So, I just got done with dropping the influence of a certain nation in several ports, and I wanted to share my thoughts. I was initially excited at the prospect of such a task, until I realized exactly what it would entail. Namely, breaking a mindbar and casting several propaganda voodoo cards. I feel as though it was too simple and took away an interesting aspect of nation controlled ports, namely, the fight for influence between parties.

At higher influence levels, the percentage nature of voodoo cards makes them a much better alternative to manually donating gold to ports. Especially because that hard earned donated gold can be erased with a propaganda voodoo card. This makes influence wars consist entirely of just a few voodoo cards. Which is rather boring if I say so myself.

Personally I believe that influence should be gold maintained. This means that players would have to donate gold to keep influence high, but also that players would not be able to directly drop influence via voodoo. To lower the influence of a nation, you should have a disrupt their income and trade fleets, and therefore, their donations. This would make claiming a port an extended campaign, not just pop of a few (or many) voodoo cards. Which gives room for more exciting campaigns, reason for wars, and more balanced completion for f2p noblemen.

My propositions:

Death to propaganda - Remove or replace the card entirely
Death or Nerf to Charity Donation - 1%-3% instead of 5% perhaps?
Death to Conspiracy - Remove or replace the card entirely


I say death, but I am really just bringing up the topic for discussion. Curious to know other's thoughts on this.

Good points.

Aye, it is a two-edged sword, the percentage nature of the main port-related voodoo cards : you can build up high influence and populations quite quickly once you have established a reasonable base in either : mind, you can lose it just as quickly once its high enough.

So, yes, it does become a war between voodoo cards after a while. I agree that it should be more wealth-related than that.

Reduce the voodoo card impact (% impact on influence), but leave it in the game. That way a player who spends credits in the game can still use the voodoo on influence, but will have to use more voodoo cards thus spend more credits. Nice compromise for players and developers.

Crackedcubes wrote:Reduce the voodoo card impact (% impact on influence), but leave it in the game. That way a player who spends credits in the game can still use the voodoo on influence, but will have to use more voodoo cards thus spend more credits. Nice compromise for players and developers.

Nice compromise yes, but is one needed?

Compromises are for when there are two sides, one of which will be affected negatively by something that would benefit the other side. Who would this be a detriment to though, players who want to be able to destroy influence without any actual effort? If that is the case, then why are you playing? I feel as though everyone would benefit by the removal of those shortcuts, which overly simplify influence as a game feature.

Also, consider this. Influence is a large investment by players who took a long time to build up to where they are. Should any player (even a completely new one) be able to damage that investment immensely without having any gold base himself whatsoever? That is very unfair, and the reason why, that while I believe that a simple nerf for charity donation would suffice, I think propaganda and conspiracy voodoo cards should not exist at all.

Please note am saying this from a pirate perspective as well. I have no trade fleets to speak of and just got done doing exactly what I described above

Hawk wrote:

Crackedcubes wrote:Reduce the voodoo card impact (% impact on influence), but leave it in the game. That way a player who spends credits in the game can still use the voodoo on influence, but will have to use more voodoo cards thus spend more credits. Nice compromise for players and developers.

Nice compromise yes, but is one needed?

Compromises are for when there are two sides, one of which will be affected negatively by something that would benefit the other side. Who would this be a detriment to though, players who want to be able to destroy influence without any actual effort? If that is the case, then why are you playing? I feel as though everyone would benefit by the removal of those shortcuts, which overly simplify influence as a game feature.

Also, consider this. Influence is a large investment by players who took a long time to build up to where they are. Should any player (even a completely new one) be able to damage that investment immensely without having any gold base himself whatsoever? That is very unfair, and the reason why, that while I believe that a simple nerf for charity donation would suffice, I think propaganda and conspiracy voodoo cards should not exist at all.

Please note am saying this from a pirate perspective as well. I have no trade fleets to speak of and just got done doing exactly what I described above

+1 to influence revolving more around gold than voodoo.

I am in agreement to most everything Hawk says with a caveat to say, the current system has tons of room for improvements such as outlined above but not right away.

Right now it does provide a nasty way to overtake ports and essentially falls in line with the older versions of the game.

The current system is rapidly evolving and although I can see where improvements to the current system could be made, as the game itself evolves, there are going to be much more exciting opportunities to overtake port control than just a few voodoo cards.

Hopefully, it will involve naval warfare and blockade, port stock manipulation and population control with tools other than a voodoo (black death) card.

I agree that an improvement is needed. For example as it is, gold is better up to 2,000,000 influence points which costs around 20 million gold. Beyond that point, it is all about card play. Also, without any means to defend a nation, nation targeting cards are unfair and a hassle to other players. While I appreciate voodoo cards, the current system is designed so that a lot of the advantages of getting to the top cannot be achieved except with a combination of gold and voodoo.

What's a more elegant way to say "bump" ..?

Hm.. How about: "I'd like to hear more opinions on this subject and whether players agree or disagree."

-Hawky

Propaganda is the counter to Charity Donation and the one to stir up wars. Do we really need just another war excuse/reason out of the game? We need to increase such elements at current state.

Conspiracy is yet another card to control donation, without stirring up wars. Good tool I say. You can use it to trigger wars between other nations while you sit back and enjoy. This alone, is a good enough reason to keep it, imo.

With 2 cards bouncing off Charity Donation, it is not Charity Donation that needs nerf but some more aggression by the players to actually use the two cards above.

The cards are also a good balance to the percentage based daily loss.

Ultimately, I wouldn't say that influence wars are simple. Many have tried them and many have lost fortunes overnight. They are much more difficult than they seem and only after you managed to control a port for a really long time, you get to realize this.