I did an all-X oiler to challenge myself. Can't believe I got top ten.

Your hate speech isn't welcome here. Your off-topic attempts at creating drama aren't welcome here either.

I'd say the "snowflake" is the guy crying about a SIX HOUR forum ban that expired 16 HOURS AGO. Did you even notice that you were banned before it was over? Find something more important to be upset about.

As a seller I've learned to ignore most standing orders because buyers simply aren't trustworthy. Changing the S/O limit from 3 to 1 doesn't help with that. The lack of flexibility with just 1 per item hurts destocking for cashers and farmers on Express and I'm sure would cause problems elsewhere.

Does allowing for 3 per item cause some type of issue that I'm not aware of?

There are balance issues with some of the destructive spy ops. I'm considering changing returns for some of them to be partially based on the attacking country's spy count. Some starting numbers are below:


Stir Rebellions
CURRENT: MIN(0.04 * $target_pop, 0.07 * your_pop)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.04 * target_pop, 0.001 * your_spies)

Cause Dissensions
CURRENT: MIN(0.04 * target_troops, 0.08 * your_troops)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.04 * target_troops, 0.04 * your_spies)

Bomb Airbases
CURRENT: MIN(0.04 * target_jets, 0.08 * your_jets)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.04 * target_jets, 0.04 * your_spies)

Bomb Buildings
CURRENT: MIN(0.015 * target_building_count, 0.04 * your_building_count)
PROPOSED: MIN(0.015 * target_building_count, 0.00015 * your_spies)


Reasons for the change:
1) Some of these spy ops are too powerful as is. It's too easy to take out a large chunk of a defending country's troops, for example.
2) Using spies to partially determine damage encourages specialization during war, rewards large countries over small ones, and reduces the offensive power of countries that plan to get a high SPAL by dropping their land at the start of the war.
3) It doesn't make sense for a tiny number of spies to be able to destroy millions of jets.


All feedback is welcome, but I think that I need help picking the right constants for some of these. It's been a long time since I've participated in a war between clans.

Considering one changes (got rid of the other one):

1) The "asking" column for the public market will be a link that shows a small table of information about valid standing orders. The table would factor in the money of the country that placed the order as well as other standing orders for that country. Example output for an asking price of $3100:

Price    | Quantity
3000     | 1
2900     | 100
2800     | 3043943

In this example, sellers wouldn't be fooled by the empty SO at $3100 or the low volume SOs at $2900 and $3000. They might sell at $2800 instead because they know that there are valid orders at that price.


Reasons for the change:

A) Standing orders feel too powerful for buyers.
B) Giving sellers access to more information may make markets more efficient.
C) It's straightforward to implement, balance, and test.

Share any feedback that you have.

There's no public information to share about that deletion.

Anyone want to guess on the winning NW? No idea here. Been stuck in all-X hell.

Yeah I know that it looks bad. It's not live yet for a reason. I wanted to get all of the raw data there and actually working.

Countries start in GDI and can leave before they make an attack or get attacked.

Keep it civil.

Your countries have been deleted 24 times for rule breaking on Express. That means that you've used up your first 24 chances. Please don't make a spectacle on top of that.

Early tech sales worked this time!

I changed it to have live public market prices. I'm open to adding some visual elements if they are easy to do.

Here's what I currently have, although it doesn't look quite right: https://slagpit.earthempires.com/

I think that it's too much text. Someone had the idea to add a live public market feed to the front page instead. Could do live prices as well. Any opinions?

I don't want to go into the details of how the mod tools work, but consider the reasons why people cheat in the first place. We look for those patterns.

Molotov provided you with a good explanation. You should not change your play style because of the addition of ingame allies, except perhaps by running with less defenses than you would normally (due to the boost that allies provide).

If you wish to coordinate and attack the same targets with your friends then you should do on that the Team, Alliance, or FFA servers only.

Lies, NitelL will just sell on PM all round.

