i went the education route (because i work in higher ed and it was free) and got a masters in IT. if you're interested in being a generalist or managing IT resources, it's not a bad idea to go the university route.

this same thing happened to me last set as tag admin.

back then we didn't worry about exposing email addresses online

pang, i need DB access on the new host

bonus

i support this thread derailment. it makes pdm look less bad.

You win, Ivan.

see detmer's posts

see detmer's post

Who were you going to war this set?

Well that's one way to simplify gameplay :)

Can't tell if stupid or trolling.

sorry thore. our members wanted to net, they weren't thrilled with having to drop another netting set to stand up in principle against sof's blind aggression, so activity has been lacking. we'll get ours in the end though.

cypress's restart is now a priority target!

one needs a PhD in fluff

i haven't read a post from dagga in ages

Obviously we know you're not upset. You wanted to war. I'm using the you pronoun to refer to SoF here.

When other options fell through, PDM was your choice, despite the fact that you and Sov knew there was no real reason to hit PDM. You had us on yellow/80 turnsaving for weeks on end while we tried to net, and the pact negotiations ended up seeming like a stalling technique, since you were giving us terms to which you knew we could not agree.

Then you grabbed a few of our fattest countries on the same day. I'm not complaining that we got grabbed, it was just another signal that you were looking for a fight. At that point we considered war to be inevitable despite our genuine desire for peace, and since we were netting all set with absolutely no intention to war you, no war techs, low spies, etc., we had to completely change our macro strategy to try to get into some semblance of war readiness. At that point there was no turning back.

Obviously you wanted us to strike you first for political reasons, but trying to argue that we started the war is ludicrous. I would have much preferred a top 5 finish to fighting against SoF's perpetual boredom and bully tactics.

this is "banter, fighting and drama" :)

Piggybacking on what Detmer said, PDM will not instantly make nice when this is really just another iteration of mindless escalation that has come to define the SoF/PDM relationship. I don't see this war resolving that core issue; SoF got what it wanted while we lost yet another netting set. I do appreciate, almost tangentially, that there are some in SoF now who seem to have a head on their shoulders.

no way! keeping the pictures in the PDM pr0n vault until SoF explains how one can diffuse a missile!

If this were truly a PDM FS, we would have committed espionage or mass demoralization. Defusing missiles is just silly.

"But why should I spend my time bottomfeeding anymore?"

You shouldn't?

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

to your last point, i think that's a great attitude.

so idk, on multiple grabs or one big one, you can easily spend 800m-1b/day building, even with building cost reduction. you're rebuilding the buildings that were destroyed in your target's grab, plus everything you just grabbed. i guess the risk is in that you dont have adequate defense :P

also, hanlong, to be clear, you are talking about levels of risk but seem to be overlooking the crucial high-risk aspect that comes along with running low defense / high acres and having huge building expenses... you're going to get grabbed by a third party - how will you retal?

Yes, implying that it is your right to hit an under defended 50k acre country and be subject to normal retal policy without starting hostilities. I am not from the netting school that warps gameplay around a feeling of entitlement to every acre you've grabbed.

My comment about "an environment where little guys get raped" was directed at locket's post directly above mine.

I think we are in agreement that landtrading needs some balance. I am arguing against the people who posted here ignorantly dismissing it as immoral, unethical, anti-competitive, etc. in nature. It should be respected as an alternative to bottomfeeding and all-ex, and we can experiment and fight wars and tweak mechanics to determine how far we're willing to let the definition of "landtrading" extend from what already exists as non-hostile inter-tag hits.

are you saying you prefer an environment where little guys get raped and can't retaliate to one where land is created for both attackers and defenders?

wtf thread necro?

I absolutely disagree with hanlong saying that "landtrading" as it's been executed thus far is low risk. It's only low risk if you net in a vacuum. There have been several grabs on my landtrading country this set that I could not retal adequately and ended up being an easy 3k+ acres (inc. ghosts) for the attacker and a net loss for me even after I retalled. It's very high risk; you have low defense and no stock to buy up adequate offense in many cases.

