This game is old as hell and outdated. With all the consule games around and pc games with actual video, the main reason this game stays alive is the long time core of vets that play it(with occasional newbs that leave after a cpl sets). Changing up formulas that ppl have used the last 14 years isnt going to fix anything. itll just make ppl less interested in the game because if they want to learn new stuff they will go learn a much more entertaining game. This game is from the 56k times and really needs more than kill formula updates.

I think most people would agree that land is the biggest issue in this game. With bottomfeeding basically eliminated its even tougher this set. Theirs 100+ grabbers going after the 20-40 untaggeds we have. Most people would also agree that grabbing is one of the more enjoyable parts of the game and it seems that these changes are going to make alliances drop some of the crazy 150% l:l pacts and go back to 1:1 retals. Since thats almost impossible in current state of this politically ran server the only real way to get land is camp targets coming out of dr(usually to have someone hit your target 30s before they are out of dr. So really your option for getting land is landtrade which many alliances discourage or killing a small tag and farming them all set. Lots of opinions thrown at mods by everyone on this place but no ones ever going to agree whats best. Im glad mods are spending time to revamp the game but the changes made are only scratching the surface of what needs to be done.

Things wont be fixed overnight, we all need to be lest critical of changes made and be more helpful to put the game on the right track. Every thread somehow turns into a hatefest. Get over your grudges from 2004 and start worrying bout the future of the game b

efore we lose player after player til theirs no one left.

My opinions of what needs to be done to fix the server:
Add another form of land. Allow reps to explore and sell it on market. Adding bots would work aswell to make grabbers a lil happiers. I think the only downside is theirs no way for the bot country to retal.
Dont allow countries to attack other members of their tag.
Change dr to attack specific dr(when ur br/gs a suicider and they do grabs for 5k acres but are in dr so you cant get your land back)


Thats all i got for now. Feel free to put in your opinions and troll away!

Zahc: people with grabbing pacts are moving in the right direction in terms of land, grabbing between similar size countries between alliances on friendly (or even unfriendly) terms is definitely beneficial. I agree with no hitting intertag, and with the specific DR trick too, although I thought that the instant they grab, it takes them back out of DR?

it takes them closer to getting out of DR, but 1 attack doesn't cancel out 15, just 1

I was a sysop on an IBM 360/168 for Bell Northern Research in 1978. I reprogammed Star Trek on an upgraded Apple 2+ ( to 64K) I like this old retro game, and I rarely watch TV.

Also, my Dad invented the code for timesharing in 1966 at MIT. It was the Multix project, and he was the sysop working for GE, after returning for a stint in Melbourne implementing the computer system for Fosters. My Dad received the "Sweatt Award" (Honeywell) for engineering and they made him a VP in charge of a division in Minneapolis in 1967. He designed the London Stock Exchange computer system, Talisman, too.

My point is, this game is just fine.

I'm confused.

My sister was born in Melbourne, me in Toronto. I beat the 11+ in Surrey in 1972. Royal Grammar School, Guildford. Advanced Scout Standard. My Dad was the top score on the 11+ in Essex in 1947. A genius. Cast not your pearls before swine. Waddaya say?

Gameplay is what it is. Really 90% of this game is the clan dynamics and intra-clan issues.

You need a top tier of players in each clan doing the planning and setting the politics.

Then maybe 50-80% of the players in that clan will execute. What needs to happen is leaders need to understand some players can only check clan site once a day and have 30 minutes and not to have an elitist attitude about the minutiae of game mechanics.

Long post sort.

20% lead, 80% execute. Yes, this means a disproportionately small number of players will carry the load of the alliance, but that's how MMOs are.

I'm going to go ahead and drop out of character for this one, because I actually want to be serious for a minute. This is a very rare occurrence only witnessed once before.

If you want to save this war game, stop trying to take the war out of it.

Every time I see the phrase "in order to combat suiciding", it makes me cringe, because what you're really talking about there is finding a way to remove some or all risk from those who wish to engage in aggression against another player in order to grow their own country. I think too often people forget that when you grab a country 20 times over 3 days, there's a person behind that country who you're risking chasing away from the game. Every time you take away or diminish that person's ability to get what little bit of satisfaction he can, you're increasing the odds that he'll just leave.

