My thoughts after two rubbish sets in EE: (please resist the urge to think ARGH ITS DAGGA ALL HIS DOES IS SPIN AND TROLL.. I know it is hard to ignore my rap sheet on this board but give me a fair hearing.. please)

1. Slow down the goddamned attack button. Ok, it looks great and makes speed hitting a no-brain-required effort, but it has removed walling for smaller countries and restarts and makes first strikes way overpowered. Remember when walling didn't rely on you being at the computer or sitting on Safari on your iPhone? Remember when mid-sized countries with relatively decent defense took a more reasonable 3 minutes to kill instead of 90 seconds?

2. Give restarts the turns 80 (120). Get them back in the fight quicker. Hell, give them a minimum military bonus and maybe $5m bucks too. Call it a respawn bonus - make it more encouraging for people not to pack up and quit if their country dies. Make the bonus higher for restarting a third or fourth time. Reward these active players.

3. Do not allow intra-tag hits (and this goes for spy ops too - an alliance should not be able to spy out one of its own). This is just silly in an alliance server.

4. Give tag admins the ability to declare war on another tag. Create a new db table and store this info. It will make it easier down the track when admins get the impetus to make real changes to war.

*5. Disallow special attacks in the first 14 days. Nobody wins when wars start that early and the way the server is going with grudge wars, we will soon be fighting OOP. Also orients the server into a more cautious mode around that time, makes it less likely for alliances to be blindsided and, wow, might make netters actually carry some defense (cheap shot but necessary!).

* this is by far the most important suggestion. Is there skill in fighting tag vs tag in the first two weeks? Bullfluff there is.. Like similar games on the internet, there should be a grace period where players know a timeframe on when war is possible. Our hit this reset and other hits that have been done on us - they're pointless. If there is a legislated amnesty period, this would instantly make EE war and war strategy a million times better. It's improbable, but agreement between alliances could subvert admin inaction by simply agreeing that there is a 10/12/14 day amnesty period on any hits.. Old timers will realise that this was almost an unwritten rule anyway - wars were fought when most alliances had at least a decent opportunity to show off their netting skills or skill in the first 800-1000 turns. War any sooner than that is f-ing retarded. Fix.

I like 1-4.

Number 3: one of the solutions floated is actually to not have DR count for intra alliance ops (so you couldn't spy them out). There was some discussion about something similar in FFA regarding self farming and DR.


Number 5 is actually being discussed. imo it wouldn't actually stop early wars really because you could still lg countries to death. (Last war I ran vs NA). When I ran SoF I wasn't really in favor of OOP wars most of the time, but there were a couple of occasions where it made sense to do so. Having played the game from 1997-2010 I would say that OOP wars in alliance tended to be rare because
1) the amount of work it created
2) someone would wait a couple of weeks (if you were lucky) and call in an ally and trounce you good no matter how much you were winning
3) barring 1 and 2, after the war ends the rest of the reset is a write off for your tag

Number 2 is interesting. I agree that after restarting once, the odds that a player will restart again after that diminishes exponentially with each death.

Regarding 1: IT would have to be done in a way that slowed down attacks for everyone (ie a way to stop things like firefox scripting and using tab from making attacking faster). Not sure exactly on how many seconds/attack would be good. You do realize that with enough countries in a warchat limitting the individual attack speed won't slow down a kr noticeably.

i agree with 1, 2, 4

for 3. that's their choice. if they want to spend their turns sying out their own countries instead of doing some damage to the enemy, their choice.

5. you want safe first 14 days? go to every clan, sign a 14 days unap and u're done :P

No 5 is awfully self-serving.

I love it, make it so you cant do this, make it so you cant do that.

Yet

"You're untagged in an allaince server, you deserve to be farmed"

Perhaps we can just have a checklist at the beggining of the set, you choose how you want your country to play, government and strategy and the game fully automates, you can log in and play and it overrides the automation while youre logged in. That way the game can be played the way it was supposed to be played.

"create the most powerful country in earth empires"

I didnt realize that this has changed to "create the most powerful country in earth empires, but only do so the way we think you should do it"

If you want to recruit 800 people and have them all in your tag and have them be your personal land fluffes, so be it.

