Alright, After an initial idea which everyone seemed to like, once it came to fleshing out the details, the thread deteriorated pretty quickly.

To clean it up, I'm going to post the original vision again, and a summary of the criticisms so far against that vision.

From here, please feel free to offer up suggestions to help solve some of the criticisms, but please keep it constructive. Disrespecting admin, moderators or the game staff is not the way to go here, it just makes us want to shut up shop on this and other planned updates and spend our time elsewhere.

The Original vision:
* The crux of the original idea, was to have 48 hotspots hidden on the world map.
* Each hidden spot would have a radius in which you would have to place your nation capital inside in order to get the bonus. - Update: You would no longer be moving your capital, instead, you would buy an improvement and place it positionally on the map.
* 4 hotspots each would be designated to each of the 12 teams, so each nation would have 4 hotspots possible to search for, each would be linked to a team bonus resource, which would be located loosely where the designated resources were in reality.
* For example, if the black team resource was Chromium, the 4 black team Chromium hotspots might be located in India/Kazakstan/Iran etc
* Each of the 48 bonuses at a base level would be equal.
* The more nations inside the radius of each hotspot, the more the bonus would be degraded down to a base level if 1000 or more nations were on the hotspot.
* Team senators would have the ability to exclude a certain number of nations from receiving the hotspot bonus even if a nation was inside the radius.
* A small penalty would be given to nations not inside a hotspot, unless they were on the grey team.
* The hotspots would shift once per year, which would mean they would have to be found again, after a long period of degrading the resource
* Hotspots in successive years would have smaller and smaller radii to make them harder to find each time they move

Goal of the vision:
* Give the map a purpose outside of alliances drawing boobs on it
* Give a little boost to the smaller teams, nations on a smaller team would benefit more than those on a larger team, as more nations could share a hotspot with less penalty, a larger team would need to cop a lower penalty than the smaller teams were getting, or force nations off the hotspot to increase it.
* Increase the power of team senators
* Give bonuses which may in certain instances be worth fighting over

Criticisms, and issues with the criticisms:
* "The proposed bonuses are too small"
- Issue, making it too large makes this a central part of the game, instead of an added feature. No matter what way you cut it, it is not desired that the game revolve around this, we'd like it to influence things at times sure, but not be the be all and end all, we are looking for balance.
* "Unless you decrease existing bonuses in other game areas, all this bonus will do is increase inflation"
- Issue, making changes in other areas greatly effects years of established gameplay, which like it or not is not on the table. Cutting income in places such as improvements could even induce bill lock in nations depending on that income only to not have it arrive. Ideas on how these bonuses could be implemented, not increase inflation, and not affect other areas of the game are welcome/encouraged, because we have been racking our brains on it... People seem to respond to penalties with fury and bonuses with dismissal. If we were talking losing -5 happiness if you weren't on the hotspot, and back to zero if you were on the hotspot, would the bonuses still be considered too small?
* "There should be no penalty for not partaking in the concept"
- Issue, If you don't partake in the concept of the religion your people want, there is a penalty, this is really no different, its a feature of the game, if you choose not to partake you can, but there is a small penalty.
* "I don't want to move my nation/moving my nation is unrealistic, I'd prefer a wonder/improvement(s) to do it instead"
- Issue, it makes it more complex to implement, but it is under consideration.
* "Not all bonuses should be tied to teams"
- Issue, this depletes the idea of helping boost the small teams, however it also depletes the problem of possible infighting in teams for resources, and could increase competition between large alliances on different teams, a mix of team and non team is under consideration.
* "Not all bonuses should be equal"
- Issue, it makes it more complex to implement and also more complex to update what the bonuses are if down the line it needs doing so, but it is under consideration.
* "The hotspots should move more often"
- Issue, unless it is automated and we ignore hotspots appearing in spots where they have no real life connection (and thus making them very hard to find), it is a big job to move them all.
* "Anarchy/Peace mode should mean a nation loses their team bonus resourse"
- Issue, these nations are likely already in enough trouble without losing this as well, however, this could encourage more fighting over hotspots, so is under consideration.

---

If I missed any other issues form the previous thread during my sweep, I apologise.

