yes how dare Rose not fight TKRsphere AND IQ simultaneously. No. I'm a grandpa. 1 Quote Hello! If you don't like this post please go here: https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=usercp&tab=core&area=ignoredusers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keegoz Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 52 minutes ago, Placentica said: Have to admit, I wish I'd changed many years back when we were allied. t$ would've been a much better path for us than Rose. You are just confirming what I'd reluctantly assumed about you. I've only defended your alliance when we were allied in losing wars and then didn't make a stink when you didn't defend us when we needed you or when you backed out of post-war aid you promised. Your alliance was doomed wherever you went. You were leading it after all. Going inactive for over a week, without letting anyone know. Coming back and shrugging it off. Hoarding power for yourself. Being paranoid at every turn. Add in the fact that you're down right an idiot and really it is no surprise Alpha was a failure but if it makes you sleep at night. Please blame me. 1 1 Quote [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
True King Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 On 4/20/2019 at 6:55 PM, Buorhann said: They do change it up. There's no denying that. It's the way how they handle some of the FA issues that clouds the moves they make. As for "been really good for this game" - Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh................ We can debate on that one. I can see both sides of that particular statement. I wish I had more control over our FA as well, but guess they know what they’re doing if there is any fuss over this being OP. Doubt us aligning Syndicate before NPO treatied them or Rose after they broke off would have had any less saying it’s to strong either. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bollocks Posted April 23, 2019 Share Posted April 23, 2019 On 4/22/2019 at 2:23 AM, Keegoz said: Your alliance was doomed wherever you went. You were leading it after all. Going inactive for over a week, without letting anyone know. Coming back and shrugging it off. Hoarding power for yourself. Being paranoid at every turn. Add in the fact that you're down right an idiot and really it is no surprise Alpha was a failure but if it makes you sleep at night. Please blame me. Lmao, murdered by words Quote The Coalition Discord: https://discord.gg/WBzNRGK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azaghul Posted April 25, 2019 Share Posted April 25, 2019 On 4/19/2019 at 1:56 PM, Hodor said: Which I would say was the issue. I think that long wars really have only one scope and it is cutting your opponent down to size through a thorough beating. This tends to have a humiliating effect which then incentives the war dragging out for issues of pride and/or the hope that the loser can somehow flip the damage or cut the deficit as they reach a point of having nothing to lose. Shorter wars with limited scopes are less toxic, albeit perhaps less satisfying, because you'll always exit knowing more damage could've been done, but also the knowledge that the next war will come quicker. The early stage of the war is by far the most destructive, when people are loosing expensive infra and are most likely to be going in fully armed up. Half or a little over half the damage done last war was done in the first two weeks. After that it's a slow slog and mostly fun for the most active people who in a position to fight the guerrilla war and enjoy it. But for the most part the loosing alliances can choose how much of their resources they invest into fighting back, there isn't any way to force people to buy stuff that can get destroyed. 1 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Scarfalot Posted April 25, 2019 Share Posted April 25, 2019 10 hours ago, Azaghul said: The early stage of the war is by far the most destructive, when people are loosing expensive infra and are most likely to be going in fully armed up. Half or a little over half the damage done last war was done in the first two weeks. After that it's a slow slog and mostly fun for the most active people who in a position to fight the guerrilla war and enjoy it. But for the most part the loosing alliances can choose how much of their resources they invest into fighting back, there isn't any way to force people to buy stuff that can get destroyed. And that's exactly the way it should be; that kind of war makes the less consolidated side have the more fun, and rewards activity. Both of these things encourage dynamism, minispheres and activity. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senator Aurelius Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 On 4/17/2019 at 3:22 AM, Curufinwe said: Huh. And people are accusing Leo of getting triggered. I'm just going to break this down since there's a lot to unpack here: There's been three major wars since BK left Syndi-OO; Tiers, AC and Knightfall. In Tiers BK was on the offensive (though of course we lost that one), in AC we preempted (so technically we did hit first, but as you say, it was coming anyways) and in Knightfall BK was on the offensive as well (but I guess that doesn't count, since you say dogpiles don't count). Meanwhile, Rose was on the defensive during Tiers (and I seem to recall you were running it at the time), CKD didn't participate in any major conflicts during your time there, TGH entered against Vanguard following