You should create a DB table for restart data.
For CS you take what ever the maximum CS built in a country was and copy it to the Restart Data DB table.

Treat each restart data as slots, so as FFA works with the same system. So in other servers you have 1 slot, in FFA you have 16 obviously. Then clear most of the data except maybe turns and rewrite it with the new countries data. This way a restart is never larger than the original country killed.

This would give the power to take portions of what ever the last country had at some point. Maybe open up some options upon dieing vs stonewalling also.

Just seems a logical way to handle it. Adds an extra if and db operation at worse case scenario every turn taken, but if your code supports it say just when you build CS or other events take place.

We already copy data from previous countries (stored turns).


What, precisely, would you want to accomplish? Prevent restarts from being bigger than their previous country in any way? That kindof defeats the purpose of the accelerated restart, no?

Mainly to control the CS, pull it off of the max that their previous country had.

Maybe implement some tech and cash too.

If you have a secondary table you can store data such as max CS, while their actual country was BRed to hell.

Or who knows how having a secondary country table could be beneficial.

mhmm; but say a country goes all set with 60bpt; then in the last week restarts, gets 4kA, you want them to start building that at 60 BPT?

Wouldn't that create all sorts of incentives to be insanely high CS before a war? So that you have instant restart?

You'd still need income to build stuff.

Perhaps to both accounts.

On the first one, they only put in 60bpt worth of turns into CS, they shouldn't be rewarded with higher CS than what they originally had. So the ones that spent time building some CS will end up with a restart better than those that didn't.
I feel like this would also curb early wars. Now you have to build CS rather than dieing and your restart having more CS than your original.

On the second part. Yes. It helps curb early wars. The country already spent the turns to have CS they have earned the reward of restarting with high CS. The current CS restart changes are just insane. I kill a country, I put 240 turns into my CS and they restart with more CS than they or I combined had and did no work to get them.

CS is I think one of the largest issues, or at least of the complaints I have heard.

True, and yes it stops being able to take advantage of that CS some. However that much CS just makes no sense. If you need cash you have to build CS.

If anything drop CS significantly and offer some of previous tech or something more interesting and useful.

I don't think being killed is a reward; you end up with many turns of not hitting as a result of losing turns on hand plus having to get OOP again.

And I disagree with the "curbing early wars" theory; nobody considers their restarts when they start a war.

stop me if im wrong but arnt restarts still getting 72 turns when they restart plus the stored turns? i know all mine get 72 even if i restart 10 min later. and 250 cs on a 4th restart is insane. it makes the 4th restart stronger then the original that got killed. and in a long war give no incentive to kill it again if its just going to be stronger than the one you killed you need to add something to make the later restarts weaker. a 3 day old restart shouldnt be able to break an original country. with later wars it isnt as much of an issue but early wars like 1a this set by the time some ppl are on their 4th restart its almost as big as someones original thats never been killed after 3 or 4 days.

im all for making restarting quicker but not making the country so strong that its better to die than it is to wall. or to wall then self delete just to restart.

deleted won't get restart bonuses.

qz, the restarts definitely start with too many CSes after week 5 or so.

One problem is that you start with so much starting acres, and CS, but too little cash. So what ends up happening is that you build your first few turns at full BPT as a week 5 restart, but after your first 5 or 10 turns, you run out of cash. Then what? You're forced to build CSes for most of the remainder 80+ turns until you go OOP to be able to accept FA.

Reduce the starting CS count and starting acres for week 5 restarts onwards. Instead of being based on a linear turns/10, it should be something more logarithmic.

i have no problem with the land they get. but they do need to start with less cs. maybe do something where only the 1 previous country affects how many cs you get so if your original played 1000 turns your restart has 100 cs but your restart plays 500 turns you only get 50 cs not 150.

I like the idea of being able to pick what you keep, find a viable way of putting value to cs, land, money, military, tech and have the player choose =D

But country growth is exponential; surely linear growth shouldn't be an issue; if a fully stocked alliance were to go to war right now, would the restarts be way too big?

"Big" depends on context. A fully stocked alliance warring now would have zero issues with FAing a restart back up to its feet quickly, and such a late war would rarely have the same issues of a long drawn out 6 week war with one side farming the other side.

