WTF ARE YOU SMOKING?

Recheck your newsfeed. I'm including all hits, DH, missiles, everything.

My #s are correct.

ZZ Bikini (#347)
Total defends 221
Defends last 72 hours 220

=================

Storm in the West (#147)
Total defends 313
Defends last 72 hours 310

go debug your code

Donny the game has changed.

Its called Internet Speed,

I guarantee you when I played on dialup, the fastest I could hit was every 20 seconds.

Hell, sometimes my ICQ froze my computer up because of so many messages that came in that day alone, and it would take 4 attempts of relogging into dialup.....which took forever...just to get all the ICQ messages to come through

SO I could log in and take a turn!


The game has changed. The mechanics of the game have not changed to adapt to this.

I can not play this game because I refuse to be available 24/7 on 20 seconds notice to try to defend via smart phone. I have more important things to do like raise kids.

However, I can play COC after kids are in bed because no walling is required.

The game has changed:)

grep -o 'countrynamehere' count | wc -w

should be

grep -o 'countrynamehere' count | wc -l

( i used wrong extension, is my error ).

Updated using correct parameter:

Storm in the West: 308 hits
ZZ Bikini: 220 hits

The numbers above reflect those beginning with the first KR attack and not total attacks made in 72 hours (made from retals earlier in set).
So to be fair, your numbers are not entirely accurate either.

@root:~# man wc

-l, --lines
print the newline counts

-w, --words
print the word counts

off by 6 between 2 is a lot closer than 900 on 1 :p

/agreed.

i was trying to escape the humiliation of my major error.

another reason why i typically keep my math to myself. i seem to find myself in these situations.

Servant, hitting was arguably even faster back in the dial up days until the Attack Again button was implemented. You didn't need to wait for the screen to load after hitting the attack button. You could spam it, or hit attack then cntrl + <-.

You don't need to press send attack manually these days either.

I guess if you're familiar with Python programming, you can make a program to click it for you.

Though I think the fastest way would be to use Curl statements and submit the info via command line. Both I believe are techinically against the rules.

for FFA, I can program a keypad (it would take a while) that could execute all the keystrokes I need to make a kill run in one button push if I have the tabs set up correctly. Really quick kill if right, lots of bounces if wrong. I don't, because I feel this violates the spirit of the game in manually sending in attacks.

agreed, i could and i don't either

The problem is, people want:

a) to die more slowly

b) warchats to take less time, and kills to be fast


these are fundamentally at odds with each other.

I welcome your solutions though!

qzjul is right....

There is a low tolerance for failed KR's. Despite the significant damage inflicted, entire warchats of people leave "unhappy" if they didn't "get the kill".

Since walling is possible once the target is online, the pressure is to do the KR fast.

This is also related to the advent of mobile devices and always-on internet connections. There aren't the same "windows" their used to be where you could do a 30-min KR on a guy who just "wasn't at his computer".

Times have changed.

We all seek instant gratification. On both sides.

Ok, how about this?

For those who don't like the short notification of dieing to a KR, can join GDI.

By joining GDI:
a) their attack gains become smaller
b) their own targeting capabilities become more limited.

Both which are already in effect.

The added part could be:
There's a 5 minute cooldown period between declaring war and hitting that player.
So, in other words, after declaring war, a clan cannot attack that player until 5 minutes has elapsed. All players are notified when war is declared on them.

This way only a certain population are affected, and those who choose it, lose some sort of benefit.

Or you could just add another whole system called PFC. It costs a player -30% attack gains and it causes special attacks made on your country to do 50% less dmg., thus giving your country 2x the time to wall, and makes you less of a target.

Just brainstorming ideas- don't go grabbing your m16 or bazooka.

You can't make everyone happy, but I would say it's a little off if we're thinking 30 second kills is appropriate, especially on large targets. The people that want a 100% success rate in 30 second kill runs are (IMO) unreasonable. Lots of military operations fail and it doesn't mean you'll lose the entire war.

