Colours

[RagnarBuliwyf]

At the moment. Everyone's crowded to Yellow, purple and blue the rest of the colours are fairly abandoned. 

 

While this is fine. It's really not providing any sort of entertainment/politics from the colour system, which Sheepy intended it to do. While I'm currently unsure of what to suggest to fix this issue. Something needs done. 

 

The system currently is just spam a colour that has a great bonus and forget about the others. As nobody is going to flock over to them, if somewhere else has a better bonus. Before someone replies and says that's not what's happening, look at yellow. It's clearly happening. 

 

I remember some form of colour politic system being added a while back. I haven't seen any update on that from Sheepy. What happened to that? Will it still be added?

 

Anyway's I'm fairly awful at suggestions. So here's an open topic for people to suggest new ways to make the colour system more effective. Rather than a useless game feature. 

[Ren]

Bonus = ( Nations on Color * 2 ) / ( Total Nations + ( Alliances on Color ^ 2 * 100 ))

 

The problem is that there is no incentive to start on a less populated color. Because of the bottom half the equation, far too many nations are needed on a color to get a significant bonus. 1 alliance, alone on a color, would need 40 members just to get a bonus of 5% and like 65 members to hit 8%. Anyone starting a new alliance wouldn't bother going brown, orange, or pink, and few existing alliances are large enough to go an unclaimed color and get a bonus comparable to what they are getting now.

There are currently 900+ unaligned nations, with only 1550 total nations in the game. 680 nations have a score of <10. Inactives need  to be purged quicker. My proposed solution would be to set a length of time that a nation can be inactive that is based on their score, since early on, a nation's score is roughly indicative of the time invested in the game. Someone who still has a score of 0.5 should be removed quickly, like after a week of inactivity. Someone with a score of 30 would have a bit more time to return to the game. If the total nations actually reflected the number of active nations, I think that the color spheres would be much more competitive.

 

tl;dr: Inactives & unaligned are killing the color bonus. Recruit more. In the colonies it's spelled 'color.'

[Atzuya]

Wait, people are crowding to blue?

 

+1 on Ren's suggestion. Nations with scores lower than 10 (something that can be reached within just an hour of playing, if one knows what to do) should be removed after a week of inactivity. There's no need to clog up the server, and if they decided to get back it shouldn't be too hard to recreate the nation.

[Ayayay]

Flag all nations >30 score and have logged in at least once in the past two weeks as "active nations" and change the equation from total nations to active nations. If a nation falls below 30 or, at day change, hasn't been on in a fortnight they should have the "active nations" flag revoked. 

 

Or we could always revert to the old system and bring color colonies back

Edited October 1, 2014 by underlordgc

[SoS]

Inactivity solution is cool.

 

How 'bout a diminishing bonus to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. alliances on a color?

[Alex]

I've modified the formula in a way that I think promotes color diversity a lot better. Instead of using All Nations, it now uses all nations that aren't on gray. I also changed one of the multiplication factors from 100 to 200, so that alliances are more harmful to a color's score.

 

Bonus = ( Nations on Color * 2 ) / ( All Nations (Not on Gray) + ( Alliances on Color ^ 2 * 100 200 ))

[Lottario]

I've modified the formula in a way that I think promotes color diversity a lot better. Instead of using All Nations, it now uses all nations that aren't on gray. I also changed one of the multiplication factors from 100 to 200, so that alliances are more harmful to a color's score.

 

Bonus = ( Nations on Color * 2 ) / ( All Nations (Not on Gray) + ( Alliances on Color ^ 2 * 100 200 ))

 

My colour stock bonus currently isn't the same on my revenue page as it is on the colour leaderboards (10% on the revenue page vs 6.1% on the leaderboards).  I imagine one of those two pages isn't implementing the new formula correctly.

[Alex]

My colour stock bonus currently isn't the same on my revenue page as it is on the colour leaderboards (10% on the revenue page vs 6.1% on the leaderboards).  I imagine one of those two pages isn't implementing the new formula correctly.

 

I think you caught it right before I finished updating it. Check again.

 

Also, just for fun, there's currently one nation on orange, giving it a color bonus of 0.28%. At this rate, per nation, if the Dutch East India Company (I use them since they are traditionally orange) left Yellow and went to Orange they'd have a color bonus of:

 

(36 * 2) / (736 + (1 ^ 2 * 200)) = 7.6%

 

This would also cause a drop in Yellow's color bonus:

 

((122-36) * 2) / (736 + ((4-1) ^ 2 * 200)) = 6.7%

 

Yellow's current bonus is: 9.69%, so they'd lose ~3% of their bonus, and Orange would increase by ~7.3%. While in this instance it would still be more profitable for the Dutch East India Company to stay on yellow, there are likely more instances where alliances would benefit from switching to a less populated color.

[Atzuya]

Aww yiss the era of gray flood is gone

[Lottario]

I think you caught it right before I finished updating it. Check again.

 

Nope, still shows as different for me.  I'm still seeing 10% on my revenue screen (it was 3% before the update), and 6.1% on the leaderboard

[Alex]

Ah, it was a typo. Should be good to go now.

[Ayayay]

And Purple is even lower than before, seems like Delta Orbis needs a few monopoly treaties.

 

Also, all alliances right? Or does it only apply to alliances with >300 score?

Edited October 1, 2014 by underlordgc

[Atzuya]

It only count alliances over 300 NS, or your stock bonus would be wayyyy lower than that

[Tenages]

While I don't really care about the color system one way or the other I will note that in the game's current state, where they're really aren't that many big alliances, you're actually going to create less drama, entertainment, and color politics by encouraging nations to spread out amongst the colors. There are so few large alliances, relative to the number of colors, that pretty much all of them could have their own color if they wanted, and thus, no drama. You'll get drama by making a narrow sweet spot wherein you get the big bonus. 

 

To really provoke politics, drama, and entertainment through color politics, you need a few colors with a really good bonus that everyone wants to be on because the rest suck, and alliances fighting over who is on those colors. If all colors are pretty much equal, the entire thing is pointless.

 

It's not causing  any wars (which is what everyone means by entertainment) right now because nothing is causing any wars right now. Everyone wants to build before they war, and nothing short of a direct attack is likely to start one atm. Changing the color system didn't and isn't going to change that fact. But if you don't think color was a factor in politics, and causing tension and discussion before the change, well you're just wrong. Behind closed doors and in backchannels, color is and has been a major political factor since I returned to the game in the beginning of September.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Tenages

[Odin]

-deleted-

Edited October 12, 2014 by Wilhelm II