We were also 11-12 ppl this set. Half of which got suicided on, so i will take DKs.75m avg nw and consider that a win. oh and its easy to avg 30k land with only a dozen countries :

Yeah, I know you guys got hit a lot with suiciders :/ I didn't mean it to sound like you guys are terrible, just that having more land doesn't mean you win.

So you are tellin me that if 10ppl have 30k land each, and the tag average is 30k, that one of hem ten guys can beat that 100k stocker?

If he's a 30k techer that got the land quickly, yes.

But that's not my point.

He only stocked on 80k, he simply cut his destock time down by 1/5th and allowed himself to gain 20% more reselling if he did infact resell.

It is still a lot of land, but at least give accurate numbers

SS, please define "being good at the game".

If you're talking about bottomfeeding, there are no longer hundreds of neutrals like in 2025 where every good netter could make a few safe hits and get some good land.

If you're talking about taking some well-calculated hits so you can come out ahead a little after you get retaled, that simply doesn't happen anymore...there are no more "will retal" designations for alliances, it's all 150-200% L:L pacts, basically, "if you mess with us you get raped, no way you're coming out ahead"

If you're talking about topfeeding, read the above and think of it being much worse since that'd be a nice big FA fluff sandwich for all involved to digest.

If you're talking about farming a smaller alliance and getting out of retal range, or farming all of them to keep them beaten down, that's just bullying (read: being a douche)...haven't you seen all those Today shows about bullying?

If you're able to provide a sensible solution to be able to gain more than 40k acres from all exploring til you die of boredom, I'll be the first to hop on board. Until then, land-trading is fun and promotes sportsmanship among competitors instead of rampant hatred due to farming. If anyone else is opposed to land-trading too, I would in all honestly love to hear some ideas I can start to integrate into my country's growth.

Everyone in LaF will let me farm them without retaliating, thats even better than land-trading.

I see Vincey won. Gratz man. I'll not to AWOL this set. lol.
Ahh this FAid issue has been talk of the town every end of the set. tldr

Grats tella! ;)

No I want a game where there are actual options for the less active people to do to enjoy themselves. I never said anything about what strat I think should be best or how much time should be involved in winning.

I dont understand, can some netters explain this for me?

1st of all most of you farm untags and claim its an alliance game and that if you dont like it join an alliance.
2nd when said untags suicide your alliance mates, its disgusting, and how dare they do something so despicable?
3rd you then complain if an alliance FA's a player to the number 1 spot, thats also despicable, but isnt it an alliance game, so working together as alliance should be absolutely fine???

Seriously, the only people who can be pissed off at someone else for others being FA'd into the top spot is people who played all explore, didnt have any allies at all and had no interaction with anyone else apart from being in an alliance.

Otherwise stop being pansy fluffing netters and congratulate the guy who won you whiney little fluffes...

Having an appreciation of all aspects of the game and using them in conjunction to create the best individual country possible without the aid of others.


Bottomfeeding is viable should the admins actually choose to make it viable rather than continuing to nerf if in an attempt to promote land trading.


That depends entirely on the skill of the player, I would almost guarantee the top tier players can still bounce half or more of the alliances on this server with relative ease, and the very best players can probably bounce every alliance on the server with enough effort put into their countries.


To be topfeeding you're already behind, if you're behind you suck, topfeeding has never been a viable netgaining strategy for aiming at top ranks.


Who said anything about smaller alliances, I couldnt care less what size alliance someone is in, fact is if a good player decides he's not being retalled, they're not getting retalled unless their is a player of equal calibre in the alliance they grabbed, fact is there is only a handful of really good players still playing so chances are, they just aren't getting retaled.



Sportsmanship is simply playing on a level playing field... what you want is a competitive server, not one where everyone mutually agrees to suck. Bigger numbers do not equal more fun. What land trading has done is remove any competitive game play from netgaining and just created a second explore button. And while people go on and on about how there are more variables than exploring, the only reason there are more variables is because you decide to create a variable by not understanding what you're doing. Anyone that actually understands land grabbing formulas, building loss forumulas, etc has the easiest task in the world in finishing t10 (or realistically rank 1), and the fact is anyone that doesn't land trade right now has an enormous task in trying to finish t10, and rank 1 is pretty much impossible were certain players to land trade.

You answered this one yourself but probably didn't realize it so I'll help clarify. Farming an untagged country can help alliances grow. Once an untagged country joins an alliance they become part of that community and put down roots. This can help solidify and/or grow the player base. Recruited untagged countries may also learn how to be better players while a part of an alliance. The ethics are a little hazy as the initial exchanges play like racketeering but in an ideal situation both parties are likely to benefit.



