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Down-declares are unreasonable at the moment, so I did the math.


playerwhoplays
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Edit: A couple disclaimers that I should have placed here in the first place. Firstly, I've always been a mid-tier player across my time in this game, and my nations (the "third" in my nation name has a meaning), and I am speaking from the position of that lower-to-middle tier experience.

Secondly, both of these examples are extremes that are highly unlikely to be put into practice due to economical strain. I glossed over this point originally, but these scenarios presume that money is no object and that your alliance is willing to support such a ridiculous project. A nation to these specs is WAY harder to maintain in reality.

Lastly, I understand that I'm coming across as a salty new player. I'm not sure there was a way to post this without people immediately assuming that I was one, frankly. I'll bite that bullet. But this is a problem that's plagued lower-level players for a very long time from my experience. The examples are exaggerated, but the problem at its core is simple: with a little thought and some work, you can fight a war that you are absolutely guaranteed to win just by messing with your score a little bit.

Alright, enough of that crap. Original post follows.

---------

So. If the March balance change to war score is any indicator, I'm definitely in the minority of this...but I wholeheartedly believe that the current system for war is absolutely ridiculous. The very brief case synopsis? A player with 25 cities can declare on a player with 10 cities, with a little creative accounting. I'm obviously not going to leave it at that claim without proof, but that's what the rest of the post is for, isn't it? I spent a few hours running the numbers and theory-crafting the most ridiculous scenario I could possibly think of, so join me for the ride: this is the math that allows someone with 25 cities to be attacked by someone with 70. No jokes, no lies. It's possible, and I'll show you why.

 

First and foremost, what the hell am I talking about? "Down-declares are an essential part of warfare! If we can't down declare how will we ever fight a winning war?" Well, my wonderful colleague, you're right. Being able to declare on a range of targets is extremely important. If you couldn't declare on people just 3 cities below you, it would be extremely hard to find targets for raids or wars. Don't worry, I'm not saying down-declaring should be entirely removed. However, in the current state of the game, it does desperately need to he toned down. Let's start with our first situation.

 

You are a nation with 10 cities, 2,000 infra in each, 4 projects, max military improvements. Your rather small alliance is at war with another rather small alliance, no global-scale conflict. You are able to fight your enemies well enough that you have max military right now, although you have no missiles of either type. In this situation, you have 2012.5 Nation Score. The equation for this nation score is as follows...

9×75+((2000×10)÷40)+(4×20)+((5×10×3000)×0.0004 )+((5×10×250)×0.025)+((5×10×15)×0.3)+(3×10×5)+10=2012.5

Simplified, that's 675 city score, 500 infrastructure score, 80 project score, 747.5 military score, and the base score of 10.

 

Your opponent hires a mercenary who is playing as a dedicated down-declaring nation. This mercenary has 25 cities; how on earth does someone at 25 cities attack someone with just 10? Simple. Minimizing their cities. When I say minimize, I mean the absolute bare minimum: all military improvements except dockyards, and a reactor. This requires just 800 infrastructure. Additionally, they have zero military at the time of declaration, and they do have five projects, but no nukes or missiles. This nation has a score of 2,410. Again, the equation follows.

24×75+((800×25)÷40)+(5×20)+10

This equates to 1800 city score, 500 infrastructure score, 100 project score, no military score, and the base score of 10. This nation is EASILY within range to declare on your maxed out nation.

 

So why is this a problem? "He's declaring with no military, I'll just roll him and get superiority quickly!" You should know it's never that simple. After all, they just have to perform the single oldest trick in the nation sim player's arsenal: double buy military at turn change and, in this case, laugh as your opponent is literally unable to fight back. The nation with 10 cities has a max soldier count of 10×5×3000, which equals 150,000. The nation with 25 cities can buy 25x5×1000 soldiers per day, or 125,000. With a double buy that's an instant 250,000 soldiers. There is absolutely nothing that 10 city nation can do in this situation.

 

So, what's the point to be made here? Well, simple...this gets exponentially worse as your score and city count rises. This is where my claim of a c70 fighting a c25 comes from. It sounds absurd (and is an unrealistic achievement) but is entirely possible, just following the math.

