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Slagpit Game profile

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May 23rd 2021, 23:13:06

There are balance issues with some of the destructive spy ops. I'm considering changing returns for some of them to be partially based on the attacking country's spy count. Some starting numbers are below:


Stir Rebellions
CURRENT: MIN(0.04 * $target_pop, 0.07 * your_pop)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.04 * target_pop, 0.001 * your_spies)

Cause Dissensions
CURRENT: MIN(0.04 * target_troops, 0.08 * your_troops)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.04 * target_troops, 0.04 * your_spies)

Bomb Airbases
CURRENT: MIN(0.04 * target_jets, 0.08 * your_jets)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.04 * target_jets, 0.04 * your_spies)

Bomb Buildings
CURRENT: MIN(0.015 * target_building_count, 0.04 * your_building_count)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.015 * target_building_count, 0.00015 * your_spies)


Reasons for the change:
1) Some of these spy ops are too powerful as is. It's too easy to take out a large chunk of a defending country's troops, for example.
2) Using spies to partially determine damage encourages specialization during war, rewards large countries over small ones, and reduces the offensive power of countries that plan to get a high SPAL by dropping their land at the start of the war.
3) It doesn't make sense for a tiny number of spies to be able to destroy millions of jets.


All feedback is welcome, but I think that I need help picking the right constants for some of these. It's been a long time since I've participated in a war between clans.

Gerdler Game profile

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May 23rd 2021, 23:50:53

I would keep the old mins based on your resourse in there as well. that way you need spies AND troops to kill troops, and I think that is easier to balance.

Gerdler Game profile

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May 24th 2021, 0:47:42

Hmm this is interesting. Right now CDs and Chem rushes both scream loudly to everyone: DROP LAND. With this some very large countries could soak CDs for days, as long as they dont die to the chem rush. If this is enough to cater to another type of war country I don't know, but its interesting to say the least.

We just have to introduce this and wait for Rasp to finally wall a chem rush. :)

Bug Game profile

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May 24th 2021, 14:22:11

Will make warring different.. will make spies the most valuable unit again. but yeah i am with Gerd, you should need to have both spies and troops to CD at any sort of max.

DerrickICN Game profile

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May 24th 2021, 19:09:23

Yeah. It may be unintended, but this also addresses in a small way, the effects of bomb buildings for a suicider. Which is to say, those out to ruin a set could very easily do so with just that one op, 20 SPAL and some built acres. If I'm doing the math correctly on 0.00015×20k, I get a result of 3. As in the return would be 3 buildings, 15 at 100k acres. That seems extreme to me, but the op itself is generally not used for war and used primarily for griefing, so I'm totally fine with it being useless. But I think if it's going to be totally useless, it might as well not be there at all.

Changing CDs in this manner would complicate war a bit, because returns would be variable instead of fixed. In most cases, people have spies in lower quantities than troops. We'd all like to have more spies than troops, but due to what a lot of people believe to be a flaw in the expenses formula that punishes players for carrying too many spies, we don't. Breaks will, by and large, be much longer processes to calculate. Given all of that, I'd prefer it to be say, 0.05-0.06 min factor.

And ofc CD is too strong in non variable situations, I think my ideal would be something like MIN(0.03 * target troops, 0.06 * your troops, 0.05 * target spies) ish. I think that would allow players to run high enough spies not to have variable returns. That's important because slowing down a warchat dramatically will have severe negative effects on war culture. People actually dont want to sit on IRC for hours calculating breaks, so it's important for people to actually be able to achieve the mins. Were mostly there to do our kills and walling and then chat it up.

Also agree with everyone above on not removing and replacing the "your units" part of the mins. Would just add in spy totals as a 3rd min.

I would be more apt to support this idea wholeheartedly tho, were the expenses formula changed from (1+NW/(2*10^8)) to something like 1/(0.2+ln(NW+1)/20) that would make it slightly easier to maintain a higher spy count. Gerdler posted this formula before and it makes total sense now that NWs are higher from bot farming.

I think this would just make having a high spy total a "damned if you do damned if you dont" type situation and more complicate the process of war. The crippling expenses of spies will still not make this encourage running a good country.

