Game Development Discussion - Econ Update Part 1 (Treasures/Colours, City Import Tools & City Cost Changes)

[Keegoz]

Alrighty, it's time to get ready for our next update. The military update is well underway, with ship changes already live on the test server and military research not far away. The tournament to test out the mechanics should happen fairly soon (if Alex is around to do it).

I've elected to split the econ update into two parts, as I do want to add another new mechanic to the game but I need more time to flesh a few ideas out. Alex was also very keen to have city costs sorted for the on-going health of the game.

Treasures & Colours

Adjustments:

• Remove continent requirements on all treasures that have them.
• Require alliance colour and nation colour to match to spawn treasures.
• Require nations to have been on a colour for 30 days to be able to spawn treasures.
• Add four new colours to the game (Bronze, Gold, Lavendar and Teal)

New Treasures:

Add 2 new treasures each for the 4 new colors.

Gold:

• The Ark of the Covenant
• Mask of Tutankhamun

Teal:

• Hope Diamond
• Atlantis

Lavender:

• Crown Jewels
• Dead Sea Scrolls

Bronze:

• Topaz
• Nebra Sky Disk

Add new specialized treasures.

For Raiding AAs: 2 “Pirate” treasures. 2% Bonus to raid loot for the alliance that holds it. Doesn’t spawn, can only be taken in conflict. Nations who do not declare war for 10 days (120 turns) will lose the treasure to whoever declares war on them immediately.

• Queen Anne’s Revenge
• Royal Fortune

For non-majors: 2 new treasures that can spawn on any nation, Provides a 1% bonus but only add bonus to alliances outside of the top 10.

• Lance of Longinus
• Lost Library of Alexandria

For Mass Member/Micros:2 new treasures that can spawn on any nation, but only add a flat bonus of 150k per turn to nations under c20.

• Excalibur
• Shroud of Turin

For Small/Elite Alliances: 2 new treasures that can spawn on any nation. Provides a 1% bonus, only usable if an alliance has less than 50 members.

• Tyrannosaurus Rex Fossil
• The Last Supper
   

Spoiler

Just for some reasoning behind this. Colours are currently dominated by the major powers, with middle powers having to more or less exist on a colour with that majors consent. Adding more colours allows middle powers or rising major powers to be able to carve out their own colour. More treasures also allows more alliances to join in on them, to futher this we added a few unique ones for alliances that do not fit the traditional mould.

Easier City Imports

Currently, city builds can only be changed individually or all at once. The whole system to determine builds is incredibly awkward and dated. The following suggestions can help improve this.

Templates

The solution is to allow players to save city builds as templates. This would ideally be done by allowing players to save an existing city build as a template, and then apply it in a drop down menu to cities.

A new tab in the sidebar would exist allowing you to view your templates.

Mass Import Tool

A mass import tool that functions similar to the mass infra/land tools, allowing you to change a dropbox next to the list cities and import across all cities.

Credit to @Sketchy for this idea

City Cost Changes

Alright, this is going to be contentious for some of you. I am going to say, an update to city costs or caps is going to happen so if your stance is 'Leave it alone', I apologise because that is not happening. Alex had a conversation with the design team about the massive creep in cities and the issues this was creating for the game, after discussion around a hard cap we more or less agreed to instead aim for a moving soft cap. I will detail some of the issues with the current cost model in a response below as to not make this intial post too overwhelming.

Firstly, the city planning projects will be retired (and refunded as a cash amount) for all nations. This allows the following changes to occur without issue.

Moving Average City Count

The game will implement a moving city cost that will adapt to the games growth over time. Simply put, as the top 20% of the games city count average goes up, the costs of cities shifts upwards, making earlier cities cheaper as the game expands.

A new city cost formula will replace the old one, that is steeper at the top end, acting as a soft cap to cities, until the average has caught up. Cities far ahead of the average will cost more, meaning it will be more expensive to push far far ahead of the top 20% average.

