"thus most grabs are the "I'm going to take advantage of you" type, in which case I do believe that it should not be acceptable to do that type of grab while GSing some of your countries into DR."

I would agree with you on that. But the other side of that coin is when I look at my 50k acre country I see any attack coming in as a "I'm going to take advantage of you" grab. I do not recognize their right to take advantage of me. Thus I DR my one single country while happily land exchanging with other alliances my fiften other countries

they attack me, i retal, i attack them they retal, we come out close enough to equal land gained that I don't feel taken advantage of and i don't think they would either. you come out ahead in a grab/retal +500 acres, and then I come out ahead from a grab/retal +450. Next time you'll get the 450 and I'll get the 500. I would even go as far as saying this is "fun"

Thats why I think it shouldn't be too drastic of a change for alliances to accept this.

Ketchup said that he doesn't tell anyone how to play their countries, however I have no doubt that if someone in TKO was routinely topfeeding other alliances, that person would get kicked out fairly quickly.

only because topfeeding is lamer than the eighties

(and they were pretty lame)

I agree it wouldn't be too hard to adopt. The problem is FFA refuses to acknowledge topfeeds, which is a larger issue I believe.

I think the bigger issue in FFA is noticing the misuse of those policies in Alliance. All too often clans there hide behind this to protect some sacred right they think they have to their land. I think the original notion of it was quickly clouded. If there was a policy that defined a topfeed in a way that would only acknowledge those instances where it was clearly being done in malice, rather than a gain for resources, I would certainly at least consider it. Alliance has a whole mess of issues with its politics that I hope to keep out of FFA.

(assuming none are dr'd)

if you have a country in your tag with equal or greater land than the country you wish to attack then you may. That gives them the same opportunity you were given.

If your tag does not have a country of equal or greater land, then l:l is accepted and the person gets their acres back.

it doesn't speak towards intent, be it growth or douchery, but it certainly deals with both issues (get rid of dr and discourage topfeeding, as i'll do it right back and we'll be even or simply get all the land back and we'll be even)

Yeah...I wouldn't be down with that for a couple of reasons.

any definition of top feeding involving land # instead of NW is just retarded.
get the military to support your land or dont cry when u lose it.

lol it'd make the guy with the fatty getting subsequently topfeed get a little mad at the guy who did the initial topfeed though. :p

What are your reasons for not liking that though prime?

popcom, that depends somewhat on the mechanics of landgrab returns, tbh.
i haven't studied them, so i may be way off, but, for example, if landgrab return calculation includes the difference in acres between the two countries, then that's actually a factor at play.

(but i have no idea what the calculations involve. so this may be a pointless post. as there are so many of in ffa.)

"Yeah...I wouldn't be down with that for a couple of reasons."

I know what you mean. Almost as bad as alliances outright not being "allowed" to landgrab. Absurd, I know.


"get the military to support your land or dont cry when u lose it."

you know what, i think i might. i think i just might. (get the military, not cry, english is fun :P)

As Popcom pointed out, I don't like the use of land to determine "topfeeds" for the most part, and the game limits you networth-wise. So many people sit on tons of land undefended or underdefended and grow further and further out of range and into the top ranks by not paying the same expenses that I do on my better protected countries.
When I said I would consider topfeeds I guess I really meant mostly jetter grabs. If you have a well defended country (relative of course) and I stock a crap-ton of jets to break you, that's likely me being an asshole as there are much better targets available for me for most of the set.
Its a personal preference for me: most things that limit the grabbing in this game I tend to dislike. Not to mention the argument of the have's and have-nots when it comes to acre difference.

i think one of the main differences in ffa and alliance is the shorter fuses in ffa. not to describe that as a bad thing, but alliances in alliance tend to try harder to make the political thing work, where in ffa, it's more of a "fluff you, i don't feel like doing fa, going to fs instead."

it's a little odd, considering that most of the clans in alliance (as i recall) are about the same size across the board, and in ffa there's such a huge difference in numbers between the biggest and the not-so-biggest-yet-still-viable-clan

at any rate, server-wide policies are a little less likely to be reached in ffa, precisely because people are generally willing to fight every reset. why come to an agreement when i can just jump you next time etc.

so this conversation, while interesting, is mostly academic, because the moment somebody gets topfed, or just hit for more acres than they care to be hit for, they're going to declare war and go at it. as is the way of the free-for-all.

difference in acres doesn't effect landgrab return's at all, only networth differential. But of course the fatter the country you grab, the more acres you're going to get if nw's don't change..

