Thank you Zen, I appreciate your time in crafting this message.

I would like to personally see a some form of amnesty for everyone who is banned or an action plan for them to come back depending on the issue. People make mistakes and being held accountable is part of it. Accountability looks different to everyone and long term ban doesn't make sense in the 2024 version of the game. For many people, we have developed close knit friendships from people in this game. Many peoples spouses have come from this game. Bans gets personal and it indirectly hurts a lot of good people.

We all see this game differently too. Some people are here for the game and some are for the community. We need to do everything we can to grow the game and all options should be on the table.

#LetGoAndLetGod
#FreeThemAll
#PardonChevs

That's what some of us are trying to figure out, but slag is not willing to spill the details.

maybe rather than ban players you should have a mute button. I like how thick skinned the admins are with all the criticism they get it would be easy to throw up there hands and say to hell with this game. Maybe that is why the other admins do not interact as much??

There are three game admins right now. Two of them are available under the right circumstances but aren't active. We could decide to shut the game down tomorrow if we wanted to. That event would be effectively a permanent ban of every single player here. Just like any other website on the internet, this site is our private property. None of you have any guaranteed right to use our services.

The game admins have absolute power due to the nature of how websites work. We can see and edit the data in the database. We can see and edit the game code. If you believe that the game admins are biased, corrupt, or engaging in other nefarious activity then I suggest that you find a different game that has admins that you feel that you can trust. It simply does not make sense for a player to participate in a rigged game.

The game admins do not currently play on any clan-based servers. Even if they did so in the future, gameplay changes are not made to benefit or hurt any specific clan. Game and forum moderators do not have any special influence over gameplay changes. For better or worse, the attempted process for gameplay changes is a meritocracy: we try to take the best ideas from players and our own minds. If you have an idea for a gameplay change or even just a complaint, post it in the right place and an admin will read it.

We do not make gameplay changes in response to players threatening to quit. The reason for this is simple: players often want different things. Player A could say that he will quit unless Clan GDI is enabled and player B could say that he will quit unless Clan GDI is disabled. It is impossible to satisfy both players.

I am appreciative of the players who help keep this website through patron and premium running but it does not entitle you to have your demands met. Requests and suggestions from all players are treated equally. Patron status is a way to show support for the game and to get access to the Patron forum. That is all. It is not something that you can use to get a player banned, unbanned, or to get any kind of gameplay change made on your behalf.

I have always been honest with this community. I have, by far, the most to lose by lying out of anyone here. I have no idea why some of you are so eager to believe every bad rumor, conspiracy theory, or piece of propaganda that you come across. I will give you a very direct hint: the players who deliberately stir up trouble against the game staff are lying to you. They have lied to you in the past and will lie to you in the future. They have nothing to lose by lying. Tricking you is a fun little game to them.

The game on offer here is a text-based game where you play turns to grow your country. There is no other game on offer here. This includes activities such as harassing players or staff until they quit, working to expose "corruption", or any other conflict with the game staff. Moderators and administrators are neutral parties and are not in conflict with players. To be frank, think about how little sense that makes in the first place. If players are in conflict with the people who own the game then what is the winning condition for the players?

My goal here is to create a fun gameplay experience for players. The game is here if you want to play it. If you don't want to play it, that's fine too. I don't view every player as a precious resource that must be protected at any costs. Some players do an extreme amount of harm to the community and game compared to the benefit provided by one additional active user.

We've had the same rules posted since 2010: https://www.earthempires.com/rules . Some players have the idea that running multies is the worst possible offense and the only thing that they are not permitted to do. That is not true. I would also like to direct your attention to this line: "In extreme cases, such as hacking or breaking other laws, players may find themselves banned from all game related areas."

1.) You arent "active" though. You are sporadic with years in between posts. You are "active" right now, in a few days you will vanish for years while the server mods "actively" run the game. The server mods are the ones who actually know and handle the 24/7 gameplay, whether it is community or continuity of server access. You get updates and bored enough to participate in "your private property". I gotta say this is the first time since Mars 2025 where I have witnessed the site admin threatening to "pull the plug". Disconcerting considering thats ultimately what shut Mars down.

2.) Thats tyrannical and equally disconcerting as threatening to shut down the game. This is a "shut up or gtfo".