Suiciding contributes nothing to the community. The target suffers a set back it can sometimes cost the target's alliance resources to resolve the suicide action, usually in the form of turns spent to kill the suicider or turns spent repairing the damage.

The suicider is likely to die or be farmed. Suiciding will not help improve the suicidng country's circumstances. Suiciding doesn't contribute anything to anyone. Everyone loses.



We have alliance rankings and individual country rankings. The benefits from being in an alliance can affect individual performance but the benefits are often mutual. Alliance wide retals and allies don't simply benefit one country, they benefit a number of countries allowing numerous people to compete at a higher level. FAing someone into a number one position is a little more single sided as the FAing countries are helping the FAd country achieve at their own detriment. The FAd may win #1 but the people that country displaced feel like they lost and the countries doing the FAing certainly did.

It's still a bit of a gray area but I'd rather be coached and supported to a win than have one gift wrapped and dropped in my lap.

For you to enjoy yourself do you need to attain a high rank? because there is nothing stopping anyone from land grabbing alliances without the hits being mutually beneficial.

Now if you were to get retalled and lose out on an exchange of hits, does that make the game less enjoyable?

What you're really asking for is an easy way to finish well out of some ridiculous sense of entitlement because you think you're better than other players and you want that to be verified in the scores list without actually having to play better than others.

Anytime someone wins in a competition there will be someone who tries to invalidate that win. Their points may or may not be valid but the excuses will always be there and the results generally stay.

If vincey and TPA are proud of their #1 country then be proud. If others want to follow in their steps then go for it. If you want to achieve a #1 country without people questioning it's legitimacy then don't give people an excuse. The opinions of this community aren't exactly a secret.

To all haters
http://i.imgur.com/ozyRO59.jpg

Literally half the servers are dedicated to this. This is the Alliance server. Meaning you have allies, meaning implicitly that they help you either directly or indirectly.



I honestly just wanted to thank you for using the correct phrase here. People saying 'I could care less' is probably my biggest pet peeve, and seems to be the way a majority of people now use this.



There is already a level playing field! The rules are the same for everybody. It's not as if the admins give extra turns or bonus effects to chosen players. That would indeed be an uneven playing field.

Your assertion that it's "the easiest thing in the world" to get a top 10, or even "realistically" the #1 spot is ridiculous. Ignoring the hyperbole, there are by my count at least 50 countries that land traded this past set. Obviously not all 50 can get into the top 10. So virtually by definition, only the best can get in. This means at least several sets of getting your ass kicked and sucking at life, because it's actually not that easy.

Yes, the land grabbing formulas are involved, but this is true for hostile grabbing as well. You seem to imply that this is the only thing involved, other factors still must be taken into account. There are land traders who will purposefully manipulate the situation according to the rules to fluff you over, and there are people who will grab you and try to outrun the retal by buying up a bunch of defense or otherwise manipulating their NW in order to try and prevent you from getting even returns. People can lie to you and fluff you over if you don't or can't spy op them. So you still need figure out who you can trade with, and who you should not trade with, just as you must with hostile landgrabbing where you need to make an assessment on whether it's a good idea to be hitting that country or not, and what to do after the hit.

What Zorp said

i'm pretty sure i have landtraded with laf 2 sets ago if somebody here is saying they don't landtrade

I think you all misunderstand me? Or maybe don't care... I'm not 100% against trading itself... I am against blatant abuse of it. And by my definition getting 20k acres in 9 trades in the span of 5 minutes is abuse and should be stopped.

I think that's pretty clear about being totally against land-trading...begging qz to get rid of ghost acres entirely? That would essentially end it.

That's because if people in this game arn't willing to enforce any standards it should just be taken out.

If this toxic community actually had any values it might be different.

Do you not agree that kind of exploitation of landtrading is bad for the game?

Furthermore the same people who say "we are against internal trading" yet stand by and watch that crap go on are, insane.

You cannot argue that what was done in this example and internal trading are any different. If you do: you're wrong.

So all you people who say "I dont support internal trading" are hypocrites if you stand by and let this kind of trading go on.

Why don't we all just split up into two tags and trade... would that not make it "internal"

Give me a break.

A QUESTION FOR THE PRO GHOST ACRE CAMP HERE:

WOULD YOU BE IN FAVOR OF A SUPER-EXPLORE FUNCTION WHICH ALLOWED YOU TO INCREASE YOUR LAND BY 6% IN TWO TURNS, AT A COST OF 13% OF YOUR BUILDINGS FALLING DOWN?

