This is a suggestion I made a few months ago, but it was buried in a thread and didn't get seen by many people. So, I'm bringing it back from the dead to see what everyone thinks.

The objectives of this suggestion are to balance out the FS advantage a little bit, while also making war somewhat more interesting. To do this, I have a single change, which then allows for some ripple changes throughout the game. Please bear with me as I go through the details.

First, I want to change "readiness" and introduce something new called "war weariness". The change to readiness is really simple; we make it only effects attacking strength. War weariness would be a counterpart to this, it only effects defending strength.

The difference, is in the recovery. Readiness is recovered by using turns, war weariness can only be recovered by time. Obviously these can be tweaked if people like the general concept but not my numbers, but these are the numbers that I have in mind:

War Weariness loss rate: 0.5% per attack
War Weariness recovery rate: 0.625% per hour
Maximum war weariness drop: 30%

The basic idea behind these numbers is that it allows players to make strategic decisions.

I think that 30% drop in defensive effectiveness is more than enough. It gives an obvious advantage, but doesn't go so far as to negate all the defences of the player.

With a 0.5% weariness rate, the most any government except tyr can do during an FS is just barely reach the maximum. This will encourage players to balance how far they want to go and there won't be any "well, I'm at the maximum and have only used a quarter of my turns, so I may as well keep hitting". In general, I like things that force players to make choices.

With a recovery rate set so that you gain 1/2 the maximum war weariness per day, there's a new strategic element to the game. Some alliances may choose to only have countries attack every second day and keep their average war weariness effects lower... while others may choose to attack every day but stagger their members half each day... and still others will just go balls to the wall and attack every day no matter what. I think this is interesting as each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Again, I like choices.

Now, the more astute among you will realize that this change makes it easier to break for the CS, but doesn't actually alter the FS at all. My second major change addresses that.

I want to alter the readiness/war weariness effects formula. The current formula is:
AttackingStrength * ((readiness + gov't bonus + weapons)/3)
I want this changed to:
AttackingStrength * ((gov't bonus + weapons)/2) * readiness

War weariness would use the same formula, substituting for readiness.

Basically, in my opinion, the solution to the over-powered FS is to increase the effects of readiness loss. You can still send just as many attacks if you want to, but your losses will be higher unless you're more careful about keeping your readiness up. I haven't advocated for this change too loudly because it absolutely destroys your defences if you let readiness get too low... but if we separate readiness from defence by introducing war weariness, this problem is no longer an issue.

That's the basic concept that I have in mind. Though I have a few other smaller ideas attached to it that would make the whole scheme more interesting and close a couple potential exploits.

The third major change that I'd like to see is that countries suffering from war weariness lose additional population. So, they're not only easier to break, but easier to kill as well. This is an extra step towards balancing out the FS advantage. I'm not exactly sure what number to attach to this, but I was thinking that WW%/4*normal population loss would be a good number for it. This may need some tweaking, because it could entirely eliminate the FS advantage or even move the advantage to the CS if it's too high.

The reason I think that this final change is important is to make late war more interesting and important. The most unfortunate thing about wars (in my mind) is that they're so often decided during the FS. A lot of kills happen then, but fewer later in the reset. Most proposals to limit the FS make kills later in the war almost impossible. By having WW increase population loss, we can actually make late war kills easier. By having fewer kills early, and more later, we post-pone the point at which the war is essentially "decided"... making it more of a competition... and, to my mind, more interesting.

That's the essence of my idea.
1. Separate Readiness from defence and introduce War Weariness instead.
2. Alter the readiness/war weariness formula so that they have a much larger effect on attacking/defending strength.
3. Increase the civ loss rate for countries suffering from War Weariness.

Now, that's the basics of my idea, but I have a couple others thoughts to close some exploits I see in this set-up and to make it slightly more interesting.

I'd love to see the bonus civs captured instead of killed. In most circumstances, these civs would promptly be bled off, though for a couple turns the attacker would have to feed them. However, the really neat effect from this is that it adds an interesting element to stone walling. If you find someone suffering enough from WW, it may actually be worth your time to make some BRs or GSes.