Anyway, I think the best way to extend kill runs is to drop readiness faster for attackers. We already have a control for % of total military, but adding one to the frequency of attacks would force players to play more turns keeping readiness up. I would put it into small manageable time chunks like 10 seconds. So, one hit per 10 seconds, is normal readiness loss. 2 hits in 10 seconds (as measured from the time of the first hit), you lose double. A third hit, it doubles again. For those that like to hammer on the button once every second (or faster) you can see how fast this adds up. Not sure this would help for a 70 vs 1 situation as mentioned above, but I think it's a good general first step.

that got scrapped before boltar and I got to laugh at it with democracies, granted it was just a flat increase for hitting fast

It needs to be dynamic. *= 1.5 or a little higher. I think 2.3 would be optimal. If you wanted to go really crazy you could check it against attackers % of military used in the attack and lower it accordingly. That way, it won't really effect the breakers as badly, but the mid-range and finishers will have to play a little more conservatively.

I'm pretty sure I coded a mechanic in that changed readiness based on the time since your last attacks. If I remember it was a pretty elegant solution that a vocal minority of people complained until it got removed. I even rebuilt the war page to support that mechanic (that's why attack again exists...)

it shouldn't have been removed, IMO. war tactics would have adjusted over time.

28 seconds with so many attackers is not really fast. Even if there was a readiness penalty with so many attackers the kill would still be quick or even quicker if planned properly. The really challenging thing is achieving fast kills with less attackers which suffers terribly if you change the mechanic.

In past wars we've seen much quicker. Fast kills can be countered with significant skill and organization. You just have to be a really good waller. For example, I don't think you'd be able to kill Dragon/Scorba in any 30 second killrun.

If you have 20-30 countries hitting the country will and should die quick. Anything you do to try and slow down killruns will make it so killruns with 10 countries attacking will be hurt the most. I've seen 15 second killruns with 10 attackers on 5mil+ troop countries and achieving those kills takes lots of planning, skill and coordination which is a really fun thing to do and provides more enjoyment and sense of achievement to the 10 people attacking.

Just out of curiosity, how many people rage-quit because of failed KRs? I know I've seen dozens of people quit over this exact issue, so I'm thinking this is the one to fix.

Anyone who is complaining about speed being too fast has never fought against heavy wallers such as Slash or Dragon. I guarantee you more people will quit (and have quit) after being in Warchats where you cannot kill people for days. It's not rage quit type quitting but rather a grind down of morale.

I think two things need to happen.

As was said above, people want to be able to stonewall and most cannot if only given 30 seconds (props to the few who can...they are gods among us). People also hate leaving a chat after attacking 2 or 3 stonewallers and not getting the kill, since, usually this means the defender will be able to nearly fully rebuild, making the kr a waste of turns and time.

So, a possible solution: Figure out a curve. Damage goes down based on number of hit recently received. As time goes, Damage goes back up.

Make this curve work so that a kill done in 1 second would take 1000 hits and a kill done in 5 minutes would take 200 hits.

This gives the defender a chance to stonewall. Of course, this also means almost noone would ever get killed.

So, change the pop gain formula. Right now, it's way to easy to regain pop, as people flood back into your country when you play a few turns. Maybe, if the country took a hit within the past 1 minute, pop returns are halved (or something like this). This way, have a constant rush of hits would make it harder to regain back to full.

All of this would need to be tested and tweaked to find the right amount of each side, but implementing both should make warring much more fun for everyone.

juice: http://earthempires.com/...set-12-26672?t=1387031694

Fast DR Type II.

Didn't work.

Keep IRC open and use alerts. 30s is easy to wall if you have alerts on....and are sitting at ur computer.

Didn't we try this not too long ago....

also tried low damage at the start so a waller wouldn't be hurt as much.

Seems to be an issue with people not wanting to adjust strategy and tactics. I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to keep IRC open all day and all night so they can start to wall in 30 seconds or less. That doesn't work for the working folks which I think makes up a fair percentage of our community (and maybe our future target consumers???).

It would be fair to extend some minimum time frame for the normal players to have a chance to wall. There's a lot of good ways to do it, too. Hammer down readiness on speed attacks, limit damage, increase losses to attackers military, or increase chances of failed attacks. You can still get your < 30 second kills, but, it's going to cost you.

This puts leaders in a position of having to figure out how much resources one stubborn SOB is really worth, or working out a smarter way to get him.

