I hung around for war lol

Some of the input again. Exactly what we need. Thank you for remaining positive!
<3

no thread until 13 days ago.. out of all the ones been there for over a month.. a new thread is put into effect.. hence the people wanted other changes (besides the inner circle of whoever ur listening to)

if u want a positive discussion, how about having server wide votes. each alliance president votes on what stuff gets added to this game. since they are responsible for their players in their respected tags

Perfect. The restart bonus is currently the most toxic aspect of this game, by far. An idea being pitched does not mean it will be a good idea. This idea will lower player interaction without having an effect on griefers. Netters will still complain when it's implemented that their sets are being ruined. I'd say even more so as people who are bored fighting the same wars over and over again decide to suicide instead of pretend like clan GDI was some magical fix since this doesn't actually prevent suiciding, it just means you must focus your suiciding. Ie. Suiciders will pretend to be bots and destroy one country thoroughly unless you make even more draconian restrictions on them. Though, with the sound of it, it seems you will eventually bring in an "untags cannot retal" rule, which as far as growing the game goes is incredibly toxic for new players if we ever had any.

Yeah I'm not generally on the paranoid bandwagon but there is definitely an inner circle effect here...

This is the wrong way to go about it. If we did this and I ran a 30 member tag I would feel I would have more say then the person who ran a 5 member tag.

At the end of the day they pay the bills. I keep saying lets give it a try and if it does not work it will either get tweaked or rolled back. There has been things done in the past that got reversed, so just give it a try.

I hate the restart bonus, I always have wars do not end now.

If it doesn't work it will not get tweaked or rolled back. Again, restart bonuses. There have been no positive tweaks to it since it was implemented that actually address the issues that it brings about. Unintended consequences are a fluff

well in theory the restart bonus was initially designed to reduce the effects of blindsides and first strikes

which it did to some degree, originally you got back way more of goods on market too, minimum of 70% instead of 50% or something i think but that was nerfed

and maybe some changes to do with how it scales up with being hit, type of hits, amount per hit, or counting all countries not just the most recent one, i dont recall though

but id rather have other means to reduce blindside and first strike such as significant penalties if declaring war without notice and a notice system to give clans time to war prep and notify allies

one of the things i dislike most about the restart system is the more you wall and use your resources the more it helps you, and those are the people that need the least benefit from the restart system

hmm actually there was a rollback before on something that did not work.

then u do it the old way non millennial way, u war them into submission.. and make ur vote mean more.. dont hold their damn hand, and besides even small tags, have some of the more respected and thoughtful players.. being a big alliance doesnt mean better, just means more people drank the cult kool-aid

all these years never really knowing who's fault it was; now I know --- now we all know :P

actually I would love to see a War Academy type tag for new players then clans that want to war can use this to train new recruits into their tag. Kind of like bootcamp, but it would take a buy in from warring clans to provide the leadership in something like this.

same thing for a Netting Academy

of course the these would be optional for new players, but those who choose to do so would have a distinct advantage. and actually learn the game upfront, and much more likely to stick around.

A decade ago?

Also, I'd love to see the suggestion thread that someone made for clan GDi: "hey, let's have a clan gdi but instead of modelling it after GDI, which has country size limits for who you can attack (that being the reason I don't join it in the first place), let's make it a low risk, high reward, netting protection web that costs next to nothing, will probably be free with bonus points anyways, and allows me to farm bots all day while benefitting from the market as normal. Sure, my clan mates who won't be able to differentiate between fake bots and real bots will still get suicided but I am a good player and will finish with slightly higher first place finishes while the community dies away"

Only time will tell how it works. They do not even have the costs ironed out yet. It could be more of an issue to join based off how it will impact your country. It could be so painful that if you join it you will not get top 10. Who knows...

http://www.earthempires.com/...ur-tag-47882?t=1572315506

like i stated created 13 days ago.. so all discussions on this were private hence ONCE AGAIN someone in his inner circle (regardless of tag) suggested it

this inner circle thing you refer to is it the development board?

and i believe there is a wide cross section of representation on it

its not exactly private but i believe its so they can have a better signal to noise ratio and discuss without politicking and trolling

no, him stating he has been private messaged about this clan gdi thing, and the board had no knowledge of it until u made said thread 13 days ago enshula

Unintended consequences aside, i think the primary function of this will be to shield yourself from the community and not so much to shield yourself from a handful of suiciders. That's why sof is seemingly adamantly opposed. Tags in the past have won wars and achieved netting nets politically. They've also been b-sided without a good reason, but one could argue that's part of the game and not just griefing. Good politics, not being able isolate yourself and have a bonus sized restart, should be the driving factor in who wins or loses.