And meh popcom the problem I have with that is that I can easily run an allx rep farmer to 30k acres, and have some typical war clan come along with a bunch of fluffy 10k acre jet heavy dict's and grab my peaceful country that hasn't bothered anyone and i have no hope in getting back what I lost.

"because the moment somebody gets topfed, or just hit for more acres than they care to be hit for, they're going to declare war and go at it."

or decide they're bored and kill anybody who happens to have self farmed or self dr'd.

because us self dr'ing is unfair, but their outright killing of us would be, as you call it, the way of the free-for-all.

in other words, netgainers beware, you're going to be jumped.

why don't we ignore alliance like alliance ignores ffa, and not focus on what they do, or what happened there. we can acknowledge topfeeding, and in brutal circumstances accept l:l without becoming 'the alliance server' or whatever the concern is (again my first time here in a long time)

"difference in acres doesn't effect landgrab return's at all, only networth differential. But of course the fatter the country you grab, the more acres you're going to get if nw's don't change.."

i'm asking, not telling, so bear with me.

if i'm 55k acres on 31mil nw (most of which is tech), and you attack me on 20k acres on 31mil nw, regardless of it being military or tech, the gains will be the same? you said it doesn't effect returns at all, so i'd get the same amount? (this one i am skeptical)

What if the 20k acre country hit while at 12mil nw, and i retaled while still on 31mil, I would get far less acres than if I used another country at 12mil nw and lets say 49k acres? (this one i believe)

I didn't know this to be true.. and then that would change entirely my stance on the issue, but i'd be surprised if that is true
(sorry for editing)

Because the Alliance server has been screwy for a while. Ignoring what they did wrong and putting the same policies in place here is, at the very least, "unwise".

i completely fluffed up my last post through editing, um, sorry :P


"Because the Alliance server has been screwy for a while."
Well then, we could learn from it. We could take what works there, and take what works here, and possibly better it for both sides? (netters and warrers, i need to stop editing posts!!)

I'd agree with primmy a bit on this (o.O hell is getting colder ...)

if nothing else, take alliance as an example of over-politicization of the game. there are some good things that have occurred there, but there are some rather impressively cranky policies out of 1a too.

like it or not, ffa *is* a different style of game, and as such, we *shouldn't* be completely emulating the policies and rules of the other servers anyway.

i don't landgrab in alliance for these reasons, so i agree with you on that front. but people aren't sitting on 165k acres on alliance. if they were, l:l might make a lot more sense than blanket l:l if you so much as look at my country

i don't lg in alliance because there are people in my alliance that are more able to turn the landgrabs into networth than i am. better for the alliance that i stay all-x :P

the time issue, there are so few targets because of pacts and policies and what not so it isn't worth my while. i have less interest in bottomfeeding somebody who has already been attacked ninety times than i do in also simply going all explore.

team as well. express i often landgrab, primary i try to smart landgrab, one simple ps a day, try not to hit anybody twice and try to finish without drawing too much attention to me :P

I think the issue with topfeeding is that people like to run countries with hyper low networth per acre.

If your 40k acre country is 15 mil networth, it might get topfed by a 12k acre 15 mil networth country, but more likely it'd be hit by a 25k acre 15 mil networth country. If your 40k acre country is 6 mil networth, any 25k acre 6 mil networth country isn't going to hit you, but you're likely to get topfed by a 12k acre 6 mil networth country or even a 6k acre 6 mil networth country.

If you just keep your countries at a more reasonable networth for their landsize, that eliminates a lot of the topfeeding problems because of how the topfeeding curve limits gains for hitting someone twice your networth.

But the problem of countries with well over 1000 networth per acre doing grabs is something I dislike about FFA. If those countries have done an adequate job growing, it just means they've done a good job boosting their military. But its the ones that are significantly smaller than all-explore countries that I have a problem with. If you're still under 10k acres at this late a point in the set, you're probably grabbing someone just to be a douchebag, you're not really actually trying to netgain. Just ask ZDH, he's in my tag, and he's been focused on killing, and then lost internet access for a week. Countries his size aren't focused on netgaining, and if they grab people significantly bigger than them, it is out of malice.

