Game Development Discussion: Colour Bloc Changes

[Keegoz]

Hey all,

As some of you may know, we had a thread where we asked for feedback on what our next update should be. Now that both the Project/Commerce rework and Generals updates are both being coded by the development team, it is time for the design team to begin planning for the colour bloc update.

I've seen a few proposed changes to this, and I feel as though we should look at some that have been presented to me. If you wish to voice your ideas, this thread will be the place to do so. No decision has been made on where we should go, and once I have a feel of what the more popular ideas are, I'll likely go back to the design team to create a full proposal. Generally what we are looking for are 2 things, 1) A rework on how colour is calculated and 2) A colour bloc council that allows for political/economic decisions.

Current Idea Proposal:

Colour Calculation Changes

Step 1:

Eliminate all people not in an alliance from counting towards the color bonus.

Eliminate all people city 10 and below from counting towards the color bonus. (Can still benefit from the color bonus).

Step 2:

Adjust the Turn Bonus formula from:

Turn Bonus = (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue / Nations)

To this:

Turn Bonus = ( (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue * 0.75) / Nations)

Step 3:

Instead of raising the cap to 150k, change the cap to the following formula. Currently this is around ~111k with the above changes.

New Turn Bonus Cap = (Total Aggregate DNR/Total Nations)

Step 4:

Create a second bonus with the following formula:

Recruit Bonus = (Total Nations <c11 on Color/(Total Nations <c11/5)) * New Turn Bonus Cap

Step 5:

Add the revised Turn Bonus to the new Recruit Bonus. This is your final Color Turn Bonus.

What this accomplishes:

1. Removes the need to bully nanos off of colors. Gives nanos free reign to choose any color and receive it's bonus without impact.
2. Remove the need for training alliances that don't benefit from the main alliances bonus.
3. Creates value for lower tier nations and nanos for larger nations and alliances, giving them slightly more power. Larger alliances can court smaller alliances to increase their recruitment bonus.
4. Allows for multiple approaches to gain increased bonus without changing the system to benefit one style of play over another.
5. Create a cap that automatically scales over time as the game grows or shrinks, and pins the recruitment bonus to a value that adjusts to the ebb and flow of player count.

Treasure Changes

Treasures have increasingly become very rewarding to only large/wealthy alliances. To the point where treasure ‘sniping’ has made them almost an exclusively a mechanic for top 8 alliances and whale nations. The following is to try and balance that out a little. Further updates on treasures may come in the future that further link them to colour blocs.

1. Treasures now only spawn in nations with the same colour as their alliance.
2. A nation must be on the colour for at least 14 days for a treasure to spawn on that nation.
3. Removal of continent requirement for treasures.
4. The two treasures that spawn in any nation (Hoa Hakananai'a & Holy Grail) will now instead spawn in a nation on the lowest colour bloc at the time of its respawn.

 

Colour Bloc Council (Under Work)

So far I have only had one solid proposal on this, you can get the general idea from this google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13f_rjow5i3dD9wJCYKsu9OroClpdGAvvOTCMX0YAxSQ/edit#heading=h.xadj016tgw9u

 

As you can see, we're in the very early phase of this idea. So we are seeking community feedback and input before we start to move in any sort of direction.

 

Edited April 10, 2024 by Keegoz

[Ramona]

Sounds super convoluted, love it, I like the political side of it though.

I would say one quick fix that could be made is to raise the Turn Bonuses cap from $75k to $150k per turn (or at least $100k).

As 9 out of 14 colour blocs are above $50k and 5 colour blocs have hit the $75k limit already.

And for the 5 at the top of the leaderboard it is actually ridiculous in terms of turn bonuses:

Uncapped Green: $200k

Uncapped Pink: $140k

Uncapped White: $140k

Uncapped Maroon: $95k

Uncapped Orange: $83k

I get capping the top one as clearly Green Prosperity is working too well (I am also on green), but having 30% of the game capped at $75k shows that the cap is outdated on current average income of nations ingame and should be raised in line with the incomes of today.

