Game Development Discussion: Generals

[KindaEpicMoah]

10 hours ago, MBaku said:

From what I understand, generals only modify the low end of casualties/success, they don't actually add more military power to your nation like a troop does. That's not the kind of benefit that should add score to your nation. 

Technically they do increase your average army value by changing that lower end modifier (by up to ~7.15%), though this isn't final and it's possible that things will change again once we have the opportunity to test things on the test server so we can gauge if the score formula is appropriate or not and get more feedback from people actually using it in-game before we finalize things for the live server. 

[Hwan]

On 1/24/2024 at 3:23 AM, KindaEpicMoah said:

~update~

This is BAD. There's no way i'd find it fun to click train for like 500 resources every day just so i can end up rolling a d20 for a useful trait and a 3% boost to army value. The newest update to the plan makes it like 3 times as hard to level up generals which already sounded really hard. Also friendly battle isn't clear. Is it just like, you do a mock battle but spend the gas and muni? Because if i had to use 1000 gas and muni doing an airstrike every day i'd just not do it. Half the playerbase can't be assed to even log in for 2m a day and you think they'll train, do mock battle, and *spend* 2m to train a general by 0.1%?

So buff them, reduce RNG, and make it cheaper and simpler to train, or else this is just feature bloat.

[MBaku]

1. I really dislike the random trait rolls. It doesn't give me a defined goal to work toward. I may never get tier 2 trait that I want. I think if you have balanced traits, then nations and alliances can develop generals in accordance with their military strategies. Solid, balanced traits can shift the meta away from planes towards something more matchup based.

2. On balancing traits - If generals were in play right now, I would be instructing my alliance to get systems engineering then leadership dev and enhanced battle engineering, and then develop a war strategy to farm plane attacks and straight up reroll your generals until you get Ace Pilot or ground attacks until you get anti-tank mines because those are by far the best traits for war, with mounted machine guns 3rd, all the other traits are useless in gaining a competitive advantage in a global. They are cool traits - but opportunity cost will make large, competent alliances order their nations to go the meta route.  I think there should be other viable options that can balance war strategies at the sphere level instead of just making planes even more OP. Give ground and navy a trait that has the ability to kill planes and we could shift away from a plane meta. Navy anti-air specialist is a good start but if it doesn't work on dogfights then it doesn't matter. Ground traits don't get a plane kill boost, that should change. Shell-shocked is also a great idea but if it's just the war you're in it's really niche and has to compete with the far better Air superiority for MAP expenditures. I think it could be cool as a temporary space control effect across all wars. Pairing it with AS for counters could flip the outcome of wars and that's what I think the meta should be do. Reward coordination and smart tactics/strategies.  

3. Pillaging is particularly bad - one city doesn't make that much and a minor, temporary increase in crime in 1/40 of cities or whatever seems to have not much effect. it's a meme trait at best. 

4. I like how the experience is formatted. It allows for active war nations and active war alliances to begin to gain war advantages. It also encourages farming alliances to get out and find ways to train their generals through war and that could create a lot opportunity for conflict to emerge. I think that's really exciting for the game, so major props for that. 

5. I worry that people will find ways to farm attacks by using really small military. For instance, it's common to run a small amount of ships. I could farm PVs with 8 v 10 ship naval battles. Maybe there's a way to scale general experience in relation to nation size and make the experience correspond to what the resource consumption would be on those max mil attacks or just make experience correspond to military size of the attack in general. it's a tough tightrope to walk because it could lead towards large nations feeding general development in small nations, if it's cheaper for smaller nations to develop max generals but that may not be a bad thing for the meta either. I think that's better than massive nations farming 8 v 10 plane dogfights and the moderation nightmares that loom by allowing max experience for minimal military fights. 

Edited January 25 by MBaku

[MBaku]

Question: How many generals can be assigned to actively fight at one time? Can you have 3 generals active simultaneously? 