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 24th 2021, 19:16:00
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enshula Game profile

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May 25th 2021, 4:57:17

i think the biggest amount of spies ive gotten for a war was 30m, maybe 20m i forget, but 30 is probably around the upper bounds of whats practical currently, with these changes it could incentivise going higher

cd being by far the most important of these ops that caps you around 1.2m troops per op

which previously would require you having 15m troops opping a 30m troop target, and would still require a 30m troop target

getting 30m spies is way harder and more costly than 15m troops, so id say this will be a very big nerf to CD meta, and make it much more of a commitment to do significant damage rather than just something you can choose to do at any time

you can still go higher spies to do more damage but the cost now will be extreme, particularly for some strats over others

'hey guys we need to kill that big guy who wants to drop land and CD him'

i think this is a really interesting option over just the standard idea which is nerf cd from 4% to 3% and see how it goes

as to keeping a minimum of troops im not sure how important that is because most countries need troops anyway, could go with current or a reduced amount and see what happens

that might make more sense for bomb airbase and jets since skipping jets entirely is part of what leads to CD meta

if expenses were changed id even consider raising spy base expenses to both make it a real choice and reduce the benefit of pure small spy countries compared to aa large balanced country to be a good solution

enshula Game profile

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May 25th 2021, 5:13:30

bomb buildings im not sure on in war

but 100 spal for max effectiveness against a same size target sounds nice and simple

200 spal if your half their size, 50 if double and so on

one of the current weird things about bomb airbase is you cant do it when your jets are ps'd so thats probably good from that perspective, but bad that countries can completely skip jets

sr change i dont care about

Dark Demon Game profile

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May 25th 2021, 17:49:31

I think leaving it fixed is a better option as for the bots a d calculations purposes war chats are hard enough to run with out having to do other calculations on top of it
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Gerdler Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 0:23:20

I think it is intereresting to consider a war meta where staying alive could actually happen without being able to log on in 20 seconds in the middle of the night if you just build a strong country enough.
The actual numbers might need tweaks but I agree with the direction somewhat.

With CDs like this there would be such a thing as a safe amount of troops and a country that cant be killed fast, this is something that the game has needed for a while. The concerns about warchat math I think is overblown since warbots and methods would be quickly adapted. For instance we might have to spy after CDs or input last CD from a guy that had diminishing CD returns. Warleaders would also have to adapt to the kinds of targets that can be killed.

The concern I have is that here is a move that makes killing harder after the CM rushes, so much so that a good waller who also built a strong country and didnt take CMs probably can't be killed until the stock runs out. This makes the CM rushes way more powerful than today, and they are already too strong, and should you mismanage one either by failing or by not hitting the most important target it's way more costly than today to rectify over days or weeks to kill that country that you should have killed in the FS.

Dark Demon Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 1:02:58

Also valid points. There is some people who can totally build a unkillable country. And cm or cd or sr are the equalizer for us common. Folk. I do like the idea of changes but maybe not this much
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enshula Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 4:26:47

warchat maths isnt a big issue

for it to matter you need to be having people always doing max damage, so having half the opponents troops doing ops and reporting just success amounts

i guess if someone wrote a bot where you just say !cdsuccess 10 then its a bit quicker, or if you pre assume how many successes and tell people do them no matter what until that many are done so the break will be this amount then yeah

that also leads to the option of doing a faster safe kill without CD which isnt bad, or just doing cd earlier which can provide warning

Slagpit Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 5:40:43

I don't see a compelling reason yet to add back in the minimums based on the attacking country's resources. It makes running a high spy country less economical and complicates the formula. Besides, why should bomb airbase returns go down if a country has jets PSed away, on the market, or simply has a low number of jets?

With the new formula, a country with 10 M spies could kill up to 4 M troops or jets with 10 successful ops. Does that feel about right? Should it be higher or lower?

I'd like to get this in before FFA restarts (June 9th).

enshula Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 9:52:38

i like them

i can see a lore argument that you need lots of jets to bomb lots of airbases, rather than the spies planting bombs but this is a game not a simulation

DerrickICN Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 11:52:02

I dont really consider the economy of running a high spy country, because it isnt financially sustainable to do so....period. You can get to maybe 20 or 30m but at some point you're going negative $ no matter how much production you have to offset it. The game punishes you for having high spies on many acres.

I like the idea of total spies mattering more, truly I do. But it's hard to think anything encourages more spy building on better countries when it isnt financially sustainable to run any more than we already do.

I think maybe creating a country on alpha with 30m spies and attempting to run some turns at various acreages and war builds/MUs might be wise. You'll see that reaching that maximum isnt viable, and that the value of running a higher spy total will not change. Rather, the value of a chem rush will just increase.

