When landtrading, each grab gives approximately 6% of your target's land in ghost acres, assuming your target is fully built, and you're a non-dictator with no strategy tech. 6% isn't exact, and it varies with each attack, but it is a good estimate to use. If you don't believe me, look at the news of countries and prove me wrong.

If you start with 6.5k acres before you start landtrading, and you hit each of your other countries exactly 3 times all set, that allows you to do 45 grabs, with 6% growth on each grab. This 6% is exponential growth, not additive (although the number of acres to rebuild after each attack also grows exponentially, so exponential growth as a landtrader is impossible).

1.06^45 = 13.76

So assuming 6% growth per grab, and starting at 6.5k acres, you can grow to 89.5k acres while only hitting your own countries.

If you keep 117% military strategy tech all set long, then we can change it to 7% growth per attack.

1.07^45 = 21

If you start at 6.5k acres and grow 7% per attack, after 45 attacks, you will be at 136.5k acres. If you're landtrading with dictators or tyrannies, or with 120%+ strategy tech, you can easily get past 150k acres per country without having to do more than 3 attacks per country all set.

These new changes don't weaken landtrading AT ALL. They just make it a really big hassle to keep track of which countries have been hit already and which ones have not.

So thanks, qzjul. You didn't actually weaken landtrading. You just decided to stick your finger in the eye of those who don't want to spend hours playing their countries.

You also took away the ability for a person to play more than one strategy with their 16 countries if they want to play optimally, without having to landtrade with other people. Before I could play 8 cashers and 8 techers if I wanted. Now if I do that, I need to find someone else to landtrade with if I want to make it past 30k acres.

There isn't really any added skill in the new changes. Keeping track of which of your countries have hit each other and which have not isn't a skill. It's just a pain in the ass.

Rockman you do realize they don't really care about FFA. They never factor how changes effect FFA, because they don't play FFA. This change has everything to do with the alliance server.

I think it's a little funny that you say it's a huge hassle for land-traders, and yet it doesn't actually affect land-trading.

Everyone land-traded the last few sets because it was just SO easy.

Now, it wouldn't be nearly so much.

Also, there's an assumption made by your math: That people will run 16 countries with the same strat. This may be true with the new rules, but certainly wasn't before. I know very few netgainers who didn't hedge their bets by playing at least 2 different strats. So there's one way it's already affected the game.

If people decide NOT to play 16 of the same strat, but rather go 8 and 8, then they're either doing extra rebuilding than they did before or they're limited not to 45 hits (or 75, if talking about doing the full 5 hits before DRs REALLY start to limit your gains) to 21 hits or 35 hits. 35 hits can still get you to 100k from the math I've seen, but it is a lot more work.

Ultimately, I don't see any problem with this. It DOES weaken land-trading to some degree, as it does prevent someone from building a bunch of 3M acre countries.

Due to my work schedule, I have less time than most to spend playing countries as well as I could compared to other players.

The new DR structure o GA hurts a player like me. That said, I don't particularly have a problem with the changes. I think a better resolution would have simply been to cap total land at, say, 500K acres, or do something that would make it prohibitive to be larger than 500K acres.

I'll just adjust my play and do the best I can with what I have.

I openly question the intent behind the change though. That's really the issue. There are already enough wars on a 4000 country server on a regular basis without encouraging MORE wars over land gains via excessive grabbing. If this encourages players to increase grabs on "spam tags" and untags, I think that's a step backwards as opposed to forwards. We just become more like the Alliance server as a result and I don't believe that FFA was ever intended to be a multi-country 1a Clone.

Everyone just run 50k acre techers, less trading hassle. I'll buy your tech.

I'll probably start off strong, but once all my fall commitments start, I better be close to my land goal, otherwise this will ultimately hurt me too.

Ultimately, that's fine by me though.

all they needed to change was the amount of GA gained from hitting countries with half as much NW as you to stop those 1mil+ acre countries

They aren't trying to stop those 1m+ acre countries, they didn't make this change based on FFA. 1m+ acre countries aren't even a problem. People complain about landtrading in Alliance all the time, and that is probably the reason for the change.

If there were 2 or 3 many times as many players on the server, I'd see this more favorably.

I'm not sure what Ownership thinks it is achieving here. It certainly doesn't level any playing fields.

We see these ridiculous land totals, but at the ed of it all, what exactly is the change in GA's trying to accomplish?

If TPTB are really trying to punish "self-farmers", why just not reintroduce the "5 hits and you're banned for 3 days" rule like old time FFA?

It's pathetically easy to avoid this change simply by having enough people in any clan agreeing on a mutual strategy that allows each member to gain max acres from every other clan member in addition to self-farming.

It seems like the Big People are just trying to force action on a server 5 times to small for what they think works.

