Why I don't like the Nile Online military-economic system

[Jonath]

Nile Online is a casual browser-based game, which means that you shouldn't have to be constantly watching your cities at all hours. They generally have this right, except for the military system. Because military units cost 1 bread/hour, they are ferociously expensive to keep around, and it would be easy to overdo things and wind up unable to maintain the bread supply. Suppose you go on vacation and accidentally leave barracks production running a few days, beyond what your bakery/wheatfield/labor-pool can support. At that point, you have to keep operating in bread shortage (other threads say that this reduces production to 50% of normal), or get your soldiers killed, or demolish the barracks buildings.

Consider that the base production cost of spearmen and archers is 21.6 bread, and charioteers 33.6. The cost of maintaining a military unit for a single day is 24 bread, more than the base cost of spearmen and archers. This means that the only efficient way to manage military is to:

(1) Build up big stockpiles of bronze, cedar, leather, and especially bread;
(2) Build big barracks to push out the army quickly;
(3) Push out the army at maximum speed; and
(4) Keep attacking the target every half-hour, over and over, so that you can win before your bread runs out.

Here are some different but not-mutually-exclusive alternatives for adding bread-labor cost:

(1) Military units cost 25 bread each to produce;
(2) Sending military units on a mission costs 10 bread/unit each time;
(3) You can only send military units on mission if you have an equal number of free laborers (maybe they're reservists). While they are on mission, the free laborers are unavailable. Those who survive return to the labor pool. Those who are killed are replaced with free laborers at 3/hour to the Palace limit.
(4) Like (3), except that your production on everything else is automatically scaled down if your free laborers run out. That way you don't have to constantly fiddle with moving laborers around.
(5) The size of the Palace determines the maximum number of military units which can be sent on a mission.
(6) The size of Palace determines how many military units can be kept free of bread cost, the rest still cost.
(7) If nothing else, the cost of 1 bread/hour/unit seems way out-of-whack. Maybe 1/4?

FYI, I am trying to take a monument plot with one class-6 city and one class-4, which is maybe a little early. Also, I haven't quite taken it yet, not sure what comes after.

[Silpion]

Originally Posted by Jonath

Suppose you go on vacation and accidentally leave barracks production running a few days, beyond what your bakery/wheatfield/labor-pool can support. At that point, you have to keep operating in bread shortage (other threads say that this reduces production to 50% of normal), or get your soldiers killed, or demolish the barracks buildings.

Going into vacation mode is also a possibility.

FYI, I am trying to take a monument plot with one class-6 city and one class-4, which is maybe a little early. Also, I haven't quite taken it yet, not sure what comes after.

This is indeed very early, at this point you can only sustain an army by forcing all laborers into making bread. You need limestone for a level 12 palace and with level 11 you have much more laborers available than with level 6 (405 instead of 155).

[Andrelvis]

The thing is not that the bread cost is way out of whack, it is that barracks capacities are absurdly high, and so are the number of bandits in a monument. If there were 20-30 bandits on each monument, and the barracks capacity had a progression like this: 5-10-20-35-55-80... everything would be perfectly fine. Even if soldiers cost laborers.

[CppThis]

Military really shouldnt be restricted to people with at least one level 10 city, though. Bread cost should probably come down, or otherwise make them consume some other resource (oil, anyone? ) as upkeep. Come to think of it I like that idea, have your units eat one unit of something per day and if you run out, troops desert. Everyone looked at military as the savior of the cedar industry, but cedar use is gonna be minimal if bread is the limiting reagent.

Also itd be nice if you could send them on some sort of 'quest' for some sort of minor resource reward, so smaller cities who cant sustain a 150+ unit army have something to do.

[Leperous]

(1) Military units cost 25 bread each to produce;

Mm, don't see why it should cost bread as well as raw materials to produce them. What does this bread disappear to, baguette-swords and pain-au-kopesh?

(2) Sending military units on a mission costs 10 bread/unit each time

I agree it should cost something to send an army, worked like this in CotN.

(3) You can only send military units on mission if you have an equal number of free laborers (maybe they're reservists). While they are on mission, the free laborers are unavailable. Those who survive return to the labor pool. Those who are killed are replaced with free laborers at 3/hour to the Palace limit.

Urgh, no, the whole point is that you have soliders to do the fighting! Not the laborers. Think of the laborers as the weapon and armorsmiths and whatnot that are needed to get the military up and running.

(4) Like (3), except that your production on everything else is automatically scaled down if your free laborers run out. That way you don't have to constantly fiddle with moving laborers around.

Why should production scale down if you run out of labourers? It would just be annoying for people without an army to maintain to always keep 1 labourer free.

(5) The size of the Palace determines the maximum number of military units which can be sent on a mission.

Could be a good idea, kinda like the number of commanders and prestige levels in CotN. But, plots (at the moment) are pretty much fixed in size in terms of raiders, so really this would probably only translate as a "minimum Palace level before monuments".

(6) The size of Palace determines how many military units can be kept free of bread cost, the rest still cost.

Too much advantage to the higher level Palaces if done wrong

(7) If nothing else, the cost of 1 bread/hour/unit seems way out-of-whack. Maybe 1/4?

For level ~10 cities it seems like quite a lot, but then these monuments are supposed to be "end-game", no? Armies of 100 soliders will be nothing for a high level city, you just need that initial investment to get enough limestone to start upgrading, much like the brick wall you hit for making your 3rd city.

[Leperous]

Also I don't understand how you derive your production costs. 21.6 bread to produce an archer/spearman?

