Buying/Selling Military Units

[Alex]

This is a suggestion that has been floated since the game's inception, and has always been shot down because it could make wars less fair. However, I think that perhaps with careful considerations for abuse, we could implement an Arms Market where you could buy and sell military units.

Buying nations should be limited by their total military caps, so that you cannot buy units to exceed your existing caps. Basically, this would just provide an avenue for replenishing units quicker.

While it could be considered unfair for your opponent to be able to instantly buy units off the market and have his armies replenished, you could do the same thing. It might make wars more dynamic and give the 'losers' a chance to make a comeback.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the idea, and why you think it's good/bad or why it would/wouldn't work.

[Apeman]

Having this as posted above with change the lamdscape. Will there be a hard cap on how many you could buy daily? My only concern is a nation always active couldn't ever be taken down even when facing 8 people

[Ayayay]

Honestly, with the daily purchase cap and blockade preventing purchasing, most people were in favor or mixed rather than outright against iirc. I don't know why you didn't implement it after the last major discussion tbh

Edited February 26, 2018 by Malal

[NastyGamer]

The daily limit to be bought should be wayyy less than what the nation can build. You cannot buy an army  Something like 1/3rd of daily production limit?

A better (rather a suggestion from the test server).. implement bounties. That way I can offer money to that guy who helps me in war. It will not be just my alliance members helping me. Mercenaries, pirates, will also help me for money, etc.. The mercenary shud not be able to peace out. And it shud not work as a slot filling mechanism (Allies should not be able to declare). A different topic tho... requiring some discussion (maybe its already been discussed.. I've not read it).

[Alex]

What do you think would be an effective daily limit? 

[Ripper]

I think that it would be really interesting to implement, if this mechanic gets combined with the embargoes one.

As in, alliance X won't sell troops to alliance Y or...

an alliance, to remain neutral during war, stops selling troops altogether.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

2 hours ago, Apeman said:

Having this as posted above with change the lamdscape. Will there be a hard cap on how many you could buy daily? My only concern is a nation always active couldn't ever be taken down even when facing 8 people

They are definitely stoppable, they are just limited by their warchest, and not the daily military buy limits.

What I see happening is a dramatic increase in the cost of war, you could see steel prices in the 10-15k ppu

[Fraggle]

11 hours ago, Apeman said:

Having this as posted above with change the lamdscape. Will there be a hard cap on how many you could buy daily? My only concern is a nation always active couldn't ever be taken down even when facing 8 people

 

What do you care?  You don't fight wars anymore.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Fraggle

[Sketchy]

I don't see why this is needed or how it really helps the game.

Thanks to the changes to beige timers that makes them stack its extremely difficult to pin people as is, it comes down a lot more willpower and money than actual strategy.

 

[Buorhann]

I'm not entirely opposed to this idea.  It's...  intriguing.

Some possible suggestions:  Set a minimum base cost per unit and make it more expensive than recruiting on your own.  Probably set it where you can only buy a single day's worth of units from the market (Or impose this restriction if a nation is blockaded).

That way, while people can benefit by having an opportunity to come back in a fight, it comes at a cost.  There's also an added strategy to timing when to hire the units.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Buorhann

[Holton]

13 hours ago, Alex said:

This is a suggestion that has been floated since the game's inception, and has always been shot down because it could make wars less fair. However, I think that perhaps with careful considerations for abuse, we could implement an Arms Market where you could buy and sell military units.

Buying nations should be limited by their total military caps, so that you cannot buy units to exceed your existing caps. Basically, this would just provide an avenue for replenishing units quicker.

While it could be considered unfair for your opponent to be able to instantly buy units off the market and have his armies replenished, you could do the same thing. It might make wars more dynamic and give the 'losers' a chance to make a comeback.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the idea, and why you think it's good/bad or why it would/wouldn't work.

The idea of an arms market is cool but the real question isn't "is this cool", it's "will this improve the game experience?" and I think the answer would be no.

1. You're buying troops from someone else effectively hiring "mercenaries". Impacting merc groups in the meta.

2. Would you buy purely using cash? If so, how does this impact resource usage?

3. How much / when can you buy? If I can fully militarize in an instant, it seems like you're basically making your entire military system irrelevant.

