where did i say land-trading was ruining the game? where did i ask for the server to play by my rules? in fact, where did i even lay out any rules that people should stand by. if you can't answer a few simple questions, because you'd rather dodge them and try to infer something i neither said nor meant then that's your prerogative.

also i'm not some hypocritical fool, who creates a thread then backtracks because i like to troll 'certain' people.

I didn't bracktrack anywhere. I still support an admin solution but I also think it could be policed by the players. The second way just involves more whining when one side wins.

OK both of you STFU and quit trying to rehijak the thread that I have lawfully hijacked already.

Anon, believe it or not - I don't dislike you, in fact I appreciate your passion and if I was in EVO I'd be glad you were going to bat for me. Your problem is that by the time your passion reaches your fingertips and gets ahold of a keyboard - it has been converted to vitriol. Here is the south we have a phrase, its called 'bowing up' - you make people bow up even if they agree with you in principal.

Locket, you on the other hand smell of cabbage and must not be allowed to reproduce.

What I don't get it why either of you care? You're at war, what the JV netters are doing while you are at war should not matter. When I war, all I car about is napalm + school = win. When you guys get to net again, if land traders offend you, then team up and exterminate us, or join us, or whatever. But right now you've got pew pew to be doing so get cracking.

Hope you have no idea what I smell like. I don't go near cabbage so thats not an option.

Why I care? Because it happens in netting sets too and it has been done more and more and I personally disagree with it. Also, Bakku's/SS's nw records could be beaten by people doing it and I think thats lame ;)

Point taken.

But honestly, if we decided instead to organize a massive FA chain and break the record that way, would it bother you any less? Or if we ran landfarms, or did internal farming?

The game has always been an arms race of exploits verses policy. In every case, the community decided either through diplomacy or through war what exploits were acceptable and which were not. Land trading will be no different, it will push the envelope - the envelope will push back until stasis is reached.

There are lots of alliance policies that stifle land grabbing that I don't like - but I don't think the mods need to tweak the formulas force everybody to play a certain way.

For the record, I think the large scale organized land trading is already on the decline - I tried it and I'm over it, it feels like stealing and I certainly did not do enough work to have earned my 30k acres. I've spoken with others that feel the same way.

(Locket actually smells like cinnamon and fine leather, but I still think that he should not be permitted to reproduce)

at least i smell good though.

I'd be just as much against those other things :P and I have said that there are two ways to fix this so I agree with you there. I wanted laf to kill the landtraders for the last few sets :P I have no influence there sadly :(

Unless we stop this trend of always instituting changes which make it easier and easier to obtain high networths, then their records will be broken by players whose achievement is less impressive than theirs.

Both Bakku and SS benefitted from long sets with over 4000 turns and a bonus system (both used 100% decay) and a very nice ghost acre to acre taken ratio for grabs. They got ridiculous landgains on bottomfeeds and were able to destock their food stockpile, and then continue stockpiling cash, before destocking on cheap military later on in the set.

Bakku's and SS's countries pale in comparison to the skill it took for people to set networth records in Earth 2025 that were half as high as theirs. Bakku and SS and nearly every great Laf netter will tell you that netgaining 5-10 years ago was much more competitive than it is now, yet if you look at the networths achieved back then, the networths were way lower.

If you are worried about Bakku and SS's countries being beaten in networth by undeserving people, then your problem is the culture in Earth Empires which causes a continued process of the changes always causing networths to go up when the skill has plateau'd. Landtrading is not the problem.

Landtrading is part of the problem. And I know the rest already. Doesn't make their record worth less because there were more players back then. Thats not my main concern anyways but meh. Oh and I would argue that skill isnt done improving yet too :P

This is my fourth set "landtrading." The first I did externally with a member of a top-tier netting tag; we exchanged about 8-10 hits each. The second I did internally in a ring of 3 players that all got to 50-60k acres. The third I started as all-ex, but kept getting grabbed through a grabbing pact that was essentially less-organized landtrading with retal and RoR windows.

