Europe and Balance Pt. II

Wr1tt3n by Hugosch, 29.07.2012 at 05:48

Wr1tt3n by Desu, 29.07.2012 at 05:41

This still leaves Turkey as the only OP country, since there is no ukraine to keep it in check.

Turkey is not OP imo. The reason for taking Turkey, is because it was a good counter for Ukraine, not because its a good country. Without anyone taking Ukraine, there is no need to take Turkey. Yes, it has a lot (most) of reinforcements, but its expensive to buy. All 'high costs' strategies are useless with Turkey. Therefor you have to play GW, PD or IMP. With these strategy you have a slow expansion, and since you can only expand to other 'cheap' countries, you will be running out of money in turn 2. Turkey will lose in a 1v1, against countries like Germany, France, UK and Spain. Therefor, i think no change is needed here.

It's hard to say in words how wrong this is.


Turkey's expansion with imperialist is almost unstoppable. With gw/pd it's not as extensive since you can't go as far/buy as much.

(also, I edited my previous post with some reasoning)

Wr1tt3n by Desu, 29.07.2012 at 05:41

This still leaves Turkey as the only OP country, since there is no ukraine to keep it in check. In every game it was: someone picks ukraine, so someone HAD to pick turkey to stop an unstoppable duo(in team games), or vice versa. Even in 1on1's.


You can't nerf one without the other.

I completely agree, nerfing only ukraine is a terrible idea. Turkey wasn't OP with Ukraine to balance it, but without good old ukraine (RIP ;___;), Turkey is now officially the big boss in the east. I also disagree with Hugosch saying the expansion is slow and poor. I hope you realize its possible, and commonplace, to be able to take Italy first turn with Turkey with up to 15 units. Turkeys expansion is beast and needed Ukraine as it's main opponent.

Also, i'll add, as a Ukraine player I always thought Turkey was the more powerful choice. A good Turkey can zerg you immediately before you get usable income as Ukraine. So the choice of Ukraine over Turkey to nerf seems completely ridiculous to me.

I was Germany and i got overrun by Turkey in a 15k game
(P: He was using SM)
(turn 4)

Its funny; There was a problem with countries that where OP. I did a suggestion how to change it, and most of the players agreed with that. Now it is changed, and players are responding like this is very bad.

Cow is now saying this:

Wr1tt3n by Guest, 29.07.2012 at 08:59

This is ridiculous. Did you ever see someone play Turkey efficiently? No way he would ran out of money in turn 2. This only happens if you are forced to overstack certain countries, which isn't necessary anymore without Ukraine as an opponent.

Maybe he didn't notice that was responding on THE EXACT SAME TEXT that i just copied from before the update. Before the update, he also responded on the same thing, but then it was this:

Wr1tt3n by Guest, 10.07.2012 at 19:43

I am supporting Hugosch's version of an Ukraine-nerf.

Turkey is not overpowered at all but just the best known counter for Ukraine, [..]

Again: Its very easy to complain afterwards and say you never ment it this way. We are in a proces to get things better and to not get things OP. Yes, some things might not be completely balanced after a update, but we are trying to get there. We have changed Ukraine now, if Turkey is really op now (just if), then it also needs a change offcource. I will do some more testing; and i like arguments from guys that will stay with their arguments once the changes are in effect.

Lets just test and argue this out, before we make thoughtless and quick decisions.

This is truely dumb, now turkey will win every single europe game.

take bursa completely out, that would nerf turkey enough.


turkey was NEVER just a ukraine counter, people played turkey way before ukraine strats were thought up.


also, i want to know why removing 2 units was also necessary, the infantry in central was enough, the pop decrease was just a complete kick in the balls.

I want to add to my original post.

The population nerf is largely irrelevent as Ukraine will be compensated in a game against another player so we can ignore that.

The intent was to nerf Ukraine by making Russia Central harder to take by increasing the amount of reinforcements in Russia Central. This would both make RC a compelling start choice and by pushing their neutral defence units into infantry range.
Instead Russia Central just got an income boost (making it a worse choice to start with than before because it's more expensive to buy) to push it into infantry range.
I maintain that Russia Central needs infantry, however that infantry should be gained from an extra city or two instead of increasing its money.

