make it so a player can not attack themself from one country to another. 100k plus acre countries is just nuts. selffarming has got way out of hand.

political problem, war them

you don't war allies. selffarming will be a big problem soon as it has gone from an amount of countries you can count on your fingers being over 100k acres in a set to what looks like what will be over 100 this set. soon the only netting strat in the ffa will be selffarming and little else will matter but who can selffarm the most land. not much reason to play the game if it comes to that.

i'm not a fan either, but i am not going to take on the whole server over it. you have to selffarm now to keep up

Self-farming is both interesting and challenging. Exploring is neither. We need something to make the game more interesting.

Simply put, self-farming is utilising the resources you have with 16 countries. It is available to all people - instead of whinging about it all over the place, do as NBK did, refuse to pact self-farmers, even go to war over it..... Admins have had ages to change it, and it hasn't. Adapt to combat self-farming or be left behind - simple.

Instead of being whiney that your 16k acre theo suck, join in on the fun.


----

This has been discussed. Admins agree that it is fine to attack yourself in FFA, and it is just utilizing your countries.

Delete this thread.

it will be pretty bad if any of my 16k countries bet any of the selffarmers in networth at the end. it will just show it takes no skill at all to selffarm. LOL

Any tag I play in after this set will not have dnh's or pacts with any tag one that selffarms and no wineing when I grab them folks. which will be daily or more.

So people who don't like self-farming all like to bring up this "skill" aspect. To me this is just a big WTF. What real skills are there in this game? There are some small optimization problems (arithmetic for Rockman) and some risk/reward tradeoffs, and these are present in all countries.

Because you hit the explore button or GDI farm someone you somehow have mad skillz? In FFA you have 16 countries and you can use them anyway you please to get as much NW as you can. Clearly it is easy as a self-farmer to beat someone who is playing all explore, but not all self-farmers get the same NW. There is something that distinguishes different people who are self-farming, call it skill, luck, or whatever you like.

The only reason that I have heard people give as to why they don't like self-farming that makes even a remote amount of sense is that they didn't like it 10 years ago in FFA. It is too bad though that no one can give a good reason as to why they didn't like it then.

Who exactly does self-farming harm? Netters who would otherwise be farming untaggeds and small clans now farm themselves. Small clans, untaggeds, and big war clans now get to make obscenely large LGs on these countries and still generally get 1:1 retals. WTF are you whining about.


And yes, I am going to wtfpwn your fluffty little NW this set, and then next set I will kill your fluffty little clan if you grab us too much.

My reason and I think it's a good one is that it reduces the game at least as far as netting goes to one basic type of strat. That strat is selffarming. it makes little difference if you selffarm as a farmer or casher the result is close to the same. the game was designed to pit different strats aginst each other, such as farmmer, casher, techer, Indy, and reseller. depending on how many of each were played the strat you picked and changes made durring the course of the game could be great or bad even if played well. As you should know with grabing vrs selffarming there is much more risk involved as you just said and then next set I will kill your fluffty little clan if you grab us too much.

But really for someone trying to put out the flame of selffarming making you use your turns to kill with would be a win because as you know using the turns in that manner would hurt your networth.

when I use the word skill I just meant any nob can selffarm with tag protection and even if the country was poorly run end up with a high networth. heck with selffarming you could just about run a rainbow and end up in the top 100.

You say selffarming does not hurt anybody but there too I think your wrong as unless you buy or sell nothing from the public market you are skewing the market prices.

I mean do you think this would be a fun game with 2000 coutries just selffarming? sounds like a dumb idea does it not?

As i see it everyone that wants to net will have to become a selffarmer, they will get board and either become a killer or quit the game. Then the game will have less and less players. The game needs more than one way to get to the top.

One way to fix the problem would be with either a very high limit of countries or not limit at all. the server could police itself then. But that can not be done with a 16 country limit.

LOL by the way if I did grab more than once or twice it would be with the intention of making you kill my countries off and use those killing turns as well as my grabs to hurt your ending networh. I can't say that a threat to kill my bits of data on a text based game would bother me much.

