52 replies to this topic

[iMatt]

Remove Active Nations & Percent Active from Detailed Alliance Statistics, as it doesn't provide information on "activity" of an alliance.

Number of active nations are nations who haven't collected in 3 days; backcollecting has eliminated this as a useful stat.

Replace this column with something people actually want to know about an alliance. I propose this thread to brainstorm the best replacement for these columns.

Some options:
1. # Active nations (from last bill payment date), and % Active nations (from last bill payment date)
2. Something unrelated to activity.

[Captain Calcium]

Approved for discussion.

[Michael von Prussia]

I'd like to see the alliance rank added to the stats page. While I am aware it is available elsewhere, it seems to me to be a commonly-enough used statistic (especially when tallying war damages, but in general just to keep track of individual alliances) to warrant a place with all the other commonly-used statistics.

[Prime minister Johns]

Personally I would like to see activity redefined so that if a player does to their nation (such as buying troops, infra, tech, sending aid) it counts as activity and resets the inactivity counter.

This would give a truer reflection of just how "active" that nation is.

[Ironfist]

Personally I would like to see activity redefined so that if a player does to their nation (such as buying troops, infra, tech, sending aid) it counts as activity and resets the inactivity counter.

This would give a truer reflection of just how "active" that nation is.

I think this has been suggested numerous times, but it's been ignored because it would change the mechanics of the game too much. It would serve as a completely revamped system and warfare would most likely change.

[Trikoupis]

I totally agree with the OP. This is now useless.

If the number of full trade cycles, or the number of foreign aids offered could be tracked, they would both be excellent alliance developpement tools.

[iMatt]

I think this has been suggested numerous times, but it's been ignored because it would change the mechanics of the game too much. It would serve as a completely revamped system and warfare would most likely change.

You're correct, it would change too much in that regard. We'd have to keep the definition of inactivity the same as it is currently. What *could* change is the way this "% inactive" number is calculated. Without storing any more fields it's pretty pointless (I think) - since without any extra info (last bill pay, last purchase) there is nothing else to gauge inactivity on.

If admin doesn't want to add in another number to store, then the only option would be to change this column to something unrelated to inactivity altogether. But as it stands, the only conceivable use for this number is to see how many people are backcollecting, and on average where is the alliance in their backcollection (5 days, 10 days, etc). And that's useless because it's an average. And it only differentiates between <3 days inactive and >3 days inactive.

[ChairmanHal]

I personally would like to see a return of DEFCON as something that is a sortable and visible part of the Alliance Rankings. Removing it did nothing really but create a fun, leisure time activity for those who either developing a software solution to "harvest" the information from the individual nation data or gave some noob nation leaders a job to do for the minister of war/defense/breaking of things' benefit.

As far as the OP's suggestion is concerned, the less work I have to do looking up stuff "by hand" the better, and activity/inactivity can sometimes be a useful thing to know.

[iMatt]

As far as the OP's suggestion is concerned, the less work I have to do looking up stuff "by hand" the better, and activity/inactivity can sometimes be a useful thing to know.

I'm having a hard time imagining situations where this number is useful, can you clarify?

[Fernando12]

"Activity" - Why should we know when a nation last collected taxes? It makes no sense to have that be given away. We have spy operations for that, let's make raiders have to spy and use money to find out if a target is raidable or not. Isn't it anything over 12 days gets destroyed. Anything under 12 days is up for loot. So make raiders use spy ops before they go in for a raid.

As far as activity being last tax collection...it shouldn't be something that is revealed as I just pointed out. What most people would like to see instead of 100 nations - 48 active...the way it is now is based on tax collection. I'd rather know when the last log in was for a nation or at least the daily log in percent of alliances.

Anyways, my main point on this activity is my first paragraph.

Edited by Fernando12, 18 October 2010 - 07:27 PM.

[Michael von Prussia]

"Activity" - Why should we know when a nation last collected taxes? It makes no sense to have that be given away. We have spy operations for that, let's make raiders have to spy and use money to find out if a target is raidable or not. Isn't it anything over 12 days gets destroyed. Anything under 12 days is up for loot. So make raiders use spy ops before they go in for a raid.

As far as activity being last tax collection...it shouldn't be something that is revealed as I just pointed out. What most people would like to see instead of 100 nations - 48 active...the way it is now is based on tax collection. I'd rather know when the last log in was for a nation or at least the daily log in percent of alliances.

