Spot on. I wish we had an Express style alliance server where the set lasted a week. If you got hit in that week so what it would restart the following week.

The game is won by the player who does that and doesnt get hit. You dont see a problem with a competition 100% determined by which of the competitors are not sabotaged by a spectator.

This is frowned upon in sports:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsck4i

Do you think this is his fault for being first as well?

Now this happens to some people every time they run.

Should he have worn more protective gear?

If one of the sport's rules is that you can get hit and you can hit other people, then it's not frowned upon...


I think the logically consistent argument for getting rid of people hitting you is to remove hitting from the game altogether. I've suggested non-pvp servers for a long time. Still waiting....

If this was common, ie it happens to 20-30 of the 50 or so runners every olympic marathon, what do you think would be the response? I'm sure that the IOC would change the venue and/or the security until it stopped. The people doing it would be incarcerated like this man was, and they would be kept away from sporting events for years to come, like this man eventually was.

These people are called hooligans in sports and we have the same here just that they are given a free pass in EE, to do it over and over again.

The clan-GDI I've suggested makes players who want to play non-pvp hitting play on the same server, thus contributing to a functional market. Most who wanted a PVE-sever were against that solution. Also most who wanted a PVE-server were suicider-supporters who just wanted to get rid of netting altogether from 'their' game.

You missed the point. If the sport has a rule that you can hit and be hit, which running does not, then I don't see a problem with it. You don't hear many people complaining about a clean hit in hockey, for example. Usually the response is for the player's team mates to take out the other player, it's considered bad form (ie. being a giant fluff) to complain to the refs.

And no, clan GDI is not a non-pvp solution. A non-pvp server would not allow you to hit untags at all. I think the functional market thing is over rated as the market would be balanced by the bots as people optimized their strategies when all the non-pvp players left the server. (Not that I think they would but at least they might complain less)

And I'm not a suicider supporter, whatever that is. I am just for a rational player based solution to suiciders. One, players should avoid hitting obvious non-bot countries for their own benefit as that would alleviate many problems. Two, clans should take measures to pre-emptively kill suiciders. There are clearly enough people not strictly netting to do it especially with a combined effort. Eventually, those suiciders will quit the server (see Syko and his cohorts on FFA)

You know whats great about EE? It contains several "competitions" at once. Some play for war, some play for rank, some play for something else. Even in netting there are different competitions available; some want to be the highest ranked commie, some might wanna compete over who is the best casher or the highest ranked all-xp while others are going for the top ranks in the game overall.
Now all those netting competitions are invalidated in eyes of every real netter because no win in any of those friendly competitions are complete without actually 'besting' your competition. When you just win because someone else got hit, just like the one who won the 2004 Olympic Marathon, the victory is hollow also for anyone who didn't get hit.
The game isnt designed so that you can get hit while netting and still win. Two dozen hits cost me 300m+ NW this set and last set AND THERE IS NO WAY TO DEFEND AGAINST IT WHILE STAYING IN THE COMPETITION FOR A TOP RANK.

War has problems for sure, but you always always get a war when you want, and there is very little or no outside influence, spectators don't decide the fight. You have what you need to keep fighting fair wars(in the sense that the participants strength and skill decide the winner, not that the wars are always even) whenever, every reset for the foreseeable future.

Netting is what is being compromised by a few hooligans/griefers/repeat-suiciders and your solution is to remove netting for the 80-100 that want to play that way. It will happen regardless if this continues.
Lets remove all non-contact sports as well and expect the people participating in those sports to just change sport. It seems reasonable, right? Whats the difference between a marathon runners body and a rugby players anyway? I bet 2 months of reconditioning and he's good to go!

Its possible that we need to change the game design like utopia so that you cant win without warring. But that is difficult. And I dont like utopia for a lot of reasons. But they are onto something there, because the best kingdoms generally win and everyone is pretty much forced to fight.

Maybe its time for more random variables, stuff that you cant use formulas to determine. Then, getting hit isn't a guarantee you cant get top NW, bwcause theres random variables that meqn you still have a chance yo work you way up.
It does still sound like youre effectively advocating for a zero risk sandbox game though.
Heres a thought though, what happens when everyone is on the "optimum" strat, and you all finish with the exact same NW because you all know all of the formulas, and you all took best advantage of them?
Wheres the encouragement for new players to play when its literally "you play this way to get the same as everyone else because this is the winning strat taking full advantage of all the game formulas"?