Only a response to you threatening my bits of data :-P

as ZIP said, political problem.

if you dont like it, dont pact them anymore and show them that you disagree with their practices

I don't think it's a political problem at all. I fell that it will become a game play problem. Like I said you need more than one way to get to the top in the game if the game is to remain viable. turning the server into one where thousands of countries selffarm to 100k plus acre countries will become pointless with no reason to play. If there were viable means for the server to police itself it would be a political problem but with a 16 country limit it's like sword fighting with 2 hands tied behind your back. large enough buyouts can not be done with 16 countries to give the same effect as selffarming without you selffarming yourself so that option is off the table. Attacking/war could be an option if you never want to net but if your reason for playing is to net why bother? Does anyone really think that selffarming benifits the game? Will it bring more players to the game or drive more away? I'm talking about making the game more playable. Yes I will agree that if it were only a few countries and was only to a reasonable level it would be a political problem. I can see it mushrooming to a point in the near future as to be a major problem.

Debate on and off the boards is part of this game also so I will contine to debate the issue and try to get more people to see my point of view and maybe enough will agree that one way or another the game will get beter. It's best to look at all options and keeping the issue in public view is currently the best option for me at this point in time as I can not change game rules such as the country limit or if one can rape ones self. I have also given my word to play in the tag I'm in and do not make the pacts for that tag so there are no options open for me there without breaking my word, which I will not do.

Bottom line is I think selffarming is bad for the game.

You haven't actually argued why or how self-farming hurts anyone or makes people leave the game. Unless you are citing your own unhappiness and wanting to leave the game as evidence.

Just saying you don't like it isn't going to convince anyone of anything.

Should FA chains and buyouts also be banned? In FFA you get 16 countries to use in however manner you want, and self farming generally helps create better countries so it continues to exist.

It hurts the game as a whole by making netting only playable one way and that way is selffarming. The idea behind the game as I see it was to have options on how to get to the top. Making the right or wrong moves for options you pick and others pick durring the game along with a little luck and timing would decide how well your countries/country placed. Selffarming is so strong of a strat because of the ghost acres and the 16 country limit that it takes away all other options for netting. If we have selffarming why not just have one type of gov and only one type of tech. There is only one way, selffarming, to reach the top levels so why if there are no options other than selffarming to get to the top then why have other options in the game. I'm aginst selffarming for the same reason I'd be aginst a gov type that was +800% explore rate +800% population -100% expences and so on.

bigger buyouts and bigger countries can be done/made by those who selffarm again making selffarming the only option for netting.

fa amounts from selffarmers will also be bigger than those who don't selffarm. Again only one way to the top selffarming.

The countries ranked 2,3,7,9 last set all didn't self-farm and were all below 26k acres. There's many ways of putting up a t10 country without self-farming. It's also easy to put up 16 countries 125m+ going all x..

Although it is hard when you have 16x 16k acre early TMBR. lol, horrible strat decisions

At least with FA chains and buyouts you have to hurt the networth of many countries to help one or a very small amount of countries. neither will help the avg or total networth of a clan the way selffarming does.

LOL TMBR is not what I have. They are the old fashioned TTR's everyone here seems to disregard the R in TTR. making money two ways is a soild strat and they will finish with an ave net between 100m and 175m.

I agrees with you Ozzite, last set there were only 9 countries over 100k acres at the end. This set though at last count there were already 18 countries over 100k acers and enough that are super high in land that I will be shocked if there are not well over 100 countries with more than 100k land and another 200 over 60k acers. To me that's getting out of hand. If there is that many this set how many will there be next set over 100k land?

Depends how many clans war:) And like half of those are Rockmans.

I don't want to selffarm but if there are no other options next set I will have to so there will be at least 12 more 100k countries next set. if I do that and how many others will do the same. Not good for the game. Some changes need to be made to the game before all netting in the ffa is selffarming. Those changes don't mean that selfarming has to be done away with but things to help balance it out should be done to keep it from being just a selffarming server.

let me see if i follow you here jp. your opinion is that in a multi-country server, you should play each country as if it were on a single-country server?