Remember, a simple idea that can be expanded on, is better than a complex one that has to be trimmed down, if your idea improves on this concept by 5%, but complicates it by 100%, then there is little incentive in going for that 5%.

Now, I'll reiterate here that lets keep it civil, taking shots at admin or the game staff is likely going to see this idea, and other future updates shelved for good, this thread is here for your input, but not everything is possible, and all opinions are considered, not just your own.

This isn't an answer to every issue, but it is a clean, simple start. Lets say that the color hotspot gave +10 happiness, and the non-color gave +5. The +10 is obviously better, but after so many players, it would be worth it to seek out the non-color hotspots to get the highest bonus. The smaller teams would be able to more easily find benefit in the +10, which is good because it is better and it's less likely they will be attacked because of it. They would be more of a shared hotspot, compared too the riskier non-color hotspots.

First I want to comment on the closing post from the last thread



Disagreeing with you and saying the game sucks and needs a major overhaul is not necessarily being disrespectful. It's the damn truth. We have been saying for years that nobody plays CN for CN, but instead for the community that has been built up around it. The game itself has no real bearing on politics, and provides minimal interest in of itself.

As I pointed out in the last thread the best way to solve this problem is to make the politics of CN central to the game of CN, rather than continuing to have a whole community who could abandon the game at any given minute and really lose very little because of it. I guarantee you if you made a poll of what keeps people here, the game, or the community, the results would be overwhelmingly in favor of the community.



As I've said before, making it a small tangental bonus not only fails to make it a central part of the game, but fails to make it worth anything to anyone at all. Especially if it declines to the point where with an average number of people on the hot spot you're getting no bonus at all.

Again, if you're not going to make it a big feature, just save yourself the time and effort and don't bother implementing it, you'll only be disappointed if you keep going with this line of thinking.



At what range is a nation making a small enough profit margin that losing out on 50% of their improvement happiness bonus will bill lock them? At low range, they have few improvements and thus aren't losing much. At mid range they get hurt the most, but by this time you've got income from multiple different sources, should have a steady trade set, and will still clear significantly more than your bills. It's just a significant slowdown.

Large nations will notice it, but if you want to tell me that taking off happiness from improvements will bill lock anybody who is 6k+ infra I have to wonder if you actually play this game.

If i understand it right that is what may happen
1. Big alliances with allot of players will find this resources/Hotspots first
2. Since it will take some considerable time and effort to find them and as more players find the hotspot the smaller the bonus will be ,the big alliances will automatically claim the spot for their own alliance and no other players will be welcome
3.Since they have the military power they will have the power to implement it and cut off other players from the hotspot
4.Small alliances will be history and we will have with the time only a few big alliances who will have access to the hotspot
5. In an alliance itself (if the alliance grows big enough)only old members will have access to the hotspot

I dislike the idea of adding something that is purely a penalty... Perhaps each hotspot could have two sets of rings, the inner ring is +2 happiness to the alliance controlling it. The outer ring is 0 happiness to the alliance controlling it and anywhere outside the two rings is -3 happiness and nation in one of the rings but not a member of a controlling alliance gets -3 happiness as well. An alliance controls a hotspot when it's members make up a majority of the NS in that hotspot or surrounding ring.

There would be 4 hotspots and 4 rings surrounding them, each can hold an unlimited number of nations, but will only give the bonus to those in a controlling alliance. To control it that alliance needs >50% of the NS in that spot. So if three alliance have a spot split up 40-20-20 then nobody gets a bonus.

I think this would encourage not only new wars but also new treaties to divvy up hotspots. Smaller alliances working together could deny a larger alliance access to a hotspot, but it would prevent guerrilla forces from shutting down hotspots for too long because they would have minimal NS compared to a large alliance. By having controling alliances I think we really do create a new political tool, while if the hotspots are free and not bound to alliances they just become a nation activity reward or team balancer. A decent addition perhaps but not nearly as interesting as if we combine it with alliances.

