1) What if you find one of these countries on your own? Open season for farming, hit once and move on, or avoid altogether?

2) What if you're tipped about it somehow off-site? Keep in mind, this case will look indistinguishable from case 1. Should this change the ruling on 1?

3) What if you're told about it via in-game message? Obviously it's not open season then, as we've seen three countries get deleted. So if you've been messaged, is the ruling to hit once and move on? Or is acting at all going to risk deletion? Would a rule on this simply take the collusion off-site, without stopping it at all?

4) If the ruling is "hit once and move on," then it's worth pointing out that the party being tipped first will still get a large amount of land. In today's case, that player got 1590 just from the first hit.

5) I think a "hit once, move on" rule may be the best way forward, but say a latecomer to the party notices someone's suddenly being farmed into DR. This person scopes it out, finds it's a 0 defense country, and hits twice, or three times, but still gains hardly anything compared to the first people on the scene. Does this player end up being the only one punished?

6) Even if this all seems murky and hard to enforce, keep in mind how flagrantly unfair these back-ally free land giveaways are. In today's case, #4 grabbed for 6022 land. Before that point, he had 31,545 land. In other words, the free land he got in one day through today's cronyism netted him 20% of the land he'd accumulated over the first 33 days. That's definitely something we don't want to allow. In some cases, it can have big implications on the final scores. Anyone remember tduong getting massive land from Requiem and ultimately finishing in second?

2012-04-10 16:42:33 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 239A (356A)
2012-04-10 16:42:16 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 354A (669A)
2012-04-10 16:41:11 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 377A (710A)
2012-04-09 16:42:53 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 284A (420A)
2012-04-09 16:41:36 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 291A (430A)
2012-04-09 16:40:23 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 422A (788A)
2012-04-09 16:11:32 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 437A (814A)
2012-04-08 17:52:18 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 333A (486A)
2012-04-08 17:51:12 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 341A (497A)
2012-04-07 15:45:12 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 621A (1111A)
2012-04-07 15:42:39 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 654A (1153A)
2012-04-07 15:41:42 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 796A (1604A)
2012-04-06 15:40:45 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 975A (1798A)
2012-04-06 15:39:42 PS Welcome back (#62) Cobra Empire (#95) 1034A (1889A)

Requiem had posted he was quitting on the forums, tduong had PM'd him asking if he was #95 and Requiem confirmed and let tduong have his land. When Serp attacked Cobra Empire, though, he got nuked!

7) What about the case where the two countries had previously exchanged attacks, and then come to an agreement to settle the score? Is this kind of war diplomacy considered 'coordination'?

These points should help you get started, galleri. I want your report on my desk by close of business tomorrow. :)

Better yet, Galleri why don't you start by posting the definition of "coordination".

It should be rather obvious if a country drops all his defense and then is immediately farmed minutes later.

I dunno, even if they don't tell anyone, someone will notice a big landfat country pretty quickly after scores update and jump in.

well,

when a country drops all his defense, then messages people ingame telling them he did/was doing so, then gets farmed by messengees then that's probably coordinating.

without the message it could always be dumb luck. and I don't believe dumb luck is punished, is it?

Screw all that, galleri made the right call. The real question is, who is #4?

I'm not saying she made the wrong call, I'm saying there's a heck of a lot of different ways this issue manifests itself.

If Karim had simply PM'd LATC on the forums, would he have gotten away with it clean?

We know who #4 is, he revealed himself a few weeks ago didn't he, in the other thread?

What pisses me off is, I had nothing to do with Karim until I messaged him today. And then he told me he dropped his D.. and then I see #4 farming away at him and catching up to me in land. Given the track record of no one else being deleted in the past for this, was I supposed to just let #4 keep farming him for free land?

I doubt that many people are grabbing at once to notice. Also most people won't hit more than once due to GDI.

He did? Who is it?

Oh LOL. qwertyh you dope!

This is still the worst on record:
http://www.eestats.com/primary/oldcountry/336/226
bug was allowing some countries to farm him per agreement while still making big grabs for more land for them to farm! He even admitted it on the forums and didn't get popped.

WOW. Galleri, care to weigh in on how that differed from this?

That was round 15. Round 16 is when they started to enforce the no co-op rules.

Fixed it for you.

"Assuming" makes you look bad ;)

blid already knows this, but I just added to the coordination rule. Unfortunatly, it sucks, and even worse is coordination is in a fine line itself. And trust me it makes it VERY difficult for me to look at the news and debate if something is coordinated or not.

All you can be expected to do is look at what's reported. Anyone who thinks you should be scanning news all day looking for things to investigate at random are crazy. Bottom line, if something you see is foul...report it.

LATC. If it looks too good to be true (i.e free land), then it probably is too good to be true.

If you had not touched Karim at all, and qwertyh had continued to farm him, he would have been deleted with Karim for coordination, that's all.

I have been offered free land before, Aznize offered after he topfed me 2 sets ago. I didn't take up the offer.