BH - you've written a ton, so I'll just respond at a high level. You talk about the benefits of earning a reward: if someone wins the top spot because everyone else got suicided worse than them, does that feel legitimate? Griefing adds in a factor of randomness that many would argue removes the importance of skill, which makes it less like earning and more like luck that you survived.

For all of your other points, I don't think your arguments are as persuasive as you think. You can still create engagement and conflict without making people feel bad (to Ugolino's point). I'd wager the war groups would be happy to have a bit more engagement, which seems like a win-win?

I think 1) was a bigger issue a decade ago. These days, almost everyone farms bots (and purposefully tries not to run new players off the server). Team server is in the bucket you're referring to here though, where the 'best' policy is to kill off unknown tags - we haven't quite gotten to that here, so I'd say the main goal from the netter perspective at least is to help prevent griefers from doing so much damage, without requiring every solo / spam tag to need to be killed proactively. That said, your idea works pretty well for both (e.g. they will likely have to declare their intentions early in the set). Going back to my suggestion though, honestly having a declare war that takes 10 days or something to break the pact would help mitigate some of the problems people called out (and if you keep FA, I think that would be nice as a cost of breaking a pact so there's some teeth to it beyond just giving a long heads up). I actually like the FA part, for the reasons you stated, and because there's nothing to prevent people from sending FA currently - so it's not like it opens up a new avenue for abuse or anything.

The corollary with game-enforced UNAP's is that FDP's would be way more challenging - and I could see the argument that people need to determine everyone else's status with each other before signing (like it was done in the old days), but with the low member tags, they could say they're giving everyone a UNAP but then order of operations their way into 'missing' an alliance and the community would not be able to work together like they do today. Or do so with the promise of FA and then fail to do so. I guess to your point, maybe the war groups hold off any unnecessary UNAP's as security, which promotes some additional diplomacy between netters and warrers.

To Coalie's point, maybe the pacts can be breakable, but with a longer declare war option and at some required FA cost (perhaps determined in the initial creation of the pact, with an unreasonably high value set for the strongest of alliances). This could help with a number of the issues (FDP requiring help, another alliance saying things in discord or forums that pushes escalations, another alliance plays in a way that is 'harmful' to your gameplay, etc).

LaF attacks Evo because mercs is attacking them. This kills Cath.

He leaves the server in a huff for almost a year, and returns to maim an ex-LaF player who now plays in Evo.

He has a falling out with his fellow griefers and attacks mercs. This kills Cath.

Now Cath attacks Evo because mercs is attacking him.

"You've become the very thing you swore to destroy." This kills Cath.

Did LaF killing you stop mercs? No - we are completely separate alliances. If you want to pact out with mercs, talk to Dark Demon not Superfly (and not Evo).

https://imgflip.com/i/8ljmph

I think you and I chatted about this on the Team server forum.

I didn't say it was improper? But it certainly benefited the single clan that was at war, who was the impetus for reviving the old project (with a few key changes, like there was absolutely no way to declare war / interact, and no cost). I was not a part of those conversations so I used speculative language based on what was shared in the forums, including from discussions with qz, mostly because I thought it would be helpful to provide that context. I know that you're friends with Gerdler, but maybe spend a little time reviewing the facts and not assume it's a narrative when it's been hashed out on the forums for months already? The reason I even responded to that is because you told g0nz0 it didn't happen, when you should be the one using speculative language when you don't know any of those details, which you openly state later in your same post.

The point though, as Req called out, was that it was rushed, didn't provide balance, and then was changed in live code within the same set, because of complaints from LaF that it didn't fully protect them as they had hoped (harmful spy ops were not initially included). As a suggestion, the admin team could make a post that they're reviving this older concept (that had a ton of feedback then and now) and solicit input for changes to occur in the future. Does every suggestion need to come through the forums? I agree, that's not necessary, but if it's a major change, getting multiple perspectives (especially with varying playstyles and a focus on balance) is key. When a developer only hears one perspective and uses that to make fundamental game-breaking changes that greatly benefits that specific perspective, then I'd say that's a concrete problem to avoid in the future.