You also avoided my observation about the fact that in just my second set back after a several year retirement, still playing pretty much purely from memory, in a 5 minute a day strat, is going to finish with about 70 mil NW. Thats ridiculous, and all of us know it.

I do not advocate "zero risk sandbox netting" which is a phrase in a collection of similar like "bot masturbation", "profile masturbation" etc that are all pretty much ad hominem arguements with nothing to do with reality. Shows you don't have any faith that you can make an arguementation based of facts or logic and its a bit sad.
Especially when my last post was the absolute opposite of that.

Theres always the market, which is changing. So optimal strat is different every reset... Well as long as the oil destock gets nerfed like I've suggested for 2 years now, until then FFO is the optimal strat every reset pretty much, which I don't enjoy one bit.
Market is not random but it is not 100% predictable since its influenced by psychology etc, you can guess what it will do and guessing right can be part of why you are successful but no one can know completely what it will do.

The same goes for grabbing since I dont know exactly when another good grabber will play, and if I play after him I will lose the 10-20 best grabs in the game. Those are things we can't control. I guess the reason the same players always compete for the win is because in this marathon length server we make 400-800 grabs in a reset and those outcomes will be better on average for those who make the most effort and have the best game knowledge in the end. As it should be in my opinion.

If you want to add random effects that are so huge that a player who now can't compete for a top 50 will win just based on pure luck then I'm totally against that. I'm not sure that is what you are suggesting but it sounds like it. I'm not against more random stuff in the game tho like bots picking certain attackers to retal perhaps in a pseudorandom way based on who hit that bot most, for example.

Also there is no "taking full advantage of all game formulas". There is no written strat that is the perfect way to get to the top, suggesting that is either another low blow or just a total misconception of how people play and how the game works. True there are certain things you can calculate in advance that would be better than doing it completely wrong. Like if someone tries to net with 50 bpt on Alliance I will tell them to try 150 bpt next set.
But if you look at how the best players, netters and warriors alike, in this game play you will see very quickly that they all have their own style of how they grab, when they grow, what buildings they build and when as well as how they interact with the market. If you cant see that you are not looking hard enough, if you dont want to its fine too, but reducing the effort and variance in their playstyles to "playing this way to get the same as everyone else because this is the winning strat" is just dumb.

Some of you people need to learn how to get your point across in fewer words.

No, my solution is to give people that do not want to play with the current rules a place to play where they can enjoy all the benefits of not being hit without enjoying the benefits of being able to hit others. I gave you a suggestion for how your clan can solve it. Pre-emptively kill the untagged suiciders. That will eliminate almost all of the ones you're complaining about. You can't tell me there aren't 10+ people in LaF every reset that aren't competing for a top rank and would gladly give up 50-100 turns a set to ensure their clan mates are safe. There are people that have played for decades that can't net their way out of a paper bag, they are never going for a top rank. If restart bonus is gone, then you're 100% out of excuses. There are also many others in other clans that would help. Spread the turns around and it's not a hard game and will not impact anyone going for a top rank.

More turns now than when you retired? At least more turns than when I retired. Also didnt have bonus points then. NWs are just numbers. You cant compare them to past times you have to compare them to now. Same with acreages.

The NWs in tournament are pretty much the same as they used to be since turns are still given every 25 minutes and it's a month long as before.
Alliance without bots had 350-500m NW finishes which is far more than back in E2025 and thats mainly because they added ~2000 extra turns. I think that was done to appease war folks, it certainly screwed netters.

Im oversimplifying, but the point is fairly valid. You literally just admitted that fascist farmer oiler is the "best" strat right now.

"When you just win because someone else got hit, just like the one who won the 2004 Olympic Marathon, the victory is hollow also for anyone who didn't get hit.
The game isnt designed so that you can get hit while netting and still win."

That seems to me an awful lot like you're advocating zero risk netting. Basically, that reads to me as "I got hit once, therefore I cannot win, and your win doesnt count as a result".
Being hit is literally one of the risks of jetting, and you're actively advocating its removal.

That could work sin however other alliances have less motivation to help if sucider his are inversely proportional in their favor.

Make it part of pact terms to eliminate free-riding. I also still believe that war clans would participate in this. War clans are often willing to kill suiciders after the fact, the only difference is this will be before the fact. Derrick is constantly looking to defend netting clans, Makinso made the point that many SOLers switch between LaF and SOL regularly, Stones is generally DTF, etc.

The only suiciders that would slip through are those that detag. Those types are rarer as most clans have some sort of vetting process and many of those that have done the detag thing lately have only done it because they were frustrated from untagged suiciders first. If you eliminate that, those types will be rarer still.