This is coupled with Turkey receiving no changes at all. In my original post I highlighted the fact that a nerf to one would cause the other to be overpowered. Turkey will need a nerf. I no longer believe Turkey should be split into two, however it's massive amount of reinforcements in comparison to every other nation is not justifiable. Turkey is not even the largest nation in Europe, Germany is a larger nation than Turkey in terms of population however it's not got reinforcements to match this. Turkey needs to lose 3-4 population by taking a reinforcement from the cities of Diyarbakir, Adana, Antalya and Bursa. It then needs to have its overall income boosted by a small amount so it costs about as much to start with as it does right now. This is because a Turkey with fewer starting population without any income boost would likely be stronger than right now because it's losing pop in the east which is the least important part of the country.

However a Turkey with 35 pop instead of 39 would still be powerful. This is where the second nerf comes into play:

Italy needs another port city to make it a truly viable starting country. Anyone who has played Italy knows that it is extremely vulnerable to attacks because of the difficulty of getting troops in to reinforce Rome. Whilst a lot of nations can attack Italy (Greece, Turkey, Croatia, France and Spain. Italy cannot attack these same countries which makes it extremely exposed and needs another port to help alleviate this difficulty.

These ports should either be Genoa on the West Coast or Venice/Bologna in the East. They don't need to be bigger than 1 pop cities, however it gives an Italian player far more mobility which is desperately needed.
The other effect is to push Italy into Infantry territory in order to nerf Turkeys expansion. Turkey went through a bit of a renaisance when players discovered you could reach Rome from Izmir on turn 1. With Infantry in Rome, Turkey could still take it, it would be far more expensive for them to do so (a nerf similar to Ukraine > Russia Central).

With the combination of population nerf and a boost to Italy we will have balanced Turkey against a weaker Ukraine and made Italy a more viable choice in competitive play (And just FYI, I play Italy a lot, I'm not saying it can't be used I'm saying that any other country would be better than it). Russia Central should gain at least 4 pop through the creation of 2-3 smaller cities but I've said all this before in my first post.

To conclude: I'm really grateful that this has recieved attention from Ivan and Amok and it's a great boost for those of us who care about competitive gameplay in Afterwind. I'm sure you're well experienced in negative reactions from the playerbase following game changes, but please take these response to these critiques into consideration as we all just want to make Europe + a better map.

I think italy defo needs a boost.

Why?

1. It has only 800kish less people than the UK, this isn't represented
2. It has slightly less GDP than the UK, this isn't represented
3. As Barry said, it has no access to the Balkans.

Adding Venice and Florence then stacking it with infantry may work.

Also, looking at barrymore's turkey nerf, the main problem with turkey being OP is that it has far too many units on it's western side Istanbul, Ismir, Bursa are the life of turkey, nerfing the east side is what is needed.

Replacing Bursa with a city like Gaziantep or Konya (my vote goes with konya), will keep turkey at it's current population and cost, but make it harder to expand or more costly to expand.

Ukraine also needs it's two units back, and central needs an income decrease, but more troops.

P.s. this is the best imp start i could come up with, i hardly even play imp and came up with this.

Let me add:
We are getting a lot of criticism. Criticism is a good thing, you will not be silenced because of substantive criticism. But tell us something new. "This sucks", "rofl", "this is bad", "are you serious?", "This is truely dumb", "This is ridiculous". Persistent whiner comments, especially afterwards, not ment to initiate a discussion, but ment to damage Afterwind or any moderators, admins or players are not nice.

We had a problem of Ukraine that was to OP (everyone agreed on that). Now there was a change to fix that problem, but that doesn't mean everything will be completely balanced from then. Please come up with some suggestions and arguments to help us instead the whining. Apart from the fact that we can't do anything with this whining, it is extremely boring for other visitors, please don't do it.

@Barry; nice post, i will check some things out before responding

Wr1tt3n by Hugosch, 29.07.2012 at 11:37

Let me add:
We are getting a lot of criticism. Criticism is a good thing, you will not be silenced because of substantive criticism. But tell us something new. "This sucks", "rofl", "this is bad", "are you serious?", "This is truely dumb", "This is ridiculous". Persistent whiner comments, especially afterwards, not ment to initiate a discussion, but ment to damage Afterwind or any moderators, admins or players are not nice.

