Feedback - Updeclare Changes & Nuke Meta

[Keegoz]

Alright, so I want to gauge some community feedback around some of the military changes we made last year and early this year around declare ranges & nuking.

I think enough wars have happened where most people can have an informed opinion on the changes. Please be aware we likely won't revert the changes but can tweak them to be less extreme or put in place some other easy fixes. I do not wish to rework this area of the game too much.

I am aware there is a desire to do more around giving options to players who are on the losing side of wars, this thread however isn't for that discussion. If you could please limit discussion to *just* the changes, that would be greatly appreciated.

The changes were:

• Increased Updeclare Range for Wars: The updeclare range for engaging in wars has been expanded from 1.75x score to 2.5x score.
• Adding 2 projects, one which allowed players to buy an extra nuke and the other to increase the damage of projectiles (both were made fairly expensive to make it a more 'exclusive' project and recognise that giving people more nukes was a fairly significant buff)

The tweaks that could occur:

• Updeclare range remains higher than the original, but reduced slightly
• Nukes costs more (e.g. uranium cost goes from 250 to 500 aka 750k more per nuke)

If you have any easy tweaks, please comment below. If feedback is positive or indifferent, I will leave the changes as is.

Please note, you need to engage in discussion for me to take your opinion. I am aware that certain people like to review bomb these threads, and just saying "I don't like this" or downvoting.

[Pascal]

I think that reducing the updeclare range to x2 or x2.25 would make more sense. 

I'd also agree that nukes , and even missiles, could use a (slight) increase given they're both overly cheap at the moment.

Edited October 4 by Pascal

[Sketchy]

3 hours ago, Keegoz said:

The changes were:

• Increased Updeclare Range for Wars: The updeclare range for engaging in wars has been expanded from 1.75x score to 2.5x score.
• Adding 2 projects, one which allowed players to buy an extra nuke and the other to increase the damage of projectiles (both were made fairly expensive to make it a more 'exclusive' project and recognise that giving people more nukes was a fairly significant buff)

As I said at the time of it's proposal, 2,5x updeclare range was way too much. It's kind of ridiculous, you can literally updeclare on anyone now. I never saw the need for an increase at all, but if it's not being reverted, it should at least be decreased to 2.0x.

I don't think the new projects need to be changed really. If this war proved anything, it's that they aren't that significant of a change to the meta.

4 hours ago, Keegoz said:

 

• Nukes costs more (e.g. uranium cost goes from 250 to 500 aka 750k more per nuke)

Not necessarily opposed to increasing the cost of nukes, but I feel like it would be better to increase the alum cost, which obviously needs more sinks in the game, than the uranium cost. 750 Alum > 1000 Alum would be better in my opinion. 

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

You should make the updeclare and down declare range equal.  Us poor upper tier nations cant even defend ourselves against all that want to strike at us....

[Cassius Vorenius]

4 hours ago, Sketchy said:

As I said at the time of it's proposal, 2,5x updeclare range was way too much. It's kind of ridiculous, you can literally updeclare on anyone now. I never saw the need for an increase at all, but if it's not being reverted, it should at least be decreased to 2.0x.

Could you help me understand why an infinite updeclare wouldn't be practical? I'm picturing a scenario like the Vatican being able to declare war on any country, not just Italy. Why would it matter if they'd likely lose the war anyway? I'd really appreciate your insights on this.

[Mastermind]

30 minutes ago, Cassius Vorenius said:

Could you help me understand why an infinite updeclare wouldn't be practical? I'm picturing a scenario like the Vatican being able to declare war on any country, not just Italy. Why would it matter if they'd likely lose the war anyway? I'd really appreciate your insights on this.

In most wars it is net damage that is the most important metric. If there was infinite updeclare range any nation with 3 cities and the nuke project could nuke rogue whales and do infinite damage without taking any (since their nation is so small they won't even have anything to lose), which would lead to wars sucking even more.

[Cassius Vorenius]

2 hours ago, Mastermind said:

In most wars it is net damage that is the most important metric. If there was infinite updeclare range any nation with 3 cities and the nuke project could nuke rogue whales and do infinite damage without taking any (since their nation is so small they won't even have anything to lose), which would lead to wars sucking even more.

Great answer, thanks for explaining.

[Huey Freeman]

Nukes need to be more expensive to build.

[Sketchy]

7 hours ago, Cassius Vorenius said:

Could you help me understand why an infinite updeclare wouldn't be practical? I'm picturing a scenario like the Vatican being able to declare war on any country, not just Italy. Why would it matter if they'd likely lose the war anyway? I'd really appreciate your insights on this.

Because it's a game. Picturing scenarios from real life was your first mistake. The game should be balanced around mechanics, not around meticulous realism. You could find 100 other glaring issues with the game that way.

[Buorhann]

16 hours ago, Keegoz said:

Alright, so I want to gauge some community feedback around some of the military changes we made last year and early this year around declare ranges & nuking.