If you want to recruit 1 person and have a 2 man tag that will do nothing but play mon, rainbows missling every country that hits you, so be it.

When are you guys gonna realize the draw to this game is the choice to play when and how you want, the end goal is still the end goal.

All of the wars and politics are just "side quests"

Oh and by the way, when were you able to stonewall in this game without having to sit in front of a computer? Is that some dagga esp mind controlling the game type stuff?

I've played at least as long as you have (well quit a couple of times in between), but really this never happened. Speed attacking always existed, whether that button was there or not. And I don't really see it as a bad thing either that a nice, well-coordinated FS/warchat can inflict a lot of damage in a short time period.

Other than that, I can agree with most of your points (not with the respawn bonus save perhaps increased turns).

those are some good ideas, although many have already been discussed and are included in our redesign plans (something I and qz have said a few times now in various places, including other threads you've made on this topic)

#5 as it is presented is a non starter, #'s 1-4 we've already discussed on various other threads or in IRC over the last year or so and are included in redesign plans (in some form).

most of those aren't 24h or 'do it in your spare time' changes. 3 of them are major system overhauls and 1 will need quite a bit of work/testing to make sure it doesn't entirely nerf or break attacking (the speed). I want to do user experience research on all of those areas to figure out overall opinions regarding major changes like that.

1, 2, and 4 are already included in the redesign for the fall (which includes the user experience work). I even posted a positive reply about the tag admin stuff in your last thread on this topic which you never replied to.

anyway, for future reference, lists of suggestions go here so they don't get pushed down by AT threads and into oblivion -- especially threads with ideas that will impact more servers than Alliance.

and finally, it would help a lot of if you didn't troll the admins simply for being admins one or two days ago and then come back going "hey I have good ideas, ignore what I said before because these ideas are good!"
i see through it and I think others do as well. you're someone who tries to tie admins playing to us abusing our position or power, then you expect us to just be like "hey, ya. good ideas! that negates everything you said!". Your opinions will mean a lot more if you don't act like an asshole to us, especially me, every chance you get.

if you want to put on the big boy hat and try to be one of the people who help us move the game forward you really shouldn't be flaming the admins for simply taking part in the game like everyone else.

I would agree, the attack again button is over kill in alliance. Not sure if there is a way, but make it so even refresh or back button doesn't work. I will say there is another side of the coin. Yes the attack button changes war from what it use to be back in the day, but walling has been made so much easier now too. With alert bots and so many people with smart phones(not me though), you can wall while taking a dump. However, if the attack button is taken away from the FFA server, I would most likely stop playing FFA.

Who are you? And what did you do with the real dagga? Really good points. I like the part about speed hitting. I do miss the days of slower hitting and the chance for someone to be able to wall. But I also favor the speed hitting. At the the same time, I have seen some good stonewalling during some speed rushing KRs. I did it last set against Sanct, until they 8 sec rushed me and I was in my team country.

the basic fix is to just make the game not allow you to attack for X seconds after your last attack, but because of the way requests stack that gets complex to properly manage if people are spamming.

this applies to both the AJAX attacking and the old-school "mash f5" method

Pretty good suggestions. I guess dagga isn't really an imbecile, he just role plays one.

the problem with #5 is early reset suiciders/troublemakers become extremely difficult to deal with.

1 is ok but i dont really mind it currently

2 best would be to increase turns to restart but limit people from making attacks until they are using turns gained after they created country (or at least after previous one died) you really need to avoid having people be able to get bonus attacks from dying or selfdeleting

3 anything which encourages multiple tags just increases lameness id avoid it

4 wouldnt hurt, can even be useless to start then improved

5 uhm could be fun, but the first reaction might be early set landgrab wars.... it would help netgainers be able to farm unmolested for 2 weeks as well before buying any tanks, thats 1600 turns roughly which would be ok to start stocking for some

if you tied in #5 with the 1 ss puts you at -1 DR it wouldnt be too bad

you could also reduce or eliminate stock being stolen in the first 2 weeks but it probably wouldnt be necessary

could even make double/triple DR reduction for the first 2 weeks if it was a major problem

#5 is one of the worst ideas I've ever seen

That would allow people to farm without any fear of being ABd, BRd, GSd, or even missiled.

