What do you mean by "improved grabbing environment"? Bottomfeed whatever small country who can't hit you back and ban alliance-wide retals? This is ridiculous.

"What is the point of all our landgrabbing formula changes when people are still simply unwilling to hit eachother?"

I like the changes, and I did try experimenting with it last set or the set before by single midfeeds a day just to see if I could grow through ghost acres.

It does work if you can figure you will come out ahead after retals, requiring you to check land figures, estimate the gains and the losses, vs you, the target as well as any potential retaller if the target doesn't take it himself.

A grab or two a day + exploring still isn't as good as farming though.

The problem? Getting in fluff from upper leadership for hitting a pacted tag. And having no other target available from the remaining unpacted clans that you can actually get a profitable hit from after the retal.

Alliance-wide retals aren't the problem, its the pacting. You could of course lower the pacts, but then you'll just get farmed by laf and randomly FS'ed by imag (like they really need a reason anyway).

Lose/Lose situation. Maybe if pacts were used as just something that says, hey there, we wont go to war with you this set, just don't go overboard on the hits. As opposed to Dont touch us / Sign it or else.

My ramblings of course are just speculation/personal experience on the potential causes for this issue and may not in fact be true, or just a part of it. So take with a grain of salt.

We had/have? one..

No, but we will!

the analogy of landgrabbing being stealing does not apply...

there are no laws against landgrabbing

I an honestly surprised that so many people actually believe that being grabbed at ALL is wrong. That is an inherent problem on this server and a core reason why it's become the way it is.

grabbing ok, farming not.

Lol... stealing? I give up.

Being grabbed is part of the game and perfectly ok. No problem.

But let's take an example. I started my country in day 1, it's a good country and I have enough resources to retal everyone in the whole server who grabs me. No big deal, actually since the ghost acres are back most probably both me and the attacker will benefit from it. Now look at this country: MPS4LIFE (#581) - LaFamiglia. He started his country on August 13. He is at 0.5mNW. No DR and at 4500 acres it makes a good bottomfeeding target. If I were to hit him, once, how do you expect him to retal me in 48 hours? And 3-5 other similar countries from different alliances who have the same thoughts as I have?

The whole country/country policy is wrong. If you topfeed/midfeed big countries who obviusly put some effort it does not apply at all since they will want to take their own retals themselves as they do care for their land and want it back. Instead everyone will be happily bottomfeeding the small guys like #581 who can't retal themselves and will be screwed.

Lets pretend you were bottom feeding laf a lot like that. What would laf's response be? They would start hitting everyone in your clan once till you backed off or kill you. Clans could still protect you.

It has been proposed by some that multiple hits on same country and/or alliance will be subject to alliance-wide retals anyway and in my example I said that I'd hit 581 once.

Of course, Laf can bottomfeed as well and screw my alliance's little guys. In fact everyone will be bottomfeeding everyone because there's nothing to stop them if they're doing it right.

I meant if each laffer made 1 grab each on your alliance thats 60ish grabs... that wouldnt happen since not all would do it but lets say even half... enjoy 30 grabs. Thats one way to deter people from doing it.

Personally, all alliances need to update their rules slightly when it comes to retalling. Maybe have player - player retals. Then if it gets excessive, the tag steps in.

At the moment, grabbing in the game is stale. I am a new player and may not understand fully. But it seems to take ages to even find a target to hit, then that country has been hit to high heaven already.

Needs a shake up.

Yes, a 60 countries alliance A can still offer some sort of protection against a 30 countries tag B. As it is now tag B offers tag protection for his small guys against attacks from tag A because at least half of them can retall. With the proposed policy changes tag B can do nothing more than go to war, die and screw both tags' resets in the process.

locket you have absolutely the wrong response in regards to Rufus...sorry.


The correct response is there would be no 4500 A .5M NW countries in LaF if country:country not alliance wide retals were the norm.

Just b/c we switch to country: country retals doesn't mean we would switch to 1:1 retals as well. If you are playing correctly, 30 LGs from LaF if retalled correctly could be a good thing for your alliance=).