Anyways, my main point on this activity is my first paragraph.

I see reasons to have activity displayed at the nation level. For example, if one of my trading partners is getting a little too close to deletion for my liking, it's nice to know, so I can send him/her a message and start scoping out potential replacements.

However, as has been stated, there's really no use to knowing how many people in an alliance have done so, since backcollecting screws up any possible hint of usefulness it may provide.

Edit: That said, I think your point about raiding is well-founded, and perhaps such indications of activity should be restricted to trade partners only (as it already shows up on the trade agreements screen).

Edited by Michael von Prussia, 18 October 2010 - 07:44 PM.

[ChairmanHal]

I'm having a hard time imagining situations where this number is useful, can you clarify?

An alliance preparing to launch an offensive will typically have its nations collect first. A sudden drop in inactive nations would therefore be a signal that something may be happening soon.

[Fernando12]

An alliance preparing to launch an offensive will typically have its nations collect first. A sudden drop in inactive nations would therefore be a signal that something may be happening soon.

Why should this info be revealed though? How bout we use actual spies instead to get that alert message while on the AA or from an alliance forum Oh, yeah spying is frowned upon.

[iMatt]

An alliance preparing to launch an offensive will typically have its nations collect first. A sudden drop in inactive nations would therefore be a signal that something may be happening soon.

Thanks - this is one use I didn't see right away. I don't see it as important enough to warrant being on that screen though, given that one use. It's like when we used to be able to see alliance defcon (am I hallucinating this? I forget), but now we can't. It' rather replace it with something people actually want to see on a daily basis.

Edited by iMatt, 18 October 2010 - 08:35 PM.

[ChairmanHal]

Thanks - this is one use I didn't see right away. I don't see it as important enough to warrant being on that screen though, given that one use. It's like when we used to be able to see alliance defcon (am I hallucinating this? I forget), but now we can't. It' rather replace it with something people actually want to see on a daily basis.

You weren't hallucinating it, because I remember it being there at least through the end of 2008 on the Alliance Ranks page. At some point Admin removed it.

[Lord Xnut]

I agree.
If we are not to change the way activity is calculated we should add the last date that the nation logged in as the way alliance activity is shown. Maybe something along the line of the percentage of nations that have logged into their nation in the last 5 days or something like that?

I know that a precise time and date of a users logins would change the system a bit too much, but how about a simple checker along the lines of: "nation ruler has logged in during the last 72 hours -> YES or NO" (?)


As it stands now the percentage of active nations in an alliance is actually the opposite of what it should be with a low number of active nations being a sign of a healthy alliance and a large number of active nations giving an indication of an alliance that either does not know what they are doing, an alliance that are in money problem, or an alliance that are preparing for war.

[iMatt]

I know that a precise time and date of a users logins would change the system a bit too much, but how about a simple checker along the lines of: "nation ruler has logged in during the last 72 hours -> YES or NO" (?)

This would be a great way to calculate this %.

To keep the naysayers at bay, this "last log-in" flag will *not* be shown on the nation display, but only as an aggregate % of the whole alliance. Perhaps the Gather Intel spy op can give you the last log-in or whatever field is chosen to save.

One great thing about adding this field is that after 25 days everyone's log-in time will be correct (unlike the addition of AA seniority which was wrong for a lot of people for a long time).

[admin]

The current method of determining activity through tax collections will not change, but what about for the statistic that the OP is referring to, make it count the number of alliance players that have logged into the game within the last 5 days rather than base it on their tax collections.

[thedestro]

The current method of determining activity through tax collections will not change, but what about for the statistic that the OP is referring to, make it count the number of alliance players that have logged into the game within the last 5 days rather than base it on their tax collections.

That's fine. Logging in is what we realistically think of as activity anyway. But 5 days might be too much. I don't think the community considers a person who logs in once every 5 days to be active. 3 would be more acceptable

[iMatt]

The current method of determining activity through tax collections will not change, but what about for the statistic that the OP is referring to, make it count the number of alliance players that have logged into the game within the last 5 days rather than base it on their tax collections.

This would certainly be better than the current method - it would be great to be able to see which alliances are *actually* active in the sense of logging in. As far as how many days since they logged in, I'm inclined to lean towards 3 days more than 5 (like thedestro mentioned).