Hi All;

We're pleased to announce the following changes:

Spying:
- The spy DR rate has been cut approximately in half.
- The 3x land/land penalty has been changed to 6x


Ghost Acres:
- Reset-long Country:Country DR added to Land grabbing (SS & PS) ghosts: this means that all hits over the reset by a country on another are added into reducing ghost acres; this does not affect the main returns, *just* the ghost acres.

Self Deletion:
- You must now wait 72 hours after attacking before you are allowed to self-delete your country.

Minimum LG Returns (SS & PS):
- MINIMUM LG returns have been changed to depend on whether or not you are at war with the target, and whether or not the target is in GDI; please note this *only changes the minimum*

War? Target GDI?  MINIMUM Return
YES  NO           20
YES  YES          10
NO   NO           10
NO   YES          5

These changes will go into effect at the beginning of the coming resets. As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome!


Once again, thanks for all your support!

-EE Dev Team

Also, a reminder that the previously announced Special Attack changes will (finally!) also be coming into effect in Alliance/FFA etc.

what about changing the self deletes to pink!!!

Because they're pussies

The ghost acres change should drastically lower the overall acreage in the game.

that doesnt make much sense Qz. What are those numbers below return? 20,10,10,5 acres? So do you get less land hitting a GDI person you arent at war with than before? That seems pretty damn counter productive to me if so. GDI shouldnt protect from people your own size.

Also what about the reset long country to country DR. Is it the same as normal DR or does it work much slower?

DR rate cut in half means it takes longer or shorter to put a country into Spy DR?

hmm, not sure i like the ghost acre thing but everything else seems cool.

Ghost DR is to cut the most obvious land trading... its the same as normal ghost DR but for country: country

Spy DR cut means it takes longer to spy out a country;

The min return is to protect GDI countries slightly while potentially opening up land kills;

Self Deletion:
- You must now wait 72 hours after attacking before you are allowed to self-delete your country.
-- would have been better perhaps if u made it to where after they self delete they cant attack for 72hrs not accumulating turns?

So to confirm.. you get half the returns of previous if you hit someone in GDI while not at war and twice the current returns if they are not GDI and you are at war?

Also, am I assuming that country to country DR functions the same as current DR in %'s but just doesnt go away?

I warned you about what will happen with ghost acre dr QZ guess you don't want to listen to what ffa players want as usual.

Im confused by the ghost DR country to country thing...

If I am getting it right - if country A hits B 5 times... next day if A hits B again , then B will still be in 5 DR as far as ghost acres goes as the ghost DR doesnt go away.

So result = after 1-2 days of land trading no more ghost acres for these 2 countries if hitting each other.

But what if a country C then hits B? Does that undo the ghost DR for A?

No it doesn't hence the "Country:Country DR".

Good changes! Will help the fame for sure.

Troy: You can get max ghost acres 5 times per coutnry combination:
In FFA each coutnry can self grab 75 times with decent ghost acres, so use it effectivly!

All the C:C dr does is hurt one man tags and smaller alliances in ffa, the large alliances will continue to have huge countries.

But as ketchup said, each country can do 75 hits within one players countries before C:C dr will affect u.

This only really hurt super land countries

Don't know much about spy stuff but the rest sounds good. I like the ghost thing. I'm assuming the LG returns are only for *minimum* land gains, normal gains continue as normal

Yes, that's just for minimums; normal gains continue as normal :)

Ketchup I assume the 75 hits is amongst your entire group of 13 countries?

it's 1 trading 5 times with countries 2-16(15) = 75 land trades per attacking country

This is going to crush all the players who simply farm untags into the ground. Ghost acres will cease to exist, and the minimum hit drops to 5 acres.

Oh god there are going to be wars over grabs this set. The only way to get land is going to become grabbing other alliances.

Those that only farm small countries into the dust are in for a rude awakening.

As they should be.

Also no, this won't be live on Team, we missed that one by a couple days

Will this be live on Tournament?

*is doing some beta testing*
:P

Ah, yes this is live on tournament now

I have nothing bad to say about these upcoming changes.

The most significant change is going to be the C:C DR. On non-solo servers, this will single-handedly cause warring to be a more efficient way of gaining land, larger tags will farm smaller tags one by one.

On the other hand, it will also cause players to try to keep their country alive in a war to maintain the C:C DRs since a restart will lose C:C history.

Consider also that the changes to the C:C DRs are going to favour the countries that do larger hits and less overall attacks - the techers will benefit from this.

Consider also that Camping for DRs or GDI farming will no longer be as feasible after the first 5 or 7 hits on the same target.

I welcome the game changes since it provokes thoughts and metagaming on how to better plan for a top 10 country on a non-solo server.