[MBaku]

I'm trying to envision how this will all play out. There will be a period where everybody levels up their academies, but once that's done it's done. So we should approach this like everybody has a max academy and then see what the meta looks like. From the get go - the 4 general recruitment seems level seems redundant because it'll be passed and obsolete really quickly. 

 

6 Generals - 1150xp to trait for each (there's no reason to max a general with an unfavorable trait) 

135/xp a day from two training battles  (60xp each) and 15xp from exercises makes a Trait general every 8.5 days from doing nothing but logging on once a day and clicking like 5 buttons. Is that right? That seems way too fast for farmers. The advantage for active fighters exists but it's almost pointless when the fighters are risking their generals dying and the farmers can get a trait general this quick. 

I imagine I can decommission a general and just recruit one if I don't like their trait right? Could I be stuck with a general until it dies? That seems silly. at 8.5 days/trait. We're gonna def be scrapping these guys to get the optimal traits if we can. 

 

[-Nero-]

@KindaEpicMoah Just wondering if you can confirm a few things about the update post. 

First, what are friendly battles? Are they just training battles that give you 10% more XP? Do they share the same limit of once per day or twice per day with academy upgrade as training battles? Do they also give the same base XP as training battles? 

Also, based off the update post, would the following be correct?

1. Military Exercises:
   - 12 XP daily (15 with 90 XP academy upgrade)

2. Offensive War Attacks:
   - IT gives 8 XP (11 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - MS gives 24 XP (32 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - PV gives 40 XP (54 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - UF gives 8 XP (11 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - IT XP reduction to 4 XP / 1 XP for attacking with more than 2x / 3.2x opponent’s military.

3. Training Battles:
   - 30 XP (60 with 450 XP academy upgrade), multiplied by 1.1 if against alliance mate
   - Once per day (twice per day with 270 XP academy upgrade)
 

[KindaEpicMoah]

Will make a longer post tomorrow since I'm currently wiped after getting off work, but I wanted to answer all of the technical/clarifying bits first.

 

7 hours ago, MBaku said:

5. I worry that people will find ways to farm attacks by using really small military. For instance, it's common to run a small amount of ships. I could farm PVs with 8 v 10 ship naval battles. Maybe there's a way to scale general experience in relation to nation size and make the experience correspond to what the resource consumption would be on those max mil attacks or just make experience correspond to military size of the attack in general. it's a tough tightrope to walk because it could lead towards large nations feeding general development in small nations, if it's cheaper for smaller nations to develop max generals but that may not be a bad thing for the meta either. I think that's better than massive nations farming 8 v 10 plane dogfights and the moderation nightmares that loom by allowing max experience for minimal military fights. 

Good point! Thanks for bringing this up. Like you said it's a tough one to balance since you don't want to create too much of a disparity between small/large players, but at the same time this does have the potential to become an issue. I'll have to think more on it.

 

7 hours ago, MBaku said:

Question: How many generals can be assigned to actively fight at one time? Can you have 3 generals active simultaneously? 

One for each army group, so up to three. 

 

7 hours ago, MBaku said:

the 4 general recruitment seems level seems redundant because it'll be passed and obsolete really quickly. 

I assume you're talking about Improved Logistics. The "up to 4" bit was a remanent from when the upgrades were purchased linearly (so you couldn't purchase advanced before improved), and I've changed the wording to reflect the fact that improved gives you +1 max generals and advanced gives you +2 max generals. 

 

7 hours ago, MBaku said:

I imagine I can decommission a general and just recruit one if I don't like their trait right? Could I be stuck with a general until it dies?

Yes and no. You can forcefully retire generals, and while you won't be reimbursed for it, you can do so to free up a slot. 

 

7 hours ago, -Nero- said:

First, what are friendly battles? Are they just training battles that give you 10% more XP? Do they share the same limit of once per day or twice per day with academy upgrade as training battles? Do they also give the same base XP as training battles? 

