But that's making a lot of assumptions about who is choosing which countries. Especially in the WWI map there are a lot of country choices that, in any other world, would have been questionable, but instead have been highly lucrative.

I don't personally see how "connected by jets" would be any more realistic. Since when does a single jet contain an infinite number of soldiers?

I think the ability to give bases adds a lot to the diplomatic aspect of the game. I'd also love to see a system where you could give sectors in general, maybe as some kind of treaty deal system, like trading certain sectors for other sectors, or sectors for a treaty, etc.

agreed. i think giving money and actually doing the attacking is going to be very different.

i mean more like you'd have to get one of your people there to open the base and then the base can recruit soldiers and churn out vehicles. lol

more realistic than Australia building a factory and then American troops and tanks start rolling out the next day anyway.

it just seems strange to me that a country could suddenly appear in a new spot no matter how far away it is. having to get a jet there adds some work to getting to the new spot and an enemy could even try to take down that jet.

I think that is better than just giving a base to an alliance member, but I am still cautious about the idea of giving bases away. This will add an entirely different aspect to the game..

I should also say that I think the Airbase thing is sort of superfluous. People have always found play styles to get around game mechanics. In the WWI map look at how many people have abandoned large numbers of sectors to be able to get around the alliance cap! If you have it done by jets, you'll have alliances form of countries spaced throughout the world so that they can send jets all the way across the map within the first few days.

On the WWI map for instance, look at the "Northbound" alliance. If you enacted the collect base by travel mechanic today, they would all be able to have bases in every corner of the world within the week.

Just because it changes how people play doesn't mean it's wrong. I remember many added features to this game that changed how people played.

I definitely think the money and base transfer will add a different aspect to the game. I'm hoping it will make the game more interesting and dynamic.

I still like the idea of using jets to transfer ownership, so I'm strongly leaning in that direction.

In the past, I've typically added features and made them available immediately. Considering the points made above, do you guys think the money and base transfer features would be too big of a change to add to WWI at this point? Should I hold off activating it until WWII?

My opinion is to make it a WWII feature. I think the change is very interesting but it is also very significant. I would have spent the last 22 days playing far differently if this had been available, as I am sure many others would have as well. But hell - if you add my suggestions below I might be made to change my mind.

So: May I suggest that you make the base transfer function extemely expensive? I mean, logistically speaking such an action would cost quite a bit more than simply producing a jet and sending a pilot. It would also take longer than simply sending a jet.

So I have some ideas: Maybe add a new air unit? Air Transport? Make it big, make it expensive. Perhaps add a time delay of a turn or so and let other people see that a transfer is taking place? Allowing others the chance to take the base out .

My other thought is to perhaps even add some sort of feature where you need to send X number of air transports (maybe depending on distance?) to take over the base from an ally. Could take multiple turns, show some sort of progress bar, or some such - if that makes sense?

I was thinking the same thing. I'm ok with money transfers in WWI but I think base transfers would have drastically changed how I played, and what alliance options I looked at.

I really like the idea of creating an air transport unit, if that isn't too difficult.

Again, I agree here, the base transfer will completely change the dynamic of this map and the strategies involved would have been very different from the start. Of course the money transfer would be nice in my position since I am on the front line of my alliance facing a beast of a country.

I love the idea of a new air unit for this! I'm thinking a transport helicopter that's expensive, has lower armor and strength (to make it more vulnerable to enemy fire), and has a smaller range.

That would create the base sharing functionality but also add some limitations to it.

I will also set any land base that's claimed to act as a new base, so it can't create new trucks that same cycle.

I think both the money transfer and the base transfer would really change the dynamic of the game.

I'm going to create a quick survey to get the feedback of all current players. Based on those results (probably only if 2/3 of the players respond positively), I'll decide if one or both should be added to WWI.

Great! I like that it's a helicopter.

While we're at... perhaps we could also make the helicopter multi-functional? In addition to allowing base transfers - how about a drop unit feature that allows the helicopter to drop a single land unit on a vacant sector or a sector that is already occupied by the player? Maybe apply some immediate limitations to the dropped unit as well.

I would like this, but I'd rather have the drop unit feature only apply to tiles you own, or will own on the cycle you drop on.

weah but think about it, your at war and just like today's u.s. That airlift troops into enemy territory, but they allso have a range so I think that carriers should carry them across seas and they could move from that carrier and lift up a unit in a transport and take it a certain distance or to its destination, but in order to limit this it should take a day In order to be used like the ct takes one day to be able to build a base. And I like the mult. Functions idea, like we could allso build attack helicopter, blackbirds, Apache, etc.