3. And 4.) Gerdler is a forum moderator and did absolutely abuse his level of influence and access to developers and did so with the overt "threat" that if his demands were not met then the entire LaF roster would permanently abandon the game in protest.

5.) Agreed. I get the concept, but the monetary contribution earns specific entitlements, like alpha and bonus turns.

6.) There are most certainly behind the scenes drama and conspiring. Again your sporadic activity leaves you out of the loop. Unless you spend every day reading every post the details revealed lead to everything from bans to dissolving of decade old clans. Leadership corruption, double agents, multis, suicide pacts, irl grievance.

7.) Confirmation bias: The Post.

8.) 100%

9.) Turtle Crawler. Gerdler. Players threatening to kill people who dont align with their religion or political affiliations. Some get banned, some dont. Others get unbanned based on moderaters deeming the offender "learned their lesson".

Thank you for taking time to consider updating or creating entirely new servers. As always if it adds a new challenge or balance it is most welcomed. The elderly and institutionalized folk get nervous when big changes or disruptive policies are enacted and tend to lash out. Offer 2 cups of tapioca or double bread pudding, maybe +30 minutes for Bingo night.

Have a Swirvey new year.

If so, can you provide evidence regarding the permaban of a player (Chevs) as your first act after being gone for so long?

I don’t play with him or even like him. I think that dude is a weirdo.

We want to know the FULL context so none of us here makes the same mistakes that he did.

KoH is referring to TurtleCrawler (TC), and commenting that I mentioned him in my post as TC. I think there are a number of threads from that era (and I think Coalie has the particular comment on TC he's posted in the past, which is helpful because it's hard to wade through so much) but it's from this sort of thing around Boxcar having everyone reset their password and Pang forcefully taking the code and pointing the DNS away from TC's servers: https://earthempires.com/...ng-hostility-18150#334934 where Pang said

"It still boggles my mind that to some folks in LaF, the net result of TC stealing a database password, exploiting it in potentially many forms for probably 2+ years and passing it off to the active Don of the alliance, who used it to form the basis of his political planning, is that I'm the bad guy for not coddling LaF's interests."

Which maybe gets to your 'rules of the game' comments around hacking, and the questions from the community around why is there a permaban for some things and not others.

g0nz0, clan GDI currently is not in the game and Gerdler is not playing this game. How is this evidence of special treatment? The admins didn't do the gameplay change that he wanted and he quit.

In terms of players making death threats and not being punished, I think that we need correct that issue going forward. I'm guessing that the moderators are doing their best to avoid losing players, but there's some behavior that we simply cannot tolerate here.

Thank you for explaining, I honestly simply misread his post. It's unfortunate that KoH assigned malice to that action. Why are players so eager to assume the worst? I honestly have no idea who TC is "buddy buddy" with. Where do these ideas come from? I don't believe that any of the admins are fans of TC. He did a horrible thing in the past.

To answer the question, TC isn't banned right now because Pang has forgiven anyone who has ever wronged him. He's kind of like an enlightened monk. I'm not going to waste Pang's time by bringing up events from 12 years ago. We're trying to move the game forward.

I don't think it's reasonable for folks to demand perfect consistency from admins over a 12 year period, especially when different admins are different at different times. It's not a relevant issue for nearly all players. It's really easy not to get banned. Players who simply play the game and act in a civil manner on the forums will never get banned. It's really difficult to get banned.

here you go Tiertus. It amazes me how TC is still allowed to play despite all of his cheating, aiding and abetting of other cheaters. But Chevs is perma banned for having a weird personality. But here it is Tiertus,


On May 2, 2012, the game administrators announced on Alliance Talk that Hanlong, with assistance from former game administrator Turtle Crawler, had gained access to the game's database, allowing the two to view all countries without requiring the turns needed for spy operations, change anything in any of the countries, and view private messages sent via the Earth forums as well as those sent in the game itself.

Upon the posting of the administrators' announcement, Hanlong's Don access to LaF was immediately revoked, and his country was deleted.

maybe you should be an enlightened monk yourself and unban Chevs for something that happened in the past too?

It's completely different. TC's bad behavior was caused by having a certain level of server access. That server access was removed so the root cause was solved.

Chev's past response to leniency was to escalate his rule-breaking and to behave in a worse and worse manner. It is impossible to get Chevs to follow the rules.