Could probably raise the floor from $0 to $50k or something too to help smaller nations and alliances but idc.

For extra data, over 60% of nations are above beige ($50k per turn).

[Keegoz]

7 minutes ago, Ramona said:

Sounds super convoluted, love it, I like the political side of it though.

I would say one quick fix that could be made is to raise the Turn Bonuses cap from $75k to $150k per turn (or at least $100k).

As 9 out of 14 colour blocs are above $50k and 5 colour blocs have hit the $75k limit already.

And for the 5 at the top of the leaderboard it is actually ridiculous in terms of turn bonuses:

Uncapped Green: $200k

Uncapped Pink: $140k

Uncapped White: $140k

Uncapped Maroon: $95k

Uncapped Orange: $83k

I get capping the top one as clearly Green Prosperity is working too well (I am also on green), but having 30% of the game capped at $75k shows that the cap is outdated on current average income of nations ingame and should be raised in line with the incomes of today.

Could probably raise the floor from $0 to $50k or something too to help smaller nations and alliances but idc.

For extra data, over 60% of nations are above beige ($50k per turn).

This has already been coded into the game by Alex (150k cap). Really up to @Alex or @Village to push it live at this point.

Edited April 2, 2024 by Keegoz

[SleepingNinja]

Tie weather effects into the game via color blocs, so every month reset RNG for every color bloc to generate weather patterns that can result in positive or negative bonus' for the nations on that color bloc, some patterns can just be completely normal weather that don't do anything and are just neutral rolls. It's basically akin to seasonal effects of sping/summer/winter but for color blocs. Just something I thought might be fun and decided to post it on a whim since you pinged us for feedback.

[Danzek]

I think we should buff colors randomly, decided by a fair dice roll. I've attached code for it below

NationColor getRandomColorToBoost() {
	return NationColor.GREEN; // I rolled a die and got this color
}

 

[SeaFyre]

Intrigued by Color council, never experienced it in CN so I’m unclear on the exact workings or process. 

[Noscar]

You need to make sure that the colour council feature doesn't get abused and it gets in favour of bigger alliances and puts smaller ones in shambles. The colour bloc council members should be screened for loyalty and that no corruption is involved. We don't want a big alliance to send 50mil to a council member to vote in favour for the said alliance. The only (could be more) problem I see with this feature as I have already said, is corruption. 

[Ramona]

16 minutes ago, Noscar said:

You need to make sure that the colour council feature doesn't get abused and it gets in favour of bigger alliances and puts smaller ones in shambles. The colour bloc council members should be screened for loyalty and that no corruption is involved. We don't want a big alliance to send 50mil to a council member to vote in favour for the said alliance. The only (could be more) problem I see with this feature as I have already said, is corruption. 

I mean, it will be abused in any situation it is introduced. Every player/alliance/sphere will use the mechanics to their advantage and to disadvantage their enemies. PnW summed up. 

I would like to see political corruption and possibly PnW gerrymandering, bloc stacking (like branch stacking), takeovers/rolling and factions. 

I think that +100 member alliances will claim one colour bloc as their's, a sphere might have one or two or possibly even 3 (the second one for perpheries of a sphere or smaller alliances). 

[Cypher]

I believe there’s way too much power behind having the ability to prevent trade with an entire colour bloc. 
 

My suggestion would be to alter it so sanctioned nations/alliances are not able to receive any colour bonuses or hold treasures.

[Totally Hatebi]

Colour bloc tariffs. A colour council can vote to make everyone have higher trade prices (receiving/sending) to other colour blocs. Also it should be top 10 alliance leaders who should be on the council. Kinda like the power dynamics now. (Also 1 bloc focus, or 2, at a time to prevent goofy trade prices)

[Keegoz]

It doesn't have to just be the colour bloc that has a council. Feasibly you could have 1-2 elected positions per colour bloc that then form a council from all colour blocs that make choices or propose suggestions.