Another thing I think should be added is population, if your population reaches zero you lose, and population allso determines how many armies you have, and industries to help make money. Or just use a construction truck to make cities

20 users responded to the survey. Thank you for the quick responses, and for all of the thoughtful feedback in the comments section!

85% of users want money transfer, while 15% do not. 60% want it limited to alliances, 35% to any country, and 5% have no preference.

70% want base transfer, while 30% do not. 80% want it limited to alliances, and 20% to any country.

Considering those responses, I'm going to proceed as planned. Money and base transfer will both be enabled within alliances in World War I.

I'm going to enable it for any country in the Development Sandbox for testing, while I develop the base transfer functionality.

I have been having a problem with moving anything in game, is it me or is the game glitched

Well, that's not surprising. A majority of the active players on WW1 are all members of one alliance, that alliance is also the one that would arguably benefit the most from these rules being active...

Let me put on my tin foil hat for a moment, but let's look at some statistics here.

20 users responded. 70% voted for base transfer. 70% of 20 is 14. There are 14 members of Northbound on the WWI map. Northbound has a HUGE advantage if base transfer is added.

Johnny, how many people who AREN'T in NorthBound voted for base transfer? I'd be willing to bet it's not more than 2 or 3 at most.

Well im not in northbound and i voted for base. Bit i do agree with you, but it could allso help weaker smaller countries fight against stronger larger nations.

Six of the votes for bases were from non-Northbound players.

I think the modifications will be greatly beneficial to all of the alliances. For example, I don't think base transfer will benefit Northbound any more than being able to transfer the significant wealth of large countries that are part of other alliances.

Also, I plan on having the helicopter unit have a small range, high cost, and low strength/armor. Right now, I'm thinking perhaps 150 sectors, $8000, strength 5, and armor 1. Therefore, it wouldn't be very effective at getting past enemies or spreading over large distances.

I think that thanks to the sector value nerf, the larger countries don't really have that much of an advantage. I'd be really interested to see what the "Top 25" countries' respective daily incomes are...

Is this map going to close soon? i just had a player (brand new to the game. Welcome) take a country i was in the middle of taking over. never place any troops ect and now i have to wait 28 days before i can take over what has been empty since day 1 (and most likely remain empty...) . while it is only a small country, very frustrating to run into this at this point.

Would it be beneficial on maps with declaration of war to have that treaty time go down as the map progresses? ie for every 2 weeks of play the initial start treaty goes down by a week ect...

Well when the new update is here any player in any map must be on once every three days at least, if they don't play for 3 days thier kicked from the game and then the whole one month thing kicks in. To help eliminate any players that are just making it frustrating for others

Honestly, with declaration of war I think that any country not claimed as of the first daily cycle should count as a broken treaty on that day, i.e. with the 28-day declaration of war on WWI, if you joined day 2 you'd have a treaty that expired in 27 days with every country. If you join on day 29 you have no treaties.

I've seen that happen a few times in WWI and it make me wonder if people are making fake accounts to slow the expansion of others.

I can definitely see adjusting the Declaration of War mode to reduce the duration of the treaty after the world begins.

In fact, for WWII, I'm thinking it might be worth trying it without Declaration of War at all.

Oh for WW 2 will the winning countries be set only, or will you have all the countries with the amount of land they had at that time

And when do you think the new update will come?

I, personally, like the idea of Declaration of War. I like the idea of trying to create a world where diplomacy is important. I think the problem with WWI was the sector limit on alliances. A few alliances reached the cap within the first couple of days, then it was just a matter of breaking treaties with everyone NOT in your alliance.

I'd maybe rather see some alliance tweaking. Maybe alliance limits that grow based on a proportion to the size of other alliances (for example, you have a base alliance size cap, and once alliances grow larger than that via conquest, the sector cap rises in relation to the size of the largest alliance), I'd also like to see one with, maybe, preset alliances, perhaps determine regions of similar size around the globe and have all the countries in each region allied with each other.

I dunno, just a few ideas.

I think that would actually help the weaker countries as well, since smaller countries will most likely have safety in numbers and can oVer run the larger countries if they all attack together, I allso think that cities should be added, as well as other types of units if possible

If anyone would like to help do the final testing on cash and base transfer, please join the Development Sandbox and ensure your account is verified. (You can verify it in your <a href="https://ssl.toomuchstupid.com/account/settings/">Account Settings</a>.)

To share a base, click it and then select the icon that looks like a landing plane. You'll then be able to select (or deselect) a country that is allowed to claim it. It will appear in the World view as a cyan marker.

To claim a base that has been shared with you (which appear as green markers in the World view), click the base and then the icon that looks like a landing plane. It then works like an air attack or air transfer, where you select the air base that has the helicopters you'd like to send (which you'll need to build in an air base that's within 150 sectors).

