How the F*** does GDI work? People who are in GDI attack me and then I am unable to attack them back because they are too big?

Let me unleash the nukes! WTF

If you are playing on Primary..

Joining GDI provides the following protection:

Unless you have attacked a country twice or more, that country will only be able to commit the following attacks or harmful spy ops against you:
standard strikes
planned strikes
steal tech
bomb banks
burn oil
burn bushels

Joining GDI also restricts your attacks:

After joining GDI, the only attacks you can commit against other countries who have not attacked you more than once are:
standard strikes
planned strikes
steal tech
bomb banks
burn oil
burn bushels

GDI costs $5 per acre of land (unless you get the free bonus) and must be joined before making any attacks. Once you join GDI, you can't leave it. Additionally, in the final six hours of the game, you will not be able to engage in any offensive actions against countries that have not hit you at least once.



However, to address what is stopping you from hitting countries back that are too big, it is the humanitarians limit I believe. In the primary server, humanitarians will not allow countries to attack other countries which are either four times bigger or smaller than themselves. If you take your networth and multiply it by four, but it is still smaller than the big guys networth, then humanitarians will not allow you to try and hit them back. What probably happened is that they were just within your humanitarians limit, but after making their attack, jumped up in networth above the humanitarians limit. To try and get them back you will have to get your own networth back within the humanitarians limit.