I mean, the main point is that LaF leadership made poor diplomatic choices, doubled down on those, pushed for game-breaking changes to protect themselves from that decision, and then continued to suffer in game consequences of their in game actions, all while many of your members started cross-server attacks and suiciding for multiple sets on alliances/players not involved in the war, because if you are at war with most of the server, what's a few more enemies right (especially if those players are likely to break your precious server records)?.

This server isn't meant to allow alliances to make unpopular choices without consequence, but certainly there could be conversations on how to resolve those conflicts that don't lead to players entirely leaving the game (though I'm not sure a champion from each alliance dueling in 1v1 server will become the norm, it's certainly interesting).

Just to touch on this - that's the current state, but during the time, it seemed like Gerdler pushed for the implementation of ClanGDI directly to qz on discord (it may have also included others from LaF); there was no discussion on the forums that it would be coming or asking for input until after it was decided and ready to go. It was a complete surprise to everyone except LaF that it was coming.

So admins did do the gameplay change Gerdler wanted, and then the rest of the server revolted because it was too extreme (and while you can never please everyone, you can see in the comments that removing the politics and clan interactions for this server removed the whole point of it). That lasted for several months, until it was further discussed in the forums to be rolled back and implemented with changes in a future version. At that point, given that LaF had made a number of diplomatic missteps, even longer ago leading to the war, and now unilaterally pushing for this change that fundamentally altered the game (even after they had been given longterm pacts from their enemies), they did not return (as they reasonably expected those unhappy folks to further continue the multi-set wars once the artificial protection was removed).

KoH is referring to TurtleCrawler (TC), and commenting that I mentioned him in my post as TC. I think there are a number of threads from that era (and I think Coalie has the particular comment on TC he's posted in the past, which is helpful because it's hard to wade through so much) but it's from this sort of thing around Boxcar having everyone reset their password and Pang forcefully taking the code and pointing the DNS away from TC's servers: https://earthempires.com/...ng-hostility-18150#334934 where Pang said

"It still boggles my mind that to some folks in LaF, the net result of TC stealing a database password, exploiting it in potentially many forms for probably 2+ years and passing it off to the active Don of the alliance, who used it to form the basis of his political planning, is that I'm the bad guy for not coddling LaF's interests."

Which maybe gets to your 'rules of the game' comments around hacking, and the questions from the community around why is there a permaban for some things and not others.

I think we all realize AT has long been light on truth and heavy on spin (spin dagga spin) - and while I'd like to think a number of us try to be reasonable and honest, you're right that's not always the case for players. That said, I'd also argue that the expectation for admins within the admin role (and not as an alliance leader) defaults to honesty. I can't speak to his co-conspirators (it seemed like the Bomb group was always a smaller group, and I don't think Weezy was part of it) but there's definitely a number in the middle of the pack who would appreciate at least some evidence. Permanent bans for doxxing etc have occurred, and I think people were pretty reasonable about it. With TC, Pang came out and shared the details that were known and the repercussions. If there's an old thread about this somewhere, maybe that would help, but I think this happened while I was away and given someone purposefully unbanned him, it's just a little unusual to see that unilaterally reversed.

I do appreciate the renewed efforts you're putting into the game, the responses you've provided, and your perspective, but just wanted to share the neutral view too.

For teams - I agree with Req, there have been a number of netting groups. Typically, if you want to net, you have to have fought for a pact against the warring teams; it has it's own version of politics, but there have been a lot of successful groups on both sides, a lot of commentary when Blackhole came to upend things (including making enemies of EVERYONE), and some tight netting competitions for #1 and ANW (along with some really nice team efforts with mass FA etc, which is a little more interesting when there's no single largest clan).

Congrats all, and I agree - that's a fantastic finish for FFO on tourny!

