I like the idea of location mattering with hotspots, but it is restricted to a very small number of nations in a setting that doesn't feel quite like Cybernations. I'm not saying that the space wonders are bad, but the idea could be expanded upon, on Earth.

Earth should have it's own hotspot. Or even better, there could be like 100 hotspots, that are more or totally permanent, with different effects too. The bonus from each hotspot would be much greater, but the total bonus would be divided among all nations "within range". For example if 1 hotspot had the effect of +25 happiness and one nation was in range, that nation would gain +25 happiness. But if there were 100 nations in range, everyone at that hotspot would get +.25 happiness. It wouldn't be a question of how close a nation was to a hotspot, it would only be a question of whether a nation was in the boundaries of the hotspot or not. Alliances would fight and negotiate to gain control of 1 or more hotspots, and it would be like having territories. You could look at the map and see what alliances were at a hotspot and how many nations were from each alliance. Lets say a nation from the NPO wanted to be in the boundaries of a certain hotspot. They would look and see that there were 150 nations from OV, and thus it would probably not be a good idea for that player to settle there.

Also every "hotspot" could correspond to real places on earth. There could be a hotspots in Africa that are there because of the diamonds. Or hotspots in the Middle East because of all the oil. There could be a hotspot at the grand canyon because of it's awesome beauty. (I'm not suggesting that hotspots in Africa will give you the diamond resource, or anything, just examples).

This idea would put the map to great use. It would make a lot of sense realistically, and players wouldn't randomly put their nations in the middle of the ocean. As for gameplay, it would add a lot. Wars and diplomacy would take place based on control of the hotspots. It would be creating "territories" of alliances that would be worth protecting and/or expanding. If an enemy player moved his or her nation in the boundary of a hotspot occupied by another alliance, that alliance would have a reason to get the enemy nation away, since they would be detracting from the bonuses of everyone in their alliance. So there would be a reason not to just move your nation to whatever hotspot gave the best benefit. As for future additions with this idea, there could be things like spy operations that randomly move a player's location, or a wonder or something that hides your location. If this idea was open to all players from the beginning, or with a simple improvement, everyone could enjoy a deeper version of the moon/mars wonders, that would be a more integral part of the Cybernations experience. The space wonders would remain as extra bonuses for the nations who could afford it. Obviously can be changed, but I think this idea would add a great new area of gameplay to Cybernations and make alliances, diplomacy, and of course the map, more important.

Approved for Discussion.

I spoke to steeldor about this, as it is remarkably similar to an idea that admin and myself have been kicking around since we devised the Hotspot concept for Moon Mars.

We are thinking of using this as a way to give the map a purpose, and also help tie together/balance the teams.

What we are thinking, is 'Team Bonus Resources'.

Each Team would have a resource, the location of which would be in certain positions around the globe.

For example, Black team's resource might be Copper, and thus a few Copper hotspots would be hidden around South America (Chile & Peru are two of the worlds top Copper producers).

Now, if you were on the black team, and have your map marker within a certain distance of a Copper hotspot, you would get the bonus resource.

To take this to the next level (and as steeldor spookily alludes to above), the more nations using each resource, the worse that resource becomes.

All Team bonuses as a base level would be even, but as opposed to steeldor's suggestion we aren't thinking of making these worth a significant amount, perhaps $2 income, and not making there be many around the globe, perhaps 4 per team.

The depreciation might be something like 0.1cents for every nation using it, down to a min of $1.

So, Pink teams bonus resource, with only 436 nations, if they had all 436 using the same resource, would each get $1.56. If they managed to split their 436 nations among the 4 hidden resources, they would each get $1.89.

Black team on the other hand, with 4188 nations, if they had all 4188nations using the same resource, would only get $1 each, and spreading them evenly with 1047 per resource, would still only resuly in $1 each.

So as it is easier to get trade bonuses on a larger team, it would be easier to get more from your team bonus resource on a smaller team.

But, you can see this would only be a small difference, nothing to really make it weigh into things too much, but perhaps enough to have alliances, and teams congregating together on continents, sharing resources, or perhaps, conquering them.

