This game is great despite several massive foundational flaws.
I am hoping to improve the foundation without destroying what's built atop it, knowing that this might be impossible.

In order to correct these issues, we first have to identify them. >CLOP was a game made in a different time, which thrived in a different environment.
Ponies are no longer in vogue. While I yearn for those days, they're unlikely to return.
I intend to take another crack at shilling the game when season 2 begins, but we cannot assume that this game will ever have tens of thousands of concurrent players again. If it should happen, that's great! But we must proceed assuming it will not.
This means identifying how a lower player count has affected the game.

High player counts naturally correct two major issues from what I can see. They create a livelier market, and they provide shelter from snowballs.
More players mean more public market activity. Free market needs help in this new environment.
More players mean that most of the population escapes the notice of whatever snowballs happen to occur, and that multiple people will get overpowered concurrently, so there's more competition at the top.
Part of why I chose to make the game seasonal was a kill switch for these snowballs, but seeing how QUICKLY it can happen I am now convinced we also need better comeback mechanics, and stronger brakes.
More players means more opportunities for expansion. If we had enough, anyone with enough ambition could find a mark and add to their empire. Expansion is unrealistic for most people right now, and that's a huge problem.

There are also a few problems unrelated to player count that should be addressed.
Rule 4 is abhorrent. I've had to provide exceptions in a few cases because it's overly broad, and even beyond that it asks me to be a mind reader. It needs to go.
The defender's advantage is obscene. Defenders may tailor make a perfect defense, they pay less maintenance, they have more time to accumulate the needed resources, they pay a lesser diplomatic price, they may change gear between combat rounds to fine tune damage, and to top it all off they take 25% less damage.
That needs to be dialed back.
Inflation and deal limits are ineffectual as a breaking system. All the dangerous players are adept at dodging them entirely, and they're just annoying. They either need to be much more confining to serve their intended function, or they need to be removed entirely to cause less frustration.
There are no peaceful opportunities for growth. While I do think that conquest should be heavily rewarded because of its risk and expense, it shouldn't be the exclusive solution for building yourself up. Some players do not want to start fights, they should be given something to do.
Resource dumping allows players to completely skip the process of building up. If you have a rich friend, you have an endgame economy. Nothing is earned.

>>43564843
All combat is existential. If you lose a single fight, you lose everything. Those who do not have rich friends to resource dump find this frustrating, and those who DO have rich friends are likely politically exposed, and now feeding a rival that has irreversibly become stronger.

I may be forgetting a few issues, but those are the most pressing ones in my opinion.

Some of these are easy to fix. Players will no longer pay any tax when selling things on the market. The purchase tax will remain, and will be reduced when in free market. I do not intend to reduce the cost of state controlled deals even though free market will become the cheaper way to move resources, as state controlled is the cheaper way to move bits. This might not be enough to revitalize the free market, but it's a clear step in the right direction, and one that I hope makes a difference.
Rule 4 is gone. It exists to prohibit a cancerous growth strategy, but it's causing more trouble than it solves. I'd like to have the game itself fix nation farming, and I'm hoping to start a discussion about how to do that. Rule 4 is going either way. Well, aside from the spite stuff about self destructing instead of dying.
The defender's bonus can afford to lose the 75% damage multiplier. This will exacerbate issues with snowballing and the existential nature of combat, so they need to be addressed as well. However, this is the wrong solution. I'd also like to lean into the one aggressor's ADVANTAGE by making target selection more meaningful, but that's beyond this scope of this discussion.
Both inflation and deal limits can go. The game won't play any differently without them, I assure you. Neither CEF nor TNN actually paid anything of consequence.

The remaining issues that have not been touched are resource dumping, snowballing, and the existential nature of fights. All three need addressing.
One player pointed out that all three are downstream from how nations work. I'd like to discuss changing that. There WILL be knock-on effects, many of which won't be obvious. There WILL be bugs if we change something so fundamental. It MIGHT be a bad idea.
I wish to explore it anyway.

>>43564845
Any adjustment to land needs to be mindful of the goals.
We want to make losing a fight less punishing.
Ensure that winning fights is still materially rewarding, and sufficiently so to justify the cost of combat.
Reward attacking bigger players, since they're harder to beat.
Offer peaceful paths for growth to peaceful players.
It needs diminishing returns of some sort.
It must be possible to implement without a complete rewrite of the game.
It should tie into existing systems to keep complexity in check.
It should NOT make rule 4 stuff the meta.
It must NOT permanently cripple players, since that would encourage restarts or ragequits.

I also have a few goals that I think are mutually exclusive. One will have to give, unless somebody has a galaxy brain solution.
Prevent resource dumping from letting players completely bypass building up
Avoid rewarding seniority itself

The chunkiness of nations is inherently troublesome. If I make land more granular I have way more control over the punishment and reward.
Preventing total nation loss means losing a fight doesn’t instantly spawn in new land, killing rule 4 stuff. It will probably also reduce ragequits.
I cannot reduce people below their initial state since that’s less merciful than the current system. Therefor, losing a fight while already at the initial state must not have lasting consequences. I don't want it to be free, though.
Diminishing returns must apply to the amount of land CURRENTLY held, otherwise we have a snowball guarantee.

Proposal
Nations are no longer land. They CONTAIN land.
When starting the game, you have 0 land.
Existing satisfaction systems stay in place.
Divisors in the sat formula are multiplied by 1 plus your land times some constant.
The initial state of 0 land is functionally identical to how the game currently works. Nothing is different economically at first, only when you start to accumulate more land.

Players may purchase land for some scaling cost, tbd.
The cost scales with current land held.
The cost of purchasing land is a new resource, tentatively called administrative capacity. I don't like the name, it's a placeholder.
Buying land costs but does not consume admin cap.
The exact amount required to buy land would scale superlinearly. The curve is tbd, but probably a quadratic of some sort.

Any time you lose a fight, the attacker gains some percentage of your total admin cap. You, as the defender, lose slightly more than the aggressor gets to make it a lossy process and kill nation farming behavior.
Newly claimed admin cap can be used to immediately ease environmental damage. Freshly lost admin cap causes land to be lost, starting with the kind you own the most of and in a tie starting with the lowest land ID type (probably basic/mech extraction) until it free admin capacity is greater than or equal to 0.

>>43564873
Three new buildings will be added. I am not certain of their names yet, we'll call them capitol buildings.
Each of these adds 1 admin cap per tick at varying upkeep prices.
The first one would be very cheap to run, and the final one prohibitively expensive. This introduces diminishing returns and also a hard cap to your ability to generate admin cap.

Superpower attacks now have travel time because it's silly that they don't. Rebellions stay as is. Both behave as any other attack, deleting some percentage of your admin cap if not defended. Since superpower hatred and dissatisfaction already recover when these things spawn, no further changes are needed to break a soft lock. I think. Maybe make reverting governments free...

This would solve a lot of problems. Losing a fight no longer doubles your attacker's economy, it no longer completely erases everything you've ever had, and rule 4 behavior is strongly discouraged because conquest is lossy. There is a peaceful avenue for growth, but conquest also expedites your growth in a way that cannot be done peacefully, so it's rewarding. The scaling cost of expansion means that even the strongest conquerors stop growing eventuall.

It would also introduce some problems. Losing a fight while at 0 land is currently inconsequential with this plan, I might add some malus to that like missed production ticks or something I dunno. That has to be addressed.
Conquest is less significant, which IS intended, but also might make it too expensive to be worthwhile. We need to ensure people still fight somehow.
I have no idea how to handle conquering other regions with this. You might be forced to stay within your economic type, but I don't like that.
Prze do not need any land. At all.

There are probably more issues. Trying to fix a problem that the whole game is built around will doubtlessly have a lot of knock-on effects of varying subtlety. This is my best attempt so far.
If anybody has a better idea I'd really appreciate it. If you can think of a solution to one of the issues with this one, that's great too. And if it proves to be inherently broken, we can abandon this and look for other solutions to the game's issues.