I think part of the issue is that in the recent few years, given the small player base, the mod team has tried to be very transparent in what happens - which has been much appreciated. I'm honestly not sure how many friends Chevs has (he is polarizing to say the least, and many of us have had run ins with him on the solo servers that have not always been... ideal). But it's hard to argue that he didn't bring some new life to the game, even when the first iteration of ClanGDI removed a lot of the inherent interactions. The videos and forum activity were certainly something worth talking about, and even the opposing team seemed to enjoy it and provided their own video (I won't criticize it, because you won't see me creating any videos, but Chevs quality has certainly been unmatched).

I think given all of that, this is a strict departure - there's zero transparency, and to your question here: it seems inconsistent given the nature of what's been shared for the reasoning. Based on what others have mentioned on the forums, it seems like Chevs is willing to make whatever public, because he honestly doesn't know what this decade plus ban is for. Certainly sanctions were likely based around him, but given those were pulled back - and TC of all people, has returned with qz publicly stating in discord that 10 years seems enough, it's hard to imagine what sort of action would match this punishment so long after.

You've stated you don't need the forums to approve of your decision - and you're right, you're the administrator and developer of the game, but I just wanted to explain why so many people push back at this. There's so few people left, any sort of lifetime ban has a relatively large impact on the remaining teams, and Chevs - whether you like him or not - is pushing the game to have more people involved than it did, which seems like the point of these threads.

I don't think that type of change is much of a deal breaker or really impact QoL. I'd argue the dropping land was always a bug / oversight, but even if we ignore that: oil still has it's value, it would just balance out (likely at some lower price point) for the benefits. And with the recent expenses changes, if people are shooting for the 700M range instead of 1.4B, most governments would be able to compete by a mix of private and public markets - you just might have to decide if it's more beneficial to destock off the private a few days earlier or play turns without expenses and buy oil or gamble on the public. That's not so bad.

I think part of the challenge is that there are pretty polarizing views of what people enjoy in 1a. I think the majority believe that diplomacy and politics should play a big role in that though, as opposed to the initial implementation of ClanGDI which made it so that you could never have a threat of attacking to get what you want (including if others wanted to net differently, say by mass FA - or historically, land trading). I think many argued that was a step in the wrong direction and that was undone. That said, there's always some compromise where war tags can't war the same group repeatedly or they'll just abandon the server, and netters can't ignore everyone all the time, or we lose the politics and war tags lose their purpose.

To the question of how to get players to join alliance: I typically point users that I interact with in Primary / tourney (and to a smaller extent Team) to the alliance server if they're looking for a group to learn from. You still see quite a few rainbows in the solo world, and I often provide a few tips for people who regularly get farmed (especially if they reach out about why everyone is attacking them, which does happen) that can lead to that. It's less persuasion and more of an opportunity. That's been historically true - and in fact, Cath for instance talked with people on solo servers including Tmac, who then brought him over to Evo (not because he was getting farmed, but because he was asking the top players questions on how to improve). I think Primary with it's GDI and tourney with the small player numbers per group are probably the ideal place for new users to practice in lower stakes. Express is also great, but very unique.

Am I the only one who didn't like the new UI they were testing out?

Others have given a lot of good feedback. As a small correction to your original assumptions, one big change from 10 years ago is that given the low numbers of actual players and high amounts of bots, people pretty much never grab other players unless they're already in a war of some sort. So some of the really fun aspects of diplomacy and teaching other alliances they can't grab yours is sort of gone. It's hard to think of how that could return though without hundreds of players, because the core veteran group is mostly pacted out, or if not, it leads to frustration where a number of players are unlikely to return. This occurred some even 10 years ago, but with dwindling numbers, it's just exacerbated.

Primary is probably the best example of a server that looks at least a little like the old days, and honestly, I think it's because the way GDI is implemented prevents griefing / suiciding but still allows a choice of aggressive grabbing - and so that's the culture that exists. It's just only for individuals (who sometimes retain their name from set to set as a form of "tag" protection).

