The Economist ~ The end of war?

Day 3,893, 03:53 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313
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Dear friends,

We live in quite possibly the most peaceful period in the history of the game. Yet at the same time, it’s rare there are less than seventy battles open at any given time. As I write this, there are 89 battles to fight in, and 72 countries in the game. At any time, most countries have at least one active battle open.

The reason for this is training wars (TWs). For those of you new to the game, a training war is a planned conflict between two countries, where the attacking country systematically takes the same 2-3 regions from the defender, and the defender releases the regions after conquest through resistance wars (RWs). TWs allow for 28g per round (60g per sky round) in medals, as well as a campaign hero medal and up to 10 resistance hero medals per RW. That means each conquest/release cycle in a region generates a minimum of 572 gold for the two countries involved (assuming all participants are citizens). That’s at least 572 gold per cycle (often more), and some countries have multiple training wars.

This is very lucrative, especially for the high strength accounts which benefit from TWs the most. Coincidentally, players with these accounts are, for the most part, in charge of international affairs.

TWs involve two partner countries, which usually involves a stronger and weaker country on opposite ‘sides’ (or at least not sharing MPPs). Most countries are now either occupied or involved in an ongoing TW with a partner nation. There are no avenues of attack that will not mess with someone’s TW. And the result of this situation… gridlock. The global situation has barely crawled in months, and as a result the game is… boring.



Solutions

There are a number of proposed solutions to this crisis. A common request (I saw a shout by iDiod this morning) is for the admins to reintroduce a gold cost for attacking regions. There used to be a gold cost, and the admins removed it with the intention of encouraging more wars. The end result is a lot more wars, all of them meaningless. Introducing a gold cost for battles would effectively end the profitability of TWs (especially if it was a high cost).

My proposal would be to introduce ‘war exhaustion’ to the game. Essentially this would mean that every battle fought as part of a direct campaign (not RWs which have their own mechanic for this) would contribute to ‘war exhaustion’ for both participants. This would act as a negative damage buff, meaning that as a war went on, the citizenship damage of both participants fell everywhere. This would build gradually, but would also fall gradually once the war had closed. This would discourage ‘permanent war’ and encourage a series of short, meaningful, global conflicts that do not always involve the same countries. A permanent war would result in the long term reduction of all citizen damage for that country in every war, everywhere. As you can imagine this would make them vulnerable to attack.

I would also extend rather than limit the legend bonus, since it’s impossible to put that cat back in the bag right now. Players with “Legend of XXX” rank do additional damage when fighting for their country (depending on which level of rank they have). I would extend this so that they also do 50% of this damage fighting in battles where their citizenship country is deployed as an ally. This would increase strategic depth to the game, and also mean that smaller countries with few legends could once again be involved in major wars, relying on allied damage.



What would happen?

If all TWs ended tomorrow, for whatever reason, we would see a dramatic rise in real wars as people demanded these to raise rank, gain medals and prestige points. The fewer wars would mean more epics, and closer battles (less 90% walls). Medals would be meaningful again and would be contested.

There is more to this than just stopping TWs, but that is a necessary first step to break the current deadlock. The amount of gold given by medals also needs looking at, the frequency of air battles and where they appear in the order of battle (1st and 5th would make more sense) and how deployment works (perhaps a bonus for ‘deployed’ countries rather than just blocking non-deployed countries altogether).

However the important thing is that we wouldn’t have a situation where there are not only no real wars, but no opportunities for real wars. I don’t blame players for the TW situation, since exploiting the game mechanics is what all good players do. I also don’t blame the admins, since they were clearly not expecting this outcome. However I think all are in agreement that it is time to make a change.

Iain