Ok, Seerow, two things. Disrespect has less to do with the idea behind a statement and more to do with how you present that idea. "This game sucks" is disrespectful. Secondly, I've known nations with such a terrible profit margin that 90% of their income was going to bills. Just because optimal growth strategies have been found and are generally available to active players doesn't mean that all 25k-30k people playing this game use them. There are people who aren't good at this game.

Ok, as for the topic at hand:
First, if you're going to do non-color hotspots, I really think you should limit it to one or two total. If everyone has access to a dozen or more hotspots, what will happen is the top alliances on each team will try to dominate their hotspots and the smaller alliances will just wind up moving to a multi-colored hotspot instead of trying to compete. That will cause smaller alliances to compete with each other for hotspots, which is unlikely to drive politics overmuch.

Second, will each hotspot give a bonus that decreases with the number of nations on that particular hotspot, or will each team get a bonus that decreases based on the number of natinons using the entire team's resource?

this is a good start,
good idea right here ^^

beasuase as many nation (use up) the available +10 the + 5 areas become more attractive evn to the point a nation may look for them first beacae they will last longer than the + 10 areas.
I do like an idea of the team senators being able to block nations from the bonus even if they are on the hotspot.but make it so they can only block a predetermined amount of nations,
maybe 10 or 12 ,that way even if one team try's to take over a hot spot another alliance would basically have to organize a move against them ,
hence a war for the hot spot.
with the limit as hight as ten or twelve it would still give the advantage to the original team on the hot spot.

Seerow, comments like this are not constructive at all. The argument that you are making is that this update needs to be so big and overshadow all other game features in order to somehow 'save the game'. That is not a direction that I've taken on any past updates nor do I think that it's necessary here. I've always strived for a sense of balance by building on top of what already exists, not tearing everything down and starting over, so I don't know why you're expecting a huge game changer all of a sudden now after 3.5+ years of gameplay. There are many reasons why someone may choose to leave the game but as I see it we just wrapped up the biggest war in CN history and judging by my bandwidth overages everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and it goes to show that your comment that the "game itself has no real bearing on politics" is just flat wrong. A blanket statement that the "game sucks" is downright disrespectful to me and to everyone here who enjoys working on and playing CN. Please refrain from posting in this thread further.

So where's the wonder I can buy to get out of the penalty? You know, like the one I can buy to stop changing my religion.

Thank you MD.

And I'd like to apologise for making my las comment in the old thread a little bit.. "unfriendly"
I was a bit angry after reading about this whole plan.
But you see, the fact of making the map a part of the game would actually take away huge amounts of the community I have outside CN. The only thing keeping me here.
YOu have to understand, that not all people are in favor of this, and as such, stating that "-- an initial idea which everyone seemed to like --" is a lie. I have been talking with many of my friends and some random CN players on IRC, and it really seems that MOST of them are AGAINST this suggestion, stating it is "idiotic" or "totally against the game".
Now... what I still could accept, is that you add this feature, without giving penalties to players not willing to participate (or by making this woner MD suggested) and by not taking away anything from the old improvement/wonder bonuses (just like our kind admin already said . I hope that this time, as I tried to make a more civilized post, it doesn't go to waste..

These are all good goals. I think people are getting a bit hung up on the last one though, thinking that the bonus has to be huge or nobody will want to declare war on anyone else for it. The point obviously isn't to make something that we'll all want to kill each other for, but to create something that can cause tension or force cooperation in the same way the senate has in times past (and the senate isn't even all that powerful to begin with).



You just need to find a happy medium, where it's a fairly substantial bonus at base, but depletes to low or average as people pile onto it. I really think the formula I put out in the other topic was a good example of something that does this.


If you implemented something like a military, rather than financial bonus, it might be worth fighting over but without increasing inflation. Or a decrease in Wonder cycle time. (Start with -10 days and go down to normal as more people join). Things that are helpful but not directly affecting income. It's not necessary, but something to think about.



I think the only penalty for not being on a hotspot should be not receiving the bonus. I do think, however, that having a penalty for being on a hotspot that is too crowded would introduce some interesting political elements.


If you do this, it'd probably best be an Improvement to give the maximum number of people access, otherwise it limits the amount of competition/drama/etc you're going to see out of it. I could go either way on actually doing this, though.