Anyway, as I said, this is an idea we have been kicking around for a while now, and admin would like to open it up to the users for any ideas on how to improve/tweak it.

Is a very good idea. Right now the map is a set it and forget it thing. Pretty much a non-factor. Although some alliances use it for some fun to make pics. LOL.

I am not a number guy to say what should be $$ or +happiness. I say it would be a nice additional change to make the game more day to day interesting. Something to do when the wars are all gone.

The idea interests me and depending upon how it is done could be great. However it wouldn't fundamentally change the way diplomacy and inter-alliance politics are carried out. Virtually no one would start a war in the off-chance it could give a small bonus in game play mechanics.

I like what you have going here a lot, but I would recommend making the hotspots have a much larger effect than what you are proposing, to make them something worth arguing and warring over. If this contributes to inflation too much (which it would have to, realistically to be big enough to make a difference) change a formula somewhere else to reduce the net income without the resource. A tweak as small as reducing all happiness/+income based improvements by 25%. Taking the difference made there, multiplying it by 1.5, and making that the maximum value of the new team resources would make them something seriously worthwhile. With what you describe it would be such a negligible bonus that nobody would bother really organizing to get it.

Also, I'd recommend having it go down instead of in an even .1 per person using it, go down in tiers. For example:

1-50 nations using it: full bonus
50-150 nations using: 90% bonus
150-300 nations using: 80% bonus
300-500 nations using: 70% bonus
500-750 nations using: 60% bonus
750+ nations using: 50% bonus

Also, I'd recommend 1 hot spot per continent per team. That way each team can realistically support 7 major alliances claiming their control over a resource, and when you get a team bigger than that, conflict begins to build to get them elsewhere, either to a part of the continent where there is no hotspot, or to a different continent.


just my two cents.


Edit: Apparently all happiness boosting improvements give a total of +45 happiness. This means that 75% would reduce their total effectiveness by 11.25, making the hot spot value maximum 16.875.

Seeing those numbers I might argue for reducing by 50% (making it 22.5), thus making the hot spot value 33.75 which would be a very worthwhile bonus, but would at most add +11.25 happiness over what we already have. This would make the hot spot bonus go as follows:

100%: 33.75 (total happiness from improvements + hotspot: 56.25)
90%: 30.375 (total happiness from improvements + hotspot: 52.875)
80%: 27 (total happiness from improvements + hotspot: 49.5)
70%: 23.625 (total happiness from improvements + hotspot: 46.125)
60%: 20.25 (total happiness from improvements + hotspot: 42.75)
50%: 16.875 (total happiness from improvements + hotspot: 39.375)


Going from these numbers, up to 500 nations, you have a net improvement over currently, over that you start being worse off, and people with no hot spot at all are facing a significant penalty and will want to get in on it.

This is precisely why the bonus needs to be a very significant bonus.

I've often thought there should be something that there are a very limited number of, that confer such a large bonus as to be fought over for control of them. So, i like the idea.

This is a really interesting idea, and something I think could create more exciting gameplay. Putting more of a focus on Team Colors is something I love, as the value of team unity is currently rather low.

It would also establish more of a "goal" in warfare. Alliances would fight over resources for once, not just old grudges.

I personally see it unlikely to happen on Earth - it would be a huge change to gameplay, larger than anything I can think of before. Would also make the game even less removed from the KISS system.

Perhaps different hotspots could have different "intensities" of a bonus. One hotspot could be +4, while another could be +1.

Another thing that could be interesting would be to limit the number of nations that can be using any one hotspot. This would increase competition (particularly on a large team), especially if you could "steal" someone's hotspot by putting them into anarchy.

Making Anarchied nations not receive the bonus and not count against the limit is actually a really cool idea. Another thing to promote war, AND it makes regular anarchy a much more powerful tool.

However I don't like the idea of different bonuses for different hot spots. Making them all the same high bonus so everyone has a chance at the same thing, but just having them fight over who actually gets it works out better I think.





This idea in general also can lead to insurgencies of nations jumping onto an alliance's hotspot not just for their own benefit, but to reduce the bonus that the alliance that 'owns' that hot spot.

