I'll certainly consider it. Since it's purely for war, I might find it fun to just pound someone in alliance for awhile.

Damn right.

Prime: A couple notes just to make you aware of some things, since you only check here a few times a week from what you just said.

1) You made a point to say FoCuS and IMP shouldn't fight as they're two of the FFA-bred clans, but IMP declared on PANLV to help SoF, a 1a transplant that isn't only a 1a clan, but is trying to impose 1a retal policies on the server (land:land specifically). Not to mention, PANLV is a FFA-bred clan as well. So if your loyalty is to FFA clans, then the clan you play cheerleader for isn't exactly holding up to your beliefs.

2) FoCuS was called in for defensive reasons, when PANLV was already being hit by 2 alliances. SoF basically called in IMP, we called in FoCuS. Not our fault or FoCuS's fault that our ally was bigger and badder. And on your statement: "they are completely in the right to call in all of their allies to stomp you in the future." I would disagree if you're calling in an ally to help on a FS, although since that's how IMP started the war, by jumping into a war on behalf of SoF when there wasn't even a war going on prior to their declaration, I guess your clan doesn't seem to see that point either.

Regardless, I find it amusing when people come on here complaining about losing a war when they've stated over and over they're a war clan. For the most part, you've seen little to none of that from my fellow PANLV members (even though we're primarily a netting clan), and other than Ivan getting pissy back when we were arguing the whole land:land idea back about a month ago, you haven't seen it from SoF either.

Why complain? You're a war clan that's at war! You should be happy!

Damn that Red dragon!

Man, I HATE when that happens. Pisses me off....

Donny, I think I speak for most people here when I say, I don't hate you. I nothing you.

That's one of the more amusing and elaborate metaphors I've heard in awhile, NukEvil.

Well done.

Tell me Ivan, why did IMP attack PANLV then when it was an issue between you and us that was apparently the start of this war?

You are such a colossal hypocrite.

"come get some fluff" --> sexy
"come get some, fluff" --> not so sexy

Meaning of that REALLY depends on whether there's a comma there.

I'll be honest. I'm a netter first and foremost, but I've been enjoying warring IMP.

However, I find it entirely hilarious that Ivan is the one complaining about a 2nd clan entering this war.

Ivan: You come to a server you're apparently unfamiliar with and instead of conforming to the retaliation policies of that server, tried to impose ones you like better. When that didn't work out, you are the one that escalated the situation. When that didn't work out and your clan lost a bunch of countries and knew you were going to be wiped you, you ran and hid.

And when you did come back to fight, you had to get someone else to fight your battle for you. The only reason your clan is still around is because for us to have any chance of surviving in this war, we had to focus on IMP.

The only problem I have with IMP at this point is that they're backing a fool like you. Other than that, I was enjoying battling them.

On that note IMP, it has been a pleasure so far meeting you on the battlefield, but I really do question your choice of allies.

...smells like doody.

Discuss.

I bet it's Red Dragon.

Go after ICey's countries. He did afterall declare war on SoF :P

RaHL: Fair enough, but I'd prefer if he declared on you and hit someone else.

I actually think IMP v. PANLV is pretty even itself, with IMP having the FS, but it should still be an interesting war.

It looks like IVan's just not very bright. SoF is also attacking PANLV.

hmmm... how many David Hasselhoff look-a-like midgets do you have??

May your joining together be as delicious as the joining of spaghetti and meatballs.

Feel free to put your own update as well, as it's your thread, TwizTid, but I'll do my own here too:

Netting Clans:

Legends at Earth:
Won TNW the first two sets and barring some major change, will do so again this third set. They were mired in a cheating scandal during the 2nd set but have done a good job of rebounding. They still seem to have a reputation of being a bully clan, but they are very talented netters and are still the biggest clan in FFA (although AoDT was ahead of them at beginning of set for size).

Pandora's Last Vikings:
Went from about 100 countries to 235 in one set by picking up a lot of new players this set and is likely to finish 2nd in TNW behind only LaE--although they have very little chance of catching LaE unless something drastic happens. Almost had a war with SoF earlier this set that could have slowed their netting ability, but SoF ran into vacation mode and has never come back.

Dynasty:
A smallish netting clan, but a very good one. Had a small war that seemingly was unprovoked, but still won that war handily, showing that Skystormers is as knowledgeable as he seems to be. At 80 countries, they're small (or perhaps mid-sized is a better way to define them in the new FFA), but they're a very good group of netters.

