It is clear that both sides are bad for the game so the obvious choice is to stop playing for the good of the game! (wait, or rather than justify actions by countering with a fault of the other side, you could play like (in) PDM to save the game!)

or you could join fluff

"So what are the real motivations here? Do people condemn farming by LaF and EVO because they want to grab the untaggeds themselves, like Ruth posted? Do they condemn farming by LaF and EVO because they feel like untaggeds steal hard earned explored acres from their alliance like Soviet does?"

For the record, I dont farm untagged countries ... never have, never will unless it was war related.

I look for a target to hit once, MAYBE twice but when I see Evo and LaF constantly farming the same targets over and over until they are so far into diminised returns, I give up and hit the explore button. Honestly, I dont think thats what this game was intended to be and combined with the constant whining from netting alliance, I have had about enough.

Driving newbies and vets from this game wont do much to keep it going for very long.

Slagpit: Are you insinuating that EVO does not kill untaggeds because you are being noble, or are you willing to admit that you lack the participation and or motivation of your members?

Just blame martian and get over it!

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

mazooka sighting!

aponic: If you look at overall alliance turns, killing is very inefficient; it only becomes "worth it" to kill an untag if you expect them to cause something like 400-1000 turns production (attacks, readiness, oil, jets that need to be bought, etc, depending on who shows up too of course... farmers aren't so bad for killing) of an average country to your alliance; if they are going to cause less damage than that (say one or two nukes), then it's simply not worth it in the long run.

Fooglmog: I understand that you're just trying to provide a more proper context and you don't necessarily agree with what you posted, but that equivalence doesn't hold any value if we're trying to improve the politics or the environment of the server.

We hear a lot of talk about reducing the farming of untaggeds, but any solution would have to overcome at least the following three obstacles:

1) As untaggeds are hit less, the incentive to hit them increases. How would any kind of agreement be policed?

2) What is to delay or stop suiciders?

3) Why would a new player be offended and disheartened by 12 grabs from one country as opposed to a single grab from 12 different countries?


I personally believe that untagged farming is more of a symptom as opposed to the illness, but I'll play along. Let's take small steps to treat the symptom.

So far no one in this thread has actually offered a justification for farming very late into the set. So I'll assume the majority of them (both in netting and warring alliances) do it just because they're bored. So here we have a behavior that some believe to be harmful that doesn't actually benefit the involved parties.

So why doesn't the server draw up some kind of agreement or treaty to put a halt to this practice? Signed alliances would stop farming untaggeds for sport, mainly late in the set after wars. Netting alliances would benefit because their members would stop making stupid grabs or getting their alliance into trouble. Bored warring alliances could kill off offenders or the obvious untagged suiciders. New players might enjoy the game a little more and be encouraged to stick with it. Everyone benefits, yes?

I can think of a few alliances that would probably be signatories to such an agreement. I can think of a few that wouldn't. I wonder how many in total would agree to it.

What I outlined above isn't the only way it could be done, of course. But if players aren't willing to sacrifice even the smallest thing, we have a problem that no amount of debate or politics will be able to solve.

this thread is boring. STOP BORING ME! LORD BRITISH WOULD NOT BE PLEASED!

protecting your country is part of building one... thus, if you want to net , you need proper defence..

that has always been the gamble... its part of the freaking game!

un-tags playing on the alliance server.. i like the idea, gives the damn game some excitement, but if untags on the server are getting upset over being hit by ALLIANCES on the ALLIANCE SERVER... they can A) join other untags in relations, thus giving them added strength, and ergo, making them a real small alliance.. or B) go to the primary server, and do there thing...

the game is what it is.. as far as alliance relations, you go to a home that plays the way you want to play, and you kick arse for them, and they kick arse for you...lets just play and have some fun!!

alas, netters have a home in tourney.... untaggs have a home in primary.... and as in every server, defence is , and will always be needed... thats just the game...

hell, if its that big an issue kill the TEAM server, and make it a netting (training) server, where no attacks are made, and the players can just pop in play there turns and do thier netting.

because alliance is alliance, you start, you play, and you do your best, on the way you build your country, from turn 1!.. building your country, means just that... you build your country for networth, and you protect that networth w/ proper defence and allies

sorry i spoke good luck all

Major

If you kill my home server, I will suicide on your country.

jk, but still, let's not do that.

we get a free pass... cause we Take it.. without asking.

/me takes Junkys lunch money

well it was someone elses welfare link card thing...

Looks like no one likes my idea. Can I conclude that complaining about farming untaggeds is just shifting the blame and not meant to accomplish anything?

Also, I'd like to know why Instant Krazy (#242) was killed. I'm sure that he did "harmful spy ops" or something.

confirmed.

the policy of "if you yell loud enough, you become right" seems to be the credo of this board over the last little while. moreso than every before.

Man, that sucks that Sol just killed armadillo off for no reason. Figures.

As somebody who played the game 10 years ago during the good old days and just recently started playing, the problem I see with farming is not that it drives untags away. Those guys are untagged for a reason and they are not noobs. The problem, as Ruthie mentioned, is that it drives vets away. When I first came back, I was shocked to see that the alliance server became an all-X server basically. In fact, I didn't even know what all-X meant because all-X didn't really exist (or wasn't widely played) back in the day. Let's face it, all-X is not that fun to play. But everybody is forced to go all-X because of the excessive farming. I admit that I did some farming this reset for the first time (more than anybody in Omega, but less than the Evo guys), and it wasn't all that fun. I basically had to be super diligent and super obsessive about finding the right targets at the right DR time, and I only ended up with 25k acres. Basically for 90% of the server, even if they wanted to landgrab, they are unable to because somebody else has already farmed the targets to huge DR.

