Basicly, I've been speaking to QZ over the past few minutes about FFA and FFA activities as a whole. I like the number 32.

I asked him simply what it would take to raise the limit. Basicly unlimited would be too hard to cover.

But, 32 would make a clan (single person) able to do all that a clan could. This would also create some more land in FFA -- More countries = More Land.

Now, I do realise that most of you would stick to the 16 country limit and thats fine.

But, if we can get 3/4 of the FFA population to agree the limit will be increased.

Also, I'm quite for this.

why 32? get a buddy and tag up together, now you have 32.

as far as more land goes because theres a higher limit... that'd be fine if people wouldn't self farm. whats the point of having the extra land and extra countries if llaar is going to just farm 31 of his countries.

Need to have a better argument for why to have so many countries instead of because one person can be their own clan and you can have twice as many countries to self farm with.'

With that many countries (double the numbers) you wont have to self-farm.

Also, it would be closer to the true since of FFA. 32 would create full allies, you can pick another number if you wish. 35, 40, 38, IDC.

Just 32 was a starting point to getting the number raised.

You guys really cant find land with this many countries? Thats weak. Start grabbing other existing clans then. I'd assume the only way youd get land with this is to grab the morons who run their 32 country tags into the ground

I think it's clear the l/g formula needs to be looked at to prevent it being possible to accumulate so many acres through self farming - a discussion for another thread perhaps.

As for raising the country limit, my concern would be that it would place too much power (and temptation) in the hands of those that might be tempted to run a bot. Once you have a limit higher than the amount of countries that the average player is willing to run by hand then those that chose to run the maximum number using illegal methods gain an advantage, while others would be tempted to turn to "aids" in order to be able to play the maximum.

Therefore I would say the question that needs to be asked is how many would people actually wish to run?

Why not wait till the Facebook App comes into play? Lets see what it does for Earth Empires as a whole. We just had the limit raised to 16 so that all 16 of a single players countries could be allied to each other without having empty unfilled slots.

50-60

I dont really have patience/time to play more than 16 so I'm against this..

The question is simple.

Raise limit, yes or no.

The number can be decided later -- the land thing wasn't quite the way I expected it to go...

btw, ghost acres wont leave till more players come in...

I agree with elvish and thunder. 16 is fine. 32 would make the game a lot more interesting, with a clan of 10 members pushing 320 countries - But would also make the game very unbalanced. I know numerous people who only play 10 because their time is limited. Being 6 countries down is not a massive gap and is bearable, but being 22 down? Thats just unfair.

Also, imagine the suiciders.

32 is hard to manage. Would be seeing bots almost immediately, more prolifent than they are now.

Need is the mother of all necessity. At the moment, you CAN run 16 countries without a bot, hence minimal need for one. Running 32? Double time consumption = More need for a bot = Someone actually taking the time to code one.

IMO We need more players, not a raise in the country limit.

i would love to see the limit raised, but i really think it would be used to cheat more. i would rather the mods work on the game first and get it onto the facebook scene, and then start making changes like that.

i really think facebook is the make or break for this game. if we don't get players from that there isn't much we can do to keep the group of around 800 tops in the game. im not sure how many players are in the game, but i am sure it isn't more then 1000.

That is what set the difference between the old FFA and the rest of the servers, and the reason all the 1A clans who came in failed.
With a high limit, the time spent becomes a resource just as vital as CS-count etc when deciding on the strategy. 20 decently run countries will beat 1 perfectly managed.

I think I'm with the majority here when I say I'd be against it.

When I war (as I have been most of this set), it'd certainly be nice to have another 16 countries with turns, but only during the summer would I have the time to run more than 16 anyway, and like azmodii said very well, if I run 10 and I'm 6 down on other people, I can deal with that. If I'm down 22 on other people, my ability to compete in the game drops drastically.

15 was not perfect, 16 is perfect. Am sure not going to run any more than that. I mean, people do need a life outside this game.

Hooking this game up to Facebook is extremely disturbing to me tho. Is this likely to happen? I want no part of FB. Been there, done that and will not return.

I think the FB thing would be increase our numbers -- that is all.

Let's get to work and increase our own numbers without the assistance of FB. I want no part of them and the feeling is reciprocated.

It's a tempting notion. An extra 16 countries could be used for a lot of things. Land farms, retal bait, war ready "reserve countries" with full turns banked every day, cash banks for buyouts, market manipulations, etc...

I personally don't know that I'd want to do 32 startups every reset though. 16 is plenty for me. Now if you could opt to start with Turn 99 generic startups, it would be more attractive.

that would be pretty nice, but i think it needs to stay in the game just to get people used to starting countries up.

16 startups took me 2h per day to play...

doing 32, nah...

my answer is no...

I think the 32 option is fine. Some of the concerns voiced about it are valid, but I don't see any as a reason not to go ahead with it, at least on a beta level.

The whole concern about people not wanting to spend the time running 32 is just as valid of an argument as with 16, but here we are all the same. If you don't want to tangle with 32 countries when you're only running 16, don't pick fights w/ guys with 32 countries....just like you wouldn't pick a fight w/ a clan 2x your size if you were running 16....or perhaps more relevant, pick on a guy running 16 countries if you only have time to run 8 or 10.