ESD:
Just Dragon playing by himself this set, but Dragon is a very solid netter and is looking to grow ESD into a nice group of veteran players next set. My guess is that his group will probably rival Dynasty in size next set. However, ESD has always primarily been a home for players who are not only veterans but also people who can stay out of trouble, and offers players probably the most autonomy concerning FA issues.

Many other tags seem to be good netting tags, but only one player, including WILD, enshula, SAS and Beek55, but I don't have any idea whether these tags will exist for more than one set, so I'm not going to cover these.

War Tags

Asylum of Dark Templars:
One of the two premier war tags in the game. They've now fought an epic series of three wars with NBK, with (if memory serves) the alliance that took the first strike basically winning each one (of course this third war isn't officially over yet). AoDT started off as the biggest clan this set and are still T-2nd with NBK, but with a significant NW advantage.

Natural Born Killers:
The other premier war tag in the game. After a poor showing against AoDT in set 1, they rebounded to have a truly impressive war against AoDT in set 2. Now, in set 3, they are losing a third war, but are fighting admirably. In this third war, they started with a disadvantage in numbers, but also were the victims of the first strike, so they are doing quite well considering they're fighting this war uphill.

fluff Off Cause Ur Stupid:
A very capable war clan that so far this set has stayed out of war and are currently 3rd in TNW in a very tight race with IMP and AoDT (who will presumably fall out of this race as they continue to war NBK). At around 200 countries, FoCuS has the size to put up a good fight against anyone, and they've got some of the best veteran leadership in the game.

Insane Multi Posse:
Another very capable war clan that looks like they could war any second, with a crazy number of Communist, Monarchies and Dictatorships in their numbers. Despite this fact, they've also stayed peaceful all set and surprisingly have the best ANW of any of the big 5 clans.


Other clans to mention:

Soldiers of the Apocalypse:
Usually considered a netting clan, because they don't war. However, they don't really seem to net either. NightShade's clan seems to be stalled with relatively smallish countries that all rest outside the top 1000 countries. Seemingly with a few active veterans in their ranks, SOTA could easily rebound, but as of right now, they look like a clan that can't really be considered a netting clan or a warring clan.

SoF:
A group of 1a players that came over to try their hand at FFA. They looked very solid at the beginning and could have been a very good clan, but they tried to enforce land:land retals against PANLV and were chased into vacation mode, where they still reside.

The Killer Elite:
A very small (probably 2-3 members) clan that seems to be decent, but not great netters. They had issues with a failed merger, but seem to be back on their feet now.

CTU24:
A very small warring clan. They merged with TKE but that fell through seemingly due to lack of communication. I have to admit, I liked the boldness of their declaration of war on Dynasty, but only killing 3 countries before their withdrew from the war with their tails between their legs shows while the leader, Bauer, has the attitude of a good war leader, but maybe not the skill of a good war leader.

I'm sure TwizTid will have his own take on this, but I thought I'd put my own statements on what each clan is like. For anyone looking for a new clan, hopefully this will give you an idea of what to find in each clan.

NOW3P: Tell me where I went wrong, so I can understand.

mrford's response to BP, in my opinion:

1) shows a LaE leader acknowledging seeing this post.

2) does NOT make any attempt to make further contact with BP

3) does NOT ask BP to hold off until he talks to a representative of LaE.

4) seems to be an acknowledgement that the LaE member was doing something he shouldn't have (although, admittedly doing it in an over-the-top, humorous way).

If any of my assumptions are way off base, let me know, but this is how I see this. Your only real reason to kill BP is to say he didn't make sufficient contact with a LaE leader prior to acting, but mrford saw BP's first comment 15 minutes after he posted it and seemingly made no effort to contact BP about it.

Of course, AoDT and NBK are a bit busy and I would imagine they wouldn't be bothering you anyway, so my guess is you're safe there.

Here's the original thread BP put up:

http://forums.earthempires.com/...mp;p=1276185278&z=lae

BP told LaE he was intending to kill them and 16 minutes later got this response:


Now, to me, that's an acknowledgement of fault and an acceptance of the proposed course of action. If mrford jumped on and said "Please contact us and we'll make reps/work out acceptable retals" then I would admit that BP probably stepped over the line. But with that response from mrford, if I were BP, I would have taken that as an authorization to kill those countries.

LOL, definitely agree with the last statement Dragon.

Especially when I was in LaE, Blake kept asking me if I'd like some type of leadership position, to which I always answered "No thanks."

I just remember TIE always ended up being just big enough, but just bad enough at war that anyone that wanted to notch a win for a war would declare on us even though we typically stayed out of people's news and were pretty quiet. To try to avoid that, I always had AIM/ICQ lists of about 200 people each to chat up everyone in all the big clans all I could to try to make sure no one hated us. Apparently I'm not all that likeable though because we still had just as many war sets as we did netting sets.

