Hi All,

I apologize for the delay in this announcement; I was climbing a mountain and missed the reset day...

Changes for servers, as of rounds starting in June (including FFA & Alliance)

A) Fast DR will be *removed completely* (FFA didn't have FastDR).
- Basically, the reasons we implemented FastDR were better solved by the restart bonus


B) Changeset 16:

1) Restart Bonus tweaks:
- Base percentage kept will drop to 20% for non-FFA servers (from 40%), with the addition of 0.06% per defend (of *THAT* country - not all countries all round) remaining the same
- The percentage of goods ON MARKET that are kept will be calculated separately with a base of 50% + 0.06% per defend (of *THAT* country - not all countries all round)

2) Removing the additional relative nw damage penalty from change set #10 (1b) ( http://www.earthempires.com/...resets-changeset-10-25801 )
- This is the cube root of relative nw damage change
- We're removing this because it's kindof made unnecessary by subesequent changes to the nw/nw curve

3) BR building loss is being reduced by half; CS loss by 60%
- This will bring GS & BR a bit more into line, and also further distinguish AB from BR

4) Ghost acres cap based on units sent

- In each attack, you will be limited to a maximum 1 Ghost Acre (type I) per (your_land/20) units sent.
- Example I: You are 20k Acres; Land/20 = 1000; thus, for every 1000 units sent, you can get 1 Ghost acre.
You attack somebody who is 20kA with 200k units, get 2000A + 200A ghosts (because 200k/1000 = 200)

- Example II: You are 20k Acres; Land/20 = 1000; thus, for every 1000 units sent, you can get 1 Ghost acre.
You attack somebody who is 20kA with 2M units, get 2000A + normal ghosts (because 2M/1000 = 2000 ghosts, and you can't get 2000A ghosts from this grab)

- Example III: You are 100 Acres; Land/20 = 5; thus, for every 5 units sent, you can get 1 Ghost acre.
You attack somebody who is 400A with 50 units, get 40A + 10A ghosts (because 50/5 = 10)

- Example IV: You are 100 Acres; Land/20 = 5; thus, for every 5 units sent, you can get 1 Ghost acre.
You attack somebody who is 400A with 500 units, get 40A + normal ghosts (because 500/5 = 100, and you can't get 100A ghosts from this grab)

- Example V: You are 80k Acres; Land/20 = 4000; thus, for every 4000 units sent, you can get 1 Ghost acre.
You attack somebody who is 80k with 100k units, get 8000A + 25A ghosts (because 100000/4000 = 25)

- Example VI: You are 80k Acres; Land/20 = 4000; thus, for every 4000 units sent, you can get 1 Ghost acre.
You attack somebody who is 80k with 12M units, get 8000A + 3000A ghosts (because 12000000/4000 = 3000)

- Example VII: You are 80k Acres; Land/20 = 4000; thus, for every 4000 units sent, you can get 1 Ghost acre.
You attack somebody who is 80k with 20M units, get 8000A + normal ghosts (because 20000000/4000 = 5000 and you can't get that many ghosts from this grab)


- Reasoning for this change: Makes land trading slightly more expensive, cracks down on obvious abuse; should boost military kept on hand, thus reducing suiciders; may boost troop market slightly.




C) Logout Bonus change which I will post separately


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As usual, please leave your comments and concerns below!

I apologize for the unusual delay from the start of the round before putting these in, I was on top of a mountain when the reset happened.

As for why we're putting them in when the reset is already started, my experience with trying to do development after changes that aren't already live for two months was annoying at best -- need feedback sooner than later. Also, none of these changes affect early play, so it should be as though nothing happened :) They should also not greatly affect strategies and plans. If they do, I apologize, but it's much better than the alternative of waiting 2 months for changes to roll in.

Regards,

- qzjul & the EE Dev Team

should add 3 day suspension in ffa for self farming like old FFA days lulz

What's Fast DR again? Lol :P

Do dicts still have the ghost acre boost?

Does NW matching affect ghosts?

Does milt strat still affect gains?

The defender has 10k land and no Defense, but i send 1 mil units, am i gaining max ghost acres because i sent 1m units?