The second best farmer was an NPC country.

:(

Congrats to Molotov for setting a new Express NW record!

Great tech prices guys, let's do it again next round.

It would be restricted in that if tag A and B have a mutual DNH then they can't get into a war without 48 hours notice.

Lots of people have PMed me about their issues. As far as I can tell, I usually resolved their problems in a satisfactory way.

If you feel the game isn't fun and have felt that the game staff have been incompetent for years, my response would be that it sounds like we don't deserve your money.

Some customers will never be satisfied no matter what you do. Some customers also simply aren't worth the trouble.

If you feel that I'm doing a bad job with the game, that's fine. You still can't repeatedly break the rules of the forum.

One member is enough for relations.

If a one man tag exists at the start of the round, that tag can choose to try to establish mutual DNHs with other tags.

If a one man tag pops up suddenly in the middle of the round, other tags can choose how to respond. If the country looks suspicious then it may be in the best interest of the bigger tags to kill it. If the country doesn't look suspicious then perhaps relations can be established.

If you beat someone in a war and want to trash talk their performance, go ahead and do that. If you want to trash talk another alliance in an FS thread, go ahead and do that. If you're known someone for years and want to engage in some lighthearted banter, go ahead and do that. None of that is against the rules. That is not what is being discussed here.

If you feel entitled to go further than that, then these forums may not be a good fit for you. We have always set out to host a game where players are, for the most part, civil to each other. It's been that one since day 1. That's why there are rules on country names, ingame messages, and what can be posted on the forums.

"Ingame messages are used to communicate with other players, find allies, or resolve disputes. Please be polite in all of your messages: sending offensive messages can have dire consequences for our country!"

"Note: Use of inappropriate language may result in deletion."

Lately, we haven't done a good job with enforcing the rules on the forums. The forums have grown wild and are overflowing with personal hate. That drives away some players from participating in them and the game. It's bad for business.

From a business perspective, why is it a good thing to allow players to tell the game staff to kill themselves?

The forums are hosted to further your enjoyment of the game. They are not hosted so that you can personally abuse others in some attempt to have "fun". If you aren't willing to follow the forum rules then don't post here.

What "heavy consequences" are you even talking about?

By this point we've got to be all adults here, mostly 30s and older. There's a bunch of stuff that really ought to be common sense to people of that age:

- If you go on someone else's property then you have to follow their rules.

- If you enter a business and abuse the staff then you might be asked to leave.

It blows my mind as to why people care so much about posts getting deleted or being put in temporary time outs. Don't you have more important stuff to worry about?

Fair point, changed it to be 48 hours in both cases.

I'll share my point of view. You are someone who has loudly announced on multiple occasions that you aren't really playing the game anymore. You created this thread to say hello to the community. That's fine. Yet three days into it you go into an anti-admin rant and make false statements about me, seemingly without provocation. If I had come into this thread and taunted you by saying something like "Welcome back DerrickICN, did you enjoy your time off?" then I would understand. But I didn't do that. So I'm looking at a guy who says he isn't playing the game anymore who will apparently blow up in any thread without any warning or cause. How should I deal with that? If someone came into your business, said he wasn't going to buy anything, asked to speak to the manager and told him to fluff off, and kept being disruptive, what would you do in response?

Your last post contained at least five false statements and accusations. I'm done with this. Maybe your outburst was for attention. Ok great, you got some. Now stop.

By the way, I am not responsible for your feelings. You are responsible for your own feelings.

You can view it that way if you want to. Players being fluffs to the game developers is certainly part of the reason why 3/4 of them are inactive. Perhaps you should try viewing it as a mutually beneficial relationship instead of trying to achieve 4/4 inactive developers.

Being "nice" to players will not prevent them from abusing you. That has been proven many times over the years.

