I think this is the next logical add-on for the Alliance Server.

There is a discussion thread over on the Suggestions Board concerning how to rank war alliances. This is very difficult unless some parameters are defined in terms of when a war starts and when a war ends. For this to work, giving the tag holder the option to declare war on another tag would definately make it easier for qz to come up with some ways to create a war ranking.

I propose giving the tag holder the option to (a) Declare War on Alliance or (b) Challenge Alliance.

"Declare War" would be what LaF, PDM, NA, ImagNum did this reset. Surprise first strike, looking for first strike advantage. You may hit the opposing alliance immediately.

"Challenge Alliance" would be what RAGE are looking to do next reset. A 1v1 or 1v2 that would be mutually agreed and would have to be accepted by the alliance(s) being challenged. No hits allowed on challenged alliance until acceptance granted.

Hits outside of the "declared war" window don't count towards your war ranking.

War ranking stats could be;

1. Output score - Total Hits/Day
2. Efficiency Score - Successful/Failed Attacks
3. Activity Score - Avg Country Hits/Day
4. Destruction Score - Networth Killed/Day
5. Preparedness Score - Tough one. Someone come up with a coefficient to rank a country's war preparation - SPAL, Military, Tech levels.

You could then have two major War Rankings.

1. War Power Rankings - Output + Destruction Score (SOL, SOF would lead this category)
2. War Skill Rankings - Efficiency, Activity, Preparedness (LCN, Omega, ImagNum would lead this category)

Overall War Ranking would be a combination of both.

Thoughts?

So like utopia

If you have nothing constructive to say then, as my mother used to opine,

SHUT THE fluff UP.

dagga is getting upset about people not making constructive posts?

Pot, I'd like to introduce you to Kettle...

HOW ORIGINAL I SAW WHAT YOU DID THERE MADE A PLAY ON WORDS ABOUT THAT SAYING ABOUT THE POT AND THE KETTLE - IM SURPRISED NO ONE HAS EVER HAD THE CLEVERNESS TO DO THAT. EVER! AMAZING BASTARD!

id like to see a formalised system

id also like to see attacks/ops/actions which would kick in after a significant time period, say 24 hours

that could do something like reduce civ/hit kill % at higher pop and increase it at lower pop, or effect pop regain

for example for every hit on a country under the min pop regen level ~1000 which has corresponding roughly 25 civ/hit and a 1.5 hit/turn ratio and 3.7:1 turn to turn ratio min pop regen could drop by 1 for 24 hours

so 3 goals

1 reduce tempo of war in general and particularly first strikes
2 reduce effectiveness of war without formal declaration or for a period after formal declaration
3 reduce reliance on having high proportion of an alliance online within the same 5 minute period and therefore effectiveness of one country stonewalling many countries over a long time period

Easiest way to reduce FS advantage would be to formalise the First Strike through war declaration.

If Alliance A gets declared war on, then they might get a 24 hour "Population Retreat Bonus", making it 25-30% harder to kill them off.

This would extend total kill hits from about 250 to ~325-350, increasing the chance of walling, and reducing total kills in the first strike.

Declare War should be apart of Challenge. You can challenge an alliance and they can choose to accept anytime there after, but after 1 week if they do not accept (ie. They're ducking any conflict) the Declare War option becomes available. Stops blindsiding but still allows an inevitable conflict. It could also work both ways. You challenge an alliance, and they save turns and finish their prep, which allows them to choose the accept time, and hence their FS instead of yours.

Agreed completely.

I could see benchmark #4 getting skewed very easily in a long war...

example:

SoF FS'es NA

NA dies quickly, but keeps fighting.

SoF is killing 500k NW countries for 3 weeks straight, but doing so at 180 HPK.

SoF's hpk would still look great, but their destruction score would be rubbish. This would tank their overall ranking due to something beyond their control.