Some will say, "Or he'll learn to play a better country".. Yeah, he may. And his group of 7 or 8 friends in the tag HEROES or GOOFBALLS or SPANK will soon find out that even if they do play well, they still get farmed. Bill and I were running two of the slimmer countries in the top 20. That didn't stop us from getting hit. We reacted the way we did to LaF because we've been around a very long time and know what comes next. Allow a double tap.. fail to take back as mush as the attacker took... show any weakness.. give even an inch.. and you become the entire server's landfarm. WE knew that going into this.. Not so for the new player who talks a few of his friends from work or school into trying to start an alliance. Bill and I will stick around because we knew what we were getting ourselves into. The newbie will most likely throw his hands up in frustration and go play something else.

For every self-important "I QUIT!" post from a vet that you might save by "combatting suiciding", you're losing dozens of other players who will just silently disappear. Just look at the news for pretty much any major alliance, and you'll see the relentless, vicious farming of anybody who dares to play outside of the big fifteen. And if one of those small guys manages to actually get a blow in on his tormentor?? HOO BOY, the fan is going to be hit by some stuff that doesn't smell good. Now take those same people doing the farming, tell them that their risk has been reduced by 50%, and do you think they'll do it less?

So in my always incredibly humble opinion, the admins should STOP worrying about suiciding, STOP protecting the big guy, and STOP trying to make war something from which both parties can gain. Eliminate or scale back most of the changes which are designed to do those things, and I think you'd have a better game, and eventually more players.

"Ghost acres" that are almost equal to the amount of land taken from the victim country... that's a little ridiculous. Scale back or get rid of ghost acres. "But where will all the land come from?".. I don't know, maybe increase the effectiveness of exploring somewhat.. or maybe there's a different, better way to get land into the system. Zahc may be on to something with the land market idea. But warring actions that benefit both parties are just stupid.

I think the formulae for missile damage need to be revisited as well. It shouldn't be possible for a country to go without SDI, eat 23 missiles from somebody that he just farmed into the ground, and shrug it off like nothing happened. As I was looking for targets before I was killed today, I was astonished by the number of extremely landfat countries I found with literally zero SDI. If there are that many people willing to take that much risk for the sake of netgaining, then missiles aren't scary enough any more, IMO. Perhaps tweak those formulae so that the limiting factor of the attacker's level of [x] on the damage done is slightly smaller. Or maybe allow for sale of missiles on the public market again. That was FUN back in the day. It got out of hand in a game with 10k players, but we're sub-1000 now. Maybe it could work again.

I definitely disagree with separating special attack DR from landgrab DR, and I hope the admins won't consider it. Zahc, what avenue for revenge would you leave the farming victim? Going down in flames and taking some of the big alliance's land with you is currently about the only effective tool most of the small guys have. Wish I'd done a better job of it today, but I got killed in the 10 minutes that I was switching rooms at my hotel (after doing practically nothing but watching my country for 2 days) :)

Bots are also a terrible idea. Why bother having land at all, if we're just going to make it completely risk free? Might as well just change this to a straight math game and forget strategy.

For the most part, the big alliances aren't stupid. If you want them to stop chasing away your newbies, then stop taking away the power of those newbies to fight back. Sure, a couple of self righteous, arrogant players will quit "because you've ruined the game", but I think the gains would outweigh those losses. Big alliances will adjust their policies, netgainers will have to actually have some defense (but the playing field will still be level because all of them will have to have it), and smaller players or alliances might stop feeling like the game is just pointless. When netters come boo-hooing about how they have to keep defense which increases their expenses, remind them that every single other netter is faced with the same risk-reward trade off.