So yes, Laf/Evo farming sucks basically because it leaves other people/alliances with nobody to grab. You may say well that's their fault they just aren't as good at grabbing. While that may technically be true, that's not helpful in retaining vets. If this type of lack of grabbing/excessive farming continues, I can see myself walking away rather than playing all-X, because all-X is not fun. I can imagine other vets or would-be players feeling this way. So yes, if you don't want to drive people away, the farming needs to stop. But it's not a problem with Laf/Evo, they are just the target of criticism because they currently do it better than anybody else. The solution must be to increase landgrabbing targets, which is why I think the untaggged bots idea needs to be priority #1 for this server.

I agree with highrock...

he was Krazy, and had to be put down.

Are you saying it's okay to farm untags at the start of the set and not okay to farm them at the end of a set?

I think slag's saying that the ONLY untagged who was doing some legit and open netting was killed by SoL for what looks to be nothing.

I think that pretty much destroys the argument of the warring tags, as they are doing things MUCH worse for untaggeds than some grabs. You can recover from that.
A player's country was destroyed. You can't recover from that.

He hadn't even made any hits for the last 17 days.

"Why do warring alliances get a free pass"

Because the mechanics of the game allow it and, in my opinion, war clans have an innate advantage over the politics and general freedom of mixed and pure netting clans with the games current mechanics.

All of this talk is aimed at creating a less tense atmosphere(?). Where war clans play by a netting clans credo? Or war clans trying to dictate that netters carry more defense than what is necessary to protect themselves against heavy DR untaggeds, is absolutely pointless.

You cannot dictate how a game is played without heavy moderation that results in countries getting deleted for violating these unwritten "rules", and in that case, you may as well put it into the games core mechanics instead.

That's the bottom line. You cannot change how the players play the game from outside the game, at all, ever. Players will do whatever gives them the greatest advantage in the competition, or the greatest entertainment.

The only way to change how the game is played, is to change the actual mechanics or rules of the game itself.

I was trying to quote him from before #242 was killed - I have no clue why he was killed, but that is up to SoL to explain or not.

His first line:

"So far no one in this thread has actually offered a justification for farming very late into the set. So I'll assume the majority of them (both in netting and warring alliances) do it just because they're bored."

We had a war mid-set, we finished the war. We're looking to net out the rest of the set - is that justification enough? If we were bored, we'd kill something.

I'm saying that farming untaggeds at the end of the set is worse than farming untaggeds at the beginning of the set. It is also, in theory, easier to prevent. Apparently the server doesn't have the willpower necessary to take even a baby step towards reducing farming, so what hope is there to solve the overall problem, as some people see it?

I've seen specific EVOers called out for "mass farming" when in reality, they've actually grabbed fairly responsibility. All of this strikes me as outdated, lazy thinking.

If you farm them at the beginning of the set, what's to say they will even stay on till the end?

They'll either just stop playing or do something to retaliate and be killed for it.

I do not see how farming at the end is worse than farming at the start.

Hopefully they tag up somewhere. Isn't that the point? Tag up so you have some protection?

I feel that farming at the beginning is more acceptable because instead of finishing with 100 M NW, you might finish with 200 M NW. Instead of finishing out of the top ten, you might finish in the top ten. Instead of finishing 2nd in alliance ANW, you might finish in first.

What does most farming near the end of the set accomplish? You might finish with 40k acres instead of 20k acres? 40 M NW instead of 20 M NW? Are these worthy goals? From my point of view, they aren't as worthy as the goals in the previous paragraph. Maybe your point of view is different.

There's also the issue of the people who run countries just to mess with tags. I'm sure that the untaggeds grabbing your alliance appreciate your restraint in grabbing them. I don't farm anywhere except for alliance. Even in alliance, nearly all of the countries I farm are detaggers, suiciders, or all-jetters. I don't feel any guilt about it, but AT pundits say that I should.

So after you've grabbed these untags for a full month and a half, and still they don't tag up, it is not okay for anyone else to grab them because you're done grabbing for the set?

When I say you, of course I don't mean you particularly.

When we plan to wargain and yet see our countries at 30M or even 40M NW or even 50M NW (after a war); of course it matters. Just because we didn't purely netgain from the start, doesn't mean we don't want to end the set well.

Untags that are created just to "mess with tags" - we accept retals if we grab them, they suicide or farm one of us and they go on the kill list.

Oh, you left before I could respond to your last question:

<Slagpit> I guess you enjoy this stuff

No, I don't - that's why I don't deal with FA stuff

So you have a valid point Slagpit. Grabbing from the beginning of the set rather than doing it from the middle of the set is a better strategy for gaining top networth. The flaw in your logic arises when you assume that everyone shares the same motivation for playing.

If you want to stop the farming of untagged players, build it into the game. Like the market in this game, players are motivated by price or interest. Saying that the players lack willpower is rather contrary to the nature of the game we are playing.