our preempt (so I guess we'll call that 0.5 offensive wars each, since technically we both struck first), was on the defensive against TKR during DDR, hit TRF for a couple of weeks when no one was looking (which hardly qualifies as a major war, but we'll count it as another 0.5 since we're keeping score) and sat out the main war against TKR and friends entirely. So by that reckoning, BK following the formation of IQ engaged in 2.5 offensive wars in the traditional sense of the term (Tiers and Knightfall, plus preempting during AC) and alliances you occupied a leadership role in engaged in 1 (0.5 for AC and 0.5 for NRF, though again the latter wasn't exactly a ground shaking move on your part). So while, sure, according to the very narrow definition you've put out, I guess BK didn't engage in more than a few wars during that period, but I'm not sure why you feel you're in position to criticize others for a supposed lack of going on the offensive. As for your tiering comment, BK is currently averaging 16.36 cites per player, compared to 13.86 for TGH, so it appears we that we are building higher on average than your AA is, although you guys have a higher proportion of small players than we do at the moment. Still, if you run the stats, you'd notice that BK is primarily tiered in the 17-18 range, compared to the 18-20 range for TGH and KT, so again I'm not sure why you feel you have grounds to criticize an AA with tiering only slightly lower than your own. The topic of upper tier consolidation re:TKR was already talked to death in the run up to the last war, so we'll just let the record show that Sketchy feels that TKRs upper tier consolidation totally was a thing that a bloc whose largest member was 24 cities prior to the last war should have been able to handle completely on its own and all the AAs that felt threatened by it (which is why the coalition came together, by the way) should have stood aside, apparently. By what measurement was BK the worst AA in Syndi-OO? I'm sure we can find stats from Oktoberfest, 168 and Pacifica in Orbis Central to demonstrate that we more than pulled our weight in those wars, as well as in Paperless. And I don't recall Rose (which you were a part of at that time and gov in after October 2017) covering itself in glory in any of those conflicts; 1) Looks like you all had a separate peace in Pacifica, leaving your allies to surrender later: https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/13543-announcement-from-the-coalition-known-apparently-as-the-leeroy-jenkaaylmao-coaltion-and-the-empire-of-rose/ 2) Surrendered in Silent: https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/16718-roses-surrender/ Though of course your nation page says you were only lower Econ gov, so Rose's not-great blitz against TKR that war probably wasn't your fault. 3) And, of course, 168 was a war initiated by your side that ended in white peace, so you can't really say the AA you were a part of achieved its goals there either. Then, as I recall, when you actually became upper gov in Rose you guys switched sides courtesy of a tie with Mensa and played a fairly peripheral part in Paperless (although I'm sure we can dig up stats for that as well if you like), though according to your definition of what constitutes an acceptable 'offensive' war (IE not a curbstomp), I guess that really can't count as a mark in favour of Sketchy-in-gov era Rose as well, since that was most definitely an example of everyone coming together to take down TEst. Meanwhile, while it's true that BK did have a tough first round in Silent, that was mostly because we were prioritized by NPO, UPN, Polaris and HBE due to our performance against NPO in Pacifica, rather than getting the famous two-man blitz treatment like some other people did. Fortunately, we did manage to keep them busy enough that they couldn't switch to other fronts while our allies mopped up the rest of the enemy coalition (including the AA you were fighting for at the time) and ended up with a win for our side. For the record, I did take the time to dig up the stats for Silent and, while it definitely wasn't our finest war, we did do okay considering we took a harder hit than many of the AAs in our coalition early on. But yeah, Silent stats for those who are curious: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BVOQv4r2MYPZEfQoJgcokGrZagxqL1oeJxNMSdZsnh0/edit#gid=5604508 At any rate, perhaps someone else can dig up stats on Oktoberfest, 168, Pacifica and Paperless (the stats pages aren't as clearly marked for those wars as they are nowadays), but if you're talking performance wise, I don't think you have much ground to stand on, especially since it was Sketchy-in-gov era Rose that people had doubts about performance wise after you switched sides, rather than BK (or at least that's what I recall from the coalition servers where we discussed you guys coming over to our side - someone who was Syndi-OO gov back then probably has logs from the relevant server, since I didn't bother keeping them). As for your meatshield comment, you'll notice that BK & Co is one of the weaker of the six spheres upper tier wise, which is the same issue IQ had prior to the split. If we look at Theodosius' stats... ...you'll see that the upper tier is concentrated in Chaos/KT spheres, with the two combined having 48/120 of the 24-26s, 50/89 of the 27-33s and of the 10/12 34-39s, meaning almost 50 percent of the larger nations in the game, and virtually all of the largest ones, are in two of the six