Alex, its been 9 months, I think its time to deal with reality.

[RightHonorable]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Given that you build your second city as part of the tutorial, and since I highly doubt that we are seeing an influx of just short of 700 players per day. I would be willing to say that we can safely discount the majority of those sitting at one (and maybe 2 cities) 

[The Mad Titan]

[Callisto]

7 minutes ago, LeotheGreat said:

Not even all large nations like this econ entirely, I can tell you that for sure. I'm a 26 city nation and I really hate this current system

[The Mad Titan]

Just now, Saxplayer said:

Not even all large nations like this econ entirely, I can tell you that for sure. I'm a 26 city nation and I really hate this current system

Fair enough. Not all large nations like this econ, all nations that like this econ are large nations.

[Callisto]

The core of this game is that 7-21 range. The vast vast majority of those 1-6 city nations will never amount to anything and just flake off super quickly. 

 

[Who Me]

39 minutes ago, LeotheGreat said:

So almost 50% of the game could have been created in one day haha 

Or created their nation and never came back after the first day.

[RightHonorable]

One would expect something resembling a normal distribution, with the peak shifted left such that the peak of the curve lies somewhere between 10-15 cities as that is where most alliance grant programs start to end, and where cities start getting relatively expensive. The fact the peak is at one city suggests to me that either turnover is immense, alliances are incapable of pushing their nations much further than city 5, or the definition of "active" that is being used here is very loose indeed

Edited March 7, 2018 by RightHonorable

[ArcKnox]

He uses the investorspeak definition of "active"

[Dubayoo]

How to fix the economy and game in one line:

Delete all nations over 500 days old.

Boys and girls, there comes a point where you have to grow up and graduate from school.  I know you love being on the 7 year plan to get your degree, but there comes a point where enough's enough.

On the side, the upvotes and downvotes in this thread show how the real problem is oldtimers just circlejerking while opponents are ganged up against...

...and I say this as someone who's played MMORTS since I was 13 while going on 30 this year.  Yes, you are ageists.  No, despite my own age, I am not.

Further on the side, my nation's econ made $3m equivalents everyday before I went on vacation.

Now, I make almost $6m equivalents everyday.

The salt from this game's leadership is glorious.

[WISD0MTREE]

1 hour ago, Dubayoo said:

Delete all nations over 500 days old.

Best suggestion yet, tbh. 

It's been 9 months? What have I been doing with my life? 

[Sketchy]

@Alex

Commerce returned to old econ system values
Raw resources (excluding food/uranium) returned to old econ system values

Refined resources returned to old econ system values, then adjusted as follows:

1. Refined resource base output increased by 33%.
2. Refined resource pollution increased by ~30%
3. Refined resources capped at 3, but are also capped at a total shared cap of 6 across munitions, gasoline, alum, steel.
4. Refined resource output scaled by number improvements. 1 = 70%, 2 = 100%, 3 = 130%.

Uranium & Food returned to old econ values, then adjusted as follows:

1.  Uranium mine slot cap remains at 3 rather than 2.
2.  Pollution increased from 10 to 15.
3.  Uranium mine output scaled by number improvements. 1 = 75%, 2 = 100%, 3 = 125%.
4.  Farm cap increased to 9.
5.  Farm output scaled by number improvements. 1 = 80%, 2 = 85%, 3 = 90%, 4 = 95%, 5 = 100%, 6 = 105%, 7 = 110%, 8 = 115%, 9 = 120%

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

If you take the title of this topic out of context, such as a Facebook post from a girl, Alex would have a lot more to worry about.

I really don't have anything to ad to this except I'm happy to see my uranium and iron production up. I'm sure there's a downside to it, but like a crab or lobster....

I'm shellfish.

[ArcKnox]

On 3/7/2018 at 2:49 PM, Dubayoo said:

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE IT'S MY TURN TO BE THE TOP TIER ALREADY

 

[Azaghul]

A lot of the arguments in this thread don't make much sense, and presume things to be bad that aren't necessarily bad.

- Increased resource prices also improve the profitability of resource intensive builds.  Yes it costs more for you to BUY resources, but you also make more SELLING resources.  For most people, that ends up being a wash.  They sell around as much as they buy.

- The real impact is not that people on average area going to suffer from high resource prices, but that overall it takes longer to build up a warchest.  This is always relative though, as it will effect whoever they might fight too.  I don't think this is a bad thing, we've seen a lot of warchest inflation in the last year or two.  There may be better ways to address that (Honestly... that's probably some kind of cap), but the overall impact isn't necessarily bad.  Smaller average warchests = shorter wars.

- The pollution changes benefits smaller nations.  They can devote almost all of their slots to resource production.  Mid tier and upper tier nations that have to account for pollution, which means they have to use some of their slots for recycling centers and hospitals.  This means that on an overall per slot basis, resource production will be more profitable for small nations than for other nations.

- Upper tier nations have the added handicap that they hit the maximum number of recycling centers, and then hospitals.  Once they max out recycling centers, they have to use hospitals which are less efficient and reduce profitability even more.  Again, I think this is a good thing, it balances out the fact that they can make a lot with commerce.  Eventually, they hit a point where they've maxed all pollution reduction that the only way they can really use those slots is for farms.  With the way land factors in, food prices should stay pretty low.

- Again, everything is relative.  A lot of times people only think about things in terms of how it affects them, not how it affects them in relation to other people.  Don't just look at this in terms of how it will affect your growth, but how it affects your growth in the context of everyone else's growth.

