The Carrot, the Stick, and the War Game

Limits on attacks and "removing the attack button" are solutions that do not work for problems that do not exist. I don't think you read how easily my new suggestions integrate into existing game systems. Jonni Doctrine is ridiculous. I am interested in feedback from folks who either participate in the war game now or would with their own suggestion. How about you, Madoff?

Aries, you're not a prosecutor and I'm not a defendant. Your prosecutor schtick is tedious. Seriously dude, you're unhinged.

We're all happy that you enjoy your adorable, little 3-hour wars against poorly defended countries. But 99% of players avoid PvP. You're not one us. Therefore, you're not our spokesman.

You're just a troll. I'm done feeding a troll.

I have not asked for your alibi but I should be curious about your motivation for offering suggestions to the war game. If you don't want to PVP, that is okay but that makes you less invested in its success, especially if your own solutions would still not make you interested in the war game.

You define troll better. I made specific comments on your suggestions you posted. You attempted to stir things up with a post on my suggestion. Your post lacked any evidence you read my suggestion at all.

I would love the chance to raid PVP for profit again.

Some of my favorite times in SC were with Barney and Jason fighting each other for practice or because someone had a new strategy.

As for limiting units I am all for that.

A more realistic war game with the strategy elements already in the game would be a winner in my book.

Pretty sure I can hear the floor boards of this chat room creaking under the sheer weight of ego on display.

We have to be realistic about what the game developers would be willing to implement, as they are obviously a small team with limited time and numerous priorities. Rather than fomenting grand plans for reinvigorating the game and overhauling the war engine, we should probably focus on small an simple changes within the existing functionality which improve the game for a majority of players.

I'm fairly sure this would rule out tournament/pvp based league proposals ('Total War' etc) and fully automated war/ removing the attack button (a heinous idea that should never be mentioned again).

We ought to focus on finding common goals we all share - and let the developers work out how to do it with the minimum effort - rather than fighting our own personal corners or defending big master plans that the g

Please check out my suggestions without preconceptions about complexity. I have greatly simplified Battlegrounds in the revised version. War College is simply a 3 level system that is nearly identical to game levels. I plan to revise Total War but, in effect, it is simply a conflict that flags participants in a way to drop their war protection.

Also, if you meant to characterize my motives, that description has never applied to me. I have seriously considered doing what is within my game power to setup a battleground where I go through the difficulty of setting it up and stocking the country with my own cash as the reward. The war game is fun and I believe players who are interested in the war game are having a difficult time gaining resources through use of the war game. My suggestions are to resolve this and provide a game experience to players who are less interested in the single-player economy game (I like this description).

Ok. I had written out a long piece, but before I had posted it the computer decided it was time to install updates and shut down.
So I will cut to the chase as I have to go out.

Dubhthaigh Bro. Your points on the game are valid. Your points on why players commit the time to come up with improvements are not valid.
Brothers and Sisters like Aries only want to bring some spirit back into the game.

Ok, back on point.....For me The fear of war was the reason I looked to join a fed when I first started.
Fear was the reason I made friends and allies.
Take the fear of war away and all this game is is numbers, letters and little pixel pictures.
How many noobs look around and go....hold up...I need to join a fed for protection?
I feel WL's have taken away that need and therefore the consequence happy and relieved feeling of being accepted into a fed and becoming apart of the game.
The war engine is 1000 X

I'm sorry I you don't want to play the war game you don't have to there is secured mode if you want multiple countries you should have to defend those countries with an army diplomacy or temp war protection there is no need for war levels they aren't an indicator of experience or anything or that matter

The more opinions on this, the more it appears there is two sides to this with a few moderates in between.

Nix, Jackwagen, Toecutter, and Xon represent the war player side. The war players blame war levels for the fall of the war game and would mostly advocate towards their removal.

Orbiter and Madoff represent the econ players side. They want to keep war optional and advocate for the continued unlimited protections that war levels bring, often, even to the war world. Orbiter goes as far as wanting to change the war engine to a casually tweaked system that a player can change similar to eduction priorities before leaving the game to automate the rest of the experience.

I think Dub is a moderate and I feel I am too. I enjoy the econ game and the war game differently. I spend the most time developing my countries and enterprises to be effective tools towards my own ends.

