Killing is broken.

http://earthgraphs.com/...&num=41&reset=362

BTW, this is NOT me. But its a great example of what happens to a country who doesnt wall...

http://earthgraphs.com/...y&num=8&reset=362

Buys up, civ kills go lower? 200 hits, 16k civs down to 8k civs on BR, out of anything... BR!


When i first read the change, i thought the damage ramp up was for military units ONLY, and that the civ kills were not affected. In this current formula, this game is now retarded.

ah, maybe SRing?

not sure what the question is but i will agree that the admins royally fluffed up the killing in this game. it is not ANY easier to wall if anything its harder because you cannot tell how many hits your country has left based on news feeds to properly wall unless youre the type to blow all turns on hand at once.

You should see this one then:

http://www.eestats.com/alliance/country/140

Aug 18/12 8:04:15 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 247 C/25 B
Aug 18/12 8:04:13 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 240 C/24 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:56 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 232 C/24 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:56 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 224 C/23 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:55 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 216 C/23 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:54 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 201 C/21 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:54 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 209 C/22 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:53 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 192 C/21 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:52 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 184 C/20 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:14 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 118 C/15 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:14 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 112 C/15 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:13 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 110 C/13 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:12 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 110 C/12 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:11 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 111 C/12 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:11 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 111 C/12 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:10 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 111 C/11 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:09 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 112 C/11 B
Aug 18/12 8:03:07 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 112 C/10 B
Aug 18/12 8:02:39 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 119 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:02:38 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 120 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:02:38 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 120 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:02:37 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 120 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:02:37 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 121 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:02:36 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 121 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:02:35 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 122 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:46 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 122 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:46 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 122 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:45 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 123 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:44 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 123 C/8 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:44 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 124 C/9 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:44 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 124 C/9 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:44 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 124 C/9 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:43 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 125 C/9 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:35 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 125 C/9 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:34 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 126 C/9 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:34 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 130 C/10 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:33 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 133 C/10 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:33 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 137 C/10 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:31 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 145 C/11 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:31 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 141 C/10 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:29 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 149 C/11 B
Aug 18/12 8:01:13 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 155 C/11 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:50 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 167 C/12 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:49 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 197 C/13 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:48 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 202 C/13 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:25 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 242 C/14 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:23 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 247 C/15 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:23 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 254 C/15 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:23 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 262 C/16 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:23 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 270 C/17 B
Aug 18/12 8:00:22 PM BR Don Santo Trafficante (#140) (LaF) ARE YOU THREATENING ME (#595) (DANGER) 279 C/17 B

Damage goes down. Then goes up.

Edit: Attacker 2.9m NW, defender 1.2m NW.

So that I can see both sides of this, what are the admins trying to achieve with this change?

klown: http://forums.earthempires.com/...-attack-style-now-in-team

LI: you should know that GS and BR have the same civ kills before the minimum. you should also take into consideration that those are from team with people sticking to the 5 man rule ;)

Whats great is that u br a target and your first attacks kill 8buildings. Thanks for this great game improvement!

/sarcasm

Fact is if you're not from evo or pdm then your input wont be listened to, and given that the only guy I would consider competent enough to actually have a chance of understanding the impact changes will have in advance was diez who is now not playing I believe? (and even that I say based on him being a competent netgainer I have no idea if his all round war knowledge matched that), so now we all suffer...


Although like I have said before, I have no problem with the idea behind the change, they are just going about implementing it the wrong way, using the wrong ingame mechanisms.

MAYBE HAXOR COULD OFFER YOU A TUTORIAL.

BILL

Lol, you're so full of fluff SS, can you not see how well things have worked out for PDM and EVO. All of that influence has catapaulted them to the top hasn't it?

Having changes made in the game has nothing to do with how you are doing. The current change to limit landtrading hurts traditional bottomfeeders etc more since landtraders just need multiple partners and land is already so limited for everyone else.

I think this kill change was supposed to make stonewalling easier but it just seems pretty odd now...

im not saying the influence has any benefit for pdm or evo, everyone plays under the same mechanics afterwards, fact is the only people consulted about changes are from those alliances, and i was making the observation that the majority (perhaps all) of the players from those alliances are not people i would consider competent enough in their understanding of game mechanics to warrant consulting.

