Hi

Just a thought, the newly announced 72hour land drop rule is 75% of the entire length of the express server. I tried to drop land this afternoon and I got blocked because I had grabbed it back on Saturday. I could go back to all explore I suppose?

Everything else is accelerated on the express, so maybe a 12 or 18 hour window is more appropriate if the rule is to say on the express. Or even change the entire rule from time-based to a turn base.

hmmm
interesting point
perhaps we'll change it to be based on the turn rate

My thought was just the rule bascially makes all land grabbed on the express impossible to drop.

Thx and good work.

i've never really seen the point of dropping land.... but... yea, i'll see about this sometime soon hopefully :)

the point is for silly assed suiciders to hurt you,knowing full well that you cannot get your land back.

people used to like to drop land a lot at the end of the set to increase tech levels

but with private market concerns it doesnt make a lot of sense especially since the public market is so thin in express

that said no real reason not to let people to it if they really want to

72/5 = 14.4

so round to 14 or 15 would make sense, or 12 for nice half day intervals, or less down to say 6 or 8 to be a lower percentage of the max turns of a reset inline with the longer servers

to be equivelant to tourney which i havnt seen people complain about it would only need to be 11 by the way

i had to drop land so i could grab the last 30 acres from a land kill target.

ok this is important

maybe this will be the breakthrough
if the admins can learn the point of dropping land
maybe we can get some war rules into place on the express server

SOMETIMES U HIT A TARGET FOR $$$$ OR FOOD

sometimes the land is secondary

for example if u hit someone with $1B you get $23 M even without tech
if you hit someone with 12M bushels you get a ton of food

all the land does is reduce your tech which if u r going to hit the target multiple times can reduce your yield signifigantly

if u r running a fully researched T, I or C the loss of research can be several percentge points

the land may so improve ur NW that your yield is reduced

the land makes u a target for LGers

land can adversely impact ur SPAL which reduces your yield on offensive spy opps

if u use your military tech for something besides window dressing large amounts of increased land is detrimental

"SOMETIMES U HIT A TARGET FOR $$$$ OR FOOD"

if you're just about dead yourself, sure

but if the land is secondary, it's still a benefit 99% of the time

"all the land does is reduce your tech which if u r going to hit the target multiple times can reduce your yield signifigantly"

this, I believe, is one of the *main* reasons we implemented it... this part is stupid, and lets suiciders... well suicide... easily

if you want higher tech levels, buy more tech! or tech more if you're a techer....



I have very little sympathy for a "strat" that people use when they get themselves in a position where they can't be self-sufficient for food/money that causes them to attack usually weaker opponents (who, guess what, are weaker because they *ARE* self-sufficient and aren't carrying so much def/off that they make no money) and *THEN* have the audacity of removing the scarcest resource in the game, FROM the game



It's like a hobo mugging some random rich dude, stealing his money, and burning it for warmth... it's completely pointless!

u have very little sympathy for a netter getting attacked or spied on

thats why spies are emasculated and dictators are banned

Also, most of the times when people need to drop land (like being KR'd) you haven't grabbed a huge amount of land lately, so you can still drop some.

remember, if you are say 5kA and you do a 1kA grab, you can still drop 5kA after that... so it shouldn't affect people in most cases

if i wanted to ban dictators why would i be considering improving them? :)

i am pleased to hear that u r considering improving dictatorships

all the following comments relate to individual servers only

dictatorships were my favorite gov on earth2025 because they are the most active government in terms of making a decision on nearly every day and changing plans in response to new opportunities

the inability to build is so debilitating early however that on the primary server the first three weeks are spent as some other gov type

and because u have to build up your tech for the coming rush u have an extremely low rank

the payoff is that in weeks five six and seven you are the dominant spy force in your ranking sector and can be the most efficient army in the game

this means that in a massive set like we used to have u could spy constantly and find the targets of opportunity who lurk near the bottom with tons of cash or tech or food and no defense

u then hit the cash cows acquiring tons of cash or food per turn, shed the land and hit the lurker again

it was not uncommon to pick up $200 million and move up 200 spots on a single day and in the final week to be moving into the top 100

the problem with the strat is of course the lurkers were inevitably the lead country of some multi which then proceeded to try everything in the book to retal

the administrators have said they have no sympathy for players who were in a weak position and want to advance by hitting other players
honestly i have no comprehension of what this means
there are plenty of strats that start out weak including the Rs and Ds who inevitably won on Earth2025
the beauty of that game was the natural progression of the set which like clockwork starting out with the Indycoms in the lead followed by the H and then the week five jump in food and oil prices that allowed the Fs to think they might do something followed by the arrival of the Rs and Ds who won

they may have won but they never made a name for themselves or earned the respect of their peers))))))

it seems the following questions should be answered when considering any improvement

do u want a site where all governments have as closely as possible an equal opportunity to win?

