I'm a newbie to this game. Over the last reset I've pretty much fiqured out the strategies in all aspects of this game but one...in-house farming for land.

I know the rules allow for it but it's no different than going fishing in a stocked trout pond.

This is a free on-line game. Do these players win money if they have the most land than any other country at the end of the reset?

I play yahoo cards(another free on-line game). It amazes me the number of players that cheat in that game to boost up their ratings. When you really think about it....how pathetic is that?
cheating in a free, online card game with nothing at stake.....what a complete waste of time

I really see no difference in cheating at yahoo cards to in-house farming for land and for that matter landtrading between clans for ghost acres.
It's just a complete waste of time and for what??

please explain this to me

this practise requires no skill or intelligence at all or does it?

I personally would prefer to spend my time flyfishing on the side of a river bank instead of snagging fish in a stocked pond.

so why do these players in-house farm for land?

is it because they have a small penis and want to look big in the earth community?

let's see:

paragraph 1) if you're new, i doubt one reset's allowed you to figure out all the strategies.

paragraph 2) maybe, i could give you that

paragraph 3) no

paragraph 4) from your perspective, there's no point at all in competing in anything that doesn't have a tangible reward. why do you even play any games online with nothing at stake? complete waste of time.

paragraph 5) internal farming is not cheating, so that's a pretty flawed comparision.

paragraph 6) again, by your reasoning, all online games without tangible rewards are a waste of time, so it's kind of a nonsense question

paragraph 7) working on it

paragraph 8) it requires intelligence to do it *right* :P

paragraph 9) then by all means, start grabbing. nothing stopping you

paragraph 10) because it gets them the acreage they need/want and it's not disallowed by game rules, so it's as legitimate from a rules perspective as "normal" landgrabbing

paragraph 11) you seemed rational enough until this one. maybe you don't want an explanation and are just sad because you can't catch up to landtraders in acres?

the ones doing it the most are the same people who cheated throughout old (e2025) 1a. there's something probably psychologically wrong with them, I'd just to a large extent ignore it (like most people on the server do) and leave them out of alliance rankings etc (as most people have done)

Thanks for the explanation Azz Kikr and Pontius Pirate

Pontius Pirate....your explanation makes the most sense

If this is proven, please let me know so I can start internal farming ASAP.

QQ

rofl, of course it does, it's what you wanted to hear :P

So you see no difference between doing something that is allowed by the rules and cheating? That's not a good thing to admit.

I don't like land trading, especially in house, except where there is a retal squad . But its hardly cheating, this game is more ruled by politics then by the actual rules. Don't like something? Make a tag, recruit and fight. You have this game down pat after being here for a set.

nope not "cheating" .

it is a political issue. If you are against it then you must know you are not alone.

Lets kill stuff together !!

iMag's too fighting random wars

screw it

I don't think you're a new player

The problem with in-house farming, is that it is a lot closer to running multies.

At what point can you really say that 2 people running 2 countries, with one person running his country solely for the benefit of the other player, isn't really just "1 player"? After all, it is "2 countries playing for the benefit of 1". It's just gray and shady.

What about in house land trading? They both benefit.

Land trading is an issue only because of game design principles.

It is the case where 2 countries can attack each other and reach a Win:Win result. In almost any other game, 2 people that attack each other will result in either a win:lose or lose:lose scenario.

It wouldn't be an issue if the win:win scenario is roughly the same strength as an all-explorer, but it isn't, and the countries are at lesser risk and are competitive (if done right) than those that landgrab normally. That is, the situation is less risky and provides rewards that are just as good, but in game design principles, it shouldn't be the case.

Right xinhuan; but the problem is how to distinguish "friendly" land trading from normal land trading; and when we had win:lose before, you had alliances pacting out and not landgrabbing each other at all, and primarily all-explore.... so there needs to be enough win vs lose to make alliances actually attack each other still...

I say disallow internal attacks just like allies can not attack each other. At least that way if alliances wish to farm their own, one must detag first. Also do not allow detaggers to retag with the same alliance for X number of hours.

It won't get rid of the issue completely, but if another alliance wishes to kill the offender they are not tagged and not subject to protection from pacts and whatnot.

As far as land trading goes I still don't see it as a complete win for the participants... I agree that it isn't as risky as normal landgrabbing, but it is pretty expensive and you lose CS's for every hit received. If it is done correctly then it is a win:win, but a landgrabber who doesn't lose their land will usually come out ahead in the end.

yeaaa the biggest problem with that is it's so easy to make a second tag (LaF1 and LaF2) and bounce back and forth between them as required.... too easy to abuse...

And yea, we've tried to make it so that landgrabbing is always better

Couldn't admins simply step in if they see alliances blatantly abusing it?

TMBR (and DMBR) as a strategy (not as a destock method) needs a boost. Superbig landsize countries need a nerf.