File: Clipboard Image.jpg (42 KB, 535x642)

42 KB JPG

He done run off and took our only copper
When I broke jail, the house was burnt and bare
The Zebs moved the plant back to Eritri
Some days life just don't seem that fair, I don't even care
I'm telling you I just don't give a damn

I gave all my best years to that stallion
All he gave me was mouths to feed
A miracle straight from the loins of Cadance
Since Chiggers blew out both my ovaries
1925 Can Ter Bay, it was a massacre

My oldest colt was born a burrito
My youngest is uh, covered in fur
The middle one says he's a "homosexual"
The other seven have gone, I don't know where and I don't care
I just don't care

Git your Moonie ass off my property
Don't care if Canterlot gave you a deed
This farm's been Cloudy land for generations
Since we beat back them sneaky Neighponese
In the age of chaos, bring our girls home

Somehow I got sulcal candidiasis
Injecting all them cupcakes in my hoof
It's a super cheap way to party
If you aim to kill some brain cells and some time
Good luck getting them apples from me now (I'll die to rebels before 2:00)

My dreams are all dead and buried
Sometimes I wish the sun would just explode
When God comes and calls me to Her kingdom
I'll take all you runts and bitches when I go
Let 'er blow

File: Untitled.png (166 KB, 1400x1400)

166 KB PNG

What I imagine is happening every time I pay Luna to ignore my drugs

>>43564873
>>43564874
Grabbing admin cap should be split between attacking players rather than all given to the same pony the way it is now so large mob attacks pay out for smaller contributors.
I'd suggest making admin cap increase automatically as a sort of simulation of the 21 day buffer i.e. there still becomes a motivation to attack you if you do nothing.
>I have no idea how to handle conquering other regions with this. You might be forced to stay within your economic type, but I don't like that.
Proposed solution: to add a major action which creates a new nation while costing land & scaling admin cap. The new nation can't build the +admin cap buildings, costs 1 admin cap each tick, and land would be combined across subnations in an empire for calculating scaling land cost (possibly with an offset so the new nation counts as being however much land even at zero). I'd suggest making the action cost a large amount of the resources of the region so that it can't be used to generate resources you have not first legitimately acquired through war or trade.
Attacking a region that you don't have land in creates a new subnation for free that is otherwise subject to the above restrictions as long as you steal above some certain level of admin cap. Subnations count as having extra admin cap when attacked (to offset the fact that the player has less than a monotype player of equal power, and so that you can 'steal' someone's subnation reliably) - optionally they might get destroyed outright under some conditions, or just always depending on how punishing losing fights is in general.
>Losing a fight while at 0 land is currently inconsequential with this plan, I might add some malus to that like missed production ticks or something I dunno. That has to be addressed.
I'd suggest a per-tick SAT penalty that grows either geometrically or exponentially every wartick you still have troops on you. This means that players can buffer to not die from getting raided fairly easily while also leaving open the option of actually killing people if they have no friends/you significantly outweigh their friends and are otherwise able to spare the troops to sit on them. Because sitting your troops on somepony for more than one wartick is a clear statement of intent, the rest of the server gets to watch you actually try to kill somepony rather than it just being ordinary raiding.

>The defender's bonus can afford to lose the 75% damage multiplier. This will exacerbate issues with snowballing and the existential nature of combat, so they need to be addressed as well. However, this is the wrong solution. I'd also like to lean into the one aggressor's ADVANTAGE by making target selection more meaningful, but that's beyond this scope of this discussion.
Something to say about snowballing, but defense is significantly easier for alliances than it is for loose coalitions of independent players because the former have a faster reaction time by far. It's fairly easy to tell an arbitrary number of players to put their troops on somepony on a given future wartick since that can be planned any number of days in advance, whereas putting the coalition's forces onto somepony defensively is much more time sensitive and needs better coordination. The cure is probably still better than the disease but this is going to heighten the fact that it's really difficult to protect yourself from an alliance as an indie without just relying on a different alliance.

File: AAAAAAA.png (128 KB, 453x373)

128 KB PNG

>>43564234
She can't keeping away with this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3_PPdjD6mg

>>43564873
MAKE ACQUIRING MORE LAND PAST A CERTAIN POINT REQUIRE WAR AND HEAVIER PENALTIES AND DISALLOW GAINING LAND THIS WAY AFTER 21 DAYS :-) AND MAKE THE GAME SEXIER :-)

>endless hoofwringing about how HoM totally isn't TNN guize and you should leave former TNN members alone
>HoM is a single 2day old stale nation with 2 oil wells
>HoM leader remakes as a literal terrorist nation
>within hours they get fed more than I have the entire game
And then I bet the person who fed them is going to bitch and moan if there's any reprisal for this

>>43564845
>Rule 4 is going either way. Well, aside from the spite stuff about self destructing instead of dying.
Is there any need for this btw?
In [current patch] spite-suiciding is always the right move per the logic of the game because you lose nothing that you weren't going to lose anyway. Even if you don't care about denying another player stuff at all, the sooner you crash your nation the sooner you can start the next one so every tick that you spend waiting to die is a tick less that you get when you reroll. So obviously it needed to be policed out-of-game if it was to be policed at all, because you had every incentive to kill yourself.

If losing an invasion just means losing a chunk of an abstract resource and without losing your nation, and crashing your nation ~always erases days or weeks of progress, then the primary incentive to kill yourself is gone. As you say, the problem was that the defender lost everything and the attacker doubled their economy. If the relative swing in economies is less than deleting your nation would be, then it's worth it to stay in.

Moreover, depending on how 0 land invasions are handled, if they don't give anything to the attacker and just penalize the defender then letting people kill themselves is a good thing in those cases. It actually benefits the attacker because it saves them time where their troops have to be tied up killing the player that's getting merc'd. I think you could try cutting rule 4 entirely and see if any problems crop up because of it if you change the system radically enough.

>>43565160
The person who fed me is literally myself. I sent resources to someone who sent them back. Literally talk to ANYONE. At all. This is a social game and it's not anyone's fault but your own that you can't have a relationship with other players. I have, in fact, given new players and weaker nations good deals for things only because as a prze I couldn't give away parts for free or else I'd have no copper to make parts. My messages have always been open, and everyone who's approached me and asked for a deal has been given a BETTER deal than asked for. And I know a number of people who have or would have done the same, TNN and CEF both. Believe it or not, most of us care about new players, as long as they're willing to interact.

Ultimately, if you don't want to join an alliance, you are actively choosing to not interact with that part of the game and you keep bitching about how you're not getting the reward from that part of the game and other people are. Either suck it up and talk to people, or don't, and stop blaming others for the consequences of your own decisions.

I feel like a CEF victory is the bad timeline
At least TNN would've splintered after their victory with the Umbra stuff

>>43565278
Would it? Or just Umbra alone? If anything, the not-TNN was kinda numget to see happen right after the dissolution, so I wonder how that would have played out

File: MP.jpg (81 KB, 1029x1206)

81 KB JPG

>>43565257
>The person who fed me is literally myself.
I actually believe this did happen because you have two accounts, though I don't know who the player that is your second account is specifically to check whether that is the case, but this is a complete non-sequitur. No. You did not feed yourself unless you literally controlled the second nation on your second account, somepony either sent you resources for no reason or is still collaborating with you and is a defacto member of HoM. I literally said the second one. How the fuck is somepony who holds onto shit for an alliance and then gives that stuff back to that alliance not helping that alliance? Obviously they're helping you. You wouldn't have the stuff if they didn't help you. Disingenuous rat. I said that somepony is helping you and that's what you're disagreeing with but obviously they're fucking helping you. If you send a new player 2000 copper are you not helping them? Obviously you are. Come the fuck on man.

It's such a simple and obvious fact, why do you feel the need to deflect so desperately?