Another side note: While they most definitely did not work in the favor of THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER] this time around, I think the recent special attack changes are fairly close to being just about right. When a player ticks off two other countries his size, they should be able to put a pretty good hurt on him. We didn't really, but we did a pretty piss-poor job of it. From not putting any prep into it (we were full on turns for another batch explore when we got double tapped) to warning H4xOr THE FLAILING CHICKEN in advance on AT, to just plain making a lot of mistakes (I even bombed the jets of country #4 instead of bombing haxor's jets 4 times.. SORRY!), we could have done a lot better. And even with all that, we still managed to take out 1/3 of his buildings and jets. Not great, but a better prepared duo could have done a lot better. I think maybe the new attack formulae are just a little toO heavy at the beginning and ending of the kill/destroy runs, but not by a lot.

OH, AND WE ARE ALSO CERTAIN THAT A PUBLIC FLOGGING OF ROCKMAN THE PETULANT APE WOULD BRING IN HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS OF NEW PLAYERS!

HA!

SAM

Agreed upon grabbing is just land trading Drow, because I assume that if someone is always trying to and succeeding about coming out way ahead on you guys you would become upset?

SAVE THIS GAME???
That ship sailed a long time ago.
We are just the stubborn few who can not let go.

The Land Market suggestion thread on the B&S forums is pretty good:
http://forums.earthempires.com/...5426270&z=land-market

Otherwise, I will still suggest again that one possible other way is to simply reduce humanitarians to x4 and /4 (like Primary server). This will force all the alliances to land trade in some form or other, and the top countries will leave the new countries alone. Many new wars will occur due to differences in land trading, but new strategies and tactics will also be formed to maximize land trading returns. Even warring strategies will change because there will be NW tiers for conducting wars.

locket: not at all. and I would define land trading as being a constant set of hits between 1 or 2 countries, who have foreknowledge of breaks etc. a grabbing list is about providing a large number of countries who don't care if they get grabbed, which also provides a large pool of countries, where you aren't going to be able to tell without making a genuine effort what their breaks etc are. By discouraging any landgrabbing beyond bottomfeeding, we only increase the existing problem. Too many people are afraid of genuinely going out and grabbing aggressively. If you are regularly losing out on your grabs, then you aren't grabbing smart enough.

I feel like there has been a lot of changes to protect netters from suiciders. But they aren't for the best. Like finally some changes have been made to spies. But spy dr is stupid, specially for a country that has zero spies to go into spy dr. Stealing cash needs to be brought back too, instead of bombing bank. And it would be nice for missiles to be improved. I think chems is okay, but make it possible to kill with nukes too, as effective as chems kill. Also, make EM much more effective. Maybe have it destroy ~5% SDI too. It would be best if you could actually kill with EMs, but at least make them more than throw away missiles.

Sam. Great post. I think you make some very interesting points that need to be considered when making changes and looking at reverting old ones.

[quote poster=SAM_DANGER; 19769; 365439]I'm going to go ahead and drop out of character for this one, because I actually want to be serious for a minute. This is a very rare occurrence only witnessed once before.

If you want to save this war game, stop trying to take the war out of it.

Every time I see the phrase "in order to combat suiciding", it makes me cringe, because what you're really talking about there is finding a way to remove some or all risk from those who wish to engage in aggression against another player in order to grow their own country. I think too often people forget that when you grab a country 20 times over 3 days, there's a person behind that country who you're risking chasing away from the game. Every time you take away or diminish that person's ability to get what little bit of satisfaction he can, you're increasing the odds that he'll just leave.

Some will say, "Or he'll learn to play a better country".. Yeah, he may. And his group of 7 or 8 friends in the tag HEROES or GOOFBALLS or SPANK will soon find out that even if they do play well, they still get farmed. Bill and I were running two of the slimmer countries in the top 20. That didn't stop us from getting hit. We reacted the way we did to LaF because we've been around a very long time and know what comes next. Allow a double tap.. fail to take back as mush as the attacker took... show any weakness.. give even an inch.. and you become the entire server's landfarm. WE knew that going into this.. Not so for the new player who talks a few of his friends from work or school into trying to start an alliance. Bill and I will stick around because we knew what we were getting ourselves into. The newbie will most likely throw his hands up in frustration and go play something else.

