We implemented the "spirit of the rules" clause in response to players from other servers migrating to the solo servers and doing kill runs. The rule has had some success in limiting that behavior. However, it has also caused a number of problems:

-Players still work as a group but are less obvious about it.
-Players obey the literal wording of the "spirit of the rules" but violate the spirit of it, for lack of a better term.
-Whenever moderators get involved in country disputes typically one side feels as if they are being treated unfairly.

I would like to eliminate the "spirit of the rules" clause, but it would need to be replaced by an alternate mechanic. Just a few days ago a country received a message saying that it would be killed for missile retals and that "players who have been here for a long time run the server". The most obvious solution would be applying a modified form of express GDI to primary. Here is a summary of Express GDI:

"GDI will now serve as suicider prevention. The rule set is as follows:
--Minimum GDI time is the whole length of the set.
--Countries that have done an attack may not join GDI.
--Cost is $5 per acre.
--Countries in GDI will only be able to do standard strikes, planned strikes, steal tech, bomb banks, burn oil, or burn bushels to countries which have not done at least 2 attacks or offensive spy ops towards them.
--Countries not in GDI attacking countries in GDI will only be able to do standard strikes, planned strikes, steal tech, bomb banks, burn oil, or burn bushels, unless the country in GDI has attacked them more than once.
--During the final six hours of the set, countries in GDI may not attack those who have not attacked them."

I am sure that many of you do not want limitations on how and who you can attack in primary, so we are looking for two kinds of suggestions in this thread:

1) How to modify Express GDI so it's more appropriate for Primary.
2) Alternatives to Express GDI that solve the group play problem.

Thanks for reading and I hope you post your thoughts.

just bring express gdi.

Well titanium, this is the primary serve and afaik theres no rules against missile retals or ABs here so i dont really see the problem with that but perhaps there should have been a limit on how many hits one can do back or somethin

you have allies to help you with your grabs and grabs against you, not to fight your fights imo, its a solo server after all...

the express GDI might work, but what about changing the "spirit rule" that your allies may not help you at all? and if they do its a clear violation of the rules...

why delete posts? why not just lock the thread?

This thread is here to discuss an important ingame issue. It is not here to fluff on game moderators who volunteer their free time to make the game a better place. If you want to talk about how unfairly you were treated and how horrible the moderators are, make a new thread. That would be rather ill advised, but you won't be punished for it. However, the next person who posts in this thread about Titanium's issue will be punished for it quite severely.

As I said before, we are looking for two kinds of suggestions in this thread:

1) How to modify Express GDI so it's more appropriate for Primary.
2) Alternatives to Express GDI that solve the group play problem.

So we have two extremes. Mehul Patel did not pay much attention to Earth2025 (comparably to Utopia) and let the game suffer massive casualties; and now this game has a ton of moderators and admins that often have their hands and nose in the game mechanics, politics and progression of play. Interesting.

With group play. If u wish to kill a country if there is more than one hitter make some sort of pre empt request to allow it up to 12 hours later And its either approved or disapproved. Or remove missiles in this server for suicide protection. Test it to see impact on tech market with no sdi or warfare....

In the random games 12 years ago I'd have my random allies help me. Now a days where everyone knows everyone, allies almost always know each other. It is just asking for increased cooperation. The fact that they are allies makes me feel that it is alright for them to help. I see the options as being 1) no allies 2) allies are allowed to help. Certainly within my understanding of the rules and spirit of the server, allies would be allowed to help.

wow

i agree with some guy for once

if you dont want group play, you should remove allies on the server

Seriously, its the only thing that makes sense

you can have a off and def ally, but they cant help you kill an offending country?

a bit ridiculous dont ya think?

As I said this would be a replacement for the "spirit of the rules" clause. So if a form of express GDI was implemented, no one would be deleted for helping their allies.

seriously though

it says clans are not allowed

can you point me to where it says you cant help your allies?

i could see if people were teaming up to kill for no reason, like express (do you delete countries there?)

but for helping an ally with a reason?

http://www.earthempires.com/rules

"Spirit of the rules
Players should strive to play according to the spirit of the rules, especially on servers without clans. These servers are designed for individual play. To make the game fair for all players and accessible to new players, players in the primary, express, and tourney server that attack as a group may be deleted at discretion of ingame moderators. Ingame alliances exist to give bonuses throughout the game: not as a tool or an excuse to dominate the rest of the server."

my fear if we remove alliances in game is that alliances were a major impetus for getting players talking to each other and eventually creating a community atmosphere even in a solo server.

