New change to tech multiplying.

[Nymraud]

you're right. tech is way more expensive to buy than infra... if you buy it from yourself. but who does that? no higher level nation buys their own tech. the use of tech deals makes buying tech a much more efficient way of raising your NS, even with the change in value

You can only get 50 tech at one time. Since 50 tech is worth 75% less. That's like getting 12.5 tech in the old formula. Woohoo. Not even worth the 2 foreign aid slots and the time it takes to set up a deal.

Edited November 2, 2007 by Nymraud

[Masta]

i think you are missing the point of us offering to buy your "worthless" tech. the calculations you just provided show exactly what we were talking about last night when we first started offering to buy tech. tech is still the fastest way to inflate your NS, even though it is worth less (NS-wise) than it did before. infra gives a x3 multiplier. tech is x5.

the point of our offer was to show you that tech is not, in fact, worthless (and to get some easy tech from ignorant players that don't want to go to the trouble of figuring that out)

I have never said it was 'worthless', I have said it was 'worth less'. It's still worth less than it was before, in NS value, which is what I personally base everything in this game off of, so to me it feels like we're being screwed.

The price of tech needs to be re-evaluated. You're paying the same amount of money for 250 NS as you would for 1000 NS before, and this seems right to you?

Maybe if the cap is removed it would be worth it, but I don't see how paying the same amount of money for 75% less NS is economically sound, when above 300 right now tech means practically nothing. If you have less than 300 tech it may be worth it, but anyone over 300 tech should seriously reconsider paying so much for it.

And don't say NS means nothing, NS is the entire game, it's how the countries are ranked, everything you do in the game is NS related, everything you buy is NS, you're buying NS whether you buy tech, infra, land, military, etc. And now you're paying the same prices as before for 75% less NS when it comes to tech.

If you went to a pizza shop one night and bought a pizza seperated into 4 slices for $7.50, and then went back the next day and discovered that it costs $7.50 for a single slice now instead of a whole pizza, wouldn't you feel that the pizza shop was ripping you off?

I'm not saying tech prices should be dropped 75%, but there should be some reduction. I spent the last 500+ days buying tech at a certain price to gain NS, now the amount of NS I gain from that tech is reduced but the price remains the same. Is it hard to understand why I feel like I'm being screwed by this?

Maybe have it so that once you reach the cap on tech(if it isn't removed completely) you should get a 20%-30% discount on tech prices to begin with, but the prices still increment with each purchase as normal. It's a very small discount, but it would make many of us feel much less 'screwed' by this update.

[Edit] Saw this in another topic:

It is now at 33% cheaper than it was last night, a huge twist to the market.

I have not seen any change in my tech price. It still costs me 1.4 mil for 10 tech, as it has for the past few hundred days.

I still feel the 75% reduction is BS. A reduction was needed, but 75% is rediculous. Now instead of being 'balanced' it's unbalanced in the opposite way.

Edited November 2, 2007 by Masta

[BlackBolt]

Hypothesis: this was done to raise the number of donation offers...

[Bob Janova]

Like i posted before a nation with 2k less tech and 1.2k less infrastructure than myself has a higher ns, two days ago i was 40,000ns higher than this person and today he's higher than me due to his inflated military. Please explain to me how ns is more accurate.

An active military is the single most important factor in your strength at war. Of course it makes sense that a militarised nation is stronger than an unmilitarised one. If he attacked you he would win all his attacks until you militarised yourself – which would vault your NS above his again.

Your post overlooks the fact that tech is A LOT MORE EXPENSIVE than infra.

No-one buys tech at the in-game rate anyway, so that's irrelevant. Buying it at the international market rate means it's still a much cheaper way to buy NS than buying infra.

If you went to a pizza shop one night and bought a pizza seperated into 4 slices for $7.50, and then went back the next day and discovered that it costs $7.50 for a single slice now instead of a whole pizza, wouldn't you feel that the pizza shop was ripping you off?

This is a bad analogy, the pizza (i.e. the effect of tech) is the same. The problem is you aren't buying a pizza (which is useful, it is tasty!), you are buying gold stars (i.e. completely worthless items except for scoring purposes), and your friends have decided that having a house is a more useful indicator of your worth than having lots of gold stars.

NS value, which is what I personally base everything in this game off

There's your problem ... NS is, and always has been, an arbitrary measure and not related to the success of a nation in any way. Unless you're chasing No 1, or the nuclear border, NS and rank are a complete waste of time. In particular, an item which only increases NS and does not help your nation was always an anomaly, and it is good that its effect has been reduced, even if it means people's 'score' has been reduced. In fact I just looked at your nation, and with only 700 tech you probably went up in rank!