Congrats, Gods. Total land will decrease. Explain how this makes a difference?

I'd like to hear from the geniuses that implemented this. As a loyal player, I think we should have a better answer than an ambiguous post on the Announcement Forum.

If you guys just got tired of people whining about self-farming and their lack of will to join the gang, just tell us.

In an environment as small as this, I think TPTB need to make a more specific accounting of why they do what they do. At least THAT way, we can all decide on our own from an informed position whether this game is still worth spending time on.

Oh come on now, we ALL know how pointless it is to spend so much time on this game.. yet we still do. This game's worse then crack.

Again, this change wasn't meant for FFA.

EDIT: What I mean, is that a server based on trading and self farming for the most part, don't you think we would have been addressed more directly of this than a simple post on the announcement board?? Like Dragon said.

I don't mind this change at all, there's a reason self farming was not allowed in the good 'ol days.

as i told QZ he would be better off penalizing countries that have more then 50% unbuilt,

the huge TKO countries last reset were lucky to be 25- 30% built

Dragon when they first suggested this , as the only FFA leader with access to the dev board i fought long and hard against this change as it would help larger alliances over smaller alliances, they just ignored it as they dont understand FFA,

because FFA and alliance are exactly the same in mechanics, they dont understand that gameplay is different due to each player having 16 countries.

I LOVE the idea of not being able to be less then 50% built, or at least HEAVILY penalized for returns. You get halted in exploring, so it makes sense.

One of the best ways to weaken them - PM regeneration only comes from buildings, not acres.

that too

I do like these ideas, because 1m acre countries are overpowered, why not nerf them a bit JUST for this server. Keep the change in the Alliance as it needs it, or nerf it a bit as well because untags and small countries are going to get bit hard by this. Just means people are going to grab them more for real acres instead.

=/ We do care about FFA and we do factor in FFA, though I freely admit that I don't play FFA; alliance & FFA have similar problems, though typically of a different scale (x16 even hehe); landtrading is even more epidemic on FFA than it is in alliance; however, a degree of it in FFA probably isn't bad; the extremes its been taken to probably aren't a good thing though.



relative NW already affects landgrabs, and thus ghost acres; we could convolute it again I suppose, that wouldn't be too hard.



Well sure the gameplay is different; but you always seemed to be of the opinion that land-trading is good; while the rest of us are under the opinion that it is not necessarily good; when it simply becomes trivial to hit back and forth, that is *silly*, and makes the game too repetitive. Having to work a little bit for your landgoal is preferable.

Does it favour large alliances? probably if they're organized; but there's few things that don't; this is true in both alliance and FFA; and while we'd love to be able to dampen the advantage large alliances have over small, that shouldn't impede us from dampening aspects of the game mechanics that are open to abuse -- especially abuse that causes the game to be less interesting.

Changing the rules (other than basic principles) for servers will lead to impossible fragmentation of the code; maintainability is fairly key; I'd prefer to come up with a solution that is balanced for all servers; 1M countries would be unbalanced in any server. We also, however, would prefer to avoid hard caps like $2.1B or 500kA as they lead to annoying behaviours

I suppose we could make the land expense non-linear heh

1m acre countries is not unbalanced IMO. So long as you have 16 countries to work with like a team, you can do whatever you want.

I say take the suggestions Warster and a few others have suggested and work them in. I do think instead of this ghost acre change here, you can penalize those big countries as they should already be. Building expenses is the ONLY penalty I know of for those big guys minus the terrible tech prices.

I was just getting the hang of landtrading....now I get to add a lot of time.....for me playing 16 countries is already very time consuming.....adding this kind of planning and record keeping might make me simply not land trade.

One thing that hasn't been brought up is that basically when I'm done landtrading on day 1 I will need to wait until all my countries come out of DR to begin again. If it takes me 1hr to play then that puts me at 1hr later each night....my work requires that I get to sleep at a specific time in order to function, so up to this point I played 90% of my turns in the same 1-2hour time frame. I doubt this will continue to be possible and thusly will limit further advancements by my countries. However, the only constant thing is change so I'll just roll with the punches for now I suppose.

The rest of us ??? U mean the alliance players who play in laf and evo who are against it,

Most of ffa have gotten use to it being around and have adapted to it, all you have done is made it easier for large alliances to dominate netting now as well as warring, good job

hmm i hear you on that one; i've got some ideas that were going to address the binary nature of DR, but they'll have to wait a reset for sure at this point

Well would you have an addendum that would be better suited to FFA that would stop the intra-alliance land trading?

As for networth affecting landgrabs, did u know as a dict, as the networth gap get passed 50% you gain more ghost acres but as unused land instead of building

relative NW already affects landgrabs, and thus ghost acres; we could convolute it again I suppose, that wouldn't be too hard.

