KTs will be much easier this round as people will either be Turtles or anti-turtles. I still think that a good DW that can manage their population will be problematic for everyone as they'll benefit the most from LT based defense and insanely cheap dragoons with extra offense.
It will be hilarious when the 4x casualties ruins someone's defenses on a first break, or random grab thou.
Better than a lot of SK changes, but some of the secondary advantages are a bit counter-intuitive.
Oceanic for example: the extra defense benefits turtles and new players, but then the disadvantage really hurts anyone going for an explore based play. The secondary advantage makes it easier to build defense on top of that by making it cheaper by a bit, but since exploring land is a primary cost of both new and turtle strategies, it is actually really bad for both play styles. So the biggest benefit is actually anti-turtle, but it still gets whooped by DW or event MT in this regard anyways.
Terraform is the other planet that is not really ideally balanced. The secondary advantage is counter-intuitive for the primary advantage. If I have a 75% research efficiency, I need less scientists already. Reducing the cost of scientists is not really good then because I'm already getting more out of my scientists, so need less of them. Thus, the only strategy that this planet type is actually good for is tech rushing - but with Multiple Terrain being the way it is, if you wanted to go that route it would be better to just pick DW and MT to get that extra offensive boost. Otherwise, it's advantage doesn't really come into effect until later in the round and the income differences are too much of hindrance to make that beneficial.
Mystical Lands on the other hand, you have a fantastic logic there. 25% is a good number because that means you can realistically have returns that allow for dangerous play. The secondary advantage is interesting, because the disadvantage makes you lose 10% more units per attack when you are ideally attacking 25% more anyways. So having shields cheaper just makes sense. Likewise, a cost reduction on all shields in general would make sense. You follow the same logic for Mount too.
DW way too OP though - especially when considering NAPs and such. From what I've read it seems like you guys have an issue over there with the player affiliation balance ala xLTx, and planet types like DW really take advantage of this due to the anti-turtle nature of it. It needs a much harsher disadvantage. For example, slower return times would make more sense for DW than other planets due to this. Something along the lines also of having Tanks have less defensive power would also be intuitive in this regard so DW players would have to be more responsible, but still have the ability to create game changing moments over a short period of time.
Ideally, you'd want to balance the game in a manner where each planet type hits a different timing window in the round where they are strongest. In this manner, strategies would be created to defend and attack at these points from players. You see this already with DW and mobilization early, with Mystical due to returns and inacts, Mounts in the late game, and in the past with Terraform tech rushes for TFs. Not an easy task. :P
Also as a side note, I've always been a fan of creating a late game upgraded version of the tank. A lot of the more interesting game play elements of SK revolve around the tank because it's the sole "buffer" unit and encourages risk taking.
Its all counting on the situation first of all we only have a 1 mounth game still.
For Oceanic I calculated it myself the exploring cost are no problem you gain more money from the cheap LDs buildings as the explore cost is, i even did this calculation with my 10k land end game from last round so with lower land it will even pay more off. Although who sayed Oceanic need to just explore and turtle ?
For Terra I can't really agree either with every TF planet I played whatever it was SK or GoC I gone high sciens at beginning at least to use the research bonus what would be the sence of playing a planet with high research if you have no sciens ??? And since Terra has bad income this helped a lot to spent the cash elsewhere also if you use cheap units you don't even need TCs.
And we took out the SL bonus this helps a lot in the game play too its also bad a bit for DW. And at all we are just on way its still in beta !
taking input from a has been isnt going to do you any justice and basing it on someone who has rampantly cheated wont help you either
just for starts when I saw you say the 2nd bonus for terra was stupid, please calculate me the amount you save on one single scientist. Then tell me what that can buy with that
taking input from a has been isnt going to do you any justice and basing it on someone who has rampantly cheated wont help you either
just for starts when I saw you say the 2nd bonus for terra was stupid, please calculate me the amount you save on one single scientist. Then tell me what that can buy with that
26,400,000 monies saved, is that a good amount compared to other PT advantages? You tell me. This only considers early - mid game, good potential for end game terras.
