More dramatic could be making it spies*acres^(-1/3) or something along those lines, but the general idea is sleek. The question becomes: At what point should spies be balanced? Should it be balanced around the economic hit taken to maintain said spies? Or is it all arbitrary?

Can't u just change the expenses of spies if ur that concerned with the economic reprocussions of having alot of them ?

Well, the idea is to make originals that are well built be useful against poorly built countries that just dropped acres. The only reason I suggested an economic way of balancing it is because it seems easy... but you could balance it around the extra production you would get for more acres from having indy sites built on them, the extra costs of carrying extra acres (tech costs, etc), or any number of things (Depending on how strong/weak you want to make it). While the formula presented technically still makes it marginally better to get an extra spy on lower acres, that doesn't take into account extra production,etc. The key would be to nerf SPAL without making high acre countries overpowered. If that makes sense.

I personally like it the way it is now. Those higher acres lower spy countries can make more stock and essentially replace what they lost daily and or buy enough troops that the CD isn't as effective. But the high acre low spy countries would need to spend precious stock and not perhaps try to netgain during war or after the war is essentially won. And if a enemy has 1 or 2 high spal countries all u need is 1 spy op and then kill it even if u have got to burn stock to break without CDs. Are we perhaps looking at this the wrong way and just trying to take away from war people one of the only tools to try and help them compete in a war against better countries? Instead of looking at it as why not make the netting country spend their stock ?

They can't replace what they lost daily if they have to drop to 1/4 of their acres just to compete. There are really enough crutches in war (like restart bonus) that incentivize building poorly and allows poorly built countries to compete; should spal really be another one?

I think tbh it's arbitrary because you'd probably have to run 50% indies to achieve a spal relative to someone who drops in. While dropping land still should benefit a waller, someone with under a million spies total should not be able to have a high success rate over a well built war country with 8m+.

I think what you just posted for a formula is more in line with how it should be. Ugo plainly had a great idea it just wasn't quite dramatic enough imo. By that formula a country with 50k acres and 100 spal (5m spies) is 135720 spy power. In order to achieve that on 5k acres, you'd need about 2.4m spies or around 480 SPAL. Not impossible but also as difficult to achieve/maintain.

That seems extremely fair to me.

[quote poster=sinistril; 47479; 909860]

I think they can. If the stocked clan knows which guys are cding them. Kill them before it gets expensive. Then all u gotta do is replace what is lemming away cause the CDs are no longer effective. And if the stock country has let's say 30 mil troops. The high spal countries are more then likely not going to have 15mil troops to get the 4% per cd Max benefit, hence spending stock to be to big to cd properly and just kill the spy countries

Either way boltar it shouldnt be incentivized to run a country with 5k acres and 1m spies OVER running a country with 50k acres and 9m spies.

You have less cash expense, less food expense, cheaper production cost to maintain, lower spy losses on failed ops, fewer buildings required to produce spal thereby lowering cost, and a better spy power.

That's clearly not balanced in the most remote sense. It literally incentivizes having a bad country. If you needed something like 4 or 5m spies on 5k acres, you'd merely be hitting the same production walls as the larger country does, and not just be able to easily steal tech from bots to maintain an absurd spal. While that's easy peasy on 5k acres, on 50k acres same spal you get the same amount of tech per op but on higher expenses. It should be just as difficult to maintain spies on low acres as high acres and the fact that it isn't is a problem. Sin's rendition of Ugo's formula is spot on for a remedy to balance the cost of being low acres high spal.

I also don't think something that makes good players better at war and bad players worse at war degrades the war experience at all. This is absolutely not a case of something just to make war more difficult or something. It just means you will have a better chance of winning wars and distancing yourself if you are good at the game. And you should have to also be good to take down good players.

I would prefer spies*acres^(-1/3) for spy power, and spy drs to go into effect after 10 of any single op type, while CDs remain equal in power. The number of total ops before dr could remain the same tho.

