A Solution to Mass Alliances

Bureaucratic efficiency!

Bureaucratic efficiency will represent how efficient the player empire's government is. This value will be calculated from several things:

Base Value
If all other factors are zero, bureaucratic efficiency will be 1.02

Diplomatic Complexity
Maintaining friendly relations can be a tiresome task. Each player has a "diplomatic cost." This cost will be the inverse of the number of players in the game, plus the proportion of the total players' unit count that that player controls, plus a flat value of 0.05. For the purpose of this calculation, players which have been eliminated (surrendered, left the game, or defeated) will count in the player total. For example, if in one game with four players, A controls 50 units, B controls 30 units, C controls 20 units, and D has been eliminated, the diplomatic cost of player B will be
(30/100) + (1/4) + 0.05,
Which is 0.60.
A player will receive as a penalty to his bureaucratic efficiency the total diplomatic cost of his allies. So if someone allies B in the example above, that someone will receive a -0.60 modifier to his bureaucratic efficiency as a result. This effect is limited to -0.70 per ally, to ensure that a player is not penalized for his ally's success. Not too much, in any rate.

It can sometimes be extremely frustrating for diplomats to simply resist the temptation to kick in the ribs of some irritating foreign diplomat. Peace, too, incurs a cost. If a player signs peace with someone, that player will receive as a penalty to his bureaucratic efficiency one-half of that someone's diplomatic cost. So in the above scenario, if someone signs peace with B, that someone will receive a -0.30 modifier to his bureaucratic efficiency. This effect is limited to -0.50 per peace deal.
"Role-play mode" will be available as a game option, which removes the penalty for peace. It will not, however, remove the penalty for alliances.

Decadence
An army that did not fight recently will be an army with green troops, inexperienced officers, and clueless generals. A player will receive as a penalty to his bureaucratic efficiency one-fiftieth of the number of turns he has spent since the last player versus player battle he participated in or turn 0, if he has yet to fight a player versus player battle.
For example, if someone had their last player versus player battle in turn 16, but it is now turn 30, he will receive a -0.28 penalty to his bureaucratic efficiency. This effect is limited to -1.00, to prevent absurd values.

Administrative Complexity
The larger your empire gets, the harder it is to manage. This modifier will be the negative of the proportion of total players' income that is controlled by the player. For example, if player A has 150 income, player B has 250 income, player C has 300 income and player D has 300 income, player C will receive a -0.30 modifier to bureaucratic efficiency, as he controls 30% of the total players' income (income uncontrolled by any player doesn't count). This modifier will cap at -0.30, to prevent the winning duo or trio from all suffering negative efficiency in the late-game.

Military Complexity
Pulling capable strategists into the armed forces will reduce the efficiency of the rest of the player empire. This will give a flat -0.01 penalty per general, admiral, or other such leader unit a player owns, including the player general. This is mainly for flavor, and should rarely contribute meaningful modifiers.

Thus, the maximum possible bureaucratic efficiency will be 1.00, and the minimum value will be, well, quite a bit into the negatives.

So what does bureaucratic efficiency actually do? At positive values, none. There is no difference whether you have a 1.00 bureaucratic efficiency or 0.01 bureaucratic efficiency - it will do nothing.

However, at negative values, a player will incur extremely steep penalties. An income penalty equivalent to the square root of the negative bureaucratic efficiency times total income will apply. For example, a player with -0.01 bureaucratic efficiency will suffer a -10% income modifier, and a player with -0.25 bureaucratic efficiency will suffer a -50% income modifier.


Adopting this suggestion will limit the diplomatic options available to players, and will do so very sharply, particularly for players with large empires. It is hoped that this sort of a measure will stop the sort of mass alliances that tend to plague free-for-all, scenario, and roleplaying games.

Needless to say, none of this will apply to team games.

Comments and feedback will, as always, be appreciated.

Nigga, I ain't reading all that shit.

Geschrieben von International, 27.02.2015 at 04:33

blablablablablabla

Needless to say, none of this will apply to team games.
therefor this post useless to all you 3v3 players
troll'd

Geschrieben von Camel, 27.02.2015 at 22:11

Well, did you expect a post titled "a solution to mass alliances" to be useful to 3v3 players?
I mean, those games have fixed alliances...

Geschrieben von Skittzophrenic, 27.02.2015 at 21:53

Nigga, I ain't reading all that shit.

4-line summary:

1. A statistic called bureaucratic efficiency is tallied for all players.
2. Allying players, signing peace with players, not fighting for a long time, and being big will reduce bureaucratic efficiency.
3. Alliances between successful players against the players with little empires is penalized more than an alliance between tiny nations.
4. Negative bureaucratic efficiency brings about nasty income penalties.

My courtesy to the busy player.

This is super good
now lets all upvote so ivan and amok sees this and stuff

Seems pointless imo

I would only support this for the alliance limiting.

Way too long, and too many big words

Geschrieben von RaulPB, 28.02.2015 at 11:22

I would only support this for the alliance limiting.

That is its main purpose. The other modifiers either supports that function, or is just a symbolic flavor thing.

That would only encourage "secret"/word alliances ingame, specially among clan members, to avoid costs and allyfag would become much big of a problem.

System is good as it is; just use alliance limit if you dont want 5 players allying vs one.

Geschrieben von Laveley, 28.02.2015 at 21:46

That would only encourage "secret"/word alliances ingame, specially among clan members, to avoid costs and allyfag would become much big of a problem.

System is good as it is; just use alliance limit if you dont want 5 players allying vs one.

Two points,

1. Such informal alliances are extremely easy to backstab, which many sensible (and self-interested) player will make use of.
2. There is a penalty given for not fighting every turn.

Geschrieben von International, 28.02.2015 at 21:56

Two points,

1. Such informal alliances are extremely easy to backstab, which many sensible (and self-interested) player will make use of.
2. There is a penalty given for not fighting every turn.

1. any sensible and self-interested player will make use of this type of alliance if your system comes up instead of backstabbing his friend and risk the game (thats the point of allying in the first place). Do you really think people will prefer an "honest" alliance, pay huge costs and certainly loose to the guys doing the "secret" one that arent paying a penny to cooperate with one another? Like i said, your system just encourage this type of shady relations and penalizes the honest ones.

2. Yeah, so? If 5 guys ally to beat one, they are still fighting that one dont they? Also, its easy to work around it, just put one militia fighting another every turn....

unless you make a high complex system (which is not worth it) theres nothing you can do to prevent people of cooperating with one another. Thats the reality and not just for this game. Better just stay with the simple ally limit. But hey, its just my two cents after all....

As much as I dislike backstabbers who ally everyone turn one, save up their army, and then betray allies, this solution is simply inefficient and unnecessary. People can just as easily, if not more so, abuse this feature by having a satellite war zone where they fight one another each turn, but never really invade one another. For example, Russia and Germany both attacking Poland each turn while stacking armies elsewhere to betray their allies.

There is no adequate solution to allyfagging and secret alliances, and that is fine to me. Just ignore and enemy list people, and beware of allyfags in general, and current system works fine

Geschrieben von Laveley, 28.02.2015 at 22:50

[...]
unless you make a high complex system
[...]

Brilliant. I shall get on it right away!
I have time enough.

Geschrieben von Skittzophrenic, 27.02.2015 at 21:53

Nigga, I ain't reading all that shit.

omg thats EXACLTY what i thought too

Would make the Game Too Complicated.

Thought, It could work as an Optional Way of Diplomacy, To make the game more Fair and Realistic i guess.

Simple, Yet Effective.

Venezuelan.