And can you back up this allegation? (amongst many others you have been making)

thats the thing it hasnt made stonewalling easier, its quite the opppsite. its made killing more difficult as it takes about 30-40 more hits to kill a country but that doesnt benefit someone unless its a 15 minute kill run. the only benefit youd see from it is if you were online and caught the kill run within 20-30 hits before the civ/building loses go up (they start low, gradually rise to a max then decrease until dead)

i watched a kill run yesterday at the end of the run it went from 100 civs/hit to dead in 27 hits. good luck walling trying to guess how many hits are left before you need to run turns/buy up.

Sigh.

I was under the impression that LaF were the first to know about all changes through illegitimately gained access to the admin tools.

I don't know what SolidSnake is moaning about, the announcement that changes had been made was made on the Evo forums at the same time as they were announced on the EE site.

Also what is there to suggest that LaF has more competent netgainers and warmunglers capable of giving good feedback?

Its been widely accepted that after the deletion of Hanlong and TurtleCrawlers super high NW finishes that other LaF members finishes could have also been assisted by the hackers. A year ago I would have agreed with you and said perhaps the like of bakku could have given some good feedback on gameplay related topics, but now its quite probable that his understanding of the game mechanics are the game as everyone elses and he just got assistant from the cheaters to achieve his super high NW.

Am I the only one that read the post at the top of this forum that stated the admins want to hear feedback on the changes and that they are no way set in stone.

This is feedback.

And it does seem the changes are no good. Like SS, i also agree with the idea behind this, but the way it is being implemented is no good.

IMO, we need deep changes to game mechanics, putting limits to how alliances war, not this...

This isnt about laf or any other alliance, its about he admins using coming sense and actually using the assets at their disposal rather than just sticking in house.



At no point did I mention myself or laf as needing to be consulted, I simply said someone competent.

And now instead of actually trying to point out flaws in the game you're here attacking laf with some fabricated bs about finishes being aided by hacking? every admins/mod posted a half dozen times no finishes were tainted. But you want to run with with the theory that they were, go nuts...

I know why I wouldnt be consulted, but someone competent enough to understand the impact of these changes does need to be before changes are implemented, the fact is I pointed out several flaws with the new attacking system before it was brought in, and none of them were addressed and instead was ignored so now we've started a set with changes that dont work...

And it all can be avoided just by talking to people that fluffing understand game mechanics...

Heh; most complaints thus far are just "I don't like it because it's different! oh fluff i have to use my brain!"

Where are the proper analyses giving GOOD reasons why you don't like it?


Part of the intention *WAS* to shake things up; and as the parent post said, guy buys up and returns drop; hence better for stonewalling.

Also, FYI, this change was developed primarily in consideration with players from SoF and SOL; Also, more LaF people are consulted than Evo, as they're usually around for testing in the channels more than most people are.

STONEWALLING IS NOT DEAD, JUST DIFFERENT. NEITHER IS KILLING DEAD.

NEW TACTICS ARE REQUIRED. THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER] WILL ADAPT, AND WILL EXPLODE YOU ALL.

HA!

SAM

bonus

One of the issues with this change that people are mentioning here is that it seems very hard to tell how much population someone has left or even how much you have left... probably the bigger issues is knowing how much your own country has left since there are ways for population to be tracked by those killing you.

Right; it's hard because we have 15 years experience doing it a different way, and now it's changed; tell me in 15 years from now if it's difficult to tell? You can't expect it to appear as intuitive as something you've been working with for 15 years, because even if it *is* more intuitive, it won't appear so.

qzjul if the returns were consistent like they used to be, you might be right. they arent.

youre changing things that arent broken and leaving the broken things broken.

Warring people said warring is broken. We changed it.

The results should be consistent, if you know what you're looking at.

It sounds to me like you just want dead simple.

Maybe all attacks should always return 50 of whatever unit they're doing. Would that be consistent enough for you?

The only thing that is broken about warring was the restart addition you guys changed; now further breaking warring with these new kill formulas

Warring is broken for many reasons, namely the strength of certain spy ops/lemmings/first strikes too powerful/restart changes needing adjusting/humanitarians and gdi hiding.

I'm actually a fan of this change since it weakens the losers who resort to suiciding, although it seems buggy in it's current state (which is to be expected). There's been a few instances of civ returns rollercoastering for no apparent reason. I know I reported one directly to martian.

Right; since it is new, I would expect some bugs; I'll look into them when they're reported; there's one on B&S I have to take a peek at, perhaps later this week.

