Positive brainstorming

[Solaris]

Make a complete history of cybernations, bollywood style, and people will flock!

[Scorponok]

I think this needs to be mentioned and more support needs to be given;

http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=70087&st=0

If this was to be introduced, I think the new dynamics will freshen up CN and boost fun and enthusiasm, creating more opportunities for everyone.

[Yevgeni Luchenkov]

I'm not in the mood (it's 6 am) to write a long text so here are a few points:

1)Something needs to be done to make reps easier. Some of us have proposed the concept of an AA's Central Bank. I take it it has more to do with a suggestion than this topic.

2)Something needs to be done to make building infrastructure cheaper so new players can, more quickly, join the rest in the 25-30k+ NS. If you don't see players coming back often - expect the political drama llamas - it's because they know that the longer they've been out of the game, the more steep the hill is. Virtually all games online have adjusted themselves, after a few years, to permit new members to climb the wall more quickly. Take a look at most MMORPGs, take a look at WoW.

The solution clearly isn't to tell the Community to commit a mass suicide or to be more "bold". It won't happen. There's no incentive for players to do that and the Community will never develop a collective consciousness.

The best way would be to simply give a chance to small and/or new members to grow more quickly while still rewarding older (not necessarily bigger) nations by creating time-related improvements, wonders and what not. Make new improvements and wonders that are only available after X month or X years of age.

3)Speaking of which, it's a small thing but extending anniversary bonuses to older nations should happen.

4)Another major point is that the game, while permitting to go to war, doesn't provide clear IC CBs in its mechanisms. Zzzptm pointed it out in one of his threads, recently, but you would see a lot more wars happen if there was in-game reasons and possibilities to wage it. Resources to physically hold, events leading to wars, etc.

5)Admin, I think there's a clear correlation between the lack of major improvements to the game since at least two years and the diminution of the number of players. It's not new nations that we are losing and most of the people who left, at least in the alliances I have been in, were bored because the game offered nothing new in terms of opportunities. While I agree that the drama must come from the players, they need reasons to fight wars. If not, they might as well hop on a FPS and just blow random stuff without purpose. Wars are fun but wars shouldn't happen [i]for[/i] fun.

[Instr]

[quote]Wars are not, never will be, and never should be profitable. This new concept is destroying the game. Wars should be fought to gain a political advantage; You got beat up, but the other guy is more beat up, so you're ahead. You are fighting for political capital and political strength. Not to make your numbered stats bigger than they used to be.

[/quote]

This is a recipe for further stagnancy. Bashing the other guy's face in to gain relative superiority is foolishness in a multi-polar world, where alliances no longer even have geographical spheres of influence.

All this means is that if any party attempts to attack a second party, the third party will bandwagon-kill the victor.

IMO, the main limitation on this game isn't war, but growth.

Regarding war, TE is based all around war, but it has been a relative failure. It has collapsed from four-thousand players at its peak, in an SE game of around 32000 players, to around 1600 players, in an SE game of 22000. The reason for this is simply that war in Cyber Nations really isn't that interesting. While there is significant depth in the coordination and maintenance of fighting organizations, you can master the art of TE war in a matter of hours. For the average non-aligned nation, war is simply boring.

The real problem with CN is that we have reached the end of the growth game. The population of tech sellers is declining, the capability of new alliances to reach mass is gone, and there is nothing left for large alliances to do but sit, twiddle their thumbs, and nurse at the depleted breasts of the tech sellers. There is simply nothing left to do in this game. You tell us, we should pick fights with people we dislike, but here in MK, all of our enemies are now either depleted or on our side. And what's the point of random war? What's the point of putting months of infra, and more importantly, tech bytes at risk just for the sake of fighting through a war system that simply isn't interesting?