spheres. You'll also notice that signing TCW (which by and large has more high city count folks than BK) only brings BK & Co to fifth place in the number of higher tier nations (behind Rose but above Pantheon), so rather than 'stacking meatshields' it provided us with a capacity that we have traditionally lacked relative to other spheres (and which certainly was an issue for IQ). So it's up to other people to decide if having half of the largest nations in two of the six spheres constitutes consolidation, but it is hardly an overwhelming advantage that BK & Co has acquired. I'm sorry that an upper AA being willing to work with us is so upsetting to you though, I guess. BK has actually cut 7 of its 16 treaties (which I believe is the largest amount cut in-game so far, though I suppose it also says something about the number we'd signed) and signed 1 since IQ dissolved, which is a 7:1 ratio for dropping versus retaining ties. More importantly, the BK/NPO treaty was ended which, at least according to its critics, was the single worst treaty ever and almost solely responsible for stagnating the game due to our cohesion in the middle tier, so you're welcome for that. While I realize that it may feel odd to not complain about BK FA constantly (that was a scary week or so for us, too - we had feared you'd forgotten about us), the fact remains that BK, NPO and GoG voluntarily broke up a sphere that most people outside it felt was problematic and that created a space for new politics to take place: whatever you might feel about BK as an AA, I doubt even you can argue with the fact that IQ voluntarily dissolving has changed the FA environment we're all operating in. And yeah, much like TKR, tS, NPO, CoS, Guardian, GoB, SK, TGH and KT, BK has made a new friend after shedding some old ties. Maybe more will go in the future (that's not my decision to make any more, thankfully), but for the second time in two years BK has completely reoriented its FA, making Orbis a different place in the process. You can complain about the pace of the change if you like, but we've done more than most to shake things up during our time as one of the larger AAs in Orbis. So again, I'm not sure you have a lot of ground to criticize us when we've more than once taken the lead in making big changes in our FA, even if the pace or form it takes isn't necessarily to your liking. Wasn't the whole point of everyone dropping previous ties to make friends with new people, including former enemies? Guardian was allied to TKR during DDR (and GoB was informally aligned with EMC in general) and I don't recall anyone ranting in your treaty thread about how you signed someone who formerly wasn't in your immediate sphere of influence. If we're serious about trying new things people are going to have let go of beefs from past wars, so criticizing BK for burying the hatchet with TCW while many other AAs as busy signing former opponents (or in TGH's case, people who were allied to your most recent major opponent) seems a bit baseless coming from you. As for the 'BK & Co is OP' numbers, looking at them shows that we don't dominate any particular tier in the manner IQ did; we're about equal to NPO/tS in the fearsome 1-9 tier (205/734 nations), stronger in the only slightly less irrelevant 10-12 tier (203/595), do have an advantage in the lower mid tier (198/498 13-16 folks), are about equal to NPO/tS in the upper mid tier (collectively, 294/379 of the 17 to 18s are in one or the other sphere - funny thing about how the two large AAs that tiered to that level still have most of the people at said level two weeks later), and then start to fall off dramatically at 19 and up (only 130 people over 19, which places us behind Chaos, KETOG and NPO/tS in that area, even with TCW added into the mix). So yeah, your numbers essentially state that BK is still strong in the mid tier (shocking I know), but instead of the upper middle tier being concentrated almost exclusively in IQ, it's now split between tS/NPO and BK/TCW (again, you're welcome for that). It also says that almost half of BK & Co's terrifyingly terrifying 800 or so nations are below the 13 city mark, a range that is pretty much irrelevant against any sphere other than Pantheon and NPO/tS and certainly isn't much of a threat to the two blocs where almost half of the upper tier nations currently reside. So yeah, I'm not going to accuse you of pushing a narrative (since you were just stating facts, as you've said), but the fact remains that the numbers BK is currently bringing to the table don't really suggest the kind of tier consolidation IQ was always criticized for in its heyday. We're about equal to tS/NPO sphere in capacity currently, with an advantage lower down and a growing disadvantage the farther you go up the tiers, while KETOG/Chaos are about equal upper tier wise and larger than the other spheres in terms of big members (overwhelmingly so among the biggest). But hey, we have more noobs than Pantheon, so that's kind of neat. So I realize this was a pretty large text-wall, so here: TLDR: Sketchy got triggered and spouted a bunch of nonsense that isn't really supported by facts, meaning that Leo isn't the only angry guy typing away in this thread. Personally, I regard that as the first victory of the BK/TCW alliance. Is this really about Ayyliens and Whales? If so I'll go grab some popcorn!!! Quote GREG HOBBS HONDA, DEALER FOR THE PEOPLE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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