Most of you serious veterans know me. You know that I like to be at war as it suits me well.

First, the major decline of the game happens for the most simple reasons.

Reason #1. The advent of external databases to support "searching for suitable landgrab targets". This is what has become the major deterrent to gathering in new players.

Since there are a lot of you who "farm" untagged targets into the ground because you're terrified that you might be hit back, you fail to realize that most of those untagged targets are "new players"

Therefore, you drive them from the game before they can even get a sense of how to play it.

Without those external databases to find those tiny little helpless targets, you would be forced to use alternate methods which would allow those tiny little helpless countries to grow and prosper some, perhaps even enough to last long enough to find a good alliance to join and stay with the game, rather than quit in disgust.

Reason #2.

People who are already in alliances cannot play the game without getting involved in politics and experience the disappointment of having themselves deceived by another alliance "politician". There really is nothing that can be done about this, it's just a fact of the alliance game, but it does tend to drive players out.

Cerberus of the MI

erm cerberus.... the game is starting to grow again

Have you actually taken a look at earth empires?

3/6 servers are for solo play. There are hints and tips everywhere for new players.

How do you think everybody else currently in alliance found their way there?

No offence, but you've been back 5 minutes and have made unjustified sweeping statements.

noob members aren't allowed to post about the decline of the game. Earth:2025 is dead. it ain't declining. it's flat out dead.

untagged people on the alliance server are just nubs who click on things without thinking about the consequences. if they don't want to take the time to know that they should be in an alliance, then they should be treated as farmland.

You're a towel.

I don't even think Cerberus plays...why the fluff are you posting here?

No seriously, you're a towel

everytime you mention towel I think of south park...

err I think Sony/nintendo/microsoft/apple etc had more to do with the decline of this game.

Tommy, if this is the Cerberus, the following is a response.

1. External databases have been in this game since I started playing in 1998. Wide spread access was in place by January of 2000. The boxcar database, which the majority of the alliances use, has very few enhancements over the rockfamily site it is descended from. The problem is the lack of untagged multis and much smaller player base, and certain players deciding that the poor returns/next to no risk of hitting the few untagged players is preferable to the high return/lowish risk of mid-feeding on established alliances. Also, since one of the two main land grabing alliances (all alliances have players who mass bottom feed, but two in particular have a large number of players who follow that practice) was in a planned early set war, we should be seeing a much lower level of bottom feeding than usual.
SOLUTION: lower the reward for bottom feeding to below the reward for exploring by lowering the minimum return to 5 or even 1 acre.

2. Agreed, but the politics and personal interactions are one of the main components of playing on an alliance server.

The main reasons for the decline of earth2025 are as follows:

1. MMPORGs, which offered the community interactions that drew people to earth2025 and the various MUDS, but with flashier graphics, story lines, and opportunities for user interaction.

2. Wide spread cheating, and resulting admin indifference to the game. This is something that has been pretty much curtailed in earth empires, and many of the players driven away for this reason are filtering back.

3. Aging of the player base. College and high school kids have a lot more free time than adults with jobs and families.

4. Competition. Facebook apps especially take away low-tech community based player's time. While the game play of earth empires is far better than any facebook game I've tried, you can't beat the community building and communication tools built into facebook.

There are also kind people who will message untags. If those happen to be new players and join an alliance, then great. I had only played to turn 99 at the beginning of the set and left my country alone for a few days since I wasn't sure which alliance I would play in. During that time, someone did message me and told me in a nice way that I should not remain untagged. Personally, I giggled because I knew that wouldn't happen. But had I not known, that message would have been appreciated just due to its nature.

1) not all servers have external databases... for that exact reason. we don't want to give some players an advantage over others. For the Alliance server there are free hosting options for every clan, so everyone is on the same playing field.

2) if you don't like the politics there are plenty of non-clan servers to play in

but ponderer hit all the points I would have about what drove folks from E2025...

We're finally showing improvements on the Alliance server's membership after stagnation/decline, but other servers have shown much more improvement such as Primary and Express earlier than Alliance. This sort of game isn't meant to challenge things like WoW or EVE, but it's meant to be what you make of it and we like giving players lots of options to choose how to play.

permaban

Dibs: 1st of all, you can't judge whether a person is new, by the post number next to their name. (at least not all the time) Some people just choose not get into the pissing matches that run rampant on here.

Ozzite: He plays on the Alliance server.

Hai Cerb!

I think anoniem kinda nailed it - give the game a chance, the admins have put in some good measures to protect new players. The farming is just the same as it's always been in clan servers.

new? don't recall saying new. believe i stated it specifically as "noob". noob members don't have a clue until such a time as they are no longer considered noobs. doesn't have anything to do with being new. it's a basic insult to state that a veteran of the game a noob.

Cerberus_MI Join Date: 	January 13, 2011
Cerberus Join Date: 	December 8, 2010

Cerberus is about as noobish as someone can get.

I get what your saying. Miscommunication ftw! lol
Btw he is a NA member :)

yup, that and the collapse of various parts of the economy worldwide

/me poops


/me wipes on cerberus.

