I think this would just incentivize pushing a single country - it would be tougher without FA and the way SO's work fairly now, but I don't think it's what I would hope for with the server. Specifically, having one country get to #1 is more important than pretty much all the other categories given the variance (e.g. if 11 is the max value you can get for not placing in top 10). This is also something that could just be done by anyone (like a rankings thread at the end of the set).

The cumulative records over time is certainly pretty interesting, and something that's a little tougher to do outside of the game. I like the idea of ANW mattering, because it helps distinguish those who work together versus maybe having more numbers with players who put in minimal effort to help (it's still good, and those players are necessary and helpful with spy ops etc, but I'd argue higher ANW means they likely had someone doing that and more).

Would it be easy enough to allow players to detag (or be detagged) if they haven't attacked or spied at all? This would get those players who logged in one day to never return. If your tag is open to randoms though, I think there's a limit on reasonable accommodations for this.

Confirmed.

Slightly contentious correction / comment unrelated to the main thread, mostly because it came up on discord recently as well (feel free to ignore this post and/or mute yourselves as desired):

The issue was not FA to Mercs - Tmac and gains chatted about that early in the set, and it was agreed that it didn't make LaF happy, but it was agreed to prior to their super early OOP AB war and very reasonably due to Mercs killing off all of the suiciders the previous set, including BlackHole with all of the connotations of Gerdler and SuperFly at the time (how are you in the middle of so much drama?) - and we didn't have a NAP that forbade it since LaF unilaterally dropped it.

Presumably, Evo was killed due to FA to SoF restarts, as evidenced by the screenshots posted in Discord which focused on non-mercs tags (because otherwise, it was already obvious and admitted) who were on our list of untags for FA, but tagged up something else later (it was an honest mistake, I checked the admin logs at the time, and no one who received FA was tagged at the time of FA, but without a NAP, LaF could hit for whatever reason anyways).

This is contentious because it's possible gains said it was "ok" but just meant he was going to hit us later for it. It's also contentious because Gerdler reached out to Tmac in game saying he didn't like it, then lied about who he was and said he wasn't involved in the politics (see Tmac's post https://earthempires.com/forum/post/1013457/perm), but no diplomacy or discussion really ever occurred beyond the beginning of the set.

Relevance: In both cases, I argue that diplomacy would have been the better tact. Josey's group could have "netted" with their hundreds of missiles and told not to FA M4D. LaF could have asked it to stop, threatened war, and/or demanded FA the following set etc. Both cases would have led to a lot less drama for the following sets.

Suggestion:

New military action - Embargo - can dramatically increase the cost to buy off public and private markets. Multiple attackers can perform this attack with results adding; it acts like a PS (your military is gone for some length of time that the embargo is active - possibly requiring much more oil to "patrol"); and adds cost (like a tax, no players get the money) proportional to the power of units sent divided by the defense (capping out at some to be determined value - maybe like up to 5x the cost for 10x the power of attacker / defender?). You could make it use tanks or something to help provide more meaning to those units in a war while helping to provide a larger need for oil. It could also be used in non-team servers to help outgrow an opponent (but treated as a special operation for GDI purposes on primary and express). I'd imagine FA would not be impacted, mostly to reward team play (and it already has a time limit).

This does nothing to address the super fast kills - but maybe if it's prohibitively expensive to wall indefinitely, other ideas to slow down kills would be more practical (like the old idea of just limiting attacks per second/minute).

I've tried to mend fences with you for a long time and you're the one who made it personal: you literally warred 6 random people in tourny because you said you were looking for me. You keep suiciding Evo, set after set. I'm not sure what you consider trash talking (were you trying to trash talk me by saying you think I would drive an electric vehicle?? or that SuperFly wears spandex??), but everyone's done with your fluff.

The reason no one has spoken up about "this attempt" is because we all know you and your clan are the actual bullies / griefers. That's the whole point of every single thread and post, but you and Josey live in some sort of bizarro world where up is down so, though we've tried to have some sort of rational conversation with you, it really is a waste of time.

Yes, SuperFly is a troll - no argument there. But he's also not in Evo and we don't push backdoor politics or suicide alliances to try and force their players to play how you want them to play.

