it is time for those of us who play this server as an individual war game to invent a more accurate objective measure of the quality of a country's strategy and the execution of its strategy.

This measure should be called the WoR, Warrior of the Reset

Surely. others have tried and failed to invent such a measure but their failure should not deter us from the effort.

First we should endeavor to determine what factors must be considered in measuring the quality of a country's play.
I would suggest we assess the quality and quantity of the nation's land grabs including factors such as money food and research obtained in the strike. We should assess whether the hit was taken on a country that was likely to retal. Ideally we would measure the nation's use of spies but given the administrators' recent statements that spies are unfair and bad for he game perhaps we should not measure their utility. Since I believe that spies are a fun and important part of the game I would include their use. I strongly disagree with the idea that spies are unfair.

Given that this is the express server, a country should be penalized for hitting an LaE country where retal by three or four countries is virtually certain. Since we know that HOBO and his Netters Defense League will missile anyone who launches any ss or ps, there should be a penalty for being missiled.

So for this reset, which is about to start, I will award the WoR prize, (Warrior of the Reset) on the following basis:

NW x the country multiplier x number of successful ss x 1.5 number of successful ps x the military grade divided by 2x the number of failed lgs or if no failures 1 x the number of lost lgs x .3 of the number of lost Missile attacks x .20 the number of gs, ab, and br

country multipliers
H M 1
R D C 1.2
I 1.8

military grade considers acreage taken, date of attack and relevance of buildings captured

for example an ss on day one for thirty acres will not receive the same grade as an ss on sunday for 1200 acres.
an F who hits an F will get a higher grade than an F who hits an R whose captured buildings are not as useful
I am not yet certain how this will work so i would appreciae any reasonable comments.

the factors considered for this award should evolve with each reset and as we get more input

comments are welcome but pls keep them reasonable
if all u can do is call me names please post elsewhere

gregg

WOW you put way too much thought into that... Thanks for saying I have a low IQ too bad your too much of an idiot to realize that deplomacy is a huge pat of the game..

lol@this:D

why does this not surprise me one bit?

haha

actually, strike that, I'll even give you a constructive criticism on it.....for whatever you'll think it's worth.

I would say you need to spend some time learning the netting aspect of the game before you start trying to rethink a system of measurement that has been in place for nearly 15 years, and served the game extremely well.

I see your line of thinking in newer players pretty regularly, and I think it's a common mistake among the "war monger" and "suicider" mind sets (Given that I ran a strictly war clan for 3 years, I know this first hand) - you assume that because it is easy to destroy a netting build, and there are so many facets of the game that can be used in war, that that somehow means that netting isn't just as much of a relevent measure of skill, if not more.

There are several measurements that are taken into account during war, but as an overall measure of success, these stats aren't relevant to who has run the most productive country for any given set, especially given the viability of all explore strats for netting, and the fact that many successful netting strats do not require large amounts of land. This is not a bad thing, or a waste of IQ as you seem to think - it's based on the fact that the original designer understood that the key to running any strat well is efficiency, of which netting is just as much of a competition as war.

Additionally, you would run into several major issues coding the system you described above - take for instance, "likely to retal". How would the system recognize whether a netter would be willing to dump their stock to retal a grab on them? The guy might have 50 mil bushels stocked, but prefers to keep them for destocking at the end of the set rather than retal a 300 or 400 acre grab. I also disagree on penalties for being missiled...I think you probably meant to say penalty for missiling as this would make much more sense, although it would also skew your scoring for countries that use missiles in suiciding/warring.

Overall, I think the set up is way too myopic, and will do nothing but encourage things like suiciding and farming given its basis in attacking bonuses and incentives. Were you to revamp the system described above to take into account the netting aspect of the game, which just as many if not more people play the game for, as well as the fact that your system actively encourages something that has been long known to be detrimental to the community as a whole, I think you might be on to an idea worth exploring. Currently though, it needs a lot broader understanding of the game than just the war aspect.

Your system would also require you to have access to what is currently protected information (e.g. figuring out if the grabbed country is likely to be able to retal - only available through a spy op or advisor screen, as well as money/food/etc on hand, and obtained in the grab), so that makes it a no go right there.

