I can only speak for NBK, but we wont kill you because you grab our countries for land. we have a retal policy, and if you play your cards right, you could still get land from us and come out on top. you just gotta play smart.

Suppose I play smart and end up with 50k acres. I am then hit by a country with 10k acres. What do I do?

if your country is big enough to have 50k acres, and a 10k acre country can grab you for land, then you aren't buying enough defense. you have 5 timses the amount of land they do, thus 5 times the income, and you should have 5 times the amount of money to buy military to defend your land. If you choose to get fat and not get any defense..then its your fault.

ill pick this up later Slag..i gotta go out. been good having this chat though.

NBK has 360 countries. I assume that "playing smart" against that many potential retallers would require me to spend significant resources. Getting to 50k acres is also a long term investment.

Players are free to use their 16 countries to grab me in any way they wish. I don't dispute that. If someone wishes to grab my 50k country, it's in their best interest to funnel resources to their lowest land country to make the hit. I can't possibly defend one country against 16, especially with all of the offensive multipliers out there.

Maybe there is some level of defense that would completely prevent that kind of behavior. But I imagine that the costs involved would be so large that I'd get better results with an all-X country.

If you have 5 times the amount of land, you've currently got 5 times the income, but on the way up to getting 5x the amount of land, you haven't had 5x as much land as them all set, and you've spent way more than 5x as much as them on buildings.

The question is, what is a proper defense? No one has given me a valid answer to that question.

If someone has 50 million turrets on 50k acres, and a 10k acre techer stockpiles for 2 weeks to get 50 million jets to break them, should the 50k acre country be pissed off? Or should the 50k acre country have gotten more defense?

slag this is why ppl become killers ;)

netting is way too much effort...


ill be killed heaps this set.... but im too dumb not to restart and hit whatever i can.... much simpler ;)

netting and grabbing is way too much work lol

they will say yes

Grabbing another country for land and trying to defend it was a fun challenge until I figured out that the offensive multipliers were out of whack, and I could only bounce retals from idiots.

Then I realized that once I got decent at gaining land, that I would be topfed by anyone who was not as good at gaining land as me, and that I would be unable to bounce their attacks.

How did I know I would be unable to bounce their attacks? One of my very first sets in FFA, I ran a ring of 4 tyranny techers which would stockpile for a few days, and then make a big grab on a much bigger country. I was running around with 1000 to almost 2000 networth per acre, topfeeding countries with 3 or 4 times as much land as me. And it took no skill at all. By the end of the set, all my techers had 15 to 20 million jets. And all 4 of them ended the set with around 15 to 20 million networth. Which at that point, was the best I had ever done.

I thought that having 12 million jets on 6k acres made me entitled to grab a 25k acre country. While the 25k acre country spent days growing & money building his buildings, I spent my days teching all my turns and buying more and more jets. The lazy way to gain land was to just topfeed someone every few days. Finding good untagged targets out of DR was incredibly time consuming. And it was a skill I had not picked up yet. I lacked the skill to gain land as well as good players did, so I just topfed a good player every few days.


That was less than a year after I started playing Earth 2025. For me, doing things inefficiently and improperly isn't fun. So I learned to play the proper way. Having played Utopia before Earth 2025, I had thought that the higher your networth per acre, the better your country was. It took me only a couple of months to stop thinking like a Utopia player. Unfortunately, FFA players still think like Utopia players. And yes, that is meant to be an insult.

As for the spirit of the game, I see it as I should not encourage others to grab me unless being grabbed benefits me. If it does not benefit me, then I should choose a retal policy that will discourage people from grabbing me. I see it as against the spirit of the game to grab someone and not even worry about trying to have enough defense to bounce their retaliation.

Once I realized how retal policies are formed, I realized what they were. They are policies set in place by the bullies of the server to benefit themselves. If the bullies are bottomfeeding netters, they force the server to use land:land. If the bullies are midfeeding netters, they midfeed an alliance until that alliance threatens to go to war if they are not granted a DNH, and then the alliance grants them a DNH for the rest of the set to prevent war. If the bullies are topfeeders, they force the server to use a 1:1 retal policy. Why are any retal policies put in place? Because the bullies of the server force them on people.