Edited November 2, 2007 by Bob Janova

[Masta]

There's your problem ... NS is, and always has been, an arbitrary measure and not related to the success of a nation in any way. Unless you're chasing No 1, or the nuclear border, NS and rank are a complete waste of time. In particular, an item which only increases NS and does not help your nation was always an anomaly, and it is good that its effect has been reduced, even if it means people's 'score' has been reduced. In fact I just looked at your nation, and with only 700 tech you probably went up in rank!

CN is still a game, and I play games to win. If NS didn't mean anything, it wouldn't exist. NS means everything in this game, hence why everything(you buy/gain) in this game contributes to NS. It's a simple logic, how anybody can not follow it is beyond me.

@ the last line - I am currently 247 ranks behind where I was before. So no, I have not gone up I have gone down in rank.

And that 'only 700 tech' equalled a 11.4k drop in NS.

I have never played a game for the sake of playing a game(except maybe a few PS2 shooting games, which are good for relieving stress even if I don't win or even try to win), I play to win, or at least be among the top ranks. In this game a top rank to me is at least top 200, which as of now is pretty much impossible.

[idriveavw]

You can only get 50 tech at one time. Since 50 tech is worth 75% less. That's like getting 12.5 tech in the old formula. Woohoo. Not even worth the 2 foreign aid slots and the time it takes to set up a deal.

no, it's not worth less. functionally, it is still worth exactly the same.

it's value in terms of NS has been diminished, but NS has always been an artificial number used to quantify the strength of a nation. a number which was vastly different from the ACTUAL strength of a nation. tech does not improve the actual strength of a nation beyond 300 levels, so why should it have a profound effect on the number which symbolizes that strength?

like my sig says... if you think it is so bad, sell it. myself or any of my alliance mates would love to take it off of your hands for the price it fetched yesterday when it was still worth 20NS/level

If you went to a pizza shop one night and bought a pizza seperated into 4 slices for $7.50, and then went back the next day and discovered that it costs $7.50 for a single slice now instead of a whole pizza, wouldn't you feel that the pizza shop was ripping you off?

and for the pizza analogy above... it's fatally flawed.

if i was paying $7.50 for a slice of pizza that nourished and satisfied my hunger as much as 4 pieces of the same size for the same price, then yes, i would pay $7.50 for the slice. just because it looks like less doesn't mean it is less

by the way... where do you get a pizza for $7.50? around here it's like $9.00 for a small pie.

Edited November 2, 2007 by idriveavw

[MOAIS]

-----

I would quote Bob Janova and idriveavw, in their posts immediately above this one, but first they're too long and secondly it would be redundant. What I will say is that they're both dead on. This is particularly true when they refute those who whine that "now nations with a lot of active military are stronger than mine!" Really? Whoda thunkit? Isn't that the real measure of a nation's strength to begin with? And if you don't want to place the proper value on military strength, then you clearly must take the backbone of a nation into account. In nation-building terms we refer to backbone as INFRASTRUCTURE.

Then there are those who "play to win", but somehow believe that NS is the measure of that goal. To that I say your inflated NS, taken into battle against a TRULY strong nation, would have proven beyond doubt who was really winning! If you're truly playing to win and you want to use NS to measure your progress, you should actually be happy with this change since your yardstick now measures more accurately.

This was an improperly executed change. The admins should be called on the carpet for bringing this online with no warning or explanation. They should perhaps also be brought to account for making no effort to properly compensate those nations who invested millions upon millions of dollars into technology which had a stated value at the time it was purchased, and then that value is arbitrarily changed without notice or input. That's shameful work on the part of the admins. I believe they should answer for this. However, the change was not only proper, it was NECESSARY. There should still be a closer look taken at altering the actual value of tech (there should be no cap to the benefit it offers) but bringing the NS value of tech in line with it's actual value was absolutely the right call.

-----

[TheBFG]

(...) tech is A LOT MORE EXPENSIVE than infra (...)

???

I don't know where you buy your tech, but 150 levels for 3M is still quite a common price on the open market.

So that's 50 levels of tech for 1M, which could also buy me about 5 levels of Infra. I stopped reading the rest of your post after this.

Of course the recent posts from idriveavw, Bob Janova and MOAIS show exactly that nothing much has changed in the true "value" of tech. That is, value defined as "what can you do with something". In that respect Tech is still just as valuable as yesterday. Of course it is obvious that a number of players assigned "value" to the fact that Tech simply gave them some arbitrary higher number than somebody else, and that "value" has indeed gone down. Personally I'd say that those people were always mistaken to think that their nations were "better" than others purely based on a higher NS score, so I don't think that that is such a bad thing.