We had a problem of Ukraine that was to OP (everyone agreed on that). Now there was a change to fix that problem, but that doesn't mean everything will be completely balanced from then. Please come up with some suggestions and arguments to help us instead the whining. Apart from the fact that we can't do anything with this whining, it is extremely boring for other visitors, please don't do it.

@Barry; nice post, i will check some things out before responding

Hugosch, I think you're completely taking it the wrong way. Everyone is actually contributing to what the new update could further be improved on, and if you notice, Cow was actually being civilised until you accused him.

Also, to clarify, there is not too much hatred towards the Ukraine update, it's just that you missed out on the other half of the deal that Barry suggested in his first post: Nerfing Turkey alongside Ukraine.

EDIT: I know it can be annoying and frustrating, but please don't be so pessimistic towards the AW community. You're a mod.

Hugo, I agree with Cow - we see more valuable feedback here than whining, and the ratio is much different from the Turnblocking update feedback, for instance.

Barry's understanding of this game is incredible, I think he should be on the balancing committee, if there ever was one.

I don't think they only listen to the moderators, Cow. There were plenty of times where the devs listened to the rest of the player base for upgrades.

Consider how it'd affect team games.

On another note: inb4 DS Ukraine.

We have been running away from raising upkeep independently of original cost, and raising original cost independently of country's income for a while now.

Sorry, but this whole "admins to mods to players" scenario is nonsense. If you want evidence just look at the ideas and suggestions forum for yourself. Ivan and Amok respond to and implement changes that are proposed by non-moderators all the time. I'm don't mean to sound sharp but I really despise the "admins only care what mods say" fantasy that more and more players seem to be subscribing to.

Wr1tt3n by Acquiesce, 29.07.2012 at 15:58

Ivan and Amok respond to and implement changes that are proposed by non-moderators all the time.

True, but amok/ivan will reed your opinion first and before the non-moderator opinion

I maybe didn't made myself clear in the last post and i see there is some confusion. It was not ment as a attack on Cow (as some might think). The whining i mean is in general, and can been seen in the signatures for example:

- "If Admins only listened to us. If they only ever listened to us."
- "Process of Afterwind: Make terrible update, say to play it for a while, then wait for everyone to forget about it, success"

These are things that make me sad. We are all trying to get this game better, and the admins do a lot of work and implement for PLAYER requested changes. There are plenty of examples that things have been changed, even though me and other mods disagreed with it. It simply got changed, because a lot of players wanted it. Did you ever see this happening so much in any other game? And still some players keep whining everything sucks, mods are biased and admins won't listen. Do you really think that the admins will make a game, to completely ruin it after a year? These things are, what really making me tired and i found that i should be heard. Thats why i'm asking again, to give us tips and good critisism, without the bashing.

I did some testing today (playing Greece and Spain as a counter for Turkey IMP). I can pretty much say that Spain fails against Turkey. I won in a difficult match against vdog. After that i tried the same on TopHats and it became absolute failure.

Then i played with GC Greece i was planning to prevent a Turkish movement on Italy. I won against: Houdini, Desu and bargain (witch is, together with fruit, one of the best Turkey IMP player imo). I lost one game against Caulerpa, but that still makes a 3:1 ratio.

I'm gonna do some more testing on it, i think that DS Ukraine is also still a good counter for IMP turkey. Or maybe even Germany or France is.

In summary, yes Turkey is stong but surely not unbeatable and i woudn't say its OP. I think (as also fruit suggested) that if it will be impossible for Turkey to reach Italy, that it will be less stronger. And this might be enough...

Wr1tt3n by Acquiesce, 29.07.2012 at 15:58

Sorry, but this whole "admins to mods to players" scenario is nonsense. If you want evidence just look at the ideas and suggestions forum for yourself. Ivan and Amok respond to and implement changes that are proposed by non-moderators all the time. I'm don't mean to sound sharp but I really despise the "admins only care what mods say" fantasy that more and more players seem to be subscribing to.

Please don't flame.

or lie.

or delete this post.