- I don't think it would be a bad idea to add some ongoing peace time demand for resources, paired with lowering the resource cost of military units, as a way to keep resource prices stable and profitable while making war less expensive.  For example, the operational costs for commerce improvements could be resources rather than cash.  This would fit neatly into the goal of creating a market where small nations produce resources to sell to larger nations.  Something that's a recurring cost (like the per turn operational cost) is better than a one time cost (like buying an improvement).

- As always, I want to thank Alex for putting time and effort into the game.  It's easy to criticize, harder to be the person actually doing the work and having to make decisions.  I'm not saying that people shouldn't ever criticize Alex, but be reasonable.  Don't forget that he's spent a lot of time on this and his job isn't easy.  And that he's always going to face criticism from somewhere no matter what he does.  If you disagree with a decision, do so respectfully.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Azaghul

[RightHonorable]

1 hour ago, Azaghul said:

Increased resource prices also improve the profitability of resource intensive builds.  Yes it costs more for you to BUY resources, but you also make more SELLING resources.  For most people, that ends up being a wash.  They sell around as much as they buy.

In theory that would be the result, but it has been 9 months, and until recently that time was peaceful, the markets should have equilibrated, but they haven't. Inflation continued for that entire duration

1 hour ago, Azaghul said:

The real impact is not that people on average area going to suffer from high resource prices, but that overall it takes longer to build up a warchest.  This is always relative though, as it will effect whoever they might fight too.  I don't think this is a bad thing, we've seen a lot of warchest inflation in the last year or two.  There may be better ways to address that (Honestly... that's probably some kind of cap), but the overall impact isn't necessarily bad.  Smaller average warchests = shorter wars.

Shorter wars are the logical result of having smaller warchests. The issue is that instead of making wars shorter, decreasing the rate of warchest growth just lengthened the duration between wars. This also causes an issue for new nations as meeting warchest requirements often crowds out growth.

1 hour ago, Azaghul said:

Again, everything is relative.  A lot of times people only think about things in terms of how it affects them, not how it affects them in relation to other people.  Don't just look at this in terms of how it will affect your growth, but how it affects your growth in the context of everyone else's growth.

While the changes effect people to varying degrees, it can be said that as a general rule that these changes are a net negative. It handicaps large players to an extent, but the ones who are really effected are those who are too large to be self reliant in terms of resources, but aren't large enough to bring in large amounts in commerce. 

1 hour ago, Azaghul said:

I don't think it would be a bad idea to add some ongoing peace time demand for resources, paired with lowering the resource cost of military units, as a way to keep resource prices stable and profitable while making war less expensive.  For example, the operational costs for commerce improvements could be resources rather than cash.  This would fit neatly into the goal of creating a market where small nations produce resources to sell to larger nations.  Something that's a recurring cost (like the per turn operational cost) is better than a one time cost (like buying an improvement)

Adding further demand for resources will just exasperate the inflation problem. Furthermore, while there are merits to the proposals that you offered, they are, at the end of the day just patches, and not long term fixes. 

Edited March 23, 2018 by RightHonorable

[Azaghul]

1 hour ago, RightHonorable said:

In theory that would be the result, but it has been 9 months, and until recently that time was peaceful, the markets should have equilibrated, but they haven't. Inflation continued for that entire duration

 

Inflation isn't necessarily a bad thing.  There has been significant inflation of average nation size as the game grows older.  Inflation of resource costs over time increases the profitability of resource production, which increases the speed of growth for small nations.

Quote

Shorter wars are the logical result of having smaller warchests. The issue is that instead of making wars shorter, decreasing the rate of warchest growth just lengthened the duration between wars. This also causes an issue for new nations as meeting warchest requirements often crowds out growth

This assumes that it was warchest growth that lengthened the duration between wars.  There are other factors at play.

If alliances are imposing large warchest requirements on small and mid sized nations that greatly crowds out growth, that is a policy decision on their end.  

Quote

While the changes effect people to varying degrees, it can be said that as a general rule that these changes are a net negative. It handicaps large players to an extent, but the ones who are really effected are those who are too large to be self reliant in terms of resources, but aren't large enough to bring in large amounts in commerce. 

If they aren't doing a lot of commerce they can still focus on resources, at least enough to be self reliant.  Especially because they have an advantage in resource production over large nations because of pollution caps.  

Quote

Adding further demand for resources will just exasperate the inflation problem. Furthermore, while there are merits to the proposals that you offered, they are, at the end of the day just patches, and not long term fixes. 

I would pair it with lowering military resource costs, so the overall demand would stay about the same.

Moving towards a model where large nations consume resources to maintain commerce is a potential long term fix.  It creates demand for resources from people that can afford it.  It keeps profits high for the benefit of small nations who sell the big nations their resources.  It could lead to cheaper warchests and less expensive wars while replacing that demand so you don't deflate the market.

[Dubayoo]

Upper tier nations just gunna be crybabies because they can't buy as much with their precious cash.

lol

I should note that my nation is in the least occupied mid-tier.  You really don't get much more unbiased than me in my perspective.

Oh... and if you look at those who downvoted my post, it's exactly what I predicted would happen. 8 of 12 are above the 500 day mark, and one's at 488 days.

The game's just rigged to a bunch of old-timers who want to maintain their hold on power while wasting everyone else's time.  That way, they troll the world for getting everyone frustrated while doing nothing.

I wonder how long the pause will be to the next war after this one.

Edited March 31, 2018 by Dubayoo

[ArcKnox]

5 hours ago, Dubayoo said:

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE IT'S MY TURN TO BE THE TOP TIER ALREADY