bonus

ZOMG BOTS

Also would need to make sure the bot countries aren't self-protecting.. if PDM kills a suicider that was part of TheBot, it wouldn't be A Good Thing for SkyNet to activate and kill PDM in retaliation.

I want to see the bot use tags Arrow, Ragnarok, CWG, Lust.

Tag groton must have the "these countries will do incoherent things" script.

No bots. This server is finally starting to evolve and get more attack friendly. We have more retals than ever this set. We're progressing in a good direction. Keep the bottomfeeding out.

Bots: Always GDI and can never declare war on them. This would solve the bottomfeeding farming thing pretty well.

This will essentially make them a decent grab. That is, you would expect it to take all of your miitary to grab them 2-3 times in one day. They would go a little deep into DR(5-7) and then would be allowed to grow. This means they can't be bottom fed by a bunch of people that are 10x their NW.

This gives lower NW guys more targets, and easier targets. Not as much camping of untagged countries.

Add the frakkin bots. This game needs em to survive. It is the only way to get more players.

NPC are the only way.

Anyone have deep pockets here>? Lets pay for a game developer to code us super smart bots for this game :p

Like the unreal engine for earth empires ;)

YES!!!!

Since I have nothing very constructive to say, I will simply say,

WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!

Marco, LAF fought SOL last reset over L:L retal policy and SOL changed, so that's your most recent war over land or policy.

As for bots, the community seems divided, so two alliance servers, one with and one without bots, seems to make the most sense.

I believe one of the major issues with EE is that there is little adversity for players in clans. If you are one of the lucky few to bottomfeed, the worst you can expect is a few missiles or ABs. If you are trading retals, there is little reward in making your country 'unbreakable'. Bots that attack would add a layer of adversity back into the game. You can't run with too low defense or you might not get your land back. You can't farm relentlessly without provoking a response.

Why should we have to wait for a new player to find this game when we can have simulated humans playing along side us? Without bots, there is little chance of the player base growing substanially.

I believe my idea of a server wide reunion set would be a far more beneficial use of effort than the implementation of bots.

Land Farm bots. When the land is all gone its "killed". I mean this is a great idea.

try it for a set and see what happens

I very much doubt people would truly dislike bots if they put them in. PLEASE do it. At least it would open up a path beyond landtrading which is turning out to be the only option.

if it was as easy as spam emailing all old earthers, dont you think this would have been done? hell it HAS been done people just dont stick around anymore (for good reason). MD is a rare instance of a reunion set sticking.

Has anyone fought a war because of policy and forced a policy change?
many

Has anyone initialized war because of an FA dispute over land gained/retalled?
even more than the above.

There is more to it then just spamming old members. It is an entire promotion and marketing activity. If it is server-wide and it is promoted on this website in some shape or form then it will receive a response. It is like cheap advertising.

It just needs to be promoted to be exciting.

Firstly, I havent read anything else here, just purely stating my thoughts.

I think it could work for instance. Would all these bot countries be untagged or what? It could make the server actually look bigger, and increase some of the things that have been kinda lacking lately. If they are not going to go and take position 1 on the server etc, and arent contributing to some alliances, it could possibly help to improve the amount of players, and the amount of fun gameplay on the server.

That said, I don't like change much :P

hahahahaha. well played.

If you can make a bot that emulates Assassin's behaviour, it would totally be worth it!

I think the bot idea is a good one. Yes, as has been said, make them all GDI / no-war status.

Be fun to have some bot clans that might randomly retal, or even put in a 5% chance of retal with a missle - and have that % multiply for every additional hit (5% first hit, 5%+10% for the second hit, 5%+10%+20% for the third hit etc...) that would make some more protection against pure farming and add a little excitement to life.

so yeah, the more I think of this the better it sounds. Right now we dont have enough real players to have a lot of landgrabbing.

^ nice to see the old man kicking

*waves to gary

Yes, bots are a good idea.

Most games have NPCs, no reason for this game to be an exception.

LOL

I think something along the lines of skynet would make this game more interesting heh, recruit the bot run countries, and run a command via message to have the attack when needed, or something like that, or if the bot is doing at least decent during the set, recruit it and give it the logic to netgain to a 100m nw spot heh

I honestly doubt people would like that hahaha

Another point in favor of the bots is that new players who join a game (ie: the people we want to start & keep playing EE) are expecting a wargame to have some action.

New players want to start up the game, get some military and ATTACK something with it.

Here we tell them 'No, dont attack THEM... nope, that guy will retal you too hard... dont waste time with that little guy in DR's...'

Unless they are untagged, then we just farm them out of any possible desire to play the game. :(

Bots would not only protect the new player countries, but give the new guys a place to attack and learn the military side of the game. Maybe even keep them around long enough to recruit into an alliance. :)

Oh, and hey right back at ya Zip. :)

Bots or anything else will not make things better for new players. Even when we had more (unsanctioned) bots than players the untagged countries were still farmed to hell.

It just means more people will bottomfeed again.

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink.

I smell a lot of fluff in here... Sov did you open your legs again?

1) New players. New players SHOULD NOT start at alliance server. All new players should start in primary or even better tornament. Bots will not help new players. Alliance server is for alliances (as it name says) and should be used for alliances, not for new players.
2) Land. We dont need more land. If you want more land, just add more explore.
3) NPC. NPC has some sense. As i see it, if you want use bots as NPC, its need to make some challange for it. Like kill 5 (depends on alliance size) countries in 24h and get reward like +2K acres on each alliance country. For example. Or kill super big 24h stonewaller and get +2b for each country. And so on... This is good idea and can bring some new fun.

What else bots can do?

bottom-feeding way back in the swirve alliance server during the good (or bad?) RD days was fun.

You had to track the correct type of countries for optimal performance, no overfarming to avoid being botted, etc. Then somtimes we fluffed up and ended hitting a RD tag.

Often you ended up having to do some FA talk.

The whole politics of bottom-feeding was in a crazy way fun.

We can bring some of that back through NPC, with the good side of not having the stupid side of bots back (like botting tags or single players out of the game).

mehul never consulted people about proposed changes.

just bring in the bots and forget about the lame idiots.

You know... Granted, I would never claim to have read every post on these boards, but I don't recall ever seeing someone suggesting a change to the explore rates. Say you keep the rates as they are at the lower-acreages, but slow the pace at which you drop off to near-inexistant gains per turn.

On the surface, I kinda like that idea. It doesn't solve the issues presented here, that much is certain. It would, however, allow all-ex players to better compete. Just by making all-ex stronger, you may have people who would otherwise be bottomfeeding reconsider, and continue hitting the explore button instead.

I say just give bots a chance, it is a great idea and if it doesnt work all you need to do is remove it. But how will you know unless you just give it a chance, quit being a bunch of sissies and lets try something new for a change.

Also I think one of those Bot tags should be a nice sized War-Bot Tag, to level out the playing field. When these bot tags are hit by real player tags it should send out an automated message to the tag that LGed it or performed harmful ops and missle attacks. Even offering the real player tag leader terms and conditions, or a settlement and that tag leader can accept terms and continue to net in peace or decline and get FSed by the bot clan. It might make it a little more interactive since you cant really message the bots and get an intelligent response.

im dont mind 25k PSing farm bots again. =P good ole days, 40 hits a day no spy ops needed. =P

Necrotastic