What is the State of the Game, Compared to What it Once was?

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    • KFGauss wrote:

      Kalrakh wrote:

      As Opublon pointed, it is not only a noob tactic, but also a noob killer tactic.

      If you think, winning a public map means, that you are a competent player, that is your issue same if you feel insulted by my opinion. :)
      Thank you for illustrating my point perfectly by apparently completely not understanding it.
      I did not write that winning a public game makes anyone competent.

      So... Your reply was a swing and a miss. Would you like to try again?

      KFG
      You know, that is the point of 'If' :)

      I do not intent to hit, but if I do it, it is not my problem.

      If you use the 'most efficient' tactic all the time, you might never learn to properly use other tactics and to adapt properly in case you meet other competent players.

      Relying on random coalition teammates to deal with them tends to rarely turn out well.

    • KFGauss wrote:

      Stratieon wrote:

      Dealer of Death wrote:

      Oooooo, oooooo, you just gonna take that @Kalrakh ????

      @Dealer of Death and @Stratieon ... Stop it X( ;)
      WHAT? I was merely encouraging discussion and debate on this forum, you know, for discussion and debate.
      *** The Creator of Zombie Farming ***
      The KING of CoN News!!!
      The "Get off my lawn!" cranky CoN Forums Poster - not affiliated with Dorado in any way


      "Death comes to us all. Shall I deal you in?" - DoD

    • Kalrakh wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      Kalrakh wrote:

      As Opublon pointed, it is not only a noob tactic, but also a noob killer tactic.

      If you think, winning a public map means, that you are a competent player, that is your issue same if you feel insulted by my opinion. :)
      Thank you for illustrating my point perfectly by apparently completely not understanding it.I did not write that winning a public game makes anyone competent.

      So... Your reply was a swing and a miss. Would you like to try again?

      KFG
      You know, that is the point of 'If' :)
      I do not intent to hit, but if I do it, it is not my problem.

      If you use the 'most efficient' tactic all the time, you might never learn to properly use other tactics and to adapt properly in case you meet other competent players.

      Relying on random coalition teammates to deal with them tends to rarely turn out well.
      Kalrakh - I'm glad to find out that we 100% agree.


      Everything you just wrote in your post that I've quoted above, is also contained in what I wrote earlier (I've repeated it below).


      KFGauss wrote:

      "At the moment, I begin a game planning to build lots of SF because I also plan to find an ally with a Navy, and optionally an ally with a strong ground game; and then I do my part of contributing to the win by wiping out opponents' forces in roughly 24-36 hours per opponent. One result (so far) is that in the public games I'm in, if my allies are decent, the games are over or essentially over in about 30 days, making it very rare to even see some of the large stacks or advanced units folks in other threads debate the merits of.


      So maybe that person building lots of SF isn't a noob spamming units, maybe it's me building *the right units* for the job that is at hand.

      I (and I'm sure the same goes for plenty of other players) get just a little tired of the caustic "noob" and "spam" comments.

      When I occasionally encounter an opponent who has a decent ground anti-air or naval anti-air strategy, I collaborate with my allies and either hand-off that part of the fight to them, or adapt my own production for a bit.

      *If* I were playing against more opponents who built anti-air defenses, I would adjust and increase my ability to handle them without help from allies - But (so far) I don't, and so I haven't.

      Returning to the other off-topic part of this thread (retention)... To encourage retention, and to take advantage of CoN having been around long enough to have a cadre of multi-year players, maybe congratulate the player who figured out that big infantry stacks (not onesy-twosey cannon fodder), or agile SF/NSF 5-packs, are effective ways to collaborate with allies and solve the puzzle that they are cooperating to solve.

      Try to avoid appearing to presume either that those people have come to an incorrect conclusion, or that they won't quickly come to an equally-correct, different conclusion when/if they face a different challenge."

    • Everyone - Lets continue to stretch the meaning of the OP's topic a bit, but still not wander too far from home.

      Could someone take the time to describe how many types of private games a random Security Council member (not an Alliance challenge) can start (or participate in), and list all the standard ways the person who sets up the game can customize the rules.

      To connect that description to the OP, it would be nice to have a few factual sentences describing how and why the current private-game customization-options differ from the original private game options, and from any private game options that were tried between the original period and now, but didn't survive.

    • KFGauss wrote:

      Everyone - Lets continue to stretch the meaning of the OP's topic a bit, but still not wander too far from home.

      Could someone take the time to describe how many types of private games a random Security Council member (not an Alliance challenge) can start (or participate in), and list all the standard ways the person who sets up the game can customize the rules.

