Revisions to Recent Game Update

[Changeup]

Now that the initial wave of rage has slowed down, and now that people have had some time to see how the new update works, I'm proposing some revisions to the recent game update to improve it across the board and balance things out. 

1) Military Score Changes.  Tanks were buffed yet their score was nerfed more than planes, which actually were nerfed.  Change the scores for tanks from 0.009 per tank to 0.015 per tank.

2) Make the unraidable money limit city-based to boost low tier raiders. For every three cities, have the unraidable limit go up by $100,000. Example: Cities 1-3, it's 100K. In 4-6, it's 200K. In 13-15, it's 500K, and 25-27 it's 900K. This also evens out war, since for someone with 5 cities 200K is enough money to rebuy some units, but for someone with 25 cities it's hardly anything.

3) The ground control changes were some of the most disliked changes in the update. Although I had some ideas on how to change it, after some discussion with a group of players reversion seems to be the best way to go until more ideas can be put on the table and a balanced solution could be found. It's better than what we have now, since planes already got a decent nerf this isn't especially needed.

4) Change the maximum amount of planes to 20 per hangar, 4 hangars per city, with a 1/4 (or 1/5) rebuy. This is less planes than people could have before,  but they can buy planes faster now.

5) Readjust some of the casualty rates. This will balance things out and also slightly reduces the nerf to planes, which in most peoples opinions were a tad too much.

• Avg Soldiers Killed in a Ground Battle: 25% -> 35%
• Avg Aircraft Killed in an Airstrike (not dogfight): 29% -> 34%
• Airstrikes on Units
  • Soldiers Killed Airstrike: 25% -> 35%
  • Tanks Killed Airstrike: 14% -> 25%
  • Aircraft Killed Airstrike (Dogfight): 53% -> 65%
    
    And if you don't want to revert the changes to Ground Control:
• Aircraft Killed by Tanks in a Ground Battle: 42% -> 27% (only after Ground Control has been established)
  
  
  That fixes a lot of the most disliked parts of the last update and balances things out in general. If you have any questions or anything, just ask.

Edited May 24, 2020 by Changeup

[Arawra]

Please add a poll so the community can show which revisions they agree with (include a "none of the above" option as well).

[Changeup]

3 minutes ago, Hime-sama said:

Please add a poll so the community can show which revisions they agree with (include a "none of the above" option as well).

done

[lightside]

The score changes should be undone. Everything else should kept as it is and maybe modified as needed 

[Sketchy]

He's not going to undo it lol

[Majima Goro]

5 hours ago, Changeup said:

3) The ground control changes were some of the most disliked changes in the update. Although I had some ideas on how to change it, after some discussion with a group of players reversion seems to be the best way to go until more ideas can be put on the table and a balanced solution could be found. It's better than what we have now, since planes already got a decent nerf this isn't especially needed.

A big change that needs to be done is to allow soldiers to kill planes as well. 
Maxed out soldiers should be able to kill 5% aircrafts on avg per IT.
 

 

5 hours ago, Changeup said:

5) Readjust some of the casualty rates. This will balance things out and also slightly reduces the nerf to planes, which in most peoples opinions were a tad too much.

• Avg Soldiers Killed in a Ground Battle: 25% -> 35%
• Avg Aircraft Killed in an Airstrike (not dogfight): 29% -> 34%
• Airstrikes on Units
  • Soldiers Killed Airstrike: 25% -> 35%
  • Tanks Killed Airstrike: 14% -> 25%
  • Aircraft Killed Airstrike (Dogfight): 53% -> 65%
    
    And if you don't want to revert the changes to Ground Control:
• Aircraft Killed by Tanks in a Ground Battle: 42% -> 27% (only after Ground Control has been established)

The % kills need to be upped
The % kills for tanks and planes should be same by each other.
Also, the soldiers should be able to kill planes
Around 3% of the 27% should be killed by soldiers

[Keegoz]

At best you're going to get him to undo certain oversights but he won't revert or massively change things.

[Wendell]

17 hours ago, Hime-sama said:

Please add a poll so the community can show which revisions they agree with (include a "none of the above" option as well).

Polls don't do anything for Alex. He ignores them and only listens to Prefontaine.

 

14 hours ago, Sketchy said:

He's not going to undo it lol

If he does, I'll delete a city.

[Kaz]

The number #1 problem with this update in my eyes is that ground control does nothing to reduce the effectiveness of planes (at least on the test server), but planes reduce tank value by 50%. If you start out a war with a plane disadvantage, opponent has slightly better than 50% of your ground force, you lost the war straight out of the gate based on war scoring mechanics alone.  

The infinitesimal plane destruction you get from having ground control only takes place on subsequent hits AFTER you’ve established an immense triumph for a first time.   Otherwise, you’re at a stalemate.   

The #2 major issue in my eyes is that a maxed out military in all 4 categories can declare on a nation of same size and infra with 0-0-0-0 forces.  How does that make any sense?  Add Pirate economy and you can hold 6 nations down simultaneously and not even fire a single shot    

All this update just did was make actual non-raiding war wicked expensive and even more lopsided than it already was.  Advantage, whales with deep pockets.   Disadvantage anyone in the game who doesn’t have a $500M per nation war chest.

@Alex, you really need to rethink this.   

 

[Vemek]

21 minutes ago, Kaz said:

The number #1 problem with this update in my eyes is that ground control does nothing to reduce the effectiveness of planes (at least on the test server), but planes reduce tank value by 50%. If you start out a war with a plane disadvantage, opponent has slightly better than 50% of your ground force, you lost the war straight out of the gate based on war scoring mechanics alone.  

The infinitesimal plane destruction you get from having ground control only takes place on subsequent hits AFTER you’ve established an immense triumph for a first time.   Otherwise, you’re at a stalemate.   