The restart bonuses help a long war weary alliance (to keep player retention) much more than a short late set war - in this case, I think it provides a bit too much help.

I think is 2-fold, 1) restarts get a little too much after week 5 and 2) the cash is too little for the massive amounts of restarting CS and land, leading to players building even more CS because they can't do anything else. Increase the cash, lower the CS and acres a bit.

What, precisely, is the "problem" you want to solve? That the losing side is still able to hit back? I'm not sure I understand precisely what your goal is?

But yea, we will probably tweak it a bit to enable them to be able to come out more like a normal country rather than cash starved and building CS for cash...

i think the goal should be not to make the new country stronger than the rest of the countries in an early war. 70 bpt week 5 is hard to kill any restart that can get 250m cash a day. when a country 3 weeks old can only make 150m a day due to its lower cs at time of restart. i dont think that the cs your restart has should be a major deciding factor in a war. cuz right now 4th and 5th restarts are just getting stronger while older countries have a tough time to keep up with the the quick high production of the restarts.

i think a week 5 restart should have a large amount of cs if its the first restart. but once its been killed 3 times it shouldnt keep getting more cs the cs amount should go down. rather than keep going up. its like a reward for getting killed. you get all your cs back and all your buildings. rather getting killed should be a bad thing and come with some punishment not benefits.

your numbers make no sense to me; what exactly are you saying?

Having died recently, I can assure you I'm not making 250M/day

I don't think this is true at all; show me where this is happening?

My goal is to make it such that a restart should not be stronger than the original dead country by turn 150.

If I crippled a 4k acres country by ABing/BRing 80% of its buildings till it only has 10 BPT left, it should not be better for said country to drop acres to 1 acre and have a clan-mate landkill him to restart.

By turn 150 his new country would be a far superior state with 60 BPT and 3-4k acres with a few well placed grabs at low NW and some FA, compared to if he had to rebuild his crippled country slowly over the same 150 turns with the same FA.

That restarted free 50+ BPT makes a HUGE difference. Without restart, he would be at "4k acres, mostly unbuilt, 10 BPT" and would probably drop half of that empty land. With restart, he would be at "2k acres, all unbuilt, 60 BPT" at turn 0 of the restart. Why wouldn't ANYONE kill themselves for the free BPT??


I consider this an _abuse_ of game mechanics. I hope you understand the problem, qz.

It is NOT that the restarts are too strong, it is that the restarts can be _superior_ to the original country if the player chooses to abuse the game mechanics by self-killing it (via a clan mate), so yes, in a way this makes restarts too strong comparatively.


Edit: There's the second problem where the late set restarts simply start with too much CS and acres, and too little cash to build it, leading to the "I need to build more CS until I'm OOP" syndrome.

Hmm; The only thing is that if he'd spent those 150 turns building CS rather than restarting, he'd have gained an additional 40 BPT; perhaps slightly behind in CS, but ahead in land and probably every other stat as well

Not true qz. That 150 turns building CS wouldn't have actually given the player any income at all for all 150 turns of it while crippled. In fact, his income would be negative because he has to support the remainder of his alive army (with a super low pop (so low cash income) if crippled via BR) unless he sells those off too.

Instead, the restart can use those 150 turns to recover a decent economy, by turn 150, the restart would be fully built, the "non-restart cripple" would only have built a ton of CS and not much else.

Though you could sell off military &etc, for profit; pop makes money generally....

I still think they're in a worse position after killing themselves tbh

If they are in a worse position after killing themselves as you claim, then why are some countries in Evo/SoL/MD/PDM doing it?

Heh, why do people buy lottery tickets?

I'll cite #1011 as an example on Alliance server.

After he was crippled, he has 27 CSes on 5586 acres, of which 4334 acres are empty. That's 11 BPT.

Spies 162,244
Troops 336,336
Jets 112,341
Turrets 397,757
Tanks 4,521
About 1.2k tech points in total.

With a negative income of -140k per turn. He has 1097 indies left, and little else.

If this country were to have dropped almost all his military and half his land, and start building 100 CSes (which would bring his BPT up to 36). At 36 BPT, with the remaining 50 turns left, he would have been barely able to build 1.6k buildings. This would get him to about 2.7k buildings built, but at only 36 BPT, compared to a restart at maybe also the same size but with 70 BPT.