I learned some things during those sets that I thought would improve my landtrading. Figured this was a good set to do it in earnest as the "real netters" are warring and were not likely to b!tch as loudly that I was ruining the game. I'll be interested to see how it plays out. Likely some bored vigilante whose alliance is at war will suicide me.

There is some decent discussion here amid the whinebabble. Landtrading is, of course, totally within the ethical bounds of the game itself and the scope of the server. It's a more effective way (when done correctly) of doing amiable grabbing between alliances. Is it overpowered? Maybe, I'm not sure. I know I personally can't get as high a finish with it as better players could by bottomfeeding.

boneSAW kind of went off on me today ingame about how landtrading is ruining the game and making "the real netters" want to quit the game. I guess I just don't see the logic of landtrading ruining the game when "the real netters" camp DRs and farm untaggeds to kingdom come. Which is the more detrimental to the server?

Like Rockman said, game mechanics continue to trend toward higher possible finishes. I think the real issue is that some netters are irritated that it gets progressively easier to hit numbers that were traditionally reserved for the most leet.

I'll continue to landtrade in some capacity until political pressure changes PDM's policy toward landtrading, or the game mechanics nerf it to the point of being ineffective. It's more fun to me than exploring, and does not require that I have no life like bottomfeeding.

i said this many times

i dont necessarily think landtrading is evil, but the way its done right now makes it unfair vs any other landgain means (especially after 30k land or so).

which is why i wanted us to come to a consensus on retal policies to help balance the game.

maybe lose L:L rights when u landtrade is one. i already noted that people suggested ways that can be abused still, which is why we can add some flavors on top of it..

can we just stop poo flinging at each other and discuss retal policies to incorporate landtrading into an acceptable method for everyone since it is the trendy way to gain land for some players and i'm not one to deny others from having their fun.

just be happy its not laf poo being flung either way for once :P

How is it unfair? Last I checked everyone on the sever could do it... If you think its unfair by all means join in! It's not like they are taking advantage of something that others cant. Everyone can land trade if they so wish. If you feel it is immoral then that is your on personal belief, but that doesn't mean you can claim moral victory over anyone who land trades.

so you feel like the game is a better game if the only way to compete is to landtrade?

hm

i was just saying if we have multiple means to obtain the same goal, it would cater to a bigger group of people =)

there has been people who feel like netting has no point due to landtrading, i was hoping we'd incorporate everyone in a fair fashion =)

i didn't mean it as it was unfair as i can't do it either, i said it was unfair compared to the other land gaining methods past a certain threshold (around 30-40k)

.

this.

a simple fix

Remove L:L all together, and only have L:L for pacted alliances


So L:L only applies if Clan A and Clan B agreed to it, aka allied clans are under L:L, while everyone else has to struggle with 1:1.

Is simple and will completely remove the silly land traders with no defense.

There is no need to balance Land Trading, have you people even tried to land trade? most land traders have a weakened economy/country during the process so it is pretty easy to get the upperhand and get easy acres off them (something that is MUCH more effective).

Is simple

Explorers exchange: Turns for Land
Bottomfeeders exchange: Turns/Mil/Oil for Land
Landtraders exchange: Turns/Mil/Oil/Land/CS for Land


Explore have little Risk and minimal gains

Bottomfeeders have moderate Risk with good Gains (depends on time available and camping)

Landtraders have Relative Risk with exponential Gains.


If you remove that silly crap called L:L, then the Relative Risk goes higher and Higher (because STILL most people think land trading doesn't need any kind of skill, and as such will hunt you down)

If L:L is removed or is examined on a country:country basis (related to FA work and whatnot) then all your so called problems go out of the window.

peace out

A landtrading country has never won the game while LaF/Evo was netting using 'other land gaining methods.' You can't call it unfair, other netters just don't want the competition if someone can do it well.



