Rooman33

o/ VE Proud to have been associated with you for almost all of those six years :)

Sam summed up my thoughts perfectly. Congrats to the GOP on their most recent coup... er... peaceful exchange of power, I mean. We love you guys even if you do wreak of hippie dust. :P

Exactly right, Samwise - with one minor caveat. My resource set is the most cost-efficient for the (some would say excessive) amount of military I choose to permanently keep on hand. The best alternative (which I sometimes pursue) is to swap out one or two of my bill-reducing trades for population-boosting ones for a back collect. But none of that gets to the heart of the matter. As Samwise said, we're just looking for an answer as to whether or not the profitability curve goes back up. Not all the way to the peak - or even 75% of it - but at least above breaking even. Otherwise, there's literally no point for me to donate to this game any more.

Considering the Dave War ended August 2012 and the bottom of that first valley took place roughly two years ago (June 2011), I hardly think so. Moreover, I think we can all agree there is no scenario in which global radiation from a war in which I did not participate could negatively impact my profit margin to such an extent that it would cut the profits in half of a nation my size - for four months, and then take another half year to completely recover. That's ridiculous.

For those interested, this is loosely how my profit margin played out (lots of negative events mixed in towards the end): I averaged a 500 bump in infra every month (because of donations), if you want to track this relative to a timeline of wars.

Yeah, I know what quadratically means... Change on profit in the static environment you describe - whether quadratic or not - would be constant. What I'm telling you is that my profit did not decrease in a constant (linear) way. I hit max profit at around 20k infra, then it began to decline at a steady rate until I got near 25k (I think, I'd have to check my notes) then it went back up to about 75% of my max profits, then it started going back down again after around 30k infra. These were pretty steady changes irrespective of environment changes and war. Picture the laffer curve with multiple apexes, the latter ones each smaller than the last. That's what I believe we're looking at here and what I need to know from admin is if there is another peak in profitability after 40k like there was after 20k. If there isn't, then why would I keep donating to a system that's punishing me for growing? And this isn't the same as a land cap - it's literally made my nation insolvent. Capped land has no active negative effect - just no positive effect either. Totally different.

If the cost benefit curve doesn't correct itself, it's not going to matter much is it?

Optimal profit seems to be at 19,999 infra (depending on resource set). But it has not been my experience that the profit margin reduced linearly. Profit margin decreased significantly after passing the 20k threshold but then went up to about 75% its peak somewhere around 30k infra. This sparked my original curiosity to see if there was just one bump in the CN laffer curve or multiple - because I've experienced at least two. The original hypothesis was that maybe infra jumps - which are just 1k apart at lower levels, - get further and further apart the higher up you go. What I'd like to know now is if there are any more bumps in profitability past 40k infra.

I suppose I should have asked sooner... and I'm assuming only admin can really answer this one: Is there any point at which having 40k infra or more becomes cost-efficient? Because, right now, I'm running a $7 mil deficit a day, and that's with improvement swapping, of course... So, I'm upside down. Why would there be such a thing as too much infra? And why would I continue to donate to the game if the rewards from each donation make my nation less and less solvent? Side note: I don't have all three mars wonders because when my moon wonders ran out (for the second time) I went for mars wonders. But because my profit margins are so low at this level of infra, I can't seem to amass enough wealth to pay for the second and third mars wonders - despite the fact that I back collect over a billion dollars on a 20-day cycle... Even if I had them, I'd barely be breaking even, if that.

*Thomas Jefferson bumps*

*Rand Paul bumps*

Generals you say... interesting...

... everyone starts out with the exact same stuff now. Just less of it.

Relative to flagrunning, yes, early wars can have strategic implications. For those of us who play TE to refine war capabilities, however, those early wars are about useless. We all end up fighting with the same limited military capabilities we had at the beginning of every. single. other. round. There are only so many ways to coordinate a GA blitz to optimal effect. And you can do it only so many times before it becomes monotonous and mundane. The more military assets you have on the board (for you to launch and to have launched at you) the more combinations there are for either maximizing damage to your enemy or minimizing damage to yourself, respectively. And it's these combinations that most SE vets want to freshen up on. The starter nation <20k ns wars are not appealing. We've all done them hundreds of times. We get it. We've got it. We've had it. It gets old.