I enjoy the war game too but don't wish the wa

Perhaps I was a little off the mark on the motive front, as brothers Natures Wrath and Aries have pointed out. That aside, I think what I said still holds true: We should focus on clearly defined small goals rather than endlessly plugging large cohesive mechanisms. I would bet good money the developers will not, in the near future, respond/take on board either the revised 'battlegrounds' proposal, or the idea to institute automated warfare (regardless of their merits or lack thereof).

We should formulate a list of 5 simple goals for the game in order of preference, then ask Jonni very kindly for some form of moderated chat Q&A session. This would at least serve to publicise chat even if nothing is decided.

Sorry for not answering, I've been working 15-17 hour days. Anyway, I don't think at this point anything could peak my interest in the war game. It's just too time consuming and the number of accessible targets too small. I can deal with time consuming or I could deal with inaccessible targets but I won't deal with both.Perhaps if I could transport land units by sea I'd be more interested. I've never liked taking c3's just to get from here to there. That has definitely been a huge turnoff for me, as has land units and painting. I know it's made the war game much better as far as being refined and not so simplistic and unrealistic but I just never liked it, I never liked secure mains either, we had peaceful untouchable empires before that for people who didn't want to war. IMO there will never be a level of safety high enough for everyone. Too much safety leads to boredom and not many will play a boring game.

This game has become safe to the point of boredom. Boredom because of lack of interaction and boredom with clicks per event so to speak. I don't feel I have a lot more to say, I am not very knowledgeable about this game these days and don't really want to make complaints I have no constructive solution for.

I also don't like changes of any kind, I want to learn and not have to relearn, it's something I've come to expect and deal with because I've always liked this game for the 13 or 14(I can't even remember anymore) years I've been playing but I don't enjoy changes. The massive changes to the war game however and resultant lack of interaction was the last straw for me to desire more than a secured country. At one time I had a country profiting 300B/game month, one country, all by itself with no time input from me, that's more weapons than it could buy without boosting spending limits. I can look around the game some but given my work schedule I really don't want to, is it possible to profit enough only through your countries economy to continually outpace military spending? That's also been a huge turnoff for me is the difficulty I've had the past few years making enough of a profit to buy anything resembl

Well that's all I have to say, what we have here was caused by people wanting to cause a change, if only those folks were as socially adept as they were technically it would have been known in advance the gm wouldn't change things in the desired way or in a way that positively affected the player base. I personally wouldn't attempt to cause changes, they far more often than not are worse than had nothing been tinkered with. IMO, my opinion based on 13 or whatever(I can't even remember anymore) years of playing. For whatever that's worth.

It is possible, but not easy, to support a large military with a strong economy. Acquiring the necessary weapons and ammo needed to compete in PvP is difficult, especially for players more interested in competing with other players than playing the single-player econ game. This is the reason I announced a new game feature. Check out War Games which I posted to this forum.

I did quickly. I will look at it again.

I know bumping a 6 month old thread should be illegal, but as a long-term player who just returned to SC a week ago, this was a fascinating read. I read it this morning and thought about it throughout work, before giving myself the space to write my thoughts down.

I played almost daily 2011 til 2013 on Kebir Blue. I was a member of the Protectorate. I was even its Leader at one stage (when it went democratic). I remember Parsifal and Crafty and Sunny and Wendy and Orbiter and the Shoe Lady on chat and on the forums. I nurtured an empire which eventually went to #2 on KB. I had a moderately large enterprise. To be honest, those two-ish years were the most fun I've ever had with a game.

Nonetheless, I also remember the seemingly long shadow that the Mob War and WCG war seemed to have casted over the game. It still does, to an extent. I hadn't even discovered the game when those wars broke out, yet somehow, now that I think

I find it amusing that the econ players want to limit war gaming to a couple of worlds while the war players want to limit the econ players to a couple of worlds. In each case, the 'other guys' are corralled into a limited space. Although I'm very new to the game, I would like to throw my opinion in the ring, for what it's worth.

It would be best if each type had one or two worlds each. Honestly, each world should be different; with gradations from a no holds barred war world with protection only if you pay coins and equal merit to attack and defense, to a peace world where the only way to buy weapons and wage war is to pay coins and/or import them from off planet. If the rules of each world is clearly presented to them, I'm sure most new players would chose a world somewhere in between the two extremes.
Most online games are credit card driven - you simply can't win unless you pay. And those who do not pay are at t

Yes, old thread. Still the state of the Simcountry war game though. For the guys with new posts here, I am not sure your suggestions successfully met the criteria of creating an incentive to participate in PvP. The basic test is, does the idea you have come up with motivate yourself and others to participate in the PvP game? Answer for yourself and why you think it would motivate other players to participate in PvP that might currently be on the fence.

