I believe `echo transliterator_transliterate('Any-Latin; Latin-ASCII', $countryName);` shall prove its usefulness.

As for moderation, there are players who already report inappropriate country names. There is no shortage of those who want to see the demise of another player.

https://www.earthempires.com/...ce-server-52511/2#1031086

Oh my, so we're rekindling this topic again.

For all intents and purposes, I'm another leader of Paradigm. I've asked the other clan leaders not to kick because there was simply no proof at the time when we received the pictures. I've presented my argument for why not.

Yes, the leaders were all looking through the pictures, checking, and judging. Technically, those pictures can be faked and I would hope EE staff wouldn't judge solely on such pictures alone. I know the pictures can appear really convincing and so on, but that doesn't necessarily prove that the cheating occurred in recent times. The pictures appear to be almost a year old.

In a hypothetical scenario where the events depicted in the pictures are accurate, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that I would have kicked Milkman from the clan. The absence of concrete evidence that he cheated in the last Alliance round or on any other game server is the reason for this. Considering that approximately a year has passed since the alleged conversation occurred, there’s a chance that he may have completely ceased any cheating activities. EE staff does give chances, don't they? Paradigm don't knowingly recruit such players; such players would have to have several months worth of good conduct before they would even get a chance at membership.

At best, the only thing that picture did was provoke suspicion. So Doug then suggested that I go report to the game moderators, which is what I ended up doing while providing the pictures to trigger an in-game investigation.

After the moderators found that Milkman had indeed cheated, we then started the kill run on Milkman's country, despite the fact that EE staff took no action on Milkman's country on the Alliance server at the time.

We're not going to kick people just because we're presented with pictures that appear convincing. My mindset at the time of judging is that you simply want to spite Milkman at all costs.

I called it:
https://i.ibb.co/...led-it-milkman-spited.png
https://earthempires.com/...k/eestats-52269/3#1029466

As of now, this game only accepts English/Latin Alphabets.

I do recall last round in alliance, someone attempting to use a Russian/Cyrillic country name, and it failed, resulting in a blank country name.

Our non-English players would greatly appreciate change and it'll give us more ways to express ourselves.

Please consider allowing more characters for country names. I too would like to be able to name my country with non-latin characters.

BUMP.

This library can be used to fix this bug here as well:
https://www.earthempires.com/...cters-in-their-name-52548

For example, when attempting to quote ツ, you'd get something like this:
https://www.earthempires.com/...ogus-reports-49401#960056

That doesn't address the problem with being unable to retain players. Sure it adds players, but I doubt they'll stick around.

Unless this game is made to be a bit more fun to lose, such as,
1. To lose land/buildings and quickly recover land/buildings in as many turns;
2. Dealing damage is balanced by the amount of effort it takes to do damage (put as much effort as it takes to produce assets); and
3. With the significant reduction in construction cost/turns, and military expenses/food consumption

I don't see any hope of being able to keep players in Alliance in its current form.

True. 🙂

I believe the biggest issue is that there is virtually no way to retain the chances of finishing in rank 1 after winning a war. Just by participating in a war whether you wanted to or not is an instant game over.

Another issue is the lack of strategy balance. Players suggesting rotating buffs/nerfs is a symptom to this kind of issue. For the past 12 rounds, or two years, the only thing that finishes in rank 1 was a Fascist before converting over to Theocracy. One exception being a Tyranny which looks like a techer. https://eestats.lafamiglia-ee.eu/alliance/oldranks For the past 12 rounds, check rank #1 country's history.

There is no compelling reason for most countries to buy anything other than jets while playing with almost no army.

The expenses are too high to justify the cost for defense. It's sad to buy defense only to still get rekt anyway. I'm not saying that 0 defense is good, but right now, a serious attempt at defense is not a good use of money if one is serious about finishing in rank 1.

Building a country takes effort; griefing virtually effortless. There is no good way to recover from griefing, you're basically out of the race if someone kicks down your proverbial sand castle. It'd be nice to be able to rebuild faster and cheaper. As of now, construction is expensive and consumes too many turns.