But I feel it should be incenti whatever the hell u said. If ur netting and get stuck warring u gotta accept the fact u might need to spend ur stock to outgrow the enemy not hold it and hope the enemy dies faster before they pick u to be a target. If ur in war u need to accept that.

We're not talking about netters here. None of these formulas benefits netters, really. We're talking about people building war countries.

I think most of us do that. I wholeheartedly disagree with making it super easy for bad players to kill good players just for war participation sake tho. I get your point but you should simply have to build more than a 5k acre country with a little over a million spies to take down a 50k acre country with a little under 10.

I hate to revert to sarcasm but if the genuine argument of wardogs is "this is a war game," then more powerful nations should be more powerful. Right now running 200 spal on 5k acres is like the giving every millennial a participation trophy thing. It's just babying bad players so they can war better players and not feel like they are bad. When in reality half of the people that are better than them (i.e. 1a last 2 sets) didn't even want to war them in the first place.

Spies are one way along with the restart bonus and bot exploitation, that make wars endless instead of evident who has won. Fixing this flaw will improve the experience of war by greatly appreciating the value of a CF vs getting slaughtered after you lose repeatedly and still somehow hanging in there.

If this is a "war game," then wars should have definitive winners and losers.

You can't make a proper SPAL when already in war. If you are netting, and you carry a netting SPAL and a netting amount of ICs you are gonna have a crap spal when you die or when the war ends, whichever comes first. Theres nothing you can do about that. What we are proposing is to make that slightly less true.

I disagree with the Spy_power=spies*acres^(-1/3) and I think Ugolino's Spy_power=spies*acres^(-1/2) is enough of a change as long as small nerfs to CDs(from 4 to 3% perhaps) and an increase of resources needed for max damage comes along with it.

Like I suggested here:



Spy_power=spies*acres^(-1/3) means a country of 80k acres need only twice the amount of spies as a country of 10k acres to have equal strength. It's too harsh a punishment for being small I think, unless there are other changes that go along with it.

The expenses formula is another thing we have only hinted at in this thread but its part of the problem as they are proportional to '(1 + Networth/200000000)'. This usually only has a tiny effect but in late alliance/FFA/primary conflicts(or posturing, or just defending yourself properly) it's another factor making spies cost increase more than proportionally with your size.
If instead spies expenses were proportional to '1/(1 + Networth/200000000)' then big 100m NW countries would instead of having to pay 50% more expenses on each spy they would pay 1/3 less per spy, which would make it viable to actually try and get the necessary spies also when you are big.

For what it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree that spies*acres^(-1/2) is superior especially for balancing. It works out in such a way that the proportional spy expense between two countries increases at the same rate as the proportion between the marginal benefit of running a turn on two different countries with the same % of indy sites producing spies. That is not true with spies*acres^(-1/3) and I feel like it should be. I was just pointing out that it is easy to change the formula depending on what should be balanced (that's also why I asked if it is arbitrary).

Sorry if that sounds confusing Lol

I can get behind the idea of spies costing less the more you have (even so far as to have them decrease exponentially every million or so total spies), in addition to Spy_power=spies*acres^(-1/2).

The suggestion for making it a more dramatic -1/3 is due to the massive expense of holding high spal at high acres, which decreasing the expense curtails. It should be easier to run 200 spal at 50k acres than 5k which currently it is not. So if it were a combination of the two, the end result is roughly the same, although it does more to reward high acre high spal countries, rather than punish those with low acre high spal. Imo win/win. I can way get behind that.

I think decreasing CD to a constant 3% is also reasonable but not as effective as having a faster spy dr on CD. You'll still be breaking a 10m troop country at under 4m with 20 CD and 7 demo. If spy dr hits at 10 - 4% CDs, you'd be looking at more like 4.5m than a 3.8m break on a 10m troop country. Since 7% of troops is basically peanuts in most cases, i think both solutions are good.

I think you are 100% spot on Gerdler.