OOP wars do take strategy, you're mistaking your inability to develop a good strategy for them to mean that there cannot exist a good strategy for them.

#5 is basically a "we suck at this, so please make it not possible" suggestion.

Generally I like the suggestions except #5.

There are many ways to prepare for war, having a rule would penalize some strategies without any good reason IMO. If you like to have tyr techers and dict farmers as war strats, that's great for you. But prepare to be pwned by commie indies and theo cashers early in the game. If you cannot scout out what strat your enemy is using and adapt to that, you deserve to get defeated IMO.

I like most of them.

The speed hitting is an issue, but a complex one at that, you can't just take it away, and certainly you can't put a limiter on it.

I guess it would make sense to change the main page

Instead of having a silly and useless overview of our country, add a mini market to it, one to buy goods, that way you can save 2 seconds when you are getting killed.

Example:
Country A is getting killed
Country A logs in
Main Page shows 10 civs returns already (4 more seconds)
Buy 20000 turrets
Bounce!!!
Click build
build and save your ass...
Go back to main page and refresh every 3 seconds.


2 is good, but only turns

3 is part off the strategy, however, something must be done to make Spy DR show on the military spy op to save ops yourself and make military Spy op useful.

4 is a good suggestion.

5 is a political problem out of the game code.

1. Or, killed in 30 seconds like I was this set. And I was top 20 too. ;P

Foresight and preparation can negate the advantage of a speedy FS. For instance once an FS starts, you don't need to wait until a specific country is being hit to react. Speaking for myself, I had my phone on IRC sitting next to me in the office, set to alert if my country showed up in the #alliance news feed. I knew I was a potential target, so once my phone buzzed I was instantly on and walling. I wasn't the only one.

The ten-second kills (there were some even this fast) were only possible when the victim had near-zero troops, meaning absolutely no breaking or even mid-breaking discipline or hesitation was required. A blindside will always be a blindside, but nerfing the speed too much removes the chance for an alliance to differentiate itself in terms of defensive war preparation.

You're a wanker pang. Plain and simple. You ask others to separate your ingame persona with your admin persona, yet you show time and time again you're a massive hypocrite. Don't attack me as justification not to actually move this game forward.

As follow ups to people who have made positive suggestions -

martian:

1 (attack speed): Yep I know that more people in the chat means the kill will be just as quick, but what we need to avoid is the 5-6 country kill run being just as quick as a 11-12 person kill run. The game should be tweaked to allow active smaller countries a chance to wall and not simply be overrun in 1 minute by a handful of opposing countries with max turns.

2 (restarts): I think everyone agrees that you should be rewarded for restarting. The time consumption of restarting for many players (and I am talking mostly netters) is simply too great and they go inactive or quit until the following set. I would give restarts quite decent bonuses but also limit FA packages to only those allies who have Trade Pacts. Getting a trade pact from 8 people on your pact list is a massive advantage to bigger alliances.

3 (DR): Looks like a simple solution. No DR for intra-tag hits would fix the problem with an hour of coding.

5 (early war): Early war is rubbish. No one enjoys an early war - the attacker or the defender. It takes no skill. While we don't have an alliance vs alliance war system, the best way to stop war within a set period is to remove special attacks.

Thanks for replying.

ebola

"Speed attacking always existed, whether that button was there or not"

Yes it did, for some players that bothered to work out how to do it. But it was never a large problem because there was a great number of players who didn't have the knowledge or the browser or whatever, to speed hit. It took slightly more know-how and that was a natural limiter of the speed of kill runs.

thanks for replying

papa smurf

"the attack again button is over kill in alliance."

agreed

"walling has been made so much easier now too. With alert bots and so many people with smart phones(not me though), you can wall while taking a dump."