What I think CN needs is additional fields of competition, and not simply an intensification of existing combat (what? Meaningless pixel destruction day in and day out for another 3 months? Bah, humbug). There should be additional realms for existing CN alliances to grow and to compete in, alongside with those of new alliances. These new realms should only have a weak interaction with the existing CN world; having hegemony over one or two of new realms will benefit your CN:SE alliance, but not in a way that would give you an overwhelming advantage in CN:SE. They should also be interesting persistent worlds in themselves. It's similar to the TVTropes GoKarting with Bowser. You get a bunch of adjacent semi-related games to play with your CN:SE rivals for CN:SE advantage, but eventually the semi-related games reach stagnancy by themselves and a different game is added.

[edit reason: preemptively toned down the explicitness of a metaphor]

Edited August 28, 2010 by Instr

[uaciaut]

First part rambling, second part some light suggestions that have probably already been mentioned :<

In-game features have had an impact on the game's popularity, and had it not been for a decent war/aid/trade system the game would really not have gained as much attention. I remember when i joined nukes were hardly a commodity, a lot of types of aid-falls kept being used, all had that "new" feeling to it and the competition to discover new ways of improving different aspects of alliances was still there. It was all fun and interesting back then, hell people even often advocated against going over 5k infra and i remember when GOONS had mostly nations built around that concept with huge (at the time) warchests.

The political aspect also had a "new" feeling to it with powers still trying to establish themselves as solid political leaders and others trying to work their way up the ladder.

Problem is the game got so much popularity people started catching up with the system too fast. There was never nothing wrong with it to start with, people just outgrew it very fast. Same thing can be said about the political aspect as well, a general system slowly proved itself to be succesful and people stuck with it even if it had it's flaws.

For the most part of the game-related aspect - i found many of the last changes to be rather dull in theory/practice. Basically they did add some complexity to the game but no real depth to it, they simply lacked that new feeling it had back in the day. Problem is brainstorming in-game features to add REAL depth and be actually fun is really hard to do and it takes a lot of effort to do so. I know i haven't come with any revolutionising idea ever so there's not much i can actually say to this, maybe one day i'll actually contribute somehow and come up with something D:

As for the political-related aspect - at this point people have been using this treaty-web - the more allies the better style for so long i doubt most can think of anything different and i'm really not expecting anyone to think outside the box anymore and change things up. So many things happened during CN's history and really there's so much bitterness all around that i doubt people will be ever to take their eyes off it and try to be more constructive for themselves and for the game in their way of thinking/political maneuvering.


[quote name='HeroofTime55' timestamp='1282977151' post='2433671']
This is where we hold the leaders of these fat alliances at the top [i]personally[/i] accountable for sitting there and doing nothing, for destroying this game. Are you reading this, and are a member of one of these said alliances? Go to your leader right now and tell them to start crap with alliances you're unsure if you can beat, and don't take no for an answer. Otherwise stop whining.
[/quote]

Why don't you try getting in a larger alliance, work your way up the leadership ladder and come to a position where you can actually do something along the lines of what you're suggesting? Because the way i see it you're doing nothing but complaining and asking other people to make things FOR you and that's not going to happen very soon is it. Everyone can talk the talk, obviously not many can walk the walk.



And some suggestions (probably):


-make rebuilding easier perhaps? the only way to do it now is to reach 14k infra and buy that wonder, doesn't seem all that attractive to me
-easier way to find trade circles by making people post trade circles which other people can subscribe to and they search thing directly on the CN page rather than finding TC's on forums etc.
-aid size depending on nation infra/tech OR seerow's old aid-related suggestion
-make nukes less of a commodity - changes on the environment's importance was actually a step in the right direction
I'll edit in more as i think about them D:

[Swanfield]

In other news, we have lost over a hundred players in the game since this topic was created.

The amount of current nations stands at 21,702.

[zzzptm]

Give everyone one trillion dollars. When a nation starts, it gets 1 trillion dollars. Keep everything else the same, except for buying infra 10 at a time...

The catch is that any money not spent at the end of one week is gone. After that, a nation can earn money normally.

Instead of flattening everyone, we all get a chance to start off equally.

OK, maybe not a trillion dollars. A billion would do just as much fun and we wouldn't need to zero it at the end of a week.

