Remove Alliance Bank Looting & Cap Alliance Bank Amounts

[Raphael]

On 10/2/2019 at 1:35 PM, Azaghul said:

I agree that people will get around it with individual nations.  There should also be a cap on individual stockpiles.

1) Even if an alliance's stockpile gets zeroed, they still have all their cities.  And they often can get loans after a war.  Even starting with nothing, infra is relatively cheap.

2) If the caps are set at a decent level, they could balance things out in favor of losers by limiting how much of a stockpile the winner of the war has after the war, and thus the disparity between the alliances. 

Right now many alliances have banks that have several months of stockpiled resources.  If we have caps, alliances at peace will hit the stockpile and then have to invest elsewhere.  Starting a war, buying more cities, and in their newer players.

A rough illustration:

Currently: Alliance A is twice the size of Alliance B and defeats Alliance B in a war.  Both alliances go into the war with 6 months worth of stockpiled cash/resources.  They fight for 3 months.  Alliance A uses 1 months worth of stockpile to fight and 1 months worth to rebuild.  Alliance B uses 3 months worth of stockpile to fight and 2 months worth to rebuild.   Alliance A ends with 4 months worth of stockpiling left, Alliance B with 1 month.  Alliance A now has a 3 month stockpile advantage.  Alliance A takes 2 months to rebuild their stockpile and Alliance B takes 5 months.

With Caps: Alliance A is twice the size of Alliance B and defeats Alliance B in a war.  Both alliances go into the war capped at 2 months worth of stockpiled cash/resources.  They fight for 1.5 months.  Alliance A uses .5 months of stockpile to fight and .5 months of stockpile to rebuild.  Alliance B uses 1.5 months worth to fight and .5 to rebuild (1 month less than they need).  Alliance A has 1 months stockpile left and Alliance B has 0.  Because they couldn't do a full rebuild, Alliance B takes an extra month to rebuild without stockpiling again.  Alliance A has a 2 month stockpile advantage on Alliance B.  Alliance A takes 1 month to rebuild their stockpile and Alliance B takes 3 months.

This is of course an oversimplification in a lot of ways.  But the point is, if warchests are capped, it limits how much of a warchest advantage one alliance can accumulate over another by setting a maximum for the winner.  It sets a maximum amount of time that an alliance effectively needs to be "war-ready" again.


 

I think your argument is sound in theory but once actual numbers are applied it becomes glaringly obvious that the data doesn't support your suggestion.

I would be interested to see the numbers, not the theories, to actually see how it would impact gameplay.

 

Questions like:

1. What is the current "disparity" between the "winner" and "loser" of a conflict?

     1a. Is the "winner/loser" defined by the playerbase via forum surrenders or defined by who has less resources when the fight finishes, or by some other measure?

     1b. Define what kind of conflict we're basing resource caps around. The longest global in the game's history? 90 days worth of every nation in the game using all their MAPs? Average data from every global war ever fought? Some other measure?

2. Is the current "disparity", once defined, greater than / lesser than / equal to the difference between 0 resources and the proposed cap?

     2a. What should the difference between current and proposed disparity then be?

3. Ramifications on the playerbase once implemented? I could foresee a war, much like the current one, where no one ever "loses" or surrenders because they know their opponent will eventually run out of resources. Similarly, many people "lose" a war before their stockpile is zeroed out. Their infra (ability to generate income) and their military (their ability to conduct meaningful military operations) are both zeroed out while they still have plenty of gas/steel/munis/aluminum left but the buy caps and constant pressure from the enemy prevent them from using it. Therefore, the "winner" is still using more resources because it costs more to have 1800 planes bomb a dead city than it does to just sit inactive and be bombed.

So will future "winners" just be whoever doesn't spend their resources first? Meaning I could have no military and no infrastructure for 364 days but on the 365th my opponent is bankrupted so I win  by default? What kind of meta does that introduce? Even longer wars? Wars that never get decided?

 

This is where "Game Suggestions" fail the hardest imo. It's why so many people become unhappy with Alex when he develops solutions. We spend all the time here theorycrafting but no one every bothers to put pencil to paper and figure out how it would actually work.

 

I don't think the current game can handle a resource cap of any kind. The only solution that will work is a better economy of scale. Add more cost into the game at higher levels. Resources and cash need a way to drain from the economy other than burning in war.

[Buck Turgidson]

How about making the minimum score 1?