As far as moral of the forces go: it's war. War is a grind no matter what. If they can't handle that, there's plenty of netting clans to get on board with.

Even in current eniviroment, there are countires that can take a huge amount of effort/resources to kill, even if it takes 2-3+ runs to kill.

As with any online game, there will be issues on how to balances the desires of the uber-active vs the 1 hour a day players. I do feel is it is unfair to change the game mechanics based on super minotirty of the game. Most of you can count on one hand the number of superwallers in this game. and even then, why penalize activity in the game???

I belive the current mechanics work. If you want to create nearly unkillable country, the avenue is open, up to you to find it, and apparently one LaFer has.

I just agreed with Sov....

What you (and others) are suggesting has been done before and it made war stupid. It is an interesting argument because everyone here advocating for changes to warring are netters who do not war with any regularity if at all. I don't think you'll find anyone in MD, SOL or SoF agree that warring mechanics need to change and that is because we know how much the warring experience is hurt by such mechanics being implemented. LAF advocate the changes to speed because it suits their style and plays into their own strengths.

It was also mentioned by someone else that a vocal minority got the changes revoked. This is not the case as the changes were opposed by the majority of warrers for whom had to fight with these ridiculous mechanics in place.

In my experience there are a handful of players in the entire game who can wall within 15 seconds. In MD, SOL and SoF I believe about 1/4 of the players in those tags can wall within 30 seconds, although sometimes you get lucky and catch them at a bad time.

Most players in warring tags just want to be able to log in, attend a warchat, get a kill and log off. Their sense of achievement in the game comes from getting the kills and winning the war. It takes weeks to win a war so most of the time the fun in the game is in successful warchats.

If you make walling easier to do you play into the hands of the few people who are able to wall and make them even harder to kill, thus when you get to the last 10-15 remaining originals you hit a wall and this is often where a war can be lost. How? Because you cannot kill those 10-15 players and you keep trying for days and have little success so you are reduced to killing restarts just to get a kill. People stop having fun and attendance starts to fade as people lose motivation and then killing those 10-15 starts to become even harder.

Dying is part of war and people should accept that. It is not like back in Earth2025 the ratio of countries walling and dying was any different to what it is now. The hits per kill over the last 10 years has actually been fairly comparable. So what is the problem? You die in war, you restart and now you get some nice restart bonuses to make restarting less painful. Why do we need to harm the warchat experience just because people don't like dying?

It also should be pointed out that with current technology (i.e phones) almost anyone should be able to stonewall (assuming your Alliance is organised enough in terms of notifications) within 30 seconds. Now to those who say you cannot wall fast from a phone, I would say that is only because you are not prepared. If you are logged in from your phone whenever you are not at your computer and have windows/tabs ready to buy up you should be able to wall within 10 seconds, it is just a matter of preparation. If you are set up to wall at all times all you need to do is unlock your phone, select the appropriate tab and click to buy... If that takes you more than 30 seconds then you are not doing it right.

Now another point in this game is that in the past 3 years I've been in EE it is the warring tags that grow this game and sustain it's members. I'd actually advocate that it is the stale state of warring politics which is attributing to the current decline of the game because there is simply not enough action, drama or intrigue to keep warring people interested in the game. Think of 2 years ago when the warring tags were fairly closely matched and competitive politically, there was an arms race and the game was growing. Now there is none and the game is declining.

The tldr version of the above post:-

The fun in warring is killing. People do not war because they have fun walling. Don't hurt the killing part just because people do not like dying. Dying is part of war. If you are REALLY good you might not die but probably still will.

Yea, and my experiences in war, despite definitely feeling the "dying too fast thing" myself, has been more along the lines of what Sov is saying -- it's the *looong griind* that wears down people until they get tired and quit; the fast wars usually lead to people just chilling after and maybe taking some time off or half-heartedly netting, but not being exhausted from weeks of futile hitting.

I generally like the idea of the restart bonus, as it does reward people for having a good country before the war, and also for efforts in walling, I don't know if it's balanced well, but it hasn't been drawing as many complaints recently, which usually indicates it's not terrible! :)

I kindof would like some more-formalized warring system some time, i think that might drive things to be more awesome; and maybe reward both sides based on losses at the conclusion of a win or loss, or something.

