Rebuild Suggestion

[Hooves]

Sorry no tl;dr but there is a short summary of this below to help easily understand it.

 

With the way wars are currently fought. Most notably in the upper-mid to high tier nation conflicts. Infrastructure is incredibly easy to destroy, and rebuilding it is a really big pain. Also going into the deficit you'll be in after the war if you bothered to retaliate with your resources. Now, with alliance bank looting back in the game. Not only will your nation lose a great deal of money from attackers, your alliance will lose some as well. Thus pressuring people to get a high military count to counteract potential outcomes. Yet, even then when nations have access to missiles or nuclear weapons. Those preparations become all but void as you pray to the RNG gods that your Iron Dome will block missiles. While praying to all things Orbis that the 20% of the Vital Defense System actually bothers to work. If you bothered to get it at all, because that's only gonna be your 4th or 5th project if you want to bankrupt your nation without any good economic projects.

 

The current system promotes really low infra cities. Due to the simple fact you won't have to repay as much. Even though there's convenience in having higher infra and more improvement slots. If you simply switch a great portion of your improvements around. You'll be really close to the same fighting capabilities as a higher infra nation. Due to the restrictions in military improvements. This all leads to one thing, the person with more cities, and enough infra to sustain the military improvements wins. So low infra + mass cities is the current way to go for maximum profitability. As well as protection from losses.

 

Onto the real suggestion now with those out of the way. I've seen some suggestions here and there, which piqued my curiosity on the possibility. A way to rebuild infrastructure more easily, and getting back what you had without paying the obtrusive full cost our current system goes with. I'm merely suggesting this as a way to help out nations that go into high infra build for the convenience of more improvement slots. Regardless, this doesn't change the overall best strategy in low infra + mass cities. Merely as a better way to support high infra strategies.

 

If you're still caught up with me here. I want to add a "Rebuild Policy" in the Policies tab. What will this policy do? It'll do the following

 

Reconstruction

• 40% reduction in purchasing lost infrastructure
• Soldiers fight 50% less efficiently
• Tanks/Aircraft/Ships fight 20% less efficiently

 

In addition to the up front effects. There will be additional requirements to toggle the policy on and off. As well as conditions.

 

• Upon activating, can't be turned off for 5 days
• Must have a total infrastructure of 5,000 to activate
• If you're in beige, the time to turn this policy off is increased to 10 days
• You can't switch nation colors manually while the policy is active
• Can't be toggled on during a war
• If you get beige'd while this policy is on. The time it takes to turn this off is multiplied by the remaining number x2
• This doesn't stack with multiple beige'd defeats. Only when you first get sent into beige
• This policy is hidden unless someone spies you with Gather Intelligence

Now, I won't go into detailed explanations on my first post as to the purpose of all these conditions/such. I will explain what I mean when I say lost infrastructure.

 

Infrastructure Cap

 

No you silly people, not an overall limit to infrastructure. What I mean is that in addition to your current infrastructure in cities. There will be a right number as well like 1600/1600. This right number is your current cap, or otherwise the amount you've bought maximum for infrastructure. Meaning that if I had 1,500 infra in my capital, but wanted to increase this cap to coincide with rebuilding later. I'll pay the cost from 1,500 to 1,600 like I normally would with our current system. I would make this purchase via under the Grow City input like always. Note that in buying more infra when you're at say 1200/1600. Both numbers will increase by how much you purchase, using 100 for example would mean 1300/1700. The number of improvement slots you have is dictated by the left number. Not your cap.

 

Now, if you've not activated the reconstruction policy. There will be an additional input somewhere (haven't decided where), but let's go with under Grow City for this example titled 'Rebuild'. Putting numbers into this box will repurchase infra back to your cap at the normal cost as always. This is to ensure that reconstruction isn't a forced way to rebuild your lost infrastructure, and to retain your full might of military. Basically keeping what we have to this day. But if you've toggled the reconstruction policy, that rebuild input will have infra cost reduced by 40% (45% with monarchy, and 50% with Center for Civil Engineering both) being limited to strictly up to what your cap is. If you put in a number that makes your infra go above the cap. It'll either reduce the number to fit the cap itself. Or basically give you a flat no.

 

Now I keep talking about the infra cap. From what it sounds, it sounds exactly like land. It's practically indestructible by normal military means. People will ask, what will your nation score be dictated by then? It'll be dictated by your current infrastructure via the left number. People will also wonder how this will look visually. This will basically turn the Policies tab into something similar to the Projects tab. 5000 infra lets you activate the policy. Rebuild City will be under Grow City, or anywhere else Sheepy decides to place it. Aside from the change in infra number when you look at your front page under Cities [M]. With the 1500/1500 infra, nothing else really changes on the front screen.

 

One way to implement this? Simply duplicate the current number all nations have for infrastructure. And make that their current cap.

 

Short Summary

 

• Policies -> Rebuild Policy = 40% reduced infra rebuying but with poor military performance
• Lots of conditions that should be displayed and fully viewable to people before they activate it
• Infra requirement for this policy to prevent newbies from accidentally activating it
• Time to swap changes based on nation color
• Works alongside Monarchy and CCE project reduction
• Having to buy infra the usual way to increase overall cap
• Math based on simulators posted by Sheepy in post below
• Can heavily cost you a war if you carelessly use it
• Isn't meant to change the system in general. Is only meant to be a supplement to the current system.

I'm open for criticism, and will be fine if this is too much for Sheepy to place. As this is merely a suggestion.

