Can somome simply this for my blond twink axx? I don’t understand this.

Hold up so all bots will be Y therefore, netting is a no go as people do run the bots or at I confused

[quote poster=qzjul; 51945; 1014771]PPS: I may have bumped up the number of bots in alliance while changing things. [/quot

NeverMind questioned answeredcb

Thank you Qz for helping TheBOMB reach powers not thought humanly possible.

Frieza power level 1 million will pale in comparison.

This is the sentiment I'm mostly hoping for. Try it!! If it's bad, I can change it. Honestly part of the biggest problem with developing for this game is that no matter what we do, or don't, we get like INFINITE flak for it. Hence why we've been doing nothing. I feel like it's worth giving this a shot for a couple resets, see how things shake out. Maybe there needs to be a cost, maybe we remove it. Maybe we make players in Clan GDI have 100x as many earthquakes, i dunno =/

At first glance this seems fair, but I realllly don't remember the math on all those things.

I feel like it should be the max return. I'd assume the formula looks something like

IF(target land>hitter land, 2% of hitter things, 2% of target things)......I could identify the exact changeset it was added in if that's helpful. You could just expand the formula to IF(retal, 2% of target things, IF(target land>hitter land, 2% of hitter things, 2% of target things))

Nah mean?

Is Slagpit still around?

Yeah so when this was first added my complaint was that in many not so rare instances the new formulas make returns independent of attack type (SS/PS), Mstrat, govt, DR and NW ratio. Now the most obvious flaws were quite swiftly removed and that changeset now works as it was advertised to work. But both before and after that changeset I always argued for that it should work as I think you are suggesting here.

That isnt how it was made tho. Now there is just a flat cap on returns dependent of attackers stuff. For most normal situations this doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it does dumb down grabbing to a degree in some circumstances. On the other hand you could argue the opposite too, by claiming it can be a player mistake to PS when an SS would yield the same return and the player who makes costly efforts to match NW on a retal or a grab only for it not to matter has made an unforced error.
That said, if I understand you correctly, you are suggesting the same thing I suggested back then, and I still think that it's a more elegant solution.

would think countries in a CLAN GDI should have like a -20 or -25% income for it.

IS this Not a WAR GAME?

I realize you wont make everyone happy with every change, that will never happen. I feel like if the change was made that affected both the netters/warrers there MIGHT be less flak. Right now, this only seems to benefit one side.

Give it the same features as standard GDI where declaring war is required to hit countries more than twice your size / less than half your size unless declaring war.

I really do think it should have a feature where a clan can declare war on another clan and negate Clan GDI while at war. I honestly think that will be an essential part of this. And needs to be a part of this, or stonewalling will essentially ruin war.

As I suggested when this was originally proposed, war deccing on clan v clan should start a 48-72 hour clock, where Clan GDI is negated at the end of the time period for tags in a declared war. It's a way to eliminate the blindside narf while simultaneously letting war tags be war tags, and political drama to still be a powerful aspect of the game.

If you want to war an alliance now you can just talk with them and come up with a solution. Similar to how we netters always had to rely on the kindness of the warring alliances to be able to net.

I think that's less likely to be the meta than still blindsiding but doing it with individual war decs. I mean, I'm friends with everyone and would love it if everyone was kind to each other, but I anticipate the exact opposite of that to be the case...

I think it's important to look at how things will get exploited rather than used properly given the vitriol within the community.

I also think it provides more safety for netters to have a cool down on war Decs from untagged and solo or small tags intent on suiciding.

Under this meta, someone could declare war on the largest country and suicide them instantly just as they would in the past but with an added step. They would only be able to suicide one country at a time rather than a whole tag at once....but I honestly wouldn't consider that an improvement. It won't matter for people targeting Gerdler>LaF, tmac>evo, etc.

I may not have the war mechanic explained in the exact right way, but imo this meta doesn't reach far enough to protect netters in any meaningful way. All it really does is make a stonewaller in clan GDI able to prevent the rest of his tag from getting hit while folks are declared to them. Otherwise, people can still kill whoever they want to with war decs.

I think the way you describe it, gains, will actually never be the meta tho. It's a nice thought, but people will do everything possible to find a way around that. And I think after one read thru, I was instantly able to identify how to blindside netters still rather simply.

I think this is a good thing, but doesn't reach far enough to achieve its intent, and largely stops short of a meaningful change. I think adding a clan v clan war declaration mechanic in combination with a 48-72 hour formal announcement of hostilities would prevent both the blindsides and suiciding this intends to avoid, but stops well short of actually achieving that while people can still just declare war and smoke someone willy nilly. Giving people a solid notice that they're about to be suicided or killed would be far more valuable. And in combination with this mechanic, would essentially achieve the intended meta.

