After playing half a set in FFA under the new GA DR rules, I have found that it absolutely does not affect me considering my style of play in terms of the total acreage I accrue in a set.

Where it's a pain in the ass is in the time required to keep track of who has hit whom and how many times.

The rule change appears to be tolerable, but it would be nice if there was an automatic system under which reset long GA DR could be pointed out when one country is grabbing another.

I wouldn't think that should be too difficult to implement. Each country's reset long news keeps track of hits by other countries. Certainly, there's a way to flag the GA DR boundary.

While I freely admit that I had a knee-jerk response to the formula change, I also continue to voice my concern over the need to spend more time that may not be even available to players having to keep track of their land trading matrices.

That said, I don't personally believe that this change adversely effects the FFA server nearly as much as I feared it would.

http://forums.earthempires.com/...&z=ghost-acre-changes

Omitting some of the math from my original post, but leaving the rest:



In other words, I agree with Dragon, but I find the rule change less tolerable than him, because the "pain in the ass" part is something I don't find nearly as tolerable as he does. He has a higher pain threshold than me for pain in the ass (yet my arrogance still exceeds his tolerability level).

correct, large countries are still easy to do if you want to put the time into it,

the time required to play now, as far as netting goes... is..

fluffing sucks balls...


the end.

Honestly i've had 1 or 2 minor mistakes (hitting the wrong #), otherwise i made a pattern and its worked well thus far. I'm through 8 of 15, will probably only need to get up to 11 or so.

Has anyone tried running 8 and 8? I can see that being tough.

I know this.... Unless you want to spend even MORE time messing with countries, you should play all 16 with the same strat from the get go.

I decided to run 8 techers and 8 cashers because of the new rules. Getting stuck in the trap of land trading, building labs, tearing them back down etc while land trading between countries with different builds was just a TERRIBLE idea.

I should have either started with all techers or all cashers and stuck with that till I was finished land trading.

But I'm not near as good a player guys like Angry, Troy and Rockman.

Dragon LOL, I thought I said all those things on our site before the start of the set.

If the ghost acre DR's hadn't also been messed with 8 and 8 would be viable. As is it's more difficult to pull off.

maybe this is silly but

is the benifit gained by the rule change actually outweigh the frustration/ time and planning it requires to simply work around the same rule....the rule accomplishes little other than making it more difficult for someone to go around it.

In my experience the people who exploit things are the ones with to much time anyways, so the only people your preventing from gaining land are the people who weren't abusing it in the first place

The change does not effect anything that the admins claimed they were intending to change. Let me justify since the admins said that it was a test and they wanted constructive input.

First point, Im currently doing stronger than i previously have ever done, i changed close to nothing in my style of land trading.

Secondly ZIP is on 100% land built at 300k acres. Thats dam huge and the sets only half done. In addition if he had chosen to not build he would be significantly higher in acres. And thats with solo land trading! he hasnt even hit anyone else.

If i were to let the country Zip supports a mandingo (#942) 299,331 acres farm my countries right now there would be absolutely no doubt that he would finish as high, if not higher than most of the previous sets.

So this made no change to the game.
Get a member who is willing to let you farm them and Zip would easily achieve the previous sets acreage. Get 2 members who are willing to let you farm them and you will get who knows what!


Look it on a smaller scale, so making 16 countries even instead of the 1 huge country. As rockman said, doing it solo you can get 120K-150k acres average.
Get 1 friend that wants to exchange hits with you and you both easily smash that size if you so wish to.


Summary:
Landtrading solo with 16 even countries = As powerful as it has always been.
Landtrading with a partner with 16 even countries = Not required as you can do it solo
Landtradin solo to make a big country = Slightly less powerful as it has been, but ZIP is close on track to previous sets if he were to continue, but he will probably stock out the rest of the set from this point.
Landtrading with a partner to make a big country = Just as powerful as previous sets. << Dam easy to do, doesnt need explaining, if you cant figure it out, then you dont deserve to know how.

wtg Drinks, that's how you break it down........lolol

lol you should see my hitting charts. lack of enough cs stopped me from going farther. ( prays for cheap food and oil )
and drinks if you had cashers we would trade

unless you're as lazy as I and have fun trying NEW things. Gotta get old playing the same strat all the time, I enjoy experimenting more then anyhting else!

I just set up the 15 patterns I think probably everyone in PANLV is using at the beginning of the set and have a thread in our forum that said which patterns I did each day and how many hits I did. It's basically just adding a small amount of bookkeeping to it.

Granted, I'm actually still sitting at around 20k because I've been too busy to actually play my countries, but that's not a judgment of saying "this takes too much extra time, I can't play" but moreso, "school has started and the combination of teaching full time, being a dad and taking classes to get my M.A. is kicking my ass."

If I weren't doing all those things, I'd probably be sitting at 70k acres or more right now.

Am I the only one that does not have to keep notes/charts and so on to keep track of which countries have traded land and how many times? It's all in my head and I spend no time on that at all. I think people are just making it harder than it has to be. Just use a simple pattern that you can remember and things will not get over complicated.

Naw JD you're not the only one.. I've made one error this set landtrading which is on par, and taken no extra time

If I were playing more consistently, I wouldn't need the notes for which patterns I've done, but I would need the patterns themselves.

However, I was playing about every 2-3 days early in land-trading time, and now I'm playing even less often, so I have no idea which pattern I'm on for sure.

JP, i agree with you.

Mine is all based off my first country, he attacks 2 then 3, etc. The rest is based off of that.

exactly what I do Angryjesus

Not all of us have work schedules that accomodate daily, regimented play. Besides that, I have plenty of other fluff happening in my life that crowds out who last hit whom and when.

So the answer is yes. Yes I do have a chart laid out to keep track.

Just sayin'

*high fives Dragon*

Yes i have a chart also.

And for some reason when i was trying to do you style with first country, attacks 2 then 3, etc. I somehow stuffed it up hahaha.

So my pattern got ruined.

My pattern is to play fluffty.




Mission accomplished

keep your standards low and you're never disappointed! Right there with ya brotha!

I suck and finished the last 2 sets with a top 10 country not using patterns or any other geeky uber Netz0r fluff.

Just sayin'

i made some big mistakes too...

ESD is just lucky to HAVE you. Your mistakes are better than my best efforts.

All jokes aside, it's a privilege to play with the caliber of folks that make up ESD. I have NO clue why you guys even would join the tag, but I'm grateful for the fact you have.