Rethinking Tech Dealing and Nation Building

[Belisaurus]

[u]The short premise:[/u] People aren't sticking around this game because it takes you 2 to 3 years to reach relevance.

Today I want to waste your time with some pondering if we need to rethink nation building. So lets set the scene:

A new nation joins a large alliance and finds themselves enrolled in some kind of academy or training program. Initially they find themselves rolling with some cash in that was used to lure them into joining (the join us and get $X million offers). After that initial run of money, which covers your harbor and your foreign ministry, you enter the wonderful world of tech dealing. If you're lucky (or Umbrella is on one of its tech binges) you're doing business at 3/50 but likely you're doing business at 3/100. At 3/50 you're clearing say ~10 million every 20 days in profit. At 3/100 it is a little over 5 million every 30 days. I want to stress these are conservative numbers (I'm assuming you buy all the tech and just sit on the money while prepping for an infra jump or wonder purchase) because I'm trying to push the pessimist viewpoint here.

At this time if you're in a raiding alliance you can pass the time by cracking skulls. Although as the game population dwindles, targets on NONE and unprotected micros kind of drop.

So you sit there and your CN experience is:

[list]
[*]Working the foreign aid button
[*]Paying bills
[*]Getting nasty PMs if you miss a tech ship date
[/list]

My argument is that this whole system of running five concurrent 3/100s evolved back when 5k infra was all the further a lot of people went. At that point in history 5, 6 or 10 million was a big deal and a nation was only 4 to 6 months away from reaching infrastructure relevance (depending on trade circle, global wars, etc). So the five concurrent tech deals made a lot of sense. It limited the risk and amount of money an alliance pumped into a newbie. It also gave the newbie a decent growth curve and they could see themselves growing closer and closer to 5k, making them more and more likely to stick around.

Simply put at 5k infra you normally stopped selling tech. You hit 5k, started back collecting, wonder buying, and importing tech. Within a few back collection cycles you were fairly military capable and ready to roll.

That isn't true anymore. You aren't military capable now under you have a bunch of wonders (hence the 2 to 3 year estimate a lot of people make) and are a billionaire in techs of the warchest. People need the MP, SDI, and CIA as the bare minium of military wonders (Buy nukes, block nukes, protect nukes from spies, destroy nukes with spies). The Pentagon, FAFB, WRC and a bunch of other wonders also give nice edges in military combat. Plus of course you need some economic wonders to boost your tax collection and give you the ability to save up a warchest. Figure we're talking at least 6 months of military wonders here.

So in the modern world you can be at 5k, having your collections lowered due to the GRL, and you're still going to need to sell tech. You need to buy 700 spies at 100k each, you need that 100 million MP, the 75 million SDI, and your military command is screaming at you to up your warchest.

The argument I want to make here is that [u]everyday a newbie spends off the wonder clock and at low infra the odds of that person quitting increase[/u]. At 5k infra you're at least on the wonder clock for the cheap wonders and you feel like you're going somewhere. If you're stuck down in the sub 5k land and being strip mined for tech, you don't feel like you're going anywhere relative to the big boys.

At 5k you also feel a bit better about yourself military. You can at least roll in on the second round of a war and help pummel the big guys who got torn down in round one. Assuming you get teamed up with at least one guy who has nukes, you can help deal damage as a squad with your GAs, CMs, and Air Force (bomb right after the nuke lands and the other guy has not much in terms of an air force). Whereas now the little guys are just kind of a monkey knife fight in a side arena while the big boys play.

The flip side though is no one wants to mass out 45 million or so to a newbie and have them flake with the aid. Even if you do have a 6 billion warchest, that still stinks.

So CN needs to balance the need to prove loyalty versus the need to fight boredom. I'm arguing a lot of alliances are leaning way too far in the direction of proving loyalty. I'm not going to tell people how they should spent their money or structure their aid problems, but I do think a lot of alliances need to rethink their aid patterns.

At the end of this global war we'll have a lot of people in need of rebuilding. We'll also have a lot of defeated alliances who need to get their member count back up and rebuild up to world power status.