I didn't cast a moral judgment on them helping you either you projecting sperg, I said that they were helping you. I don't know how this is hard to understand, I guess when you're used to playing with multiple accounts it becomes hard to see the line between 'self' and 'other'.
>The person who fed me is literally myself. I sent resources to someone who sent them back.
This is literally what rule 4 exists to prevent. On a more personal level it's also directly metagaming. For all the whining about roleplay you sure don't seem to have any interest actually staying in character when it doesn't benefit you directly. In what universe is sending all your resources out of your nation before it dies so you can give them to a completely unrelated nation that you happen to be piloting not
A) Sabotaging the person who was attacking you (you even talk about trying to steal oil so you understand this is a war goal)
B) Sabotaging your last nation for the benefit of a different nation (incidentally also controlled by yourself)
For all intents and purposes this is just a low-grade, badly done version of feeding an alliance member your nation. God you're such a piece of shit it's amazing. Like you're right, flying as close to cheating as you can that the admin allows is obviously beneficial, it doesn't change the fact that you are the biggest fucking metagaming faggot imaginable. You are literally one player with defacto two accounts that uses them to play with continuity between completely unrelated nations. You're a disgrace and all this lashing out is just you projecting because you're such an incorrigible piece of shit that you can't separate theory from practice. Just cut out the middleman and make 70 accounts lol.

>stop blaming others for the consequences of your own decisions.
You are lacking in self-awareness to the point of parody lmao. Are you going to spend another 36 hours bitching in the thread because people didn't let you attack a small player and take over their nation for free or would that come too close to acknowledging the consequences of your own actions?

I don't suffer any consequences for my decisions because my decisions aren't retarded. I'm in an alliance, I'm overshooting alliance members who have been there for ages longer than me but who are less active and less social. I'm doing relatively competant play while following both the literal rules and their spirit (unlike you), that doesn't mean that I have to ideologically support the kind of play that metagaming niggers have forced onto the server as the idealized form of possible gameplay in a pure discussion space which has no impact whatsoever on my trade deals. I can make strong plays and still think that the fact that they are strong plays is fucking gay. If multikeying was allowed, would you be having a spergfit if I said that multikeying is gay?
I mean, we both know the answer to that is 'yes'.

>>43565419
Ur like a sane Huffy

File: 1765603819285088.png (87 KB, 226x317)

87 KB PNG

>>43565419
>>43565423

>>43565423
Whatever helps you feel better. There IS no rule against metagaming. Rule 4 specifically states that you must leave enough to keep it running, it doesn't state you must feed your resources to your opponent if you are conquered. Everything you're crying about is already a well established part of the game, so sooner or later, you're going to have to learn how to deal with it.

I also don't know where you get the idea that I'm trying to avoid accountability. I'm the one who posted the troops. I'm fine with being targeted as a major player in the war. Doesn't mean I can't call CEF out for what they're doing. That's a part of the game, sweetheart.

I know you don't understand what trusting someone is, or how to make friends. Maybe if you actually talked to people instead of coming to the thread to bitch and moan that people are helping each other in a social game, you'd actually have the help you cry about not having.

I can't wait to find out who attacks you first.

File: Clipboard Image.jpg (78 KB, 884x1004)

78 KB JPG

>>43566016
This sure is a lot of projection lol
>I also don't know where you get the idea that I'm trying to avoid accountability
>>43561992
>There is nothing wrong with trying to win the game. But there IS something wrong with going exterminatus because you can't handle even the possibility of being contested. Everyone is saying how they thought that TNN would conquer the whole game, but here's a little piece of knowledge for you. DV's been going around talking about how activity checks were normal, right? You want to know else was normal? Limited war. Attacking into something, taking a nation, then leaving the rest of them the fuck alone, because people weren't dicks about it. The past two times I've played, it's gone like this: "Oh I'm threatened by the fact that someone might be stronger than me, I know, I'll make sure the rest of us exterminate all of them from the fucking game."
>There's a reason why it's a warcrime to kill people who put down their weapons.

I'd tell you to cry me a river but you seem to have anticipated the request

>>43564834
I adore that this is a ponified version of the Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad poster. One of my favourite games.

Apologies to the normal ponies for being repetitious
>>43566016
>I also don't know where you get the idea that I'm trying to avoid accountability. I'm the one who posted the troops. I'm fine with being targeted as a major player in the war. Doesn't mean I can't call CEF out for what they're doing.
Yeah man this really looks like somepony that's accepting accountability
>yeah, no, let me post their incoming since they just want to paint me as a warmongering retard. Literally scraps sent off out of desperation.
>Oh, and, for the record, CEF has not stopped attacking into us, even after it's clear we can't do shit and just want to be left alone. My alliance has 5000+ incoming right now.
>>I know you're bleeding and asked for a peace agreement but we didn't know that you wanted to be peaceful so we wanted to kill you first
>Did you even count it? Did you even look at the composition? I'm throwing shit with scrounged armor around. Wanna know why? It's hot off having to defend against continued attacks against us from CEF. There's not enough oil left outside the two remaining major alliances, and did you miss the part about needing a lot? My nation at full steam uses multiple thousands of oil per tick. More than his entire net production. My alliance was already bleeding oil BEFORE we lost LMMH. There's no trading for that. It's either attack into a saddle, and maybe have a fighting chance against the next wave of attacks, or roll over and die.
Like to be clear if this game went for more than 20 days longer 'accountability' would be getting farmed the moment your nation turns 21 to general indifference and I bet you would seethe up a fucking storm if we got to see that (and it would happen again, and again, until you drop the schtick and have gone long enough without screeching like a retard that anypony would think for a day that you weren't about to turn around and attack them).

>Doesn't mean I can't call CEF out for what they're doing. That's a part of the game, sweetheart.
CEF literally aren't doing anything (besides ascending). Like TNN (back when it was big) they really should be, it's in their interests to blob and kill the serb WRT securing victory (though consensus among my alliance and the indies I've talked to is that >40% of the server thinks CEF victory is karmic retribution and majority of the rest are indifferent, so being doing nothing they're also realistically securing victory), but if we're talking about 'ethics' then the worst thing they could have been accused of is leaving you alive for too long. For someone talking about things just being part of the game you sure have bitched a lot about the fact that some of the ponies you started a war with and tried to kill (AFTER you successfully killed somepony) responded in kind.

>>43566070
take your meds

Oh hello yeah, it's back!

>>43566040
Fleetfoot?

>>43566070
Reminder that TNN didn't blob, it sent out troops that could be defeated by letters, banned the practice when it realised that was not accepted in the current culture (when in prior cultures of the game, if they didn't, CEF absolutely would), and staged a total of two meaningful attacks; one on a solar vassal, which makes sense thematically (and they then banned it when, again, the general population of independents complained), and one on their rival superpower to determine who gets to be the ascendee (everyone knew it was just a matter of time before one of them ascended or attacked the other, TNN just decided to prioritize the actual closure-giving war over rushing ascension)

TNN guaranteed the independence of basically every minor alliance. CEF stayed strategically ambiguous. TNN MERGED with two minor alliances over the course of the game. The vassal was the only real anomaly in our 'friendly to minors' stance, since we did not consider activity checks hostile - and once we saw that they WERE considered hostile by independents we outright banned the practice despite some members' complaints.

File: HELP.png (9 KB, 918x255)

9 KB PNG

>EMOVIC magical weapons inspectors have arrived at Vladihoofstock
The ponies of Vladihoofstock are nothing if not warm. They're excited to jabber about their industrial output, or to brag about their martial prowess - trying to drag the inspector to here-and-there to show them all the wonderful sights of statues and tanks and fluffy clouds and pretty buildings and all.

... Of course, Vladihoofstockians were never known for being cunning or sly. Suited ponies with sunglasses keep jingling bags of bits near the inspector's head. Doesn't seem like she's taking the bait. Maybe manila envelopes would work better?

I wasn't expecting to see an actual unique unit spawn, LOL.

>>43567112
what does a inspector even do

File: Really makes me think.png (270 KB, 631x622)

270 KB PNG

>>43567029
Propaganda is one of the most effective tools of war, so a "reminder" of an old fallen comrade is as good as constantly screaming "Nazis!" while trying to rise again in the background.
Oh wait. All of that fits commies kinda well. What's the alliance name again? Hmm....

>>43567130
He inspeccs

>>43567130
He'll inspect the communism eradicators for eradicating communism

File: smug.gif (1.09 MB, 786x600)

1.09 MB GIF

>>43567130
He'll inspect their waifus marecock.

>>43567112
That is a cure mare!

