By skill, I assume you mean individual skill.

also i think you can still mass FA and give your alliance mates off allies to help them retal. i dont necessarily think having just C:C retals will ruin all alliance cooperation either. think about it =)

you make it sound like with C:C the game becomes totally a solo game....

why would i want to make it worse? nerf it maybe but not make it so its not a valid strategy.

i mean both individual and alliance skill. collectively skilled individual will work together to create a skilled alliance. you make it sound like the individual member almost doesn't matter for alliance wide success =)

Do I? I haven't even addressed C:C... there is a reason why PDM does L:L C:C and 1:1 cross country...

It's like you're setting me up to troll you...

Given that land trading is not against the game rules, it isn't cheating.

Obviously if groups of players don't approve of a strategy or a country in game they are free to take any actions within the rules of the game to remedy the situation as they feel fit :P

I will neither encourage nor discourage such actions.

Well, if they wanted landtrading (cooperation between two countries to sacrifice military for gained land for both countries) then I suppose they could just implement a nice, peaceful "joint explore" function. Two countries who choose to go on a risky "joint expedition" would both risk losing military they send into uncharted territory as well as other resources (food, tech, money) they need to supply the expedition.

The net result would be the same but it would make a lot more sense than ghost acres when countries attack back and forth.

And it would make sense intra-alliance too.

Now, would it make the game any better? I dunno. Debate.

all I hear is flap flap flap of your lips as usual PP

If your too lazy to read the news I'll summarize it for you: LCN has already started solving this by grabbing landtraders while they are fat and carrying enough defense to make the retals hard.

Like TAN, I've toyed with landtrading this set for three reasons:

1. Finally after all these years I can hit RD with impunity!
2. Hanging out in IRC is fun again
3. No netting done this set means anything anyway because the only real netters on the server are awol

I have not traded in 3 days because I keep having to make big retals on LCN

Skill is subjective, camping DR's to bottomfeed the handful of untagged countries is not a skill girls, its just sad.

what a great thread to have my bonus post

archaic let me know when you start trading again. i'm one of those in LCN waiting for you guys to get the show goin



ironic since i started the land trading push in RD and got told most didn't agree...then i leave and silver goes and picks up where i left off. no more lobbes for you silver. i'll be comeing for that land shortly =P

land trading is rubbish...but somehow it promotes activity. it's no longer a fair game for all-x perspective..but maybe veryone should be grabbing?

i just looked at silver (and joker) since someone said he got ab'd (pretty much 0 you can do about that when landtrading) and my conclusion is:

you are doing it wrong


if people ever do it correctly i can imagine complaints being much more than they currently are

darkness and azure are doing it better but not perfect

trying to be a little generic assuming 7m nw 40k acres thats 3.2m nw of buildings and land since not being fully built is wrong

that leaves you 3.8m nw for tech and mil, its less efficient than in ffa due to the way allies work so (no o allies)

1/ is 1:1
2/ is 2:1
3/ is 3:1

odds are people are running without defence allies as well due to complexity (this is my main problem with landtrading that outside ffa the entry barrier is so high)

making it

1/ .66:1
2/ 1.33:1
3/ 2:1

depending on growth rate and shown grabbing patterns at the moment you can expect 2/3+ of mil nw is jets, tech should be at a minimum 10ppa for 800k nw leaving 3m nw for 3.33m jets and 1.11m turrets with no d allies

any tanks/troops reduce that efficiency, spies are also a drain on growth

tech should be much higher than 10ppa

countries should be vulnerable to 800k jet ps's, will be unlikely to have 100k tanks, will have <10spal

running higher mil requires higher income and higher tech, resulting in higher nw/acre

so there is a huge vulnerability and its even more glass cannon specialised than normal netting is, but its also so much better that unless everyone gets suicided the people who dont win and it is silly to do anything else

this is also the reason why for non techers its silly not to go for huge land and run risky defence

id argue there should be a change to the humanitarian yoyoing we see in line with changes to alter landtrading

as to techer changes that should be balanced by the peak and average landsizes non techers hit, as well as a potential increase/decrease in tech/lab

enshula... you know this stuff too well.

* examine thread for evidence of a trail left by the Pink Bikini Burglar *

ahhh, martian was here.

* moves on *

i think bottomfeeding is a far far bigger issue in this server than land-trading atm.

not that land-trading is necessarily a good thing.

However all-x and retalling only for lazy me:p

Now what I don't understand is why the untaggeds aren't getting in on the action. Most of the landtraders are running extraordinarily low def which could be pretty easily broken. ;)

I think a healthy middleground could be alliances on decent terms that allow grabbing between them. LCN has done that with PDM in the past. Although our retal policies don't entirely align, with FA talks in the case of any disputes, we've been able to work out generally favorable outcomes for all sides involved the vast majority of the time. Sure, I guess some people could construe that as "landtrading", but using the "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck" test, it looks to me a lot more like midfeeding than someone trying to take advantage of the game mechanics.