That said, Flamey, you were too quick to dismiss the substance of my reply to you as ideological differences, which I think is mostly unfair. However, to respond directly to your most recent post, while I don't personally have a problem with two countries hitting each other back and forth, it does seem like most of the server disagrees with the speed at which they are hitting / the speed of land gain as somehow anti-competitive. While my first reaction is to say, well hit them and get some land, I would also support game mechanics that nerf repetitive country:country grabs, such as what I've heard is in the works possibly for next set.

In my opinion, that doesn't undermine the spirit of "landtrading" aka friendly grabbing, which I still feel is a net positive for the server. Suffice to say I will defend the concept of friendly, coordinated, mutually-beneficial grabbing, but I am definitely willing to concede the repetitive country:country thing if that's a major hangup for you all. The greater good is mixing up the tradition of farming untaggeds and reflexively malevolent inter-tag hits.

I don't think there is anything to be gained in debating Ivan as a person or player.

Fights over personalities are only smart insofar as that personality can control his or her alliance's policy.

I'm more interested in finding out if SoF has a legitimate problem with the way PDM wants to play.

Just had a lengthy conversation with Ivan.

Hopefully I am not misrepresenting you here, Ivan. But to recap the conversation for the benefit of the community, it seems the crux of the issue is that he considers it immoral to hit a country that you've just grabbed/been retalled by, unless an arbitrary amount of time passes between this exchange (72 hours by SoF's currently policy), which would make it moral.

Another moral alternative would be to hit different countries, which would not be under the auspices of SoF's 72-hour rule.

So really "landtrading" as its been discussed is permissible so long as you use multiple partners, and you do not hit the same country more than once per 72 hours.

This didn't make logical sense to me; I was not able to get at the root of this moral judgment in our conversation, though we agreed to discuss the 'why' another day.

I personally feel this is completely arbitrary and should be challenged, and like most changes in server politics, will likely take some wars and maybe tweaks to the game mechanics to get ironed out. I do feel, however, that the basis of "landtrading" as it's been discussed is 'morally' sound; that is, the cooperative and generative exchanges of land between players, so long as those players are subject to the rest of the server rules that have been established to date, as I outlined on page 5 of this thread.

just as a point of interest, don't most alliances consider hits 24 hours after a retal to be a fresh grab?

What if I did coordinated grabs with 15 different players in different alliances and got to 70k? Still mad?

Grab the 70k countries and get some land? If you're pacted and can't grab them, don't pact them next set and then grab their land?

No one seems to acknowledge the massive amounts of risk that go along with "landtrading". Would love to see some direct responses to my long post on page 5.

It doesn't make any sense to say that the landtraders are crap netters but that the land they put up is overpowered. If the landtraders are crap netters and can't beat Evo's canned strats, what do you care how many acres they have?

How is it different Ivan?

You'll notice that I said: "I have recently "landtraded" with RD, Evo, Sanct, LCN, NA, and Monsters."

To elaborate, 'recently' meaning over the past 4-5 sets. 'Landtraded' meaning we have coordinated back and forth hits for the purpose of both of us gaining acres.

Exhibit A

Thanks for the thoughtful reply?

Flamey, I disagree that so-called "landtrading" violates some code of conduct on the server. Although this vocabulary we've developed over years of playing and political posturing is more or less empirically arbitrary (concepts like a topfeed, for example), I do agree that there are certain entrenched styles of play that "landtrading" challenges.

That is, as a server we've developed methods of play for which we've sought to maximize potential, and "landtrading" adds several variables which challenge the standards for achieving a top networth. For example, you have the "landtraders" themselves, who acquire large amounts of land. (This is not so different from getting fat from farming untaggeds... it takes a similar number of turns, and is more risky than bottomfeeding.) You also have the high-defense countries that will inevitably steal that land mid-set. This challenges the idea that land should either be acquired by farming untaggeds/camping DRs (an old tradition that I'm philosophically opposed to), or through marginal gains in uncoordinated, aggressive grab exchanges.

