It all depends KJ, you see you cannot make a blanket statement on something that is fact dependent.

I looked at RDs ANW going back a number of sets. Looks strong to me?

Since people seem confused, and want a definition of landtrading this is straight from sofs policies are used in a number of pacts

"- For countries that have participated in land trading within a 72 hour period, land:land will not be accepted in any circumstances. Escalating retals will apply. Land trading is defined by two countries exchanging hits between each other more than once within a 72 hour period."

theres a seperate clause for RoRs etc

fluff

if they can only achieve 85m ANW with "land trading" how is that hurtful to the big dogs of netgaining?

Wrong they did it without trading, that was fair and square netting.

And 72 hours is stupid, most alliances have a limit of 48 hours on retals windows and if someone raped me in the retal I will for sure hit them again as soon as the retal policy allows me (again most at 48 hours) and not be as cordial with the hit (get more defense or stock hunt), also the limit of countries in this server makes it hard to find suitable targets, and as someone else said, if I am doing the hitting then I must hit someone fatter than me, and if only one country fits that criteria then we will be exchanging hits.

Is not my fault others refuse to hit me, I go after the best target I can find, if that ends being the same guy, then he will either kill me for hitting him too much, or he will be fine with it and we both will get fat.

I don't have to hit fluff targets with less land than me and get super raped in the retals just because a stupid idiot finds it cool.

Even if we lowered it to 48h it wouldnt make a difference since PDM/RD do it within minutes sometimes

And the only reason that you are that fat is because yer landtrading back and forth, if you didnt landtrade back and forth 10 times per day youd be a lot closer in size to everyone else and thus would have a lot more targets to pick on etc etc etc

fluff

spin ivan spin!

dance dance dance!!

just as a point of interest, don't most alliances consider hits 24 hours after a retal to be a fresh grab?

Yes, unless your name is Ivan.

Not if its made by the same country no, at least SoF doesnt if its made by a different country then yes

LOL@requiem god i love being trolled by nobodies

1296 posts vs 1083

Ivan wins

Ivan-- I'm glad you consider me a nobody. You are the lowest common denominator here ;)

Yeah but half of them posts are fluff, or intellectual garbage. So lets average out them please :)

Just had a lengthy conversation with Ivan.

Hopefully I am not misrepresenting you here, Ivan. But to recap the conversation for the benefit of the community, it seems the crux of the issue is that he considers it immoral to hit a country that you've just grabbed/been retalled by, unless an arbitrary amount of time passes between this exchange (72 hours by SoF's currently policy), which would make it moral.

Another moral alternative would be to hit different countries, which would not be under the auspices of SoF's 72-hour rule.

So really "landtrading" as its been discussed is permissible so long as you use multiple partners, and you do not hit the same country more than once per 72 hours.

This didn't make logical sense to me; I was not able to get at the root of this moral judgment in our conversation, though we agreed to discuss the 'why' another day.

I personally feel this is completely arbitrary and should be challenged, and like most changes in server politics, will likely take some wars and maybe tweaks to the game mechanics to get ironed out. I do feel, however, that the basis of "landtrading" as it's been discussed is 'morally' sound; that is, the cooperative and generative exchanges of land between players, so long as those players are subject to the rest of the server rules that have been established to date, as I outlined on page 5 of this thread.

Balin = PDM's official legal council

So basically all Ivan can explain is that he doesn't like landtrading but cannot put up a logical argument for it? Sounds about right to me.

Ivan you're such a somebody that you deserve a gold star sticker, I bet you didn't get many in 5th grade so I want to reward you for your efforts and good work now.

I don't think there is anything to be gained in debating Ivan as a person or player.

Fights over personalities are only smart insofar as that personality can control his or her alliance's policy.

I'm more interested in finding out if SoF has a legitimate problem with the way PDM wants to play.

I just want to honor Ivan because I'm a nobody, and he is a somebody in this game.

They wont beat the best of the best most of the time anyways but they will beat other people working harder who should beat them in an equal environment.


And Chaos/Archaic, I actually agree with KJ. RD is a crap netting clan and being 10k ahead of evo is ridiculous. Whatever I think of them, I know that they are not 10k acres worse than RD. Omega/Monsters/LCN/OR maybe MD are the 3rd best netting clan btw. Omega is my pick.

Please quit ranking us and calling us netters, thx.

