W3C - Developments in Simcountry in the coming months - The war Game

In the past months we have announced in different ways, mainly on this forum that we intend to restructure the war game and move away from raiding or as we called it: "fake wars" into more player vs. player wars.

Several developments are already in place and the trend will continue:

1. The economy in Simcountry is today more profitable than before. It is easier to make your country profitable and with some effort, it can become very profitable. More is underway with corporations becoming more profitable.

2. The cost of war has declined. This trend continues for a very long period and is ongoing. Weapons and ammunition come at a lower cost, there is a larger war industry that is capable to produce what is needed. Corporations producing war materials can be very profitable.

3. The war game is already partially restructured and allows easier wars when you reach war level 7. This may be reduced to war level 6. With a next change, countries will move more quickly up the war levels and will join the pool of players that can participate in player vs. player wars.

4. New army features may improve the defending country auto defense. The main problem of player vs. player wars is that the defending player is not logged in while the country is being attacked.
If the country is more able to use its assets and defend itself more vigorously, the danger of waking up and discovering that your countries are gone will diminish. Blocking part of the day to prevent war at time you are not available, already reduced the danger.

5. we have also rewarded players who are removing their own war level protection by increasing their welfare index and the profitability of their economy.

6. We intend to make player vs. player wars more likely.
This will be achieved in two ways:
1. By a general increase of the risk of war.
In the past, Simcountry had no war protection and war was a major risk. We have later introduced the safe mode for the main country so players can secure their main assets. Temporary war protection that is used to protect all the other countries in the empire should be discouraged. It should remain an option but we will introduce incentives that may convince some players not to use it. These will be economic measures that will improve your economy and reduce your cost.
2. By the introduction of new incentives for fighting wars. There are possibilities to qualify such wars and add a fighting quality index that will increase the score of both sides. There are possibilities to reward the winner and there are possibilities to optionally prevent the takeover of a country at the end of the war.

There are examples. There will be more incentives.

New army features may improve the defending country auto defense. The main problem of player vs. player wars is that the defending player is not logged in while the country is being attacked.
If the country is more able to use its assets and defend itself more vigorously, the danger of waking up and discovering that your countries are gone will diminish.

More great news thanks Andrew.

Why do we care so much about PvP? Go to fb if you want that. That was the point.

Taking a wait & see approach to this...

"4. New army features may improve the defending country auto defense. The main problem of player vs. player wars is that the defending player is not logged in while the country is being attacked.
If the country is more able to use its assets and defend itself more vigorously, the danger of waking up and discovering that your countries are gone will diminish. Blocking part of the day to prevent war at time you are not available, already reduced the danger"


The navies seriously need looking at with regard to above statement. With the current rules it's far to easy to take someones country. A couple of hours is all it takes for a country to fall. Regardless of how well defended you are. Plus the attacker doesn't loose a single weapons system.

This is exactly what we talk about.

The possibility of war while you are not there is scaring many.
we think that it should be harder to take a country when the president is not available.

Player vs. player wars are not important to some.
others want to play a game where war is part of it.

Simcountry was and will be a game where war remains a good option but you can choose to participate or not to.

FB should be much more of a war world.

It is extremely difficult to take a country with a solid air defense even if the player isn't logged in. You need to address the specific issue of navy's...cruise missile ships in particular. It's basically a bug that they get around air defense completely, this wasn't the case in the past. Heli's would respond to these attacks just like they'd respond to any other missile attack. I know it's ridiculous for heli's to attack ships from a real world perspective, but it's also ridiculous that heli's attack conv batts 10,000KM away.

Yes I agree. I need peace of mind that if I'm in war my country is very hard to take. Someone taking me down in a couple of hours without losing a single weapon just doesn't give me that lol.

