Lol, ya he deserves it, RAWR!

What's the bluff? If someone sold 100,000 tech for $8k and didn't get a PM and tellarion says he PM'd the cheaters, they know he's lying, not much of a bluff. :P Or is the bluff his claim that he will delete them next time? I think the only reason they didn't get deleted this time is it's too much work to delete a country from a completed round. If they do it again Telly will be mad enough to get qz to do it. Hehe. Should really be deleted for last set too though, there's no reason to let a cheated score stand.

And Rats, I get different allies every set. This set it was Orjuwan and Sweden. Its the landfarm and give all your money away to CX allies that are the problem.

True enough Alin, but I'll call the bluff if it is one

'We know who they are'

'We do aomething about it'

Means..

Keep playing please, see we did 'something'


NAMES, or not legit

RaTS, we suggested getting rid of all alliance to make it a truly solo server, not sure of QZ will do it :-/

Well Getafix has said it's CX LaE like 10 times and tellarion hasn't corrected him ;)

Many people do not want to get rid of all allies.

But should since its a "solo" server, makes me wonder how the NWs will change, it would be kool to see.

No allies makes the game a bit too simple in terms of grabbing, it makes retals quite easy (50% PS bonus with no def allies to counteract), and it makes the game a more atomized & alienated experience.

Neah - tella is good intentioned. I fear there might be a 4th player that will call his 10 high with a 4 of a kind and take all his money.

Like the last time he purpled folks around.

blid so your saying you and your friends can no longer get higher then everyone else and hit with almost impunity?

No I'm not saying that. There are no alliances in Tournament and I've won that half a dozen times. My scores would probably get higher with no allies, because I'll be able to farm weaker players much more easily. One spy op only needed. No spy on allies op required, no spy on the allies themselves required. Much lower breaks, farm away. But it's a bit simplistic...

There are many people you learn not to grab based on their same country name because I know they retal (examples of my dnh list who use the same country names include Superfly, Getafix, Braden, Silent Wolf), but that's hardly coordination. Are you going to delete people because they use the same name set after set?

Similarly, if I spy a country, and they are playing heavily delayed and can burn 300 turns making jets to retal, I will generally decide not to hit them. That isn't coordination either.

Majority of the top 10 players just won't hit countries that will retal them for more than they grab. Otherwise you won't end up finishing top 10. :P

Adjust the PS, simple.

That's still 3 fewer successful spy ops you'd need to get a 100% accurate break. It's still making attacking more simplistic. That's still lowering the chances for people to meet other people in the game. It still won't really change anything about who finishes on top. And it's also not the topic of this thread...

derp.

Good set, this game is much different than when I played previously. Reading your threads help. Hope to join you in the top ten soon enough.

Blid is correct. It saves 3+ turns (once to spy alliance, once to spy each of the allies), and actually it makes retalling even easier since it simplifies the attacks a lot (similar to tourney).

Keep in mind that taking out allies won't solve the problem of market play since you don't need to be allies in order to do buy outs.

sorry Revan theres already 15-20 guys each week fighting for top10 no room for more players up there >.<

bad enough most sets 20 million is the bar.

Side note having allies is only an issue for mediocore players, I literaly play this game for the socail. if they take away allies it will be very boring. Wake up every two hours, hammer everyone, run turns sell goods, buy defense, repeatedly till I win.

Primary is very boring like this but thats where the real test of how good a player is and thats where I challenge myself to get better then my record of 65 million and a 21st finish.

Besides having allies has its downs as much as its ups, I lost 2 million NW easily last week to players wasting jets failing retals on allies. Plus I had small tech allies (no offense I still love you guys) which isnt always benifical when im teching 5333 turn and they are at 2000ish. Either way allies isn't a problem here.

Silverton became a great AB target after he launched a few missiles at me :)

The root cause of the problem is the fast paced nature of the server, allowing coordinated efforts on market play to be easily conducted (among a large list of problems that a fast paced server brings). I've said all this before in that titanic thread of Express suggestions, etc, so I won't repeat it again, but you all know that what I said was that slowing down the server is the solution.

On other servers, you can still do market transfers, but it is much much much harder because of slow turnover time on the market.

The other solution, Xin, is post-game moderation. Hopefully this is a step toward that. It's encouraging that tellarion caught the abuser *after the reset*! Means people can't do a transfer with 1 minute left in set and think they're safe.

Oh yeah, and I know it's not to your liking, Xin, but the DR issue really was stomped out through server moderation...