You and SuperFly escalated it together. You're the highest IQ dumb person ever if you expected a different result than getting stomped in the alliance server. If you hit SF on teams, you'd have a better chance of even numbers, though very likely to get stomped by multiple tags. Keep it to Primary or Express if you don't have friends. Which, even if that was your issue, Evo once again has zero control over SoL - and I honestly don't recall if anyone else hit you that set, but we don't have control over anyone.

Where is the dishonesty? Have I ever lied to you? There are like 6 different aspects that you and Josey pick and choose from, but generally, your posts don't live in a world of facts. So I'll give you that the initial war between you and SF was a clusterfluff, and maybe SF attacked you first with his words. Your initial and continued attacks on Evo make zero sense, are the acts of a bully, and caused you to lose all credibility with me.

This is no longer meaningful with Change set #25 - I think Slagpit said he'd phase out the timer to prevent confusion, since you'll get everything when you login for the first time each game day. I think you can still get to -100% building costs with the F bonus and forum activity on this server.

https://www.earthempires.com/...set-25-52775?t=1718757458

Bonus Systems:
* A country will be awarded 7 turns, 20 acres, and bonus points the first time a player logs into it per day. This replaces the 12 hour bonus, 18 hour bonus, and other similar systems.

How did Evo do anything? We didn't join in those original kill runs, and we recommended you talk to actual mercs leadership. Those politics are between you and mercs. Then one day after you had restarted enough times you posted cryptic messages on the forums about how PDM and Evo are somehow at fault, and then started suiciding on us out of the blue. We were never involved until you involved us. And somehow, anytime something goes wrong, you involve us again.

If you wanted to discuss bullying, you know I have always spoken out against cross-server retaliation. Slagpit as a neutral observer suggested you not fall for SF's words, especially if you don't trust him. Also, to be fair, Josey on the forums said originally that he was going to kill SF, so it really doesn't seem like bullying, just escalation. Your attacks involving Evo, or looking me for on tourny, seems more clearly bullying too me, but in that case you seem proud of it. It's not clear when it's okay for you to bully or threaten but not okay for Mercs.

How did you not provoke the war (with Evo)? Even with SuperFly, you fired the first shots, after both Josey and SF threatened total war after their falling out. Everyone agrees this is past the point of ad nauseum. Everyone (but you and Josey?) agrees you started this fight.

Just like Drow outlines, you started it with LaF, you started it with mercs (by killing SF). You definitely started it with Evo.

You might not be interested in politics but this is alliance: other war clans were happy to join in. If you want to solo SF, you'll have to find some other server to do it or get some sort of agreement with him to drop tag. It's really not clear how you don't think you should own this being your fault. Where is the disconnect?

Leeches don't work well on primary, purposefully. It's dependent on your TPT.

WeeZy, even when you retired before, you came out to help and support us. Hope you enjoy the time off and I hope to see you in 2025 if not sooner!

You picked this fight with everyone. Small clans are perfectly successful. You have the numbers, but your group is just incapable of netting, diplomacy, or apparently even griefing. You certainly can't war for fluff. You can keep telling yourself that the world is out to get you, but the truth is you fluffed around on this server, and then quickly found out.

Neener neener neener.

Josey - the point is that you attacked Evo well before any deal. The whole point of the deal was that you tried to ruin Evo's netting set and got tired of getting killed over and over. You were the aggressor. You came into this set with the intent to attack Evo, not netting as you claim. Once all of you were on your 4th+ restarts, then you were interested in a deal to "net".

To Coalie's point, this is where you then aided an alliance that was directly at war with Mercs, which caused your second demise (and another three restarts).

Maybe there could be some trust built with you - with a clear understanding of the terms - but it's hard to imagine what's possible with Cath given his eternal war feud and claims that he never agreed to the terms last set either. I think he's caused you to lose a lot of your prior good will and reputation with PDM, galleri, and honestly the entire server.