Getting to Req's and Auk's point, I think the people who are vying for #1 likely appreciate the PvE experience. That min-maxing that HW called out is actually enjoyable for a number of us geeks (and the numbers are still complicated enough, especially with market dynamics, that there's a lot of 'playing by feel' even if there is a valuable guideline from the numbers).

The PvP experience is good, when it's on your own terms. I think a few years ago, it was sort of in an interesting balance where the war groups mostly took turns warring each other, with occasional sets netting or having players join netting tags as desired (or you could war on Teams and net on 1a, etc). There's a somewhat reasonable expectation that diplomacy would require netting alliances to earn those pacts by having a war set every now and then (which is more or less what happened 10 years ago), but if even a few players aren't interested these days, that's most of the alliance, and given most people are older and in different places in their lives - not everyone can even play that style of immediacy to stonewall or scheduled timings to gather a group for kill runs. Changing that to occur over time to prevent such quick deaths and reduce the need for having groups of players online at the same time would be tricky - most people don't like losing all that work so quickly, so restarts were given more capabilities - there's more balance to be done there I think. And while getting the timing to join a kill run can be challenging for people who have busy lives, having that community experience on IRC or discord is probably a pretty big draw of the game to many (especially after so many years).

The future state of ClanGDI was meant to possibly help with some of that - pacts would still be necessary if war clans could ransom you for resources if you didn't agree to war, but pacts would be binding for those who could navigate into the PvE for that top spot. There certainly could be other ways to meet those needs - and with some of the other ideas, there are certainly plenty of ways to spice things up with and without it.

+1

Glad to hear you're not sick enough for some of those treatments, but sad to hear you've been diagnosed as a grinch (with a heart two sizes two small). Join an old lady's walking group and they'll have you back in shape in no time! =Þ

I know v1 hasn't even been created yet or has a complete idea on the final form, but beyond the basics of GDI limiting who can attack, if we're going all out on clan diplomacy, it would be interesting if alliances could have "projects" they can complete for specific defense bonuses, even beyond war perhaps. Partially, I'm thinking it could also help stabilize some aspects of the market as well (e.g. some resources would provide bonus value and those would likely be items that are not high demand in general, or particularly in the early set). This would be most relevant with a ClanGDI that allows players to declare war and still be able to hit (which I think is the plan either with a clan declaration or possibly with the usual country version).

The idea for the project is that every country would have to provide some minimum amount of resources, but then a few countries can supply the bulk beyond that. I would expect every country in the alliance would have to participate (similar to sending FA), but there could be some mechanic that it takes resources automatically (mostly in case you have players who are less active or are not aware how they should proceed, but maybe at some extra cost). Ideally, only countries who were in the tag at the time of the project gets the benefit, but depends on if that adds too much code complexity. Projects could be completed multiple times, but do not stack (e.g. if it's about to run out, you can do it again to get it to full, but you never get double benefits). The general idea is that these could benefit both warring and netting alliances, and add in some new strategies and group optimizations for the game.

Some ideas:

Missile Defense - requires every country to provide some minimum resources, with bonus value from oil, SDI tech, and turrets. This would have some feature like it blocks the first 10 missiles that would have gotten past SDI across the whole alliance.

Disaster Preparedness - bonus value from bushels, troops, and medical tech - reduces the impacts from earthquakes and famines by 50% for the first 20 across the alliance.

Military Parades - bonus value from military bases (just having them gives a % boost for that players contribution), tanks, military strategy tech, and spy tech - reduces expense costs across the alliance by an additional 5-10% (possibly PM too, like encouraged recruitment?) and lasts for a set amount of time

Festivals - bonus value from business, residential, and agricultural tech - boosts pop growth rate (war / walling benefit) and reduces corruption (netting benefit) for a set amount of time

Enhanced Building Code - No bonus value items, could have a large upfront cost and also increases costs to build acres (currently it's Land*3 + 1500, and maybe this would make it Land*4 + 1500 or something) but it would reduce the damage to buildings from AB and BR by some balanced amount. For large FFO's who go reduced building costs, it would hopefully be a fair price to help reduce impact of griefers, and for war countries, it could help keep restarts productive for longer.

