Obviously there is no set rules for primary (except a RoR breaks GDI), so it's really up to personal preference and individual country.

What are everyone's "personal" retal policy?

If someone grabs you early in the set and you can't retal them immediately, would you:

1. Retal within 48 hours or let it slide
2. Retal within 72 hours or let it slide
3. Retal within X days or let it slide
4. Retal whenever you can in the set
5. Retal with spy ops for the remainder of the set or until you feel like stopping
6. Retal with missiles or special attacks immediately

7. Retal after 30 days have passed, with 36 hours left in the reset, in a 30m jet attack that makes you lose networth and hurts you even if you succeed.

ingle chose 7.

My own rule is basically to try to do it within 72 hours just because some people "require" that. I actually think that's a bit strict and I might stretch it out further than that if he's a commie and I'm a farmer or something, and it's expected for him to start faster, or if he's just going all-in on the early game and I am going to easily pass him later in the set.

After a certain point it seems like it's either a) just being a jerk or b) just seeing if you can get away with it and take some free land and have the guy allow it (ie gamble). Vengeance retals that don't even help your country are basically for trolls and newbs, and fall under a).

but we know when ingle is having a bad reset he often turns to a). Like when he stole people's tech until they ended up warring him, and even posted in the forum he was just trying to provoke someone into to warring him - all because they grabbed him a single time. Or the time he was deep in DR in Express with a ruined country and topfed afaik who was having a great set, which was DR abuse and just asshole behavior. I believe that time he offered to help make it up to afaik in the next reset which afaik refused because, of course, that would be cheating.

and then other times he just does the 30-day old, 36 hours left in the reset, total a) retal.

i hereby find the defendant ingle GUILTY of various crimes, including a pointless grudge retal against a potentially winning country he took because he is an asshole. i hereby sentence him to: I am going to ruin some of his countries in the future. as oldman says, look forward, not backward.

LOL WTF ingle, you seem like a major douchebag. I agree with the guilty verdict, and may God have mercy on your soul.

PS: This is a kangaroo court.

I retal 100% before reset ends. You let me worry about when.

LATC sucks so it might be slow ;)

I say quilty by association and lets look at some Ingle friend facts. H20, friend CandyMan, friend.... not sure who else but im sure they're more.

OR C) PLAYING THE GAME DIFFERENTLY THAN WHAT THE MAJORITY OF VETERANS AGREE IS THE WAY ONE SHOULD PLAY.

I ONLY GRAB THOSE WHO HAVE DOUBLE+ TAPPED OR ROR'ED OTHERS (OR MYSELF). IF SOMEONE GRABS ME UNPROVOKED, AND I'M ABLE TO RETURN THE FAVOR AT ANY POINT IN THE RESET, I WILL DO SO. I KNOW THAT MY SELF IMPOSED LIMIT ON LAND GRAB TARGETS MEANS THAT I ALMOST CERTAINLY WILL NEVER WIN A RESET, AND PROBABLY WILL NEVER FINISH TOP TEN. I DON'T CARE. ITS WHAT I ENJOY DOING.

THAT'S THE RISK YOU RUN WHEN YOU COMMIT UNPROVOKED AGGRESSION AGAINST OTHERS. CHOOSE CAREFULLY, OR YOU MAY RUN INTO THE GUY WHO PLAYS DIFFERENTLY, AND DOESN'T CHASE NETWORTH AT ALL COSTS. YOU MAY RUN INTO THE GUY WHO JUST LIKES TO FIGHT, OR AT LEAST DOESN'T MIND FIGHTING. TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THAT GUY WHEN YOU'RE BUILDING YOUR OWN COUNTRY BY HARMING OTHERS' SEEMS A BIT HYPOCRITICAL, IMO.

ALSO, INGLE IS THE MAN.

HA!

SAM
COORDINATOR OF ACQUISITIONS,
THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER]!

ingle will never win Primary :P

retaling past the point it can help you in a 60 day long game for something 30 days old is the behavior of a fluffing asshole. dear internet, please PM me every reset ingle's country number so i can make sure he never wins this game

lol whine more.. you should just watch who u're grabbing..