Finally, I hope you are at least insightful enough to understand that A. as a player in Express, and B. as someone who has an open grudge with several players in the server and a clearly stated political agenda, you are a less than neutral source of judgment for who has built the best country. I'm not saying anyone else here is, but I'm not sure if you're aware of that. If you were to have suggested decision through a committee or other group, the idea might hold water - but given that you have decided your self as the sole proclaimer of the victor, I doubt many folks will jump on board with the idea.

To summarize - It's nice to see good intentions, but it needs a ton of rethinking before it's feasible as a standardized measurement.

If I'm understanding your post, you would ask us to change the way the game is played so that you have a chance to "win" in a different way.
So what you are really saying is "I can't compete with the rules as they stand so .... let's change the rules so I have a chance to win".

This game has always been about "He who finishes with the most wins." Plain, simple ... easy to understand.
This being said, There is a purpose for war countries. If you feel the need to brag about your accomplishments ... bore keeps great stats at http://eestats.com .
In fact go here and tell us if you made top 10 in any of the areas bore keeps stats on. http://eestats.com/...ess/oldtoptencountries/92
I'll tell you now I only finished top 10 in 1 category. To me it's the one that really counts ... total NW at the end of the set. If I were warring I would be looking at most attacks, most missiles, most special attacks .... whatever I was doing and I'd be measuring myself against my opponent/s.

referring to sig

Trippster None 721.7 Hours
We call this being here in spirit? hehehe =)

people who dont take the time and effort the greats do will always want the makers to lower the bar

NOW3P

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTS
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THERE MAY BE SOMETHING HERE

I agree that I am neither qualified to be the sole arbiter of who wins nor am I the best advocate of any proposed additions to scoring strategies. If the scoring is not objective it is worthless. If a committee would form to consider this I would be very happy, even if I were not on the commitee. NW would still be measured and netters could still use it as their standard of excellence. The WoR would be for players who use attack stratgies.

I will not address your demeaning comments because there is no point in disputing them. Let us just keep this positive.

You indicate that finding out how much a strike obtains in terms of food money and research makes this a no go. Surely that issue can be finessed. If a player wants to compete for the WoR he could send his victory screen to eestats or boxcar or some other site to be graded. On that screen all those stats will be available.

Will this encourage farming? it may especially farming one's landfarm like 6 and 114 last set where the landfarm is hit seven or eight times with no real retal. But even without this measurement 6 landfarmed 114 all the way to the top. In addition some countries will just hit their friends on the last day but again that happens now. The military grade would have to consider whether the attacker is just hitting his own multi or a fellow clansman. Is it complicated? yes

is it insoluble? no

WILL this server benefit from the evolution of an objective means to measure success of attack strategies in addition to the NW that measures netting?

Clearly yes

kemo and trippsters comments do not warrant any response

"THANK YOU FOR YOUR CINSTRUCTIE (CONSTRUCTIVE) COMMENTS
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THER (THEIR) EMAY (ENEMY) BE SOMETHING HERE

I agree that I am neither qualified to be the sole arbiter of who wins nor am I the best advocate of any proposed additions to scoring strategies. If the scoring is not objective it is worthless. If a committee would form to consider this I would be very happy, even if I were not on the commitee (committee). NW would still be measured and netters could still use it as their standard of excellence. The WoR would be for players who use attack stratgies (strategies).

I will not address your demeaning comments because there is no point in disputing them. Let us just keep this positive.

You indicate that finding out how much a strike obtains in terms of food money and research makes this a no go. Surely that issue can be finessed. If a player wants to compete for the WoR he could send his victory screen to eestats or boxcar or some other site to be graded. On that screen all those stats will be available.

Will this encourage farming? it may especially farming one's landfarm like 6 and 114 last set where the landfarm is hit seven or eight times with no real retal. But even without this measurement 6 landfarmed 114 all the way to the top. In addition some countries will just hit their friends on the last day but again that happens now. The military grade would have to consider whether the attacker is just hitting his own multi or a fellow clansman. Is it complicated? yes

is it insoluble? no

WILL this server benefit from the evolution of an objective means to measure success of attack strategies in addition to the NW that measures netting?

