Am I the only one who didn't like the new UI they were testing out?

Others have given a lot of good feedback. As a small correction to your original assumptions, one big change from 10 years ago is that given the low numbers of actual players and high amounts of bots, people pretty much never grab other players unless they're already in a war of some sort. So some of the really fun aspects of diplomacy and teaching other alliances they can't grab yours is sort of gone. It's hard to think of how that could return though without hundreds of players, because the core veteran group is mostly pacted out, or if not, it leads to frustration where a number of players are unlikely to return. This occurred some even 10 years ago, but with dwindling numbers, it's just exacerbated.

Primary is probably the best example of a server that looks at least a little like the old days, and honestly, I think it's because the way GDI is implemented prevents griefing / suiciding but still allows a choice of aggressive grabbing - and so that's the culture that exists. It's just only for individuals (who sometimes retain their name from set to set as a form of "tag" protection).

Getting to Req's and Auk's point, I think the people who are vying for #1 likely appreciate the PvE experience. That min-maxing that HW called out is actually enjoyable for a number of us geeks (and the numbers are still complicated enough, especially with market dynamics, that there's a lot of 'playing by feel' even if there is a valuable guideline from the numbers).

The PvP experience is good, when it's on your own terms. I think a few years ago, it was sort of in an interesting balance where the war groups mostly took turns warring each other, with occasional sets netting or having players join netting tags as desired (or you could war on Teams and net on 1a, etc). There's a somewhat reasonable expectation that diplomacy would require netting alliances to earn those pacts by having a war set every now and then (which is more or less what happened 10 years ago), but if even a few players aren't interested these days, that's most of the alliance, and given most people are older and in different places in their lives - not everyone can even play that style of immediacy to stonewall or scheduled timings to gather a group for kill runs. Changing that to occur over time to prevent such quick deaths and reduce the need for having groups of players online at the same time would be tricky - most people don't like losing all that work so quickly, so restarts were given more capabilities - there's more balance to be done there I think. And while getting the timing to join a kill run can be challenging for people who have busy lives, having that community experience on IRC or discord is probably a pretty big draw of the game to many (especially after so many years).

The future state of ClanGDI was meant to possibly help with some of that - pacts would still be necessary if war clans could ransom you for resources if you didn't agree to war, but pacts would be binding for those who could navigate into the PvE for that top spot. There certainly could be other ways to meet those needs - and with some of the other ideas, there are certainly plenty of ways to spice things up with and without it.

+1

Glad to hear you're not sick enough for some of those treatments, but sad to hear you've been diagnosed as a grinch (with a heart two sizes two small). Join an old lady's walking group and they'll have you back in shape in no time! =Þ

I know v1 hasn't even been created yet or has a complete idea on the final form, but beyond the basics of GDI limiting who can attack, if we're going all out on clan diplomacy, it would be interesting if alliances could have "projects" they can complete for specific defense bonuses, even beyond war perhaps. Partially, I'm thinking it could also help stabilize some aspects of the market as well (e.g. some resources would provide bonus value and those would likely be items that are not high demand in general, or particularly in the early set). This would be most relevant with a ClanGDI that allows players to declare war and still be able to hit (which I think is the plan either with a clan declaration or possibly with the usual country version).

The idea for the project is that every country would have to provide some minimum amount of resources, but then a few countries can supply the bulk beyond that. I would expect every country in the alliance would have to participate (similar to sending FA), but there could be some mechanic that it takes resources automatically (mostly in case you have players who are less active or are not aware how they should proceed, but maybe at some extra cost). Ideally, only countries who were in the tag at the time of the project gets the benefit, but depends on if that adds too much code complexity. Projects could be completed multiple times, but do not stack (e.g. if it's about to run out, you can do it again to get it to full, but you never get double benefits). The general idea is that these could benefit both warring and netting alliances, and add in some new strategies and group optimizations for the game.

Some ideas:

Missile Defense - requires every country to provide some minimum resources, with bonus value from oil, SDI tech, and turrets. This would have some feature like it blocks the first 10 missiles that would have gotten past SDI across the whole alliance.

Disaster Preparedness - bonus value from bushels, troops, and medical tech - reduces the impacts from earthquakes and famines by 50% for the first 20 across the alliance.