Thanks.

we will look into it and respond.
we are quite busy in the coming week.
it may be in the following week.

khome i want to be able to fight wars in the same place that i have friends and relationships with other players i also don't want to need to pay extra so i can fight wars removed from all other aspects of the game including other players considering the low population of players with countries on FB

I don't mind loosening up the rules of warfare on KB. My main point has to do with penalizing raiders with some sort of justification that it would allow more PVP. I am starting to see this as more of an attempt to make raiding near impossible, not the intended purpose of increasing pvp on other worlds than FB. None of this makes any sense.

I think making war more likely would definitely improve the game. I wonder though if there is some sort of way to have limited military action short of full scale war but more in depth than the sneak attack (and also a public declaration)...like an air war.

If I may ad my 2 cent. The biggest problem in this game for pvping is that if you lose your main country it's game over. You're done with all those months/years of work...

In other games you can PVP but even if you lose the war over your main country you only lose a massive amount of assests but you're still left with enough so that you won't have to start all over again.

especially since in the real world not every nation looses by being conquered. Iraq lost in 91 but it stayed intact for another 12 years, for example

Why is raiding bad? I think there needs to be another review of the changes to war levels. I would like to stay at a lower war level as long as I like and not have to move up. But let me explain. To me there seem to be several issues that are at play with changing war levels and raiding. People seem to want to be able to raid to either take bases or get resources. The increasing war levels, while good intended, also decrease war because it becomes increasingly difficult to carry out "raiding" by taking more time and having to build up larger and better equipped armies. I like playing the game but I don't have the time to spend hours carrying out a war, similarly the amount of time needed to try and keep the army going becomes onerous both time wise and financially. So without raiding, I either have to buy coin (which has been steadily made more expensive in the gc exchange btw) or spend lots of time trying to get my slaves to produce more coin quickly. Another edge to war levels is that I will then only be able to php versus war hardened vets. Andy has the data since the changes have occurred, is the theory true that war levels work beyond helping lower levels survive?

A question I have is why change raiding and increase war levels? Why is there a need to remove a system that is in place with another system. One answer given was the "intention" argument, or that having a raiding system of "easier" wars was not what the programmers wanted. Another answer is that it protects less experienced players from PVP. I understand that rationale but there is also war protection we can buy and secured mode. To me it seems to contradict the idea that WC3 wants to increase PvP yet limit it at the same time. Or is raiding giving too much away and the need to raise capital through GC purchase driving the change?
If it is, it really makes more sense to give more fun and possibility to the paying players and less to the free ones.

Since Wc3 wants to increase PVP wars why doesn't it incentives or make those wars easier to fight. As we see from what several players are saying, it is hard to take a player out when you are at a disadvantage due to space, weapon strength, and federation air responses. Will incentivizing PvP make more wars? Probably not due to the fact the resources used (raiding) to keep up an army have been diminished.
So the question left is how will making raiding less possible (where many with larger armies go to sustain those armies) increase PvP wars? It seems to me to be short sighted. If I wanted someone to fight more PvP wars I would make it easier for them to do so. Taking away a resource from them won't help, it will hurt. 4 attacks per war level is short sighted. Having a large army is not possible with a smaller economy. The costs of keeping the standing army drains the country's resources. Without cost effective raiding there will be limited large armies. Having players quickly move up the war levels is not the solution. It causes problems with the economy.

Secured mode is still in the game. Everyone's main country is safe unless you choose to play in the war world.

If it is true that the war level changes will make it more difficult to build and maintain armies, this will be the case for everyone. A similar point can be made that PVP is more likely, if this is the case, since some can now choose to not raid, or raid less, and be less at a disadvantage in a war against one who does raid.

The announced change in war levels will, in fact, make it more likely that seasoned vets will occupy the higher war levels. As it is, many very experienced war players stay at low war levels, for raiding ease, acting against the original purpose to encourage those capable players to rise in war levels.

I can see how players who earn most of their game cash through raiding seem to think the only alternative, if raiding changes, is to purchase gold coins. It is actually intended to encourage actual empire-building and other economic means to generate income. Again, everyone is in the same boat with the change. If you have a hoard of cash going into the changes from raiding, you have a head start to fund your empire to new income sources.

