corruption seems to have gone up

Bytro seems to be making a lot of changes that penalize "winning" and make the game even more difficult to play effectively. I'm beginning to wonder if some of these changes are not driven by some obtuse effort to force more GM usage to be won.

First the changes to revolt percentages which slow the game down and make it harder for anyone to actually go on the offensive. making what is arguably the worst part about the game (the waiting) even more interminable. Additionally this made the game feel even more grindy which is the number one reason I have heard people complain/stop playing over other than GM usage which obviously is a necessary evil to keep the lights on.

It also makes me wonder if anyone at Bytro is actually playing the game or doing any math before making these changes. I currently have provinces with 87 morale that are losing resources. It's often impossible to get your morale up to 100 in far flung provinces because if you're winning the game you often have multiple enemies and if you combine -30 for distance and -20 for wars you're in a deep hole morale wise and so the overall effect is to make expanding the economy more and more difficult.

-12% corruption? seriously? the distance penalty to morale is already creating this effect, corruption is just a redundant penalty that is ONLY penalizing people who are playing hard and trying to win. If you have 80 provinces all within a -8 to 10 morale penalty distance from your capital this will not harm you that much but if you're conquering land on other continents (which someone has to do if your coalition wants to actually end the game effectively) these penalties are destroying the ability of the people who are winning from growing. 70 morale break even point is pretty steep. 87 and still being underwater is ridiculous. Who is analyzing the math here? Is no one playing the game? You can't have -30 morale penalty (or worse -39 on 500 player maps) and apply this corruption penalty as aggressively. The morale penalty is an interesting twist to the game (very abstract and mostly nonsensical in a lot of cases because Boston doesn't have any higher morale than LA or San Francisco but corruption (which is a mechanic in many games) is already accounted for in the distance morale penalties. having both is redundant and the combined weight is oppressive in the worst possible context.

Is corruption and how to combat it even explained in the rules? Are you adding a "state capitol" or courthouse building? It feels like someone stole the corruption mechanic from civilization without actually understanding game design or the abstract concept of "distance morale penalty" you already have going on here.

Is the point to say "you must spend GM on morale or else winning will be so grindy you'll stop playing?" If that's the logic here just come out and say it so I can be done playing. Someone at bytro need to take a course in game balance and/or look up the term "unfun" in the context of game design. 90 morale as the new break even point? Sheesh, who is making these decisions?

Quote from Furry1

I suspect you're talking more about Supremacy 1 but it's bleeding over into Sup1914 too. Yesterday I took a city over and stationed 11 troops (high morale, btw) in there. Day change comes along and it revolts with 8 men being killed and 3 men switching sides. The ONLY silver lining is that it was to my coalition member. But still, that is freaking ridiculous.

I have never played S1. I'm only referring to 1914.

I have another thread on this subject (revolt percentages greatly increased) and one of the staff (freezy) posted that the numbers were going to be revised again back towards what they used to be. It used to be that 7 men was 0% revolt with a new province (25 morale) and 6 was 1% but now 11 men is 3-4% and 15 is still 1%, the major problem with this is it massively slows down offensive operations in a game where offensive operations are already pretty slow. They seem to be making change after change that make the game even more grindy and I suspect this is going to have a negative long term impact.

I joined the front line pioneers a few times when I first started playing because I assumed there would be some opportunities to help with issues like this before they became part of the mix but I've never once seen a front line pioneer game offered and the game kicks you out of the pioneers after 24 hours without being in a FLP game. It's one of the most annoying things I've ever seen being tossed at potential beta testers in a game system in 45 years of gaming.

Quote from Hastings TNT

Wow, I never consider this, there is not ANY way to manipulate corruption that I have ever heard of I believe corruption tops off at 15% but been so long that I paid any attention to it I would not be confident it was not changed in one of the patch note / updates we see monthly.... there are not any directions on how to combat corruption...I have scoured these Forums, since old forum was POOF gone and this new library created... it is tough especially in 500 maps if you have not saved some capitals to harvest in the late game... and the SAGA continues

I always save capitals because I've almost invariably got the most land at some point in the game but even with a few capitals if you have to be the guy to get 40-60 % of the points for the coalition this is going to make it even harder. Meanwhile the players doing the least to help the coalition win will be getting impacted the least.

