How can we adjust the rules to make a better playing experience for ~250 players split between two or three games? Feel free to suggest anything. Some examples: removal of certain attack types, removing the 2 billion limit, changing GDI/humanitarians, and so on.

This thread has my only idea so far, which was pretty half-baked (or I was...) and wasn't well received...

http://forums.earthempires.com/...es-should-each-level-have

Difficult with just 250 players to do a ladder that'll work.. I've nothing else. Someone have an idea quick before the set ends.

I have a couple of suggestions.. here goes:

=Game structure=
What we could do is maintain this like upper tourney.. 1 top game (A), 2 lower games (B&C).

Cycle it so only the top 50 stay within game A, and the rest get split evenly between B and C.

For B & C, the top 25 get to game A.

This makes it 100 players in game A, and 75 players in B and C each (total of 250 players).

=Public Market=
Make all of these share the same market.. (Its already so small anyways.)

With so little people, there really is no point to splitting it up further.

=Game Play=
With less players (even last time, 2A alone had 229 players with the bottom 40-60 inactive usually I'd reckon?), I do think we need to keep land transfers alive.

1) Reinstate free GDI: This forces midfeeding = More land transfer

2) Enhanced ghost acres: Need to create land in some way.

3) Attacks limited to SS/PS: Most of the time, it is near-impossible to kill another player with 1 country under your control and with no 'external help' anyways; so if someone's looking to war, he should head over to alliance. So let's make this a pure grab-fest kinda server. (Land kill's are impossible with the new ghost acre rule, where you lose less, am I right?) Declare war and missiles should be removed too.

4) Make it a 1b limit. This would really force players to use the market to stock, and hence we would be able to artificially bump up volume in the market?

5) Enhanced explore rates. This is part of the idea to make land abundant.

6) Remove all Relations. There would be no FAs or pacts of any kind.

=Conclusion=
I hope that with the above, what we get is a true and more competitive grabbing environment. Without 'declare war' and with permanent free GDI, one can only midfeed; this removes all topfeeding worries and bottom feeding woes. Without special attacks, the only thing you can do if you get grabbed is retal. The only way to prevent retals is either 1) shrink to 50% of your opponent's size (unlikely), 2) outgrow the other country like crazy. With enhanced explore rates and enhanced ghost acres, we should get a lot of land in game.

With a lot of land, we had a lot more production and consumption, which is demand & supply of the public market. With the 1b limit put in place, most of the cash must be stored in the market and so we should get a good level of public market activity and volume on the small player base.

Ok, so what do you guys think?
The game structure can be re-organised as more players get into this.

Nice, a question and a few comments:

q: do you mean to reduce grab losses, but increase ghost returns (so you lose less land but the attacker gains more?)

Tourney has a high proportion of all-x strats already, which increased explore gains would add to. I think the increased ghost acres would be enough in itself.

Really like the idea of a 1b limit to force stocking...

We only really need 2 tourney games A and Z.

I wouldnt say change anything, next round everyones going casher or techer and prices will change again. Prices are messed up right now cause everyone thought of playing c/i.

i like the game structure
same w/ market
game play 1) is good
game play 2) more than current???
game play 3) works for me....
game play 4) i think that would really stifle the market actually, because even more assets would be tied up
game play 5) mmm i dunno... about that
game play 6) errr... no relations at all? it could work i suppose

game play 3) a c/i ran divus style selling turrets before grabbing and then going past everyone nw. no way to retal that with auto-gdi and no declarewar.

the ability to AB someone is a practical defense as well.


game play 4) i think the market needs more options.
a finance/banking link through the market. where you can either lend money or borrow it. players can either lend money(setting interest rates and setting up one or more loans like standing orders) or borrow cash. paying back interest every turn played like an expense or going to banking/finance tab and paying back the loan plus interest.

more goods. selling spies, missiles, land, buildings.

how about a repCSfarmer who sells farms midset? would the demand for farms make it a viable strat option? who knows, but it would still be cool to have more strategy choices.

add oil to PM for $64. that would make oil viable tourney

I like the selling money option (interest rates). (: Would it be too complicated though?

I like having non-land grabby attacks available. Made it possible for me to get back at the jerk who thought stealing my tech was a good idea, and that letting him steal 5 ops worth a day was a good compromise on my part.

Instead I've destroyed half his buildings and have continued.

I liked it when govt. types weren't visible from the scores sheet. Gives people less information about the makeup of the set, and forces people to spy.

This is a good idea, you know if you see a commy you know the strat, or a rep is a casher, a fas a farmer etc.

Yes I'd like that invisible govt be reinstated.

^would be fine

more spy ops. 15 is way to few with how often spies fail.

about that. 4-5 ops failing against a 3 spal w/16k spies total is pretty lame. 3 fails on 0 spies . heh, i ran out of ops losing 46 spies a fail. no spy ops and 44 turns to grab with =/

I agree with the attack issues. There's nothing more annoying than logging in and finding yourself AB'd to the ground because you grabbed someone. Maybe Cruise missles?, but that's all.


1) Grabbing conflicts
There should be a NW cap on grabbing so you can only grab those in direct competition. No ability to declare war. It sucks having the top 10 guys farm the hell out of you, and you can't break them. This is why people get AB'd (see above).

Maybe institute a max of 2 attacks on one country (any type) within 36 hrs? Grabbers can grab, retalers can retal, and saves jerks from suiciding

I like that as well, running an all x casher is sometimes really bad when a dict farmer can break your 500k turrets with almost 250k jets. It really sucks trying to protect your land.