If your offensive allies' army helps out on a planned strike, shouldn't their military that helped you be unavailable for 20 hours?

It'd be much simpler to just change it so that your offensive allies do not help out on a planned strike.

The offensive modifiers are too high these days, and its too easy to break people. Removing the ability for offensive allies to help out on a planned strike would be one step in rectifying this unbalance.

hmm... nice idea

Mehul dropped the third def ally slot years ago to encourage aggressive play. Adding that back would help provide balance to individual servers without fundamentally altering attacking game play. I think in individual servers changes like these could be justified, but on alliance servers I think it would be detrimental to the overall climate.

Detrimental to give players a fighting chance to be able to bounce retals? Everyone being able to break everyone doesn't help the climate.

If you take away a small clans ability to retal there will never be small clans that are worth a damn. Without the threat of retal there's nothing preventing you from raping a small clan. Escaping retals is not balance.

I might be missing something. Has the attacking formula changed since the switch to EE? Is it more favorably offensive than the days of Mehul? I took a long vacation.

Smaller clans are not inherently less skilled than bigger alliances. But what keeps someone from raping a less skilled alliance is the desire to avoid a war - since wars tend to ruin netting sets.

I think adding D allies would have a terrible unintended affect osloos. I already likc my chops and start farming when I find a target in primary with 0 alliance costs. I think this would get even worse if 3 D allies were allowed.

Most of the time my offensive allies provide little assistance since their units are out on PS 20 hours per day. I could understand not having allies assist on PSs but I think their forces should help on SSs even if deployed to even things out.

most likely this. Maybe make them less available but available still.

But that would be the result of their own choices, Bobby, just like not buying enough turrets. It's not hard coded.

I was just proposing an alternative solution to rockmans post though. I dont feel the current system requires change.

In other words, you like it when every country is breakable and no one has any chance of bouncing retals or topfeeds.

In alliance, absolutely. If you grab my alliance mate and try to jump out of range, I will break you. Alliances should be able to work together in as many ways possible. In primary I see the argument, but I think something more simple, like adding a def ally slot, is more appropriate than changing the formula.

You want countries to be unbreakable? You want me to be able to farm netters senseless and have no hope of ever getting the land back? I could make people beg for topfeeds under a system like that. Topfeeds are at least usually easy breaks, even if it takes multiple hits. This sort of change would give unnecessary assistance to top notch netters and top notch terrorists, at the expense of the majority.

If offense is overpowered, add another def ally slot.. create a defensive strength bonus.. theres nothing wrong with making it more difficult to break people who dont want to be broken, but countries cannot be made unbreakable.

ttt

This change is definitely needed on FFA. Its way way too easy to break anyone that you want to break, and its a piece of cake to have 3 offensive allies who have their jets at home.

Even without offensive alliances, the multipliers for attacking are way too powerful. The inherent 50% boost of doing a planned strike cancels out the 2 defensive allies, meaning the 3 offensive allies are overkill.

Larger countries have zero incentive to grab smaller countries if offensive modifiers are too strong. If we want to encourage people on alliance based servers to grab each other, offensive ally help on planned strikes needs to go.

I agree with Osloos on this one

I could easily store turns, make a few grabs and then Jump Networth and become unbreakable for the guys that I fluffed up.

I can see the problem of offense being too strong, but keep in mind a few things.

Attacking costs turns + Ops
Attacking costs Oil


So why make Defense (that cost nothing) closer to attacks? There is even a random factor that can make you bounce if you don't oversent a little, so stop whining already.

Can't see anything wrong with the Formulas right now, maybe reduce production of Oil (or make it more costly) so people get a higher penalty while attacking (having to buy more oil, or pay more for oil) would reduce the amount of attacks on the game, or at the very least make oiler strats stronger.

You could easily do that if you play against nubs. Trying to be unbreakable against good players ain't gonna happen.



Defense costs nothing? Its the opposite.

To maintain a good defense, you must have the military on hand 24/7. To grab someone, you can run low military and stockpile cash, and then buy a ton of military at once to make the grab.

That random factor is less than 10%. There are 3 offensive allies versus 2 defensive allies, and people get a 50% bonus to offense for a planned strike. What about a planned defense if I don't have an army home. Can I get a 50% defense boost if I don't attack anyone?

Not to mention that its incredibly easy to stockpile up billions of cash to make a grab, and then sell off that army. To grab land you need offensive military once and you can sell it off very quickly as soon as the PS gets back. To hold onto land, you can't run low military except when someone is about to grab you (unless you do the lame tactic of having someone GS you into DR). To hold onto land, you need a strong army 24/7. That costs something.

If you give me a 24 hour warning with the exact minute that I need to boost my defense before someone does a grab on me, then you can tell me that defense doesn't cost anything. Until then, its the opposite. Offense is free, defense is expensive.



Chaoswind - you need to learn how to retal. Its way way too easy to break anyone right now. Its nearly impossible to make a few grabs, jump networth, and become unbreakable. LaF does it about as well as anyone, and they fail at it a lot, and it takes skill just to do it as well as they do. I've seen on FFA this set how ridiculously easy it is to get the offense to retal people. My challenge has been to get my networth high enough that I can get good gains off them. Even when I had no stockpile and was under half their networth and they've got more defense than offense, I still scraped together the offense to break them between focusing a day's worth of turns completely on buying jets and getting 3 offensive allies and using the planned strike bonus.


Its pretty clear that you've never tried outrunning retals on FFA, Alliance, or any other non-individual server.

If countries are not made unbreakable, then larger countries have no reason to grab other alliances, and thus bottomfeeding & exploring is forced upon them. If it is possible to be unbreakable, then we'll have larger countries on alliance servers actually willing to risk getting retalled because there's a possibility that they won't get retalled.


If we want to fix the stagnation of the alliance server, without introducing bots, then we need to give large countries a reason to grab something other than untaggeds.

If we make countries able to bounce retals, then we see increased midfeeding between alliances, where someone tries to outrun retals. This would lead to the grabbing of weaker alliances, which some people object to. These same people object to the lack of country to country interaction that we now find on the alliance server, yet at the same time do not want larger countries to be unbreakable.

If its not a viable growth tactic for a big country to hit someone smaller who can retal them, they aren't going to do it. Get that fact into your heads. With that fact established, that leaves three options:

Do you want

Option 1) Big countries have no reason to ever hit little countries, and instead we have the same situation right now, where everyone farms untaggeds into massive DR and alliances don't grab each other anymore.
Option 2) Big countries hitting little countries and getting retalled is a viable growth tactic for the big countries.
Option 3) Big countries hitting little countries have a chance to not get retalled, and thus is a viable growth tactic.

FFA - Impossible to avoid a retal from almost decent alliance regardless of size if u grab them

This would not make countries unbreakable. The ability to stockpile already makes it impossible to become unbreakable.

Offensive modifiers are way too powerful right now.

sometimes i run grabbing countries with o allies

assuming 3 countries with the same mil setups and decent troops and tanks you can PS with just jets on each country and basically double every hit with your allies troops and tanks

its not quite as abusable as it used to be because now troops and tanks take losses from o allies but its still pretty bad

if im running a demo with 150% weapons then i get 1*2*1.5*1.5=4.5

and all i need to do that is 1.33X the jets im grabbing with in troops and tanks in my 3 o allies

that basically means a bit over .5 troops and tanks, for each jet you grab with

the real advantage is in keeping networth down to grab/retal/farm with

I think the best comment here is rockman's "planned defense." You may sacrifice your offensive capabilities for a defensive boost. Once you've made an attack, whether it be a retal or a grab, this boost no longer exists.

Or something like that.