I bet you mount income bonus is better than the 26.4mil saved haha
Terra has 75% more reseach so can easy keep all researchs maxed and even warp over a long run which also means more land = income. And if you use it right and get TFs as fast as possible you can also gain some nice honor.
26,400,000 monies saved, is that a good amount compared to other PT advantages? You tell me. This only considers early - mid game, good potential for end game terras.
That's where you and I differ - I consider things from a different perspective. You can call me a has been, that's cool; however, the concept of the game remain the same no matter how things change. You can add up all the money you save and what not, but what is important is the applications of that. What you neglect to think about is that research is based upon land, which is based upon the stratification of kingdoms ala exponential growth that the game has always been influenced by. Most people call this term DPA, and the above why DPA is always higher for smaller kingdoms than larger ones. I am simply providing the reason why this occurs. The applications of DPA mean that large kingdoms also have a reduced exponentially larger income then kingdoms smaller than them. Which means the top kingdoms grow much faster per land than any other kingdom in the game.
Likewise, scientists required also has the same function - it goes up exponentially as land does. Although this is coded into the game, much like the math you provide above. At some point growth goes up so quickly that it becomes ineffective to even build scientists. With this in mind, Terraform's bonus prolongs this, but the income decrease offsets anything that would be gained by this bonus - even when consider the possibility of extra income due to saved barracks space. Likewise as the bonus is linear, and the function of scientists required is exponential, that point is *barely* prolonged at all. This means Terraform bonus' have a limited impact, and are actually a hindrance for larger kingdoms when considering the entirety of the game.
Now, consider this as a whole. Kingdoms on smaller amounts of land need exponentially less scientists, but higher DPA, and thus are able to grow slow. This means that they need significantly less scientists overall to begin with, because they are growing slower, and thus have more time to get research points on their land. They also have less income to spend on DPA. This means that Terraform bonus is even worse off for them since the benefits of the bonus are a function of how much money you originally need to spend on scientists.
The other application of this bonus, used to be rushing research such as TFs. Obviously that supplies a benefit, or rather it made sense before the MT buff. So, having researches early is convenient, but I would then argue that enjoying the extra 10% income and putting this directly into scientists on another planet type would more than make up for this advantage since the amount of income spent on scientists is much less than 10%.
So yes, the secondary advantage isn't terrible. The problem is the application of the three avantages together that makes Terraform a less than desirable plante type. If the disadvantage were something other than the income loss, than it would be an effective and useful bonus. It's the interaction of the bonus' in combination with the way the game actually works as whole, that create the problems.
For Oceanic I calculated it myself the exploring cost are no problem you gain more money from the cheap LDs buildings as the explore cost is, i even did this calculation with my 10k land end game from last round so with lower land it will even pay more off. Although who sayed Oceanic need to just explore and turtle ?
Hey Hansa.
It depends on how you play it. If the game were merely a hitting game, then I would agree with you; however, most people would agree you explore a lot in the early going. Some of the above principles I explained will hold, but with a month round some of what I've said will change slightly.
The biggest issue is the size of the game, this means that people *have* to explore at some point should they want to maximize their growth because they'll run out of hits. The reason why I brought up the point of Oceanic is that if someone wanted to hit then DW would be of a much larger benefit. My chief concern is that when turtling, is that the primary cost is exploring land, followed by buildings, followed by defense, followed by research. So taking 10% of exploring land funds is a big issue. The rest I've explained above.
If the game ever grows to the point where a top planer can sustain themselves entirely by hitting, then Oceanic is actually a really good planet type. Almost the same as DW. I think for a smaller kingdom you might be right though, it depends on how much of their income they're actually spending on exploring vs defense.
Lets give some arbitrary land mass to see how efficient this really is,
100,000 land = 285,000,000
current game is around 60 days, so
(285,000,000) / (60 * 24) = 197,916 scientists. as a midpoint, which if considering how many by end turn, would equal twice as many approximately (using linear fitting, Im not doing quadratic :-p) = 395,832 scientists. (Will use the mid point to calculate everything then give realistic values afterwards to see if 395,832 scientist seems plausible.)
