Did Servant openly admit that Sof is involved in the LCN/MD/LAF vs RD/SOL war?

That is what it looks to me.

Increase turns required for LG attacks.

Servant is just experiencing sympathy pains for SOL.

I actually agree that the speed hitting feature is a bit OTT. It allows even mediocre fighters to kill very efficiently and takes away walling opportunities for all but the most sexually deprived. ;P

I'm still really glad that Sol is on the bottom of a blindside gangbang for once. Humility is a good thing. Besides, their revenge in future sets will be excruciating.

Just how many times have SoF and NA fought anyway?

how many hits does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Roll, err, um, 300 hits to kill a country? i should powerup eestats.

2011-06-16 22:50:24 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 2 C 
2011-06-16 22:50:07 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 
2011-06-16 22:49:51 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 
2011-06-16 22:49:37 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 
2011-06-16 22:49:23 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 
2011-06-16 22:49:08 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 
2011-06-16 22:48:50 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 
2011-06-16 22:48:37 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 
2011-06-16 22:48:20 CM God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  7B 25 C 
2011-06-16 22:47:54 BR God of the Arena (#209) KSF Asterix (#442)  1B 10 C 

22:50:24 - 22:47:54 = 2 mins 30 seconds to do 10 hits? i used to get 5-6 hits per minute when Mehul was running the game just using the back button. damn, hits are so slow now...

Servant- What have you brought to monsters now that you are involved in gangbanging! LOL j/k

FS's are too powerfull with the 120/120 turns. My theory as to why this was done, as I wasn't around at that time, was numbers were smaller here, so they made it a 2 month set instead of 3 month. War alliances hitting netters now with a shorter set, it didn't ruin 3 months. This is just me guessing.

Spy needs to be fixed. THey use to be very useful, now they are there just for defense almost. It sucks.

Attacking is too quick now. need to make it a 1/2 second cooldown or something like that. If you can kill a country in under a minute, it should be because you have 50 countries hitting at once.

o.O

Being spied out happened in E2025; martian and slagpit modelled our current system after E2025; we're open to remodelling though :) Maybe some new paint and drapes...





Turns are not really the problem; you can adjust them all you like, and it will still come back to larger alliances crush people easily, and you die really fast; 80(80) would just make the game shorter over the same amount of time; (ie less happening == boring); i dunno why mehul made council 120; i think to make it faster and more interesting (which I tend to agree with)...


Spying addressed above...


Attacking is no quicker than it used to be for those who were good at it; now we just levelled the playing field a bit.
I had a thought, and some people didn't like it and some did; the thought was to make

minimum readiness loss = max(5 - seconds_since_last_attack, 1)

so you could rush if you wanted, but pay a higher readiness price for it....

Geez, folks, Alliances have been using First Strike tactics since the beginning of the alliance game. If you are unprepared to be hit first, perhaps you need to find a better way to use diplomacy and negotiate a Non-FS treaty to go along with the UNAPs and NAPs, and other alliance pacts. I know that there is a lot of politics in the game, that's understandable. However, if you have good allies, then you're rock solid in the game, if you have poor allies, you're fooked so to speak.

Crying about the "power" of an FS is pointless. The only good way to do something about it is to be able to counterstrike effectively and in a timely fashion.

Cerberus of the MI

to negate the power of the fs they should just make killing take more turns and it easier to wall. instead of lowering the turns just make it take more turns to kill. just tweek the formulas so instead of killing in 200 hits it takes 300 hits. that has the same effect as lowering the turns we have. then make it so you can regain population easier when you have low pop and slower when you have more pop. there are times where you run a turn and get 40 pop and they can kill all that with one attack and then when you get real low that 40 pop is 4-8 hits.

I disagree. The turns required to kill are about perfect for the size of the game at the moment. Any change in this really only hurts the smaller alliances (having enough people on at the same time) vs larger alliances just killing less.

Also, when EE was in beta testing (the first set) I remember the GS/BR formula being off by quite a bit, requiring about 800 turns to kill. That wasn't so fun then, and it certainly wouldn't be now.

I still think adding a time cap between attacks would be an interesting addition to the game to try out.