I think anyone should be able to see that. Something like killing the restart bonus would have far more of an effect than will this aspect for mitigating grief. Unless you consider like half the server as one big griefer because they wanted to hit laf. But to say this is protecting against suiciders is a little naive. It's protecting netting tags from having to coexist politically with war tags and their need for alliances in those tags. People like josey who have hid in the bots, get hit and respond will still be 100% effective suiciding.

I think it's fairly obvious that the negatives easily outweigh the positives. As enshula has said, laf wont even use it if you have to dec war, and they'd still expect to get suicided.

Since it's fairly obvious that this does not protect netters against suicider/griefer types, it's fairly clear that its just shielding the netting tags from having to be a community with war tags. That's legitimately the only function. And i think that's why you're seeing sof calling out laf for it. But as I've stated, the politics were always a major driver for the most active on this server.

I've heard 80% of the members of this game talk about the good old days. And 99% of the time (save maybe gerdler who talks about his favorite math moments) they talk about who screwed over who, who hit who, who beat who, who rage quit the warchat etc. MOST players fondest moments on this server were a result of the politics/people moreso than any ingame function. Alienating half of the server from the other half in a manner that does not seemingly protect against even basic fluff suiciders like josey, while completely destroying any sort of political motivations tags may have with each other, does not seem like a real solution to anything.

Like sin said. Unintended consequences are a fluff. Now i can just join clan gdi when i start losing a war and make it stop. Now when i suicide a single player over an lg, his tag cant help kill me. Now when i talk to people in netting tags, i won't have a real reason to. Now the politics are dead, and we're expecting basic math in a text game to attract teenagers? Really? The politics/community are (or maybe were) THE THING that could entice them. I feel like we couldn't be missing the mark harder in that regard.

TLDR

Something simple like making the bots a different color in the scores list than players so people can't use the bots to hide, or even just tagging the bots, or killing the restart bonus are like 10x easier to accomplish and 10x more effective with 10x fewer unintended consequences.

lol thats my post and i didnt realise pang had replied there

im pretty sure i made that thread as a suggestion after he posted the thread on AT saying hed booked time off to look into the matter

and there was talk on these forums about 3 sets ago by pang/qz about anti suiciding changes coming in, so i just assumed it was that getting done

i think it was either the set before laf warred when wed got suicided or when NM got suicided not sure which

I do agree with this guy. I think killing the restart bonus would help with what you all keep calling griefers.

I see the merit in getting rid of the restart bonus but I know personally one or more of my returns to the game were ended by dying and starting from zero. Made me lose interest and disappear for a while.

Here's a starting point for a list of ways to reduce suiciders:

Eliminate/reduce restart bonus. Maybe eliminate on the second kill?
Require all countries to join a tag
Remove ability to do special attacks as untagged unless you are provoked
Clearly identify bots (different colors in scores list?)
Reduced attack effectiveness for smaller countries as mentioned earlier

There are many more ideas better then clan GDI as proposed currently, I'm sure the community can add to my quick/short list

I am not sure who pitched the clan GDI(I think it was QZ) in the first place but the discussion on what plagues netting alliances have been going on in public for well longer than the time I been playing EE. Some of the recent changes to bots have actually increased the impact of suiciders so the voices might have become louder since then.

Case in point; before while netting under the old bot code the netting competition was settled by like day 30 and by that time you could basically call out the top 5 order as long as no one gets suicided and that order was clear to everyone (possibly required a spy op). Back then bots had no defence (like 1/5th or less of what they have now) and techer bots didn't tech turns, just explored and built, so there were no huge cash mountains up for grabs. Further, there was only 100 bots on alliance so all bots were in much deeper DR than now. Because you didnt need as many jets as now and didnt grow as quickly you knew it was not difficult to keep tech levels high while grabbing as it is today and there was no real potential to outplay anyone by a large margin. You could just see that the better players eek out a very small lead every day due to grabbing skills and perhaps a higher BPT. And since grabbing was the same from day 10 to day 50 none of that would change.