I would say that from the "anti-change" side Veritas makes a very interesting and good point though, the overall decrease in NS means that the relative weight of a standing army on NS has increased, and indeed this also doesn't really reflect the true strength of a nation and therefore this change might have brought up some other imbalances.

Edited November 3, 2007 by TheBFG

[Masta]

???

I don't know where you buy your tech, but 150 levels for 3M is still quite a common price on the open market.

So that's 50 levels of tech for 1M, which could also buy me about 5 levels of Infra. I stopped reading the rest of your post after this.

Of course the recent posts from idriveavw, Bob Janova and MOAIS show exactly that nothing much has changed in the "value" of tech, it's still worth exactly the same in the sense of "what you can do with it". The only difference in 'value' is that for people who only played for NS score, but then those always were mistaken to think that their nations were "better" than others purely based on a higher NS score, so personally I don't think that that is such a bad thing.

I would say that from the "anti-change" side Veritas makes a very interesting and good point though, the overall decrease in NS means that the relative weight of a standing army on NS has increased, and indeed this also doesn't really reflect the true strength of a nation and therefore this change might have brought up some other imbalances.

I have never said my nation was better or worse than anyone elses, I have always fully admitted my nation was 'tech heavy'(though I haven't had any trouble defeating any opponents as of lately, even if they have been more infra heavy, most just suck at war strategy). But in rankings my nation was 'better' than most, now 200+ more people are 'better' than me even though nothing in my nation itself has changed, but rather a formula was changed by admin. It wouldn't have been so bad had we had some prior warning, but dropping this on us without even a heads up was a poor play by admin, something so major deserved a warning.

And anyone who says that 'if you only play for NS or rank you're not a real player' needs to shut the hell up, if NS and rank didn't matter they wouldn't even be part of the game.

I'm sorry for using a game play feature, which apparently means I'm not really playing the game properly...stupid me.

[TheBFG]

It wouldn't have been so bad had we had some prior warning, but dropping this on us without even a heads up was a poor play by admin, something so major deserved a warning.

That, I think, would be something that everybody agrees on. I certainly do.

For the rest, I should have used "in my opinion" in my piece above, apologies. I of course complete respect the fact different people can play for different goals, and look at different rankings. But in my opinion NS should reflect the relative strength of a nation, and the new formula probably does that slightly better than the old one (although I do note Veritas' interesting points), rather than be a ranking tool in itself.

[Masta]

That, I think, would be something that everybody agrees on. I certainly do.

For the rest, I should have used "in my opinion" in my piece above, apologies. I of course complete respect the fact different people can play for different goals, and look at different rankings. But in my opinion NS should reflect the relative strength of a nation, and the new formula probably does that slightly better than the old one (although I do note Veritas' interesting points), rather than be a ranking tool in itself.

I understand that is your opinion, and you have every right to play the game as you see fit, just as I and others who play for ranking and NS have the right to do so. I wasn't so much directing my comments in that regard at you yourself, I'm just sick of all the people(there have been many) who say we aren't playing the game properly if we value NS and rank so much, which makes absolutely zero sense as we are playing the game based on a gameplay feature. How can you not play the game 'properly' when playing it by using a feature that is part of the damn game?

Apparently using the features included in the game means we aren't playing the game properly...

I still maintain, as I have from the begginning of this whole episode that a change to the tech calculation formula was needed, tech was over-valued when it came to NS, but I think a 75% decrease is too much. 40%-50% would have been fine, but 75% is overdoing it a bit. It does create more unbalance than before, as now NS basically means nothing, as you can gain a ton of it in a minute with military buildup and lose it just as quickly. And people say that represents the strength of a nation better than over-valued tech?

Standing military does not equal strength, the ability to field a large military when called upon is what true strength is. To have standing military influence NS in such a major way without anything to balance it is rediculous.

North Korea has a massive military system, but could it fight worth a damn? Highly unlikely given the fact it's technology is so bloody outdated. If technology didn't matter the DPRK would be ruling the world right now, along with Iran and China, since they have the largest militaries on earth. Technology does play a massive role in real world nation strength, so why make the game less realistic by making tech less NS valuable? I thought the point of this game was to be realistic, but dropping tech NS value by 75% isn't realistic.