If I have my own leather and bronze cities, then it costs 5 bread to dig the stuff out of the ground and then 1 more to put it together. Even less with temple bonuses or specialisations.

Or are you comparing to some local market price without saying? (Or does it include barracks construction cost? Why not throw in city/Palace construction too while you're there? )

[goonsquad]

This is the "opportunity cost", in other words the amount of bread that could instead have been produced with the resources it takes to produce one soldier.

[Jonath]

Actually, I had no trouble knocking over a bandit site with my level-6 leather city (assisted by a level-4 bronze city). I agree that there should be something military for little cities to do, to keep players amused on their way to level-10. Quite a letdown that my monument site is "temporarily disabled", I was looking forward to harvesting some limestone.

Vacation mode is a painful choice, you fall behind your peers. Nile Online is by nature a game where time counts, all our maneuvering is just about getting ahead in the race.

A city with a capability of 405 laborers would burn more than 10% of its production capability maintaining a military of 100 soldiers. More to the point, cities of any size are subject to getting eaten alive by the military. Generally you don't have enough bakery/wheat capacity to employ 100% of your population, so it would be easy to overbuild your military, and not be able to divert enough production to upgrade your bread production before the crisis hits.

Remember, it's all about making a fun casual game. You're supposed to be able to walk away at any time, and come back when you have time. I don't think it fits the desired play style to have to check in all the time when barracks production is running.

[goonsquad]

I agree that the cost of feeding an army is way out of whack, but then you wouldn't expect them to eat less than everyone else, so maybe we'll see a tweaking of bread consumption rates very shortly.

[PhilL]

Originally Posted by goonsquad

I agree that the cost of feeding an army is way out of whack, but then you wouldn't expect them to eat less than everyone else, so maybe we'll see a tweaking of bread consumption rates very shortly.

I agree here 24 bread a day to feed a worker or soldier is high at current bread production rates. I blame this on the lazy wheat workers. needing 85 wheat workers to supply 57 bakers seems outrageous. A small tweek to the wheat field would have a tremendous trickle up effect.

[Agamemnus]

Go here to see my solution to the bread cost issue. (suggestion 2) It's elegant and simple.
http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20975

[Andrelvis]

I have a new suggestion to make. As of now, laborers only consume bread when actually employed. Shouldn't soldiers function in the same way, thus consuming bread only when they were en route to a battle?

Originally Posted by Agamemnus

Go here to see my solution to the bread cost issue. (suggestion 2) It's elegant and simple.
http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20975

I agree

[Agamemnus]

Originally Posted by Andrelvis

I have a new suggestion to make. As of now, laborers only consume bread when actually employed. Shouldn't soldiers function in the same way, thus consuming bread only when they were en route to a battle?

But what about defenders?

I agree

Post that there!

[Andrelvis]

Originally Posted by Agamemnus

But what about defenders?

Oops.

[lynnk]

In this particular game there is another way of looking at the military though...

the military are not for the 'fighting' that they are used for in other games - they are used to produce limestone....

this is more of a trading/selling/buying game than a fighting game - more like a tycoon game than a FPS even

So if the military cost is just looked at as something that needs to be spent to be able to produce limestone - then the huge cost seems more understandable...

Just look at the military as if they are shop workers and they are 'making' the finished product - which is limestone - and then the cost of the limestone is actually cheaper than any other luxury item to produce if we keep 1 military for 1 laborer at the monument

Assuming 1 laborer quarries one limestone per hour of course

[lynnk]

Originally Posted by Agamemnus

Go here to see my solution to the bread cost issue. (suggestion 2) It's elegant and simple.
http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20975

I think that is a very good idea

...but I would also like to add that when a player leaves their troops starving - it ought to take some time for them to get back up to strength after they have been given the bread...

Because if a player had kept their troops starving for a week - and only needed to send the bread 9 mins to the monument when they noticed an army was coming towards them most players would still keep the troops starved until they actually had an attacking force bearing down on them....

Whereas if it took quite some time for the strength of the troops to get back to full - there would be an advantage in keeping them reasonably well-fed... [similar to the way the successive temple bonus cost decreases with time - the soldiers strength could go up the more time they had to build up strength...]

[Agamemnus]

Originally Posted by lynnk

I think that is a very good idea

...but I would also like to add that when a player leaves their troops starving - it ought to take some time for them to get back up to strength after they have been given the bread...

Because if a player had kept their troops starving for a week - and only needed to send the bread 9 mins to the monument when they noticed an army was coming towards them most players would still keep the troops starved until they actually had an attacking force bearing down on them....

Whereas if it took quite some time for the strength of the troops to get back to full - there would be an advantage in keeping them reasonably well-fed... [similar to the way the successive temple bonus cost decreases with time - the soldiers strength could go up the more time they had to build up strength...]

How about making it so that if they are starving (but have a higher than 30% efficiency) the efficiency goes down by 1% a day.. and they desert by some percent an hour, too? I will add that.

[cirrrocco]

The cost for having the troops in the city should be 0 - .2
When the troops leave city , their cost should be 1
The cost while defending once they reach monument and win battle should be .5

Very simple to implement!!!!

[CppThis]

The problem is as long as it has a bread upkeep cost, it will far outweigh the importance of military resources. To wit, quoting some numbers I posted in another thread

If you wanted to make a 150 unit army of spearmen for only for 24 hours and disband them, it would require 750 laborer hours of resources and 1500 laborer hours of bread. For a week, it would be a whopping 10500 laborer hours of bread production but still just 750 laborer hours of resources. See the problem? In contrast, building a third city (which a lot of guys in my area are putting up now) requires 7825 laborer hours worth of bronze/cedar/leather.