I don't think the game mechanics necessarily need a fixing (although I've been happy with just about all of the changes made so far); I think this is more of an issue of class and respect. I wouldn't be surprised to see this resolved through alliance discussion (and potentially wars) and revisions of clan grabbing policies.

yup, bottomfeeding people who know how to play (and choose to play untagged, despite the several warnings to join a clan) the game is definitely a bigger problem, especially in an ALLIANCE based game.

dragonlance, same tune, no substance.

I am personally against this method of landtrading and think that countries that participate in two grabs/hits with another person in 72h should be exempt from land:land. If enough alliances adopted this as their policy it would go a long way to helping.

I am in favour of SoFs retal methods. I don't know whether 125% land is the right threshold, but it encourages midfeeding and the purpose is to make it as benificial to you, while trying to deny your retaller. The higher land you are the more ghost acres, but you also lose buildings in the retals and the military needed impacts on it. The more skilled players will make most land of it. We have internal policies limiting people to a grab a day and 1 hit vs an alliance every 72 hours so grabbing doesnt get out of hand. Also there is no point in topfeeding under this method and less of a need to bottom feed.

Although after sets of beings suicided by untagged multies (despite not bottomfeeding) I have little sympathy for untags, who are usually attracted to the untagged servers and make a concious choice to join alliance.

P.S. I personally care moer about two stepping giving our experience.

why wouldn't the landtraders be carrying at least 100k tanks? ABs are their biggest threat...

because a tank is more expensive than a turret to replace while landtrading for the equivalent defence against landgrabs

for nw roughly 8% cheaper per day for tanks

for milpower roughly 60% more expensive for expenses and 50% more expensive for food

roughly 70% more expensive for losses

its also slightly more expensive $/nwp currently

so landtraders will always be able to carry more defence against being farmed by having few tanks, how few is up to them but i doubt any of them have very many, 5k is probably more likely than 100k

anyway it looks like silver was farmed and ab'd by a country with 700k nw of combined tanks and jets and troops

Oct 29/11 8:39:35 AM $5,863,125 59,552 ResDogs Dictatorship No

thats up to 4,764,160 nw in buildings, and what should be another 1.2m nw+ in tech

from this hit in 0 dr:

Oct 28/11 11:53:58 PM PS JoKeR (#404) (ParaBOO) Mr Silver (#175) (ResDogs) 5079 A (+2327 A)

we get 45.81% buildings gained by a dict at the time which suggests he was 78% built to begin with, ill just guess he was 60% built by the end

which suggests a 4m non mil nw roughly, assuming crappy tech, 1.9m nw of mil, more than 2/3 of it probably offence, although he could have been even lower before then bought turrets afterwards, probably had only around 1m turrets, if he was ss breakable by such a small country it had to be low, and the odds of a lot of it being in tanks is even lower

If you landtrade with a horrible economy, you have to keep a tiny tiny military, and you can't stay fully built or get any decent amount of tech, so even if you reach 80k acres with a month left, its probably at least another week before you even begin to start stockpiling.

There is a huge differential in skill between different landtraders, because even most people who do it on FFA (and who have had a lot of time to practice it) don't do it right, and end up with crappy countries that take a while to get ready to stockpile.

not staying fully built only makes sense if theres a reason people wont landtrade with you in the future or hassle in finiding someone to set it up with

both reasons i think landtrading is too hardcore for us to want to promote in the current form (in ffa none of that applies, although amusingly there seems to be a lot less land:land)

enshula,

you are way off in terms of how many turrets and how built silver was.

just given by how easily he was broken i think he was a lot lower just giving him the benefit of the doubt though :P

If the concern is about "friendly" attacks (i.e. attacker and defender shouldn't be in collusion) then wouldn't the natural solution be to make attacks less attractive/friendly?

For example, greater "losses". Aside from military losses, the defender could be losing (destroyed, not stolen) more tech, food, cash, buildings, spies, oil, etc. Or an attack could create a negative economic consequence such as lowered production levels. lowered tech effectiveness or market activity interference.

While this would make suffering an attack worse on everyone in the game, it would more likely reduce the chance that the defender willingly invites the attacker in. I.e. an exchange between attacker/defender both ways might be net positive in land, but the other losses would negate the benefits.

Nah, that won't work. Forget land:land - if someone else from the alliance knows what they are doing and just make one retal, they can make the attacker lose more than they gained. The mechanism to punish attackers already exists.

I don't think anything needs fixing except for alliances crying when a new or old, resurrected strategy puts them at a disadvantage and they are too self-righteous to indulge in it. Instead of attacking the alliance and punishing them for it (or even adopting the same practices), they run to the mods to fix their problems for them.

