Bank Changes

[Arawra]

Given the recent suggestion by Alex to change how banks operate, which I personally think is a bad idea, I've decided to suggest an idea which isn't new and has been thrown out by someone (Sketchy?) before. I quickly just want to iterate that this idea will probably not be popular but that the only reason I'm suggesting it to begin with is because Alex is persistent to change the bank mechanics so I figure it's at least better that he makes a decent change instead of one that disadvantages smaller, low-tiered alliances. 

First change: Remove bank looting altogether. I know this idea in particular won't be popular because raiders like myself sometimes rely solely on bank loot to make profit. However, this change will remove the necessity for offshores and save Alex a lot of moderation headaches; Alex's time is valuable and better spent developing the game rather than dealing with moderation issues. Additionally, I think a lot of alliance leaders/econ will appreciate no longer needing to constantly micromanage these offshore banks to ensure the safety of their members' taxes.

Second change: 2 nations minimum for alliance bank access. This is a preemptive measure to ensure raiders do not begin creating one man alliances to keep their wealth safe alone in their hands. Without the need to rely on an alliance government to manage offshores, I assume a lot of raiders would avoid alliances altogether so that their wealth can't be taken from them, not by looting, and not by a corrupt government member. Having a 2 people minimum probably won't prevent alliances like this from popping about, but I think it will deter a lot of people that would think to try it.

Third change: Resource Decay. There was a small debate on the politicsandwar Discord about the idea of hard-capping resource stores of alliance banks. This idea came about with the intent to force alliances which have accumulated extreme amounts of wealth over the years to either invest into members/alliances/businesses, or let the resources decay. The idea is that there will be an alliance bank resource/monetary soft cap based on the number of cities in an alliance, and the rate of decay would be determined via the percentage of resources/money above the cap plus the number of nations in the alliance. The rate of decay would be exponential, meaning, the further above the cap your alliance bank is, the faster the resources decay, this is to create a soft-hard cap to force alliances to eventually consider spending their excess resources/money (hopefully on their newer members or on war efforts).

The formula I made is as follows: TurnlyResourceDecay = Subtract (%IncreaseOver  + (%IncreaseOver * 5))^2 * N. In this case, N is the number of nations in the alliance. You will also note, the decay occurs every turn. So, as an example of the formula in action. Say you are 50% over the soft cap in a 100 person alliance, the formula would be: TurnlyResourceDecay = Subtract (1.5  + (1.5 * 5))^2 * 100 or 8100 per turn.The idea here is to make the soft-hard cap somewhere between 150% and 200% over the soft cap to allow wiggle room for alliance warchests and safekeeps. What is the limit? Of course it's subjective what the soft cap should be, but I was thinking (Per City) $50 mil, 1000 coal, 1000 oil, 1000 uranium, 1000 lead, 1000 iron, 1000 bauxite, 5000 gas, 6000 munitions, 5000 steel, 8000 aluminum, (?) food. I'm not entirely sure what to soft cap food at, but as stated, all these numbers are adjustable so please feel free to provide your own in the replies.

You will also note I don't have a decay formula for cash, this is entirely due to my inability to make a good one so I'm relying on the replies to provide a good formula for this. I'm also wondering whether to separate the decay formula for food as well due to the disproportionate amounts that nations require.

Please leave respectful feedback and hopefully we can all create some good ideas/amendments to this idea so Sheepy can hopefully implement it.

Also a thanks to @Epi for the help providing inspiration for this change.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Aether

[Majima Goro]

No

[Arawra]

22 minutes ago, AntMan said:

No

Could you elaborate why?

[Jeric]

Why not just limit the age/city count to create alliances? This way we avoid the whole 1 city 0ns nations holding banks

[Majima Goro]

53 minutes ago, Aether said:

Could you elaborate why?

Removing bank loots is bad. It incentivizes alliances to hoard inactives and farm em with no risk. Sure, it reduces Alex's moderation time but it is Alex's job to moderate. We already have a nice suggestion from Alex himself which severely reduces offshore creation. 

One-man raiding alliances is a choice of playstyle. And since it is a raiding alliance, the bank is usually in a larger loothouse. The main purpose for being in the alliance usually is bank to bank transfers

Resource decay is a very good resource sink. But why will I need to lose my money? It makes no sense. Food is the only perishable commodity I see out there. Not only that, this prevents smaller alliances from getting richer since they constantly lose out on much needed resources.