[hr]

Perhaps they should consider that if you take a 0 NS nation you can:

1. Two rounds of 3/50 across five slots (20 million profit)
2. 2 packets of 3 million lets you buy a FAC. Use other slots to continue tech deals.
3. Two rounds of 4.5/50 across five slots (35 million profit)
4. 2 packets of 4.5 million (if needed) lets you buy a DRA. Use other slots to continue 4.5/50,
5. 6 slots of 4.5/50 from now until the nation is fully outfitted (at least 6 months), every 20 days a nation makes 21 million in profits.

(My math assumes a nation is at break even for taxes vs bills just to make this simple)

Now honestly this might not be the best economically, as an investment in infrastructure might realize profits quicker than a wonder, but this does have a mental value. Gets the wonder clock ticking and the nation feeling like a big boy since they're pulling in wonders. More importantly consider that the end of Step 6, you're making 31.5 million every 30 days off tech dealing. That means your wonder cycle can run like:

I. FAC at Day 40
II. DRA at Day 80
III. Stock Market at Day 110
IV. Agriculture Development Program at Day 140

Now I realize ADP is not what you get as your fourth wonder. What I'm doing though is being a pessimist. In reality by Day 140 though the new nation should have a fairly health tax income as well and be able to suspend infra purchasing for a cycle to snag up the Stock Market or ISS. However I'm being a pessimist in case the newbie screws something up. Then at least with the ADP they're buying something. Assuming the newbie is smart with their money, they grab the Stock Market and keep on moving forward with infra.

In closing I want to mention my program above is a template program. You could accelerate it by doing more aid dumps (in Steps 2 and 4 I might be tempted just to aid dump on all the slots instead of mixing aid dumps and tech dealing). You could also down it down by doing some 3/100 rounds before starting 3/50 rounds. Different alliances can do different approaches and that is the beauty of CN.

With the template about though, in 120 days you pull:

1. 500 tech in this period
4. 500 tech in this period
5. 300 tech every 20 days. With the nation selling for at least 8 more wonder purchases (240 days). That means 12 cycles of six concurrent 4.5 / 50s or 3,600 tech is passed up to your alliance.

So building a 10 wonder nation over the course of 380 days (just over a year) a year nets you a 10 wonder nation (which isn't bad military) and 4,400 tech*. Now this nation is likely a little light in the warchest and still hasn't imported any tech, but they should be nuclear capable (if they just buy up to the min tech) and ready to roll in terms of ground combat. This is a nation that can contribute in the second or third round of a war after you tear down someone's upper tier. They can roll in and drop nukes and perhaps help you make it harder for your enemy's upper tier to rebuild post war buy inflicting more damage to them in mid tier fighting.

End of the day of course I'm just a random voice on the OWF. However if you're thinking "man that other side has a numbers advantage..." consider getting your ducks in a row in terms of nations to pump out aid and then going to recruit off your home community or a massive in game blitz. It benefits your alliance and it benefits the game's population.

I also feel it provides a good balance of proving loyalty versus engaging a new player with some pixel growth (and hopefully emotional investment in said pixels and your alliance). Figure 30 days in the academy where you run 3/100s and then two rounds of 3/50. That's 70 days of time where you haven't really spent all that much on the newbie and you'll pulled a good amount of tech off him. You're not really getting generous with your money until the 4.5/50s start and by then the nation has been with you for over two months. Depending on your sense of risk aversion you can extend or reduce the academy time based on concerns over theft vs concerns over boredom.

*For comparison, 4,400 tech is a little under 1% of the tech MK is currently sitting on. So if you did this with 100 nations you'd get as much tech as MK has in one year. Not to mention 100 nations that have a MP. Keep your butt out of war for another 6 months or so to let those nations import tech to fuel the WRC and save up some cash and it looks even better.

Edit: Just to note, I assume you start the aid on Day 1. In reality you likely have a minimum of a 2 to 4 weeks period where you recruit the nation and cycle them though your academy. So that's an extra round to run a 3/100 or 3/50 and does add say 30 days onto all my time estimates. If you add on a month of academy time it adds time but you also can run a 3/100 and pull an extra 500 tech off the nation.

tl;dr: People are running their newbie development programs like 10 million is big money and structuring their nation building guide around pre FAC/DRA thinking.