Currently on a 40m troops country, 10 CDs would kill about 12m troops. On a 20m spy country, it could kill....8m?

I think that is totally fine and decent. The very top end of economy for spies will kill about 3/4 of what CDs do now. It will make killing as restarts way more difficult, and will encourage better building.

The one thing it will not encourage or add economy to, however, and be absolutely sure of it, is running higher spy totals.

With that in mind, I worry wars would become endless with kills getting more and more difficult as the war progresses. And I absolutely wholeheartedly disagree that the war meta needs to be any lengthier. The only thing that sucks worse for activity than having 6 straight weeks of war is having 6 straight weeks of war and no clear winner.

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 26th 2021, 12:07:52
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Gerdler Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 14:27:19

Do you consider that the war meta will change to having more troops and more spies, which will deplete stocks faster and therefore end late-set wars faster with this? I mean we both agree that CDs are too powerful, and he is nerfing CDs, and you are complaining about him nerfing CDs.

DerrickICN Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 17:19:58

Originally posted by Gerdler:
Do you consider that the war meta will change to having more troops and more spies, which will deplete stocks faster and therefore end late-set wars faster with this? I mean we both agree that CDs are too powerful, and he is nerfing CDs, and you are complaining about him nerfing CDs.

Why is it that whenever war people take part in these conversations, that we're complaining? Good lord man. Don't insult us while simultaneously asking us.

Again, the war meta will not have more spies. People already have as close to maximum sustainable spy counts. CDs are overpowered, but restarts should still have the ability to do them effectively on occasion (albeit .4 is too much). Otherwise originals become increasingly difficult to kill as the war progresses, and, more than likely, will increase the amount of unresolved wars.

There's narfing CDs for all vs narfing CDs significantly for restarts which this would absolutely do. And I think taking spy ability away from restarts is something we ought to think about. Killing the ability for a restart to be a meaningful participant in a war will make it a long boring process for those who die.

Different ways of changing something have different consequences. And without repairing the expenses formula, changing it in this exact way appears net negative for the culture to me, because "having more spies" like you netters who have never had 30m is not sustainable. I promise. You arent just going to start seeing people with 50 million spies suddenly because it simply isnt sustainable. But I do actually like this idea if it is done in conjunction with fixing the expenses formula.

2 of 2 war players on here are saying the same thing. Perhaps there's something to it. And further, if I start calling you a complainer crybaby netter every time the griefer issues come up, it would genuinely add nothing to the conversation. In fact, my posts would probably get deleted and I'd get reprimanded. So lay off that fluff. I dont have any desire to get banned again for things people have said to me a dozen times. I just want restarts to still be meaningful participants because it's high key necessary for both activity and wars having a conclusion.

Alternatively, you could bring back the old restart bonus and let us earn a meaningful restart thru walling. I just think it will be a tough ask for 80% of war players to be useless by the end of set, but all keep playing for some reason. Yes. CDs are too powerful. But you cant kill restarts ability to both midbreak and do ops simultaneously and expect we won't experience inactivity from it. There are absolutely ways to narf CDs without doing that.

This is being 1 chem rush away from wasting 2 months of your time and being totally meaningless for war players. That's going to be a tough sell. I'd even take 80% 1 and done restarts in conjunction you know. Anything to make it somewhat playable after you die 1x. That's the whole reason we have a restart bonus lol.

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 26th 2021, 18:20:35
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Gerdler Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 19:25:36

You seem to forget I've warred as well. And you seem to forget I was effective at it.

50m spies would allow you to CD at full effect 50m Troops. And in these late game wars the median number of troops at the start of the war seems to be more like 15 or possibly 20m Troops. So yeah I fully agree with your assessment that people won't be doing 50m spies with this change.

The land dropping meta would take a hit with this(because most very effective spy countries these days run sub-10m spies but drop to 5-15k acres) and it would perhaps be viable to build strong sustained income breakers in war.
This is not the first way I'd think of to achieve that, but I will take what I can get. War needs to be viable for good players who are not interested in walling 24/7 but who can build a beast of a country. The activity and alerts needed now to just not be an absolute liability in war is what burns you out in anything more than a 2 weeks war.

DerrickICN Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 19:38:19

I'm certain you know that median spy count is lower than troop count. And I'm certain you know the reason for that is expenses.

That said, I agree with everything else you're saying. It would make the war meta better for the top builders. Absolutely. But in the event they are chem rushed 1 time, restarts were still able to be viable.