Sinistril suggesting we kill all untagged alone when they are hitting everyone is abysmal... We have had to kill some players 4 times this set and there are several dozen other untagged that we have not touched. This is not FFA. We have 30ish players who should kill 30+ countries and still netgain? I have desperatly sought to involve Monsters, Omega, Evolution and PS in taking out the suiciders together, but they dont even help with the ones that hit them (A monsters country helped with 20 hits, thats it). If we kill 30 countries, thats 15000+ turns, taken from the most active LaFers, which are also the ones competing for top ranks. Yeah then we are not going anywhere. Certainly its not great for the game either if we kill all untaggeds every reset.

LOL at 10 LaFers spending 50-100 turns a set to kill ~30+ countries (because a lot of the untaggeds will restart and grow back to hit us)... I freaking love it... I dont even know where you are getting those numbers from in this dimension.

There's not 30 untagged countries capable of ruining netters sets, you just have to find the ones that will suicide, monitor the high scores list, country builds, etc. As I said, if restart bonus goes away, this is easy mode with no excuses left. Frankly, FFA takes a larger percentage of your turns to kill suiciders, so I don't see why you're saying it's easier there. It's really not. Suiciders are far more dangerous there because they can legit ruin a string, whereas on 1a they can do a few landgrabs and maybe throw some missiles.

Also apart from the LCN suiciders 1 year ago there has been a lot of attempts from us to get help with killing suiciders and apart from some rare one time occasions where someone sniped a kill from us (any help is appreciated) we have mainly been forced to do it alone.

A lot of people say they want to help but when they are given a warchat time or an offline target theres nothing.

It was 27 hits (as a demo). I am offend ;p

Depends what time of the reset you start killing. the later you go the fewer the countries you have to kill but you gotta kill them before such a time that they can do any real damage, and that is earlier than now for sure. There is not 30 countries but there is certainly 20 around midgame. Many of them would restart and Im pretty sure it will end up being 30+ kills that are needed. We killed 9 this set and its only 4 actual players. There are half a dozen 1-2 man tags that would certainly qualify.

Maybe the second set would be fewer people. But we are catching A LOT of flak from everywhere saying we deserve to get hit because of this and that that happened X years ago. I am certain that if we would do this that would just be another reason to hit us.

You are the only one that has helped us this set and 8 of our kill runs were on players that have not targeted LaF exclusively but hit Monsters, Omega, Evolution, PS and/or imagnum.

That said; hitting with a demo techer shouldn't even be necessary since its so expensive.

Either way where are you getting the number from when you say that a little over 10 LaFers need to spend 50-100 turns a set, sinistril? To me that comes up to maybe 2-4 kills unless its all CMs. We killed 9 this set and those were only the ones that had already hit us to a varying degree.

Again, my understanding is the restart bonus will be gone next set. If you do it correctly, then it will be really easy to go on the offensive here. Your point is noted about killing 9 with only 4 players and that's one of the reasons I was advocating for getting rid of the restart bonus for so long. It's a toxic mechanism that didn't benefit netters or wardogs. If you watch how they grow, you can pre-empt them at the right time and you'll ultimately save turns (they'll have less defense, be less ready to wall, might not have full sdi yet, without restart bonus they won't be a treat again, etc etc).

How has more turns screwed netters? More turns meams more stock meams more networth.
Last set, I did 40 mil on my first back. Roughly par with where I had finished previously. And yes, the whole point of comparison is to observe that it is too ridiculously easy to net already, and you want to make it easier still. I played here, and it was 20 min turns when I retired too. Has been 20 minute terms for alliance since EE started iirc, so that explanation is not justified. Literally every decision Ive seen since my return has virtually explicitly been aimed at givimg betters higher amd higher final NW results, and every time something occurs to spoil that, its accusations of "ruining the game" and "warrer bias". Youre Literally sticking your head in the same and claiming you cant compare earth empires with earth empires, when yes, theyre literally what you shpuld be comparing with. If the numbers are insanely beyond where they ever used to be, then maybe things need to be toned back

Yeah the restart bonus being removed would lower the number by a lot. But doing it these past sets would require 30+ kills is what Im saying, which is why we have not done it. But also to do this it has to be more than just LaF because the retaliation will end up concentrated on just LaF if its just us, also the cost will still be all on LaF.

The reason its easier on FFA also is that when you want to kill something on FFA you need just one player, while in 1a you need 4-10, and the problem with that remains that those who show up will generally be the most active one, which are the top netters, most often.
So it would be significantly less costly for IMPs netting if you had to kill 150 untagged/ set than it would be for LaFs netting to kill 30.
With perfect 100% activity this wouldnt happen, but those who are just logging in once a day to run their turns in 10 minutes and dont really care about their ranks will rarely be seen at a warchat unless the time is just perfect for them, nor will they be likely to be the ones participating in an offline kill run. This is not a LaF-specific problem, this is the situation across the board.

I would do it again in a heartbeat, even if I was running a proper netting country. I think everyone else should too, but each to their own. I appreciate what LaF does standing up to griefers so thank you.

I understand why people may not be around to hit. we all have work, families etc. But I'll tell you what. you get a suicider you need help with killing next set, pm me details and I'll hit when I can. OR, if I can make the run, I'll even come make a run with you.
Can't say any fairer than that.

It's actually far more costly for IMP. If you don't kill a whole string, you might as well not kill at all. It's like doing half a kill run then stopping. Takes 3-4 to get a whole string at once. IMP also has less people to spread the turns amongst; although, there were always people willing to play just to kill suiciders (I suspect LaF has more than a few players that would play that role if they were called upon)

Suiciders are usually less organized for retaliation, maybe yours are more organized RN because of who they are, but in a normal set, that won't be the norm. Either way, would you rather choose who spends turns killing suiciders or let the suicider choose who spends turns recovering from the damage they do? Would you rather kill a target with low SDI who might be playing super casually, or have to kill him when it's ideal for him to wall and his country is fully prepped?

I do agree about the free-riding. That's one of the reasons why IMP stopped pre-empting suiciders, because other clans like LoC never helped. Funny enough, now they're the prime target for suiciders, not that FFA has many left. That said, you can use judgement, for example, Evo doesn't help? Well, you don't help them next set when Hellrush is ruining their set (again).
If you just track the ones that have a history of hitting LaF, it becomes even easier. Other clans that don't help will keep their suiciders, and LaF's suiciders will be less effective, and LaF will bear less of a cost than other clans or at least LaF will get to choose which of their countries they want to bear the cost; wheras other clans will be relying on pure luck.

I dont care if I win with 1100 million NW or 51 million NW. I care about if I win or how I compare with my competition. If they scale back NWs nothing will change for me. Except the game formulas heavily punish running with a high NW in many ways, so that will improve the situation a great deal.

For instance with every turn they add its another turn I have to pay the expenses on my tanks and turrets, and its another turn that a potential aggressor can stock up resources to buy up and hit me.
His buying potential is proportional to the amount of turns he stocks but my expenses increase more than proportionally with how many turrets/tanks I have because of the NW factor in the expenses formula.
Ergo; the more turns in a reset the easier it is for an aggressor to ruin someones netting reset.

Military expenses are proportional to (1+NW/200000000) which doesnt really matter in tournament or team server, but it starts to matter in alliance and FFA because the length of the set pushes the NWs up into ranges where it makes a difference.

Further, the more turns I have the more hits I have to make which means it takes more time to netgain too.

Either way NW is just a number it doesnt mean anything unless you compare it to those you play with NOW. However, humanitarians, the grabbing formula and the military expenses formula does very much favor those running at lower NWs and it is a part of the problem that NWs of players and bots as well as players and other players become so divergent. So I would very much appreciate NWs being lowered if they are lowered in a way that doesnt remove the ability to compete still.
So while I think lowering the NWs would be good for me I dont think thats the right way to solve the issues in the game, and I dont think devs or many players for that matter see the actual NW numbers as a big problem in itself, but perhaps as I've explained how they interact with other things in the game.

i lost more nw killing the suiciders than what i did getting suicided

its crazy expensive having to kill countries, at least next set with no restart bonuses they will need a while to be able to suicide again

I ran a good country all set, most military in sof before the war, warfare tech, spal and able to break ANYBODY all set until 3 days ago. I just spied a postscript fools who gonna beat me with freaking 5 spal and 8 bill at home and 120 mill bushels at home with 5 missiles and if i mess up that homies finish im the bad guy.

Guys like him are punks. See yall in 2030.

Sure i aint going to make top 10 but my country has over 100 mill net and is still functional and growing organically and was strong all set.

Don’t worry Neil PS paid for their “friend” who has nothing to do with them even tho Skywise posts weak threats to “take a break” and Sucide just like his close buddy that has nothing to do with them. Even tho they are pretty much spooge, another bunch of suciders.

This game is awesome!

In the end the problem you have here is trying to code out peoples attitudes which you simply cannot do.

The game is losing players whether you make changes or not. Those who want to war don't have targets anymore, those who want to net are being sucided on and don't see it worth the effect for 30 days to be destroyed in 2 minutes.

ALL the changes that have been put forward help netters, period. To make it easier for people to not interact with each other in a war game and play left alone.

I think the identity of this game has changed too much, but again like i keep fluffing saying its players attitudes that need to change.

This is a complete utter lie. You can argue bots are for netters but you know who took advantage of land-trading before? Netters! And that was deemed too difficult and time consuming, mostly by the non-netters who didnt understand how to do it well, so bots were added.

Apart from bots being added, which is questionable who it intends to benefit, theres no change in the past 7 years that have benefitted netters in the way you describe.

I don’t think the devs added bots to benefit either side. It was more of an “oh fluff there is only 200 players now” kind of thing.

Gerdler, what kool aid you drinking?

Bots = netters can grab no risk
Bots =Netters less land targets.
Bots = Netters are now achieving 300,000 + acres with little defence.
ClanGDI - Helps protect netters from being sucided on..

Do i need to continue?

netters, netters, netters.

Adding in the clan GDI helps who? NETTERS from being suicided on. When is the last time imag whinged about a suicider hitting them? What about Elders? No they want to war so they take the trash out themselves.

All i am saying is the majority of the decisions are about allowing the netters to net in peace without any risk, is that what this game has become?

Netting used to be about tag protection, some tags had tag protection and kill teams to protect those within the tag that wanted to net. It wasn't a right to net it was a privilege...

This game can still be saved, but it requires resetting the direction we've been on.

If you're not prepared to save it, then just remove the WAR ROOM altogether and officially make this a PVE game.

Yes continue, cuz you're wrong cuz!

After close to 5 years away I came back last set and got 124 mil net as a teacher and helped with kill runs. Your point is very valid.

why shouldnt you be able to get 70m

the bots finish something like 40m not even optimised for nw

nw's are never going to be the same as when there were 57 turns a day obviously

a set used to be 3400 turns now its 5k

but that hurts war more than netting because theres so many turns in a FS most wars are over almost instantly

thats been hidden a bit by how overpowered restarts are making some wars stagnate for the whole set

the way wars used to equalise was you always got max pop kill hitting 110% of your nw or higher so eventually the losing side tended to equalise at about 1/3 of nw when it took way more turns to kill them

Clan GDI does no such thing and Bots have actually saved everyone from being farmed by the large tags and netting tags. You dont remember the game without bots?



I have always grabbed without risk in 1a, 1b, tournament and express. bots or no bots.



Netters were never the ones getting farmed back in the e2025 days or in EE before bots. It was always the small tags and the untaggeds and the war tags that didnt secure policing. Now policing is hardly ever needed and small tags and untaggeds can thrive. That is part of the problem for netters tho since untaggeds are not farmed they can build up to suicide netters.

So the bots increase the NWs, so what? no one cares.
But the bots create an environment where suiciders can do more damage which is part of the problem.

They are needed with the few players we have tho, unless we want to go back to landtrading.

Comparing pieces of fluff like 314, 395 or 403 to say 373 (who at least is making an effort), and comparing like 373 to me. Man these countries are soft pieces of fluff who deserve whatever they get. The game done changed way too much for my liking.

enshula: I can categorically state that: I played a part of a set in EE set 26,(400 turns taken) (which was feb 5-april 26 2014) the last full set I played was EE set 21 (april 6-jun 5 2013), which was war with LaF, right around when LaF members were abusing a flaw in the boxcar coding iirc.
I did 29 million on a farmer last set.
my last actual netting set was EE set number 11 (aug 5 - oct 4 2011), when I made 61 mil (I don't even remember this one), though looking at the country stats, I appear to have gone Rep Casher to DMBR at a quick guess.
playing for the second time in over 5 years, without even remembering how to run a startup properly, (I actually fluffed the start), playing with no knowledge of what works, and spending no more than 5 mins a day doing so.
Oh, actually figuring on finishing at just about 90 mil at this point. last bit of stock on the market now, and I can probably resell a bit of stuff in the last few hours to squeak a bees fluff more. Still all too easy.
Bluntly, I shouldn't be able to do that well, doubly so given I played all X

oh, and that 29 million last set netted me 88th position.

Just over 5 for me, using the stats from EE itself, and even that wasn't a full set played lol. I played like 400 turns and that was it.