Grabs like the ones NBK has done on me the last couple of days are not done out of malice, because those countries are actually a decent landsize. They're actually at least trying to grow. I don't have a problem with those grabs.

So my standard for land:land is how does your growth compare to that of an all-explore country. I think its a reasonable standard.

out of curiosity, rockman, what would you consider an appropriate nw/a for a 20k country? a fifty thousand acre country?

i logged into two of my fascist farmers, one at 20k acres on the dot with 479nw/a and the other at i think 22.5 at 423nw/a.

Its mainly about not sticking out on your scores page too much. I'd say that your countries are about right. And yes, mine are looking a bit fat, but I'm hoping my dictator bonus & weapons tech keep grabs away.

LaF on the alliance server is probably the biggest culprit with the 30k acre 4 million networth type countries. And I dont like that style at all.

would you suggest then for a 50k acre country doubling the nw per acre, as a safe bet, or should the same 450-500ish suffice (assuming the nw is in military and not technology points :( )

It really depends on the people on your scores page. Except when everyone fatter than you is GSd into DR :(

I agree with your re-clarified point Braden. Grabbing benefits a war country to about 13k acres as a general rule.

i appreciate that, it was a pretty dumb statement before, of this i can agree :)

and I am a top ten country, many countries on my list are three times my land. You can search the news (taylor swift, i forget the number), I was targeted a number of times as I fell out of DR. Once, I believe, was while I was at church. That one stung :P

IF a 10k acre country at 31m nw hits your 55k acre country at 31m nw, I believe it gets the same returns as if a 25k acre country at 31m nw hit you.


Yes that's true. The closer you are in nw, the better returns you get.

i wouldn't say that completely since all x rep farmers at least can keep exploring and exploring but like 75% of their land (mine have 22k now) would seem reasonable

"IF a 10k acre country at 31m nw hits your 55k acre country at 31m nw, I believe it gets the same returns as if a 25k acre country at 31m nw hit you."

Really, what makes that so? I mean.. how can i ask this.. why do I get returns as if its 25k acres if he's only 10k, presumably now 16k ish after the grab? Does this make sense?

The closer in nw i did learn, I think it's something very close, also, like 5%, 4.something % i forget, numbers and I are terrible

what he is saying is the attackers land has no bearing on the amount of land he takes.

but it does with how much i can mathematically get back in a single attack. this is a topfeed, with nw irrelevant to the question.

unless i'm still missing something, which i don't put past me..

LaF normally has 4m 30k acre countries to stay in range of grabbing untags more then anything.

my head hurts ...

thats y u dont read these threads KC.... just post something to stir it up regardless of what u think... its fun!!!

ok. In that case ... am I the only one extremely disappointed with the two new episodes of South Park?

ur really bad at this arn't u ;).....


try to keep it somewhat on topic..... will send the complaining netters into a frenzy...i find argueing both sides in the same thread is a winner every time!!

i'm not very good at trolling.

all it takes is practice.....

true. it's been awhile though.

you wanna bulk up land fine. you want 300k land in that country... great. but remember that while players half your land are grabbing you, players half their land are grabbing them. how do we smaller land players combat this vicious cycle? we buy enough military that countries half our land can't afford to LG us. and if they do, we take our retal congratulate them on their efforts, not rant on FFAT about a grab against us that was our own fault to begin with for not having enough miltary to protect it.
it not our fault you can't protect your land. with your resources, you should be able to boost your NW outta our range, let alone buy enough military to make a successful LG impossible.
having 50k land with a 100k jet break and expecting your country to NOT get LG'd is flat out retarded.

well put GG...

Maybe it would be if that is what people were fluffing about.

hust de1i ;)


its more fun to stoke the fire than offer anything that may aid the arguement :)

Agreed, which is why I believe 'topfeeds' do have a purpose in this game and FFA..

I don't think it'd be too ridiculous to enforce topfeed possibly L:L policies on countries that are all explore and get hit by smaller land countries? Thoughts?

does anyone else find it ironic that some of the same people who dont recognize topfeeds have a problem with "all jetters"