Jump to content

Politics and Whales


Keegoz
 Share

Recommended Posts

4 hours ago, Dr James Wilson said:

Aside from making it cheaper to build cities under say, c30.   I don't know what would be a legitimate solution.   Whales tend to be long term players that have been here since the beginning and the game is built in a way that time is what enables you to reach the high-end of the city spectrum.   

 

Unless cities become cheaper there is no way to catch up to people who have a 3/4 year head-start when it comes to nation building.

It is possible to catch up.  I believe I have passed many people the started a year or more before me.  Just the fact that you can get to 30c in under 2 yrs is ridiculous. 

 

As to downdeclaring, suck it up just like I did.  If you have the numbers you can turn it round, if you fight right.  If you don't have the numbers you loose.  Been there, done that and racked my stats.

  • Like 1

Legal Disclaimer:

My opinions do not necessarily reflect of the opinions of my alliance, allies, enemies or neutrals.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a possible solution isn't to entirely nerf whales or to buff low or mid tier across the board. The issue all of these wot's are essentially discussing is the game becoming boring. Alliance wars are becoming stale as tactics are essentially the same every war: bloc/alliance 1 starts to militarize, bloc/alliance 2 militarizes if they think they are the target, whoever reaches adequate militarization declares war, bloc/alliance with the stronger numbers and coordination wins. Beyond that it's just a grind to cause as much damage as possible.

 

This gives, as many have mentioned, an objective benefit to anyone that can gather the most whales since whales can build more units and cause more damage. This isn't inherently bad, as people that have played the game or invested enough time/skill should be rewarded, but there also is a lack of payoff and complexity that would make things interesting.

 

A potential solution is to nerf aspects of whales or boost aspects of mid and/or low tier. For example, perhaps deployment speed (number of units you can buy/day) can be reduced by a percentage for every city you have. This way, a hypothetical alliance/bloc entirely of whales could try and militarize against an alliance/bloc of entirely mid or upper tier but that alliance/bloc would be able to militarize faster and possibly launch an attack first before the whales are ready.

We could also increase maintenance costs for units for each city. Something like that. It would still be rewarding to build cities and be a whale, but it doesn't give you an objective and simple advantage in all areas.

Edited by Evlar Ball
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Evlar Ball said:

I think a possible solution isn't to entirely nerf whales or to buff low or mid tier across the board. The issue all of these wot's are essentially discussing is the game becoming boring. Alliance wars are becoming stale as tactics are essentially the same every war: bloc/alliance 1 starts to militarize, bloc/alliance 2 militarizes if they think they are the target, whoever reaches adequate militarization declares war, bloc/alliance with the stronger numbers and coordination wins. Beyond that it's just a grind to cause as much damage as possible.

 

This gives, as many have mentioned, an objective benefit to anyone that can gather the most whales since whales can build more units and cause more damage. This isn't inherently bad, as people that have played the game or invested enough time/skill should be rewarded, but there also is a lack of payoff and complexity that would make things interesting.

 

A potential solution is to nerf aspects of whales or boost aspects of mid and/or low tier. For example, perhaps deployment speed (number of units you can buy/day) can be reduced by a percentage for every city you have. This way, a hypothetical alliance/bloc entirely of whales could try and militarize against an alliance/bloc of entirely mid or upper tier but that alliance/bloc would be able to militarize faster and possibly launch an attack first before the whales are ready.

We could also increase maintenance costs for units for each city. Something like that. It would still be rewarding to build cities and be a whale, but it doesn't give you an objective and simple advantage in all areas.

I agree with the first 2 paragraphs, they're largely similar to what I've said prior, however I disagree with the latter two as solutions. We've trialled and tested these kinds of bandaid fixes, we're still in the same storm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whales have put in the time and effort to get where they are.  It has already been way easier to climb up than ever before.  Which is a bit disrespectful to those that paved the way.  I understand that quicker growth is needed to some degree to inspire newer players.  What I am hearing here is, I don't want to have to put in the effort to build my nation but make the game easier for me to roll over bigger nations.

