Hi All,

TLDR: Clearly the majority opinion, from both people in favour and against the feature in general, is to disable Clan GDI, at least until it can be tested and bug-fixed a bit more. I will thus do that, for next reset.


Thanks for feedback on the previous post, especially people like Tertius and Auk for engaging on the complexities. I'd also like to thank the people who answered #4 and gave some suggestions, like "make a classic 1A server", and "make the bots retal".


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The problem, as many have pointed out, is the general asymmetry of warfare / netting in the game. Clan GDI was the most obvious, and frankly simplest - idea I had, to formalize the warring system, and at least provide a way out of war.

Clearly, however, there have been some edge cases and loopholes; and given this is a game, everybody minimax'd to those...



So, I'll disable Clan GDI on alliance until I can more easily debug (by getting the IRC server going - hopefully over xmas!!) and getting y'all to test it a wee bit more on alphaffa. However, part of the "fix it" involves the edge cases:

Step 0: Turn off Clan GDI on Alliance for next set.
Step 1: Fix IRC server.
Step 2: Deploy series of changes to Clan GDI on Alphaffa, and have you guys test it.
Step 3: Put it back on Alliance.



So the general purposes of Clan GDI are:

0) Make it so "being at war" is formalized.
1) Prevent solo/small griefers from disrupting other alliances, by making it so there is a relative size required to "be at war"
2) Make it so there is a way to make "wars end", so you don't have a war at week 1, and have the rest of a two-month reset to endlessly die or give up...
2a) ... so that you can surrender, in some way that lets you continue playing the game in some more-meaningful way than described above;
2b) ... or so that you can win, in some way that feels like winning.
3) Nerf the FS, because it is overwhelmingly powerful, and arguably reduces the long-term enjoyment of the war.


Thus my solution was Clan GDI as described:

a) Have to be >=5 members to declare war on clans >= 5 members.
b) You can surrender by giving up money/goods (at any time)
c) You can send a peace offer (that doesn't require giving up money/goods) but that must be accepted (at any time)
d) The "war" does not go "active" until after a certain period of time (24h I believe currently)




Then, the most obvious way the system can be gamed:

i) Clans break into groups < 5 members upon being declared or tag-hop to a new tag within every 24 hours of being declared upon

... and one outcome that I consider to be semi-desirable, as a compromise between viewpoints:

ii) Surrendering before war begins


To solve i), my thought is to make it so countries can't de-tag during the "war is declared, but inactive" period. Seems simple enough? Maybe too simple?

Also, make it so that clans < 5 members can declare on clans < 5 members; seems like it would be a game of chase then, but no problem.



As for ii); I would like people's opinion on this. Part of my thought is that surrendering and giving up a good chunk of money & goods, while not having absorbed an FS, is a "Fair" out for clans that don't want to war.

What do you think?


Am I missing anything else?


Thanks,

qz

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as a PS: I really like the "make bots retal" bit, but it's harder than you would think. It's still my plan, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

#1 - Thank you for listening.

Yes, small clans need to be able to war. Sure a 3v3 is not going to get kills and the excitement of a large war but maybe there is a principal involved or point to be made.

Also, need a way for small clans to join together or join in with a larger clan to participate in a war.

You need to increase the surrender money and goods significantly higher than what was previously suggested. The previous 50% of FA is just too small, Pennies on the dollar. Warring clans could spend a long times wargaining just to earn basically “nothing much”. I don’t want to assume which degen made the suggestion to “50% of max fa” but we call guess it was a fratboi99.

It should be:

10x their max FA. This will force the surrendering clan to be more proactive with diplomacy to avoid getting declared war on the first place.

qzjul,

Thank you for listening, and excellent job and effort in making the changes both fair and exciting.

Max FA is 10% of their stuff; 10x max FA, is "all their stuff".

I’m open for a middle ground since the original suggested was on the polar opposite “bare minimum”. 5x works too.

Laf knew this set had a warring surrender option but still chose to completely avoid diplomacy to ensure they didn’t get declared on. Instead they chose to openly slander/libel with no repercussions. It’s evident that “50% of fa” is not enough skin in the game. We need to increase the stakes significantly higher.

Also clans that are defensively pacted to each other, gets to enter into war together as 1 entity. This prevents a larger clan to accept war from 1 clan, and then surrendering to the other (especially if they are 2 small clans enforcing a defensive pact with each other to declare war on a mutual enemy). We don’t want a larger clan cherry picking which small clan to war.

In summary, clans that have fully defensive pacts enter wars together. We can’t eliminate interpersonal clan relationships for 1v1 showdowns.

Qz, we appreciate you hearing the community out.

I agree with Coalie on his suggestions to the tweaks.

Thank you QZ!

I agree as well with suggestions above on ii.

