If you'll pardon a new member, whose only sense of history has been reading it in prep for her alliance exam,
The world seems broken into three groups:
I. The old, upper tier powers. Those with the age, wisdom, warchest, and stockpiled tech to stand at the pinnacle of Bob. People who won't be going anywhere. These people can be good or bad for the game. Many now use their economic might to lift up younger nations. Others are old and weary powers. Those that had their time in the sun and now sit around talking about the "Good Old Days".
II. The mid tier powers. Later comers to the game. They've been around for awhile though. Enough time has ticked off for them to grab up wonders and to become military powers. However they lack the sheer history to be sitting on a truly massive stockpile of tech (or they lost a few wars and paid it out as reps).
III. The new invasion alliances (newest generation of such). To put it simply: "It's going to take us how long to matter militarily? We're going to be mere tech farms for how long?!".
The issue I see here lies in the power dynamics between the mid tier and the lower tier. The mid tier has their wonders and can easily step on the throat of any lower tier that rears up. A new nation has to get to 5k-6k infra to start buying wonders, a mid tier can be sitting there at 5k with full wonders and just crush the newcomer. The mid tier has shifted so that now it has a has a wonder edge on the lower. The lower has to get themselves up to 4k infra, 5k infra, 7k infra, and then sit around for a year or so buying wonders and building a warchest. An alliance that invades today is likely looking at 14 months of tech farming and wonder building before they have any kind of serious shot of taking out a mid tier alliance.
This is bad because throughout history invasion alliances have had the most impact (after the initial settlement of powers from NS). GOONS Classic, FAN, LUE, FARK, IRON, TOP, all came into the game from another forum base and between GWII and BiPolar all of those alliances managed a moment of prominence (sanction, leader of a central power bloc, etc). Now though it takes you 14 months to reach mid tier and who knows how long to get a sanction. Invasion alliances now not only have to watch paint dry, they have to battle boredom and keep their rank and file willing to watch paint dry for over a year. Look at for example the TPF comments in the UE thread. They're talking more about "Hooray, access to tech" than "Hooray, a new military ally." It will be interesting to see what UE's attrition rate is as they find out they'll work the Foreign Aid function for months before they get to work the war function in any meaningful way. As another example, a later arrival FOK, never made it out of "mid range sanctioned alliance" level and to the level of TOP/FARK/IRON/GOONS 1.0/etc.
Simply put, longer building teams mean less changes to the political structure. That makes it less exciting and less drama to thrive on. It takes people longer to develop their alliance and set up their power play. This increases the odds of leaks and gives the most established powers time to wake up and crush the upstart playing to shake up the world order, while the old power still enjoys a decisive advantage in wonders.
As such I have three proposals:
[b]First[/b], split the wonders into two groups. We could do a "classic wonder tier" and an "advance wonder tier". Stick things that most nations consider primary wonders (Stock Market, Social Security, IIS, MP, SDI, etc) into the classic tier. Stick the others in advance. Allow nations to buy 2 wonders a month out of the 'classic tier' and one a month or every other month out of the 'advanced tier'. Alternative do a economic group, a military group, and and an advanced research group. Allow one per month out of economic and military, while advanced only become available after you have X number of the military and economic ones.
My thought here is to create a system where new arrivals can get the basic combat / economic set of wonders faster. Make it so established alliances can recruit and grow nations quickly. If you can grab 40 new players, have your banks feed them aid for 6 months, and walk away with them as combat ready and supportable in war via aid (using FAC, DRA to feed) suddenly everyone gets an incentive to recruit, to buddy up with invasion alliances, and generally do more than farm for tech. Meanwhile the more established nations can hang onto the advance class of wonders as their perk for being old and hanging around (also they get the advantage of a warchest and a tech stockpile in most cases).
[b]Second[/b], increase aid slot numbers. I've read some arguments over increasing the size of slots as well, but I don't think that it makes a good idea. If I can get 4.5 million a slot, I'll just start charging 4.5 million for 100 tech. It just increases the price for tech. Rather increase the base aid slots by one or two. That lets nations be build faster or be build with a combo of say 3 slots being used to sell tech (good for older nations) and 2 slots being used to pump aid directly in (good for the new nation). This will get smaller nations off the ground faster while still maintaining a tech flow up. What really matters those is now banks could have 7 slots to spread the wealth out over new recruits. It lets larger nations kick out more money over a wider area. So a small cadre of active banks can fund more newbies.
[b]Third[/b], increase the war range. This is tricky and I'll admit I'm having trouble nailing this one down. My thinking is that in the upper tier you have a lot of nations who are old and lazy. They don't use their aid slots to buy tech or anything. They have a tech stockpile, over 10k infra and their attitude is "I got mine, I'll back collect every 19 days". That's all some of them seem to do. I think it would be good for the game if the mid tier could attack deeper into the upper tier. Obviously in the first few rounds the big guys with their WRCs would wipe the floor with the mid tier. However I'd like a setup where eventually a howling mob of mid tiers could drag them down and beat them up. On the flip side we need to prevent a system where the mid tier can attack deep into the lower tier and just buzzsaw the little newbies knees off. Something like starting at 10k, your upper attack range increase by a certain percent. A 20k increase the lower attack range.
This basically forces the big guys to stop coasting. If they do the little horde of mids can get them. I also think some mids are kind of content. They're too small for the really big guys ot squash them, but they can clobber upstart little guys. So some of the mids just sit in the middle and enjoy complete dominance there that is impossible to challenge due to wonder size (over the lower end) or being too small to step on (from the higher end). If the mids can suddenly be rolled by the big boys it forces them to get to building up to the size of the big boys. So you'll have the political play of the mids expanding upwards and the big guys trying to fend them off. This means lots of blood, wars, and politics in the upper ranks again and hopefully an increase in activity / war frequency.
Alternatively do something like anyone with a MP can attack anyone else with a MP, but that gets kind of weird.
My personal view is some version of my first and second ideas is the best. Make it so that by the third month of the game new arrivals are buying their first wonder (with proper banking support of course). It creates a "light at the end of the tunnel" view. Even if it will take the new arrival a few more months to finish filling out the basic set, they can see progress and see they're halfway there to mattering militarily.