Just remember that helicopters are very weak, so they could easily get shot down. I have a few areas with bases that I'll be sharing with players, some of which will be behind a line of turrets or units. This is just for testing purposes, to demonstrate how difficult it will be to get choppers over enemy defenses.

Also, in the next World War map can we play on a projection with a more accurate representation of Antarctica (or none at all)? In WWI Antarctica makes up 30% of all the land sectors. Which is almost 4 times more than in reality.

Actually, I'm thinking the adjustable alliance limits would probably just lead to the world splitting into two huge alliances really quickly!

I have thought about predetermined alliances, especially for the Civil War I world that's forthcoming.

That's really just a mathematical result of unwrapping a spherical surface onto a 2D plane.

Of course, it affects both the northern and southern parts of the world. For example, in reality, Canada is about 1% larger than the United States. In WWI, it started about 53% larger! Greenland and Russia are also substantially larger.

In the end, each player gets to choose his/her country, along with its potential pros (e.g. Canada's huge size) and cons (e.g. its distance from Antarctica).

It looks like the base transfer functionality is working correctly. (Thanks, @KalEl!)

I'm making some final adjustments to ensure the transfers render correctly in the final world videos. Once I confirm that's working correctly, I'll likely move everything into place and set WWI to enable money and base sharing during the next morning's Game Cycle. (It will become enabled during the Game Cycle so all players have access to it fairly.)

I ran a few more tests (cycled the Development Sandbox world a few times) and everything is working correctly!

Money and base transfer will be enabled in World War I after the next cycle. The only adjustment I made is that I changed the helicopter range from 150 sectors to 200 sectors. (150 sectors seemed extremely impractical during testing, even in the small Development Sandbox world.)

Another detail I wanted to mention is that any other objects in the sector that's claimed also transfer to the country. They're marked as new, though, which means the land base can't immediately create a truck and a truck can't immediately create a base.

Notes on using base sharing and claiming are above. If you have any questions, please feel free to post here!

I was wondering if thier was a way to share a CT with an ally see my cousin river lost his capital ato chile and has no more CT and only has a handful of troops and I have a treaty with chile so I can't help home or share a base with him. And well FYI hasn't been on for 8 days and that really affected us. So I just wanted to know if we'll he can't take his capital with the troops he has and I doubt chile will allow him to have it back

I know we've talked about possible alternate rules for WW maps, and how diplomacy is and should be important. What if you separated "Conditions for Victory" and what criteria ends a map into a single figure, but what if they were independent? We all know that historically, in the real world, things like neutrality, and just plain minding your own business is a viable strategy. What if you created a WW map, decreased the percentage of occupied land necessary to end the world, but set a separate criteria for "winning" a map.

Here's an example: Maybe you could set the criteria for ending a game at a player/alliance occupying 60%-66% of the occupied sectors, but to be considered a "winner" each individual player would need to occupy a certain number of sectors when the map ended.

There are a few options for the "winning" figure. You could set a minimum number of sectors each individual player needs to control. It could be set to a certain percentage of the map to be controlled individually. For a more diplomatic game you could set it as anyone who at least maintained their starting size or better at the end. For a more aggressive game you could set it to, say 10% of the sectors or double starting size, whichever is greater.

In theory, in a game like this (with maybe a more size accurate map projection) you wouldn't need to set an alliance cap as the terms of the game would limit the maximum number of people who could "win."

Sorry for the delay. Our baby was born Thursday afternoon, so things have been a bit hectic! [/grin]

This is a really interesting idea. I could even potentially see replacing the "biggest player wins" model with perhaps a variety of "medals" that are assigned to various players for various reasons. So, one medal would still be largest player/alliance, but it would open the door to all sorts of other win conditions for new medals. I'll have to give this some thought. Thank you!

The other consideration for me is whether or not this is workable into the current version of the game. It may need to be worked into my wish list for a possible future version.

Congrats! That's a big deal!

Congrats! are in order Here! Here!

Also you now will have alot of time to work on new versions of GT since you are not going to get any sleep for awhile.

We're throwing in the towel. Well done, Northbound.

Due to the time of year, I have been unable to devote the time needed to put up a decent fight and will be unable to through the holidays. Even so, I don't think it would have made a difference, Northbound has played masterfully - especially in making use of the new mechanics. Again - well done.

Johnny, we're ready for World War 2 to start the new year!

I would suggest the implementation of the changes that were already discussed to be implemented for World War 2 - such that we don't start the map with a bunch of inactive nations and players from the start. However, I have some other recommendations for a round two:

1: In addition to previously discussed changes to country selection: Priority selection for verified accounts - perhaps even allowing verified accounts to boot out non-verified accounts whom have already selected a nation (also serves as a means to promote verification).

