Thanks for your hard work qzjul.

i played then too :p
and phew, just reread this
"However, the stealing rate is ~0.05% peak rather than ~5% peak now. This is 100x *less* than currently."

guess i missed that part. i panicked for a bit :p

yeah we deliberately set a low amount to avoid the issue of the bushel pirates and yet the ability to do some decent damage over the course of a kill run.

Were earthquakes removed in this change set?

wishful thinking but it'd be nice.

yes earthquakes must go

Earthquakes aren't gone, just lost 3 buildings due earthquake (and that was only special event I hadn't gotten so far).

maybe one day someone can put these rule changes in english so somebody like me can understand them.

Let's get rid of Bomb Structures and random Earthquakes. We can create a new spy-op called "Plant Explosives Along Enemy Geological Fault Lines" (PEAEGFL for short).

But... thats the same thing as bomb structures.

All harmful spy ops need to have the difficulty raised a little, and the ability of the target country to defend themselves also has to be increased somewhat. It should be a two part change, one part adjusting the baseline difficulty, and the other part further integrating the defender's raw spy totals as compared to the attacker, and maybe even building in certain levels of SPAL independent of the attacker that provide some blanket protection. Sets have been ruined over this at no fault of the victim's, it can be literally impossible to defend oneself.

Why should it not be? If you dont have enough turrets should you be defended from a huge techer who can grab you as much as you want? If your spal is too low then you made a mistake. If it is a suicider then your clan likely made a mistake.

Adjusting the damage done to some of them I would support though. Some less and some more.

http://forums.earthempires.com/...&z=spy-page-incorrect
http://forums.earthempires.com/...;z=spy-defense-impossible

locket you're another tunnel-vision Alliance player. If it's a suicider my Alliance did something wrong? What if I'm not playing Alliance??? Can you even imagine it?! Griefers are stealing 100s of thousands of tech points from all top players because the formula is broken. You're also clueless as to how impossible it can be to stop... it's not because anyone's SPAL is too low, it's because the success rate of the ops is broken. Why do you feel the need to chime in to disagree about something you're not even slightly informed about?

Another example for ignorant people like locket can be found here:
http://www.earthempires.com/primary/21/ranks/155
http://www.eestats.com/primary/oldcountry/455/155
Over 3 million spies, a SPAL over 46, never even double tapped a single country. Does this person deserve to have 100k tech stolen on a daily basis by griefers and vultures, possible costing him a first place finish?

If they fail the ops then their spal will crash and they wont succeed. I have plenty of experience with it.

Oh and fluff you asshole.

You are whiny as fluff here. Entitlement to top players? The person with the better spal wins spy battles. Its a fluffing shocker eh?

If you were talking about griefers then yes I think they should be deleted or banned, depending on their severity. But you are talking about a simple fluffing formula.

Did you even read the links to Rockman's posts?

The spy help page in the game itself says:
"However, tiny countries will not be able to consistently use large spy networks to unreasonably destroy larger countries."

Clearly, with the current formula, that's not true, even though it's supposed to be. *The formula is not working as intended.*

Let me repeat here the fact that Rockman had a country with about 1/3rd as many spies as him run a 90% success rate on ops against him. Rockman had *5.7 million spies*. Again, the formula not working as it claims it should.

GDI doesn't protect one from bomb banks or espionage. Random players have no choice but to surrender 100s of thousands of tech points because to stop the ops would require getting a SPAL so high it would destroy their netting ability. This is a problem. It is a problem that has been more or less universally acknowledged for months, but for some reason you're trying to dispute it from within your little Alliance bubble? Maybe it hasn't reared its head over there (because a rogue tech thief would obviously just be killed off by his victim's alliance) but that doesn't mean it's not a real thing that's been happening for a long time that everyone on Primary server is aware of. Maybe I'm being a bit rude but it annoys me that you have so little knowledge on the subject that you started talking about a different server in your objection to my post.

The problem with tech stealing is that on solo servers, it literally is a better NW finish to just ignore the tech stealer and replace the lost tech. So really, there isn't any defense the victim can do short of going to war.

Which multiple top tenners ended up doing.

:'(

Wait, what??? On all servers? I thought those were harmful spy ops and were subject to GDI?

Oooo, I could go have me some fun in Express. LOL...

Spy DR on Express kicks in pretty fast though. Or I should say it lasts really long in terms of turns.

Express is pretty funny, just watching 5-10 turns go is like nothing in the long term for a day but it's irritating.

how about fixing the allies back to e2025 ... your allies spies are added @100% to yours with NO multiplier or Limiter

Then you get the protection you want if you have good allies - yes it helps attackers too so better you have good allies

I'm fairly sure that's *not* how they worked; how they are implemented is how they were in E2025 -- 20% of spies, no maximum.

FYI orignally GS stole food instead of destroying it. Mehul changed that for good reason, I guess we'll see if that good reason starts presenting itself again, now that food stealing is back.