How does this affect solo servers?

Ya; that doesn't (currently) affect this unit cap though


Only in as far as nw matching increases land gained overall anyway, and ghosts are a % of gained


Yes; the gains formula isn't changed; just ghosts are capped


Depending on your acreage and how many units you gained, as per the formulae above


Solo servers tend to run higher military anyway, so it should probably make little difference there; it's only the big land traders that this should *really* affect; or 1jetPS

So if a big country finds an all-jetter, the big country can't just 1 jet PS it multiple times for a lot of land? Well I guess he still gets a lot of land until DR kicks in, just no ghosts unless he sends more units.

No real comments otherwise, since it is difficult to project/predict how much landtrading is affected by these changes, because it isn't just additional jets and oil used as the cost for getting ghosts - it is also their upkeep, because landtraders would likely still keep low defenses - it is only attackers that have to send more to get more, there still isn't much incentive to keep a high defense, might as well stay low defense and lose less turrets.

Landtrading would likely still work, it just costs more since you need to keep a bunch of jets around, turret demand will not be affected, the change doesn't make suiciding harder.


Removing the additional relative nw damage penalty from change set #10: This one is pretty nice, its introduction actually dampened overall land sizes across solo servers.

Restart bonus change to 20% base is good. Had recommended it to be lower last set.

I am curious about the rationale about having the goods on the market having a higher base restart percentage than any other aspect of the country.

hmm what's max ghost acers anyways a % of land?

because they cant have changes that don't benefit netters.

protecting stock from suiciders...

BR was already in line with GS and AB in that jets don't defend anything. Now that the damage per attack is similar there doesn't seem to be any reason to use a purely offensive unit (the jet) in war over the more flexible offensive/defensive variants.

According to the war stats for the major wars in the past 6 sets it seems like BR's were, if anything, underutilized compared to GS. With ghost acres also being modified by defensive units jets seem pretty underwhelming. Why the change?

the market thing: Not sure that it really benefits netters all that much. If you are forced to restart I would say your netting set is pretty much shot anyway? :P

Based on a db pull 2 sets ago, over the past 10 sets prior it appears that br and gs were more or less used in balance with each other. The game mechanic changes affected how much AB was used more.

The thing is that different tags used markedly different war tactics (I can see looking at the db) which depends on
the tag, who they are fighting, and when they are fighting. Certain tags also have a definite bias for one attack strategy over another.

The ghost acre thing was to prevent too very large countries from land trading themselves to obscene amounts of acres which was not really the intent of ghost acres in the first place. It really only has a material impact once you hit 10K acres or so. Regular acres are not affected (ie if you have no defence, 100K acres, and someone grabs you, it is still going to hurt a lot :P)

Lol at once you hit 10k acres, so in a few block explores

the target of the suicider will likely have higher nw now as they are carrying more jets. So the suicider might have a harder time getting into range undetected.

The target may also be holding a crapton of troops, as it will be easier to meet the unit count with troops.

Mdevol, how does the market change effect suiciders?? Suiciders almost never kill the countries, an the market change is about restarting..

Good point, I had not considered that your NW would be higher by holding on to jets or troops.

This ghost acre change makes me think about leaving the game. :-(
STUPID!!

completely kills land trading for netters.... :(

You mean it completely kills your 0 military land trading from the game

lol, actually I keep decent defense. Just really stupid change to the ghost acres and DR again.
what is wrong with building 100k or 350k acre countries?

and the fact it was changed after set started and we couldn't change plans or strats really sucks. also STUPID!

this game keeps being ruined by all of the changes and has become much less fun.

Doesnt hurt ffa style land trading troy, just means higher oil use that's all

I don't think I got a solid answer from an admin on my question about having the substansially higher restart for goods on the market as opposed to the the rest of country's stats. I don't object to the change...just why is it there.

Oh and once again ffa netting is affected due to 1a complaints

Nerfing LTing some is fine. But personally i dont see the need to nerf all the other servers ghosts because alliance complained

Solo servers are not affected by this change. The number of jets you send to attack people on solo server far exceeds the minimum amount of jets you need to send to get full ghosts.

