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Post by xade on Sept 10, 2012 23:14:03 GMT -5
Alright, I've had a fair chance on a number of tile types now (Well, not Alu), the rest of them. And I just wanted to pop in my quick mindset on them all. Coal- I started with coal early game and it rocked. Obviously not having power an issue was a good thing, meanwhile, Ramul was very receptive to Diamonds- particularly at low tech levels. Glass- Glass also rocked. Glass was desirable across the board, and really, anything I could sell, could be put into either OP's, upgrading the spy network, or Palantirs. Really, it was a jack-of-all trades. Coal was also pretty easy to get, because everyone was happy to get sand. Though I did find that the coal shortages really funked things up- leading me to move into Uranium- Yeah, you get a reactor- it's easily the strongest resource. So strong. Defensively shores you up, and per-worth, you're mining up a refined material every 20 hours. I mean, a glass merchant took 12 hours and (pending power, half a uro) to make a glass- the uro miner just takes time. Or in my case, builds a f*ckton of mines and smiles. Refining just made a strong tile even stronger. All the while, taking up very little space/value- there is just no downsides to being a URO miner. I'm seriously thinking that LF/Descolation nerf is a good thing as a -10PM hit onto URO miners is probably needed! Steel: Wow. After URO, this is a steaming pile of crap. Everything takes up way more space- and no-one wants any of it! You can't offload any off your excess iron anywhere (like the sand-> espionage, baux->warehouses), so you seem to be stuck with Ramul and < 1:1 iron-coal trades. And you will be taking him up on such horrid trades, cause no-one wants your iron. Not the coalies, not your vassels, not anyone. Heck, the one time I did have a vassel, I got nuked for 6 drills cause he didn't want my iron! It's a horrible horrible tile which simply doesn't currently have a place in the world. It just feels really difficult to progress anywhere when standing on this tile, especially since Steel isn't even worth it for the battleminers since the low-cannon way is how they roll. Curious to hear the thoughts of other players on their tiles.
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Post by Rasteroid on Sept 13, 2012 12:38:29 GMT -5
You're probably right. Just for fun, anyone got any ideas to balance it? More expensive cannons, perhaps? Cheap steel mines?
It doesn't really matter, in a broader game situation the economy should balance itself to a certain degree.
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Post by xade on Sept 14, 2012 1:56:10 GMT -5
Maybe it will balance itself out- will we have access to more trades with more people though?
Of the 12 active players I see, the current breakdown looks as follows:
4: Coal 3: Sand 2: Uro 2: iron 1: alu
I'm thinking that points to a big lean towards those who are less reliant on power from others. And that's what really gets me- sitting around with a ton of iron, and no-one to trade it to for coal. Ramul then takes most of it to give a modest amount of power.
As for fixing, perhaps have Ramul's dirty coal deals- a constant 1-1 base trade between your base material and coal- keep the flow of power happening, cause damn- we have 4 coal miners and I reckon it'll be a cold day in hell before I see a 1:2 iron:coal trade.
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Post by Rasteroid on Sept 14, 2012 15:04:34 GMT -5
There will be more trades, and less idles on your personal map. The current game dynamics can not even compare with what we will see in a couple month's time.
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Post by xade on Sept 14, 2012 17:35:36 GMT -5
Well, don't you just have all the answers then.
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Post by Rasteroid on Sept 14, 2012 19:47:29 GMT -5
Not on hand, but in time, yes.
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Post by iuewen on Sept 15, 2012 12:45:12 GMT -5
What balanced it out in old BM? Tetsujin took a fuckton of steel or alu? And they were squishy and died a lot. Godzilla would wreck your infrastructure often and require a rebuild. Everyone rolled with 10 cannons always because they took no room. Governmental buildings died a lot, and took a lot of steel. ICBMs took a lot of steel.
See a trend here? We don't really have anything in the game that serves as an ironsink. I agree with xade, after playing every tile except Coal (which I'm sure is just lovely, you greedy Coal-producing twats), steel was the biggest pile of crap out there. Alu was close, to be fair - you can only build so many warehouses before it becomes counterintuitive.
The biggest problem I see with steel is that everyone wants 1 or 2 cannons, max. Combat is so much smaller now. Cannons take a big chunk of your real estate, and I can't ever see it being worth it to build more than this. What if you could stack cannons? What if you could stack cannons like office towers, up to 5-high? You could make them take progressively more steel as your cannon stack got higher, and the whole thing would be lost in 1 lucky shot, but that would be a huge sink for steel.
What if you introduced something like 'Statues', which had a political effect? Cost: 5 Steel, 1 tile. The person with the most statues is awarded an additional title, like Speaker for the Senate, and his vote breaks ties in the senate. Call him 'President' or 'Chairman' or 'Vizer' or something.