*rolls eyes*

and yeah, what ponderer said

ponderer, you make excellent points, Thank You.

For those of you who feel the need to just get up and run your mouths, you can just bite me.

If you can put your mouth in gear before your brain is turning over, feel free to play in the primary game with me.

I'm easy to find, I use the same name every game. If you want to play, play, If you have a point to make, please make it, don't just flame on me like a 12 uear old.

Cerberus of the MI

1. Bottomfeeding was tweaked already; If you hit an untag with a HUGE networth difference that smaller player loses less, even though Ghost Acres Gains can still be good.


The problem with bottomfeeding is that a lot of players don't know how to do it rationally and skillfully, Bottomfeeding is an art, and one that not many use well.

1. First hits on good Bottomfeeds targets should be PS, if after 3 PS you have no no military to hit more, then you aren't bottomfeeding.

2. You need to have enough defense to deter counter attacks, and enough offense to attack with 4 PS a day and still have enough for a few more SS's

3. Going wild on 1 target is Stupid, you want it to keep growing so your returns keep getting better, there is no point in hitting a target until said target stops running turns.
3b. Going wild on 1 target may also warrant a few missiles, and you don't want to get hit at all.
3c. There are Ghost Acres now, so use THEM to get most of your gains, best LGs are the ones in with the target loses 400 acres and you gain 700 on ghost acres alone, as you can keep doing it for much longer without causing your target economical demise.

4. Bottomfeed targets should be treated as cows... yeah you can maul them and enjoy a feast once, or milk them and drink milk every day... If you have several cows then you can drink lots of Milk.

----------------

Problems with bottomfeeds:

Sensible bottomfeeders need 4 targets per country, we don't have that number of untaggeds, so things are bound to get rough.

I saw EvoxWhore farming a 400K networth country and getting 50 acres (+0 GHost), and keep hitting even though the attacks gave so little gains it wasn't funny, bottomfeeds like those are bad, and should be stopped.

I call out the clans that allow this to put a leash on such players, we are big boys now, all clans should be able to put some decent inner tag land trading, and that is the best solution we can come up to help the game be more user friendly.

Chaoswind:
A bit of simple mathematics for you:
If you're a tyranny and you gain 50A +(0 ghost) per grab (also assuming your explore rate is 7~ apt) then you've saved yourself 6 turns per grab.
If you're any other govt you've saved yourself 5 turns.

The term efficiency comes to mind.

So you can keep your inner-tag landtrading. Thanks for the suggestion anyway!

That's also a good point Chaoswind. I like your thinking there, although I always used a different reference point for it. I likened the bottomfeeders to "sheep" and the untaggeds they feed on the "grass". Thus, bottomfeeders are herbivores, and people who play like me are carnivores since I prefer to landgrab from my scores list. The gains are there for me, and there really is little to no chance for the bottomfeeders to get their land back from me since they have so little offensive military. And you can't attack with turrets.

Cerberus of the MI

If you believe in your theory then run a country sans alliance and make folks pay for their mistakes. I really don't think the script searches are the problem since they've been around for over a decade. C'mon, that was a huge deal when GT was unveiled way back when. Was it Rock that used it exclusively at first? I can't remember. There was another site too whose name escapes me.

Things that changed the game were the rise of the internet. During dialup days and even early dsl days it made sense that tons of people played. These days it makes more sense as a Facebook app-type game. The other big mover and shaker was changes in retal policies. I remember when topfeeding was fairly normal among alliances. I'm sure fellow LCNers remember Griffey and his tens of millions of jets set on pushing us toward a war every set. Then there was 2:1. Then it was L:L.

The thing that hurt the most, was inactive Mods,

Mehul and the subsequent owners.

Had we had a proper group of people, like we do now, running this game, It would be in a much different place.

As it stands, it has stablilized and is now growing.

Now all we need is some crap-clan leaeders to start some crap clans so we can have some land in the game again:)

What would you need to start a clan, bottom up? (minus the crappy part)

whoever you are with your theories, you sir are a chode.

OK, this got a tad long . . .

Cerberus probably uses a motorola flip-phone, ;p. Its great to only grab on your scores list, if you are playing Primary in 1999. But lets face facts, you like to war and thats fine but playing that way will never get you into the top 5% of netgainers - and they have a desire play here too.

How many MORE players would we lose if we hamstrung the netgaining wonks? They have little desire to wallow around in the scrum with you, grabbing on the 'scores list', they are gamblers. They run highly specialized countries and hope for some good breaks.

I have no desire whatsoever to play on a server where there is that much equality. It reminds me of crabs in a bucket, every time a crab tries to climb out - the other crabs pull him right back in. They all end up in the stew pot together.

MI was a great bunch and I love that they are still represented here, but that was a over a decade ago. Most of what you are trying to bring attention to was sorted out on the battlefield before HALO came out. Hell, I would log out of E2025 and play DOOM for petes sake. Let it go - this is what we have, Pang and Co. picked up the broken pieces of what Mehul cast away years ago and they built us a new and better toy (sadly, 10 years too late).

Lets enjoy and make the best of what we have NOW.

