Do you like the new tech change?

[idriveavw]

I would really like to see the tech be changed back. this is b/c I have gone from 22k NS to 13K ns. my nation may have been tech heavy, but that was b/c I was trying to ge higher in the ranks quicker. now, instead of being in the 11%, I am in the 16%. the only reason is b/c I have been focusing onn tech and not on infra as much. another thing, is why couldnt they have been more prepared about this. why didnt the admin tell us or ask us wether or not we want the change?

if he didn't make the change the game would be dead in a matter of months. it was necessary and it didn't matter whether or not we wanted it.

[thesoulman]

i don't like it because it reduces the nation strength of the bigger nations more than it does the smaller nations, so now everybody is relatively closer to the same amount of nation strength. Plus it makes buying tech worthless.

[3Davideo]

Actually, tech still is useful after 300, and even more so now, because of the infrastructure discount. Before, if you had all your NS in tech, the max discount would be:

2 * (tech) / (NS = 20*tech) = 10%.

Now the max discount is

2* tech / (NS = 5*tech) = 40% !

Tech can give a huge discount on infrastructure upkeep if you have a lot!

[Nymraud]

if he didn't make the change the game would be dead in a matter of months. it was necessary and it didn't matter whether or not we wanted it.

Riiiiiiiiight...

1. The game would not be dead in a matter of moths, the amount of people who participate in this game is more than likely to go down due to this change than go up considering how many people hate the change. But most likely, this change will have very little change on the amount of people playing the game.

2. The change was not necessary, the game has existed perfectly for about 2 years without the change. You may like the change but that doesn't make it necessary.

[idriveavw]

1. it would be dead b/c the rate of tech inflation would, in a matter of months, make catching the top tier of nations completely impossible.

2. the game has been constantly changing in the past two years that it has been "existing perfectly". if it was so perfect, it wouldn't be changing. this game is still in beta, which means new formulas and such are being tried out all the time.

Edited November 4, 2007 by idriveavw

[Nymraud]

1. it would be dead b/c the rate of tech inflation would, in a matter of months, make catching the top tier of nations completely impossible.

If anything is impossible, it's catching the top tier of nations now, not before. Before the change, I could go up .1 or .2% everyday, now I'm stuck at 8%. And even if somehow what you say is true, the game would not "die."

The fact is the changes that are made are made to try to improve the game, that doesn't mean every change is necessary. Most people agree this change was a bad choice. Just because the game is in beta version doesn't mean admin should make this kind of change. The least he could have done is not made such a drastic change to nation strength and rankings ignoring people who have spent literally over a year on the game using a completely legitimate strategy. There's no way to get that lost time back for us, that's why so many people are upset.

[idriveavw]

most people agree it's a bad choice? most of the people i've seen/talked to like the change whether they are affected negatively by it or not. i'm not trying to win you over here, and i know i probably never will, but it doesn't matter, b/c the changes have been made and that's that. the fact still remains that tech is STILL the most cost effective way of upping your NS. and with the changes admin made today (plane tech requirements and removal of the 300 tech limit), tech is more valuable than ever before.

[Amnesiasoft]

So, let me get this straight, the majority of CN players are being morons? I've seen so many calls for the strength value of tech to decrease in the suggestion box in my time here, then as soon as the change is finally implemented, more than 50% of you start complaining saying it shouldn't have been done? Maybe the suggestion box should just be removed because most of the CN players seem to complain when they get what they ask for.

As has been pointed out, tech still provides more strength than infrastructure. I lost 30,000 ns from the change, do I care? Yes, but because it is beneficial to everyone. Now it's possible to get a 10% infrastructure discount. So what if I moved down 0.7% in the ranks. You people who are rushing to get nukes thinking they are these amazing things that make the game suddenly worth playing are being ridiculous. Nukes don't really do much of anything for you but make you look powerful, which is just what an excessive level of technology did before the change. Besides the fact you'll probably be ZIed by somebody just for launching one, they only manage to drain a fair amount of money out of your economy.

[Drai]

Definitely, it has a real purpose for the military now and is no longer a fake strength booster.

[Nymraud]

most people agree it's a bad choice? most of the people i've seen/talked to like the change whether they are affected negatively by it or not.

Most people you talk to apparently aren't most people. Read any poll asking about the change and it will tell you that most people do not like the change.

i'm not trying to win you over here, and i know i probably never will, but it doesn't matter, b/c the changes have been made and that's that. the fact still remains that tech is STILL the most cost effective way of upping your NS.

Yes, but the point is that it is 75% less effective at upping your NS. It is only a little bit more effective now as opposed to a lot more effective, you might as well just buy infra. I would rather not clog up my foreign aid.

You people who are rushing to get nukes thinking they are these amazing things that make the game suddenly worth playing are being ridiculous. Nukes don't really do much of anything for you but make you look powerful, which is just what an excessive level of technology did before the change.

If you look at it that way, everything in this game is boring. Nothing in this game really does anything for you except make you look more powerful. But then again, that's kind of the point of the game.