I'm not of the thinking that destroying all viability for restarts, (which is often the majority in a war because the best builds get chem rushed), is a good way to achieve that tho.

I mean....really think about where a restart fits into this way compared to now. I agree this helps better builders, but for sure at the expense of the majority of those playing. I think its incredibly short sighted to think only of how to benefit the very best players in a war, because if they're too hard for restarts to touch, the war just ends with like 2 left on each side.

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 26th 2021, 19:41:47
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Gerdler Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 19:45:55

Think of how many people would like to war if it was just slightly more fun and didn't take 24/7 availability to not be a dud.

Tbf. I have never played or heard of any game other than EE(when warring) that requires you to log in and play at a sub-30 second notice at any time of day, that you can't control.

DerrickICN Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 20:11:34

Lol. This is true. And I'd make the distinction that youd still need 24 hour availability not to be a dud. Because if you die you become totally useless lol. I don't think much changes in that department unless you're like double their biggest breaker.

I want something that encourages better building, but with expenses the way they are, you gotta be borderline insane to go beyond 60k acres with 500+ spal. You might have a higher total, and see some benefit from this, but more than likely dropping land for success will still be the meta, as the biggest countries will undoubtedly have lower SPALs. Wed just be doing extra CDs really.

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 26th 2021, 20:17:32
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mac23 Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 21:27:10

I must be borderline insane! :P

DerrickICN Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 22:29:12

Lol I'll be waiting to check out that 50m spy 100k acre jawn mac. I'm certain it will be so upside down you'll be needing FA lol

There just isnt a reason to reward people for running a strat that cant afford to exist. It'd be way cooler if it could just afford to exist and war players got rewarded for being bigger and more badass. But the expenses formula punishes this sort of play. So in turn this change just makes restarts useless. If you could afford the spies for big acres, restarts would be fun to play. This in conjunction with an expenses fix is a huge win. Without it tho.....idk if wars will be good.

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 26th 2021, 22:39:59
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Gerdler Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 22:50:23

The expenses formula I agree should be changed, that was my suggestion initially. :)

However, when you say;
Originally posted by DerrickICN:
There just isnt a reason to reward people for running a strat that cant afford to exist.

are you suggesting then that if this change was rolled in you would change nothing about how you play? Are you suggesting you have always uncompromisingly went into every war you have ever been in with the maximal amount of spies you could have at the time?

For me, at least, it has always been a compromise. I may have elected to run 4m spies, 10m spies or 20m depending on how my enemies looked and what role I intended to fill etc. But it has always been a compromise between stock, production, breaking ability and ability to FA my allies etc. If theres enough incentive to bring 50m spies to the start of a war I will do that too. This moves the needle a bit on that compromise.
Suggesting that no one will change the way they play, while still being against this change, seems strange.

Dark Demon Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 22:56:17

I’m open to change. But a lot of people
Don’t have the same skill levels as some of the elite and buy making these changes. The elite basically be un touchable would it not.
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Slagpit Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 23:05:34

Originally posted by Dark Demon:
I’m open to change. But a lot of people
Don’t have the same skill levels as some of the elite and buy making these changes. The elite basically be un touchable would it not.


I really don't understand this. I asked this question earlier and I don't think that anyone answered it yet: "With the new formula, a country with 10 M spies could kill up to 4 M troops or jets with 10 successful ops. Does that feel about right? Should it be higher or lower?"

4 M troops is something like $500 million worth of military. That's what you get with ten successful ops. Is that number wrong? What should it be instead?

I suspect that if I changed things to be 3% max instead then people would feel that makes CDs stronger than a variable approach that would give 3.1% out of 4%. Why is there a need to do the absolute maximum amount of damage with every spy op?

Gerdler Game profile

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May 26th 2021, 23:40:11

If I should make a suggestion. This change might not be great to implement alone. There are two things I think should be done simultaneously:

1. CMs need some kind of nerf.
-this is because this change together with the current CMs will scream the opposite message to the players. The country that is set up to not die from CD+GS today looks the same as the country that is set up to not die from a chem rush today. This change to CDs will make more countries be vulnerable to CM rush, meaning CM rush will be more powerful.
Tags might adopt "Predator satiation" tactics by running enough CM-vulnerable countries that most of them survive anyway, who knows? But strange nonetheless.