Same parameters and calculations as last time, the c25 is maxed out and the c70 is minimizing hard.

c25 nation strength: 24×75+((2000×25)÷40)+(10×20)+((5×25×3000)×0.0004 )+((5×25×250)×0.025)+((5×25×15)×0.3)+(3×25×5)+10

5128.75 NS.

1800 city score, 1250 infra score, 200 project score, 1868.75 military score, 10 base score.

c70 nation strength: 69×75+((70×800)÷40)+(11×20)+10

6805 NS.

5175 city score, 1400 infra score, 220 project score, no military score, 10 base score.

The minimum NS a 6805 score nation can declare on is 5103.75. Hell, the 70c could pack on around 100 planes and still be able to make that hit, giving them even more of an edge when they double buy 2100 more to fight the 25c's 1875.

Obviously, that scenario is ridiculous. Nobody has 70 cities, and it would likely be a waste to get there, especially with no economic improvements. But you know what's a little less ridiculous? 50 cities with a more balanced setup. There are already nations at and above this number, so it's no stretch to say that this is possible right now. Might take a lot of elbow grease, but it's both possible and feasible. Which leads into another question...

 

Why isn't this a more common practice? "If it were really so effective why don't we see every single alliance with a ton of nations like this?" Well... there's a really, REALLY heavy downside to putting all your stats into combat: you have no cash flow to speak of. A nation in this vein requires support from other nations just to keep from going bankrupt, starving, or losing power. Not to mention, it's kind of lame to solely exist for combat if you think about it. Makes you a burden to others at all times unless you're fighting a war. And as such, it's a program that has to be run at a loss, and the person doing it needs to be skilled (and might be better for a different role anyway). But this is still something that can be completely abused. And it needs to be addressed before it suddenly becomes a major issue.

So what can we do about it? Well, I don't think a hard cap on down declares is a good idea. Too many ways that can be abused. However, I do believe the way score is calculated needs to be changed. I do ask that you take this suggestion with the notion that I'm not some top tier veteran god of war, but just someone who has seen the same issue plaguing the lower echelon for years.

My suggestion is to lessen the weight your military has within your score, and increase the weight of cities significantly to compensate. I'm really not sure what the right answer to "by how much?" is personally, but hopefully I can trust some of the fine folks here in the forums to get some math thrown around and come up with a few ideas. This could solve the problem with absolutely ludicrous down-declares of a 15+ city difference while still allowing alliances to defend themselves too.

Equally importantly, there needs to be a tighter up-declare cap as well to prevent this system from being abused to all high hell. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to make sure that if you're fighting someone, their allies with another city or two can still counter and punish. Concerns about a bunch of c15s hitting a single c30 and the other c30s being unable to lift a finger are entirely valid if the c15s are skilled. (this is probably the most extreme exaggeration in this post, honestly)

 

Anyway, that's the post. Thanks for taking the time to read through. This took me a couple hours (on and off) to write up and double check my math for, but hopefully it was worth it.

Here's hoping I can start a discussion on a healthier way to wage war.

Edited by playerwhoplays
Adding disclaimers, fixing some Minor Spelling Mistakes™, and a single piece of flavor text.
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50 minutes ago, playerwhoplays said:

There is absolutely nothing that 10 city nation can do in this situation.

Tanks, planes, ships aren't 3 days like soldiers fyi, so you'd still be able to get air superiority, ground control and a blockade. You mentioned your enemy has no dockyards, so you can just naval beige them faster, since they wont be able to get an IT on ground with a double buy (assuming you have military). 

Also, on a new 800 infra city, your enemy wont have the population to do a full buy. 

Anyway, just be in an alliance and get counters on your pirate friend, ezpz.

Edited by Borg
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I hear you, but there are always going to be issues with trying to change the score ranges. Anything that decreases the ability of a low military, low infra nation to downdeclare is going to hurt anyone trying to raid above a certain city count. And I don't actually see many major downdeclares like the ones you're describing happen on a very regular basis. I could drop all my military and infra and hit a c15 if I wanted to, but unless that guy has several hundred million to loot it's too time consuming and costs too much to be a viable option. Aside from some dedicated raiders I don't see that ever being commonplace. 

1 hour ago, playerwhoplays said:

My suggestion is to lessen the weight your military has within your score, and increase the weight of cities significantly to compensate.

I think this would actually increase the score of a zeroed target relative to someone with max military, sorta the opposite of what the recent score change did. There's always gonna be a caveat. 

1 hour ago, playerwhoplays said:

Equally importantly, there needs to be a tighter up-declare cap as well to prevent this system from being abused to all high hell. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to make sure that if you're fighting someone, their allies with another city or two can still counter and punish. Concerns about a bunch of c15s hitting a single c30 and the other c30s being unable to lift a finger are entirely valid if the c15s are skilled.

