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Peace mode evolution


Alterego

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Almost every aspect of the game has evolved to match the modern game filled with monster nations except peace mode. Isnt it time that the limitation on happiness reduction is abolished and a modern version of peace mode introduced. A continued reduction on happiness level along with increased military costs and reduced population might be appropriate in this day and age. Certainly a limit of -9 happiness after 14 days seems outdated. It will also make it less likely that [i]future wars[/i] end up sucking because everyone just sits in peace mode for the duration of the war.

4 days = -3 population happiness
6 days = -5 population happiness
8 days = -6 population happiness
10 days = -7 population happiness
12 days = -8 population happiness
14 days = -9 population happiness

Edited by Alterego
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[quote name='Viluin' timestamp='1324221120' post='2881162']
Peace mode cuts your tax collection by 50% after a couple of days.

That's pretty significant, some nations don't even make a profit in that scenario.
[/quote]

When you are sitting on billions not making a profit for a month is no punishment. Everyone would agree peace mode is a good tactic for choosing where to strike and when but people are just rolling half their alliance or more into peace mode and openly admit they have no intention leaving it until the war is over. The result is alliances who think they wont win a war dont even bother fighting it. The rewards for an alliance not leaving peace mode are enormous. Hundreds of billions saved, hundreds of billions in infra saved up to a year of tech saved and all in the space of a month to six weeks. The idea whole alliances can duck into peace mode for a couple of months and just not turn much of a profit for a month is a huge profit.

It might have been punishment when the largest nations never had more than $100m or $200m on hand, but now most nations carry multiples of that with bigger nations carrying billions. All I’m saying is that version of peace mode was designed for a different less wealthy world where you had more than 1 war per year and it should be revisited. If there is only one war per year masse peace mode for the duration needs to be discouraged.

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[quote name='Alterego' timestamp='1324212441' post='2881130']Almost every aspect of the game has evolved to match the modern game filled with monster nations except peace mode. Isnt it time that the limitation on happiness reduction is abolished and a modern version of peace mode introduced. A continued reduction on happiness level along with increased military costs and reduced population might be appropriate in this day and age. Certainly a limit of -9 happiness after 14 days seems outdated. It will also make it less likely that [i]future wars[/i] end up sucking because everyone just sits in peace mode for the duration of the war.[/quote]
Long-term Peace Mode, when decided at alliance-level, allows an alliance to preserve some of its potential from complete destruction. Staying out of every protection doesn't make sense, as the stronger party would just pound them to the stone age, forcing them another few years behind.
The few tech-heavy alliances have a great advantage that can't be overcame and not even just reduced with "mere" skilled nation building. There's an evident incentive for some of the few top-heavy alliances to band together to ensure that their pre-dominance endures "forever" (until the end of the game). There's an evident incentive for anyone on the receiving end of a clear "curbstomp" to preserve their top layer, to not become irrelevant for the next years after the war.

When it takes years to come back to relevance (see: NPO) non-unintelligent people are (expectedly) conservative, with all their FA being based on sloth-speed moves across a viscous treaty web and plans that take years to come to fruition. And they're not going to give up on every future plan just for the amusement of the people that are piling on them.
Allowing/forcing the complete destruction of today's losers would reduce the pool of people that can have a say at all in CN politics, and it would further slow down everything towards stagnation. I wonder why you would expect anything different, and especially why you'd expect better "future wars". If anything, everyone would jump ship from the weaker side even faster.

You got one thing right though, when you talked of "up to a year of tech saved". Tech dynamics (or tech importance in war) are what you should be talking of, if you wish for a more interesting and dynamic CN.

________________________________________

From another angle:

Your discourse/proposal wouldn't be an effective disincentive either, anyway. You can zero the profit in Peace Mode and increase the military expenditure as much as you want: people will continue to consider PM convenient to save their top layer, as:
1. In every moment they aren't sure that they'll have to remain in PM for months, while they can very well bet that they'd lose years of nation building if they didn't stay in it.
2. Big nations that can give up 50% of their income for months can probably give up 100% of it too.