 

I would post the math statistics along with this. But if I make a new post it simply adds to my own. While the spoiler tag makes putting this all into one post really intimidating.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Hooves

[LordRahl2]

This may have been a good alpha suggestion and it has some excellent points.  But please, please leave the game mechanics alone and allow us to play the game as it is designed.

[Alex]

I like the idea, to be honest. I think making rebuilding a little easier would promote more war, and thus more activity.

[Saruman]

I like the idea. Orbis needs moar war. Plus I just got wrecked.

[Bilal the Great]

This is a great idea. Very helpful and as Sheepy said, might promote more war. Infra really is darn expensive at higher levels.

[Alex]

I favor something simpler, than what Hooves proposed, though. Maybe everyone just gets a 10% discount when rebuying infrastructure that they've previously had?

[Hooves]

I favor something simpler, than what Hooves proposed, though. Maybe everyone just gets a 10% discount when rebuying infrastructure that they've previously had?

10% isn't really a noticeable amount, but it's still better then nothing so I suppose I'm fine with it.

Regarding simplicity, I originally wanted it to be simple. I just don't know how the game will remember lost infrastructure and all. So I tried to build around the whole system suggested above.

[Alex]

10% isn't really a noticeable amount, but it's still better then nothing so I suppose I'm fine with it.

Regarding simplicity, I originally wanted it to be simple. I just don't know how the game will remember lost infrastructure and all. So I tried to build around the whole system suggested above.

I actually had this idea once, and so it already does. It already has a record in each city of what the highest amount of infrastructure was. It's updated everytime you buy infrastructure (assuming you buy more than your max amount).

 

And 10% isn't a huge discount, but it's also not hugely game changing. And at high infra levels, a 10% discount is a considerable amount.

[Hooves]

I actually had this idea once, and so it already does. It already has a record in each city of what the highest amount of infrastructure was. It's updated everytime you buy infrastructure (assuming you buy more than your max amount).

 

And 10% isn't a huge discount, but it's also not hugely game changing. And at high infra levels, a 10% discount is a considerable amount.

Let's see... For high infra builds...

I had 2000 infra and I lost 600 for simple example from missiles

That's $11,437,388 to fully rebuild at our current rate

That'll be $10,293,649 to rebuild with 10%

So the attacker got a profit damage of around 6-7m if those missiles weren't blocked

 

If I had 2500 infra and lost 1,600 from a nuke

That's $32,377,563 to fully rebuild at our current rate

That'll be $29,139,806 to rebuild with 10%

So the attack got a profit damage of around approximately 22-24m

 

I could calculate basic military actions. But not at this moment. As I said it's still better then nothing so I'm good with 10%. Besides, we don't know if the defender will just outspy the missiles/nukes.. Yet that depends if they can get good RNG with the spies.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Hooves

[Vincent]

I am not so sure just by reducing the infra cost , it might promote war but on the other hand, I think if we were to amend slightly the game play, increase the turn from 2 hour to one hour which means 24 turns in a day, that might promote more activity.

[Hooves]

I am not so sure just by reducing the infra cost , it might promote war but on the other hand, I think if we were to amend slightly the game play, increase the turn from 2 hour to one hour which means 24 turns in a day, that might promote more activity.

That would be a beautiful addition to promote warfare. I'd certainly enjoy that. Although I doubt it'll happen unless its in a speed round.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Hooves

[Roger Campbell]

I think directly messing with the effectiveness of troops is a dangerous path. Also, it would promote short, heavily damaging wars over longer grinds followed by spurts of rebuilding.

 

The point you mentioned about having nations bounce back mid-war and buying all new military improvements also isn't necessarily a bad thing. In real life, large scale conventional wars are won by being able to out-produce the enemy. And this would add a new realm of strategy to wars, on whether damaged nations want to put their wartime resources towards short term or long term investments.

 

I'd support a regular old discount like Sheepy mentioned, perhaps with some sort of diminishing return as you get closer to your original levels. So the first hundred or so of "easy" repairs is really cheap and can be recovered during the war if it drags on, followed by a period of reduced, but still reasonably expensive rebuilding. But only if that can be done in a simple manner that doesn't completely void everybody's plans, otherwise, what Sheepy said.

[WISD0MTREE]

I am not so sure just by reducing the infra cost , it might promote war but on the other hand, I think if we were to amend slightly the game play, increase the turn from 2 hour to one hour which means 24 turns in a day, that might promote more activity.

From my experience in another game, this is untrue. The game has 12 hour turn (2 a day) and it has considerably more war than PaW.

 

I think this has more to do with the community. The community on the other site tends to be more... Toxic? I would post an example, but I would have to censor it more than FOI requests about weather balloons in New Mexico. 

[PigInZen]

From my experience in another game, this is untrue. The game has 12 hour turn (2 a day) and it has considerably more war than PaW.

 

I think this has more to do with the community. The community on the other site tends to be more... Toxic? I would post an example, but I would have to censor it more than FOI requests about weather balloons in New Mexico. 

 

I am curious what that other community might be.  Could you shoot me a PM?

[Kemal Ergenekon]

Implementing this would mean people would aim for even higher infra numbers than what they have currently.

 

As a result, the score dispersion between players will grow wider. The more dispersed the player base is, the lower the number of players to have an interaction with.

 

I see no reason to implement this. There is already a project that reduces infra costs. If you rebuild a lot, just buy that project.