2. Walling should be made much less effective.
Walling will be more easy since kills will take longer once CDs cant drop the break as low. As the game has gotten smaller good wallers have become harder to kill, the turns in each side of the war are not enough to rush through them often. This makes walling more important than ever and I believe it is what makes war so stressful for the participants. If you remove the power of walling by reducing pop growth when hit, or something like that, it will allow people to chill out without feeling completely worthless about their war effort.

Requiem Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 0:37:51

One of the big reasons I refuse to play in pre-arranged wars is because of CD and CM kills. When I war, I am normally a high-priority target and eat CMs. It's not fun to build a top country only to eat 70 CMs and die in an instant. Or have 30m troops and die because they could CD all of your troops away.

So change to CD is great, and a change to CM as well would be superb.

LittleItaly Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 1:47:13

I like the idea that spies do the damage independent of the spyers military levels. After all, the spies are doing the work, and arent bringing troops along with them lol.

If a country has 4m troops or jets to kill, then spending $575m to wall to replenish on login is reasonable and that country should be able to afford it with stock / whatever. You easily spend $500m a day at least breaking from what i remember.

On a side note, all the war bots are gonna be broken until updated with these new formulas :P
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DerrickICN Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 2:22:18

Originally posted by LittleItaly:


On a side note, all the war bots are gonna be broken until updated with these new formulas :P

I dont think so. They'll be totally accurate assuming the spy country has more total spies than defender has troops. If that seems unlikely, that's because it is. And if they dont it will be variable and extremely complicated to calculate for multiple spies without getting a fresh op after cd phase.

I think it changes that process into a longer process bots wont have an answer for. I think bots like hitman and EWB will just have a bunch of useless functions that were built for no reason is all haha.

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 27th 2021, 2:26:38
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Kill4Free Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 2:44:16

I like all these changes, there is a sliver of pros, on how it would help certain situations, however a good amount of overall negatives for our typical country builds. This will help restrict suiciders on how much damage they can do, also, on average, lower damage taken from spies on a built country vs a built country, and lastly, throws a few of the common builds people do (mid level spies, drop land, CD bunnies) out the window. I love anything that changes the balance of gameplay, as the quickest person to come up with something better will be the new lead, rather then getting stuck in stationary builds that both sides do not change.

It is absolutely ridiculous that a country with 10m spies and a normal amount of land, can drop down to 1/5th the land, and all of a sudden his ops are golden. This method reduces approaches the result from the front, and limits the damage done using the harder to obtain resource as the base. One other method that I would suggest to help with issues along this line, is right now, defensive ops success ratio are primarily determined by your SPAL compared to the targets SPAL (for his own land). An alternate method, which would balance many of the issues right away, is using Defenders SPAL, against the attacks SpyValue/DefendersLand. How many spies you have per acre should only apply defensively. How many spies You can put on their acres, should be the offensive value.

I have a few other thoughts, but for this this change, I really like what you propose!
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Dark Demon Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 2:50:33

my mistake i had it explained to me and i understand it better
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enshula Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 3:27:50

i like the proposed level CD is set at because it feels nice at 1:1 spy:troop for max damage, its going to be easy for people to understand you need as many spies as they have troops if you want to do max damage, if not you still do damage just in proportion which will force a large investment rather than a small sacrifice

particularly late set last 2 week wars the cost of dropping land in terms of stockpile to future production was very low when you throw in everything else like boosting spal and tech and in particular for techers that wouldnt be using the labs very much anyway

but where the change might be a little more complicated is early set wars where spals havnt buit up and blindside wars, but it sounds like you can still drop land for enough spal for basic spy ops which is still the most important spy op, and no change to demoralise either which is still way more effective than CD, and with proposed 2 day dnh drop period that aleviates some of this, mainly just the ability to store 160 turns but still a big difference

for oop wars its not a huge issue either as if you spend all your turns each day doing offensive spy ops and special attacks you will fall behin in growth, as well as the reduced min pop losses it just leaves early land kills which have been happening lately as the big overpowered option

a bit later than that probably wont be much CDing but that will be more because people will have jets for grabbing and probably do br kills, and initial gs kills would be on the targets with tiny troops you wont need to cd anyway



if its too low change it after but CD needs a massive nerf right now not just a small one, and with a change like this its going to be a bit harder to see the results of a small change than with a simple 4% becomes 3% change

enshula Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 3:30:56

as to the spal should be based on target not yourself, yes that does make a lot of sense

and there is some of that in the success formula already with total spies, perhaps the total spies bit should apply to damage as well as success, but the way total spies is handled in these changes is good too

Gerdler Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 11:59:07

Originally posted by Kill4Free:
An alternate method, which would balance many of the issues right away, is using Defenders SPAL, against the attacks SpyValue/DefendersLand. How many spies you have per acre should only apply defensively. How many spies You can put on their acres, should be the offensive value.