Leave me out of it, or at least be accurate
1) I didn't steal a password. I had legit access. What I did was give it to Hanlong
2) I didn't use the password to add military, modifying countries to stonewall via database updates. Hanlong did (I think, he later denied), despite me begging him not to.
3) I was never banned from the game, never had my account impacted in any way except my winning finish from the previous reset was deleted
4) I was kicked from LaF, but then again only to the degree that they didn't want to anger Dave. I suffered that out of service to the alliance, not as separation to it.

Please stop using me as an example of someone who was unbanned.

What rules did he break? Can you show evidence?

I haven’t seen him purpled since he came back.

I’ve seen him forum banned temporarily for a short time.

I just don’t see any game related reason worth a perma ban?

Ask a player associated with Chevs and they can tell you why he was banned. We don't do public trials here for players who are punished for rules violations.

False or a lie. Chevs even has no clue on the reasoning.


[quote poster=Slagpit; 52511; 1031240][quote poster=Tertius; 52511; 1031236]

If anyone wants to see the reasoning slag gave before deleting it. Find me on discord. Funny thing about these forums. Messages really don't get deleted.

From a player's perspective it's quite easy to get caught up in the psychology of events. Trust me, been there done that; but, I'm also a programmer & I can tell you the time invested to fix this game is 100% a sacrifice. Unless everyone was paying a monthly subscription, the programmers really don't owe us anything.

I have 100s of posts critiquing the mods of what should be better or what isn't fair or sucks or who is good; but, we all need to remember he's working on this site on his FREE time.

This site has two important elements that keeps it interesting: the drama and the game itself. What we complain about actually contributes to making the game interesting.

And Bluecow is correct,. this is a work around to seeing admin deleted texts. I assume the admins have the authority to do a soft delete whereas the queries pulling the posts for a user doesn't have this portion in the WHERE clause.

I am obviously going to delete a post where a player gives details on how to use a forum exploit in order to read deleted posts.

If you truly want to cooperate, then please send a PM as I already requested. How are you viewing deleted posts? Can you include a screenshot? I'm not able to reproduce what you described.

I can't send screen shots over the forums. I'm just searching my name. It looks like you fixed it though? I can't really tell as I'm currently jumping from job site to job site.

Replace the word exploit with "bad code"

Yes, by definition an exploit takes advantage of bad code. I appreciate you trying to help out but game exploits need to be reported privately.

There is another issue, some people besides moderators can still post on closed threads, maybe that needs to be looked at as well :-)

Just to touch on this - that's the current state, but during the time, it seemed like Gerdler pushed for the implementation of ClanGDI directly to qz on discord (it may have also included others from LaF); there was no discussion on the forums that it would be coming or asking for input until after it was decided and ready to go. It was a complete surprise to everyone except LaF that it was coming.

So admins did do the gameplay change Gerdler wanted, and then the rest of the server revolted because it was too extreme (and while you can never please everyone, you can see in the comments that removing the politics and clan interactions for this server removed the whole point of it). That lasted for several months, until it was further discussed in the forums to be rolled back and implemented with changes in a future version. At that point, given that LaF had made a number of diplomatic missteps, even longer ago leading to the war, and now unilaterally pushing for this change that fundamentally altered the game (even after they had been given longterm pacts from their enemies), they did not return (as they reasonably expected those unhappy folks to further continue the multi-set wars once the artificial protection was removed).

just to touch on what Tertius said.

"they did not return (as they reasonably expected those unhappy folks to further continue the multi-set wars once the artificial protection was removed)."

exactly that, you managed to run what 20?(ish) players out of the game during the course of the war, yet here we have Coalie the supreme demanding stuff because he paid for patron, yet you fail to realise the people in laf all paid premiums each set so you have actually cost the game more than you have put into it, FYI.

Rokkie, welcome back man we miss you. As a person, not as a player that suicide netters and that cross server bull crap you do on your free time. Also a lot of laf guys are still currently playing and prospering in different clans including Evo.

Also saladpit said patrons and non-donors are all equal in his eyes so it doesn’t matter if someone contributes to the game or not.

I have been logging in here quite a lot in recent times and have thought a lot about whether I should return to the game. Along with that I have thought hard about how I would revive the game and more than that, try and give it a future. For me I think about rebuilding SoF but then I look at the server and it becomes a question of the value of the time investment.

