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City Score Adjustment


Valdoroth
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So this has been a problem for years still. The score value from cities is still flat, and that in itself is a major issue.
A guy with 25 cities @ 2k infra ea can be attacked by someone with 35 cities @ 1k infra ea. There's no military chance for the smaller guy to be able to win due to sheer military buying power of the more cities.
It costs almost the same to buy 1000 infra in 35 cities from 1000 to 2000 infra than it does to buy the 26th city (assuming you have some discounts actually), and yet they have about the same nation score. This should NOT still be a problem. It's this reason alone that this game's 100% most profitable method isn't building your nation or trading anything (literally 2/3 of the game's mechanics), but is simply raiding.
Not even real life is. There's literally no consequences for being in wars non-stop, where-as in anything actually close to a simulation there should be. That's a separate issue though. (Consider looking at a raiding degradation factor for being constantly in wars back-to-back, and it'll also help the large-scaled global wars be shorter with the same results)

In short, the nation score needs to be non-linear, but an exponential (inverse log), or at least stepped linear scaling. Example of stepped could be every 5 cities each city score adds +20 additional for each city owned. Something simple, but effective.

Again, this has been an issue for years that has never been addressed.

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Thank the Heavens this isn't just another "revert city score to the way it was" post but rather one that offers a novel (at least as far as I know?) idea for addressing the problem. Whether or not I fully agree with it is something I need to think about.

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Federation of Knox

Enlightened of Chaos, Event Horizon

QA Team and API Team

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This is an issue I raised some 2-3 5 years ago and still nothing changed. (Old post)
There are players who enjoy this game still that have to deal with a possibility of being "down declared by someone with basically twice their military capacity, and frankly that's not fun. It's happened in every major war the past 5 years.

Depositing is not an actual in-game feature. The fact that we have to do a bypassing method such as depositing in the first place is a highlight to the issue of piracy being the absolute best income in the game. It literally bypasses most of the game's design. You ofc don't want change bcs you utilize it daily and you don't care if others want to enjoy the other features of the game that you don't use.


To show the math of the OP example:

The cost to purchase city #26 should be: 695,025,000.00 (No benefits, and with ALL benefits is $365,398,125.00, which means you also spent another +700m worth of rss to buy the projects)

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1,000.00 and ending at the amount 2,000.00 is $13,462,782.00 (x35 cities = $471,197,370)

Score inc from +10 cities atm = +750
Score inc from 35000 (1000x35) infra = +8750

The other major issue is probably the declaration range. I think that an up-declare being higher is fine, while a down-declare being the same range is kinda silly I think.

The point I made in the old post is that the cost to score ratio drops off so hard it's not even reasonable.

Could even be stepped +15 every 15 cities as an example:

firefox_rVG9zAm4rM.png

Or less increases every 10 (step +10 every 10 cities)

firefox_iJ8cFzd2Me.png

Edit by Pre to remove now hidden post quote.

Edited by Prefontaine
showing math values for previous example:
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1 hour ago, Valdoroth said:

I don't care about that part.

This is an issue I raised some 2-3 5 years ago and still nothing changed. (Old post)
There are players who enjoy this game still that have to deal with a possibility of being "down declared by someone with basically twice their military capacity, and frankly that's not fun. It's happened in every major war the past 5 years.

Depositing is not an actual in-game feature. The fact that we have to do a bypassing method such as depositing in the first place is a highlight to the issue of piracy being the absolute best income in the game. It literally bypasses most of the game's design. You ofc don't want change bcs you utilize it daily and you don't care if others want to enjoy the other features of the game that you don't use.


To show the math of the OP example:

The cost to purchase city #26 should be: 695,025,000.00 (No benefits, and with ALL benefits is $365,398,125.00, which means you also spent another +700m worth of rss to buy the projects)

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1,000.00 and ending at the amount 2,000.00 is $13,462,782.00 (x35 cities = $471,197,370)

Score inc from +10 cities atm = +750
Score inc from 35000 (1000x35) infra = +8750

The other major issue is probably the declaration range. I think that an up-declare being higher is fine, while a down-declare being the same range is kinda silly I think.

The point I made in the old post is that the cost to score ratio drops off so hard it's not even reasonable.