Personally, I quite like the idea of teams having to either compete or find ways to cooperate to maximize use of the hotspots. It gives a tangible reason for people to want a stable sphere instead of just for the hell of it. (Honestly, "stable trades" aren't much of a motivator, not as much as people tend to make out).


If you wanted to introduce variety, you could have a happiness and military bonus that the senate of each team could switch between. If each team has to make all hotspots either one or the other, that could make for some interesting situations when some of the team goes to war and some of it doesn't. Plus, that wouldn't unbalance anything the way the current resources do to a small extent because everyone would still have access to the same bonuses, just not all at once and by choice.


You could always allow each senator to see where one hotspot is. Even if they all cooperated, that would still leave one hotspot undiscovered for people to hunt down. It'd be difficult, and you'd lose out on the bonus while doing it, but if you find it, you have access to a hotspot that no one knows about, which would yield a fairly substantial bonus.


Well, I think the ability to invade another team's/alliance's hotspot has some interesting drama potential, and having both of these active would make it difficult for someone like Vox Populi to pull that off. However, the Anarchy thing has some interesting potential. In a nuclear war, everyone gets anarchied. This means they lose the bonus (not particularly noticeable since they're in nuke anarchy anyway) but since everyone at war is losing access to the hotspots. it means those who aren't nuking that can get onto a hotspot suddenly don't have competition and get a larger bonus. Of course, if you make military bonuses, you might want to ignore the issue altogether.

I'm a little concerned with the siting of the hotspots. This of course depends on their size, but I tried to bring it up in the earlier thread.

First, while I can see there being the logic of 'it's found in X in the real world, so it should be there in the game', it could cause hotspots to be too predictable. I'll pick diamonds as the example I'm using: if it was known that diamonds were your team resource, everyone would move to South Africa and Arkansas. Granted, there are probably other large diamond mines..and you'd find them by seeing the nations dive at them. Resources aren't 'realistic' in this regard (I have a lead mine in the middle of the North Atlantic that also produces inferior lead, but everyone else calls it 'silver'), so perhaps we don't need to tie hotspots down that way.

Second, if memory serves, the idea limited these to the RL earth landmasses. Depending on the size, some bits of land could be left out too, simply since they couldn't support the hotspot size. If you're going this route, I'd open it up to the entire planet surface. (I'd also advise all the Green ones to be put in the North Atlantic, but that's just selfishness .) It gives more possible places for the spot, and while some may not like the idea of nations in the middle of the ocean, they do exist--the realworld examples could be the various Polynesian islands, which take a while to show on the CN maps.

qft


Also, I think instead of a wonder to op out of the whole "hotspot" idea like we've done with religion/govt maybe we could have one that increases a nations bonus from the hotspot (i.e. prevents it from degrading as much with more nations on the hostpot). And I think that the wonder could help out everyone on the hotspot as well. The more nations on a hotspot with such a wonder would increase the bonus for everyone...but not as much as for the people with the wonder. If everyone on a hotspot had said wonder then they would all receive 2x the normal bonus or something, those without would receive partial increases depending on the number of wonders.



Eh, maybe that makes sense. It'll be more of a team/alliance effort to organize.

A Wonder that gives you the full bonus for being on a hotspot and doesn't count you toward the number of nations on the hotpot would do what you're talking about.

This sounds like a job for Mining Conglomerate.

Also, I'd like the idea (using the "Copper" example") of using your resources to get further benefits from the 'Spot, if it's not that hard to implement. Lead or Gold, for example, could be combined with copper for special alloys that give your a little more cash or bonus of some sort.

On the thing about getting a wonder to opt out of this, how about we build a wonder to gain advantage of hotspots? You don't build a (let's say) East India Trading Company, you don't take part in the "colonization" part of the hotspots. You build the wonder, you get -1 happiness if you don't have a hotspot, and accordingly get bonuses if you are on the hotspot.

This way, people who like their places and don't want to be attacked by an alliance if it is on a hotspot will be happy, people who don't want to be penalized will be happy, old nations which need more fun will be happy.