[Arawra]

1 hour ago, Jeric said:

Why not just limit the age/city count to create alliances? This way we avoid the whole 1 city 0ns nations holding banks

The problem isn't solely the 0ns nation; It's people vming with banks, hiding them in rerolls behind the 14 day new player protection, and trying to exploit all sorts of methods to make them untouchable. Offshores are a hassle for Alex to micromanage, they're annoying for alliances to manage, they're hard to find, and they needlessly bloat the number of alliances in the game. As stated in OP, removing offshores would save Alex a lot of potential time otherwise spent dealing with these moderation issues that only he can handle.

1 hour ago, AntMan said:

Removing bank loots is bad. It incentivizes alliances to hoard inactives and farm em with no risk. Sure, it reduces Alex's moderation time but it is Alex's job to moderate. We already have a nice suggestion from Alex himself which severely reduces offshore creation. 

One-man raiding alliances is a choice of playstyle. And since it is a raiding alliance, the bank is usually in a larger loothouse. The main purpose for being in the alliance usually is bank to bank transfers

Resource decay is a very good resource sink. But why will I need to lose my money? It makes no sense. Food is the only perishable commodity I see out there. Not only that, this prevents smaller alliances from getting richer since they constantly lose out on much needed resources.

Inactives cannot be taxed after being 5+ days inactive since they become gray. If truly desired, Alex could add a mechanic that automatically puts gray nations into applicant, or removes them outright (minus vacation mode nations). Alex's job is to develop and moderate the game, but when moderating the game detracts significantly from development time, it becomes a problem. The suggestion by Alex disproportionately affects smaller, low-tiered nations, since the alliances with lots of members are well-able to create 5 man offshores and bounce the bank around. Sure it *reduces* offshore creation, but that's a band-aid solution which doesn't actually eliminate the problem.

Then instead of one-man raiding alliances, just do two-man. It shouldn't be hard to find another raider to work with. The idea isn't to kill the playstyle, but to reduce the number of one-mans, same as you want Alex's suggestion to do to offshores, except that one-mans are not a big problem since they merely bloat the alliance counts, nothing too major.

Gameplay > realism. If you really want a realistic reason why money should perish, you can think of it like inflation. The reason for the decay suggestion is to implement a "use it or lose it" mechanic so alliances cannot persistently accumulate ridiculous amounts of wealth, at least, not in their banks. Maybe some alliances will start depositing the resources into their members' nations, in which case, I'm sure raiders will be pretty pleased.

Edit: Members cannot be taxed after 5+ days, amended, thanks Aky.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Aether
Correction

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

Correction: they can't be taxed after 5 days, Actually.

[Artifex]

1. Alliance looting is a cornerstone of raiding and objectives in war. Its removal would be the removal of a big part of PnW.

2. MAYBE a solution is increasing the requirement for nations in an alliance, but as it currently stands, alliance banking is far far superior to nation level trading, and stripping individuals of the ability to utilize non-crap transactions and banking is a bad idea.

3. Oh good, now we just need to transfer everything into a nation to avoid ridiculous decay, and the added stress of managing all the taxes before they decay totally won't out weigh the removal of the stress you mentioned earlier about managing an offshore.

4. Frick you, frick Alex, and frick your----   I mean, thank you for putting forth a solution to what Alex views as a problem, but I don't agree with this solution. 

[Arawra]

19 minutes ago, Malleator said:

1. Alliance looting is a cornerstone of raiding and objectives in war. Its removal would be the removal of a big part of PnW.

2. MAYBE a solution is increasing the requirement for nations in an alliance, but as it currently stands, alliance banking is far far superior to nation level trading, and stripping individuals of the ability to utilize non-crap transactions and banking is a bad idea.

3. Oh good, now we just need to transfer everything into a nation to avoid ridiculous decay, and the added stress of managing all the taxes before they decay totally won't out weigh the removal of the stress you mentioned earlier about managing an offshore.

4. Frick you, frick Alex, and frick your----   I mean, thank you for putting forth a solution to what Alex views as a problem, but I don't agree with this solution. 

I know the negative impact this has on raiding, but you ought to recognize the positive impact it will have on raiding too. Alliances will start storing more resources into individual nations (as you already mention later in your post) which makes them great raid targets, and are more vulnerable than alliance banks; A well-executed blockade will fair a lot better than hoping your opponent's alliance government doesn't bounce the bank to an offshore.

Banking is still possible with this change. I'm not suggesting the removal of alliance banks, just the deactivation of alliance banks for alliances with less than 2 members. Most banks have a CEO and CFO, so it shouldn't be too hard to reach 2 members minimum.

If you transfer stuff to individual nations they will attract raiders, so it's a risk vs. reward type deal.

It shouldn't be stressful to go above the soft cap, alliances will simply need to invest more into their members, upcoming alliance partners, businesses, etc. It'll be a lot more beneficial for the game if new players can get more funding, new alliances can have financial support from the older ones, and businesses can flourish with an abundance of rich alliance backers.

