S for $trategy

Day 2,044, 01:17 • Published in Romania Canada • by New Faustian Man

The whole [lack of] strategy in this game means buying a heap load of x2EBs to fight in some "important" battle is utterly pointless! Thousands of Euros are regularly spent by the combatants on single campaigns, then next day the region that was fought over is regained by yesterday's loser in a campaign that hardly anyone even notices -- the whole thing is ridiculous. And yeah, I know this has been going on for years, but this combined with the hyperinflation of damage on the battlefield because of the x2EBs and other add-ons has been the clincher. And now I could no longer be arsed.



Facts are: once a region is won in a campaign the victor should be able to profit from it, game mechanics should secure them the region for a period of a week or something. The lack of something like this means we have these stupid, unrealistic (yeah I know its just a browser game, but still) pingpong wars, where regions switch hands daily. What is the point? Seriously.

Paul the Octopus [R.I.P.]

Now obviously the game admins aren't gonna change a winning formula: they pulled in a small fortune via the MU competition, and missions that demand dumping some serious damage are no doubt equally profitable, so that side of the game is never gonna change. And its an unrealistic and unreasonable expectation to think it ever will. Erepublik is a business lest we forget.

But.

But if they're creating these gimmicky missions and competitions like the MU one or alliance one intending them to offset the faults that many people find in the game, then -- for me at least -- I think they're making a huge mistake. Missions are fun, but there's NO WAY IN THE WORLD they compensate for a working, realistic economic module, or a balanced war module, or a tiered, ideologically-driven political module. The missions and competitions are just gimmicks intended to distract us.

What I'd rather see them do is return us something like the previous economic module, if they wish to incentivise it for themselves then whatever, as long as its engaging and functions and we can make a profit from our companies.



I'd also like to see some major changes to the War Module. Some STRATEGY for a change, plus like I say above: the invading country be rewarded for its gains, so if this involves setting a limit upon when RWs can be started or w/e, then that's cool. Though deeper, more fundamental changes to the Battle Module would be great. I'm not suggesting a huge shift from what we already have, but by simply extending the concept of the Natural Enemy bonus so that handicaps and bounties can be allocated to either country based on different things, the defending country I believe should have anything up to a 25% Hit Bonus on top of any NE Bonus they might have, this would work wonders for smaller and mid-sized countries. I've written elsewhere about developing different MUs based on the kind of terrain they're best suited to, I appreciate that that's never gonna see the light of day in this game, but a simplified version of it, based on say three different types of MU: Regular Army, Navy and Airforce and each had a different Hit Bonus based on what type of terrain they fought on, would add a further layer of planning and strategy.




The point of this is it would call for government's to become heavily involved in military planning, not just in funding but in terms of identifying longterm threats and implementing some form of tax plan and military spending plan that (they hope) would neutralise a perceived threat. This kind of detail in MUs, although it might seem a niggly thing, if executed properly could be the difference in wars, i.e. a mid-sized country that's enjoyed six months of competent governments that have contained good military and geopolitical analysts who developed a military to cope with projected threats would/could have an edge over a stronger country which has suffered a string of low activity, incompetent governments. Game mechanics like this that demand competency from governments and long-term planning would add a massive dollop of accountability and make things like tax policy of CP candidates HUGELY IMPORTANT, which would be a vast improvement over what we're used to, i.e. elections that are popularity contests were sometimes the most popular candidates doesn't even win anyway...



Or imagine CLOSED CAMPAIGNS/BATTLES/RESISTANCE WARS - that only allow players who are resident in a region when a campaign starts to actually fight in that campaign. This rewards the military organisation that has the foresight and means to deploy however many soldiers to a region and adds a measure of strategy to what's otherwise a free-for-all.

*

I don’t think there’s much chance of any of the above being implemented. Its obvious the direction admins are taking this game, and its away from thoughtful strategy and something more akin to whoever gets the most clicks in and is willing to dump the most cash: wins

Anyway, thanks for the read
And I'll leave you with some words of wisdom:



NFM