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Symposium on Stagnation


Raphael
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The biggest reason the game is going stagnant is the tier-locking introduced by cities contributing a very large amount of score compared to military units. What this does is lock people with similar city counts into each others range regardless of whether one of them has maxed out military or zero military. What this does is effectively let everyone stay at maxed out or near maxed out military without having to worry about down-declares as much. Or in other words encourage maxing out everything as the way to "win" the game and tier everyone to a certain city count while hoarding numbers to maintain control in that tier.

Extremely low causality rates is also an extremely big factor since it takes ages to kill off someone else's military. However the downside to increasing causality would be that you can zero someone out with minimum usage of MAPs and letting people sit on others with extreme ease. It is an extremely tough situation which would need reworking the usage of MAPs for attacks, Resistance lost per attack as well as making casualty rates higher. 

Decreasing costs isn't the answer here. Especially since lower cost to fight would mean longer, more dragged out wars. Even with current costs, some of the old alliances can drag wars out indefinitely. You can argue that lower costs will benefit smaller alliances however the obvious downside to it is the tier-locking by virtue of which no matter how much a smaller alliance struggles, it is bound to fail to a larger alliance.

As for reducing infra costs, nope, that is actually not going to work. Pixel-huggers would pixel-hug no matter how low their pixels cost. Similarly, land being capped is another crap idea since people with the most land are usually pirates or ex-pirates. Plus high infra already has its disadvantages like higher crime rates.

Here is an alternate method I suggest:

1) Redoing score so that military gives more score than cities. The higher your Military, the more your score. This encourages people to be smart and keep lower, more strategic militaries. Cities should be kept as the secondary option for score. So I'm talking about cities giving around 50 score while max military gives around 150 score.

2) Heavily increasing causality rates especially for tanks, planes and ships. The rate at which tanks are killed in both ground battles and airstrikes should be doubled. Planes killed in air strikes need to be increased as well even when the target isn't planes. Ship vs Ship should have their causality rates at least doubled.

3) Resistance lost from ground battles should be upped to 15, for airstrikes to 18 and naval battles to 20. Missiles can be upped to 24 and nukes to 30. This with the higher kill rates would make it difficult to sit on the target but won't prevent zeroing out.

4) All wars to expire in beige for person with lower resistance. Beige earned from expiry will not result in loot and infrastructure destruction but would give 25 turns of beige like normal defeats.

Basically what I'm trying to do here is break locked tiers for people with zero military so people with loads of military and similar city counts won't be able to declare, making going to wars with alliances having great teiring more feasible. Zeroing people in wars would be possible and probably faster however sitting on them will be extremely difficult. These two would make going to war against bigger sides possible(meaning a 2 on 1 or a 3 on 1 might be more winnable for the smaller side), leading to lesser blobs like Quack or Oasis being formed to maintain number superiority since numbers would not be that important now. 

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53 minutes ago, Rockefeller said:

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I dont think any of these will solve the issue that you are getting at.
Point one just seems like a way for normal alliances to be less hurt if a war or coordinated raid breaks out (KT looking at you) and potentially lower MMR because the risk is lower.

Land does't need to be capped because as you said tis already very expensive for what you are actually getting. The price functions as a soft cap of sorts. 

Decreasing unit usage costs might make it so people have smaller warchest, or it might make it that wars last longer because people really like hoarding stuff. Feel hard to predict. But if Naps stay as long as they are people will just have more stuff to use during war. 

I do like your initial vs rebuild cost but we have to be carefull with how we implement it.

Last up I dont think it takes very long to deal decent damage, a war of a month is fine, nearly no wars last longer for infrastructure reasons. If a war lasts longer its often because of politically motivated reasons by either or both sides. Both in Knightfall and Duck Hunt 90% of the damage was done in the first month. In NPO's last time it was a bit more compelex because people joining and switchign sides and cheating. 

In Duck Hunt 1 Trillion damage was done after 10 days. And yet the war had to last another 30+ days for 400 Billion. This isnt a mechanics issue this is a political issue. An issue that got reinforced the the ridicolous nap that took 6 months afterwards. If naps would shorter people wouldnt dare to rebuild to 2500 or 3000 infra (except a very specific niche group) because the risk would be too big.