Yes those are good points, eventually the mods will have to get better tools created to catch them during and not after the set is over so that winner is clean.

After the set is okay too if the country still goes purple. Someday h2o's Tourney record country will get purpled and I'll have another win over there.

LOL alin! you and your poker!!!

but i totally understand and love it! :D

I could afk and hit top 10 every set with a casher. It's that easy, that doesn't mean I want to top 10 every set. Rather I strive to win every set. Top 10 is easy. Winning is a lot harder.

Play a no D casher like Braden and you'll get top 10 every set.

It's like once you become a mod you get a little dumber. From you the market alone, there are 17 goods CX can cheat with. Tella seriously suggested that the server should monitor that? That's dumber than qz's suggestion for the server to monitor the oil market by SOs, 17 times dumber.

CX isn't yet advanced in his cheating yet. mdemon used to pull these stunts with the lesser known techs, medical/SDI/spy techs.

You always have to worry about someone that sucked balls in the past, goes away, and suddenly comes back and claims he's good.

That's why I love the Nigerian nightmare!!!! Comes out swinging for the fences :-)

And I just got back from Nigeria last night, so you just gotta know the juices are flowing in my right now and peak performance :)

Awesome, trip was good?, family good?

Very good, thanks.

Good idea Revan but all that's left is a few fluffroaches running around in the ruins:

2014-01-27 07:32:58 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 74B
2014-01-27 07:32:58 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 76B
2014-01-27 07:32:57 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 77B
2014-01-27 07:32:56 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 79B
2014-01-27 07:32:56 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 81B
2014-01-27 07:32:55 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 81B
2014-01-27 07:32:54 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 83B
2014-01-27 07:32:53 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 85B
2014-01-27 07:32:53 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 87B
2014-01-27 07:32:50 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 90B
2014-01-27 07:32:49 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 92B
2014-01-27 07:32:49 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 94B
2014-01-27 07:32:46 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 97B
2014-01-27 07:32:45 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 99B
2014-01-27 07:32:45 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 101B
2014-01-27 07:32:43 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 103B
2014-01-27 07:32:22 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 106B
2014-01-27 07:32:20 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 108B
2014-01-27 07:32:15 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 111B
2014-01-25 23:58:34 NM Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 557A
2014-01-25 23:58:32 NM Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 586A
2014-01-25 23:55:58 CM Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 215B 22183 C
2014-01-25 23:55:57 CM Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 223B 22183 C
2014-01-25 23:55:56 CM Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 233B 22183 C
2014-01-25 23:55:54 CM Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 242B 22183 C
2014-01-25 23:55:52 CM Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 252B 22183 C
2014-01-25 23:54:42 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 159B
2014-01-25 23:54:41 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 163B
2014-01-25 23:54:40 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 167B
2014-01-25 23:54:39 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 171B
2014-01-25 23:54:38 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 176B
2014-01-25 23:54:37 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 180B
2014-01-25 23:54:35 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 184B
2014-01-25 23:53:57 PS Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 119A (119A)
2014-01-25 23:44:22 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 187B
2014-01-25 23:44:21 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 191B
2014-01-25 23:44:20 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 195B
2014-01-25 23:44:19 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 201B
2014-01-25 23:44:18 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 205B
2014-01-25 23:44:14 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 210B
2014-01-25 23:44:13 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 215B
2014-01-25 23:44:12 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 219B
2014-01-25 23:44:10 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 225B
2014-01-25 23:44:09 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 230B
2014-01-25 23:44:07 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 236B
2014-01-25 23:44:06 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 242B
2014-01-25 23:44:06 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 248B
2014-01-25 23:44:03 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 254B
2014-01-25 23:44:02 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 259B
2014-01-25 23:44:00 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 266B
2014-01-25 23:43:48 AB Gaul (#237) Silverton (#272) 274B
2014-01-25 18:48:46 PS Silverton (#272) Gaul (#237) 466A (605A)

fluffroaches. lol

/me wonders what fluffroach is :p

Such a noob, does a PS after throwing like 15 ABs?

Braden has just made me aware that the auto-buy out for tech is $1000 and NOT $999. That $1 extra from each tech point! I've been missing out on $500k each set - that's another 2k nw!!

Braden > ingle

<3 Braden

I play to win too TDA but like I said thers 20sih guys competitive playing at that level. Which doesnt leave alot kf room for the top10, Braden doesn't always top 10 lots of factors come into play. But thats the point of it all, and why I said the bar is getting higher for top 10 the last two months. If you can't hit 30 milion you cant win

it bothers me immensly when people say autosell for 999
why not 998, who cares about a further two thousand nw? six thousand lost nw is nothing, so why not autosell at 997? 996? 995? ten thousand nw is nothing!!