Council on Foreign Relations wonder.
I'm for this only if there is a wonder to employ it, or a wonder to opt out entirely. I sited my Capital for sentimental reasons, and I don't much personally like the idea of putting all my telephone poles and factories on cargo planes and boats and shipping them halfway across the world (although teleportation seems to be the preferred method of movement ) for an advantage.

Also, I liked the idea of not being able to relocate outside your sphere of influence. Much more realistic that way, and no teleportation issues.

I personally like Cybernations because it takes very little time to play. Adding features like these will require me to put more time into the game in order to progress, which I do not want to have to do. I truly don't see this as a beneficial idea.

That wonder didn't come along until much later, like 2 years later after the happiness penalty for religion was added to the game. The option to add such a wonder to negate the negative effects of the hotspot idea has actually been discussed but I doubt it would be part of the initial release, just as the penalties for religion and government didn't have a 'opt out' wonder until much later.


Is this a new wonder that you are proposing or are you confusing the name of the existing Mining Industry Consortium? If it's changing the Mining Industry Consortium that you are referring to it would require either a change to the price of the existing wonder or reducing its existing effects both of which wouldn't be very fair since players have already been using it under the existing purchase price and effects.

You could make the Mining Industry Consortium a prerequisite for whatever hotspot based Wonder(s) come out. It'd boost the value of the MIC without mucking about with the mechanics of the Wonder itself.

Yeah, I was messing up the names.

I just thought it would add a little zip to the wonder. I see what you're saying, though.

Do you not expect people to share the locations of the hotspots with their comrades? The correct Religion/Government selections have been posted up in almost every alliance since day 0 taking all element of fun/guesswork out of the equation; why would hotspots be different? I foresee this becoming similar to the Religion/Government selection, no one really cares that much about it its just something you need to do to keep your population in check until you can buy the relevant wonders then you simply forget about it.

Hotspots on earth will just be another chore; log into IRC, ask someone in your sphere (assuming its not in the IRC channel welcome) find out and move, not because you particularly care but because youll be penalized by happiness modifiers if you dont.

If this is some way of getting new resources into the game its going to be unfair simply because Orange sphere has X, Blue Sphere has Y and Black has Z. People will move to whatever sphere has the best resource (or staying in their sphere if their alliance insists they stay on "their alliance sphere") constricting some spheres and engorging others; the other way around this would be to give the spheres equal resources which would be rather pointless.

Missed this bit * Each of the 48 bonuses at a base level would be equal


The Space Resources was and still is in my mind the way to go. Sorry if Ive been a negative Nancey, but this idea just isnt doing anything for me

You didn't really read the topic did you?

Now that I think of this more in depth, I don't think it would be a good idea. It would be unrealistic and doesn't really follow the KISS method.

The Moon and Mars wonders I also do not like, especially since the pricing is backwards and once again, its not simple.

I had an idea that popped into my head. The hotspot area should only be given to native nations. Nations that move into the region shouldn't be given the bonus since they moved to get it. It should be a luck thing that moves just like in real life. One area looses but another area discovers it.

why not simply change the name of the procedure to solve the * "I don't want to move my nation/moving my nation is unrealistic, I'd prefer a wonder/improvement(s) to do it instead" problem... sort of...

divide the globe in spheres of influence between the teams and if a nation is outside it suffers from happiness penalties that increase the farther away from the borders you are.

then allow people to drill for them resources inside the spheres of influence with or without a new wonder (changeable each day/week.../year/decade).

There are a few problems with this suggestion. First of all, what would happen when all the hotspots of all teams are filled with 1000 players? Instead, it would be good to be on the hotspot that has the lowest amount of people so that the normal bonus would be applied if 25% of the team are located at a hotspot and the bonus would be halved if half the team is on it and up to doubled if down to 12.5% of the team that is using hotspots is on it.

How exactly could this be done? I see no way to make other players capitals move.

You can't make another player destroy Improvements, change teams or send you money either.

I am completely against the hotspot idea, here are the reasons why:

1. It would only benefit large alliances who have the political influences and military force to drive smaller alliances off of the large alliances' color teams' hotspots and crush independent nations who are sitting on the hotspots.

2. Since a limited amount of players are able to be on the hotspot before all of it's effects are soaked up, the large/old nations in the large alliances will hoard the hotspots.

