The mess with LaF this set helped me realize that our policy needs revision. Furthermore, RD's paper-thin justification for FSing us out of the blue (something about ingame messages from last set regarding another server and a vague notion of being against our retal policy) has caused us to revisit our policy.

If possible, could you help me work through the pros/cons of some of our ideas without mindless flaming?

Goals:
- Encourage landtrading while discouraging farming
- Create a sensible policy that fits PDM's position in the current server environment
- Increase the potential for fun and innovative gameplay
- Emphasize simple, clear-cut rules and eliminate clauses that read like a hack lawyer's attempts to cover his own ass

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1. With changes to the grabbing formula and my experiences grabbing over the last few sets, I haven't seen a good argument for continuing the debate about what 'topfeeding' might be. Why do we need to keep throwing around this outdated term?

2. Min-max strats that push low def / no off are boring and uncreative. If you get hit while doing this you don't deserve your land.

3. Farming your clanmates is stupid, whether it's for landtrading or to have someone else take your retals.

4. 48-hr retal window seems like the sweet spot for the current server environment. Are there still clans pushing 72? I'm not sure.

Speaking to these points, what is wrong with PDM's current policy of country:country L:L and clanwide escalating? Clanwide L:L does not encourage landtrading but does encourage lazy min-maxing. It also takes a strategic element out of target selection.

A new thought this set was that if a country starts doing SS L:L, all hits must be SS, rather than doing multiple SSes, then buying mil strat and equalizing NW and doing a fat PS. That also discourages landtrading.

PDM needs to take out its harmful ops as acceptable retals policy. LaF claimed we harmful opped them but could not supply any evidence. It just complicates fluff needlessly.

I think we'll continue to fight for our missiles as acceptable retal policy for the time being. Our intention is to only do SS/PS retals, but we need some kind of leverage in the classic LaF scenario of farm away the small clan's retal capacity. We don't do these in conjunction with L:L.

Declaring war seems like a totally acceptable action to me. Can someone lay out a case for why I shouldn't believe this?

Thoughts/concerns/additions/ideas?

You are smarter than I am so I'll ask you doesnt being at war cause both peoples expenses to go up until it is dropped?

Topfeeding definitions provide some protection in a game where offence seems to far outweigh defence. If i'm sitting at 30k acres and 10 mil turrets I'm still not hard to break.

The main problem I've seen with the way PDM did this in this set is that they would have one member who grabbed the same clan or country repeatedly within a very short amount of time ie. minutes.

being at war does not cause both players expenses to go up

How does topfeeding affect anything? If you can retal L:L for yourself then it doesn't matter how much they take because you can take it all back... if your alliance mates are doing the retal 1:1 is fine since they are getting free land and there is no sense of recovery for them. L:L alliance wide by ANY metric is just a means to discourage landgrabbing.

Also, I was planning on posting up a thread like this AFTER we made our own proposed revisions, and posting the whole policy for people to reference. Lets lay that out soon and come back with what we think is good.

my main greivance with the pdm retal policy is that there is not enough easter eggs

Not all alliances do L:L thats why there is still topfeeding, I don't have a problem with that part of PDM's policy :P

and thanks for the clarification on war

The reason alliances are getting upset at PDM is the number of grabs, I understand you want to "have fun", but I also know that when I played in PDM if people had done this to them PDM would be pissed. I took the time to count the hits by different alliances on collab.

PDM 21
LAF 9
SOF 1
Omega 8
WOF 1
and some random untaggeds

Can you see why it might piss an alliance off?

and when your FA's are extremely hard to contact things don't get better :P

The problem with the PDM retal policy is that people don't like PDM. It has nothing to do with the policy.

Cool, just looking for feedback.

As far as the number of hits, I feel like as long as the timeframe is reasonable (aka no bumrush volley of farming), it works to the benefit of all involved parties.

In the case of Collab where you were warprepping and apparently didn't want to increase your acreage, that could be sorted out with the offending alliance, no?

I do agree that in order for PDM to say our retal policy is fair we need to have accessible FAs. :P

joe, when you played in PDM that was not the modern era of PDM. PDM was one of the first alliances to force L:L down everyone's throats and we clung to that mindset for a long time. PDM would have not have accepted it then but 21 hits in ~21 days from an alliance is not particularly unreasonable...

Also, we are always available via insite.

We did get a new FA today =P

my biggest problem with you guys while I was playing with Fist was that you guys didn't enforce any of your own rules on your members so we kept being RoRed or whatever even by your own extremely complicated set of rules

assuming thats not happening anymore, biggest gripe is that your rules are too complicated

LaF's hits are unjustifiable and RD was just looking for a target.

