25 ops to wipe out 7m troops. Happened to a LAFr just now because a country dropped land for a bigger spal- the LAFr had had a better SPAL previously, and far more spies in total

I lost a similar amount a few days ago when I was CDd after both my intel allies dying in a row, again I had over 1m spies and a 60 raw spal with 140% spy tech. If you can kill 3 days of total income for a country and make them that susceptible for a kill in 25 turns, it is over powered

60 SPAL is simply too low for war.

I preached about higher SPAL on both EE & on LaF forums.
I think there was like one person listening., and he's still alive in t10.

^no, he had a similar spal to me. Storm was the only top guy with higher, he had 2m spies but was killed from 100 lemmings

60 raw celphi, with 140% tech and 2 allies that's well over 100

and that doesn't change the fact that by crippling a country with AB or a failed BR killrun, the country can drop land and actually do more damage in the short term until they run out of cash with CD

CDs shouldn't be able to destroy 240 turns worth of income in 25 turns

You're saying CD is OP because it made you lose a significant amount of troops which cost a lot of money.

I'm saying, for the players who sacraficed extra income (production) for a higher SPAL should be rewarded in some sense.
You can attack a player with either a military or spies. Of course the country with a higher production will always have the larger military. Thus, it would defeat the purpose of ever investing in any spies.

If you lessen the dmg by spies, then there will be 0 incentive to have any spies. There shouldn't be the perfect defense that any country can hide behind. There should always be some sort of vunerability. If you want the large army, then you lose against spy ops (which are limited by the way). If you want the larger SPAL you lose on the production and military.

If you invest more into SPAL, you wouldn't lose so much troops.

I didn't say it shouldn't be powerful I said it's over powered

Also, I recall there being a change way back where total spies was more important than spal. A crippled country shouldn't be able to drop land and inflict damage because of exaggerated spal. It defeats the purpose of crippling.

Total spies is weighed more., but it's not grossly more. It's still based on SPAL. When you have 24k land and 2mil spies, vs 10k land and 1.4 spies, the fact that the country with 24k land has more spies doesn't weigh enough to make a difference.

24kland 2mil spies (83 SPAL) vs 10kland 1.4 spies (140 SPAL). The purpose of the adjustment was to prevent suiciders from dropping massive amounts of land to have insane amounts of SPAL.

The actually #s (formula) is not provided to us, I think, to prevent exploitation. But I've done lots of tests on the test server. The amount of weight given to the country with more spies, isn't that much. It's my guess, that it has more so to do with networths of both countries.

As for the str of a SPY OP., if you can only land 4 or 5 of them,. they're not that powerful at all. If you had about 200 SPAL right now, then you wouldn't be complaining about the dmg of CD at all.

Celphi, I think you're missing a couple points

1. the 2 guys who CD'd me had less total spies, and similar raw spal's to me. I lost both intel allies in their warchat and that gave them a window to have about a 90% success rate. That is way too high, with the losses being too high of a percent

2. The other LAFr had a better SPAL and far more total spies than the guy who CDd 7m troops in 25 turns off of him. We crippled said country, and he dropped 2/3rds of his land and succeeded in 24 of 25. That is exactly the measure that should be introduced regarding total spies. It greatly negates the tools of ABing in war

There was a buffer put in place to prevent this. There is a land penalty if you don't have a certain amount of land compared to your target that nerfs your spies.

That being said, in this case, it was our war strategy paying off compared to LaFs strategy. You guys did your intra farming to boost land and stock and we adapted and went spy heavy and made that extra land work against you as it required more tech and more spies to defend against. It was an easy decision. We entered the war about 30-40 spal avg higher than you guys and it showed.

Your high nw countries left are the ones that had decent spal. Furthermore, part of ABing a country that already has 150+ spal and 5m troops is asking for this.

it did not have 150 spal. It had 80 spal

Funny, I predicted all this on LaFs forums on a single thread.

I mentioned that SOL SPAL would be much higher, that SOL would just missile and CD all of LaF troops, that 20k+ land was too much, and I even mentioned the part of getting flattened by ABs.

actually 65ish raw

which is my point, that is a far lower spal and far less total spies than the country it succeeded in 24/25 CDs after dropping 11k acres

How do you know their SPAL *after* they hit you with 24/25CDs? Maybe he hit someone after you and failed 30x.

ops. updated ops daily, celphi

pretty simple. You can toggle through old ops on boxcar

No I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

Occurs in this sequence:
1.) His spy / SPAL could have started at 120:
2.) hit you for 25 CDs
3.) hit another player for 30 failed CDs (loses a significant amount of spies)

4.) You view his SPAL which looks like his SPAL is similiar to yours when in fact is started off much higher.

no you clearly don't understand what I said

old ops. Taken the day before. Boxcar saves all ops uploaded by all members of the alliance in the database, you can toggle through

So how do you know what his SPAL was while he was CD'ing you?

A day old spy ops can't tell you his SPAL while he was CD'ing you. He could have had turns saved, used them for more spies, then CD you.

For an example:

If he had 2k ICs, 140% Indy tech, with 120 turns saved, 2000×.6×1.4x120 = 201k extra spies.

You're missing the point. If a marginal difference like that makes a huge difference in effectiveness than the formula is flawed

Most of SOL's countries are 10k land., so 200k spies on 10k land is +20 SPAL. That's a huge difference.

When you're running 22k+ land, yeah that's hardly anything.

Another point for why I'm arguing total spies should be a larger factor

The flaw was going to 20k+ land. It was never going to work.

There just wasn't enough time to get 400k in each war tech & have a competitive SPAL. And not only 400k in each war tech, but also have 600k in SDI.

Whereas a 10k country only needed 1/2 those #s. And to boost SPAL at 10k was much much easier.

If you give all the power to total spies, then demos are going to be at a significant disadvantage.

Other peoples thoughts here? Xin, etc?

there should be a disable turret op :P

Personally, I think that what makes CD somewhat overpowered is the way production is tied to population now. Prior to that change, a failed GS run was practically worthless. This mitigated somewhat how easy it potentially was to start a GS run.

Now, a failed GS run has the same crippling effect as a successful AB run, even if it is only for a couple days.

Wars between two large groups are now pretty one dimensional. GS is the only attack that makes sense in most cases, assuming you have enough dedicated spy countries.

That being said, I don't think you can say that CD is grossly overpowered, based on the current war. Almost half of the players on this server are involved in this war. That tends to make any exploitable hole or weakness in the system look much greater than it really is. CD should perhaps be reigned in a bit, but not drastically nerfed.

I just want a better understanding of this land:land nerf and general spy DR. If a country wants to drop land and lose production for increased SPAL there should not be random factors to diminish it's power....

And if #spies:#spies is now taken into account I don't really see the need of a SPAL factor in the first place. Especially with a land:land factor also being taken into account.... I thought if was stupid to test a 1k SPAL country vs a 100 SPAL country and see failed op after failed op....

I'm sorry i don't actually understand

it's mostly spal vs spal, with the exception that your spal is punished if you are way-the-crap smaller than somebody in land

.

How badly is it punished? And what is the range for "way-the-crap smaller"?

He won't say; otherwise, people would just exploit it. There's a much older thread already discussing how SPAL works in more detail (with Qzjul giving hints), but he avoids the specifics. Which is understandable.

As I've mentioned before on another thread, (borrowed from the old thread), the purpose to making the # of spies to weigh more heavily was primarily to prevent players from droping 'massive' amounts of land to achieve a higher SPAL.

like... sqrt?ish? or cube-root?ish? I can't remember the exact function off the top of my head

and there *might* be a land floor of like... 1000A or so?