Not sure if it helps, but in terms of coding, the information required to identify which attacks qualify as "DR-free retals" already exists in the game. For example, if a country has hit you, you can still attack them during the last six hours, so I know that is already tracked. And I know if you hit a country for a SECOND time, you break GDI, so I know that is tracked as well. Therefore, everything you need to make the first retal DR-free is available to you as is.

Have you been hit by this country? Yes/No
If yes:
Did this retal break GDI? Yes/No
If no:
No DR

And since only one retal is DR-free in this solution, that severely limits the possibility of land trading (which I wouldn't be too worried about anyway, but if you did have concerns).

Hello qz, thanks for coming here with this issue. I think it is definitely a longstanding problem, as it's just silly for someone with low/no turrets to be able to hit you for thousands of acres, while you have no recourse in terms of retaliation solely due to DR that has nothing to do with you.

I think DR is short enough here on Express, so I wouldn't tamper with that more. I also don't think shortening it by half would always solve the problem - what if I'm in 75 DR and there's only 24-36 hours left in the game?

So, I'd back the first solution, allowing anyone who has been attacked by a country they have not hit to take a retal without DR coming into play. I think that solves the issue pretty completely. As for your concern, land trading/pyramid schemes are ALREADY possible here (right? why wouldn't they be?), so this change wouldn't exacerbate that one bit. Moreover, those things are not effective in Express server anyway.

tellarion still exists?

Research button.

has first place ever tripled 10th place before? :P

ok, so the bots are still impacting the game negatively. obviously i am able to adjust and exploit them like everyone else, but until they learn to fight back or disguise themselves in some way, they'll continue to make the game worse instead of better. more land in the server is fine. more targets than the typical newbies, that's fine. a dozen bots you *know* you can safely attack 5+ times, though, really isn't cool.

i see two responses that the admins should make when they get the chance. the first is, obviously, better disguised bots, bots with spies, bots that, at the very least, will send off any nukes and chems they have at a player who hits them too many times. the second adjustment that could be made is one that was already promised, which is that if you hit a player 4 times or whatever, you get kicked out of gdi. that way you couldn't play the offensively safe ungame like ebert's taken up without exposing yourself.

when bots were introduced into the game, qzjul correct me if im wrong, but i think they definitely werent introduced to be literal landfarms for you to move among, 8x tapping one after the other. more land on the server? yes. but that? no. and it's made express quite a bit silly.

i just looked it up and actually i got 43.7m net with no bots but that was under the old building cost formula as well. so it was double penalized versus the scores today, both no bots and building cost exploding as you get your land up. that's still the server record in my eyes.

I got 45m with no bots :3

Getafix,

I agree with you to a point: bots introduce more land, and perhaps prevent newbies from being hit as much, and the winners of Express are usually the best bottom feeders anyway.

But the bots sap the fun out of it, man. I walked away from this server for quite awhile because of the bots. So did currydubs. And our scores speak for themselves, we're not people that can't compete. But landfarming bots that don't fight back, being the lucky one to find a bot that just explored out or that isn't in DR, the potential to navigate through a set without attacking one real live player... that all is so sterile, so boring, so much less fun than the server used to be.

BOTSSSSSSSSSS

It's a fluffing stupid era, with tons of landfarms that you just need to farm first. Who cares what scores people get now? Nothing against the people getting them, but the game is now a joke. h2o himself might agree with me, I know currydubs does.

congrats h2o on beating the legit record with tihs fake bs botworld cheap buildings hell. i could score 50m with tihs. i scored $44m with the old bulding prices and without bots. everything now is bullfluff and fluff it.

my hard-earned scores that i spent years getting are meaningless because of the many public landfarms

all express statistics are now meaningless. fluff

scores are all a joke now

blergh, congrats on the record in the cheap buildings free bot farm land reset.

I will play Team if recruited. I won't play Alliance

i wnatd to retal that guy

Point taken that there may be updates we don't see. I think the bots have been the same the last 3-4 rounds but who knows. That said, see this:
http://earthempires.com/...become-34917?t=1422074856

with the bots as they are, this isn't even the same game anymore.

I don't expect him to put in the effort to add a muting system just for things like this, but because a forums/in-game msging merger is already in the plans, I think if/once that merger takes place, this sort of punishment system could then be adopted with no problems or additional work

btw Celphi you should have put this in B&S forum so it would be read by qzjul

MacXGee got lucky last reset, he farmed my abandoned country and I didn't notice. If I'd noticed I would have logged in and nuked him

I think coding will DEFINITELY allow it if they merge the forum messaging system with the in-game system - which they've been planning on for a couple years - because I think people can get squelched/banned from the forums currnetly, right? Like iccyh did to Getafix

retard is less offensive than c*nt or get on oyur knees b*tch. even if you're approaching it from a liberal, pc standpoint, those are gendered insults which is a no-go ~

fine though, "idiot" or "moron" whatever. my point wasnt about the word retard in specific

I agree with Celphi. I am in favor of the bot experiment in general BUT they should be taken offline unless there are being tweaks and updates done each round. They are still not "ready" and their presence is more harmful to gameplay than helpful as they currently exist. As is, I'd go so far as to say they actually ruin the game experience. If they were being actively worked on and changed round-to-round as part of the effort to make bots that fight back, I'd understand it, but currently we just have a server full of landfarms and the game is a joke.

The basic reaosning behind that is that vulgar language and abusive messages are ont the same thing as cheating.

