Currently, all nations have access to all Wonders, improvements, resources, etc., given enough time in the game. This leads to a lack of individuality of nations, the only difference being which particular order you bought your wonders in. That can have a large effect when they interact, but it is haphazard and does not allow for enough player input in how their nations are developed, and there is little strategy involved at the individual or alliance level.

I suggest adding a group of wonders or improvements that are either indestructible, or so costly that it is impractical for nations to switch on a whim like you can do with labor camps or guerrilla camps. There are pros & cons of using each type or whether they are destructible or not, and that is something this thread can help develop a concensus on which is better.

The key to these wonders/improvements is the fact that you can only get ONE of this group, much like how you can only get the Moon or the Mars wonders, not both. This is where the strategy part would come in, as each nation would choose where they want an individual strength in. Having multiple types of individual strengths would add flavor and allow players to tailor their nations to their personal preferences. Some possibilities:

1. A plus happiness or $$ wonder. (econ focus)
2. A % modifier to battles, offensive or defensive. (military focus)
3. A discount to spy ops, and % bonus to same. (espionage focus)
4. A +1 happiness to your nation and to each trade partner for having a trade agreement. Negates the econ penalty for trading off color for you and your partners, or acts as an econ boost for having in color trades. (trade focus)
5. A bonus senate vote or votes. (political focus)
6. A bonus to construction/maintenance. Like the Interstate, but possibly extending to other types of purchases/expenses. (industrial focus)

The exact numbers can be determined by Admin, to balance as he sees fit. You can make this as simple or as complicated as you wish; the military and industrial focus could easily be split into several specialities, or you could make these prerequisites for more focused wonders/improvements later and thus create a path of development. The main point is to allow the players more flexibility and choices without making things too complicated for this to be added. Even moderate bonuses should have an effect if you can only choose one focus.

Royal Seal of the Tsar



Note that it is not a penalty for trading off-color, but a bonus for trading on-color, that the player receives. Nonetheless, whether negating a penalty or providing a bonus makes little difference.

Hm, like the overall concept, and I think its a good simple way to finally allow specialization (something the admin is very touchy with, so it seems)

just a couple of questions however; How would a nation choose their focus? Would it be through government position, just buying a selected improvement, etc...

you mentioned these improvements to be costly; but to what range exactly? Because as of now, every improvement is designed to allow any nation in the early game to easily get without much investment. Or would this kind of improvement be bridge-like in prices between wonders and improvements?

Extra senate votes is actually a cool idea. I'm suddenly upset I never thought of it before. Some way to increase senate presence at the expense of other things is something I hope comes out of this suggestion.

A new set of improvement trees would be something nice to see added to the game. The problem we have currently is people quickly get to the point where they have every improvement in the game and no longer have anything to buy.

The problem that comes with just adding more however is it creates a lot of inflation on the econ side, and to make people go for a military improvement rather than econ the improvement has to be pretty immense.


I really think the answer rather than making whole new sets of improvements is to uncap the ones we have already, and make improvements cost more the more you have. It solves basically all of the problems at once. It forces choice on people because you no longer have the "buy all econ improvements then start buying military" because you theoretically never run out of econ, but a pure econ nation should get trashed by a mostly military nation. It adds diversity, and it avoids needing to develop a whole new improvement set which will just be added to the cycle and eventually everyone will have them all.

just my 2 cents.

Energizer, I was deliberately vague as to how to exactly handle this in my OP; maybe that was a mistake. There are a couple ways you could go about this, and there are advantages/disadvantages to both. I know Admin has been touchy about specialization, so I wanted this to be flexible, and preferably simple.

Nations would choose their focus by buying one of these wonders or improvements. Whether to make them destructible or not is one point. I think they should be cheap and indestructible, or very expensive and destructible, if you prefer people to be allowed to change focuses. By expensive I mean somewhere in between imp. and wonder costs, say $5-10 M. That way you could not change focuses willy-nilly, or at least without paying a fair price for it.