If that happened, I don't remember it heh.... but slagpit fixed everythign to be like E2025 anyway :)

A lot of people really enjoy being able to play in five minutes a day. A warchat or grabbing is already time consuming enough without slowing it down even more. That's the problem I see.

i probably would have tracked down and detah'd somebody who woke me up just so i could stonewall.

for the person asking about it, it changed when the EC server was created on old E:2025. it did make for some interesting moments, PDM being jumped by ix, when ix had a 50% numbers advantage was one, then after they killed 25% of us in the FS, it became a 50% disparity. we still fought back though.
FS perhaps do need to be toned back a fraction, but not so much as some people seem to suggest. I'd be inclined to find some way to slow attacks such as hits taking more readiness off perhaps, so more time has to be spent on regaining in ordeer to keep hitting.

People are still missing the point.

If the numbers in a war are even, and the recipient of a FS at least does a little bit of war preparation - the FS really should be overshadowed by alliance skill.

The 'power' of a FS is really at the hands of community attitudes to acceptance of dumb and meaningless wars. This current war/gangbang is just the reverse incarnation of what imagnum does and all it just promotes more idiotic revenge wars.

The war component of the game has had nothing dont to it while netgaining has had dozens of changes. In a sense, the only real fault of the game itself is the complete lack of ingame war tracking, rankings based on war power, formalised ingame relations/war decs. For instance, MD/LCN/LAF are achieving nothing in this war. Whats the point? Orginaise a gangbang, run commies, hit basically OOP, tagkill an alliance with less than half your total members.. Now what? In MD's case they will probably disband again but for LCN/LAF it's just going to be consecutive resets where we attack each other so you wont netgain for 6 months. It's just silliness in the extreme.

The FS power is absolutely fine. It's the morons who don't try to engage in meaningful wars with no measurable outcome because they're too scared to lose that is the problem. Fix attitudes of leaders who are pussies and you fix the FS 'issue'.

Dagga. this has always been the problem with this game. It's always all about the netters, the most money, the most land, etc. It's never about the "power" of the individual players, if it was, I'd win almost every reset since I can whoop even the biggest country 1 to 1. :)

This is something that the warriors of the game just have to live with.

Cerberus of the MI

Heh part of the problem with "warring" vs "netting" changes is that war people tend to get upset whenever we try to adjust something war related "leave it! it's fine! or make spies better!" but netters tend to be more open to trying new things...

also warring changes are much more complicated

netters don't try new things. what's a netter need to know besides how to build a stockpile.

they don't need to know how to rebuild readiness.
they don't need to know how to pick between a GS or a BR.
they don't need to know who to throw missiles at.
they don't need to know how to work as a team to achieve a goal.

netters don't need to know jack.

Make it so I can kill a country with a single spy op.

If you want to war 1v1 go ahead and war 1v1. No one is stopping you. If you want to be recognized formally, that's a bit of a problem because there isn't enough demand for a 1v1 server.

Let's see.

120/120 turns saved cathcing someone off guard,

that's a lot more turns per person, saved up, giving the AGRESSOR, a huge advantage.

It gears the server towards being the agressor....you are the agressor you win.

reducing the # of kills in the first 48 hrs is a good thing. Instead of knowing who wins, in 3-4 days, it takes a week or two to know who will win.

That's a good thing.

I think having 15% of your alliance killed in the FS vs 25% gives the second allaince a much better chance to make a comeback.

Those 10% countries hitting, over time those hits snowball, it makes a major difference!

The restarts would recieve more FA per restart, that also makes a difference.


The speed of the kills is a seperate issue. The issue here is TURNS

120/120 is too many

80/80 is better.
in fact, that hurts all xplore alliances like Monsters, and would encourage more grabbing!

qz, there is almost universal acceptance that a formal war dec system would be better for the game. There is no way that (as a start) would take more than 10 hours or so to code and make it easier for you to make further war improvements in the future to balance war.

It would separate 'at war' alliances with netting alliances and you could change the game dynamic within that scope.

To rehash;

- Two types of war declaration
-- CHALLENGE: Challenge another tag to a war, they have 48 hours to accept/decline. No advantages to either side.
-- IMMEDIATE: Tag A is immediately 'at war' with tag B. Easier to code in some disadvantages to the FSing alliance.

- If your alliance is not 'at war' you cannot perform more than 5 (pick a number) specialty attacks on any one country. Ability to curb suiciding.

- You cannot grab an alliance that is 'at war' unless you are 'at war' with them. Removes the need for policing.

- Easier war statistic tracking. Improve upon the current status where every netgaining stat under the sun is kept, yet nothing in terms of war stats.

- More encouragement for alliances to fight more meaningful wars - wars which may count for 'power rankings' or supremacy over the server.

