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

[Schirminator]

53 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

Probably a poor time to try to use my alliance affiliation as an attack when we just decided to suicide into TKR for the next few months.

We haven't even spent 6 months at peace in our entire existence.

"Next few months" >_>

 

I would agree that being on a color for 30 days seems rather punitive. Alliances on the losing side of a war will already have lost all their treasures but this would also ensure that they can't spawn any new treasures at least 30 days into their rebuild. Giving the timing of colors that may spawn after that point, you're looking to naturally spawn a treasure maybe 30-90 days postwar. Anything that spawns in the first 30 days is almost guaranteed to go to the winning side or a neutral alliance. I've found attempting to treasure snipe to be an engaging part of an otherwise boring peacetime but if people feel that it's a problem, ensuring the alliance color and nation color is the same should be sufficient.

[Gul le Necro]

Compare how many times you are at war vs how many times you are at peace.

When I say you, I englobe the big alliance full of farmer, and yes Singularity is part of it. There is nothing against your alliance specifically (Singularity was my first alliance for 1 week).

Please do better and fix it :

- No 30 days require for the same color (I already explain why), this is a bad design that is not existing yet, dont add it lol. To be honest you should more of the opposite : cant have the treasure spawn if you were not at war during these last 30 days. This create activity instead of the opposite.

- City should cost less for less than c24 instead of your new proposition. You want to improve noob player retention but your proposition do the opposite. the task should be to focus also to make c1 - c25 cheaper than what it is now if you want to improve it.

This is pretty simple to be honest.

Edited February 13 by Gul le Necro

[Stanko1987]

I really would love to see this get pushed quickly as possible for this update to happen since now many people are holding off from building anymore projects since UP,AUP and MP are becoming redundant now and are getting retired. Will be great to open up three additional project slots and use them to build other projects that are available. I believe many players and even alliances are probably waiting on this also. None the less, i am pretty excited and am really looking forward to this update.

[Keegoz]

1 hour ago, Schirminator said:

"Next few months" >_>

 

I would agree that being on a color for 30 days seems rather punitive. Alliances on the losing side of a war will already have lost all their treasures but this would also ensure that they can't spawn any new treasures at least 30 days into their rebuild. Giving the timing of colors that may spawn after that point, you're looking to naturally spawn a treasure maybe 30-90 days postwar. Anything that spawns in the first 30 days is almost guaranteed to go to the winning side or a neutral alliance. I've found attempting to treasure snipe to be an engaging part of an otherwise boring peacetime but if people feel that it's a problem, ensuring the alliance color and nation color is the same should be sufficient.

I may shorten it to something like 5-10 days, at least make it that more effort needs to be put in.

 

1 hour ago, Gul le Necro said:

Compare how many times you are at war vs how many times you are at peace.

When I say you, I englobe the big alliance full of farmer, and yes Singularity is part of it. There is nothing against your alliance specifically (Singularity was my first alliance for 1 week).

Please do better and fix it :

- No 30 days require for the same color (I already explain why), this is a bad design that is not existing yet, dont add it lol. To be honest you should more of the opposite : cant have the treasure spawn if you were not at war during these last 30 days. This create activity instead of the opposite.

- City should cost less for less than c24 instead of your new proposition. You want to improve noob player retention but your proposition do the opposite. the task should be to focus also to make c1 - c25 cheaper than what it is now if you want to improve it.

This is pretty simple to be honest.

First part: Only like last month did we finally go over having more days at peace than at war. In a few weeks that will tip back to more days at war than peace. Sorry you're not winning this one.

As for the actual points:

- Read above

- You're ignoring that new players no longer need to buy over $1 billion in projects to get the cheaper city prices. Not to mention, as the average moves up these cities get even cheaper.

1 hour ago, Stanko1987 said:

I really would love to see this get pushed quickly as possible for this update to happen since now many people are holding off from building anymore projects since UP,AUP and MP are becoming redundant now and are getting retired. Will be great to open up three additional project slots and use them to build other projects that are available. I believe many players and even alliances are probably waiting on this also. None the less, i am pretty excited and am really looking forward to this update.

It's likely that the city costs would be pushed as its own mini-update. It is apparently easier to code than adding more colours or treasures (to my surprise). Can't give a solid ETA but there is every chance it would come out before the new military update which is coded in-game for the test server now. Just needs some UI tweaks. 

[NotSad]

So, this update this basically a death sentence for micro and nano alliances, it's an update made for macro aa in the name of making it newer player friendly. Before anyone start trolling hear my reason out.

1. you could have just made city expensive above c40 or something like that shouldn't have made city cheaper. why because now macro aa who have big banks will same ton of money and push their noobs easier to higher city. which was possible earlier but now it's far cheaper. micro and nano aa can basically eat dirt at this point, they can't compete with it.