Heh, would make groups like Vox even more powerful. The problem with that, is there would be no actual way to get rid of them. A system for the bonuses having to do with NS (perhaps weighted with the total world NS) would fix that.

Except you'd have the ability to anarchy them and have them not count against the nations on the hot spot based on the post you quoted, which is what had actually made me think of it.


And making it based on NS would be so much harder to balance because of the inflation in NS in this game. It's easier to have a set income bonus that's worthwhile to everyone.

This could bring more depth to the game.(Hypotheticly) This could make Black Team alliance want to expand and bring their alliance via changing whole trade guilds to pink in order to share in the pink teams bonus resource.

So I guess we would also be suggesting you can't get the bonus in Peace Mode? I would be up for that.

While making this team based would balance things more, I agree that there would be little to fight and negotiate over. For larger teams, this aspect would be virtually nonexistent because like what was said, the blue team would never get more than the minimum bonus.

Having continents or areas for each team would fix this. The bonuses of every continent would apply to only 1 team, but at every continent there would be many hot spots. You would still have color based alliances trying to conquer hot spots, but it would be limited to a portion of the entire world map. The colors with less people would still be getting more of a bonus because there would be fewer people on that continent. Teams would be more balanced while still having hot spots that are worth fighting for. Also you could divide the world into more then 7 continents because there are 13 teams, or you could make 6 main continents with 2 teams having access to each one, and make Antarctica open to the colorless team with less bonuses.

Nations in anarchy and peace mode should completely be able to take hotspots.

It provides someone who is getting crushed with at least SOME negotiating power, something that currently does not exist in almost any form.

That is a great thing for CN as a whole imo.

Making the map useful? Please, this will make it a graphics-text game. This is a text game, and this is why it has always been so great. Don't change this. Don't make the map useful.

This is the strongest support that this suggestion has received thus far fyi

No, just flat out no.

The GAME of CN is a political simm, our nations and nation building is the side show, the muscle behind the diplomacy, Most of us enjoy the fact that we can manage our nation in moments a day, and then devote time to the real game. The politics.

Its cybernations, a political sim, not a game of marco polo, be in on the moon, or here.

Updates to the war system we're good, new wonders (aside from the space crap) were good, so were the improvements (Some more might actually be in order). Passive improvements are the way to go for gameplay (aside from the war system, but thats different).

Making the nation building take more attention and more babysitting is just bad in my opinion.

You're missing the point here. You say the game is a political game with nation building as a side show and something to give influence behind your political simulations.

This suggestion turns nation building into an innate driver of politics. So long as there are people out there who want that bonus for their nation building, then people will compete for it. (Especially if as I suggest, to compensate for a large bonus nations are nerfed in general, so those who don't get the bonus suddenly notice their income drop and want it back).

The point here isn't to make nation building more involved. If that were the case you'd give the different hot spots different values (as others have suggested) and don't place any effect for how many people are using it. You'd also have some randomizing effect to make people keep track of their hot spot constantly. The point here is to tie macro level politics into the game in a way we don't really have outside the senate, which has thus far been unable to cause the appropriate levels of drama to spark major wars thus far.





Which reminds me, perhaps have the senate affect the hot spots somehow? Being able to sanction someone to take away their hot spot access on that color is a good start, but I'm sure some creative effects for hot spots could be thought up.

If you don't like it, you really don't have to use it. It's an extra. If you don't want to bother with it, you don't have to search for the hotspots to reap their benefits. As always, there will be people very involved in their nation building efforts, and those who only devote short periods of time to it. That won't change. This will merely give the involved people something to do, and leave those who don't care no worse off. It won't hurt you nation not to find them.

On that note, I do like this idea. Gives us tiny people something to do and a little taste of the new space wonder mechanic.

It's an interesting idea, but I can't take the image of an entire nation of people picking up and moving across the world because someone saw copper there.

An entire nation of people can't unilaterally decide to relocate with the press of a button either. I imagine if they could it would be much more common.

aka, don't worry too much about realism.