Despite your feelings toward me or Alex, this is overall beneficial for the game me and you both play. I think the main issue is people don't see offshores as a problem, but Alex is persistent in removing them, so might as well try to help him do it right. It's fine if you disagree with my solution, please help me better it, or make your own.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Aether

[dtc justice]

7 hours ago, Aether said:

The problem isn't solely the 0ns nation; It's people vming with banks, hiding them in rerolls behind the 14 day new player protection, and trying to exploit all sorts of methods to make them untouchable. Offshores are a hassle for Alex to micromanage, they're annoying for alliances to manage, they're hard to find, and they needlessly bloat the number of alliances in the game. As stated in OP, removing offshores would save Alex a lot of potential time otherwise spent dealing with these moderation issues that only he can handle.

 

It's actually against the game rules to hide a bank under 14 day new player beige, an alliance in dial up did this and we had a % of the bank deleted.

 

Having a hard city cap on having the ability to create a bank, or be given the leader position--- solves the unraidable problem...make it like 8 cities and minimum 60 days old or something

[Arawra]

7 minutes ago, dtc justice said:

It's actually against the game rules to hide a bank under 14 day new player beige, an alliance in dial up did this and we had a % of the bank deleted.

 

Having a hard city cap on having the ability to create a bank, or be given the leader position--- solves the unraidable problem...make it like 8 cities and minimum 60 days old or something

I know it's against the rules, but my point was that Alex has to spend his time moderating those incidents over developing the game. 

In terms of fixing the unraidable problem, I agree with a suggestion by @Akuryo to make the first city give nation score.

Thank you for bringing the unraidable problem to light though. I actually hadn't thought of it but, alliances might try to avoid the resource decay by placing excesses inside unraidable nations like the one you described. I'm going to make a fourth change to try and preemptively amend this potential workaround.

Edited February 28, 2020 by Aether

[Majima Goro]

One-man raiding alliances can be fixed if Alex develops a system for Nations to transfer their money via their alliance bank to any place else without being gov.

[katashimon13]

mfw u dont credit @Sketchy and link to the combo suggestion thread they posted that had decaying resources >_<

rawr

[Arawra]

10 minutes ago, katashimon13 said:

mfw u dont credit @Sketchy and link to the combo suggestion thread they posted that had decaying resources >_<

rawr

I did try to credit Sketchy as being the original proponent of the idea, I didn't know where to even look to find his thread though >.<

[Jeric]

Solution to offshores... Splinter alliances. Now they arnt offshores and can bounce the money around on a random or regular schedule

[Artifex]

On 2/27/2020 at 2:10 PM, Aether said:

I'm not suggesting the removal of alliance banks

What you're suggesting will effectively remove them, as a bank's main purpose of STORING MONEY, will become void and in fact, instead of SECURELY STORING MONEY, your idea of a bank is something that destroys money. 

 

The only way I see this as being possible without being incredibly unfair to bank users or just implementing things that destroy banks, is it make it so all money and resources in the game decay at the same rate no matter their location or quantity. Just a flat percentage. Otherwise, people will just move it around or be frustrated. 

[Arawra]

33 minutes ago, Malleator said:

What you're suggesting will effectively remove them, as a bank's main purpose of STORING MONEY, will become void and in fact, instead of SECURELY STORING MONEY, your idea of a bank is something that destroys money. 

 

The only way I see this as being possible without being incredibly unfair to bank users or just implementing things that destroy banks, is it make it so all money and resources in the game decay at the same rate no matter their location or quantity. Just a flat percentage. Otherwise, people will just move it around or be frustrated. 

I hadn't yet proposed a formula for money "inflation" (decay), I was hoping someone in the replies would be able to create a balanced one. However, perhaps a flat rate could work for money since banks work solely with money. This will still maintain the balance of decaying the vast amounts of unspent wealth accumulated over the years, but not kill banks as you are rightfully worried about. Although, I do see many alliances simply converting excess resources into money in order to avoid the more intense decay rate on resources, however, this might not entirely be a bad thing since that money will more than likely be invested. Would this idea suffice for you?

Just as an idea, how about a flat, turnly decay rate of (0.02/7)%? Of 10 billion, that would be ~28.6 mil, which most alliance banks carrying this amount can easily outproduce. Of course, the soft caps would be removed for money since it's simply a flat rate that doesn't need the added variables of soft caps. The banks that cannot outproduce the inflation rate will need to invest, something I believe the experienced bankers (whom should be the only ones with anything close to 10 billion) will be capable of doing.

Edited February 29, 2020 by Aether

[Lossi]

I need a dislike button