Its simple, civ/building/bushel returns in hits should not be changed. Only military unit losses if you buy up.

im sorry ive done enough kill runs since these changes to say its not consistent (networth differences seem to have a HUGE impact on this). the idea of starting at lower returns and ramping up is fine and the returns dropping if the person gets on to stonewall is fine, its the end of the kill run that is retarded. the last 30-40 hits should be at minimum returns regardless.

LI: do you even know what those losses would be based on the old formula?

Pain: networth was a huge factor on kill runs before this too

I might be the first one to say this, but I like these changes.

Like qz said, the returns are consistent if you look at things the right way.

yes i know it was but it was a consistent factor. if i wanted to learn a new game id go play one.

shut up li

Qz, wouldnt it be a heck of a lot harder to tell your current population just from how many civs you are losing now though? Considering how much it seems to fluctuate?

couldn't you give a bot account permission to read self uploaded ops, similar to how they read enemy spy ops? seems like that would do the trick

A partial compromise would be to also add Population to the blue status bar (where money, turns, food and NW is). Maybe not all the time, perhaps it only appears when the pop value is less than 1/3 of your max pop.

Since they are trying to save this game, then I guess the best thing to say here is "BYE!".

im saying the returns shouldnt lower from 40 civs killed to the next hit 6 civs killed if you bought up. Only military unit losses if you buy up.

qz, I think you're great, and most changes in the game are great.

What I see though is a propensity to do something not exactly required because it's a bit fancy or might be cool to tinker with/code.

Make stonewalling harder? Target the problem - stop allowing the spamming of hits via the OP Ajax attack button. That is an easy way to lengthen the time taken to kill a country without increasing the turns required to do so.

Stop dumb war dynamics? Promote even wars by coding alliance level war decs into the game. Do not allow alliances to hit each other until a reasonable amount of time has passed in the reset. Reduce the power of first strikes by giving restarts even bigger bonuses (this will also make tagkills* harder to achieve - instead of 24/48 hours).

The game is broken but not in the areas that seem to get the fixes.

* by tagkill I mean the common scenario where 99% of an alliance's networth is destroyed in a short period. By giving restarts say a 25% of everything the had before bonus (tech, military, cash, bushels, oil) - the most damage you can do in a devastating first strike is 75%. Still powerful but at least it gives the recipient alliance some chance to get back on their feet quickly (especially if they stocked well and played a good country, which the game should reward)

I like the idea of slowing down attacks. I always thought it was odd that people could do that. Making alliances declare war is fun but setting an arbitrary time for wars to be able to start is silly. I'd expect people would go around it by landgrab FSing which might be entertaining anyways :P

Nice changes qzjul. Those changes makes killing harder and stonewalling easier. This was a major problem of this game since your 1 month work could be destroyed in 30 seconds.

I can't solo-kill in Express anymore. This sucks!

without saying anything else.. we did make a thread (stickied) at the top asking for feedback and saying that not everything is going to work as intended and what we would like you to do to help us out (posting a long ranting thread was not it.).

We also posted was was intended and I stated clearly that we couldn't promise it would work 100% and that there could be unforseen consequences.

Any constructive feedback is welcome.
that means:
1) examples of kill runs and why you think this causes a problem.

2) how this is/could be abused

3) kill runs that require insanely high/low numbers of hpk

4) any opinion on the change itself

you'll note that flaming qz is not up there nor does that help.
you'll note that simply saying "I HATE THESE CHANGES" without telling us why does not help

So NukEvil's comment could be construed as legitamite feedback.


Saying that it makes hits remaining per kill harder to predict is fair game in the sense that you are entitled to your opinion.


I don't undestand how saying: we can't tell how many hits are left to kill a country + more hits per kill = harder to stonewall.

I do understand how: loging in undected = easier to stonewall but there are many many ways to do that.

attack throttling code already exists and has been tested, unless someone removed it. i haven't looked at that code in over 6 months, though.

and SS is incorrect -- PDM'ers don't get their ideas listened to :p

but it definitely seems like LaF'ers are a little bumhurt that I'm not coddling them anymore and allowing them to be in my ear constantly. but then again, the last time I talked to SS, he accused me of making up the Hanlong/TC cheating because I wanted to smear LaF... so... ya... maybe there's a reason you're not in my ear anymore.

Yeah Pang never takes my ideas seriously. If he would have we'd have more cowbell.

Bonus posting in a DANGEROUS thread

Most PDM members cannot even find the wizard of Pang's office anymore.

Because i like the people in my alliance. Same reason ive always played this game.