This is the Alliance Server. Sure people seek to put individual efforts into the game, but in the end friends live and die with their alliance mates. Alliance-wide retals make some people who might be inclined to farm other alliances to think twice about it. Country:country retals is a ridiculous idea. At least on this server, the notion should be dropped and forgotten.

u can live and die with ur country mates just fine but if LaF offers u a pact next set that says something along the lines of 1 hit per member allowed per 24 hour period

A) country:country (L:L) on first hit
B) alliance wide retals kick in if more than 1 hit per 24 hour period and are 150% L:L
C) this is a unap so all that other jazz about we won't go to war with u or fund suiciders against u or FA ur enemy in a war etc.

and then says either sign this or we go to war with u. Well, I bet after a set or two Angel1, Omega will be playing with country:country retals.

I really really hope LaF considers doing this next set with at least one alliance and slowly building up the group of alliances playing w/ country: country. I will encourage EVO to do the same altho we will have to pick a smaller alliance than Omega to bully around heh=)

Alliances existed for quite a while before alliance wide retals first started showing up. In fact when alliance wide retals first made an appearance in alliance (via MD), many alliances were against it, and fought to keep it away.

So the assumption that it is a necessary part of the alliance game is seriously flawed.

I feel like I am in that episode of futurama where the Professor tries to prove that evolution is real... "I don't want to live on this planet anymore..."

i like the idea of grabbing the wrong mo fo will cost you. the problem with country to country retals is bottom feeding. why cant we put that in the policey. maybe grabbing people 50% smaller than you equates an alliance wide retal?

I actually really like this idea - a lot more than country:country. C:C will level out the curve too much because it will deter specialization, unless we like the idea of commies winning NW titles again. Taking (or minimizing) retals out of pacting would solve a lot of land problems, plus it would encourage MORE pacting if pacts only really worked to prevent unwanted wars.

The late start can get more defense than countries similar in land to him. He can also get FA to help him grow or o allies to help him take retals. I stated as much in this very thread. You make it sound like it's impossible, but people restart in wars all the time.

What's interesting is that untaggeds are essentially forced to retal country:country. Is grabbing untaggeds morally wrong? Should all alliances immediately cease grabbing untaggeds?

You always jump to the extremes, there is no middle ground permitted in your arguments.

Restarting in wars is really a seperate matter, most warring alliances have police - all of them have long memories. Farming a tag at war has been socially taboo for as long as I can remember. Its a matter of ethics . . . so in a sense I was wrong, its NOT a seperate matter.

A tag at war was farmed around a year ago and nobody cared. That's not really the point though: as a restart you have the other side trying to kill and maim you. Yet some lowly restarts manage to grow and be useful.

The most extreme stance would be that countries shouldn't take retals at all. Second most extreme would be that single hits aren't retallable. Third most would probably be something like country:country retals.

I don't believe that I've actually stated that alliances should do any of these? I just said that people should tolerate being grabbed because it's suffocating and shrinking the alliance server. Wanting players to interact with other players is crazy, I know.

I totally agree with you on that, being grabbed and grabbing are integral to the game and should be encouraged. I used to love logging in to see I had gotten well grabbed by a worthy opponent - especially when I knew my retal would net me more land.

It always comes down to exploitation. A big part of the reason that C:C was replaced by tag-wide retals was because of the system was being exploited by topfeeding. Each push and pull in retal policy has either tried to create an exploit or respond to one.

As I stated above, a change in pacting policy might go a long way towards increasing grabbing. Pacting should be to prevent war not prevent grabbing. You can keep provisions in it for retalling of topfeeds or other bad behavior, but 1 LG among friends should entail 1 retal in return.

To go back to an earlier discussion on this thread (my apologies)...

Tag protection is not inherently guaranteed, as anyone with any experience in this game knows all too well. Regardless, having or building up tag protection is, as far as I'm concerned, the main goal in having an alliance in the first place. If we just played clan-based servers to have friends, we would better spend our time going off and doing wonderful things with RL people than sitting in front of a computer. The friends a clan provides are wonderful, but the first and most important aspect of a clan must be its attempt to protect its members from being grabbed.

Because what is grabbing? As has already been said, it is stealing, legal or not. Is that a bad thing? No, because it is a basic part of this game. But that doesn't mean people will want to be grabbed. And people will know that someone who is grabbed and does nothing will be grabbed again. Someone's already threatened (jokingly or not) to retal country:country hits with missiles. I can already tell you, from primary experience, that I've done it before. I was killed by twenty guys afterward, but as a noob I felt I had no other recourse. This is what I expect from a country:country policy shift. If countries are expected to defend themselves alone, I would have to expect that the underachievers are going to throw courtesy out the window in order to make retals their countries aren't suited for, if only to explain to any other potential predators that their countries are not free farmland.