Here are some brief ideas I am happy to put forth for you all to ponder on and possibly consider. Keep in mind that these ideas are with a longterm goal of growth in mind...


- Introduce "Bad Weather"
One of the biggest aspects of warring is walling, but the problem is not everyone can be online 24/7 to wall. I have been known as one of the harder to kill players in the game, but it is very draining in my older age to go without sleep. In fact it is one of the things I dread about the game.

I believe it would be a positive for the game if a player has an option to select an 8 hour period of the day where their country cannot attack or be attacked. That means any player willing to wall have an 8 hour respite and also any player who does not wake to wall has a fair opportunity to level the playing field against the guys who will wall 24/7. There will always be those players who do not take up the 8 hours.

If that player is attacked during this 8 hour period the attacker would be greeted with a message along the lines of "Your Generals refuse to attack due to bad weather. They advise that the weather will improve in ** hours."

You can change your 8 hour period but any changes will take 24 hours to become active.


- Introduce clan incentives based on number of members
You want to encourage clan/alliance leaders to recruit more people and you want to reward them for making their clan bigger. They should not be overpowering bonuses, but ones that are enough to encourage clans to grow. For example you could boost restart bonuses for clans with more than 15 members by 5%. If the clan has 20 members then that could become 7.5%. If the clan has 25 members then that becomes 10%. etc etc. I have other ideas but not the time to go into them. But I will note that history has shown warring tags have always been the ones more inclined to recruit heavily for obvious reasons.


- Forget new UIs and out of reach projects like AI overhauls. Keep it simple.
Do small UI improvements and other slight changes but forget the blue sky projects that go nowhere, utilize the resources you have better.


- Advanced vs Normal Servers
Make it easier for new players to come into the game with simple server choices. Such as:-

Easy Primary Server - Basically how Primary Server is right now but with bots. You need to make the server feel more populated for newer players.
Advanced Primary Server - Think of the old 1B server back on Swirve. Basically same rules as Alliance but no clans. Let people coordinate ingame and learn how to relate with other players. Maybe no bots, but this would need to be considered. It is a step to Alliance but also introduced the social aspect back to Primary which is something that really drives people to be active in the game.
Easy Alliance Server - A server designed more for netting rather than warring. Basically make it so a country cannot be killed, for example special attacks are nerfed and a country can never drop below 100 civilians.
Advanced Alliance Server - Basically the server as it is now.
Easy FFA Server - Can only run a max of 5 countries, for those who do not have time to run 16. An easy stepping stone into FFA as 16 countries is quite daunting for those who are used to only running 1.
Advanced FFA Server - Basically FFA as it is right now.


- Create a standard EE staff forum handle
If someone is posting in an official capacity regarding an admin or mod action as EE staff it should be as EE officially and not as an individual. Remove the personal side from the forum mods and admins.


- Promote the game immediately
Use the large database to begin emailing all past and present players to invite them back to the game. Encourage current players to invite people back to the game. Promote the game through all avenues to the Earth2025 community. There is a big opportunity to really kick this game back into gear in 2025 but you want people to come back to something in a healthy state. I know if I came back I could get SoF back to 40 members in 2 sets if I put in the effort by myself.


There are a ton of other things I would also do but perhaps I might post about those another time. The fact is the admins need to stop thinking about this game as their side hobby and consider it as a business and run it like one.

I mean, the main point is that LaF leadership made poor diplomatic choices, doubled down on those, pushed for game-breaking changes to protect themselves from that decision, and then continued to suffer in game consequences of their in game actions, all while many of your members started cross-server attacks and suiciding for multiple sets on alliances/players not involved in the war, because if you are at war with most of the server, what's a few more enemies right (especially if those players are likely to break your precious server records)?.

This server isn't meant to allow alliances to make unpopular choices without consequence, but certainly there could be conversations on how to resolve those conflicts that don't lead to players entirely leaving the game (though I'm not sure a champion from each alliance dueling in 1v1 server will become the norm, it's certainly interesting).

Yes it's quite obvious, and clan GDI remains the only real answer for those who only want to net and not deal with those who just want to kill them for fun. Just let people play how they want. People's only real opposition to it was that it stops them from griefing whoever they want and it has no other negative side effects. IMO admins need to decide if they want to have organized griefing or not and act on it. Also most of the server supports it and finds the current setup to be stressful and not fun.