2. earlier a micro aa with 10 c30 would have some say in the game but with this update they get some money back and macro aa could push member easily to higher city. making these macro aa with like 8 to 10 c30 or above members that gave them some say basically useless. in short with this update u decrease micro aa USP and their value.

3. these color blocs, can't wait for more aa to go and start policing them. it would be far better if this whole color bloc is gone as a whole. but then again, it's a thing that make macro aa more money and most people around Alex is aa reps, so it won't go anytime.

--------------------

And this update isn't noob friendly. let me ask anyone here, what r the 2 most important thing that makes any player enjoy the game:

it's the politics between aa that only leader and high gov plays or is the war aspect of the game. with this update u r basically saying if any micro aa which already is f up want to even have a little bit of say, u telling them to merger and this merging will than decrease the number of players playing the politics even more. which is already being played by very less players of the community.

now I won't take names of other games but there is a game just like us where 2 to 3 top aa decided who were too big to just have a 3 to 4 years of nap. that's the route this game is going, and this update is helping it.

-----------------

but here is my recommendation on the stuff that should have been in focus rather than this macro aa update in the name of new players.

1. as much as we make fun of the bulletin and nano guys, they r the ones that keep the game active when there is not much war. take NSC, TAO and Antartica Alliance, these aa are here with around 200 members because of their roleplay and bulletin.

so even though I make fun of bulletin you can add something that could help these roleplaying guys. I don't use bulletin but if you talked with some more active members in that place, I am sure u will get some good recommendation. cause I see a lot of noobs playing that part of the game. and u all can't ignores them. IF you all are thinking of making it more noob friendly and thinking of retaining players.

2. you can add some buffs to nano aa or micro aa that can help decrease the levels between a macro and a micro or a nano aa. also, could add some penalty for too big aa.

3. nano aa should be promoted as politics is one aspect of the game which I find the most interesting in this game, rather than people bulling guys into basically disband or saying join a big aa or micro aa. I know few noobs who tried making an aa was basically laughed at and they get regular disband messages when they talked which finally let them leave this game. if you want it more noob friendly u got to promote these nano aa. even if we find them dumb. have some in game guides on how to do offshore and other things. cause more the aa, more the players participating in politics, more activity better for the game. 

4. Add some new units for war, by the ship update it a good one. I liked it.

5. could have added like policy where if 2 aa are at war they can't trade among themself and there be an embargo placed via the game. imagine attacking sing and then buying their food. lol

6. bring in some more projects that could only be used by new players

---------

overall could have just made it so that the city above the average of top guys is way expensive rather than push this update where u just pushing for big aa to get even bigger and then in the end when their be 3 to 4 top aa too big, as big as a f bloc decide to put a 3 to 4 year nap just like many other games like PnW, we all can blame this update as a whole for starting this whole stuff.

-----

now i don't expect much from for micro aa anyway as most team are made of these big aa reps.

[Keegoz]

On 2/16/2025 at 2:06 AM, NotSad said:

So, this update this basically a death sentence for micro and nano alliances, it's an update made for macro aa in the name of making it newer player friendly. Before anyone start trolling hear my reason out.

1. you could have just made city expensive above c40 or something like that shouldn't have made city cheaper. why because now macro aa who have big banks will same ton of money and push their noobs easier to higher city. which was possible earlier but now it's far cheaper. micro and nano aa can basically eat dirt at this point, they can't compete with it.

2. earlier a micro aa with 10 c30 would have some say in the game but with this update they get some money back and macro aa could push member easily to higher city. making these macro aa with like 8 to 10 c30 or above members that gave them some say basically useless. in short with this update u decrease micro aa USP and their value.

3. these color blocs, can't wait for more aa to go and start policing them. it would be far better if this whole color bloc is gone as a whole. but then again, it's a thing that make macro aa more money and most people around Alex is aa reps, so it won't go anytime.

--------------------

And this update isn't noob friendly. let me ask anyone here, what r the 2 most important thing that makes any player enjoy the game:

it's the politics between aa that only leader and high gov plays or is the war aspect of the game. with this update u r basically saying if any micro aa which already is f up want to even have a little bit of say, u telling them to merger and this merging will than decrease the number of players playing the politics even more. which is already being played by very less players of the community.

now I won't take names of other games but there is a game just like us where 2 to 3 top aa decided who were too big to just have a 3 to 4 years of nap. that's the route this game is going, and this update is helping it.

-----------------

but here is my recommendation on the stuff that should have been in focus rather than this macro aa update in the name of new players.