For every self-important "I QUIT!" post from a vet that you might save by "combatting suiciding", you're losing dozens of other players who will just silently disappear. Just look at the news for pretty much any major alliance, and you'll see the relentless, vicious farming of anybody who dares to play outside of the big fifteen. And if one of those small guys manages to actually get a blow in on his tormentor?? HOO BOY, the fan is going to be hit by some stuff that doesn't smell good. Now take those same people doing the farming, tell them that their risk has been reduced by 50%, and do you think they'll do it less?

So in my always incredibly humble opinion, the admins should STOP worrying about suiciding, STOP protecting the big guy, and STOP trying to make war something from which both parties can gain. Eliminate or scale back most of the changes which are designed to do those things, and I think you'd have a better game, and eventually more players.

"Ghost acres" that are almost equal to the amount of land taken from the victim country... that's a little ridiculous. Scale back or get rid of ghost acres. "But where will all the land come from?".. I don't know, maybe increase the effectiveness of exploring somewhat.. or maybe there's a different, better way to get land into the system. Zahc may be on to something with the land market idea. But warring actions that benefit both parties are just stupid.

I think the formulae for missile damage need to be revisited as well. It shouldn't be possible for a country to go without SDI, eat 23 missiles from somebody that he just farmed into the ground, and shrug it off like nothing happened. As I was looking for targets before I was killed today, I was astonished by the number of extremely landfat countries I found with literally zero SDI. If there are that many people willing to take that much risk for the sake of netgaining, then missiles aren't scary enough any more, IMO. Perhaps tweak those formulae so that the limiting factor of the attacker's level of [x] on the damage done is slightly smaller. Or maybe allow for sale of missiles on the public market again. That was FUN back in the day. It got out of hand in a game with 10k players, but we're sub-1000 now. Maybe it could work again.

I definitely disagree with separating special attack DR from landgrab DR, and I hope the admins won't consider it. Zahc, what avenue for revenge would you leave the farming victim? Going down in flames and taking some of the big alliance's land with you is currently about the only effective tool most of the small guys have. Wish I'd done a better job of it today, but I got killed in the 10 minutes that I was switching rooms at my hotel (after doing practically nothing but watching my country for 2 days) :)

Bots are also a terrible idea. Why bother having land at all, if we're just going to make it completely risk free? Might as well just change this to a straight math game and forget strategy.

For the most part, the big alliances aren't stupid. If you want them to stop chasing away your newbies, then stop taking away the power of those newbies to fight back. Sure, a couple of self righteous, arrogant players will quit "because you've ruined the game", but I think the gains would outweigh those losses. Big alliances will adjust their policies, netgainers will have to actually have some defense (but the playing field will still be level because all of them will have to have it), and smaller players or alliances might stop feeling like the game is just pointless. When netters come boo-hooing about how they have to keep defense which increases their expenses, remind them that every single other netter is faced with the same risk-reward trade off.

Another side note: While they most definitely did not work in the favor of THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER] this time around, I think the recent special attack changes are fairly close to being just about right. When a player ticks off two other countries his size, they should be able to put a pretty good hurt on him. We didn't really, but we did a pretty piss-poor job of it. From not putting any prep into it (we were full on turns for another batch explore when we got double tapped) to warning H4xOr THE FLAILING CHICKEN in advance on AT, to just plain making a lot of mistakes (I even bombed the jets of country #4 instead of bombing haxor's jets 4 times.. SORRY!), we could have done a lot better. And even with all that, we still managed to take out 1/3 of his buildings and jets. Not great, but a better prepared duo could have done a lot better. I think maybe the new attack formulae are just a little toO heavy at the beginning and ending of the kill/destroy runs, but not by a lot.

OH, AND WE ARE ALSO CERTAIN THAT A PUBLIC FLOGGING OF ROCKMAN THE PETULANT APE WOULD BRING IN HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS OF NEW PLAYERS!

HA!

SAM [/quote]

+100

I agree with all of that. This would be boring if it was a math game, im here for the war. Wheres the fun in no risk?