Edit:

Wr1tt3n by Hugosch, 29.07.2012 at 16:20

I maybe didn't made myself clear in the last post and i see there is some confusion. It was not ment as a attack on Cow (as some might think). The whining i mean is in general, and can been seen in the signatures for example:

- "If Admins only listened to us. If they only ever listened to us."
- "Process of Afterwind: Make terrible update, say to play it for a while, then wait for everyone to forget about it, success"

These are things that make me sad. We are all trying to get this game better, and the admins do a lot of work and implement for PLAYER requested changes. There are plenty of examples that things have been changed, even though me and other mods disagreed with it. It simply got changed, because a lot of players wanted it. Did you ever see this happening so much in any other game? And still some players keep whining everything sucks, mods are biased and admins won't listen. Do you really think that the admins will make a game, to completely ruin it after a year? These things are, what really making me tired and i found that i should be heard. Thats why i'm asking again, to give us tips and good critisism, without the bashing.

Well I hope you can appreciate my contribution and it is this: Not every player understands the game, few players have half the understanding of the game dynamics (dynamics as in how win the game). I for example don't have a clue on how GW works and have never had one, at least compared to players like Fruit or Pinheiro. Things look different from each side of the game and often one confuses the advantage of an opposing player's strategy.

My point: Not every player can be listened to, however, mods are undoubtedly to be trusted more by admins so your duty is (both admins and mods) is to find out which player you must listen to in every strategy debate. This has been proven successful every time, especially with the infamous IF nerf.

Admins, get more involved in the game or have specific people study the game dynamics, it can't all be relied on mods, after all they were chosen for their behavior and time in game, not for their understanding on the game, with absolutely no offense intended AT ALL.

Wr1tt3n by Hugosch, 29.07.2012 at 17:23

I did some testing today (playing Greece and Spain as a counter for Turkey IMP). I can pretty much say that Spain fails against Turkey. I won in a difficult match against vdog. After that i tried the same on TopHats and it became absolute failure.

Then i played with GC Greece i was planning to prevent a Turkish movement on Italy. I won against: Houdini, Desu and bargain (witch is, together with fruit, one of the best Turkey IMP player imo). I lost one game against Caulerpa, but that still makes a 3:1 ratio.

I'm gonna do some more testing on it, i think that DS Ukraine is also still a good counter for IMP turkey. Or maybe even Germany or France is.

In summary, yes Turkey is stong but surely not unbeatable and i woudn't say its OP. I think (as also fruit suggested) that if it will be impossible for Turkey to reach Italy, that it will be less stronger. And this might be enough...

You claim to have won against me as Turkey, preventing me from getting Italy, but the time you won against me I was only testing if I could reach Italy using NC Turkey (which I did) and the rest of the game I just zogrushed your cap to get the game over with. I personally wouldn't count this in the ratios.

I won against your France and against your Greece "counter" with imperialist turkey.

I would say that evens the ratio right up, and I'm not even a good turkey player(which you seem to say isn't a good excuse, but asking anyone, I'm not really a star player with Turkey). Just thought I'd clear that up.

You can still get italy with a greece there, I will show anyone who wants to see tomorrow.

You have to think turkey in a team game situation rather than just a 1v1. yes you could pick greece to dick turkey's expansion, but that is going to leave you in real shit in the long run.

also, you are just creating counters instead of finding ways to balance the map, this is not fixing the issue.

Wr1tt3n by Guest, 29.07.2012 at 19:25

Wr1tt3n by nonames, 29.07.2012 at 19:18

You have to think turkey in a team game situation rather than just a 1v1. yes you could pick greece to dick turkey's expansion, but that is going to leave you in real shit in the long run.

also, you are just creating counters instead of finding ways to balance the map, this is not fixing the issue.

1v1 is the only thing that matters bro.

seeing as i haven't played a 1v1 in europe for around 4months, i am inclined to disagree with that.

Wr1tt3n by Hugosch, 29.07.2012 at 17:23

In summary, yes Turkey is stong but surely not unbeatable and i woudn't say its OP. I think (as also fruit suggested) that if it will be impossible for Turkey to reach Italy, that it will be less stronger. And this might be enough...

with tank general you can conquer all the balkans and italy by turn 2.....

You can't stop turkey reaching italy without using a counter strategy, there needs to be another idea.

italy replaced with infantry and adding venice is a good idea, but has effects for and already fairly weak spain and an effect on france, practically making it impossible to take italy from france.

Wr1tt3n by Hugosch, 29.07.2012 at 17:23

I did some testing today (playing Greece and Spain as a counter for Turkey IMP). I can pretty much say that Spain fails against Turkey. I won in a difficult match against vdog. After that i tried the same on TopHats and it became absolute failure.