I think KingKaosKnows's idea is great, L:L only between pacted alliances. Less entitlement to acres mentality would be a great thing for server politics.

Incorrect. It is exponential gains per attack. But unless you maintain the same bpt to land ratio all set, your growth with landtrading is not exponential. In fact, if you don't increase your bpt at all, the growth is basically linear.

getting rid of L:L will push much more of the server to landtrading.

Nope

No L:L will make more people Land trade while others will Focus on "Topfeeding" Land Fat countries.

The Topfeeds will cause Issues, BUT if the clan topfeeding you is not an allied clan, then you can't fluff about it.


Alliances will be more important, and the diplo game will also improve (sorry for the FAs that will lose their hair).

And Rockman, You are right.

(Not going to work with me)

Respectfully, go ahead and measure epeens with Evo over who can play this strat better.

No L:L makes things more lively, for sure, I'm not denying that.

Highrock is in MD... just making sure you know that :P

Also, the only reason a landtrader hasn't won is because the best havn't done it ;) Not counting myself in that list

slightly less than linear due to quakes, if the set was long enough you would plateau

I'm still curious what the difference is between

Tech Allies, Land trading, defencive allies, having an alliance tag, country dropping, foriegn aid, buyouts, having an FR in the alliance make pacts.

Just find it funny how some people will complain, but you can spy them on a random reset playing a casher with Tech allies.

heh hell, being a techer with a tech ally is still receiving something that wasn't earned.


Now I'd completely understand ppl wanting to take action on the Primary, express, or tourny servers as they're individual.

but ingame mechanics and the whole idea of alliance server is figure out how to make your alliance "win" whatever random goal your alliance has.

in my opinion it boils down to entry barrier, we shouldnt make things needlessly hard for new players

a good example is dropping allies in solo servers, might be just express with no allies currently which is good because without out of game coordination it either makes sense to always have the same allies or you will be worse off, thats not new player friendly

without allies you make things simpler and reduce disparity in sizes from so many turns on hand and stored

im not a huge fan of tech alliances either, it forces you to have at least 3 other players you can ally with similar to your size and playstyle for best effect, that penalises smaller groups and limits elasticity in tech supply, tending to create price swings

landtrading requires more time and coordination than grabbing/exploring and is less casual

defensive allies are less a problem the longer a set is, the main interesting thing they do is make it harder to predict breaks for farming, as well as counteract to some degree the offence advantage given by PS, if they were weakened no big deal, one way to favour new over established would be to increase their effect as DR increased, i dont mind discussing them but its not the biggest issue at the moment

Alliance tags will usually be an issue, right now ignoring those at war it looks like RD is doing the best and has the highest proportion of landtrading. Everyone else except ICN is landtrading a bit i think and ICN is the only tag it looks like people are trying to farm. So looks like D allies matter very little this set.

Country dropping is different in that it doesnt benefit another country in itself. Only if that country feeds another country in some way.

Foreign aid is largely 0 sum for a tag. But im all for increased transparency. And extra metrics.

Buyouts are largely negative for a tag. And harder to report. Id suggest something along the lines of deviation from standard prices being reported, or market news made public end of set.

Pacts of course make a huge difference between tags. With maybe ICN appearing to be the loser this set. That assumes NA and Rage wernt trying hard and got messed up by others earlier. But if we can tune landtrading and introduce bots i believe the importance of pacts will drop significantly.


Regarding tech allies being unearned for a techer thats not the case. Its a bonus that applies to everyone researching and has the effect of increasing tech produced and pushing down averaging tech selling prices (since if price doesnt go down $/acre goes up and more people will play techer). Lower ASP's for tech is better for non techer which is why i advocated increasing TPT. Of course it also has the effect of allowing techers to run with higher tech levels, which isnt very balanced for non theos but i believe its still a good idea. If we took out tech allies we should increase tpt because otherwise tech price would rise.

