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12/24/2016 - Uncounterable Espionage


Alex
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Every other alliance had the opportunity to take advantage of this flaw in Sheepy's ability to think things through. They didn't use it. We did. That just makes you all bad at the game. Grow up and move on. Bunch of babies in here.

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Priest of Dio

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Because the operation was only born knowing that the war system was offline and that it could go effectively unpunished until the start of the new war module. Players are using an out of game event to gain an advantage in game. The main reason Sheepy didn't announce when the war module was going to go offline was because some people wanted to use the timer to attack without recourse. This is the same scenario, however just one Sheepy did not foresee. Yes, we could spy back but anyone who's actually organized spy ops knows once you get hit with 5-6 spies ops against your spies you aren't doing anything back on the spy front. Coming into the new war system with 0 spies and all of our spy slots free to be hit (twice at update) gives any alliance a huge advantage, one born simply because the war system was offline. Had the war system been online a war would've already started and while you would have had an advantage, you would not have been able to spy further that day against units giving a chance for a defense to be rallied. This is not an option with the war system being offline, thus making it what Sheepy was trying to prevent, players gaining an large advantage due to the war system being offline -- It only makes sense it would be changed. 

 

You can claim I'm only against spying being in place during this because of what happened to my alliance, and you're damn right I'm going to be more adamant that this is shit, but it would be shit regardless of who it was being done to. I was against players attacking players just before the update, and that wasn't going to happen to me (if it was I didn't know). I was against missiles being OP way back when, when Guardian was full of missiles. I was against Air superiority being so high when my alliance ruled the sky. I was against low infra nations running rampant (before Arrgh did it) when I was running around as a rogue fighting people well under my city count. I'm against the espionage while the war system is offline because it is an exploit. TKR leadership themselves said that the only reason this attack went down is because the war module was offline, intentionally preventing any sort of recourse against them until spies were removed and the new system was rolled out making spies much more potent against units, but not other spies. 

 

--

 

That all being said, the easiest method of remedying this that requires also the least amount of coding work is simply to uncap spy purchases for the remainder of the war module being down. As to not hamper those who spent money doing the spy attacks and give them a reward, you can make spies cost more to buy at the increased rate. Somewhere between 2x-5x the normal cost (would make it at most 15M for 60 spies). Still gains them an advantage for the effort they put in for spy attacks without leaving alliances spy-less at the start of a war system revolving with massively buffed spy attacks. 

 

 

 

Because the operation was only born knowing that the war system was offline and that it could go effectively unpunished until the start of the new war module.

So you, and everyone else knew that this was possible but you didn't prepare for it? Pretty much the whole server knew that the 5 no-war module is going to be in effect and that spy engages aren't - some of the people have took advantage of it. It's not like Sheepy made this update out of the blue.

 

I'll ignore the fact that with organization you can infact spy back, but we'll leave it at that.

 

 

es, we could spy back but anyone who's actually organized spy ops knows once you get hit with 5-6 spies ops against your spies you aren't doing anything back on the spy front. Coming into the new war system with 0 spies and all of our spy slots free to be hit (twice at update) gives any alliance a huge advantage, one born simply because the war system was offline.

Yes, and rolling back the server(or removing spy cap/whatever else) will give you a huge advantage because you know you're going to get hit, and you know who's going to hit, and you can prepare for it. Why the !@#$ should the alliances that actually used the mechanics, organized spy-efforts, and made a war plan be punished for Sheepys stupidity? If you think Sheepy !@#$ed up - that's not the problem of the playerbase and it shouldn't give you an advantage. It shouldn't give you an even playing field

 

 

 

You can claim I'm only against spying being in place during this because of what happened to my alliance, and you're damn right I'm going to be more adamant that this is shit, but it would be shit regardless of who it was being done to. I was against players attacking players just before the update, and that wasn't going to happen to me (if it was I didn't know). 

You're basically admitting that you're only making this argument because you're on the receiving end. Do you expect 'honesty'-sympathy points for that? tTO didn't participate in the spying and I'm pretty !@#$ing sure that if you were on the other side of the spectrum, you would be criticizing Sheepy/Alex for this move and bailing out people who are bad at the game.

 

 

TKR leadership themselves said that the only reason this attack went down is because the war module was offline, intentionally preventing any sort of recourse against them until spies were removed and the new system was rolled out making spies much more potent against units, but not other spies. 

 

Pre, you know how to play this game. I usually agree with your talking points as well. You know as well as I do that the initial strike, if done effectively can decide the first round of the war, and in result a whole war. This is why when Rose blitz was exposed and countered immediately - they got wiped out. This is why when Mensa attacked SK just now they lost half their points while Mensa lost nothing. 

 

The people who decided to roll out a spy operation on you could've instead opt to sneak attack you and thus result in massive damage before any of you or your members are online to react. 