I do watch who I'm grabbing. Not knowing it was ingle, seemed like a good target. And it was a good target, actually. Except that he decided to retal with 36 hours left, 30 days later, when it was of no benefit to him, like a fluffing asshole. Otherwise I was fine.

Which country was this?

whats wrong with retaling with 48 hours left in the set?
his motive wasnt to benefit from it and net gain. his motive is to punish people who hit him..

You probably left too little defence at home for a 30m nw country to hit you at 84m nw..
Anyway, being hit 2 days before the set ends is better off than being hit 10 days before the set ends right?

I spied your country blid (to see how high you'll finish).

You left about 25m turrets only in your country. I would never have done that if I was expecting a top 3 finish, or top 2, it would have been at least 40m turrets, or 50m. Any country ~25m NW could have retalled you easily with 20m jets. Not only that, you also only had 11 SPAL. You took risks to finish higher in NW, and it didn't pay off. Even I could have stolen money from your country when you had 2.7b cash at home, and it would have been better than cashing as a farmer.

While I am in disagreement with extremely late retals, I take precautions myself against their possibility; I've gone up to 50m turrets before, and track the NW of every single country I have grabbed that reset.

I remember oldman dropping all his spies 2 resets ago, and paid the price for it:
http://www.earthempires.com/forum/post/563919/perm
That was your rationale for stealing oldman's money. Basically, you thought it was wrong for someone else to run 0 spies, so you stole money. Now you think it is wrong for someone else to retal you 30 days late. You ran 25m turrets, someone thought it was wrong for such a large country to run such low defenses.

To put it mildly, who do you think you are to tell other people how they should play? Seems a bit hypocritical of you. It sounds like I should have stolen cash from you, because that was what you did to oldman. After all, it would have benefited my country more than cashing my turns, exactly the reason you gave.

Xin kind of got you there. Lol.

In response to the original question... There is no such thing as a Retal on this server. The purpose of land grabbing isn't to be fair in a two way exchange. It's to gain land and win. Sometimes you hit a target that hits you back. Sometimes its right away or sometimes its later when convenient or just to spite you. Sometimes you hit a guy and he focus's on you for the rest of the set. That's the risk you take by being the aggressor.

I get hit back from time to time. Just means I didn't chose my targets good enough. 2 sets ago DEEZY whooped my butt over a comment on the forums. It happens. There is no policy or formula to follow to get away with no risk, nor should there be. Play with the risk, and have fun dealing with the consequences.

SERPENTOR FOR PRESIDENT!

Ah! He ran Yolo last set.

I'm fine with late retals. It's part of the game. Can't stop someone who wants to make you pay for initiating the offence.
I will (sometimes) also do late retals myself.

And also, Xin just burnt blid lol.

SHOTS FIRED

When it comes to guys I've grabbed, I:
1. Don't assume the person won't hit me if they can (for example I went to 50m turrets in stocking phase, 130% wep). This is the mistake that blid made :(
2. Don't grab guys that can hit me even if they make it their mission to do so for the remainder of the set (in other words I'm pretty conservative here). This is a mistake that many people make, and the risk they take. I've made it too!

When it comes to me doing the retal, I:
1. Look to see if it's beneficial (this includes making a statement of "I will retal") so it isn't always mathematical. See my retals on Giraffeland and Bibigon this past set. Those two easily cost me 5M NW, no joke.
2. The severity of the retal depends on the doucheness of the hit, which includes war if my set is ruined.

I only lowered my turret level to that in the last couple days, because at that point hitting me wouldn't make sense, and my networth was still high and out of the range of most trolls. Sure, it was a risk, sure I got hit, but see:
http://www.earthempires.com/primary/12/ranks/133
http://www.earthempires.com/primary/13/ranks/69

It's not the fact that i paid for my risk that bothers me. That happens. It's ingle that bothers me.