With a billion for everyone, tech dealing goes to zero between players. Oh well. It's already almost to zero. Now we can buy our own tech.

Up the amounts that can be moved in an aid deal by a factor of 10 for the cash. This will help keep nations out of bill lock, once everyone gets a FAC. Being a new nation would now mean timing wonder purchases correctly. Man, I love buying wonders... used to get one every 30 days.

So there you go. [b]Give us all a billion dollars to start with, and every nation ingame gets another billion. Increase the cash aid cap to $30 million.[/b]

[Scorponok]

[quote]5)Admin, I think there's a clear correlation between the lack of major improvements to the game since at least two years and the diminution of the number of players. It's not new nations that we are losing and most of the people who left, at least in the alliances I have been in, were bored because the game offered nothing new in terms of opportunities. While I agree that the drama must come from the players, they need reasons to fight wars. If not, they might as well hop on a FPS and just blow random stuff without purpose. Wars are fun but wars shouldn't happen for fun. [/quote]

Pretty much this.

[Ardus]

[quote name='Ironfist' timestamp='1282974815' post='2433640']
There are plenty of restrictions already in place IC. Tell me how dismissing reparations would hinder community. Give me a valid answer and I'll back off.
[/quote]
Given the premises you're operating from there are no valid answers. You want to remove the war from a war game. I don't feel obligated to elaborate at length why that's a horrible idea.

[Lord Fingolfin]

[quote name='Ardus' timestamp='1283015036' post='2433923']
Given the premises you're operating from there are no valid answers. You want to remove the war from a war game. I don't feel obligated to elaborate at length why that's a horrible idea.
[/quote]

I don't see where he stated he wished to remove war from a war game. Rather, he indicated that he would like to see the removal of reparations payments. I don't see the two as mutually inclusive. Why would the removal of reps necessitate the end of war?

[Kzoppistan]

My suggestion would be to incorporate CN as an official business entity, and pass it into the hands of those who can continue working on it. I'm sure CN isn't a giant money maker, but if advertising covers the cost of its maintenance then you could build a reasonable small profit model off donations, store sales, cross-market promotions, real prize TE tournaments, ect.

The reason, imo, that many of the good ideas have never been implemented is because Admin probably has a lot of other things occupying his time and attention, and massive re-coding an old pet project doesn't seem to be high on the list.

The idea, what has already been created, the brand name, the possibilities, however, I think has enough potential to attract some entrepreneurial developers who can turn this from Beta to Alpha. If Admin can secure a small profit and advisory position, from the deal, I think it would be a good arrangement for everyone involved, players, Admin, and prospective investors.

Edited August 28, 2010 by Kzoppistan

[Crymson]

I think reparations are of secondary concern to the fact that the war system is broken---that is, one's years-old nation can suffer absolutely catastrophic damage from a short period of war. In my opinion, wars were more fun back when it took quite a bit of time to devastate a nation; it took a more concerted effort to damage a nation and its alliance, and alliances didn't need to fear being near-irreparably stomped into dust in extremely short order should they involve themselves in a war. One week of war can often do far more damage than any fair amount of reparations can, and so war REALLY isn't worth getting into unless one is fairly certain that one's side can be the stomper rather than the stompee.

Back in the day, GATO and Co involved themselves in Great War II and were still well enough three months on to provide a legitimate challenge against the WUT & Co. That could never happen these days. Ever since the advent of the tech bonus and the WRC, wars are all or nothing. If you lose badly, you'll have lost so much that it'll be impossible to come back without a looooong period of rebuilding; and even then, you'll still be far behind the others. It's a huge incentive to not be politically active, just as the current treaty web is.

Edited August 28, 2010 by Crymson

[Arcturus Jefferson]

[quote name='Crymson' timestamp='1283019467' post='2433976']
You weren't involved. At the time, you and your (IC) alliance's government refused to keep any information from your members, and your members had a habit of telling things to Polar, and so the rest of us in the Citadel simply didn't inform you of the war beforehand! Simple logic led to that decision.