Edited December 12, 2011 by Belisaurus

[Dion de Vermiis]

I've never experienced the whole "large alliance" academy/handout program thing because I've never accepted any of the invites. I simply checked all of the recruitment letters I got and mass deleted them.

Even though I worked my way up by myself, finding tech deals and resource trades on my own, working the foreign aid button and paying bills basically sums up my entire experience so far (minus the occasional ground attacks and such).

I have to say though, it's really hard as a newer nation to be relevant to war because well, when you get nuked right after you start warring, and you watch half of your time spent here destroyed over the course of a single day, it's a pretty hard pill to swallow.

Sure, all of the people who have been here for thousands of days probably have had this happen over and over, but what about to those 250 day old people?

I think the biggest change to CN mentality that has led to tons of new nations deleting was the change in nuke usage. Nukes (as I've read from forums and such) used to be used as a last resort. Now they're just another weapon in the arsenal.

[threefingeredguy]

We've done many programs like this in the past and they all basically got phased out because they were useless. It didn't help new people play any longer, so millions of dongs were wasted on deletions. The money isn't the issue of course, it's the slots. Aiding a nation in a big coordinated effort often just ends up losing tech. Things like chaining aid or using middlemen multiplies that issue.

I'd love to see some ambitious aid projects like these happen, but they will never be in common usage because of how much they rely on the dedication of the noob.

Edited December 13, 2011 by threefingeredguy

[Belisaurus]

[quote name='Dion de Vermiis' timestamp='1323723717' post='2875568']
I've never experienced the whole "large alliance" academy/handout program thing because I've never accepted any of the invites. I simply checked all of the recruitment letters I got and mass deleted them.

Even though I worked my way up by myself, finding tech deals and resource trades on my own, working the foreign aid button and paying bills basically sums up my entire experience so far (minus the occasional ground attacks and such).

I have to say though, it's really hard as a newer nation to be relevant to war because well, when you get nuked right after you start warring, and you watch half of your time spent here destroyed over the course of a single day, it's a pretty hard pill to swallow.

Sure, all of the people who have been here for thousands of days probably have had this happen over and over, but what about to those 250 day old people?

I think the biggest change to CN mentality that has led to tons of new nations deleting was the change in nuke usage. Nukes (as I've read from forums and such) used to be used as a last resort. Now they're just another weapon in the arsenal.
[/quote]

Nukes have been the new cruise missile for awhile, for good or ill. They're not terrible if you have an alliance behind you to help you rebuild but that are definitely annoying. With a good cash reserve you can buy the infra back (although your hand goes number from clicking). The real hassle is lining up the tech sellers and importing the tech all over again.

Nuke usage was more limited back in the day because people didn't have the rebuilding capacity. Also because the people pushing "Think of the Children" had numerical advantage. Ground attacks/air raids/etc favor the alliance with more people, since they can fight you 3 v 1. Nukes favor the opposite (since everyone can only take 1 nuke a day, so the defender can nuke all attackers but only take one nuke in return). So most defenders have now figured that out and employ nuclear strikes, so they're not going to sign an agreement limited their nuclear options.

The big issue I think is solo nations are back in the Great War II era or so, where a nuclear launch is a big deal. The older alliances with their support networks just throw these things with little to no concern.


[quote name='threefingeredguy' timestamp='1323750669' post='2876151']
We've done many programs like this in the past and they all basically got phased out because they were useless. It didn't help new people play any longer, so millions of dongs were wasted on deletions. The money isn't the issue of course, it's the slots. Aiding a nation in a big coordinated effort often just ends up losing tech. Things like chaining aid or using middlemen multiplies that issue.

I'd love to see some ambitious aid projects like these happen, but they will never be in common usage because of how much they rely on the dedication of the noob.
[/quote]

I can definitely see how we'd have a lot of money lost on deletions here. Or simply squandered when newbies failed to read the guide.