If you need some help with getting IRC up, then feel free to msg me.

I'm not currently playing, nor very active on scourge.se.. but PM me here and I'll probably see it within a day or two..

It would have been helpful to send an ingame message alert about the vote if you wanted feedback.
"The community" consists of more than the persons that live on AT.

The 50% of fa doesn't work. That was tested and known. What was unknown was when the war would actually start. Since y'all didn't kill that last remaining right at 24h you didn't know it would be 24h either.

This is the alliance server. Didn't your alliance members notify you? Several of them live here.

You don't know what alliance I am in, and no, they don't live on AT.
Your enthusiasm for making this place toxic is why I no longer visit here.
Announcements, yes. AT, no thanks.
Not since the player base shrunk to what is now the majority around here.
I've no desire to visit a forum with a handful of grown-ass men acting like twelve year old playground-bully conspiracy theorists.

Qz,
You were misleading about what the majority opinion is, which is to keep clan GDI in place. And functional so that people can net free of harassment. Notice here in this thread the great majority of people voting to keep it in place.

https://m.earthempires.com/...e-vote-52258?t=1702409343

QZ,

Notice in this thread was “created by you”, the great majority of people voting to remove clangdi.

https://earthempires.com/...-input-52239?t=1702398166

The problem is/was it wasn't really functional, in fact its super broken. It did one thing, which qz has stated isn't something he wants to see in clangdi.




I think efforts are now best spent working the problem on a test server over having something broken in an actual game server, which seems like sound game development practice. Let's be thankful qz has put in as much time as he has already

I have a question QZ, how many times can an alliance declare war on an alliance per reset? Also, what if an alliance who already declared war on an alliance switch to a different alliance and declare war on the same alliance even after a surrender? Is that something that's going to be tested or is that explainable now?

ClanGDI strikes me as an overly complex attempt to force two opposed camps to exist on the same server. So why not untangle this mess and come up with a solution that satisfies both camps?

Create a server for those alliances solely interested in netting while keeping Alliance for those that want to war. I'd be interested in seeing which server flourishes, for the communities sake, I genuinely hope both.

This satisfies everyone. You'd be separating factions that have driven the server to its current toxic levels. Netters who have quit out of frustration will return. Warmongers can war to their hearts content. I know the argument in the past has been that the Primary server is where you go if you want to net, but that is a solo server, and for many, the enjoyment comes in netting with friends under the same banner.

Seems like a way simpler solution then having to build a complex ClanGDI mechanism. Just my 2 cents.

I agree with table4two.


I think what we will see happen is that the netting server flourishes. Mayyyybe some netters who never get attacked continue on the war server as well, cause it's just an extra server they get to play.

And then the 'warring' alliances dwindle down in activity and don't actually end up doing much on the warring server, because they aren't interested in warring, they are interested in harassing.

If they were interested in warring, they could war with clanGDI, in a mutually agreed upon war amongst themselves. They don't. That's all the evidence you need to know they aren't actually interested in warring.

In what world do two parties get to agree when to war?

Both of these were explained in the changeset post.

Answers:
- only once
- If 20% or more of the same countries have been at war with a tag, war cannot be declared again. War resolution does not appear to be limited to just surrender for this restriction so peace or victory should also apply. I do think it's worth clarifying if it's a two-way street - IE: Clan A declares on Clan B and Clan A ends up surrendering or Clan B ends up declaring victory. Clan B shouldn't be able to declare on Clan A later in my opinion.

I have not yet fully tested either of the above but I'm guessing they're probably broken with many of the other functions, but I should have an answer for my B&S post soon.

Let’s keep this thread related to the topic please. There is more than enough threads out there to chat about other topics. Outside of this one

This has been brought up before, but should we pivot back to implementing pacts into the game? So an unbreakable pact is truly unbreakable, etc. **This post isn't to get into all the implementation details to prevent loopholes...

From a user's perspective, from a development, testing, and successful deployment, would this be a more straightforward change that gets most of what some people want while maintaining a certain level of uncertainty that others cherish from Earth: 2025?

My fear with ClanGDI is that it is a complex solution for what should be a pretty simple outcome. It will require much more testing and work from a developer perspective to successfully pull it off, and I wonder if we should expect Qz to spend that much time on it.

This makes more sense, like in relations page that once you ally up there's a waiting period to drop the ally, implement that to clans page with no options to drop the pact..... wouldn't this be easier and less buggy as Requiem hinted?

I like the idea of pacts, it's just slightly complicated

This is the best and easiest to execute idea.

1. Wild West/King of the Hill server with action and rivalries.

2. Netters server for the number crunchers that enjoy that and having their peace.

wild west/king of the hill and Netters servers sound like a very easy option to create the best of both worlds