Apologies, I should've clarified this in the update post. The answer to all of those questions is yes. Basically think of them as training battles that you do with someone else. They still count towards the daily limit, but give bonus % XP for the extra effort/consumption.

 

7 hours ago, -Nero- said:

1. Military Exercises:
   - 12 XP daily (15 with 90 XP academy upgrade)

2. Offensive War Attacks:
   - IT gives 8 XP (11 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - MS gives 24 XP (32 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - PV gives 40 XP (54 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - UF gives 8 XP (11 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
   - IT XP reduction to 4 XP / 1 XP for attacking with more than 2x / 3.2x opponent’s military.

3. Training Battles:
   - 30 XP (60 with 450 XP academy upgrade), multiplied by 1.1 if against alliance mate
   - Once per day (twice per day with 270 XP academy upgrade)

 Yes for all of these except:

• Offensive War Attacks - I made a typo/math error here. The increase should be by 1.5x not 1.33x. So:
  • IT gives 8 XP (12 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
  • MS gives 24 XP (36 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
  • PV gives 40 XP (60 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
  • UF gives 8 XP (12 with 180 XP academy upgrade)
  •  IT XP reduction to 4 XP (6 with the 180 XP academy upgrade)/ 1 XP for attacking with more than 2x / 3.2x opponent’s military.
• Training Battles - 30 XP (60 with 450 XP academy upgrade), multiplied by 1.1 if against anyone, multiplied by 1.2 if against alliance mate

And for clarity, I'll post the updated General requirements here:

• Generals will become Level 1 at 100 points
• Level 2 at 225 points
• Level 3 at 375 points
• Level 4 at 600 points
• Level 5 at 900 points
• Level 6 at 1275 points
• Level 7 at 1725 points
• Level 8 at 2550 points
• Level 9 at 3450 points
• and Level 10 at 4500 points

And therefore,

 

7 hours ago, MBaku said:

6 Generals - 1150xp to trait for each (there's no reason to max a general with an unfavorable trait) 

135/xp a day from two training battles  (60xp each) and 15xp from exercises makes a Trait general every 8.5 days

This would be 6 Generals - 1725 points to the ability to develop traits for each, which would take 11.5 days (or 10.5 days assuming you're maxing out the friendly battle bonuses), and this wouldn't be guaranteed to develop a trait since if you stop training them as soon as you reach level 7, the only way they're going to develop a trait is if you fight with them. 

 

 

 

[MBaku]

13 hours ago, KindaEpicMoah said:

This would be 6 Generals - 1725 points to the ability to develop traits for each, which would take 11.5 days (or 10.5 days assuming you're maxing out the friendly battle bonuses), and this wouldn't be guaranteed to develop a trait since if you stop training them as soon as you reach level 7, the only way they're going to develop a trait is if you fight with them. 

For trait development - How many simulated battles happen in a simulated war? I assume it's something like 8-12 like in a normal war. Which would mean you get 16-24 simulated battles a day at and it will take you no more than 4-6 days to develop a trait (at 1% rolls, we'll assume 10 battles and call it 5 days). 

 If you equip 3 generals to army, air, navy, do they all get experience during war simulation? 

Also, Enhanced Engineering allows you to train for specific trait types? How does this work? Once I pick a type are all my future battles sims of that type? Do I pick ground/air/navy each battle and it changes the odds of recruitment a bit? is that the case for actual war too? will ground attacks help earn towards ground traits? 

Assuming max academies, worst case scenario a trait general every 15.5 days. you'll have 6 generals with traits at 93 days, or 31 days if you can equip 3 generals a time. Then people will just start force retiring generals with unfavorable traits until they get the preferred trait. They'll always have 5 trait generals and one in training. That will be the new meta. Raiding/warring nations will just be able to hit this cycle faster but since it's random, there's no incentive to really farm it because there's no guarantee of getting what you want. 

So I take back my previous statement, this will not encourage more warfare among nations because training is sufficient to get enough traited generals and the cost/benefit of actual warring won't make sense to get a general with preferred traits. 