Why do we use alliance:country retals? Why not alliance:alliance retals? Or country:alliance retals? Or country:country retals? Because the bullies of the server want alliance:country retals.

There's nothing wrong with being a bully. Whats funny is that the bullies like to pretend that they are being fair or are doing what is best for the server. They are acting in their own self interest. They don't care about whats best for the server. And they appear to be so delusional that they don't even realize that they are power hungry bullies working to ruin the server.

So what your saying Rockman is 90% of the players in FFA are bullies. And we should conform our policys to allow for untags and 1 man tags to retal SS/PS's with 100+ ABs, or 15 missiles?


The policys on this server are in place because after 15 years, this is what the players have found to work.

the people who cry about self farming are the same people who cant net anyways. so they want to handicap people to bring them down to thier level.

Player interaction? LOL good one.

its 2011. this game isnt a big deal anymore. noone wants to spend 2 hours a day finding land grab targets for 16 countries. ill just as well quit the game and invest my time in something more worthwhile. hows that for "helping the game"

retards.

The alliance server is doing much better than the FFA server right now. So does that mean that land:land works better than 1:1 retals? And if you're worried about what the players have found to work, why are you not fighting to implement land:land retals then?

land:land may work in alliance. But it does not work in FFA. If you can't get your land back in 1 hit, get more defense or run a a country as a retaller to get your land back in 1 hit.

Your not limited to 1 country in FFA, so theres no excuse why anyone shouldn't be able to get there land back in 1 hit.

Do you really believe this?

you guys will use any reasoning to justify your means, and youll spin it once someone makes you look dumb with it.

so do you find it acceptable for someone to use one of thier retallers to take a retal on one of thier netting countries and then use the netting country to take the land back from the retaller?

Rockman, just ignore dedly, hes got down syndrome. or at least it seems that way.

smurf just doesnt get that this isnt earth 2025

Your right Warster its not. Its Earth 2025 remade by players. Unfortunately for the rest of us, all the Admins that play on this server have a 1a type mentality. This is not 1a. Stop trying to make it that.


You think we want to play 1a but with just 16 countrys instead? Not a chance in hell

Find me an Admin that has played on the FFA server as long as I have and I may show there ideas a little more respect. But there are countless amount of people still around that fought tooth and nail for over 10 years to keep FFA completely different than 1a.

are you retarded? what does self farming and 1a have to do with each other?

are you just pulling fluff out of your ass now? seriously?

Pain - If you Pro - Self Farmers would stop spinning this topic 18 different ways, I wouldn't have to post 18 different responses.


My responses were directed at what I percieved as the topic. Rockman brought up 1a and land:land, I was responding.


But now I noticed your "FoG" signature. No sense even talking to you guys. Your the only retards that are pushing to keep Self Farming alive.

TKO stated if the rest of the server stopped, they would as well. They only do it, to compete with LaE/KA. PANLV made that same claim. Its only LaE/KA still trying to force the issue here.


NBK, IMP, Cerevisi, Swords and BSS have all sworn to not Self Farm. TKO and PANLV would join that group, unfortunately though, you LaE/KA folks have no other claim to fame or skill without it. So TKO and PANLV will continue doing it, because you guys are retarded.

this thread is turning to crap lol. ive said my bit and im not gonna repeat myself 10 times over.
you all know where I and NBK stands. what you wanna make of it or what you think of it, is up to you.

Hey smurf Understand this

I do not Self Farm or have a wish to , I'm fighting for the right of players to play their countries in the way they wish to, not the way YOU wish them to play.

I respect the way NBK goes about self farming, I do not respect you or Swords for the way you want to Deal with it.

at least NBK come and talk about it, no one from Swords has come and spoke to me about it,

You guys want people grabbing??

I can tell you right now, almost all TKO members will either quit or run all -x countries if Self farming is a killable a offence, so in the end there will be less interaction between TKO and the rest of the server.

You guys may have hours free of time to search targets, and do all the spy ops you need, then deal with all the FA crap that goes with that amount of grabbing, but most of us dont and alot of us just play out of the love of our old alliances.

If you dont let me self farm. Then im going to mass explore.

Ending result: I have the exact same interaction with the players of EE no matter which method i play. So your point that its hurting the game due to less interaction is invalid.

