Increase the costs of non-tank military units

[Daniel Storm]

@Alex

Prefontaine's post about reducing the cost of tanks and increasing the cost of planes got me thinking about how damned cheap war is, and what a fractional cost most non-tank units are. So I would like to present an alternate proposal that we avoid making war any cheaper than it already is, and instead increase the costs of other units to be more in line with that of tanks.

Right now if you were to fully militarize, over 57% of your costs would be spent purely on tanks. Followed by 27% on ships, 15% on planes, and 1% on soldiers. With that in mind I propose that unit costs be re-balanced to the following numbers or something similar.

This is a pretty conservative proposal, and I'm not married to any of the numbers, but I think it offers a decent visualization of my idea.

As you can see these changes would greatly increase the cost of the current "cheap" Aircraft and Soldier units, while keeping Ships roughly on par with where they are now, and making tanks much cheaper in a relative sense, without actually reducing their cost. Given how dirt-cheap war is, and that in the current economic meta any competent alliance can keep fighting indefinitely, I think it would be a mistake to reduce the cost of any military unit, instead costs of cheap units should be increased to make the expensive unit (tanks) a more attractive option.

 

 

Edited November 22, 2019 by Pop
Fixed Images.

[Teaspoon]

Agreed. Attrition should mean something.

[doge]

What city count is this at?

[Alex]

I like that idea of increasing the costs of military units, and I like your numbers.

I'm not promising anything here, I'd like to see more feedback from other players, but on the face of it I think it's a simple, intuitive and beneficial change.

12 minutes ago, doge said:

What city count is this at?

I believe it's per-city. Each city has a max # of improvements so it makes sense to me to do a standardization based on 1 city.

[Sir Scarfalot]

Honestly, the idea isn't half bad. Best to test it and of course implement at some point after the war ends (if that ever happens at all), but it seems like a fair tweak to me.

[Daniel Storm]

43 minutes ago, doge said:

What city count is this at?

It's exactly 1 city like Alex said.

5 Barracks

5 Factories

5 Hangars

3 Drydocks

[doge]

2 minutes ago, Pop said:

It's exactly 1 city like Alex said.

5 Barracks

5 Factories

5 Hangars

3 Drydocks

I think the math on the soldiers is wrong. I checked the math on the tanks after my comment though and that had the right number.

[Daniel Storm]

2 minutes ago, doge said:

I think the math on the soldiers is wrong. I checked the math on the tanks after my comment though and that had the right number.

You're right, it's calculating off of 45,000 soldiers per city instead of 15,000. 1 sec.

Fixed

 

Edited November 22, 2019 by Pop

[Teaspoon]

Perhaps make soldiers even more expensive than your proposal. They're a vital component of gaining value out of wars, losing them should mean something instead of it just being a number you replenish between every attack/defense.

[Guest PhantomThiefB]

I would further increase soldier costs to 10$ per unit. It's still chump change as far as buying soldiers go. Also would increase cost of planes more to 10k per unit instead of 8k and ships round it out to a nice number like 75k per ship. As your number stand the cost of planes and ships is still somewhat low compared to tanks so I feel like that'll balance all 4 of them rather well.

[Viselli]

Wars are trending longer and longer and most people get tired of the long wars, leading some to even leave the game completely. This change has the opportunity to decrease the length of wars with resource reserves being used quicker. I would say do a test server tournament using these new prices and see how long it takes people to run through resources.

[Clarke]

Not sure about this.
Ships don't need an increase, very expensive as it is. Planes don't need a monetary increase, 3.7 million to buy maximum planes each day? no thanks. 
Better to simply increase resource cost of planes.
Soldiers are irrelevant in the grand scheme and need to be affordable.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Clarke

[Micchan]

Before that you have to increase the unlootable resources/money to not make the blockade too powerfull

[Vein]

I dont like the idea of increasing soldier cost, in a way, you're gonna just end up nerfing raiding again. So NO to increasing soldier cost.

[True King]

On 11/21/2019 at 10:36 PM, Teaspoon said:

Agreed. Attrition should mean something.

Attrition War Type only affects infra damage, so this wouldn't effect that. Other than you can barely loot anything with attrition wars, so you'd be able to only be able to potetnially recoup even a smaller amount of what you spend fighting even if successful.

I don't have a strong opinion on increasing the costs, other than ships I agree with whoever said they're expensive enough & planes don't need a cash increase cost to them. Soldiers I agree should be cheap, although still the cost increase wouldn't matter much except maybe for new players. I don't actually see any reason to increase the cost of planes to begin with or the purpose behind it. (Would just make it harder for people who lost the planes advantage to try coming back from it)

So I think this change wouldn't be very exciting, but people who have been playing a while should easily be able to absorb the increased costs. So don't really care if this gets implemented or not.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Noctis Anarch Caelum

[Teaspoon]

8 hours ago, Noctis Anarch Caelum said:

Attrition War Type only affects infra damage, so this wouldn't effect that. Other than you can barely loot anything with attrition wars, so you'd be able to only be able to potetnially recoup even a smaller amount of what you spend fighting even if successful.