[/quote]

But it effects ghost acres a LOT less. Meaning less actual land lost and more GA gained. Also I was having 90% of all captured acres being built acres when I was bottomfeeding at 1/5th my NW.

as for pollex you can still easily hit 50k average land, 75k is really all you need for 300mil NW+ with a resource decayed theo/casher.

Intra-alliance grabbing isn't the problem QZ, there should not be an issue with people using their own countries to grow,

The goal should be the make people build the land, because at the moment is better to farm to 1 mil acres then to build everything to 300-400k land

Exactly HOW do you think that you have done the FFA server and the game any favors here?

Tell us exactly HOW you're not encouraging the same bottom feeding scum play that makes Alliance almost dirty to admit playing on?

How do you think that you can extrapolate rules and formulae based on a one-country-per-customer server to a server where every player gets 16 countries?

You're not changing things by 1*16, you're changing themby a FACTOR of 16.

My guess? You hate FFA. You probably always have. What you HATE is that people LIKE to play it. You hate that your contrived little structures don't apply in FFA and because they never can, you'd rather nerf the server than allow it to just run its course.

That's your prerogative. How much money would it take for me to buy the FFA component of the game from you?

Wow. This thread got pretty dramatic pretty quick.

I start drama. It's what I do.

Well, I tip my hat to you then, sir, because you 100% accomplished that goal here.

to be fair, it's the weekend, so chances are dragon's drinking ;)

You're absolutely RIGHT that I'm drinking!


That I might be a little less diplomatic in rendering my point of view really isn't a big deal in this case.

There is NO argument anyone can make that justifies reduced potential land gains on a server that only has 4000 countries because people want to self-farm.

Not on a server that allows 16 countries per player.

It's stupid. Me and my 11 guys can simply pair up and change ;and trading partnerships after Ghost Acre DR kicks in, and get just as much land as we always have.

Bad news for the 1,2,3, and 4 man clans though. They get penalized simply because they don't have enough members tokeep land trading possible.

They ALSO don't have enough countries to be aggressive in land grabbing as they will be tag killed should they try.Just like Alliance.

Warster was on this from the get go. If you believe what he says, he did his best to help FFA. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

Well a large part of the idea was to reduce the same back-forth landtrading that is repetitive and one could say uncompetitive with normal play. Obviously we can't necessarily extrapolate directly to a server with 16 countries per player, but the fundamentals are the same.

I actually like the idea of FFA and have planned to play it, just have never had the time.


Also, as usual we're more than willing to adjust things if they're obviously broken; so try it for a reset and tell me how it works out. I think even with a 2 man alliance you shouldn't find it a burden to land trade if you *really* want to.

I don't even see this penalizing any small clans.

Most of the math I've seen, both on FFAT and that people have done on the PAN boards to try to figure out the impact of this, it seems like it'll still be relatively easy to get to 50k, 100k or even perhaps 200k land by trading with 16 countries.

The difficult part would be to work past that point to make 1M acre countries like we saw last set. For that, people likely WILL have to work together and trade hits between each other.

unless you had a big indy and waited to do his hits until everyone else was at 75k acres or more =P

ok so math doesn't lie it is possible and relatively uncomplicated at least in a technical sense to continue to land trade given three things
1.communication and organization with at least one other person
2.organization and notes on what countries a particular country has hit
3. significantly more time/planning on when to hit (especially when grabbing another player)

honestly I don't think most people will have an issue with the first two, I think everyone is upset about the third thing in some way shape or form. Which in my opnion would not be a huge deal in alliance, but you multiply that problem by 16 the time to construct this and fall within typical DR 24 thing it will cause problems unless your perfectly cordinating with at least one other player, which assumes your also playing at relatively the same time if you have any hope of grabbing daily rather than every other day.

I guess I'm saying if you tweaked DR for lets say one landtrading partner and your own countries then that would clear up a lot of issues, or even making DR 22hours as opposed to 24hours, thoughts?

and yes this thread did get serious, because land one way or another runs this game, and when there is a change in how people approaching getting that....then....chaos ensues.

It already took us at Mercs about 30 minutes a day to run our countries. Now its going to take 40+ minutes a day in order to make sure we setup all the landtrading properly. For less efficient people, I doubt they'll be able to landtrade properly in under an hour a day.

At least it's adding a little bit of skill into LT'ing then just hitting back and forth with 2 countries. If you can't be bothered don't run 16 countries. You could also run allx if you can't be fluffed about it

That's not what it required before. If you have no clue what you're talking about, then you could just shut the hell up.

Does the hit pattern below look right?