Does this seem high? Well lets calculate the price on these for a terra form and see how much one saves,
But this is with respect to terraform research values, how many scientists would this require for a normal kingdom?
100,000 land = 498,000,000 => 345,833 scientists
Typically a player Only researches money and maybe aswell military, which would give a reasonable value of:
76,388 scientists for solely money at 100,000 land, 118,750 scientists for both money and military at 100,000 land.
Thing about this, is that Sephiroth on one of his rank 1 kingdoms on SK achieved 300,000 scientists easily, and dominated the round with it (For a case). So 300,000 scientists is possible, can this achieve max researches for a terraform as he didn't use terra and only kept money maxxed?
300,000 * 850 = 255,000,000 / 640 = 398,438 (an endpoint) = 199,219 for a midpoint, which is by his build, would achieve keeping all top 5 (excluding FDC) maxxed at 100,000 land.
Now, if we are talking logistical matters, where we get so large that power makes no difference, and population has no meaning, how far can 398,428 terraform scientists go?
199,219 * 24 * 60 = 286,875,360 / 0.0171 => sqrt(16,776,336,842) = 129,523 land for money and military maxxed.
286,875, 360 / 0.011 => sqrt(26,079,578,181) = 161,491 land for just money maxxed.
At these points, is it worth exploring to these numbers? (Since there isn't enough players/ competition to achieve these values where can grab and gain huge lump sums of land)
Typically not (Not going to calc this as its just lots more stuff to put, and I'm not wasting more time, and its pretty trivial so w/e).
Which indicates Terraform if played correctly can achieve quite the kingdom.
So, for endgame measures, with numbers, verifiable answers that aren't just words for you to read and take "experience" from someone who "thinks" such and such is right, here is the real solid evidence as to why fade to black is useless, and why terraform is the bomb diggity on goc.
So, for endgame measures, with numbers, verifiable answers that aren't just words for you to read and take "experience" from someone who "thinks" such and such is right, here is the real solid evidence as to why fade to black is useless, and why terraform is the bomb diggity on goc.
Dece maths, minus the non-quadratic part. Also you're calculating the values of an entire round... So you don't realize how difficult it actually is to keep scientists up as reasonably a top kingdom can achieve that land with 2-3 weeks left in the round. Again keep in mind research is not so linear as land growth is quadratic. The reason I don't provide maths is because I don't need it to illustrate my point. I can see why you have trouble understanding what I'm trying to say, being as you can only achieve such sizes of kingdoms on paper... With that said your math doesn't mean *anything* because you have nothing to apply it to - this is why your math is meaningless.
But I'll bite anyways:
On average, by end game, let's say my income distributions goes as such by end of game until I stop building scientists (This is actually very generous to military and scientists): 40% exploring, 25% buildings, 25% military, 10% scientists
Any top kingdom by end game will probably be exploring due to the game size as they've run out of hits, so no TCs. Scientists cost 850 with the soldiers for Terraform. So let's say we reduce that expenditure to compare:
10%/1.75 x 0.7 = 4.00.
That is considering the benefits of research in there as well compared to income, in one calculation. So, this means that instead of 10%, I am now spending 4% on scientists to get the exact same effect *AT BEST*
Now, let's assume barracks space as well. Using the above distribution, let's say we are also saving 6/35 or 17.14% on barracks. Pulling out some old stats from my kingdoms past on average around this land size, kingdoms have an average of 15% barracks closer to the point where scientists become an issue.
15% x 17.14 = 2.57% of extra buildings into income.
Now let's look at my relative total amount of building income into to see how this effects my income distribution in general:
70% of my buildings are in income on average by end game point.
72.57%/70% = 1.037. This number means Terraform saves 3.7% in buildings space and thus these buildings can go into increasing income (At the highest level) by roughly 3.7%.
Now add up the values: 6% (saved because of the cost efficiency and effectiveness of scientists -> this value is linear across all kingdoms) + 3.7% (saved because of the freed barracks space) = 9.7%
9.7% < 10%. Therefore we can conclude that Terraform's advantages and disadvantages do not break even *at best*.