Clearly yes"




it appears that a player with a IQ of peanut butter (we know his IQ is this low because he clearly cant spell!), has found a way to post on the internet!

there has to be some kind of award for this


p.s. turnabout is fair play is it not? funny when your logic is used against you isn't it?

if you skip the military grade thing or calculate it from something that can actually be counted, it works.

ok since this is an evolutionary process; lets skip the military grade for this reset and reevaluate next week

since the express server resets every week it is a great beta testing ground

this reset we just go strictly off the formula with no military grade

since eestats has everyhing we need i or some other volunteers should be able to post the winner by tuesday afternoon

thx for making eestats available to the community

for the next reset should we see if we can recruit some respected volunteers to look at boxcar downloads and vote for the WoR?

Too bad you can't find a way to include 'points' from spyops! As they're also a vital part of playing

i agree with you mr cobalt

any suggestions in this regard will be appreciated

there may, mrford....there may. I'm sorry that your "sub 90 IQ" doesn't allow you to understand the difference. Even though you are a successful engineer working in a lucrative position in RL, obviously your misuse of a commonly confused phrase indicates your utter ignorance of the world. :-P

bore - it's still a system that rewards suiciding and farming. Sorry, but that will never work as a feasible scoring system for the majority of players. If nothing else, it rewards those who have hours to spend on the game above those who can build a country in a few minutes a day, or only have a few minutes to spend on it. It is also easily abusable and open to a huge amount of differential information from the "unknowns" that come from not knowing enough about the 2 countries involved.

Making players upload information for every landgrab for the system to work is entirely unfeasible - the top landgrabber in Express last set made 200+ land grabs - do you REALLY expect that person to upload 200+ different victory reports just to participate in this system? Additionally, you would have to ask their targets to also upload their stats so you could determine likelihood of retalling (say they're only 1mil NW, but have 500mil cash on hand, or have 250 turns ready to go).

I also don't think the system can accurately grade landgrabs without that information, as it is the only way to tell things like the "feasibility of buildings grabbed" as well as the overall quality of the grab. I can think of a half a dozen scenarios right off the top of my head where the system would break down and either overcompensate or undercompensate for a grab made.



Gregg - you can't exactly make derogatory comments about folks in your opening post and then expect to be taken seriously. You said you won't address my negative comments, but yet the very first paragraph of your proposal is a cheap, and naive/biased, shot at netters.

This isn't a personal attack, so please don't take it as such, but there are netters in this game that would make you look like a public school special-ed case so far as smarts go - and they will make a joke of you in any aspect of the game that you choose. Choosing to play this game to net doesn't have any bearing on their intelligence, nor does it indicate your intellectual superiority (which you seem to be more than a little overly self assured of in your day to day dealings w/ the world).

To summarize the above - if you want people to listen to you, quit being a prick about what you have to say (I think this is the 2nd or 3rd time you've been told this in 2 days now). Present your information, and quit taking cheap shots at folks you have a personal grudge with just because the opportunity arises. And by all means, if you want to be taken seriously, you NEED to drop your grudge with netters - as that's what a large contingent of people play this game for.

Sorry mate, it's a nice effort, but there's just really no need to re-invent the wheel. The current rules work very well for the community, even if they don't happen to play into your own personal agenda. Instead of re-working the system, why not just learn to play within it and become a part of the community? If you'd relax a little bit and quit trying to prove to the world how great you are, I think you'd find you're quite welcome here.

ok again i will not respond to the blather and fulminations about my personality. I get that some people can not hear this idea simply because of their feelings about the person proposing it. Again i thank NOW3P for his objective criticisms

Let us examine the objective objections to the system;
1) rewards suiciding and farming
2) rewards those who are dedicated to playing the game
3) possibility of abuse
4) too many uploads
5) target uploads

1) I do not want to be accused of attacking netters so i want to phrase this carefully. Netters disparagingly call lgs suiciding and people who view this game as a war game suiciders. This phrase shows the nertters' contempt for predators. In a clan game it may be suicide to hit a netter but in express it is far from suicide. There is a fundamental divide between netters who play this game like it is symcity and predaors who play this game like it is axis and allies.
This award is meant to measure a player's abilities as a predator so of course the prey will hate the very idea. The purpose of the award is to measure the ability to play this game as a war game, so the objection that it rewards warring will not be heard.

2) It rewards those who spend hours playing.
Yes, if you are dedicated to this game you will be rewarded.
If this game is just a sidebar to you running 45 countries in the ffa then you will not win the WoR. NOW3P is right you can win the NW title playing three minutes a day. I submit that this is a strength of the award not a weakness. Those who are dedicated to this server should be rewarded, only a netter could disagree with that. oops excuse me i should not disparage netters but seriously how can one object to rewarding people who put time and effort into the game?
Netting is not time consuming, predation is; netting does not require a great deal of thought about these particular circumstances, predation does. There should be a way to measure and reward that dedication.