I'm just here to play math games. You know, in three years I have one kill. Stupid smiley. :)

i like walls of text

I must be dreaming, finally a thread on AT where people are making sense and not throwing childish insults.

This thread ACTUALLY has merit.

Sam you took the words right out of my mouth.. or more accurately right off my keyboard as it were :-D

Great thread so far.


I think the biggest issue is that those in control of the game simply dont have the gaming background nor the time to transform the game into what we would hope for it. That isnt a purposeful smack in the face to those working on their spare time for the game, just simple facts.

There is only so much we as players can suggest, in the end if those in control dont have the proper game creating background or time to work, then all of these indepths talks are moot.

Sam you do bring up good points but this is alliance server for a reason. If you want to run a legit alliance and not get farmed to hell you can easily get dnh from most tags and run indies to retal for you early on. If you have a two member tag you should just go play on team server. If you play the game just to be a danger to anyone you chose than ofc youll get farmed and killed when you ab retal.

As for the bots i said i dont like how theirs no way for them to retal but im sure if someone wanted to they could make a few of the countries launh missiles or send a ps.

I never meant to bring all the solutions i just wanted a thread for some input on how you think things could be better. Whether its game mechanics or polical.

1

SAM: Marry me! :D

da fuq did I just read?

"da fuq"? What is this, slum-doggin in da hood? Hooked on ebonics?

^^ its a meme.


lesbihonest

" When netters come boo-hooing about how they have to keep defense which increases their expenses, remind them that every single other netter is faced with the same risk-reward trade off."

This one alone deserves a +100. The playing field is level. Individual success is dependent on your decision making process.

Just being untagged, or small alliance tagged in this game is disadvantage enough, and always has been. We shouldn't have to worry about the formula intended to protect those that are already protected through policy.

This game has potential, great potential to come back up. Maybe not to where it was, but it can improve. Sure, some formulas could use some tweaking. I agree there. But that isn't the real problem.

We share a responsibility as a community to reach out to newer players and potential newer players if we want this community to continue to be here. I'm not just talking about recruitment messages and random "THIS GAME SUCKS NOW" or "FIX THIS BECAUSE I'M LOSING" posts we typically see.

We need to start policing ourselves and conducting ourselves in a manner that is congruent with a community that wishes to grow. Right now, we're acting like a dying corporation. Full of blame makers, belly-achers and general cry babies all worried about getting their cut before the company goes under.

Stop it. It isn't helping.

Our interest needs to be in protecting the game and this community. Remain competitive. Be decent to your fellow players. Think about the consequences of your actions in regards to many aspects of the game. Think of your impact in the grand scheme of things. And above all, have fun.

Take a little self evaluation time and ask yourself "What have I done to help the community of Earth Empires today?" Not just your alliance, not just yourself. Everything you see here. What have *YOU* done?

Cheers.

The playing field isn't level though. Apparently you people don't understand that different strats perform better in different ways.

If every person kept way more military on hand then techers would be harmed the least of the three current netting strats. Farmers and cashers quite simply aren't made to hold huge amounts of military and net efficiently.

get ridda Ghost Acres.. and end L:L... live with conciquences of a bad grab.

Meh, the simple fact is that as the sea of Earth dried to a lake, then to a pond, then a kiddy pool, and finally now to a half empty goldfish bowl - there is just not enough water separating all of the assholes that take this game to seriously.

The only voices that anybody hears anymore are me and Ivan and locket and dagga and KJ . . . etc. It was bad enough when we had to swim in our own cloud of bullfluff, but now everybody else does too. We either need a bigger bowl, or we need to grow legs and crawl out. Most people seem to be opting for the latter, but evolution seems to move slowly for the trolliest among us.

Locket, you missed my point. Personal responsibility. Simple. Consequences of actions and decisions. If you don't like cashing and farming because of the disadvantages, then play techer. Not everyone wants to play the game the same way. This doesn't highlight a problem with the game, it highlights a complete and utter failure to adapt.