Now if they are indestructible, you are making a final choice, so the cost you set for it is only going to affect how large a nation is able to afford these. If you make them very cheap, then even new nations can buy one, which can help newer nations catch up a bit to the older ones, but not too much. Similarly, the only reason to make it a wonder rather then a improvement is to include aquiring this costing a nation 30 days of wonder clock time. If these end up as indestructible wonders, you could make the cost almost $0, and brand new nations could choose one right away.

Seerow, I think you and Energizer both may have missed the main point I am aiming for; you get ONE of these, so you can't get the others. I like making them permanent myself, but if people want to be able to switch them I guess that is possible, but it should come at a real cost. I am not too concerned with inflation myself, This is more to allow players to customize their nations a little bit. If someone takes an economic option, they forego any of the other options and will be at a disadvantage to the others in their focus area. Maybe one particular focus will end up being what people say is the "best" choice, but if we do it right all of the choices should be at least interesting. If this were implemented I honestly don't know which of these would interest me the most, which is what I want.

You could make this more complicated, like making it a two tier system; e.g. have the first level of military focus be general, and the second level be a particular branch of military. I would rather keep it simpler though if possible.

I like this idea...it could even be a an option under "My Government Position" that is permanent. You set it when you create your nation and that is it.

Seems it would be easy to add.

Not every government stays the same. True, our rulers may be immortal, but they can always be influenced by outside forces. If the country is democratic, then the president will no doubt change the government's position on certain things.

The biggest trick would be balancing it so that we don't end up with a "best" option no matter what, 5 options with 4 being forever ignored would be pretty pointless.

Agree 100%. Having something that permanently sets apart nations from others in a unique path like the suggested resource wonders is something highly recommended from myself.

But you have to keep a balance in this one. Like if there's an option to reduce infra upkeep, you already know 80% of people will go for that, so we can't have one like that. And regardless of which options we decide on, they all must be as balanced as possible, because the objective is for players to pick the option best tailored for their nation (or just their favorite) without having to worry if their choice wasn't "the best pick." In which case there should be no "best pick" because the balance would negate any possible advantages.

Furthermore the cost formula for these very valuable wonders should be variable, like the Moon/Mars wonders so nations from all sizes can decide their path early on.

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Who says we can't find the balance in the numbers ourselves? So to first find the balance we need to establish a proportional base to apply to the rest, and it seems easiest if we start with the military stuff.

I understand the concern for balance, it's just going to be difficult in a lot of cases to do so. The benefits I gave to the political and trade focuses for example are somewhat unique, so how to put a $$ value on them? Players who don't chose those will never get to have those advantages, unless the destructible version is used.

I really would like to see something like this.

The only real specialization that happens in CN so far is when you have the choice between "Best eco wonder" and "Best mil wonder." By the time you hit the "mars/moon" choice it really doesn't matter.

Interesting, I like it. The only thing I would have a problem with would be that new nations who know nothing about the game being able to choose/buy an option because it is so cheep and regret it down the line when they realize they don't like the path they choose. I would make it so that at a nations 100 day they could choose one for free or very low cost.

I see the prices as being like the Moon Wonders, as being much cheaper for smaller nations but still too expensive for any newb to buy.

Just to make some attempted-balanced effects and put them on the table for discussion.

1. +5 happiness or +10$ (This specifically CANNOT be a larger amount than the benefit from the trade imp/wonder*)
2. +1 Ship limit(per type), +5 plane limit, +2 nuke limit, cannot put self into anarchy by deploying too many soldiers(only during war, not having enough out of war WILL anarchy).
3. 25% discount on spy ops(maybe more), +10% spy strength, +1 to max limit of spy operations an enemy can receive.**
4. +$3 income, and you give all your trade partners +$3 income.***
5. I'm not quite sure how to balance extra senate votes. Maybe your vote is worth 5? Maybe you automatically get +10 votes for yourself each senate election? Suggestions?
6. -5% construction cost(to ALL, yes including wonders, think long term compared to the econ or trade focuses) and -2% infra upkeep****

*Because it is harder to get a trade circle set up with all people having the trade specialty, the straight econ imp/wonder is the "easy" way out and has to be worth less.