3) Abuse is rampant in our game. on every server. On FFA there are countires that have 14 landfarms and grow to over 100000 acres. There is no greater abuse than that. You dont stop playing the game nor devising rule changes just because of the certainty of abuse. My numerous posted objections to abuses show that i am aware of and resentful about the abuses both real and imagined on the Express server. Can this be abused? certainly but with evolution we can stem the abuses.

4) If a player is voaracious enough to launch 200 lgs, he will not be dissuaded by having to click upload after every attack.

5) Spy op uploads are a routine part of clan play on boxcar. Target country information will be readily available. If the attacker is just attacking blindly in the dark with no spy op then he is not a very good predator.

While I thank NOW3P for his criticisms of the concept, he has only convinced me of the necessity for this award. We need an award that recognizes effort and skill not just those who play for three minutes a day and win the NW title.

1) I'm not talking LG's here - I'm talking rewarding things like AB'ing/BR'ing/GS'ing countries, which by the proposed scoring system is what I would do to win it every single set. All I'd need to do is run a Theo/Techer, and find a 1 troop GS target to win the award set in and set out...or just farm some >1mil NW country endlessly for the entire set. Either way, it WON'T work out well for the server. *edit* This is not rewarding in any way for the player who does it, or the player who's on the receiving end - which is my major objection to the currently proposed measurements.

For the record though, 3+ grabs from any one country has, for many many years, been the standard definition of farming, and a run on any given country or set of countries is considered suiciding.....or are you looking to re-invent that wheel too?

If you wanna encourage war, encourage war with someone who's looking for a war, not someone who's A. done nothing to the player looking to win an arbitrary measurement, and B. has no interest in a war, and has not run their strat to prepare for it. The winner of this war will be apparent at the end of the set, and there's really no need to measure this.

2) If you were to reward the minority of folks who spend several hours a day over the folks who spend a few minutes, you will find people leaving this server very quickly if this is the standard measure of success. The whole appeal of a game like this is that with just a few minutes a day, you can still achieve a very high finish, just like the guys who spend hours calculating every step of the way. Take that away, and you've taken away a major draw for a majority of the server's players.

3) Internal farming in FFA is not abuse - it's legal, it's relevant, and it works. Until the mods declare it to be an illegal form of gaming, this is a mute point. I am one of the self farmers in FFA, although I am not doing it for the NW benefits, I'm doing it to help myself understand the dynamics of grabbing and how different variables affect grabs. You will not see me finish in the top 10 of FFA even if I don't get suicided, I can pretty much guarantee it.

4) I would be dissuaded by this. I had the 3rd most attacks/grabs last set, and I can tell you I'm not about to spend the time it takes to load each of those to boxcar or another site - especially given that there is A. no way to have mass access to this information in a way that still protects it from those who would abuse the system - imagine the problems of having dozens of grabbing target's spy ops posted openly on boxcar and then giving grabbers access to them, or even worse a select group of people who are actively grabbing - and B. that there are currently not a set of tools for.

5. See problem with this mentioned above. Additionally, how is it fair that random grabbers have open access to target's spy ops online without having to get a spy op? Even more so, why would anyone willingly post THEIR break information for others to see? Who protects this information from the people who have to judge it? What's to keep a judge for the WoR tropyhy from accessing the spy ops and using them to grab countries? Sorry, if you wanna see what's going to break me, you're going to have to get an op...I would never post my advisor for all to see, it's nothing but a huge liability.


Like I said before, until you understand the netting side of the game, as well as the technical obstacles that are intentionally put in place to ensure fair play, you will probably not fully understand why this idea is just entirely unfeasible as anything more than personal rankings.....which have been tried many many times before by some very intelligent, very experienced, and much more objective people, and always failed for the exact same reasons. (lack of objectivity, lack of available information, lack of participation, and lack of general interest from the majority of the community, lack of measurement tools, game charter infringements, etc). I agree that there is something to measuring and rewarding these things, but take some time to learn from the downfalls of other previous attempts before you commit to reworking them.