CN has a number of alliances in the 200-300 member range that have a good 100 or so members at or over the 7k infra mark. They're also social pariahs or on the losing side of the treaty web. So they need to nation build to get competitive in the next war. I'd love to see them just straight up do this for 40 or 80 days and figure out the results. Something like: We spent X dollars, got Y Tech and Z nations that stuck around and are now on the wonder clock. Figure out if it is worth it and keep going from there.

If say you your alliance currently has 120 DRAs that is 20 groups of 6 nations. If each group of 6 takes on 2 newbies you could run this program with 40 newbies at a time. The aiding nations can also be buying tech at 3/100 or whatever on their other 4 slots. Just scale the program up or down as you get newbies or feel the value of the program increases or decreases.

It's basically asking each nation to donate X million to newbie growth and risk losing Y tech (if the guy deletes without sending back). I'm not sure what other steps could be taken to deal with deletions. Perhaps it would work in the sense of truly mass recruitment, like a Fark Greenlight type of thing. Where even if only 40 out of the 200 nations you pull in stick around, you still get 40 nations out of the deal which isn't shabby.

Also nothing says you have to do this on Day 0. I sometimes stare at the alliances that have 120+ DRAs and wonder why they have a bunch of nations at 1000 to 3000 infra with over 100 days seniority in the alliance that are just struggling to grow.

[Erwin Schrodinger]

The main issue with this is greed. During war, sure, I'll aid everyone in the alliance for free until the game tells me I can't any more. But off war, I want tech. Indeed, smaller nations are set in a side ring like monkeys with knives, and the real war is fought at > 20K NS minimum, and if you want to do well, you need as much tech as possible. So offwar time, I'm bulking on tech, and don't have the aid slot capacity to both mass aid, and acquire as much tech as possible. Then trust becomes an issue where I just aided some guy and he flaked. I don't care about the money. I care about the fact that I could have aided someone else and gotten 50 or 100 tech back, even if that nation later flakes out.

Worse, is the spiral involved. Because a lot of small nations quit out of irrelevance, there are fewer smaller nations. Honestly, I don't want the small nations to get large too fast. If that happened, I would have no one to tech deal with. Once again, that is selfish, but when the few small nations have a high chance of disappearing, why would I want to use my aid slots for that purpose?

[Dion de Vermiis]

[quote name='Erwin Schrodinger' timestamp='1323819652' post='2877004']
Worse, is the spiral involved. Because a lot of small nations quit out of irrelevance, there are fewer smaller nations. Honestly, I don't want the small nations to get large too fast. If that happened, I would have no one to tech deal with. Once again, that is selfish, but when the few small nations have a high chance of disappearing, why would I want to use my aid slots for that purpose?
[/quote]
The last part is what leads to small nations deleting in the first place.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

I myself am on the verge of converting from a tech seller to a tech buyer, and I have had no trouble contacting potential sellers myself (based on recent activity, foreign aid, seniority, nation age etc.) and lining up more than 5.

There are quite a few tech sellers that are not 0 days old. They can be casual players. They can be nations that just got hit extremely hard in war.

And on the other hand, there are quite a few tech sellers who are new. Who you can guide to become a proficient tech seller. Trust goes both ways.

If you've ever read the [url="http://ansontx.info/cybernations.aspx"]Texas movement, or whatever it's called[/url], follow it. I myself have sent maybe a hundred of those welcome messages, and have gotten back 25 or so responses. And guess what? These people end up being more active, and more engaged in the community, and more likely to stay.

[Coyote]

Oh boy, is it hard to be a relative newbie tech selling. I'm fixing to take a beating this war and it's really frustrating not to be able to play with the big guys when they get beaten down to my level. I can't compete with someone that's played CN for three years because of the tech advantage, and that's not a good state of affairs. I honestly think it's a lot of why the game is stagnating.

Ideas to fix it? Well I don't know. A lot of things have been suggested, and some would be interesting to see.

[Iceknave]

Part of it is that the newbie themselves has to learn what is optimal for them and part of it is how devastating wars can be for a newbie nation.