These were just random ideas, but if we're looking for big changes or have dev enthusiasm, I think there are opportunities to add interesting tweaks.

Living the dream! See you when you're back.

This is pretty cool - I think it would require a lot of player time dedicated to playing it (well specifically, structured time during those few hours). One option to help with that could be to have the times / days decided in the forums ahead of time so that it rotates some (for global players) and meets schedules for work or hobbies.

Also, is the 8 set in stone or is it partially dependent on number of players?

After it gets going a bit, it might be interesting to add in bonuses for winning each round - it could be like the bonuses we have today (slight bump to expenses or defense) or they get to remove one of the random starting options from the fixed list in the next round, etc.

I don't think Cath was trying to join back with Evo - I don't think he even logged in since that last set when LaF killed everyone but the ex-LaF players we let join us to avoid the war. I'd be surprised if he had ill will towards us but he can correct me in game if he likes (I assume he's on a forum timeout based on Primeval's comments). He does seem to have reason to dislike Doug, though I'm not sure how involved he is in with PDM at the moment - I thought someone mentioned he hadn't been around lately, and I'm not sure if Josey is on good terms or not.

So I guess the connection is not clear to me. You FS'd mercs, they called in their defense allies (which you should've expected) and mopped up your tag. Since you feel it was unfair to have allies on the alliance server, you are now... attacking other alliances to make sure everyone hates you? I think BlackHole tried this on team, and it didn't work out so well (but I mean, if you really want to be the new BH, I guess you're well on your way). It certainly will make people leave the server / game, and you'll have lost all good will that you previously had, but maybe it'll help encourage qz to finish ClanGDI?

Cath - I think you are posting pretty quickly and maybe skimming over what people are saying. Sui said he'd 'hate to see the war carry over to next set' and you thought he said something about you hating people. Empy said you should be careful about who you trust as friends, and you somehow took that to be an assault on you. I didn't see what Doug posted, but you certainly have discussed your religious views in these forums before (but then stopped after the mods locked a thread, it's probably been a year or two at this point). Either way, if there's inappropriate content, no mod will let that stay on the forums and will likely give a timeout for posting it. If you receive things like that in game, report it and they'll take action there too.

That said, I didn't see all of the forum posts that have been cleaned up, and I can understand you have reasons to not believe things that are told to you from a variety of people, but as an unbiased observer who has played with you for a long time, it seems like people are only out to get you as a player in the game based on your in game actions, unrelated to anything else in your life. It sounds like you ran some good war countries, taught some new players a lot of good tips, and they look forward to battling with you in the sets to come.

This is pretty reproducible and I can confirm happens regularly.

Nice - the other bonus fix is this provides an easy way to look at this on mobile (which I think previously required viewing the portal in desktop mode) - thanks!

Both - certainly there have been cases where people self-delete to try and remove that connection (though you can find it if you search their profile, which is tricky when you don't know who they are).

I think one big use case is finding out who someone was after the set, which is typically from people who would not be interested in publishing it to their forum (or who have multiple forum accounts). I don't think that would hurt, but it's typically not the folks who are easy to find that is the needed for a search.

What about 1% C:C DR, but less general DR; so it limits the gains from a single player but allows others to get some (it seems like the issue is that individual players put all the bots in heavy DR to ruin it for everyone, but I don't play Express)?

You also have to spend turns and cash to rebuild - that's the big factor in doing a tech start.

The receiver of the request can see the units related to the pact, but if you haven't accepted then they can't see anything. Once you accept, they can.

Ha, that's right. Back in the ICQ days of FA. Where 'mature' 12 year olds decided the fate of the server.