I think enough wars have happened where most people can have an informed opinion on the changes. Please be aware we likely won't revert the changes but can tweak them to be less extreme or put in place some other easy fixes. I do not wish to rework this area of the game too much.

I am aware there is a desire to do more around giving options to players who are on the losing side of wars, this thread however isn't for that discussion. If you could please limit discussion to *just* the changes, that would be greatly appreciated.

The changes were:

• Increased Updeclare Range for Wars: The updeclare range for engaging in wars has been expanded from 1.75x score to 2.5x score.
• Adding 2 projects, one which allowed players to buy an extra nuke and the other to increase the damage of projectiles (both were made fairly expensive to make it a more 'exclusive' project and recognise that giving people more nukes was a fairly significant buff)

The tweaks that could occur:

• Updeclare range remains higher than the original, but reduced slightly
• Nukes costs more (e.g. uranium cost goes from 250 to 500 aka 750k more per nuke)

If you have any easy tweaks, please comment below. If feedback is positive or indifferent, I will leave the changes as is.

Please note, you need to engage in discussion for me to take your opinion. I am aware that certain people like to review bomb these threads, and just saying "I don't like this" or downvoting.

 

I can't disagree with these ideas and second @Sketchy's points about them.

I do have some thoughts, but I'm going to wait a moment to flesh them out before posting them.  As for the current points, I got nothing to complain about (Sketchy's idea on changing the increase cost of Uranium to Aluminum is a good one though).

[Kosta]

Using nukes is "suboptimal" in itself. Making it cost more just makes things less fun. 

[Ketya]

Just keep it as-is. The proposed tweaks are too minimal to result in any meaningful outcomes. Better to spend your time and energy on other ideas.

[Ayayay]

Make updeclare range 10x so i can go back to perma nuke rouging for funsies

[Sir Scarfalot]

I said it before, and it remains true: nukes and missiles need to be a bit more expensive since they haven't kept up with inflation. We simply have more cities and money supply in the game, so we need to re-balance costs to compensate for that reality.

I know it's fun to toss infinite nukes, but it used to be expensive to do that. I'm just saying we should bring the mechanics closer to how they were.

[Fikingdom]

I really never understood the updeclare changes in the first place and the necessities for it. I would say revert back to what it was originally.

no issues with increasing the cost for nuke and I agree that the cost for missile should be increased as well.

[hidude45454]

We are never ever going to escape this dumb ass discussion are we 😭

[Keegoz]

4 minutes ago, hidude45454 said:

We are never ever going to escape this dumb ass discussion are we 😭

This is the last one I am going to have for at least 1-2 years so people better have a say lol

[im317]

as expected the increase to 2.5x was a really bad decision. in fact the in game text about it almost makes it seem like whoever wrote it did not even fully understand it. if you try to declare on someone outside of your war range the message reads "You can't declare war on this nation because they are outside of your war range. Your war range extends to +150% (29,266.18) or -25% (8,779.85) of your score. You can also always declare on nations within the next 10 ranks above you." maybe this was simply never updated but 150% of my score is actually 17,559.705. i get that in practice the formula is (your score)+(your score x 1.5) which is the same thing as your score x2.5 however i have no idea why its written (and coded?) that way. the way its written has me still not completely sure that when the change was made the person making it actually understood what they did.

 

imo it should be 2x your score. i think nukes and missiles need to cost more thought im not sure if that should be an increase in cash, resources or both. we get $1m a day for logging in now. what was a fair cost when it was first put in place has become something incredibly easy to afford even on an individual nation scale compared to the damage it does. a nation with 40 cities, NFR and 500 infra per city has a score of 4280 with no(!) military and can hit a nation with 10,700 score. that could be a c35 with 3500 infra per city https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=180876 meaning the nuke does more then $50m in damage. we are seeing nations this past war who with 40+ cities who hit 5+ nations at a time and were able to buy missiles and nukes every day for a very low cost and over a month into the war a single missile could still do over $100m in damage. 

 

this change supersized the incentive for nations to hit random people not involved in the war in order to make there stats look better.

[Hwan]

I've enjoyed nuking whales like the guy above me with the big range so you should keep it.

The proposed cost increase is so marginal it doesn't really matter either way, but yes, nukes should be more expensive.

[Majima Goro]

I think missiles are severly nerfed from the point of view of their MAP usage. Currently, if you have NRF, you can beige someone with 4 nukes. But if you only have MLP, you cannot beige someone with missiles only. I would like to see the cost of missiles go down to 6 MAPs or their resistance shredder go up to 20 resistance. 

[im317]

11 minutes ago, Hwan said:

I've enjoyed nuking whales like the guy above me with the big range so you should keep it.