And im sure this applies to 75% of self farmers. Most of them as ketchup said, are looking for a quick way to net and focus more on socialising. We would play wow if we wanted to play a game for hours every day.


Edit: Yes im a TKOer and Yes what warster just said refers to me and most of TKO. I still see no reason for how its hurting the game if most self farmers would become all explorers. Its the exact same result in terms of server land grabs and player interaction

Are there extra baseball bats available so we can all help beat this dead horse?

I love how people make the assertion that this game is a "war game."

How does the game rank countries and alliances?

It ranks countries by networth. If you have the highest networth, you're #1.
It ranks alliances by membership, total networth and average networth. One of these rewards just having more people, the other two reward netgaining.

Furthermore, RIU, you say that basically landgrabbing is what got you hooked on the game in the first place? Who are you to say what got anyone else hooked on the game? If land-trading my way into the top 10 is what got me hooked on the game, do I have the right to force my opinion on you?

I don't really care about land-trading/self-farming. I've done it in the past very heavily. I did it on a very limited basis last set, while getting most of my land doing normal landgrabs on other alliances, and I could certainly landgrab from other people. My biggest problem is the "holier than thou" attitude of the clans that don't land-trade/self-farm.

It's logically inconsistent, as Slagpit does a far better job than I ever have of explaining it, and it seems more like this is still all just negative backlash because llaar found a way to exploit the formulas of the game that no one else was willing to explore on the level that he did. I know the formulas have changed somewhat since then, but ultimately, as long as it's beneficial to land-trade between your own countries, what's so morally reprehensible about this?

And in response to what RIU said earlier: yeah, it sucks to build up a country and have someone grab 30k acres off of a country in which you're going to get 3k back, but ultimately, if I'm running so little defense that such a hit is possible without someone running 80%+ jets, then that's my own damn fault for not defending the land.

I personally have no problem with self farming, I think it's a great to way to add land to the server. As a result, we don't have some of the same problems alliances in 1a have. I don't like the entitlement some netters feel they have for land they self farmed. A big part of this game is holding onto your land. i defend my land. I was running countries at 25k to 40k of land with 40m to 5-m of jet breaks. As someone who does grab, I never used offensive allies or the bonus attack, just the PS attack and my weapons bonus. Those I grab used offensive allies and their weapons bonus. What that meant though is that before the weapons bonus was applied, I had to send 4 jets for every 3 jet defense. Since i was generally at 130% to 140% on the weapons bonus and those I grabbed were lower, it mostly evened out for 1 jet for 1 jet defense. Last set, I probably sent over 10M jets once on a grab and that was a build up to 16M jets for a country that had about 150k acres. I grabbed countries of 250k acres with about 5M jets, 300k acres with 8M. I used a small fraction of my expenses on jets, didn't use allies, and was breaking high acre countries.

The problem I have is that these complaints about offensive bonuses are complete BS. You don't break these countries because of offensive bonuses. You break them because they are extremely poorly defended and the netters need to do a better job putting some legit defense up. It's hard to take seriously a demand for limiting your number of grabs when those who demand it are not willing to pay the bucks to put an adequate defense in place.

I read most of this thread and to basically sum up what a lot of NBK members were saying,

1) Self farming itself is not harmful, but it leads to less player interaction.

2) Self farming instead of attacking so you don't "piss of a war clan" is sort of silly, NBK WILL NOT war over a few landgrabs, especially if they are real grabs.

3) Sure you can say other things hurt the game too, or are almost as bad, but you can't say "Well this is ok, cause this other thing you do just as bad", that logic has so many holes in it, I won't bother :P

4) If you want to self farm, go ahead, but the less people who do it, the more people will grab the few fat countries. That itself is no real issue.

5) When you think that without L:L you will be reduced to the average land of the server. That is incorrect. At most you will be reduced to the average land of the people who can break you, which if you have well built countries is at most a couple hundred of the bigger ones, probably a lot less.
After that, not having L:L works just as much for you as it does against you, so that is a pretty poor excuse.
I generally have some pretty fat countries from grabbing, and not including retals or wars, I think I have been grabbed maybe 8-9 times in the last 4 sets in all 16 of my countries combined. Out of the hundred or so retals on me, a few dozen weren't attempted, another couple dozen bounced, leaving less then a 50% retal rate on my grabs. (This is on real clans too)

If self-farming is completely abolished, lazy people like me will go back to bottomfeeding as it's a lot less time consuming than looking for grab targets from clans, and FFA may very well end up where 1a is right now.. where new players not in formal clans get farmed to the ground and stop playing.