The reality is, if you want to, the game mechanics make it quite possible to pull whales down.  I helped pull Grumpy down way back when.  It was harder then it should have been because our worst enemy was our own allies taking up slots to nuke turret instead making sure the slots where filled by people that could smash armies 

On the flip side I've been with Grumpy and we fought off 2.5 to 1 odds because of our ability to work together.  Yes the other side had more than equal whales.

I would propose that what you need is not more skewed game mechanics but a willingness to change how your tackling what you see as a problem. Whether it's exercising better military cooperation or making sure your nation's are pumping out the ching-ching (half baked builds that I see quite often, have to be one of the largest causes of stunted growth.) 

Actually working with like minded people is a great way to reach a goal.  If you can't find the people or your ideas aren't gaining ground recheck your paradigms, change and keep moving forward. It  takes time and commitment and the end result will have more value then having everything handed to you.

 

  • Upvote 1

Legal Disclaimer:

My opinions do not necessarily reflect of the opinions of my alliance, allies, enemies or neutrals.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These threads pop up from time to time over the life of the game, I probably made a thread about upper tier consolidation being bad or two myself. Large nations are going to be strong, and should be strong. It's something to strive towards in game, a goal to reach. Others have stated it's easier now more than ever to get to higher city counts, however the end post does keep moving further.  Additionally, threads about reducing nations abilities to strike down get largely met with disapproval.

Things in these games can change a couple of ways, the two largest areas of which are with mechanics and the other is on the players. It doesn't matter what mechanics get introduced if the players are going to consolidate the power in one place. It doesn't matter if everything is 100% fair across the board because then why care about growth if you're just as effective in fighting at C10 versus C20. Players have united against upper tier consolidation in the past, Papers Please and Knightsfall are two examples of such.

In any game where there is leveling the higher level players are stronger than the lower levels. It's a large part to why people play the game, to get stronger. Same is true here. You reduce the benefit (nerfing whales or buffing everyone else) of being big being impactful you remove the motivation for growth. You remove the motivation for growth people stop playing. Too keep this reply from getting too long I'm going to cut this part here, but I wanted to touch on one thing in the OP
 

Quote

Recently Alex posted a bunch of changes that, once again, heavily favoured the whales in the game. New projects once again had food costs which whales mostly produce and thus they'll likely profit from the new resource sink. This came at no shock to anyone who has been tracking new projects, the majority have been helping whales in one form or another. He also added reducing city score (with no real reasoning behind it).

The three new projects, one can't be used above C15, one makes more project slots which whales don't need, and one effects everyone. Any project that helps everyone is yes, also going to help whales. Reducing city score was one of, if not the largest request from the the raiding community, and was a largely disliked change when it was implemented prior to the Design Team's creation. 

  • Upvote 1

scSqPGJ.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/9/2022 at 3:39 PM, Lord Tyrion said:

Realistically, a cap on number of cities (or make them even more exponentially expensive) and removing the 10-day timer would probably be a decent idea to close the disparity.  A new player will take many years to catch people who have a 40 city head start on them.

I agree about removing the 10 day timer. But then u will find larger alliances being able to build up their new players instantly while some smaller alliances trudge behind creating yet another inbalance unfortunately

Edited by Blair4932
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Blair4932 said:

I agree about removing the 10 day timer. But then u will find larger alliances being able to build up their new players instantly while some smaller alliances trudge behind creating yet another inbalance unfortunately

I dont think you will find many alliances that are going to speed build people due to the likely low return on investment.  You may see scumbag alliance leaders using tax revenue to speed build themselves, but most likely you are looking at very rare instances where new players get shot up really fast.  Look at most major alliances, they all have a ton of guys below 10 cities right now, despite being able to instantly get them to 10 if they wanted.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Look at most major alliances, they all have a ton of guys below 10 cities right now, despite being able to instantly get them to 10 if they wanted.

Most of these cases would be because they're raiding.

  • Upvote 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

These threads pop up from time to time over the life of the game, I probably made a thread about upper tier consolidation being bad or two myself. Large nations are going to be strong, and should be strong. It's something to strive towards in game, a goal to reach. Others have stated it's easier now more than ever to get to higher city counts, however the end post does keep moving further.  Additionally, threads about reducing nations abilities to strike down get largely met with disapproval.