Now....if you were looking to make this a community measurement and not looking to REPLACE NW as a means of picking a winner, it might have some feasibility to it. But so far you've been talking replacement over supplementing, so I have to continue to disagree with this idea as it is too full of loop-holes, and too one-sided to favor those who want to spend more time worrying about damaging other's countries than building their own, or fighting challenging fights.

Here is what I would propose as an alternative system for measuring the best warrior, at least until some tools could be built to accurately measure some of the protected information (which could probably be done through a plug-in like what Snupi built):

Let's assume for this system, that the following definitions apply:

Landgrab/Grab = SS or PS attack
Attack/Attacking = GS/BR/AB attacks as well as harmful spy ops (all but "spy", "market spy", and "spy alliances"), unless otherwise noted

- Points for the ratio of hits made vs hits taken, where higher points are given to the player that takes a lot of attacks, but makes even more. I add this one to ensure that there is incentive for relevant attacking, not just random attacking on easy break targets to pad stats.

- A point scale to reward grabbing/attacking on even or higher NW levels (this is a spin on your original idea) where grabbers/attackers are rewarded higher points for grabbing equal or higher NW targets than themselves, and lower points for "bottomfeeding". This is one that would have to be worked out a little bit though to avoid subjectivity.

- A separate point scale to reward GS/BR attacks on lower NW countries with the above in mind.

- Instead of a system rewarding the sheer number of attacks, a system to reward Land gained vs land lost (to retals or grabs), and a system to reward Civs killed vs Civs lost. Let's face it, it's much easier to make 50 grabs/attacks on a country with 1/5 your NW than it is to make 10 grabs/attacks on a country 2x your NW, so let's reward accordingly. The best players are not the ones that make the most hits, the best players are the ones that make the most meaningful hits - that is why breakers rarely are seen in the top hitters measurements, despite their absolutely vital contribution to war. For folks who are warring, the system will also self-normalize, and award them higher points for breaking hits, but lower points as they get closer to killing their opponent.

- No kill based rewards - it's too easy to get a gang of friends together, kill a country, and let the final hitter reap the rewards, thereby causing a loophole in the measurements With the breaker argument in mind, this is especially irrelevant.

- A negative multiplier for unprovoked attacks on random countries. I'm all for measuring war performance, but believe me when I tell you that if this server continues to regress into a server where unprovoked or malicious suiciding is the norm, you will continue to see the number of players drop as it has been for the last 4 sets. This has been proven true time and time again in every server that has ever been offered for this game, and was one of the original reasons Express servers were ceased in the first place.


If the community is on-board with the idea, I'd even be willing to help define some of the measurements - although you're on your own for actually tracking each country's stats. I have no interest whatsoever in trying to track and calculate this stuff for 100+ countries.

its pretty simple buddy. if you want to be like the guys on the top you gotta learn from them. your insane to think of changing the game mechanics thatve been in place for atleast a decade just cause you cant or wont compete with the current elites

I don't think he's getting at changing the game mechanics.....just offering up a new measurement of skills in addition to the current ones.

I can't say I think it's really necessary, but if folks wanted it I don't see a big problem with it.

I posted an idea in bugs and suggestions that would remove the need for this :-)

without doing all the calculations it appears that

INDESTRUCTIBLE

is the early leader for the WoR


oprovin is close but he may just have been farming his own multi

there are some active wargainers this reset

where are hobo and the netters defense league?
we certainly expected 39 to have launched a lot more missiles by this time in defense of those who can no or will not defend themselves

I'd say my server leading 373 attacks and 194 defends puts me in the running for this....but somehow I suspect you'll come up with some asinine reason why LaE'ers can't be included in the rankings. That is, if the mods didn't ban you when they closed all your troll threads...

And as far as I could see, I had the second most attacks, and being number 1 in top missiler!

well. i'm willing to publish stats on my server if we can agree on a good equation for weighted NW.

tho, i don't think we should try and reward idiocy such as some 300k NW country that can pump out 500 attacks(not that I have seen this)

but, willing to help devise a good equation.. put about an hours effort into this one and it lead to nothing... not worth the time.

o yea.. i'm not looking to replace NW at all, just to maybe add a weighted score to NW for those countries that would rather play a bit less peaceful.

at least a ranking for top warmonger, maybe not even including the actual NW as part of the score, other than to comprise the multipliers. *shrug*