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Discouraging "Offshore" Alliance Banks


Alex
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12 hours ago, Alex said:

I find the use of "offshore" alliance banks a confusing gimmick that doesn't really improve gameplay.

Would you care to elaborate how you find them confusing? Because I don't really see anything confusing about them.

Furthermore, I said this to you several times before and so have other players. And I will say it again. They might not "improve" the gameplay but making it next to impossible to have offshore banks is achieving the exact OPPOSITE. Alliances have a limited number of people they can trust with a offshore bank. In a large war such as the one we just saw ending, you just need some competent people to do beige cycling and by the rules you're just suggesting, even large alliances are through very quickly with the number of people they can trust to hold a bank.

If you hate these alliances so much, then remove bank looting all together. Making it extremely difficult to properly protect your stuff during war with which you fund the war, which is basically the most important aspect of this game to begin with, is an absolutely terrible idea. It will lead to consolidation because people won't like going to war if they don't feel they have a high chance at winning at the fear of losing their bank and the chance at rebuilding. It will lead to banks getting looted heavily during war and people basically being beat down really fast because they can't fund it anymore while their opponents can rebuild really quickly. It would discourage people from starting newer and smaller alliances because you don't have many people you trust to keep your stuff safe. And you basically kill ingame banks with that of which you just recently said they were "such an important aspect to the game" when you gave Seb a 15b dollar bailout.

So let things stay the way they are and look into removing the small alliances that annoy you so much in different ways (maybe start with those that start on Idk #151 of the alliance list all the way back to #322 and delete the inactive micros among those) OR remove alliance bank looting completely. Every other decision is absurd and gets absurder the smaller an alliance is.

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12 hours ago, Alex said:

I find the use of "offshore" alliance banks a confusing gimmick that doesn't really improve gameplay. Alliances are effectively forced to use this gimmick to remain competitive, and I think that discouraging its use would be better for everyone. I have a few suggestions on how to do that:

  • Set stricter standards on alliance creation:
    • Nation must be at least 30 days old to create an alliance
    • Nations can only create one alliance every 30 days (to prevent constant new alliance creation)
  • Disable alliance banks when alliances have less than 5 members
    • While the specific threshold could vary, in my opinion every "real" alliance has at least 5 members. This requirement would prevent frivolous 1-man "offshore" alliance banks, and would increase the probability of an offshore being raided (and thus discourage the use of "offshores" altogether)

I think that these changes would discourage the creation and use of "offshore" alliances, which again, in my opinion don't add anything valuable to the game but instead force others to use the same gimmick to be competitive.

These improvements to game mechanics would help to eliminate situations like this: https://politicsandwar.com/alliance/id=7244

That alliance has one nation with 0 score and is effectively "unraidable." Alliance banks are not intended to exist to eliminate the possibility of money and resources being looted.

That alliance is not the best example as the vast majority of alliances do not hide their banks with a 0 score nation and isn't it against the rules to hide your bank with a 0 score nation anyways? The vast majority of alliance offshore banks are hidden in nations that are reachable and are not unlootable. They require activity and for people to be on top of their wars. People do mess up from time to time and when they do, it hurts far more because they're usually losing 33% of the bank. How is that against the spirit of what you want to maintain in the game?

This is not a good idea, Alex. Echoing what I said previously, I'd rather see you just remove alliance bank looting altogether than do something like this and I'm not normally a proponent of that. I think this change penalizes alliances for finding ways to protect their bank from being looted, penalizes the losers disproportionately in wars, and is especially hard on smaller alliances. A larger alliance would be able to manage around this but an alliance of 15-20 would probably really struggle and is already more heavily impacted by bank looting due to the way the formula is set up iirc.

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Remove alliance bank looting so there's no point in having an offshore. Otherwise, they will always exist. Requiring 5 people on the AA would mean an intelligent AA would split their entire membership into groups of 5, and play hot potato with the bank to dodge beiges.

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Or just leave it how it is. Alliance banks get looted pretty often as it is.