Things in these games can change a couple of ways, the two largest areas of which are with mechanics and the other is on the players. It doesn't matter what mechanics get introduced if the players are going to consolidate the power in one place. It doesn't matter if everything is 100% fair across the board because then why care about growth if you're just as effective in fighting at C10 versus C20. Players have united against upper tier consolidation in the past, Papers Please and Knightsfall are two examples of such.

In any game where there is leveling the higher level players are stronger than the lower levels. It's a large part to why people play the game, to get stronger. Same is true here. You reduce the benefit (nerfing whales or buffing everyone else) of being big being impactful you remove the motivation for growth. You remove the motivation for growth people stop playing. Too keep this reply from getting too long I'm going to cut this part here, but I wanted to touch on one thing in the OP
 

The three new projects, one can't be used above C15, one makes more project slots which whales don't need, and one effects everyone. Any project that helps everyone is yes, also going to help whales. Reducing city score was one of, if not the largest request from the the raiding community, and was a largely disliked change when it was implemented prior to the Design Team's creation. 

Just because people voice their opinion (80% of the time of which is them protecting their self-interests), doesn't mean the game is balanced.

I believe that if you are going to reduce city score than you need to look into whether military score is balanced or not. I'd argue it isn't if two very different sized nations can declare war on one another, more so when it's going on 10 cities (or more) downwards.

Referencing Papers Please or Knightfall is not helpful when the game has gone through quite a few changes. You cannot replicate the same strategies we had back then where hiding on max planes in the lower tiers and sniping upper tiers down.

I'm not advocating that they shouldn't be powerful or the pinacle of the game, I am arguing that it needs to be pegged back a little. I am arguing that when changes are made we actually look at the impact of changes in a much more wider variety. 

Some of the suggestions in this thread imo, would make the gameplay more enjoyable for whales. Such as some of the project ideas etc. Actually having to choose between improvements instead of the late game game-play of just "I'll build everything and keep building cities".

  • Upvote 2

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Keegoz said:

Just because people voice their opinion (80% of the time of which is them protecting their self-interests), doesn't mean the game is balanced.

I believe that if you are going to reduce city score than you need to look into whether military score is balanced or not. I'd argue it isn't if two very different sized nations can declare war on one another, more so when it's going on 10 cities (or more) downwards.

Referencing Papers Please or Knightfall is not helpful when the game has gone through quite a few changes. You cannot replicate the same strategies we had back then where hiding on max planes in the lower tiers and sniping upper tiers down.

I'm not advocating that they shouldn't be powerful or the pinacle of the game, I am arguing that it needs to be pegged back a little. I am arguing that when changes are made we actually look at the impact of changes in a much more wider variety. 

Some of the suggestions in this thread imo, would make the gameplay more enjoyable for whales. Such as some of the project ideas etc. Actually having to choose between improvements instead of the late game game-play of just "I'll build everything and keep building cities".

I'm not saying the game is balanced. Regarding score changes, it was first increased for cities from 50 -> 100, which was a little too much which is why it's being put into the middle. 

I've been a long time advocate of reducing down declares, but it's often met with resistance. The next thing I was going to try was reduction of military effectiveness when declaring an offensive war on any nation with 3+ cities less than you have. So if you down swing by any gap higher than 3 there will be some limiters on your militaries effectiveness or pool of units that can be sent into combat. 

If you feel strongly about this to put more effort than forum posts, I welcome you to come join the design team. 

scSqPGJ.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

I'm not saying the game is balanced. Regarding score changes, it was first increased for cities from 50 -> 100, which was a little too much which is why it's being put into the middle. 

I've been a long time advocate of reducing down declares, but it's often met with resistance. The next thing I was going to try was reduction of military effectiveness when declaring an offensive war on any nation with 3+ cities less than you have. So if you down swing by any gap higher than 3 there will be some limiters on your militaries effectiveness or pool of units that can be sent into combat. 

If you feel strongly about this to put more effort than forum posts, I welcome you to come join the design team. 