>>43567029
>TNN didn't blob
This is correctly read as "TNN failed to blob"
You crossed the threshold where everypony in the world is your enemy basically before the game even got started. The fact that you fired the first bullet in every instance is incidental.
>and staged a total of two meaningful attacks
Every single attack was an attempt to murder the other nation and take everything the other player has, and even just playing chicken with it is still a huge drain on resources and cause of economic uncertainty. Your lack of understanding of this point has done you real harm in terms of relations and you really need to stop pushing your view and see how other ponies view this sort of thing to understand how they might react. This isn't a culture thing, this is you being autistic.

Both of the attacks you're talking about were unprovoked, but that's neither here nor there. At the end of the day there's nothing wrong with trying to murder the rest of the server, that's the point of the game (because of monoascension) and it was your stated intention from the start, but at some point you're going to have to realize that that's what you were doing and either do a better job of it next time or realize that the constant disingenuous drivel is only souring people's opinions.

Like I'm going to spell this out explicitly because I don't understand how you're not getting it even though I've said it six or more times already:
You SHOULD have blobbed.
What you were doing was just as hostile as aggressively blobbing would be, so it translates to just attempting to blob very ineffectually. The bloodthirsty players like me are going to look at you and say 'oh they just suck at war' and the peaceful players are going to say 'oh they attacked me and fucked with my trades etc.'. You're not going to earn any sympathy by pretending that you're innocent after you fucked with people ingame (and failed to control the rabid dogs with your name on, who you continue to run defense for).
>TNN MERGED with two minor alliances over the course of the game.
Very very much not a point in your favor dude.

Why are you lying at me when I'm talking to Umbra about Umbra being a nig post-TNN anyway?

>>43556747
>>43556755
>Be Bat.
>Bet in Lanathesis.
>Be stirring an apple stew using a wooden spoon in your muzzle while holding in your hoof a bag of frozen peas, you press it on your swollen right eye.
>Normally you'd use your wings for holding both, but they are tightly restrained on your back.
>Hear a knock on wood. You know what it means. You set the spoon and peas down.
>Bring a cold beer to the stallion in your living room sitting on your sofa and watching your tv.
>Hold the bottle between your hooves and pop off the cap using your lower teeth. It would had been easier with your fangs but you don't have them anymore.
>The earth pony takes the bottle from you using his one front hoof, the stump on his other side scratching his balls.
>He takes two swigs and eyes you over. Still not enough.
>The tv changes from news about Endless Reverie's conquest for the daily recitation of Solarium's national anthem.
>The buck smiles and downs his beer. He lets the bottle hit the floor as he stands up next to you, easily a head taller.
>You two go into the bathroom, where you take out a bottle from the cabinet and hoof it over to the stallion.
>"Marediol. 500mg. 1/day"
>He shakes the bottle over your open mouth until two large pink pills fall inside.
>You gulp them down and open your maw to show you weren't faking.
>He closes your mouth and makes your look up to him. You see him smile, the booze has hit.
>Jumpcut to you getting railed in your bedroom.
>Every thrust is a contest of who's squeaker, the bedframe smacking against the wall or your new effeminated cries.
>Earth pony stamina is no joke. They also sweat a lot.
>You couldn't get hard anymore but were learning to enjoy this. It was becoming the best part of your day.
>He pushes in one last time and you hear him hold his breath, see his shadow on the wall going still.
>He stays inside for a while.
>When he pulls out, he rolls and gets comfortable on your bed, you have until he catches his breath to get out.
>You limp out of there as soon as you can.
>You go to sleep on the couch.

>>43567359
I masturbated to this btw

>>43567366
always a pleasure

>>43567359
Such faggotry is a danger to the social cohesion of the new Lanathesis. Please find your nearest work camp and report for the 'voluntary' program of assisted suicide. The government pays all the costs, for ponies engaging in debauchery so your families can stay safe and without worries! The local ministry of truth should point you in the right direction. You and your partner.
You're welcome. Praise the sun.

File: cums.jpg (46 KB, 472x588)

46 KB JPG

>>43567359
UNF

>>43567243
nobody cares about your bad fanfiction

>>43567029
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4f9m4OYkCY

>>43567960
banan

>>43567243
>Huge drain of resources
>One message
>At worst 4 ticks worth of baseline gdp (not counting any sales) if for some reason they didn't believe we would recall

Like, I know that ponies don't accept activity checks in the modern day, but that is still a huge exaggeration.
>Puts on old man cap
Back in myyy day, i'd get an activity check inbound to my nation once every week or two!

File: la tailor mare.png (167 KB, 1909x1216)

167 KB PNG

rarity is the only TNN member that got away...

>>43556624
>If there was any doubt in your mind about the Solarists' intentions, it's gone now.
>It's been... a few days? A week? More? Everything's been a blur.
>You've been struggling to sleep. Every time you close your eyes, you see...
>You shake your head. You shouldn't think about the nightmares.
>The only reason your family is alive is because of your connection to the Heralds.
>The warning came the day before the army arrived. You barely had time to gather what little you could.
>You think you explained to them what was happening, but you can't remember what you said.
>They objected at first. It was our home. It couldn't be as bad as you thought.
>You thank the stars that you were firm.
>The day after you left, your home, your life, everything you ever knew and cared about, was burned to the ground.
>Other memebrs brought their families, too, and whoever else they cared about.
>But even then, your group is still way too small. For every pony you know who made it out, half a dozen more didn't.
>There are a lot of faces you recognize. You know Starseeker is here, and you think you caught a glimpse of Nightshade, once, but only for a moment.
>And then there's Melody.
>Melody is struggling even more than you, and until recently, becoming more listless every day.
>You haven't been able to get the whole story from her, but you did get bits and pieces.
>She and Russet were some of the last ones to find out what was happening.
>Russet convinced her to meet up with us, while she went to warn both of their families. Better to only risk one of them than both.
>But she never made it back. Not her, not either of their families.
>She lost everything.
>You can't imagine how it must feel. You don't know what you would do if it happened to you, but you don't think it would have been much better.
>Even thinking about how fortunate you've been makes you feel a little guilty. So the least you can do is try to be there for her.
>Starseeker even came to visit her. You don't know what the two talked about, since you gave them some privacy, but Melody seemed a little less broken, afterward.
>She started eating again, anyway.
>You've only been able to talk to Starseeker yourself once since everything happened, and that meeting was painfully brief. But you understand.
>She's busy trying to keep everything together. Everypony looks to her for hope, and you don't know where she finds the resolve to keep up appearances.
>You know you have trouble with it.
>You're just... so tired.
>You wish you didn't have to sleep. The nightmares are nonstop.
>Despite your anxiety, you know you can't stay awake forever.

File: time.jpg (52 KB, 719x665)

52 KB JPG

Y'all done fucked it up

File: sadhoers.png (71 KB, 700x800)

71 KB PNG

>>43570380
Should I be scared...?

File: 1194905.png (79 KB, 900x904)

79 KB PNG

>>43570397
Not if you like fillies

File: 1432992999789.png (82 KB, 800x600)

82 KB PNG

>>43570410
But fillies don't have milk jugs

File: 1791388736036310.png (220 KB, 584x296)

220 KB PNG

>>43570420
Then yeah, I guess you can be afraid maybe
Nation age hasn't increased since the 7th. This does actually matter because the actual thing that determines whether you can do drugs / attack ponies / be attacked is not increasing, it's not just a visual bug.

File: l-lood.png (430 KB, 840x710)

430 KB PNG

>>43570436
Huh, I see that yea. Hopefully it changes tommorrow or should get admin on that

File: wardec.png (127 KB, 428x740)

127 KB PNG

now if it was me sending an army like this at Rarity, she would be getting war aid left and right.

File: Untitled.png (139 KB, 1520x1422)

139 KB PNG

>>43570530
400 AUFU/NOPE cav with 20 training should beat it (even accounting for the attackers gaining 1 training after the first fight and training on the way) if I'm understanding warcalc correctly.
Which is 'only' 116M bits, 6400 copper, 400 machinery parts + precision parts + composites ignoring upkeep

How far off are you/will you be last time you'll be up to build stuff before it hits? Even just by myself I could cover the copper and half the bits without anypony else from FFA or the other alliances getting involved.