What exactly is the problem if all the netters started self-farming? Just means more land for the server. There will still be times when it is better to grab other alliances.

You've never tried self-farming, yet you claim its easy. Have you tried spending a few billion dollars a day on buildings while running a rainbow? Rainbows cannot landtrade, and keep up with non-rainbows. It will not work. Landtrading places a huge strain on the economy of one's country, which separates the skilled players who can handle an economy from the unskilled players who cannot maintain a good economy.

You also really suck at counting. There's 22 countries over 100k acres right now, and there will probably only be about 25 or so over 100k acres this set. Given that you will be shocked if there are not well over 100 countries with more than 100k land, I guess you need to prepare to be shocked.

In previous sets, people tried the strategy of putting all their eggs in one basket and boosting one country at the expense of all the others. Due to IMP killing off countries like these two sets in a row, and Mercs doing mutually beneficial landtrading more efficiently than anyone has done before, we're seeing more 100k acre countries this set. Of the 22 100k acre countries, 16 of them are by two players in Mercs, 4 are from one player in PANLV, and 2 are from SemperFi.

Three of the four countries between 85k acres and 100k acres are done grabbing. There's a ring of 8 between 80k and 85k acres each by the same player which haven't grabbed in 36 hours, and may or may not be done grabbing for the set. There's another country there that is done grabbing for the set, and there's one country in SemperFi thats still growing. Then there are two countries at 74k acres in SemperFi still growing, and then by that point you're down to 70k acres.

That leaves 4 more countries that may make it to 100k acres this set, unless someone with under 70k land right now decides to go all the way up to 100k acres.

You claim that self-farming doesn't take any skill, yet you've never tried it. Go compare what Mercs has done with self-farming to what SemperFi, Focus, and others have done with self-farming.

The 3rd largest tag on the server in avg land is a 1 man tag with 21,398 acres. Mercs has 32 all-explore countries, the smallest of which is 21,339 acres. Only two tags have managed to outgrow our all-explore countries. Are you going to demand that our all-explore countries not explore so well?


I think you know that your assertions are blatant lies. You know that there's nowhere near 100 countries over 100k acres and 200 more over 60k acres. I think you know that if you tried self-landtrading, you wouldn't come anywhere near what Mercs has done.

Look at the difference between the land generated by how Mercs landtrades, and compare that to what other alliances have done. There is a huge difference. If it doesn't take skill, then how is there a huge difference in the landsizes people have gotten?

If you have to lie to support your position, you must believe that the truth is harmful to your position.

what Sockman said

Plus there have already been changes to reduce the overpowering of self-farming/land trading. You're lucky you weren't around when llaar put up a 64 million acre country.

LOL, you guys just don't see, can't see what I'm saying at all it's like trying to talk to a brick wall. I can see how you would not want to give up what your think is an advantage and it is for right now. the way it's going it will not be in the near furture, the math does not lie. Almost everything in this game is a trade off. You give up something to gain something else. That's not the case with land trading as long as there are ghost acres. You give up little to nothing to get the land. And I don't want to hear the BS about lossing a few CS as being a trade off. If you guys are happy with a server that will be all land trading so be it. I don't think it will be good for the game. I could care less what a few countries do but I see the writing on the wall. Soon it will not be a few countries it will be many. LOL and so I did not look up the numbers of how many counries were at what today. The other day there were 18 over 100k now theres more.

LOL, why do you guys get so hot under the collar when someone does not agree with you?

Jade Penn - you may not have realized this, but we have to build up the land. That takes tons of turns and cash. We definitely have to give up something.

The other day there were 18, now there's 22. Those last 4 were my 4 theocracies making it to 100k.

What exactly would be the problem with a server where everyone self-farmed? There would still be land grabs as some people would choose not to self-farm and others would be smaller so it would be worth it to grab up.

This is basically what FFA is with you and ESD living in the stone age.

I think this goes both ways. You don't really seem to have an argument but continually say the same things over and over again. Just because you think this is bad and that you see more people doing it doesn't mean it should be changed. Make some logical claim and use evidence to build your case.