Military Parades - bonus value from military bases (just having them gives a % boost for that players contribution), tanks, military strategy tech, and spy tech - reduces expense costs across the alliance by an additional 5-10% (possibly PM too, like encouraged recruitment?) and lasts for a set amount of time

Festivals - bonus value from business, residential, and agricultural tech - boosts pop growth rate (war / walling benefit) and reduces corruption (netting benefit) for a set amount of time

Enhanced Building Code - No bonus value items, could have a large upfront cost and also increases costs to build acres (currently it's Land*3 + 1500, and maybe this would make it Land*4 + 1500 or something) but it would reduce the damage to buildings from AB and BR by some balanced amount. For large FFO's who go reduced building costs, it would hopefully be a fair price to help reduce impact of griefers, and for war countries, it could help keep restarts productive for longer.

These were just random ideas, but if we're looking for big changes or have dev enthusiasm, I think there are opportunities to add interesting tweaks.

Living the dream! See you when you're back.

This is pretty cool - I think it would require a lot of player time dedicated to playing it (well specifically, structured time during those few hours). One option to help with that could be to have the times / days decided in the forums ahead of time so that it rotates some (for global players) and meets schedules for work or hobbies.

Also, is the 8 set in stone or is it partially dependent on number of players?

After it gets going a bit, it might be interesting to add in bonuses for winning each round - it could be like the bonuses we have today (slight bump to expenses or defense) or they get to remove one of the random starting options from the fixed list in the next round, etc.

I don't think Cath was trying to join back with Evo - I don't think he even logged in since that last set when LaF killed everyone but the ex-LaF players we let join us to avoid the war. I'd be surprised if he had ill will towards us but he can correct me in game if he likes (I assume he's on a forum timeout based on Primeval's comments). He does seem to have reason to dislike Doug, though I'm not sure how involved he is in with PDM at the moment - I thought someone mentioned he hadn't been around lately, and I'm not sure if Josey is on good terms or not.

So I guess the connection is not clear to me. You FS'd mercs, they called in their defense allies (which you should've expected) and mopped up your tag. Since you feel it was unfair to have allies on the alliance server, you are now... attacking other alliances to make sure everyone hates you? I think BlackHole tried this on team, and it didn't work out so well (but I mean, if you really want to be the new BH, I guess you're well on your way). It certainly will make people leave the server / game, and you'll have lost all good will that you previously had, but maybe it'll help encourage qz to finish ClanGDI?

Cath - I think you are posting pretty quickly and maybe skimming over what people are saying. Sui said he'd 'hate to see the war carry over to next set' and you thought he said something about you hating people. Empy said you should be careful about who you trust as friends, and you somehow took that to be an assault on you. I didn't see what Doug posted, but you certainly have discussed your religious views in these forums before (but then stopped after the mods locked a thread, it's probably been a year or two at this point). Either way, if there's inappropriate content, no mod will let that stay on the forums and will likely give a timeout for posting it. If you receive things like that in game, report it and they'll take action there too.

That said, I didn't see all of the forum posts that have been cleaned up, and I can understand you have reasons to not believe things that are told to you from a variety of people, but as an unbiased observer who has played with you for a long time, it seems like people are only out to get you as a player in the game based on your in game actions, unrelated to anything else in your life. It sounds like you ran some good war countries, taught some new players a lot of good tips, and they look forward to battling with you in the sets to come.

This is pretty reproducible and I can confirm happens regularly.

Nice - the other bonus fix is this provides an easy way to look at this on mobile (which I think previously required viewing the portal in desktop mode) - thanks!

Both - certainly there have been cases where people self-delete to try and remove that connection (though you can find it if you search their profile, which is tricky when you don't know who they are).

I think one big use case is finding out who someone was after the set, which is typically from people who would not be interested in publishing it to their forum (or who have multiple forum accounts). I don't think that would hurt, but it's typically not the folks who are easy to find that is the needed for a search.

What about 1% C:C DR, but less general DR; so it limits the gains from a single player but allows others to get some (it seems like the issue is that individual players put all the bots in heavy DR to ruin it for everyone, but I don't play Express)?

You also have to spend turns and cash to rebuild - that's the big factor in doing a tech start.

The receiver of the request can see the units related to the pact, but if you haven't accepted then they can't see anything. Once you accept, they can.

Ha, that's right. Back in the ICQ days of FA. Where 'mature' 12 year olds decided the fate of the server.

When was that? I played with the combined Ely x SkyElitez and I thought a number of us went to TIE too, but I've played off and on so many times over the years that I might be mixing and matching when we went to TIE (or it happened multiple times - maybe well after you left to MKR). I think I played under the name Marduk back then though. I thought your name sounded familiar from a different browser game (maybe there were pantheons and the admins would randomly grant small favors... I have no clue the name of it, but I believe you mentioned your name is not necessarily unique so maybe entirely unrelated).

I'll go techer again and try not to get into wars. Let me know if you want an all tech ally.

