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Hahahahahaha!

7 (41.2%)

Nooooooooooo!

10 (58.8%)

Total Members Voted: 17

[Kilojoule Proton]

Unfortunately, my mind has gone completely blank trying not to think of jelly rolls.

Log: 1 jelly roll -> 1 unit; 10 jelly rolls -> 2 units; 100 jelly rolls -> 3 units (approximately current one)
Square root: 1 jelly roll -> 1 unit; 10 jelly rolls -> 3 units; 100 jelly rolls -> 10 units
Linear: 1 jelly roll -> 1 units; 10 jelly rolls -> 10 units; 100 jelly rolls -> 100 units
Quadratic: 1 jelly roll -> 1 unit; 10 jelly rolls -> 100 units; 100 jelly rolls -> 10 000 units
Intuition: 1 jelly roll -> ? units; 10 jelly rolls -> ? units; 100 jelly rolls -> ? units

Yes, PMs are OK. I don't expect you all to dump the details of your creations here where anyone can see (without encryption).

$$$Response
100% chance of hitting: Asymptotic cost, 90%: probably 2E per shot, 1-2E if aligned

[IcyTea31]

(You're not serious are you? The Golden Throne is inside the Paradise Plane. Even if you were able to get past the barrier you're risking countless innocent souls in the process. Even worse is that the body is already capable of talking on its own so you'll probably be doing all this for nothing.)

You're acting quite undwarfly today, Andres. Try doing a thing FOR ‼SCIENCE‼ for a cure.

[IcyTea31]

Cim probably got inside the Paradise Plane because Yaos never revoked that one offer of sanctuary once. Surely the barrier doesn't stop invited guests of honour?

[Quartz_Mace]

All the things I've made:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

High-Elves
Wolf-people
Ärž (given to Cim) Protects wearer and allows them to see into mortal's minds
High-Elf Capitol, Àrenne
Unintentional Creations:
High-Elf-Human Hybrids
Progress in works:
My own church (being built in Àrenne)
My statue (being built in Àrenne)
Yaos shrine (on hold in Àrenne)

$$$Price check$$$
How many High-Elves can I create per 1E?

[Andres]

Cim probably got inside the Paradise Plane because Yaos never revoked that one offer of sanctuary once. Surely the barrier doesn't stop invited guests of honour?

That lasted up until Fusil was arrested. You have not been granted a permanent passport and there's a reason that only the GM knows why you wouldn't have access to the Paradise Plane anyway.

Why would anyone vote for quadratic? Do you really want to spend 10,000 Essence on a mere 100 Humans?

[gman8181]

Ah locked voting and I keep changing my mind.

Square Root for creating Jelly Rolls but Quadratic for upgrading Jelly Rolls?

Square Root would be nice in allowing creation of large jelly roll populations or jelly roll armies but would be bad for making individual jelly rolls more powerful.

Quadratic would make sense for upgrades to prevent godly powerful jelly rolls but would bug the hell out of me for creating large populations, etc.

Pretty much the current model I think you use but Square Root is less exploitable than Log when it comes to spending huge amounts of essence. I don't want to imagine someone like me spending 20+ essence just to make Gruen. The world would be a green tide.


I'm fine with increasing the council's power but hopefully in a manner that doesn't completely shut down gods who like working outside it. It makes sense the council should get more bang for their essence than an individual but I'd prefer a reasonable ratio where everything big doesn't require use of the council and individuals can still achieve the same effects by spending more essence than the council would have to. I'd hate to see a council trumps all no matter what situation but giving it a little more push seems fair.

Also regarding gods' power being opposed, keep in mind most of that is actually from other gods (directly or indirectly).
Using the angels beating gods example, as was mentioned earlier, some of us spend a lot on our angels because that's how we like using our power / essence. I don't really see why any essence investment should be particularly less valuable than any other in functionality. If no angels can reasonably oppose gods, it devalues what some gods invest in their angels.
I think the issue might just be that some gods don't spend nearly as much essence on combat followers as others do which leads to the impression any cheap angel can kick god butt. I don't think that's the case. Even my basic angels for example all had enhanced traits and they still were being killed easily. It's probably only creations with truly enormous amounts of essence invested that you need to be concerned about and if buffing individuals was any more expensive than it already is, it would become a less viable play style. Sure the average god is and should be more powerful than the average non god by a lot but with significant investment, I should be able to make any individual a big threat to anyone or anything that hasn't also been significantly invested in, including gods in my opinion.

To me, the challenge is that some gods just like creating more non combat stuff which puts them at a disadvantage compared to more military gods. Both being viable play styles would be nice but difficult to achieve depending on individual behaviors. I think more cooperation between gods would solve the problem though. Strength in numbers seems viable still considering the method was used to take out Fusil once. Making military gods less powerful would remove the fun for them but the larger number of less aggressive players working together would provide safety.