Then i played with GC Greece i was planning to prevent a Turkish movement on Italy. I won against: Houdini, Desu and bargain (witch is, together with fruit, one of the best Turkey IMP player imo). I lost one game against Caulerpa, but that still makes a 3:1 ratio.

I'm gonna do some more testing on it, i think that DS Ukraine is also still a good counter for IMP turkey. Or maybe even Germany or France is.

In summary, yes Turkey is stong but surely not unbeatable and i woudn't say its OP. I think (as also fruit suggested) that if it will be impossible for Turkey to reach Italy, that it will be less stronger. And this might be enough...

agreed. turkey is not op in anyway. It is a strong pick but not to the point that's causing an unbalancement. In fact, the old Ukraine was much stronger.
First, Hugo, Greece is not a good counter to turkey. As much as it can block turkey from getting italy (which it still can) and attempt to stall the balkans......... Greece still has an enemy with 39 starting infantry, 39 reinforcements and two powerhouse coastal cities consisting of Istanbul and Izmir. Greece isnt a great choice against Turkey unless you estimate the expansion perfectly, for instance. Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Volga and RC can all beat turkey using the rights strats and expansion technics. Also Hugo, when we played you didnt get Italy in any turn.... including Germany..

Wr1tt3n by Acquiesce, 29.07.2012 at 15:58

Sorry, but this whole "admins to mods to players" scenario is nonsense. If you want evidence just look at the ideas and suggestions forum for yourself. Ivan and Amok respond to and implement changes that are proposed by non-moderators all the time. I'm don't mean to sound sharp but I really despise the "admins only care what mods say" fantasy that more and more players seem to be subscribing to.

I think I brainfarted in my post but I wanted to point the exact thing you're saying. A fine example of that is the interface upgrade that rolled a few weeks ago.

Wr1tt3n by The ZOG, 29.07.2012 at 18:31

Admins, get more involved in the game or have specific people study the game dynamics, it can't all be relied on mods, after all they were chosen for their behavior and time in game, not for their understanding on the game, with absolutely no offense intended AT ALL.

We all have the same goals (admins, players and mods) to get this game better. So bashing on a player or mod that does not agree with your opinion, does all distract from getting the game better. Come up with a debate and better arguments to prove your points are better then someone else. Its better to convince others of your story, then attacking them on personal issues. Even i will admit my mistakes, if you give good arguments why i'm wrong. Telling me i'm an idiot (even if true) will not convince me. Also the assumption that mods are only chosen because of their good behaviour, is absolutely wrong.

Wr1tt3n by nonames, 29.07.2012 at 19:18

also, you are just creating counters instead of finding ways to balance the map, this is not fixing the issue.

If you also would have tested it and read my posts, maybe you wouldn't say something like this. I am trying to find a counter for Turkey, to judge wheter it is OP or not. And if its OP (just if), then i want to check what there needs to be changed, to make it balanced the right way (like preventing IMP Turkey to get to Italy). This is the way to get in a balance, where all players could agree with. Your critisism is exactly what i mean in my last post about whining: You are whining for the whining of it, without bringing up a good alternative (except for saying 'THIS' when Barry posts something), nor do you give any factual based experiences with balancement.

Back on topic:
I will admit that it was a testing game against Desu and he might not be the best Turkish player, but i'm not the best Greece player either. However, i was just trying to say that Greece could be a counter, not that Greece is the solution to all. I would like to see fruit showing how to move to Italy. If we make that move impossible, then i want to test it again some times with different countries. Still i have to test Germany/France/Ukraine as a counter.

Again: If the question that Turkey is OP will be awnsered with: 'Yes' then there is no doubt there needs extra balancement and this will offcource have my support. But for the moment I still think we don't have to overreact with making new balancements again. Let first try the current changes. Yesterday morning, most said that Turkey was OP. After one day, i already hear players that have actually tried it, are claiming the opposite. And as TopHats said: Ukraine was more OP before the update, then Turkey is now, after the update.

Dont let ships pass the small landbridge south of Athen. that would slow turkey down

As much as I enjoy being right, Turkey is getting stronger in 1v1s now and the balance is definately starting to tip towards Turkey being picked first rather than Ukraine. If Turkey wins the 1v1 tourney then perhaps we can reopen the case for nerfing it a little bit (even if only by 2-3 reinforcements).