Rockman I understand that and yeah a nob could not do it. I tend to over estimate what others can do. I figure If I can do it anyone can.

Ozzite, The problem as I see it with an all land trading server is more or less what I have been saying the whole time. A player from any of the other servers is already overwhelmed with the idea of playing many countries. (personly I don't think that the number of countries should be an issue but still it is) You add land trading to it and and the idea of playing ffa is to much and they will not bother. If the ffa server is just going to be the same old people all the time with no new blood over time it will just fade away. Give ffa nobs a chance. Also for the game to be interesting I feel that like in the past you need to be able to get to the same result in different ways (the same type of networth in this case). There is nothing out there that can equal the networth result of a land trading set of countries. there is more than one way to kill a country, more than one type of gov and so on. It's not really the land trading or farming I have a problem with but the fact it does not have an equal.

So your argument is that it is too hard for people to learn how to do something you claim is so easy to do that everyone can do it.

Awesome, have a nice day.

LOL, back in earth 2025 when the ghost acres were still there I tested the idea of land trading and even posted the theroy on the ffat boards. I didn't take them to large size countries in the tests but did just enough to be sure they would work. The next set no ghost acres go figure. If they are still there or if anyone saved them you can see the posts for yourself.

Why would I care about those posts?

There's more than one way to landtrade. How else would you explain Mercs being so much better than everyone but PANLV (and TKO if they were netting this set) at it? You can check the news to see how much more efficient Mercs was than everyone else.

If the FFA server wasn't so horribly incompetent at gaining land (compare FFA avg landsizes with alliance server avg landsizes), then maybe landgrabbing would be a more productive method of growth on FFA.

FFA has taken pride for a long time in their inability to play good countries, and now thats coming back to bite them. FFA players can't even explore properly and keep up with the all-explore countries in Mercs.

You took pride in your incompetence, and how easy it was to get into the top 100, that any fluffing idiot could do it. Maybe now you guys will have to learn to netgain properly. Look at the avg networths that your alliances have put up during netgaining sets. Its pathetic. Look at the networths put up on the alliance server, and the networths put up on FFA. With the ability to use 16 countries cooperatively, FFA alliances can war more effectively than 1a alliances. With the ability to use 16 countries cooperatively, FFA alliances should also be able to put up better networths than 1a alliances, but they do not. Why? Because they are incompetent.

LOL Ozzite your a twister. But in a way yes, the big numbers and odd type of play compaired to other servers will keep new blood away. Heck the 16 countries already does that somewhat. LOL, and no I'm not saying make it one country, more countries is what makes the ffa very different already. I kinda thought the idea most had was that we needed more players on the ffa server. I can play the game either way but it just seems that the 2 things are at odds with each other. And I guess I'm also saying closer pairity would be good for the game at least as far as bringing in new players.

You haven't provided any logical reason how self-farming is a barrier to entry.

In fact Mercs is a largeish new clan that is self-farming that came over from 1a.

You don't back up anything you say.

LOL I give up land trading it will be. But I don't want to hear anything about how there are no new players.

those 100k acres countries are easy targets for killing, SPAL and SDI are wretched. The amount of CS's lost, cash lost due to building new buildings everyday is very strenuous. 30k acres is max I would self farm to for those reasons, general defense being the main priority.

I recently self farmed upto 23k acres for the private market units only, my best in land is 30k acres and he had about 10k acres taken off of him due to the retals he took.

And on a side note Jade, our only allies are the self farmers in the game, I think you're just mad you can't take advantage of their hard work ;)

Almost all netting countries have bad SPAL and SDI ;p

i consider a *decent* SPAL to be 20, that would take 2mil spies in a 100k acre country and fluff that.

Now if you had a 20k acre commie and got those spies up and then began trading you would have some sexy war countries ;)

You are way off on your facts. Salt declared on SemperFi on June 19th, 20 days into the set.