Yeah, definitely agree that things need to be stated more clearly. The policy itself, especially as we edit it down, I feel is more concise than others that I've seen, which seem to have phantom opportunistic clauses that get pulled out whenever advantageous.

Last set and this set we bent over backwards to apply our rules to ourselves even when the other alliance involved had different rules that could have benefited us.

Example, LCNer hit me, I got off one retal for 50% L:L, but couldn't get the other one off within 48 hrs. Instead of passing that 2nd retal to a clanmate per LCN's policy, we considered the situation complete.

Some people don't like how you topfeed constantly. You might not recognize it but people from elsewhere do. And there is no "enough defense" to not get topfed really unless you want to ruin your country and then if someone really wanted they still could. Obviously Im not saying if you see someone with 1 mill turrets and 30k acres that he deserves his land but yah.

I might also suggest you start grabbing later in the set. I kinda laughed at a few of your members doing their landtrading/topfeeding being about 3-4k acres behind me when I was at 10-11k from exploring.

And as Rockman said, other then the NM and spyop retals your policy isn't likely the real issue.

GL HF GG etc :P

locket: what is a topfeed and why should we recognize it? If you can make a good argument I'm all ears.

IMO, inherent in the idea of a topfeed is a notion of entitlement that is not founded in game mechanics or the spirit of this server. You are saying essentially, I want a device in place that ensures that when I'm done grabbing, I won't get grabbed anymore. It seems so arbitrary and counter-competitive.

Cut out the idea of a topfeed and you eliminate half the legalese (i.e. rambling clauses that only serve to patch logical holes) in most alliances' policies.

Well the basis of topfeeding is that no matter what you do, you can always be grabbed. If you work hard all reset to get to 40k, and have 15m turrets. You can still get topfeed by some nub running an 8k all explore techer since they stocked 100m bushels by then. You'll find it particularly costly to get your land back because they have far less than what you had and between lost production/cash spent on jets etc, you can easily lose 5-6m nw over one land grab (which does make a big difference end of reset when that occurs more than once)

And reguardless of ease of getting the land back, getting hit by another alliance means that you have to take turns/cash getting the land back and rebuilding it, so its not ideal anyway. Which basicly means, that all netgaining alliances will look to protect their members from any situation where they will lose nw, otherwise they are failing at fa.

Networth has never, and will never have any basis on topfeeding for netgainers, because a countries nw does not impact their growth/income/final networth, land does.

And as per normal, the larger stronger alliances policy prevails, if pdm want to force their policy on people, they'll have to war over it. Just like laf wasnt willing to accept sol's policy a few resets ago, so they got mauled for it, although sol's policy is clearly a warmongers policy designed at creating wars rather than defending members.

So basically the problem is you make yourself a target by getting 40k acres and don't want to accept that you have made yourself good for grabbing, independent of your defense.

The problem is, topfeed is a notion created by players, not game mechanics, but so is 1:1 retals, land:land retals, alliance:country retals, etc.

If someone runs a low SPAL, can I commit espionage on them and demand that their alliance do 1:1 retals with espionage ops back on me? I could use the argument that you got a lot of tech but didn't protect it, but I bothered to protect my tech.

Should missiles be an acceptable form of retaliation or not? After how many attacks should they be acceptable? Does the size of the attacks matter?

Should grabbing other countries that can retal you be encouraged or discouraged?

Should staying significantly smaller than all-explore to abuse 1:1 retals be rewarded?

Should buying the military to bounce SS/PS retals be rewarded? Or should we allow missile retals if someone has too many turrets?

Should growing significantly larger than all-explore countries and running low defense be rewarded? What about running high defense? What is a fair definition of low and high defense?

If we penalize anyone for outgrowing explorers, what incentive is there for people to grab, aside from those who intentionally stay smaller than explorers? Do we want to penalize people for outgrowing explorers?

i think that's a game design flaw, something that happened more with the rule changes.

we made offense too powerful compared to defense in this game.

there should be more logical reason why a 8k country should break a 40k country that kept up its defense.

i can see why topfeeds occur, it is retarded that a 40k country would run around with only 1M turrets. they deserve to get hit since they are just asking for it. but if you had 15M turrets and kept up your defense, it is pretty dumb that an all jetter 8k guy all explore can break you.

i already put some stuff in the bugs & suggestions (add the 3rd d ally back, etc.) but no admin even bothered to answer me

i answered you hlw -- we're aware of that stuff, but it's likely only relevant to a handful of servers, so it's taking a back seat for now.