 

 

The bottom line is that now, instead of wasting effort and energy trying to roll back the game, you could instead(and I presume you are doing so) rally and organize allies and prepare for war. Something which you couldn't do had you been sneak attacked. The "no 5 days of war" is a double edged sword - the element of surprise was lost, the initial strike was lost, everyone is on equal terms otherwise.

 

 

 

That all being said, the easiest method of remedying this that requires also the least amount of coding work is simply to uncap spy purchases for the remainder of the war module being down. As to not hamper those who spent money doing the spy attacks and give them a reward, you can make spies cost more to buy at the increased rate. Somewhere between 2x-5x the normal cost (would make it at most 15M for 60 spies). Still gains them an advantage for the effort they put in for spy attacks without leaving alliances spy-less at the start of a war system revolving with massively buffed spy attacks. 

Or, instead, you can use this time to organize, distribute resources, make a war plan, rally allies and actually win - something you would never be able to do had the attack came as a surprise.

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So alex, lets simplify this choice for you a bit.

 

Option one: You allow Test & co to regain spies beyond the normal limit, method is irrelevant./Lessen the effects of missing spies.

Option two: You leave things as they are.

 

Under option one, you are effectively screwing SyndiHQ. Which has as a group spent both money & time to obtain a tactical advantage for a war. We have also revealed our intentions to start a war, actually it would be fair to say that the war has started. You can likely assume that both sides will attempt to attack as soon as the beige timer ends. Messing with spies at this point would the equivalent of resetting a blitz. Or completely delete the effects of TI, something that allowed our sphere to grow to a point where a war with test is practical. Regardless of how you do it you are deliberately using your admin powers to shift advantages around & away from people who earned them using your mechanics.

 

For option two, yeah it sucks to be test, however they still possess a massive city advantage, which is still an overriding factor in war. All the spy ops allow us to do is drag them down into our range for an actual war. Additionally, while the response to being massed spied is war, it would still take a couple days or so to build up & organize a blitz.

Or, the much better option 3, as has been suggested, and just don't roll out the spy changes for a couple of weeks. Solves all issues.

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Okay from what the OP says, Sheepy says he's considering (and probably won't be) taking action and at the very least hearing ideas on what he could do. I also do think this was an oversight or something he didn't think would be a problem and I hope if he ever has to do something like this again he'll remember to turn it off.

 

With that being said I still think the solution is to not do anything. It isn't like TEst doesn't know who spied on them, so they can't work with the knowledge they do have to prepare. And let's be frank, rollbacks and uncapping purchasing limits if anything does give TEst an advantage and I'm gonna be frank they shouldn't be given one due to intervention of an admin. You could say what the other side did was sleazy but they did take the time, energy, and money to plan this out and such and still earned their advantage. Why should their work be tossed in the trash?

 

Now if something has to be done, I do agree that stalling the spy update is the best solution I've seen.

Nerd To The Core

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Wow who'd think you'll ever see Mensa whining like this

 

Whinning about whinners.

 

I never would have thought TEST would turn out to be complete cry babies.  Ya'll lost all credibility.  "Best alliance", heh right....

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The problem here is that we have an admin openly stating that his desire is to garner feedback from the community to make his decisions about gameplay.  

 

That's completely illogical.  Hire some game mods that you trust and let them be your inner circle.  Don't push this crap out to the general public.  It makes you look indecisive and allows the larger voice (not necessarily the correct one) to rule the day.

 

Tywin Lannister had the best answer.  Take it and implement it and then take steps to make sure that gameplay decisions aren't debated in public.  Make a decision, discuss it with perhaps a small group, and then implement it and do not change your mind when people are critical.  People will always be critical. 

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The name of this game is still Politics & War. The goal is to git gud at both!

 

Politics: The greatest advantage you can get in politics is your relationships. Relationships is basically everything, so making a decision to sacrifice that relationship is a huge step. In carrying out these spying operations, certain alliances have taken such a step publicly. There's no going back from this, to punish them in any way (for something within the rules) is to screw them politically.

 

War: The secret to winning a war is leveraging the best available advantage, whether it be a surprise attack, luring the enemy into a trap, or overwhelming them with force. In a game like this, when you are fighting a much larger enemy, you can either surprise them or outsmart them using game mechanics. To punish someone then for using the available (to everyone) game mechanics it to basically screw them from a war standpoint. 

 

Putting this all together then, to change anything in response to this situation will be to screw one side in both aspects of the game (Politics and War). The game mechanics were available to everyone to use. Some people decided to take a huge political step and a smart military step using the game available game mechanics. That's smart play and they should not be punished in any way for that.

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I never thought you would turn out to be complete cowards. Attacking us while we can't fight you back. "Best military", heh right. Obviously even you are not certain in that anymore.

Cant fight back. lol.

 

Failure to use mechanics is not a lack of mechanics.

 

Crybaby alliance appoligist at its finest.