Random traits will also not shift behavior in the game, it just creates more consequential RNG. So I stand by my opposition to random traits assignment. 

[KindaEpicMoah]

On 1/25/2024 at 12:08 PM, Hwan said:

Half the playerbase can't be assed to even log in for 2m a day and you think they'll train, do mock battle, and *spend* 2m to train a general by 0.1%?

No, I don't think everyone will log in every day to train their generals every day (unless their alliance starts spam dming people to do it, which will have varying levels of effectiveness depending on the alliance). The point is to reward the most active players with a military edge while also introducing a continual resource sink. The most active players, which are typically raiders, will have the easiest time in leveling up their generals since war provides the most XP.  

 

On 1/25/2024 at 12:08 PM, Hwan said:

The newest update to the plan makes it like 3 times as hard to level up generals which already sounded really hard

Sure, leveling up generals has been made significantly slower, but that was because I believed people (especially people not frequently warring) would already level up their generals too quickly. I mean, you believe that it takes too long for people farming to level up their generals, and M'Baku believes that it is too easy for them, so there's very clearly a balance that needs to be struck here between attainability and actually needing a good amount of effort/dedication to get high level generals. 

I know that some have said that it takes too long to level up for the amount of time that you get the benefit, but even if you log in every other day and only do one training battle and get your daily exercise XP, you can still get a general to level 10 in 60 days of their 150 day lifespan. 

 

On 1/25/2024 at 12:08 PM, Hwan said:

make it cheaper

Regarding it being too expensive: I mean, it's 2.4m for a city 50, who make like 85m a day during peacetime. Getting a general to level 10 would cost them ~$180m, which, sure, is expensive. And sure, the marginal benefit of +7.1% more army power (per unit group) on average seems weak. But remember, this is a game where people buy multi-billion dollar cities that only give 2-3% more army power. For a city 50, their next city will cost 5.2b, and gives them only 2% more army power, and yet people still buy city 51. I know it is an instant purchase versus a prolonged commitment, but that's the tradeoff.

 

On 1/25/2024 at 12:08 PM, Hwan said:

reduce RNG,

On 1/25/2024 at 4:21 PM, MBaku said:

1. I really dislike the random trait rolls. It doesn't give me a defined goal to work toward. I may never get tier 2 trait that I want. I think if you have balanced traits, then nations and alliances can develop generals in accordance with their military strategies. Solid, balanced traits can shift the meta away from planes towards something more matchup based.

Now, when it comes to the RNG aspect of Generals, I am pretty sympathetic to the arguments that it sucks. I believe most of this is targeted at traits, since deaths aren't fairly prevalent, but if people feel like the grace period or death odds needs to be modified, I'm open to that. When it comes to Traits, randomness was added for two reasons. Firstly, because it encouraged players to make the most out of what they had, rather than chasing whatever the most optimal choice was. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it exists as a balancing crutch due to the imbalance that currently exists in war mechanics (between the different types of units). I have a couple of different ideas on how to address the issue and make it more tolerable for players to deal with the RNG, but I wanted to ask, would players tolerate being able to further mitigate the RNG nature of obtaining traits (like with the Enhanced Battle Engineering upgrade), or do you expressly want the ability to choose what traits you get? 

The latter will invariably pose some balancing issues, but I'm happy to adjust values as need be until they're in a good state. 

I agree that it'd be cool to see alliance-wide generals strategy, but I think deeper mechanical changes would be needed to make a significant shift away from the plane spam meta. 

 

 

On 1/25/2024 at 4:21 PM, MBaku said:

I would be instructing my alliance to get systems engineering then leadership dev and enhanced battle engineering, and then develop a war strategy to farm plane attacks and straight up reroll your generals until you get Ace Pilot or ground attacks until you get anti-tank mines because those are by far the best traits for war

Getting advanced battle engineering without getting military training zone is a bit odd. 