Hot take but I support getting rid of updeclare limits. If you're a c30 who can't fend off a few c15s you need to git gud, I don't care if you were on 0250, just get air superiority and double buy and you should be able to handle it. If the c30 was sitting without max planes that's their problem. If a horde of c10s wants to try to fight Grumpy they're dumb as shit but hell, let em. 

Edited by Cassia
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5 hours ago, playerwhoplays said:

So. If the March balance change to war score is any indicator, I'm definitely in the minority of this...but I wholeheartedly believe that the current system for war is absolutely ridiculous. The very brief case synopsis? A player with 25 cities can declare on a player with 10 cities, with a little creative accounting. I'm obviously not going to leave it at that claim without proof, but that's what the rest of the post is for, isn't it? I spent a few hours running the numbers and theory-crafting the most ridiculous scenario I could possibly think of, so join me for the ride: this is the math that allows someone with 25 cities to be attacked by someone with 70. No jokes, no lies. It's possible, and I'll show you why.

 

First and foremost, what the hell am I talking about? "Down-declares are an essential part of warfare! If we can't down declare how will we ever fight a winning war?" Well, my wonderful colleague, you're right. Being able to declare on a range of targets is extremely important. If you couldn't declare on people just 3 cities below you, it would be extremely hard to find targets for raids or wars. Don't worry, I'm not saying down-declaring should be entirely removed. However, in the current state of the game, it does desperately need to he toned down. Let's start with our first situation.

 

You are a nation with 10 cities, 2,000 infra in each, 4 projects, max military improvements. Your rather small alliance is at war with another rather small alliance, no global-scale conflict. You are able to fight your enemies well enough that you have max military right now, although you have no missiles of either type. In this situation, you have 2012.5 Nation Score. The equation for this nation score is as follows...

9×75+((2000×10)÷40)+(4×20)+((5×10×3000)×0.0004 )+((5×10×250)×0.025)+((5×10×15)×0.3)+(3×10×5)+10=2012.5

Simplified, that's 675 city score, 500 infrastructure score, 80 project score, 747.5 military score, and the base score of 10.

 

Your opponent hires a mercenary who is playing as a dedicated down-declaring nation. This mercenary has 25 cities; how on earth does someone at 25 cities attack someone with just 10? Simple. Minimizing their cities. When I say minimize, I mean the absolute bare minimum: all military improvements except dockyards, and a reactor. This requires just 800 infrastructure. Additionally, they have zero military at the time of declaration, and they do have five projects, but no nukes or missiles. This nation has a score of 2,410. Again, the equation follows.

24×75+((800×25)÷40)+(5×20)+10

This equates to 1800 city score, 500 infrastructure score, 100 project score, no military score, and the base score of 10. This nation is EASILY within range to declare on your maxed out nation.

 

So why is this a problem? "He's declaring with no military, I'll just roll him and get superiority quickly!" You should know it's never that simple. After all, they just have to perform the single oldest trick in the nation sim player's arsenal: double buy military at turn change and, in this case, laugh as your opponent is literally unable to fight back. The nation with 10 cities has a max soldier count of 10×5×3000, which equals 150,000. The nation with 25 cities can buy 25x5×1000 soldiers per day, or 125,000. With a double buy that's an instant 250,000 soldiers. There is absolutely nothing that 10 city nation can do in this situation.

 

So, what's the point to be made here? Well, simple...this gets exponentially worse as your score and city count rises. This is where my claim of a c70 fighting a c25 comes from. It sounds absurd (and is an unrealistic achievement) but is entirely possible, just following the math.

Same parameters and calculations as last time, the c25 is maxed out and the c70 is minimizing hard.

c25 nation strength: 24×75+((2000×25)÷40)+(10×20)+((5×25×3000)×0.0004 )+((5×25×250)×0.025)+((5×25×15)×0.3)+(3×25×5)+10

5128.75 NS.

1800 city score, 1250 infra score, 200 project score, 1868.75 military score, 10 base score.

c70 nation strength: 69×75+((70×800)÷40)+(11×20)+10

6805 NS.

5175 city score, 1400 infra score, 220 project score, no military score, 10 base score.

The minimum NS a 6805 score nation can declare on is 5103.75. Hell, the 70c could pack on around 100 planes and still be able to make that hit, giving them even more of an edge when they double buy 2100 more to fight the 25c's 1875.