That said, I think we should both keep this IC bantering out of the thread; and should note that AJ came in here with the intention of being provocative and nothing else.
[/quote]
I was in Fark at the time bro

That said, there's been plenty of IC discussion in here.

[Ardus]

[quote name='Lord Fingolfin' timestamp='1283017394' post='2433955']
I don't see where he stated he wished to remove war from a war game. Rather, he indicated that he would like to see the removal of reparations payments. I don't see the two as mutually inclusive. Why would the removal of reps necessitate the end of war?
[/quote]
Eliminating reps renders war more destructive for the victor as their losses can be diminished by reparations. It also makes it far more difficult to establish a definitive outcome in war since the most anybody would be able to ask for are what NSO got in terms.

I'm floored that anybody here is even entertaining the idea.

[Crymson]

[quote name='Arcturus Jefferson' timestamp='1283019536' post='2433978']
I was in Fark at the time bro

That said, there's been plenty of IC discussion in here.
[/quote]

Fair enough.

[Lord Fingolfin]

[quote name='Ardus' timestamp='1283019699' post='2433980']
Eliminating reps renders war more destructive for the victor as their losses can be diminished by reparations. It also makes it far more difficult to establish a definitive outcome in war since the most anybody would be able to ask for are what NSO got in terms.

I'm floored that anybody here is even entertaining the idea.
[/quote]

I'd still contest that. Losses diminished by reparations? I'm looking at my nation right now and 6,659.99 infra, to purchase 10 infra is $1,686,259. If I was hit by a cruise missile I would lose somewhere between 10 and 20 infra, which would cost around 3 million to buy back. One cruise missile. A single nuke, depending on the tech level of my attacker and whether they have a WRC, could potentially do 50-100 million in damage or more. But I'm not getting nuked and CM'ed once, I'm getting GA's, aircraft assaults, 2 cm's at least, ect. One day of war at my NS range I could lose a couple hundred million if I got utterly wrecked by 3 opponents. The point is, that the damage accrued by just my nation over the course of a few rounds of war would add up to a few hundred million probably, even if I was on the winning side. Thats just one nation, and I'm not even "upper tier", I'm upper middle tier. Liquid Mercury's 1k NS killing nukes last war against Oyaybaby were probably causing hundreds of millions if not billions of damage each. What were TOP's reparations? 3 billion in tech? I can't recall exactly and don't feel inclined to go check, but lets just say they were 3 billion. I'd bet that the 3 billion doesn't even cover 5% of the total damage done to C&G over that war. Reparations no more "diminish" the losses of war for the victorious party than giving a couple hundred dollars to a guy who just had his house burned down "diminishes" his loss. In addition, many alliances have never requested reparations, and have fought in numerous wars and gotten along just fine. Reparations are more a tool to keep your opponents down even after the war is over, than a means to replenish your losses. With the current destructiveness of wars and the size of nations, you are always going to lose money even when winning. A lot of it.

The definitive outcome of the last several wars has been quite clear before reps were paid. As I mentioned earlier this thread, C&G and SF and company controlled 18 out of the 20 alliance spots according to score, and there wasn't a single sanctioned alliance that was hostile to them (not counting NPO due to the fact they were still under terms). If that isn't a definitive outcome then I'm not sure what is.

Edited August 28, 2010 by Lord Fingolfin

[Delta1212]

[quote name='Ardus' timestamp='1283015036' post='2433923']
Given the premises you're operating from there are no valid answers. You want to remove the war from a war game. I don't feel obligated to elaborate at length why that's a horrible idea.
[/quote]
Taking it a step further, you could put restrictions on all of the in-game actions that are considered detrimental to the health of the game: E/P/ZI, raiding micro-alliances, etc.

Whatever your view on the relative harshness of some terms, I think we can all agree that they are at least fairly limited in the scope of how many people they effect. Light or even outright white peace have been applied far more liberally. This isn't meant to trivialize anyone who feels unduly restricted by terms, but simply to draw attention to the factthat the number of people who are or have been affected by alliance raiding or ZI punishment is likely at least comparable to that of harsh terms and so it's an apt comparison to draw.

