W3C - Simcountry Upgrade July 31, 2026

Army Units

Army units are becoming a bit smaller. The change is about 10%.
This will result in smaller army units both defensive and offensive and will slightly reduce the number of destroyed weapons in war and a lower cost of war.

Corporate Profitability

Many corporations are becoming a bit more profitable.
The changes are small and while they increase the profitability, they also slightly increase the size of the corporations.

Countries now have larger population numbers and more corporations than before. This makes the management of the production and the markets more complex.
A smaller number of corporations that are more profitable and increase the profitability of the economy will make it easier to create profitable accounts.

The change will continue. Not all corporations are updated and more will be in the coming weeks.

Wind Energy more profitable

The cost of maintenance of wind farms increased recently because of the higher price of wind turbines. We have now reduced the base price of wind turbines and with it the maintenance cost of wind farms.
Wind turbines corporations remain very profitable.

Now that army units are smaller, I am still able to use up to 900 per weapon type in a long range division. Since they're now under 1971 weapons in total when I place an attack I lose the entire unit instead of 1800 weapons. I lost more in my last c3 war just now than I have in the past. Not sure how it's saving cost. It's forcing me to click slower, using less weapons than the total unit so that I do not lose the entire unit in one attack. The attacking force is also weaker now, buffing defense capability even further when the current pvp formula favors defense by a significant margin. I feel this may make the war engine even more unbalanced on the defense side.

I fail to see how smaller units will reduce the number of weapons destroyed in war or it's cost.

Seems to me, unless you've changed the effectiveness or general war engine, you will need more of them to do the same job.

Exphon,

What you describe is strange to me.

can you explain how it works, you can do it here or in a mail.

If wrong, we would like to fix it.

Yankee,

In an attack now, a smaller number of weapons are attacking your unit, resulting in a smaller number of destroyed weapons.

The cost of a units is also lower.

The difference is probably too small to be clearly noticed but in general, if units are smaller, casualties will be smaller.
Also the number of missiles used per attack will be smaller. and the number of missiles per aircraft used in the attack and defense should decline a bit.

we have done this before. Units used to be much larger.
we just think that too much money is going down the drain in wars and amounts should decline.
we also think that countries should become a bit more profitable which will also allow them to build the army they want.

we will listen to comments and then test and improve if needed.

They are saying that offensive weapon effectiveness does not scale linearly with size. If it is true or not, I do not know, but I suspect that is indeed the case.

Calibration aside, I want to know if it is possible to make all PvP wars end in a White Peace when the War Index hits 0 by default, instead of transferring ownership. To be clear, the game would end the war in White Peace, it's not the players choosing it.

Andy, you are of courts correct that if fewer weapons are involved in the attack, then the cost of an individual attack is being reduced. But this is irrelevant as the number of attacks is unlimited. So, this change will simply mean more attacks. And no real reduction in overall cost.

I'm not sure but time will tell us. But, I think that it will shift the balance so that it takes more offensive weapons to destroy the same amount of defense.

So overall the cost will go up. likely. Hard to say until we fight. I'll be testing on C3s

Andy when it comes to war even the biggest players in the game really cannot afford to fight each other now as it is.

With a decent defense, the only choice an attacker has is to burn massive amounts of expensive weapons and ammo to make headway.

Generally, they will run out of either offensive weapons or ammo before they can do much of anything.

That applies to them, that applies to me, scaling down the number of weapons used both offense and defense is not going to change that. It's also not going to change the necessity to use brute force tactics to do anything against a well defended player.

You took away our ability to finesse attacks using anything other than brute force years ago when removing things like the ability to attack defensive radar planes directly, or outrange defensive weapons using a navy.

War is always going to be expensive in Simcountry with the current war engine and the winner (if there is one) is always going to be who has the most along with the williness to burn it.

Reduce the cost of weapons maintenance cost or remove the cost in space or CEOs if you really want to help

I wouldn't want to spend the money or time on a PVP war honestly despite likely being the best prepared to do so. I still keep enough weapons and ammo to arm a small world by myself in my CEO.

With that massive charge and the CEO tax for having 1782 corporations in a CEO I have a negative monthly cash flow in The Bilderberg Group despite having 8.8T a month in production.

Why do I persist?

Sheer motivation and a slight masochistic tendency I assume.

Laguna,

The formulas computing the hits are linear.
but when a target is kaput (destroyed), in the current attack, than it might be that you have used too many pieces of ammunition.

The White Peace idea means that you never conquer the country.
is this what you want, others? or is it a new type of a war declaration?

Hymy,

The defense is also weaker, with a slightly smaller number of defensive weapons. The number of strikes should remain unchanged, each strike destroying less than before.

This is our assumption. The change might be too small to really allow for a decisive evidense.

Yankee,

I think you are right. As it is now, it is destructive and expensive. The question is: does this change make a small dent in the numbers. If it does, it will make sense to make some more such steps.

I also agree that we might have made some wrong changes in the past. Your comment is not very clear.
If possible, can you take ONE example and explain.

I am really listening and the people here will love to fix or reverse. we just need a good feed back that allows us to make a reasonable change that makes sense, in a short time.