One of these days, I am going to get fed up and join your team, and then force you all to use proper problem solving techniques, which will then probably make most of you quit, and some of you that stay will develop an actual valuable professional skill.

  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

I'm not saying the game is balanced. Regarding score changes, it was first increased for cities from 50 -> 100, which was a little too much which is why it's being put into the middle. 

I've been a long time advocate of reducing down declares, but it's often met with resistance. The next thing I was going to try was reduction of military effectiveness when declaring an offensive war on any nation with 3+ cities less than you have. So if you down swing by any gap higher than 3 there will be some limiters on your militaries effectiveness or pool of units that can be sent into combat. 

If you feel strongly about this to put more effort than forum posts, I welcome you to come join the design team. 

Where do I apply?

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/11/2022 at 10:08 PM, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

I dont think you will find many alliances that are going to speed build people due to the likely low return on investment.  You may see scumbag alliance leaders using tax revenue to speed build themselves, but most likely you are looking at very rare instances where new players get shot up really fast.  Look at most major alliances, they all have a ton of guys below 10 cities right now, despite being able to instantly get them to 10 if they wanted.

 

P

 

On 4/11/2022 at 10:08 PM, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

I dont think you will find many alliances that are going to speed build people due to the likely low return on investment.  You may see scumbag alliance leaders using tax revenue to speed build themselves, but most likely you are looking at very rare instances where new players get shot up really fast.  Look at most major alliances, they all have a ton of guys below 10 cities right now, despite being able to instantly get them to 10 if they wanted.

 

Perhaps you’re right. But the option is there and could create a problem if taken in that direction. I don’t think it’s necessary to remove the timer but maybe lower it to 1 week instead?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

SUCH PRIMITIVE BEINGS YOU ALL ARE. THE QUALITY OF BEING A WHALE DOES NOT AFFECT YOU THAT MUCH AS BEING SOMEONE BELOW WHALE TIER. AS WE ALL KNOW, RUSSIA HAS BEEN IN THE EARTHLY WORLD FOR QUITE A FEW DECADES AND IS EXTREMELY HIGH IN FIREPOWER AND MANPOWER. HOWEVER, WE CAN SAY THAT THEY ARE NOT AS POWERFUL AS WE THOUGHT THEY WOULD BE. THE RESULTS OF THE INVASION OF UKRAINE WERE NOT VERY SUCCESSFUL. ALTHOUGH THEY TOOK CONTROL OF SOME LAND AND RESOURCES, THEY OVERALL LOST A LOT AND HAVE NOT GAINED ANYTHING MAJOR.

Ha, of course, we're not even talking about realistic qualities and are relying on the game's abilities to help win. To simply beat a whale would to be an All vs. One fight. Sometimes this doesn't work because the whale player nation is just too beyond your own league.

BUT OF THE COURSE... THE DARK MELDING...image.jpeg.51481f8d20c91dd2c4e36b8a12cd85d6.jpeg

  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/11/2022 at 9:13 AM, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

The actual issue I think many of you have is that the upper tier alliances are generally some of the most active and organized in the game.  When Grumpy rolls out, we roll out with 95-100% of our members in our opening blitz.  If we fought like WTF/Fark, who used to have a pretty large upper tier, none of you would care because they didnt have the organization or the effort to properly utilize their upper tier to fight.

I think the other issue many of you run into too is your alliance is not focused on your individual nation growth, I hear that many of you get taxed an arm and a leg, and your alliances use that money to build up your smaller players, if you are trying to grow, that really sucks.  You know what I did when I was around 22-25 cities and got sick of it? I created my own alliance that prioritized individual nation growth.

First statement is very true.

Second statement is...  true and false?  Alliances that tax an arm/leg mostly tend to misappropriate the taxes, while alliances that don't tax - well, it's all based on the individual.  If a community really bonded together and maxed out taxes, they could very easily adapt to their alliance needs faster than an alliance without taxes - but we don't see that.  Not even NPO pulled that off when they could've very easily(They ignored building up a group of active, good players to contest the high tier for whatever reason, and instead resorted to !@#$ing and complaining about the high tier.  That boggled my head).

