W3C - Game news Aug. 30, 2010 (Little Upsilon)

1. Starting wars

When starting a war, the time between war declaration and the start of the war is now increased to 48 hours on all worlds. The time was 32 hours max on some worlds and it was much shorter on LU.

It is done to allow defenders to have more preparation time before war starts.

This change has taken place today.

2. Reducing the max number of attackers in war

The maximum number of countries that can declare war on a single country will be reduced to 10. The number was 15 on most worlds. The numbers on FB are higher. Even 10 countries is quite a high number and we may reduce it even further if needed. This change is one of the results of a recent discussion on the forum, aimed at a more balanced war game. We may revisit this item once other improvements in the war game are completed.

3. The War Game

A recent discussion on the forum, that was constructive and in our view very productive with many new ideas, brought up several very interesting options, to improve the war game.
Some results of the discussion are being implemented now and some may not be necessary.

We intend to develop several features that will allow for much more war, on all our worlds, for those who want it and prevent most or all of the "collateral" damage of the current war game that causes destruction of players who are not interested in the war game. The underlying ideas have been triggered on the forum in the past days.

These features will greatly reduce the need for war protection. More details will be published in the coming weeks. {text] To prepare for some of these new features, we will shortly introduce a war level into simcountry. The war level will be earned by players who are interested in the war game and demonstrate capabilities in waging war. The war level will become a requirement for game levels and will gradually replace the war index requirement. This additional requirement will not cause any shock effect to current players game levels.

The peaceful player game levels will remain unchanged.
The game levels for players who participate in the entire game, including the war part, will not be measured only by their capability to purchase weapons and build army units but rather by their capability to wage war and win. In time, the war index will cease to be an important requirement for game levels.

We will publish the exact conditions to measure the war capabilities at a later stage while starting to prepare the game for these new features. The war levels will provide us with simpler tools to prevent unbalanced and unwanted wars.

4. Simplifying the Building process of the Army

The same discussion on the forum triggered some ideas on how to reduce the effort of building the army. Both the defensive and the offensive army currently require a lengthy process that can be reduced by the introduction of some larger building blocks that will reduce the detailed approach for those who want it. We will start a development effort that will simplify the process.

5. Government workers

The number of government workers is slightly increased in both universities schools and hospitals. These changes are part of a rebalancing effort of the current markets and percentages of workers, government workers and the army that have changed with the introduction of new products and new types of corporations.

6. Soldiers and Officers

The number of soldiers and officers in the army will decrease somewhat in the coming week. We expect large armies to shed several thousands of soldiers and officers. Gradual declines in the coming weeks will continue to reduce these numbers slightly. These changes will reduce the complexity of the job market for many new players who struggle with the numbers of LLW and MLM who are disappearing into the army.

Although unintended at the time this was decided, reduced numbers will also help in preventing unwanted automatic deactivation of weapons that is identified as one of the problems in the war game.

7. Expanding corporations

Many types of corporations will grow in size. The corporations are gradually hiring more people, their turnover and cost will increase proportionally, and their market value is increasing. Typical changes are boosting corporation man power by about 4% but are limited to a small part of the products. The total influence on employment in all corporations is less than 0.5% because only some corporations are expanded each week.

This round of changes are intended to: a. Reduce the growth in the number of corporations per country and make it easier to manage. b. Increase the revenue per corporation, increase the profit per corporation and with it the market value. This will create larger assets that are stable and very valuable for the country or enterprise. We intend to make it possible to trade corporations on the direct market. Average corporate value is already on the increase. c. Reduce the growth in the total number of corporations in all the worlds and stop the increase in processing time that is becoming a very heavy load on our servers. (500.000 corporations with many transactions each are processed many times each day). This issue is as old as the game. Reducing processing time will allow us to add more features that require live updating.

These changes in number of workers will be activated with the next game update, later this week.

TOM, I thought the updates wouldn't affect wars already declared?

I am fighting a group of wars against an inactive president and now they have all restarted, and I am waiting til I guess tommorow now, my decs were already active, like shots being fired, can you allow them to go back active?

This was not discussed but I too assumed that started wars will not be affected.

we will now find out.