[Trace]

I understand that is your opinion, and you have every right to play the game as you see fit, just as I and others who play for ranking and NS have the right to do so. I wasn't so much directing my comments in that regard at you yourself, I'm just sick of all the people(there have been many) who say we aren't playing the game properly if we value NS and rank so much, which makes absolutely zero sense as we are playing the game based on a gameplay feature. How can you not play the game 'properly' when playing it by using a feature that is part of the damn game?

Apparently using the features included in the game means we aren't playing the game properly...

I still maintain, as I have from the begginning of this whole episode that a change to the tech calculation formula was needed, tech was over-valued when it came to NS, but I think a 75% decrease is too much. 40%-50% would have been fine, but 75% is overdoing it a bit. It does create more unbalance than before, as now NS basically means nothing, as you can gain a ton of it in a minute with military buildup and lose it just as quickly. And people say that represents the strength of a nation better than over-valued tech?

Standing military does not equal strength, the ability to field a large military when called upon is what true strength is. To have standing military influence NS in such a major way without anything to balance it is rediculous.

North Korea has a massive military system, but could it fight worth a damn? Highly unlikely given the fact it's technology is so bloody outdated. If technology didn't matter the DPRK would be ruling the world right now, along with Iran and China, since they have the largest militaries on earth. Technology does play a massive role in real world nation strength, so why make the game less realistic by making tech less NS valuable? I thought the point of this game was to be realistic, but dropping tech NS value by 75% isn't realistic.

Tech was too over-valued to start with though, that was the problem. This game is still in beta-version, so it's going to change. You can't grow as fast anymore...neither can noobs. 250NS is now worth as much as 1000NS was worth before. Thus, tech is still worth the same value. I for one will still be paying 1.5M for 50 tech. Just keep doing it the way you were doing it, and things will work out fine.

[Lybertitia]

I know...... So many alliances are dropping big now because of this. I dropped 3k from it myself. Big tech heavy alliances are gonna be losing big amount of NS.

I lost 50k myself. I hear GPA lost 7m.

Nothing much really. Makes it even more of a need to buy infra.

[Lybertitia]

Tech was too over-valued to start with though, that was the problem. This game is still in beta-version, so it's going to change. You can't grow as fast anymore...neither can noobs. 250NS is now worth as much as 1000NS was worth before. Thus, tech is still worth the same value. I for one will still be paying 1.5M for 50 tech. Just keep doing it the way you were doing it, and things will work out fine.

I believe the prices should drop. Cause now you get more out of infra seeing as the difference per point is only 3 NS.

[Thevin]

Perhaps a warning next time, Kevin. There are a lot of online games, but when it comes to respecting the players, Cyber Nations is definitely lacking some.

[BartSimpson]

Then with global radiation, when a nuclear war occurs everybody's growth slows, and not just those involved in the war.

And that's why I don't support this. When the last major war happened a whole bunch of us found an opportunity to move up in rank and we did. That's because we were not stupid enough to ignore our grade school lessons about history and tangle our alliances up into layers and layers of MDPs. I recall one alliance that found itself contractually obligated to DoW on ITSELF because they got tangled up in too many MDPs.

So if the majors want to immolate themselves now the GRL hamstrings everyone and prevents the alliances run by cooler heads from moving up too far to displace the foolish alliances who every few months have to form up two teams and chuck nukes at each other.

Sorry, I should not be punished in game because other people can't play nice with each other.

Which takes this to the next level:

With the next major war will a non-combatant major alliance go to war against someone because they used nukes and raised the GRL?

[Nymraud]

This game is obscure enough, I don't think admin should be making decisions that make 50-60% people angry if he wants to grow the game let alone keep the players who are in it. It makes me want to quit knowing how pointless this game is now. Let's face it, a lot of young players and even experienced players only keep playing because they are enticed by nukes. The ability to annihilate. The ultimate attack. Now? Psh. I've been playing for well over a year, I could see it take another year if not more to get there. Very few people are going to be devoted enough to play this game.

no, it's not worth less. functionally, it is still worth exactly the same.

it's value in terms of NS has been diminished, but NS has always been an artificial number used to quantify the strength of a nation. a number which was vastly different from the ACTUAL strength of a nation.

Yes, it's NS value has been diminished by 75%.

tech does not improve the actual strength of a nation beyond 300 levels, so why should it have a profound effect on the number which symbolizes that strength?

