Fixing the war system

[Azaghul]

I disagree with this idea.  The limit on what you can buy adds a lot to both strategy (how much standing military to keep and what that costs) and tactics.  This would make it less dynamic and interesting.

I do agree that there is a general problem and want to see some changes.  A few things I think would help address the issue of people not being able to fight back:

1) Make the combat casualties less directly proportional to the opponent's units.

2) Different types of attacks that might give someone at a disadvantage a chance to do some damage that is less than what a conventional attack would do.  Raiding, Guerilla attack, etc.

3) Some kind of combat stance that tells your units not to contest defensive battles.  This could be in line with choice of attacks that might override it, when you attack you choose to focus on killing enemy units, stealing cash, killing infrastructure, or killing resistance.

4) Make nukes kill less infra but kill half of one kind of unit of the attackers choice.  Coupled with good coordination where other people follow up this would offer a way for a group of zeroed out nations to get in a position to win some battles.

[Sir Scarfalot]

43 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Initially yes, but Infra Damage would lower pop cap and lower the buy back

No, infra can already be immediately bought back; with this both infra and military would be immediately buyable without limit. It comes back around to untouchable whales able to bring their entire city counts to bear instantly without any way for smaller opponents to coordinate and spy their way to eventual air superiority.

1 hour ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

For example, what if every war resulted in beige for the loser (the person with less resistance)? That way there is no way to scam the system and perma-war someone.

I've been suggesting this for ages, it alone would solve so many issues and the only arguments against it basically come down to "but we want to perma-war our enemies so we can 'win' the game".

1 hour ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

Alternatively, buff the Propaganda Bureau. Make it so it halves the time to max military rather than 10%.

Or just flat buff recruitment rates across the board and leave the PB as-is. The problem with unlimited recruitment rates is that it would turn PnW into another game that has failed partly due to the broken war system. Frawley detailed it out a little better but you get the idea.

Any buff to recruitment, at all, pretty much kills the utility of coordination and spies and overpowers downdeclares even more than they already are. Aircraft taking as long to max out as they do still beats how fast spies can tear them down, I think, so it still takes a sincere effort to whittle down an opponents air with coordinated suicide airstrikes. There are ways to improve the war system (I won't say "fix", since it's quite functional as it is), but recruitment MUST NOT be changed in that direction. Absolutely must not.

1 hour ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

I really, really love increasing MAP's. I think that would go a long way for people who get hit then log on when they wake up to a zero'd out military. They at least have options.

I'll give you and Pre this one; increasing the cap of action points could help a lot in very specific, but otherwise very difficult and unbalanced situations such as low activity or extreme updeclares.

I still won't upvote anything that even hints at buffing recruitment rate though. Terrible, terrible idea.

[Dio Brando]

What started off as an attempt to diagnose and address inequalities within the attacker-defender dynamic ended up as a way to horribly imbalance the game, and shift the meta in so many ways that you would need half a dozen additional accompanying changes for it to make the least bit of sense. 

There is an ebb and flow to warfare. When a blitz occurs, the momentum of the effective offensive belligerents pushes forwards and is considered significant not simply due to its magnitude but that it occurs within a short period of time, but this very thing is only possible if coordination between the offensive party is present. If not, and you are most familiar with this, you end up with something like the notorious 2-man blitz. After the initial forward wave, if the defenders are not entirely outnumbered and there is still some possibility for forces 'in reserve' to engage in countering, you see a slow - but entirely noticeable - push back. Of-course it is not as rapid as the offensive, but can mitigate the first-strike advantage fairly well. If you are not able to scrounge up enough counters to make a significant push-back, you have either:

• Failed to secure your interests politically, in that you left yourself in a vulnerable position and were dogpiled by a force that wasn't necessarily updeclaring but fighting with a similar tier'ing,
• Failed to secure your interests mechanically, in that your alliance had poor control over your tier'ing and thus allowed the enemy to 'divide and conquer', 
• Were declared on by a relatively higher-tiered force - or relatively lower-tiered force - and thus incapable of immediately mobilizing counters due to range immobility,