Even someone like Grauel with a pretty massive amount of essence would be beatable in combat if say 2 or 3 decently powerful gods pooled resources and used it intelligently. The main issue is that on a one to one ratio, Grauel could still make more powerful creations than the 3 theoretical opponents unless they worked together to create an similar numbers of creations of similar power level to Grauel's. That leaves the most likely remaining issue as possible reluctance for the individuals to make something that is equally loyal to others as well in exchange for it being more powerful. The other option is just quantity vs quality which is potentially viable but more difficult and costly to pull off in battle due to the attrition. This, to me, is just part of the game though. There should be perks for being individually powerful otherwise why bother accumulating followers and essence.

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

Why would anyone vote for quadratic? Do you really want to spend 10,000 Essence on a mere 100 Humans?

I thought it meant inverse quadratic. Looking at the actual prices, square root sounds good. Can I change my vote?

[Andres]

Square Root for creating Jelly Rolls but Quadratic for upgrading Jelly Rolls?

Square Root would be nice in allowing creation of large jelly roll populations or jelly roll armies but would be bad for making individual jelly rolls more powerful.

Quadratic would make sense for upgrades to prevent godly powerful jelly rolls but would bug the hell out of me for creating large populations, etc.

This is genius! Someone give his man a medal!

Pretty much the current model I think you use but Square Root is less exploitable than Log when it comes to spending huge amounts of essence. I don't want to imagine someone like me spending 20+ essence just to make Gruen. The world would be a green tide.

On the contrary, I think Log should be used when propagating races. With Square Root you don't have a chance of propagating truly large amounts of sapients (in the hundreds of thousands, for example) without help from the Council, thus making gods unnecessarily weak. If you want to make a race on your own, you'd have to settle with making 100 sapients at 10 Essence(!) and then wait a few dozen Ticks before they get to such a high number.

As for the angels beating gods thing, I'm not saying that angels shouldn't be able to beat gods. What I'm saying is that an angel able to beat a god should be something noteworthy and expensive, not simply common. Your idea of using Quadratic scaling for angel upgrades is a very good balance to achieve this, in my opinion.

The problem with your idea of balancing military gods with non-military gods is action and reaction. The military god would have fun by putting time and resources into what he wants to do - warring, but the alliance gods wouldn't have as much fun because they'd have to put time and resources into defending - something they need to do rather than want to do.
On the other hand, giving a non-military god equal military power to a military god would simply frustrate the military god because he's spending all his time and resources in a futile effort to defeat his enemy. It's a tricky situation.

[Kilojoule Proton]

I'll be resetting the poll, I guess.

Re Council rebalancing: I'm still not sure how it will end up changing. Recently, it's seemed to have little passive power, but its active power hasn't really been tested (because not enough people bother with voting). Perhaps you all will have to decide on just how much will be a good amount of Council power and how much automated enforcement to have. I recall some proposals to create Council guards/enforcers that died because again, not enough voted.

Possible palatable changes could involve providing some conditional continuous surveillance, providing some direct enforcement of the Code of Conduct beyond slow lawsuits, and other things of that nature.

Re aggressive and peaceful players: This is also a tricky one to resolve. One of the assumptions I made was that peaceful players would tend toward aggregating and forming large, stable partnerships, but this has not generally been the case. Most of the groups tended toward decaying into stabler two-player fragments. If you all consented to providing relationship data (in-game, not real-life!) regularly, I may have a better idea on how to resolve this without alienating either group (and even create a fancy animation as a reward with names scratched off). Perhaps tweaking and exposing the cooperation discount system will encourage the formation of larger partnerships.

$$$Response
High elves per 1E: It's not linear right now, but probably a few hundred.

[Andres]

(I have airships that turn boulders into paper advertisements. That's almost the same thing as turning metal into gold. It's not like a god wouldn't know how to change something's makeup...)

Kind of a point. Kind of.

(I'm not sure why this alchemy business is causing such a ruckus, but I repeat the point that patents, copyrights, and other such things will not be enforced by me even a little.)

This actually wasn't case of patenting. (That stuff was half-joking and I've stopped patenting stuff anyway.) This had to do with in-game stuff like weapon schematics or blueprints or stuff. However, I've since realised that my reasoning and logic was faulty and I was simply wrong. Alchemy is definitely a thing that other gods should have access to. There are some other problems, however.
A long time ago I was given the option of spending 2 Essence to create mass-producible energy weapons or else have them developed manually for free. The implication was that I myself wouldn't know how to make them until I bought the weapon, and thus couldn't just tell my scientists how to make it for free. The big question being the level of omniscience a god has in these kinds of situations.

EDIT: I think one of the biggest drawbacks to the Council is that voting isn't mandatory. Nothing ever gets done because of it.

[IcyTea31]

Do note that Quadratic winning would deflate Essence value massively, so KJP would probably re-inflate it to a suitable amount. Still, the huge price differences cross-tier would cause problems.

[Andres]

I'm voting logarithmic for the creation of mortals. Angels ought to be created linearly in order to avoid Conservation of Ninjutsu.

[Stirk]

It is a little known fact that math was created by Cultists in an attempt to drive the world insane. It worked for Newton, what makes you think it won't work on you?

Just do what I do! Make up numbers and yell dice roll results if anyone questions you.

[gman8181]

On the contrary, I think Log should be used when propagating races. With Square Root you don't have a chance of propagating truly large amounts of sapients (in the hundreds of thousands, for example) without help from the Council, thus making gods unnecessarily weak. If you want to make a race on your own, you'd have to settle with making 100 sapients at 10 Essence(!) and then wait a few dozen Ticks before they get to such a high number.

True but I already voted and it's locked . It still seems like an issue with really large numbers though. Granted it hasn't been exploited yet but maybe it should scale down at higher amounts of essence. Just look at how many Gruen I could create with 20 essence if I wanted. It's hard to balance without more complicated equations but that's too much GM work probably.

As for the angels beating gods thing, I'm not saying that angels shouldn't be able to beat gods. What I'm saying is that an angel able to beat a god should be something noteworthy and expensive, not simply common. Your idea of using Quadratic scaling for angel upgrades is a very good balance to achieve this, in my opinion.

Thanks! I wouldn't want too many god killing angels running around either to be honest. Just didn't want angel upgrades to be useless either since I treat the Devourer like a little spoiled kid and don't want it to die if a god decides to punch it after I've invested a lot.

The problem with your idea of balancing military gods with non-military gods is action and reaction. The military god would have fun by putting time and resources into what he wants to do - warring, but the alliance gods wouldn't have as much fun because they'd have to put time and resources into defending - something they need to do rather than want to do.
On the other hand, giving a non-military god equal military power to a military god would simply frustrate the military god because he's spending all his time and resources in a futile effort to defeat his enemy. It's a tricky situation.

Yeah it is. I'm not entirely sure of any decent solutions besides having peaceful gods invest more in the council and automated protective measures. I'm not the most creative guy though.

Re Council rebalancing: I'm still not sure how it will end up changing. Recently, it's seemed to have little passive power, but its active power hasn't really been tested (because not enough people bother with voting). Perhaps you all will have to decide on just how much will be a good amount of Council power and how much automated enforcement to have. I recall some proposals to create Council guards/enforcers that died because again, not enough voted.

Yeah, the council mechanic is good but seldom used due to mostly independent players with fairly variable goals. Possibly fixable IC by us voting to have no votes count as abstains (Yeah I know it was already proposed and I didn't vote on it) and the council's power proportional to the amount of gods participating in any given action and what they invest. Actions automatically pass if at least 2 gods vote yes and more vote yes than no but the effectiveness of what passes would be variable compared to the amount of yes votes. So if only two gods vote to imprison a god and that god votes no, the imprisonment would occur but would not be too difficult to break out of with some decent effort. If a lot of gods voted yes, it would be a very powerful prison. If no votes outweigh yes votes, the action would not be applicable through the council.

Re aggressive and peaceful players: This is also a tricky one to resolve. One of the assumptions I made was that peaceful players would tend toward aggregating and forming large, stable partnerships, but this has not generally been the case. Most of the groups tended toward decaying into stabler two-player fragments. If you all consented to providing relationship data (in-game, not real-life!) regularly, I may have a better idea on how to resolve this without alienating either group (and even create a fancy animation as a reward with names scratched off). Perhaps tweaking and exposing the cooperation discount system will encourage the formation of larger partnerships.

I wouldn't mind keeping you updated.

Do note that Quadratic winning would deflate Essence value massively, so KJP would probably re-inflate it to a suitable amount. Still, the huge price differences cross-tier would cause problems.

For upgrades? I thought upgrade costs already increase drastically according to effectiveness.

[Kilojoule Proton]

Spoiler: Intuition/Intuition: An anecdote (click to show/hide)

God 1: "SSS an angel. All he does is change colors."
(4 hours of most definitely undistracted studying pass)
God 2: "Ohai heres my design for my updog [description]. watSSS an updog cost?"
God 3: "...elections at Erehwon... a pound cake got elected..."
God 4: "...obviously a bun is better. :3:3:3"
God 5: "...jelly rolls better..."
God 3: "...superiority of the sponge...more bubbles..."
God 4: "Hi KJP, PriSSSe check on my cute widdle bunnies what kill everybun and are inviNsible! :3:33"
God 6: "...racist against cakes..."
God 7: "...it's not racist, you silly. It's anti-batterist."
KJP: "SSSResponse:
Color-changing angel: Eh, let's say 3E.
Updog: Why not 3E
Cute little bunnies: Bah, 2E"
(4 more hours of most definitely undistracted studying)
God 1: "My race got killed off by a cute widdle bunny! Fix this!"
God 2: "I got killed by a cute widdle bunny! Fix this!"
God 3: "He can't have his cute widdle bunnies kill anyone! You price checked for just cute widdle bunnies, not cute widdle bunnies what kill everyone!"
God 5: "Does the bunny have a switchblade and a glock?"
God 6: "Only I get guns!"
God 4: "No fair! I made them kill everybun! 3:<3:<3:<"
God 7: "The bunnies killed me too! Fix this!"
KJP: "..."
God 4: "I already paid fur it! I get to keep them! >:3>:3>:3"
KJP: