I'm not sure what you mean by this. Is this a bug report? If so, please PM me a link that shows what you're saying. Thank you.

This mechanic is already planned for the Cooperation server. If it goes well there then we can roll it out to all other servers in a change set.

Eh, better to aim for the stars and go out in a blaze of glory than do something lame like just farm bots all set.

VicRattlehead: I think the primary server might be the best fit for what you're looking for right now? There are no NPC countries there and players do grab each other. Express will eventually have NPC countries attacking players but there's no timeline on that.

I haven't played in a while but I suspect that grabbing other players is a much better value proposition than most players realize. The main concern would be allowing someone to force you into a war. If you grab someone once and they grab you back twice you generally either need to let it go or you need to commit to war.

Could BlackHole be the next Head of TAN?

I looked into this and found that it would be difficult to fix, but I plan to address it at some point.

The rest of this was implemented as part of change set 23, so closing.

This was done in change set 23.

Here are some of the criteria that I use when determining if a new server should be created:

1) Does it offer something unique that isn't found on other servers?
2) What kind of experience does it offer in terms of conflict, diplomacy, and the public market? https://www.earthempires.com/...osophy-49938?t=1618152644
3) Will players continue to play it?
4) How difficult is it to program?


That's what shaped my rewrite of what was proposed here. If it's a server that's only about killing standard bots then everyone will run a tyranny jetter with high warfare techs. There won't be any way to distinguish between a good and great country. It also won't be important for players to work together. Besides, players can already kill standard bots on FFA.

Here's my interpretation of what you're asking for at a high level:

* Players would be forced to tag up. Each tag could hold a limited number of players. Let's suppose it's 10.
* There are untagged NPC countries that players can farm.
* A tag of static countries would be created for every player-run clan. These would be the war targets for that player's tag. The ten countries in the war target tag would have NWs of (in the billions): 8, 4, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, and 0.0625. These countries would not play turns.
* A tag can only attack untagged NPC countries or their war target tag. Players cannot attack each other.
* NW-based humanitarian restrictions would be in effect.
* When a country in the war target clan is killed, it restarts in the player's tag and restores its original NW.

Here's how the clan standings might end up, as an example:

1) A tag ignores the war targets and only netgains. Each player has 1 B NW. Their tag finishes with 8 B NW.
2) Each player in the tag has 500 M NW but they manage to kill the 2 B and 4 B NW war targets. Their tag finishes with 11 B NW.
3) Each player in a tag has 400 M NW but they manage to kill the 8 B NW war target. Their tag finishes with 12 B NW.


In effect, it would be a wargaining server without any direct player to player attacks?

I updated the post to make it more clear as to what the FFA implementation would be.

What's the gameplay experience that you're looking for? A clan-based server where you're guaranteed to get a fair war every round?

Right now we encourage them to play on Tournament.

We already have something like this but no one is using it: "There are currently no clans recruiting on this server.
Try checking back later or posting on the forums."

Here's the intended workflow from my perspective:

1) A few friendly clans open up their tags up to anyone.
2) New players are automatically placed into those clans.
3) The clan admin sees the new country and sends them a welcome message urging them to join the clan's discord, irc, or website. (I'd personally recommend against irc for this)
4) Some percentage of new members follow up on the message and join the discord or clan site.
5) Some percentage of those members learn the game from the clan and keep playing it.

It's to partially close an existing gap. Currently, after a round ends you can view the owners of any country in the top 100, any country in a clan, and any country where the owner allows country statuses to be viewed. After this change it will be possible to see the owner of dead untagged countries as well.

Someone shouldn't be able to anonymously suicide SOL in one round and then join SOL the next without SOL being aware of their previous actions.

Express already has completely custom costs for bonus points. The problem is that there's so much variance in when players are awarded bonus points along with how many turns can be saved. I don't remember how bonus point allocation works exactly, but I think that after the first 67 hours one player could have 40 bonus points but another player could only have 24 bonus points.

I changed it so it's only possible to view the owner of dead countries after the round has concluded.

Opinions on this kind of change?

1) The restart bonus is only available once per country.
2) The restart bonus is only available for countries that have been in the same tag for the past 72 hours.

Closing this in favor of the other thread. We want to fix this but haven't been able to yet due to operational reasons.

Thank you, I used LittleItaly's suggestion. I changed everything on Celphi's list except for Manage because the zeroes are meaningful as a percentage and most players don't change those options frequently. I also changed a few pages on the FFA control panel.

Did I miss anywhere?

What you're asking for is planned but it would be an extremely fast-paced war: https://www.earthempires.com/...ervers-52503?t=1712810807

This would be easy to change in the standard UI, but it's been like that for a long time. Just to ask: does anyone have a reason why keeping the 0s would be helpful?

Fair enough, changed it to allow for that.

How would this information change the way that war is conducted?

The idea here is to allow recent restarts to drop land?

Unfortunately that's really hard to do. There's no way to force team captains to be active at the right time to make decisions. There is an unpublished idea to allow for team-based combat but I can't figure out what the warrers want.