The current status quo is that there is no impetus from the admins to improve the war dynamic. It just sits there and the server just rolls from one meaningless and dumb war to the next. Maybe if I said that you can isolate the war and netgaining components of the game so that netting alliances would be unaffected, that might give you guys some motivation to make some improvements?

And slagpit, who is talking about 1v1?

maybe you should use the term AGRIEVED instead of AGRESSOR. the AGRIEVED has the chance to perform an FS and kick butt because all forms of diplomacy have failed to resolve the situation.

cept, usually, in this game, its an agressor, looking for a fight, and taking the FS anyways.

No honor anymore,
used to it was about baiting allainces to FS you, to justify calling in an ally, and manipulating the pact situations to get the upper hand.

then that changed at some point (IX I think) where people and their allies just all hit,

bad change for the game

Servant, you are heading down the right track, but 120 (120) is good for the game. The component of 'tag war' needs to be treated as a separate entity. Think about this;

if there was a formalised ingame war dec system, you could make a coding change so that the tag that declares 'immediate' war loses all stored turns. That fixes the FS issue with one stroke.

I haven't seen a real reason for war really since I came to EE 4 sets ago.

I may have missed 1, or 2, but really, most wars are just blindsides, SOL picking someone to kill, or prearanged wars.

Ingame war dec system..

feed the birds dagga, elaborate more on what this would entail

It's simple, just take how the 'declare war' option works with country vs country, and imagine it on a tag vs tag scale. It gives your country an attacking bonus, you can hit GDI targets etc.. It places advantages and restrictions on your country. Once you formalise war decs ingame, you can start playing with code to improve war dynamics.

Dagga, this is not the first time I've seen this idea,

but it is the most developed I've seen it.

I think this is an excellent idea to discuss, and would support something moving in that direction,

as a side bonus, it also diminishes untaggeds abilities to AB:)


agree with LS, there's been an arranged war or two,

I think PDM dec'd on LAF a time or two in EE for grabbing issues,

but there aren't the "reasons" we had in the past.

though, with the system I'd add in the ability to call in an ally, formally, and if they accept they don't have the penalty...but this allows the agressor alliance to also call in an ally who wouldnt be penalized.

This has potential

Damn dagga... You're supposed to just say silly things and troll. What is this about making sense and being constructive ;)

Seriously though, I really like your suggestions. It could definately improve the dynamic of the war portion of this game. I don't like the part about not being able to grab alliances at war though. I think it should be possible to feed off alliances at war, especially to foster future conflicts. I also think it leaves too much room for abuse (ie. two tags declare war because they want to be immune to grabs for a while).

Wouldn't the system just allow untags to not need declarations for war?

The 'grabbing at war' part would work both ways.

If Tag A declared war on Tag B so they would be immune to grabbing, they also would not be able to grab outside this state of war.

If you wanted to relax this a bit, and keep the ability to hit these tags at war, you just treat it like you would GDI. If you are in Tag C and want to hit countries that are in Tag A and Tag B, simply use the country to country Declare War option to bypass the restriction.

Untaggeds dont need to declare tag war because thats called suiciding :p

Again, if a country wants to suicide and do more than 5 specialty attacks (or whatever the restriction might be) it doesn't matter if they are tagged or untagged - they either have to be 'at war' with the target country's tag or in the case of an untagged, have to use the country to country option to bypass the specialty attack restrictions. It actually makes sense to declare war on a country you are suiciding on.

This allows for suiciding, but only on one country and will restrict it to attacks on the one country for the length it takes for the Declare War option to expire (48 hours?).

I'm going to refer to the more loved child of Mehul Patel (Utopia). When I played that before the war system there was a gentlemans agreement for wars.

Kingdom A would contact Kingdom B with a declaration of war. It had a start time, and any terms (things like if no black ops, dragons etc etc were going to be used). Alliance B didn't have a choice to say no, but they had some warning. It was usually at least 24 hours.

The war meter was then brought in and things changed rapidly.

For Earth Empires.

I'd like to see a formal war dec system based on the gentemans agreement.

1) Formal dec is made ingame. Alliance A decs on Alliance B with start time (at least 24-48 hours notice is given).
2) No hits allowed between the parties for the length of notice. Spy, Mil Spy, Alliance Spy, Market Spy all allowed.
3) Reduced gains for alliances grabbing Alliance A and Alliance B to avoid 'seftening up the target'.
4) Start time arrives and all hell breaks loose.