PVP wars do need incentive. Andy has asked for suggestions and I have had one on the forum ,Total/All-Out war, for some weeks now.

You will have to explain how players moving up war levels causes problems with the economy or how the changes make a smaller economy.

..and the larger armies churning through ammo that has to be stockpiled, if not the units are all disbanded. This on top of the weapons shortages.

Forcing people up war levels is very problematic I can't afford to fight a war against a computer who has a larger army then my target just to get a base to attack my target but I also can't afford to not raid a little bit for cash.... All In all these are just more regulations that make the game more restrictive when it should be about having freedom to play the game you paid for

One thing that I do think is good about this is that it will force more countries to work to develop their economies.

Jackwagen. Check the game news. You can now choose to fight a war level 3 c3 regardless of your war level.

T mac hit the nail on the head I think.

"Or is raiding giving too much away and the need to raise capital through GC purchase driving the change?"

There it is right there folks.

@ Aries

"If it is true that the war level changes will make it more difficult to build and maintain armies, this will be the case for everyone. A similar point can be made that PVP is more likely, if this is the case, since some can now choose to not raid, or raid less, and be less at a disadvantage in a war against one who does raid"

Not if you've been here a long time and gained your wealth through other more profitable means at that time. Like yourself. But players like yourself have to moan because raiding challenges the status quo. A players can rise very quickly to challenge the old vets. That's what I liked about raiding. Within a few months I could challenge players who've been here years. Now you guys have your way and ruined it for everyone else. Seems a familiar trend around here.

@Aries- I know I'm not as experienced here as many. I think I still have a lot of questions here that need to be addressed however. How can you keep a standing army large enough to fight pvp w/o raiding? Are the incentives to going up in war level enough to sustain the army it takes to obtain those? What purpose is raiding used for now, versus after the change? Who is most affected by the change? Does incentives for PvP affect more peaceful worlds like WG and KB? Will making new players quickly move from wl1 up as they learn war be one aspect of the new change? Is the economic engines capable of sustaining players both in terms of fun and in terms of army building? How does a players interaction with the game change with these changes? I think all these questions are valid and necessary to be asked before the changes occur. Has the game masters surveyed a real set of players getting a good cross section of their types not just put a call out on a forum? Making a change that affects gameplay and player experience should be based off of data, not philosophy or ideology. The idea that someone is trying to make money creating a game like this that forces people into one part or another based of an idea that "this was not our original intent" or the game is "about" this or that isn't good business tactics. Why force people to change? In the end what we will find is the real result of the change versus the intended result?

All of these changes are driven by one agenda: getting players to pony up more cash to SC. That's it.

I have added a suggestion to the appropriate forum for Battlegrounds. Please check it out and comment on that thread.

It is more difficult to win against C3 countries at higher war levels but the rewards are higher.

Moving to higher war levels you win more money and Gold coins.
So much for higher cost.

for a long time, we were asked to remove war levels.

With this system, you will keep raiding, win more money and gold coins and you will get to a war level where there are no limitations.

war levels will not limit your ability to fight anyone.

new players will remain protected.

we will keep reducing the cost of war. It is much lower now than before and keeps going down.

economies are more profitable and their profitability keeps improving.

Armies may end up smaller, and indeed as Aries said, all armies will probably become smaller.
It will reduce the cost of war even further.

In the past wars were much larger, in fact huge.
we have gradually reduced the need for huge armies. smaller number of weapons, smaller units (reduced by 60% or more).

To make PvP wars more likely, there must be protection for the main country (we have that) and the cost must decline even further. (it will).

On the other hand, war protection for the other countries in the empire is too frequently used.

we should not be chickens.
We should build a good defense and drop the temporary war protection.
spare yourself the gold coins. drop the war protection.