While this is a new suggestion to me it is almost an analogue of what we discussed 2-2.5 years ago in the big spal/cd discussion where I believe it was ugolino who had the idea to change the spal formula to be something that doesn't double when land halves. I believe it was something like SPAL ~ Spies/ (land^0.5).

I dont know which is better, without deep theorycrasfting I think both makes sense. But it seems like it's leaning towards another change that should have partially similar results on land dropping.

BlueCow

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May 27th 2021, 12:54:36

Originally posted by Kill4Free:
One other method that I would suggest to help with issues along this line, is right now, defensive ops success ratio are primarily determined by your SPAL compared to the targets SPAL (for his own land). An alternate method, which would balance many of the issues right away, is using Defenders SPAL, against the attacks SpyValue/DefendersLand. How many spies you have per acre should only apply defensively. How many spies You can put on their acres, should be the offensive value.

I have a few other thoughts, but for this this change, I really like what you propose!


There is something like this already which isnt to well known.
Your spal isnt the only determining factor on op success. The amount of land you have compared to your opponent also plays a factor into success or not.
I've bounced ops on targets with 0 spies sitting on 300k acres that were not spied out because my acreage was under a certain amount.
No idea when that change came about.
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Gerdler Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 13:14:56

It's explained in an announcement post a near decade ago that it was changed from 'something' to 'something else'. How it works or when it was initially introduced isn't posted to my knowledge. We always avoid being hit by that, which is easy enough if you know what to do. Regardless it's too weak a deterrent to dropping land since heavy land dropping has been standard in war for years now.

Slagpit Game profile

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May 27th 2021, 14:06:04

Originally posted by BlueCow:
Originally posted by Kill4Free:
One other method that I would suggest to help with issues along this line, is right now, defensive ops success ratio are primarily determined by your SPAL compared to the targets SPAL (for his own land). An alternate method, which would balance many of the issues right away, is using Defenders SPAL, against the attacks SpyValue/DefendersLand. How many spies you have per acre should only apply defensively. How many spies You can put on their acres, should be the offensive value.

I have a few other thoughts, but for this this change, I really like what you propose!


There is something like this already which isnt to well known.
Your spal isnt the only determining factor on op success. The amount of land you have compared to your opponent also plays a factor into success or not.
I've bounced ops on targets with 0 spies sitting on 300k acres that were not spied out because my acreage was under a certain amount.
No idea when that change came about.


There is a small chance to fail any op. There's also a penalty to success that kicks in when the attacker has much less land than the defender.

I believe the guts of the spy success formula haven't changed since introduction and we've mostly tweaked constants. We haven't tweaked any constants since change set 10 based on the code.

Kill4Free Game profile

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May 28th 2021, 3:11:30

I believe
Originally posted by BlueCow:
Originally posted by Kill4Free:
One other method that I would suggest to help with issues along this line, is right now, defensive ops success ratio are primarily determined by your SPAL compared to the targets SPAL (for his own land). An alternate method, which would balance many of the issues right away, is using Defenders SPAL, against the attacks SpyValue/DefendersLand. How many spies you have per acre should only apply defensively. How many spies You can put on their acres, should be the offensive value.

I have a few other thoughts, but for this this change, I really like what you propose!


There is something like this already which isnt to well known.
Your spal isnt the only determining factor on op success. The amount of land you have compared to your opponent also plays a factor into success or not.
I've bounced ops on targets with 0 spies sitting on 300k acres that were not spied out because my acreage was under a certain amount.
No idea when that change came about.


That is true, this is you start to get severe penalties if you have less then 20% of opponents land. This isn't the case in many wars, as if you cannot get through their defense, and you cannot get 20% of their land, you are generally not combat capable anyway. This is not a strong limiting factor however, as it only affect either small suiciders/poorly built countries, attacking very large land countries. A more normal example is a 20k acre country attacking a 70k acre country with spy ops, and that penalty would not come into great effect. Where what would be expected is the 20k's offensive SPAL should be HisSpies/70k, not his own SPAL. SPAL should only be defensive, as when is having less land, and less spies better offensively then someone who has more of both.
So many ways to die, only one way to live...
NBK

DerrickICN Game profile

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May 28th 2021, 7:31:45

Yep. Not to be an echo chamber, but the only instances we really see of land penalty is on 2nd or 3rd restarts generally. People dont go into wars over 100k acres due to expenses and chem rush/SDI issues, and try not to drop below 20k at least initially to stay above that threshold. It's rarely encountered.