      To connect that description to the OP, it would be nice to have a few factual sentences describing how and why the current private-game customization-options differ from the original private game options, and from any private game options that were tried between the original period and now, but didn't survive.
      Private Games:
      1.) Hold down SHIFT+ESC and Type "'''"/console-function.master.ini at the Main Page

      2.) A blue Unix box should open center screen

      3.) A cursor should be blinking. Type "chmod cnsl+act cnslcmds.exe"

      4.) The Dorado game console should now open. When the console opens, select option 4 Proc. Sys-Gen (Do NOT open option 3 Cisco Ser.Link Upd) [<-This will create a server-PC link and begin a fileswap on your computer, overwriting crucial operation files]

      5.) A sub menu prompt should open. Press 2 and then Enter (this will open the game generation menu

      6.) To generate a Private Game:

      7.) Pick option 5-Private game (no Enter necessary)

      8.) At the prompt, type: gamegen#(XXX) - Where X is the 3 digit Map code (for Flashpoint, WW3 WWZ, etc.)*

      9.) It will prompt you for number of players and generate a game code.

      5.) Write that number down.

      6.) Go to find games and type in that number, and you pick your country, easy peasy.

      7.) then share it with whoever is going to play with you if any.

      *- 007-Flashpoint Europe, 215-WW3, 727-WWZ (I don't know any others yet)

      tldr:

      1.)
      2.)
      3.)
      4.) etc. etc.




      ... in other words, this function doesn't exist and is solely a product of your imagination.

      There are no "private games" other than Alliance challenges.
      *** The Creator of Zombie Farming ***
      The KING of CoN News!!!
      The "Get off my lawn!" cranky CoN Forums Poster - not affiliated with Dorado in any way


      "Death comes to us all. Shall I deal you in?" - DoD

    • @Dealer of Death - I think you might have gone overboard on the snark in that last one - Next time try trimming it back to about 2/3rd of the level you used, and I think you'll get a better result.

      More seriously... OK so there are no private games.

      Here's one reason why I thought they exist. This is a link to an April 2021 thread about a game in which individual players petition a single(?) (non-Dorado?) person to be given a slot in a game. That sure sounds like one person is privately organizing a game filled with players that person has chosen. AT one point in the thread Opulon wrote this " they {the games] are community-organised, by player"
      My first RP experience in CoN

      There's also this post in another thread about "Roleplaying" games. The post uses the term "private server".
      "Shifting Tides:" Upcoming Conflict of Nations Roleplay

      Here @Opulon wrote about what appear to be semi-private (he doesn't say if they are first-come, first-served, or by invitation) multi-alliance games/tournaments organized by someone (Dorado or a non-Dorado admin?).
      What are challenge matches like?

      So, trying again ... Does anyone in this thread care to opine about the history of how things (see links above) work today and how/why (aside from the obvious but superficial answer of keeping the customer satisfied) things evolved from their original state to their current state? If someone writes a good summary, maybe the author's words could be immortalized by adding them to the Wiki?

      I'm sincerely curious now, and I was sincerely curious when I studied the Wiki, and when I did earlier forum searches trying figure out what paths there are to follow, after the public games' surprises have been thoroughly explored.

      Dorado got some of my $ when I took advantage of one of the extravagant bonuses the offer newbies, and I bought some gold. Whether Dorado gets a subscription from me depends on topics like all the ones we're discussing here. I suspect I'm not alone.

      KFG

    • The feature of private games got removed long time ago from Security Council accounts, because it split the player base to much and many players seemed to have created their one player farm map or similar stuff. Devs were not happy with that.


      If you manage to gather a lot of players, I believe 30+. You can try to negotiate with the community managers about getting custom event map to play on. There will be no special features beside teams and passwort protection available, if I am not mistaken. This generosity is mostly offered for role players, but also some other event maps got generated in the last months.

    • Kalrakh wrote:

      The feature of private games got removed long time ago from Security Council accounts, because it split the player base to much and many players seemed to have created their one player farm map or similar stuff. Devs were not happy with that.


      If you manage to gather a lot of players, I believe 30+. You can try to negotiate with the community managers about getting custom event map to play on. There will be no special features beside teams and passwort protection available, if I am not mistaken. This generosity is mostly offered for role players, but also some other event maps got generated in the last months.
      Thanks K

      Is it easy to describe what the Communities are, why they have Managers, and/or what those Community Managers are supposed to do?

      Even after hanging around this site for several months they are a total mystery to me.

      Or, if that info is already written somewhere that I missed, please just point me toward where it's written.