Too many things at the same time, all in competition with each other has a name in our office:

we call it, as a joke: GAME REWRITE. We mean: not realistic.

By the way: When we changed, in nearly all cases we did not remove code but left is as comments with an explanation in the body of the text.

We still have "Attacks from bases". some can be used now, we can bring back more.

Corleone,

We need the maintenance cost of the army and these corporations also help to keep the defense industry going.
What do you mean by cost of space, CEO?

I do agree that something must be done and we are in the process of making the industry more profitable and increase the income of countries.

Johanas,

Keeping the enterprise, you help to keep a large industry going.
We are as I said before, in the process of increasing corporate profits. This will help CEOs too.
We are also looking at the various costs of an enterprise such as weapon maintenance, contribution to the countries and CEO tax.

"If possible, can you take ONE example and explain."

Okay, Defensive radar planes. I was gone before this change happened so I can only assume it happened when defensive Land units were introduced (which I do like land units).

There was a time when defensive radar planes could be attacked directly. Since there were no land units all of a country's defense was either at bases or garrisons so you were dealing with whatever was at the base. The introduction of land units should make that attack just as expensive.

Federation air response was lowered significantly making other attacks while not necessarily cheap, possible.

From what I can tell now in my wars, since the last base cannot be fully destroyed, and radar planes cannot be directly targeted there is no way to get rid of an enemy's radar plane so your only option is to run fed air out of ammo or weapons (which with 20M+ rounds per country is not really much of an option).

I would like to see the ability to attack individual defensive radar planes just like any other defensive unit returned to the game.

There are others I'd like to see but you just asked for one.

I'm not sure I would have any interest in a "white peace" randomly or otherwise chosen by the game.

I have truth be known, ended a war without taking the country but that was my choice not the game. Why?, maybe I didn't want the country, maybe I was simply making a point, maybe I already had too many countries and had destroyed my enemy to the point there was nothing worth stripping left.

The ability to end the war once you've defeated an enemy without taking the country is already in the game however, after spending whatever it took. I want that choice to be mine not some random decision by the war engine.

I also wouldn't like the ability for someone to declare a war that could only end in a white peace. Anyone that wants to declare war on a player needs to take their chances and accept the possible consequences.

Andy, the number of total strikes will simply increase. Unit size has no effect on the cost of war. Make them bigger and it will be fewer more costly attacks, make them smaller and it's more attacks that are cheaper each. It's a wash.

I saw the issue with what Exphon was doing, and he should have been paying attention to to the responding units. I did some testing too. This change won't change anything in regard to army units and cost.

There are going to be nonobvious to you, but very obvious to me, knock on effects, that I won't discuss.

Im suggesting we go back to how the game was storing weapons to reduce cost entirely. It will have a positive effect on the weapons market and players will be able to stockpile weapons needed for large pvp wars

In CEO

I will trust to you assess the calibration, Andy. I don't have any data to weigh-in properly on this.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

The White Peace idea means that you never conquer the country.
is this what you want, others? or is it a new type of a war declaration?<!-/Quote-!>

Yes, this is what I want. I also know there have been others who wrote the same here.

In short, the success of the war game works against itself, because it eliminates the competition in a definitive way. From a game perspective, we don't want that. We want the losers to stick around with a fighting chance, to create the drama that keeps things interesting.

It also doesn't jive with the whole spirit of a building game. If you need any proof of that... It has been 25 years of this, and see where we are now.

I ask you to make all PvP wars in Kebir Blue end in White Peace when the WI reaches 0. This works towards the goal of making each world more distinct from one another, and establishing KB as the "Peaceful World" in a material way. However, I must note this change creates a system where wars are more likely.

If you need me to write a proposal with the details and reasoning, I will. But you guys need to commit to give this at least a try with an experimental period.

Laguna, if every war ended in a "white peace" there would be no reason to have wars or even defend your country.

You couldn't be taken, you couldn't expand other than through C3's.

Even now with losing everything back to a secured country there have been multiple players trolling (the nicest word I can come up with), imagine what would happen if no matter what you said, or did nobody, could ever do anything about it.

I have to disagree, I think this is a very bad idea.

Ego, pride, envy. Bragging rights. Knocking down a peg. These have always been the real motivators behind PvP.
You cannot conquer their lands, but you can land a devasting blow to population and corporations. And the ego. And their country score, to snipe their rank.

In the list of things that have a large impact in the game, this is the simplest course correction. As a matter of fact, making the war game easier and accessible is predicated on this change. If this doesn't happen, nothing will change.

We must build a system must where victory is not absolute, but sets a precarious status quo where retalation is an actual possibility.


It has been 25 years... and look around. There has been so many that left shortly after a war, and look how many of us remain. The cost of waging war in SC is high, and it's not in simbucks.

I'm only asking for a experimental period in the world that has always been considered peaceful by default. It is time it happens.

Yankee.

We should have the option to attack radar planes and destroy them.
I am going to check exactly what happened and when, then fix it.

Yankee/Laguna

White peace could be an option on ONE world and then see what happens.
I suggest a vote and hope there will be voters.