I agree with this but probably the guy was upset he was getting owned in the war. I would hope trash talk is still allowed as long as it's of the "you suck lol, i own you retard" variety instead of "get on your knees you b*tch, be a good c*nt" variety.

still, though, and this isn't a complaint about bstrong, but a suggestion for the game in general: deletion is NOT the ideal punishment for vulgar language. a more fitting punishment would be to remove their in-game messaging ability for the rest of the round

lol

2015-01-23 22:01:16 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 124A (140A)
2015-01-23 22:01:13 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 153A (179A)
2015-01-23 22:01:10 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 187A (230A)
2015-01-23 22:01:07 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 224A (293A)
2015-01-23 22:01:04 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 250A (350A)
2015-01-23 19:28:40 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Oceloths Dwarfs (#71) 183A (265A)
2015-01-23 19:27:44 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Oceloths Dwarfs (#71) 219A (343A)
2015-01-23 19:27:37 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Oceloths Dwarfs (#71) 255A (441A)
2015-01-23 17:26:27 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 175A (197A)
2015-01-23 17:25:42 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 218A (253A)
2015-01-23 17:25:37 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 267A (325A)
2015-01-23 15:18:50 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Hildar Camon (#82) 107A (151A)
2015-01-23 15:18:45 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Hildar Camon (#82) 127A (190A)
2015-01-23 15:18:42 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Hildar Camon (#82) 147A (234A)
2015-01-23 15:18:38 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Hildar Camon (#82) 156A (269A)
2015-01-23 15:18:34 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Hildar Camon (#82) 150A (283A)
2015-01-23 12:30:13 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 295A (376A)
2015-01-23 12:29:07 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 351A (473A)
2015-01-23 06:01:43 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Oceloths Dwarfs (#71) 205A (380A)
2015-01-23 06:01:16 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Oceloths Dwarfs (#71) 232A (464A)
2015-01-23 04:00:26 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Agnar Redtooth (#53) 139A (179A)
2015-01-23 04:00:22 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Agnar Redtooth (#53) 171A (235A)
2015-01-23 04:00:06 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Agnar Redtooth (#53) 208A (307A)
2015-01-23 03:59:56 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Agnar Redtooth (#53) 249A (397A)
2015-01-23 01:34:08 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Fiend Skilled (#74) 253A (355A)
2015-01-23 01:33:28 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Fiend Skilled (#74) 326A (464A)
2015-01-22 23:19:35 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 80A (96A)
2015-01-22 23:19:32 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 97A (124A)
2015-01-22 23:19:29 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 118A (160A)
2015-01-22 23:19:25 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 140A (203A)
2015-01-22 21:04:14 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 165A (199A)
2015-01-22 21:04:10 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 204A (257A)
2015-01-22 21:01:55 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 249A (329A)
2015-01-22 18:51:30 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Null (#96) 665A (928A)
2015-01-22 16:49:50 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 137A (199A)
2015-01-22 16:49:12 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 169A (257A)
2015-01-22 16:49:08 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Arturo Fogripper (#72) 189A (288A)
2015-01-22 14:33:22 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Agnar Redtooth (#53) 155A (252A)
2015-01-22 14:32:20 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Agnar Redtooth (#53) 197A (340A)
2015-01-22 12:32:31 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 197A (237A)
2015-01-22 12:31:43 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) 348A (416A)
2015-01-22 12:30:33 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Bathelie Sabalz (#51) DH
2015-01-22 07:25:35 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Hildar Camon (#82) 116A (175A)
2015-01-22 07:24:44 PS DeathFromAbove (#7) Hildar Camon (#82) 131A (193A)

Cool game.

Industrial (100.00%) $1700 - Available 133,916

Wow, there's a set's worth of cheap indy tech for ya. Meanwhile biz/res is at $2900

Pro
2015-01-22 20:34:23 PS just a friendly land grab (#14) Gaea (#15) 426A (606A)

vs noob
2015-01-23 00:45:59 SS Gaea (#15) just a friendly land grab (#14) 255A (382A)
2015-01-23 00:44:37 SS Gaea (#15) just a friendly land grab (#14) DH

+351 acres

that's a silly thing to give up on a set over: his break was a SS and for jack worth of acres. if you're having a good set either: a) ignore it, or, maybe more to your liking, b) farm the twerp later and see what he does... instead of just jumping straight to ABs and blowing all those turns on em. he's doing 2x SS retals, he's obviously a chump... prob could've waited until later and farmed him up the ass

More like I've lost interest. I quit last reset too.

I was considering warring (well, farming) a guy for retaling me because he PS'd all his tanks and troops. Easy land. Instead I quit

Yeah weird how iccyh came back from a 5-year hiatus, posted like a crazy ass, got made moderator, and then disappeared again, all within like a 3-month period.

bstrong knows what he's talking about

i dont think netsquash was gonna break currydubs top score but i dont agree with warring a guy just because of some sort of forums disagreement?

Celphi is Jar Jar?!

Celphi is Celphi and Selfie only.

vic is my friend

i mean it even says "your forces invaded"

the defender isn't vic

you cant you doofus. you have no idea how many jets he has, if he sent all his jets or 1/100th of his jets, or what his weap tech is.

no they cant, dont talk gibberish.

Hey now, i told you the new DR rules. Dont blame me

Granted, this is after bots were released and building costs were lowered and all scores became ridiculous, but:
http://earthempires.com/express/264/ranks/14

that guy is funny

also you still ended up +100A

Oh we were keeping him in check pretty good. Lots of drama and accusations and detective work and cases being pleaded. He is the reason the mods had to create DR abuse rules for Express

ah. well he won 2 consecutive alliance sets back in 2012. he had the highest all-time score in express as well until the record was broken by flufftyassman. now it seems people score over 40m all the time with these recent changes

you don't know who Mr. Titanium is? That was Seth aka smlandau84, he won a couple alliance sets while cheating his balls off in Express, got deleted like somewhere close to 10 times. He was trying to keep the two identities separate so ppl wouldn't know and when i accused Mr Titanium of cheating he made that epic (false) post