[Sketchy]

Alright here is my proposed revision of the color bonus.

Step 1:

Eliminate all people not in an alliance from counting towards the color bonus.

Eliminate all people city 10 and below from counting towards the color bonus. (Can still benefit from the color bonus).

Step 2:

Adjust the Turn Bonus formula from:

Turn Bonus = (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue / Nations)

To this:

Turn Bonus = ( (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue * 0.75) / Nations)

Step 3:

Instead of raising the cap to 150k, change the cap to the following formula. Currently this is around ~111k with the above changes.

New Turn Bonus Cap = (Total Aggregate DNR/Total Nations)

Step 4:

Create a second bonus with the following formula:

Recruit Bonus = (Total Nations <c11 on Color/(Total Nations <c11/5)) * New Turn Bonus Cap 

Step 5:

Add the revised Turn Bonus to the new Recruit Bonus. This is your final Color Turn Bonus.

 

What this accomplishes:

1. Removes the need to bully nanos off of colors. Gives nanos free reign to choose any color and receive it's bonus without impact.
2. Remove the need for training alliances that don't benefit from the main alliances bonus.
3. Creates value for lower tier nations and nanos for larger nations and alliances, giving them slightly more power. Larger alliances can court smaller alliances to increase their recruitment bonus.
4. Allows for multiple approaches to gain increased bonus without changing the system to benefit one style of play over another.
5. Create a cap that automatically scales over time as the game grows or shrinks, and pins the recruitment bonus to a value that adjusts to the ebb and flow of player count.

The Numbers

[Altheus]

In favour of the colour bloc council because there is so much you can do with it. I think a balance should be aimed for in which it actually provides an income advantage for larger alliances to have smaller alliances on their sphere, but against that they have to keep in mind that the more alliances that are on their sphere the more they'll have to share power on the council (as their vote will be diluted). Could create an interesting dynamic (and therefore politics) with larger alliances incentivised to create networks of smaller alliances on their sphere

Also in favour of a sphere being stronger for alliances donating resources to a central sphere fund. The co-ordination and trust issues that could generate sounds like great politics

[Danzek]

>  change the cap to the following formula. Currently this is around ~111k with the above changes.

I think a ranked turn bonus split might make more sense, as that simplifies calculations and avoids the cap being all over the place for seemingly irrelevant factors (number of new nations). It also avoids there being multiple colors with the same bonus (and thus no benefit to switching between)

e.g. You could have a cap of 140k and then rank the color blocs in steps of 10k revenue
Edit: You'd can use the formula you have but instead of that determining the turn bonus, it determines the ranking. 

 

> Recruit Bonus = (Total Nations <c11 on Color/(Total Nations <c11/5)) * New Turn Bonus Cap 

A bonus based on nation age may be more useful as that avoid disincentivizing growth. Though raiding would remain a disincentive to grow still. 
The median age of a c11 is 195 days. (wtf)

Edited April 2, 2024 by Danzek

[Velyni Vas]

I like the direction.

[Sketchy]

6 hours ago, Danzek said:

>  change the cap to the following formula. Currently this is around ~111k with the above changes.

I think a ranked turn bonus split might make more sense, as that simplifies calculations and avoids the cap being all over the place for seemingly irrelevant factors (number of new nations). It also avoids there being multiple colors with the same bonus (and thus no benefit to switching between)

I think that just further benefits whale tier. The act of switching in most cases is going to change the bonus.

[whiskerz]

Just make it so whatever color I am in gets a bonus and call it good. 

[Spukey]

A small quality of life improvement could be letting alliances see which of their members are voting for a bloc name and for which name they're voting for.

[Village]

On 4/2/2024 at 12:23 AM, Keegoz said:

This has already been coded into the game by Alex (150k cap). Really up to @Alex or @Village to push it live at this point.