Seriously? You don't recall that 4 days into the set you and Cath were sending BR, AB, and trying to land kill Evo players without anyone having ever attacked you? Here's some of the news to help remind you that you have always been the aggressor. Such great netters you are!

https://eestats.lafamiglia-ee.eu/alliance/oldcountry/4877/26 - your original country

2024-04-24 19:18:48 SS Charlie Dont Surf (#26) Von Duffs Express (#82) EvoEn4 DH
2024-04-24 19:17:05 BR Charlie Dont Surf (#26) Von Duffs Express (#82) EvoEn4 9B 266 C
2024-04-24 19:16:58 BR Charlie Dont Surf (#26) Von Duffs Express (#82) EvoEn4 11B 275 C
2024-04-24 19:11:32 SS Charlie Dont Surf (#26) Von Duffs Express (#82) EvoEn4 DH

https://eestats.lafamiglia-ee.eu/...iance/oldcountry/4877/126 - Cath's original country

2024-04-26 02:29:05 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) A Beautiful Evo (#413) EvoEn4 26A (42A)
2024-04-26 02:29:02 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) A Beautiful Evo (#413) EvoEn4 26A (43A)
2024-04-26 02:28:57 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) A Beautiful Evo (#413) EvoEn4 28A (44A)

2024-04-24 21:24:02 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) Clem Fandango (#470) EvoEn4 12A (19A)
2024-04-24 21:23:59 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) Clem Fandango (#470) EvoEn4 12A (19A)
2024-04-24 21:23:55 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) Clem Fandango (#470) EvoEn4 13A (21A)

2024-04-24 15:57:43 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) 10 in 20 (#5) EvoEn4 20A (20A)
2024-04-24 15:57:41 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) 10 in 20 (#5) EvoEn4 20A (20A)
2024-04-24 15:57:38 SS Dawning robe and wizard hat (#126) 10 in 20 (#5) EvoEn4 20A (20A)

Josey, now now, you can't claim to be netting ALL set when you AB and op'd Evo OOP - an alliance that was actually netting. You and Cath are the spoiled brats here.

What even is hardball? You were already doing this. You've constantly been doing this, and then aggrandizing it like "this is your last chance" to only later admit that was a lie and there's no logical reason to hit us, so there's no logical demand you want of us. You affirm your actions with Wikipedia articles on terrorist and total warfare without having any real claims to how we have wronged you. SuperFly makes you sad, and he's in an alliance that we have close ties with - actually like a number of alliances because we actually put forth effort to be diplomatic.

So it's not really clear there's any way to prevent your continued griefing; you don't try to follow pacts or truces because those rules don't apply to you; and so you try to run off another group of players who have been nothing but kind to you, while claiming the real problem with this game is that the forums aren't lawless like 4chan? No, you're the problem - you've always been the problem. Though, I don't remember you being quite so angry at these same netters who FA'd you to the top in Teams. Once you get yours, that's all that matters, right?

Luckily, there's a completely new server that seems like it was pretty much created to sidestep antics from griefers like you.

He can't be any worse than that #6 on tourny - following people from server to server, hitting everyone except who he's after (even in 1a, somehow you miss SuperFly to instead target netters), breaking pacts, getting time outs from the forums repeatedly. Using words with positive connotations like feminine, clean energy, stretchy synthetic materials, etc to somehow taunt his opponents. Like that dude has a serious complex.

https://earthempires.com/...game-a-52881?t=1718949058

Also, tacos are delicious.

Yeah, if anything, I think everyone has been so worried about the 98% loss (even though you more than make up for it even in the short term with how fat the bots are - and with tech!) that the market is just dead. Hopefully that'll pick up as players get tech and can afford to grow faster.

Seems like a good addition!

This happens somewhat commonly in recent sets. You can typically figure it out, there are bots that watch NW. Or like Josey, you can wait until the end of the set (assuming it went where it was meant to go, and gets used effectively). We've certainly seen a few go awry over the years.

Welcome back!

On a side note, is there an agreed upon historically "best" warring alliance? Over 25 years, there's a lot of contenders. Some of the giant server wars of the past were all about numbers, but I'd argue in this case best is referring to "best leadership" in the sense of good target finding, strat planning, and morale / stonewalling / restarts.

I definitely remember dying to SoF more than a few times, but I don't have the war experience that many of the long term vets have. Also in the modern wars, it seems activity more than anything can decide it - the more people who can jump into a warchat at a moment's notice leads to more kills but with the reduced alliance numbers, there's not always so many options for targets beyond the early days of the FS.