there's a fine line between making it so that skilled players don't get hosed and making it so skilled players can abuse other players, so those kind of changes aren't something we do willy-nilly

I do feel that is a game mechanics issue. I think that market recall has made stocking extremely easy - but the clear choice to bring military back in the game is to have GS steal bushels. Sure- countries will need tons of troops to avoid stock stealing... but it will incentivize growing rather than staying small and accumulating huge stock.... and it will encourage people to keep the military market up.

and balin, honestly i almost feel like the easiest way for everyone is to accept universal land:land. either that or go country:country solely. the second method promotes more individual skill, which is something everyone on the alliance server hates (and i don't know why), because they go blahblahblah about "go play in primary", etc.

but regardless, there would be no definitions of topfeed etc. etc. if everyone did universal land:land because the game is structured with generous ghost acres. everyone would win-win and no one would be pissed in the end.

the problem with that is not all alliances want "win-win". some of the warmongers on purpose have different retal policies so they can cause wars... and that's what i see is the problem with pdm's policy. it seems like a policy that a warmonger would use =)

btw you seem so reasonable, i wish you were the FA and was the one responding to my messages once the LaF/PDM tensions broke out. i think none of what happened this reset would've happened, and i'm being 100% honest on this one.

detmer: "GS steal bushels" is a nice idea, but the problem is that's a tactic no real alliance would use but a terrorist tactic by untags. considering there's no more random untags (aka multis), and most untags nowadays can be easily linked to ex-vets of this game, it makes this just an open door for suiciders to push past grudges and not actually serve as a valid tactic for people on the alliance server to interact with each other from an established alliance to another established alliance except maybe in a time of war.

i'm not sure that really fits on the alliance server in terms of changing strategy, it will probably impact the individual servers more.

pang: i wasn't aware i was answered. i'm not saying my idea was necessary the right one, it was just a suggestion of something that worked in the past that got removed. perhaps you guys had a different game design goal in mind that could somehow fit something like this.



to be honest the new bonus system with the luck/d bonus/decay/building costs/etc. is a step in the right direction for everything.

it adds another dimension to this game, but a lot of it is a very slow (except for the turns bonus) and deliberate buildup in a game where everything else (except building CS) is an instant gratification type of deal.

a retal policy should basically discourage people from grabbing you by not making it profitable for them

but you could also do it so under certain situations you allow or expect a certain amount of profit

for example with our 80% land:land assuming in general countries grab and retal for the same amount each side gains roughly 47% of the amount grabbed

if the retal gets back 150 in 1 hit obbiously it was a poor grab

if the retal gets back 75 then another is taken perhaps the grab was too abusive, but you have to think about not only your milstrat gov ps and their dr and nw, but the dr on you their milstrat gov and networth

and if it gets too organised then its just like internally farming or land trading but just agreed to between tags

the problem with dec war is its a 10% bonus, and stacked with all the other bonuses makes offence more effective than defence

everyone can always get 50% from ps, everyone averages around 50% from def allies, but if you through in o allies and dec war it throws that balance off even more, of course theres the random fail factor which counteracts it a little

id rather like to go back to 72 since it makes FA retals and so on a lot more relaxed, but it also makes WR feeding have a lot more turns owing retals and so leads them to concentrate their hits even more on tags in smaller time periods to leave less retals owing all around the place

to the SS on l:l, policies used to say that if an ss is done you count it as 150% for l:l to avoid that abuse partly, laf usually has a rule saying 'all retals must be ps' but when too many hits are owing or disparity is too large theres only so many hits you can do in 48 hours with ps (particularly if you make l:l country:country_only)

the milstrat buying and selling isnt a huge issue since you cant change it a lot inbetween hits repeatedly, it only works occasionally

the problem with topfeeding when its too easy to get away with and too prevalent is it encourages mediocrity since no one should try harder if they know they will be grabbed, and promotes playing only the highest $/acre strats since others cant compete

its really hiding behind a retal policy and saying your only allowed to hit me back once but i know i took plenty so that its still worth it for me

some level of l:l helps to balance that by turning topfeeding into landtrading

I still wanna know why I can't do commit espionage on other countries and demand that they do only spy retals on me. If they won't defend their tech, I wanna steal it!

I consider that to be a truth - not an inherent problem



I think that is a valid argument on lack of protection. I definitely feel that politics have encouraged people to only focus on one form of protection but I want people to know that they have to focus on all forms of protection if they want to be safe from me. Commit espionage is like a landgrab in that it may have harmed them but it also benefited you. The means of retaliation I doubt people would abide by just due to the very nature of commit espionage returns and the ability to retal with other means.