I'm looking to change the Team server into a casual clan-based environment, FFA into a more hardcore clan-based environment, and Alliance into something somewhere in-between. I'm inviting the community to comment on changes that may happen as part of change set #22 to accomplish part of that vision. More information here: https://www.earthempires.com/...hanges-49997?t=1618146293

For the Alliance server:

* Untagged countries will have a 90% gains penalty when attacking or spying any tagged country.

* A country cannot perform any attack or spy op 48 hours after a tag change.

* Clan admins will be able to mark other clans as DNH. Upon doing so, countries in that tag will only be able to perform harmless spy ops (spy, military spy, alliance spy, market spy) against the other tag. Some details:
a) Anyone in the tag can see who has been marked DNH and which tags have marked them as DNH.
b) A clan cannot mark another clan as DNH if it has attacked it within the past 48 hours.
c) If two clans have mutually marked each other as DNH then cancelling the DNH will only take effect after 48 hours. Both sides will be notified and both DNHs will be dropped at the same time.
d) A one-sided DNH can be cancelled at any time without a delay.

For the FFA server:

* Only the DNH tag change will be implemented.

I am hoping that the following benefits are realized by these changes:

1) Formalizing DNH relations will prevent accidental hits during war.
2) Formalizing DNH relations will make it less risky to recruit new players into a tag.
3) Adds a game mechanic to enforce rules around pre-arranged wars between clans.
4) Reduces the power of the FS and can prevent blindside wars in some situations.
5) Builds a starting point to add other types of relationships between clans in the future, such as allies or formally declaring war.
6) An attack/spy cooldown period prevents some tag change behaviors which are generally viewed as bad by the community including tagging up late to immediately join a war and detagging to suicide another tag.
7) Smaller tags who are viewed as untrustworthy by other clans can be more safely tolerated by them.
8) The incentive for larger clans to kill off all untagged countries has been reduced.
9) If a single person has a grudge against a tag it will be more difficult for them to wage war by themselves.
10) Some of the issues that cause negative tag utility have been addressed. I'd like alliance to be a place where clans compete with each other and there's more meaning and importance behind the tag that you choose.

I'm aware that number nine will be viewed as a disadvantage by some. To be frank, we've tried it the other way for the past ten years and the results have been predictably negative. With that said, none of these changes are set in stone and I invite all comments.

This is exactly the problem. At no point did I say anything remotely resembling that. This is your final warning from me. Stop putting words in my mouth.

Nothing to do with "wokeness". The rules haven't changed for ten years.

If you'd like to explain from a business perspective why it would be a good thing to allow you guys to tell each other to commit suicide and other vicious garbage, I'm all ears.

Derrick: you were already warned by someone else to stop spreading misinformation. As I already told you: "The moderators aren't perfect and don't see every post. If you find a rule breaking post that you believe should be deleted, free free to message the forum moderators."

Thanks. So the worst was food at 7% of the time and the second worst was bus tech at 3% of the time.

The reasons are complicated. Demand can be very spiky on Express because people can play up to 360 turns at once. Right now tech is too cheap so I'm not surprised that it keeps getting bought out.

It's a problem that I'm working on. I know that it's not fun to try to play turns only to find no food on the public market.

Can you be more specific? Which goods are emptying out and about when did it happen?

Please keep discussion in this thread on topic. This is an important announcement for the community. Thank you.

My current thinking is for the clan-based servers to offer various degrees of protection: Team protects you from unwanted wars entirely, Alliance might have some restrictions on early wars, blindside wars, and untaggeds, and FFA would have basically no restrictions. FFA would be the place to go if you want politics decided entirely by the players. That type of experience may not be what everyone is looking for.

$250 oil currently.

Anything under 10k is a techer. They won't explore that high on a server with 1980 turns.

Same answer as before: "For example, someone could argue that clan based servers are for clan-based play, so untagged countries should have some kind of penalty applied to them. If we decide to go in that direction then we can code that into the game."

In terms of what to expect in the future on clan-based servers, what I posted here is still current: https://www.earthempires.com/...hanges-49997?t=1618146293