---PLEASE READ THE CONVO FIRST DISCUSSION BELOW---

the econ levels are the same BECUASE THERE SO REALISTIC!!!
[5:03:21 AM] lmao
[5:03:32 AM] BECUASE AT THE CURRENT LEVEL ITS POSSIABLE TO BE LEVEL 10 ECON
[5:03:37 AM] well, he just tweeted that war protection is too high
[5:03:41 AM] AND MAINTAIN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[5:03:45 AM] and he is going to lower it
[5:04:11 AM] even so i still have to have 125T
[5:04:20 AM] IN SOLID CASH OR LOANS
[5:04:23 AM] lol
[5:04:28 AM] 125?
[5:04:32 AM] its going to be hard when buying WP
[5:04:34 AM] a bit much...
[5:05:07 AM] ya at level 10 an econ player must have 5countries
[5:05:11 AM] here
[5:05:20 AM] Requirements for Game Level 10 (Peaceful Game)
Required number of Countries: 5
Required number of Enterprises: 2
Required AVERAGE Population Number: 35 million
Required AVERAGE defensive Index: None Required
Required AVERAGE Defense Index: None Required
Required AVERAGE Education Index: 130
Required AVERAGE Health Care Index: 130
Required AVERAGE Transportation Index: 130
Required AVERAGE Social Security Index: 100
Required AVERAGE Salary Level: 150
Required AVERAGE Financial Index: 140
Required AVERAGE Employment Index: 90
Required Average Net Cash Level: 25 Trillion
Required Number of Corporations in the Enterprise: 800
Awarded Number of Gold Coins: 100
[5:05:36 AM] to have the average you must have 25 per country
[5:05:43 AM] 25*5=125trillion
[5:06:34 AM] no super I think that is only 25tril for all 5
[5:06:57 AM] how much do you have now
[5:07:14 AM] my empire is only worth 7T average
[5:07:23 AM] Melichor has 20B in loans ALONE
[5:07:43 AM] hmmm
[5:07:53 AM] Net Cash 23.18 T 5.87 T 8.00 T
[5:07:56 AM] do you have debt in any other countries
[5:07:58 AM] thats melichor
[5:08:07 AM] no even my slaves have loans out
[5:08:16 AM] oh okay then
[5:08:31 AM] damn 25 trillion each is kinda steep
[5:08:45 AM] this is my complant
[5:08:51 AM] we need to have 125T total
[5:08:56 AM] plus we have to buy WP
[5:09:01 AM] plus we need to buy pop
[5:09:07 AM] plus we need the extra GC
[5:09:18 AM] plus i have to have 2 CEOs totaling 800corperations
[5:09:22 AM] THATS HELLA FUCKING HARD
[5:09:28 AM] lol
[5:09:52 AM] thats 60GC per month in just CEO costs ALONE
[5:10:31 AM] 60*460B=27.6T per month
[5:10:35 AM] Real month
[5:11:25 AM] to make 28T sim cash per real month well buying WP n all the shit needed for an empire
[5:13:13 AM] tenbatsu has become available
[5:13:15 AM] tenbatsu has left
[5:14:42 AM] honestly if its not that bad and im just being a bitch tell me but i think its not fair personally
[5:15:02 AM] lol
[5:15:11 AM] its all good super
[5:18:03 AM] to boost in the War game a player only needs 1COUNTRY till level 11
[5:18:19 AM] at level 11 they need 2countries well econ need 6!!!
[5:20:00 AM] rueben117 has become available
[5:20:28 AM] rueben117 has left

TOM PLEASE PLEASE LOOK AT THAT AND REDUCE THE ECON LEVELS!!! look at the facts 125T plus we need some form of protection. I posted the facts i even forgot others the econ levels are MUCH to strict.

and some food for though......

Pretend your an econ player working for level ten how long would it take?

So your main country makes 300B a month it would take 417GAME months or 70real days(based on LU) 140(based on the rest of the worlds) to make the 125T. Not including spending on anything it needs like roads, schools, ECT. Plus with 5countries you have to factor they need WP at the current rate of 115per month and the cost of CEOS. SO...

so off the bat just for defenses your slaves you need WP which costs 115 per month per slave meaning you need 460B per game month to cover your empire

A Full CEO slave at 30M pop taxing 10% makes 60B a month...4slaves*60B=240B...So 4slaves would make 240B per game month on top of the 300 your main makes is 540 now minus the 460 per month and you at 80B a month which would now take you 1563Game months or 260Real days(LU) 520Real Days (the rest of the game)

Plus lets not forget its 30CG per month to have a CEO and that costs 460B a DAY!!! so LU CEO need 80B a month well the rest of the worlds need 120B a month.

Plus buying boosters and pop and other needing upgrades again the countries dont include buying spending or anything

So really After all this im just wondering when is fair UNFAIR????

Thx for looking into that Tom.

The game new's web feed has a problem. It is replicating older news.