As noted above, I think so. You are able to get SDI as spy defense (and unlike turrets where someone can stock all round to break you - you are in control of their maximum likelihood of success with missiles). I do think that in trying to get along with people, factors such as number of attacks and size of attacks should matter, but inherently you can get revenge any way you like.



No. I do think that policies which try to stop people who can retal for themselves from retalling are silly. If you attack someone who has the might to hit you back, then it is stupid to say that they should not hit you back as much as they want. Stopping at some amount like L:L is merely convenient for keeping the peace.



I am not sure what this is in reference to. Are you saying to "topfeed" people who can't retal? I encourage all-ex in PDM to run jetter so they can retal for themselves. Sure they are more open to attacks and it costs oil to operate the jets - but they will recover their land from comparably sized countries that way. It does of course leave them more exposed to top countries but I don't think anything in this game should be perfect. The ability to defend yourself should be its own reward.



I think that buying military should be rewarded as should buying SDI. If you protect yourself that should be the reward.



I am not sure what this is in reference to. High and low defense are of course relative terms and on a basic level are governed by the same principle as supply and demand. The ability to defend yourself is its own reward.



Some people in PDM grab because it is more fun in their opinion, not because they will necessarily do better than if they ran all-explore. If someone wants to grow larger than the pact then I think it is their job to protect themselves sufficiently. Being larger should provide them the resources for that. People do have the ability to store up to make a single damaging landgrab against top countries and long as the game is not altered to disallow that then it is up to the top countries to maybe let one or two people outpace them and become bigger targets. Grabbing certainly can provide you all-explore acreages faster, with fewer turns spent gaining land. Something certainly essential for techers.

This might not surprise you - but Mehul changed GS to destroy bushels instead of steal them because Warichak pioneered the bushel pirate strategy (largely at the expense of LaF) and grew extremely large since people were unprepared for it. I am shocked Mehul made a change in response to it and I think it is one of the worst changes he ever made =P

I thought PDM's retal policy was a step in the right direction myself; it opens up grabbing, yet if you want to get your land back you can.

Detmer, you've played long enough to know how netgaining works, there needs to be a stockpiling phase for 90% of strategies, you cant just start out and go mbr all reset, or comie indy all reset, which is essentially what you are suggesting, you wont do well.

Netgaining alliances will protect their right to have a stockpiling phase, and if they didnt they wouldnt exist as netgaining alliances, because people would be unable to netgain well.

If they made grabbing gains more proportional to the original acerage of your own country, then there wouldnt be a need for L:L. But that comes with its own set of problems.
i.e. as gains are currently measured based on nw, also measure them based on land, with people around equal acerage to you getting optimal gains, and decreasing segnificantly as you go up/down from your land total.

Thing is then you create another problem, bottomfeeders could grab with low defence, against people that can even retal them, knowing that the returns of the person they are grabing if/when they retal would be small.

There doesn't need to be. There only needs to be to achieve the NWs people expect currently. I have seen round long MBRs and sure they won't win the round but you could have someone do that and finish top 100. Slagpit got a top 10 as a commie indy all round like three sets ago.

That being said, I don't see how you made the jump to no stocking. Are you saying that you want to lower your expenses more rather than investing entirely in defenses? My point is that if 40k acres makes you a target then maybe you should stock on 35k acres.



Netgaining well is all relative. You don't have to stockpile if others aren't stocking.



I agree that has its own problems and I don't have what I consider to be a better alternative right now.

so are you suggesting we get rid of the idea of stocking all together?

we actually promoted it more by removing the 2B cap bug. what you are suggesting would lean more towards putting the 2B cash bug back and ADDING a max food cap (no matter if you store it on market or not say you can't have more than 100M food for any country) or something.

might be interesting twist

Something I would be willing to do is impose decay for food on the market. Sure, that would hamper stocking, but just through what I consider a valid/realistic gameplay mechanism.

Edit: Because I don't want to say stockpiling shouldn't be allowed, but it is perhaps way too easy right now. As you know I want GS to steal bushels again. Problem of course is market recall allows bushels to effectively never be exposed. Some people have proposed spy ops to raid goods en route to market and I would be all for that.

great thought, just skimmed them but will think hard about them later.

hanlong, glad you found me to be reasonable. i have more free time these days and will probably be stepping back into some kind of leadership position in PDM next set.

baline: i'll make a post later about all the facts about PDM/LaF stuff later that you asked about. i just need some free time to dig through all the networth changes again.

i apologize for the delay

Except that several hits = more Oil used, more military units lost, more time (if you have to wait for your Jets to come back) to get your land etc etc. Much more harmful than it would be if you got all the land back in 1 retal, which isn't possible with a topfeed.