>>43570436
>>43570446
How did I manage to do that?
It appears to be fixed. Thanks for noticing!

File: 3908262.png (475 KB, 377x566)

475 KB PNG

Live, thread, live!

Is the 21 age requirement just for being targeted by attacks, or does your nation need to be that age to launch attacks as well? Asking for non-evil purposes

>>43574212
Yes to both

>>43570530
Field tanks + AUFUs ez win

Ponies... are at war...

File: ROBOTPONY.png (9 KB, 1100x860)

9 KB PNG

If this game had some more peacetime stuff to do it'd be so awesome

>>43579624
yeah needs more content

So what's the correct time to send troops
Right before the 12:00/24:00 ticks? Anytime in the 10:00-12:00 and 22:00-24:00 range? Something different?

Basically
>when does the target get an incoming notice
>when does the 12hrs start counting from
I could test the first on the test serb but I can't test the second since ticks and warticks are sync'd there

>>43580097
The fact that warticks happen every tick doesn't change the wartick logic. War only advances on warticks. A same-region attacker for example takes 3 warticks to arrive.
So if you send it at 23:59, it will take 24 hours and 1 minute to arrive. If you send it at 12:01, it will take 35 hours and 59 minutes to arrive.
You get an incoming notification the moment a force is en route (without waiting for a tick).

The only thing army-related that happens on non-war-ticks is the sat penalty from large armies, which is a normal factor in your nation's sat calculation and is therefore "applied" every tick.

>>43580157
>The fact that warticks happen every tick doesn't change the wartick logic.
This was more just because I was thinking that the incoming notification might be tied to ticks. I keep underestimating how much of the game is realtime. Thanks!

The wartick when they arrive is the wartick where the first fight occurs and if the attacker outright kills the defender they take the nation in the same tick, right?
Though I'm not going to get to invade anypony before some of this changes most likely anyway

>>43564874
>I have no idea how to handle conquering other regions with this. You might be forced to stay within your economic type, but I don't like that.
What if land had region types, and if you win a battle against a nation in a specific region, it grants you a land (or increases your land cap?) for that specific type. Then if you have enough lands of one type, you can convert them into a brand new nation of that type, probably at the cost of having it start at 0 land again.
This allows you to expand your region type and ultimately allows self-sufficient empires, while I think keeping most of the benefits of the land system.
I would also say that conversely it should be possible to conquer an empire's nation itself, perhaps after more than one attack though (maybe you have to conquer every land unit first, bringing it to 0, and then the nation is conquerable?). The player's last nation would be exempt to again avoid the total loss case from today.
Not entirely sure how land and admin cap would be divided between empires - the system you described trivially lends itself to admin being per-nation (just like sat and lands are), but thematically speaking it'd be cool to have an empire-wide admin mechanic. Maybe it's simpler not to, though.

>Losing a fight while at 0 land is currently inconsequential with this plan
Maybe if you have 0 land AND it's your last and only nation, a sucesful attack raids a portion of your stockpiles instead. Hmm, though those are easy to hide. Maybe it destroys some portion of buildings too, forcing an effort to rebuld? And has a temporary massive sat malus as the population reels from the defeat.

>We need to ensure people still fight somehow.
Make ascending expensive enough that people get bored over the 2-3 months minimum the game takes. Fighting is the only other thing to do.
The bigger problem IMO is not that figthing is expensive, it's the political situation that if there's a rival faction and it tries to attack someone, it's always in your interest to help fund a defense: it denies the attacker the victory, wastes a bunch of their resources at a favorable rate, and gives you diplomatic brownie points (everyone loves a protector). Reducing defender's advantage should help with making the resource exchange less one-sided, and maybe making battles less consequential will also actually lower the risk of just letting a rival win something, making occasional low-stakes attacks more common rather than forcing the game into a confrontation of superpower factions every time?
Not sure, but I doubt it'll make things worse. The diplomatic deadlock issue might need to be solved separately.

>Prze do not need any land. At all.
Przes are weird like that, it's just the same as how you don't need any extra nations of them today. I don't know if this really needs a rework or if they're fine being outliers.

>>43580290
>This was more just because I was thinking that the incoming notification might be tied to ticks. I keep underestimating how much of the game is realtime. Thanks!
Yeap, rule of thumb is that player actions are realtime, while game state transition happens on ticks.
I guess you could expect "sending an army" to be a state transition that the player just queues up before the wartick, but yeah, in this case it's considered a direct realtime player action same as creating a building.

>The wartick when they arrive is the wartick where the first fight occurs and if the attacker outright kills the defender they take the nation in the same tick, right?
Correct. If an attacker is present in a nation. either there's defenders and a battle is resolved, or there's no defenders and then the nation is conquered by the attacker. The tick an army arrives it is immediately considered present in the nation.
So for instance friendly defenders arriving the same wartick will also immediately be considered present and will immediately participate in the battle.

Maybe we can look to other nationsim games for inspiration as to what else we could add
I remember one of them had like, a faux baseball team that players could invest into and play against other nations with. Shit like that would be cute for us
I also think it let u define names for ur own currency and blah-blah-blah. I think a lot of larpy shit is relatively low effort and would help ppl feel more invested and give us things to poke at
Cus rn i get the feeling of ahh i wanna play 4clop but then i open it up and its like damn I did just about everything for now

I'd like to suggest that cross-region attacks should not be slower than same-region.

For big alliances in the later game it makes no difference because you just funnel stuff to the pony that sends the attack anyway and it makes it harder to attack ponies to get stuff that you don't have. In the current system, as an indie the most useful kind of acquisition is a different base resource and as part of an alliance it's interchangeable (literally) so shaving off the extra 24hrs that cross-region attacks currently suffer from would make opportunistic stuff a bit easier.

clopity clop

>>43585787
balls

File: glimpopcorn.gif (787 KB, 337x321)

787 KB GIF

>>43585787
balsl

File: 2 dragons.png (15 KB, 216x529)

15 KB PNG

Is there supposed to be two dragons in the armor marketplace? also lol at both weapon and armor marketplace being unused

>>43586447
On old old iterations, was it ever actually used?

>>43586447 (me)
also I think there needs to be some sort of promotion system to announce to all users you're selling weapons/armor since probably barely nopony scans through it for anything

I'm curious what the sentiment of long-time ponies about some kind of gambling would be. It's a big selling point of the game that there's no RNG at all though I guess you could technically keep that if it was like secret auction or RPS stuff.
I guess the entire idea of turns always being able to be planned out ahead of time is only really a thing because the free market is kind of anemic at the moment, considering that gambling stocks is the purest electric cocaine gambling feeling there is.

>>43586447
>also lol at both weapon and armor marketplace being unused
I mean
>trade high value item in bits only and pay flat % of the bits cost as tax
>nature of combat means that essentially all defense is adhoc and flexibility in printing the right equipment is extremely valuable in terms of practical performance
vs
>send stuff needed to make item + bits in a deal
>locked into those particular items
it's cheaper to do deals in the base resources than for a trade which has free market fags on both sides

the market changes admeme put forward will fix the money side of it for certain scenarios but won't change the fact that trading finished products is just too cumbersome unless you're defacto multikeying
maybe zebs will start selling full sets of shib/dragon + unicorn gear but I doubt it

>>43586603
what if there was a dynamic "(X)" besides the name, which shows how many listings are in the market. Also done in the normal market too.
Like: Copper (3) , meaning there's 3 mares selling copper at that moment (all three listings could be from one mare, but 3 different prices)

There have already been considerations to fix these problems
>conquest is existential (the land rework)
>early game is very unengaging to new players (no rework but was discussed earlier)

There's a third point worth discussing IMO:
>mid and late game upkeep is so uneventful that you fall asleep and lose your nation to negligence
Tasks which are utterly routine and repetitive, or even require doing nothing whatsoever, are generally considered boring. The gameplay past early game and outside of wars boils down to "do your usual trades for upkeep once every day or even 2 days" which is the most unengaging thing possible.
So the overall gameplay is just this boring routine but if you ever fuck up you lose your entire nation. "Do almost nothing 99% of the time for literal weeks on end and make sure you NEVER mess up even once" is basically anti-fun gameplay, it's the polar opposite of what if generally considered fun in almost all contexts.