Also, we're currently trying to make LGs a larger part of this game. Obviously, if your defences get lowered when you LG, this is another reason to run an all-x strat. To combat this, I don't think war weariness should effect your defences against LGs... or missiles for that matter.

Finally, I could see how this system could be exploited by non-attacking FA countries who never have to worry about WW. I don't think this is entirely fair, so I'd like to see a 15% WW drop touched on anyone who sends FA. After all, if you're in a war, your people won't be happy about you sending your resources to someone else. I think that makes sense.

To summarize this, here are my proposed changes:
1. Separate Readiness from defence and introduce War Weariness instead.
2. Alter the readiness/war weariness formula so that they have a much larger effect on attacking/defending strength.
3. Increase the civ loss rate for countries suffering from War Weariness.
4. Have bonus civs captured instead of killed.
5. Do not have War Weariness effect LGs or Missiles,
6. Put a 15% War Weariness loss on FA.

Thoughts?

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

make war readiness global for each clan. Like if 2 in a tag of 10 make 50 attacks in 24h, whole clan gets less deffense for 24h.

I don't see what that would solve Mortcus... except that it completely eliminates one aspect of subtlety from the game, and makes it very much worth while to try and plant spies in alliances you want to FS.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Current is AttackingStrength * readiness * govtbonus * weapons

With a minimum limit of 70% for the readiness in the attack formula.

so now that I have more time, I'd like to give this a true response.

1) I like the idea of your war weariness, mostly the general idea that as war goes on there should be some penalty. The immediate benefit after a FS is that even if the larger players who are able to break die, the 30% drop would allow a reasonable CS.

2) Balance would of course be delicate, and I could foresee a smaller alliance who wishes to attack a larger alliance being hurt by such a change. The dilemma would be that the smaller alliance would be devastated in a FS regardless, and now their FS would be weaker (by that I mean, they could lose more in the CS than prior to the change). I guess some part of me would hope that the change would be made such that the attacking alliance still has some benefit to hitting first, but just not the decision maker it seems to be today.

3) I like the idea of increasing the civ loss rate as a war rages on, especially given the bonus for population boost that was implemented.

4) If the goal is to encourage LGs why not have it affected by war weariness? a) This could have an interesting feedback for players who farm untags 40+ times a day. Now they will need to worry about retals that much more. b) Outside of farming, typically players make a few grabs a day and the war weariness would be minimal, less than the randomization in attacks already. I think that seems reasonable.

5) I'm not sure I know what you mean by bonus civs.

6) I think the 15% war weariness loss for FA is nice. For the most part, outside FA won't be too affected but assuming that the war weariness is displayed with military spying, it could be an interesting way to confirm suspicions of help.


It all definitely adds a good bit of new dynamics to war, but as I'm typically a netter, it would be prudent to hear some thoughts from others who predominantly war.

meant to edit, but hit quote instead..

Thanks for the feedback Tertius. Here's what I'm thinking about what you wrote.


I absolutely agree that the balance is delicate. I also agree that the advantage should still be with the attacking alliance in most circumstances. With the way I've laid this out, I think that will come through. However, I also see that the FS advantage almost disappears if the defending alliance stores turns. I think that this is interesting, as it may make it possible for an alliance to scare off an FS by storing turns.

As for small alliances not liking this. To an extent you're right, this will make it harder for smaller alliances to FS bigger ones successfully. But, by that same token, it also makes it easier for small alliances to fight back if they get FSed.

This may just be me, but I think that if you make the FS, you take your chances. After all, you've chosen to get into that war. If these changes hurt those people, but make it easier for alliances who get blind-sided to fight back, I don't think too many people will be upset about it.



That's a valid point -- I like it. It gives a reason for players to avoid mass bottom feeding and play around with big pay-off grabs.