I have no idea who thought a 6 month nap was a good idea after a 1.5 month war, but if that weird logic got removed from the world the staleness of this game would be a lot lower 😛After NPOLT I could get behind the idea of a 6 month nap because that war was genuinly so exhausting, but it feels to me like the current staleness is caused by our political leaders.

There is too much predictibility, I as a rose member know that if I build 2500 infra and I remain active that there is a near 0% chance that more than 10% of that infra gets destroyed during the nap. You as a member of another respected alliance must have the exact same expierience.

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The best way to make this less stale in my opinion (from a non political but mechanics standpoint) is to boost rogues, pirates, raiders, and people who destroy infra for fun during NAPS. They mostly only build up to 800 infra so I doubt these would help them a lot. 

I would be thinking about a modifier on how much you can raid. Depending on how much money you actually raided in the last lets say 30 days and how many raid wars you declared and won/lost (so not peaced out or other exploitative shit). If you raid a lot you will get a bigger modifier to steal more stuff. This won't immediatly boost how much infra they can destroy but it would make funding a pirate alliance a lot easier. 

Next up I would make a similar boost for unit buying. If you go to war (any type of war) a lot and you either win or lose (so not peaced out or other exploitative shit) you will get a boost in what percentage of your max units you can actually recruit per day. This will make alliance that does a lot of this stuff stronger. 

If you want to be really bold you can also make them do more unit damage if they wage more wars. 

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To balance this raid war bonus the other types of wars would need a proper bonus too but that isnt the essence of what I am saying here.

There will probably be other good suggestions in this thread but this is my 50 cents.

Edited by BelgiumFury
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1 hour ago, Rockefeller said:

Hello,

 

I've seen quite a few dispersed suggestions recently that all seem to address, or attempt to address, the current issue of political stagnation - which many people seem to agree is caused by mechanical incentives.

I'd like to open the floor for people to discuss what's going on and what possible solutions could be introduced here.

 

Some initial thoughts I have but may be wrong:

  • Reducing infrastructure cost up to 2000-2500 infra, while maintaining current cost of anything above that? Basically a much sharper curve to give people the ROI they want but in a shorter amount of time.
  • Capping land in each city. Maybe at like 3-4k? Basically this forces pollution to become more of an issue with higher infra, giving even more diminishing returns and maybe incentivizing not building up so high and needing to wait forever for the ROI?
  • Decreasing unit usage costs - less gas / munis used = smaller warchests needed = less time to avoid war?
  • Infrastructure rebuild cost reduced but initial build cost remain the same? Seems trivial for most people tbh as we all get up to 1500, at least, as soon as we're in a competent alliance.
  • Increase infra damage per attack across the board for all unit types - addressing the "it takes too long to inflict decent damages." thought as well.

This is just me initially spitballing though so take everything with a grain of salt. Any thoughts or ideas?

Physical changes aren't going to change political stagnation. 

Political stagnation is due to politics, starting large global wars takes work.  But if your alliance is not out starting wars, pushing for war, or causing trouble in general and you want them to be, or you dont like that people fight wars and sign 4 month naps, !@#$ to your leadership, or join a democratic alliance and become leader and change it.

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How about we stop making meta posts about how we don't like the politics of the game and start making political posts how we don't like Rose or Eclipse or something. There has been far too much meta conversation.

Here's where I disagree SRD. I don't think globals have to take a lot of work. Look at KT! If bloc leaders took a hint from KT, we'd have globals every 3rd week!

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Hey Krampus, the signature edit is under account settings. Actually, here's the link.

https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/settings/signature/

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1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Physical changes aren't going to change political stagnation. 

Political stagnation is due to politics, starting large global wars takes work.  But if your alliance is not out starting wars, pushing for war, or causing trouble in general and you want them to be, or you dont like that people fight wars and sign 4 month naps, !@#$ to your leadership, or join a democratic alliance and become leader and change it.

 

49 minutes ago, zigbigadorlou said:

How about we stop making meta posts about how we don't like the politics of the game and start making political posts how we don't like Rose or Eclipse or something. There has been far too much meta conversation.

Here's where I disagree SRD. I don't think globals have to take a lot of work. Look at KT! If bloc leaders took a hint from KT, we'd have globals every 3rd week!