^ I'm very much for this change in the expense formula for other reasons. I think it is a long-time needed and could use it's own thread for discussion completely separate from the topic of spies.

Never said hey this is a war game I said hey if they are in a war for whatever reason they should try and make themselves unbreakable as best they can until those high spal countries are dead

High spal countries dont go away. They actually just get more powerful when they restart because they're running the same spal with diminished expenses. All you lose is some stock, but spal is roughly the same and the expense of your SPAL decreases. I know this very well. I've only lived thru 3 1a sets and running a spy just gets easier and easier the fewer acres i have from dying assuming i get my stuffs on the market and wall enough to get a good restart bonus but not enough to burn a lot of stock. Just a couple buyups and maybe 100 turns of walling and then restart as epic spy.

fluff left this out. They shouldn't be rewarded either by not needing to spend their stock. Im aiming for it to be fair. So far all discussions are to making harder for 1 side not both

That's because it is currently sooooo much easier to run a high spal on low acres than on high acres that it is unfairly advantaged toward lesser built countries. Large spy countries should be encouraged more, as building up is the name of the game.

The suggestions are in an effort to make that fair, as it currently is not.

How is it fair ? It's making it harder for 1 side and easier for another? What is the easier side losing out of this?

What sides, exactly?

It's been easier for poorly built countries for a long time. It's built into the current formulas to be easier for them

The problem with adding as many crutches for weaker countries that we have today is that it no longer(in war) feels necessary to build a stronger country and therefore players are not encouraged to learn that.

That's exactly right. Having a good country should not be discouraged at the very least. I tend to stock at high acreage before a stocks war with something like 20 spal on 50k acres, and then drop to 200 spal on 5k acres. It is both easier and more sustainable to have a trash country than building 10m spies on my 50k acres. And I think all we are asking for is for that ease of having 200 spal be equal to the alternative. I shouldn't want to drop to win a war. I should want to outgrow my enemy.

Extra spy SDI. Or the option for a permanent increase in spal thru bonus points(of which you can't lose). That way you can essentially stock your bonus points and if was hits you while you are netting spend them on SPAL boost.

The only reason stocking points is OP atm is for turns on hand(which you can cap) and PCI/Indy/Farm boosts which can be removed...

But what you did us considered a strategy. Seen it many times in ffa. Run 30k techers and drop to 20k before war.

Since people are so worried about bigger countries not being able to compete spy wise maybe we should cap the number of grabs you can make a day to 10 or 15. Also make it where people cannot grow 5,000 acres over the server's average land from landgrabs.

Should keep everyone close together in spal unless someone decided to buil all their land into indies.

If we want to limit growth we should reduce the % land captured in landgrabs and/or do something about the explore rates.
I'm sure you know how important it is for the game to allow different strategies to work - which require (and allow) different growth rates at different times of the reset. It is also one of the ways good or great players distinguish themselves, how well they grab and manage their economies while they grow. You understand this I'm certain. So I have to assume its not a real suggestion you are giving. :)

When it comes to war; the effectiveness of CDs from smaller countries remove the benefit of being a good player, only being a good waller counts since they are gonna break you with GS anyhow. And since walling is only about being there, preferably on a computer, at all times of the enemies warchats it is not inclusive to non-American players, or anyone with jobs or regular pasttimes that mean they might not be able to wall. So war drives people away from EE presently, because it only allows a very small percentage of the demographic to participate reasonably effectively. CDs and the way SPAL work today are a significant part of the reason for why it is like that.

I feel this may have unintentionally gone down a CD path. But more generally for spies and as said in the original post, why not reward specialization for spy countries like we do for other strategies? Basically disincentivize running a small, crappy, rainbow spy country.