3. The hotspot idea will make the game more unfair for small alliances since large alliances have more man-power to search for a hotspot and hold it.

im curious. If I look at an alliances map, say the NpO, and see that all of their nations are focusing on certain spots? thus eliminating the need for the majority of nations to actually search for the hotspot.

What i mean is, only a few need to search for the hotspot for many to enjoy its benefits and its not exactly something you'll be able to hide from competing alliances.



Now for those that like where their nations are right now, and for those that think its unrealistic to move your nation, how about instead of moving the nation capitol, you just have mining sites? I.e. my capital is in china, but i have a remote mining site in the antartic to mine that precious ice resource.

If it was done this way, you could have the mining sites setup like improvements and allow nations to have more than 1. I have no idea the complexity involved in doing it this way vs the payoff, but i think it would answer some of the complaints.

EDIT: also, we should petition to have the name of this topic changed to Hotspots on Bob

I like the idea of having mines instead of moving your nation. Make you spend money to find the hotspot then make you spend more to get a mine.

Pay for exploritory missions every X days to try and find the hotspot and when its found pay for a mining site at that location?

I'd be good with that.

before I try and run away with that, loxley / admin, is that something that falls under your warning in the OP of ?

Why not do this:

We have the map on CN, and it's basically useless. Why not make it so that the alliances have to battle over where their "land" is. For example, if Alliance A was in the UK, and Alliance B was in France. The alliances would "fight" over the land, and could take over the hotspot where the new resource was.

This was make it less of a gimme, and would make the alliances come closer together, and there would be more wars for the land.

Definitely a good point. Once one alliance finds it and people start noticing a mass move, then everyone would find out.

Although this could add more strategy. The alliance could create fake spots and have a mass move to three spots on the map, but that would still narrow the search.




Sounds like it would be fun. But who gets what to start with? Do alliances have to fight if they share land? Can there only be one alliance per country?

Totally different topic

I don't know how difficult this would be to code, but you could restrict access to certain hotspots based on your alliance strength. For example, there would be 5 hotspots for alliances in the 0-199,999 range, 5 for 200,000-399,000, and so on. You would only have access to the hotspots in your alliance's strength range. If your alliance's strength went up or down so that it was supposed to be in a different range, you wouldn't be kicked out of the hotspot you were currently in. However, your bonus would be penalized. Let's say your hotspot is meant for alliances in the 200,000-399,999 range. If your alliance strength was 150,000-199,999 your bonus would be halved. 100,000-149,999 would be no bonus. Any lower would give you like -3 happiness.

This assumes that alliances are based on where their nations are. As an example, as of 23:51 CN time, the Grand Global Alliance's top 100 have a clump in a line from roughly Seattle east to Moscow, with a minor gap between Newfoundland and the westernmost marker from the Europe side. This is of course the top 100. Where would you say it's based?

And remember, as the last war showed us, nations can be removed from their alliance's top 100--whether by going elsewhere, or just getting blown up really good.

I may have missed this, but I don't think anyone's mentioned that introducing hot spots on Earth would increase the learning curve of the game.

Really though, my main beef is with lack of realism in this. Moving your capitol around the globe is just...ugh.

Read my post where i offered up a solution to the moving your capitol business
http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?s...t&p=1735927

The only way this feature would appeal to me personally would be the increased political tensions that can be created by trying to control the hotspots, kind of like a king of the hill game between alliances. As it stands currently this new feature will not create alliance wars or any political issues trying to control them.
Nations will move around as they please, and the gains amassed from an alliance pushing another alliance off 'their' hotspot will be so minimal alliance wide that no alliance will even bother.

For the political tensions to start mounting because of this feature and make it something worthwhile, I would propose the following.
The four hotspots are given a rating system, the more people under the same AA near a hotspot gain 'control' of the hotspot, only one alliance can control a single hotspot. If MHA has 500 people near one hotspot then they are given full control over that hotspot, and are able to choose which AA's will gain the benefit from being in range of that hotspot.
This will create tensions because MHA may not want to let their resources be squandered away by Athens on the same sphere, so they deny access to Athens and Athens has to find a different hotspot. In the same way, MHA will grant access to gremlins over the hotspot and relations will
improve between the two from this relation.