Solution - change PM regen and make military bases affect PM regen. Also, make military bases even more powerful, but decrease PM regen from below its current rate, even for MBRs.

That'll give less incentive to grow beyond the area where landtrading starts to pass bottomfeeding in growth, and it will give full-set MBRs a much needed boost.

The MBR strategy has been underpowered for quite a while now. All-explore MBR is far more difficult than all-explore casher or farmer, yet its peak networth is comparable to a good all-explore casher or farmer's networth. And the addition of grabbing to a MBR strategy adds little to its networth. The strategy needs a boost. And it hasn't been given one at all.

Even MBR destocks are becoming rare now. However, there is a very different speed between a Commie Indy destock (about 2.4 networth per acre per turn) compared to a private market destock (about 6.5 networth per acre per turn). The Commie Indy destock also needs some tweaking and weakening (the decrease of the military expenses modifier boosted indies too much, in addition to them getting a boost in the indy tech max from 140 to 160, while MBRs got no boost to help them). Most people destock as a no military base theocracy, and their PM regen allows it to be effective. Even going MBR for farmers with 600+ CS is often not as effective as destocking as a theocracy with no military bases.

The balance in destocking techniques has gotten messed up, as has our addiction to the need for the game to constantly be easier, so that we can constantly be getting bigger and better countries. That way we can fool ourselves into thinking that we are improving as players. In actuality, getting a t10 now is about as challenging as getting a t100 was 8-10 years ago. If anything, we're getting less skilled, and we're using the game changes to mask our decreasing skill.

I wish there were some kind of strat where you could mix in 10% military bases and it would make sense, but there's not. Military bases seem to be all or nothing and thus in any given game there's probably far fewer military bases than any other building out there.

If you're talking about landtrading, PDM never cheated in the old game or now, barring the occasional exception every alliance has had.

Yeah, but even when PDM landtrades their finishes are mediocre. I was kind of talking about the people who were doing it to win.

Rockman: Bottomfeeding should NEVER be profitable in any way, shape or form. Personally I'd like to see countries grabbing countries their own size or larger, take a bit of a risk. at least land traders are hitting someone roughly their own size.

So hitting someone that can't retal you should not be profitable, but hitting someone that can retal you should be profitable? That's completely messed up.

You should be rewarded for having a good country and a good defense, not penalized for it.

yes, being able to farm someone so they can't grow and end up quitting SHOULD be penalised. there's a vast difference between hitting someone close to your own size, maybe a little lower in nw, maybe a little higher, where it's all about risk, and farming the living daylights out of someone 1/10 your size who, even buying maximum defence possible with their funds, to the detriment of their country, still can't stop you taking 50 grabs per day.
to be honest, most people of a given NW DON'T have a particularly good defence, an attitude evolved by reset upon reset of lazy pacting to prevent landgrabbing at all.

Land trading makes the game boring for those who enjoy competition.
I guess it should be solved so you can't land trade efficiently or the game will loose players.

I guess make it harder to retal and come out on top?
But still not to hard :P

Right now its mostly a matter of how much more you will gain when grabbing someone..
Its not like you are afraid to loose any land when retaled..

Or just make me king and make my turns count as 10 turns each. and i will stop land trading myself.. In an honest fair way of course :)

People don't quit because of bottomfeeders. People quit because of suiciders and topfeeders.

Landtrading aggravates those who hate competition and hate skill being introduced into the game.

The only people who say landtrading properly doesn't take any skill are the ones who haven't yet learned how to do it properly.

Right, I understand this. That is exactly why I have no issues with the upcoming C:C DR that is being introduced next reset, because it is a good step towards this problem, but is probably insufficient to prevent in-house farming when it involves a larger amount of countries (for example, in FFA, you can still farm yourself for 75 hits round-robin before C:C DR kicks in hard).

Reducing ghost acres in general would fix the land-trade problem, and might actually cause more wars to happen, since GDI farming and DR camping strategies will no longer be as effective in the coming resets.

Im not very good at programing.
It would take a lot of skill for me to make a bot that played my country :P
But it would mean no competition for me..

Its retarded to reply that it takes skill when it still ruins the competition part called land grabbing.

Land trading is just like a new kind of exploring, its a peacefull way to gain land using a symbios of 2 players who use their math skills to gain a lot of land together.
At the cost of the competitive art of land grabbing.

I like land grabbing! I don't want it ruined by land trading!
It seems as a fair amount of other players agree.

We like Earth Empires, we don't want it turned into tetris :P

I think not, and by God that post made me think you actually are Seth after all ;).

There are lots of people who could be trained in the fine arts of landtrading in FFA. Why don't people do that? Probably because they, like me, think it sorta sucks. Not because they can't do it, but they aren't the least intersted in doing it.
FFA is very different, most ppl there are pretty dedicated, and for some reason it's OK to selfarm there. And I goota go to bed. But I had a point, ffs. Just not the stamina to point it out.