If you guys don't like landtrading, do something about it ingame. That should be the end of the discussion.

what i don't understand is PDM's stance:

1) we play for fun and don't care about ranks.
- yet you have taken a top10 position twice in the past resets, through a country that has not only land-traded but also received mass FA

2) we are only testing landtrading and won't be doing it again (this was said 2 resets ago)
- the landtrading going on now is just as obvious as it was then


you talk about ruining the game and alliances being too harsh cos they want to "punish" people for attacking. but what i want to know is what are the benefits of attacking when anyone with 5 minutes a day to hit the explore button - can out netgain any of your "grabbing" members.

if things like war are meant to be a means to an end - what is the "end" that you reap from poor grabbing anyway?

this game is going to the dogs and it is the attitudes of some that are ruining it further. just because somebody doesn't agree with your view doesn't mean they are crying. i see nothing progressive about grabbing backwards and forwards while messaging each other your breaks. it's lame and i for one want no part of a game that has no competitive element. i'm sure landtrading will cause more players to quit than all those "innocent" new players that are playing untagged.

err.. not.

Couldn't agree with Archiac more here. Camping the news and waiting for countries to come out of DR is not skill, it is just sad.

Not as sad as grabbing an ally, just to be a douchebag.

@anoniem: The alternative is to do something about it. Don't like the practice? Do something about it.

what the hell is your problem? i started off defending pdm in this thread, as i thought that this situation could be resolved very easily if people came together and found a solution that benefitted the server.

but instead you are intent of having the server fs you (by egging everyone on), because you are too stuck up to even take on board what anybody else has to say.

see how i said that certain people are ruining the game. you have become one of them. congratulations.
~_~

How is this ruining the game when there is already an INGAME mechanism to stop this??

I don't have a problem with you at all, but I just don't understand why people want the admins to do something about it when they could themselves!

I don't see why you don't understand my point...

pang already stated that the indicators are green, and the game is a go. why y'all keep going on about the game is being ruin'ed?

Don't you have a war to fight with the rest of the people that are ruining your game?

Kyle, come play with us - we have much good times

Hush archaic, stop trolling. Edit post plz. Back to your cage!

STFU TANHOLE

NO U!

YES U!

archaic, you clearly are not interested in what anybody else has to say, which is why you are trying to twist my words. i said that it was attitudes ruining the game, so i'm not sure what exactly you are trying to get at, because it appears you are reading a completely different book to myself.

i used two points that are "quotes" of what pdm leadership have said on the forums to form an 'argument' against land-trading, which actually came in the form of questions toward pdm.

i also don't see why any person would advocate their own alliance getting fs'ed, in order to stop them land-trading. i have seen nothing that gives land-trading credibility, simply issuing some generic rhetoric about in-game mechanisms does not justify what you are doing.

if i want my alliance to have a retal policy of 1:kill then I have to justify it not only with in-game action but words. how can you even fathom changing people's opinions and making them think "actually pdm" have a point when all you have to say for yourselves is "fs us".

this conversation is childish beyond reason and i'm done with it for now, unless somebody actually wishes to have a discussion and answer the questions i put forward earlier.

edit: and, yes i do have a war to fight in, which you can make digs at all you like, but i remember not too long ago you being fsed by the same alliance, and stating that they were ruining the game and your fun.

the game has been being ruin'ed for at least a decade, and it's still here...

archaic, say whatever you like! PDM does not censor!

Disregard that order, Archaic! There is a difference between censoring and choosing your words carefully (something I disregard, but hey, I'm hFA). :P

KSF members can not complain about this when they have a crappy retal policy, doing land:land cause their members cant protect their land and dont know how to retal correctly.

Can't protect their land? You're talking like it actually is possible to protect your land. You're in no position to criticize others for not knowing how to retal, if you think its actually possible to protect your land from others.

I dont think I said anything that requires censoring anyway. Anon is EVO, EVO land trades just as much as PDM, hence not a lot of reason for stone throwing.

Everybody is all butt-hurt about so-and-so ruining the game, please - spare me. There are about 800 depressing dumbasses clinging to the past that continue to play on the alliance server, in any given set half of them are out to 'ruin' the game for the other half.

If you want the entire to server to play by your rules then crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. Otherwise, ditch the rhetoric and learn to talk nicely to people.

Which clans havn't landtraded so far? Basically the war clans and Laf from what I know. Maybe MD and rival also havnt.. maybe sanct? This COULD be solved ingame or out of game. Either solution is possible, I do agree with Tan on that. Heck I have personally suggested this on Laf forums more then once :P

MD hasn't and won't participate in landtrading.

i left Monsters because of possible land trading with SOL. not group level, but it looked like an individual or two was abusing it.