About 2, if PM became that costly people would just wait to have an even bigger warchest before doing anything. The general plan would be to have a warchest that allows for a PM stay of one year, or more. Is that what you would like to see?

[spoiler]A huge nation with a few billions saved can "easily" stay in PM for an year or more.
I could personally disband everything to 0 soldiers, sell all my Improvements but the dozen or so that I have to keep for the SDI, spies and infra bills, and end paying around 10 millions per day in total bills. Paying 3.6 billions at the end of an year in PM would be tough, but a couple of months of nuclear warfare could cost me more in terms of military spending and lost infrastructure alone, not to mention the thousands of tech levels that it would take me several months/years to rebuy. You can also bet that, without nation managing to worry about, I'd spend every second of my free time to harm your cause in some other way...[/spoiler]

Edited by jerdge
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Jerdge states it very well. People would act whatever fiscal costs are needed to stay in peace mode simply to avoid losing tech. At the end of the day you have:

War Mode = money, tech, and land lost due to battle
Peace Mode = money lost due to bills exceeding tax collections

Short of making the econ penalty for peace mode really punitive, I see no way to deal with this.

As it stands I think the peace mode game mechanic can be dealt with via human mechanics. Pre-emptive attacks, tighter OPSEC, better stagger management, etc. There are a lot of things a human can do to prevent peace mode on the other side. Also the community as a whole can become more accepting of punitive terms or demands for "direct" tech from alliances who hide in peace mode the majority of the war.

On the losing side of course people need to evolve better strategies for hiding their upper tier. Quietly building them up and getting them ready for the main show. Learning when to spend those nations (ie in a war the size of Karma) as opposed to exposing them to damage in smaller wars.

Basically I agree there isn't much of a penalty for hiding in peace mode, but I think we should force the community to adapt around this instead of getting admin to crank the numbers up.

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[quote name='Belisaurus' timestamp='1324336561' post='2882146']On the losing side of course people need to evolve better strategies for hiding their upper tier. Quietly building them up and getting them ready for the main show. Learning when to spend those nations (ie in a war the size of Karma) as opposed to exposing them to damage in smaller wars.[/quote]
Hiding? Quietly? Spending? You can't hide stats in CN. The only effective way to save your upper tier is to align alongside those that are top heavy.

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[quote name='jerdge' timestamp='1324394829' post='2882564']
Hiding? Quietly? Spending? You can't hide stats in CN. The only effective way to save your upper tier is to align alongside those that are top heavy.
[/quote]

Build your top tier entirely off AA. Or at least a fraction of it. You have many options in that area.

You can for example send them off to neutral alliances. One of the reasons for the Woodstock Massacre, members of Pacifica sphere governments felt a lot of LUE nations ran off and hide with the neutrals, rebuild, and surfaced later to cause trouble (either in GWIII or later on in things like Atlantis). I don't claim that reason is correct/true, but it was one of the reasons the GPA was considered for a strike. They were seen more as a place people ran off to rearm than to actually be neutral.

You also have options of a Doomhouse like arrangement. Where everyone is together in a bloc, but the "alliance" your upper tier is in, isn't politically actively. Let your lower or mid tier be politically active and if they get hit, the upper tier can simply not chain in to the conflict. Basically imagine a Doomhouse where Umbrella is really small and doesn't ever fight. Of course this could be problematic with preempts.

You could also drop your elite guys into protectorates. Somethings like the older protectorate bloc TPF had or Ragnablock. Only what happens is ever so often ten or twenty of your nations splinter off and sign a protectorate with their homeland. It's considered bad form to hit protectorates or preempt them, so your elite nations could sit there. If you want them to fight you could chain them in via the protectorate treaty (write it for ODOAP style). If you want them to sit tight, avoid the curb stomp, and be there for rebuilding, have them act like good little protectorates and keep their heads down.

Then once you have the upper tier you want, call everyone home and merge them back in.

Any of these options of course have risks of the nations you build failing to come home. I mean even in the end the Ordinance of the Orders failed, but assuming you aren't attached to the idea of all your nations on one AA you can hide your upper tier as you build it out. It is of course based on the assumption that you lose less NS to defection/failure to return than you'd lose to having your upper tier stomped on every 6 months or so.

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