1 <--> 2 3 4
2 <--> 1 3 4
3 <--> 1 2 4
4 <--> 1 2 3



1 <--> 6 7 8
2 <--> 5 7 8
3 <--> 5 6 8
4 <--> 5 6 7



1 <--> 10 11 12
2 <--> 9 11 12
3 <--> 9 10 12
4 <--> 9 10 11



1 <--> 14 15 16
2 <--> 13 15 16
3 <--> 13 14 16
4 <--> 13 14 15



1 <--> 5 9 13
2 <--> 6 10 14
3 <--> 7 11 15
4 <--> 8 12 16



5 <--> 6 7 8
6 <--> 5 7 8
7 <--> 5 6 8
8 <--> 5 6 7



5 <--> 10 11 12
6 <--> 9 11 12
7 <--> 9 10 12
8 <--> 9 10 11



5 <--> 14 15 16
6 <--> 13 15 16
7 <--> 13 14 16
8 <--> 13 14 15



5 <--> 2 3 4
6 <--> 1 3 4
7 <--> 1 2 4
8 <--> 1 2 3



5 <--> 9 13 1
6 <--> 10 14 2
7 <--> 11 15 3
8 <--> 12 16 4



9 <--> 10 11 12
10 <--> 9 11 12
11 <--> 9 10 12
12 <--> 9 10 11



9 <--> 14 15 16
10 <--> 13 15 16
11 <--> 13 14 16
12 <--> 13 14 15



9 <--> 2 3 4
10 <--> 1 3 4
11 <--> 1 2 4
12 <--> 1 2 3



9 <--> 6 7 8
10 <--> 5 7 8
11 <--> 5 6 8
12 <--> 5 6 7



9 <--> 13 1 5
10 <--> 14 2 6
11 <--> 15 3 7
12 <--> 16 4 8



13 <--> 14 15 16
14 <--> 13 15 16
15 <--> 13 14 16
16 <--> 13 14 15



13 <--> 2 3 4
14 <--> 1 3 4
15 <--> 1 2 4
16 <--> 1 2 3



13 <--> 6 7 8
14 <--> 5 7 8
15 <--> 5 6 8
16 <--> 5 6 7



13 <--> 10 11 12
14 <--> 9 11 12
15 <--> 9 10 12
16 <--> 9 10 11



13 <--> 1 5 9
14 <--> 2 6 10
15 <--> 3 7 11
16 <--> 4 8 12

THanks for the reply!!

I fail to understand how you think internal land-trading is "uncompetitive".

Let's use FFA as the example. The server is pretty clearly divided into 2 camps:

1. Net Gainers

2. War Clans


While there may be one I'm unaware of, I don't recall ANY "War Clan" on the server posting any interests or concerns in their tag(s) being "competitive" in terms of TNW or ANW. What - I - see are posts about the quickest kills, stonewalling abilities, who shoots the most missiles, etc....

I certainly WOULD understand an adjustment in GA if "netting clans" were routinely self-farming in order to gain some FS advantage in War.

However, at least in FFA, the "competition" between netting tags is on a completely level playing field as the overwhelming majority of "netting clans" have adopted internal land trading as a strategy.

If anything, internal land trading (in FFA) allows smaller tags and solo players to try and net gain with less grab pressure. That has ALWAYS been THE argument I've had against Alliance. The land gaining process encourages farming on the small, unaligned player as well as being pacted with every clan possible.

How is THAT more "competitive"? Basically, 1a farms the piss out of small alliances and solo players. That's no different than internal land trading, Qzul.

If it's your intention and preference as Owner to mold an Alliance Server that does not allow for individual players or small Alliances, that's fine. If it's your personal belief as Owner that Alliance should be 10 or 15 major alliances always provoking one another with escalating land grabs, that's fine.

However, when you apply the notion to a server you don't even play, that's where the trouble starts.

The truth is that by reducing set-long GA gains, you're not increasing the "level of competition" on the FFA server. What you ARE doing is making the game a more time consuming proposition for a lot of players who are unable or unwilling to devote even MORE time to get their return on investment.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind. And what you do to 1a should not affect how the FFA server operates.

well dragon you have 1 reset to show QZ ingame how this change works or doesnt work, as QZ is playing this reset :)

I'm just going to play the same way I have the last couple sets until net land per trade gets to the point where it's a waste of turns.

At that point, I'll start stockpiling and see where I end up compared to my last 2 or 3 previous sets.

I would like to point out, this is far more time consuming and does not work well with those who have a specific window everyday to do this..... DR is messing with this hardcore.

im not having any issue

Jesus, is anyone actually trying to play on FFA without landtrading? Not that I'm against it on this server, but I really don't have time to calculate how I should go about things. So I bottomfeed like in alliance :(

Let us know how that works out. You bottom feed in FFA, and you're likely to have your ass handed to you at some point.

This isn't a server where your boys can prevent you from being eaten alive because you decide taking acres from defenseless countries is a good strategy. Go ahead and bottomfeed. And be suicided.

Alliance players. Sheesh.