I stole bushels from oldman because I was trying to beat him, and because it was profitable, and yes, it was a risk of his going 0 spies and having 100m bushels at home not paying off. gambles work, or don't. What ingle did was different, he hit me just for the hell of it. He can play how he wants, sure, even if that means he's going to play like an asshole. And indeed, now he has an established track record of messing with top countries when he's not having a serious round. i think he should fully expect someone else to do the same to him. he finished off a PM he sent me with the flippant comment, "Maybe next time you'll learn not to grab my country so I wouldn't have to retal you!"

Well, besides the fact that i didn't know it was him until after the reset was over, maybe this way HE'LL learn not to fluff with other people's countries for kicks when he doesn't care about his own country. He drew herbs into a war when herbs was going to finish top 5 in Primary. What does ingle pay for that? nothing, because he didn't care about his country. he gets the entertainment of a war out of it. When he topfed afaik while deep in DR, how did ingle have to pay for that? he didn't, except for having to run damage control in his relationship with the player he'd screwed over. Now he retals me 30 days later with 36 hours left in the reset. So, now what?

and this isn't Joebob99 or something, or I wouldn't even be talking about it. Instead though this is a player who can win this game himself, one of the better players out there, and I would love to see one of his good countries treated the same way he treats other people's.

I don't have a retal policy. I don't get hit.

You're barking up the wrong tree.

If he doesn't care about his country, reputation or relationship with other players, then he most certainly doesn't care about getting his good countries treated badly. Either don't hit him, or don't piss him off. Whining here just makes you look like a .... whiner. It doesn't make everyone else want to attack him; and will just make him want to attack you more.

I used to PM Gogy my country so that he doesn't attack it, nor me him. I've stopped doing that since I just use the same country name (like him) now.

If the late retal happens to just about anyone else, they would probably just suck it up as a bad attack choice, as Serp and eManny has posted. If it happened to any of us, we would have just posted 2 lines about it, grumble a bit in PMs, and move on. LATC ate late retals 2 sets ago, I don't see him whining. Serp ate topfeeds from Deezy, and was a good sport. I don't see why you have to be different and make a mountain out of a molehill.

yeah other people might let it slide, but if you cross enough people soon enough you'll run into someone who won't. ingle's always been very disrespectful of other people's countries. whatever your stance is on "whining" or "putting it behind you" or "playing how you want to" or whatever, i still don't believe that you, latc, emanny, hell juts about anyone else, would go making a retal to your own detriment on some random country that hit you 30 days ago, when there's 36 hours left in the reset. right? most people just wouldn't do that because it is fluffty and pointless. ingle does it. he doesn't respect the golden rule of doing to others as you would have them do unto you. just like you say people can play how they want, can i not, if i want to, decide i don't like how he plays, and declare him my enemy?

People stole tech from me first, so I adapt and learned to incorporate it into my play style.
People late retalled me, so the next few sets, I've also incorporated a "retal whenever you can" for punishment for hitting me.
As serp said, there are no rules. Play with the risk, and have fun dealing with the consequences. I'm not starting the trends, I'm just following them.

And from the sounds of all the public threats, Blid wants to ruin any set where I net. From a defensive point of view, if I wanted to take it seriously, I should strike first and make sure he also never wins a primary set ever again ;) It works both ways...

Oldman has also pulled some risks like that before where it hasn't paid off. I remember one time he tried to keep several billion dollars on hand while waiting for his decay bonus and he got hit by someone during that period. Now a days, not many people will attempt to drop defense or sell spies for gaining a couple million more networth.

Everyone runs a risk by attacking/grabbing anyone in this game. Actually, everyone runs a risk when they create a country to begin with.

Blid took 2 risks:
1. He hit my country
2. He dropped his turrets near the end of the game to a level where a 30 million nw country could grab a 84 million nw country

You'll notice that Serp didn't eat a late retal from me because he decided to keep 40-50 mil turrets on his country at all times. He also could have sold down turrets on market but he chose not to. :)

I don't care that my gamble didn't pay off, I care about your motivations for why you would hit me at all with so little time left and when you're running an anonymous country to boot. You get nothing out of it. So what is the reason you do the things you do? "Well, people did it to me" seems like it should have the opposite effect, in that case I would expect you to realize it sucks and is fluffty and to decide not to behave that way. Why, really, do you do it? Do you just like fluffing with people having good rounds? Do you have some kind of rage boiling inside you even 30 days after a single tap?