2: Auction or bidding period for verified players to select countries before the game begins. Gives you a means of raising some funds.

3: Alliance Limits: Start with the hard cap but then allow it to be either equal to or some percentage of the largest current alliance. Not complaining, but when there exists an alliance that is twice the size of yours and you still need to vacate 300k sectors to induct a new member, it seems silly. But I also feel the largest alliance should still retain some advantage for the foresight - so maybe 80%?

thank you good sir!! that was a very fine example of sportmanship.

sorry for being a little misleading there near the end, lol. i couldn't exactly forecast that we were about to throw a punch. but i also didn't want to be too dishonest so i decided to try to keep things vague and noncommital.

you were definitely surging in Europe and had us worried. no doubt it would have been a hell of a battle if you had the time to play! i figured it was probably the holidays keeping you away and was the only reason we were able to get a good foothold. well done to you too! gg!

i joined when GT was pretty dead so this was my first big war with alliances. had a lot of fun and there are definitely some great players around. looking forward to more!

i don't think WWI lets us resign so i guess we just have to keep grabbing land until we reach 75%. unless you all wanted to vacate and save us some time, lol.

are there still countries that want a crack at us?

Agreed.

Overall I feel like the WWI map added so many features that hadn't ever been used before at once that it got a little out of hand.
Also, many of those new features were made to "balance" the early game created a HUGE imbalance later in the game, in many of the ways I predicted earlier on in this thread. As such, it became pretty clear this map was over about 60-75 days in, which made it really difficult to make any effort to return to the game with frequency.

at least you're sticking to your MO.. complaining about something being unfair to you. lol

1, we all played the same world. we saw the resources and we knew the limits. no one forced you to pick Canada. i guessed early on that a group of smaller countries with more resources would be better so that's how i played. if you think the map is so unfair to big countries.. DON'T PICK ONE.

2, our alliance did a LOT of hard work to win. expanding effectively, coordinating between a dozen countries to get the cash and bases where we need them, scanning oceans to find ships to prevent attacks, tons of time building a huge amount of infantry because they were the most cost effective, selling stuff to have extra money for important attacks. we had some really strong players who put in the time and effort to win battles.

3, strategy is important. for example maybe building a base every 10 feet when the only other country near you is your ally and then paying maintenance fees on those bases every day isn't the best idea.

4, determination is important. when Russia made huge gains on us in Europe it wasn't "really difficult to make any effort" to fight back. instead i spent MORE time being careful with all my other moves in the game so i could have the best counter attack i could in Europe. Kadath was gracious to say we would have won either way but i can't honestly say if we would have been able to win if he had the time to play out the fight. Europe was a lot of high value land so that would have helped him even if we grabbed more cheap land from him elsewhere.

a normal GT map is pretty much whoever expands fastest has the most money and can beat other players. WWI was different. if it worked like other maps then it would just be whoever grabbed the biggest country wins.. which would have been really lame. working together was always going to be the most important part of this map and it was a lot of work to get a dozen countries to do that effectively.

We'll put that to the test in World War II!

Agreed. The nature of the game changed a fair bit (especially with the helicopter mechanic) and that made this map far more interesting. I think this was absolutely Johnny's intention.

The other contributing factor here was that large countries had a significantly lower income than what we are all traditionally familiar with in relation to size, which was unfortunately at my own behest. While I don't regret that recommendation, I can't tell you how many times I cursed myself for it, it felt like I shot myself in the foot. However, it did make me think more carefully about spending that income, which also ultimately makes those choices more meaningful and the game more engaging.

Let's not pretend that strategic genius wins this game. It all comes down to who earns the most money, whoever makes the most money, inevitably wins the game. Often, (especially on WWI) this is largely dependant on starting location.

Looking back, the people who succeeded the most in WWI were those that: 1. Had countries near a large number of small countries; and/or 2. Had countries near a large number of unclaimed or (by luck) inactive countries.
My failing was claiming a country early, as once the US was claimed, because of the declaration of war, and my Capitol's distance from anything, meant I saw absolutely no growth for the first month of the game. In WW2, I'll be waiting until the last moment to select a country.
As for my "high upkeep" being my undoing, I find it hard to believe that my $2,200/day of upkeep was the difference maker. I'm more inclined to believe it was the fact that smaller countries, with less area to defend, had a higher daily income than larger countries, with more area to defend.
I was against income scaling by size from the beginning, as (because of where many large countries capitol's are, they had a huge advantage in early expansion.

I think that adding cities to the next world, or an easer way to transport troops longer distances should be added in order to resolve that issue.