**Meaning If you have the espionage focus, it doesn't give you more spy operations, but you can use up to 3 on a single opponent. This limit of 3 is for all people with the espionage focus. So if you receive 3 spy attacks from someone, someone else with the espionage focus cannot spy on you, because you have already been spied on 3 times that day.

***So, in the best case, if you trade with only other people who are trade specialized, you make a total of +18$. Note: This is significantly higher than the straight economic focus because it is much harder to find a trade circle with all trade focused people, so once you trade with 3 other people with the trade focus, you break even with the economic focus.

****I understand that you don't want to reduce the infra upkeep much because then everyone would get it, but a small percentage would make it enough for people to consider the other focuses over this one.



So this is my input. Thoughts? suggestions? balances?

#4 is way overbalanced as it'll be quite easy to get since it'll just be put at or near the top of everyone's wonder list thus increasing inflation far beyond any wonder in existence to date. The effects would put every other economic wonder that increase revenue to shame.

For anybody looking at long term growth infra upkeep will almost always win out, some of our higher end nations might want to chime in here, but as you grow infra upkeep becomes a seriously disproportionate part of your bills, even with LC's.

We'd be better off I think with two paths to start with, the divisions everybody is used to, and expanding from there, so to start with, two new wonders. One for an econ line, one for a military line. After that, we can further subdivide them as necessary, to further customize the paths, these path's either opening up new wonders, new improvements, or perhaps even both.

Their bonuses need to be visible but not overwhelming, econ paths are easier to balance becuase money is money, but the military path is more difficult becuase we don't want to make it impossible for someone who did not take the military path to beat someone who did.

Industrial Complex and Military Complex can be our umbrella wonders, the starting point down your chosen path.

They need baseline bonuses that should reflect their generic nature, infra upkeep is not generic enough, happiness bonuses are too specific. I imagine something like this.

I.C.
A National establishment bent on the internal infrastructure of your nation, applied research and massive capital investments give you the edge when it comes to production, expanding your existing infrastructure base, and its maintenance.

Doubles natural land growth, -10% upkeep of improvements and wonders (maybe infra upkeep too, but a token about 2 or 3% I'm thinking.) Infra and and land purchase price -5%

M.C.
A National establishment bent on the expansion of your armed forced, applied research, aggressive recruiting, and a massive backing of military contractors gives you the edge in military conflict.

All military upkeeps reduced 5%, all military purchase costs reduced 5%

Then we add an improvement or two, theres no point it adding a stack of five because they'd all be bought at once anyway, one improvement that gives the whole bonus would do it, keeping in mind its unique to this path it should lean towards the mini-wonder scale. So it costing a mil or 5 while doing something medium sized would be just fine.

Subdivisions from IC/MC are easy;
IC turns into population, infra, or happiness/income
MC divides down to GA, airforce, navy.

The beauty of this is its very scalable, you can work out one level at a time, and then work out improvements at each level, and then a new wonder for another subdivision.

Nonsense, a stack of 5 is significant in that you still have to have the population to buy them. It may not matter for large nations, but it does matter for most nations. I'm not necessarily promoting a 5 stack, but a 2 or 3 would not be unreasonable, depending on the bonus.

Its significant in the fact that the first tier of bonuses are nothing to write home about, None of these are going to be anybodies first choice for wonders, SSS ISS DRA, all blow these speciality wonders out of the water, these wonders are unique because they are a gateway to customization of a nation that has already peaked out, wonder and improvement discounts are chump change, military upkeep and purchasing costs are similarly small upgrades. We are establishing a trend of reinforcing bonuses here.

These wonders are significant not for what they do but for where they lead you.

While I originally thought a path would be the best approach too, that might be asking too much. The simpler we can keep it the better the chances of this every being a reality. Alos, the intent isn't to make them overpowering, just to spice things up a good bit.

