Tournament Edition Bugs & Suggestions

[admin]

Two things I'd suggest based on experience so far:

Improvement prices should probably be toned down to somewhere around where hey used to be in CN. I understand that infra prices and things accelerate it, but the current Improvement prices are designed to make you save for them. The speed with which you can buy infra means that you can have a few thousand citizens before having enough to start buying Improvements without completely halting your growth.

Donations massively unbalance a game in which all players are going to pretty much remain at a low level all the time and which doesn't give any time to make up growth differences with skill.

You can already tell two people donated because they are at twice the infra level of everyone else (barring those few who had already joined previous to today). Startng out twice as big as everyone else is a bit of a balance issue.

Also, how long does it take for the Alliance information to update? I know of an over 30 and over 20 AA that exist and it says no one is over 20 yet.

Thanks for the feedbak. What would you suggest for the cost reduction on improvements and wonders? Would you simply remove a zero digit from all of them to keep things simple? Would that reduce the prices too much?

As far as the donation bonus, what do you suggest it be changed to? There were 4 players who made donations when this round of alpha testing should not be accepting donations. I've refunded their money but will let them keep the bonus since it doesn't matter right now anyways.

A lot of these questions will have to be answered after playing the game by ear for a bit to find the right balance. I'm open to make whatever adjustments are necessary in this area.

Alliances update every 12 hours like in CN standard. After 12 hours you should start seeing some of the bigger alliances populate the in-game lists.

[Omas Nams]

The Senator system could do with a bit of a change. I think the limit to sanction etc. should be lowered, seeing as there is so many colours and only 200 nations. Maybe from 30 down to 20/15 votes?

Edited July 31, 2008 by Omas Nams

[steodonn]

An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please try the link again and if the error continues report this error in the bug reports section of the forums located here.

I got that when I clicked on "make a donation"

[admin]

I got that when I clicked on "make a donation"

Yes, I broke the screen on purpose. I'll fix it when we move out of alpha testing.

[Bob Janova]

I second the suggestion for 12 hour updates. Apart from the problem (as discussed in Suggestion Box) of certain people getting a large advantage from a single update time (2 updates mean that almost everyone will get to be on at at least one of them), I think CN:TE would benefit from being played at the faster pace.

[Janquel]

'Search Aid' tab appears when you click on 'Search Wars.'

[KCToker]

Getting rid of a 0 off the prices sounds about right if you ask me.

I'd say just drop donations completely off of TE, at the very least until the alpha testing is completed.

[Viluin]

The amount of nations in peace mode still shows up amongst the alliance statistics.

Also, I seriously doubt many people will be able to buy wonders within the 90-day time period. Not with their current prices.

[Janquel]

Getting rid of a 0 off the prices sounds about right if you ask me.

I'd say just drop donations completely off of TE, at the very least until the alpha testing is completed.

That might be a tad too much. If the costs of infra/land/tech have been dropped by a proportional amount, I would use the same proportions for improvement cost reduction. If not, making them 25% original cost would probably be a better ballpark than 10%.

[Delta1212]

Thanks for the feedbak. What would you suggest for the cost reduction on improvements and wonders? Would you simply remove a zero digit from all of them to keep things simple? Would that reduce the prices too much?

As far as the donation bonus, what do you suggest it be changed to?

A lot of these questions will have to be answered after playing the game by ear for a bit to find the right balance. I'm open to make whatever adjustments are necessary in this area.

Alliances update every 12 hours like in CN standard. After 12 hours you should start seeing some of the bigger alliances populate the in-game lists.

I think removing a zero might be a bit much for Improvement prices. Perhaps split the difference ad divide it by 5. As you say, it's Alpha so that can always be adjusted higher or lower as it plays out. Current prices are definitely too high to make them worth it in the same timeframe gameplay wise that they're meant to be. Wonders will be harder to judge until it's determined how quickly nations actually grow with this pricing set up.

As far as donations... 200 infra will let people blow past the competition any time during the first week after a reset, and that advatage will be hard to close up. The 500k you start out with is only enough for around 300 infra or so if spent intelligently and solely on infra.

If you want to keep donations in, it would probably be a good idea to drop infra bonuses to around 50, and, based on the nature of the game, offset this with some troops, although how to determine the number would be a bit tricky.

It might be best to keep donations as they are, but disable them for the first week or two of a round so everyone starts on an even keel and then make the cut off the $10 donation instead of the $20. Giving out too much creates a situation in which the top 100 of each round are simply the ones who pay the most. To be honest, I'd remove donations altogether from Tournament Edition if it was up to me, (and I do donate in the regular game, so I'm certainly not biased against the practice in general). If you must keep it, however, at least limiting it to the end game at the lower benefit will relegate it to giving someone a slight edge in the top tier, or giving someone who joins late a bit of a catch up boost, rather than skipping someone out to the front right from the start.

Edited July 31, 2008 by Delta1212

[Delta1212]

The Senator system could do with a bit of a change. I think the limit to sanction etc. should be lowered, seeing as there is so many colours and only 200 nations. Maybe from 30 down to 20/15 votes?

That's only for Alpha, though. It might be a good idea for Alpha, just to let the system get tested out, but 30 should be fine for the normal version.

[The fox]

I quite like the idea of being able to collect taxes twice a day, Perhaps make it so that you can still only launch attacks once per day, not per collected taxes, If that is a problem.

[Janquel]

To be honest, I'd remove donations altogether from Tournament Edition if it was up to me, (and I do donate in the regular game, so I'm certainly not biased against the practice in general). If you must keep it, however, at least limiting it to the end game at the lower benefit will relegate it to giving someone a slight edge in the top tier, or giving someone who joins late a bit of a catch up boost, rather than skipping someone out to the front right from the start.