Now in contrast because most FFOs and cashers get so much more land/day in the last days of grabbing you can never count anyone out and because the lategame is so fruitful the people who have to spend turns rebuilding in the lategame lose so much more than before. And because the amount of defence a netter needs directly impacts the number of bots available to grab in the lategame a suicider spending 30-50 turns on you will not as some suggest 'cost a hundred million NW'/'1 rank'. That was probably true before.
I won alliance after a suicide before most of these bot changes took place, and that just wont happen now. So the bot changes while good for the market and some other aspects have really supercharged suiciders.

before the 100 bots no defence sets there was 50 bots with defence sets

but everyone was still trading then

people probably forget that if bot farming become unviable we just go back to land trading again

and trading with dec war clan gdi and 2 day target switch is 100% viable

it might be a bit tricky early when you want to be doing 3 hits in a day and moving onto a new target, but that might be solved with starting a tad earlier turn banking and cs pumping until land gets big enough

any situation where landtrading becomes better than bot feeding again in my opinion is a bad thing, because with land trading you kind of need people doing as well as you are to trade with so it compresses competition a bit

ironically trading with clan gdi could become 100% safe with everyone just running enough defence to meet whatever the mmr's are it will mean networth matching wont be affected by running defence

previously you couldnt run defence as a trader particularly when you were in the land lead, except maybe some troops which you ended up psing anyway

Yeah I think QZ brought it up in 2018 at some point

Here's a thought. Maybe just maybe the admins could get some active player input from all aspects and not just a select few or not any input at all. I still believe the voting is the way to go. And if there was any objections to certain people doing the voting I'm sure someone in that alliance could step and do the voting for them.

# of active users is a vote of sorts...

So if the # active users tank after this is implemented. We have our answer? I'd rather we not trial and error what little bit of players we do have left

I redacted a few quotes above to highlight the parts I liked. But I actually read a wall of text from Derrick (havent done that in a long long while) and it was good. Interesting.




These days 1 or 2 "topfeeds" seem to be considered by some players as "ruining" their entire 2-month round. That may be why removing the restart option isn't a viable option...or at least a satisfying one... to some players. The more vocal group leading up to the most recent public discussion wants to play in isolation with near full benefits to the public market and bots. But this culture has been eroding to this point for a while now. Even in FFA, outright decent grabs that one would have to really stretch to argue for a topfeed or all-jetter claim are sometimes seen as acts of war warranting a hissy-fit either on the forums or retaliating with escalating retals unnecessarily. Single legit grabs are near seen as an act of war by many and its only further eroded into the current state of further isolation. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and we have some of the loudest around here.

If you landgrab a 10k acre country and take 1000 of his acres he loses maybe 20-30 turns worth of construction time, attacking time Etc. As countries get larger tho, the cost is measured in days or perhaps close to a week. Anyone who tries to get land on his own will not be in a position to make hits where retaliation can't come close to raking in even half the land that was lost, which is why Land:land percentages has been standard on 1a since about 2002 (SoF pioneered it but most other major alliances went that way eventually) even before there were bots in the game.
Back then acreages were more uniform. Not to say they were equal but you never had the 1:5 or 1:10 ratios between countries which we see these days which would be really weird to 1:1 retal.


We get scenarios like this:
https://www.eestats.com/ffa/oldcountry/1514/322

2018-03-19 16:32:25 PS GET FAT AND WIN (#322) IMP SoO (#1732) xTKOx 51729A (73722A)

2018-03-19 16:36:01 GET FAT AND WIN $53,524,607 124,412 acres T IMP
2018-03-19 16:11:02 GET FAT AND WIN $46,303,106 50,690 acres T IMP

2018-03-19 16:36:01 SoO $52,098,829 266,928 acres F xTKOx
2018-03-19 15:11:01 SoO $57,150,035 318,657 acres F xTKOx

I heard this being talked about a lot at the time thats why I remembered it and back then I was discussing with QZ a lot and brought this up as one of the big issues of the game today and as I remember it it was this example that made him understand how the game state had changed. Maybe this perfect example is partly responsible for why they are looking to make Clan GDI to counter also these things.

