Forcing a withdrawal - possible trick?

[Agony_Aunt]

So, maybe my brain is broke here, but when two factions are in a war, their influence % is locked right? (if not, then this idea is duff).

One of the pains with forcing a withdrawal of a faction is that its stupidly easy for them to climb out of the danger zone if they have any support.

So, let's assume 5 factions in a system, A, B, C, D, E.

We want to get rid of E.

If we pushed the factions so that A and B are almost at war and likewise C and D, and get E into withdraw state, then pushed the other 4 factions into war, then am i right i thinking no matter what work was done for E, they wouldn't change % because all other factions are unable to move? Of course, the wars that are happening would have to be kept even for as long as possible to keep E down.

If this is just a giant brain fart on my part, let me know.

We just have a situation with a NPC faction that is very annoying because randoms work for it all the time and might have some direct supporters as well, and we really really want to get rid of them, but we know it will be near impossible with the support they get. We tried it once before, and almost every day they would pop up out of that danger zone.

 

[Dommarraa]

Yes it would work, as long as there were assets at stake for both Conflicts.
However, getting it all neatly arranged and keeping the conflicts going long enough might be harder work than just keeping your jack-boot on their throat.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yes, this works - you don't even need the C/D war if you set the A/B one up at a high enough influence.

Dubbuennel (Eol Prou LW-L c8-10) - History

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Thanks. Yeah, i'm aware it would be a pain to set up and execute, but so is forcing a faciton to retreat.

 

[Just Paul]

If you have enough people on your side is very easy to do, just ask Jane.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Conversely if you're just working against a faction that has passing traffic support but too much of it, you may even find you don't need to start the war - pushing two factions (A as if it wants to avoid the war, B as if it wants to start it) - may give you sufficient efficiency over just pushing A that you get there anyway.

 

[Jane Turner]

Population has a bearing too. Stopping a retreat in a massive system where maximum possible gain isn't much more than the 2% tax is actually difficult.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Population has a bearing too. Stopping a retreat in a massive system where maximum possible gain isn't much more than the 2% tax is actually difficult.

Ah, i'd say ours is a mid-sized system. 10 million.

 

[Jane Turner]

There's about 12.75 to play for there so, the retreating faction doesn't have to do too much to escape. Locking as much influence into one or more conflicts is indeed a good way to do that, and the only way to do that in a competitive situation, unless the population is immense. One locking conflict requires more effort to set high enough but less "timing" because if any conflict lock breaks on the 6th day of the retreat, then it's trivial to escape. The standard practice is to "ratchet up" the locked influence in consecutive cycles until there isn't enough influence left to escape with. It also gives time to seed additional negative states.

Conversely, all the faction you are trying to retreat needs to do is push any of the unlocked factions hard before the lock is achieved to get enough headroom.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Conversely, all the faction you are trying to retreat needs to do is push any of the unlocked factions hard before the lock is achieved to get enough headroom.

The Retreat tax itself can burn headroom, of course - pushing the retreating faction a little on days 1-5 will siphon influence off it and primarily into the conflict lock.

You can see an example of that on the Dubbuennel graph where the conflict starts at 41.1% (leaving plenty of room to escape the retreat with a final-day push) but the taxes are used to ratchet it up to 49% (making escape literally impossible) by the end.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

There's about 12.75 to play for there so, the retreating faction doesn't have to do too much to escape. Locking as much influence into one or more conflicts is indeed a good way to do that, and the only way to do that in a competitive situation, unless the population is immense. One locking conflict requires more effort to set high enough but less "timing" because if any conflict lock breaks on the 6th day of the retreat, then it's trivial to escape. The standard practice is to "ratchet up" the locked influence in consecutive cycles until there isn't enough influence left to escape with. It also gives time to seed additional negative states.

Conversely, all the faction you are trying to retreat needs to do is push any of the unlocked factions hard before the lock is achieved to get enough headroom.

We don't believe there is any (or much) active opposition. But its a very widespread non-player faction in the region, meaning randoms often help increase their influence just by doing random stuff.

Its why we want them out of the system, its a constant battle keeping their influnence down.

 

[Jane Turner]

Yes, it seems that the 2% is redistributed to all the remaining factions pro-rata to starting influence. Better if its 4% taken though.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

The Retreat tax itself can burn headroom, of course - pushing the retreating faction a little on days 1-5 will siphon influence off it and primarily into the conflict lock.

You can see an example of that on the Dubbuennel graph where the conflict starts at 41.1% (leaving plenty of room to escape the retreat with a final-day push) but the taxes are used to ratchet it up to 49% (making escape literally impossible) by the end.

Can you explain what you mean by retreat tax?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Can you explain what you mean by retreat tax?

The Retreat state directly costs the faction which has it 2% influence a day. This is applied separately to the normal influence calculations from player actions that day. If the faction doesn't have 2% influence to give to this tax, it pays as much as it can.

So if the faction is on 1% for days 1-5 of the retreat, it pays no tax, whereas if you push it to 3% for days 1-5 of the retreat, the tax will take it back to 1% in the final calculation, but you'll get 2%/day transferred to the other factions in the system, which will add to the amount of influence tied up in the conflict lock.

(Several of the Event states have similar direct influence costs, Public Holiday has a direct influence gain, and the successful end of an Expansion costs 15% one-off in the source system only)

 

[Jane Turner]

Having been part of an effort to prevent a retreat in a 10Billion pop system (cap=2.75) we've see that the tax is applied in the "state tick" which passes through before the influence tick. The interesting question that follows is where in the state tick sequence is the application of the tax relative to the decision on whether the influence is above or below the retreat threshold. If before it may need that you need to be above 4.5% not 2.5% going into the retreat tick.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

The Retreat state directly costs the faction which has it 2% influence a day. This is applied separately to the normal influence calculations from player actions that day. If the faction doesn't have 2% influence to give to this tax, it pays as much as it can.

So if the faction is on 1% for days 1-5 of the retreat, it pays no tax, whereas if you push it to 3% for days 1-5 of the retreat, the tax will take it back to 1% in the final calculation, but you'll get 2%/day transferred to the other factions in the system, which will add to the amount of influence tied up in the conflict lock.

(Several of the Event states have similar direct influence costs, Public Holiday has a direct influence gain, and the successful end of an Expansion costs 15% one-off in the source system only)

Ah, that's very interesting.