Hey Zahc. Just to be clear, I wasn't attempting to refute your post. I like that you're willing to put out honest ideas, even if I may disagree with one of two of them. I was just putting forth my opinion on what I believe is one of the major drivers of player loss.

I'm also not saying that what happened to THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER] shouldn't have happened. Bill and I knew that we were in for at least one reset of repeated deaths. We adopted our policies anyway, because it's the way we want to play. We've both been away from the game for an extended time, and we didn't want to come back to a stale, "grab 5 untags or small clans 3 times each day" existence.

I guess this is where I'm coming from: I started playing this game *I think* one reset before the introduction of the alliance server. Back then, the game was brutally hard, as I believe it should be. You either had to put a lot of effort into diplomacy with the others on your server, or you put a lot of work into making sure people knew that if they messed with you, it would not end well for them. Of course, being good with basic strategies was required too, but if you skimped on the non-strategy parts of the game, you were not going to win.

The alliance server quickly became the most brutal of the servers, IMO, and that's also how it should be. I'm in no way suggesting that smaller players or alliances need more protections. They just should not have their hands tied if they choose to fight back. And this is where I think things have gone at least a little bit wrong. Ever since the beginning, changes have been made to protect the players from each other. I don't think these kinds of changes are usually helpful, *especially* when they protect those who should be able to protect themselves.

And I think "anti-suiciding" changes are the worst of them all. Because what one person calls suiciding, another calls self defense.. or revenge.. or just plain satisfaction.. doesn't matter. I'm sure a lot of players will consider what Bill and I did suiciding. We considered it a demonstration that if you push around THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER], you might kill us, but gain nothing in the long run. (I'll admit our effectiveness in that endeavor this time around is debateable) Both of us were members and leaders in an alliance that struggled for a long time to gain some respect. We know it's not as easy as just asking for a DNH. In that alliance, we tried diplomacy, heck we tried begging. But if most of the alliances have nothing to fear from you, you're not going to get anything but farmed. As long as new alliances have the ability to inflict some reasonable damage, there is at least the possibility of gaining that respect they need to survive.

Anyway, I'm getting longwinded again. My main point is that the players, and alliances especially, will do whatever benefits them in order to win. As the power to retaliate is reduced, the benefit of excessive farming increases, and so they will do it more. I believe it really is that simple, and that creating an atmosphere which fosters farming, negatively impacts player retention.

HA!

SAM

Oh, and locket, I'm not understanding how a techer is hurt less than a casher or farmer if all three are forced to carry more defense. If the techer carries enough military to create an extra million per turn in expenses, that is funded by his sales. For the casher, it comes out of his per turn income, and for the farmer, it manifests itself as increased consumption of the commodity he sells. All three still suffer the same loss in production of one million dollars per turn.

But.. even if there's something I'm not seeing here, and the techer does have a distinct advantage on expenses (military tech, I guess maybe?) in the long run it doesn't change much. If an overpowering advantage exists, then more and more players flock to that strategy. The result is that the market quickly becomes saturated with tech. There's more supply and fewer people buying. As that happens, the advantage for the techer is lost and goes to the other strategies. That's the ebb and flow of the free market. It is a natural, healthy and beautiful thing. It is also one of the unique features about this game that I think makes it fun.

PATIENCE! I DID NOT KNOW YOU WERE STILL AROUND. IT IS MOST WONDERFUL TO SEE YOU AGAIN! ALAS, I CANNOT GRANT YOUR REQUEST, AS I HAVE ALREADY MARRIED. WE WOULD NOT WANT TO SEE THE COMMITTEE OF ONE REDUCED TO THE COMMITTEE OF NONE.

HA!

SAM
HIGH PRIEST,
THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER]!

Oops

I keep getting the quote and edit buttons mixed up

i am keeping Patience in the dungeon ;)

I personally think and have thought for awhile that they should make changes so that carrying more military simply doesnt hurt income as much.

The only advantage by strategy goes to CI, since they're already typically loaded up on units and reducing expenses via bonus. They'd still need to pay attention to SDI like everybody else, at higher cost than say a techer. It'd balance out one way or another.