I think Rokkie is onto something.
Promote. Former glory. Small achievable goals.

Professional mods

Reap what you sow.....ClanGDI is an out for alliances such as yours to avoid the consequences of bad diplomacy, quite the opposite of what this game is about, if you want to play Farmville, get Farmville.

Solving the griefer/ suicide infestation was simple. No tag no attack. You can hit bots. A tag can only attack another tag with equal numbers. No harmful spy ops. The rest is up to leadership and diplomacy. The entire community came to this conclusion back when it was revealed gerdler and brogaine were having secret meetings with development and finally decided to ask for our input.
You wanna fight join a clan.

You used speculative language such as "it seemed like Gerdler pushed" and "it may have also included others from LaF" but from that concluded "So admins did do the gameplay change Gerdler wanted". It's only improper if qz implemented the change to benefit a clan or as quid pro quo for someone to moderate the forums. Neither one of those happened. Pang started the development in 2019: https://www.earthempires.com/...gress-spec-47925/4#918776

I used to play with you on the team server and I remember it being fun. Can you do me a favor and stop pushing narratives like this? What is the actual, concrete problem here? What is it that the admin team could have done better?

You said that the changes came as a surprise. I don't know what the exact timing was, but maybe there wasn't enough advance notice of the changes. Sure, I can take that feedback. In a ideal world, for Alliance I think that we would give players at least a month of notice for major changes. I don't know what happened specifically in terms of the clan GDI rollout. Maybe qz ran into technical or other obstacles that resulted in him not being able to give as much notice as he would have liked.

Is there a demand that all game feedback to admins needs to be made publicly on these forums? I'm never going to agree with that. People on these forums are way too toxic. I'm not going to require that someone engage on these forums and to put up with that abuse just because they have an idea to improve the game. If you'd like a more polite explanation, someone today sent me a private message about a possible exploit in the game. Qz and I are now discussing the issue privately. Should we be required to have that discussion in public?

What else?

I think the biggest problem is that it seemed like a rushed release because it was not a thoroughly tested production-ready PR that was pushed into production. There were some side effects, and all had a weird set!

I still believe just hard coding in pacts into the game + preventing loopholes (such as untagged suiciders, etc. etc.) would give everyone mostly what they want. There would still be an ability to sign pacts, which would be guaranteed to be upheld or not, which still gives a bit of uncertainty in the game. And before you say that some will just not pact others they do not like, I think that is incorrect. Even the most unlike clan could fully pact out some of the time.

If we want to go the ClanGDI route in its most extreme form—total protection—then we should probably also address the FA/Market transfer issue. This would allow clans with zero consequences for FA/Market to aid people into top spots.

At this point, I don't care what you do, but something prob ought to be done:
1. PvE and PvP server (without significant changes other than the PvE or PvP aspect– just copy and paste this server and make it PvE).
2. Game-enforced pacts
3. ClanGDI total protection with changes to address FA/Market aid abuse

You honestly have no idea what happens here anymore. These years long breaks, then pop in and talk about "My Property!"

Read through the HUNDREDS of posts regarding clangdi. You seem determined to deny anything and everything.

"You used speculative language such as "it seemed like Gerdler pushed" and "it may have also included others from LaF" but from that concluded "So admins did do the gameplay change Gerdler wanted". It's only improper if qz implemented the change to benefit a clan..."

Thats exactly what happened.

Gerdler abused his access to development. He did this in secret discord chats with qz, brogain and probably other LaF.
The scheme, as you noted, was to present it as "Well, we're just following up on some old projects..."
For a change that fundamentally altered the Alliance server in major ways, YES the community should be included BEFORE, not after the code is uploaded. Everyone knew why it was being forced down our throats. Its why it went from "this solves suicides" to "implement this or LaF leaves forever".
Other schemes Gerdler has tried:
Remove anonymous spy ops.
List all FA sent/received in post set stats. (from "determine fa aided finishes" to admitting "if clans send aid during war aka proxy warfare)
Gaining access to game dbase after server crash then deny taking action in-game based on what he saw.