I would log out and play Golden Eye on the 64. :P
quarter a kill ;)

Agree to all of the above post. Pessimists should read and re=read this again :P

+infinity.

I blame it on bill gates

Lets teach you something

If you can get 4 bottomfeed targets, you can hit all of them 4 times, getting good acres + Ghost (and that is pushing it as I would do 3 max)

After 4 targets you gain +2000 acres that day alone and used only 12 turns attacking, so you can focus the rest on building.

Anon seems like you are a Noob, so lets test you.

What is better?

A) Use 100 turns hitting small targets getting maybe 3500 to 5000 acres (and I bet you don't get that much), mauling your targets so you won't be able to do it again tomorrow.
B) Use 100 turns exploring getting 800 acres.
C) Using 15 turns getting 2200 acres daily and using the rest (85) on CSs.

You bottomfeeding noobs of all alliances I have seen know nothing of it, go and play all explore, you do yourselves and new players a favor.

Just do what I did one time:

http://forums.earthempires.com/Forum.php?threadid=3917

Should be enough to disprove the theory that external databases ruined the game. If I could murder 24 countries in a single reset--most of them single-handedly--then I can't possibly see why others cannot perform similar feats of awesomeness.

the main reason of the decline of the game is because of Mehul.

He focused more on the coffee business instead of the game.

Why Mehul? Hear me out and in no way am I blaming or saying to blame Pang or anyone but... Pang has been around forever, so has dozens of other programmers; myself included.

This game didn't have to wait to be taken over by responsible admins. The community should have been more mobile and some great people like Pang and Qzjul should have stepped up sooner as well as been supported and encouraged even before the game went to Omac.

It was a community failure to predict the obvious, didn't even need predictions we all sat and watched it go down.

However... This game isn't that dead game, and this game isn't in the hole. The numbers are getting bigger and if we can get some true new blood, well maybe we will have a game again.

blame it on Mehul, because he owned the rights to the game.
blame it on Jolt, because they owned the rights to the game.

kinda goofy, since Mehul pretty much intended the game to be free so people could play. i suppose.

oh, and i'm still think that resets need to start on the 1st of the month! hmmm, i can't see the topic title when i'm editing. what the heck am i responding to?

we weren't in a position to redo the game because the community didn't want to move at that point.

i was checking the pulse of the server for a long time before things went down the tubes and the general consensus was that folks liked E2025 and wanted to stick with it and "play it out to the end".

but how do you think qz and I (and later slag too) coded the whole game in like 3 weeks?
we were talking about the basics beforehand and ready to execute it :p
That's also why Evo'ers + LaFfers were highly involved in the early stages -- they were the ones who were interested in the new game, since they liked me+qz better the joltmac :p

Indeed, I remember when whats his face from PDM wanted to buy it, the players at large were against moving then and were later when someone else I can't remember had probed for interest if people would move if they coded and hosted the game.
The community was against Mars2025, too.

That's why I said it was a community failure. That part was about the community being more mobile.

The whole Jolt thing nearly killed the game, I think had someone came along then before the move and been allowed to advertise the community would have moved to a community ran game rather than that Omac garbage.

It would have been difficult for them to advertise to the community since those type of posts on the boards were removed pretty quickly.

I dont see this game as in decline at all.

If it werent for the current admins, there would be no game at all. So frankly, what we have now is such an upgrade over what we had then, or didnt have.

what's his face was Comwood. i wasn't in favor of Comwood buying the game, but it had something to do with his site being full of advertising trojans. meh, maybe i just didn't like the layout of the site. the problem was that the community didn't have any rights to Earth:2025 until such time as it went under.

I think the actual decline of the game is because of lack of poon. I am sure most of you are like me and play this game solely to pick up chicks.

More womens' Pang.

Make it happen.

i always supported comwood buying the game and always told him if he bought it, I'd be happy to help him out with coding/running things

this meant less when I was a 17 year old kid who liked to code warbots and by the time it meant something, it was no longer for sale.

don't forget that prior to the game being closed down, Martian and I inquired about buying E2025 and weren't even given the courtesy of being responded to.
we also tried to buy the naming rights to E2025 once Jolt shut it down, but again there was no response.

wonder how many $2 hookers can afford to play this game...

we need flashy graphics.

this bleak black background and all text won't attract the chicks to play!

we also need to call this "Earth Empiresville"! Share your jets with your neighbors! Social networking galore!

LMAO.

Brilliant.

just a brief point on an above comment - I was one of the most vehemently opposed to Mars2025 because it was a blatant infringement of intellectual property. A bunch of guys (it was mostly DU, right?) in an lawless untouchable country rip of the code of an existing game and mirror it from Russia as a direct competitor. IMHO, that had a lot to do with Mehul and Jolt abandoning the game.

(not that Mehul needed much prompting, he'd left the game in the car with the windows rolled up for about 8 years at that point)

we've actually got some cool social stuff thought up for the facebook stuff, but I won't get into it here :p

if you want to find hookers/strippers/cam-girls who have participated in Earth, you should talk to KJ.
I know that he knows at least one :)