Now let's consider the historical consequences had such things been banned on a moderation level. Remove EZI and Vox never forms because the core founders never get desperate enough to try going out in a blaze of glory. Whether you found them aggravating or entertaining, Vox was one of the most interesting things to happen in the politics of the game, and the drama caused by their antics was almost certainly a significant contributor to the game's pre-Karma membership surge.

Likewise, remove micro-raiding and the BiPolar War never happens. As much as this war upset a lot of people, it did contain some of the most dramatic mid-war political maneuvering and counter-maneuvering that the game has ever seen in its opening days.


Because of the lack of in-game reasons for conflict such as resource scarcity, conflict effectively arising in this game from a clash of ideologies. What is being advocated here is a removal of controversial game options, essentially staff-mandated gameplay ideology. That effectively removes almost all sources of legitimately interesting conflict. Lobotomizing the political drama of the game is simply a bad idea.

Now, plenty of people make the argument the vast majority of players don't really know or care what happens on the OWF. I haven't seen a truly rigorous attempt at proving this, but I'm still willing to grant that, in all likelihood, it is probably true. I will point out, however, that the vast majority of players, politically active or not, are in alliances which [I]are[/I] to one extent or another, politically involved.

These alliances are all run by the active players. They provide the aid programs, organized tech deals, trade circles, guides and coordinated rogue protection that form the backbone of even the most minimally organized alliances.

Among the people who provide these services, especially at the top end where everything gets tied together, a very large portion of the entertainment is generally derived in some way from the drama that is international politics. Luckily, these are also generally the people best situated to find ways to get their drama fix, or who have enough invested to wait out the low periods for a resurgence of drama. You remove not just current drama, but all potential for drama to take place in the future as well (and I mean really physically removing it by making it against the rules of the game) and you are going to see a lot more of these people quitting in despair. That is going to have a detrimental effect on alliances and [I]that[/I] is going to effect even players who don't really care about the drama.

Now, what I'm not saying is that it would e a bad idea todight tooth and nail to get practices you don't like removed from the game within the confines of politics. That's the kind of thing that drives the interesting parts of the game. It's fun to watch people try to end common practices or to push the envelope and meet resistance. Hell, it's fun to [I]do[/I] those things. What's not fun is being told that, essentially, "resistance is futile" and attempting to circumvent a convention will result in your ejection from the game in a manner you can't fight. Being EZI'd sucks but you have avenues open to you to fight back or at least rail against your oppressor. Getting banned just sucks.

Unnecessary restrictions are bad for the game.

[Yevgeni Luchenkov]

At 3m/100t, TOP's reps were 8.1 bn, Lord Fin. But really, to calculate it in dollars doesn't make much sense. For virtually all major alliances, sending 8.1 billions is much easier than paying it in tech at the aforementioned rate.

However, reparations is one of the only incentive to go to war and a political tool that needs to stay. The more damaging the wars are, the more intense the reps should be. We backed away from more interesting concepts: viceroys, disbandment, etc. That's a damn shame for they gave another reason to later go to war (and exploit it against your old enemies). Instead, we're upping the ante in reparations. Which slows down rebuilding by as much.

[Ardus]

[quote name='Lord Fingolfin' timestamp='1283021482' post='2433995']
I'd still contest that. Losses diminished by reparations? I'm looking at my nation right now and 6,659.99 infra, to purchase 10 infra is $1,686,259. If I was hit by a cruise missile I would lose somewhere between 10 and 20 infra, which would cost around 3 million to buy back. One cruise missile. A single nuke, depending on the tech level of my attacker and whether they have a WRC, could potentially do 50-100 million in damage or more. But I'm not getting nuked and CM'ed once, I'm getting GA's, aircraft assaults, 2 cm's at least, ect. One day of war at my NS range I could lose a couple hundred million if I got utterly wrecked by 3 opponents. The point is, that the damage accrued by just my nation over the course of a few rounds of war would add up to a few hundred million probably, even if I was on the winning side. Thats just one nation, and I'm not even "upper tier", I'm upper middle tier. Liquid Mercury's 1k NS killing nukes last war against Oyaybaby were probably causing hundreds of millions if not billions of damage each. What were TOP's reparations? 3 billion in tech? I can't recall exactly and don't feel inclined to go check, but lets just say they were 3 billion. I'd bet that the 3 billion doesn't even cover 5% of the total damage done to C&G over that war. Reparations no more "diminish" the losses of war for the victorious party than giving a couple hundred dollars to a guy who just had his house burned down "diminishes" his loss. In addition, many alliances have never requested reparations, and have fought in numerous wars and gotten along just fine. Reparations are more a tool to keep your opponents down even after the war is over, than a means to replenish your losses. With the current destructiveness of wars and the size of nations, you are always going to lose money even when winning. A lot of it.