It's going to go out with the March update! We've had a small delay with some stuff but it should be out soon.

[Keegoz]

Thanks for those who have given input. This is where we are at with the proposed changes thus far:

Colour Calculation Changes

Step 1:

Eliminate all people not in an alliance from counting towards the color bonus.

Eliminate all people city 10 and below from counting towards the color bonus. (Can still benefit from the color bonus).

Step 2:

Adjust the Turn Bonus formula from:

Turn Bonus = (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue / Nations)

To this:

Turn Bonus = ( (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue * 0.75) / Nations)

Step 3:

Instead of raising the cap to 150k, change the cap to the following formula. Currently this is around ~111k with the above changes.

New Turn Bonus Cap = (Total Aggregate DNR/Total Nations)

Step 4:

Create a second bonus with the following formula:

Recruit Bonus = (Total Nations <c11 on Color/(Total Nations <c11/5)) * New Turn Bonus Cap

Step 5:

Add the revised Turn Bonus to the new Recruit Bonus. This is your final Color Turn Bonus.

What this accomplishes:

1. Removes the need to bully nanos off of colors. Gives nanos free reign to choose any color and receive it's bonus without impact.
2. Remove the need for training alliances that don't benefit from the main alliances bonus.
3. Creates value for lower tier nations and nanos for larger nations and alliances, giving them slightly more power. Larger alliances can court smaller alliances to increase their recruitment bonus.
4. Allows for multiple approaches to gain increased bonus without changing the system to benefit one style of play over another.
5. Create a cap that automatically scales over time as the game grows or shrinks, and pins the recruitment bonus to a value that adjusts to the ebb and flow of player count.

Treasure Changes

Treasures have increasingly become very rewarding to only large/wealthy alliances. To the point where treasure ‘sniping’ has made them almost an exclusively a mechanic for top 8 alliances and whale nations. The following is to try and balance that out a little. Further updates on treasures may come in the future that further link them to colour blocs.

1. Treasures now only spawn in nations with the same colour as their alliance.
2. A nation must be on the colour for at least 14 days for a treasure to spawn on that nation.
3. Removal of continent requirement for treasures.
4. The two treasures that spawn in any nation (Hoa Hakananai'a & Holy Grail) will now instead spawn in a nation on the lowest colour bloc at the time of its respawn.

[Totally Hatebi]

On 4/10/2024 at 8:10 PM, Keegoz said:

Thanks for those who have given input. This is where we are at with the proposed changes thus far:

Colour Calculation Changes

Step 1:

Eliminate all people not in an alliance from counting towards the color bonus.

Eliminate all people city 10 and below from counting towards the color bonus. (Can still benefit from the color bonus).

Step 2:

Adjust the Turn Bonus formula from:

Turn Bonus = (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue / Nations)

To this:

Turn Bonus = ( (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue * 0.75) / Nations)

Step 3:

Instead of raising the cap to 150k, change the cap to the following formula. Currently this is around ~111k with the above changes.

New Turn Bonus Cap = (Total Aggregate DNR/Total Nations)

Step 4:

Create a second bonus with the following formula:

Recruit Bonus = (Total Nations <c11 on Color/(Total Nations <c11/5)) * New Turn Bonus Cap

Step 5:

Add the revised Turn Bonus to the new Recruit Bonus. This is your final Color Turn Bonus.

What this accomplishes:

1. Removes the need to bully nanos off of colors. Gives nanos free reign to choose any color and receive it's bonus without impact.
2. Remove the need for training alliances that don't benefit from the main alliances bonus.
3. Creates value for lower tier nations and nanos for larger nations and alliances, giving them slightly more power. Larger alliances can court smaller alliances to increase their recruitment bonus.
4. Allows for multiple approaches to gain increased bonus without changing the system to benefit one style of play over another.
5. Create a cap that automatically scales over time as the game grows or shrinks, and pins the recruitment bonus to a value that adjusts to the ebb and flow of player count.

Treasure Changes

Treasures have increasingly become very rewarding to only large/wealthy alliances. To the point where treasure ‘sniping’ has made them almost an exclusively a mechanic for top 8 alliances and whale nations. The following is to try and balance that out a little. Further updates on treasures may come in the future that further link them to colour blocs.

1. Treasures now only spawn in nations with the same colour as their alliance.
2. A nation must be on the colour for at least 14 days for a treasure to spawn on that nation.
3. Removal of continent requirement for treasures.
4. The two treasures that spawn in any nation (Hoa Hakananai'a & Holy Grail) will now instead spawn in a nation on the lowest colour bloc at the time of its respawn.

 

I like the new mechanics for colour bloc and will be looking forward to them being implemented in the future. It is looking to be a very interesting year with implementations of new mechanics.

Looking forward to the changes!

[Shiho Nishizumi]

On 4/10/2024 at 7:10 AM, Keegoz said:

Thanks for those who have given input. This is where we are at with the proposed changes thus far:

Colour Calculation Changes

Step 1:

Eliminate all people not in an alliance from counting towards the color bonus.

Eliminate all people city 10 and below from counting towards the color bonus. (Can still benefit from the color bonus).

Step 2:

Adjust the Turn Bonus formula from:

Turn Bonus = (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue / Nations)

To this:

Turn Bonus = ( (Average Daily Monetary Net Revenue * 0.75) / Nations)

Step 3:

Instead of raising the cap to 150k, change the cap to the following formula. Currently this is around ~111k with the above changes.

New Turn Bonus Cap = (Total Aggregate DNR/Total Nations)

Step 4:

Create a second bonus with the following formula:

Recruit Bonus = (Total Nations <c11 on Color/(Total Nations <c11/5)) * New Turn Bonus Cap

Step 5:

Add the revised Turn Bonus to the new Recruit Bonus. This is your final Color Turn Bonus.

What this accomplishes:

1. Removes the need to bully nanos off of colors. Gives nanos free reign to choose any color and receive it's bonus without impact.
2. Remove the need for training alliances that don't benefit from the main alliances bonus.
3. Creates value for lower tier nations and nanos for larger nations and alliances, giving them slightly more power. Larger alliances can court smaller alliances to increase their recruitment bonus.
4. Allows for multiple approaches to gain increased bonus without changing the system to benefit one style of play over another.
5. Create a cap that automatically scales over time as the game grows or shrinks, and pins the recruitment bonus to a value that adjusts to the ebb and flow of player count.

I'm not sure how you can look at a formula which accompanying chart has Lime skyrocket from lowest value bonus to highest value bonus, and go "Damn, this is really what we should be going with". I'd like to think that that alone would highlight the issue with the formula as is.

 

 

Quote

 

Treasure Changes

Treasures have increasingly become very rewarding to only large/wealthy alliances. To the point where treasure ‘sniping’ has made them almost an exclusively a mechanic for top 8 alliances and whale nations. The following is to try and balance that out a little. Further updates on treasures may come in the future that further link them to colour blocs.

1. Treasures now only spawn in nations with the same colour as their alliance.
2. A nation must be on the colour for at least 14 days for a treasure to spawn on that nation.
3. Removal of continent requirement for treasures.
4. The two treasures that spawn in any nation (Hoa Hakananai'a & Holy Grail) will now instead spawn in a nation on the lowest colour bloc at the time of its respawn.

 

A good portion, if not most of, whale nations can't even spawn treasures given the 15-65% range. The largest nation sits a 15035 score which caps it at 9772. While whalehood is defined by city count and not score (and with scores fluctuating as well), if you take Grumpy as a benchmark, most of their nations can't spawn a treasure. It similarly excludes Eclipse's upper cohort (C45 and up). Rose's a bit more mixed but their larger/largest nations are similarly excluded. t$'s largest nations are likewise excluded. At a glance, roughly 45 and up with fairly tall infra can't spawn it due to score inhibition. I imagine that this city count would lower as people presumably move back to 0350.

In most cases (whenever they didn't just happen to spawn in their alliance), alliances get those treasures by buying them from whichever smaller alliance spawned them. That's why there's a concentration of them along the larger alliances. This is doubly true given that the price floor for treasures tend to be fairly high (usually something like 300m), and becomes harder to justify paying for the smaller an alliance is. I recall being hard pressed to justify the cost for one in Requiem (a small upper tier, edging whale alliance), as it didn't leave much of a profit margin after the fact.

I struggle to see how your proposal is going to address concentration in the top alliances when it it doesn't affect why this concentration is happening (larger alliances/economies benefitting from having them, smaller alliances benefitting more from selling than keeping), or how this concentration is happening.

 

Edited April 12, 2024 by Shiho Nishizumi

[Keegoz]

2 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

I'm not sure how you can look at a formula which accompanying chart has Lime skyrocket from lowest value bonus to highest value bonus, and go "Damn, this is really what we should be going with". I'd like to think that that alone would highlight the issue with the formula as is.

 

 

A good portion, if not most of, whale nations can't even spawn treasures given the 15-65% range. The largest nation sits a 15035 score which caps it at 9772. While whalehood is defined by city count and not score (and with scores fluctuating as well), if you take Grumpy as a benchmark, most of their nations can't spawn a treasure. It similarly excludes Eclipse's upper cohort (C45 and up). Rose's a bit more mixed but their larger/largest nations are similarly excluded. t$'s largest nations are likewise excluded. At a glance, roughly 45 and up with fairly tall infra can't spawn it due to score inhibition. I imagine that this city count would lower as people presumably move back to 0350.

In most cases (whenever they didn't just happen to spawn in their alliance), alliances get those treasures by buying them from whichever smaller alliance spawned them. That's why there's a concentration of them along the larger alliances. This is doubly true given that the price floor for treasures tend to be fairly high (usually something like 300m), and becomes harder to justify paying for the smaller an alliance is. I recall being hard pressed to justify the cost for one in Requiem (a small upper tier, edging whale alliance), as it didn't leave much of a profit margin after the fact.

I struggle to see how your proposal is going to address concentration in the top alliances when it it doesn't affect why this concentration is happening (larger alliances/economies benefitting from having them, smaller alliances benefitting more from selling than keeping), or how this concentration is happening.

 

Which is why we have further plans for treasures, but wish to see how the colour proposal outcome goes. For now, removing 'sniping' is an easy change to make whilst we further workshop them.

Feel free to propose your own colour bloc calculation or amendment. That's why this post exists.

[Sketchy]

10 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

I'm not sure how you can look at a formula which accompanying chart has Lime skyrocket from lowest value bonus to highest value bonus, and go "Damn, this is really what we should be going with". I'd like to think that that alone would highlight the issue with the formula as is.

Lime has a bunch of training alliances on it. As soon as the changes are implemented those alliances will move those aa's onto their own color.

The point of the proposal is to encourage multiple types of paths to a higher bonus, so obviously it's going to rescale how the colors currently are. Naturally a change in the way the color bonus is being calculated is going to result in a change in how some colors have their numbers work.

What's your core issue with the proposal?

 

[Rageproject]

Related color quality of life issue… Can we fix the problem with having to toggle from gray to an actual color?

Currently, a gray nation has to go into Edit Nation page, select another color, and then reselect the color they want, and save the page.

Eliminate the ability to ”hide in gray” and it should automatically revert a nation to its prior color upon login. Beige players move to gray as usual, until they login and it reverts to their prior color. If it’s meant for inactivity, then let’s keep it strictly for inactivity.   

Let players and alliances fight about taxes amongst themselves instead of exploiting what feels like a glitch in the game. Plus, this is a huge frustration for players who think they fixed colors it and didn’t, and it draws active players to be attacked and mistaken as inactive constantly.