A possible solution would be a ratio of Total Clan NW:NW Killed/day

I 100% oppose any game suggestions proposed on this board.

yeah

but by extension it should go:

least effective: killing people you dont declare on
normal effective: killing people you declare on until they hit back enough or have enough time
most effective: killing people with either mutual declaration or after time/level of engagement hits required threshold

350hpk is obviously better but its not enough to put the game back to the tempo it used to have making wars decided quicker than most people would like

other things that can be done is give people better restarts that die earlier in the war

but to really slow tempo down you run into a wall of the smaller alliance not being able to get any kills any more

first due to turns needed at a particular time
then due to total turns needed

and once an alliance has been at war for a few days (if we dont change the restart system dramatically)_it is likely that people at a chat will be dead

so most alliances these days would use 2 chat times per day with gaps of up to 18 hours, usually closer to 15

with 3 chats no one will have more than about a 10 hour gap

1 chat is obviously roughly 24, or a rolling 30-18 pattern

the more chats the less people per chat the closer the smaller alliances are to just having enough turns and the quicker a war machine falls apart and chats fail to get any kills or have to kill less useful targets

you need ~6 countries for 1 kill/day

but if you fail a kill with walling unless you have ~6 countries worth of turns left you cant do much

so the turns roll over to the next day meanwhile you lose more countries

if we tuned walling to be less effective running a lot of turns against a bad chat run slowly but quick enough the waller stays around

but more effective against an offline type run we could lower the barrier to entry to war, and perhaps increase the fun for those who arnt super into it

since auto irc highlights, emails, and sms alerts combined with an always on computer or a mobile phone which you can wall on provides a huge increase in stonewalling

forcing kill runs to try and be even faster and more people to be on at once waiting for enough that its safe to hit

if the only advantages to being on for a kill run like that were selling other mil on private and spending stocks you could tune pop regain so that there isnt as big an advantage to sitting on low pop

I think the easiest solution is to retool population regrowth at low population levels so as to reduce the effectiveness of stonewalling on low pop. this will force people who want to stonewall to do so from the beginning using all resources which will help those with less active warchats to get kills.

But that's not really the issue being discussed here.

I don't think you can hamstring too much the ability of an alliance to do a lightning unexpected first strike because that will give greater confidence to larger alliances to farm the bajeesus out of small alliances knowing that the small alliance must first declare and give them warning before being able to do any damage.

there needs to be a secondary trigger though

otherwise cash starts get destroyed

id rather see a cap on attacks to reduce the difference between 132(120) and ~42 with 0-84

just stop the frontloading of hits where its possible to kill half as many countries as you hit with in the first 24 hours

just going back to 2% readiness per turn would go a long way to reducing the crippling effect of FS's

but if you do that it drops hits/country/day drastically and runs the risk of smaller tags not being able to get kills

you could do things like 50% extra readiness loss doing hits on tags your not at war with or until the initial period is over

Making it an official War declaration in game is ok and throwing in the stats to show off how big your C**K is (no real game value added, just the right to brag)

But messing with the pop killed per hit and readiness level is just stupid. Your basically saying "Im pathetic and cant get 5 players online to get a kill, so make my life easier by allowing the game to do it for me".

Leave the killing how it is. And leave the FS as it is, it is an advantage and an advantage that makes sense.

As for improving restarts, llaar mention this in another topic about salvaging your dead country to make your restart larger etc.

I think there is a lot of potential on this particular thread.

It'll take some work and compromise, and Im' sure everyone won't be happy,

but for once,

Dagga may have the genesis of a good idea.

Wow, makes me wonder if I didn't have one too many beers tonight:)

I am torn on this idea. My biggest issue is the decrease in flexibility as it forces you to formalize things. There are clear perks, particularly for statistical purposes.

ya, this general topic has been discussed a few times in various forms, and the outcome is always that there are other changes which need to come first.

some interesting points in this thread, so we'll keep those in mind when we eventually revisit this topic for the clanned servers :)

Yea for sure; I really want a formalized system, but it always comes back to this:

You have to make the FSing alliance WANT to declare war - this means giving them an advantage. But the FS *already* is kindof strong most would say (for 1:1 even alliances), so that would tip it more in that way.


So basically, there has to be some incentive to declare war, while not really increasing the FS strength, or weakening it even?

Maybe mobilization for war increases industrial output? A bonus you definitely want but won't overpower things immediately.

I think the advantage could be as simple as one of the 2 following ideas:

1. Built in Policing/"Gang-Bang Prevention"

If side1 has a TNW OR Member Count higher than %120 or lower than %80 of sidee2's TNW OR Member Count, then side1 may designate additional alliances which can hit side2 (but not to exceed %120 or be below %80 of side2's TNW/Member Count).