Fair point - but I would suggest that the problem lies with the fact a country with decent defense can be killed within a minute in the middle of a war is not right. I'm not talking about tweaking it by much, but the average kill time of a country should never be less than 2 minutes.

"if the attack button is taken away from the FFA server, I would most likely stop playing FFA."

Don't think this should apply to FFA.

thanks for replying

haxor

"the problem with #5 is early reset suiciders/troublemakers become extremely difficult to deal with. "

Not really, because while special attacks are removed, you just make it so you can still perform them if you declare war on a country to country basis. If Suicider A hits Laf then you get your kill team to Declare War and kill it with GS/BR whatever.. Un-declare after its dead and get the next one. While this works for suiciders, it would still make OOP war impractical due to the fact that if you declare war on country A and you don't kill it, you're stuck.


thanks for responding

enshula

"1 is ok but i dont really mind it currently"

I'm not talking a big change. Just something that slows the KR down by 30s or a minute.

"2 best would be to increase turns to restart but limit people from making attacks until they are using turns gained after they created country (or at least after previous one died) you really need to avoid having people be able to get bonus attacks from dying or selfdeleting"

Extending protection for restarts to 200 turns solves that issue.

"3 anything which encourages multiple tags just increases lameness id avoid it"

Simple rule that you cannot attack your ex-tag for 48 hours. This would also stop the disgruntled member-suicider detagging and ABing your clan president.

"4 wouldnt hurt, can even be useless to start then improved"

Yes, there is no motivation currently from the admins in this area - pressure needs to be brought to bear.

"5 uhm could be fun, but the first reaction might be early set landgrab wars.... it would help netgainers be able to farm unmolested for 2 weeks as well before buying any tanks, thats 1600 turns roughly which would be ok to start stocking for some"

Special attacks are still an option on countries you declare war on. No tanks means a suicider can declare war and AB you to the ground whatever stage of the reset. Landgrab wars are extremely difficult and grossly inefficient and I don't think that would become a reality. Sure, it's an option - but good luck to the alliance that tries that.

cheers for replying

Rockman - you dont haver an imagination obviously.

"#5 is one of the worst ideas I've ever seen

That would allow people to farm without any fear of being ABd, BRd, GSd, or even missiled."

Wrong. Using the 'Declare War' option means special attacks are available to you at any stage of the set.

"OOP wars do take strategy, you're mistaking your inability to develop a good strategy for them to mean that there cannot exist a good strategy for them."

Wrong. OOP wars means staying monarchy, low CS, masses of ICs and the element of surprise. As you are so sure there is skill involved in basically running a fluff country, please enlighten us!

"#5 is basically a "we suck at this, so please make it not possible" suggestion."

Wrong. Strike 3. I'd argue we (I assume you are referring to SOL whereas I am talking from a players not a members point of view) would be better at this OOP strategy than most other alliances. I'd argue we need to improve at our country building in the first 2 weeks, thus is would be a disadvantage for SOL to implement this rule.

thanks for your opinion, but I think you're biased against me and/or SOL.

Erian -

"There are many ways to prepare for war, having a rule would penalize some strategies without any good reason IMO. If you like to have tyr techers and dict farmers as war strats, that's great for you. But prepare to be pwned by commie indies and theo cashers early in the game. If you cannot scout out what strat your enemy is using and adapt to that, you deserve to get defeated IMO."

I'd argue that planning for an OOP war, while a 'war to prepare' is a cheap cop out strategy that takes no skill. I think if we are serious about improving gameplay then the unwritten rule of old needs to be legislated into the game; the policy whereby an alliance will try its best to grow good countries first before whacking someone. OOP wars devolve the game.


thanks for contributing

2 that would mean people could start hitting about 20 hours after restarting but would get bonus attacks for the next 20 hours, so effectively 20 hours downtime then 20 hours doubletime, id rather see less downtime but bigger to start


3 dagga i mean rockA and rockB for example landtrading between them, not just changing tags but running multiple tags, tags are already starting to make landtrading pacts, see the pdm post on at

5 i thought you said no special attacks at all for two weeks, i dont get the point of limiting it to dec war, then you just have 1 person abing 1 person rather than lots of people and the most efficient way to suicide early isnt abing anyway

landgrab wars could be incredibly efficient and decisive if like you said originally no specials could be done for 2 weeks, you could farm and grow then stock and buy up, worst case you would have a lower spal and your enemy would have some missile stock

"The speed hitting is an issue, but a complex one at that, you can't just take it away, and certainly you can't put a limiter on it."