To see a more detailed cost analysis please see here. The current average is ~c40 right now, which has been highlighted in green detailing the new city costs. Columns to the right project future costs as the game grows. If you wish to see the changes a little more easily then click here

The formula for the changes are: =MAX(100000(CityToBuy-(Top20Average/4))^3 + 150000(CityToBuy-(Top20Average/4)) + 75000,CityToBuy^2*100000)

Spoiler

Some things to note, this intially will entrench current high end whales as having an advantage for the short term. Meaning their 'advantage' will not be wiped any time soon. I am aware that for some nations this will make growing prohibatively expensive, however more features to diver funds into are either on their way (Military research) or being looked into for the second part of this update. This was seen as a compromise between hard capping cities or leaving them alone but seeing the game run into multiple issues going forward.

Please remember that you can upvote and downvote these threads as much as you want. The design team will only focus on feedback from people who post and explain their reasoning.

Edited February 9 by Keegoz

[Keegoz]

Some discussion around issues with the current city formula:

Introduction
We are at a point in the game where the current city cost formula has proven to be ineffective at balancing the growth of the game. Even though city costs are exponential, so are the increases of revenue per each added city, and thus the added time it takes to purchase the next city remains linear forever, regardless of city size.

This means that a city 32 nation and a city 49 nation will grow at almost the exact same rate in the following year, with the gap between them only shrinking by 1 city over all of 2025. Meaning for the average player, the game currently doesn’t support their catchup and we are at risk of playing two or three separate games, where a new player won’t even be able to become a part of the mid tier anymore, as the current mid tier will grow into the c35s and 40s over the next year and a half, way past a point where the current support systems (urban planning projects and new nation bonuses) will become too outdated to aid them.

Growth keeps up with costs - which creates a problem
Firstly, when covering the median revenue for a nation in each city tier, we will notice off the bat that each city doesn’t increase our revenue linearly, but exponentially.

Now, this isn’t anything new and the result isn’t surprising at all. This is due to larger nations having projects which increase revenue, city age bonuses and having a higher concentration of land - which allows them to produce food, which is far more profitable per slot than raw or manufactured resources. However this also means that for each subsequent city bought, previous cities earn more revenue as well on average.

We have seen that on average, nations will see larger and larger increases in their revenue for each subsequent city bought as they progress through the game. When a nation in the C21-C30 tier purchases a new city, their revenue will increase by about $1,800,000, whilst nations in the C41-C50 tier will see an increase of $3,700,000 for each new city bought due to the aforementioned factors.

This difference in revenue earned for each subsequent city bought will keep growing forever, and thus create a reality where large nations will definitely not only reach city 70, and then city 80, and then city 90 etc, but they’ll do so relatively quickly, a lot quicker than people think. Fundamentally, their growth will slow down very gradually. In fact, the rate at which growth slows down in the upper tier actually goes down for each subsequent city bought.

If you take the median amount each tier earns per day, and then (for the sake of fair evaluation) assume they won’t fight next year, you can quite easily estimate the amount of growth each nation can afford next year with just their revenue. The gap between C32 and C49 will only shrink by 1 city next year, as will the gap between C50 and C62.

The result of this is that once the current support systems run out of road and the high tier moves closer to C50, the mid tier will follow suit, lagging behind at around C40. This will create a scenario where new players will create a new tiering altogether, and won’t be able to participate in mid tier fighting, or have any prospects of catching up for years and years to come. Another urban planning project would act as just a band aid fix, and we need a more thorough way to solve this issue for good.

[Vein]

17 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

Moving Average City Count

The game will implement a moving city cost that will adapt to the games growth over time. Simply put, as the top 20% of the games city count average goes up, the costs of cities shifts upwards, making earlier cities cheaper as the game expands.

A new city cost formula will replace the old one, that is steeper at the top end, acting as a soft cap to cities, until the average has caught up. Cities far ahead of the average will cost more, meaning it will be more expensive to push far far ahead of the top 20% average.

To see a more detailed cost analysis please see here. The current average is ~c40 right now, which has been highlighted in green detailing the new city costs. Columns to the right project future costs as the game grows.

  Reveal hidden contents

Some things to note, this intially will entrench current high end whales as having an advantage for the short term. Meaning their 'advantage' will not be wiped any time soon. I am aware that for some nations this will make growing prohibatively expensive, however more features to diver funds into are either on their way (Military research) or being looked into for the second part of this update. This was seen as a compromise between hard capping cities or leaving them alone but seeing the game run into multiple issues going forward.