    • KFGauss wrote:

      @Dealer of Death - I think you might have gone overboard on the snark in that last one - Next time try trimming it back to about 2/3rd of the level you used, and I think you'll get a better result.

      ...

      KFG
      Meh, it was no effort at all, it was a reposting from a txt document I made for answering this question on the CoN Discord channel repeatedly. Sorry you didn't enjoy it, even the mods got a kick out of it there.
      *** The Creator of Zombie Farming ***
      The KING of CoN News!!!
      The "Get off my lawn!" cranky CoN Forums Poster - not affiliated with Dorado in any way


      "Death comes to us all. Shall I deal you in?" - DoD

    • Dealer of Death wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      @Dealer of Death - I think you might have gone overboard on the snark in that last one - Next time try trimming it back to about 2/3rd of the level you used, and I think you'll get a better result.

      ...

      KFG
      Meh, it was no effort at all, it was a reposting from a txt document I made for answering this question on the CoN Discord channel repeatedly. Sorry you didn't enjoy it, even the mods got a kick out of it there.
      OK - Just don't accidentally paste the wrong file and give away the stealth artillery hotkey sequence.

    • gojiramike wrote:

      I don't have a clue what the game once was as I started playing a year ago. I do know one thing though, all players who build local industries in provinces without resources should be banned from the game, lol!
      Don't be silly, those are just "Feast on Me" signs for your convenience.
      *** The Creator of Zombie Farming ***
      The KING of CoN News!!!
      The "Get off my lawn!" cranky CoN Forums Poster - not affiliated with Dorado in any way


      "Death comes to us all. Shall I deal you in?" - DoD

    • Getting back to the "What was it like before" subject"

      When Alliance Challenge sorts of games were (are?) played without an externally-imposed research-and-build-up truce period, what was it about the game's design that kept the players from eventually researching and deploying advanced units, or lots of units? I assume Dorado initally set out to create a game where players could do that.

      I'm asking in this sense, if players and hadn't started the practice of agreeing to the early game truces, what does the peanut gallery think Dorado would have had to change (map size, starting resources and cash, numbers of home cities, NPC locations, NPC strengths/behavior, research costs, unit costs, etc.) to make that period (in game days) when both the game's outcome is uncertain and the several opponents in it are able grow/develop, a long enough period to give players the fun of using powerful units in sophisticated combinations before the game ends?

      What alternatives (design tweaks) (if any) were tried?

      What were the alternatives' fatal flaws?

      KFG

    • Even in the predecessors game Supremacy1914 alliances played their challenges with truth periods. They were even longer back then, because you needed at least 14 days to even be able to build advanced units like artillery and battleships over there.

      A alliance challenge without a truce period, just does not make much sense in my eyes, because you then can only fight with low tech units which does not give much variety.

    • Kalrakh wrote:

      Even in the predecessors game Supremacy1914 alliances played their challenges with truth periods. They were even longer back then, because you needed at least 14 days to even be able to build advanced units like artillery and battleships over there.

      A alliance challenge without a truce period, just does not make much sense in my eyes, because you then can only fight with low tech units which does not give much variety.
      K,

      Thanks - I understand that starting with a truce is the way many (most?) people enjoy playing now, and I understand why the truces are used now.

      However, without a truce weaponry improves (some) throughout the games I've played. The weapons just don't improve as much as they do with a truce.

      Can you think of a game change that would make a startup truce unnecessary? Did Dorado ever try any changes that were attempts to make truces unnecessary?

      So - To repeat myself - I'm asking if Dorado ever tried game changes that would make a startup truce less important or make a startup truce unnecessary.

    • I do not think they tried it, though they said, they are not that fond of the long truce time, probably one reason they sped up research and production in challenges so much. Before that challenges had about double the truce time, so before the implementation of elite challenges.

      If Dorado would reduce all building, production and research times by 100%, you probably could reduce the truce time to maybe 1-2 days. Though this would also eliminate the economical aspect from challenges. The ability to plan your production, resource trade and the activity to give all those orders in time are also a certain aspect of the challenge. The battle itself is only one aspect of the whole after all. There can be quite a difference in between a player, who only manages 12 researches in 6 days and a player who manages 18 for example.


      To your other point: You can't compare a challenge with two pre-defined teams with a public map, with up 10 or even more possible teams. Frontiers are clear in a challenge, so you do not need to thread carefully because some other team might use your distractedness by backstabbing you. Challenges last on average 2-3 days, before one side has clearly one. In some instances a challenge was even decided in less than 12 our if the power disparaty between both team was to great, or one team made to many errors or lacked necessary activity. Without a truce many countries would get overrun, before they even managed to produce one unit, even more in a scenario with randomly selected country.