Otherwise, all hits are disallowed on side1 and side2, giving them guaranteed protection to fight their war on an even keel.

If side1 is only 1 alliance, and it's TNW and Member count exceeds %120 of side2's TNW or Member Count, Side1 may be hit by outside alliances/countries, but side2 may not.

This would all have to be done with a minimum number of hits required per day to remain at war (avg of 15/country/day or so?), or something of the like - otherwise it would be pretty easy for this to be abused by netters who want to exclude themselves from being grabbed.

This would give the advantage of leveling out wars a little bit too.



2. Why do they have to want to declare?

No, Really - why do people have to want to declare to be considered at war? Why not just make it automatic?

IF clanA hitsPerMemPerDay > 15 THEN
warStatus = atWar(clans hit in last 24 hrs)
ELSE
warStatus = atPeace

Could be updated every few minutes, and give whatever bonuses/penalties you wanted.

i suppose it could be automatic but that could get confusing potentially... and obviously a minimum of 10 would have to be observed still

Beyond getting confusing, it would be a pain in the ass to set up.

There would be so many variables to deal with to make it work well, I'm not even sure if it's really worth it. At least not for the time being.

The incentive is this -

If you hit another alliance outside of a state of declared war, none of the hits count towards your War Ranking/Score.

If some of the alliances don't care about this (netters), then your automatic declaration of war should kick in at 500 hits with the declared war period beginning at hit 1.

Another potential way of looking at is this - give the alliance who is declaring war a 24 hr bonus (10% attacking strength or pop killing), but the alliance who cops the first strike also gets a 24 hr counter-strike bonus (15-20%).

meh.. bonuses don't really have to be used, really. i guess you could limit warlike tendancies when not in a state of declared war.

the statement that the FS is already too strong(which is only that strong in certain circumstances) is great reason to add a formal declaration of war, because then you can put things in like fs or cs bonuses w/o the game having to guess whether someone is at war or not.

*shrug*

I agree that people doing it voluntarily would be best....but given the current set up, I just don't see that happening.

The fact that the developers have to keep the incentives/penalties even to both sides is going to act as a disincentive in itself for a lot of clans....

yea.. but then the incentives/penalties need to be good ones.. i mean things like an increased medical bonus for the FS'n alliance. there's loads of options to make it something you want to do because it's better than not declaring.

also, now3p... clan politics could dictate that no WarDNH would be given if the clans at war didn't... declare war.

also, if the FS'n alliance didn't declare war and the, technically, CS'n alliance declared war, they'd get whatever the FS bonus was.

There's where my concern lies though....

A. Giving a FS bonus, imo, is a very bad idea. FS'es are powerful enough as is. I'm not one of the namby pambies that wants to water them down, but I certainly don't think it's a good idea to make them any stronger.

and B. If the other side is going to have an equal incentive as you to declare war, why bother? It's still just even ground.

whee.. so much inside the box thinking. think i'm going to stop taking part in these conversation/debates.

there's more wrong with a war than just the apparent over powered FS... these days, war gets boring very easy. especially if you're either being thrashed or doing the thrashing. it's so cut and dry... very rarely any evenly matched wars, and even then... they're pretty boring as well.

having a formal declaration gives the admins a chance to easilly spruce things up a bit by adding in different bonuses/penalties throughout the wars. could even do stages, etc where week 3 something amazing happened where maybe 3 big breakers came back from the dead..

bleh.. probably stupid ideas.. but the possibility for other amazing things is made so much easier by simply adding in a formal declaration of war.

^and even sticking to the inside the box routine, game keeping official stats is a pretty big bonus to any war monger.

Here's an idea:

No special attacks without declaring war on a country; OR having your alliance at war with their alliance;

Alliances would have to be allowed to declare war on single countries probably though, or have alliance -> untag not require war or something

that way you simply have to unless you want to do landkills across the board.

I like the idea of removing special attacks without a war declaration, be in alliance wide or country to country. This should however, also include harmful spy ops

Untags in Alliance don't really have any rights regarding war. It's Alliance after all.