I liked everything about that except that you implemented it on FFA, where no one cares about 30 second kills, they just want to be able to run 2000 turns as fast as possible. That is where the focus of dislike was coming from.

I'm not saying dying isn't part of war. I'm saying the dying doesn't have to be quite so fast. So you have few good wallers. Great, they can still be good at it. You'll have some others that don't have to be quite so attentive yet, you can still kill efficiently. When you think about it the suggestion is more along the lines of limiting the amount of kills per day (depending on tactics). You can either kill one (quickly) with a lot of turns, or your can kill five with the same amount of turns (a little slower).

Yes, you will have to come up with new tactics but so will your enemy. If you're so convinced that the war clans hold this game up (I'm not disagreeing, I think warring is more fun than netting if you have the time) you'd start looking at ways to make it less rage inducing. Right now the big issue seems to be blitzkrieg is knocking the fun out for some. Even with all the technology available people don't necessarily want to be glued to a game all the time. You have a small percentage that will actually do that; i.e. the handful of 'heavy wallers' we already have. You open this game up to a much broader dynamic when you allow for more fulfilling part time play.

Sov,

I'm a fighter, not a netter, and I am one who would prefer a change.

Also, you posted an awful lot about how slowing down the kills would make it impossible to get a kill, due to the wallers. It IS possible to code in a change that makes it a bit harder to recoup after a run has been done to you. If this was also implemented, then kills would not be impossible, but they could take a bit longer, allowing for the fun of walling. I explained more in a previous post. You should read that one.

Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate.

LOL, this is rich!

Don't throw stones when you live in a glass house...

i'm not speaking on behalf of them, but Stones would not appreciate being thrown around in a glass house

readiness

As soon as a player logs into that server, readiness goes back up to 100%. This will prolly result in opponents bouncing at first til they readjust their attacks. But should in meantime give defender few precious seconds to attempt to wall. Should not impact possible quick KR but does allow player bettet chance to wall.

OFC not what do about ones staying and already logged in, but sure some simple solution can be done.

Most of what Sov said I agree with and even briefly hinted at the main problem. Problem is not length of time to do KR, that has not changed. What has changed is amount of countries. Yea it sucked when country died back than as it does now, but their were lots more countries to continue on with, lots more to monitor war and call around or send FA asap. lots more to counter attack to try disrupt KR, etc etc. Sure are other differences too like most of us have active lives now, etc. But to me the biggest difference is amount of countries and not sure anything can be done to rectify that.

Come on noob. There are @sshole in this game that survived a what-could-have-been a 10sec kill back in the day. Current speed kill record on non-restarts >15m networth i believe is still 3sec. That guy didnt fluff.

Ya, guess it's just kicking a dead horse keeping this tread going...

I'll just retire my 1a battle helmet... I'm stuck playing mobile 99.9% of the time. Being incapable of being able to speed hit(tap send again button quickly only results in my zoom going in and out) and then having the community thinking and preaching 30 seconds is a reasonable amount of time to receive an alert, login, captcha and then manage to get to a market screen to buy up to wall.... I just shake my head in sadness.. I have more time to wall in FFA..... not that I excel at it there anyways.... but still, I get more than 1min generally. I still get the "chance"

I know it does not help that I have no real reasonable solution to the problem... outside of a general understanding between the community to have a delayed breaking system or something like that.

The easiest way I can think of to slow a kill run down is to throw in a 30 second cool down between every 100 hits... it can still be fast... but it would buy the country being hit about a minute and half or so to get online and wall.

those 30 seconds would seem like forever to those waiting to hit...

start to end on a kill run would be approximately 2-3 minutes.

Yesterday I found myself agreeing with mrford and today I'm totally with Sov.

Damn what drugs did I take :P

Anyways he said it perfectly.

Also, my oppinions are my own and have no regards to LaF. I would be making these same statements tagged in any alliance.

Time invested > ability to wall = waste of time.

The icing on the cake is I was online, logged in and still didn't have time to even change servers.... only thing I could have done differently to increase my personal speed was be all ready logged into alliance and just sit and wait...

Like I said though, if the majority is not dissatisfied then don't change it.