Starting July 22 on all servers, we're going to reduce the number of ghost acres created by landgrabbing. Buildings taken will be multiplied by a factor known as "unreduced DR". Unreduced DR follows the same rules as normal DR but it cannot be canceled out with attacking. In addition, unreduced DR equals 0 instead of 0.1 for any hits after the first 12. The ghost acres generated by a NW difference between the attacker and defender are also multplied by "unreduced DR". The following are a few examples to illustrate the difference between the old and the new system.

13 hits in a row under the old system:
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.8 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.8 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.5 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.5 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.35 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.35 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.15 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.15 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.15 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.10 * (base acres + ghost acres)


13 hits in a row under the new system:
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 1.0 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 1.0 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 1.0 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.8 * (base acres + 0.8 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.8 * (base acres + 0.8 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.5 * (base acres + 0.5 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.5 * (base acres + 0.5 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.35 * (base acres + 0.35 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.35 * (base acres + 0.35 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.15 * (base acres + 0.15 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.15 * (base acres + 0.15 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.15 * (base acres + 0.15 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 0.10 * (base acres + 0.0 * ghost acres)


13 hits in a row under the old system where the attacker and defender take turns grabbing each other to cancel out the DR:
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + ghost acres)


13 hits in a row under the new system where the attacker and defender take turns grabbing each other to cancel out the DR:
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 1.0 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 1.0 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 1.0 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.8 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.8 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.5 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.5 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.35 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.35 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.15 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.15 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.15 * ghost acres)
acres gained = 1.0 * (base acres + 0.0 * ghost acres)


As you can see, the amount of ghost acres generated is greatly reduced in both cases. We hope that these formulae changes will have positive effects on the game but will monitor each server to see if any further adjustments are needed.

In addition, there was a small bug related to the calculation of DR that will be fixed. This bug fix will not affect most players.

What?

That's horrible. That's obviously intended to be an anti-warring policy, making our attacks less effective during a LG KR.


Heh, sorry, I just had to.
Seriously, I approve of this, it seems like a good attempt to prevent the million acre countries in FFA.

/me hangs rpottage for insubordination

lol... I just about blew a gasket when I saw your first line there....

is unreduced DR permanant for the whole reset?

also is this live on test server?

there is a test server? I WANT IN!

I can see in ffa limiting ghost ar is good, but in alliance? may be when i see numbers it will make more sense, may be not...

what happened in ffa could happen in alliance too, there was some landtrading which happened this set and got a lot of people to talk about it, and its happened in the past when ghost acres are in

i dont really have an opinion over whether seperate rules for seperate servers is a good idea but it needed to be fixed for FFA or that server would have been extremely distorted next set

Yeah. In Alliance the landtrading is harder to impliment because you have two different people involved so you need to co-ordinate, but it's definately possible.

And sorry qzjul, but I just had to say it.
Everytime you guys impliment a change people say it's against war strats, so somebody had to say it this time.

a war strat with 0 troops turrets and tanks probably wouldnt be the best war strat :)

you can always ps troops and tanks but buying and selling turrets all the time would get expensive

DR run out in 24 hours still?

also is this for NW based and/or building based ghost acres?

both and yes 24 hours

it's for both ghost acres types atm

i dont believe these changes will be enough

if i understand it correctly all you need to do is have 1 main country at perhaps quadruple networth of 4-6 smaller countries then do 5-7 exchanges each day with each smaller country

this gains almost as much land as if no DR was in place but less total land as your splitting the land gain between 5-7 countries rather than 2

if you combine this with some other land farms, moving land between the lower ranked countries you could come close to what is currently achievable

perhaps half

but considering its currently possible to get 80m+ land even 20m is probably enough for 2b networth

could have

1 hitting 3 hitting 6 hitting 6

or

1 hitting 2 hitting 4 hitting 8

or

1 hitting 1 hitting 1 farming the rest
adding a single 1 to the bottom of the chain as net and land outgrew farms

im not sure what would be the most efficient but i think crazy nets can still be reached

for ladder style farming you start with the top exchanges then work down to maintain ghost acre creation

I think my suggestion on suggestion board has merit, and fairly easy to implement. I do like this as well, it cripples farming people as well as farming ghost acres.

i also like the added side effect of reducing the sort of powered bonus that was given to bottom feeding with the introduction of mammoth lvl ghost acres across the board..

Any warrior that whinges about this is a bum:p and also needs reading glasses, since the acreage lost from the defending country is still the same!!

Good work slag and qz!

i like the changes, i dont like that they get added in the middle of the set...

my 2 cent

they are getting added at the end of FFA... which is the only place it will really affect anybody

This is live on all servers.

Cool. I think this is a clever change.

Nice change.

I don't know about FFA, but the landtrading (land-faking is a better name) did take place in Alliance this set (maybe some FFA players getting ideas), so it's a good thing something is done about it. I can't figure out if it's enough, but we'll see if anybody tries anything next set.

this is a good start
next time reduce ghost acres to 0

so does this mean that it is now impossible to grab yourself our of dr? or is it only hits between country a and b that wont reduce dr?

only hits between country a and b

if you are country a and country b grabs you 10 times, you will have 10 hits of DR on you.
If you hit country b back 10 times, you will have 0 hits worth of DR on you if country C hits you, but if country b hits you again, you'll still have 10 hits of dr on you.

This only applies to ghost acres, I believe.

that make sense? :p

it makes sense, although its quite complicated for what it needs to be heh

i agree with whoever said they like the changes, but don't like them getting implemented mid set. Only bug fixes should be implemented mid set imo.

There's a need to expand on pang's comments: it's not country to country at all. If a country has been attacked more than 12 times in the past 24 hours, any hit on it will generate exactly 0 ghost acres until those hits wear off by time.

Bobby: for major changes that would affect how players plan out their countries, like government bonuses and penalties, I agree. However, for relatively minor changes that aim to close formula exploits, I'd like to see those implemented as soon as possible. Implementing changes in that manner prevents further immediate abuse, allows us to stabilize game rules and figure out what works and what doesn't work faster, and is generally easier for players to understand. Having six different rule sets that change every time a server is restarted is difficult to keep track of.

thanks slag, i must have been thinking of a different solution -- feel free to update my post, you know the new system better than me :p

No kidding! lol...

edit nevermind

Jeez, Enshula, you have really, truly turned into a treehugging netter, my old friend. Holy Crap.