The definitive outcome of the last several wars has been quite clear before reps were paid. As I mentioned earlier this thread, C&G and SF and company controlled 18 out of the 20 alliance spots according to score, and there wasn't a single sanctioned alliance that was hostile to them (not counting NPO due to the fact they were still under terms). If that isn't a definitive outcome then I'm not sure what is.
[/quote]

Addressing the second point first, NPO for [i]years[/i] has maintained that it did not lose the First Great War because it paid no reparations. I have no doubt that the NSO will do the same with the much smaller Six Million Dollar War that has just concluded. The presence of reparations provide a definitive record of submission of the defeated to the victor that words alone can fail to achieve.

While in major cataclysms such as the one you've listed reparations indeed pale in comparison to the destruction caused, in smaller wars they do indeed diminish the costs of war. The tech demanded in raids may count as reparations in our operating definition--eliminating reparations eliminates raids. Eliminating with a hard and fast rule by CN administration would wipe out one of the central continuous philosophical conflicts we've enjoyed for the past few years. Why in the world would we want to do that when we're all complaining about how dull it is around here? Larger, though still minor by comparison, wars have also been launched over the course of our history with the intent of wringing alliances for heavy reparations after a quick and decisive fight. It isn't the place of CN administration to rip away this manner of controversy.

You're focusing too heavily on global wars and on upper-level combat. Global wars don't start as global wars. Global wars start as smaller conflicts for often petty reasons and then run out of control from there. On this smaller scale, reparations play a major role in how we perceive each other and why we go to war.

[The Corrupt Teacher]

I think a major problem is the lack of spine by the ex-Heg alliances. I know after Unjust War 1 and NoCB I wanted to go back and destroy NPO and do everything in my power to remove it from power. Along the way one of the way to do due that was to take alliances like ODN and Sparta and VE ex-Heg players and convert them to our side and use them to help us take down NPO. If some of the ex-Heg worked on building up a coalition quietly in the background they could eventually pull this off. The Current Hegemony while powerful is in my opinion no where near as strong as when NPO-NpO ruled mainly because the power is spread out with 2 blocks vs. 1 powerful block which allows for potential division.

On another related note one of the major driving forces for me early on in CN were inter-alliance rivalries. I spent a great deal of my time working to push the alliance I was in in the direction I wanted and felt was best while working against those who felt differently. I feel like if you cut down the amount of AAs allowed in-game you could get more opposing personalities in alliances and that would make it more interesting. Now if you have a problem you just leave and join one of the other breakoff alliances.

[HeroofTime55]

[quote name='uaciaut' timestamp='1282991517' post='2433766']
Why don't you try getting in a larger alliance, work your way up the leadership ladder and come to a position where you can actually do something along the lines of what you're suggesting? Because the way i see it you're doing nothing but complaining and asking other people to make things FOR you and that's not going to happen very soon is it. Everyone can talk the talk, obviously not many can walk the walk.
[/quote]
I've already stated a number of reasons as to why. Everything from "being the underdog is fun" to I recruited 10 brand new players into the game and want to make sure that they stay." It is absurd, when you sit in one of the key alliances directly responsible for this situation, and directly responsible for making it difficult to overcome, that I should do something more. I am doing my part. Your statement implies that anyone from SF/CnG would even let me into their alliance (something I don't want to do anyway), let alone allow me into a position of real power, especially now that I have stated what must be done.