This gives the advantage to the bigger alliance, but could encourage some interesting political movements.

Interesting but not gonna fly here. Things are more cut throat in this game compared utopia. This is how it should be.

The gentlemans agreement you talk about would be the challenge system.

Discussion here....

http://forums.earthempires.com/...umid=5&threadid=10372

declared on NA for grabbing issues and switching policies on us like 3 or 4 times in a set too.

don't think FS's are too powerful, just too easy to pull off on an unsuspecting target... the button is alittle overkill

120(120) is almost three and a half days of not playing a single turn. How much more warning do you need?

Yes, let's all post our times and dates of attacks to make the wars more interesting. The whole concept of an FS advantage works both ways. A smaller alliance can bring a larger alliance down to their size if the larger alliance doesn't see it coming and vice versa the larger alliance can obliverate a smaller alliance. It lends a lot of importance to the political element of the game.

I disagree with Servant's point that FS's are way too powerful. The problem isn't the power, it's the relative speed at which they can kill a country. Way back when for those who played this game a decade ago, you didn't have the 'attack again' button, more than half the players were on some variation of a dial-up, there were more players and less turns. Today you have more turns which is balanced out by less players, but the ability to kill instanteously is much higher due to a few factors: faster internet and even computing times (aka less browsers freezing the way they did with Windows 95), the 'attack again' button, and more turns.

So you can't reduce internet/computing speeds leaving you with a few options: paring down turns, removing the attack again button and slowing down attack speeds. The easiest solution I think would be to slow down the speed at which someone could attack. Maybe once every 10-15 seconds or something akin to that concept. Then you have a max 4-6 hits per minute per country so if you have 40 countries in the FS and they all hit it's only 160-240 hits in the minute. The reality is you rarely have that many countries hitting so instead of 1-2 minute KRs, you would likely have 3-5 minuute KRs. Just saying.

I actually think dagga's idea has a lot of merit. It will serve several secondary functions besides making the outcome of a set-long war actually take a set to decide (instead of a few hours)
- it will indirectly curtail the most agregious of the bottom feeding
- it will pretty well end suiciding as we know it
- it will INCREASE politics and intrigue by making foreign affairs much more important
- it may reduce the number of gangbangs and grudge wars by forcing both sides to actually toil through a war set
- it will make winning a war a LOT more meaningful

There are still a lot of questions for sure but all in all -

WAIT A SECOND, what have you done with dagga!?!?

lol, good stuff dagga - it would be a significant divergence from E2025, but hey - its a new game.

Balance to a generic warchat, and you'll have balanced the FS as well. Should one person, online and aware of the circumstances, be able to stand up to and negate the combined efforts of 5 coordinated players? 10? 20? If you neuter the attacker too much, it will become impossible to kill a country outside of a massively coordinated effort, especially as internet access becomes more ubiquitous (and stonewalling becomes easier).

"It should take X players with maximum turns no less than Y minutes to kill an unattended country, using all available turns. It should take Z players to kill that country if they get online in time."

THIS is how attacking vs. defending strength should be balanced. The FS will naturally extend this balance, and it is otherwise up to alliances to be proactive in terms of checking if potential adversaries are storing turns or not. FS's shouldn't be neutered as a tool because alliance A failed to discover or react to alliance B storing turns for three days.

Two methods to fix first strikes without screwing with turns:

1. Formalise war decs.
2. Slow down the attack now button by .2 to .4 of a second (should be easy using javascript.. qz?)

I would tend to agree that FS'es are a little too powerful as they are now, although not so much so that they are the sole factor in tipping the balance of power in a war......HOWEVER, I hope the dev team will be extremely careful in just how they dilute the effectiveness of the FS - watering it down too far, or even in the wrong way, will take a lot of fun out of war for a lot of folks.

The 'no hitting alliances at war' thing won't work as it's easy to abuse to prevent suiciders by just declaring war on an ally :)

but the rest of it looks kind of fun.

But in general, I still feel 180-200 hits is too few for a kill. If the count was say, 500-600 hits per kill, it would change the strategies used for war, increase use of AB's and could create some interesting scrums.

So you want it to take a minimum of 16 Tyr's using 100% efficient hitting to be able to kill one person? I think the odds of that happening past the FS day is about 10:not happening to any clan that isn't LaF or Sanct sized or greater.

Dont increase the hits needed but slow the speed beeing able to make them making it somehow possible to get on and wall.

yah hitting is too fast imo :P ill use it but meh