So, I saw a post on AT from QZ saying that his only real problem with suiciding is if it's done in a way that makes acres disappear. So, I thought to myself "Okay, let's have them not disappear"... here's the mechanics of my idea:

When a country drops land, those acres don't "disappear" -- they become abandoned but are still attached to the country. For the purposes of tech, building effectiveness, population, costs etc. those acres no longer exist. But when the country gets LGed, they do... and stolen acres are taken proportionally (so if a 2000 acre country abandons 500 acres, so it's 1500a/500a an LG will take 75% of the land from the built acres and 25% from the abandoned acres). Military losses work the same way, you don't take land more easily because some of it is abandoned. Think of it like the military is using the abandoned acres as a cushion to fall back through as they defend.

Of course, one of the legitimate purposes of dropping acres is to make you a less appealing target... so that strategy needs to still be possible.

First, please note that you already are a less appealing target. Abandoned acres won't have buildings, so it's more effective to LG countries who are entirely built up and steal buildings.

I do think that those acres should gradually disappear though... and my solution is to add a bonus to exploring and ghost acres. In both cases, if there's abandoned acres in the game, add a 25% bonus which gets taken from the abandoned acres (so if exploring would get you 40 turns, it now gets you 50 or if you would get 200 ghost acres, you now get 250) -- of course, these percentages can be changed to balance this properly, maybe a better figure would be 10%, or 20% for exploring and 10% for ghost acres. But the point is that, in this way, the abandoned acres will slowly be leached away... but it prevents an immediate and sudden change.

Anyway, that's my idea. I already realize that those who drop acres will organize with their alliances for LGs and exploring to happen right after and that only attentive (or lucky) players in other alliances will get in on it. But I have no problem with that, I think alliances should benefit from organization and I think that other players should benefit from attentiveness. Regardless, I think it solves a problem in an interesting way that would add a pretty cool new dynamic to the game.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

hmmm
and when you go to do an SS or PS perhaps "Your forces found some easier-to-occupy land along the way, and diverted there instead"

:)

Let me clarify my previous statement a bit; the ability to get the land *back* is key imho; one way to accomplish this, obviously, is to limit the amount of land that can be taken... One of the nice things about the no-drop rule at the moment is that your weapons tech percentage doesn't go back to 150% when you drop from 10kA back to 1kA.

I would perhaps support being able to drop your land, and have it as "abandoned" land; but it should probably count towards your tech for 24 hours or something.


I have once been on the receiving end of a suicider that funnelled 160-190kA out of Evo in 24h (it was hard to kill because it got some stockpile initially from hitting undefended TIE and ICN countries I believe, so don't go on about needing more defence) and a couple 120-130kA suicides. For a small alliance like Evo was at the time, that was a retarded amount of land - 5-15% or something.

I don't believe a single suicider should be able to inflict that level of damage on a whole alliance; by not allowing the land to be dropped that is limited in two ways; if we simply allowed the land, as you say, to stay there and be taken by somebody, that would kindof limit it in one way -- the suicide would happen, the alliance would have a way to get it back kindof (if the target didn't get farmed into oblivion)... but it still allows the 1kA country to hit and drop say 190kA in a short time frame...

If only countries hit in the last (X timeframe) were able to access that land for (X timeframe) then that might allieviate some of the farmed-into-oblivion problem... i dunno

it's an interesting solution anyway...




Alternatly we could simply add an (attacker land) term to the LG equation =/

The other solution would just be to delay dropped acres for 24 hours or something...

Of course, that impacts stone walling a lot... but no more than restricting the tech jump when you drop acres would...

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

http://forums.earthempires.com/...33&z=no-dropping-land

Abandoned acres is the smart way to do things.

what about something simple like "Your population refuses to invade another country for land when you recently abandoned your land!"

ie do the opposite; make it so you can't SS/PS for X hours after you drop land; so you can drop whenever you want during war as long as you only plan to GS/BR/AB/missile

although imperfect, I think qz's last suggestion is much better than the current rule....

Agreed

I like it.