Quite right. But that begs for a different question: why do you really want country/country retals in the first place? What's the point? Let's get back to my example, #581. If he were to retal my 10k acres 3mNW country he'll need a bunch of FA packages besides OA's. Each FA package takes 3 turns which are totally wasted not even explored or cashed. Wouldn't have been much lucrative if one of the FA senders used 1 turns to spy me and 2 turns to retal my butt for about 5 times more land that I got? Or if I didn't hit him in the first place?

The war analogy is totally irrelevant. If you're at war you're not going to win a top 10 NW finish anyway and if you died chances are that you're going to die 3-5 times more during the war, FA or not.

This is beside the point. You and Pang already proved that grabbing is not at all morally wrong. And we're talking about alliance wide retals here.

This might probably be the next step in a couple resets ;)

And guess what, players DO interact with others more if the alliance retals are allowed. One "player interaction" is guaranteed followed by another "player interaction". The OP's original idea was that he can grab someone without him being "interacted", back otherwise this is totally useless. Actually it IS useless anyway. Country-country will have no impact whatsoever on those guys who know how to play and grab well. (or not, depending from where you're looking it). Mid/topfeedings are usually retaled country-country anyway. This idea might only be helping clueless players who only know how to build countries by bottomfeeding.

PS: BobbyAta: "either sign this or we go to war with u". I have no words to describe that! :D You know, if you're so desperate to gain any parcel of land by any possible means then you and your alliance ultimate goals are to netgain. Guess what, after a war noone wins and warring Omega isn't really a walk in a park. Not sure who will give up after 2 resets.... Archaic is wise: "Pacting should be to prevent war not prevent grabbing."

as it stands already, im sure MOST people retal country:country when they get hit by someone in relative size to them. the way i see it the only time someone has thier alliance retal for them is when they get grabbed by someone whos much larger and out of range for them to retal on thier own in the time period alotted. you take that option away and what you have is every tag only hitting countries they KNOW dont have the resources to retal. what good is tag protection then.

country:country promotes bottom feeding, nothing more. you want that, go play a non clan server.

if you want bottomfeeding to to a different server?

But hasn't alliance traditionally been the bottomfeeding server? It seems your argument should be flipped, if you want to AVOID bottomfeeding then go to a different server.

Regarding the pacting issue. It doesn't make much sense to me to form pacts that revolve around " no warring" but still grabbing.

Traditionally (although not so much lately) wars start due to grabbing (or over grabbing) issues. The point of pacts were to aviod wars through avoiding hit exchanges.

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say. In every earth server bottomfeeding is the most viable strategy. You hit someone who you are sure he can't hit you back. Alliance server was NOT promoting bottomfeeding. It is the other way around; you just can't bottomfeed someone belonging to an alliance because you know that someone in his tag will hurt you. This is what some are trying to change, by the looks of it.

I fixed it. You're welcome :P

H4 please consider the pacting terms I listed earlier in this thread. I think that is a great example of how a pact can allow for LGing while still providing for protection against war.

It's amazing how you can quote me saying "I don't believe that I've actually stated that alliances should do any of these?" in the same post as accusing me of wanting country:country retals.

no I said it right the first time. Alliance has always been the absolute worst for bottomfeeding.

Wanger is correct.

There was a server wide war over alliance wide retals.

The new upstart MD took on the ROCK coalition over this issue which led to the first server war,

MD fought ROCK to a tie in a 1-1 (surprised everyone)
The following reset (I think) was WWIII, the original WWIII.

thousands of countries involved:)
Good ole days:)

i wasnt talking about bottomfeeding. i should have been more clear. let me reiterate

if you want to landgrab people and not worry that someone else can retal you back, go to a server where there are no clans. then no matter the size of the person you grab, only they can retal you.

im pretty sure this is called the "alliance" server for a reason. its so you can have friends collectively work together to help each other out, whether that be advice, aid, retaliating for you etc. take away clan wide retalling and you have nothing more then friends who cant help you out any more on this server then on express, primary, or tourney.