Besides today's news, I received three feeds for twitter, the icons and the RSS feed again. I'm using Google Reader. Speaking of which, why isn't the web feed icon showing up on my url bar?

I don't know LG, but my twitter reported that the country I conquered took control in my country lol

Had me nervous becuase I walked away from the comp, and when I got back ....WTFizzle the guy was 'active' oh....noes.... but it was a glitch.

Tom, thank you for all your hard work in responding to and working with the players on this. Please can you clarify a couple of things:

With the new 'war level', presumably the number of wars fought by a player will form the index which will then contribute to level requirements.

1. Will wars that you have lost or which reach no final conclusion count? If not, then players will be encouraged to wage wars only on countries that they are sure to win against, which will result in the larger players targeting the smaller ones.

2. Will wars against C3s count? If not, then there will be a rise in the number of player wars, with those aiming for higher levels targeting anyone and everyone. If you make it easier for players to avoid war if they wish to, then it may become very difficult for players to get up to the higher levels, just because there are too few other players (against whom they could win) to fight.

3. Will wars that you did not start, but won, count? If not, then one player could effectively prevent another player going up levels by constantly depleting their weapons and ammo to the point where they have no resources with which to declare war themselves and win.

Please balance the new 'war level' very carefully, with these things in mind. Apart from those concerns, I think this is a good move on WCs part

Hugs and respect

Jo

Jo, I think the idea I put forward regarding 'war levels' was understood to set levels at which two players could war, so a lower war level player (new or econ) cant be bashed by a high war level experienced war player. So no starting wars that you can be SURE of winning.
You have to prove the ability to war, not just buy weapons, to achieve the levels in the full game mode.
Re: counting C3s wars, I personally would have the first couple of levels include C3s taken then make the 'war level' more reliant on active player wars, but I guess that needs kicking around at W3C.

Personally, I can see a LOT, or most, of new players wanting the bragging rights of gaining higher war levels and so fighting each other and learning the war game (the whole idea of the changes as I see it). I can picture chat now...
"Woot! got level 3 war today, beat that MOB n00b on FB..." ;)
"Cool, one more level 2 war for me and I can get nukes...YAY!... Hey, what did you use to kill his helicopters?..."

You get the gist.

m0b n00b...Lmao

Damn Crafty...had to pick Mob

But I get your point, that actually would be pretty cool to hear players discussing such things and I think it might just work. That was one of the ultimate goals of my leveling c3 idea, create some sort of achievement system with war, we'll see how this one pans out, I think the idea is a good start.

If that is the intention, Crafty, then it would be a good development. Also agreed that lower levels should include C3s.

What I don't want to see is players losing their countries for the sake of someone else's level, so balance is essential, but hopefully W3C will be on top of that.

Hugs and respect

Jo

Lol! Sorry Whiteboy, I guess I could have used a better example.

Crafty.

its a really cool concept. and i'm anxious to get more details about it. i mean, the idea of fighting for the top warlord spot, is really cool. and in theory it would encourage warlords to fight warlords... but as Jo pointed out, with out careful checks to it, it could create the opposite of the desired result. and allot of that is going to be really tuff...

i've played allot of pk muds in my life. i find the challenge to be amazing. and the thrill of success... well the thrill of pvp can not be replicated. but their is often an inherent problem with them...

i used to play allot of god wars. you'd gain status by killing another player, and they'd lose status... and status would make your character stronger... so stronger players would pick on weaker players, to gain status to move up the later, and of course they'd get picked on by stronger players, get knocked, and go looking for the last easy person to kill. their were times the same person killed me 5+ times in 30 minutes...

and in SC, when a warlord gets beat down, where is he going to go, to rebuild?

i am hopeful that W3C has an idea to counter that. and i am waiting on more details... but i think, unless doves are removed from the war feature entirely, (aside from c3s,) it will result in the opposite of the desired effect. but again, maybe W3C has it figured out.

*crosses fingers,*


edit, some questions, if a player takes a c3, and a freind takes it? does it count? does size of country defeated matter? does loosing count against wins? do you only EVER have to accomplish a goal, once, and never have to do it again? or does it roll of after say 6 months? just some questions? waiting for details.

LoL, Tommy, now all my wars ended for no reason.

Tom, my wars have now ended completely whats up with that?

48 hrs is completely way too long for war to start on LU.

bump

Here is where the 48 hour rule was created Andy

This confirms it, Andy is NOT tommi.

not like you can click his name(Tommi) and it messages a player called Andy that kinda detective work is unallowed...

well sorry mr 60 minutes...