Gaining land is key to the game. Currently, it is generated only by exploring (diminishing by natural decay with size) and ghost acres (growing linearly with size). I'm suggesting the game create 1 automated country for every player country created. A few logic cases would be enough to decide to explore, build, attack, cash, tech, or store turns.

I need to double check these numbers, but in Alliance so far this reset, there have been 46 people to grab 10k land or more, and 316 people who grabbed 1k or more. With 120 untagged countries, there isn't enough to go around, so everyone is farmed into deep DRs because there are not other marginally better targets out there and, after 10k land, exploring is also marginal. As a result, people move on to the next marginal task of land trading for ghost acres.

With 800-1200 untagged countries, there would be enough targets for each current attacker to have 5-10 hits a day without reduced returns. With 800-1200 untagged countries that will retal and make random LGs on landfat countries regardless of tag protect, all-explorers will need more than token defense and plan for interruptions rather than being a rare exception.

The main grudge against multies is how they were used and benefitted one side over another. If they were server-side ran countries, they could help liven things up for those in tags and take some of the attack pressure off real people who choose to play untagged.

Yea, we've discussed this, and have a framework basically ready for starting writing bots &etc

after pang & I are done our theses perhaps :)

If bot countries are created, I will leave LaF and either quit alliance, or start a new alliance entirely devoted to killing bot countries.

Even landtrading, as it is player to player interaction, is preferable to farming bot countries.

PVP in WoW was fun (before they kept making it worse). Gold farming was never fun. I don't want this game turning into a gold farming exercise which rewards time over skill and becomes tedious. I like that I can spend 5 minutes a day in alliance and be competitive, or 40 minutes a day in FFA and be competitive. I don't want someone to win merely because they spend more time than me, I want them to win because they are more skilled than me.

Fortunately for you, Mapleson, I think most of the moderators are more in favor of bot countries than they are opposed to it.

well, we don't want dumb farmable bots

or at least i don't

if we add bots, they will be bots that can fend for themselves, and perhaps even be a little aggressive...

I didn't mean to suggest making all-x countries non-competitive, only to provide more of a random element to the game. If they just sat there and generated land, it would be worse than nothing.

Rockman, if you want to devote your time to killing random countries, that adds to the variety of game play. Would LaF or other netting clans step in to protect what they treat as their farmland?

Why is preferable to bottom feed the same player/country 8-13 times than hitting at a target unsure if it's a human or robot? The lack of targets already favours time input or lucky timing over skill in finding good targets.

Another change, which is being considered by the administrators, and will hopefully be put in before bot countries get put in, is to change the DR system so that timing isn't anywhere near as important. The current DR system is definitely flawed. And you are correct that the current lack of targets does make timing your hits to the second necessary, which has removed much of the skill component.

Call them NPCs!

i think bots are better than landtrading because the barrier to entry is lower and therefore its more casual friendly

rather than making everyone team up in teams of 2 or more and potentially even play at the same time every day

or just have very strict who you can hit when rules that i dont want to be in charge of enforcing

to reduce the time advantage we need to soften DR, and then not landtrading becomes the least time intensive option (can grab blind without calcing, dont need to keep countries the same, dont need to play at particular times and so on)

i think were being too conservative on bots, we could even start with an absurdly useless and low number of dumb bots that wouldnt change anything if we had too

im more worried about landtrading actually because nothing else seems to come close to it without a huge ratio of targets:grabbers which means if it becomes prevelant its the only way to play

with bottomfeeding and bots a tweaked landtrading and midfeeding are probably still viable

i'm with Rockman with this

i'll even be his VP if needed...

I am with Rock as well.

It would be interesting to have a server with bots, but only that server, if we added bots in alliance, people would want them in Team, then FFA... And where would stop? Tourney?

One new server with bots would be OK, but I don't want them to be the standard

Yeah Rockman is right. Instead of giving alliances bots to farm, we should just farm the fluff out of every new player that comes to the game and drive them away.

For a smart guy Rockman, you are pretty dumb.

When did I ever say that farming every new player that comes to the game is acceptable?

That is the reality of what happens now. Adding bots could ease up farming on new players. Instead of bringing in land by other means, you'd rather farm your own countries or land trade.

I'd much rather have bots in the game. As long as they have some sort of AI system, so they can make there own retals, and make random grabs so nobody knows who is a bot and who is a new player.

There are currently 876 countries in the Alliance server

Instead of pacting out and complaining there's no land try grabbing other people? Allex is fine to get started but there's not enough conflict in this game, you should be competing for the top, not landtrading/grabbing bots because it's easy.