Also removing in game alliances wouldn't do much to stop most of the poeple circumventing the "spirit of the rules" as its my guess that most of these groups are formed not b/c of in game alliances but b/c of 1A or other relationships that have already been formed apart form this server.

IMO the current spirit of the rules goes to far in discouraging "team play" on the solo server. Consider two examples of how,

First, the group of players who became SKA started as a "clan" on the primary server who allied up and netted against one another. We let each player fight his own fights but obvioulsy we never grabbed each other. I never had a problem with that in one sense b/c we ran good enough countries we would never be good targets for each other, but I dunno technically that is team play

Second, I still remember KoD's strat page (Slagpit KoD might even be before your time heh), where among other things he suggested spamming out the break for AB or BR or w/ever of your opponent if you got dragged into a war with someone. IMO there is nothing wrong with that. Especially in random servers (back when u could play primary or random smaller game) sometimes one big C/I would dominate early on and farm everyone. I saw once a group of like 8 players gang up and just AB him to the ground, and they all individually benefited from it but it was certainly team organized.

what we do want to avoid are the "bunch wars" from old 2A, or bands of 1A players coming to primary and running KRs on whoever grabs one of them (even once) or worse, just random members of the top 10. It's hard for me to figure out how to stop this and keep all the other things we want in a way.

Also, one more example. I'm in an AB war in tournament and I noticed so was another guy. Would it be wrong for me to suggest to him that we team up and try to GS kill the guy I"m fighting and then GS kill the guy he is fighting?

I think these questions should be answered first, so we determine what types of behaviors we want and don't want on solo servers before we start thinking about administrative level fixes to incentivize behaviros we want and punish those we don't...

I agree with Bobby.

If it a server for individual play, why should missiles and special attacks on a country that has never hit you be allowed? Only reason for doing special attacks & missiles on someone who has never hit you is either to be a suicider without provocation or to work as a team.

I'll repeat myself rockman:

example 1) To help beat down the top dog that is dominating, even if he hasn't hit you yet. I think its kinda cool if one player jumps out to such a huge lead the server "teams up" and beats him down.

2) By grouping together you can run KRs which are not possible really in a 1v1 war. Thus I can kill the guy I want to kill, and then in return to the people who helped me, I help kill someone they want dead.

and let me add another

3) It appeared I was getting dragged into a war in primary earlier this set and one of my allies asked me to start hitting a guy who had been bothering him if I was gonna stop netting. This seems like a decent quid pro quo, this guy is a friend who still had a shot to win the server, so why not help him out this set and maybe next set if roles are reversed he will help me (not to mention it is a nice thank you to an ally who was fantastic this set). I was able to not get dragged into war so it didn't happen...

Perhaps we wan't to ban these behaviors but they are much less "clearly bad" then say the example of a clan in 1A coming over and just killing at10 player once a day as has happened in the past...

So you think its cool if the server suicides someone for doing well. Success should be punished.



Its a server for individuals, for 1v1 wars. Its not a server for teams to fight each other. If you want to fight as a team, go to the team server. If I want to run 16 countries, I'm not running 16 of them in primary.



Again, its an individual server. Accomplishments are supposed to be achieved individually. If you have an ally fight a war for you, then your top 10 finish is no longer legit.



Just because they are less bad doesn't mean its acceptable. If I don't run bots in primary, but I do play 16 countries, does it being less bad make it acceptable? Obviously not.

Ultimately the rules exist to serve the community. What kind of behavior is acceptable, what kind of behavior isn't acceptable, and what kind of behavior is bad but we'll just have to put up with it?

My biggest concern is when groups of countries going around killing off players for sport, or if people from tags kill anyone who grabs them. I feel like it's already been articulated enough on the forum why that behavior hurts the environment.

You guys say "oh but you can help your allies" like it's so easy. What ends up happening is that people from clans simply ally each other and use that as an excuse.

slagpit, I agree I listed that as my main concern. I also pointed out removing in game alliances wouldn't seem to help much as (as you point out) the most egregious breakers of the "spirit of the rules" only use in game alliances as an excuse. I also listed reasons why removing in game alliances might have negative impacts, as well as discussed how working together with someone can help you both out. You seemed to address neither point.

Let's take an anology: on the alliance server, different alliances help each other out, even when they have no in game alliances. In the solo server so too two individuals can help each other out to further their long term individual goals. It seems to go to far to try to prevent such teamwork IMO...