<3 ingle.. him and ska taught me efficiency, only trying to help out where little i can ;p

and as for no defense rep, well, might as well consider it a no land or turns used rep, either. who else can place top ten without defense, land or use of turns? im the greatest! ;)

and maybe not, cable, but its a pretty safe bet i will.

true

If you can afford it, a PS just before beginning a war is usually a nice move since it basically nukes a bunch of acres. More than like five ABs and ABs only break buildings.

Thanks crest for calling me dumb, i appreciate that.

I will not name names because doing it once is not enough. If they do it again, they are gone. I also looked into the oil thing and am more or less convinced it wasnt coordination.

And for all you guys badmouthing the suggestion of putting some tech up at high prices to block this abuse, care to explain to me why there were 7 countries with tech above 6k?

Yeah... but DR issue wasn't the only problem. There is market abuse, there is the special 60% commie selling rule, cheats are far harder to detect, suiciders can deal much more damage, bonuses are ineffective, 360(360) is waaaay too many turns to be allowed in storage, among others. All caused by one single problem - the turn rate.

suiciders aren't much of a problem in express imo and therefore i don't think 360(360) is "waaay too many turns to be allowed in storage".

The game doesn't need bonuses. The commie 60% sell is not the reason why commies dominate the game either. The reason for that is that commies can stock enough to cover their entire destock without going into corruption, and can focus their last few hundred turns in the other players' destock period. The 360 (360) makes turns another resource and an interesting thing to play with, it's not really a big deal. It does make commies supreme, but it also makes theos more powerful. Now that no one plays farmer, food prices are high and demos/farmers are also competitive more often. Rep casher might be the weakest remaining strat, but it's a really solid one for exploring with. All in all, this server is unique and it works with proper moderation. Slowing down the turn rate would destroy what it is.

I think a lot of people have been trying a "hail mary" tech sell at v. high prices since CX LaE said he was just lucky, and qzjul said it sometimes works. But I think it would only work if there was absolutely Nothing else for sale, which I remember happening sometimes a few years ago, but sure not in the last 12 sets. I've tries it a few times since I heard that with no luck.

Also, as Alin said:


so you might get lucky if a cheater blows through your small amount of $6000 tech on the way to the motherload at $7000

What do you mean by "I think it would only work if there was absolutely nothing else for sale"? I've never seen one set that has absolutely nothing else for sale.

The reason why you have 7 countries with tech placed above 6k is because after seeing the 7k indy, they tried to block it with theirs.

i think you mentioned, though i could very well be incorrect in this, h20, that you saw no reason for a rep to have any tech [sell] in the last fifteen minutes?

with forty six minutes left in the server i put up my tech sales at one thousand (eight hundred and fourteen if you're ingle. ;p), and often the market time places the goods for sale in that time period. so perfectly legitimate to have many countries selling off their tech there

The 60% bonus is part of the problem that contributes to it. The reason why Commies are so strong, as you said, is because "commies can stock enough to cover their entire destock without going into corruption". And why is this? Because finishing NWs are so low on this server. There is only 1800 turns per reset, about half the number compared to other servers! Change this to be in line with other servers and you will see Commies no longer dominate.

Again the reset of 1800 turns is the problem because it is too fast paced - even if you kept the pace of turns at 1 per 4 minutes, and doubled it to 3600 turns (and each reset is 10 days), it would go a long way towards solving the problems, you have double the time to stock, double the time to catch cheaters, double the time to police the market, etc. The finishing NWs will more than double, and high expenses and such considerations then come into play.

You keep saying that the solution is to have more moderation. Sure, but
A) Moderation tools are weak or non-existent.
B) It requires active community participation in reporting problems.
C) There aren't enough moderators to cover all time zones consistently, or to have a response time lower than 6 hours (any longer and it would be too long for such a fast paced server - other servers have a 2 days equivalent turn-wise).
D) Moderation helps, but doesn't solve the base problem - game mechanics are still abusable. The fixes should be going towards fixing the mechanics, not patching it with moderators.


Why is it that Express is the only server with all these problems that don't exist on other servers? What makes Express so different?

the solution to xins C) is simple! I play at any and all times of the day, so moderator here i come! :P

oh, d) ruined it. moderator here i don't come :(