Obviously, that scenario is ridiculous. Nobody has 70 cities, and it would likely be a waste to get there, especially with no economic improvements. But you know what's a little less ridiculous? 50 cities with a more balanced setup. There are already nations at and above this number, so it's no stretch to say that this is possible right now. Might take a lot of elbow grease, but it's both possible and feasible. Which leads into another question...

 

Why isn't this a more common practice? "If it were really so effective why don't we see every single alliance with a ton of nations like this?" Well... there's a really, REALLY heavy downside to putting all your stats into combat: you have no cash flow to speak of. A nation in this vein requires support from other nations just to keep from going bankrupt, starving, or losing power. Not to mention, it's kind of lame to solely exist for combat if you think about it. Makes you a burden to others at all times unless you're fighting a war. And as such, it's a program that has to be run at a loss, and the person doing it needs to be skilled (and might be better for a different role anyway). But this is still something that can be completely abused. And it needs to be addressed before it suddenly becomes a major issue.

So what can we do about it? Well, I don't think a hard cap on down declares is a good idea. Too many ways that can be abused. However, I do believe the way score is calculated needs to be changed. I do ask that you take this suggestion with the notion that I'm not some top tier veteran god of war, but just someone who has seen the same issue plaguing the lower echelon for years.

My suggestion is to lessen the weight your military has within your score, and increase the weight of cities significantly to compensate. I'm really not sure what the right answer to "by how much?" is personally, but hopefully I can trust some of the fine folks here in the forums to get some math thrown around and come up with a few ideas. This could solve the problem with absolutely ludicrous down-declares of a 15+ city difference while still allowing alliances to defend themselves too.

Equally importantly, there needs to be a tighter up-declare cap as well to prevent this system from being abused to all high hell. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to make sure that if you're fighting someone, their allies with another city or two can still counter and punish. Concerns about a bunch of c15s hitting a single c30 and the other c30s being unable to lift a finger are entirely valid if the c15s are skilled.

 

Anyway, that's the post. Thanks for taking the time to read through. This took me a couple hours (on and off) to write up and double check my math with, but hopefully it was worth it.

Here's hoping I can start a discussion on a healthier war to wage war.

Glad to see people break things down to the mathematical level. I’ve been personally trying to wrap my head around “how” to fix, or address this problem, and the only thing that even resembled some sense of logic, was by also lowering the score impact of military units.

If you need another example, Cataclysm has a c16, right now, who is fighting a c33. Not as extreme as your example, admittedly, but not that far off.

You also nailed the area regarding “how do we fight a winning war”, which I don’t think many people consider at all. As the opponent is getting lower and lower infra, and military units, they just begin to slowly drop out of range, but on their way down, they’ll ironically face the same situation you laid out here; being able to do more and more outlandish, and extreme downdeclares.

Edited by His Holy Decagon
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2 hours ago, His Holy Decagon said:

If you need another example, Cataclysm has a c16, right now, who is fighting a c33. Not as extreme as your example, admittedly, but not that far off.

You see this, because I assume that c33 already got stomped and your c16 is probably fully armed, and I would guess winning that war.

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17 hours ago, playerwhoplays said:

...

Nice to see the effort you've put into your post :)  Personally I kind of disagree though, and though you've stipulated that you're referring to problems experienced in the low-mid tier, I believe the experience is across all tiers.  Sam Cooper definitely has it right there being a cost to everything.  Rebuilding a c25+ to prewar infra levels usually costs well over $500,000,000 and over a billion in the whale tiers.  Also it is very much the rare outliers in the higher tiers who sell down infra in war time to the sort of low levels you're talking about, and you don't recoup much money invested in infra when you sell it off.  Further to that, while at such low infra the negative revenue is problematic.  Dealing with up-declares is also a problem and usually beyond the capacity of your double buy to manage if you are facing competent opponents and you've no one able to help.  Pirates presumably face these issues as a fundamental part of their choice of play style, and on that point who are we to dictate play styles in a sandbox game like this?  This place would be that much more boring without pirates on a few different levels.   Basically I think you are over-egging the problem quite a bit, as frustrating as it might be on occasion.

As an aside, it is not that I'm against tweaks to the war system including scores, but little and often is the key.  I take from your suggestion to be a fairly major alteration to the war mechanics which I think would be potentially disastrous.

Celer Et Audax

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