Land trading will kill the game much easier than server sided bots will.

I personally don't have that problem. What concerns me is when I look at the news, and EVERY untagged is farmed into 60-100 hit DR every day. It's not just 1 tag that does it, most the tags do it.

Competing for the top as the game stands now consists of setting your alarm for every 3hrs so you can camp DR on untaggeds. Or Land Trading within your own alliance.

It wont be easy to grab the bots. There would be, hopefully, a variety of intelligence of bots (like level 1 for dumb through level 5 for smart). You wouldnt know which level of intel you would be grabbing. The bots could give more kill targets if they randomly decide to suicide, can retal if they decide to, do spy ops and can LG without being provoked.

Stop thinking of them like being old FFA lovebug farm bot countries like bug ran before FFA got shutdown in E2025 =P

i hope no ones considering truely random suiciding

maybe random suiciding if provoked

i would assume you are correct enshula, maybe a small % chance of it for each hit, so if you only hit a few times its unlikely but if you hit them 20x a day its probably going to happen eventually.

radically increase NW for land/buildings, so that n00bs cant be farmed as badly anymore

There isn't a land shortage in alliance at all, excluding untagged there are 9.8 MILLION acres currently available which considering the 150 or so deaths there's been is still a lot of land. The problem is too many people are playing it safe to hold onto what little they can get and aren't prepared to fight to get or keep land, actually bring a challenge to netting instead of just playing the market.

most players aren't grabbing since if they make good grab they lose more on retal or gains are minimal like under 500 acres, all thx to l:l retall rules on topfeed which are based on land not nw.

Then you're back onto policy rather than the game limiting land.

Spawn, wouldn't it be easier served by reducing the humanitarian range for 1/12 to 1/3 than to rebalance military and land values? If built land is NW$800, 20k land is NW$16m and can hit over NW$1.3m or 1.7k land.

Steeps, while there is 10,148k total land in alliance, there is only 187k land for untags and non-clans (2025/FBI). Let's look at the distribution profile. Generally, you can't hit someone thinner than you and come out ahead in the exchange.

297 Countries <10k = 1829k
354 Countries 10k-20k = 5348k
96 Countries 20k-25k = 1934k (2971k - 129@20k+)
18 Countries 25k-30k = 482k (1037k - 33@25k+)
9 Countries 30k-35k = 286k (555k - 15@30k+)
6 Countries 35k+ = 268k

Of the 6 over 35k land, one is an MDer who farmed iMag; three are LaF who farmed 2025; one is an EVO who has 3 hits on PDM and 2 on Rage unretaled; and one is an EVO who netting 8k land in a 3 hit exchange with PDM.

To compete with these exchanges and exceptional circumstances, the game is evolving towards all-defence/ex or jet-heavy/low-defence land trading. 354 people can't gain 1k land a day each by bottom feeding or exploring. A shift to a layered DR system might balance this somewhat, giving people 1-2 good hit a day.

Any LG on an alliance should be retalled 95%+ successfully. A LG:Retal exchange sees CS, building, military, and oil costs on both sides that reduce the relative value of the ghost acres produced. These costs often don't stack up against farming past 13+ DR. So the rational options are to farm or exchange land with min losses.

The politics of land concentrating in a few tags is in part because EVO/LaF offer better tag protection as they threaten to farm/kill anyone that doesn't comply with their wishes. So you either pact out or go a step farther trade land with them. This will evolve in a network of friendly-exchanges possibly in the future as alliances realise the benefits of hitting, or also possibly stir some wars around LGing an attacker before a retal could be taken. However, if you are exchanging hits with another alliance for mutual benefit, at that point why not just hit internally?

I agree with your comment about bringing a challenge to netting. I'm just suggesting ways to balance the game and open the variety of successful playing patterns.

Mapleson: Not true. If someone's smart enough, they can net good acreage from grabbing will retal/established alliance.

Problem is, they are a rare breed.

diez, what part is not true? Please show an example of someone in the top 25 in land (~30k) that got there by LGing established alliances rather than established land trading pacts. Or show how ghost acres generated in a LG:Retal provides better net acreage than internal hitting or land trading.

There is a shift coming to the old political mindset that froze land after exchanges became unprofitable when ghost acres were nerfed back in Earth:2025. The good grabbers aren't a rare breed, they've just been discouraged out of the game or style in the past.

yes Mapleson, i'm just always throwing out ideas, thats all :)

yep, 1:1 on non topfeeds and l:l on topfeeds not l:l (or 90% l:l) on all grabs.