The proposed cost increase is so marginal it doesn't really matter either way, but yes, nukes should be more expensive.

and the first time you did it was fine. even the second time was ok. its when you were able to do it a 3rd time almost a full month after the first time despite having dropped about 5k score to my 2.5k score that it was an issue. that and the fact that the only reason you had not dropped 2k more score was that you ran out score that could be dropped. if it was 2x score instead of 2.5x you would not have been able to hit me that 3rd time a month later.

[Rageproject]

The updeclare range expansion has given too much ability to turret and deal significantly more damages by proportion to the cost. This didn’t balance anything, only created a different glaring issue we anticipated could happen. Scale it back to 2x range and also scale up the nuke/missile costs by 1.5x.

This would definitely help start to balance things.

We’ve discussed the idea of making nukes ineffective at a low/zero infra level. This is still something worth exploring how to implement in a balanced manner. It doesn’t need to be a drastically high amount but something reasonable.

And ultimately, it would just be sensible to turn Missile Launch Pad into a prerequisite for Nuclear Research Facility. It makes zero logical sense that nations could just skip missiles and have nukes.

6 minutes ago, Majima Goro said:

I think missiles are severly nerfed from the point of view of their MAP usage. Currently, if you have NRF, you can beige someone with 4 nukes. But if you only have MLP, you cannot beige someone with missiles only. I would like to see the cost of missiles go down to 6 MAPs or their resistance shredder go up to 20 resistance. 

You can beige someone in 6 missiles (48 maps) and 4 nukes (48 maps). 

[Abaddon]

17 hours ago, Keegoz said:

The tweaks that could occur:

• Updeclare range remains higher than the original, but reduced slightly
• Nukes costs more (e.g. uranium cost goes from 250 to 500 aka 750k more per nuke)

 

I'm so glad you finally brought this up, because the community is already vastly in favor of nerfing the up-declare range lol. On the original poll where Village was determining what the community thought about this, the 2.5x option won out narrowly over no change. Over time as new people trickled in and voted on the topic, people voted vastly in favor of not changing the mechanic and this was never addressed by the game design team. 



This shows that the vast majority of the community currently recognizes the 2.5x range is too high and everybody I've talked to regarding this topic is vastly in favor of nerfing it. This was one of those cases where a minority of people carried a topic forward with their hype and things were pushed out too quickly without weighing in the consequences.

Additionally, the options given were too high and a 2x option wasn't considered and given when the vote took place. 2x still allows players to target whales during wars, not allowing them to sit out of range - whilst balancing the game so that players have other options. Because turreting is so good and everybody has recognized that, other strategies aren't being performed by alliances. EVH tried having fun this war and attempted building military and got severely punished because they couldn't carry out a combined effort with The Syndicate - because turreting is way too good and attempting any other strategy is foolish and inefficient. Trying to stand out and do something interesting isn't possible because the default option is way too good.

The design team should listen to the community which has voiced their concerns on the original poll and nerf the up-declare range down to 2x

[Hatebi]

19 hours ago, Keegoz said:

Nukes costs more (e.g. uranium cost goes from 250 to 500 aka 750k more per nuke)

I think increasing the uranium or alu usage by 250 is fair. 

 

19 hours ago, Keegoz said:

Updeclare range remains higher than the original, but reduced slightly

I still think my original suggestion of being able to hit anyone x amount of cities above your own was the way to go, but in lieu of that, I think the current range is fine. If it absolutely had to come down, I don't think 2.25x would be the end of the world. Going down further than that defeats the purpose of the change imo. 

[SleepingNinja]

2 hours ago, Abaddon said:

 

I'm so glad you finally brought this up, because the community is already vastly in favor of nerfing the up-declare range lol. On the original poll where Village was determining what the community thought about this, the 2.5x option won out narrowly over no change. Over time as new people trickled in and voted on the topic, people voted vastly in favor of not changing the mechanic and this was never addressed by the game design team. 



This shows that the vast majority of the community currently recognizes the 2.5x range is too high and everybody I've talked to regarding this topic is vastly in favor of nerfing it. This was one of those cases where a minority of people carried a topic forward with their hype and things were pushed out too quickly without weighing in the consequences.

Additionally, the options given were too high and a 2x option wasn't considered and given when the vote took place. 2x still allows players to target whales during wars, not allowing them to sit out of range - whilst balancing the game so that players have other options. Because turreting is so good and everybody has recognized that, other strategies aren't being performed by alliances. EVH tried having fun this war and attempted building military and got severely punished because they couldn't carry out a combined effort with The Syndicate - because turreting is way too good and attempting any other strategy is foolish and inefficient. Trying to stand out and do something interesting isn't possible because the default option is way too good.

The design team should listen to the community which has voiced their concerns on the original poll and nerf the up-declare range down to 2x

Funny. I looked at that thread and saw a total of 0 gular members posting their objections to it then. Not a single one of you posted about it when you were turreting yourself last war, now all of a sudden when the shoes on the other foot it's a problem eh? 😂