 

War is not necessarily the end-all be-all of politics, but if mechanics are incentivizing whaling up for 8/12 months with 3k infra per city and staying quiet... Then that is directly impacting people's desire to start trouble.

 

If it's cheaper to start trouble, it's easier to start trouble imo.

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16 minutes ago, Rockefeller said:

War is not necessarily the end-all be-all of politics, but if mechanics are incentivizing whaling up for 8/12 months with 3k infra per city and staying quiet... Then that is directly impacting people's desire to start trouble.

We whales did not ask for a 4 month NAP, and I think we were all largely against it. Not all of us are Alpha. 

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Hey Krampus, the signature edit is under account settings. Actually, here's the link.

https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/settings/signature/

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2 hours ago, zigbigadorlou said:

 

How about we stop making meta posts about how we don't like the politics of the game and start making political posts how we don't like Rose or Eclipse or something

 

Good idea!  I'll start.

Zig smells bad.  Pass it on.

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4 hours ago, Rockefeller said:

 

 

War is not necessarily the end-all be-all of politics, but if mechanics are incentivizing whaling up for 8/12 months with 3k infra per city and staying quiet... Then that is directly impacting people's desire to start trouble.

 

If it's cheaper to start trouble, it's easier to start trouble imo.

No mechanics do not incentivise this.

From the moment naps dont last for liteerally 6 months (once again no idea who thought this was a good idea), most people will be too affraid to build up high.

Make people affraid to build up that high, and the main two ways to do that is cause more mechanical chaos, which could be done by boosting people who traditionally do not follow NAP rules (raiders etc..) or by political people making good decisions.

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I think there are two intertwined issues here.  First, I agree that the programming of this game is terrible and many of the mechanics are ineptly done.  I'm speaking as a game designer here, not as a player, but I assume many players who've tried CN and other such games would agree that Alex misunderstood entire concepts.  For example, if your 'turn' is once a day, then it makes sense to have projects be 10 days.  When your 'turn' is every 2 hours, then it no longer does.  Also, this game really needs technology trading.  

However, none of that causes political stagnation.  What causes political stagnation is people putting a premium on certain concepts at the expense of other things.  For example, if you join an alliance, you are expected to show loyalty to that alliance.  This is often more prized than how active you are, how good you are at various tasks (be it Econ, FA, Milcom or whatever) and what else you might bring to the table.  And once people are loyal to you, your cause and your alliance, they are for the most part going to stay that way, and this translates up the line to various treaties and keeps various blocs and factions aligned together.  

If the 2iC of some alliance in Oasis decided he or she wanted a similar position in Hedge, Rose or Quack or wherever, would they be welcomed as a cure for political stagnation or would they be looked at as a potential spy seeking OpSec stuff?  Are new players who join 83 alliances in 3 weeks seen as a cure for political stagnation, or are they seen as loose cannons, rogues and mavericks?  Go put a very young teenager like Riverstan, Jaden or Luna directly in charge of your top-whatever alliance for a week if you want all political stagnation in Orbis cured forever.  If you just thought that sentence was ridiculous, you're okay with the status quo and therefore ultimately okay with political stagnation.

But if you really hate political stagnation, then everyone reading this needs to follow Arthur's lead, and wake up and decide you're moving your alliance to Oasis or some other such area of the treaty web you personally haven't been to in a while.  

 

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2 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

Good idea!  I'll start.

Zig smells bad.  Pass it on.

I'll have you know my nose works incredibly well. Which is really a shame considering the terrible sulfur compounds I am exposed to on a regular basis 💀

 

2 hours ago, Aglet Green said:

Go put a very young teenager like Riverstan, Jaden or Luna directly in charge of your top-whatever alliance for a week if you want all political stagnation in Orbis cured forever.

Replace Valk with Arctic and all of our problems are solved 😈

Hey Krampus, the signature edit is under account settings. Actually, here's the link.

https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/settings/signature/

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37 minutes ago, zigbigadorlou said:

I'll have you know my nose works incredibly well. Which is really a shame considering the terrible sulfur compounds I am exposed to on a regular basis 💀

 

nothing clears the sinuses better than accidentally getting a big ole whiff of a super strong acid or base.

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My opinion stands that wars have to be more fun. Two weeks, maybe 4 max. Any longer and the loser should lose, but turnaround mechanics post blitz should exist.