This will only benefit the largest alliances, as Athens would have no way to gain control of another hotspot with 4 other alliances with more numbers then them on the same sphere. So, as a counter, a 'sphere alliance affiliation' can be added in game, which enables alliances on the same sphere to unite under one banner, eg. Athens and Mushroom kingdom join numbers and then are able to gain control of a single hotspot for united control. This will cause all small alliances on a sphere to 'buddy up' with the larger alliances and tensions will be created between the sphere alliances, causing more political conflict and greater interest in the game.

I would appreciate if my thoughts and ideas are considered in this game change, because as it stands, its a brilliant idea mostly wasted.

EDIT: speeeeling

Who in an AA that controls the hotspot would be able to select who benefits from it?

Why isn't 'this will only benefit large alliances' a legitimate issue?

2nd the idea of nations clumping their capitals is disconcerting; why should the hot spot need to be the capital; why not just in the nation's radius? This would encourage nation growth sense for as long as I remember it was and is the thing ppl spend least $ and interest on.

I'd prefer the 'native' approach, seems more realistic like a gold rush where the nation(s) who happen to be where the find (hotspot) is will receive the benefit.

I can think of several ways to make the map significant other than this; I think other opportunities should be explored before putting alll the eggs in this basket.

i actually like my idea more than any i heard just with a few tweaks. make it even more unrealistic than this and do basically what i said earlier just swap the economic penalties for these stats:

make nations in the sphere gain a defense bonus if they are in the sphere of influence that matches their team color. so if they are attacked by someone, they gain some extra defense.

if they are outside, their team colors sphere of influence, they lose the bonus. nations from outside the sphere they are in do full damage to them (no team defense bonus). nations from within the sphere they are in do full damage to them + some extra bonus damage. also, say the nation that is outside attacks someone whose team color matches their sphere color, the defenders team defense bonus goes down the more nations flying the aggressors team color are within the defenders team up to no bonus at all. could make for more interesting team blitzes. oh, and decrease the defenders attack bonus in this instance to half.


also, make changing capitals not instant (7 day cool down until it is changed maybe) and make it cost some money if the capital is changed to another teams sphere. the resources part can remain as i said in the last post. also, increase and decrease the size of the color sphere depending on the number of nations that are flying that team color.

Oddly enough this doesn't change anything. How the game was before shouldn't be determining how you do things now. How it is now and how it's being received now is how you should determine what you should be doing next.

Saying something along the lines of "oh it's ok because it didn't happen for 2 years before" doesn't just suddenly make the lack of something that a large group of your players will want any better.

Why would you give a product to someone, then improve it, then give out another product to someone and not give the obvious improvement that you gave with the last one that a large group of your supporters would like?

But whatever.

The same reason why companies these days sell a product, wait 6 months, and "upgrade" that product so that everyone that already has one wants the "new" one. Apple has made a killing off this. Upgrades are already done when the base model hits the shelf. If admin wants to do the same thing here then so be it. Wait until the better version comes out to buy it.

I think some people were proposing ludicrus levels. However, I do think that it may be too small to really fight or make treaties over. There needs to be a happy medium.
This would make the most people happy. I would even go so far as to make both improvements and a wonder:
5x improvements - allow you to expand the range you can move your capital every time you can by 10% of your total land area.
Wonder #1 - exclusive if you get this wonder, you can't get the other - would create a "mining colony" you can move once every time (instead or in addition to your capital). This would supplant your capital as where the resource would come from and could be moved anywhere within your land area. Would require 1 of the previous imporvements be made indestructable while this wonder exists
Wonder #2 - exclusive if you get this wonder, you can't get the other - make it so you don't receive a bonus/penalty for the zones plus some other benifits - it would effectively remove you from the race.
Have a better idea
This might induce a bit more warfare.

-----

Wonders and Improvents:

Start with making it cost to move your nation and limit its range.