I think this is the final straw in pushing my enjoyment level below the annoyance level for me. I'm in 2 games now, I don't think I'll be starting any more. Over the last couple days I've found myself reading the rules/descriptions of a couple different games. The grindy-ness factor was already massively frustrating in the end games for me. I sometimes could barely bring myself to log in on a 500 player map that had been over for 2-3 weeks where I still had to keep making fortresses on 800 provinces in order to get the game over. I stopped playing 500 player maps after the game where I had no choice but to capture 1100 provinces. I spent a month trying to keep my coalition from quitting even though I was doing 90% of the work. The distance penalties are simply too great (25 cap would make the game much more enjoyable/playable) on the 500 player map. It makes me wonder if anyone has EVER won that map solo. I guess if everyone went inactive and you could limit your wars but I always find myself at war with an entire coalition down the stretch and so the -39 and the -25 combine to make things brutal in the end game.

It's a pretty painful proposition to imagine having to control 2500 provinces on that map given the distance penalties. you certainly can not do it if Europe is not part of your land mass because Europe has the most province density and thus the lowest distance penalties. There are provinces in Asia and Africa that are larger than the entire 8 province starting positions in Europe. Without any access to data I would bet a lot of money no one has EVER won on the 500 player map without being in the coalition that controlled most of Europe.

So I'm watching more closely the corruption values. They are continuously going up across my entire empire. 15% now in EVERY province including the ones I started the game with. Currently the break even point for a single resource province to actually produce any revenue is 87 morale. A railroad on a single province with 100 morale costs just about the same amount of coal as I'm turning a profit in the other resource. If the province is below 95 and has a railroad it costs more coal than the railroad gives in increased revenue.

I've been thinking about the motivation for doing this and my best guesses are it's either someone not paying attention to the math or someone came up with the idea to throttle the "snowball effect" of being out in front in this game. meaning the person with the most provinces was accelerating faster than others could hope to catch up. The massive downside of this rationale is that you're making the end game which is already horribly grindy (I've had allies on the 500 player map quit the game entirely because the grind was so awful at the end) even more grindy. It's nice when a game has a mechanic for catching up so players don't feel completely 'out of it' but we're not playing chutes and ladders. This is more like chess and when you've fallen behind the game becomes harder.

The real mechanic for making a comeback or taking down the front runner in this game is diplomacy. The corruption mechanic is massively unfun. It's also redundant with the distance penalty to morale. At least we can work on 'fixing' morale and there are clearly defined rules around morale but I have no idea what causes corruption and there does not appear to be any method of rolling it back. My economy runs slower and slower the bigger I get despite dozens of harbors and railroads and morale in the 90's. You're making the worst parts of the game even more painful.

Can someone from Bytro please weigh in on this and give us even the slightest bit of insight? I'm invariably in the corner of mechanics that help make the bottom line stronger but I would really like to hear how this is good for the game/community/retention. It's even more egregious because it's not transparent.

Quote from Up0neLevel

best put your capital in the middle of your empire

This is a nonsensical answer. EVERYONE who has played for a bit understand the morale impacts of moving your capital. The problem is corruption has nothing to do with your capital my corruption is 15% everywhere. regardless of distance or buildings. If you're the guy pushing the team to a win you're going to have a lot of land and potentially a lot of wars. this is debilitating to keeping your economy going in conjunction with distance and war penalties it makes the game shockingly grindy when in fact it's already over.

It's not fun. The game was already grindy enough and now it's really just lost all it's appeal for me. I just had a game where my enemy spent somewhere around 15M GM and still managed to lose to my coalition. The premium spies are kind of ruinous to the game. If someone is willing to spend enough money and remove all your buildings and lower all your morale to 0 in over 200 provinces there's really no game left at all. Like most players I'm not a big fan of excessive GM spending but I usually accept it as good for the overall game. That being said even though i still wound up winning the game with my coalition is was really no fun at all once I could no longer build any units. After being in first place for about 40 game days my last 10 games days were spent trying to keep as many provinces as possible from revolting. In the end I lost about half my land to revolts (maybe a little more than half) and ended with 125 provinces that only scored 5 points because I had no buildings and 0 morale.

I tried the new game but beyond a certain point S1 is almost totally about fighting the morale penalties that are ever increasing as you expand. I have one game here left to finish, should end with a 17 wins in 21 games record and then it's time for me to find something a little more fun or at least something where the design choices don't seem so awful.