As an added note, since smaller kingdoms spend less on scientists than larger ones the advantage of Terraform is even less. The advantage of Terraform goes down substantially at the breaking point where it becomes ineffective to spend money on scientists vs land because you are only apply the research efficiency bonus to the equation, and not the other two components.
And this Flazer, is how you do math that has an application.
Quality not quantity mon amis. I prefer to explain everything I have to say in one giant post rather than having discussions that span multiple posts and that do not adequately summarize the thesis of what I am trying to say.
If you think that's a wall of text, try reading and writing for medical journals. Yuck. :P
You in med school? I edit papers for a couple people that are going for their RN. They have a way of making the phrase, "I like to watch TV." into a twelve-page discussion about the ethics of how the precious metals in TVs are mined and processed.
Quality not quantity mon amis. I prefer to explain everything I have to say in one giant post rather than having discussions that span multiple posts and that do not adequately summarize the thesis of what I am trying to say.
If you think that's a wall of text, try reading and writing for medical journals. Yuck. :P
I believe you're missing the point of "Discussions."
I dunno I didnt think about tcs and thats true in some regard, as in when there is zero competition and you are rank 1, and its the only situation it could be taken seriously
Comments
It will be hilarious when the 4x casualties ruins someone's defenses on a first break, or random grab thou.
Oceanic for example: the extra defense benefits turtles and new players, but then the disadvantage really hurts anyone going for an explore based play. The secondary advantage makes it easier to build defense on top of that by making it cheaper by a bit, but since exploring land is a primary cost of both new and turtle strategies, it is actually really bad for both play styles. So the biggest benefit is actually anti-turtle, but it still gets whooped by DW or event MT in this regard anyways.
Terraform is the other planet that is not really ideally balanced. The secondary advantage is counter-intuitive for the primary advantage. If I have a 75% research efficiency, I need less scientists already. Reducing the cost of scientists is not really good then because I'm already getting more out of my scientists, so need less of them. Thus, the only strategy that this planet type is actually good for is tech rushing - but with Multiple Terrain being the way it is, if you wanted to go that route it would be better to just pick DW and MT to get that extra offensive boost. Otherwise, it's advantage doesn't really come into effect until later in the round and the income differences are too much of hindrance to make that beneficial.
Mystical Lands on the other hand, you have a fantastic logic there. 25% is a good number because that means you can realistically have returns that allow for dangerous play. The secondary advantage is interesting, because the disadvantage makes you lose 10% more units per attack when you are ideally attacking 25% more anyways. So having shields cheaper just makes sense. Likewise, a cost reduction on all shields in general would make sense. You follow the same logic for Mount too.
DW way too OP though - especially when considering NAPs and such. From what I've read it seems like you guys have an issue over there with the player affiliation balance ala xLTx, and planet types like DW really take advantage of this due to the anti-turtle nature of it. It needs a much harsher disadvantage. For example, slower return times would make more sense for DW than other planets due to this. Something along the lines also of having Tanks have less defensive power would also be intuitive in this regard so DW players would have to be more responsible, but still have the ability to create game changing moments over a short period of time.
Ideally, you'd want to balance the game in a manner where each planet type hits a different timing window in the round where they are strongest. In this manner, strategies would be created to defend and attack at these points from players. You see this already with DW and mobilization early, with Mystical due to returns and inacts, Mounts in the late game, and in the past with Terraform tech rushes for TFs. Not an easy task. :P
Also as a side note, I've always been a fan of creating a late game upgraded version of the tank. A lot of the more interesting game play elements of SK revolve around the tank because it's the sole "buffer" unit and encourages risk taking.
For Oceanic I calculated it myself the exploring cost are no problem you gain more money from the cheap LDs buildings as the explore cost is, i even did this calculation with my 10k land end game from last round so with lower land it will even pay more off.
Although who sayed Oceanic need to just explore and turtle ?
For Terra I can't really agree either with every TF planet I played whatever it was SK or GoC I gone high sciens at beginning at least to use the research bonus what would be the sence of playing a planet with high research if you have no sciens ???