Mr. Silver - its simple. LaF wants netgaining to be an individual achievement, not an alliance achievement, even though there's 3 servers for those who want individual achievements. And despite the fact that many LaF players do get nice individual achievements on these individual servers, they want to take the same "every man for himself" approach to netting from those servers rather than a "we'll work together to get the best anw, tnw, top 100s, or top 10s, or whatever goal we decide on for our alliance."

I'm pretty sure its more then just laf. Also I doubt you would like it if you were putting in an effort and someone decided to mass FA some guy that started in the last week into first.

Oops, yeah, quoted wrong poster.

why did you bring the fact that i played in evo into this? i just asked a few questions as an individual person.

if i personally quit, because i didn't like the way the game was going - that would be my own individual choice, and not an alliance-wide decision. so just because i'm in a certain alliance that is at war - doesn't mean i can't have an opinion on land-trading. also i actually think pdm has done a lot too help bring grabbing back into the game with some of their pacts; however i do personally believe that in some instances it has been taken to far (i.e. the instantaneous back and forth hits to create ghost acres).

i have no idea what your analogy means, because unfortunately (or fortunately i'd like to think :P) i'm not from America - I am from England.

bottomfeeding is not of detriment to the server.
new players are directed to the solo servers and if they play on alliance then they get messages telling them to apply to an alliance. if you look at spy ops of the majority of those innocent untaggeds - you will see they are not new players, but experienced players mostly up to no good, so in my opinion that particular argument doesn't wash.

"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."

I'm sorry Rockman, but that point is moot now, since some people thinks it's okay to take "loans". What those "loans" do, is accelerate your economy on a way higher rate than what you should've been at.

netgain on alliance server=dumb. Alliance server for war, solo server for net... IMO!

Rockman: I think you nailed it.

While there are a few players who are more just puritans, ie:Ivan. That have an ideal of what they would want the game to be.

The rest arguing it are doing it more so to keep the status-quo going on what they want to achieve from the server. If someone has the ability to be online 90% of the day and can then bottom feed efficiently, they want it to stay that way. Since then they can win and others don't have a chance to complete.

The argument against landtrading has actually nothing to do with it 'making the server less competitive' or 'cheating' or any of the things people keep stating.

It more or less has to do with Person A wants his group to win and realizes that Person's B, C, and D would all have the same chance if something were opened.

Locket: as for the FA in the last week, I'm totally fine with that too. If lets say LCN had Castejon come back in the last reset and decide they want to aid him to #1. Great on them.

The cost would be is they'd lose a bunch of top 100's and other ranks trying to push that one player up. It's their call, and maybe what they wanted. But it could all backfire if someone else aided another on top, and then they would have just lost all their ranks to make a #2 country.

In addition to that, LaF has been one of my favourite alliances to play in over the last decade and a bit, and the sets I haven't played there I was fairly close to a number of members there or leadership. I'd say that LaF countries have finished 1st more and had more Top 10's than any other alliance in the game over that time.

now over that time I can't think of a single reset where Aid, tech allies to a non techer, or landgifting weren't used in some way or another. Many of even the first place wins were co-operative wins of a few individuals helping one.

Examples could probably be pulled out for every single alliance in the game and off the top of my head I can think of them for SoF, LCN, LaF, MD, SOL, Omega, Monsters, and many others of co-op play to push someone a higher rank.

The only difference between what has been done in the past and land trading would be that it's easier to point a finger at landtrade countries as it shows in the country news rather than them trying to hide it.

I'm indifferent to landtrading. I couldn't really care less if it existed or didn't. I just more or less find it funny that a majority of the "anti-landtrade" people if you boil it down they aren't actually thinking anything about this good of the game rhetoric, or making things more competitive as they say.

It's because they see a chance to win fading away and more individuals able to compete for those desired ranks.

Let's face it.

Land trading is only viable as a strategy if you have tag protection (or in FFA, group protection afforded by your countries). Without the protection, the countries involved in trading would be weakened enough for other countries to take advantage of.