I have a serious growth plan for the alliance I lead, but at the end of the day we're just going to be another clump of infra on the punching bag end of CN. It is up to YOU to end the stagnation. I have already outlined why. This is a very direct result of the policies your alliances have collectively put into place, a direct result of your political strategy, and I have exactly zero control over what you do, zero control to fix the problem you brought to the world.

This is not an apolitical thing to be solved with some technical magic applied to the game. This is a direct result of politics.

[jerdge]

[quote name='jerdge' timestamp='1282923024' post='2432821']What would be this player-killer, I yet don't know. I have a couple of ideas but they're still in a rudimentary stage... I'll post more when/if I'll have something more definite about them.[/quote]
After having thought about that (before reading the posts following my one, which head in several completely different and very interesting directions), I came to the following conclusion:

New players are IMO discouraged from playing because they don't have the opportunity to discover and develop anything by themselves: [b]they can't have a sense of realization by elaborating something or by building an organization[/b], because most if not all the significant alliances already perfectly know everything that needs to be known on nation building. Founding a new alliance without developing instant ties with the established ones is a worthless enterprise, as sooner or later you are just raided to the ground.
Joining the system of the established alliances (either by joining an alliance or by founding a protectorate) is also not "that" fun because your hands are instantly politically tied and you're also immediately teached the complete theory of nation building (assuming you're just able to listen, of course). The politics learning curve is also very steep as CN has a lot of history to be learnt and understood first.

That said, I don't think that anything can be done about this (in itself) and I don't think it's an evil either. The problem arises from the fact that new players probably think that CN is a nation building game, where it's a political simulation game instead - which, admittedly, is something someone else already said much earlier in this thread... - hence it's a game where a [b]newcomer can perfectly find realization by attempting to develop his/her new political project(s)[/b]. They just need that someone tells them this from the start, so that they can learn what really counts (the political system), early in the game.

Of course, [b]we should stop telling them "join an alliance and follow the flock"[/b]. We should tell them instead: join an alliance or get a protectorate for your one, study a bit of "history" and then [b]try to shake and subvert anything you can put you hands on[/b]...

[wickedj]

[quote name='admin' timestamp='1282967171' post='2433482']
It seems to me that this suggestion has been discussed before in the suggestion box but I can't find it. If there is not a topic on it then we need to get one started. Depending on the input from the community, I would be in favor of adding a 'Peak Infrastructure' and 'Peak Land' counter in the database and if your infrastructure or land levels are below their peaks (-100 so that it can't be exploited) then the purchase price is reduced for your nation. It makes sense, as it is cheaper to repair a worn out road than to build a new one.
[/quote]
I like, i like alot

[Erwin Schrodinger]

Admin, why don't you make an alliance of yourself and five or so other admin/mods and declare war on someone to get things started. As for getting others involved on your side to made a real conflict, can't you just insert treaties between yourself and others? Admins can do that, right?

[_GunneR_]

[quote name='zzzptm' timestamp='1282971326' post='2433580']
... so then everyone joins one of the five, or all go to the #1.

And, yes, without reparations, wars have no benefit other than providing joy at blowing stuff up.

If you're worried about another alliance being stronger than you, just blow it to smithereens. Take the PR hit and blast any AA that is generally resented in your side of the MDP web, regardless of political affiliation. If you're too noble to do that, then be happy for the hippies with massive nation strengths. Because of your sacrifice, they can raise their children in peace.
[/quote] To combat alliance switching for benefit, you restrict it like government and religion changes are.
But that's the thing, a war without benefit is a one off pay off. One hit of enjoyment, then you're back on the scrap heap. Some of this play for the politics, not the war. It's the lead up to pressing the button. Currently there is nothing to cause tension, nothing to fight over. Unless we start insulting each other because we don't like each other, like children we'd have no depth to the game. So this is a chance to add something tangible to fight over.