Having said that, here are some thoughts:

• In your first point, you mention wanting a 'prepared' nation to be able to jump back into the fight immediately. I disagree with the premise of this idea in the first place. It is certainly true that nations on the receiving end of things tend to be worse off, but history has proven that with enough politicking and countering, you can shift the offensive war effort backwards. See introductory words.
• Prices will go up, but at what cost? @Shiho Nishizumi points out correctly that this would make economics far more important than it already is. What this does serve to do is encourage elitism, in that people will gravitate towards making their alliances tier upwards even further, and a natural reaction to this would be giving whales/economic powerhouses (in terms of income per member, not alliance income) a significant advantage.
• Here's a funny thought. I don't need to keep hangars or any other kind of military improvements anymore. I can invest those same x slots into resources, since I can easily shift to a full military build and max out all units within the span of 5 minutes. What that could do is increase resource production.
• The idea that this will promote coordination isn't quite true. In the current meta you can see 3 c15 nations declaring on one c22 nation and still coming out on top by coordinating. In the proposed system? You'd see three c15 nations declaring on the c22 nation, having the c22 nation over-ride all progress their coordination made by buying max planes, airstriking once, buying planes again, airstriking twice, buying planes again, and airstriking the third nation. Effectively, you'd be shifting war from, "Some coordination, mostly numbers" to, "Little coordination, some numbers, mostly stockpiles". 
• Whales would be a 'bit' stronger? No, they'd be ridiculously over-powered. They'd be able to enjoy the most of their military free revenue, and as soon as they'd get a whiff of danger, would be able to arm up and roll everyone that stood in their way. You'd literally get Terminator Squads, and while that sounds 'cool', it isn't fun for anyone.
• Wars definitely will have more time in between. You're effectively eliminating 'Higher coordination, somewhat less numbers' strategies and replacing them with, 'Hoard away, and stack all tiers to your advantage. Gonna be a loooong war'.
• When you talk about war ranges and shifting them to max military potential, you're going to be introducing range immobility. Some alliances literally will be unable to fight others, and that's not fun, even if you think that encourages them to move upwards or downwards. 

There are many things I'm missing out, many things people have pointed out above. I just don't agree with the system. It boils down to people coordinating to get ahead of a numerically superior opponent and then getting all their effort erased because, hey, the higher city guy can just buy back whenever he wants.

Others have proposed changes to make the war module more interesting, and while I don't mind them, I don't think it's in the interests of any game's retention rate to make the system needlessly complicated, especially if you're making it complicated to barely justify the addition of a previous change.

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Initially yes, but Infra Damage would lower pop cap and lower the buy back

At that stage, nations generally have anywhere from 2000 to 3000 infra. You'd need to get in a ridiculous amount of infra damage in before the whale actually suffers from any reasonable deduction in military buying capacity. Even if the attackers coordinate well enough and focus entirely on burning infra, the whale would likely have more than enough money to easily get infra back to a state where he could enjoy almost full military capacity.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Dio Brando

[Auctor]

Uncapping buyback only makes sense if you're also getting rid of the MAP system.

[Sir Scarfalot]

3 minutes ago, Auctor said:

Uncapping buyback only makes sense if you're also getting rid of the MAP system.

...I don't think I agree with that. What would you replace it with, anyway?

[Buorhann]

@Dio Brando - So you’re saying Nukes and Missiles would become even more strategically important?

Just find it odd how much backlash this change idea is getting.

It’d tackle 4 things this game suffers from.

-Nukes/Missiles

-Inflation of Resources

-Able to fight back at your leisure

-Jump start the economy

[Azaghul]

One thing that I would add to this discussion is that this could actually limit an underdogs ability to damage an opponent because many times alliances in a loosing situation can have their multiple nations focus a blitz on an individual nation and take them down even while loosing in the larger sense in most of their wars.