I don't think killing 42% of average daily buy is an "infinitesimal" plane destruction, furthermore the same argument can be made the other way around.

In a secnario where you start off with a ground disadvantage, your opponent will start with 6 MAPs (7 if you don't have fortress) allowing them to get off two ground attacks on you, which kills a significant portion of your planes. There's absolutely no need for ground control to be made any more powerful.

Even previously, a plane disadvantage generally always meant defeat unless you could get ground control off and had enough planes to compete with them. 

Edited May 26, 2020 by Bacchus

[Kaz]

You’re not factoring in the inability to take down the opponent’s front line to a level that exceeds his daily rebuild ability.   So ultimately, ground control is lost.  At best, you have a 1-2 shot deal at plane destruction unless you’re fighting against someone who completely fell asleep during a war.  

Let me give you an example.  I ran a simulation on test server using 120,000 soldiers and 10000 tanks to an opponent’s 96,000 soldiers and 6000 tanks (costly battle in the real game, no?).  I got an initial moderate, followed by an immense on the open.  He took air superiority.  I got one additional ground shot in to reduce his planes by 45. Then he was able to over take me on the tank rebuild (keep in mind, my tanks are maxed but at 50% effectiveness) I lost ground control and could never get it back. All he had to do was air hit me through the rest of the war and it was checkmate with a $51M front line.   His plane destruction from my ground forces equaled less than $2M.  

Without  planes having a reduction in effectiveness when ground control is established, there’s no counter balance.  For a C20, you’re talking needing a $100m+ tank arsenal on the ground at all times.  That’s ludicrous.  Well, unless I want to sit on undefended nation’s at my city size...because I can attack them with a full military arsenal in every category.   

Edited May 26, 2020 by Kaz

[Vemek]

1 hour ago, Kaz said:

You’re not factoring in the inability to take down the opponent’s front line to a level that exceeds his daily rebuild ability.   So ultimately, ground control is lost.  At best, you have a 1-2 shot deal at plane destruction unless you’re fighting against someone who completely fell asleep during a war.  

Let me give you an example.  I ran a simulation on test server using 120,000 soldiers and 10000 tanks to an opponent’s 96,000 soldiers and 6000 tanks (costly battle in the real game, no?).  I got an initial moderate, followed by an immense on the open.  He took air superiority.  I got one additional ground shot in to reduce his planes by 45. Then he was able to over take me on the tank rebuild (keep in mind, my tanks are maxed but at 50% effectiveness) I lost ground control and could never get it back. All he had to do was air hit me through the rest of the war and it was checkmate with a $51M front line.   His plane destruction from my ground forces equaled less than $2M.  

Without  planes having a reduction in effectiveness when ground control is established, there’s no counter balance.  For a C20, you’re talking needing a $100m+ tank arsenal on the ground at all times.  That’s ludicrous.  Well, unless I want to sit on undefended nation’s at my city size...because I can attack them with a full military arsenal in every category.   

3 ground attacks (what you've used in your example) is enough to dip the tank count below daily rebuild, as the amount of tanks killed in a ground battle is generally 40% of rebuy which accumulates to casualties greater than can be recouped in a single day.

Furthermore, after the nerf to air on air casualties from 59->29% it's much harder for your opponent to actually pin down your air considering it'd take 4(3 if you're lucky) airstrikes to actually dogfight more than can be rebuilt, and even that at an incredibly small level, which itself is another issue as you can only airstrike 3 times a day. This altogether leaves room for fighting back even when your opponent has air superiority, unless they have a drastically higher city count than you which would mean you'd practically always lose regardless.

Also, you can't really use a single instance as the norm due to the RNG nature of war mechanics. I ran 5 simulations of the exact same ground troops you listed (though I set infra to 1.5k as an average level to account for the civilian army) and got 4 IT's and 1 moderate success - which means your results were more than likely just a bad roll of the dice.

(I'm not certain if Alex has updated the battle simulator, so I may be entirely wrong with the last example)

[Kaz]

3 hours ago, Bacchus said:

3 ground attacks (what you've used in your example) is enough to dip the tank count below daily rebuild, as the amount of tanks killed in a ground battle is generally 40% of rebuy which accumulates to casualties greater than can be recouped in a single day.

Furthermore, after the nerf to air on air casualties from 59->29% it's much harder for your opponent to actually pin down your air considering it'd take 4(3 if you're lucky) airstrikes to actually dogfight more than can be rebuilt, and even that at an incredibly small level, which itself is another issue as you can only airstrike 3 times a day. This altogether leaves room for fighting back even when your opponent has air superiority, unless they have a drastically higher city count than you which would mean you'd practically always lose regardless.

Also, you can't really use a single instance as the norm due to the RNG nature of war mechanics. I ran 5 simulations of the exact same ground troops you listed (though I set infra to 1.5k as an average level to account for the civilian army) and got 4 IT's and 1 moderate success - which means your results were more than likely just a bad roll of the dice.

(I'm not certain if Alex has updated the battle simulator, so I may be entirely wrong with the last example)

We will have to agree to disagree here.   I think the aspect of not reducing the plane value once ground control is established was a mistake on his part.  I’m not the only one saying this.   That and the fact of “bad rolls” even being there when one side clearly has an advantage over another in a specific category is another problematic issue, and it’s one of the main reasons the last war lasted almost 9 months.   The old format would have been fine had the roll format been tweaked and the ability for either ground or ships to have the ability to eliminate some amount of planes been in effect.   You can sell me on a moderate lessening of plane strength when having them at a say 1500 count could destroy 2200 tanks or 55,000 troops.   That was excessive certainly. But this new system in my eyes has simply made war exponentially more expensive.