I don't have a strong opinion on increasing the costs, other than ships I agree with whoever said they're expensive enough & planes don't need a cash increase cost to them. Soldiers I agree should be cheap, although still the cost increase wouldn't matter much except maybe for new players. I don't actually see any reason to increase the cost of planes to begin with or the purpose behind it. (Would just make it harder for people who lost the planes advantage to try coming back from it)

So I think this change wouldn't be very exciting, but people who have been playing a while should easily be able to absorb the increased costs. So don't really care if this gets implemented or not.

Sorry I mean attrition as in the concept of grinding your opponent down over time, not the ingame war type. As-is, it's way too easy to stay fighting for basically forever because it's too cheap to rebuild.

[True King]

15 minutes ago, Teaspoon said:

Sorry I mean attrition as in the concept of grinding your opponent down over time, not the ingame war type. As-is, it's way too easy to stay fighting for basically forever because it's too cheap to rebuild.

In attrition wars like you're talking about, I don't think these changes would be bad. Since you want to make it expensive for your opponent anyways. Although something to consider is how it would effect raiding, would be much harder to make anything off it unless you get a really good target blockaded. Also with the current setup, if you want to do anything infra damage you need to sacrifice most of what you could possibly loot. (If you don't use piracy gov type, that also cuts down a lot on the loot you can get)

So for this not to be a big nerf for raiding, would need to do so people can loot more. Personally I think Attrition Wars should give at least 50% loot & raid wars do at least 50% damage. Get rid of Ordinary type or do so its 75%/75%. Don't mind a cost increase on units if he adjusts the war types some.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Noctis Anarch Caelum

[Sir Scarfalot]

On 11/21/2019 at 10:00 PM, Teaspoon said:

Perhaps make soldiers even more expensive than your proposal. They're a vital component of gaining value out of wars, losing them should mean something instead of it just being a number you replenish between every attack/defense.

No, having soldiers be extremely cheap like they are now is a good thing since they are one of the few ways that embattled nations can compete. Without that ability, the game would be winnable and therefore endable, and I for one don't want the game itself to end.

On 11/22/2019 at 10:59 AM, Viselli said:

Wars are trending longer and longer and most people get tired of the long wars, leading some to even leave the game completely. This change has the opportunity to decrease the length of wars with resource reserves being used quicker. I would say do a test server tournament using these new prices and see how long it takes people to run through resources.

That's not really the problem that I see this solving; though it would certainly shorten the length of resource wars, it absolutely must not eliminate the possibility of continuing to fight against a conventionally superior opponent. The only way to solve the problem that you've identified in your post is for the playerbase to learn to accept that game-ending victory isn't something that should ever be possible, and to stop desperately digging deeper and deeper into toxicity in order to find some way to 'win'. Sadly, that's not something that can be achieved mechanically.

Edited November 27, 2019 by Sir Scarfalot

[Mandystalin]

What effect will this have on raiding? Seems like it will make it unprofitable 

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

24 minutes ago, Mandystalin said:

What effect will this have on raiding? Seems like it will make it unprofitable 

You must be really bad at raiding then.

[Prefontaine]

On 11/22/2019 at 1:00 AM, Teaspoon said:

Perhaps make soldiers even more expensive than your proposal. They're a vital component of gaining value out of wars, losing them should mean something instead of it just being a number you replenish between every attack/defense.

Remove food upkeep from soldiers, add food cost to their creation.

[Raphael]

On 11/21/2019 at 10:33 PM, Pop said:

@Alex

Prefontaine's post about reducing the cost of tanks and increasing the cost of planes got me thinking about how damned cheap war is, and what a fractional cost most non-tank units are. So I would like to present an alternate proposal that we avoid making war any cheaper than it already is, and instead increase the costs of other units to be more in line with that of tanks.

Right now if you were to fully militarize, over 57% of your costs would be spent purely on tanks. Followed by 27% on ships, 15% on planes, and 1% on soldiers. With that in mind I propose that unit costs be re-balanced to the following numbers or something similar.

This is a pretty conservative proposal, and I'm not married to any of the numbers, but I think it offers a decent visualization of my idea.

As you can see these changes would greatly increase the cost of the current "cheap" Aircraft and Soldier units, while keeping Ships roughly on par with where they are now, and making tanks much cheaper in a relative sense, without actually reducing their cost. Given how dirt-cheap war is, and that in the current economic meta any competent alliance can keep fighting indefinitely, I think it would be a mistake to reduce the cost of any military unit, instead costs of cheap units should be increased to make the expensive unit (tanks) a more attractive option.

 

 

I agree with your principle but not your proposal. Tanks are way too expensive for their use in the current meta.

I think tanks should only use 0.334 (1/3rd) steel per tank. That still puts them as the second-most expensive unit behind ships. Therefore, also raising the cost of planes (which should be the most expensive unit as it's the most powerful in the meta) to $10,000 per plane would be good. 

 

I don't think militarization needs to be overall "more" expensive because the current war system has a nasty habit of creating a snowball effect where the losers keep losing. Meaning they lose more units. If you increase the overall cost you're only worsening that snowball effect and decreasing potential competitiveness in wars.

 

[dtc justice]

The monetary value of military units won't change much. If you want to make a difference you should look at increasing the steel for ships, and increasing the alu for planes

[Flanderlion]

I really like the idea of a food cost to buying soldiers. Upping unit costs is fair enough, given the login bonus has increased.