Tl;Dr version:
As long as you're still able to declare war on an individual in Clan GDI, and hit them as much as you want instantly, this is not a meaningful change, and will not have the desired effects. There's years old suggestions of how to make this better, and I've listed one of them, which I find most sensible.

What's missing from this change is the ability in the game as a whole Clan to declare war on another clan so that diplomacy still has to exist between clans and create pacts and alliances.

Countries in clan GDI should get the GDI cost added per country automatically. Something neat to consider is an additional cost added to the country personal GDI incremented per country tagged.

An aggressor Clan not in Clan GDI but whom dec wars on the Clan in Clan GDI within the game should get the dec war cost per country, plus a cost incremented per country tagged.


As it stands now any established clan will attack bots without fear of being hit by anyone, and FR depts will be unneeded.

How exactly are you supposed to declare war to hit a country, when the act of declaring war is in itself an attack and you can't do it due to clan GDI?

Once again, can someone tell me in simple terms why this is good and why this is bad. I see many clans already opting in. From both sides of the former war. We’ve all got lost in these threads so I’m asking for honest pro/cons?

Remember I’m the blonde twink around here and don’t know fluffski!

It seems that the main reason for Clan GDI is to stop the blind-siding of Netters. It looks to me like Gerdler went crying to Qzjul about the recent war in which LaF got demolished, and asked him to put the crazy Clan GDI in place, so now anyone can be completely protected from war by pushing a button.

Prior the recent 3 set war between LaF and a coallition of 4 or 5 clans and many returning players, LaF fought a war about 2 years before, and another 3 years before. So they don't exactly get "blind-sided" very often.

In the most recent war, a lot of resentment had been building towards LaF. I remember some old grudges myself, going back a few years to shananigans with Vic, and I'm not alone. We've also had a pact with LaF that was quite unfair, and seems to have been imposed on SoL back when LaF won a war and dictated pact terms. That was before my time as SoL FR, but I was not happy with our pact. And so, we formed an alliance and we went to war.

We won the first set set of the war. LaF had time to prepare, but we caught them by surprise nonetheless, and won the battle. In the second set, LaF made a superb OOP attack and caught us napping, and won. In the final set, we all came out in hiding, warring oop. We were identifying each country to decide if it was a real or fake bot, lol. We had tons of players return from SoF, Elders, and SoL, and we had Apoc for the whole war as well. We crushed LaF.

Gerdler came asking for peace at the end of last set, and we met with him on irc. The Coallition offered a uNAP to LaF, auto-renewing for 6 sets. We agreed to work together to a closer rapport, to reduce hate, and to make the game more enjoyable. I believe this was a reasonable and even merciful proposal. Gerdler agreed to it, and we were all set for a peaceful start to the summer.

Two days later, Qzjul announces Clan GDI. Gerdler obviously knew about it, but said nothing as he signed our 12 month pact.

Is LaF so scared that they need to hide behind this artificial wall? Even after making a fair agreement with me and my fellow leaders and spokesmen for clans, he ran to cry for help and protection? And is Qzjul really so sympathetic to his cause that he would wreck a most basic part of the game, the trust in the players to govern themselves?

I say Clan GDI should be turned off. There's no need to protect Netters from being blind-sided because its not a problem.

I think Clan GDI has some positives built in. The protection from untagged suiciders is within the spirit of the game. On any server with Clans having someone hide untagged and operate outside of diplomacy or alliances doesn't seem like fair play. Requiring a clan to declare war on another clan is a good fix to that problem. But not allowing a clan to declare war unless a prior attack has taken place, seems like it may be a step too far.

Well he worked with QZ to roll the new mechanic out so the 1 year unap was signed under false pretenses. How are you guys going to work together to a “closer rapport” and “agree to work together” if you’ve been lied to? Getafix’s kindness has been exploited imo.

I'm in full agreement with this. But even to put it a step further, an untagged suicider can still declare war and do its thing on a Clan GDI country. I almost understand the resentment considering it seems to protect against clan v clan more than clan v player/suicider.

I really do believe the clan v clan war mechanic is totally necessary, and that the player v player war declaration mechanic ought to be removed altogether. It's far more in the spirit of the game and the server.

The 48-72 countdown I suggest to clan v clan war would just be a throw in bonus that I think would improve the experience. But in a basic sense, clan v clan war is a necessary finishing touch.

You can't even declare war on a clan in clan gdi. You are negated from every attack except spy.
Tried declaring on a guy running ops on me and it says he is in clan gdi...

Return the game to what it was Qz, what good is the warroom or politics and pacting now.

If you played the game you'd not need a 'test' set, but rather notice this clan gdi goes against what this war game was intended for. If your buds at LaF want to net they should practice good politics, all these years playing with the bots shows in how bad they are are protecting themselves via pacting.

The coalition threw them a bone with uNap, they had 6 sets to circle jerk to bots.

Interesting. I'm pretty sure that's not the way it was intended. Reading his first post, it seems like declare war was supposed to be allowed still...

Self government failed, as there is simply no longer sufficient quality people in other alliances to act reasonably. You say it's not a problem, but what you mean is that it's not a problem "for you". It's that inability to see any other perspective but your own that has ruined self government. Stop acting in a way that is essentially identical to how someone would act if they wanted to destroy the remaining playerbase. Develop *some* basic level of self awareness.

On May 2, 2012, the game administrators announced on Alliance Talk that Hanlong, with assistance from former game administrator Turtle Crawler, had gained access to the game's database, allowing the two to view all countries without requiring the turns needed for spy operations, change anything in any of the countries, and view private messages sent via the Earth forums as well as those sent in the game itself.

It’s hilarious watching this cheater that destroyed the playerbase talks about “self governance” and how we should act. What a piece of work this guy.

You can see the requirements:

3) ALL COUNTRIES
- a) Cannot attack countries in Clans in Clan GDI that
-------- have not attacked them personally (all reset) OR
-------- have not attacked their clan recently (72 hours)
- b) Cannot attack countries in Clans in Clan GDI without declaring war on that country (if it's been more than 72 hours since last hit by that country)

Those two work together, so if you want to hit a country in clan GDI then it needs to have attacked you personally or your clan within 72 hours. And if you personally outside 72 hours then you have to declare war.

You'll notice that self governance worked in that case, both Hanlong and myself were banned from laf for near a decade. I had no contact for 9.5 years. LAF keeps it's word you see, even though the accusations against me weren't entirely true.

No one practices politics anymore, the wars weren't about politics at all, but about boredom. People pretending this coalition was build via good politics are fooling themselves and very short sighted. LaF isn't going to be your punching bag. Not anymore, not even for one set, regardless of clan GDI or not. It might be 4-5 years before LaF membership might even be willing to consider war rather then just doing other stuff.

That's what we're saying. The declare war function isn't working at all on countries in Clan GDI. I think it's an unintended bug.

Seems like a broken mechanic. I run ops on TC and TC can't retaliate. Is that an intended mechanism?

Even if they hit you or your tag? Test it in alpha, the intent isn't that a country could farm them join clan GDI to avoid a retal.

Haven't tested actual hits yet, but I'd assume it's operating within the confines of everything else in the war room.

....unless the declare war mechanic only is usable if a country has hit you at least once in the set. In which case, that needs to be changed to retaliate against spy attacks.

As far as farming someone and then joining GDI to avoid retal goes, I'd assume the 72 hour mechanic would still be in place, but I'm not sure if the declare war mechanic is available at all.

Needs a bit further testing, but as it stands it's either incomplete or not functioning properly.

Yup

I can't declare war on anyone in GDI, which means if you're in GDI you don't need any def because no one can hit you.

Perfect then i can play like Evo.

Evo, Monsters, PDM. All netting clans who have respect from everyone and haven't been blindsided in years. Its just LaF who needs Clan GDI, because you are arrogant assholes, you cheat and bribe, you send spies into other clans, you dictate unfair pacts when you are in a position of power, and now that you are weak and are getting some payback for your years of being assholes, you are crying and sucking up to Qzjul and getting protection through straight favoritism, and wrecking the game. Go fluff yourselves.

And I'll add that I'm really glad to have been part of setting up what may be the last war of Earth 2025/Earth Empires and seeing LaF ground into the dirt until only 3 remained tagged, and seeing your leaders cry like the sissies they are.

I doubt Gerdler will send syko and co. to suicide on you, so no you cant play like EVO.

I looked into this idea of unfair pacts and found nothing at all supporting it. The rest is ancient history, if it were ever true, and certainly not just LaF. I've been killed by PDM multies before, for example, yet I hold absolutly nothing against this PDM tag and wish them the best of everything. Posts like yours here are evidence that there is absolutly zero reason to hit LaF other than boredom. By the way, saying you want payback for "years of being assholes" is classic projection, as being assholes is exactly what your side is and was doing. You hit BECAUSE you are low quality assholes.

On May 2, 2012, the game administrators announced on Alliance Talk that Hanlong, with assistance from former game administrator Turtle Crawler, had gained access to the game's database, allowing the two to view all countries without requiring the turns needed for spy operations, change anything in any of the countries, and view private messages sent via the Earth forums as well as those sent in the game itself.

It’s entertaining to see this piece of work refer to others as “low quality assholes”.

I've looked into it too TC, and we went to war in part for the unfair FDP that was not really an FDP beacuse of the clause that meant you never had to back us up even if we got blindsided by a larger enemy. In fact, in our previous war before this one, LaF sent $6b to our enemy in "Reps" despite clause #2 that said you would never send FA to our enemy. Add to that huge penalties if we had a rogue suicider, like KBomb, who we recruited in good faith but who hit LaF and who we paid billions in reps for, discouraging us from recruiting anyone new. And then, bullfluff like this:
"-Standard reps formula is: ((75*number of week into the reset)*(lost acres*1.2)). Units are in tanks.
-200% Land:Land negates any lost production payable, as future production will be more. Special cases may still be discussed between representatives from both alliances."

so yes, we went to war for a new pact, in addition to you being assholes who cheat, bribe, corrupt and infiltrate with lying spies, on top of being crybabies who want special treatment and protection.

So you think that SOL should not bear the responsibility for their players and should not compensate for suisiders? Did LaF have different payment terms for damage under the pact or did both sides commit to the same thing? Compensation for damage, to make whole what was broken IS fair by definition. As you note in your own post, LaF is willing to live by it's pacts and send 6 billion in compensation for it's own damage. LaF generally doesn't consider it a hostile office to pay reps either, we accepted Evo was doing it two resets ago until they didn't stop and went beyond what they owed and to alliances they did not owe it to.

And it's not like you have to war to end a pact, you just drop it, and if you have another suisider everyone gets to decide in real time what they want to do rather than having it prenegotiated. Normally if you don't think a FDP is really a FDP, you just downgrade it to a uNAP. But to drop a FDP down to nothing indicates bad faith.

Sounds like ClanGDI would have helped you then by stopping KBomb from doing so much damage.

So I'm left with the same conclusion, that the only way to say that pacts were 'unfair' is to say that damage should not be compensated for. LaF clearly believes such things are fair and is willing to and does live by them.

I'm also curious who these spies are you are refering to. I certainly used spies, 15-20 years ago. But I have no idea about any current use. LaF as a strict rule doesn't do things in game that others could do against us and we wouldnt want done (like sending people to join tags and suiside).

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree TC. We had good reasons to war LaF. You guys had avoided war for a couple years, and of all clans in the game, you were the most hated by everyone. You can see that from how many people came back to the game for the fun of kicking your asses.

This has always been a war game. You may prefer to net, but you have always been netting in a war environment. I guess its Qzjul's privilege to change that and give everyone an out from war with Clan GDI. Its the end of a long long history of conflict and drama in this unique game. We love it because the conflict here is so real, and we feel it so strongly. I don't know of another game that has the emotional impact that this one does, when you kill a country, when you are blindsided, when we debate all these issues and argue.

It makes me really sad to see Clan GDI implemented, and the game turned into a meaningless operation of farming bots with no interaction or conflict with other players. I still hope that Qzjul will change his mind on this and remove this new feature, because the game will never be the same, and I know that many many people will quit, including me.

I think once people are willing to be honest and recognize the real reason for the war, to get people to come back and for fun at anothers expense, rather than for new pacts or any of the other things floating around, then the only thing we disagree on is if that is a good reason or not. Either way LaF won't stand for it again, we'll either stand behind Clan GDI or just like last reset we simply won't play. So however you want to slice it, it's probably never happening again.

You won't stand for it? Go play actual Farmville buddy. This is the game you signed up for 20 years ago, and now you want to change the very nature of the game because you feel hurt? Grow some balls. Get some players who will stand up for LaF like we do for SoL, win or lose. Or quit, and good bye.

Or change the game if you can, and make it worthless. Then I'll quit and leave you to your fun.

And there is the child again. By the way projection doesn't really work on real people, it's just a mechanism to help you feel better about yourself. A crutch, per say, to try and cover your own shame.

Alcohol is a crutch. (And Jack Daniels is a wheelchair; Robin Williams)

You don't want to stand for being beaten in a war in a wargame and want to cry to Qzjul for protection? You are the child. How many people have LaF driven out of the game? Do you think anybody really cares if you quit in your little fit of pique?

We offered LaF a fair pact with a 12 month uNAP, and agreed to work to reduce the hate (Coz I guess Gerdler must have been really feeling it, arrogant ass that he is who deserved all the insults thrown at him), and you guys would have had 12 months to net away and maybe get stronger, or try some more "divide and conquer" tactics with Mercs, SoF and SoL before you might have to fight another war. But no, you run crying for help. Thats not a projection pal, thats what you've done.