 

Again, it's a 'cool' concept to throw around but... why not just change the war system to be able to recruit more units?

Edited February 27, 2018 by Holton

[Guest Epi]

413

Edited December 21, 2020 by Epi

[ForgotPants]

If the arms market works like mercenaries, I have some suggestions and would love to hear some feedback.

1. The arms market should have a global limit that replenishes every 24/48 hours. For example, the max soldiers per cycle should be say 10 million and players can buy out of that pool. Once the pool is exhausted, it only refills at the next cycle. The reasons to do this are that first it is realistic. There can't be an endless supply of military units readily available for purchase for everyone. The second reason would be that when someone starts militarizing using the market, the global pool would go start going down faster and trigger some level of panic amongst other nations.

2.  This might be controversial but units bought through the market should go over and above your own military caps. The max purchaseable units should also be based on your own military caps. For example, a 20% max limit based on your caps. So if you had 200k soldier cap, you could buy 40k soldiers from the market.

3. Arms market units should not add to your nation score.

4. Units recruited via the arms market expire after 72 hours. You can also not recruit units till all your previous ones have either been consumed or returned. So if you hired 200 planes today, in 3 days they would expire and you'd be left with whatever planes of your own that you had. The units from here should be treated as a boost rather than a permanent gain.

5. Disbanding or returning arms market units should give no refunds.

6. All mercenary units cost twice of their normal counterparts.

7. The arms market should only be accessible via a project.

[Buck Turgidson]

There should be a two turn delay between buying and fielding units from the market, and your opponent should be able to see it coming.

[Ishmael]

I think it would be cool if people could "hire" soldiers from somebody else, on a cost per soldier per day basis. The person lending the soldiers would have those soldiers listed as "abroad", and they would subtract from the lender's total soldier limit, but be unavailable for defence. Both the lender and the borrower could break the contract and send the soldiers home at any time.

Additions:

On the borrower's nation, the soldiers should be listed as belonging to the lender, so any attackers know who to blame for a sudden increase in soldiers!

A change like this might be made more relevant by increasing the time it takes to get to max army without borrowing.

 

 

[Sir Scarfalot]

5 hours ago, Ishmael said:

I think it would be cool if people could "hire" soldiers from somebody else, on a cost per soldier per day basis. The person lending the soldiers would have those soldiers listed as "abroad", and they would subtract from the lender's total soldier limit, but be unavailable for defence. Both the lender and the borrower could break the contract and send the soldiers home at any time.

Additions:

On the borrower's nation, the soldiers should be listed as belonging to the lender, so any attackers know who to blame for a sudden increase in soldiers!

A change like this might be made more relevant by increasing the time it takes to get to max army without borrowing.

 

 

Well, this would make it so that alliances like NPO would start taxing their members' militaries alongside the 100/100 taxes that they already are running. No-one in the game could ever hope to stand on their own feet; it'd be a game of who can squeeze their slave players more. I've seen that happen in a lot of forms and it never ends well.

Consolidating resources into a central core of elite nations is already bad enough, let's not make it worse.

Edit: Also, moving military to beige nations. The implications of that alone are staggeringly ripe for abuse.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Sir Scarfalot

[Callum]

I'd be against any form of arbitrary limiter for how many one can receive per day. It'd be redundant at that point. no different than naturally creating them.

however. limiting the success of being reinforced should be a thing.

examples:

Being blockaded should prevent any and all transfers of units.

Having a chance of complete failure based on the number of nations currently at war with. (say a 10% chance of failure, so it'd still be possible, but highly unlikely.) and the other nations would all receive a message that their units intercepted the convoy from X nation.

Percentile losses of units based on how many "superiority's" nations have against you. say 2 nations you're at war with have both ground and air against you. you'd lose 40% of any inbound unit transfers.

[CurtisLowe]

On 2/26/2018 at 10:51 AM, Alex said:

What do you think would be an effective daily limit? 

Keep the daily purchase limits the same, then allow the defending nation to buy back the daily limit multiplied by the number of defensive wars the nation is in. This would allow active nations a fighting chance when raided by multiple nations.