WE COULD CALL THEM GHOST EARTHQUAKES, AND THEY COULD BE BOUGHT WITH BONUS POINTS! GHOST EARTHQUAKES SHAKE UP THE LAND, RESULTING IN SOME DESTRUCTION OF BUILDINGS! BUT LAVA SPEWS FROM THE FAULT, CREATING NEW LANDS FOR YOU TO CONQUER!! OR EXPLODE!

AS LONG AS WE'RE GOING TO HAVE COMPLETELY RISK FREE WAYS TO GAIN LARGE AMOUNTS OF LAND, WHY NOT GET RID OF ATTACKING ENTIRELY?

OOH! I JUST HAD ANOTHER IDEA! NEW GOVERNMENT TYPE: CALIFORNIAN! MINIMUM TAX RATE 70%, -30% PCI, +80% POPULATION, -90% CONSTRUCTION SPEED, -20% FOOD PRODUCTION, -80% INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION, -40% MILITARY STRENGTH, +500% GHOST EARTHQUAKE EFFECTIVENESS!

HA!

SAM
GAME DEVELOPER,
THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER]!

Ok, great! The ability to trade hits with another consenting country is an aspect of the game...need we go further? Ok, fine...




Make it viable...i.e., make bots, artificially create something that can be taken advantage of? That's actually the exact same as ghost acres, but easier since you don't have to worry about getting retaled. So....what's this huge difference between the 2 that irks you so? If there were enough bots, everyone would be able to have all the land they want, right? Or is it so a few people can farm them all as fast as possible, thus denying anyone without the "skill" of having a program/code telling them when a target comes out of DR?



Again, this promotes bullying, not the sportsmanship you talk of...it promotes hostility, not respect of "top-tier" netters. Basically you're saying "get big and stay big so noone else can touch you, regardless of how it makes you and your alliance look to others" if I'm reading that right. Should someone be able to retal you, pretty much every pact is L:L or more, so it's an exercise in futility to LG anyone unless you have "skill" in using all your money to buy up tons of defense...how is that considered skill when it's a no-brainer that any noob can do?



"decides he's not being retalled"...dat arrogance. Great sportsmanship there.



Everyone has the ability to land-trade = level playing field. Zorp nailed it earlier about sucking...not every land-trader can get only one #1 spot, and considering that the range of NW for people who have land-traded go from 100M - 300M, I don't think everyone can suck equally and end up with that much of a difference.



Meaning that skill is necessary as there are a number of people who understand these formulas..



Simple, then...come join us. Noone's telling you what to do with your country, so feel free not to, but if you want to compete, then you'll have to conform first if you feel it's pretty much impossible.

I will say this, though...with all your talk about level playing fields, your idea of "sportsmanship", and using *all* aspects of the game to get the best country you can, I don't know how well it would go over to complain about one aspect of it that potentially benefits all while promoting another that only benefits those who aren't interested in a fair game (out-gaining retals and bottomfeeding the very few targets in the game).

Anyone can talk to anyone in IRC about doing this...hell, it could be from MD, PDM, Omega, LaF...it's a simple arrangement set at a certain point in the destock. Does that automatically make it "internal"? Sure, vincey and Osso are friends, who wouldn't rather do the trades with a friend so their friend benefits rather than some random dude? I can understand your point, but I wouldn't push it to the point of hypocrisy if *any*one can arrange it with *any*one.

DJ, YOU JUST MADE THE ARGUMENT AGAINST GHOST ACRES MORE CONCISELY THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THIS THREAD.



THANKS!

It is hypocrisy when that same person says "I dont support internal trading". What you just described is of no difference.

Unless you are pro-internal trading what you say contradicts your opinion.

Grabbing pacts are much better for the game than straight up organized land trading. A grabbing pact is much more casual and not organized and has much more risk/variety than trading does. (Just in case you dont know what i mean by grabbing pact = two alliances pacted with each other who are open to LGing and retaling. Usually a 1:1 retal rate. You do not contact anyone personally to make attacks but rather just find someone to grab and grab them. It is less organized.)

There is a reason mehul got rid of ghost acres in Earth 2025 because he understood how it undermines the integrity of the game.

If there are such things that exist anymore like grabbing pacts, I completely agree that they are better for the game...however, I haven't seen one of those for a looong time, everyone wants L:L or more. Let me know which clan you're in, and I'll look for a grabbing pact from them for this upcoming set. I'd be happy to get back to the days of "will retal" status instead of being pacted up the ass.

Oh, and Sam..you'll have to expand on what you said, cause you lost me somewhere...