[TheBFG]

Yes, but the point is that it is 75% less effective at upping your NS. It is only a little bit more effective now as opposed to a lot more effective, you might as well just buy infra. I would rather not clog up my foreign aid.

That's not really a fair comparison. Tech gives a lot more NS than Infra for the money you spend on it. 50 tech = 250NS is available for $1M for anybody who cares to look hard enough for it. In order to get the same NS increase from Infra you need 83 levels, which makes it more expensive for anybody paying more than 12K per infra level (ie, (almost) everybody who would be buying tech in 50-level bundles).

Personally I can't even buy 5 Infra levels (15 NS) for 1M, so if my aim was only to increase my NS number then tech would be far more effective (as it stands the infra upkeep reduction that tech gives starts to make it quite a effective investment at high infra levels anyway, which is why I'm still trying to get as much tech as I can, despite not being overly interested in my NS score)

Edited November 6, 2007 by TheBFG

[idriveavw]

Most people you talk to apparently aren't most people. Read any poll asking about the change and it will tell you that most people do not like the change.

polls here are useless.

you can't change your vote if you change your opinion (which i have seen quite a few people do), and many of the people who voted did so very soon after the change when many of them didn't understand why it was done or how this would actually effect game play (which is to say 'not at all')

also, it seems that a good deal of people came in just to !@#$%* about something they didn't like, while the people who didn't care or were for the change didn't bother coming to voice their opinions because they didn't care

see The BFG's comment for my response to your second point.

[Vegroovius]

The new change is completely wrong, as I've said elsewhere. I mean, I can see arguments for making adjustments, but it's far too radical and unfair to make it retrospective. I have spent much time and millions upon millions of CN dollars sorting out a good tech trading system only to find most of it has been wasted. I've lost nearly 20k NS, which is almost half of what I had! It's no way to treat people who devote little portions of their lives each day to the game. Those who disagree can shout as loud as they like, but the vote tells me they are in a severe minority. I have several suggestions:

1. Make the tech multiple 15 rather than 5

2. Make infra tradeable

3. Or, if you insist on keeping the changes as they are, compensate those nations who lost a disproportionately large amount of NS. I would suggest something like $3m for every percentage point of NS lost beyond the average, although this would have to be adjusted to take account of larger and smaller nations. So if I lost 45% of my NS and the average drop was 25%, I would get 20 x 2m = $40m, perhaps divided by 2 for nations under 3000 infra, 3 for nations under 2000 and 4 for nations under 1000. In my case this would allow me to buy two national wonders and enable me to just about forgive you!

[idriveavw]

that's maybe the most asinine thing i have ever read.

tech is worth MORE now!

[Vegroovius]

Where do you get off being so rude, Idriveaw? The tech changes are worth more if you are into the military side of the game, but not otherwise. By all means set me straight if I'm wrong, but don't call me asinine!

[TheBFG]

Apart from the use of language, idriveavw's point made above (and in various other threads) still contains the truth: --> "tech is worth MORE now!"

A point I keep on trying to make is that the "value" of something lies in what you can do with something.

In that respect tech is now worth far more than before for an individual nation. Not only in the war system (where the difference is very clear), but you can also now achieve 10% infra-upkeep reduction through tech, which before wasn't possible (well, technically you got 10% discount at ZI, but that was of course irrelevant).

More importantly, NS was always meant to be a measure of the strength of a nation, and not number to aim for in itself.

The problem was that everybody started to loose sight of this, and a lot of people started to see the NS score as a aim in itself, and then looked for the easier ways of increasing it. That really was turning the logic behind it upside down though, the measurement became the objective itself.

I think that almost everybody agrees that the current formula & rules, although by no means perfect, are at least a better reflection of the strength of a nation than the old system - and that is ultimately what is important. The new rules might drive people to actually make their nations really stronger, rather than investing in a "number" that didn't reflect much about the reality of the state of their nation.

(p.s.: Vegroovius don't get me wrong, I lost 26K (just over 35%) of my NS, so this "affected" my nation in a somewhat simmilar way to yours, but I really think these changes are for the good of the game)

Edited November 7, 2007 by TheBFG

[idriveavw]

i'd explain myself, but BFG has done a pretty good job of that.

what really got me about your post, though, was the thing about being compensated for something that wasn't taken away from you. you lost no tech, so why should you be paid for it? sure, your NS went down, but so did everyone else's. and on top of that, the tech you do have is now functionally stronger than before, regardless of how it is quantified. NS was always meant to give a numerical representation of the strength of a nation. the over-inflated value of tech made that number completely inaccurate. now it's more in line with what tech actually does for your nation.

as for trading infra... no thanks. that would make the inflation problem in CN so much worse. there is way to much money floating around and trading infra would inevitably lead to selling infra like tech, which would in turn lead to ever more money in the game.

[Vegroovius]

I've read what you and everyone else have said very carefully, but I am still not convinced this is for the benefit of the game. OK, I can concede that 20x was probably not a fair representation of what tech was worth, but the fact is that I and lot of other nations spent millions and millions of dollars in good faith that that was how the system worked. Those of us who were hit disproprtionately hard deserve to be compensated for that wasted money, not for any other reason.