Cath - I think building a war country and randomly ABing people out of the blue seems toxic (which is relevant to your comments that you think the in game politics of 1a is running players away - I'd say your continued griefing is more likely to make players want to quit), but I'm not sure what the rule (or spirit of the rule at least) is given there are no longer military sanctions (but mostly because it was challenging to enforce, not because that type of behavior is now encouraged).

Lots of people play at that time, and you did quad tap #14 as a retal, and it looks like he was just spying you for his own retal. There can be gray areas across multiple players, but I think you escalated 14 and well, 6, looks like they just want to start trouble. They might even have started enough wars to get killed without any coordination of their enemies, though it's mostly been AB.

I'm guessing it was for collusion, but it's a tricky question for mods to know if it was just coincidence (unless there is clear proof in their tools) since as you note, there's no way to see that in the news etc.

This set is probably the most explosive it's been in a while? Missiles, GS, AB across half the server? Wild.

This is the part of the set when everyone gets a little greedy and makes reckless GDI breaks. Definitely seems tighter on land the last few sets, but honestly, some guys get farmed pretty hard so I usually try to back off if they send a few missiles and not take it to all out war because they were defending themselves the best way they can.

Uh yeah, what sort of retal were you expecting when you double/triple tap multiple tags?

FYI - you can't get the forum bonus every 2 days...

I knew you'd only last a day!

Thanks LI and gains! Those sites are greatly appreciated.

Happy pride everyone!

In the search, there is a drop down for sort order - but it does not have Spy Op Age.

I'm guessing part of the goal would be to find ops that are out of date and refresh them quickly for the team.

Coop is on changeset 25 where bonus points occur the first time you login in the game's new day (e.g. rollover at 0:00) - no longer tied to a 22 hour timer. This can be confusing when playing in a number of servers with varying changesets, but will correct itself when each of those servers updates to the latest. This also means the timer on the main page for Coop will not be accurate, but Slagpit mentioned those will be removed in the future (when no server needs it anymore).

Yet you expect / demand that Evo drops friendships with Mercs (your whole silly reason for griefing us in the first place, though we were never involved in your lover's spat with SF)? Are hypocrites revered in your culture?

You also can stock like 10+ days of turns - be patient and let the buyers come to you =Þ

I think the idea is that it is a fun server even without bots. I actually liked that you could be competitive with all-x, which is another benefit of that server, while also having the capability to war. The interaction was behind the scenes because you needed diplomacy to allow you to be successful while going all-x / low defense. Part of the issue with grabbing on such a small server is that if it looks like it's giving an unfair advantage to a single team, the other teams typically kill off the land farm, which is hard to argue against, otherwise a 7 man team could run two land farms and the other 5 could profit.

Additionally, I was part of the team that had a number of those wins, and we were quite interactive in discussing our plans and teamwork. I don't think the definition of player interaction should be limited to grabbing.

Are you suggesting that Josey Wales is sending FA to M4D? I'm not sure Mercs would feel too strongly about how that impacts their peace treaty, though SoL may see it differently (and I'm not sure if they even made a peace deal?).

Having a column for NW difference compared to the op could be nice as ops get out of date.

When I've clicked on the country name to go to the war room, and then sent an attack, I've had the screen get metaframed (e.g. you see multiple copies of the Main Menu / Advisor / Manage sideframe, and multiple war screens) so I've taken to typing them back in. Am I the only one seeing that? Happens on both Chrome and Firefox.

There are literally dozens of us, dozens!

I haven't played teams in a year or so, but I'd agree that it is one of the more enjoyable servers, though I too would prefer if it didn't devolve into alliance vs team. That said, diplomacy is part of the game, so that's challenging to neutrally enforce (e.g. are these teams pact or are they effectively an alliance) - and the cause of many, many pages of forum posts regarding it.

If you do a search of the in-game news from a desktop, the result (acres, civs, DH) is cut off. It works for Coop and Alliance, and it works on mobile for Primary, just not the desktop version (Chrome browser).

I'm not sure if this is related to the in game messages getting cut off which was resolved (though now they're artificially limited to less than 40 characters it seems, which can look a bit peculiar on desktop monitors).

I like that it defaults to NPC's / untags, but it would be nice if those could be changed (you can't attack them anyways, so low chance of mistakes) - primarily so you can see government counts, top land, sort by NW/acre of players, etc without a third party site.

Yeah, learn malay newbs!

It might actually be one of the most prevalent spoken languages in this community, other than english and the sub-dialect of troll (apparently).

I'm hoping it's actually KoH!

Glad to have you back, Req!

BH and Drow: I think partially this can be explained due to how politics and pacting have changed over the years (decades??). In the old days, most groups did not pact everyone. They might leave it open to their players grabbing good targets, knowing it could escalate, but the war groups almost never pacted out - they were looking for a war, and if you did not get that pact, you were uneasy most of the set.

Over the years, netters in particular tried to be very diplomatic and pact out as many as they could. In the current state, with the reduced server counts and bots, people have a lot more reason to pact because there's no grabbing benefits and I'd argue that wars where both sides are ready is a lot more entertaining and prevents further loss of players. Of course, there are certainly grudge wars - we've seen some recently but they have always been around, including in the old days where you would finally pact your enemy after three sets and then their ally would war you for another three sets.

All that said, I think M4D was looking to add a little bit more spice into the server, but probably didn't have any specific plans initially. [NB: I'm not privy to any knowledge about M4D at all, and may have an optimistic view of their goals.] Similarly, SoL is probably always interested in a war, and so kept that option open. I could even imagine that with M4D being the new largest tag all of a sudden that some of the war clans wanted to see "what they're made of" so to speak - we see that commonly on other servers. Tag protection is not given, it's earned, for a new group.

Given M4D's large size, and the fact that there hasn't been a real war recently (mostly griefers), probably a lot of people were interested - and it looks like SoL and co had fairly even numbers at the start (probably 2 less?). If Mercs was really keen on breaking a pact or bullying M4D, they could have tagged over more than 7 (they still have 8). I think people just wanted a good fight, and given the recent expertise on the SoL side, they probably could've gone in a little less heavy, but if they were 7 less in numbers and lost, people probably wouldn't remember that they gave up an advantage, just that they lost (and then a war would likely happen the next set with more numbers).

TL;DR: This is all just musings, but mostly to say that I think most probably took this as it was meant to be - in the spirit of the game, enjoying the side of war that both sides were open to (based on forum posts and choice in pacts). It seemed like a number of people had fun (and certainly learned a lot on the M4D side) but that some vets aren't cut out for war anymore (I know I'm not). It'll be interesting if they pact out next set or both want to try again with the new knowledge gained from this set. For whatever reason, best of 3 sets is a common occurrence.

The bigger issue is getting over 500 turns in a single day, even if you were previously max stored...

The thing with only 2 PS and unlimited SS is that most players will likely have enough jets home at all times to aid their allies (e.g. if you have enough to grab once successfully beyond your own PS, then you have enough to be able to provide a good bonus; if you make that last SS and lose most of your standing jets... well then that would probably not be the most efficient use of those jets for your team as a whole, and hence fitting for a cooperation server). If it were 5 PS, then like in 1a, it would be more typical to send out all of their standing jets.

I crunched a few numbers and it seems like the cost of growing is only marginally impacted (e.g. it's still worth it to get large land totals). It is left as an exercise for the reader, but that's based on:

the medical tech helping with attacks;
the focus on offensive allies who don't lose 98% (and get the benefit of medical tech);
these bots don't have def allies;
and that build cost (sans bonus) is still the major impactor of getting to high land.

Honestly, if anything, medical tech could be reduced in its benefits (but mostly because I was hoping to farm a lot less bots on this server). But that's probably a nice way to boost techers to have another category of tech that most strats will want.

He and Josie have actually been hitting Evo for multiple sets now, but otherwise, that's all accurate. Also, don't forget that in addition to being the world's biggest victim, he's also, like, the most intelligent player on the server (okay, maybe him and TC together can agree to a tie for intelligence, but Blackhole has been challenging TC on that pretty hard in the forums).

Yes, these are really nice - I like that you get them from the destroy screen too. Great idea!