Losing your country can result in leaving the game or in rebuilding and coming back.
I think that more players left after they lost countries.

Hymy,

If defensive units are also smaller, the number of strikes will not increase.
there should then be the same number of strikes with a smaller number of casualties per strike.

We have done it in the past, when units were much larger, and the numbers of destroyed weapons declined.

Corleone,

Eliminating the maintenance cost of large armies will increase the difference between the small and the huge players.
Having a huge army is OK but it should come with a cost.

we are trying to reduce the cost of war and with it, reduce the size of armies and the need to buy weapons in numbers that drive you to bankrupcy.

Increasing the profitability of countries and enterprises is part of it.
Players should be able to earn enough to build a strong army but not one that costs many trillions to maintain.

Laguna,

You are right on "Were we are now".

For a long time, in fact from the start, we think that the user interface of Simcountry leaves a lot to be wished for.
We are not happy with it.
we think that the largest numbers of potential players, leave the site quickly after discovering it.
We have reports resulting from our advertizing and these reports confirm it.
It limits our motivation to advertize more.

The good news is, that we now see a possibility to make changes to our user interface in a simpler way, and with it, to also create a nice mobile app.
I am not going into details now but our aim is:

- Improve the user interface and make it nicer for players
- Increase the appeal of Simcountry to first time visitors.
- Extend this approach to an easier way of creating new functions.

We all have seen many games come and go.

Simcountry is here after all these years and remains attractive in a small nisch. But if 5000 people like it, why not 50.000. we did not reach the wide market because of the way it looks. Once we improve it, we could extend our reach by larger scale marketing.

A good plan or wishful thinking?

Thank you for understanding, Andy.

I believe we should move forward without a vote. Considering we are suffering from survivorship bias, the only way to make the voting representative would be by asking those that left in the past. To be fair, we can leverage this as a marketing opportunity and e-mail all former players to make themselves heard.

But I must note this is a game defining change. I really believe it is fundamental for long-term success.


When I returned a year or two, I started writing a report with changes that were really necessary. The interface was the very first priority. My main point was that it must be uniform across the website, and the interface should intuitively set the targets/objectives in the game.

However, as I was writing everything down, I understood I was asking for too much development work on your side, and saw it would be difficult to follow through, and I also got demoralised. I will look it up and send you the main findings, without the details.

But, yes, focus on the interface is definitely a good starting point. It is without a doubt one of the main things holding us back.

We have secured countries in all worlds except FB and maybe TA (I'm not there) look what it's done to those worlds.

Hundreds of relatively large inactive countries that nobody can conquer that will reset rather than be of any use to anyone.

I will predict any world chosen for mandatory white peace will end up abandoned once everyone gets bored with the inability to gain from war.

While it's possible people could use it as an economic base to break into FB I seriously doubt it will be a net positive effect overall. I've not got much invested in KB yet so I can easily leave. I'd rather see you test it on LU first since I'd not really made up my mind to leave KB.

On the Interface,
We must revamp Communications in general. Although this could be treated separately, this topic is highly interconnected with the Interface.


In general,
1. All messages must happen at the player/account level.

Messages between countries and enterprises are so inefficient, when it's player talking between themselves.
Please build a better message history, so it's more like reading a thread on Outlook or something akin.
Anything that happens to any of my entities in any world should warrant a message in my inbox, and link me directly to the country in question.
The pop-ups new players get should also be a message in their inbox, so they can review those tips later on.
With this, we can remove message at the entity level and it's one less concern when designing the new interface.

2. Everywhere a player name is present, it should be a link to his Public Profile.

It is important for other players to know who you are in SC, so this profile page should have:
* A button to send a Private Message
* It should state if the account is free or premium
* Personal details with space to write a small bio
* A table summarising the total countries and enterprises, and game level per world, and highest War Index and Financial Index.
* A list detailing the possessions per world. Could go with a map to show the countries' locations.
* Information regarding Federations and Common Markets should also be present.
* I'm sure we can expand this to add achievements, like the Hall of Fame.


These are my two main points on this topic. There are few more I wish to make regarding the Local and World Newspapers, and the Notification system, but those can be made later.

But the broader point here is to ease how players message each other, and enhance information gathering in the new interface.

In game messaging should of course be reworked. It's been of limited use for years however, if someone is still looking for interaction between a multitude of players these days the Simcountry Discord channel is where it's at much like IRC in the old days.

Our priorities for the user interface are:

- The Forum because is serves as a test and can be replaced without a major
intervention. We currently use a third party package. It is nearly done.
- User communication and messaging.
Discord helped a lot. We will introduce a rewritten communication function
that will be integrated with the game functions and game info.

- Our graphs
also nearly done. The current graphs use a library that was
written in 2005!

- The maps. There is a lot to improve.

- At the same time, work is in progress to create more up to date pages
in a way that they are then also available for a new mobile app.
This is a major effort that will be done in several phases. We will add
The option on pages, to move to the new interface when these become
available.

Don't hold you breath but we will move as fast as possible.

Happy you shared the priorities with us. They look perfectly reasonable.

I'll be waiting patiently, but I'll ask for an update every so often.