For instance, when I first started a little over 3 years ago, tech deals were all 3 million for 100 tech. In the first year, I joined a 5BR ring, built up to 1.8k infra and a decent warchest. Then Karma came and utterly flattened my nation (basically ZI/ZT/zero warchest). Effectively that was a nation reset with only a tiny economy boost from the few economic improvements I had left. With the constant struggles to keep the 5BR going, it finally collapses and I switched to a 3BR ring, realizing that economically it made NO sense to focus on infrastructure upkeep when net profit would be greater with a 3BR ring. In the second year, I built up to 2.5k infra and start frantically buying as many wonders I could get my grubby little hands on before slowly building up to 4k infra. Then DH-NPO war came and again, flattened my nation to basically ZI/ZT/zero warchest. However, this time because I was more prepared, I had already acquired a decent number of economic wonders along with the MP, Silo and the Pentagon.

With the end of DH-NPO war, I expected I would at best have 6 months to prepare before the next war started and at worst less (due in part due to the NAP with DH, in part due to paranoia from Karma and DH-NPO wars, and in part dislike and distrust of the NAP and the potential it left for back stabbing). The amount of time to prepare was exactly on the money as tensions simmered and ultimately erupted into the TOP-IRON/NpO war, leading eventually to FARK/FAN's "pre-empt" of the NPO. Within those 6 months, I again frantically built up to 4k infra again and bought more wonders. In those 6 months, I managed to nearly complete all remaining economic wonders acquirable at 4k infra along with a few more critical military wonders, leaving only 2 powerful military wonders left: the chancy and very defective SDI and the WRC. I did not bother with the SDI at 4k infra because economically, it would be ruinous to acquire, the equivalent of sacking 3 economic wonders worth of economic strength.

Now, in the past, I have actually argued and debated with various members, former members, and others about the merits of a very different build structure and method. Unlike the infra oriented method suggested and recommended by SoL (who retired from the game not too long ago if I remember correctly), the method I used was far more extreme and oriented towards war and its aftermath. The ruins of a nation left after multiple global wars clearly indicated that it is impossible to progress in this game at all relying on infra. In peace, infra fuels economic growth, but in times of war, it adds nothing, but bloat, combat with nations with superior military(though not necessarily superior tactics and strategy), and rapid losses as a result of nuclear weapons. In the aftermath of war with no cash to rebuild with, acquiring large amounts of infra is impractical and slow to fuel an economic revival from the ruins of war EVEN with aid coming in from my alliance.

It was abundantly that in a world almost always prepared for war (it requires the powerkeg to be "ignited" before the war starts), the best building method is not one that relies heavily on infra.

It is NOT necessary to pump a nation full of aid just to get them up to a level where they can start the wonder cycle. Tech deals alone can do it, BUT a newbie nation MUST be building their nation for the potential for war tomorrow rather than build for a war that might happen in some distant future or worse, think that war will not arrive at their doorstep.

To this date, I have yet to have a peace time NS greater than 15k and have never been a "tech buyer" in peace time in that I send 3 million for 50 or 100 tech in 10 days time in 1/2 cycles.
The critical aspect is build smarter and build for the possibility of war tomorrow rather than build for a distant war in the future.

Pumping pure aid into a nation even with training/support is a high risk, low returns method of building a nation. There is little value in providing so much for nearly nothing in return with no history, no information about how long said nation will survive in a world oriented around ultra destructive wars and politics that few directly get to participate in.

Edit: Added a few more details.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Iceknave

[Belisaurus]

[quote name='Iceknave' timestamp='1324413157' post='2882753']
-snip-
[/quote]

I agree with everything you wrote, the only issue I see though is that if you're on a such short war cycle and your source income are tech deals, you don't get to spend much time on the wonder clock. As you said you have brief periods to buy wonders before the next war takes you to ZI/ZT/null warchest. Meanwhile if you're fighting Umbrella, TOP, or someone of that nature they're not missing wonder purchases. So you as an alliance are falling behind your enemies. You're at ZI/ZT/null warchest while they're still importing tech or purchasing the high end wonders. Post war you get a slight breather to jump up and grab a few more wonders, but you're never going to achieve parity or anything close to parity. You get to hit the wonder button a few times before someone comes and kicks your door in again. Worse it will be difficult for you to reach a stage where you can stop them from kicking your door in.