1. as much as we make fun of the bulletin and nano guys, they r the ones that keep the game active when there is not much war. take NSC, TAO and Antartica Alliance, these aa are here with around 200 members because of their roleplay and bulletin.

so even though I make fun of bulletin you can add something that could help these roleplaying guys. I don't use bulletin but if you talked with some more active members in that place, I am sure u will get some good recommendation. cause I see a lot of noobs playing that part of the game. and u all can't ignores them. IF you all are thinking of making it more noob friendly and thinking of retaining players.

2. you can add some buffs to nano aa or micro aa that can help decrease the levels between a macro and a micro or a nano aa. also, could add some penalty for too big aa.

3. nano aa should be promoted as politics is one aspect of the game which I find the most interesting in this game, rather than people bulling guys into basically disband or saying join a big aa or micro aa. I know few noobs who tried making an aa was basically laughed at and they get regular disband messages when they talked which finally let them leave this game. if you want it more noob friendly u got to promote these nano aa. even if we find them dumb. have some in game guides on how to do offshore and other things. cause more the aa, more the players participating in politics, more activity better for the game. 

4. Add some new units for war, by the ship update it a good one. I liked it.

5. could have added like policy where if 2 aa are at war they can't trade among themself and there be an embargo placed via the game. imagine attacking sing and then buying their food. lol

6. bring in some more projects that could only be used by new players

---------

overall could have just made it so that the city above the average of top guys is way expensive rather than push this update where u just pushing for big aa to get even bigger and then in the end when their be 3 to 4 top aa too big, as big as a f bloc decide to put a 3 to 4 year nap just like many other games like PnW, we all can blame this update as a whole for starting this whole stuff.

-----

now i don't expect much from for micro aa anyway as most team are made of these big aa reps.

If people are here for role-play, I'm not sure they are as deeply concerned about the mechanics of the game.

Smaller alliances in theory should be able to be more relevant as they can grow into what basically will be the middle to upper tiers at cheaper prices. The macro alliances will either need to pay a premium to grow beyond the average or sit around it. Meaning you should be able to tier towards them.

[Corvidae]

On 2/8/2025 at 6:38 AM, Keegoz said:

The military update is well underway, with ship changes already live on the test server

Can you, for future threads, pin and link these "Official" threads please?

On 2/8/2025 at 6:38 AM, Keegoz said:

Treasures & Colours

Love all these proposals but probably will need to examine balancing closely on certain treasure bonuses mentioned.

On 2/8/2025 at 6:38 AM, Keegoz said:

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

Love this idea but cap the number of templates each player can have before someone creates 999999999999999 and crashes the game.

On 2/8/2025 at 6:38 AM, Keegoz said:

City Cost Changes

This is pretty bad and honestly screams of the old Rose and NPO tactics of trying to push or block game mechanic changes that would specifically benefit themselves.

This game is not flooding with new players, and you need to consider your current playerbase instead of a mythical flood of new players. In this case I think you can appease both sets by simply reducing the cost of lower city counts and removing city timers up to the average, while leaving the cost of higher cities alone. Making it harder or more expensive to gain cities won't solve the core issue: The game isn't designed around such high city counts and it's disruptive to the overall economy and balance to have people growing that high. Address the mechanics that are poorly designed to accomodate the obvious end result of a decade-long nationsim rather than slapping a questionably-political bandaid fix onto the issue.

 

On 2/8/2025 at 6:43 AM, Keegoz said:

produce food, which is far more profitable per slot than raw or manufactured resources.

Alex intended economic specialization years ago, why hasn't this been followed up on?

 

On 2/8/2025 at 6:43 AM, Keegoz said:

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

Completely agree but I disagree that your solution will do anything other than give some temporary political advantage to the alliances currently lagging in the whale race.

 

On 2/8/2025 at 7:02 AM, Sketchy said:

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.

The cost of c43 isn't really what a new player is concerned about. We've hashed this conversation a million times on discord: New players don't quit because they feel too far behind, they quit because the game itself is dated and feature-poor. Something that the other changes (more treasures, colors, easier build templates) do actually address. The only people who stay are those who stumble into an alliance that they happen to click with. It's been years since the alliance recruitment page went up for example. Why isn't it pushed into people's faces that this is a social game? It's more of an inconvenience to new players because they're constantly spammed recruitment messages.

The game itself should be plopping new players right onto alliance recruitment pages, with an explanation that PnW isn't meant to be played alone and that sandbox content is created by the community: PICK AN AA AND JOIN IT.

 

 

 

Overall a much more solid post from the design team than usual but I downvoted it anyway bc Keegoz said it didn't matter.

[jug]

Okay, so one mechanic that I haven't seen anyone mention yet is city jumping. Once we've saved/built up enough to buy the projects (at least c20 and below), one of the things they enable us to do is cheaply jump around to different city counts under c20. For those of us who are raiders at our tier, that helps keep the game fresh. Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with the concept, as long as its purpose is not to abuse new players.