And since Terra has bad income this helped a lot to spent the cash elsewhere also if you use cheap units you don't even need TCs.
And we took out the SL bonus this helps a lot in the game play too its also bad a bit for DW.
And at all we are just on way its still in beta !
just for starts when I saw you say the 2nd bonus for terra was stupid, please calculate me the amount you save on one single scientist. Then tell me what that can buy with that
without tcs, (1000) * (1.75 / 0.70) - (1000) = 2500 - 1000 = 1500 monies.
with tcs, (1000) * (1.75 / 0.70 * 0.70) - (1000)/0.70 = 3571 - 1428 = 2143 monies.
over the course of the round, one could build 50k scis worth, the amount of money terra would save from this is equal to (with tcs):
Max cost of 50k scis with tcs - Max cost of 50k scis worth of TF scis, with the -30% cost, along with the soldier costs of each.
35,000,000 + 7,500,000 - 14,000,000 - 2,100,000 = 26,400,000 saved.
26,400,000 monies saved, is that a good amount compared to other PT advantages? You tell me. This only considers early - mid game, good potential for end game terras.
And if you use it right and get TFs as fast as possible you can also gain some nice honor.
Was talking over goc if I haven't made it clear.
Likewise, scientists required also has the same function - it goes up exponentially as land does. Although this is coded into the game, much like the math you provide above. At some point growth goes up so quickly that it becomes ineffective to even build scientists. With this in mind, Terraform's bonus prolongs this, but the income decrease offsets anything that would be gained by this bonus - even when consider the possibility of extra income due to saved barracks space. Likewise as the bonus is linear, and the function of scientists required is exponential, that point is *barely* prolonged at all. This means Terraform bonus' have a limited impact, and are actually a hindrance for larger kingdoms when considering the entirety of the game.
Now, consider this as a whole. Kingdoms on smaller amounts of land need exponentially less scientists, but higher DPA, and thus are able to grow slow. This means that they need significantly less scientists overall to begin with, because they are growing slower, and thus have more time to get research points on their land. They also have less income to spend on DPA. This means that Terraform bonus is even worse off for them since the benefits of the bonus are a function of how much money you originally need to spend on scientists.
The other application of this bonus, used to be rushing research such as TFs. Obviously that supplies a benefit, or rather it made sense before the MT buff. So, having researches early is convenient, but I would then argue that enjoying the extra 10% income and putting this directly into scientists on another planet type would more than make up for this advantage since the amount of income spent on scientists is much less than 10%.
So yes, the secondary advantage isn't terrible. The problem is the application of the three avantages together that makes Terraform a less than desirable plante type. If the disadvantage were something other than the income loss, than it would be an effective and useful bonus. It's the interaction of the bonus' in combination with the way the game actually works as whole, that create the problems. Hey Hansa.
It depends on how you play it. If the game were merely a hitting game, then I would agree with you; however, most people would agree you explore a lot in the early going. Some of the above principles I explained will hold, but with a month round some of what I've said will change slightly.
The biggest issue is the size of the game, this means that people *have* to explore at some point should they want to maximize their growth because they'll run out of hits. The reason why I brought up the point of Oceanic is that if someone wanted to hit then DW would be of a much larger benefit. My chief concern is that when turtling, is that the primary cost is exploring land, followed by buildings, followed by defense, followed by research. So taking 10% of exploring land funds is a big issue. The rest I've explained above.
If the game ever grows to the point where a top planer can sustain themselves entirely by hitting, then Oceanic is actually a really good planet type. Almost the same as DW.
money: 0.011
population: 0.0094
military: 0.0061
power: 0.0063
RWC: 0.017
altogether: 0.0498
factor in research efficiency
0.0498 / 1.75 = 0.0285
Now, lets take the price of scientists with tcs,
1000 * 0.7 * 0.7 = 490
Lets give some arbitrary land mass to see how efficient this really is,
100,000 land = 285,000,000
current game is around 60 days, so
(285,000,000) / (60 * 24) = 197,916 scientists. as a midpoint, which if considering how many by end turn, would equal twice as many approximately (using linear fitting, Im not doing quadratic :-p) = 395,832 scientists. (Will use the mid point to calculate everything then give realistic values afterwards to see if 395,832 scientist seems plausible.)