You definately can - even at the last point of call before the request hits the server, a simple check can be made in terms of how long ago the last hit was made.. If it was less than 0.2 of a second ago, the attack is not registered. That way you can keep whacking the attack button, but only every second hit is going through. Pang is not thinking hard enough about this solution. Stacked requests still need to be processed one by one at the server end.

"I guess it would make sense to change the main page"

I made this suggestion a while ago. Similar to setting up 'Market Orders' you can set up 'Default Market Buys'. Two of them. 20k turrets and maybe 20k troops. They are a simple button on the country welcome page. Click, you're walling.

"2 is good, but only turns"

I'd like to see the bonuses extend to miltary and cash, and restrict the amount of FA packages to 2 (trade pacts only).

"3 is part off the strategy, however, something must be done to make Spy DR show on the military spy op to save ops yourself and make military Spy op useful."

Good suggestion. I don't think it's logical for alliances to be able to attack itself for gain in an alliance server. Doesn't make sense.

"4 is a good suggestion."

ta

"5 is a political problem out of the game code."

Don't agree. Similar to how 100 turn protection works, you need a grace period where players can actually build decent countries and use skill to prepare for war. Skill is what should separate alliances in war - not surprise first strikes on Day 6. Many games on the internet have a no-war period to allow for the skill component of a player come through before large scale war commences.

thanks for your contribution

enshula

"2 that would mean people could start hitting about 20 hours after restarting but would get bonus attacks for the next 20 hours, so effectively 20 hours downtime then 20 hours doubletime, id rather see less downtime but bigger to start"

I don't really understand what you're saying here.. You'd be hitting in 20 hours

"3 dagga i mean rockA and rockB for example landtrading between them, not just changing tags but running multiple tags, tags are already starting to make landtrading pacts, see the pdm post on at"

That's fine, if people want to weaken their tags like that, go for it. At least it will be very visible.

"5 i thought you said no special attacks at all for two weeks, i dont get the point of limiting it to dec war, then you just have 1 person abing 1 person rather than lots of people and the most efficient way to suicide early isnt abing anyway"

It's not really to curb suiciding - suiciding has a purpose. It is to curb large scale OOP wars.

"landgrab wars could be incredibly efficient and decisive if like you said originally no specials could be done for 2 weeks, you could farm and grow then stock and buy up, worst case you would have a lower spal and your enemy would have some missile stock "

I don't see a problem with landgrab wars - they would actually take some skill. You telling me you want to farm an alliance B just so they can country to country declare war on you and AB you to the ground? I don't think landgrab wars would happen at all.

instead of giving 80(120) with 200 turn protection you could give 200(0) with 200 turn protection

and they dont get any new turns until they are below 120

then someone can start hitting pretty much immediately and doesnt have downtime rather than not hitting for 20 hours then hitting double for 20 hours


if you still allow dec war to gs/br then you can still kill, its just more important not to get stonewallers, if it was a choice between hitting on day 10 when the enemy were not ready but having to be conservative in target selection compared to waiting to day 14 when they were ready id hit on day 10, the enemy has the same penalty if they try to counterstrike as you do and you can plan to have an easier time walling therefore gaining a strategic advantage

dagga i was saying landgrab wars would be incredibly overpowered without special attacks, and that originally i thought none would be allowed, but also that i think the restriction you place isnt tough enough to warrant delaying wars

in fact it would make some kills plus farming even better for a FS

Hmm.. I think where you're going is on the right track with regards turns. However I don't think if your country dies you should be able to hit straight away. Something about dying that means you should sit out at least a little bit of time before attacking again. The way the stored turns works is that they simply get back in the fight quicker - but not right away.

