Over time, explore gains have been boosted many times, all to appease the netters of Earth 2025 who are gullible to think that bigger numbers makes them better netters, regardless of whether or not it is made easier to obtain those numbers.

Cut explore gains back to where they used to be years ago - they started decreasing at 1200ish acres instead of 1900ish acres, and the max explore gains was 25 instead of 40.

Cutting back explore gains will make grabbing to gain land become more important, and netting alliances running a bunch of all-explore countries will be at a disadvantage.

hm they didn't decrease that much earlier, they did decrease more rapidly though; i have all the formulae for those, if we wanted to revert


I have to say, while i agree grabbing to gain land would be more important, i thinik this is probably a bad thing; if you recall what happened back then, people went tyr farmer or tyr techer or sometimes just rep farmer/casher and farmed the living fluff out of anything that wasn't tagged; while there is farming now, it's nothing compared to what *would* happen.


Combined with the fact that ghost acres are huge now, i think grabbing already is important; it's tricky for an all-x player to place T10 these days, although one sometimes does manage to, and these countries need to be played perfectly; contrast that with the imperfectly played grabbing countries that make T10 and do extremely well (consider my country last set, only a few M off T10 and i got fluffed back and forth by PDM and SOL and SOF and was topfed a few times in the last two days...)


If you can't out-net all-x with grabbing, you're doing it wrong!

Have you tried playing an untagged on the alliance server? It can't get much worse than it already is.

Its difficult for individual all-explore countries to make top 10, but during a netting set, the bulk of countries in netting alliances are all-explore or very nearly all-explore.

Heh, but it *CAN* get worse, it was sooo much worse before =/

if the player base increased i'd be more happy to lower exploring; as is, it is still always better to grab than explore if you can farm somebody

20 acres grabbed with 2 turns is better than 14-18 acres explored with 2 turns.

100% disagree with the first post!!!! increase gains

Dict + strategy tech = both parties win through ghost acres at worst, if your target selection and setup is good.

Landgrabing is very very feasible if you set your country up right. In Alliance server, most netgaining alliances were seeking gains through agressive land trading. Later in the set when you have 25+ acres, there tends to be more risk that you will lose more land than you gain, so countries explore more.

For wargaining clans, some of our member did well and some just made silly landgrabs and lost land.

Almost all top countries grab.

So i dont see what your issue is with explorers. It just means more land for you to grab. And they wont finish top 10 anyway.

I have this weird thing where I think of netting on the alliance server as an alliance effort rather than an individual effort. No one's finish is legit, because they all benefit from tag protection.

And while the top few countries in netting alliances, the ones making the top 10 are all grabbers, the all-explore strategy is still run en masse by netting alliances. A huge portion of a netting alliance's networth will come from all-explorers.

You'll notice that I mentioned this in the first post (and in my reply). I wasn't trying to weaken all-explorers chances of finishing top 10, I was worried about the alliance-wide effort of netting alliances, not the efforts of their top countries.

Since untagged countries already get farmed horribly on the alliance server, this chance won't really increase how badly they are treated. It also won't increase the supply of untagged countries for alliances to grab. With bottomfeeding targets not being any more plentiful, but explore gains being lowered ... it increases the incentive for alliances to grab each other.


And I'd like to know why Joker wants gains increased ... unless he was joking. Is he one of those gullible netters who doesn't care about how challenging it is to get a high networth, he just wants a networth higher than the set before? If so, then you can please him by doubling the networth of all military units. Then he can still have his 200m networth finishes even with all-explore countries no longer getting anywhere near 30k acres. Or does Joker actually have some reason why he thinks that increasing explore gains would actually be beneficial to the game? I seriously doubt that he does.

If everybody can netgain well with all-explore, doesn't that provide the perfect contest: see who can netgain *best* in a similar contest?

Finding a good grab is basically luck anyway.

Awful idea IMO. Please do not reduce explore rates.

People want big numbers, so the game needs to get progressively easier and easier for them. We've seen that with the objections to the change in private market food price, even though it was only a couple of sets after the change of allowing military tech to increase private market sell price.

So should changes be a popularity contest, or should moderators do whats good for the game, and figure that people will get used to the changes after a few sets?

If we let the masses vote on changes for this game, the game would be wrecked within months.

Arrogant much, Rockman? I'd like to know why you want explore acres decreased... unless you are joking. Are you one of those gullible farmers who doesn't care how many players he runs off, as long as every attacker has a networth higher than any all-explore?

Seriously though, I don't understand what your argument is. You say all the netters are gullible and apparently have no challenge, but what is the issue? Unless you feel that you can't compete with the all-x?

With ghost acres, grabbing is already way powerful. The issue is when you have more land than everyone else, then you become the target. Changing explore rates won't fix that. Explore rates allow everyone to have more land. How does that remove the challenge?

You're preaching against "the masses" but what is your reasoning? Everyone on this thread has disagreed with you, so you write them off as the ignorant majority? When I look at the server news, I see a lot of land trading and for big acres. What is it that you hope to change?

Actually, I'm the opposite. I play all-explore and I feel its too strong. I'd like to see more incentive for me to attack other countries.