When was that? I played with the combined Ely x SkyElitez and I thought a number of us went to TIE too, but I've played off and on so many times over the years that I might be mixing and matching when we went to TIE (or it happened multiple times - maybe well after you left to MKR). I think I played under the name Marduk back then though. I thought your name sounded familiar from a different browser game (maybe there were pantheons and the admins would randomly grant small favors... I have no clue the name of it, but I believe you mentioned your name is not necessarily unique so maybe entirely unrelated).

I'll go techer again and try not to get into wars. Let me know if you want an all tech ally.

Congrats all - some nice finishes for the number of shenanigans this set!

And surprise to LB - I didn't know that was you, but I'm sure you weren't expecting anyone to break you at 120M NW.

PDM has grown a lot - kudos to the congenial and chill atmosphere! It's good to see that everyone there agrees on the honest members and leadership and takes action accordingly, too.

So maybe the summary is that VPN can be okay if you effectively get approved / safelisted by the mods, but don't be surprised if they say no if there are any suspicious anomalies? I certainly have used VPN overseas, but connected to my "home" IP range.

Why, oh, why, oh, why, oh
Are we so in denial when we know we're not happy here?

Check the strategy room - people post some things there, though some are outdated, they're typically simple enough to get you going.

*Eats KoH's popcorn*

Every 24 hours you reset to the maximum ops you can perform per day (different amounts per server).

As requested by Weezy, now that I'm not on mobile and can actually see the results:

Rank Country Land Networth Special Clan
1 AndrewMose (#158) 61 $1,494,797,755 H Evo
2 No Country for Old Men (#457) 180 $1,429,134,405 H Evo
3 Gains has a mangina (#459) 50,986 $1,317,921,418 DG SoL
4 river ladder shoe (#481) 288,208 $1,193,515,750 C Evo
5 honky tonk (#5) 73 $1,147,999,578 H Mercs
6 Seemann (#456) 91 $967,142,475 HG Evo
7 redball express (#17) 10 $854,202,067 H Evo
8 Struggle Street (#463) 120,420 $790,025,443 DG PDM
9 Coffee Time (#164) 24 $750,698,580 HG Mercs
10 Thatcantbe (#30) 61 $702,416,706 H OMEGA

I think this makes AndrewMose one of the few that have had a top spot in every server, very impressive!

Good finishes by a number of players this round, including a few that haven't played in some time. I hope to see Monsters and Omega back in the top next round (monsters had some great finishes, despite the suicides and taking care of Josey Wales and co - respect).

Honorable mention to the dishonorable Chevs for the highest land I've ever seen (1 million acres) - will we be seeing a video on the making of this? I know your war dec was removed, I can only imagine by a mod's fat fingering of the forums.

Also, notable mention to 'Gains has a mangina' - really solid teamwork from SoL. I heard they may have learned from the FA and oil transfer king, Gerdler himself, but weren't available for comment prior to deadline.

An actual honorable mention to Duff - we can't get enough of that stuff - for an amazing 850M+ finish. He continues to be the glue that holds Evo together, and we can't wait to see the continued improvements from set to set.

Don't forget to smash that subscribe and hit that like button if you enjoy this type of post. If you don't, then go to teams and get wreckt. Detmer will be along to confirm shortly as resident ex-herder of cats.

Damn son, you didn't have to do him like that

pew pew

https://eestats.lafamiglia-ee.eu/primary/country/65

Or - they made the change purposefully and like the direction it led the server. If people want FA, they need to do the alliance server. Or the team server. Or the FFA server. Good grief.

Yikes, then that makes me more concerned about those vile threats you and your friends were making in chat, because that fluff was fluffed up.

Aww, poor TC - must be so weird for you since you're the one typically FSing netters out of the blue on multiple servers.

Light milk. Perfectly foamed.

Bonus.

Fireworks as requested:

https://eestats.lafamiglia-ee.eu/primary/country/50

The only reason that primary has allies is to help new players find community. FA goes too far into allowing an unfair advantage.