Unless you were below 300 tech you only bought tech to go up in strength really. Tech wasn't a false strength as many of you argue. Why? Buying tech allows you to buy nukes. If you invest your money in tech and not that much infra, you have a nation that's strength level doesn't accurately depict your real nation's strength until you got nukes. Then all that tech you bought that was false strength up until now suddenly payed off and your investments allowed you to get something that a lot of infra heavy nations don't have. Yes tech is still technically the fastest way to go up in NS. But being able to only take 50 per transaction, and using two foreign aid slots each time makes it a much slower process. A process so slow a lot of people will quit.

I don't know where you buy your tech, but 150 levels for 3M is still quite a common price on the open market.

So that's 50 levels of tech for 1M, which could also buy me about 5 levels of Infra. I stopped reading the rest of your post after this.

You can't get 150 levels of tech at one time. You can get 100 and all but 1 of your aid slots is full for ten days. It's just a huge hassle to find people to buy it from, clog up your aid slots. (I have several people I send aid to from time to time) It's just not worth it, even if it is still worth a little bit more per level because the pros really do not make up for the cons. Before the upside was that tech put up your strength and thus your rank a lot faster, but didn't help you much in the long run, (until you can buy nukes) and infra helped you in the long run but didn't build your NS for quickly. Now, neither of the two put up your NS very quickly. It's almost like making the strength multiplier for tech has been lowered so much that it defeats the purpose of even going to the trouble of buying tech.

Edited November 3, 2007 by Nymraud

[BartSimpson]

I didn't appreciate High School girls as much as I should have, until I was out of high school. Just because the era has passed doesn't mean all is lost. There are always College girls man.

When I was in high school I liked college girls and when I was in college I liked high school girls.

[MOAIS]

-----

Technology does play a massive role in real world nation strength, so why make the game less realistic by making tech less NS valuable?

Technology plays a massive role in real-world nation strength...this is true. However real-world nation strength isn't measured by a number that increases artificially based on the quantity of cotton candy a nation holds (which CN tech might as well be, past the 300-unit threshold). I can't understand why this point is escaping all of these posts. The issue at hand should be the actual value of tech in the CN universe, not the false value that has always been placed on it (and has now suddenly been corrected).

I'm beating a dead horse here but this change, based on the (poorly conceived) real value of technology, was a necessary evil. Adding to your number based on fluff makes your number fluff. That's basic math (and simple logic).

What everyone should be upset about is that technology in this game does not adequately represent the benefit that REAL burgeoning tech would have on the growth and strength of a nation. If tech was properly valued, properly scaled, properly priced and properly acquired the number it adds to your NS would be real. At that point it could be 2, 20 or 2000; it's NS value would be relative to it's true effect on a nation's strength. How about instead of arguing that it should be 5 or 50 NS, we argue that tech should represent something legitimate in the first place?

-----

[Alvar Hanso Jr.]

I wasn't affected by the change. I noticed my nation strength dropped a bit and thought it was a bug at first. However, I'd probably be pissed if I dropped 20k NS. I am pretty sure I actually moved up in the rankings.

[Jebbie]

This game is obscure enough, I don't think admin should be making decisions that make 50-60% people angry if he wants to grow the game let alone keep the players who are in it.

From what I can see its only you and 1 or 2 others complaining loudly while everyone else understands this was necessary and/or welcomes it.

[Wurzak]

I'm too lazy to read all of the posts, but this is my opinion:

Stop complaining. Admin just made tech even better than it was. Bad winners are the only thing worse than bad losers.

The less NS tech gives the better it is:

Technology decreases infrastructure upkeep costs up to a maximum 10% discount based on the following formula: (2 * Technology Level) / Nation Strength = Percent off infrastructure upkeep bill.

[kswiss2783]

I am praying this opens some sort of door for tech improvements at least.

[Nymraud]

From what I can see its only you and 1 or 2 others complaining loudly while everyone else understands this was necessary and/or welcomes it.

Dude, have you read any of the polls?

[thewho]

A change in the value of tech may have been necessary, but the overall intensity of the change was too much. This change has killed any momentum a smaller nation had at being able to grow. Probably two reasons this decision was made: To stop the tech raiders, and to raise the demand of donations. Maybe cut the value of tech in half, 3/4 of the value dropped is horrid. These post are not necessarily "Whining" posts. These are post with legitimate arguments on an overal negative feeling on the change. So the kids using the, ahhh all the whiners copout didn't read the title of this blog or understand it. Still the biggest problem with the change, that will be evident the more days that go by, is the nation strength rule when it comes to getting battles. I can now get attacked by nations who have over 9,500 infra when I only have 3,400. Sounds like a fair fight to me. Nobody is complaining at the moment about this observation, but wait till your getting crushed on by someone 5 times your size, then get back to me.

Edited November 3, 2007 by thewho