I don't think 50% min is a good idea. It wouldn't really do what the loxley intended: make those small color resources lucrative. If you're guaranteed a 50% bonus, it's not really an incentive if the bonus is so small to try for another color. If however you get no bonus that may be different.
The first thing I think is a good idea. I think though it should rather be semi-independant. The more copper their is on the market, the less valueble it becomes. However, a particular copper mine if it's not being used up has more potential for profit. Thus each person on your particular resource would depleat the value by 0.01 and each person on another one of the same type depletes it globally by .001. To compensate for this, the overall base price could be increased slightly.

As for anarchy, nuke anarchy should not do this. It would give a reason to try for standard anarchy.




One thing I'd like to see are other benefits to each resource. Each resource should have a select benefit beyond money. The benifits could be finite, but the resources switch every month or 3 (ie copper is in orange for 3 months then goes to yellow, then red, etc. through a cycle). The locations for the resource remain the same, just the access changes.

Loxley initially posted the idea that you'd have a $2.00 income bonus that decreased to a minimum of $1.00. I used that 50% mark as the baseline for my proposal.


Also note with my full suggestion that at the 50% mark, a fully developed nation would be down ~6 happiness from what he currently has. That is a noticable effect on income. They need to get into the 70% range (300-500 nations) to see any improvement above the current status quo (+1 happiness), and it isn't until you get down to 150-30 (the 80% range) where the benefit really begins becoming tangible.



And of course, this has the biggest impact on smaller nations, whom if they manage to get onto a hot spot get the same bonus as everyone else, but do not yet have the improvements that I based the numbers on, so they effectively get a large amount of the happiness early, which will help the smaller nations grow and catch up faster.

If anything like this was implemented using nation location you are forcing people to move their nations if they want to gain the benefit. If someone wishes to keep their nation where it is, then they will lose out on the benefit - and thus other nations will get ahead of them. What I'm saying is, don't use nation location - use something like the moon/mars wonders, lesser benefit, cheaper wonders than going into space.

GPA Map
NPO Map
Fark Map
The Grämlins Map
Umbrella Map

^It will likely also ruin these.

Edited to include Fark, The Grämlins, and Umbrella.

I think the point was to give nation position an actual point rather than have ridiculous pictures being drawn with nations by their alliances, instead give us something to argue and bicker over politically.


People who want to keep their nation where it is for roleplay value or whatever else can do so, and chance are they'll still be on -A- hot spot, however that in itself can spark drama. (an alliance that wants to claim the hot spot chasing down the people who just sit wherever to chase them off their spot etc)

Somehow I don't think when admin created CN he put the maps in with Alliances drawing Boobs on them in mind.

But, for TypoNinja and others, this was why it was suggested to be a small bonus, so those who wanted to ignore the feature could do so with minimal impact, but for those who wished to go for a little extra opimisation, the option was there.

The team resource hotpots would differ to interstellar hotspots in that they wouldn't move, as moving would pretty much kill the dynamic that comes with a resource being depleted as more people migrate.

The problem with that is for a minimal bonus people won't even care. To make it something worth going to war for it needs to be a major bonus, or we end up with another thing like the senate, something that gives too little bonus to bother fighting over, thus making it nothing but another means of inflation with no real purpose in the game.

I suggested something like this back in... '07 (wow thats a long time, lol), but it never got anywhere.

At least now Admin is doing things along the lines of it (moon/mars) so I think it would have a better chance now, sounds good!

I would probably set the bottom range to 25% as below 50% it becomes more lucrative in some cases to look elsewhere.

This is why I suggest other rotating bonuses. Maybe only one resource produces extra income. Maybe increases population, another reduces infra cost, another reduces naval costs, another reduces nuke upkeep. Each color is assigned a resource. Hell, maybe calling it a resource is not appopriate. These change every month (12 resources/12 months). Each resource spot for each team would be calculated differently.

Maybe calling it something like Research Institution would be better. This would give multiple dynamics: You could try to stay with one same color or change colors to keep with the same benefit. It would add a dynamic to the teams not already there.

We see so many suggestions come and go through this forum. I hope this one gets some serious attention from the staff. It would fundamentally change gameplay. No longer would we see spying and grudges as the only CBs for war. We might actually get to see some legitimate conflict between alliances.