I meant the extra civs who I proposed should be lost by countries suffering from war weariness. I'd love for them to be captured instead of killed.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I approve of this idea!

i think a lot of vets will/do like this idea.

tho, i have thought about the prospects of war for quite a while now. the warmonger in me doesn't want to say this, but i feel that any real changes to war should focus more on debilitation with longer kill times. i know that u get small clans saying it'll be too hard to kill someone, but i feel the whole art of war should shift from killing to short-term effect or even long-term effect maiming.

For those of us who have played since the beginning of time, this won't go over well... but to those newer ones coming in who have played similar online games, it will make a lot more sense. not many people enjoy creating and maticulously building a country day after day only for it to be killed in a few minutes and have to start back at turn 1 again. my clan loves to restart, but not many others.

And, we also all have to agree that the main goal of this game is NW. a war system that focused more on debilitation or maiming would still allow countries to pick up the pieces of their country and give another crack of the whip.

The ability to kill should still exist, but be made so its not an option normally picked.

ATM, if any clan gets in a war, unless its nothing but a land war, neither normally have a chance of competing well in terms of total nw. avg nw is still only competitive if the dead DON'T restart.

Not sure if the effort to change warring system is worth it. would probably lose a few war hungry vets as well. doubt this will be put in place... i just think that we should work towards less death and more carnage.


On a side note, i'd love if there were a seperate op or missile for each type of production that reduced the defender's prod for x turns. i guess most attacks and some ops already accomplish that through building destruction tho.

Don't get me wrong foog... the war weariness suggestion does have merit and brings some form of balance... i just feel it takes war in the wrong balanced direction.

also think that war should be more conquest based. i understand why gs started destroying bushels rather than taking them was to do with suiciding. but there have to be better ways to limit suiciding.

Like formal declaration of war(for clans or solo i guess) could make attacks more conquest than destructive even.

I think during a all attacks, the destruction of CS should be removed, it takes way way way to long to rebuild them, if you try and rebuild them you just get ABed or BRed again. It's just too damn effective, just the destruction of the rest of the buildings is plenty to get your point across, not to mention having to build at least 2 days worth of CS just to have a decent BPT and having the added build cost with less money, and or very little production. If you decide to not get rid of them, you should at least decrease the about of CS that gets destroyed. This would definitely balance out the FS advantage.

Before people tell me to buy defense to avoid this from happening, I'm saying this for the many country's that I have obliterated, for the victims of the blind siding suiciders.

I like the general idea you've laid out, foog. I actually clicked on this forum intending to make a post about giving more strength to countries that are built well in a war vs. countries that are online 24/7, but now I totally forgot what my idea was reading yours lol.

Zarcon and joedro, I have no problem with either of your suggestions. Both have merits which can (and, parhaps, should) be debated. But I'm hoping that this thread can remain on topic.

I didn't mean to create a thread for general discussion about war changes. There have been lots of those. I created a thread to put forward and get feedback on a specific suggestion that was developed in one of the general discussion threads.

I hope I'm not being rude, I appreciate what you both said about this suggestion, but I do want to discuss this specific ideas merits. That becomes difficult when completely unrelated suggestions are put forward in the same thread.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

i'm sorry, but i feel that my suggestion was very much related to my thoughts on the merit of your suggestion.

I plainly said that i feel your suggestion does go a long way towards balancing war as it is, but that it's balanced in the wrong direction.

If i hadn't gone further and explained what i meant, then my thoughts would have been worthless.

i too feel that it was related to balancing the fs, i had brought this up from before, but was shot down in a hurry. so i decided putting it in a more note worthy thread was a great idea!

lol, ok. I was probably being too protective regardless.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

scrapped?

?

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Mmm I like this idea, I saw it before when you posted it somewhere, definitely something to digest for a while.

From what I remember qz... I'm pretty sure when I originally posted this scheme, it was mostly just an expansion on an idea of yours. So, I should hope you like it :)

If it were to get implemented, it would be the first major structural change that this game has had. Obviously that has some risk. I think it's a relatively safe change though, and brings in a lot of interesting elements.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I actually think Zarcon's point is very valid in relation to this. I don't want this thread to devolve into GS discussion, but I do think relatedly for short vs long term warfare that there should be an option for GS to steal or destroy bushels, where maybe stealing takes 1/2 the bushels that would have been destroyed.

Anyways, I think that war weariness should be a bigger effect. I think it should drop to a 50% cap. I also think that war weariness gain should be related to the war weariness of the the defender. This makes sense in a "realism" stand point because a demoralized enemy will put up less of a fight to wear you down and upset your population. I feel population prefer fighting aggressors. I think a good amount of weariness gain would be something along the lines of .001+.008*(.5-DWW). In this example attacking someone at 50% war weariness you would gain war weariness of .1% but attacking someone at 0% war weariness you would gain war weariness of .5%. I definitely think that would prolong wars by encouraging you to make a broad crippling FS and not really begin killing until someone leaves himelf vulnerable by wearing himself down. This would probably also emphasize spies more by encouraging more spy-based FS tactics.

To give this more perspective hitting someone at 0% war weariness would put you at 50% war weariness from 0% in 100 attacks. Attacking someone at 50% war weariness would put you at 50% war weariness from 0% in 500 attacks. In this way an FS could effectively cut your defenses in half if you go all out.

I feel this definitely would reduce the FS advantage while still giving you a real opportunity to make some attacks first and hurt your enemy.

I also like how this would discourage farming.

Interesting idea foog, I'll send some of the number crunching SOF members this way so they can go over the maths etc for it.

War in this game has been long overlooked when it comes to actually making changes, all thats ever changed in the pass was civ returns, and of course destroying bushels rather than stealing them, as well as the missile changes.

I tend to build huge breaking countries for war, and can break down several enemy countries on a daily basis, while maintaining a very high defensive break on myself making me an absolute fluffer to kill. This war weariness seems like it will make people like me much more vulnerable, and I might actually have to stonewall more in future (Which is fine with me as I find walling a lot of fun)

I ain't really a fan of the board crippling FS, this is only really efficent early game when you catch someone with their pants down. But since my alliance specialise in mid-late set wars, these proposed changes would probably result in us having to rethink our entire strategy. Lucky we have the right people to come up with something :P

Will be intersting to see how this develops

i like the base idea.

when i get time i'll add some thoughts.

good idea.
Tertius said almost everything i wanted to say

the only drawbacks i see are indeed the fight of small vs big. if now a small clan (1/2 from the opponent) has a chance of winning or making even versus a bigger clan with the advantage of a good and well placed FS, with the proposed changes small clan will not have any chance. he will kill less in the FS + be easier to kill by the opponent because the weariness.

to some point logically i guess a clan should not beat a clan 2x their size. but the chances they have with the current war style i think are acceptable. if we can somehow add another factor related to clan members ; hits / member ; whatever to keep this chance of winning against a larger opponent then i think it's good.

and yea, this weariness should affect you landgrabbing. that will solve those berserk untagged farmers.

about gaining something from killed opponents: great! but let's not get carried away, you should not be able to compete netgaining prizes after you've been through a war. that's not logical.
gaining from your targets, yes, gaining so that you could compete to anw / tnw / top 10 ranks -> hell no.

the civ captured is interesting also. it would indeed change some aspects of stonewalling. i am not sure if it would be a good change or a bad change but it will be a change. and logical also.

good stuff foog

i dunno tavi. a well timed land war could easilly put a clan in a good netgaining position. even at current

The only thing I don't like about this is that I feel that it would push people to play their countries a lot more times throughout the day while they're at war. If we were at war I think i'd give up the logout turns bonus and just attack every hour or two in order stay near 100%. To me that would suck because I like to play once a day in the alliance game. If this change happened I almost wonder if the warring alliance would be better off having war chats every 2 or 3 hours.

If this was in effect last round LCN would have really gotten demolished by SOL. LCN hits Rage hoping for 1 on 1. Then Sol would come in and smash them while their WW is down.

The positive of this is that it would encourage allies to act quickly to help their allies. They would want to jump in right away and take advantage of the opponent's low WW.

I'm on the fence with this. There are some very cool ideas here, but the main thing that scares me is it pushing me to play more often when we're at war.

I'm going to throw this out there and I haven't given it a lot of thought on how it would shake out:

What if readiness only effected your ability to attack and could only be recovered over time? This could kill the stored turns 2 day FS because the attacking alliance would have to wait for their readiness to recover to strike again, in the meantime the defending alliance gets a chance to counter attack.

We could still do war weariness and that would effect attacking/defending and when you demoralize a country this is what you'd effect. It would be regenerated by using turns.

That is certainly true, however I don't see why being you shouldn't have an advantage by being more active.

Being active and having to log to the alliance server 8 times a day are totally different in my book. A lot of the activity is reading forums, posting, chatting in MIRC, etc. I spend the majority of my time doing the outside things, playing is very much secondary for me.

When I played the FFA to help Sof last set the warchats were torture. They lasted so long. You couldn't just attack in 10 minutes and be done. We'd kill a target and I'd only used 30% of the turns in 3 countries and it would go on and on and on until your turns were gone. If the alliance game became so tedious I wouldn't play anymore.

This is the same thing I see happening in the alliance game except you'd be waiting to get 25 people together every few hours, kill one country and then wait for the next 3 hour increment.

I'd like to hear what people think of the slight adjustment I made to foog's great idea. I think if we keep tossing ideas around we can come up with something pretty cool.

Well that is self-imposed tedium. There is no one forcing you to run war chats that way. I actually feel like this would speed up warchats because there would be less incentive to weight for a "full wave" of turns.

That makes no sense. Have you been in an FFA war?

Well yeah, 8 chats a day would obviously EACH be less time consuming than one big 1. But that doesn't save anyone any time overall.

I have not and will not be in an FFA war... I don't allow this game to take more of my time than I want it to. (ok, that is a lie, but I do impose some limits)

Having more chats that each is purely hitting rather than sitting around WOULD save time since the waiting would be removed however that is not my point. My point is that barring a huge turn out it is unlikely you will kill a country unless it already has high WW (in the system I proposed) and thus you can just put the hits in and move on. Maybe if you want kills you'll have to start going very heavy with the SRs...

I could argue that it would take more time. I'll posy more later.

Sounds good.

If alliances were bigger I don't think it would be hard to get kills, but with the game as small as it is I don't know that we should expect gameplay to be as it used to be.

Helmets point about FFA is that in a war chat in FFA after the first country is killed you could have only used 1 or 2 of ur countries during the run, so in a lot of cases you wont be finished with ur turns until like the 16 - 20 th kill

Not sure I am following... you have a lot of countries so it takes a long time to play them... how is this any different than when running one country except multiplied by the number of countries you are running?

Helmet, I don't think that will happen... in fact, I'm not even sure it will work.

Let's remember, every attack lowers your WW... which is only recovered by time. Therefore, to keep your WW from perpetually dropping, you need your attack rate to remain slower than your recovery rate.

With a loss rate of 0.5% per attack, and a recovery rate of 0.625% per hour, your attack rate needs to be lower than 1.25 attacks per hour. If you're attending a warchat every 4 hours, that translates into 5 attacks per WC. If you exceed that number, your WW will drop continuously at a rate equal to "(your # of attacks - 5) * .05".

This has two problems. The first one is the obvious one, can any alliance get enough members online for each warchat to be able to get kills while only laying out 5 attacks per member? Personally, I don't think so.

The second is mathematical. At present, we gain 3 turns an hour... or 12 turns every 4 hours. Used at their most efficient, that works out to 5.16 attacks at each warchat. Okay, that's no big deal, you only need to drop 1 attack per day in order to stay under the 5 attacks per chat limit. The issue is that this only accounts for balancing your turns, it doesn't let you use any turns you have stored or saved... and if you miss a warchat, your WW is back to full before the next one, and you've lost those 5 attacks.

In the end Helmet, the number work out in such a way that it is not possible to keep WW up all the time unless you don't use any stored turns to attack... or stop attacking efficiently. If you want to push it a little further so that it really isn't at all advantageous to stay online all the time, all we'd have to do is increase the WW loss rate to .525% or drop the recovery rate to .6%. There would be no lasting advantage at all then -- even if you started the war with 0 turns.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Yeah, I don't think we disagree on those points. I said the same thing basically when I said you'd be waiting to get 25 members online just to get one kill.

My question was more about whether the top half of a tag would actually choose to go to 70% WW. The small countries could obviously go to 70% and use their turns efficiently and the attacking would be the same as before. The top half of the tag might be a different story.

After doing the math, really you could just attack every 12hrs with your original numbers and only be at 91% after the FS. If I was at the top of the tag I don't think I'd want to go any lower than 90%, even if that meant losing some efficiency. It depends on the details of the war too.

I didn't take regaining readiness in to account because I wasn't sure what you were doing with that. That would certainly have a big impact on what your percentages would be.

What it could do and it would be fun to see, is bring back AB first strikes.

Like I said, my main concern is time. I'm usually a breaker and I can't imagine leaving my country that naked. So I could see myself just playing a lot more to make this work.

Detmer, i was just explaining what he meant by war chats taking soo long in ffa.

If you attack on ur own, 16 countries take a max of 20 minutes to play.
Playing them in a war chat can takes 2 - 3 hours depending on the war leader

He was meaning that he doesnt want alliance wars to become tedious like that

Ok, I don't see how WW translates alliance wars into FFA wars...


I feel the biggest problems with this idea rise when you try to force it into the box of how we currently run warchats and warfare.

Detmer: As I've stated above it could turn in to attending warchats multiple times per day. With multiply warchats each country obviously does less attacks, therefore each kill requires more people to attend the chat. If I'm doing three chats a day to keep my WW up, then I'm in warchats for a good portion of my day. I'm spending a lot of time in warchats if I'm in a small alliance and I'm constantly waiting around for enough people to join so we can just get one kill.

As I started before, the stale way people have been doing warfare for the past 11-12 years might not make sense with this change. I don't see why game changes have to be catered around making it easy for alliances to get kills.

I never said a single thing about catering to how I like to kill people. I said I was concerned about playing time increasing, which is bad for war alliances. Wars already very time consuming.

You keep mentioning people will have to wait around in war chats for large numbers and show up repeatedly until kills are achieved.

The point Helmet is that players aren't forced to do that. In the same way that players aren't forced to play exactly every 18 hours changing their schedule daily to get max bonus turns. You get to make the choice on whether you want to go the most efficient (but time-consuming) route or the standard once a day (but with some penalty). That seems like a fair trade in the scheme of things.

Though the issue of this increasing the ease of kills seems counter-balanced to some ideas of others which suggest that making it more difficult would allow people who can't get online 24/7 to still be able to wall and survive in some manner.

Of course not, just like we can play rainbow strats if we want. These arguments are pointless. All I did was post my pros and cons. If you guys want to argue about my cons all day and accomplish nothing that's your choice. :P

I was hoping maybe this would evolve, but it's clearly not.

I appreciate the thought Helmet :)

I think it's a relatively minor issue... and I think that if it becomes a matter of great concern, it's relatively easy to make adjustments to address it.

I definitely want to hear all the specific criticism (or cons) that people see in this suggestion though. I'm, frankly, surprised by how little of that there's been so far.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

If you are making a point beyond people could make this more time consuming then it is too subtle for me - or I completely missed it.

Well, maybe it's more about tweaking. I suggested an alternative that I personally would prefer or I think maybe 10-15% max WW. 30% is huge. Think about how weak you feel running a republic and it's only 10% weaker. It seems to dramatic to me at these levels.

The formula massively rapes attack strenght.

Eg. 0.7 readiness, 1.5 weapons, 1.25 dict

current multiplier: 1.31

Suggested multiplier: 0.96 (WTF)

Basically the suggested changes to formula would mean attack power gets absoluted raped. Very against this.