I think I am the only person in PDM against landtrading. Like many arguments, this is about ethics, not rules. Going by the rules, it's completely legit. But ethically, i feel that landtrading takes advantage of existing mechanics in the game - an exploit, if you will. I put it in the same category as bottomfeeding: It's not ethical (albeit for different reasons).

To me, I equate those two forms of landgaining to using mental manipulation to picking up women (the practice of the fabled "pick up artist"). Sure it's legal and gets you places, but do you really want to use mind hacks and manipulation for an ultimately selfish purpose? Some will argue that it's fine - it's about getting out of your own way and creating opportunities. If used moderately, that is all well and good. But when it's used exploitively, which I feel is the case with landtrading, it crosses an ethical line that should be frowned upon.

i hate all alliances.

EVO are the bestest clanz in earthz

So much drama.

I think it's pretty obvious we were joking with eachother :P

As for RD netting.
Some in RD currently like to, others not. We won Avg. Networth last reset while LaF/Evo/MD were out of the race... it was a low net 85, but still pretty decent.

Also last reset we didn't landtrade, to those who seem to like to claim otherwise

This sums my thoughts up pretty well.

You're so full of fluff. Not only did you farm countries in your own tag but you also did this

PDM + RD landtrading
2012-01-10 18:56 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 5,505A (+2,603A)
2012-01-10 01:33 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 5,439A (+2,586A)
2012-01-08 14:30 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 4,995A (+2,358A)
2012-01-08 08:36 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 4,767A (+2,069A)
2011-12-31 08:00 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 3,025A (+1,463A)
2011-12-30 16:04 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 3,233A (+1,516A)
2012-01-03 07:17 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 2,782A (+1,434A)
2012-01-02 13:57 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 3,460A (+1,629A)
2011-12-31 08:00 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 3,025A (+1,463A)
2011-12-30 16:04 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 3,233A (+1,516A)
2011-12-27 07:13 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 2,537A (+1,192A)
2011-12-26 13:09 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 2,395A (+1,045A)
2011-12-24 09:55 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 1,775A (+945A)
2011-12-24 09:52 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS Defended
2011-12-23 19:21 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 1,590A (+761A)
2011-12-21 18:38 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 1,258A (+573A)
2011-12-21 13:31 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 1,117A (+631A)
2011-12-19 04:47 Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] PS 966A (+444A)
2011-12-17 15:56 Blood on Excalibur (#254) [Paradigm] Mr Snow (#344) [ResDogs] PS 761A (+425A)

(how many acres created for no risk? how many turns does it take an equivalent evo country to do this?) what makes it even more blatant is that the PDM guy didnt retal DH hits by RD...

the same guy did other land trading with KSF as well

and your other top 10 landtraded with Oden


seriously, you guys are fluff. you are not able to compete with LaF and Evo when using the same grabbing methods. you're not "pretty decent", just give it up. Omega and others would be well above 85 if they were landtrading like you were.

ya, this sums up my thoughts too.

Those thoughts being that PDM'ers are sexual predators.

P.P. keep ranting :) just remember to take your daily asprin, you don't need to have a stroke... who knows how long it would be till your parents go down to the basement to check on you.

btw: you're whining in that instance about 11 grabs. and from clicking on that Oden news, even less in that case.

lol parents in the basement joke. pretty ironic coming from a mr in RD.

Now that we aren't allowed to run multies anymore, we have left our basements :(

It is bright out here!

It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose.

In the words of the great no1stroker:

"THIS IS WEAKSAUCE! WHERE'S MY CHEESESTEAK?!"

wait PP:
you're calling pdm and rd fluff?
this is rich, coming from the guy who pulled cross server bs, and targeted it @ PDM, for at least 1 person who isn't even IN PDM.
further, why SHOULD we participate in LaF/Evo's "hit every single tiny target until humanitarians stop you to gain 10a at a time" method?
Further, the concept of a "topfeed" has been skewed since it first came about due to game changes, and now refers to someone with more land than you rather than more NW, which was the original definition.
So we still have all these retarded policies where you are only allowed to hit people with less land than you basically.
PDM has signed a few grabbing pacts, allowin g us to pick and choose what we want to hit more.

Next: Sov, I specified I had reasonable defence, so I would say a roughly average amount for a given acreage. realistically, I am NOT going to buy up massive amounts of D to outrun the retal, because if I am hitting ANY form of established alliance, it is entirely pointless, because there's always SOMEONE to take the retal.
Instead, I'm going to maintain D and hope that I come out in front on the retal.
This is different from land trading how? (oh that's right, it's about an arbitrary time limit, that sof wishes to impose on me)

So once again, because I then grab this tool AGAIN the next day because he STILL hasn't bought up def, you're saying I am land trading.
In short, you are penalising me because I am grabbing someone who si stupid enough NOT to buy defence! wow.

If you're getting 10a, you're doing it wrong.

I apologize to all the bottomfeeders.

I'm sorry your archaic, mundane strategy has been made obsolete.

(not really)

Don't forget abusive!

Can someone summarize all of this?

Anoniem: wants to know plus/minus of landtrading

FFAs: Tell 1a's that they are better

1a's: tell FFA'ers they are better

Ivan: I hate landtraders they can all die

PDM: What exactly is landtrading?

Locket: I hate RD

PP: I hate RD and PDM, I am so amazing

BattleKJ: RD and PDM are the suck

Then a discussion breaks out about what exactly is different between grabbing in general and 'landtrading' and who can tell someone to do/not do this in general... let along when alliances are O.K. trading with multiple partners but not O.K trading with one partner.

Then there's a bunch of Pies thrown in all directions

the easiest summary?

lots of whining.

Haters wanna hate,
Lovers wanna love,
I don't even want...
none of the above....

It's ironic that most "landtraders" stick to a single parter as there is a slim pool of countries with matching NW, land, and strategy. If more people would embrace the game mechanics for their own gain then there would be less incidences of multi-hits per day trades.

There are 164 countries over 20k land and 12 over 50k land (5 RD, 2 LaF, 2 Evo, 1 Rival, 1 PDM, 1 Neofed). That's 1/3 of alliances represented: 6 cases of land grabbing/"landtrading", 2 cases of war farming (LAF), 2 cases of farming into deep DR (EVO), and 1 case of internal tag hitting (Neofed). That seems to me to be a good mix of strategies and player interactions.

Adapt or die. I wonder when SoF will live up to their name.

This is the first post in this thread that makes crystal clear sense to me. Given the alliances posted as involved in this thread, 7 of the 12 countries in this high land bracket had actual grabbing interactions with each other. That's over 50% of the available pool. LaF and EVO bullied those that can't defend themselves.

I think the tags that Laf and Evo farmed were:
Muppets, a tag that had multiple deletions due to trying to run multies.
Samcro, a tag which suicides on alliances as a way to do FA talks instead of actually contacting the alliances themselves.

Correct me if I am wrong, but thats the latest update on these two tags.

haha, perfect!

That's not very nice to MD.

Could I do the same camping DRs and idling in irc camping the news for a juicy hit all day that you no-lifers do?

Yes...wait second, hell no I couldn't. And I won't even try. I have a job and a life and it sure as hell doesn't revolve around this game. This game comes after real life, and rightly so. Don't ever expect some people to make a stupid text game so important that they change their lives to fit it. And if you deem people to be bad netters just because they don't want to do said extremely boring, decidedly anal, obsessive tactics to become the 'elite netters' that you are, you're pathetic.

We're having more fun in this game than has been had in a long time. Go fluff yourselves.

wow

i read this thread for the past 40 minutes for the first time.

i didn't realize all this fluff that is going on here ;P

just fyi i personally think ghost acres need to be balanced. there's clearly a few broken mechanics going on there =)

i think this whole debate wouldn't be an issue if the avg land of a pure landtrading alliance is on par with a bottomfeeding and/or all-x alliance. then we have multiple means to gain acres, which is a good thing for this game.

right now it's clear that one method is imbalanced compared to the others in terms of avg land...

it's like if we made this new attack called Ownage Strike that created +100% returns and costed 30% of the military, no one would ever use PS or SS again.... at the rate this is going without a proper fix from the game devs landtrading would be like that

is it the community's job to police obvious game exploits? that's another debate =)

Why should all-explore be as good as grabbing? Shouldn't interaction with other players be fundamentally encouraged?

Why should bottomfeeding be as good when there is no one to bottomfeed?

i shuold've clarified detmer. i'm not saying all-x should be just as good as bottomfeeding or landtrading. i meant it as this:

traditional landgrabbing (highest risk highest reward)
landtrading (lower risk, lower reward)
all-x (lowest risk, lowest reward).

this is how you balance a game. right now landtrading has low risk and high reward, which makes the other two means obsolete and pointless.

less avenues to play this game = bad. this is how the community won't grow. you want to make all methods (all-x/bottomfeeding/midfeeding/landtrading/etc.) viable and balanced so people can choose the balanced land gain means that fits their time/hardcoreness/etc.