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I mean, this isn't completely horrible: in many strategy games like Civilization, the AI cheats on harder difficulties to increase the challenge since the AI isn't that competent. We have the same situation. The people in other spheres just suck, and there is no way to make them git gud (similar to inability to come up with "better AI" in strategy games). Hence, in order to make the game challenging for us, Alex has to give our opponents unfair advantages, tailor new mechanics to help them at the expense of the more successful players, and if all else fails, directly intervene and give them free spies etc. So Alex isn't the bad guy per se. He just wants to give us a true challenge, so that the victory will be all the sweeter.

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Guest Curufinwe

Or, the much better option 3, as has been suggested, and just don't roll out the spy changes for a couple of weeks. Solves all issues.

Except that would remove much of the point of the coordinated spy ops in the first place and, once again, unfairly give an advantage to TEst, which has the most to gain from some alteration being made. These ops were conducted with an expectation of a certain outcome in mind. How is it fair to wait until after they occurred and then arbitrarily change the outcome to suit the side that cries the loudest for a redo?

 

Also, Jag, it's not whining to argue for the retention of the status quo, it's whining to run to the admin to demand a change that benefits your side because someone took advantage of a perfectly legal game mechanic in a way you don't like.

 

Just saying.

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I mean, this isn't completely horrible: in many strategy games like Civilization, the AI cheats on harder difficulties to increase the challenge since the AI isn't that competent. We have the same situation. The people in other spheres just suck, and there is no way to make them git gud (similar to inability to come up with "better AI" in strategy games). Hence, in order to make the game challenging for us, Alex has to give our opponents unfair advantages, tailor new mechanics to help them at the expense of the more successful players, and if all else fails, directly intervene and give them free spies etc. So Alex isn't the bad guy per se. He just wants to give us a true challenge, so that the victory will be all the sweeter.

Lol you have that backwards in your "who isnt competent and needs to cheat to challenge those who are better" theory
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Lol you have that backwards in your "who isnt competent and needs to cheat to challenge those who are better" theory

It's not cheating to make use of a perfectly legitimate game mechanic that's open to literally every halfway competent AA. Don't try to cast TKR as cheaters because you got caught with your pants down.

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Horseshit. It's oneway alley and you know it, whoever starts spy opsing frist, wins, becasue by the time you find out who's doing the spy ops, a good portion of spys are gone, especially if the opponent outnumbers you by emmber count since you can only do 2 spy ops (if you have IA) and can suffer 3 spy ops yourslef. The proper way to respond to spy opping is to decalre war  on the alliance as soon as you find out who's doing it. But we can't do that since wars are frozen, not to mention yo ucowards only started this since you knew that we can't hit you back and since we just recently existed wars. Fair thing would be to disable spy ops and etend the nonconflict period a bit.

 

Or maybe you could have realized the opportunity done the work and did a spy op yourselves. Because like many have stated every one had the same information and opportunity.

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Except that would remove much of the point of the coordinated spy ops in the first place and, once again, unfairly give an advantage to TEst, which has the most to gain from some alteration being made. These ops were conducted with an expectation of a certain outcome in mind. How is it fair to wait until after they occurred and then arbitrarily change the outcome to suit the side that cries the loudest for a redo?

 

Also, Jag, it's not whining to argue for the retention of the status quo, it's whining to run to the admin to demand a change that benefits your side because someone took advantage of a perfectly legal game mechanic in a way you don't like.

 

Just saying.

You have the reading comprehension of a younger human so i will be nice here. We did not complain to Alex. We pointed out the CLEARLY MILITARY aspect of an unforseen oversight to DISABLING MILITARY USE. we have not asked to get our spies back, we have not asked for help because were hopelessly lost, we asked for the particular change to be postponed so the advantage that was gained using the EXISTING MECHANICS can REMAIN UNCHANGED. That still saves the advantage you admittedly EARNED, but it prevents the effects from being EXPLOITED due to the OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE aka disabled war system.
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We sacrificed your spies. Blood for the blood god~

 

No, but in all seriousness -- pushing out updates in the middle of a war seems to be the new norm. We're at war with TEST right now essentially. Yes, they are complaining that we are using a mechanic they are not (using spies during the beige period -- which they were free to do as well).

 

Tywin's suggestion of delaying the spy implementation a week or so after the update is a decent one, and really the only one that makes any sense. I'm still mildly disappointed that an update is being pushed out changing game mechanics during war to disadvantage our side for the umpteenth time (even if this wasn't the intent), but at least it's a sensible "compromise". I'm still of the design philosophy that you should not need to balance wars artificially in your game. We used a mechanic, that everyone knew about, in an organized way, and we beat the other side at the espionage war as our first "blitz" against them. If they want to respond by rallying the rest of the game to counter us with a massive spy operation they are free to do so.

 

Also, Sheepy, would you be partial to a P&W buyout? :3

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High Priest of Dio

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