Slayer1557, I think your starting numbers are too high. +2 nukes per day is just...whoa. Plus the $18 from the trade focus is too much, I agree with Jinnai there. One thing I realised is since the trade focus has a little special ability worked into it, the econ focus should give you more income then the trade focus. The trade focus makes up for the lesser income from the flexibility it offers. The industrial types should be in rough balance with whatever number the econ focus works out to be. The military focus can be very flexible, as there are a number of approaches you can take with that one, I'm sure we can balance that eventually. The political focus is quite an oddball, no real way to correlate that with the others I am afraid. That is how I see them relative to each other. I like the +5 or +10 votes for the political focus myself, but I thought if I suggested that people would scream about being disenfranchised or something.

TheDestro, you might be missing some of the possibilities here. If you make them permanent and ultra cheap, you could have new nations choosing a military focus, and being more effective as a low level guerilla fighter. If they go econ they can make up some ground on the largest nations. I don't see any problems with making these available to brand new nations, they usually don't use a wonder slot for six months or so, so they could make good use of that time by getting one of these. Now scaling them like the Moon & mars wonders is a possibility too and I don't have a problem with that either.

You misunderstood, I didnt mean +2 nukes per day, I mean +2 to the maximum you can keep, meaning 22 normally or 27 with the HNMS.

The way I imagine trading focus to work is that you get more benefit from carefully working your trades. Which is why I suggested the increased benefit from trading with other people who chose the trading specialty. And then make the benefit large enough to balance the risk of not being able to find enough people who are trading specialized. The $18 is only an upper limit, and I think it would be difficult to get both a team of all trade focused nations and still have a good trade set.

I do not feel that the benefit of having the trade bonus, regardless of team color, is worth enough to justify making the economic focus worth more. I personally don't think it is hard to find trades within one's own color. That can still be a benefit to the trade focus, but I think the trade focus needs to be rewarded for managing your trades properly.

Think of it this way, the economic focus is to increase income from within, and the trade focus is to increase income from other nations, so to speak.

I agree with you Mirreille, that it should be a wonder available to new nations. Not necessarily BRAND new nations, maybe making a requirement of having a nation be 10 days old. This gives them some time to understand the game before they make a game changing decision.

I don't really have a position on whether to make them permanent+cheap or scaling. I wouldn't mind it either way, but I like that new nations should be able to take part.

I would agree with the sentiment that infra upkeep can't be included in one of the options. In a different game I played soldier training time was the equivalent of infra upkeep in this game, and the specialization didn't go very far because everyone got the soldier training time reductions, just like everyone here will get the infra upkeep reduction.

What I think would work very, very well is having the cost increase the further down the path you go. You could change whenever you wanted, but it would be EXPENSIVE beyond all belief. The other thing you can do, is have a more expensive "big" improvement, that lets you build one of two less expensive options to "add on".

An example in cn would be:

Firing Ranges - These ranges give your soldiers the ability to practice using their weapons in preparation for war.
Cost: 10 million
Requirement: 1000 land
Benefit: +5% soldier efficiency
(Then include two improvements that can be built to go with it but you can only build one of the two)

Expanded Artillery Ranges - This allows your artillerymen to practice using the big guns.
Cost: 1 million
Requirement: Firing Ranges, no bombing ranges
Benefit: Cruise missiles do +1 infra in damage before modifiers and Battle Support Mode for infantry increased 2%

Bombing Ranges - Your aircraft need somewhere to test that Napalm. You agree.
Cost: 1 million
Requirement: Firing Ranges, no Expanded Artillery Ranges
Benefit: Aircraft bombing runs do +2 infra in damage before modifiers

In this case the Firing Ranges are the "big" thing you have to buy to start down the military path. As such it is more expensive. Note, however, that it is still affordable by smaller nations with a bit of saving. It then unlocks the two "smaller" improvements that go with it. They are mutually exclusive and force a tough choice. Do you go with the sure thing in the Cruise Missile damage with bonus naval support that you might or might not use? Or are you a bit more of a gambler and go with the Air Craft Bonus that has the potential to do more damage but might not make it through to the target?