My opinion is that the game currently lacks much to compete for/fight over. Proficiency in the econ game can duplicate and surpass rewards that can be earned in PvP and for no risk of asset loss in wars.

@Jdlech
The war world already exists as Fearless Blue is supposed to be the War World -and I say supposed to be as not being on that world and hearing what other players that are there say it needs fixing. But not all players want a war game and are found on the other more peaceful worlds. Not that wars don't break out on the other worlds too. There needs to be a balance and the ability to accommodate both war and econ players.

Old thread, but some refreshing new opinions from both Thomas Morgan and Jdlech.

Most of these ideas fail to fully address the lack of incentives within the war game, as Aries has pointed out.

That said, I really like Thomas' point (a), regarding intergalactic federations. The space game currently feels underdeveloped and thus somewhat gimmicky, but is ripe for real integration with existing war and federation mechanisms. Interplanetary war both gives Simcountry Space a purpose, and utilises the game's best and most unique features.

Moving from Thomas' suggestion into a larger point, wars can already be very tedious, with hours of clicking and unreasonable demands on playing time. I feel this, to some extent, is a critically limiting factor on the number of players willing to engage in meaningful PvP. A multi-world federation, or even the existing federation model, should therefore offer central control over

Being able to join a federation across worlds would be "neat" but isn't a game-changing feature in PvP. Friends and allies already exists across worlds regardless of official federation tags. If wars were more prevalent, in general, interplanetary war would follow whether or not the federation tag allowed this flexibility.

The ability to allow federation control is an interesting suggestion but might be a bit scary for a player to yield expensive formations by default. I do like the idea in a more limited and controlled fashion though. Perhaps the creation of a defined "battlegroup" created by any federation member where a controller, or controllers, is defined and allows any other federation member to lend forces they choose to the effort.

From a coordinated effort standpoint a "battlegroup" would be an welcome addition. I do not believe the war game is any more tedious than the econ game though. I spend lots

@Aries - the worlds are now connected via space trading. Why can't Federations therefore be stretched across 5 worlds instead of just 1? This gives feds far more interesting functionality.
A great idea to add onto this is to allow fed mates to be able to transfer goods from world to world via space for another player. This would add an incentive for a player to join a federation, in order to get his or her goods transferred without having to dump a lot of GCs and $$$ into acquiring the necessary goods. It would also promote interaction and coordination between Fed mates. Other players will rely on each other to deliver necessary goods.

Nonetheless, in spite of having put my own (rather ambitious) ideas out there, there is only one way in which the player base can be revived properly: a conscientious effort by a number of existing players to recruit new players into beginners federations and guide them through the early stages. Thi

Again, I approve of the additional utilisation of space game functionality.

I'm sure many of us are open to recruiting new players, and guiding them through the game, but I really think that some kind of organisation is required...

I suggest:

1. Interested players contribute war-game-revival specific ideas to a medium that is easier to moderate, organise and collaborate on. This might be a joint google docs folder, with the ultimate aim of providing a comprehensive (and uncrowded) list of suggestions to the GM.

2. The same as #1, but covering associate ideas such as inter-planetary war/feds, in game natural resources, and assigned in game federation roles.

3. A cohesive plan to recruit players from offsite, and bring them through a ready made programme of our own devising. Perhaps recruiters could be additionally rewarded from security council funds in a world of their choosing.

@Tom - Adding the ability to have interstellar federations and more flexibility, in general, again, is neat. Sure, why not do it? Does it fix PvP? no

As far as adding the ability to transfer another player's goods, this is less of a problem than you might think. Check the market for shuttles. A half dozen shuttles can be had for a few coins. If this is price is out of reach of a player, they have an issue beyond trying to transport goods through space. Again, doesn't fix PvP.

As far as guiding new players, yes, I am doing all I can. I have added the best c3 war guide ever written to the Beginners Forum. I have also added a guide titled "Path of a Warrior" there that provides an overview of how a new war player gets started in obtaining the resources to be a game force. I am also the most consistent presence on the forum and in chat helping guide new players into developing strategy and style. A half dozen or so players in