if that is the goal then the improvements have to be dramatic

the goal of any enhancements to I powers should be to attract and retain players to the site

of course any enhancements will shift the balance of power, upset netters and may cause a few netters to quit. Therefor any enhancements have to draw in more players than it drives out.

to draw in some different types of players, the game simply has to be more active

ACTION ACTION WE WANT ACTION



i would suggest that when u consider what the spy enhancements are u think not in terms of % enhancements but in terms of power diversity

give dictatorships the unique spy powers that llaar W and others have suggested
give ditatorship spies a higher success rate than others

this may have the added benefit of inducing clans to adopt active spy cadres whose sole function is to disrupt the military offensive actions of the enemy clan
which may attract more players to clan games

thank you for your time and consideration
thanks for your efforts on behalf of the game

With the new ghost land, we're grabbing more in wars.
This change is going to get me killed. Reminds me, I still wanna bring back that LIFO vs FIFO discussion... haven't forgotton that. That was another change that impacted on how I played.

mmm i have no problem with the strong preying on the weak; the problem i have is with the unsustainable preying on the sustainable and dropping the part that makes the sustainable actually sustainable

and yes you can grab in war, and yes you can drop it, you just can't drop below the amount of land you've gained in the last 72 hours....

so if i'm a 20kA country going into war, i can grab like 7kA a day and drop all of it every day without noticing anything

this is not meant as a smart aleck question
it really is a serious question

why is sustainability a criteria?

and what is meant by sustainable

sure my ideal predator country can not sustain itself if it suddenly goes netter

but if there is another lurker three people ahead of me the country can be sustained right up until i find the last weak defense target

there are a ton of restrictions on spying a few on warring

why are there no restrictions on netting??
wouldnt it make just as much sense to say u can not research more than twenty times a day?
it is immediately obvious that any such restriction is arbitrary and capricious. it is just as arbitrary to have these other restrictions

what? you're not really making sense to me.

sustainability is a criterion only because if everybody ran an unsustainable country then... well they would have to sell off stuff 'till they were sustainable...

what is meant by sustainable is that a country can run its turns selling it's production every day and not run out of cash/food in the process

In any country:country comparison, a sustainable country usually is a better country.


What do you mean by restrictions on netting? This is not restricting warring. It is restricting suiciding.

a country which is not sustainable can survive by taking cash and food and tech to sell from others

$23M per ss can keep an unsustainable country going for a few turns until it get another $23M

i assume u know that with a few well timed hits u can get well over $100M in combined cash tech and food

that strategy should not be banned

i call it wargaining not suiciding

i'm not saying it's banned; i'm saying it's an unsustainable strat, and if it becomes ever so slightly more difficult then that is not a big concern. Seriously, you can grab & drop 33% of your land every day without running into this

and i'd call it suiciding; most clans would kill you for that

right now in express this rule is having an unintended consequence which proves why it is a bad rule for this server

a country with a sustainable strat just got ABed to the tune of 5000 acres

if he could drop that land his spal would be very high and his military tech would be 50%
but he can not drop the land

the AB and this rule are incapatible on this server

I am planning to modify it to be based on turn rate; it won't affect you then.

And I assume you mean weapons tech.

ok great glad i could help

Heh, you should really try playing that 'wargaining' strat of yours in a clan server.. I'm interested in seeing an op of your country.

iv'e played that strat on an alliance server. used to be able to get +/-100k acres running turns. though the people that got that deserved it. now there is no leverage or possible way a small country can extract any type pf revenge/payback for being abused.

iv'e been on both sides and understand the reasoning behind the changes but i think things will just become worse for small country/tags now.

op just looks like 800-1200 acres, bunch of spies and tech with 2bill sitting there waiting @ turn 800ish

as i said, you can grab & drop 33% of your land per day atm (or 100% of your land in one day and not again for 3 days)

the time period will be made to flex with turnrate

but i don't see how the above limitations are *that* restrictive

hopefully players understand that limiting the removal of the scarcest resource in the game *from* the game is in the general interest....

Acres should never be able to be removed from the game.

understand that but sometimes the people getting suicided deserve it. now there is no way that little country can get some payback. thats all i'm saying, not that i disagree with the new landrop rule. i just expect now that since THE only way someone that gets farmed to hell and back had to get some payback has been removed, that the usual suspect alliances are going to be farming even harder than ever with no fear of any real retribution.

i understand why u cant see it
until i eperienced it myself i could not have imagined it either

the argument that it is in the general interest of the game is based upon two assumptions

1) netters will always be the largest percentage of players and the backbone of the game

2) netters will quit if the rules are not heavily skewed in their favor


i believe the future of the game depends on attracting puter gamers who like spying and attacking

i simply do not believe the unmet demand among puter gamers for acquistion games is that high
the unmet demand for text spy and war games is insatiable

Sure there is; just grab their land and keep it; you don't have to drop it. Or AB them or missile them; or BR them....

1) is not true; this does not affect warmongers in almost all situations; maybe a 1 guy VS whole alliance "war" but that's basically suiciding

2) also untrue; the issue, if you recall, is that the rules HAVE BEEN slanted towards suiciders & warmongers; if a netter want's to net, what does he do; buy some def and attack conservatively; if somebody decides to suicide, he has no chance to keep netting; if a warring alliance decides to attack a netting alliance, both are at war; the rules are nowhere *CLOSE* to slanted in the netgaining direction. They are now a little more equal though, so one player can't ruin the resets of 30-50 people in one run, as they could before; now you can only *easily* ruin one or two or three resets in a run. You could probably still ruin 30 or so if you were clever and careful about doing it. It's just not so trivial now.

even if you do want to drop it, you can still suicide one person no problem with this.

There are definite methods of recourse atm.

it is not like a hobo mugging a rich man

it is more like germany attacking france in the forties

or a crocodile waiting a year for the zebra to jump into his river

or a grizzlie waiting on the salmon to jump into his mouth


the vast majority of the time the salmon has nothing to fear from the grizzlie, for most of their lives the salmon are swift oceanic creatures who are apparently uncatchable by the lumbering ne'er-do-well who sleeps for months on end but if the bear positions himself well when the salmon voluntarily makes himself vulnerable, the bruin feasts. we do not require the bear to hold onto the skeletal remains of his prey.
It would be in the general interest if bears did not eat salmon, but that matters not in real life.

in our game when in the fullness of time the frenetic netter finally allows himself to become vulnerable by storing billions in cash or millions of bushels to the patient predator we should not require the predator to hoard the useless empty acreage remnants of the fallen. Nor should we moralize that it is in the best interest of most if the predator did not dine.


i understand the prey does not like it but the prey is not morally superior to the predator nor is the netter superior to the suicider

would anyone seriously contend that the zebra is morally superior to the croc, or the fish to the mammal or 1940s france to 1940s germany?

hmm this problem hasnt been fixed yet

yet another set ruined by the netter protection rules committee

=/

this requires some time for me to sit down and add yet another server-configuration variable, which doesn't take *that* much time, but it does take *some* time

or to figure something out based on turnrate

um, the zebra isn't a meat eater, so his crap encourages the growth of plants, whereas the croc just pumps toxic crap out his wahzoo that couldn't fertelize anything.

i saw the 360 episode of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving the other day, and it suggests that we can use dead fish to grow maize.

why exactly did the 1940 french let the 1940 germans grope them into slavery?

this thread reflects the degradation of the american school system(((

the 1940s french knew that the germans were cheating
they caught them red handed
as punishment they deleted ten german bank accounts
the cheaters regrouped and destroyed the site((

find proof of this on glennbeck.com/history/deletionsdonotwork

I had this problem in the alliance server.
I needed to gain the land to support my upkeep, but had to drop it again during a war. It almost got me into trouble because I couldn't.

I'm slow...