Just looking at loot stats  from previous wars, and the hauls new players are getting from raiding, there isn't even a pressing need to push changes.

All you are going to end up doing is stagnating the organized warfare as alliances keep getting their resources looted, with little recourse. Bank loot gains are WAY too high for offshores not to be a viable tactic.

You should really go back to the drawing board on raiding mechanics period and design some sort of independent raiding system, as it seems there is an endless supply of issues with how you have implemented raiding as a mechanic that constantly comes into conflict with either the war or economy mechanics..

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2 hours ago, Princess Adrienne said:

This is not a good idea, Alex. Echoing what I said previously, I'd rather see you just remove alliance bank looting altogether than do something like this and I'm not normally a proponent of that. I think this change penalizes alliances for finding ways to protect their bank from being looted, penalizes the losers disproportionately in wars, and is especially hard on smaller alliances. A larger alliance would be able to manage around this but an alliance of 15-20 would probably really struggle and is already more heavily impacted by bank looting due to the way the formula is set up iirc.

This 100%, most top tier alliances would have no problem finding government members who can play hot potato with the bank. Smaller alliances would be put at a disproportionate risk solely because they don't have the numbers to play hot potato.

To remove off-shores and not address the problem with alliance bank looting is a band aid "solution" which will cause more harm than good. Either rework how bank loot is calculated so it wouldn't cripple alliances as much or just remove it outright. 

I do agree that a clean up of the irrelevant alliances is needed, so those restrictions @Alex on nation age are a good idea to stop new players join making an alliance the moment they get the chance and just cause people to quit cause they join said micro get raided and end up quiting. I'd probably add onto that maybe include a minimum score requirement perhaps 3,000. 

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I agree that offshores are gimmicky.

Put stockpile caps based on city count for both alliances and nations.

Something like: 3000 * (city count + 3) for each resource, 2.6 mill per nation for food (so folks can get advanced city planning, or adjust that cost somehow), 50 mill * (city count + 3) for cash (may need adjustment at upper levels for cities).  For alliance bank: 1000 per city for each resource, 10,000 for food, city count * 20 mill for cash.

Keep massive stockpiling from being possible in the first place... though there'd have to be some way to take into account current stockpiles.

*is probably going to get yelled at in TKR's gov channel*

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11 hours ago, Borg said:

I meant a cap that would offer protection for the bank, 40% doesn't do that, as it's a massive percent, and grows proportionally to the size of the bank

40% is the top limit. Usual bank loots are 1%-3%

7% at most for any normal alliance out there.

Most BIG % loots happen in 1 or 2 man alliances. You can loot upto 40% theoretically but the soft cap is 33%. Infact, most of these one-man AA loots are in the range of 15% to 25%. Larger loots are extremely rare.

11 hours ago, Borg said:

buying infra is often counterproductive (especially as a raider, or during war), since it raises your score (thus score to military ratio). land is almost useless, and you are limited to the number projects you can have. Edit: I don't want to waste money, I want there to be useful things players wanting to stay low cities can spend money on (in the event that they can't safely store it)
Anyway, something like projects for alliances would be a neat money sink. e.g. a project to protect the bank

This is out of context. Alliance banks dont have money because they smaller nations or nations dont want to use money. They are there to fund wars, grow members,etc. And what other ways are you talking about?

11 hours ago, Borg said:

you can't store credits in banks, nor can you feasibly obtain billions worth of credits. there just isn't the supply.

The problem with such a unit is it makes raiding totally useless. You have the Hide it All Button which is used to hide all money and/or  resources. This isn't the objective of the game.

27 minutes ago, Azaghul said:

I agree that offshores are gimmicky.

Put stockpile caps based on city count for both alliances and nations.

Something like: 3000 * (city count + 3) for each resource, 2.6 mill per nation for food (so folks can get advanced city planning, or adjust that cost somehow), 50 mill * (city count + 3) for cash (may need adjustment at upper levels for cities).  For alliance bank: 1000 per city for each resource, 10,000 for food, city count * 20 mill for cash.

Keep massive stockpiling from being possible in the first place... though there'd have to be some way to take into account current stockpiles.

*is probably going to get yelled at in TKR's gov channel*

The problem with this comes with smaller alliances with less cities. We won't be able to keep stockpiles post a certain limit. 

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9 hours ago, Avakael said:

Remove alliance bank looting so there's no point in having an offshore. Otherwise, they will always exist. Requiring 5 people on the AA would mean an intelligent AA would split their entire membership into groups of 5, and play hot potato with the bank to dodge beiges.

This is true but removal of looting would make the game pointless. Nations would deposit everything in alliance banks with no fear of ever losing anything. War would become meaningless as rebuilds would be easily funded. 
 

I can think of ways to exploit every suggestion provided in this thread so far and several of them have been pointed out by others. Still, something being done is better than nothing, imo. 

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8 hours ago, Azaghul said:

I agree that offshores are gimmicky.

Put stockpile caps based on city count for both alliances and nations.

Something like: 3000 * (city count + 3) for each resource, 2.6 mill per nation for food (so folks can get advanced city planning, or adjust that cost somehow), 50 mill * (city count + 3) for cash (may need adjustment at upper levels for cities).  For alliance bank: 1000 per city for each resource, 10,000 for food, city count * 20 mill for cash.

Keep massive stockpiling from being possible in the first place... though there'd have to be some way to take into account current stockpiles.

*is probably going to get yelled at in TKR's gov channel*

If you institute this, I think it would completely remove the ability for alliances to keep their banks safe at all. This would:

  • Prevent the use of offshore alliances. Even if they could get around the 5 members thing, they couldn't get around the caps.
  • Prevent alliances from being able to send their banks to an ally or other trusted alliance while at war without harming their caps.
  • Severely harm player-run banks, which are often also on one-man AAs, and force them to move the funds to their nations where they're even more vulnerable.

I don't think it's beneficial to the game to damage the effectiveness of player run banks or completely disable the losing alliances in wars by allowing them to get looted and not have an option to protect their bank. It harms their rebuild significantly and completely disproportionately to the winning side. This idea, while the alliance bank looting mechanism continues to exist in its current state, would be devastating, particularly to losing alliances. I don't think there should be caps on alliance banks but I especially don't think it's a viable option while bank looting exists.

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2 hours ago, Princess Adrienne said:

If you institute this, I think it would completely remove the ability for alliances to keep their banks safe at all. This would:

  • Prevent the use of offshore alliances. Even if they could get around the 5 members thing, they couldn't get around the caps.
  • Prevent alliances from being able to send their banks to an ally or other trusted alliance while at war without harming their caps.
  • Severely harm player-run banks, which are often also on one-man AAs, and force them to move the funds to their nations where they're even more vulnerable.

I don't think it's beneficial to the game to damage the effectiveness of player run banks or completely disable the losing alliances in wars by allowing them to get looted and not have an option to protect their bank. It harms their rebuild significantly and completely disproportionately to the winning side. This idea, while the alliance bank looting mechanism continues to exist in its current state, would be devastating, particularly to losing alliances. I don't think there should be caps on alliance banks but I especially don't think it's a viable option while bank looting exists.

I think you could find a way to balance it out... lower loot amounts while making it harder to prevent looting.

My general thought is large stockpiles shouldn't be encouraged in the first place.  Mainly because the need to stockpile resources slows the game down and sitting their doing nothing but stockpiling resources isn't very much fun.

And while it's true that would hurt the losing side in wars, it'd also hurt the *winning* side.  The point is to nerf stockpiling for *everyone*, so that the relative advantage that a winning alliance gets for being able to protect their bank is less because the winning side's stockpile is also limited by the caps.

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A couple of balancing mechanics:

- Lower bank loot amounts

- Increase the threshold for money being unlootable on a nation.

- Add projects/improvements that make a certain amount of money/resources in a nation and/or in that nation's alliance's bank unlootable.

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33 minutes ago, Sargun said:

offshore banks are dumb and anyone who uses them isn't playing the game properly.  these changes in particular aren't very good but *something* needs to be done

I can't tell if you are sarcastic or not. 

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@Azaghul Lowering bank loot amounts won't do much imo. As long as banks can be fully looted over time, because there exists no way to protect them, the losers will always lose everything. It will just take longer to loot them completely dry if the percentage per beige is decreased.

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27 minutes ago, Azaghul said:

I think you could find a way to balance it out... lower loot amounts while making it harder to prevent looting.

My general thought is large stockpiles shouldn't be encouraged in the first place.  Mainly because the need to stockpile resources slows the game down and sitting their doing nothing but stockpiling resources isn't very much fun.

And while it's true that would hurt the losing side in wars, it'd also hurt the *winning* side.  The point is to nerf stockpiling for *everyone*, so that the relative advantage that a winning alliance gets for being able to protect their bank is less because the winning side's stockpile is also limited by the caps.

I get what you're after but like I said, as the game currently stands, this is not a viable option. Other things would need to change first/in conjunction, like your suggestions here:

17 minutes ago, Azaghul said:

A couple of balancing mechanics:

- Lower bank loot amounts

- Increase the threshold for money being unlootable on a nation.

- Add projects/improvements that make a certain amount of money/resources in a nation and/or in that nation's alliance's bank unlootable.

These would be a good starting point but I think there'd need to be other things taken into consideration as well. I think your suggestions would take time to implement and require changes to be made to the way the game works. I don't think that's really what's being sought out here though.

 

@Alex's concern seems to be more cosmetic than anything from what I remember and about cleaning up the alliances/getting rid of extraneous ones. If that is the case, this current suggestion in the OP isn't the right answer. A more permanent solution that addresses the gameplay issues that lead people to create offshores is what really needs to happen if you really want to eliminate offshores, Alex. Something similar to Tim's suggestion here might be a good band-aid solution in the meantime though that addresses your concerns about the presence of a multitude of in-games alliances that aren't true, independent alliances ("offshore banks") and the current concerns alliance leaderships have about getting rid of them.

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28 minutes ago, Mr. Goober said:

I can't tell if you are sarcastic or not. 

offshore banks are dumb.  they shouldn't need to be in the game, it should be balanced properly instead.

these changes in particular are dumber, because they don't fix the core problem.

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Just now, Sargun said:

offshore banks are dumb.  they shouldn't need to be in the game, it should be balanced properly instead.

these changes in particular are dumber, because they don't fix the core problem.

I can agree with that. That's my real complaint here, that the suggestion in the OP doesn't solve the reason behind why offshores are made in the first place, just exacerbates it and disadvantages a number of alliances disproportionately.

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17 hours ago, Aether said:

I would rather you remove bank looting outright than disadvantage smaller, low-tiered alliances.

 

14 hours ago, Princess Adrienne said:

Echoing what I said previously, I'd rather see you just remove alliance bank looting altogether than do something like this and I'm not normally a proponent of that.

 

14 hours ago, Avakael said:

Remove alliance bank looting so there's no point in having an offshore. Otherwise, they will always exist. Requiring 5 people on the AA would mean an intelligent AA would split their entire membership into groups of 5, and play hot potato with the bank to dodge beiges.

 

I have no qualms with just removing alliance bank looting altogether. In my opinion, it's a mostly avoided mechanic anyway through "offshore" alliance banks, and therefore removing it would remove the clutter and confusion of additional 1-man alliances being created and recreated constantly.

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5 minutes ago, Alex said:

 

 

 

I have no qualms with just removing alliance bank looting altogether. In my opinion, it's a mostly avoided mechanic anyway through "offshore" alliance banks, and therefore removing it would remove the clutter and confusion of additional 1-man alliances being created and recreated constantly.

I'm not opposed to this.

My preference is still some kind of high threshold before anything is lootable, to disincentive massive stockpiling.

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