I don't have a good solution to this to propose right away, I'm just saying this is something worth considering when thinking about gameplay design and potential reworks of the game.
People sometimes say "I wish there was more stuff to do during peacetime" and not only is that true, but I simply want to go further and say that basic upkeep trading should be automatable, and a literal chore should not be the main pillar of gameplay. Add a feature like repeatable deals, either with a limit (runs X times before expiring) or forever, so that people can negotiate trades for supply for X duration and alliances can set up supply routes without having to do the exact same basic trades every single day, day in day out.
Obviously right now this would mean there'd be no reason to log in at all, so it'll only be possible if some extra gameplay is added. I don't know what that gameplay would look like, honestly. Random raids/bandit invasions/whatever has been brought up for example. It's a cool idea but also the gameplay should still not revolve all around "check notifications to see if there's anything new, if not do nothing", so it'd be fun as part of a wider set of features but not enough on its own.
How about something like seasonal changes, or variable demands from your population, which require you to dynamically adjust your production for maximum efficiency? Then if you don't log in for a few days, you don't just automatically die, rather your production just becomes less efficient. But if you do check in once or even several times a day, you can adjust things in real time and always keep your output at peak, thus an active set of players or alliance will naturally outcompete one that consists entirely of afk members. So there's an incentive to log in rather than fall asleep and forget the game exists, at the same time if you have to be away or just can't be bothered you don't immediately just leave your nation and your alliance hanging.

There's probably a lot more than can be thought about here.

File: Clipboard Image.jpg (50 KB, 603x816)

50 KB JPG

I'd suggest something more like superpowers put deals onto the market.
So like every tick there's a %chance that Luna or Celestia put up a global deal of [X of some resource] for [Y of something else] (this could also include troops or armor or even unique pre-geared troops of some flavors) with variability in the rate so some deals are just better than others and there's more benefit from checking every tick
Filling the deal would give you +rep for every unit of the deal you complete so it also forces you into dealing with the superpower rep system in a non-static way

This would create economic uncertainty in a way which causes there to be more stuff rather than less without taking away the fact that you need other players/other nation types in order to meet upkeep and not just die due to not rolling a 1/50 chance 24 times in a row. Of course this would introduce a genuine RNG factor to the global economy rather than letting it emerge entirely from player interaction but unless player interaction gets a lot more complex that's unlikely to change. It's easy to be >10x as active as most of your trading partners at the moment.

I do think it's important that attacking others carries a lot of reward, it's a sign of something bad either about the game or the meta when picrel can exist (age 54! mind you since we lost two days) and nopony has collected it and this isn't, like, somepony rebuilding from nothing. Stasis could also allow a buffer for new attacks to be launched, it's definitely a contributor to the current state of defense trumping offense and that's only going to become more true when the combat drawback of stasis is removed.

>>43586675
>How about something like seasonal changes, or variable demands from your population, which require you to dynamically adjust your production for maximum efficiency? Then if you don't log in for a few days, you don't just automatically die, rather your production just becomes less efficient.
Maybe I'm just retarded but how would this not kill you when it means you don't hit your trading quotas for the automatic deals? This is more punishing for more active players (outside of those with big buffers from large charitable networks, but that's still just collective inactivity) because it rewards not trading anywhere close to your limits and instead just sitting around on big stockpiles and not using them to get ahead since variable demands can just suddenly drop you into a crisis.

>>43586960
>I do think it's important that attacking others carries a lot of reward, it's a sign of something bad either about the game or the meta when picrel can exist (age 54! mind you since we lost two days) and nopony has collected it and this isn't, like, somepony rebuilding from nothing.
Right now attacking and succeeding carries massive rewards since it's the only only way to gain multiple nations per player.
The problem is entirely in the meta. In fact attacking might be TOO advantageous, because it's basically always optimal for everyone else to help fund the defense to deny you the nation. You need a very good casus belli to actually be able to launch an attack and not immediately find yourself in an economic war with the entire rest of the game, which is why there was exactly one war between TNN and CEF, and TNN lost in part due to fucking up but also in part due to having very strained relations with most independents and other alliances and thus getting presumably zero outside funding.

Last round two years ago, TNN attacked the Bird early, and they had rushed their late game alliance while literally nobody else knew the game and everyone was tiny in comparison. This still led to TNN downfall because again the entire game banded together to fund the Bird's defense, and while ultimately he ended up on the verge of losing and stasised, the prolonged attacks managed to drain TNN's stockpiles and gave everyone else a chance to catch up, so with the Bird war over they suddenly found themselves surrounded by peer economies and basically not in a position to attack anyone else anymore.

I don't know how you'd solve this either, but I do think making attacks less consequential will actually help because it might no longer be automatically worth it for everyone to deny you the attack.

FORGET ABOUT THE FREEMARE WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE

File: Screenshot_20261011_18163(...).jpg (326 KB, 3044x556)

326 KB JPG

Meanwhile, the infection au subplot:

>>43587026
I'm just talking about the ratio

Right now a successful attack destroys at least as much as it gives. Empires are worse than nations (worse GDP, sat penalty), not sure if that matters (generally it's negligible since an alliance can just shuffle around nations internally) so the objective gain is the same or slightly worse than the objective loss, but the subjective loss can often be a lot more than the subjective gain. Like as you say, it doubles one player's power, but it also zeros the other one and that's a much bigger ratio of their new economy in terms of the change. But these are all just products of it being atomized into such large units which is a different topic entirely, and the heart of most of the present problems.

What I'm saying here is just stuff like
>It would also introduce some problems. Losing a fight while at 0 land is currently inconsequential with this plan, I might add some malus to that like missed production ticks or something I dunno. That has to be addressed.
could be too heavy handed depending on the implementation
Lost production ticks would literaly kill you at many points in the game. Imagine not having enough toys to run your sat buildings and just getting raped by missing the +2000 SAT that usually floats your economy. If you add lost production ticks onto a system where you just steal some admin cap then it's now considerably (very considerably if it's a player that isn't ready to lose prod ticks) negative in terms of world net resources, ignoring any overhead also spent on fighting. Farming nations on allies is a problem and it's something that's solved by the thing being stolen being something that ticks up, but raiding still needs to be beneficial enough that people don't consider you an antisocial pariah for doing it under any circumstances whatsoever.

basically
>raiding has to be net negative for basic sanity or else alliances will raid internally a lot always all the time
>but it shouldn't nuke the person that gets raided
>but it should still give good enough benefits that you want to do it

Making the amount of stuff you steal (at once) small is fine, somepony could have been raiding pic >>43586960 continuously over a period of 4+ weeks, all I'm saying is that undefended attacks shouldn't feel like they're erasing vast amount of wealth from the world
>>43587770
I love how admin told us to fight the CEF in the OP and literally nopony is going to bother

>>43588330
>I love how admin told us to fight the CEF in the OP and literally nopony is going to bother
The Solar Empire has declared war on Vladihoofstock! 2026-10-12 04:00:03

sunbutt will

File: You want to what to my what.png (978 KB, 1280x980)

978 KB PNG

>>43590181
Oh shi-

If you'll excuse an old writefag his hyperfixation...