There's a pretty specific amount of acres you want to war rn, and since it's harmful to grow above it, that penalty largely doesn't affect dropping. Anyone over say....80k acres is either lower spal or non sustainable. Usually 15-20k acres is plenty to avoid penalty, which is to say, a few days of grabbing.

I also think it's a couple fairly obvious changes to make the war meta about the best builds rather than capping us at a 50-80k stocks war every set.

Also totally agree with enshula in that CDs definitely need a nerf and that I'd probably do this in conjunction with a .03 cap instead of .04. The top end is still too high. Should be MIN(0.03 * target_troops, 0.05 * your_spies) ish.

At least...the front end of that should be 0.03 and I'd think youd be hard pressed to find someone to disagree. The back end changing just changes some dynamics when really the front end changing is what we need.

It's all sort of moot tho when we are stuck in an eternal 50k acre stocks war tho. Idk. If there was any reason at all to get to 150k acres or 100m troops or 50m spies in a war, all of this conversation would make more sense to me. Adjusting the 50k acre stocks war to be a different 50k stocks war that slightly more benefits the wealthiest doesnt do it for me. Like absolutely doesn't. It only just serves to sever our player base more.

I think making the 150k acre, 50m spy 100m troop country playable would make these changes super cool tho. We can at least all admit war being essentially capped at a 50k stocks war is lame right?

Edited By: DerrickICN on May 28th 2021, 8:04:21
See Original Post

BlueCow

Member
793

May 28th 2021, 12:30:47

Originally posted by Kill4Free:
I believe
Originally posted by BlueCow:
Originally posted by Kill4Free:
One other method that I would suggest to help with issues along this line, is right now, defensive ops success ratio are primarily determined by your SPAL compared to the targets SPAL (for his own land). An alternate method, which would balance many of the issues right away, is using Defenders SPAL, against the attacks SpyValue/DefendersLand. How many spies you have per acre should only apply defensively. How many spies You can put on their acres, should be the offensive value.

I have a few other thoughts, but for this this change, I really like what you propose!


There is something like this already which isnt to well known.
Your spal isnt the only determining factor on op success. The amount of land you have compared to your opponent also plays a factor into success or not.
I've bounced ops on targets with 0 spies sitting on 300k acres that were not spied out because my acreage was under a certain amount.
No idea when that change came about.


That is true, this is you start to get severe penalties if you have less then 20% of opponents land. This isn't the case in many wars, as if you cannot get through their defense, and you cannot get 20% of their land, you are generally not combat capable anyway. This is not a strong limiting factor however, as it only affect either small suiciders/poorly built countries, attacking very large land countries. A more normal example is a 20k acre country attacking a 70k acre country with spy ops, and that penalty would not come into great effect. Where what would be expected is the 20k's offensive SPAL should be HisSpies/70k, not his own SPAL. SPAL should only be defensive, as when is having less land, and less spies better offensively then someone who has more of both.


Sounds like a good concept.
Slag 12 - Chevs -15

Rasp Game profile

Member
948

May 31st 2021, 1:37:50

Originally posted by Gerdler:


We just have to introduce this and wait for Rasp to finally wall a chem rush. :)


lol just now reading this, and I think I like these changes.
[16:18:00] znc-rasp: We can kill bushido, but not bushifo, zack, moriarty, ghost rider, or darkling
[16:18:07] Req: Is that all the same person?
[16:18:12] symba: yea
[16:18:25] mob: my kids are like dad why are you laughing so much

Mr Gainsboro Game profile

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May 31st 2021, 18:49:58

I like it. It's a good start to see how it works.
Don of LaF

BlueCow

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Jun 2nd 2021, 12:06:03

Currently having a cd war in ffa with k4f and I can say cd at it's current state is op. While adding in the spies as a factor is a good idea I think it will severely weaken netters who tend to carry 0 spies and could allow war clans to steam roll them.

K4f does have some great ideas on his post.
Slag 12 - Chevs -15

Gerdler Game profile

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Jun 2nd 2021, 12:18:36

Originally posted by BlueCow:
While adding in the spies as a factor is a good idea I think it will severely weaken netters who tend to carry 0 spies and could allow war clans to steam roll them.