The beauty of the tree is this. If you make a focus further down the path for Infantry and tanks, Missiles and Navy, and Air Force, you can use these options to help that focus later. Say I want the best air force in the world, I'll pick the one that does more air damage, because I know I'm aiming for the focus that gives my planes more of a chance of getting through. So you can have a dynamic system that forces players to think a bit if they want the best setup for their chosen path, but it gives them the freedom to do what they want with it and change their mind.

With the costs I would suggest the following:
The Big improvements, they do a little more, they cost a little more. Start them at 10 million then increase the cost 5 million for each additional one built. So 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 etc. You can change the way you go, but it will be expensive to do it.
The little addons, they don't do as much, so they shouldn't cost as much. Start them at 1 million, then increase the cost 500K for each additional one built. So 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 ect. Again changeable if you want to, but it isn't something you would do on a whim.

I would also make it so you could only buy one of each of the little addons because it would get to be WAAAY overpowered if you built multiple ones. Another thing I would suggest is making each Big improvement and addon require 1000 free population just like normal improvements. That makes the population useful past 80K citizens and allows you to chose between specializing early or going with the normal improvements.

Combine the moderate, not cheap, but not bank busting costs with the pop requirement and you have a great way to bridge the gap between wonders and improvements. It also means you don't have to force people to use the 30 day wonder slot to get these.

I'm not sure how it would work with economic paths, but you could easily do this with the military side of things. I think it would actually be a great test to just try things out with the military and if it goes well you could branch into the economic side of things later. That way people could have a military path they went down, and an economic path. So they wouldn't be forced to choose between one focus over another, but they could still customize their nations a bit.

I am so sorry I wrote an essay here.

Get rid of the land requirement for the big improvement. If we intend for newer nations to be able to get this, don't require land. I mean, my nation is like 500 days old and I barely have 1k land.

Also, just to clarify.


By that you meant that each time you destroy and rebuild one, the cost goes up? (which I like) or that the cost goes up for each one you build in a stack? (like nukes)

I was thinking land could be used as a requirement for realism purposes. Honestly for practice ranges all you would really need is maybe 200 or something in that case, but it was more an example than anything.

As to Prices I mean that the cost goes up for each one you build in a stack. So if I build 3, I pay the increasing amounts, but if I delete one and go back the price is the same as when I built the one I deleted. If I delete all of them, I have to pay the beginning prices again. That way if a new player really whiffs early on, it won't destroy his economy.

Either way the total cost of swapping all of them out, even with the price going up and down would still cost 100 million or so, because you would have to link the small improvements to the big ones, so people wouldn't swap out the big ones to get all the improvements. That way it would drain the warchests of most players to swap them all before a war, unless they had massive (500 million plus) warchests. Which if players want to slow nation growth to be able to swap these expensive items, I say more power to them. Plus if you swap them all out for a war then you don't get the economic bonuses again until you rebuild and recover.

I like the tree suggestions. You buy a wonder, thus allowing you to access a new range of improvements. Wahoo, I would actually be able to buy more improvements instead of saving up for a wonder once a month now!

That does sound good, providing the wonders are permanent and go down a unique path.

Well you'd also have to make them dependant on their tree so its not possible to say spend a few months going down one tree, buying the improvements, then switching wonder trees to get different improvements, a nation should only have presence down one tree at a time.

I can see definite changes being made to the game play system if nations were given the ability to specialize in an Economic, Military, or Balanced wonders. Of course this would really benefit with uncapping the aid limit so that economic nations can be financial powerhouses for their alliances and send million upon million to the Military nations since as it stands you reach a certain size and you can send 15 million a week no problem even if you have almost exclusively military wonders.

Uncapping the aid limit is a different topic entirely. It would alter the way wars are done entirely. And as for increasing the amount the amount send... hmm... wait, we have a wonder for that already, its called the Federal Aid Commission.

Just as long as you can convince your local warmonger to buy one him- or herself.

The tree idea does look interesting..if I've got the gist, the general idea is: General thingy, then multiple narrow thingys, and each of them having specific thingys. (Yes, I r lrned.)