If I understand the story right people quit IMP over this grab as they want to netgain as well and realized that if this is what their clan does then they will not be safe to netgain in IMP. So the defending tag was not happy, the player hit was not happy, and the attacking tag lost members so they were definatly not happy with it. The aggressor most certainly didnt want land or he would have had more than 50k acres from grabbing bots, so he mainly achieved joy from the demise of the player he hit, which is what I would call (light) griefing. This is not a behavior that needs protecting or brings players to the game, rather drives them away as was seen in this instance (albeit I am not sure if anyone actually quit for good because of it).

Im not actually sure about how I feel in regard to this. It definitely takes away the whole point of pacting at all.
I remember before I retired that we tried to run a little bit pact light to try and give us some freedom, and bring back a little of that risk element. This seems built around enabling people to run minimal/zero defence in order to maximise NW whilst having no risk. It literally becomes a sandbox. But then, to he fair, some people do want to be able to play that way, and should have that opportunity. The other option I guess would be to simply create a server for the sandbox netters.
Getting blindsided etc is a part of politics. Get better at the politics etc

At least people are being honest about this not being about stopping suiciders at all, rather, it's about not getting hit at all. Just make a new non PvP server. End story.

That suggestion has been assessed and dismissed for good reasons explained previously in this thread.

Fragmenting the community to avoid fragmenting the community should by that logic be dismissed as well then. Because that is exactly what clan GDI will do

We’ve all heard your opinion sin. This is getting repetitive now.

We've all heard gerdlers as well as about 5 other people in this thread, don't hear you saying anything to them. Almost like you have a dog in the fight and some opinions need to be silenced

we have a saying here in Kanada

“If you repeat it, if you say it LOUDER, if that is your talking point, people will totally believe it.”

Req You are an EE developer? Have you always had that below your name?

Gerdler mostly is responding to people and I generally agree with him. I do get your POV but at this point we need to try it, and modify it until it works for everyone.

Trust that Pang wont kill his own game :)

Gerdler's second-to-last post here was a bit swiss-cheesed factually, so its not worth getting upset over the redundancy of the posts. That wheel is going to squeak like hell regardless, so just let it roll on.

Ya to a few people's points here, I'm seeing lots of the same things over and over again so I've stopped replying in this thread. I don't think the discussion is trending in a helpful manner at this stage and the little time I have should go toward dev work. So this will probably be my final post here until I have something useful and novel to share (which I'll do in a different thread/venue maybe).

But just wanted to say thanks for all the feedback and passion, whether you're totally on board with what we're looking into here or not!

its nice to see changes good or bad, at least we know the dev care enough to try. at first you dont succeed keep dont give up just keep trying until something sticks

+1

My sentiment exactly. This game has not changed in any way since about 2014 (apart from bot changes and server rules).

Most game devs just change their game every now and again for better or for worse with no debate. And then they keep, tweak or reverse the changes they put in depending on the success and what they want. I fully assume this will be an imperfect addition, but still it shows that the devs care about a real issue and wants to better the game. So Im positive even tho from what I have heard so far it might be too expensive to join unless all-xp.

Another point worth making is that suiciders have greatly benefited from the increase in DR. Once upon a time an untagged country had virtually no chance of growing at all because it would be farmed in to the ground. Now it can be farmed yet still grow.

There are many possible solutions but one of the simplest options to curb suiciders is to return DR to it's original formula for untagged countries and tags with less than 3 players, allow restart rules to only apply to tags with 3 players or more and to tag up bots in one tag (or split in to several). Simple fixes which should have a reasonable effect.

The DR formula is weird its true. With as many bots as we have I dont think it would matter much for untagged suiciders to grow since its just such a bad risk-reward to hit an untagged non-bot right now that they are generally not in much DR.

The thing that bugs me about DR is that the slope of the returns to DR curve is so steep that a country that gets hit 2 times a day lose more land than a country that gets hit 10 times a day. thats really really weird and empowers all-jetters and suiciders after the suicide took place.
Intuitively a country that gets hit more should always lose more, albeit less per hit.

The end result of this will make warring unprofitable at all. Kinda ruins the game for me, damn near completely.

Doesn't change war at all. I think you misunderstood it a bit.