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

First statement is very true.

Second statement is...  true and false?  Alliances that tax an arm/leg mostly tend to misappropriate the taxes, while alliances that don't tax - well, it's all based on the individual.  If a community really bonded together and maxed out taxes, they could very easily adapt to their alliance needs faster than an alliance without taxes - but we don't see that.  Not even NPO pulled that off when they could've very easily(They ignored building up a group of active, good players to contest the high tier for whatever reason, and instead resorted to !@#$ing and complaining about the high tier.  That boggled my head).

NPO's main issue was getting new nations and waiting for them to catch up before moving up again from memory. So if they got like 10-20 more nations, they'd wait a few months catching them up before moving the rest over. They also seem to save up and then buy everyone cities, rather than just buy as they had the funds available.

Some alliances do run 100/100, I'm not sure if any do it NPO style however.

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/16/2022 at 1:59 PM, Keegoz said:

NPO's main issue was getting new nations and waiting for them to catch up before moving up again from memory. So if they got like 10-20 more nations, they'd wait a few months catching them up before moving the rest over. They also seem to save up and then buy everyone cities, rather than just buy as they had the funds available.

Some alliances do run 100/100, I'm not sure if any do it NPO style however.

The main problem with NPO's economic methodology, and it really applies to most alliances which tax high but not all, is that it essentially limits the potential of the more talented members of an alliance. This is only compounded further when you consider it is those same talented players who pretty much win wars and do much of the heavy lifting. High taxes, at least following NPO's methods anyway, basically handicaps the players you need the most and imposes limits both upon their potential revenue as well as giving up tier parity.

Now, that's not to say high taxes are always bad. I think hypothetically 100/100 if done properly should be the better model. The issue is I've never actually seen it performed in an efficient manner without major flaws becoming readily apparent over time. Hypothetically though it's possible, but it would be almost a full time job for a decent Econ person and team to manage effectively. Plus it would likely require a real understanding of economics and not just google doc spreadsheeting balancing up the ledgers.

Edited by Charles Bolivar

Untitled.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

The main problem with NPO's economic methodology, and it really applies to most alliances which tax high but not all, is that it essentially limits the potential of the more talented members of an alliance. This is only compounded further when you consider it is those same talented players who pretty much win wars and do much of the heavy lifting. High taxes, at least following NPO's methods anyway, basically handicaps the players you need the most and imposes limits both upon their potential revenue as well as giving up tier parity.

Now, that's not to say high taxes are always bad. I think hypothetically 100/100 if done properly should be the better model. The issue is I've never actually seen it performed in an efficient manner without major flaws becoming readily apparent over time. Hypothetically though it's possible, but it would be almost a full time job for a decent Econ person and team to manage effectively. Plus it would likely require a real understanding of economics and not just google doc spreadsheeting balancing up the ledgers.

Looking back and running alliances with 100/100, I don't think it was their taxes that did that to them. That was just more of a sign of what NPO was.

Basically the gov did everything and they followed. They didn't really bother training members, they just gave them orders to follow. That meant in rapidly changing situations they couldn't adapt. It was reliant on a handful of people to quickly change things for hundreds of people.

Just because you run centralised econ doesn't mean you have to run completely centralised milcom. That's my take anyway.

(Small plug but I am pretty sure @His Holy Decagon will explain Cata's 100/100 brackets at some point on Very Good Media's discord)

  • Upvote 1

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/9/2022 at 6:30 AM, hidude45454 said:

And while I agree for the most part with Goob's project suggestion, I think it would also be interesting to see how people feel about a shift in the opposite direction -- what if there were no caps on maximum project slots? A common opinion in a server of mine was that it would certainly not bias towards megawhales who already have enough infra to build anything, but that it might not go all the way and favor new players either (since a lot of projects still benefit you at the most the mid or mid-high city level), but I am curious to see what other think about this as well.

I still think megawhales would have the advantage because most low tier nations can't afford the super expensive projects. You could make the projects cheaper but if everyone can afford every project right away, what's the point of having a project system in the first place?

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and the Guidelines of the game and community.