If you consider the latter, which you gave examples of, what are the exact differences between this type of grabbing and the type of grabbing that takes place between "landtraders"? It seems the main difference is intention - "landtraders" intend for both parties to profit, bottomfeeders intend to take the land from countries that cannot possibly retaliate. There are other potential differences, such as the time between grabs, etc., but fundamentally it's a difference in intention. I guess my point here is to ask, how can you ever regulate intention? And why would you want to, if the net result is generative?

I have recently "landtraded" with RD, Evo, Sanct, LCN, NA, and Monsters. Each to a various degree of coordination and congeniality, but always with the intention of both parties benefiting from incremental gains in ghost acres. I think the only exchanges you'd have a problem with are the ones with RD, as they were the most optimized and, thus, profitable.

Essentially, from my perspective, you disagree with congeniality and coordination in land grabbing. Not an unfair point to make if you argue that this game is purely a war game. However, we also have a long-established tradition of this not being just a war game. Hence policies like land:land, which assert that countries have a right to retrieve all of their land when hit. Hence pacts loaded with clauses about reps for lost production, etc.

I do not think people who have not tried to play in a style of optimized, mutually-beneficial grabbing can appreciate the challenges of so-called "landtrading". It is not free land on top of traditional play styles. If you're going to 40k+ acres, you're chronically under defended, tech-thin, with no stock until week 5. All of your income is spent building acres, trying to keep enough offense to make retals, and trying to keep tech up. I will concede that the potential payoff is huge, which obviously is why someone would want to play this way. But just because it's a high-risk, high-reward strategy does not mean it is bad for the server. It just means it challenges the superiority of other strategies that have less risk involved.

The main way that I see this being exploitative in the way you insinuate is if an alliance were to completely pact out so that they could do mutually-beneficial grabbing in a bubble, thereby eliminating the 'high risk' aspect of the grabbing strategy. That's why PDM has gone to great lengths to make sure that our countries who are getting super fat through grabbing are subject to normal retal policies rather than being cloistered away in some netting bubble. The result of that has been gains shared with many different tags with whom we have good relations. Like any other situation that involves grabbing, when the grabs get hostile, it becomes a different scenario.

Maybe ghost acres are over-powered (though again, we've never seen a "landtrader" stack up successfully against LaF/Evo's top netters), but don't throw the baby out with the bath water just because some players are trying something different. Anyway, my unedited three cents.

let's all war over game mechanics.

i think selling down the bushel peak is overpowered, i'm going to farm anyone who does it.

Why is that a complaint, can't you break 75k turrets?

Ivan: rather than have this further devolve into your personal issues with Pang, can we agree that PDM's policy is what it is? You hit our fattest countries 3x on the same day, obviously this is not a friendly or congenial gesture and is quite annoying because your countries are really crappy (these grabs would match your own definition of a topfeed, so obviously you knew it wasn't cool).

It was a troll post because you had a string of several PDMers posting candid, serious opinions about landtrading, then you showed up and ostensibly accused them of complaining, which wasn't the case at all, and derailed the conversation into where it's at now.

Well I mean I can't disagree with the substance of Detmer's post.

But PDM's official policy w/ regard to land trading is that we follow our retal policy or any pacts that supercede it.

No seriously Ivan, your post didn't make any sense. The last few PDMers posting before your troll post were saying that they all agreed that land traders should be open for grabs. Where are the complaints? SoF ""topfed"" our traders and we're retalling them. Did anyone come to you complaining about that?

What complaints are you hearing, Ivan?

PDM doesn't recognize a topfeed. This can work in other tags' favor if they're smart. We realize that landtrading should come with huge risk.

I am a land trader and I respect non-land traders' right to attack me.

I do get annoyed when the attacker is a different strat, just because we both have to pay extra for those acres. Better target selection would yield better results.