Without considering mod intervention by altering the game, if any alliance wants to stop it as a strategy, it has to be at the alliance vs alliance level.

While Hanlong's approach is the right one, where some changes in retal policy at the alliance level might help to curb it, it is unlikely all alliances would agree to the same policy. PDM's policy is the right one then - you war over it - topfeed/kill the countries that land trade, and back up your policies of "no to landtrading" over their policy of "yes to landtrading".

I honestly do not think any changes will be made by the mods. I'm all for trying out landtrading myself, but there are some in LaF which oppose it quite strongly.

Locket, your argument about beating SS/Bakku's NW record via landtrading is somewhat irrelevant, if someone can do it, I actually want to see it, because my sentiments is that landtrading is a strategy that is far too strong with tag protection, and that it really should be played by a group of strong players to push the boundaries and extent to see just how broken it is to get it nerfed.

Rockman, Bakku/SS's NW records are by no means unbeatable even by traditional means, Eugene/me came within 1-4m NW of Bakku's record just last reset, and neither of us used Decay, neither of us took or gave loans. And yet looking back, both of us can find at least 5 ways we could have improved our finish.

i'm fine with us all trying landtrading and seeing what it can do...

once you guys see 500M nw countries left and right, we probably can then revisit this thread ;)

I wanted people to abuse it too :P i said that in a few places. I also know none of you had near perfect sets so it will be broken :P It was a small point people keep bringing up -_- I would rather it was someone doing it in what i'd consider a legit way but thats as I said a small thought i had ;)

500m won't happen with landtrading, unless it is uneven benefit landfarming and/or FAing involved. Or unless we continue the trend of instituting changes to inflate people's networths. Under current rules and market conditions, 500m networth cannot happen unless another person sacrifices their country's finish to give someone else a boost. And if we're going to allow sacrifices from countries to "break" landtrading, you might as well acknowledge that 500m is possible without landtrading, too.

If the set had been better last set for techers and our top techers hadn't of messed up 400mill wouldn't have been too far out of reach. Not saying it was a bad set for techers, it just wasnt a great one. Why wouldn't 500mill be in reach for them if they did it right

Because landtrading isn't good until you get your land and bpt high enough to the point that its late enough in the set and your country is big enough that you will be stockpiling instead of landtrading if you're playing a techer. Landtrading on alliance is only worth it if you're a casher, farmer, or indy. Bottomfeeding techers will match or beat what a landtrading techer achieves.

You can even ask Hanlong, if you're planning on getting a techer that is stockpiling at 30k acres or less and aims to finish top 10, bottomfeeding is without question faster than landtrading.

That's correct, because you lose too much income if you land trade as a techer. All those turns you spend rebuilding CS, and building up the ghost acres to have 60% of it lost again to be rebuilt again, no income.

400m should be possible though. Mr Silver would be there.

either way I think if silver can hit 400 doing it imperfectly, then someone like enshula calc'ing it all out could do a lot better.

hmmm

hmmm

Well its nice to see the rhetoric toned down.

One thing I can say about land-trading is that its not a lot of fun. I've had a lot more fun slugging it out with LCN and KSF - and maybe thats the best outcome - if this makes people less likely to go apefluff over being grabbed then its been worth it. At the end of the day, the old fashioned form of land trading is still the most fun, grabbin and retallin.

For the folks that are suggesting doing away with or adopting various retal policies - good luck, allainces are going to retal however they can get away with in there own best interest - hoping for some wave of retal altruism is probably just a fantasy.

Whether you are for or against trading, it blows that silver got suicided, I would have liked to see how he would have finished.

With the incredible amount of barren acres (even before the ABing) and low techs that he had, I don't think he would have made it to 400m networth. He did have an impressive bpt at least. If he had mass FA which he paid back later (like LaF did last set), he might have made 400m networth, but not otherwise.