Could even be stepped +15 every 15 cities as an example:

firefox_rVG9zAm4rM.png

Or less increases every 10 (step +10 every 10 cities)

firefox_iJ8cFzd2Me.png

Real Claps for you my pixel hugger friend. No one told you that it's a bad idea to carry a billion on your nation. I actually feel sad for you, for having played this game for years, getting raided almost every war and peace time, and still not knowing the very basics too "avoid being raided"

As for your claims of piracy being the single biggest earner, well your kinda wrong their considering how much traders end up earning through flipping. 

Do I want piracy to change? Sure I believe their are many things in this game that are in need of changing. Do I absolutely wanna nerf raiding so that pixel huggers like you can just farm in peace? Nope. War is the actual fun feature of this game, if it weren't their or if it was nerfed to the degree you desire it to be so that you can farm, then this game will have lost its fun aspects for hundreds of players.

And you mention as to how "I don't care that others want to use the features of the game I don't use".

Well my friend i switched to raiding about a week ago, and will likely retire from it at some point. So yes I definitely do care about those features of the game. Would I end up like you as a pixel hugger carrying a billion on his nation and then coping on the forums? Likely not. 

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Staying on topic,

The main premise of the idea is that there the score per city was mostly fine for the game 6+ yrs ago when there wasn't many 10+ city gaps that couldn't be boosted easily to fill, while now there is. You can boost a nation to 20 cities in a week pretty easily, while you can't boost someone to 30 easily.

If you compare cost-score ratios for all NS aspects, cities are the by far the worst ratio.

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Piracy doesn't need another nerf. There are still pirates, and pirate alliances but a lot less at higher city counts now. Anyone thinking it's as profitable as it used to be at higher city counts hasn't been keeping up with game meta. 

An active nation in an alliance usually isn't much at risk from pirates. They might give you a tap if you have no ground, but even if fully militarized, they can be countered. A pirate can pick off exposed targets if someone is at war, or a micro is lacking useful allies, but often it's easier (as a pirate) to drop everything but soldiers (and thus drop score), so you have more inactive targets in range. 

I would assume you have difficulty countering since your alliance is retired from the game (a graveyard or whatever you want to call it), as well as your protector (TKR) being on the losing end of a GW. 

Forgetting about piracy (since it's a niche playstyle), the issue with down declares in alliance wars is that ground attacks kill planes now, meaning if a whale down declares on you, both their ground and air need to be taken down to get the upper hand (rather than just planes). 

I dont think it makes sense to have score be non-linear. A c30 attacking a c20 has the same ratio of troop advantage as a c45 attacking a c30. 

Edited by Borg
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50 minutes ago, Borg said:

Forgetting about piracy (since it's a niche playstyle), the issue with down declares in alliance wars is that ground attacks kill planes now, meaning if a whale down declares on you, both their ground and air need to be taken down to get the upper hand (rather than just planes).

Well I will say you have really good points there. The combat system has never been balanced either. So that certainly doesn't help either.

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Here's the problem. Each city you gain actually has a smaller percentage impact on your capabilities. City 1 -> 2 is a 50% increase military potential where as 19 -> 20 is only a 5% increase to military potential. As a nation grows each step in strength becomes smaller. Thus, making cities count for more score as a player grows is actually the inverse. A C10 fighting a C8 has a 20% advantage. That same advantage in higher tiers would be C40 v C32. Both can produce 20% more than the other. Now it's not as cut and dry as I'm making it, but it's not too far off either. 

The simplest solution to down declares is hard caps on how low a player can swing below their city count. We were working on a whole score rework, but the problem is to prevent major down declares you still need a hugely weighted city to mil to infra+other score ratio. Something close to like 15:4:1.

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I think that's a very valid point. I didn't really factor in the score value of military as well. I think mil score had an inc some years ago, but as you outline in case 2 and 3, the mil is the bigger factor, not the city score.

That being said, if the mil is inc linearly, you still end up with roughly the same gaps for the most part.

So maybe the factors need to be more non-linear for all main score components, not just cities.

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  • 1 month later...

my idea for the war range thing was to make it based on cities.

 

Declare on nations with +/- 10% of your city score.

 

This would limit lower teirs to a confined space of nations to declare on (>10 cities only being able to raid nations with same city count), whilst giving a bit more leg room as nations grow (a c40 would be able to hit a c36, which is not as bad as the max c20 hitting the zeroed c40). 

 

the 10% is my rough estimation, but looking to see what yall think

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