I like the special attacks idea - forces the Alliance to declare war and doesn't make the FS more powerful.

Very good idea.

or perhaps you cannot exceed X attacks/day on an alliance you are not at war with? (something low'ish - 10 maybe)

It seems to me this whole idea opens the door to suicider clans sucking a clan into a war that is only intended to drain their turns/netting ability though.

I love people who still use references to thinking and boxes. Can we have a paradigm shift next?

Umm how many suicider clans have you seen running around the server?

And if a suicider clan decides to hit a LaF, Evo, LCN in the current game setup, does that not also just suck their netgaining ability? Formalising decs does not promote suiciding at all.

qz. Simple is always best -

You cannot attack a country with special attacks unless you (a) have declared war on that country or (b) your alliance has declared war on the tag that country is a member of.

Simple and easy. We can then start warstats/rankings dicussions from that point.

Oh, yeah...I see....the system's not beneficial for a suicider clan NOW, so if we change it it will, by theory of extension, continue not to be in the FUTURE....

makes sense

You haven't explained how restricting special attacks to countries that are declared "at war" will increase suiciders. That doesn't make sense at all.

Is there going to be an alliance that magically pops out of the air and randomly declares war on your alliance if this new rule comes in? If so, its not suiciding - its war.

Essentially, what I could see happening is this...

If you were to be able to gather 8-10 people together (say a clan's kill team playing under a different tag, for example), you could formally declare war on "Clan A" and start suiciding (land grabs, AB's, etc - no kills). Clan A is now declared upon, and is incurring all the penalties/bonuses that would be related to being formally at war (e.g. can't grab outside alliances, income penalities if they transfer from country:country war decs, etc).

Even if Clan A has a substantial kill team for the 8-10 suiciders, the rest of the clan will incur the penalties of war as long as the suiciding alliance can survive. With any sort of decent walling, I could see something like this dragging on for a week or more, which would limit the abilities of Clan A's netters.

I won't pick on anyone in particular, but I'm pretty confident there are folks who would be more than happy to exploit this to screw over an arch nemesis in a netting set, and avoid their "home" alliance having to formally declare war.

Alternatively, I could see a clan making a formal war dec, making the minimum number of hits/day to maintain the war dec, and just making the netting clan kill them to get away from the penalties of being in a formal war. It wouldn't be as damaging from an attacks standpoint, but would still put Clan A in a position of being in a formally declared war.

Of course, these scenarios are entirely dependent on what penalties/bonuses are ultimately assigned to a formal declaration, but my fear is that if the bonuses/penalties aren't created carefully it will lead to exploits that can be used to short change a netting clan on its ability to net with what would otherwise be a relatively harmless set of attacks.

Sorry for my lack of clarity - cold meds have me feelin like up is down, down is up, and the pink fuzzy fairies are prancing all over the place...

except there wont be any penalties/bonuses for them at this time

But what is stopping a clan from doing this now? The situation doesn't change, if this happens to your alliance (random ABs, topfeeds) you have to kill the offenders anyway.

And, there is no bonus system with the current solution being proposed anyway..

Thus game has one ranking system and that's networth!

if there are no bonuses/penalties associated with a war dec, then the point is not relevant. Since bonuses/penalties were mentioned in multiple subsequent posts, I assumed they were also being considered.

The difference, for the sake of argument, is that currently an entire clan is not penalized for their kill team killing suiciders, where they would be if there was a formal declaration system in place (again, assuming there are penalties associated with war).

I dunno - overall, this just strikes me as rather unnecessary. It's not really a bad idea or anything, it just doesn't really seem to be a high priority type thing for the time being. Once the game grows a bit more, I can see it being more relevant.

main thing is to get the idea in people heads first imho, and let third party sites roll with it; we could add bonuses or stuff later perhaps

Requiem, have you missed the memo on the new game leaderboards...?

Declare war: Countries in the alliance declaring see their tech increase at a rate of 0.1%/turn. That way you get a bonus that is great for every strat, isn't overpowering immediately, helps you in the long run and makes "storyline" sense because breakthroughs are always made during war. It also only helps countries that have prepared properly.

.1% would take a week to make a real difference. .2% and you'd see a difference in 4 days.