Enquirer
Celestia’s declaration of war shook the world. Her verbiage was uncharacteristically stern, and her tone passionate.
“Deliver to Equestrian authorities all the leaders of Vladihoofstock who hide in your land. Close immediately and permanently every research lab, and hand over every terrorist, and everypony in their support structure, to appropriate authorities... They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.”
In a dramatic policy shift, she has abandoned her historical position of minimal intervention, and has declared her intent to control the entirety of the world, either by diplomacy or by force.
“Our war begins with Vladihoofstock, but it does not end until ALL threats have been eliminated. From this day forward, any nation that refuses to comply shall be considered hostile not only to Equestria, but to all of Ponykind.”
We do not know what EMOVIC spotted that could prompt such a reaction. The full report remains classified, and likely will for some time to come. We can only speculate as to what has spurred such a response. Is she driven entirely by pragmatism? Anger?
Fear?
The address prompted widespread civil unrest, with protests and isolated riots breaking out in many major urban centers. Despite deploying a wide array of deterrents, including chemical irritants, riot police were largely unsuccessful at dispersing the crowds until well past their bedtime. An informal survey of the dissenting public cited two major objections to the policy. Some objected to any military intervention whatsoever, asserting that the affairs of Zebrica should not be our concern. Most, however, had a much darker goal. Many of them want us to support the project.
The Communist Eradication Front has historically been aligned with Celestia, and sympathetic to our ideals. They have, to date, done nothing but oppose unprovoked attacks from Lunarist cults, and are wholly responsible for the protection of many nations from Tir Na Nog. There can be no doubt that, without their intervention, the world as a whole would be a far darker place. They protected IWTCIRD from the forces of darkness, and recently destroyed the Nightmare Moon cult known as the Heralds of Midnight. Their allegiance in the past is undeniable, and our debt to them appreciable. We must remember and honor their work, and we must acknowledge that, whatever it is they're developing, it would likely be used against Lunarist forces, and may even be instrumental in reuniting Equestria.
Celestia barely hesitated to invade. While we do not know the exact timeline, we can be certain her decision was finalized within 10 hours of receiving the report. How much of that was spent planning? How much was spent issuing orders, drawing plans, and preparing the speech? How little was spent actually deliberating on what must be done? All the goodwill that the CEF had generated amounted to a brief pause, perhaps even less.

>>43590516
We do not know what exactly this novel weapon is, nor do we know the intended target. All we know for certain is that Celestia felt she had no recourse other than swift and terrible retribution. Dark Vessel's warning appears to have been validated, and Celestia herself agrees- perhaps for the first time- with the former leadership of Tir Na Nog. The Communist Eradication Front is the enemy of Ponykind. Their laboratories must be destroyed. And their leadership must be brought to justice.
I proudly condemn all the rioters out in the streets, cheering on the development of these weapons. I know they are likely to be turned against the Republic. I know that it could be the end of this conflict, and that this might mark ultimate victory for Celestia and her followers. None of this is relevant. Please, remember who you are. Before this conflict began, they were our sisters, our brothers, our friends. An attack on them is an attack on our family. Fragmented though we may be, we are still Equestrians. Misguided though they may be, they are us.
May Celestia’s light guide us all, even those who walk in the dark.

>>43588330
>I love how admin told us to fight the CEF in the OP and literally nopony is going to bother
lol it's impossible for any other alliance and indepenants. strongest alliances with empires would need nerfs or something like what I presume the solar empire declaration with constant attacks from NPCs so stockpile can be consumed to give any chance of weaking the strongest alliance.

>>43592805
TNN and CEF were the same size and TNN still lost
also solar empire is now warring CEF so there may be a chance

>>43592805
Eh
I think the war is impossible because anons are retarded and CEF are active but it would have been easy to significantly outmass them if indies (and TNN remnants) weren't attacking each other and micronations weren't deliberately throwing since CEF have been deliberately passive. There are 2.21x as many nations that aren't in CEF as are in it and dogpiling ontop of the event troops when they arrive would have negated a lot of the advantage of being the defender.

My post was more about the random attacks that HoM and ZAAM carried out and the acceptance of CEF victory contrasted with the fact that admin actually decided to weigh in on politics after deliberately staying neutral before though rather than the feasibility for attacking into them though rather than anything about the numbers. Fighting an obviously superior foe is still fighting and it doesn't cost anything more than dying does either way.

The funny thing about the game is that because it's so cooperative, and only a single player can actually get the ascend, it's natural for players to lump themselves into not just alliances but entire factions, play cooperatively, and consider a win inside their faction to be a win for themselves.

So a Vladihoofstock win is considered a CEF win, and a CEF win is considered a win for anyone aligned and friendly with the CEF, and may not be considered a loss or particularly hated by anyone neutral either.
I think we might not see any attacks very simply because nobody minds CEF winning.

>>43592872
That's politics baybe

>>43569965
>You must have dozed off at some point, because in the next moment, you come back to awareness to somepony gently shaking you.
>You turn to look, and...
>Oh.
>It's her. It's Starseeker.
>She speaks to you. You're not quite sure what she says, but you understand what she wants nonetheless.
>She wants you to come with her.
>You've been wanting to find her again, so you don't hesitate to follow her.
>She leads you away from the rest of the refugees, across the same fields she brought you to on that fateful night, when you found out that the unthinkable had happened.
>The stars shine bright, yet, just out of hoof's reach, the darkness is thick and heavy.
>She leads you forward by the light of her horn, a bright beacon in the middle of a sea of dark.
>You're not exactly sure how long you've been walking, but it feels like forever.
>You look up, and see the moon, obscured behind a cloud of red smoke.
>You feel anxious. Something feels wrong, somehow.
>You look back to the path, only to find that you're lagging behind.
>You thought you only looked away for a moment, but Starseeker has gotten a good distance ahead of you.
>You're not sure how you didn't notice, before.
>You hurry after her, despite how hard it is to move your legs.
>You're not very fast, and every step feels like it takes all of your effort, but you do start to catch up to her.
>Or at least, that's what you thought.
>The closer you get, the more you realize that something is wrong.
>The pony you've been following isn't Starseeker.
>The pony turns back to look at you, but you can't make out her features underneath her heavy cloak.
>She speaks to you. You're not quite sure what she says, but what you hear sends a chill deep through your core.
>You're not sure that this is a pony, anymore.
>As if responding to your thoughts, the creature opens its wings, so wide that it blocks out both the moon and the stars.
>It's only then that you realize that there's nothing keeping the darkness at bay.
>You can suddenly feel the heat trying to latch onto your legs.
>You pull your hoof away from the unseen tendril, only to feel another wrap around one of your other legs.
>The creature begins to approach.
>You try your hardest to run, but you can't free your legs. You try to light your horn, but it's not bright enough. You try to beat your wings, but you can feel the heat of oozing shadows gripping you through your feathers.
>The creature's wings wrap their way around behind you.
>You fight. You struggle.
>But there's nothing you can do.
>The heat and darkness engulf you.

>>43586654
you mean ponies

>>43595614
you mean creatures

File: .png (17 KB, 515x57)

17 KB PNG

Operating within expected parameters, everything nominal

File: Gib_copper.png (957 KB, 1317x997)

957 KB PNG

>an entire alliance of loyal Solar vassals
>Equestria sends a "forward operating base" consisting of 18,000 troops at training 50 (!!)
Fuck Celestia.

But! We can't fuck Celestia alone, let alone when her sister inevitably joins in. So we're inviting everyone to join the princest rape.

Yeah turns out the new ascension is balanced around the assumption that you would own the entire game's economy before starting. Keep in mind training is exponential, so training 50 is 2.7x stronger compared to our cap of 1.5x, and take correspondingly less damage. Or for context, our biggest wave against TNN involved sending about 6k troops; we're using 23255 troops to defend this right now. And this is just the first wave, we can only assume the next ones will keep ramping up.
In other words, if anyone is to ascend at all this iteration, we'll need to coordinate the entire game's economy for this. It basically needs to be a collective effort or it's not possible. This means either direct funding, or a world war by necessity.
Friendship is magic and this can be done this without bloodshed, but all the nations are necessary for this one way or another.

We'll be reaching out to everyone to discuss how you want to contribute.

>>43598431
lol no

>>43598431
You live and learn. It should also be warned beforehand that you'll face the wrath of the host once you start ascending.
Maybe host should look at the offending alliance's internal numbers before sending waves accordingly...

>>43598499
>Maybe host should look at the offending alliance's internal numbers before sending waves accordingly...
It will be a coded amount not anything relative, so it will take most every nation contributing willingly or otherwise
(\ Hail Victory

>>43598499
Having level scaling in the ascension relative to your strength would be lame as fuck.

To be fair having the win condition be based on also owning a significant chunk of the game is kinda cool, and encourages war a lot more than the old super lame ascend. If TNN had not started a war earlier, this would've basically forced it now, since it would've been clear that only one of us would've been able to ascend - winner take all.
I think host might have just overtuned it a bit based on not expecting this round to be so small, even compared to the previous one. In fact if Baltimare had not joined midway with 15+ new players, the game might have ended up literally softlocked: the combined nations of TNN and CEF together are almost certainly not going to be enough by themselves.