Does this seem high? Well lets calculate the price on these for a terra form and see how much one saves,
197,916 * 640 = 126,666,666 / 850 = 149,019 scientists.
But this is with respect to terraform research values, how many scientists would this require for a normal kingdom?
100,000 land = 498,000,000 => 345,833 scientists
Typically a player Only researches money and maybe aswell military, which would give a reasonable value of:
76,388 scientists for solely money at 100,000 land,
118,750 scientists for both money and military at 100,000 land.
Thing about this, is that Sephiroth on one of his rank 1 kingdoms on SK achieved 300,000 scientists easily, and dominated the round with it (For a case). So 300,000 scientists is possible, can this achieve max researches for a terraform as he didn't use terra and only kept money maxxed?
300,000 * 850 = 255,000,000 / 640 = 398,438 (an endpoint) = 199,219 for a midpoint, which is by his build, would achieve keeping all top 5 (excluding FDC) maxxed at 100,000 land.
Now, if we are talking logistical matters, where we get so large that power makes no difference, and population has no meaning, how far can 398,428 terraform scientists go?
199,219 * 24 * 60 = 286,875,360 / 0.0171 => sqrt(16,776,336,842) = 129,523 land for money and military maxxed.
286,875, 360 / 0.011 => sqrt(26,079,578,181) = 161,491 land for just money maxxed.
At these points, is it worth exploring to these numbers? (Since there isn't enough players/ competition to achieve these values where can grab and gain huge lump sums of land)
Typically not (Not going to calc this as its just lots more stuff to put, and I'm not wasting more time, and its pretty trivial so w/e).
Which indicates Terraform if played correctly can achieve quite the kingdom.
So, for endgame measures, with numbers, verifiable answers that aren't just words for you to read and take "experience" from someone who "thinks" such and such is right, here is the real solid evidence as to why fade to black is useless, and why terraform is the bomb diggity on goc.
But I'll bite anyways:
On average, by end game, let's say my income distributions goes as such by end of game until I stop building scientists (This is actually very generous to military and scientists):
40% exploring, 25% buildings, 25% military, 10% scientists
Any top kingdom by end game will probably be exploring due to the game size as they've run out of hits, so no TCs. Scientists cost 850 with the soldiers for Terraform. So let's say we reduce that expenditure to compare:
10%/1.75 x 0.7 = 4.00.
That is considering the benefits of research in there as well compared to income, in one calculation. So, this means that instead of 10%, I am now spending 4% on scientists to get the exact same effect *AT BEST*
Now, let's assume barracks space as well. Using the above distribution, let's say we are also saving 6/35 or 17.14% on barracks. Pulling out some old stats from my kingdoms past on average around this land size, kingdoms have an average of 15% barracks closer to the point where scientists become an issue.
15% x 17.14 = 2.57% of extra buildings into income.
Now let's look at my relative total amount of building income into to see how this effects my income distribution in general:
70% of my buildings are in income on average by end game point.
72.57%/70% = 1.037. This number means Terraform saves 3.7% in buildings space and thus these buildings can go into increasing income (At the highest level) by roughly 3.7%.
Now add up the values: 6% (saved because of the cost efficiency and effectiveness of scientists -> this value is linear across all kingdoms) + 3.7% (saved because of the freed barracks space) = 9.7%
9.7% < 10%. Therefore we can conclude that Terraform's advantages and disadvantages do not break even *at best*.
As an added note, since smaller kingdoms spend less on scientists than larger ones the advantage of Terraform is even less. The advantage of Terraform goes down substantially at the breaking point where it becomes ineffective to spend money on scientists vs land because you are only apply the research efficiency bonus to the equation, and not the other two components.
And this Flazer, is how you do math that has an application.
If you think that's a wall of text, try reading and writing for medical journals. Yuck. :P