where can i find stuff to read about that? i just realised its something that was added in my absence from this game, and i have no clue how it works.

is it to do with NW, land or both (separately) or NW/land ratio? and apart from discouraging topfeed, what else is it for?

if you are talking about retals then that's business between alliances and c:c 80% is that when defender retals if he/she gets above 80% land lost back (ghosties not counted) then retalling is done, if under then as many retals as needed to get to above 80% (and no ss and ps attacks mixed) and its by nw (usually, haven't bothered to check if some tags use land too). it is for helping attacker to gain land too (sometimes works, sometimes not). it doesn't dis- or encourage topfeeds since topfeeds have own determinations and retal rules.

see, im not so sure about that. i dont think it's just politics, because the examples i see are for land trading and obviously i dont know the DR situation but it seems that if two countries are similar in NW and land the % gain from the PS/SS is greater. so i was wondering if this is just a flaw in the example, or a new part of the game.

i tried to apply said similar NW+Land theory and it seems to work too.

eg. 8k acres 3m NW hits 14k acres 5m NW -> gain 1100 (1600)
while 10k acres 3m NW hits 11k acres 3m NW -> 1500 (2300)

both DRs are 0.

Has to do with NW ratio. This is well known. Land of attacker or defender has nothing to do with it, other than that landtrading countries try to have similar size so the retaller gets back his land + ghosts.

so similar NW greater gains? got a formula somewhere? =D

No known formula. But you can read about it here, Part I change: http://www.earthempires.com/...311%29-26088?t=1387775669

It is now a Gaussian curve instead of Piecewise step function. You get best returns approximately at 95% of your target's NW.

oh nice. thx. so basically it used to make a higher difference being at matched NW, but now it's slightly less of an advantage.