*votes that late retallers get kicks out of it*

Blid, I totally get what you're saying but to expect people to behave rationally is not realistic. People will do what they want to do. If a good player wants to 'get you' they will, but most of the time you can avoid getting hit or retalled by taking measures on your end, not expect others to take measures on theirs. You have to play this game without expecting 'anything' or else take the risk and it's consequences. As crest once said to me 'I never get lucky', well, that's a pretty good way to look at it, as its a mistake to depend on luck.

I learned that the hard way, but worse than the counter-hits by YOLO and farmer in my opinion would have been something like Fantastic Baby RoRing you into a war. That would have been nasty and worthy of rage >>

But all in all, yeah, you have every right to be frustrated and yet it's part of this game.

That's life. Can't change ppl, you can only change your expectations of em.

Hey blid, you forgot when the idiot hit me a couple sets back for no reason, other than he was the Earth Police that set.

I can attest to the fact that ingle is a douche. Blid had 40+million turrets until he sold down for the final push, that's when ingle decided to retal. He might have been spying him daily hoping to catch him who knows, douche move. Unless he runs a country by the name yolo this set, he teaches no one anything. Cause if he runs a good enough country, the top guys will be able to bottom feed him the final 2-3 weeks.

Oh yeah, I did forget about that one. Jesus. He just arbitrarily decided, "hmm this country grabbed too many acres from a guy who quit, I'm gonna topfeed him" or something like that.

Now that I think about it there's other instances as well that I didn't mention! There was one time ingle was in the top ten and was stealing tech from other top ten countries, and when someone hit him in response, ingle didn't retal once, he hit back TWICE. Against a guy he'd instigated into attacking to begin with! Just forcing the guy to war him for no reason. http://www.eestats.com/primary/oldcountry/496/132

The list really goes on and on with this guy. ingle really is one of the biggest assholes in the game.

Obviously this guy has no respect whatsoever for the time and effort other people are investing in a 60-day long game.

Playing Devil's Advocate here for a second...

A late retal like Ingle's, where the retaliating country is actually harmed (both it in the near term and longer term too as they don't reuse their country names) by the action... Why is that viewed any differently than legal market manipulation?

This whole conversation reminds me way too much of previous threads filled with fluffing about market manipulation that was not cheating, where the mods all but admonished us for not blocking (edit: or taking advantage of it...) it with our own higher priced techs.

In both cases, final standings were significantly altered. I don't really understand why one is agreeable and the other is reprehensible when both show a clear disdain for all countries affected.

Respect for the time and effort people are investing? It's a war game dude, you're supposed to fight. Let it go jeez. By your logic you have no respect for the little guys who put in the time and effort to play this game. All you do is grab and run, how is that any better? Just because you're more skilled at netting? Get off the entitled horse already. He retalled you fair and square.

Learn your lesson and move on. Don't drop D and keep an eye on those you've grabbed. Last reset I watched a guy I grabbed buy up to 25m jets by the last week of the reset - I op'ed him almost daily and kept buying D to make sure he couldn't retal me. He had every right to retal me up until day 60 though so I never dropped D, even when I felt the time period for a 'profitable' retal was past. That's called adapting to what's going on, not forcing what's going on around you to adapt to you, which just doesn't work.

Also nothing ingle has done is against the rules. Just like leeching tech, stealing tech, nor having offensive allies is against the rules - all of which you've had a problem with and are now gone (or on the way out). Stop ruining this game for everyone else just so you can net in peace. Aside from the top 25ish players in primary, I don't see how primary is enjoyable for anyone else anymore. So thanks for your hand in killing the game with your endless whining about people and their morals and ethics crap.