 

I wouldn't mind a city cap, for instance the max city as of now being 65 and as the game progress we could move it up to 70 in the future depending on how many c65s we'd have in the game, however, I don't like the idea of making lower cities cheaper than what they'd usually be, same for the higher up cities being more expensive that what it should be, I understand the idea of wanting to make it more friendly to the new players joining the game, but i think thats the least of our concern atm, the biggest concern is the lack of new players itself and i don't believe that would fix that problem.

[Sketchy]

6 minutes ago, Vein said:

I understand the idea of wanting to make it more friendly to the new players joining the game, but i think thats the least of our concern atm, the biggest concern is the lack of new players itself and i don't believe that would fix that problem.

Feels like this is somewhat contradictory.

Game has massive retention issues, we bring in new players and they drop off all the time. The games become too wide, too spread out.

Making things more friendly to new players isn't the least of our concern, it's the only way you'll retain them and grow the game.

[Keegoz]

7 minutes ago, Vein said:

I wouldn't mind a city cap, for instance the max city as of now being 65 and as the game progress we could move it up to 70 in the future depending on how many c65s we'd have in the game, however, I don't like the idea of making lower cities cheaper than what they'd usually be, same for the higher up cities being more expensive that what it should be, I understand the idea of wanting to make it more friendly to the new players joining the game, but i think thats the least of our concern atm, the biggest concern is the lack of new players itself and i don't believe that would fix that problem.

The cap is basically the alternative option here, yeah. It's what Alex originally asked for.

However, it isn't really a solution long-term, and I cannot guarantee that updates keep coming out for people who hit the end-game of c65. I am worried we'll see a nose-dive in retention on the upper end if things stall, like they have in the past.

[Chima]

This is actually a W update. I can't wait for this to be implemented. Mostly cause I'm glad we get refunded for UP,AUP and MP Lowkey this is close to a billion and should push more players up 🤪. Another issue is newer players find it difficult to keep playing is cause the longer the game goes the harder it is for them to catch up. It's like a game when 70% are c25+ then a new guy comes. He would probably quit too. So doesn't matter what people think this update is the best so far 🔥

[Vein]

14 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

Feels like this is somewhat contradictory.

Game has massive retention issues, we bring in new players and they drop off all the time. The games become too wide, too spread out.

Making things more friendly to new players isn't the least of our concern, it's the only way you'll retain them and grow the game.

I don't believe a newer player joining the game seeing cities being cheaper would convince them of staying, you have the right mindset in wanting to see the game grow in numbers, most of us do, however, I believe you're taking the wrong path here. If anything, it would upset most of the current playerbase the game has left now who has put in the effort to be where they are now. There is a better way to go about it when it comes to growing the game and this is not it imo.

13 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

The cap is basically the alternative option here, yeah. It's what Alex originally asked for.

However, it isn't really a solution long-term, and I cannot guarantee that updates keep coming out for people who hit the end-game of c65. I am worried we'll see a nose-dive in retention on the upper end if things stall, like they have in the past.

I understand your worries regarding the games growth and it's not really helpful when alex himself seems to have lost the motivation for it. But this will do more bad than good imo and it will definitely not make a difference when it comes to the game growing, but instead, hurt the current playerbase more who have sticked around for years. Lets not lose them as well lol.

I don't usually comment on any of these so this is actually a first from me, but this was quite concering to me. It's not a long term solution, there are better ways to go about it. I'd agree with the city cap itself, but the moving city cost is something i'll disagree with. 

[Sketchy]

10 minutes ago, Vein said:

I don't believe a newer player joining the game seeing cities being cheaper would convince them of staying, you have the right mindset in wanting to see the game grow in numbers, most of us do, however, I believe you're taking the wrong path here. If anything, it would upset most of the current playerbase the game has left now who has put in the effort to be where they are now. There is a better way to go about it when it comes to growing the game and this is not it imo.

It's more about the experience from a new players perspective than them seeing cities being cheaper.

The way the ranges in war are now, people below c30, and especially below ~c25 are functionally irrelevant to global conflicts. Alliances funnel them into low tier raiding because the investment cost to boost someone into viable tiering is incredibly high.