The restart can potentially also remain untagged for a while, to grow before retagging.

Where is it written that a war needs to be set-long? How about thinking outside the box and figuring out how to play the game with these new sets of rules? Who says you should still think of a war like it was 5-10 years ago? Adapt to the new rules already! Afterall next set, you clan might be the one getting pummelled. You won't be complaining then.

Qz, leave it as is. Change is good.

Also, if restarts are so strong, why hasn't the tide swung yet? Not going to happen I reckon.

mk so I'll use that one as well; for this case study I did some digging into old ops; when the country died, his turns played were 1123 from his previous and 1673 for a total of 1796.

So he had, as you say
953731 nw
5586 A
44676 pop
$19494038
14.68 pci
58043 food
57033 oil
1097 indys
76 farms
52 rigs
27 CS
162244 spies
336336 troops
112341 jets
397757 turrets
4521 tanks
1298 indy tech
692 assorted other tech

I get an income of $-116,836 when i clone this into an alpha country

-----

If he were to sell all but 10k of each unit, he gets to Money: $78,241,002 with Net Income $156,780


[This is compared to his restart which would have been 179 CS with 1796 acres and $53,880,000 cash;]

Building 73 turns of CS (to get to 100), he gains another 200k turrets which could be sold (either on PM for $52 or public, or 1/4 on public, the rest on PM) for $10.4M on PM plus he's up to Money: $86,994,018; after selling turrets on PM he's down to 350k NW, and has Money: $97,702,534


Granted he still can't build all the buildings, but neither can the restart; he has 30 BPT, but has double the land, hasn't lost turns; probably has more cash; kept (a small amount admittedly) of tech; significant military and oil.

going from 1797->5586 acres still requires 115 turns at optimal mass-X rates; and that's easily your extra CS + buildings right there; plus at a higher income, because building CS on a massive, empty country is still actually quite profitable: because your numbers of buildings is so low, it doesn't cost you much.

I'm sure he'd have been farmed a bit, but I'm going to say he'd almost certainly be ahead had he not been killed

restarts can get killed before they get so big to be threat to big countries.

No where in my posts have I made a reference to war as it was like "5-10 years ago", nor have I made any reference to how new wars are conducted. I was using pure math and pushing for a change that will effect everyone equally.

If change is good, then I'm pushing for _further changes_ for restarts to gain less CS and more starting cash. I'm not requesting qz to undo the restart bonuses and go back to a year ago.

Also, the current war has seen about 310+ kills on my side and 280+ kills on your side, it's almost the same amount of kills, both sides have had to restart just as much, any changes to restarts will affect both sides equally in any similar war. It's not like 1 side of the war is restarting twice or three times as much as the other side.

I'm going to disagree with this assessment. Building the "crippled country" with 5586 acres is going to cost 3x as much money as building the country with 1797 acres. The crippled country doesn't have 3x as much money as the restart, only close to 2x as your numbers show. The logical move for the crippled country would have to be dropping half his empty acres to lower construction costs.

Furthermore, at 30 BPT, he will need twice as many turns to rebuild compared to a restart at 60 BPT (I assumed the restart will have needed to build some 40+ CS to bring his BPT up from 49 to 60 due to the "too little cash, too much CS" problem).

If the restart takes 200a per land grab from warring enemy restarts, that is 19 grabs using 38 turns as a non-tyranny to grab back from 1800 to 5600 acres. Building 5500 indies would have taken about 90 turns at 60 BPT. So the restart would have roughly used about 170 turns (90 to build, 40+ CSes, and another 40 to grab) to build to 5.6k full built. Maybe add in another 10 turns for spying, which isn't really needed with shared ops.

Using 115 turns to explore in your example is unrealistic, everyone war grabs enemy restarts OOP, also the amount of starting cash outside the first 100 turns isn't too relevant in the Alliance scenario, it is expected countries will receive FA - but they cannot receive built buildings or CSes.

The crippled country instead has 30 BPT, so to rebuild the same 5500 acres, he needs nearly 180 turns to build 5400 acres without any grabbing, on top of the 73 turns to build to 100 CS, for a total of 253 turns.