I still think you are wrong to be scornful of that idriveavw.

As for yours and BFG's other arguments in favour of these changes:

1. Who are you guys to say we shouldn't focus on building NS? That was fun in itself. It is like a score, and it isn't easy to set up reliable tech trading partners in order to keep increasing it. It took me six months to get it right.

2. You are in any case wrong to say that building up NS counts for nothing - the ultimate reward would be a place on the top 100 map, which was my long-term goal. I knew that my entrpreneurial spirit would get me there in the end.

3. What's the big deal about the 10% infra upkeep reduction? Even if I had no reduction before, it would save me something like 160k a day. Not nothing, maybe, but hardly worth getting excited about when infra costs me 900,000 for 10 units!

4. How can you say that everybody agrees that the old system was deficient? Actually 52% of the people polled in this thread thing the tech changes suck! You guys are in fact in the minority.

5. I don't agree that the new rules drive people to make nations really stronger. The rule that you can only get five foreign aid slots (or six with a disaster relief agency) meant you couldn't solely focus on trading tech. I have always spent heavily on infra and land and worked hard in other ways to reduce my infra upkeep costs, increase my literacy rates, improve my environment rarting etc etc. The 10-day foreign aid rule was in my view a bit too restrictive, but it kept tech in its place.

6. When you say trading infra would be wrong because it would bring too much money into the game, who are you to say how the game should be played? It is fun to trade and wheel and deal. It is not cheating. I have never been interested in the military side of the game, although I wouldn't want the rules changed to undermine those who want to make war. I was delighted with the introduction of spies for instance. But these new rules have massively reduced the fun of playing the game in a way that was perhaps different to how you think it should be played.

I'm sorry but I haven't read anything to make me go back on what I wrote previously. I think this is a massive blow to the playability of the game and I think something has to be done to rebalance it again. Compensation and infra trading would be one way. No doubt there are others. But you guys are kidding yourselves if you think these changes have made the game more fun. Not only are they unfair, they have partially spoiled what was so cool about CN.

But do feel free to explain to me why I've got this all wrong. I want to believe you, but I doubt I will.

Sadly

V

i'd explain myself, but BFG has done a pretty good job of that.

what really got me about your post, though, was the thing about being compensated for something that wasn't taken away from you. you lost no tech, so why should you be paid for it? sure, your NS went down, but so did everyone else's. and on top of that, the tech you do have is now functionally stronger than before, regardless of how it is quantified. NS was always meant to give a numerical representation of the strength of a nation. the over-inflated value of tech made that number completely inaccurate. now it's more in line with what tech actually does for your nation.

as for trading infra... no thanks. that would make the inflation problem in CN so much worse. there is way to much money floating around and trading infra would inevitably lead to selling infra like tech, which would in turn lead to ever more money in the game.

[TheBFG]

I won't quote all that, some fair points, but I disagree with the gist of the argument - let me answer them point by point:

1/ You'll find "nation rank" and "nation strength" under the heading of "Military Information", therefore we can deduce this is a military number, not a generic "how good is my nation" rank. The current formula is a lot better at determining proper military strength than before. I wouldn't dare to say that you were "wrong" to do anything, but I do think that the game as a whole was going wrong in a mad tech-race that was leading nowhere and was inflating a military score whilst it had no bearing on military strength.

2/ fair point as a goal in the game, but the point remains that the purpose of NS is to measure military strength, and the old formula was just not good at doing that.

3/ Every little bit helps, you'll find that most top infra nations like to squeeze every bit out that they can. Like you I also don't play this game for the war side, so to me as a economic based nation these things are great to try to maximise. This is exactly the sort of thing I like.

4/ Being in a minority has never made me feel wrong ;-). It might be big-headed of me, but I really think that a large percentage of the 'no' camp hasn't really thought their arguments through that well (I'm not including you in this).

5/ I agree that for larger nations it won't matter much, if you're in a position where 3M isn't much then indeed you're limited by the aid slots only. However, for younger nations I have a feeling it might have a great psychological effect. For some months I saw more and more young nations interested only in getting their NS up by getting tech, when in fact they should have been putting in a good "base" by investing only (or mainly) in infra.

6/ I certainly don't think trading anything is "cheating", but I also think that the introduction of "infra trading" wouldn't be good. The problem with that is that Infra is literately the backbone of a nation. To enable that to be traded would really widen the gap between the nations that are already large now, and the newer nations so dramatically that it wouldn't be able to be bridged.

Regarding the gameplay: If you play for NS-rank then indeed this was a shake-up, but remember it was a one-off only. In the current reality some might have been set back on that rank, others gained, but from here on in you could continue to play in the same way. 250NS for 50tech is lower number than before, but you'll pass just as many people by increasing 250 points now as you did with 1000 before.

Let me finish with saying that I hope you come to terms with the changes and continue enjoying the game!