Slagpit, to address some of the issues you brought up about being fat and reasonably well defended and still having a small country grab you, PANLV has introduced an all jetter policy.. where basically, if it requires a smaller country to run 80%+ jets:turrets in order to break, that country is 'defending its land' and the hit will be retalled 2:1. (case by case basis)

Just saying people should attack other clans more! Would love it if NBK was being hit 20+ times a day, and we had to work to retal :)

translation: whoever we think won't retal us back for doing it.

Not at all. It's moreso the intent of the hitter and the defense of our country that we'll look at to decide if this was someone basically specifically targeted one of our countries or if one of our guys was simply the best target.

If we have a guy who has something like an 800 NW/Acre ratio (meaning they have pretty solid defense) and someone with 85% jets grabs him, we're taking 2:1, whether that's TKO, IMP, NBK, or some 1-man tag.

Of course, having said that, in most cases, this won't be an issue with most of the major clans because TKO and PAN probably don't really want to get in a top-feeding war, since we're the two netting clans that probably most use land-trading at this point, and clans like IMP and NBK are typically not going to be running countries with 85% jets, considering how inefficient that is for warring purposes.

The only truth to your statement is that the most likely culprit is going to be a 1 or 2-man tag that is trying to manipulate the rules and then claim we're a bully when we don't follow those rules.

For the most part, that jetter policy should only come into effect if some small clan tried to manipulate the rules or if some established clan wanted to try to use our policies to pick a fight with us.

No one will tell me what an 'adequate defense' is. How am I supposed to get an adequate defense if no such definition exists?

adequate defense: if your break costs more than i am willing to lose to get your land. make it unprofitable as u can

adequate defense is enough defense to keep my jets on the ground.

If you're running countries with 40k+ acres and less than 10m jets are necessary to break it, my jets are in the air.

Ah, so you are grabbing that 45k acre TKO country today?

nope. for a few reasons.

1st and the most improtant they are allies

2nd, they are in DR.

Adequate defense is have more military then other people with your land have.

that, too. overall, it's your job to dissuade me from landgrabbing. This set, political pressure isn't the way to go. Enough with the games.

lol if we meet a lion and i out run u i live theory K4F

i have to speak up against the "you may have hours of free time to search for targets" point, that u raised.
this is very very very far from factual. takes me about 2 min to find a good LG target. everyone uses the same defense in any game they play. its stupid.
doesn't take hours to find LG targets. u can play an extra 5min and LG plenty

Im glad someone read that!

lol pop you forget that if the people who self farm start grabbing that means less good targets, hence taking longer to find targets worth the risk.

if this was old ffa that ran 3 months i would agree

It only takes a while to find target if you are pacted to almost everyone. Even attacking a target with equal land, you will get a ton of ghost acres over the retal.

Most netters arent running ty... just not effective. Id argue grabbing soemone the same land as you, then having a mil strat maxed ty retal you properly (smae NW as you etc.) you would loose land, even with ghost acres, or at very worse gain less land then exploring would have gained you, with mroe cost.

You are assuming a lot of things Ketchup, one is that the original grab was not done properly, another is that the retal is guaranteed to succeed, another that there are enough retallers in the clan to keep up with the amount the clan is being hit.

And even if you were correct, someone hits you, land is being generated, and it will come back to you in the long run. A server that has hundreds of grabs taking place a day will have double even triple the land of an all explore server by set end.
If everyone loses out on grabs, why do they end with more land then all explore by such a large margin?

If you can find 16 -32 targets, spy them and work out all their breaks then double check no one in ur alliance has hit the target while you were working out the break all in an extra 5 mins

Or was that 5 mins per country
*bows down before the master of grabbing*

You can find 16-32 targets that have acceptable land and NW, and then pick out the best one for you to attack within 5min. You don't need to spy em all. You just need a few possibilities in case one doesn't work.