Originally
posted by
Rip It Up:
Exploring for land is different. Its the default way to get land, especially in the early days of country building. You cant avoid exploring for land.
you can avoid self farming your countries, and choose to grab other players for land, which is what we in NBK believe is more in the "spirit" of the game.
besides, im speaking for myself her, but how much more fun is it to grab another country for land and try to defend it? i know that was one of the aspects of the game that got me hooked in the first place :-)
Grabbing another country for land and trying to defend it was a fun challenge until I figured out that the offensive multipliers were out of whack, and I could only bounce retals from idiots.
Then I realized that once I got decent at gaining land, that I would be topfed by anyone who was not as good at gaining land as me, and that I would be unable to bounce their attacks.
How did I know I would be unable to bounce their attacks? One of my very first sets in FFA, I ran a ring of 4 tyranny techers which would stockpile for a few days, and then make a big grab on a much bigger country. I was running around with 1000 to almost 2000 networth per acre, topfeeding countries with 3 or 4 times as much land as me. And it took no skill at all. By the end of the set, all my techers had 15 to 20 million jets. And all 4 of them ended the set with around 15 to 20 million networth. Which at that point, was the best I had ever done.
I thought that having 12 million jets on 6k acres made me entitled to grab a 25k acre country. While the 25k acre country spent days growing & money building his buildings, I spent my days teching all my turns and buying more and more jets. The lazy way to gain land was to just topfeed someone every few days. Finding good untagged targets out of DR was incredibly time consuming. And it was a skill I had not picked up yet. I lacked the skill to gain land as well as good players did, so I just topfed a good player every few days.
That was less than a year after I started playing Earth 2025. For me, doing things inefficiently and improperly isn't fun. So I learned to play the proper way. Having played Utopia before Earth 2025, I had thought that the higher your networth per acre, the better your country was. It took me only a couple of months to stop thinking like a Utopia player. Unfortunately, FFA players still think like Utopia players. And yes, that is meant to be an insult.
As for the spirit of the game, I see it as I should not encourage others to grab me unless being grabbed benefits me. If it does not benefit me, then I should choose a retal policy that will discourage people from grabbing me. I see it as against the spirit of the game to grab someone and not even worry about trying to have enough defense to bounce their retaliation.
Once I realized how retal policies are formed, I realized what they were. They are policies set in place by the bullies of the server to benefit themselves. If the bullies are bottomfeeding netters, they force the server to use land:land. If the bullies are midfeeding netters, they midfeed an alliance until that alliance threatens to go to war if they are not granted a DNH, and then the alliance grants them a DNH for the rest of the set to prevent war. If the bullies are topfeeders, they force the server to use a 1:1 retal policy. Why are any retal policies put in place? Because the bullies of the server force them on people.
Why do we use alliance:country retals? Why not alliance:alliance retals? Or country:alliance retals? Or country:country retals? Because the bullies of the server want alliance:country retals.
There's nothing wrong with being a bully. Whats funny is that the bullies like to pretend that they are being fair or are doing what is best for the server. They are acting in their own self interest. They don't care about whats best for the server. And they appear to be so delusional that they don't even realize that they are power hungry bullies working to ruin the server.