I got rid of the UNAP stuff because I don't care that much about it, but I don't plan on budging on the easier recruitment. Players create new accounts every day on this site but most don't stick around for very long. I am hoping that automatically throwing them into friendly clans improves our conversion rate.

The alliance server is currently dying. Part of the issue is there is often a negative incentive for alliance leaders to recruit more members into their clans. That's the worst possible situation for player count. What is the alternative that will increase player count more than what is proposed here?

I see that you're listed as an FA for an clan. Let's consider the following scenarios:

1) A player in your clan is unhappy with a decision that you've made and suicides on all of the leadership, including your country.
2) A player in your clan is bored and deliberately starts a war with a bigger tag. Your clan gets tag killed as a result.
3) A player has a grudge from 15 years ago against M4D. They pretend to be a new player and infiltrate your clan. They suicide on another tag and now you have to pay billions in reps.

As an alliance leader, can you explain to me why those are good things?

How often are there ongoing wars in the final 25% of the round where the victor isn't already decided?

I don't see any confessions of cheating in this thread. You should send a private message to a moderator if you legitimately believe that a player is cheating.

Change set #23 primarily makes a netgaining balance change on clan-based servers. These changes will be released on the standard roll out schedule:

* On clan-based servers only, countries cannot drop land during the final 25% of the round. This restriction does not apply to countries that are less than 24 hours old, including countries with restart bonuses.
* For all servers, NPC countries will be identified in yellow in the ingame search results and on the score pages.
* The "Market Spy" spy operation will reveal information on the target's standing orders.
* The "Allow other players to see the status of your past countries" user preference will be overridden for dead countries. All players can view the ending status of all dead countries after the round has concluded.

"Standard roll out schedule" means that changes will be applied to servers as they reset. For this change set, the changes will first go live on the next round of each server that begins after April 17th, 2024.

Thank you for playing Earth Empires. Questions, constructive criticism, and feedback made in good faith are welcome.

I changed the restart bonus part. That acceptable?

The reasoning behind getting rid of the restart bonus is that we would be implementing the "sleep hours" concept mentioned elsewhere and there would be fewer surprise FSes, so it's easier to keep your country alive. As far as I understood the original intention of the restart bonus, it was to make people feel less bad that their country was suddenly killed. Is it truly necessary to keep even with the changed rules? I'm open to feedback on this subject. It's very hard for me to tell what's going on, especially because there apparently weren't any real wars this round.

Theocracy is a good government to finish as on Express because players can log out for 20% of the reset's length without having any turns go into storage. They typically accumulate a large private market during the log out period and switch to theocracy upon logging in for the reduction in private market military costs. For example, this winning country finished with a large number of troops and tanks: https://www.earthempires.com/express/741/ranks/60

It is likely that those were purchased from the private market.

It is possible for players to win Express as other governments. Here's an example: https://www.earthempires.com/express/731/ranks

I don't think that's true across the board? Here's a three member tag that got a top ten finish last set: https://www.earthempires.com/alliance/85/clans/OMEGA

I don't know your particular circumstances in detail. It sounds like you have a small group of players who made enemies out of most of the server and don't have any allies. It's the worst possible situation to be in from a diplomatic point of view. I am comfortable with those clans having a difficult time.

Blackhole, this isn't intended to solve all of the gameplay problems on the Alliance Server. It's intended to be a compromise. I'm generally hoping for a grudging acceptance from players.

The Express server used to be along the lines of what you're describing. I created a country there as a test and got randomly ABed by four different countries. Some players enjoyed that kind of chaos but a lot of them didn't.

Have you tried playing on the FFA server?

That's a cool idea and I'd like to do something similar one day, but there's too much other work to be done first.

Maybe a few warring clan leaders can poll their members for their opinions?

Clans already sign UNAPs with each other. There are 18 tags in the current round. I think that you're underestimating the difficulty of signing 17 UNAPs with other clans. I expect that some tag admins will refuse to sign.



No, the game was not built to be that way.

We have 15 years of data on this subject. How can a clan engage in diplomacy with suiciders if they can't identify them ahead of time, the suiciders don't respond to messages, and the suiciders have nothing to lose?

I also don't see where suiciding was removed? No one else is saying that. Another player's conclusion was "Halfway protection from suicides."

Sounds like I need to create better incentives for clans to recruit members and to make it easier to integrate new players into existing clans?

Why is it impossible for them to recruit other members to their cause, engage in diplomacy with other clans, or to create some other kind of scheme that allows for them to accomplish their goals?

If there are some players who just want to fight without worrying about politics I recommend participating in the upcoming Single Combat server. That server will automatically create 1v1 fights for you and you can show everyone how good you are at warring.

Thank you for reporting this. The issue should be fixed now.

Suicidal, why assume bad faith? How is that going to help anyone? No, I did not conceive of these ideas ahead of time. They were formed after carefully reading all of the feedback in the other thread. Nothing written here is in stone. You are more than welcome to make a suggestion as to what changes are needed.