I think that was WWII... but I honestly can't keep track anymore... oh the days when people could count how many major wars there had been...

if some1 remembers all wars at alliance/council-servers and categorizes those as major/big/mediocre/small/whatever then .........

Yes, that's what I said. Bottomfeeding, while the most profitable grabbing tactics, wasn't easy in alliance server because the alliance-wide retals and intensive farmage of countries who couldn't retal. You wouldn't bottomfeed a "will retal" tag. Implementation of a country/country retals will promote bottomfeeding to new levels because "will retal" will have no more meaning whatsoever. Topfeeding and midfeeding will remain unchanged because country-country retals do happen anyway in these cases.

PS: bottomfeeding was easy on alliance server too, when there were about 15k countries each reset. (Ok, 75% of them were bots but that's another story)

imo, the retaliation policy should be multiple nuking of the fattest or on the best set country in the tag that made the hit. I believe in collective responsibility.

grabbing is awful this set...

when you have your own clan mates put you in dr so you can farm and not be farmed

Aug 21/10 6:09:09 PM GS Death By SNUSNU (#429) (SoF) All your land are belong to me (#221) (SoF) 3179 C/3425 F
Aug 21/10 6:09:04 PM GS Death By SNUSNU (#429) (SoF) All your land are belong to me (#221) (SoF) 3241 C/3525 F
Aug 21/10 6:08:59 PM GS Death By SNUSNU (#429) (SoF) All your land are belong to me (#221) (SoF) 3304 C/3629 F
Aug 21/10 6:08:57 PM GS Death By SNUSNU (#429) (SoF) All your land are belong to me (#221) (SoF) 3368 C/3735 F
Aug 21/10 6:08:54 PM GS Death By SNUSNU (#429) (SoF) All your land are belong to me (#221) (SoF) 3433 C/3845 F

Yeah, farming people and then putting yourself in DRs is pretty pathetic.

21:14 08/19/10 GS Champs Elysee (#210) (ElySee) Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) 1916 C / 0 F
21:14 08/19/10 GS Champs Elysee (#210) (ElySee) Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) 1982 C / 0 F
21:13 08/19/10 GS Champs Elysee (#210) (ElySee) Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) 2102 C / 0 F
21:13 08/19/10 GS Champs Elysee (#210) (ElySee) Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) 2168 C / 0 F
21:13 08/19/10 GS Champs Elysee (#210) (ElySee) Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) 2243 C / 0 F
21:13 08/19/10 GS Champs Elysee (#210) (ElySee) Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) 2321 C / 0 F
21:12 08/19/10 GS Champs Elysee (#210) (ElySee) Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) 2402 C / 38964 F
21:07 08/19/10 PS Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) Krybe4Laffin (#107) (LaF) 1000 A (+ 469 A)
20:46 08/19/10 PS Silver Wolf (#342) (ElySee) Mier (#242) (LaF) 1326 A (+ 540 A)

i forgot to mention he hit another clan mate for just before it too. I am all for having a designated retaler in the clan that gets the land back and then takes it from the retaler, but i am sure this is not the case. This is how the two get confused and how the retal/defender land exchange gets a bad wrap

I do like this set, there seams to be a lot of spice in this set to heat things up.

I think you need to look at things more closely :)

yeah zip, I would say you fail badly at trying to troll SOF.

wellll - if you look at it that way

we did what we needed to do to stay alive, that was not for the same reason, but it was the same, you are correct, i was wrong.

ain't scccared to say i was wrong.

set up a few hundred or so server run bot countries. Have these countries run missile boat explore strats, but give a random factor for a large number of them suiciding on any one who over grabs them. Say a single tap has a 1/5 chance of a single missile response, and say a 1/100 chance of multiple missile strikes, and 1/1000 of several of these countries attacking, and 1/10000 chance of a kill run.

Double taps double the risk of response, triple taps square it, quadruple taps cube it, etc.

thats retarded. it would be better off with a bot that can retal instead of send missles.

Grabbing bots is like masturbation: it might provide some relief during difficult times but it doesn't come even close to the real thing. So no, not even "official" bots.

However your second part of the idea has merit. Ok, country country retals but nuke retals are also acceptable. How's that?

If we're trying to encourage land creation? Pretty terrible.

Country:Country retals would be nice. It won't ever happn though... Too many all-x that want to run no defense.