Honestly, I think this sort of tree would be separate from improvements and wonders to work best. Of course, then it'd be a load of work to figure which ones would be best for balance and what they should cost, and so on. You're trying to convince me to donate and get some more playtesters, aren't you?

The "big improvements" would have to lead to unique paths, that was the key to my proposal. I don't think they should be permanent, however. Because if new or small players start one or two in, then change their mind, they shouldn't be penalized for it forever. But if you have costs that increase the more you have... that is penalty enough for the big nations.



Spot on.

I agree it has to be seperate from wonders. Otherwise there still isn't anything to bridge the gap between wonders and improvements, and people don't have any incentive to deviate from the "best wonder order" lists that every alliance generates.

The "big" improvements are the catalysts for the path you choose while the smaller ones are where you really get to customize a bit. Those smaller customizations should be run the same as improvements (eg. need 1-3 thousand pop for them and can only have so many)

I also think that people are limiting the potential of this idea when they say you have to choose between economic or military or whatever else.

Within the military alone you have Army, Navy, and Air Force, which leads to 3 possible trees.
With the economy you could do the same and branch it out as well.

That would lead to a total of six paths, 3 economic, 3 military, but you could only pursue one of each. I think that is more in the spirit of how admin wants the game to run and still allows us to customize our nations more.

I already covered subdividing the tree, just keep in mind you take it in steps, FIRST you pick a military or Econ path, THEN you decide on a further specaliaztion of that, and possibly even another specialization after that if we can think one up.

It's not a penalty! They're just different flavors. If somebody picks an economic path instead of military, they're just being economic then. Remember these wonders are 100% balanced, so there's no "advantage" between either of them, just depends on how the player uses them.

It should be base of what Primary Ethnic Group the player have choice.ie
If the player Primary Ethnic Group is german then here so ideas
Brandenburg Gate Wonder-$100,000,000million
Decreases citizen count -4%,increases population happiness +5%
Berlin wall would replace the Border Wall Improvements and basic be a double border wall for one omprovement slot
Reichstag building improvement-$75,000
Lower the number of troop before nation goes into Anarchy by 2% Limit 3
This is just a rough idea toughts?

Planet Bob history=Planet Earth history?

PS: I love the name "Smit".

If you want to change 'paths', you should have to progress through it entirely so there is no 'tree swapping' that could occur. It makes the player make a conscious decision about what direction they want to go for x amount of time.

I think this was the idea behind making it possibly use wonder slots, but honestly it should probably have it's own clock.

Yea, the initial improvement should be a wonder. The following improvement, though, should be something along the lines of a week-based schedule. Depending on the number of subordinate improvements, it should be proportional. So if there are going to be a ton of new improvements for each tree, then once a week. If there are going to be 10 total for each, then bi/tri-weekly would be best.

I once suggested allowing larger nations to specialize in one of three areas. Once they meet certain requirements they would be able to unlock an advanced group of wonders.

Advanced Military Technology wonders would increase damage output, make offense and defense stronger and increase amount of nukes.

Advanced Economic Policies wonders would increase happiness, give a nation population bonuses and improve environment.

Advanced Infrastructure Development wonders would lower the price of infra, lower infra upkeep and cause infra to grow naturally as land does.


Advanced Military Technology - $500,000,000 - Requires 10,000 infrastructure, 3,000 technology, MP, SDI, Pentagon, WRC, AADN, FAFB, HNMS.

Advanced Economic Policies - $500,000,000 - Requires 10,000 infrastructure, 3,000 technology, UHC, NPP, NEO, SDC.

Advanced Infrastructure Development - $500,000,000 - Requires 10,000 infrastructure, 3,000 technology, IS, NPP, NEO, SDC.

Could also throw FAC in there for the economic one and actually make it somewhat useful.

the first 2 should have a not so sought after wonder for each: FSS and FAC respectively. The infra development doesn't need it as its not viable for long-term; younger nations it could be useful for, but older ones would want military or economic dev depending on their style of play. This is assuming you can switch your priorities and switching isn't something that can be done daily.