I agree with everything you said here.

[Woodrow]

When I looked at admin's nation and did search wars, it gave me an error. However, when I looked at Vivi's nation, and did the search war, it worked. Weird

[Viluin]

Question, are we allowed to pay CN money for a CN TE donation?

EDIT: I mean buying a donation from another user, of course. Not some in-game store where you can exchange money.

Edited July 31, 2008 by Viluin

[VIdiot the Great]

A couple of thoughts.

I agree with dropping improvements' prices by a 0. Depending on how long we have, there will be many areas of war we will not be able to engage in, such as aircraft and navies.

I agree, donations should be dropped from the tournament, it should be about skill, not deep pockets (and I donate monthly to the regular game).

Once a day tax collections should be ok, along with the regular amount of attacks, but it seems it may take too long at current prices for improvements (I don't even know how we'll get to wonders quick enough to actually use them, especially considering there is no aid function).

Or alternatively, you could start all CN TE nations at a level (equal for everyone) where they have the improvements necessary to purchase all forms of military. This might be a better alternative because you wouldn't have to mess with the pricing, everything would be the same as regular CN, however, everyone starts out with X infra, Y tech, and A- X improvements, and maybe some wonders. Essentially, you would have armed gladiators right from the start.

However, this approach would take away from the skill and decisions of building up to that level. I believe it would be offset though, by choices and strategies employed at around the 35 k NS level.

Just throwing it out there.

Overall, this is a really cool idea. Well done, admin, well done.

[admin]

To answer a few questions that have been repeated thus far:

1) There will be one update per day just like Cyber Nations standard. There are many reasons for a single update per day but mostly becuase multiple updates are difficult for players to keep up with.

2) Donations will be allowed in the game. CN:TE is being hosted on its own dedicated server seperate from CN standard and donations will be used to help offset the costs associated with that. We'll play it by ear for a bit to find the right balance as far as the donation bonus goes. I'll make sure the bonus is not over powered.

3) I've tweaked the price of improvements and wonders across the game by reducing them by 50%. We can adjust these up or down as testing moves along once we figure out what works best.

[thedestro]

Well if you tweaked the improv cost; it would be nice of you to refund the difference to the players that bought the improv's at the former price

[uaciaut]

Thanks for the feedbak. What would you suggest for the cost reduction on improvements and wonders? Would you simply remove a zero digit from all of them to keep things simple? Would that reduce the prices too much?

As far as the donation bonus, what do you suggest it be changed to? There were 4 players who made donations when this round of alpha testing should not be accepting donations. I've refunded their money but will let them keep the bonus since it doesn't matter right now anyways.

A lot of these questions will have to be answered after playing the game by ear for a bit to find the right balance. I'm open to make whatever adjustments are necessary in this area.

Alliances update every 12 hours like in CN standard. After 12 hours you should start seeing some of the bigger alliances populate the in-game lists.

I think improvement prices should be decreased by a factor of between 3 and 6, while their citizen count requirement should be halved so you can build them up faster.

I also think all the collectable tax ammount should be increased (somewhere between 2 - 4 times bigger), as for wonders, reducing the time between how often you can buy them is ok but i think their prices should be lowered too (same as improvements, somewhere between 3-6 times lower)

As for the donation part, well that's a tough one. An idea would be to open up a few foreign aid slots so they can help other people out but i can see a few flaws in this.

Another idea would be to make a temporary boost in some things in your nation - such a one day boost to soldiers efficiency or double GU's effectiveness for 2 collections, something along those lines. (like an instant positive event or something) I'll post more if i get any

[VIdiot the Great]

The events still work as well, as I got the 'hostages on a plane' event after my first collection.

[admin]

Well if you tweaked the improv cost; it would be nice of you to refund the difference to the players that bought the improv's at the former price

Again, this is alpha testing so expect changes with no compensation. Everything will be reset several times before we go live anways.

[The fox]

Another quite small bug is that the Wonder page still says that you can only buy a Wonder every 30 days, Like I said, Quite small, So sorry if its uneccesary to report it.

[Chocolate Cookies]

Or alternatively, you could start all CN TE nations at a level (equal for everyone) where they have the improvements necessary to purchase all forms of military. This might be a better alternative because you wouldn't have to mess with the pricing, everything would be the same as regular CN, however, everyone starts out with X infra, Y tech, and A- X improvements, and maybe some wonders. Essentially, you would have armed gladiators right from the start.

I kinda like this idea just so the features can be tested in Alpha.

[thisperson]

I'm wondering whether the decisions that our population makes in CN matter in CN:TE. (And vice versa)

Both of my nations want A temporary government (Which they shall never get!) and when I started out, my CN:TE nation wanted Hinduism. As soon as I logged on to Cybernations beta, it said that my population also wanted Hinduism.

It seemed like an odd occurrence to me, so I'm wondering if they are interrelated.

[The fox]

I'm wondering whether the decisions that our population makes in CN matter in CN:TE. (And vice versa)

Both of my nations want A temporary government (Which they shall never get!) and when I started out, my CN:TE nation wanted Hinduism. As soon as I logged on to Cybernations beta, it said that my population also wanted Hinduism.

It seemed like an odd occurrence to me, so I'm wondering if they are interrelated.

I just think that is a coincidence, As far as I know my CN people want a Dictatorship, While my CN:TE people want Communism. My CN people also doesnt want any religion, While my CN:TE people wants Buddhism I believe it is.