Improvement:
[Capital Moving Improvement]
Cost: [insert cost here]
Effect: Increase capital range movement by 10% for each improvement. Increase [Colonial Venture Program] movement by 20% for each purchase. [Some other minor benefit to make it worth purchasing for those who still like their capital where it is] The Colonial Venture Program requries 1 [Capital Moving Improvement] which cannot be destroyed while that wonder exists. If you have this improvement there is a 100% chance - 15%/improvement your nation will be moved within it's possible range if you are on a hotspot.

Wonder:
[Colonial Venture Program]
Cost [Insert here]
Requirement: [Capital Moving Improvement] x1, not having [Isolationist] Wonder, Mining Industry Consortium
Effect: Allows one to replace their capital with a colony in the Earth Hot Spots competition within your area of land influence. You can move your colony once every 7 days. If you do so, you can't move your capital and and vise versa. If you move your capital outside the range of your colony, it is reset to be on top of your capital. Movement of your colony is (Cost is Number of Miles ^2 / 2 + 200) * [(Infra / Tech) +1] based either from its previous location or the capital, whichever is less. The range is equal to number [Capital Moving Improvement] * .2 * total land. Increase population by 1% if your colony is not on a hotspot, by 2% if its on an off-color hotspot and by 3% if its on a same-color hotspot.

Wonder:
[Isolationist]
Cost [Insert here]
Requirement: [Capital Moving Improvement] x1, not having [Colonial Venture Program]
Effect: Removes the penalty for being off the hotspot. Removes the ability of your nation to be forcibly moved by anarchy.

With all due respect to all those who have put so much thought into this idea. The following is in no way a criticism of you.

The Hotspots idea was, as I understand it, something that was thought up for the Moon/Mars wonders project. So far, it's been around less than 30 days in actual game play. While I'm sure that Admin and his crew stepped through a fair amount of playtesting, whether it turns out to be one of those things that is lauded as a great innovation in the game or not I think is something that can't be known for some time.

Rather than rush this into the live game, perhaps it would be better to collect some good ideas being expressed and put them on the shelf. Get some player feedback on the Mars and Moon version of Hotspots, and then think about an Earth/Planet Bob version.

Let me finish by commending the sharing of ideas to keep the game fresh. Whether they turn out to be major innovations, minor improvements, or things that are best not tried, keep at it.

I'm surprised this point hasn't been brought up more. This is an interesting idea but it really just seems to be an advantage for the biggest/strongest alliances and a punishment to everyone else.

#2 shouldn't happen in most alliances, at least those that actually work for general improvement of its membership as a whole since age has nothing to do with whether you get the benefit or not.

#1 is a bit more fair points, but it's unlikely that, with a few exceptions, any one alliance could manage to hold one hotspot without too much trouble, or if they did, it would be virtually worthless. Of the major colors, blue, black, orange and aqua, only black really has no major compeititon. Orange has about one per major alliance as well as a mid-sized alliance and blue has 2 major alliances with several mid-sized ones. Aqua has the most. In all except maybe Aqua and Orange it should be easy to band together and form a bloc to try ans share a color, based purely on numbers. Below that the most competitive color would be Purple with 4 mid-sized alliances. Lesser teams would make it all the more easy to get if you really wanted that bonus.

#3 is not so much a major point in the long run. These spots are suppose to be fairly stable, therfore even Pink should be able to find 4 hotspots.

2. I meant the larger nations that can pull strings in their alliance to sit on the hotspot.

1. So how are those alliances are going to share the hotspot if there is a limit of 4?

I agree, there needs to be a means to opt out.

My capital has been located in Pretoria since Day 1 and I don't like the idea of being forced to move if it suddenly became a hotspot and some alliance now doesn't want me there.

I can see all the RPers up in arms as well over this, as in-game map location does mean something meaningful to those of us who partake in the various RP based on CN. So we could have external reasons (i.e. angry alliance) forcing us to move from a location where our RP land claims are anchored to.

Couple of suggestions:

1) a means to completely opt out, tie it in with a new or existing wonder.

2) how about the ability to lock one's capital permanently? A nation could decide to lock their capital over a location and it stays there for the life of their nation. That way someone can stay where they want and have a decent reason why they cannot move it if some angry alliance comes along wanting their spot.