A few thoughts:
-Require building specialization, e.g. a certain ratio of ICs or maybe MBs to spies for max effectiveness - combined with the prior ideas of square root or third root of land in the denominator of the new SPAL.
-At least for harmful ops, decrease the baseline success rate, up max tech to like 200%, and require 175% tech to get to today's baseline success rate.
-Increase military expenses due to spies when running ops (similar to how oil increases expenses for military actions). Those spies need hazard pay! Perhaps 2x or 3x the baseline spy expense. If taking my first idea to require MBs for max effectiveness, could also increase baseline spy expense to further encourage MBs.
-Increase spy losses for failed ops.
-Increase returns based on strat tech.
-Effectively ensure a failed op every 25 ops or so on harmful ops to discourage spy griefing.

Just some starting thoughts.

this is very typical. there is no issue but laf doesnt like something because it doesnt go to their strengths so they try and change it. how is it too strong? you may as well say brs or abs are too strong. laf is trying to change the game to fit there needs. i totally disagree with nuking cd and spies and if you ask EVERYONE in sof is against this. have you tried asking everyone on the server or have you just listened to the laf whiners?

if you do this you are clearly siding with the netters and whiners. DONT CHANGE CDs!

Too many words and I'm lazy to read. =P

But anyhow, whatever the developers that are or might be planning to change/modify, possible to setup a poll and let the players to decide what changes they want?
And then maybe only make the changes based on the outcome of the votes?

If majority of the players vote for a change, then I don't see why we can't give it a try.
If majority vote against on changes, then perhaps we should re-discuss to minimize the changes until players can accept it?

Neil this has nothing to do with Laf, this is a discussion to look at ways to improve the warring experience, Spies and CDs are a major part of that.

These discussions have been happening behind the scenes for years but with Pang and Qz now trying to move the game forward, so the whole game gets to be involved in these discussions. This is why you can see this board and why this thread has ( long term Discussion) in its title.

So please if everyone in Sof is against it well then have them join the discussion and explain why it shouldn't be changed just like boltar has been doing.

I'm going to second Warster there.

This thread and any UI changes have nothing to do with a clan or clans end of story.

This thread is about finding some new ideas and having the community discuss the issues with all opposing ideas.

From this I can tell that spal probably needs a re-work. as maybe does expenses of spies, as potentially does the outcomes of aggressive spy attacks..

Keep discussing and we will also keep watching. one of us will be posing the new'er style of Spying so hopefully you all don't just yell at us :P

Good luck with that :)

If changes to spies/spal happen I think this is the way to move forward instead of actually changing the effectiveness of spies. I don't necessarily agree with all of the rest of this post and would like to contribute more concrete ideas but being away from the game for years has limited my knowledge of the game. I think if the numbers can be worked out it can appease both warring and netting tags with this solution.

I also agree that some kind of in game vote should be put out before changes are made-not to confirm or stop changes but to gauge the input of all players not just ones that use the forums. I think the majority of players now are ones that have stuck through some harder times of this game and their input should be valued before the re-release and influx of returning/new players.

Just give us a damn test server. All of these are great hypotheticals, let's start putting them in action. Give us 5 minute turns a week long and Max turns 120(120). Clans or no clans don't matter. Hell, start us out at 7500a and built how we choose.

Lol at Neil. One of the only people on this entire thread who doesn't want at least small changes is The Hawk and he is in LaF. You're out of line. Go sit down.



I think your sarcasm here doesn't make any sense to me. Attempting to balance something that is extremely unbalanced is not at all like capping growth on things that everyone has an equal chance at. "Instead of making it less efficient to run a 5k acre rainbow, why don't we force everyone to run 5k acre rainbows" is essentially what you're saying sarcastically. I think it's ironic you don't see your own point. And not only that, but larger countries do get smaller returns from a smaller bot. That's actually already similarly balanced.

It seems to me that the people who don't want to see it changed just want to call other people's ideas bad, but don't really want to offer up a reason why they think that. The closest thing ive seen to a reason not to change it is because some people want bad countries to still be able to war good countries. That's fine to think that, but i personally think that's a problem and not a cool feature.

Perhaps offering reasons why it shouldn't change instead of insulting others opinions would make some valid points.

Out of plain curiosity, were CDs this powerful in mehuls game? I don't remember one way or another, but i don't feel like i remember them being as damaging as they are now...

I like the idea of making a specialized spy country strat.

Mehuls game completely different animal. Most serious netting clans had Rd colors in them so they knew who to grab and wars didn't start that way or were protected by Rd so they didn't war If they wanted to

I know this will mess with oildestockmumbojumbothings, but what if you drop land, you also loose that % amount of troops/spies/resources as well?
This effectively removes the 5k acres uberspy?

Trying to war stock with a 5k acre country is quite ineffective. One would come in to the war with little or no stock, and one would never be able to afford the amounts of troops needed to effectively CD a 20-30M troop country.


Sidenote, anyone sitting on 10M troops in a well stocked war, or at 50k acres, is asking to get killed, y0 :P

Killing land dropping in some way would effectively solve that part of the problem where people drop land for higher spal, but I see that more as a symptom of the issue than the main issue. The fact that a small country is so effective in war compared to a large country who's player invested time and effort to get there IS the issue, and disallowing that player to drop land could make the issue even worse as part of his toolkit is removed.

I don't mind it it kills the TMBR oil destock tho as it is quite uninteresting so some version of what you are saying could be discussed as well as part of another thread perhaps on where we want the game to go.

Good point.

Would making spy ops more reliant on having the same level of resources feel good? Like one would have to be within 70% or so for decent returns, and have sharp declining returns for being too small?

I don't remember where the the limit is today.

Good to see you badde. Been a minute bro. Didn't know you were around...

Rn anything below 5k acres has penalty ish. Anything above doesn't.

The way it has been proposed (spies×acres^(-1/2)) a country with 5k acres would need about 1.6m spies to do ops on a country with 50k acres and 5m spies (100 spal).

Not a huge change but just keeping the small country honest and not able to do ops with 550k spies.

Just to expand on my post in the other thread... here are many different iterations of Ugo's formula showing the spies needed to reach 20k spy power every 5k acres up until 300k acres. I also show the current SPAL one would get, and the cost to get to 149.95% (the percentage where it flips over to 150) spy tech on a normal government type @ the modest price of $2000. Even under this new formula you'll note that lower acred countries still have a large advantage because they don't incur the massive costs associated with buying tech, so they can max out.

Spies Acres Spy power (Proposed) SPAL (current) Cost max tech
1,414,214 5,000 20,000 283 472,034,000
2,000,000 10,000 20,000 200 941,416,000
2,449,490 15,000 20,000 163 1,410,798,000
2,828,427 20,000 20,000 141 1,880,180,000
3,162,278 25,000 20,000 126 2,349,562,000
3,464,102 30,000 20,000 115 2,818,944,000
3,741,657 35,000 20,000 107 3,288,326,000
4,000,000 40,000 20,000 100 3,757,708,000
4,242,641 45,000 20,000 94 4,227,090,000
4,472,136 50,000 20,000 89 4,696,472,000
4,690,416 55,000 20,000 85 5,165,854,000
4,898,979 60,000 20,000 82 5,635,236,000
5,099,020 65,000 20,000 78 6,104,618,000
5,291,503 70,000 20,000 76 6,574,000,000
5,477,226 75,000 20,000 73 7,043,382,000
5,656,854 80,000 20,000 71 7,512,764,000
5,830,952 85,000 20,000 69 7,982,146,000
6,000,000 90,000 20,000 67 8,451,528,000
6,164,414 95,000 20,000 65 8,920,910,000
6,324,555 100,000 20,000 63 9,390,292,000
6,480,741 105,000 20,000 62 9,859,674,000
6,633,250 110,000 20,000 60 10,329,056,000
6,782,330 115,000 20,000 59 10,798,438,000
6,928,203 120,000 20,000 58 11,267,820,000
7,071,068 125,000 20,000 57 11,737,202,000
7,211,103 130,000 20,000 55 12,206,584,000
7,348,469 135,000 20,000 54 12,675,966,000
7,483,315 140,000 20,000 53 13,145,348,000
7,615,773 145,000 20,000 53 13,614,730,000
7,745,967 150,000 20,000 52 14,084,112,000
7,874,008 155,000 20,000 51 14,553,494,000
8,000,000 160,000 20,000 50 15,022,876,000
8,124,038 165,000 20,000 49 15,492,258,000
8,246,211 170,000 20,000 49 15,961,640,000
8,366,600 175,000 20,000 48 16,431,022,000
8,485,281 180,000 20,000 47 16,900,404,000
8,602,325 185,000 20,000 46 17,369,786,000
8,717,798 190,000 20,000 46 17,839,168,000
8,831,761 195,000 20,000 45 18,308,550,000
8,944,272 200,000 20,000 45 18,777,932,000
9,055,385 205,000 20,000 44 19,247,314,000
9,165,151 210,000 20,000 44 19,716,696,000
9,273,618 215,000 20,000 43 20,186,078,000
9,380,832 220,000 20,000 43 20,655,460,000
9,486,833 225,000 20,000 42 21,124,842,000
9,591,663 230,000 20,000 42 21,594,224,000
9,695,360 235,000 20,000 41 22,063,606,000
9,797,959 240,000 20,000 41 22,532,988,000
9,899,495 245,000 20,000 40 23,002,370,000
10,000,000 250,000 20,000 40 23,471,752,000
10,099,505 255,000 20,000 40 23,941,134,000
10,198,039 260,000 20,000 39 24,410,516,000
10,295,630 265,000 20,000 39 24,879,898,000
10,392,305 270,000 20,000 38 25,349,280,000
10,488,088 275,000 20,000 38 25,818,662,000
10,583,005 280,000 20,000 38 26,288,044,000
10,677,078 285,000 20,000 37 26,757,426,000
10,770,330 290,000 20,000 37 27,226,808,000
10,862,780 295,000 20,000 37 27,696,190,000
10,954,451 300,000 20,000 37 28,165,572,000

As you can see, a 300k acre country will need to spend 11 mill per turn extra to maintain spies, as well as 28 BILLION (yay hockey stick formulas) to max their tech, not to mention the loss of building space from IC's to get 11mill spies, just to be on par with a 10k acre country with 2 mill spies and less than 1 billion spent on spy tech. The latter example would have 200 SPAL * 150% spy tech = 300 SPAL with current system (pretty common SPAL for a war country of that acreage rn). The former example would have 56 spal for their 11 million spies and 28 billion spent under the system we have. How is that a fair system? Spending 5.5x per turn and 28x on tech for 1/6 of the effectiveness...? And this doesn't need to be changed? I rest my case.

Actually, Derrick might be right in that Ugo's formula does not go far enough.

The resource requirement for full effect today for several ops is to have 50% of the resources of the target and CDs are one of those ops. But other ops are spread out between 7.5%, 0% (yes some ops you get full effect even if you have nothing, but those ops are rarely considered problematic in this sense) and one op with 66.667%. But increasing the resource demands for CDs in particular but possibly for a few other ops as well is something I think should be discussed, and both I and someone else, I forget who, have suggested it before.

I do not believe in one silver bullet, I believe more in attacking a problem from several angles rather than one huge change that might have to be so large that it creates many unwanted side effects.

When it comes to the Land penalty I have spent hours upon hours testing and putting numbers into a statistical model to try and find how it works. I am sure I have a very good idea of when the land penalty comes in effect and when it is not, but I do not yet know for sure exactly how large of an effect it has. I am very unwilling to share the exact numbers I have come up with though, as in recent wars I have noticed that my enemies sometimes unknowingly end up on the wrong side and botch kill runs and/or lose loads of turns and spies, much to my amusement.
What Derrick says "Rn anything below 5k acres has penalty ish. Anything above doesn't." is kinda true for some situations that may occur some or indeed many sets, so it can be used as a basis for discussion, even tho its not correct at all.