Separately, a couple people earlier in the thread (ToxicPepper and Corvidae) noted their lack of confidence in the idea that the apparent impossibility of reaching the high tiers is what's causing new players to quit. I'm going to agree with that, with the caveat that that may be influenced by the fact that I'm a member of an alliance whose "top tier" is around c25. I think it's plausible that players new to the old, lumbering alliances do feel what you (Keegoz) are describing. However, I would argue that, actually, it's perfectly reasonable for the high tiers to exist on a different playing field from us. As my alliance mate (Conald) pointed out earlier, the better solution is to enforce the creation of our own little playing field down here, by placing limits on the size of alliances (either by score or by city count). Alongside of that, experiment with ways to encourage new players to start their own alliances, rather than pushing them into old, boring alliances where they're effectively ignored by the rest of the members for their lack of importance.

Also, yes, Corvidae is totally right—as much as I enjoy it, the game feels extremely dated, and experimentation with new features and mechanics would go a lot further than this attempted balancing, as well-intentioned as it is. If nothing else, don't punish the people who are, in effect, creating their own new mechanics via things like city jumping.

[Prophet of Profit]

On 2/9/2025 at 12:03 AM, Stanko1987 said:

Add another form of small-scale gambling like Keno, introduce roulette, pokie slots, blackjack etc...

TRUE

[Aaron JT]

I think that this is very well thought out. I like the idea of smaller nations catching up to their bigger counterparts. As for the new color bloc changes, I also think it would be a good idea, and by removing the limited to continent treasures it will give every nation a chance to own one in the future.

[Stanko1987]

I was hearing rumors and I am hoping that they are true that the refunds to UP,AUP and MP will not directly be refunded to us in cash but in escrow. To elaborate more, it means that the money that should be refunded to everyone who purchased these three projects will instead be discounted onto their next city building instead. Just wanted to ask if that was true? If it is, it is a great move because having that extra 3.8 trillion or whatever the total amount being added into circulation would literally make inflations skyrocket really high so if anything, i prefer that the refund goes into escrow instead for future city building. 

[LoneTechWiz]

Since the refund will be a credit towards cities will there be a time limit on it or can we wait as long as we want to use it?

[Robot Santa]

Went ahead and pinned this along with the ships proposal thread, and put them both one layer up into Game Discussion so they'd be easier to find.

 

Cheers

[Azaghul]

1) Treasure sniping is a fun part of the game and I liked the continent connected ones adding a dynamic nature to it, I don't understand the reasoning behind removing these elements. I see the color swapping to try to capture a treasure as a feature, not a bug. It's been a while but I used to lead efforts to capture treasures by switching colors, it was an interesting tradeoff of every nation who switched loosing color income for a few days for a chance of getting a treasure. There was an element of cost/benefit analysis of how many treasure we had vs how many nations need to switch vs how many nations were already eligible. And it gave people something to do during peace time.

Additional treasures with additional criteria is great, but I'd keep the continent specific ones. The 30 day requirement also works against people just out of a loosing war which I don't like.

2) I agree with the critique that the main thing pushing away new players isn't the difficulty of catching up with the higher tier but with the lack of things to do on a regular basis once you are past the major raiding stage. I've always thought that the city timer cap should be proportionate (say, 6 turns limit per city level) rather than all or nothing because buying a bunch of cities at once creates less engagement than buying them over a span of days or weeks. Allowing people to get past the new tier stage extremely fast could even be counterproductive because it could diminish the sense of accomplishment of growth.

3) One thing that CN did well with new player engagement was create a resource, tech, that only new players could efficiently produce, and older players relied on trading with newer players to obtain it. It also created an incentive to recruit new nations into your alliance, or if you're an elite alliance, sponsor a smaller alliance. The dynamics of trading in CN are different because they have trade slots as a cap, but I think it's worth thinking about. 

4) The big gap between new and old players is always going to be tough dynamic for old games such as this, where many nations are building off years of nation growth. Structurally I think there would have to be some fundamental change to address this. One fundamental factor is that you only have one nation that all your growth is piled into. What if we did something that allowed people to create a 2nd nation that they could channel new cities into? This would allow people to "grow" without just getting larger and larger individual nations that are isolated from the younger player base. It would give older players something to do. It would create an avenue for interaction between newer and older nations. And it could add a lot of interesting strategy in terms of how you balance growth between your primary nation and 2nd nation. The cost for cities in the 2nd nation could either be equal to the cost for the next city in your "main" nation or could be significantly more expensive (say 5x cost per city). I recognize this is a radical and probably hard to code idea, but I think something of this magnitude is really needed.