Glad to see you get my point of view, doesnt mean i am right but it is my opion. Just one man's opinion on the matter.

It's pretty easy to get, it's basically what land-trading already is. I was grabbed at least 7-8 times out of the blue, and with no message about what their break or allies were, I only knew that I was on their "open list" and they were on mine. The difference was that those who chose to trade were placed on the list, it wasn't a whole alliance on another's list and vice versa.

Only some people (myself included) talk to their targets about arranging hits just to speed things up and keep communication with someone that you know will work with you and ensure it benefits both. Sure it's going to happen, but sometimes you get frustrated when you only gained a few hundred compared to your partner's 1k..

I killed 26 countries this set.

I ran tinyurlDOTcomSLASH4x4xwo2 (#281), 2nd country this reset (#632), and 3rd country this reset (#909).

I hear someone else may have beat me with 30 kills, tho. It got kinda interesting towards the end.

DJ. IF YOU WANT TO COMPETE, YOU'LL HAVE TO DO THIS AS WELL. FOR SOMEONE WHO THINKS THAT THE ABILITY TO LAND TRADE CHEAPENS THE GAME, THAT STATEMENT RIGHT THERE IS THE BEST ARGUMENT AGAINST GHOST ACRES.

OSSO AND VINCE MAY HAVE ONLY GAINED A 5% ADVANTAGE, BUT AT THE TOP LEVELS OF PLAY, THAT'S AN ADVANTAGE YOU CANNOT PASS UP IF YOU HOPE TO COMPETE.

AND I AGAIN WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR: I DON'T BLAME THE PLAYERS WHO DO THIS. THEY ARE MERELY PLAYING WITHIN THE RULES OF THE GAME TO GET THEMSELVES THE MOST ADVANTAGE POSSIBLE. THAT'S SMART PLAY. I JUST THINK IT GOES COUNTER TO THIS GAME'S VERY ESSENCE FOR PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO GAIN LARGE AMOUNTS OF LAND COMPLETELY RISK FREE.

Sam, I think being able to do something well is what everyone strove to do throughout the years. There've been new developments people started to work at, and still newer...this is just one of the new-ish things that people have gotten used to doing. Unfortunately for a select few that used to always excel at the new, better ways to netgain, trading drastically evens out the playing field. Rather than clinging to something that is unsure to change, everyone can adapt to utilizing ghost acres the best way possible. Is this an argument against ghosts?

Another unintended conquence to this is that landtrading is too powerful. In my opinion the effectiveness of the strat needs to be nerfed so that the effictiveness of the different strats are as follows (in order of weakest to strongest):

All x-->land trading-->WR/Trading Pacts

Right now I feel like the game is heavly tilted in the direction of land trading. If someone wants to truly compete for a top spot I feel like you HAVE to trade or you will not make it. That is a very troubleing statment for me to make.

I can see how it's troubling, as if you're not in, it's substantially harder..how would you differentiate trading pacts from land-trading? If every alliance (and it's most) had people that wanted to trade, it would basically form an open list with everyone in every alliance, unlike the current trading that individual countries opt in to. This doesn't force people to trade who don't want to, whereas an alliance-wide trading pact would open everyone up to be hit.

There could be a rule set in place where you can't hit a country more than once or twice in a set, and if you do you get retaled twice or something...that's certainly different from the current land-trading standards, but what happens when one alliance doesn't follow that and doesn't accept being retaled? Things have happened in the past with numerous alliances and pact violations, so it's kind of hard to set a rule on some things..

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/.../f/f4/Picard-facepalm.jpg

i'm done here

just disappointed how the game has degenerated since 2012 when i first joined up.
generating 20k acres in ghosts in 5 min is just lol.

i'm counting down the number of resets before this game goes the way of TEQ. newsflash qz, games aren't fun when you make it this skilless.

How is the game remedied then, Candy? Criticism absent advice isn't very helpful, and I'm sure he'd be interested in keeping people interested in EE..

Ninong if you think im playing both sides of the fence here, I kind of am. I understand why people want to do it but as with everything in life there must be boundaries. I've choosen mine. You can choose yours.

1. I come in and read this thread.
2. I shake my head, and tell myself "I'm glad I'm not playing on this server anymore." (I stopped playing 3 resets ago.)


P.S. I still hold the record for the highest non-landtrading NW finish on Alliance, at 365.9m NW, with no FA received, on 22k acres, and not by farming alliances at war with us.