Then carry more defense. If it is a topfeed that means the attacker had to trade their offense for defense and will be a cheap break.

They didn't have to trade offense for defense, they could have stockpiled for days and then spent all that money on jets.

When you netgain, you can't run huge defense. It hampers the benefits of having a lot of land if the military expenses increase as well. Anybody is breakable.

When we've been topfed by PDM, we don't throw a hissy fit. L:L is what we would be enforcing anyways. The point is that taking several retals to get your land back isn't as efficient as taking a single retal.

Thomas, if more defense stops you from getting grabbed maybe it is worth it?

It is true that one retal will not always get it back - that is why we have L:L. If you have 1:1 unless 1 isn;t enough then really all you ahve is L:L.

And to both of you, yes, anyone is breakable if someone tries hard enough. I guess it is the defenders responsibility to not make themselves a target.

Thus the question is how much defense should people have to run, or should netters be subject to warmongers staying small and grabbing them.

100k turrets on 20k acres is a bit weak. 1 mil is even a bit weak. 10 mil is probably a bit too much, but still doesn't hurt too much to carry around. 25 mil is overboard, but still breakable.

No one has given a numerical description of how much defense is appropriate. All I ever get is "if you're breakable, its not enough", which means that they think no netter has the right to grow larger than any douchebag who stays small and stockpiles cash just to make a big grab and be a jerk.

I think the question is not how much defense is enough as much as how many acres are enough? Clearly you want as many acres as you can get that will not draw people to wanting to attack you. As long as you are only trying to avoid opportunists then you can settle on a manageable amount of defense.

So far the defense for considering a topfeeding policy is:

- we want to grab until we're done grabbing
- we don't like jerks who mess with us
- once we reach our landgoal we are entitled to stock in peace

Yes, it is 'unfair' that someone can stock on low acreage and tap your 60k casher. Not sure where the rules of fairness are posted for this game. Even though it will impact your spreadsheet finish, you are still able to:

1) Grab your land back
2) If that's not possible, work it out with that alliance
3) If that's not possible, kill the offender

You want this game suicide-proof and it's getting so boring already.

To be fair, the implementation of the bonus system has made it less boring. But I do think these ancient policies deserve some forward thinking.

I was under the impression I was the first bushel bandit when I grew huge off of suiciding MD then the next set after FBI booted me from being HIA and kicked me out due to pressure from MD, I along with Champagne raided Titans and Others, causing something like a several hundred person warchat to kill us

I don't remember that but I'll take your word for it. It was changed post-Wari so by default if you did it you would have had to have been earlier =P

As has been stated,anyone can be broken.The idea is to be the least inviting target.
If i am looking at 3 20k countries and 1 has 7mil turrets,1 with 5,and 1 with 10..You better be the one with 10.

Netgainers want to netgain, warmongers want to war.

What you're suggesting is the equivilent of telling warmongers you cant war as regularly as you would like, maybe once or twice a year, no more than that.

The defence for a topfeeding policy is simple, its beneficial to most alliances on the server to have one, and as such, any attempt to remove it will result in wars, which have already been faught for years and won by those that wanted a topfeeding policy, and they will fight more to defend it.

you know what's a good indicator of "too much or too little" for d?

your expenses.

you can carry 5M turrets on 20k easily and be in teh green, but 5M turrets on 8k land puts you in the red.

if you stock to get 20M jets on 8k land just to hit a 40k guy on 15M turrets, you are just doing it to topfeed someone because your country doesn't have any future for it having that much military on 8k land

seems people are forgetting GA's in the l:l retals. If it takes say 3 grabs to get your land back, that's also 3 lots of bonus GA's. You're spending instant cash/jets which have a minor bearing on current NW, for your land back plus extra land in ghost acres, which gives a long term benefit.
Given that returns are currently NW based, and the ebst returns come from grabbing someone of similar NW, the premise is that both attacker and defender SHOULD have relatively similar amounts of military. Obviously this isn't always the case.
As for defence, of course it's a variable amount, but if I go on a look through my scores list, and I pick say two countries that I will potentially grab, they're sitting on 15k acres, one has 10k turrets, the other has 1.5 million turrets, which am I going to grab?
(and yes, I saw exactly this sit of 15k acres and a 10k break this set)
the way the game currently works, there is always a chance you will be grabbed. But if your defence looks solid, and it looks like it will cost a lot to break you initially, then you're generally not going to get grabbed as a whole.