My scenario here obviously compared the number of turns it takes to get back to "5500 built", but my preferred approach would have been to go towards 3k built, it would still take less turns for the restart to reach that state.

Additionally, just because he has double the land doesn't mean the country is producing double the goods, the crippled country will have less buildings built about 200 turns further into the game simply because the restart would have twice as many BPT and outbuilt the crippled country.

Saying the crippled country lost turns is also false in the context of your comparison, since both countries did not spend turns towards warring the enemy in the initial 100 turns. If the crippled country did not die with more than 80 turns on hand, none would be lost.

Saying the original country has significant military advantage is also false, because your analysis also said "sell all but 10k of each unit" and "200k turrets which could be sold" to bring his cash up to 93m. You either have the turrets and only the initial 70m after selling down to 10k units, or you have only the 10k units and 93m.

Now if the original country had a lot of oil and tech, it might have swung it towards keeping the crippled country, but in this case, the crippled country has no stockpile.

While this is true, any alliance would be looking to kill original countries that are likely to be more threatening than a restart.

If a restart grows to become more threatening than an original country, than the original country is probably either inactive or crippled (assuming non retarded play), or enough turns has elapsed for the restart to no longer really be qualified to be called a restart.

There is very little situation to actively look for a restart to kill unless restarts is the ONLY thing you can kill.

This change affects both sides in a war equally.

I'm approaching the problem from a game design perspective, not a what benefits me more issue. Surely the developers did not intend for players to kill themselves when trying to create incentive for players to restart.

Like you said, my clan could be losing next set, and I would still suggest these changes for the better.

Mmm if they're being efficient they will do 100% of their hits on the enemy as GS/BR/AB and then explore/build for readiness.


The significant military advantage is not merely in units sold off, but also produciton -- he can *still* attack while doing rebuilding; one or two days of finishing runs while building CS and he'll not only have actually contributed to the war but also be in a good situation CS wise -- perhaps even to 60bpt as you would like...

So you're saying you want to keep the current changes as they are because it is a trade off between

"having turns to attack enemies"
vs
"rebuilding faster"

Because the whole premise is that the restart can rebuild a more effective country with the same amount of turns as the crippled country can (again, with the same amount of turns). We assumed all turns are devoted to rebuilding and none to warring.

But once you throw in the "but you could attack enemies too", everything goes out of the window, the goal of your country if you do this is no longer trying to rebuild - as would be the case of a restart.

Only in the first 100 turns, the restart cannot attack. That 100 turns translates to 40ish attacks at minimum readiness loss. It would be up to the player to decide if he values 40 attacks more, or a better economy for the rest of the game more.

And for some people, they have chosen to self-kill and restart, indicating they value their economy more than 40 war-hits, since a restarted country can contribute in other ways such as growing and stocking untagged.

I think they're probably just frustrated with having a levelled country, and want to start afresh, even if that puts them a day or two of turns behind.


But no, I'm not saying I want to keep them as is necessarily; I'm just saying it's not really broken as you guys are all making it out to be heh.

But that's the problem, it really is broken. Starting afresh puts them 1-2 days of turns ahead (economically), not behind.

It takes way less turns to reach a 3k built state by restarting, and the restarted country will be in a way better shape for warring (i.e not waiting for 2k breaks to finish, but actually being able to join in at 20k breaks).

Just look at what these changes have done to the untagged suiciders on FFA. Congratulations qzjul, you've fluffed a server. If you're trying to wreck the game, you're doing a great job. It's like all the most recent changes are designed to make suiciding easier and more powerful.

its not broken just makes the restart overly powerful and needs adjustment. maybe adjust it per server. leave it alone for single player servers and tweek it for 1a and ffa

Okay this is ridicules.

RESTARTS ARE BROKEN!
.(Period)

Must someone completely abuse the exploit for it to be repaired?

I don't think they want to repair it. I think the intent is to break the game. I don't think the admins are making a serious effort anymore to make the game fair and balanced.

fair and balanced would be that all alliances are same sized and all goodies cost same to each player etc.

Have you not seen the discussion above? How exactly is it broken? I've seen no convincing evidence to support that conclusion yet.

It strengthens suiciders rather than weakening them. Which appears to be your goal.