"I don't think I got a solid answer from an admin on my question about having the substansially higher restart for goods on the market as opposed to the the rest of country's stats. I don't object to the change...just why is it there."
Gives some more options during war.

As for FFA that's being discussed right now. I'm going to make a post on the FFA board to discuss this specifically.

FFA is already on day 7. While still relatively early, I imagine several will need to adjust significantly due to the changes

Prime would be correct,

nice

If GS and BR distribution is roughly equal (balanced) and AB usage has increased due to mechanic changes, why nerf BRs?

dropping br's civ kills to nearly half means killing takes twice as long and increases chances that target comes online resulting to somewhat wasted turns.

The above changeset only nerfed building losses by BR, not civs killed.

The nerf to BRs is unneeded. I would think that different clans using different tactics shows how all attack types have their place and were useful. How would this justify a nerf?

then why i get 6c returns in ffa? last set i got 10c returns.

min returns are based on the # of days played in the set

well that's fluffty.

What is the max ghost acre %?

What is fast DR?

*waves his hand*

There is no fast DR.

up, ffa waiting on action!

is country:country ghost acre DR still in effect with this?

Zzz!

can i get an answer to my question plz?

C2c dr should be the same

Wrong. There's loads of Express countries one finds with low/no defense.

The game is transitioning from simple, elegant formulas into complex ad hoc ones in order to do small tweaks. Building cost, ghost acres, DR times, log out bonuses. Speaking of DR and the half-life again, I don't have any big issues with the half-life times being what they are (besides it makes things more complicated) but it's bad that it's not displayed anywhere. TPA put up a site that had some estimated DRs but it's down a lot and doesn't always work. That change could be OK but it's bad instead, because it's way too much work to figure out what DRs are.

fyi: nerfed restart bonus but still 15 turn OOP sucks.. should bump it up to like 30.. so you can actually rebuild a little after a BR death at least for an early set death..

That's kinda the point, Blid. It was intentionally changed to be less about setting multiple timers, and a bit more about luck and critical decision making.

I can understand changing it to smooth out the DR. It makes sense. Why would a country go from 6 DR to 0 DR in a single minute? And all that. Yes, I'm cool with the change that far.

But while that serves a positive purpose, I am not sure what the purpose is of having DR be so hard to estimate. Note that it's not that I need to know the exact DR, it's that it's a huge pain even coming up with the ballpark idea. Maybe alliances have proprietary pages or something but I'm not an alliance. I have to go to eestats and stare at the news for 5 minutes for each country I might be interested in attacking to try to estimate the DR. How is THAT a good thing?

5 mins is excessive.

30 seconds is all you need.
1)Look at todays date
2)Minus 3 days from todays date
3)Look at the number of attacks made on that country in that 3 days
4)If its more than 8, forget it. If its less than 8, look at the last 24 hours. If its more than 4 forget it, if its less than 4, its worth a spy.

The only thing that bothers me now is when playing off mobile, because for each country you have to click on it to see the country news, which means more loading and waiting time. And if you dont open a new tab for it, when you click back after you've seen the country's news. You have to re filter them according to nw/land and scroll again.

Yea, martian & I have been talking about maybe just displaying the DR if you search a country... also I'd like to get a little more full-featured searches going on, but that'll take some optimization to make everything else stay quick and zippy

Cool.

I hadn't seen this thread until now.. Came here to post something else and saw this.

Personally I like where you're going with all of these changes. ESPECIALLY the ghost acres cap. I'm sure everybody is surprised I like that one. :) Adding some cost to land trading was absolutely necessary, IMO. Anything that can make netgaining on the alliance server a little less of a joke is a step in the right direction.

I also like the idea to display DR on a country search, rather than changing the DR system again. I really like the way DR works now on primary. I haven't been in a war since the DR changes, but I love the fact that somebody who gets ABed doesn't immediately get farmed 24.00001 hours later. Has meant I lost some good targets on primary this reset when they self deleted before DR wore off, but its for the greater good! :)