I likely still won't play on Alliance anymore unless LaF allows internal trading. I see no difference between trading externally and internally; and the current game is setup such that the top10 is going to be dominated by landtraders. Solo servers are more interesting by far, with much more at risk than being tag-protected here.

I'm sure you'll be missed.

1. nerf landtrading even more. make it so that your ghost acre returns diminish as you get bigger. it should get prohibitively expensive to grow beyond a reasonable number of acres. otherwise you'll see even more ridiculous acreages and nw finishes that are purely transaction based. the current environment means there is only one way to play and that is landtrading. all explore is more or less obsolete. bottomfeeding is doable but takes way more work than landtrading. picture this, in order to make all-explore competitive, you'd have to actually INCREASE your explore rate as you grow larger to stay competitive with landtrading or bottomfeeding. Otherwise, people will just explore til a reasonable base and start landtrading. Bottomfeedign is dead pretty much with these half-life changes. It's still possible to time grabs and game the system, it's just harder. Bottom line is landtrading trumps all that.

2. Change the restart rules to punish country death more. In today's war environment there are cases where it's better to die than to remain crippled for example based solely on the restart rules. Wars aren't really that fun when they last the whole reset. You know the outcome pretty much after week 1 which is really when the war is fun anyway. Beyond a week, wars frought with restarts are just pretty dumb. I like the idea of 15 turns before exiting protection though.

3. As a general idea, you want the people who put in the most work into their countries to do the best. Landtrading is skilless and mindnumbingly uninteresting. All you need are two willing countries, current ops, and easily calculated breaks. In today's game, people will literally ingame each other their breaks to make the landtrades easier. It makes no sense when land exchanges are automatic like that. Might as well build a magic market for land.

4. Contrary to what everyone thinks, landtrading isn't a win-win game. Just because both players gain in land doesn't mean they're both winners. The one who gets ahead more and gains more land is the winner and the one who comes up short is the loser. In an extreme example where there are only two players on the server, the one who gains more land all things equal will finish first and the one who gains less finishes second. The only thing landtrading accomplishes is inflate the overall finishes in the game while degrading the skills required to play. The average person will get a nice absolute finish but with all of these inflated networths it won't necessarily mean he finishes well relative to others. This reset's t100 cutoff is a good indicator. Landtrading also enables crappy netgainers who find the right players to finish at the top. You can argue that this process of finding trading partners is a skill but let's be real, this is conceptually the same as bottomfeeding. The players who spend more time negotiating trades and being online while their trading partners are online will be the ones finishing at the top. Anyone can do this.

But aside from all four of these points, my main problem with the game is it's become easy to the point of boring. It's not fun and it's not challenging, and you have complete scrubs doing well which I have a problem with. There's no meritocracy in this game where the smartest and hardest working finish at the top.

Not by you. Although I could retire like you did and still come back to post. I bet you even still play a country, even if untagged. Your retirement is a sham, just like you :)

FWIW, if you take a close look, most of the hard core bottom feeding is also coordinated. Many of the untagged bottom feeding targets are actually deliberately run landfarms doing batch explores at coordinated times while in IRC for their clan mates.

All of these problems are unavoidable in a game with under 1K players, its just too small of a pond for evolution to produce anything but aberrations.

To your 1st point, candy, wouldn't lowering ghosts and making it more expensive also hurt those who are bottomfeeding or engaged in grabbing pacts with other alliances? It's a double-edged sword.

To your 4th point, the smaller can still catch up based on the formulas...he will always have a larger land pool to grab from, and could potentially even things out given enough trades. Also, he would be able to get to 95% NW to optimize the grab, and the bigger country would have to shrink, perhaps only by a small amount, to achieve the same optimization, which would always give the smaller country the advantage.

I can honestly say that I don't have the most knowledge of what to do with every acre, when to stop trading, what to do with this or that, and until I do, I won't be able to compete with the top 10ers, just as actual crappy netgainers won't be able to compete with people who have some knowledge of the game.

You can argue of any game that at some point, its ingenuity fades and things that were once new are now boring and 2nd nature, giving no challenge to anyone playing, so there will be a number of disillusioned people that will leave (unfortunately).

Can I say that most 'experienced players' here are more than 30 years of age?

Why argue so much at the end result?

Vincey won. Fact.

And since the game has changed, embrace it.. if the rules encourages landtrading, do it..

Good players are those who can adapt and make the best out of the changes, not how well u hold onto the old strats or principles..

So what's the point arguing? What osso and Vincey did may revolutionize the way to trade.. and it's show when they did it, they won the game.

Nuff said..

Congrats vincey!

Jeez, MH....why do you simplify it so easily? Almost takes the discussion out of it :P