You've offered up some creative updates, as I said before thats all welcome and nifty. So lets start coding. Discussion on topics you have had nothing to do with for years and throwing "my way or highway" is not helpful or a useful employment of the extremely limited time you will be here.

Requiem, I would honestly love it if the majority of player criticism was about unfixed bugs. You guys are more than welcome to complain about unfixed bugs all day along. As you can see, that's not really the way this thread is going.

Gonzo you are gaslighting. Your putting your desired perception in place of reality because reality doesn't yield desirable results. Everyone else sees the truth, lying to yourself is pointless.

slagipoo....how long will you let this thread go sideways???
The two smartest people to ever walk earth have given you two perfect options.
Pick one. Rehashing old stuff is why most folks lose interest.

Whats that TC? Which part?
Secret discord chats.
LaF leadership working directly with a developer to provide immunity from attacks.
The code being implemented the same set it is announced.
The ultimatums.
Hotfixes to provide immunity from spy ops.
More ultimatums.
Denial.
A post written by an unbanned permabanned "i wuz drunk when it happened" honest and unbiased player. Which clan do you play in?

You damn kids need to get the f*ck off my lawn and take your BS with you.....go to GT and hash out your fallen love.

Sov's post does have a few good ideas. If this thread had remained closed yesterday then he wouldn't have been able to post it. Can't predict what people are going to say, especially on this board.

Can you delete the post on this thread that have no contribution??? You can keep mine and SOV's.....that's all you need :)

To date, probably the president we have had. Even the message to request FA from chevs is above and beyond what that role typically does. The FA would be assumed by the president, and if not received most likely missiles would go out to the offending countries

I didn't say it was improper? But it certainly benefited the single clan that was at war, who was the impetus for reviving the old project (with a few key changes, like there was absolutely no way to declare war / interact, and no cost). I was not a part of those conversations so I used speculative language based on what was shared in the forums, including from discussions with qz, mostly because I thought it would be helpful to provide that context. I know that you're friends with Gerdler, but maybe spend a little time reviewing the facts and not assume it's a narrative when it's been hashed out on the forums for months already? The reason I even responded to that is because you told g0nz0 it didn't happen, when you should be the one using speculative language when you don't know any of those details, which you openly state later in your same post.

The point though, as Req called out, was that it was rushed, didn't provide balance, and then was changed in live code within the same set, because of complaints from LaF that it didn't fully protect them as they had hoped (harmful spy ops were not initially included). As a suggestion, the admin team could make a post that they're reviving this older concept (that had a ton of feedback then and now) and solicit input for changes to occur in the future. Does every suggestion need to come through the forums? I agree, that's not necessary, but if it's a major change, getting multiple perspectives (especially with varying playstyles and a focus on balance) is key. When a developer only hears one perspective and uses that to make fundamental game-breaking changes that greatly benefits that specific perspective, then I'd say that's a concrete problem to avoid in the future.

I know that it didn't happen in the way that some people are claiming because I've known qz for over 15 years. If I had concerns that something improper happened (which is the "narrative" that is getting pushed by some people) then I would ask qz about it directly. My objection is that people are spreading propaganda that the admins are deliberately biased towards one clan. It's pure poison to the health of the community.

If clan GDI is a bad idea then it should be directly criticized on its own without regard to its supposed origins, like what Requiem did. I have no issues at all with Requiem's post. It's constructive and it's focused on the merits of the idea and possible solutions instead of focusing on goofy conspiracy theories about the origin of the idea.

As someone who does have access to all of the data and understands how development works on this site, I can confidently tell you that people have lied in this thread dozens of times. In terms of getting feedback, I would love to get useful feedback from this community. Unfortunately, attempts at doing so either end up with not a lot being said or they turn into a complete clusterfluff like this thread.

We just need advertising and less ads.

Slag - I think you should take all your interesting ideas and throw them onto a potpourri server. Let the server change every round. Run 4 or 6 week rounds. Let fluff get wild on there. Let's see what players like and don't like. It doesn't take from any existing servers. If people don't like it, they don't have to play it.


But maybe people will like it, and maybe they will play it, and then maybe we will actually see what we like and don't like, rather than thinking about things theoretically.

No, he's 100% correct, what's rich is that you are denying it when in fact you were part of the push to create clanGDI to protect your asses from years of fluffty diplomacy 😂

Linking Premium/Credits announcement for your convenience: