Wars Are Decided Too Quickly

[Zukran]

How Wars Are Currently

You got pinged in discord, your alliance is at war. You login, see some notifications, and you check your nation and your entire military was wiped out in minutes. With your reduced military there's nothing you can really do except sit there and take a beating. The majority of major wars are decided within the first hour and are generally unrecoverable. 

 

Why is this an issue?

1. Wars are currently won the majority of time by who has the most nations and who attacked first. (Resulting in a fight to have the most nations in a bloc, to be safe, which stagnates the game and has dull politics).
2. As the defendant the war is generally unrecoverable. (Your military can be nearly wiped after one coordinated strike. Not allowing you to react or having the ability to fight back).
3. Most nations that have their military wiped at the start of the war, don't rebuild and just hunker down. So there is very limited back and forth and is generally one sided.
4. Most alliances give up within a day or two due to the nature of the mechanics. They sell their units and just hide their resources.
5. Day change has too much influence and meta. (Making players have to be on at DC when tensions are high otherwise they could get wiped instantly. This ends up causing constant server outages. This is also unfair to those who are not available during DC and generally makes it harder for them to be involved in wars.)

 

What do I Propose?

1. Reduce the amount of units destroyed in each battle to 25% of current losses. (If you lose 100 soldiers in a battle right now, in the new system you would lose 25.)
   1. By slowing the amount of units destroyed, we delay the results of the war and allow more opportunity for rebuilding, countering, coordinating and actually having a role and taking part in the war. 
   2. Allows potential allies or third parties to join and make for more interesting dynamics. As is one side is generally wiped beyond recovery by the time any one can step in to help or decide to help.
   3. Depending on the length of the war, it could come down to who is able to obtain resources to fund the war. Currently because your army gets wiped so quickly people just resort to nuking/missiling instead of trying to build up and fight back. But in my proposal you'd be able to rebuild and attack back and potentially turn the tides. This also allows everyone to actually participate in the war and coordinating efforts with your alliance.
2. Increase the cost of each unit 3x.
   1. This offsets the reduction in losses in battle, making it more expensive to rebuild. 
   2. Decreases(but not eliminates) the importance of having the most nations in your bloc. Puts increased emphasis on whos better prepared, coordinated and who has access to resources. 
3. Increase the cost to maintain military 2x.
   1. Makes it more expensive to sit at max military, deterring nations from always being maxed. Creates a more interesting dynamic when it comes to maintaining a military and maximizing growth/income.
4. Reduce the amount of units you can build in a day by 50%. 
   1. Would make it so with 3 defensive wars you couldn't necessarily remax after an initial attack blitz, but you'd be able to rebuild significantly if you have the resources and fight back.
5. Give offensive battles an advantage over defenders, perhaps reduce attackers losses by 25%(aka attackers, lose less units then defenders)
   1. To promote fighting back, offensive battles should have reduced losses. This promotes back and forth attacks making it more cost efficient to actually engage your enemy rather then sit and be destroyed(which is not fun).
   2. Will also allow smaller nations the chance to actually attack a larger nation and have the potential to be cost efficient offensively. 

 

Summary

Altogether the above in my opinion would result in a more interesting, dynamic and fun war experience. By reducing the amount of units destroyed, you enable people to rebuild and fight back, instead of being beat down before they can even react. Wars shouldn't be decided within the first couple hours or days, it should be a week or two long struggle. The results of the war should come down to not just the # of nations on your side, but the economic capabilities of your alliance, coordination, and grit. This also may help reduce the necessity of having the largest bloc and put more focus on if you can counter, coordinate and sustain the war economically. 

 

Thoughts?

I am curious to hear everyone's thoughts and opinions. I did just throw in estimates in terms of how much each value should be shifted. I'm not married to any of the currently specified values, but I believe they get the point across.

[JadenStar10]

This is a politics problem not a mechanics problem. Gone are the old days where wars would slowly expand to their heights, instead, everyone joins in against everyone else day 1.

[Zukran]

12 hours ago, JadenStar10 said:

This is a politics problem not a mechanics problem. Gone are the old days where wars would slowly expand to their heights, instead, everyone joins in against everyone else day 1.

While I think this change could affect politics, economies, and resource production. The main purpose of this change is focused on the war system and how wars are carried out. The core issue is that the majority of wars are decided within the first couple hours, are generally unrecoverable and almost never swing back in the defenders favor. This leaves us in a pretty stale environment, where the attackers nearly almost win. Leaving most defending nations destroyed and unable to even take part in the war before they can login to see what happened. 

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

Realistically, wars are determined before the first declaration is ever made.  Unless people are going for a challenge, of which very few alliances do.

[Zukran]

On 11/17/2022 at 10:42 AM, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Realistically, wars are determined before the first declaration is ever made.  Unless people are going for a challenge, of which very few alliances do.

Which is why adding more variables and factors to the outcome of a war would spice things up and change the meta. With my proposed changes your army would not be wiped within the first hour, because of this you would be able to rebuild and rearm your nation assuming you have the resources and money to do it. The amount of resources stockpiled would have a big impact on how one side performs during a war. On top of that your sides stock pile can't be easily measured by your opponents(except by spies, which might make spies actually useful when it comes to gathering intelligence) and thus it would be more difficult to assess/predict the outcome of a war. The outcome of the war could very well come down to who is able to secure resources through the market or trading agreements with other alliances.

Then because wars move slower, there will be more room to coordinate, counter and would give those who are more active a chance to outperform in wars.  Which adds yet another factor that would have more influence in the outcome of a war.

So in the end while my suggestion wouldn't solve the above in all cases, but it would definitely add more variance then just who has the most nations. 

[SleepingNinja]

On 11/17/2022 at 1:42 PM, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Realistically, wars are determined before the first declaration is ever made.  Unless people are going for a challenge, of which very few alliances do.

Disagree. I dunno if you remember or not but back in the day with the old plane meta it was still possible to fight back with planes while being on the losing side. Today's meta doesn't allow that. In short bring back the old meta so the losing side has options that don't just limit them to soldiers + missiles/nukes.

[Mohammad]

i agree with most of the proposals. and numbers can be tweaked.

 

my personal wish is to bring back 6 IT ground.