That is true now as well and the game changes that would be required to change that situation has always been opposed violently. The very existance and function of Construction Sites make it so that you are much much weaker if you dont have a 4 week notice before a war. A netter will maximize his stock for last day of the reset, while a warrer will maximize his stock for the assumed start day of the war.

Either way this change isn't meant to make netters able to fight warrers, its meant to make CDs between warrers less OP, which has been needed for a while.

DerrickICN Game profile

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Jun 2nd 2021, 13:26:00

I get what he's saying tho. When a country with high spies goes against a country with low spies, the op is still OP.

Sov Game profile

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Jun 2nd 2021, 14:24:39

The only problem with this change is that with spy DR, you are limited in how many troops you can effectively CD. CDs are a great equalizer in allowing medium countries to reduce a raw break enough to be able to efficiently attack. Strong countries will overcome this no problem, but essentially it makes stronger countries unkillable.

For me personally it works fine because I am pretty hard to kill as is and with this change I will be near impossible... (good luck ever killing me again Derrick!!) But it will make wars less competitive and decided far earlier.

DerrickICN Game profile

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Jun 2nd 2021, 14:35:43

I agree 100% sov. I think if you make restarts totally worthless, you're just going to be wall running to death after a strong FS. Takes OP blindsides and strong day 1s and makes them even more OP and deciding factors in a months long grind.

Sov Game profile

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Jun 2nd 2021, 14:42:08

Originally posted by Slagpit:
Originally posted by Dark Demon:
I’m open to change. But a lot of people
Don’t have the same skill levels as some of the elite and buy making these changes. The elite basically be un touchable would it not.


I really don't understand this. I asked this question earlier and I don't think that anyone answered it yet: "With the new formula, a country with 10 M spies could kill up to 4 M troops or jets with 10 successful ops. Does that feel about right? Should it be higher or lower?"

4 M troops is something like $500 million worth of military. That's what you get with ten successful ops. Is that number wrong? What should it be instead?

I suspect that if I changed things to be 3% max instead then people would feel that makes CDs stronger than a variable approach that would give 3.1% out of 4%. Why is there a need to do the absolute maximum amount of damage with every spy op?


If a country has 40m troops (common for strongest countries in late set wars on Alliance) and is a Dict with 145% weapons then the raw break is 72500000. Effectively right now using ops we could easily reduce that break to 22000000 raw which means you can break it using a Dict with 12m approx troops and only 40m troops on hand.

If with your proposed change you could CD 4m troops per 10 ops then 20 CDs (standard amount of CDs conducted on a killrun) reduces the troop count by 8m troops. This bring the raw break down to 58000000. With demos that is reduced to 40600000. Assuming the breaker is a Dict with the same weapons, it means that the breaker will need to have 22,400,000 troops to break, and for optimal readiness loss will need more than 3x that in troops on hand. Effectively 70m troops which is very costly for any country to buy.

Then the other massive change no one is considered here is the massive increase in oil consumption which is a further burden on the attacker. It would also drive up oil prices significantly over the course of the war because raw breaks would be far higher.

Essentially this all means that any early lead achieved in a war will almost be insurmountable as the sheer economic requirements towards killing large countries will become unfeasible once you start to struggle for breakers.

All in all I can see there will be less killing and wars will become a lot harder to conduct.

EDIT: Also it should be noted that I am basing the above on SoF's Dict breakers which we usually run far more of than any other warring tag. These numbers are far worse for Tyrannies and Commie countries commonly used by other tags. In fact breaking with anything other than a Dict with these numbers would not be viable and thus warring with those governments would be probably obsolete.

Edited By: Sov on Jun 2nd 2021, 14:55:11
See Original Post

Sov Game profile

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Jun 2nd 2021, 14:50:38

And in regards to Bomb Buildings. The thing that does need to be nerfed is not the amount of buildings destroyed but rather the amount of CS destroyed. Right now this is a broken mechanic and the amounts of CSes taken out is extremely high. Bombing Runs do not kill barely any CSes until all other buildings are virtually destroyed, yet with a handful of ops you can take out a large portion of someone's CS.

I think the amount of buildings killed is fine right now as is. Just nerf the CS component almost entirely.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jun 2nd 2021, 15:02:00

I agree with nerfing the CS component of both AB and BB. This is because those are meaningless in lategame wars and only useful for suiciding and early wars (early wars which everyone seems to want to get away from and suicides that are a constant problem)