Damage is the obvious change, but not on nukes. Maybe perks or projects that could just give flat out more damage, no reduction.

To counteract, peacetime profits could be buffed a little, but there should be like some penalty to staying at peace. So if like a sphere decides to sit and whale indefinitely, they'll be at a disadvantage.

I like the total wars requirement for projects and project slots. I'm also fond of the idea of a project that lowers pop but makes rebuild cheaper.

 

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None of these mechanics will incetnivize more conflict.

2500 infra at any size you should be having thag already has a ROI of like 30 days. Globals have ended with NAPS since like 2018, usually 3 months+. Not really gonna change much.

What in the hell is capping land going to stop political stagnation? Huh? I, what? How does that even coherently make sense, did you forget the explanation part of this one?

Warchests really aren't that big a deal, if you're an older richer alliance, you are probably not at risk of running out unless you try to an IQ NPOLT impression. If you're even a relatively young alliance of notable size and even slightly competent administration, you will be able to stockpile easily and maintain growth. 

Rebuild costs, this has been said by Ronny before in particular, but if your econ department doesn't include in it's stockpiling the ability to rebuild to whatever levels it wants day 1 of peace then you need a new econ department.

Increased infra damage wouldn't probably achieve anything except slightly higher member attrition. Not even alot, I don't think, that's how nothing burger this is. 

 

Overall in theory reducing costs, reduces risk, and would therefore incetnivize the desired behavior. This theory however operates in a vacuum and does not consider or account just the actual politics going on between people and alliances.

Which, sorry to tell ya, is stagnant and boring and has been for I think, back when CN was still popular lol. I wasn't there but from reading CN wiki I'd actually argue it seemed more interesting back then, though part of that involves having a way higher player population as well. Not all that much has changed (most of the people in positions of major power in-game have been there for A LONG TIME and often have been since PW even existed, big shock I'm sure lol), except that frankly imo the stagnation just gets worse not better.

 

A fact that isn't at all surprising when again you remember, it's mostly the same old been around forevers and their proteges, who, aren't nearly as different as you'd like for anything to significantly change.

Just lay back and enjoy the weather lol, all you can do now.

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22 hours ago, zigbigadorlou said:

We whales did not ask for a 4 month NAP, and I think we were all largely against it. Not all of us are Alpha. 

Not to get political but everyone points to everyone else when asked how to prevent stagnation. This is a strictly mechanical post though and in my time on the dev team I've had quite a few seasoned gov from across Orbis talk to me about how they believe the mechanics are partly to blame - specifically the war mechanics.

 

I'm not the decision-maker though, this is a discussion post and I'm merely trying to initiate discussion.

14 hours ago, Rin said:

My opinion stands that wars have to be more fun. Two weeks, maybe 4 max. Any longer and the loser should lose, but turnaround mechanics post blitz should exist.

Damage is the obvious change, but not on nukes. Maybe perks or projects that could just give flat out more damage, no reduction.

To counteract, peacetime profits could be buffed a little, but there should be like some penalty to staying at peace. So if like a sphere decides to sit and whale indefinitely, they'll be at a disadvantage.

I like the total wars requirement for projects and project slots. I'm also fond of the idea of a project that lowers pop but makes rebuild cheaper.

 

The problem with projects is that every feature in PnW cannot rest on a project. We are almost at 30 projects and have a few more scheduled for release. Just taking my nation as an example, in the top 1% of nations, only have 17 slots available.

In my opinion there is a difference between fun trade-off decisions and tedium min-maxing. Having 30+ things to choose from, 10 days at a time, is not my idea of an engaging mechanic and should be limited as such. It's more of a nation building mechanic, obviously.

 

But I like your first line. War do need to be more fun for all parties and I think the best way to do that is to make wars more fair and competitive. Right now I think the biggest problem is the power of the blitz and the complete lack of answer after you lose your military. Beige would hypothetically help with this but the current state of beige is ineffective or outright useless if you're under the thumb of competent milcom.

 

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This post might be a bit silly with recent happenings, but here we go.

A large part of the issue we had around the end of the NAP was that the incentives for almost anyone to hit anyone just were not there. I would imagine that the only war that might have made some sense was Swamp v Oasis given their beef, but that still left three other major spheres plus some unaligneds out in the wind. While that could be fine, there is a good argument that those were the 4th and 5th most influential of the five major spheres; hardly the stuff of major global wars or politics.