This never used to be an issue, years ago the games low tier was c10s and the upper tier was mid 20s. People become part of relevant tiering quickly and without burden to alliances. This is only going to grow as a problem. By the end of 2025, the tiering will have shifted like 4-5 cities upwards, and that'll be 4-5 more cities new players need to be part of the game.

Changes like these provide alternatives to funnelling every new player into the raid meta, and give alliances incentives to invest in smaller nations.

From taking a look at the price changes, it seems like the current playerbase, especially whales, would benefit from having purchased the cities at historically lower prices. People who have put in the effort to be where they are will still be where they are, ahead, and presumably with the lower tier growth, the games econ will accelerate anyway.

[Axelrod]

once cities get more expensive than they already are for lower tiers please remove this 🤣

[Keegoz]

15 minutes ago, Axelrod said:

once cities get more expensive than they already are for lower tiers please remove this 🤣

? All cities under whatever the average is will be cheaper. Lower tiers won't be paying more.

[Pythonian XXIII]

I don't think brown, bronze, gold, and olive are easily distinguishable enough from each other

[Keegoz]

10 minutes ago, Pythonian XXIII said:

I don't think brown, bronze, gold, and olive are easily distinguishable enough from each other

If you have any other colour suggestions please let me know, but point taken.

[Player]

Quote

• Remove continent requirements on all treasures that have them.

This sounds great, at this point in the game, we really should be removing all play involving continents in my opinion. It's not a mechanic that contributes to RP or gameplay.

Quote

• Require alliance colour and nation colour to match to spawn treasures.
• Require nations to have been on a colour for 30 days to be able to spawn treasures.

 These seem incredibly mis-guided changes. There is zero value proposition for either of these. They do not encourage micro-play and they do not bring activity in anyway to the game, this just sounds more like you were annoyed by something and wanted to change it. If anything we should be encouraging / buffing treasure sniping to create more interesting conflict opportunities and drive life into the game. Giving alliances ways to indirectly attack others can create tension and grudges, these then fuel political RP, which last time I checked - is the point of the game. 

• You're removing any and all ability for multi-colour alliance play.
• You're rewarding inactivity / inaction, which is the opposite of what should be being done to bring / maintain activity in a game

 

I fully support the creation and buffing of Micro-oriented treasures, providing and underdog type advantage is beneficial in encouraging micros and creating additional gameplay. 

[Axelrod]

2 hours ago, Keegoz said:

? All cities under whatever the average is will be cheaper. Lower tiers won't be paying more.

Nevermind,, I get it now but I have one more concern.

Due to this update being on the way. Alliances will slow down growth for small nations while focussing on larger nations till it is released. If it's not released soon enough, wouldn't it do more harm than good for small nations? I think everyone would appreciate a quick release to avoid that.

[Chima]

Yes this would be a good time to release this. A lot of us want to see it implemented already 

[Mystery Incorporated]

I personally thinks the update works due to a list of following reasons :

1. The smaller tier of players now actually have a chance to grow by halting the growth of upper tiers due to this restriction
2. This would improve player retention not for new players but for the 70% major population of Politics and War to see the following as a legit chance to catch up .As Keegoz pointed out how long it actually takes for a smaller city to catch up it would be very disheartening for smaller nation players to actually try to catch up to the 20% of bigger nations realizing that at most they would only be able to catch up 1 or 2 cities a year at best. This could very well be the reason why larger nations like even c 30s go semi-inactive or do not seem to care about they game after getting to that point
3. The bigger tier nations should not be upset over this as they still retain their advantage in terms of stockpiles while the lower tier nations catchup they can stockpile resources in mass to remake new cities after the average of smaller nations gets increased.
4. This gives incentives to higher tier alliances/nations and encourages them to work with lower tier nations to grow them overall promoting growth.

That being said Here are some major flaws i find with this update:

1. Bigger tier nations can just stockpile cash and credits so that when the average is raised they can just raise it again rather quickly and thus growth gets throttled again imagine building 1 city every year just to wait for other folks to catch upto you.
2. A stupid but potential strategy for smaller alliances to now actually bully bigger alliances is to band together and just not build and throttle higher tier growth.
3. It will take an actual long time for smaller nations to catchup to shift the average its going to take a year minimum where members of high city tiers or an alliance like grumpy cant grow simply because they need to wait at least a year if not almost two to let the nations catchup this will massively anger all high tier nations who have actually spent a long time in this game

An idea i have to fix this is actually here just dont raise the price for higher tier nations and basically make it so that the lower the city the more cheaper it is and as they get close to the average it gets to a near normal price if the higher tier buy more cities and raise the average they just make it cheaper for lower tiers to grow its an idea definetly but it is way better than stopping all high tier growth

Edited February 8 by Mystery Incorporated

[Kyubnyan]

:megawoah: 4 new color blocs? This is incredible. I don’t think we’ve ever added 4 new color blocs before other than olive, lime, maroon, and teal of course.