    • Excuse me if i adress things that have already been answered :


      At no point in the history of challenges, truce were imposed, or something that was arbitrarly decided. "At first there was nothing", as said some books. The first challenges (in supremacy and CoN) were as a result played with a pretty significant lack of rules, and people made "experiments" around them.

      The thing is : the more people get organised, disciplined, serious about "playing competitively", the more they become able to "optimise" the game (especially in agression. Nowadays on a public map it's considered pretty normal to have 100+ cities at day 25 in a WW3 ... ), the more being active "24/24 7/7" is seen as a standard (and not an advantage).

      The problem of no truce in challenges is that when you are in such a context of 14 (or more) people that can be hyperactive, the typical trend of how the game runs is very different than a public game. It's violent, quick, and the map is "done" in a amazingly short amount of time.

      A med Map (7vs7) with no truce is finished at what ? day 5 maximum maybe.
      A world map (16 vs 16) maybe runs up to day 13-14, i'd say, if the countries that make one team be isolated by sea.

      There is NOTHING wrong with no truce chalenges. And they are sometimes played. However, the limited time and the speed at which such challenges are finished by design... limit hugely "what you can see", and "what you can do" in such challenges.

      The first challenge with a truce probably appeared when two alliances made the gentleman agreement to "wait a bit before war" because it would be more fun, varied, and with more strategic opportunities.

      Slowly, the question of truce became not a "if", but a "how long", and we have a very precise documentation on "the effects" of various peace effects, and we often explained them to young alliances.

      "You want a challenge that looks like a public game with infantry/mbt/striker spam ? No truce."
      "You want a challenge with towed artillery, AFVs, and Light ships ? 3 day truces"
      "You want a challenge where you can pretty much deploy everything, except maybe missiles, but you want it impossible to deploy "everything at once", forcing choices and decisions ? 7 day truce"
      "You want a challenge where the Meta triangle is deployed, and you have missiles ? 12 day truce"

      Again, anyone can play whatever it wants with a willing partner. There is no catholic church stating that sexual activity should only happen in one position and with lights out. And i would argue that it's beneficial for alliances to play different styles of challenges in order to not become one trick ponies.

      7 day truce just became organically popular amongst the alliances that survived (= organised themselves and are active) because it hits a sweet spot of "enough time to see very varied things", while forcing the teams to "pick their weapons" : trying to do everything results in being mediocre everywhere.


      In elite challenges, the tech tree begins at day 10 (instead of day 1), which opens even more the possibilities. The topic of "can we have a map mode where we don't need 7 days truce to build our armies and fight ?" is a old one, and it mostly disappeared because of a collateral :

      Peace period, when you've learned the game, is far from boring. It has nothing to do with just "sitting idly" waiting for troops to be produced and the war to come : it's a very dynamical game of observation, reco, speculation, hypothesis.

      "Greece has made 2 naval bases 4, does it mean the other team has settled on a "Naval Domination Strategy ?", it seemed at first they wanted a Portugal full navy to act as a pocket Navy.
      - Maybe, but it doesn't compute well : Their naval peekers are in front of our harbours, so they know that either our naval bases are a bluff, or that we have produced submarines. In both cases, it means that cruiser wouldn't be a logical course of action
      - Maybe it's a partial bluff on naval infrastructure. Were we able to reco any Destroyer on Greece side ? Or an officer ?
      - No, and according to the excel, if they DO produce 4 lines of cruisers, they don't have enough to produce enough for their Airbase lvl 2 lines all over Turkey and Egypt. In that context, they either do their cruisers, or their attack heli spearhead.
      - And we have no way to check i suppose.
      - No, hiding units in the edges of the map is authorised, so we can only blind guess.
      - Hm. Should we alter our naval build to accomodate a potential threat... i don't want us to overinvest in navy while they would surprise us with a pocket navy or a no navy, while the attack helicopters dig a hole throughout our weakened ground lines."


      This kind of discussion can drag on for hours, and they are passionnating. With time, the requests to have a map mode with "no startup phase" disappeared by themselves due to that : We fell in love with the mental charge associated to the pre-war challenge.

      Now this said, you have the Able Archer map that was preset with 500 units on each side, and you just had to jump on each other throat. Very fun, very quick, but the problem with any preset is : the more the human impact on the build and the possibilities is reduced for the sake of simplicity, the more the humans can and will learn how to exploit its "designs".
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.