LATC, all respect, but nothing I've said in this thread has been about rules or asking for a change of rules. The only game change I've been crying for lately has been about earthquakes. I'm also not debating *how* ingle was able to retal me, but wondering *why* someone would choose to do so in the given situation.

anyway, as off-topic as it is, let me just say that tech leeching still exists, and that I never once asked for espionage to be removed or even considered that. Actually my suggestions on the subject were quite different, I don't know if it was a good idea but my thinking was to somehow build SPAL into a minimum spy defense rate. Say someone had 40 SPAL, that could be strong enough that no superior SPAL country could succeed more than, say, 95% of their ops on you. The higher the enemy country's SPAL gets, the closer they get to a 95% success rate. If your SPAL is 50, maybe that maximum success rate drops to 90%. If your spal is 60, maybe it drops to 85%. Basically, the idea was to give players the ability to at least have some minimum amount of defense if they were willing to put the necessary investment into their own SPAL, instead of being helpless to defend themselves. Seens like a cool idea to me but maybe someone can punch some holes in it.

Anyway, i do think tech leeching and jet leeching were/are open avenues for abuse and it makes sense to structure those alliances in a way to prevent leeching. I don't think that really is anything that will make any people have less fun playing the game. Hell, believe it or not, I don't even think GDI should make it impossible to do ABs/send nukes/etc, although I do think those options should have a cap amount of uses on them, so that someone can't just war a player completely for one grab. but a nuke? 3 ABs? something reasonable would be fine. A guy having 50 nukes and still no recourse, or an attacker running 0 tanks and being safe never struck me as totally the right balance.

DO YOU *HONESTLY* WONDER THAT? IT IS NOT COMPLICATED. IT IS CALLED REVENGE.

PLAYERS WHO HAVE HAD THEIR SET *RUINED* BY A CAVALCADE OF HITS FROM COUNTRIES MUCH MUCH LARGER THAN THEIRS, GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO INFLICT PAIN ON *ANY* ONE OF THOSE WHO ADDED A BOOT ON THEIR NECK, ARE GOING TO TAKE IT.

REMIND ME, WHAT'S YOUR STANDARD ANSWER TO OTHER PLAYERS WHEN THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT GETTING BOTTOMFED? IF MEMORY SERVES, IT'S SOMETHING LIKE "YOU SHOULD HAVE PLAYED BETTER. YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE FALLEN BEHIND."

TO QUOTE INGLE: "He dropped his turrets near the end of the game to a level where a 30 million nw country could grab a 84 million nw country"

IN OTHER WORDS...
YOU SHOULD HAVE PLAYED BETTER. YOU WERE AHEAD, AND YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED AHEAD. YOU CHOSE TO DROP TROU, AND SO FELL BEHIND THE DEFENSE OF THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAD HIT INGLE, AND HE NOTICED THAT BARE ASS AND LAID A SPANKING ON IT.

NO AMOUNT OF BOO-HOOING ON THE FORUMS IS GOING TO CHANGE THE FACT THAT YOU HAD IT ENTIRELY IN YOUR CONTROL TO AVOID THAT HIT. YOU TOOK A (MAYBE CALCULATED, MAYBE JUST ENTITLED AND ARROGANT) RISK, AND YOU GOT BURNED.

TL;DR VERSION: QQ MOAR, N00B

HA!
BILL
ROUSER OF RABBLE

The only "rule" or game mechanic in place is preventing last minute attacks in the last 24 hours, since the humanitarian nw gap closes to prevent last minute suicides.

Why do you keep asking why I would hit you?

I like to "Execute attack strategies to relieve opponents of their resources and land." because "Earth Empires is a free browser based strategy game where you take control of your nation's military and economy".

Retaliating YOUR act of aggression earlier on me in that set. I never baited you into hitting me first. You thought it was a good time to grab me, and I simply thought it was an opportune time to grab you back and relieve you of your land and resources. This has nothing to do with your status or finish or rank.

