Feb 26th 2011, 2:21:07
Yeah, ultimately, unless ghost acres go away, there's always going to be ways around the rules you guys are talking about. If anything, it might discourage a few people from self-farming, but it would then be even more profitable for the few that still did.
Because, as AJ said, if I can only get 1/4 hitting my own countries, why wouldn't AJ and I just trade hits between our countries?
If you make it 25% within the tag, why wouldn't I just contact someone in TKO and arrange the same agreement? Heck, then it'd even look like we were grabbing the way many of you guys would want us all to grab, since they'd be outside the tag.
I'm not saying it wouldn't stop some people. For instance, if it were anything within the tag, I wouldn't put the effort in to arrange a land-trading arrangement with someone in another tag becuase I'm too lazy/lack the time to do so, but I'd probably do it with Havoc or AJ or someone else in PAN if it were simply hitting one's own countries. Heck, sometimes when Havoc annoys me, I grab his farms just to amuse myself anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch for me to use his land-farms full time instead of just grabbing them a couple times a set. ;)
I think the removal of ghost acres or some type of server cap are the only equitable ways. A per-country cap, after all, penalizes strategies that run strategies that require more land, like farmer or casher, compared to someone that runs techers. Ultimately, it'd probably balance out, because so many people would play techer that it would crash the tech market, but I think that's playing with a lot of variables that we're not fully thinking about.