Jun 27th 2014, 3:31:56
The reason steal tech was added to the list was because stealing food and cash could be mitigated. The player can opt to convert all his cash into food, and store his food on the market at say $100 dollars. Goods on the market cannot be stolen. The player just needs to make sure that he recalls before it returns to re-store it on the market.
Tech stealing on the other hand, cannot be mitigated, you can only put 1/4 on the market. Doing some hard number crunching, most top players have agreed that it is not worth going to war with a tech stealer.
Specifically, even if someone steals tech from you every day as his "method of retal", you might finish 3m-5m NW lower (on Primary). If you ignore him, your finishing rank will probably go down by 1 rank, maybe 2. That's about it, a rank 3 finish might drop to 4 or 5. It's still a top 10, and if you make your country news public in your profile after the reset is over, other people can see who stole from you and knew you could finish higher.
If you decide to retaliate and attack back a second time in some manner instead, he would now be able to bomb buildings, and you won't even finish in the top 20. It's just not worth it. You might (and probably will) win the resulting war, but it will cost you more than merely a 3-5m NW lowered finish.
So the problem was essentially that because tech stealing wasn't protected in the past, if the goal was to finish high in NW, then the best action was actually to ignore tech stealers. From a game mechanics point of view, it didn't make sense that the best action is no action.
Some people will argue and point out that the game is a war game. I like to argue and point out that warring and attacking and spying are all merely TOOLS, the ultimate goal of each and every reset is to finish as high in Networth as possible, this is further reinenforced by the top 10 and top 100 charts and records of every reset, and the various ladders (leaderboards) that show your TNW, Best 3 averaged finishes, number of top 10s, etc.
The war related ladders are only shown for clan servers, and even that is subjective, just because you did more attacks and/or killed more pop doesn't mean you won a war, there is no "warring formula" to determine who is better at warring, unlike the concrete data for netting.
PS: See Bugs and Suggestions forum, there is a stickied lengthly thread that is asking for feedback for such a warring formula. Note that thread is a few years old.
Tech stealing on the other hand, cannot be mitigated, you can only put 1/4 on the market. Doing some hard number crunching, most top players have agreed that it is not worth going to war with a tech stealer.
Specifically, even if someone steals tech from you every day as his "method of retal", you might finish 3m-5m NW lower (on Primary). If you ignore him, your finishing rank will probably go down by 1 rank, maybe 2. That's about it, a rank 3 finish might drop to 4 or 5. It's still a top 10, and if you make your country news public in your profile after the reset is over, other people can see who stole from you and knew you could finish higher.
If you decide to retaliate and attack back a second time in some manner instead, he would now be able to bomb buildings, and you won't even finish in the top 20. It's just not worth it. You might (and probably will) win the resulting war, but it will cost you more than merely a 3-5m NW lowered finish.
So the problem was essentially that because tech stealing wasn't protected in the past, if the goal was to finish high in NW, then the best action was actually to ignore tech stealers. From a game mechanics point of view, it didn't make sense that the best action is no action.
Some people will argue and point out that the game is a war game. I like to argue and point out that warring and attacking and spying are all merely TOOLS, the ultimate goal of each and every reset is to finish as high in Networth as possible, this is further reinenforced by the top 10 and top 100 charts and records of every reset, and the various ladders (leaderboards) that show your TNW, Best 3 averaged finishes, number of top 10s, etc.
The war related ladders are only shown for clan servers, and even that is subjective, just because you did more attacks and/or killed more pop doesn't mean you won a war, there is no "warring formula" to determine who is better at warring, unlike the concrete data for netting.
PS: See Bugs and Suggestions forum, there is a stickied lengthly thread that is asking for feedback for such a warring formula. Note that thread is a few years old.