I disagree. The hunting down and destruction of flagrunners is pretty boring, yes. But the latter alliance wars are by far more exciting and challenging than the first one - because all military functionality is on the table. In the War Doves first war, by the second or third day, I was the only player in either alliance with nukes. There were no navies, everyone's air force was fledgling, and the participating alliances had agreed (much to my chagrin) on limited spy opps. In our third war, it was no holds barred. Why not just start everyone out at a level where wars are immediately high stakes?

In honor of this auspicious Father's Day... *Founding Fathers Bump* [center][/center]

Thanks to Samwise and the rest of our team's efforts in this last round of CN:TE, GOP nations will soon be able to fly our alliance's flag! [center][/center]

It's true that growth is expedited in TE so that nations can acquire the strength of mid-level strength SE nations in a matter of weeks, but it's not true that all nations in TE get to experience high-tier war - what with Navies, nukes, full air forces, 800 spies, etc. In fact, most don't. And no one's talking about starting us all out at some super elite level of infra just for giggles, I believe 4k infra was the number I floated. The idea is that we simply move the starting line so that wars start out with a lot more intensity, roguery has higher stakes, and losing a war has a much more dramatic effect. Think of NASCAR racing for a moment. They don't all start out at 0 mpg on the first lap, do they? No! They get up to speed and start the first lap at a very solid pace. That's what we're talking about here. Frankly, the idea of nation building from nothing.... again... is what keeps a lot of vets away. That's why I only play TE once every few rounds or so. I've been playing CN for 6.5 years. Personally, building up a nation from scratch and then having little food fight wars doesn't appeal to me. I know everything about the mechanics of that element of the game I'm ever going to need. And I've spoken to other long-timers who feel the same. Vets have done the zero to hero routine over and over and over and over again. It gets old. And, by now, most of us know the optimal formulas for growth in those first few weeks so we're all pretty much in auto-pilot from the jump until the first war. And then, because no one really has any nukes, solid air force or navy -- the first war consists of GAs, CMs, spy attacks, and MAYBE air raids. Weeeeeeeeee!!! And then there's the newbs, who would do well to "test drive" a larger nation so that when their SE nation comes of age, they don't run it off a cliff - as so many seem to do. But your point about SE wars taking longer is an interesting one. Yes, they take longer - because there's no time cap on SE, so they can take as long as they need to to make the point the particpating parties want to make. We only have a couple months in TE to finish the round. I wouldn't expect to see many wars that lasted much longer in TE than they do now. But so what if they did? I for one wouldn't mind freshening up on my re-declaring, staggering and multi-round battling. This "one and and done" type of warring in TE is good to give us all a tactical refresher and then a breather in between, but it doesn't really simulate what most vets in SE want to practice (once they've already freshened up on basic battle tactics... over and over). It simply misses some of the more strategic elements of warfare in CN, IMO.

So, I'm trying to think out of the box here... what can we do to TE to get more people involved, more people excited, and to perhaps entice SE players to give TE a try? How about making the next round of TE a virtual upper-tier brawl? Instead of starting all nations out with virtually nothing, what about starting every nation out at a very solid strength. Hell... load us up with navies, air forces, nukes, and 4k infra - right from the jump! Here's my thinking. For literally years, the formula in TE and SE has been the same - starting from scratch. And while many of us who have very large SE nations enjoy the chance to freshen up our basic-level battle tactics, some folks who try TE never get a chance to build up in TE to a size where they can truly experience upper-tier war. So, let's turn the tables. Instead of everyone starting out with virtually nothing, let's start everyone out with virtually everything. This would give the SE players who've no interest in revisiting the basics of nation building an incentive to try TE, and it will give smaller nations a chance to experience what the big boys face in SE - basically flipping the dynamic of TE warfare from the past 25 rounds on its head.

Guess we should have picked a tougher enemy than ODN in the first war? In any event, we fought three wars, two of which we were technically swinging up for, we won all three, and our top finisher finished near the top in casualties. Doesn't sound like "war dodging" to me. You sound like you've got a wicked case of the sour grapes.

The War Doves' second war was a partial/technical up-declare, and the third war we were down-declared on and still won. Hardly classifies us as "war dodgers" - especially when our top finisher was highly active, and suffered heavy damages in every war we fought. Don't hate bro. Don't hate.

Oh. I feel silly. I didn't even realize that was a feature in SE -_-; Still. Photographic evidence FTW!

It was a nail-biter there at the very top. Congrats to my friend Samwise - and to all the top 10 finishers of this CRAZY round!

That was a fun one! Good fight TPC!

Onwards! Forwards! But most importantly - warwards! Looking forward to this fight :)