Yea, I was around for that, and I understand the reasoning for that very well. However, you'll note the stealing is two orders of magnitude less than before -- it's only intended to be effective over the length of a killrun, not as a few dozen hits for stock-stealing

So it's 20% not 25%? With no caps??

i dont know if this was an intentional change, but defender losses on special attacks is not right.

2 countries, 10k acres 25m networth. 1 country is a 10m GS break. attacking country sending 10.3m troops.

Your forces invaded camaroland (#3)!
They broke through the defender's defences!
2617 Civilians
They took:
10,602 Bushels
$117,795,422
Your military lost:
824,000 Troops
Your enemy lost:
400,000 Troops

defender loses 4% while attacker loses 8%

same countries only defender has been demoralized to 72% readiness, attacker sending 7.4m troops

Your forces invaded camaroland (#3)!
They broke through the defender's defences!
They destroyed:
2531 Civilians
They took:
10,597 Bushels
$117,711,039
Your military lost:
592,000 Troops
Your enemy lost:
500,000 Troops

offender still losing 8%, defender now loosing 5%

again, same countries only now a 10m BR break

Your forces invaded camaroland (#3)!
They broke through the defender's defences!
They destroyed:
1281 Civilians
242 Buildings
Your military lost:
832,000 Jets
Your enemy lost:
600,000 Turrets


attacker still losing 8%, but defender now loses 6%

i dont remember seeing an announcement saying defenders losses would drop, actually qzjul mentioned that they would be unaffected for the first 3 hits and would stay the same as long as there was more then 1 second between attacks. there was never this kind of difference between attacker and defender loses. it was alway either 4% or 8% (i forget) for both parties with the defender losing more then attacker per attack when the defender had been demoralized.

now lets go back to the 10m GS countries, only lets lemming them sending 5m troops

Your forces invaded (#289)!
The defender held against your forces, causing them to retreat!

Your military lost:
400,000 Troops
Your enemy lost:
439,747 Troops

you still lose 8% but now they lose 4.4%. so basically its more economical to break a country down with lemmings for the first 15-20 hits since theyll lose more and youll lose half as much as you would if you were sending twice as much to actually break them.

this doesnt seem correct to me.

EDIT: this was done with monarchy govt. i just attempted the same test with dictatorship and the result were all over the place up and down but still much heavier losses for the attacker. lemming results actually remained identical though

Mr Azure, your results are 100% consistent with expected loss results from last year, so really have nothing to do with this set's changes.

The first 3 defender losses are in fact quite typical, they fall randomly within a narrow range.

The last one is expected because failed hits incur 50% extra military loss for the defender.

This has always been the case, both before and after the change. Sure you lose less jets to lemming, but you use a lot more turns to do so. You're basically trading turn efficiency (turns which could do other things like Spy ops, or country building) for jet efficiency.

Your forces invaded camaroland (#3)!
They broke through the defender's defences!
They destroyed:
2531 Civilians
They took:
10,597 Bushels
$117,711,039
Your military lost:
592,000 Troops
Your enemy lost:
500,000 Troops

whoa wait a minute, GS stealing $118m per? this seems... bad

Depends how much money he had on hand.

How much would he need to have to make that acceptable? 100 billion?

This is alpha server probably, so yeah, billions.

Yea I wouldn't say $100M is much in alpha...

qzjul:

Can you explain this:

Nov 12/13 9:15:46 PM BR Artichokiopia (#12) (MD) anarchy (#917) (75SoF75) 10 C/7 B
Nov 12/13 9:15:27 PM BR YODA HUMPING ARTICHOKES (#4) (MD) anarchy (#917) (75SoF75) 10 C/1 B
Nov 12/13 9:15:26 PM BR Artichokiopia (#12) (MD) anarchy (#917) (75SoF75) 10 C/1 B

The defender lost 1B, 1B then 7B... 1st and 3rd hits were the same attacker, so it wasn't a relative nw thing.

I think it is related to the fast DR (1s between first two hits, then 19s for the next) but others are saying that the new fast DR on special attacks only affects defender MILITARY LOSSES (in stars in the OP) and not buildings/civs/etc.

Thoughts?

It would be related to Fast DR type I, the 45 second rule, probably... esp if there were more hits before the :26 mark...

We may remove fast DR type I in the near future....

The new GS is as good as dead now
After being gs, its like impossible for a country to support its military as production gets so low that 4-5 fa doesnt really helps. :/

Along with PapaSmurfs idea of making EM's destroy SDI at a higher rate, it seems logical to me that successful EM attacks would demoralize enemy forces to a degree. I haven't run any numbers to determine a value for this, but it would make sense.

This is looking better and better all the time in this game, although I really do regret the loss of offensive allies in the solo servers since I make it a point to try to ally with newbies and they can always use the help.