Here are the landsizes of the countries that were killed in Salt's FS on day 20

maKaroni (#2444) 24,163 acres
Walding (#189) 13,765 acres
lets (#1655) 30,897 acres
000000000 (#272) 12,682 acres
Walding (#184) 19,173 acres
11 (#862) 16,460 acres
if (#1657) 23,463 acres
Walding (#188) 15,620 acres
Walding (#187) 15,459 acres
0000000000000 (#268) 14,003 acres
Walding (#186) 15,445 acres
Mr White (#592) 24,706 acres
00000000 (#273) 13,024 acres
Walding (#183) 15,564 acres
all (#1661) 25,515 acres
Walding (#185) 16,326 acres
can (#1659) 12,391 acres
SaR Swimmer (#198) 12,203 acres
00000000000 (#270) 12,808 acres
DX (#193) 14,228 acres
without (#1663) 22,259 acres
1313 (#874) 21,439 acres
with (#1667) 14,451 acres
yet another farm (#596) 10,718 acres
0000000000 (#271) 12,012 acres
How (#585) 11,137 acres
saying (#1664) 8,609 acres
77 (#868) 11,525 acres
manage (#1660) 8,640 acres
44 (#865) 17,685 acres
33 (#864) 15,984 acres
maKaroni (#2447) 13,325 acres
000000000000 (#269) 12,785 acres
0000000000000000 (#265) 11,425 acres
000000000000000 (#266) 12,702 acres
maKaroni (#2450) 8,728 acres
maKaroni (#2449) 15,182 acres
Our little surprise 2002 (#2484) 11,049 acres
Seal Team 6 (#190) 12,359 acres
0000 (#277) 12,501 acres
Where (#587) 13,308 acres
Blood and Sand (#2688) 11,624 acres
suicider (#598) 11,804 acres
maK n cheeze (#2947) 8,387 acres
Who (#584) 8,474 acres
1212 (#873) 9,728 acres
one more farm (#595) 9,813 acres
22 (#863) 16,072 acres
we (#1658) 9.546 acres
55 (#866) 14,579 acres
another farm (#594) 6,529 acres
farm (#593) 6,235 acres
88 (#869) 17,111 acres


And the sizes of my 16 countries at the time of Salt's FS

Transfinite Induction (#844) 24,276 acres
Inaccessible Cardinal (#845) 24,841 acres
Continuum Hypothesis (#846) 24,013 acres
Cantor Diagonalization (#847) 24,819 acres

Riemann Zeta Function (#848) 24,982 acres
Diophantine Equations (#849) 25,533 acres
Incompleteness Theorems (#850) 24,843 acres
Ramified Forcing (#851) 25,810 acres

Goldbach Conjecture (#852) 27,143 acres
First Order Logic (#853) 26,830 acres
Well Ordering Principle (#854) 26,007 acres
Nonconstructive Proof (#855) 26,361 acres

Dedekind Infinite (#856) 24,000 acres
Reidermesiter Moves (#857) 21,891 acres
Grothendieck Universe (#858) 22,463 acres
Euclidian Space (#859) 22,919 acres


SemperFi lost 7 countries that were over 20k acres in the FS. They may have had a couple more over 20k that weren't killed in the first 24 hours, but they lost most of their top countries in the FS. I had all 16 of mine over 20k acres with an average landsize of 24,795 acres. SemperFi lost 2 countries in the first 24 hours that had more land than my average land size. They may have had a couple of others that were as big as my average country as of 6am GT on June 19th, but they definitely did not have most of the largest countries on the server.

The nuke targets were 276, 579, 588, 866, 1659, 1663, 1665, 1669, 2448, and 2700

276 was 12,811 acres before the nukes
579 was 10,102 acres before the nukes
588 was 13,703 acres before the nukes
866 was 18,816 acres before the nukes
1659 was 25,365 acres before the nukes
1663 was 23,431 acres before the nukes
1665 was 23,985 acres before the nukes
1669 was 23,414 acres before the nukes
2448 was 11,170 acres before the nukes
2700 was 11,619 acres before the nukes

And as I said before, this was 20 days into the set, which is not even close to a week and a half.

herp derp

+1 for adding land to the market, that way non self farmers would be able to compete in land sizes =/

techer would be 1337 if land was made a market good