This is response to this thread: https://www.earthempires.com/...server-48393?t=1612825792 and similar suggestions. I need to start by saying that we cannot commit to implementing it at this time, but the level of interest means that it's something that we're looking at. Identifying a good "change set" that's both fun for players and simple enough to code is the biggest obstacle right now stopping us from doing this. The point of this thread is to hear your ideas and suggestions for that. A few things to keep in mind:

1) Rounds for the new server would likely run for 2-3 weeks and a new round would begin every month or every other month, but this is subject to change.

2) It is extremely unlikely that this would be a clan server. Creating a new clan server will import some of the problems and grudges that we see on other clan servers. Clan hosting sites also wouldn't support the server without some work on their end, and it's unclear if they would do that in a timely fashion.

3) There will always be players who try hard to win or players who play for the sole purpose of ruining the fun of others, even if the new server is marketed as a fun place to play and not to take seriously.

4) Adding bots or not is a major decision. Adding bots means less pressure for players with weaker countries but could add another programming obstacle if the bot code would need to be updated to be aware of the custom "change set".

5) You can suggest whatever you want and it's not your job to think through the programming complexity. However, I suggest keeping your ideas simple, targeted, and easy to understand for players.

I'll post an example suggestion:

The server shouldn't have bots and should have express style GDI. Each landgrab done by a player, successful or not, should increase the percentage chance of negative events occurring in the country. The idea is that players would need to think carefully about how many landgrabs they attempt and when in the set they do their landgrabs. If they do too many landgrabs they will end up getting too many negative events per turn (such as earthquakes) and won't be able to compete.

In order to make the server action come faster I suggest that for a great deal of these modes we could start with some pretty high amount of turns and roughly the same amount of turns protection. This can vary between the modes or between the sets kinda freely, say between 100-1000 turns, starting and protection length.
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[Sug Mode1] Keep NW on a separate scores sheet and for calculation purposes but change the scores sheet to a point based ranking* where you get points for doing war stuff to other countries. Winner is the one with most points.

*LaF and SOL are alliances I know with comprehensive war point systems that can either be copy pasted or used as inspiration.
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[Sug Mode2] Last country standing. Lowest NW/point country is destroyed each X hours after a certain time(doesn't have to be early). You hit each others to either lower their NW/points or increase your resources/points. Winner is the last man/woman standing. I think this works either on a NW basis or on a point system, but I could be wrong.
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[Sug Mode3] Fast 1vs1 tournament. Each player is set up in a game of 2** countries that share a market with all the other games. Sets last 1-2 days, then new reset based on who won. Can work through Winner/loser brackets from the start or just random matches for a while and then a knockout stage based on the rankings of the random matches. Between the rounds you get C+X turns to prepare your country for the next match, where C is a constant given to all and X is the number of turns you spent attacking your last enemy with spy ops, missiles and attakcs.

**for odd number of players you can make one game have 3 players and either treat the lower two as losers or the top two as winners in the random part of the "season".

Please don't add more random events!

I would prefer no bots or non-hittable bots if they are needed for market purposes. Without bots you are forced to hit others or go all explore. All explore is a bit boring to me so I do like the idea of encouraging hitting each other via gerdler's point ranking idea =)

I would say no to bots.

As far as the core concept if the Fiesta Server is concerned, I pictured it as a server where each reset, random parameters are tweaked and applied to all countries. These parameter changes would be displayed on the country creation screen.
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Example:

"After Years if struggle and famine blablabla..."

Enter your country name:

During this reset, for all countries:

Construction speeds are increased by 20%
+15% Per Capita Income
3% Market Commissions
More frequent droughts
No Research Alliances
+10% Oil Production
200 Turn Protection Period
GDI costs $6 per acre
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Something like that

Maybe just make bots equal to amount of players or for every 2 players 1 bot? There should be a few just to make growing and stuff easier. But there also shouldn't be so many that player on player action is discouraged. If there are no bots, this could just end up being like tournament where if you get off to a bad start or miss a day, you become someones farm. It's hard to overcome getting farmed everyday, you get discouraged and quit or building just to suicide on whoever is farming you.

This is actuallyba very good argument FOR bots. I, too, have stopped playing Primary and Tournament for these very reasons.

Netters won't hit real people if bots are available to farm. Why risk any sort of retal by hitting a person? You could make bots retal, but I'd rather see people hitting people instead of bots hitting people.

[Sug mode 4] Get assigned a random government, govt changes cost twice as much and are unavailable for the first 1k turns. Next set this mode is played all starting govts that underperformed get a fixed starting bonus, so they are not as underwhelming again.

Could be like Democracies start with 80cs and 140 acres, thus setting them up for a great early techer, switching into whatever.

Countries start with $100,000,000 and 1000 turns.

^^Yeah the obvious way to speed up gameplay is to start countries with turns. In some way that should apply for all modes as standard. Maybe 100(900) turns with a max of 200(1000) for instance with a turn every 10 min, 10 day resets?