>>43598692
did you copypasta from somewhere like a notepad or calc with commas? it stops at them truncating the rest

>>43598694
yeah just found out that having , makes it stop. oops

>>43598431
>We'll be reaching out
lol
>how you want to contribute.
lmao

>>43598705
we thank you for the generous donation of your entire nation

File: 1717345190907.png (651 KB, 1317x562)

651 KB PNG

>>43598431

>>43598722
>nohooves

File: the danger zone.jpg (50 KB, 561x376)

50 KB JPG

>>43598717
They couldn't even get Rarity, what do I have to fear?

>>43598786
They killed an entire superpower alliance within a week

Next iteration we gotta send out actual real ads. Like on 4ch and derpibooru and like tryhard that shit day0. I will dedicate money for this

>>43598995
start making cringe summary youtube shorts about the game
that'll give you numbers

>>43599111
It's unfortunate that that probably would work since Dominions got a lot of players from fucking awful youtubers

>>43599111
>start making cringe summary youtube shorts about the game
>that'll give you numbers
lord no please

>>43601829
No this is genius. I would love to fight tourists. Fuck it we should advertise to e621. We really should advertise to everyone we despise

File: Clipboard Image.jpg (40 KB, 865x504)

40 KB JPG

>training went down by 2-3 on the attackers
>even made the lower training ones negative
Working as intended?

>>43602279
Oh, somebody noticed!
Working as intended. Negative training works as you'd expect it to.
>>43586447
This is a bug. I'm hesitant to fix it since that would activate another bug, but I should really make the time.
>>43586675
You raise a really good point. It does get annoying.
>>43598551
It might be a bit too tough, yes. Balance around this is entirely theoretical, and I'd rather not change it while it's ongoing since that's really unfair, so it's ultimately just a good guess.
The intent is that this is something you cannot do unless you're a huge snowball, and it should be rough enough that there's a chance for everyone else to catch up.
>>43598995
I'd love to! What I need most is a banner ad.
Some people have proposed I run ads in the game to fund an ad campaign. No. Not happening. I'll take donations if people are willing, and pay out of pocket otherwise.

>>43566682
No, I just really loved that game back in the day and still play it from time to time.

I've never heard of this game before and just happened to find this thread, but it looks fucking sick. I'm gonna try and learn this.

File: 6847372.png (422 KB, 1350x1280)

422 KB PNG

>>43602425
>The intent is that this is something you cannot do unless you're a huge snowball, and it should be rough enough that there's a chance for everyone else to catch up.
This is conceptually unsound. If you want to push through a victory and others have the chance to fuck you out of it and the actual ascension is that hard, the right thing to do becomes just burning down every other nation so that nothing other than your alliance exists and at most you have to deal with other players with 21 days of development coming in at the last moments of ascension. Heck, you could burn everything down, wait 18 days, start FK research, then reap the server again before event stuff starts to happen and have a big safe buffer where you can go through the entire process unmolested. I don't know if people play stuff this aggressively but the reason why the alliance that won this round didn't kill or convert everypony else at gunpoint is just because they thought they didn't need to and as soon as they saw the actual numbers they changed their tune >>43598431
I don't think this is really related to the frustrations of the combat system that you elaborated at the top of this thread since once you're 60% of the server you can grind the game to a halt and just attack ponies over and over again until they collapse almost no matter what the system is as long as combat does anything at all.

I know that the culture of >clop is pretty different to what I'm used to but AIUI monoascension is foreign to the previous mindset/culture anyway. The only reason something interesting is happening in this game at this point is because we were blindsided by new mechanics and the expectation had been that ascension wouldn't require a second world war / world unification. If CEF had known ahead of time that they needed another dozen nations to get through it, do you think they would have started FK when they did instead of just collecting those nations first?
The only difference between having 60% of the world economy and 90% is spending the time to absorb/kill the other 30%.

just IMO

>>43602549
>blindsided
I tried to warn them.
I actually HAD expected them to blob or negotiate an alliance with everyone before trying. The long duration of research was meant to give everyone a chance to rebuild.

Could be a mistake, yes. Again, everything here is theoretical. They're currently playtesting it, and if it sucks I'll have to change it. I might have to change it even if it's good given next season will hopefully be mechanically different.

Still not sure on how to handle land... I might chicken out and just allow peaceful expansion without a proper reform, but I think there's a lot more room for improvement. I'm just having trouble finding a way that doesn't break everything else.

>>43602596
I mean I just don't think a system which requires you to have won before spending 3 weeks or whatever printing out the achievement is very interesting.

Like conceptually once you're past the line where you can beat the rest of the server the game is over. There are no more decisions to make for the winner, the rest of the server decide if they join or die, and then it's just waiting (obviously around the line where it turns over there's room for player skill or coordination or whatever but this quickly becomes just a minimum level of diligence). If you make it optimal to spend an extra month sitting around doing nothing getting bigger then it just makes there a choice between playing it correctly and speeding things up but either which way the game actually ended and there's nothing left to do besides ticking off the checkboxes.
>I actually HAD expected them to blob or negotiate an alliance with everyone before trying.
What's the point of going through with ascension then? Blobbing is the end of the game, tacking an unskippable 528hr cutscene on after that is pointless. In most 4X games the additional/standard wincon is something that takes a couple turns once you're past the point where anypony can realistically contend with you (often a much smaller portion if they're FFA but in team games it's still not going to be more than staying at 60-70%+ for more than a couple turns).
If ascension is something you can only do once you've completely subdued the server then it should be effectively instant. AIUI old ascension was both easier and didn't bother anypony else outside of metagame aspects like the timing of server resets but was closer to the traditional 4X endgame timing in terms of difficulty.

(tried to think of a less whiny way to phrase this but there isn't one really)
>I tried to warn them.
If you wanted to warn people then you could just post the actual mechanics instead of making it a black box and then chiding people for being surprised by a black box. Like assuming the coming attacks are going to be more than Vladihoofstock by itself produces, the correct CEF play from a realpolitik standpoint is taking everything out of Vladihoofstock and letting it die and then engaging in the world war hoovering up the remains and only then do they restart ascension from scratch a month or two from now. Obviously that's fucking gay and probably not what they're going to do but that's only because they're good sports.

Remember that from our perspective you're essentially just choosing what happens in realtime (since we have no way of knowing new mechanics until it happens the first time) and once it's happened once ponies will have written down what spawns and just know what is needed to clear it same as before. Like imagine we've seen it and people estimate that you'd want like 40 nations and no war to do it comfortably. There are 60 active nations on the server it's interesting - if arbitrary and unknowable - because we're experiencing something completely dynamic, but if anypony went up to 40 nations there would be no point in making either them or the rest of us sit around for 22 days while we wait for them to go through ascension and maybe scoop up any stragglers.

>>43602998
>the correct CEF play from a realpolitik standpoint is taking everything out of Vladihoofstock and letting it die and then engaging in the world war hoovering up the remains and only then do they restart ascension from scratch a month or two from now.
that was our contingency plan if the rapestacks didn't stop, yes
pausing research paused the incoming. so unless more come when this lot is killed off or something, it's pause and consolidate before continuing the research since we have to expect going forwards it's only going to escalate including stacks from Luna, at which point the only way out is through since it would be unavoidable topups of ~240+ troops per tick

>>43602549
>>43602992
Yeah, now that we know it requires a world war, next time it'll happen before the FRF is booted up.

I think the crux of the problem here is that it takes 200 ticks + however long the actual ascension takes (last time it was 100-something ticks more). So if you do a pre-emptive world war, achieve world dominance and then start FRF, you now have to wait a 3-week IRL timer to get your victory which is a foregone conclusion. At best it's now a PvE battle if the ascension is difficult enough to somehow still be interesting, but meanwhile everyone else is twiddling their thumbs waiting for the reset.

This time around it worked out great because nobody knew what it'd look like so we get genuine dynamics out of the requirements for world war. But next time this might need to be tweaked.