If I become unhappy in my current clan, Dragon, you'll be the first person I talk to.

Definitely true on the untagged multis too. And even those that were illegal countries that were run by people in big clans as "reinforcements," as long as you didn't farm a particular untagged into the ground, it seemed like most of those players just dealt with getting hit occasionally.

Of course, I remember many times when someone would farm the hell out of an untagged and get jumped.

EAsy way around it though.

For instance, if Blake and I were playing together--he could make land farms for me and I'd make land farms for him.

I'm pretty much with Dragon. Back in the day of running TIE, I always was very much against self-farming, and we always banned it amongst our own ranks.

As of now, the game's just too small with the fact that Dynasty is 7th in membership with 80 countries and any of the one-man tags could become 10th in membership by recruiting a 2nd member and getting to 32.

I've adopted the practice simply because it's really the only way for me to compete with the top players. I'm sure there's other players good enough to compete either way, but I'm not one of them.

100% agree with enshula.

If it's a kill target, two-stepping is acceptable, because by the general etiquette of the game, the person/clan losing countries doesn't really have a right to retal if we're going on the assumption that they did something that's a no-no in order to get killed.

Two-stepping on regular landgrabs always was an automatic farm/kill of all offending countries.

Could be fun. I used to do all right against the self farmers, could usually sneak a country or two in the top 100 without self-farming.

"Besides two chicks at the same time? Nothing."

Actually, first thing I'd do, as boring as it is, is pay off all my debts, including mortgage.

The one fun thing I'd do pretty much right away is buy a vacation home down in the Orlando area because my wife and I are huge WDW geeks.

I'm sure I'd find plenty of other ways to blow money, but my wife is very frugal and has pounded her frugality into me since we got married.

LCoH was one of our closest allies back when I led TIE, so I'd say I definitely remember LCoH. :)

I'd consider the same three that everyone else is considering if I were looking for a clan.

LaE -- Had some issues last set, which makes them a potential target of animosity, but due to their size, I doubt anyone's actually willing to step up and do anything other than maybe some random suiciders. But, as people said, they are big and not as in need of players as other clans.

PANLV -- big, but not LaE/NBK/AoDT big. SoF and PANLV are having issues over some retals, but SoF has gone into vacation mode and presumably shouldn't be any significant threat.

Dynasty -- small netting clan, but they just got tangled into a war, so if you're looking to net THIS set, probably not your best option.

I'll throw out Dragon and ESD too. Right now, he's flying solo, but Dragon used to run pretty much the best small netting tag in FFA back in the old days, and he still gets enough respect that flying with him is probably pretty safe.

And on Bryce Harper, he certainly seems like one hell of a player as well, but there's some risk there too (of course, there's always risk in the MLB draft), but the kid skipped a couple years of high school, taking the GED so he could jump into JuCo to play against better talent.

Some people have been talking about him as someone who may burn out early because of it. Not sure I believe that, but the MLB draft is so crazy in where the best players come from, that you simply can't assume anything until the player is in the bigs and succeeding.

After all, the best player in baseball, Albert Pujols, was drafted in the 13th round. Mike Piazza, one of the best catchers baseball has ever seen - 62nd round. Meanwhile, there are players like Bryan Bullington, 1st overall pick in 2002, who has a career line of 0-6 with a 5.57 ERA in a total of 16 games player in the big leagues.

Harper seems like as close to a sure thing (outside of Strasburg) as you see in MLB, but you never know. Baseball has way more burnouts/busts than the NBA or NFL.

Exhibit A: Mark Prior, who had a pretty similar first start (6IP, 2ER, won his debut).

I certainly don't wish that fate upon Strasburg, but crowning him the CY winner based on one start is a bit premature. However, it does look like the Nationals have something of value for the short-term at the very least.

ford: Root for perpetual overtimes.....

"And Kobe misses the shot, so we'll go into the 44th overtime, now tied at 267-267......"

now3p: Stop trying to confuse the issue with facts!

I will say that while there was a short time that I found gregg and his two other personalities kind of annoying, I'm finding them more amusing now.

The lengths to which he is going are pretty funny, and I certainly hope he's just being goofy and not actually serious in his attempts to make us all think these alter-egos are all the same. Otherwise, this is one kid with some seriously poor social skills.

I always thought the point of joining a clan was for protection.

The same thing happens in every other server--if I played a country solo on 1a tagged or not, I'm sure it wouldn't end well for me.