1. I agree that external tools have contributed to the negative experience.
2. Killing within seconds is something that can be done even without a bot. Tools didn't enable this.
3. I agree that killing should take longer. Defense in this game is somewhat a joke.
4. I like the idea of rotating buffs/nerfs, but I believe the market condition should influence this more. As of now, we're lacking balance. Farmers can store with less penalties compared to other strategies which makes farming very powerful. It's difficult for Industrial communists to finish better than other strategies.
5. I like the idea of adding more random elements to the game.

A friend of mine said it best: In general, people don't like the idea of spending weeks building up something only to have it gone in a flash.

̶ ̶B̶o̶n̶u̶s̶!̶ ̶

Bonus.

BONUS!

Bonus!

The earthquakes wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that it costs a lot of money to reconstruct the buildings they destroy. It's a big deal when we're above 100,000+ acres.

Construction IMO is too much. Especially since the change that lead to many players being able to obtain 40,000+ acres of land with ease. The game was never adjusted to deal with countries this large.

Bonus!

BONUS!

Thank you Mr. Gainsboro for working on EEStats to get it up and running again.

BONUS!

Bonus ＾＿＾

Bonus!

Adding a starting amount of construction sites would speed up the game towards getting to the more exciting parts, but it retains the griefer friendly nature of spending a month to build a country only to have it practically destroyed in mere seconds.

I don't mind that. Starting cash can also be increased, along with food.

Alternatively, how about getting rid of CS altogether and then allow for the acres of land to determine construction speed?

This approach can be a start towards returning to the days where players primarily grabbed land from other players. With no construction sites, building a nice country would be less time consuming, and less griefer friendly. I've played many games that does this, it's actually nice.

1. Who said "one time we tried and it backfired"?
2. If you're going to reply, can you at least address some of the concerns raised in this thread, such as: "How would you or anyone here address the above 5 problems?". https://www.earthempires.com/...s-and-input-52239#1024769

"My" oil :(

The problem with this game is not the amount of players we have, it's the fact that this game doesn't accommodate towards how most of us play.

We can get more players, but I doubt they'll stick around for long.

The problems are:
1. It takes a lot of time and turns to build a nice country, but all of that can be destroyed in a flash with way less time and turns in comparison;
2. If one were to participate in any war, they're virtually guaranteed to not finish in top 10 with a good score;
3. The prize/loot is not enough for the victors of war to continue and compete for rank #1 finish;
4. No other option to resolve a dispute that doesn't involve giving land, allow retaliation, or to conquer the enemy; and
5. With an imbalance of strategies, or playing style (e.g. war) it makes playing other strategies less valuable, and it makes producing certain resources less valuable (e.g. war related tech, tanks).

War is yet another option to deal with a dispute and can function as leverage in diplomacy. If the problems were solved, I imagine the war clans here would make this game more interesting.

Imagine the netters as royalties/nobles who would rather not engage in a war. The war dogs would be of any class including the royalties, but they primarily take on the role of champions insurers, risky gamblers/stock traders and mercenaries of course who takes on any bet they see valuable, intervene and fight win their way to the top while dealing with competing war clans. I imagine such arrangements can be made where a netting clan can sponsor a war clan with a boatload of funds in hopes it'll lead to mutual beneficial outcome.

How would you or anyone here address the above 5 problems?

I believe option #3 with 72 hours is good. There should be an actual war or it'll be disappointing. It also deals with suiciders who can't be bothered to put a greater effort towards destroying countries by starting their own clan and recruit.

I imagine some folks thinks 3 days is laughable, especially if not rewarding enough. I'd be open to making wars a minimum of 2 weeks instead of 72 hours so that there's enough time to enjoy the missile exchange and so on. The option to surrender already provides a war-ending condition so that it doesn't drag on for too long.

Bonus!

Bonus.

Hello. I believe in the near future, it'd be better to:

1. Stick to just UTC. I imagine this was organized before November 5th, so as of now, the American Eastern time is no longer 4 hours behind UTC; now 8pm US Eastern is 1:00am UTC.
2. If multiple timezones are mentioned, then the full date and time has to be published for each timezone to mitigate against this very problem.
3. Use a countdown app. https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/create I prefer to set "Location of Event" to UTC which the game appears to use.