And while I think it is possible to do this, you're still being limited by A) how much the enemy rebuilds (I mean, hardly anyone rebuilds planes nowadays when they're losing besides idiots), and B ) your capacity to produce level 7 generals quick enough to farm trait generation. 

 

On 1/25/2024 at 4:21 PM, MBaku said:

3. Pillaging is particularly bad - one city doesn't make that much and a minor, temporary increase in crime in 1/40 of cities or whatever seems to have not much effect. it's a meme trait at best. 

Yeah, it should probably be in tier 1 since it doesn't provide any military benefit. 

 

On 1/26/2024 at 1:48 PM, MBaku said:

For trait development - How many simulated battles happen in a simulated war? I assume it's something like 8-12 like in a normal war. Which would mean you get 16-24 simulated battles a day at and it will take you no more than 4-6 days to develop a trait (at 1% rolls, we'll assume 10 battles and call it 5 days). 

Not sure what you mean by a simulated war tbh. You get, at most, 2 simulated/training battles a day, which makes the process to develop a trait from training battles pretty long unless you're at level 10. 

 

On 1/26/2024 at 1:48 PM, MBaku said:

 If you equip 3 generals to army, air, navy, do they all get experience during war simulation? 

No, only one does. 

 

On 1/26/2024 at 1:48 PM, MBaku said:

Enhanced Engineering allows you to train for specific trait types? How does this work? Once I pick a type are all my future battles sims of that type?

No, you can choose which unit group you want to focus for each training battle. 

 

On 1/26/2024 at 1:48 PM, MBaku said:

Do I pick ground/air/navy each battle and it changes the odds of recruitment a bit?

I'm not sure what you mean here, could you elaborate? 

 

On 1/26/2024 at 1:48 PM, MBaku said:

is that the case for actual war too? will ground attacks help earn towards ground traits? 

Yes. This is true regardless of whether you have the upgrade or not. 

 

On 1/26/2024 at 1:48 PM, MBaku said:

Assuming max academies, worst case scenario a trait general every 15.5 days.

I mean, even at level 9, you only have a 1 in 25 chance of getting a trait. You will likely have a trait by the time you reach level 10 (which takes ~26 training battles assuming no friendly bonus and that you have the upgrade), but that still takes ~13 days from 9 to 10, and it takes ~26 days to get from 1 to 9. Best case scenario, you get a trait general by the time they're level 8 (17 days), but in all likelihood, it'll be skewed towards trait generals taking 26-39 days to develop. 

 

 

Edited January 30 by KindaEpicMoah

[KindaEpicMoah]

 

On 1/25/2024 at 4:21 PM, MBaku said:

Navy anti-air specialist is a good start but if it doesn't work on dogfights then it doesn't matter.

Do you think it'd be too strong if it applied to offensive attacks instead of defensive attacks? At the moment, it's the only "defense-only" trait, and it was done so to make it less strong, but I feel like it's still somewhat useful.

 

 

On 1/25/2024 at 4:21 PM, MBaku said:

Shell-shocked is also a great idea but if it's just the war you're in it's really niche and has to compete with the far better Air superiority for MAP expenditures

Shell shock isn't meant to directly compete with AS (i.e. you'd never choose SS over AS), both because traits aren't meant to compete with the current war statuses, but also because you'd never naval in a situation where you could airstrike instead. The idea is that it serves as a soft counter to AS since it temporarily negates the gains given by AS (basically just as a stall tactic). 

 

On 1/25/2024 at 4:21 PM, MBaku said:

I think it could be cool as a temporary space control effect across all wars. Pairing it with AS for counters could flip the outcome of wars and that's what I think the meta should be do.

That sounds cool but AoE effects are very tricky to balance and I think it would have to be cut down to 1 turn only to be balanced. It'd also be very strong for whales if you could group debuff the people trying to drag you by navalling someone you've already killed. 

Edited January 30 by KindaEpicMoah

[KindaEpicMoah]

3/26/24 Update - 

Technically this was all changed like two months ago in response to feedback I got from the 1/24 update, but it was never publicly released, so my bad. 
 