I would rather Cybernations remain a good text/forum based game than become a bad war game, which is basically what this proposal is calling for. More is not always better and I don't see a good reason to fundamentally change the gameplay now (starting CN2.0 using this system would be a pretty awesome idea though).

So basically keep all drama out of the game and on the forums?

I think it's in admin's best interest to keep the game itself tied to the drama, otherwise if all the drama is just personalities, what's to stop a migration to another game that the major leaders in the game decide to take an interest in?

tbh I think this is why LW was such a big dramafest and why it became banned to mention on these forums, at the start it was incredibly popular and seen as a fresh start on the same drama for many people. Admin's best interest lies in preventing this from happening by keeping his game interesting and making sure the politics of the world take place in his game, not his game is an outpost for the politics of the world.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea. It's just funny to me to try to imagine some of the game mechanics acted out in real life, such as how my giant developed nation gets by without cars.

I agree though that it's a good idea to give the map a function in the game. The more things to do, the better.

Idea that just hit me:

- Three hotspots per team.
- Each Senator gets to decide where one hotspot is.
- Only nations within the hotspot before it's moved get the bonus.

If it were implemented this way it would be cool. Small alliances could band together to vie for control. It would create some good dynamics between all these micro-alliances that people are always complaining about.

This actually sounds like a winner. I love it.

Wouldn't this just lead to all nations on a team clumping around the same point on the map?

If you want the map to serve a purpose how bout instead of giving incentives to clump all nations on the same spot, which to me sound rather dull and tedious, we give incentives to move your nation away from others. I remember a while back being able to see the map and other nations in my range, and getting messages for when other nations borders were crossing mine. Why not give that system numerical consequences?

I would imagine that the hot spots are a relatively large area, so there's still some room to spread out. Yes, people would clump within them, they would also spread out outside of them because most likely some alliances will lay claim to a hot spot and tell everyone else to gtfo.


Especially if the senate controls the hot spots, what we will most likely see happening is the nations of all alliances sitting on a specific country, so when their alliance takes senate they can get just their nations without others. Then you'll see smaller alliances trying to sneak in and take advantage of those alliances' hot spots, clustering in with that alliance and hoping nobody notices. Then when a number of them start getting caught drama ensues.



As to borders crossing, it really isn't likely to happen simply because keeping track of that would be a much larger strain on the servers, and it's not something you can just disable at update since it would affect collections. Even if you only kept track of those people close to you in rank it'd be a huge hassle.

Not necessarily. Any nation that moved to the hotspot after it was created wouldn't get the bonus.

Senators would have to coordinate with friendly nations and alliances to get everyone in one place before moving the hotspot; there would be no benefit in moving there afterwards.

This would only increase the competition for senators, it would serve no purpose in balancing colors or the struggle among alliances for control of hotspots. If there were many hotspots, then this could be a bonus for senators, or senators could have some form of sanctioning powers, but it shouldn't be the focus of the earth hot spots.

...

so this would basically allow already strong alliances to get more powerful?

Given that there's more than enough senators/hotspots to go around it won't just be the top alliances claiming them. Other smaller alliances will lay their own claims. Groups of small alliances might challenge a larger alliance for the right to a spot. Realize we're looking at anywhere from 36 (one per senator) to 84 (1 per continent per team) hot spots. There's plenty of room for competition there so that you dont just have the top 12 alliances take them all and tell everyone else to $%&@ off with nothing to be done.

Yea, and if you had fish as a resource and your loacted near a river/lake/sea/ocean that also would improve your resources. It think that the Nile R., The Great Lakes, Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea should be the Hot Spot.

Maybe instead of using where a nations capital is, upgrade the MIC wonder (up the price as well, or some other mining wonder) and move that in correlation to the hotspots.

I'm meh on this, but MIC having some effect on the hot spots would be a good idea. MIC in of itself isn't a very good wonder.

I expect that hotspots will look like capital city maps do now - simply a point with a circle of some radius around it. Making it correspond to shapes (or figure out where the water/land barrier is) would be too difficult.

Making the feature exclusive to those with MIC greatly lessens any influence on politics, turning it into more of a bell and whistle than a large part of gameplay.

Trains, Boats and Aircraft.