In your words, they are added in, not multiplied in.

Does this mean that the penalties add together? If a country is in 5 hit DR already (50% gains penalty), and you've hit the country 5 times already in the set (50% ghost acres penalty), will the attack gain 0 ghost acres?

If it is indeed additive, then that means that one country attacking another country 6 times in 24 hours will get zero ghost acres on the 6th attack.

Have you made sure that the penalty is capped at a 100% decrease in ghost acres? Or is it possible to get negative ghost acres on a grab? If its possible to get negative ghost acres on a grab, then it could be possible to get negative acres on a grab, which would lead to a very odd bug I found in Earth 2025, where the game will not let you kill your own country by attacking (and thus lets you attack and damage the victim, without using any of your own turns or military).

This would be very easily exploitable to completely eliminate any defensive military on a country and destroy ALL of its food, cash, and technology.

But, hopefully you were smart enough to cap the penalty at 100%.

And there's also the possibility that the penalty is multiplied in, rather than added in. In which case your wording is quite misleading.

what i mean is they still count as DR

so like 3 DR and you've hit him 5x this set means you're at 8 DR

And yes, you can't get negative ghost acres, it's a range from 1 to 0

So if I grab a country 3 times in 24 hours, the 3rd grab will have a ghost acres penalty to it, since it would count as 4 grabs towards ghost acre DR?

Think of it basically like... your hits don't expire after 24 hours anymore when you're counting ghost DR....

But do my hits in the last 24 hours count double towards ghost DR?

no, they won't (though i'm actually still trying to optimize how to do that exactly with index-only queries, for speed...)

On the surface, this looks excellent for Alliance,

but maybe not the best for FFA?????????

RD are right now FURIOUSLY working out a way to circumvent this for next set.

"Ghost Acres:
- Reset-long Country:Country DR added to Land grabbing (SS & PS) ghosts: this means that all hits over the reset by a country on another are added into reducing ghost acres; this does not affect the main returns, *just* the ghost acres."

Actually this is going to affect bottom feeders a lot more than landtraders.

Smlandau is correct

You mean MR. TITANIUM is correct, right?

I'm pretty sure he meant Smlandau. It is what he said, isn't it?

Although RD actually more intag farm bottomfeeds by land transferring than it actually landtrades so RD landtrade-bottomfeeds (DOUBLE WHAMMY), and yes, RD is still going to be FURIOUSLY working out a way to circumvent this for next set. My guess is that we will be quite impressed with how they solve this.

Do our hits add to the ghost acre DR of a country, or just its DR?

If a country is hit 4x, then it does a bunch of attacks and brings itself completely out of DR, but is still in 4 attack ghost acre DR, and I have attacked that country 4x already this set, but none within the last 24 hours, what DR will my ghost acres be at?

My target is in 0 hit DR, but in 4 hit ghost acre DR. I've hit him four times already this set. Is he going to give me 80% of normal ghost acres (4 hit ghost acre DR), or 30% of normal ghost acres (8 hit ghost acre DR)?

If I understand it correctly, I would get just 30% of normal ghost acres on him, even though I've only hit him 4x this set.

This does affect bottomfeeders a lot more than landtraders. Given the ease with which landtraders can find new partners, this will in effect strengthen landtrading rather than weaken it.

Crest23 is incorrect

lol @ crest

RD already know how to get around it, its not hard

Corrected it for you Mr. Tit.

ghost DR, as before, does not get "unexpired" by the target making hits

Retal rules are going to be interesting, but I suspect they won't change much. No sudden profits from retalling a country that's been grabbing a lot. As someone who's well aware that they'll probably end up a few tiers down on the grabbing food chain, I'm starting to think all-x might just prove to be a nuisance.

Seems to me that with the small number of untaggeds in the game, this actually makes intra-tag grabbing more appetizing for some players.

Rd will self delete after being hit 7-8x so the new country has no ghost acre dr

Ghost acres:
agree with most ppl, saying its more antibottomfeed. 3 hits with 100% Ghost acres is enough to landtrade. Just need more than 1 partner.
Most landtraders use 1-2 attack per day and like 20-30 attacks per reset. Its not so much, for 30 attack you just need 10 partners.
On other hand, bottomfeeders attack low countries like 5-10 times per day, so they will be in DR after 3 days with 0.1 ghost acres. So, its almost removing ghost acres. Well, if its what you want to do - then ok.

Spying:
x2 is too much. Should be 0.75 of current (so, 1.5 to wich it was before change).

Minimum LG Returns (SS & PS):
Still not enough for landkill. For landkill it might work at reset start, but not after 1 month or so.