Thoughts on the current state of the war system

[George W. Bush]

Now, before I make this suggestion, I want to make this outright: I couldn't give a fly !@#$ if I was ZIed. But regardless, let's get on with it.

 

Right now, as it stands, the smart way to fight a war is to launch missiles five days straight. Now,there may be some ground battles at the start or end of a war, maybe some dogfights or naval battles too, but the emphasis in war right now is missiles. A few months ago, there was a massive nerf on missiles, all but one part have stayed, and yet it has only slightly swayed the way wars were fought. The one that was taken out was the elimination of all missile launches from your opponent if you had one form of superiority. Although I disagreed, I felt that the idea wasn't entirely flawed.

 

Basically, I believe that if you can get all three, it should prevent missile launches from opponents. People may argue that this gives more power to those who strike first. But, if you do the math, it would take 5 turn changes, which is 10 hours, to get all three, assuming that you didn't get unlucky and miss an immense triumph. Now, typically, if there is an alliance war coming up, people have multiple days in advance to prepare. So, if you aren't prepared enough to prevent all three superiorities, you should be destined to lose. In the current state of the game, if you did get all three, you could still take at least three missiles. That shouldn't happen. If you are winning, your opponent should be playing defense, not doing infrastructure damage to you. The winners of a war in the current state could take so much infrastructure damage that it could be debated whether they won or not.

 

To add on, and this is just my personal thought that is basically unrelated to the previous suggestion, I think that instead of one ground superiority taking 1/3 of your air force away, it should be each consecutive immense triumph takes away 1/6.

[Geronimo]

Basically, I believe that if you can get all three, it should prevent missile launches from opponents. 

 

I completely agree with this. There will be more "defense" to be played on this game. Because with the current system, the only best way to defense your nation is by attacking your opponent with missiles.

[Ayayay]

Missile turtleing has actually been nerfed in such a way that attacking with a large amount of planes or ships will take out more infra than a missile.

[Vincent]

Soon missiles would be replaced with Nuke.

[Apeman]

Soon missiles would be replaced with Nuke.

That time is now!!!!!!!!!!

[Prefontaine]

Soon missiles would be replaced with Nuke.

That time is now!!!!!!!!!!

 

The Anti-nuke project will probably be buffed like the anti-missile one.

 

To Vlad, I really think the solution is removing missiles from the map system all together and making them more specialized would really add to the war system. This way you spend your maps on ground air or sea attacks which increases to coordination and depth to the war system, when I was fighting Arrgh and Pub/Adama recently I launched maybe 3-4 missiles across all my wars and had a much more interesting time fighting because of it. Currently high end levels of air/sea can out-pace missile damage even against someone without a dome, but it's more costly, nukes it breaks about even above 2000 infra, and nukes may gain a slight edge on efficiency above 2400 infra. 

 

If you make missiles able to target infra/soldiers+tanks/ships/air/land/improvements things like that and make them not cost maps, and do reduced damage to infra (so a missile blows up like 20-50 infra) and make it so you can launch a certain number a day, or certain number per target, then it makes things much more interesting. It would also make Dome less of a luck based thing as Dome could simply reduce the number of missiles you can be hit with per day and give a flat small reduction (10-20%) in the damage taken. Missiles would also be cheaper as you'd have a larger stockpile because you could launch them independently of war. They'd be like spy attacks. For those who have coordinated mass spying efforts can tell you how interesting and tactical you can be with doing this, it would make war that much more interesting to coordinate missile strikes as well.

 

The war system could be much better. There's lots of things that could be improved upon.

[George W. Bush]

The Anti-nuke project will probably be buffed like the anti-missile one.

 

To Vlad, I really think the solution is removing missiles from the map system all together and making them more specialized would really add to the war system. This way you spend your maps on ground air or sea attacks which increases to coordination and depth to the war system, when I was fighting Arrgh and Pub/Adama recently I launched maybe 3-4 missiles across all my wars and had a much more interesting time fighting because of it. Currently high end levels of air/sea can out-pace missile damage even against someone without a dome, but it's more costly, nukes it breaks about even above 2000 infra, and nukes may gain a slight edge on efficiency above 2400 infra. 

 

If you make missiles able to target infra/soldiers+tanks/ships/air/land/improvements things like that and make them not cost maps, and do reduced damage to infra (so a missile blows up like 20-50 infra) and make it so you can launch a certain number a day, or certain number per target, then it makes things much more interesting. It would also make Dome less of a luck based thing as Dome could simply reduce the number of missiles you can be hit with per day and give a flat small reduction (10-20%) in the damage taken. Missiles would also be cheaper as you'd have a larger stockpile because you could launch them independently of war. They'd be like spy attacks. For those who have coordinated mass spying efforts can tell you how interesting and tactical you can be with doing this, it would make war that much more interesting to coordinate missile strikes as well.

 

The war system could be much better. There's lots of things that could be improved upon.

I like most of this idea as well, though I don't necessarily think you should be able to use missiles like you do spies. If there was a set number of missiles you could launch a day independent of MAPs and they did less damage but could target troops, I think that could be the route. But making them exactly like spies except you have to make a project to use them and they cost more resources doesn't sound like we'd be going in the right direction with them.

[Odin]

[...]

Now,there may be some ground battles at the start or end of a war, maybe some dogfights or naval battles too, but the emphasis in war right now is missiles. A few months ago, there was a massive nerf on missiles, all but one part have stayed, and yet it has only slightly swayed the way wars were fought. The one that was taken out was the elimination of all missile launches from your opponent if you had one form of superiority. Although I disagreed, I felt that the idea wasn't entirely flawed.

 

Basically, I believe that if you can get all three, it should prevent missile launches from opponents. [...]

 

We need that fast, missile/nuke prevention on total control, so bump.

[Phiney]

If you're looking for something for this war, Sheepy isn't gunna do any changes whilst a war is going on.

 

I think missiles should be left as a thing you use as a backup when you're being beaten down but nukes shouldn't be launchable if your opponent has all 3 superiorities as they're just becoming the only attack worth doing if you have nukes which is why missiles were nerfed

[MRBOOTY]

2/2 I completely agree. To be fair, I agree with Phiney too.

[Vincent]

I think maybe we need to amend the nuke effect,

 

1) it can be launch under any circumstances as long as you have the 12 MAP

2) instead of destroying that much infra maybe it destroys only 3 times what the missiles does but is destroys completely  100% the land of the city and the land can be repurchased for at least 2 weeks.

3) Removal of auto beige protection for a nation hit by nuke

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

what you guys underestimate is the cost of buying nukes.  While I agree that there is no point of launching anything but nukes if you have them. (that being said, it should be for what they cost to buy, project and the nukes themselves)  To constantly buy more nukes everyday, and hold a ton of them is extremely expensive and difficult to do.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Sweeeeet Ronny D

[Azaghul]

The 1 missile per day thing already limits how much an outnumbered nation can do.

[Buck Turgidson]

I think you should be able to fire even if you lost 3 superiorities, but their power should be nerfed and precision enhanced.

 

I would like to be able to target military, factories, resource production, or power as well. If an opponent's infra is already down, you should be able to reduce his capacity to fight back.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Buck Turgidson

[Ayayay]

If you're looking for something for this war, Sheepy isn't gunna do any changes whilst a war is going on.

 

I think missiles should be left as a thing you use as a backup when you're being beaten down but nukes shouldn't be launchable if your opponent has all 3 superiorities as they're just becoming the only attack worth doing if you have nukes which is why missiles were nerfed

Nukes should only be used as a last resort, like missiles. Pre actually did some calculations on IRC and 3 airstrikes can do more infracost damage than one nuke and doesn't send you opponent into beige. The biggest problem is the randomness in damage from attacks. If that's tightened then I didn't see a need to ever use nukes against someone with less than 2000 infra in a city.

[seabasstion]

The whole reason nukes/missiles are the only defensive option is because the war mechanic is broken. When 3 to 4 ground attacks can take out an army that takes a week to build it doesn't make any logical sense to ever rebuild them when you get blitzed as they will just be erased again in the next turn.

 

Until serious changes are made to the war system the tactic of missile/nuke turtling will remain the only viable option when faced with multiple opponents.

 

The first change i would address is the purchase limit. When you aren't at war sure, keep the limits in place but if you have one defensive war your purchasing limit could be doubled. If you have 2 defensive wars you could double it again. If you have 3 defensive wars you could double it again for 8x the purchase power. In its current state it doesn't matter if i have 20000 steel because I'll never be able to buy enough to ever make a difference. This could be viewed as conscription or patriotism or whatever and would loosely follow the real world. There are often many citizens that disagree with a govt that decides to go to war and may protest/not decide to help with the war effort. If that same nation were to be attacked a unifying rally cry could be observed.

 

The second change, if you don't want to observe/implement the first is to reduce the amount of units killed per attack. The ratios used in lower numbers is fine but when you scale up start killing multiple days worth of purchasing per attack. This is an unsustainable formula for conventional warfare and leads to missile turtling. Put a negative log scale in to fix this as an option

 

The third change, if neither of these two are observed, is to add a bit of realism to the game. Do units teleport to enemy gates and teleport back? If it takes 4 map for planes to attack that could be viewed as them taking 4map worth of time to get somewhere back. Since the trip back is half the time that could translate to 2 turns where that city is left without defending planes should they send all their units. This would mean that a balance would have to be thought about and more strategic of if i should send everybody, send half etc, since you are now more vulnerable to counter attacks. In its current state, a losing nation will always defend against a bigger army and attack against a bigger army. Since there aren't really any underdog odds this translates to wasted map and results in missile turtling because Charlie

Is everywhere.

 

The fourth change, if neither of the the 3 are observed, is to have home field advantage. If a nation comes to your house you should have a bit of a strategic advantage since you know the land. Think Vietnam or Russia. In its current state coupled with the issues above, it seems like it doesn't matter if you have 10% less soldiers that are supremely positioned, you will lose and you will lose big. It should take considerable effort to overtake a structure, think Normandy. Since it is so easy for the attacking nation with even marginally Better numbers to dominate these conventional methods all it leaves is missile turtling as all other methods without outside help are futile.

 

I'm fine with infra damages. The issues i point out i believe are illogical in their nature and directly manifest the issues i see presented in this thread

Edited May 25, 2015 by seabasstion

[Vincent]

I agree with the fact, defensive side need to have advantage / slight odd over the attacker.