Purchasable Traits 

• Traits can now be purchased using General XP. 
• Generals can continue to gain XP after level 10. 
• There are now three tiers of traits instead of two. 
• Tier 1 traits will cost 250 XP, tier 2 traits will cost 750 XP, and tier 3 traits will cost 1000 XP. 
• Tier 1 traits will require a level 8 general to purchase, tier 2 traits will require a level 9 general to purchase, tier 3 traits will require a level 10 general to purchase.
• There is no longer a pop-up allowing players to decide when a general randomly develops a trait, but players do get a notification telling them a general has done so. 
• Traits can be overwritten by purchased traits or rerolled traits, but if a general has a trait, they can no longer randomly develop one. 
• Trait rerolls now choose a trait within the same tier
• Generals can still randomly develop traits past level 8 (with reduced chances)
  • There is a 2% chance from training battles/3% chance from any war attack you initiate of a general developing a trait at level 8. Can only develop tier 1 traits.
  • A 4% from training battles/5% chance from any war attack you initiate of a general developing a trait at level 9. Can develop tier 1 or 2 traits.
  • A 6% from training battles/7% chance from any war attack you initiate of a general developing a trait at level 10. Can develop tier 1, 2, or 3 traits.
• Traits can be overwritten by purchased traits or rerolled traits, but if a general has a trait, they can no longer randomly develop one.

Effect/Cost Change

• General effect has been increased by 50% (from +1% to +1.5%).
  • Tier 2 and tier 3 traits will decrease the bonus per level to +1.125%. 
• The cost of training battles and military exercises has been increased.
  • Military exercises will consume around 4.5 gasoline and 7.5 munitions per city per day (or 0.375 gasoline and 0.625 munitions per turn).
  • Training battles will consume 7.5 gasoline, 10.5 munitions, 6 aluminum, and 3 steel per city

Minor Changes

• Anti-air Specialist now affects offensive instead of defensive airstrikes.
• Raiders has been readded to the ground traits. 
• Enhanced Battle Engineering's effect has been changed to "Generals can now gain a second tier 1 trait". 
• Not using all of your available military decreases your XP gains by 50% (but the minimum amount of XP you can gain from a battle is 1). 

 

Generals is basically at the coding stage, but I'm still open to hearing feedback. 

[Ayayay]

"The third change is a new tier 1 naval trait, which increases the chance of blocking the missiles/nukes of a nation you’re blockading by 10% (this is multiplicative to the current 30%/25% chance)."

Nukes/missiles should not be nerfed more. They are the only units half the combatants can use after the first round. Unless the point is to encourage people to not log in after the first round of war?

[Black Oily Men]

The whole generals mechanic looks like just another opportunity for p2w. Won't be long till u can get XP for credits.

[Flaredragon]

"Generals can start developing traits at Level 7 instead of Level 8 (1% chance per simulated battle/2% chance per war attack)."

Does Leadership Development Programs allow you to purchase traits with a level 7 general too?

[Shiho Nishizumi]

A minor suggestion, but could extensions be given the same bonus as alliance mate training would give (and perhaps have MDP allies have some in between between randoms and alliance mates)?

[KindaEpicMoah]

On 3/27/2024 at 4:15 AM, Flaredragon said:

"Generals can start developing traits at Level 7 instead of Level 8 (1% chance per simulated battle/2% chance per war attack)."

Does Leadership Development Programs allow you to purchase traits with a level 7 general too?

Yes, the upgrade allows you to purchase only tier 1 upgrades at level 7. 

 

On 4/2/2024 at 8:01 AM, Shiho Nishizumi said:

A minor suggestion, but could extensions be given the same bonus as alliance mate training would give (and perhaps have MDP allies have some in between between randoms and alliance mates)?

I appreciate the suggestion. Yes to the former. Not sure about the latter since it could be a slippery slope towards giving a bonus for every treaty type.