Or what if individuals start signing NAPs. Would it be against the spirit of the server for all of EVO to put their countries on a list on EVO site and nobody hits anybody from that list. I certainly think so, just as it would be wrong of a bunch of SOF to come to this server and start killing willy nilly. Yet how would you police the EVO behavior, you wouldn't even know about it? These are hard questions imo...

Different alliances help each other out because there is an important political element to that server.

Primary shouldn't really have "politics". If two strong countries agree not to hit each other, that's fine. Killing countries is far more detrimental than a NAP list. I don't think anyone would feel as if their game was ruined because a few countries agreed not to attack each other.

well here is a completely out there sketch of an idea to consider: give each person some kind of geographic "location" of your country and you can only attack people "near" you, with "nearness" growing over time just as a function of the server and perhaps some "technology" you can invest in. This seems a great way to force each player to play on their own!

as for me trying to keep showing how hard it is to define "teamwork" and draw a line in the sand (which hopefully has clearly been my point), consider two people who share LG targets with each other in an effort to beat down peopel so they can't retal. Is there a problem with this? Is there a problem with sharing break information in general ( you aren't allowed to do so on forums but am I not allowed to spam everyone who has been attacked by somebody this set in case they want to exact revenge?) etc. etc.

i wqas hoping someone would modify GDI for this...

Still looking for more ideas and opinions.

I don't play primary but based on what you guys are posting as concerns.

As far as country killing on the server. In reality in a 1 on 1 situation you will never be able to kill another country. You could put in extreme DR for pop attacks making it near impossible to kill anyone. That would eliminate the ability to kill. If it take 1500 turns to kill someone you are not likely to get many poeple.

Instead of having allies in traditional way other servers do. Make it an investment or cost per turn. Where it isn't a specific country your allied to but generic neighbor. Have it be max boost but the cost scales up as you the closer to max you get. It turns it into a strategy choice balancing cost for benefit. That way you don't disadvantage poeple who don't have 5 buddies from another server they know are playing.

Have a different version of declare war function (War kind of like utopia). After a certain amount of hits are exchanged between two countries you can declare war between those two countries. Again stealing from utopia the aggressor won't get option the one being hit more would. This makes hits outside those two countries impossible or at max DR level or something. Have it last a fixed period 48 hours. After which neither country can be attack or be hit for a fixed time 12 or 24 hours (they can opt out of this time if they choose too). It keeps kingdoms out of each others war in utopia might take a lot of tweaking but you could apply it to individual country level.

Random thoughts. I am going to try the server next set since i am just curious.

This is an interesting thread. I'm so certain that "The spirit of the rules" will be so ignored that it's funny to even bring it up.

To what rules are we referring? In Primary, since it is not an alliance game, it has no tagging of countries, and thus no external database support, therefore it should be reasonably free from the common practices of the alliance game. If players are detected organizing kill runs in the primary game using alliance game tactics, they should be deleted summarily.

No exceptions should be made in these instances. However, if the intention of these "Rules" is to prevent a single country from destroying the netting game of another, then, that is something that should be allowed completely. If you don't want to protect yourself by having enough military on hand so that some little suicider can kick your butt, then you deserve everything that happens to you.

A lot of you folks who come over from the alliance game seem to think that you can enjoy special protection, because you had it in the alliance game by virtue of your alliance and it's pacts. You don't have that here, so get used to having the guy you used to farm in the alliance game come back to haunt you later. What goes around comes around here. You build your own Karma.

Cerberus of the MI

http://www.eestats.com/primary/toptencountries

external database support.

This thread is for posting suggestions instead of platitudes.

I can't stand that GDI implementation. Specifically that free hit that you can't do jack about.

How about modifying it:

Only SS/PS, spy ops, unless war is declared on the GDI country.

Cannot declare war on a GDI country unless they've made a hostile move towards you in the last X hours. This one specifically to prevent the issue of an early landgrab leading to an end of set suicide, if you want to go at them, do it within a reasonable time frame.

War lasts until cancelled.

Late set suiciders? Simply don't attack them. Problem solved. Keep the normal GDI networth ranges or maybe even narrow them for normal attacks.

Sounds reasonable to me, what do you all think?

Why do you feel a need to war over a single hit? It's pretty much the least offensive way to interact with others in this game.

Some grunts around here will war just because they get embarrassed in a grab/retal land exchange they initiated.
They get frustrated, act out in a temper tantrum, and engage in end-of-set vandalism.
Just the nature of some ppl. Excrement occurs.

Some people want to war in primary and wait until someone grabs them. Then they go to work.

I don't go to war over a single grab, unless it's the third/fourth or more grab i've taken in a single day because greedy people can't bother to check their targets news. And in that case, I want the *option to teach greedy people a lesson.

* which may or may not happen, depending on how well I can recover from the hits and the response of the greedy grabber to my threats.

It's not that I want to wreck people for a single landgrab. It's that I want the option to do so if I chose to.

I see that this thread has hardly progressed since I last posted.

I'm entirely in favor of returning to a very early method of attack in the game. There was a time when in order to attack a country for land, or any other reason, you HAD to declare war on it. You only had 3 slots for declaring war on a country, thus you were limited to being "at war" with a maximum of 3 countries and the war declaration lasted for 3 days.

This prevented farming, but it also prevented suiciding by disgruntled players who feel they owe someone a beating for hitting them up for land.

Cerberus of the MI

You'd rather be hit one time four days in a row rather than fours hit in a single day likely resulting in a smaller land loss?

What is cheating? Not working as a group? What about team where you have only 5 to a clan, yet clans just add numbers to their tags. Is that not the same thing?

So limiting someone to only attacking 3 countries every 3 days would limit farming? Wouldn't it force farming since you can only hit 3 countries over a 3 day span, and thus have to hit them numerous times to get sufficient land?

As the game grows, I think a completely open larger 1b would be great.

with say smaller games like 1c and 1d, that maybe don't allow allies, or AB's or whatevr....


But we're not there yet.


Allies are neccessary, the ability to help others is neccessary,
Its a good way to make new friends to new people in the game.

Granted I've AB'd 5 countries into the ground, but either they suicided on me first, or they sucided on an ally,

Anyways, I think the more open the game, the more open it is for community, and relationship buildings.

Maybe with the facebook version we need newbie games with limited options:)
but not Primary.

I think GDI is bad for it:)

Rockman, that might be so, but that war declaration worked both ways, your victim could also wage war right back against you.

When I first started, I had a guy do that to me, he just failed to realize that I was the kind of player who would find a way to strike back. I got a spy report on him, noticed that he didn't believe in tanks, so I Ab'ed him into a smoking crater. He learned not to farm me, I'm not sure he learned not to farm anyone, but perhaps he made strides on that path.

Cerberus of the MI

PS, if you really need to take land in those quantities, you can get it by landgrabbing someone in your scores list. That yields the best results for land in the game. You just gotta take your chances that they might be able to retal that hit. So, don't be so cowardly if you want to get a lot of land, look in your scores list for a suitable target.

I consistently play by the spirit of the rules and the game. I NEVER landgrab anyone that isn't in my scores list with generally at least two times the land I have. I'm sorry that I can take so much more than you can ever get back from me, but I'm not going to play the land:land rule here. You have no alliance to back you up, if you want to do that cowardly fluff, do it where you can get away with it.

I also will assist an in game ally who has been heinously attacked because he successfully executed a landgrab. It's quite simple in my book, abuse an ally, and I'll turn your country into a smoking crater.

I ally with a lot of different people, so there is no question that there are any team, squad, division, or other things going on.

I rely strictly on the news and/or in game messages from my allies for this. I never did believe in all those tools outside the game in the first place. They simply allow poor players with bad judgement and cowardly ways to bottomfeed on the newbies, which pisses me off to no end.

Remember the ROCK Manifesto of years ago, which I co-wrote with Cartoon from the New Monsters. I spelled out my feelings on the subject then.

I disagree with you. The external tools are actively being supported by the EE game admins.

The external tools rely on market and news feeds provided generously by the EE servers, and Boxcar is another example of a website and tool made by Pang (EE admin) for the community.

Not using these tools is just unnecessarily disadvantaging yourself, such as eestats.com

Xinhuan, that is the case now, back when the first external databases arose, not everyone, or every alliance had access to them, thus the rise of the ROCK Family.

Now, they are generally available to anyone, however, just that being the case does not change my opinion that playing with just the in game tools is more in the spirit of the game.

Look at it as being able to play chess with a master level chess computer sitting next to you in order to determine your next move.

Luddite much?

Very funny, Tooth. You really had to dig deep for that one didn't you, either that or you just started history of the western world and were covering the English industrial revolution, right.

That's why there is a tournament server. It is the only server without external tools and newsfeeds provided (and people don't try to circumvent that).

I just started playing tournament for the first time, should be interesting.

Many good ideas. Someone mentioned a generic ally approach. I believe this could work. Anyone looking to ally would be matched with another close to NW looking for same. After a day or two if you're not satisfied with ally you could break alliance and try again. Any coordinated attacks would have to be done in-game with unfamiliar alliances.