I wish you luck, but this happens in every game that involves multiplayer options, whether it be something like this, first person shooters or even a game as benign as Mario Kart.

Darn it, NukEvil. I thought I had a semi-original idea.

Regardless, LaE recruiter, you're guilty of breaking the Hitler rule/Godwin's law. Not by actually bringing up Hitler, of course, but by bringing up something SO FAR beyond the scope of the problem itself that it's completely ridiculous.

Two things:

1) Unless you see any reason to suspect that the four former leaders of LaE are cheating in LaE again and getting away with it, none of your analogies are even relevant.

2) Are you seriously comparing violence and killing in the Gaza Strip to jagernacht, DM, ICe and llaar cheating? I call this the Hitler rule, which goes roughly like this:

a) Hitler was a very very very bad man who did things that are unimaginable to the vast majority of people.
b) Only a handful of people are even remotely close to the evil that was present in the crimes of Hitler.
c) Therefore, comparing anyone else's crimes/mistakes to Hitler is excessively hyperbolic and causes you to lose any and all credibility in the argument, because by doing so, you actually aren't taking seriously just how evil Hitler was.

By comparing LaE's transgressions last set to violence in the Middle East, you've just basically broken the Hitler rule.

Did I miss something new? Because if not, posting something like this now doesn't even make sense.

Good trolling requires good timing, dude. This is so long after the whole Ice/DM/Jager/llaar thing has been resolved that it's basically just you shouting "Look at me! Look at me! I don't get enough attention in my real life so I'm going to try to get it here!"

JAT: He gets everyone going with his own porn that he brings, but then he tries to parlay that into a situation where he gets to make some new homemade porn.

Like he said, he also brings beer to help in the seduction.

Just thinking about it gives me PTSD flashbacks :(

So you're saying you don't care, yet you're actually threatening to go find more people to play in the other thread, so you can go after PANLV with approximate numbers?

You're acting like a child, Ivan. You came over here thinking you'd be able to play the game on your terms, and since that hasn't happened, you're pouting like a little boy who's threatening to take his ball and go home.

Think of it this way: If PANLV or NBK or any other FFA clan started a 1a clan and decided they wouldn't accept L:L on any retals, but rather would play by the standards they were used to, what would happen to them? They'd be wiped out, and rightfully so.

You've stepped into a different political climate than 1a and if you want to have any success, you should try to learn the political climate here and conform to those.

It's porn that he wants to look at with you, NBK.

Dragon is trying to seduce you.

That's probably good, because my guess is, you will be.

See, there you go again, being a jerk.

I suggest there are ways to avoid being topfed and instead of realizing maybe you haven't thought of everything, you say I don't understand the mechanics of the game.

Yet there were players last set who were running absolutely disgustingly fat countries and who managed to hold on to their land.

I'm afraid you get an "unsatisfactory" on "plays well with others" Ivan.

run a retaller that can get your land back.

You have 16 countries to possibly play. Run your own all-jetter.

Besides, there actually are ways to ensure you don't get top-fed.

And exaggerating things won't help your cause. To say you could have suiciders up in 2 days that would matter is foolish.

I guess if you wanted to take out a clan's farms, you could probably do that after 2 days, but you won't be taking out any countries of real value in 2 days. Besides, it'd be very easy to kill your next set of suiciders and spy on your alliances to find out who FAed you. I'm doubting most of your "friends here whos willing to FA" want to pick fights because you feel you have to talk all big and bad in order to get respect here.

accepting 1:1 on topfeeds actually just encourages you to learn to defend your own land instead of using thuggery to bully small clans.

Ivan, for all your big words, you're going to get your tag wiped off the server if you don't learn some level of diplomacy. And while in 1a, I know wars tend to go a little slower, in FFA, with many of us running 16 countries, you could find a clan like NBK could probably kill your entire clan in a matter of a few hours.

Not sure if you're trying to do L:L, Ivan, but if you are, that doesn't go in FFA.

I'm between 60-70 BPT so far.

trumper: "8. "Why DOES the United States flag have 13 stripes?" The US flag does NOT have 13 striples, it HAD 13 stripes. They get the tense right in the very next question."

It still does have 13 stripes. It's the stars that change when states are added.

I did the 20 question one too, started strong, getting the first 4, but only got 11/20 total, so apparently I don't know enough about Canada to be a citizen.

Shoulda waited a couple more days. Right now it's hardly worth farming when explore rates are still good :P

In a week's time, those countries would have totally been great land. But alas, I'm pretty sure some people will go ahead and farm them even though it's barely worth it at this point....