So far as self farming - well, I honestly don't see any reason why people having 32 countries over 16 would change that situation much, other than perhaps being able to have 2-3 monster countries instead of just 1. They're still just as ineffective in war, and just as useless for anything other than making it into the top 10. Turns would limit self farming more than anything if 32 countries were available. The problem is not in how many countries are self farming each other, it's in the fact that it's possible - as long as that is the case, there will always be folks who can exploit the rules to their advantage, regardless of how many countries they're running.

My only real argument against the idea would be that it would encourage folks to run solo vs. joining a clan, as they have a sustainable number of countries to play. In my mind at least, clan membership is an integral part of this server, and any player running 32 by himself because he can is missing out on a big part of the experience. Quite frankly, if you want to run solo, you better be doing it with the expectation that you're gonna be chum for the rest of the server in the process....if you don't like that, do as Dibs suggested, and find some buddies to tag up with you, or at least join one of the more substantial clans on the server.

my vote would be no...

doubling the country limit is not going to help the game, itll give more advantage to the guys who have far too much time on thier hands, and the rest who dont have time or patience to play that many have to sit further in the shadows of the people who have more time on thier hands.

can you imagine llaar with 32 landfarms.

lol

i'd vote no though. higher country limit would eliminate some current players that dont have the time and dont want to compete against people that do have that time

15 million acre record lol

no.

there is obviously no real link between land and 16 or 32 countries

the way to get the most land is have eight groups of two countries and just hit them back and forward all day every day never building

its also the easiest way to win

unless thats changed ffa is pointless for netgaining (note self farming and land trading in general also need to be weakened just not by as much)

so 2 or 32 countries makes no real differance as the rules stand right now

and if you only care about 1 or 2 of your countries then all the others gain you is deterrence and increased start up speed

if you can convince the admins to change/limit networth ghost acres somehow then you could make other arguments about land and more countries

unfortunately in a way the more countries each player can have the less safe it is to landgrab them

if 28 of your countries FA 4 all jet countries for 2 days who couldnt retal with o allies ps and tech on small land?

simple answer no

I'm against more countries per player.

I'm for 15 countries per player. 16 is still manageable.
If you want more create another server where the limit is super duper high. (A temporary express idea maybe? )

Self farming / available acres has not much to do with country limit, but more with the amount of players available to grab.
Self farming is not a problem imo, it only starts being a problem when people start combining it with regular landgrabs. So I implement a (reversed) 2-stepping = dead countries policy. We don't need admins to enforce such policies.

I stop playing this server if the country limit increases. I neither want to waste more time on this game as I already do, nor want to compete with such overwhelming forces.

16 is more then enuf for me. I can't use all my turns as it is.

16 is enough. It's a good number.

no..16 is plenty

20.. :O)

But 16 are enough..

16 is too many for me and Gaza practice makes perfect soon u can manage them in 30 minutes

If you guys really have time to play more than 16 countries on a server then you really ought to be looking for a social life.

lmao , so does kemo on the number

it really doesn't take that long to play 16 countries in the first place

not only that. but u can rotate them.
way way way back in the day, i would play my strings on a few day rotation so i always had full turns.

i would be ok with 30..but mroe then that would be to crazy

16 is perfect.

The more countries you allow 1 player to have, as a proportion, the clans will get that much bigger. smaller clans will find it harder to compete.

dizzeh! <3

Everybody complaining about running countries take too much time miss the point entirely.
The number of countries is what makes FFA different from the other servers.
Like stated above, a high countrylimit forces a new factor into the strategies: time-consumption and efficiency of taking turns rather than most efficient way to spend said turn.

A low country-limit simply makes FFA a slightly expanded 1a rather than an environment in it's own right.
In fact, lowering the limit (as suggested in another thread) would be the sure demise of the game.

Just as I believe the total control of the game being in the hands of one clan or perhaps better said one man can most certainly contribute to the death of this game that I have loved for so many years. Just look at the top 10 and the first thing that comes to my mind is "why bother?" This is especially true of anyone contemplating starting up a new clan in this game or even joining any clan other than the ruling one.

Of the two suggestions Blake has, I will say I'm more ok with this one. I don't mind the idea of a higher limit, I just wouldn't vote for it because 9 months out of the year, I'm too busy to personally utilize it.

Heck, I wouldn't even be against a truly unlimited server, so long as the admins were able to prevent anyone from running bots on the server.

I'm in that "I'm not for it, but I'm not really against it" spot for this particular suggestion.

Keep the 16. Get in any bigger and any casual gamers won't bother. Why bother to run 5 countries and get your ass handed to you by others with no lives that run 40+. The more the country limit is, the more the server is held hostage by a select handful of players.

What about splitting it?

Like reducing this server down to 8 countries per person, and creating anouther server with 8 countries per person where the maximum tag membership is 8.

Or 16 in both, that way those who want more countries and the ability to be an effective one man tag get it, while those who like the game as is don't have to worry about the server dieing.

I say if we go to 32 we also lock attacking your self so you are unable to self farm

eh, I'm kind of on the side of thinking there might be too many servers already, so the idea of making a 7th server to play on seems like they're risking spreading the game too thin.

My opinion is 16 is fine. Yes there are times that I would like to run more, but also times where I am hard pressed to run 16. Doubling the country limit would make people sorta want your clanmates to run all 32, and a ton of people will not have time. They will feel bad about only helping a bit, and probably take a break cause they don't view themselves as important.

And as budda said, the more countries that you can run, the more the casual gamer suffers relatively. And I want more players.

32 countries per person would be nice... an average of 9 million NW per country multiplied by 32... those are some nice numbers. ;)