Declare Range Modifiers

[Nyx]

2 hours ago, Jacob Knox said:

Severe downdeclares can be problematic, but I'm frankly unsure what an adequate solution would be.

I agree here; I don't really know how to solve this issue, but I do agree that it is a problem that needs to be fixed. I understand that this wouldn't take effect under c10, but when I was a c5, a nation that I declared war on built five new cities and fully militarized them. Of course, I lost that war (because of their strong military and how I had a revenue deficit at that point and couldn't attack), but if that's possible, I can imagine how difficult it would be to fend off attacks from c40s when you don't have nearly as many cities. For the record, I am a c10 and a relatively new player, so please keep that in mind if you're going to reply with anything about prior updates, wars, etc.

[Hodor]

I think using a static metric like city count is going to be the most glaring issue here. As has been pointed out by many others, there are so many other factors to be considered: militarization level, infra levels, etc. A fully milled whale is almost never able to hit below C30. I've had to down declare quite a bit and it's always a balancing act of how much military must you sell to get in range and how much military can you sell before you are risking being dragged.

I think, ultimately, the case we're dealing with is a whale that's already been zeroed and shed a lot of infra score (see HoF and other whale raiders) and therefore able to declare with a very large city count advantage. So, in conventional warfare, you're just further penalizing someone who has already gotten the shit kicked out of them. Better beige discipline would close this hole, so let's not implement a change in mechanics where a change in strategy would suffice.

[Alcyr]

Reiterating and expanding on some points that got deleted:

Your change has the following effects:

• It makes it take slightly more attacks for someone to get zeroed in the first round since you're doing less damages on a down declare, but doesn't change the end result. The blitz advantage itself is going to be more important to deciding the winner than any city count differences.
• After the first round, the losing side loses more infra and thus lose more score, meaning debuffing down declares and buffing up declares actually hurts the losing side and helps the winning side. You've said no one uses this strategy, but that anecdotally isn't true - it has been used before, even if it isn't the most common strategy. The reason missile turrets are more common is because it is easy and doesn't require coordination, not because this strategy is invalid.

You've admitted to these, though the post was deleted in your cleanup. But here's the thing: It isn't worth worsening an existing problem (that being the difficulty in coming back from a losing war) in order to slightly soften the opening blitz, especially when that softening isn't actually going to have any practical change in the end result. If one side has enough whales to spare on enough down declares, it isn't going to matter that their damages are going to be lowered a bit. And in the rare scenario that the war was close enough for the bonus/malus to change the end result, then all you've done is change which side is getting pinned - which doesn't address the actual issue with wars in general.

 

So that's why I don't think you should do this change. If you must change something related to damage, I do have an alternate suggestion that I personally at least think would be better:

Base it on current army values instead of city count. More units should always mean more damage of course, but once you have more units than your opponent, damage can scale in a non-linear way beyond that point. I don't really want to propose specifics for something that would really be a balancing act, but the idea would be that it is always benefiting the currently disadvantaged side rather than basing it on something like city count, which doesn't actually tell you who's winning. This accomplishes your goal of softening down declares in an initial blitz (when military is maxed), but without screwing over the losing side's whales just by virtue of the fact that they're whales. I think it also makes some sense from a realism perspective, though that's not necessarily a good argument for a game decision.

[Kosta]

On 8/16/2022 at 9:46 PM, Prefontaine said:

A hard limit on down declares would solve the issue but is widely disliked

Why is this the case?

Legit a 40 city nation has no right to be able to attack a city 25. I believe there should be a hard cap

+5/-5 for example. 

or +10/-10 at least. 

 

The only people who would dislike this are raiders. 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Kosta

[Nyx]

16 minutes ago, Kosta said:

The only people who would dislike this are raiders

I'm a raider and a c10, and I still think this is a good idea...

[Krameleon]

This is just a few thoughts I have in regards to this change. Take them with a grain of salt because I only 40% know what I'm talking about.

If the point of this change is to solve the issue of massive down-declares, why is it also helping up-declares? I understand how a larger city nation declaring on a lower city nation puts the smaller one at a disadvantage, and to what degree that advantage is fair can be a discussion. If fully milled C40s can really regularly down-declare on C20s and create an unfair war environment, then maybe some change is necessary.

However, if someone is up-declaring, they are at some level of a disadvantage and they are accepting that disadvantage by declaring the war themselves. By declaring that war they are accepting that by city-count they are at a disadvantage and they still believe they can effectively achieve their goals despite that. I don't think that up-declaring is in trouble, and therefore don't see why it needs to also be buffed with a change such as this. If a smaller nation decides to attack a larger one, they shouldn't be rewarded any extra for doing so. They should accept the disadvantage they are putting themselves in.

The purpose of the war range mechanic is to limit a nation's ability to down- or up-declare based on nation score. If down-declaring is really a problem, why is the proposed change not looking at this system instead? Possibly increase the score each city provides, so people with more cities are more quickly pushed out of war range from those with less.

Or, if C40-C20 down declares are a huge issue and we're looking specifically at city count, why not implement a downward-only restriction based on number of cities? Like you can only down-declare on nation that have a LEAST a certain portion of your cities, say 3/5 or 3/4. Then have no upside limit, so anyone can up-declare C20-C40 if they want to take on that challenge, so long as they are in war range.

[Keegoz]

I'm going to outline some of my own thoughts on this. Firstly, downdeclares are an issue and it is somewhat stilfling the game, largely this has come about from the reworked war system from 2019. That said, afaik there is no desire to go back to that system (with the powers that be).

Secondly, yes score does need a rework. Reducing city score has meant that the weighting of other things is a little off and it should fix some of the down declare issues. It however is not a silver bullet and will not fix the issues people are experiencing.

Just going to spitball some ideas. I would either remove or severly lessen the updec buff. I would also make it so the down declare debuff only kicks in to make sure the actual problematic down declares are being nerfed. Something like as a c40 you can down declare to c30 before any debuff kicks in. Kinda like you can down declare 25% of your cities below you before you begin to feel any effect.

[Autumn Annayah]

On 8/17/2022 at 5:28 AM, Jacob Knox said:

Where was this when @Mayor recently did a 9 city downdeclare on me?? 😠

 

But in all seriousness, I'm on the fence about this. Severe downdeclares can be problematic, but I'm frankly unsure what an adequate solution would be.

9 cities? Psssh I got 2 13 city down declares upon myself a couple days ago.  This is a perfectly balanced game. 👌 

Edited August 21, 2022 by Autumn Annayah

[dDARS]

Then bring back City Scores being 100, not 75. Change the score system, you cause this. 75 -> 100 and its done

[Honored]

If a city 20 is attacking c14 won't alliances counter?