This still doesn't solve the issue for the guy who has just had his tile blown to shit, or the newbro that is starting on an iron tile. What if the extra nutrient-rich soil that iron would have, compared to this other desolate shit, gave them a +5 nutrient-rich bonus, much like sand has the -5 aridity bonus? That might make a low-building-count, high GM, cannon frenzy combat path viable on an iron tile, and I like xade's 1:1 ramul trade idea to give a constant flow of coal.
Just spitballing.
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Post by phoenixraven on Sept 15, 2012 13:48:00 GMT -5
Having only played as coal (because I'm still learning the game a bit, not having played the first one) take all my thoughts with a grain of salt I suppose.
What if you created additional benefits to the bunker? so that Steel would have a reason to invest in several of them? Like bunkers absorb enemy cannon fire or something so those buildings are lost first, and prevent land exchange if they have leftover bunkers with food.
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Post by phoenixraven on Sept 15, 2012 13:54:47 GMT -5
I also like the Ramul dirty coal deals, expanding upon that perhaps he could have daily/weekly specials, randomly generated "even" trades that he posts for a particular reason, IE -
"Local warlord needs steel for cannons! Trading 2 Coal for 1 Iron all day long!" "Businessman needs aluminum for office tower! Trading 1 EUR for 2 ALU for the next week!" "Collapse of local regime means cheap diamonds direct from the mines! 1 DMND for 3 FOOD!"
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Post by iuewen on Sept 15, 2012 14:11:31 GMT -5
Right, but improving the bunker would just make everyone build one bunker and then ignore steel again - nothing got fixed. The other resources (well, bauxite could use some help also, but at least it is needed for warehouses all the time) have a 'sink' that they can invest overflow in (Coal's 'sink' is other players), where iron really has none. Cannons are too space-consuming to use more than a couple of.
Improving the bunker seems like a good idea, as it is very expensive and does almost nothing (its not very hard to wait for that last food to rot before exchanging), but there was already a building that did what you are suggesting - we used to have (and hopefully will have again in the future) special government-specific buildings called Seats of Power, one of which was the Reinforced Bunker which could absorb hits and would be the last building destroyed and such (I forget all of the details... it has been a long time).
Ramul specials are along the same line as what xade was suggesting, and I support something like that.
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Post by inanimatej on Sept 16, 2012 22:51:48 GMT -5
I've found that particularly, every single resource type I've been has had significant downsides through the course of my play experience. This is generally dependent on the economic factors at any given time, though. I had a pretty good time as a sandraker working a builder economy, churning out DDRLs via effective trading, until some Fascist dick decided to ruin up the joint. iuewen's right though: I NEVER want Steel in this current playtest. I think when ICBM combat becomes a thing in the near future, this might be a different tune we all sing.
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Post by xade on Sept 17, 2012 18:38:04 GMT -5
Just quickly- this recent period of wind has eradicated all my power needs- and steel has been pretty cool.
Still, I'm sitting on an utter buttload of iron right now, which if I didn't need to tech up would sadden me a bit...
Reckon you might be right IJ, ICBM's will make steel more desirable, but for mine, it's still power (or more, the ability to run dry and drive your entire operation to a halt) that is what makes Steel and Alu the less desirable options.
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Post by Rasteroid on Sept 18, 2012 12:51:17 GMT -5
Hmms, yep, I hear what you guys are saying.
I liked the one idea someone mentioned, about giving a GM bonus to the land. I'd be tempted to do that for peaceful bauxite, if I can come up with a justification.
For iron, I'm thinking I will make the DMs cost twice as much steel. That will make for an interesting iron upswing in the upper echelons of play.
Really appreciate the discussion, we'll have to see how much impact ICBMs have in the full game. Frankly, I am already finding them invaluable. They are the maximum concentration of value per unit space, when you are saving up for those expensive tech levels and need some black market to make it work. (Btw, a new kind of black market nerf is coming, enjoy it while you can.)
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Post by essence on Feb 26, 2013 13:53:03 GMT -5
So, uhh...has anything been done about this? I'm playing Iron right now and I'm offering 6->4 and 7->4 trades and no one is taking me up on them. I can't raise my tech for crap because I can't get resources except through the Black Market, which I can only manage once a day because it takes 3+ Food to get a decent amount of anything. I feel like I'm marching through pudding trying to get anywhere.
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Post by inanimatej on Feb 26, 2013 20:27:46 GMT -5
A lot of this was dealt with in the closed beta. You'll find that if you can refine items, the black market is a lot less painful to deal with, though it's incredibly slow to be able to black market for anything, particularly since you should be saving your food to bring down the time between black market sales, rather than for actually paying Ramul.
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