You are right - you can still GS/BR but who is going to want to do that if one stonewaller screws up your FS? It's a massive deterrent to early war, and thats what we are after. I'd guarantee no one would even contemplate an early war if those restrictions were in place..

When was the last time there was a landgrab war? It really doesnt make sense.. The fact it is possible is a good motivator to ensure people keep military. I'm not sure the landgrab war argument is actually a negative for the amnesty period idea - but a fantastic potential positive.

It could also be argued that warring alliances hitting netting alliances devolves the game.

There's also the unwritten rule of karma. OOP wars are one of the ways in which karma bites you if you have bad karma.

guys, dagga wants his alliance's countries to have 14 days to war prep and go through tech phases and stuff.

there's no way to argue suggestions that is clearly biased towards one side of the battle.

moo!

Wrong, Forgotten! This is a serious dagga thread. As such, you can expect it to be free from spinning, like ignoring posts that don't agree with him, or trolling, like calling people names.

Great way to make people feel bad :(

And I meant that after the attack again option is part of the gameplay, you can't simply take it away or limit it, people will complain, you need a great reason to remove something that saves people a lot of time, I rather make walling easier than to make speed hitting harder again.

#4 has merit, and I think by proxy that gives #2 merit. If an official in game tag relations system was set up, it would give FA's and leaders all sorts of great options. As much as I like the idea of officially being able to declare war on a tag in game and the possibilities that come with a system like that, I like the idea of a system that displays a "warning, you are about to attack an ally" message in the attack prep screen even more if the idea is expanded to cover FA relations in general instead of being purely war focused.

Imo, #2 only has merit if a system like that is implemented, and one of the two alliances has declared war on the other. There's a risk of giving an advantage to suiciders, but I think it's negated by the improvement it would make to warring.

#1 is rather pointless, I think. Even if you slow down the attack screen reload, folks will find a way to speed hit just as they have in the past. It's been a tactic for stonewallers for ages, and making it easy for everyone is an improvement to the game, and levels the playing field in war a little bit, imo.

#3 has been kicked to death. No point in any real serious discussion on this one.

#5 is the only real point I find just absolutely preposterous here. Early FS'es are a great war strategy for clans that are outnumbered in a fight, and know a war is coming. Removing this ability just plays too much with a clan's options to war. Otherwise, the likelihood of abuse strikes me as the second biggest drawback - hi, I'm an Indy...I'm gonna farm the fluff out of your little guys and grow huge and fat because you can't GS/BR me for another 10 days, and by then I'll be too fat to break for %90 of your alliance.


I think there's some decent suggestions here - I would hope people will look past dagga's general persona and have a decent conversation about some of this stuff.

#5 is clearly a political issue, not a game related one. Any attempt to change it in game would be an aweful move.

the rest have already been discussed so its just a rehash of the same for/against arguments...

The hitting button is gay. 1 min kill runs is gay. I am not exaggerating.

Have not thought about all, but I fully agree with #2

Agreed. Just make spy DR show up in a spy op. So you know not to waste your time.

#5 is fluff. Thats the point of Protection. Gives you 100 turns where they cant hit you. In which you can extend to a couple days if you store turns.

Its a warring strategy. While i also hate early wars, i see that its my personal preference and not really an improvement to the game.

And for #1. I dont mind this idea for other servers. But if you do slow it down. Dont touch FFA please. In war it already takes long enough to complete a warchat. Dont slow it down anymore thanks.

Removing war in the first X days is a great idea and would put some skill and thought back into clan warfare. Early war takes no skill and puts disenchantment with the game through the roof.

There is absolutely no benefit to early clan war.

early wars are dumb, but early farming with no risk of war might turn out poorly too

not sure how to hit a balance

perhaps similar to the solo servers where you can war if someone hits you more than once, or (why not lol) just use the solo rules but let everyone in your tag hit back hard if the limit is exceeded rather than just you

can set limits at 1 hit/set or higher, possibly even 1 hit/country/set prorated or xhits/country/day

enshula - early farming without repercussions? How?

Special attacks are still allowed on a country to country declare war basis.

support dagga!