It keeps the outgunned side from exploiting and sustaining any kind of edge they might have.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Azaghul

[Buorhann]

@Sir Scarfalot - People can immediately buy back their Infra?  So you’re saying there’s another money sink if they want to maintain max military?

Sounds like it’d help with the massive influx of cash in the game.

[Prefontaine]

5 hours ago, Buorhann said:

@Dio Brando - So you’re saying Nukes and Missiles would become even more strategically important?

Just find it odd how much backlash this change idea is getting.

It’d tackle 4 things this game suffers from.

-Nukes/Missiles

-Inflation of Resources

-Able to fight back at your leisure

-Jump start the economy

The reason for the backlash is because it's not the cleanest fix to the problem, though at this point I doubt there is a purely clean fix. It has its merits and flaws. Part of the point of suggesting it to see where those points are highlighted in the community. From there we take good aspects of things brought up and try to apply them to future ideas.

 

Also I feel like part of the backlash might be coming from the perception that this suggestion might be implemented regardless, as the two recent suggestions that might make their way into the game have come from me, city cost change, and the city cost projects. However that is far from the case. The point of this thread was public brainstorming. 

[Dio Brando]

5 hours ago, Buorhann said:

@Dio Brando - So you’re saying Nukes and Missiles would become even more strategically important?

Just find it odd how much backlash this change idea is getting.

I don't know if it came off that way, but I'm not railing against @Prefontaine or anything. I respect his ability as a player - and a leader - greatly, but I've taken the discussion part of this subforum literally and am just pointing out things the way I see it. In all honesty, I think the game could use threads where we collectively work towards solutions and 'fixes', and this is a decent example of people suggesting changes and so on to benefit the community. 

5 hours ago, Buorhann said:

 It’d tackle 4 things this game suffers from.

-Nukes/Missiles

As far as I can see, nukes and missiles don't really increase in strategic importance enough that you would actively use them as opposed to conventional military. In the same example that I was referencing earlier, there is no feasible way for even a team of 8 nations (5 offensive, 3 defensive) to use nukes/missiles in such a way as to drive a whale's infrastructure down to the point that they can defend against a massive military disadvantage. 8 wars, 8 nukes, 8 cities targeted, 12 MAPs each... to what end? The nation could easily rebuild a few hundred infra, get max planes, airstrike the living shit out of each of his 8 attackers, and continue. It's a battle of pure attrition, and I don't really find them all that much fun. Missiles would generally suffer from a similar issue.

25 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

People can immediately buy back their Infra?  So you’re saying there’s another money sink if they want to maintain max military?

Sounds like it’d help with the massive influx of cash in the game.

Infra is already immediately purchasable, and people do generally keep their's at a level where their military capacity isn't hurt too much.

-

I think what would be a more interesting tangent to explore is how the change would interact with destroying Improvements and the usefulness of Tactician / what tweaks we can make in that regard.

[Prefontaine]

49 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

Infra is already immediately purchasable, and people do generally keep their's at a level where their military capacity isn't hurt too much.

Hmm.. What if Infra gets purchased but then takes x turns to build? That could be interesting..

 

Also I didn't take any of this as railing against me. I appreciate comments that have detail and thought to them and ignore the ones that are effectively "Wahh I don't like ideas".

[Sir Scarfalot]

18 hours ago, Buorhann said:

@Sir Scarfalot - People can immediately buy back their Infra?  So you’re saying there’s another money sink if they want to maintain max military?

Sounds like it’d help with the massive influx of cash in the game.

There's NOT an influx of cash, it's the opposite: a deflation of cash value and low resource prices due to a massive influx of *non* cash.

[Roquentin]

1 minute ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

There's NOT an influx of cash, it's the opposite: a deflation of cash value and low resource prices due to a massive influx of *non* cash.

Yeah. Cash has fallen behind resources significantly and  purchasing power of many players is very limited due to lack of cash but they can produce resources at the same rate but it's not enough to have enough to buy the ones they don't produce at a level where prices don't crash. It's ultimately an issue on the demand side rather than the supply suicide.