Just because you can net and finish in the top 25, even in the last 36 hours doesn't mean you are entitled to get a free pass from everyone else who is smaller than you. Similarly, if you break GDI rules, you aren't entitled to be protected from AB/GS.

People could've hit Oldman in those sets where he dropped his defense and had 10 mil turrets defend himself but he got lucky and he ended up winning. :) You did not get lucky because you grabbed someone who had the ability to retal. Most top players use eestats to track countries they've hit (most likely you do too). You should've seen a large country that you attacked @ 30 mil nw and shouldn't have tried to drop your defense like a noob.

Learn from your mistakes and move along now.

If you keep insisting on whining, then maybe my country can relieve you of more resources this set too (similarly to how Deezy hit Serp over a comment on the forums).

That's not at all a meaningful answer; in fact it doesn't even attempt to explain your action. Bill gave an actual answer:

"DO YOU *HONESTLY* WONDER THAT? IT IS NOT COMPLICATED. IT IS CALLED REVENGE."

I don't know if that was your reason too, though, because you're hiding behind a bunch of empty words about mechanics and game rules and me taking a risk that everyone already understands.

What I am asking you is simple: when you decided to hit a country that was a contender to win the game with 36 hours left in the reset, 30 days after a single tap, while using an unknown country name, in a hit sure to hurt your own country as well as your target, what was your motivation? What was your thinking? Were you still angry, and it was simply "revenge," as Bill describes? Or do you just enjoy screwing around with other people's countries? Because what explains the actions you took against Pond Scum, stealing his tech and double retaling his hit; what explains your topfeed of afaik when your set was already ruined by ABs; what explains these things you do? The track record is pretty long now.

Why the hell do I need a reason? Are you an auditor? Are you a psychiatrist trying to analyse me?

EE is just a game. I don't need to have an explicit motive for everything. I'm just playing the game as I see fit, I shouldn't need to explain every action to you. Sometimes I'll bottom feed, sometimes I'll top feed. Sometimes I'll war, sometimes I'll net.

And besides, I've already explained last set's hit on you - I had a full set retal policy. If you hit me, and I could retal you at some point, I would. I would have done it in the last 5 minutes of the game if that was the only time I could. You can call this "revenge" for earlier grab if you want, I simply call it a retal for your earlier act of aggression.

With Pond Scum - You're also asking me a question about a set that is almost a year old. Maybe I stole tech from him too? I know I stole tech from other players, and if I did, it was because stealing tech was profitable (multiple players were doing this including YOU *cough* hypocrite *cough*). Stealing tech had its risks (some countries might fight back), but also it's rewards. Pond Scum hit me once, I didn't like being top fed and losing 5000 acres so I grabbed him back twice and we engaged in a war. Similar to how you stole tech from Oldman (because it was beneficial) - however, you were lucky Oldman isn't the type of guy to throw away a set on you while I got unlucky and had some people fight back.

With crest, I top fed him last set because he farmed someone who quit for a ton of land. And also because I don't like him.

The set with topfeeding afaik was in Express, and the grab was beneficial to my country since we were both commies and I still had many turns to run after the grab.

And if I hit you this set, I can tell you my motive already, it'll be because you won't stop your incessant whining. Hows that for a reason? :)

Same reasoning as deezy uses, good company there.

But really, I won't be surprised if you do attack me for calling you out on this stuff. It fits in with all this other garbage I've been listing.

Wait, what? I didn't steal anyone's tech. I stole oldman's food when he had 0 spies and 100m bushels at home or something, and he did fight back and hit me with a bunch of missiles. You seem rather out of touch on that one.

blid vs ingle war coming up?

Isn't this where KOH is supposed to come in with the popcorn?

I'm fairly certain you didn't know it was my country though so no need to lie here. As for not liking me, where did that come from? Lol. The way I see it, ingle is just a slightly better player than RR or Gogy or BiBi. And I have my policy on those 2, hahaha!

blid i was gna top feed you last reset when i topfed h2o out of boredom but i thought it was too mean now i wish i had. no one owes you an explanation so STFU or i'll tf you every reset for fun just to piss u off