What he says illustrates in a good way the issue; that a 5k acre country with insane spal is just as effective as a 20k acre country with the same spal in most situations. The larger one has either spent more time and effort in getting where he is, or the small one has been attacked(likely killed) in ways that should ideally reduce its effectiveness at least somewhat, but right now it does not.
This makes stuff like Nukes, landgrabs that remove or displace land a lot weaker than they would otherwise be and perhaps ABs, BRs, CMs and Bomb structures as well, since those often force the target to drop land. But since all those acts increase the targets SPAL, in all but the most extreme cases without activating any form of a penalty on their spy op success rate.

I know I proposed this on Page 1 of this thread, but once I did so, I took the idea and kept running with it. I still feel that switching to a Counter-Intelligence Tech, competently executed, could help mitigate a lot of the issue people have with the way spies, SPAL, and the way the whole system surrounding them operates.

I went over all of the recent posts, and it seems like there still seems to be a big push-pull in regards to what is considered balanced when bolstering your country's Spy Network, as well as the lingering issue that large countries can simply get ran over by spies coming from countries 1/10th their size. How exactly IS it fair that bigger countries have to invest ump-teen-millions of dollars to maintain a massive Spy Network when staying small and using less turns and resources can yield the same results?

Utilizing an alternate method for defending against spies, Counter-Intelligence Tech, each country can have better control over how much time and resources they put into their Spy Networks. You'd still have to put into it to see results, of course, but any

My most up-to-date revision of my proposal for this is in the Google Doc linked below. I've enabled people to be able to leave comments if they wish to. Of course, this is all just a group of suggestions that I've adjusted as I see the the input in this thread, and the proposal still has a little ways to go. But I feel that finding a new way for players to attack and defend with spies is overdue. If the back-and-forth in this thread indicates anything, it's that a fresh and new take on Spy Networks should at least be considered.

Even if the base proposal of the Counter-Intel Tech isn't wanted, or a bit too much to consider adding it on the whole, I still think I have a few decent ideas on how some of the existing spy ops can be revised. I even have a couple of ideas for brand new spy ops.

Thanks for your time, gang. I hope you like what I have to offer. Feel free to comment on the document, or leave a reply here. I'll definitely answer any questions.

https://docs.google.com/...0tmYzMxk/edit?usp=sharing

be careful with any changes that significantly reduce the cost of maintaining spies

since what you might do is change the amount of acreage that needs to be dedicated to producing spies

the most simplistic fix to spies in general is making total spies matter a lot more than it currently does, then if a 60m nw country is paying 2x as much as a 20m isnt a huge deal

you still pay 2x as much for everything else as well, so if the price was flattened just for spies it would just close the expense/acre tax on high nw countries a little

its only when spies become the vast majority of expenses it would make a big difference

on talk about land dropping the best solution for that is to treat the land dropped as still existing for the purposes of grabbing, basically the topfeed and drop all land suiciding and people never get the land back, if you implemented that and then added in the virtual land counting for spal terms it reduces the benefit of dropping land for spal

for a spy dr op it would be easier to include spy dr and regular dr as well if you wanted in a military spy op than make a new one

the other easy way to nerf spy ops or make being big more important is to limit spy ops based on yournw/targetnw similar to land grabs, it could even be the old pop kill formula inverted, the one where you always killed max hitting up and hitting down reduced pop killed, you could make its so spying down always spied max and spying up was reduced below x%

perhaps exclude certain ops if people really want 7% demo to stay the same and so on

Why not implement "turns spent" into spy ops formula?

Why not implement "turns spent" into spy ops formula?

Or allow spy ops to steal turns?

what would happen to those stolen turns? goto spier? suiciders would just love that.