Even if you got that, what in the world were the other three spheres supposed to do? There were really no incentives for any of them to hit the other, and no incentives for any of them to team up to fight the third. For Roselot this is simply due to their usual position as kingmakers rather than major movers, plus their own individual matchups are not perfect against Quack or Hedge. For Quack this is because they do not have the whales to really fight Hedge in an interesting way and a Roselot war would allow Hedge to either farm or feel free to combine safely. For Hedge hitting either Quack or Roselot just does not accomplish any goal for them with the way their tiering is setup, unless the raiders want some different targets.

Now we have something a little better stewing to take the pressure off, but it is still going to require some shuffling post-war. I think you might get it, but the look and feel in terms of the meta may not change all that much.

Of all the major spheres, Hedge is the only one that could just run it back and stand pat, and they would be fine. If everyone else is going to make major changes around you, but you yourself do not really lose anything in your positioning because of the mechanical or technological advantages you have, then you are a winner. The cards can fall where they may. Of course Hedge could make a few changes, but unless GG actually split then there is not much to discuss.

Camelot leaving Rose should in theory allow Rose to feel like one of their biggest thorns (no pun intended) is removed from their side in terms of public opinion, and they should feel more confident about playing in public FA. I would also expect Rose to feel confident in picking up anyone from Swamp that they want, and integrate them into their powerbase; some ex-Swamp would likely take on that second power role Camelot had, and I can see several of them being happy with that.

Oasis dropping micros to add Camelot is a wash in terms of actual power, but they were really the only bloc that could take in Camelot safely without having some immediate blowback, and it will make them more formidable as a collective to have Camelot rather than the micros. It is a powerplay move, and honestly I like it for everyone involved.

If Swamp decides to formally break up post-war then they will probably have a few options of where to go. Some of them might try to lead the micro bloc, some of them might go to Rose, some might make a minisphere, and some might try to find one of the other majors severing off. Most of them, I suspect, will have some choices. They may not be leaders anywhere, but they would probably be able to at least get something to be influential.

Quack splintering, and in the only way people talk about which is TKR breaking its spoke off of the t$ hub, will also lead to a lot of changes. TKR will be a very popular pickup for almost anyone out there - especially if they would be willing to sign into GG or Rose. I imagine even Oasis would work to try and add them if that was an option. TKR can also feel fine to make their own sphere too, and they are capable enough to actually do it and be successful in a multipolar world. As for the other spokes off of t$, most of them are also going to have options as to what to do. While I am biased, I would also imagine that t$ could also pick pretty much any destiny it wanted in a post-Quack landscape, and few alliances would actually refuse.

Finally there are the unaligneds, such as KT, SF, and the Micro bloc, among others not here. Most probably will not be super relevant to global politics, but I expect KT and SF to be individually influential enough in their own right, and the Micro bloc could maybe cobble something together with a little help from the outside to make something at least partially respectable.

So will you get political stagnation to go away? At least in part, probably. Will it be enough?

I think that is a question you will have to answer for yourself.

In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cüm Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

 

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14 hours ago, Zed said:

Even if you got that, what in the world were the other three spheres supposed to do? There were really no incentives for any of them to hit the other, and no incentives for any of them to team up to fight the third.

Thank you for your thoughts on overall political meta but I want to focus specifically on this line.

I understand the mechanics do not and cannot incentivize warfare as a means of profitability. That is an oxymoron and frankly if people wanted to fight 24/7 they'd be in Arrgh.

Mechanics can be made in such a way that will alleviate barriers to interesting things happening though. For example, if wars take too long because damage output isn't high enough - we can increase the infra damage done per attack. This will also help the game in another way by providing further money-sinks, which we desperately need.

 

That aside, content begets content. The attitude of the political players is what needs to change. Yes you can farm infinite money in this browser game and obviously some are going to minmax more than others, but at the end of the day if everyone is sitting still we're just watching numbers tick up on a screen. If you're a political player who's out of ideas: Make a new alliance, drop some long-standing treaty, resign your position and let a new generation step up. Will things go perfectly? No. Will things be more interesting and entertaining in a game we all play for entertainment? Yes.

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