If you're Pacifica and a lot of people are looking to settle grudges, so what you do makes sense but unless you can find a way to break the cycle it will prove problematic to expand your upper tier any further. So you're pretty much stuck in a world where Doomhouse can raze Francograd at will in a 1 v 1 fight. I think it is intelligent policy to get wonders early like you did, since Doomhouse can't nuke though away, but you need to break the cycle to get the good toys.

Regarding the SDI, it can be very useful or useless for individual nations. Sometimes it shoots down 18 in a row, some times it lets through 7 in a row. What matters more is having them on an alliance wide scale. As your expand your sample size you start to see the benefit size of them. If a 200 person alliance all have SDIs and they stop a quarter of the missiles fired at them, it suddenly takes 267 missiles a day to nuke them instead of 200. If the SDIs are really stopping 6 out of 10 nukes, that means it should take 500 missils a day to nuke them. So suddenly in the later rounds of war your enemies were forced to shot themselves dry to break through your SDIs, which does help. Same with the WRC. If everyone has a WRC your alliance can purchase 400 nukes a day instead of 200. That does make a difference on a macro scale

[Instr]

I think the actual fact of the matter is that buyers really hate sellers. There are more rapid ways to grow than tech selling, but at the same time, the tech market is the most efficient way to obtain tech at the present moment. The longer sellers are kept dealing, the more tech they make available.

There are in-game methods to deal with it; that is to say, there exists an opportunity to deal with the present structure, but I'd rather keep them under wraps.

[jerdge]

[quote name='Erwin Schrodinger' timestamp='1323819652' post='2877004']The main issue with this is greed. During war, sure, I'll aid everyone in the alliance for free until the game tells me I can't any more. But off war, I want tech. Indeed, smaller nations are set in a side ring like monkeys with knives, and the real war is fought at > 20K NS minimum, and if you want to do well, you need as much tech as possible. So offwar time, I'm bulking on tech, and don't have the aid slot capacity to both mass aid, and acquire as much tech as possible. Then trust becomes an issue where I just aided some guy and he flaked. I don't care about the money. I care about the fact that I could have aided someone else and gotten 50 or 100 tech back, even if that nation later flakes out.[/quote]
It's not greed, it's in the game mechanics: you need high levels of tech (every day higher) to compete in warfare. The solution has to be coded into the game, otherwise this fundamental dynamic is too powerful to be overcome with "just" cultural change.
Back in the first half of October I made a suggestion to fix the "tech inflation" problem. Needless to say, the suggestion hasn't been approved for discussion yet... (Apparently it takes 2+ months to do so, I guess I can still hope?)

[Rexy]

Alright, sounds interesting. I'll see if I can get a wonder going after a couple of months, rather than a year or so. Infra's really just pixels.

[Dion de Vermiis]

[quote name='Rexy' timestamp='1325005893' post='2887314']
Alright, sounds interesting. I'll see if I can get a wonder going after a couple of months, rather than a year or so. Infra's really just pixels.
[/quote]
I started my wonder clock when my nation was 81 days old, without any outside aid (other than finding tech deals).

[NOMNOMNOM]

[quote name='Belisaurus' timestamp='1323717727' post='2875431']
The flip side though is no one wants to mass out 45 million or so to a newbie and have them flake with the aid. Even if you do have a 6 billion warchest, that still stinks.
[/quote]

We do 60 mil for active people who aren't going to delete anytime soon.

[John Gault]

I have just got off of a stint playing a different nation and alliance building game. I left because nations were always temporary with a lifespan of 2 to 5 weeks. I like CN for the permanence. I would however, suggest some improvements based on my humble observations as a relative newcomer.

The following high-level improvements would definitely enhance my enjoyment of the game:

- Mini-Games: make it so a ruler can play mini-games to boost cash, tech, infra, land, and military power as well as win in-game medals.

- Open Market: make it so a ruler can buy and sell technology, military units and land on an open market. Randomly generate auctions where rulers could bid on things like "receive 1% of the worlds cash".

Please forgive if I'm posting this in the wrong place