[Hoffy]

I notice you mention the New Player Expirence, Perspective and Retention. Can I ask, have you actually spoken to new players, outside of your own alliance or coalition, to see what the vast majority of them would like?

I understand the desire to make changes, but the vast amount of new players are not on the forums and won’t see these discussions. Asking only those within a single or coalition alliance, may provide the answers you are looking for because of your position. 
 

I’ve not seen cross alliance new player consultation, or consultation with those without an alliance, so I can only assume that this hasn’t been conducted

 

Finally, what exactly are you classing as new player? 1 weeks, 1 months, 1 year?

 

I don’t know the best way for you to gather this information, but posting a forum discussion and not informing new players of said discussion but stating it’s in their best interests, seems a little sketchy, pardon the pun

[Conald Petersen]

This seems like a solid update (mostly because it helps me). I think another thing that should be considered in this update is moving the start of the city timer to c30 or somewhere closer to the mid tier. If the goal is to allow smaller nations to get to the relevant tier quicker than moving the city timer up would help. Also you might want to tweak the gold color, looks kind of similar to beige. Most importantly as a relatively new re-roll, a cap or limit on the size of alliances would do more for new player retention than anything else. The most interesting part of the game is the politics and with the consolidation of mass member alliances fewer and fewer players will actually get to play any role in the politics of the game, especially when some of the largest alliances don't participate or communicate with the rest of the game at all. More alliances = more voices and that's what creates "content" and makes the game interesting. I know this is hard/impossible to implement with how the game functions but if the dev team really wants to keep new players interested, allowing them to meaningfully impact and participate in the wider community is the best way rather than making their 14th city cheaper.

[Noscar]

As stated in the forum post, the city changes are going to be implemented no matter what, and we really only have two options. They being;

- Waiting for a bit for the others to catch up while you slowly stockpile enough cash to buy the next city when the small nations have caught up, or

- Being constrained to a certain city number for a long time until the cap is updated again.

Personally, I think the first one is better than the second. This change will actually benefit all whales, midtier and the small folks. 

The new colours look great! I think the new Team colour block should be named to "STeal" by the players lol

Love seeing the game being updated.

Love to the development team.

[Zayde Storm]

8 hours ago, Mystery Incorporated said:

An idea i have to fix this is actually here just dont raise the price for higher tier nations and basically make it so that the lower the city the more cheaper it is and as they get close to the average it gets to a near normal price if the higher tier buy more cities and raise the average they just make it cheaper for lower tiers to grow its an idea definitely but it is way better than stopping all high tier growth.

I'm c5 but even i gotta agree with this. If i were in the shoes of the top players like dreadnought for example with 62 cities, and the game actively impeded my growth even more than it already does, i'd probabaly just quit. Thats countless rescources stuck in one place out of circulation which is bad for the economy which is ultimately what this update is trying to improve.

Edited February 9 by Zayde Storm

[George Clooney]

The treasures seem a bit gimmicky, but otherwise I like the creative thought here and would like to see these implemented.

[Kastor]

I really want to stop and consider the changes with treasures spawning but the colors have to match. That removes certain aspects about gaming that I’d rather keep, personally.

 

i like the other changes, I really hope you review that. This seems like a change for change sake, people sniping treasures has been a tale as old as time and we shouldn’t stop that from happening.

[Viselli]

I am still jaded from when GPA tanked every update suggestion please implement this regardless of people complaining. 

[Dopes]

Fail to see how any of this is going to make anything better but idgaf do whatever lame changes you want. Fixing problems no one cared about and making it harder for noobs. Good plan. Very forward thinking. Whales still gonna whale you're just hurting everyone else. Then again only the players with fat wallets matter.