Congrats all - some nice finishes for the number of shenanigans this set!

And surprise to LB - I didn't know that was you, but I'm sure you weren't expecting anyone to break you at 120M NW.

PDM has grown a lot - kudos to the congenial and chill atmosphere! It's good to see that everyone there agrees on the honest members and leadership and takes action accordingly, too.

So maybe the summary is that VPN can be okay if you effectively get approved / safelisted by the mods, but don't be surprised if they say no if there are any suspicious anomalies? I certainly have used VPN overseas, but connected to my "home" IP range.

Why, oh, why, oh, why, oh
Are we so in denial when we know we're not happy here?

Check the strategy room - people post some things there, though some are outdated, they're typically simple enough to get you going.

*Eats KoH's popcorn*

Every 24 hours you reset to the maximum ops you can perform per day (different amounts per server).

As requested by Weezy, now that I'm not on mobile and can actually see the results:

Rank Country Land Networth Special Clan
1 AndrewMose (#158) 61 $1,494,797,755 H Evo
2 No Country for Old Men (#457) 180 $1,429,134,405 H Evo
3 Gains has a mangina (#459) 50,986 $1,317,921,418 DG SoL
4 river ladder shoe (#481) 288,208 $1,193,515,750 C Evo
5 honky tonk (#5) 73 $1,147,999,578 H Mercs
6 Seemann (#456) 91 $967,142,475 HG Evo
7 redball express (#17) 10 $854,202,067 H Evo
8 Struggle Street (#463) 120,420 $790,025,443 DG PDM
9 Coffee Time (#164) 24 $750,698,580 HG Mercs
10 Thatcantbe (#30) 61 $702,416,706 H OMEGA

I think this makes AndrewMose one of the few that have had a top spot in every server, very impressive!

Good finishes by a number of players this round, including a few that haven't played in some time. I hope to see Monsters and Omega back in the top next round (monsters had some great finishes, despite the suicides and taking care of Josey Wales and co - respect).

Honorable mention to the dishonorable Chevs for the highest land I've ever seen (1 million acres) - will we be seeing a video on the making of this? I know your war dec was removed, I can only imagine by a mod's fat fingering of the forums.

Also, notable mention to 'Gains has a mangina' - really solid teamwork from SoL. I heard they may have learned from the FA and oil transfer king, Gerdler himself, but weren't available for comment prior to deadline.

An actual honorable mention to Duff - we can't get enough of that stuff - for an amazing 850M+ finish. He continues to be the glue that holds Evo together, and we can't wait to see the continued improvements from set to set.

Don't forget to smash that subscribe and hit that like button if you enjoy this type of post. If you don't, then go to teams and get wreckt. Detmer will be along to confirm shortly as resident ex-herder of cats.

Damn son, you didn't have to do him like that

pew pew

https://eestats.lafamiglia-ee.eu/primary/country/65

Or - they made the change purposefully and like the direction it led the server. If people want FA, they need to do the alliance server. Or the team server. Or the FFA server. Good grief.

Yikes, then that makes me more concerned about those vile threats you and your friends were making in chat, because that fluff was fluffed up.

Aww, poor TC - must be so weird for you since you're the one typically FSing netters out of the blue on multiple servers.

Light milk. Perfectly foamed.

Bonus.

Fireworks as requested:

https://eestats.lafamiglia-ee.eu/primary/country/50

The only reason that primary has allies is to help new players find community. FA goes too far into allowing an unfair advantage.

Enjoy the real life!

I think there can sometimes be issues with cookies too (so you could try clearing them if you don't have any VPN activity)?

this guy fluffs

Damn, knocking out cancers you didn't even know existed -great update!

I do appreciate these news posts given not everyone can see each game, thanks!

If Req's idea is implemented, can we have a spy op that infiltrates the markets and recalls one (or some portion) of those instances of goods?

I really liked your Fiesta server idea!

Edit - adding link for those who didn't see it before: https://earthempires.com/...server-48393?t=1689137247

Yeah, I'm flabbergasted at the prices, but I know a lot of the top players do tech starts on primary given you can't rely on it (and they may sell some to finance their rebuild), but wow.

what we do in the shadows

Even if you have enough tanks, it looks like he still attacks, but just switches to GS.

Not cool and not appreciated. I know you have a deep respect for Tmac, and a group of us from Evo have had a lot of fun and accomplishments with you here and on Team since you've been back - if you respect that, you should respect the Evo tag, even if it's players that have wronged you before.

Apparently, he hates margaritas, happy times, thundercats, and uh.. *checks notes* dogs. Wow, blackhole, you really do suck the joy out of everything! (gravity humor!)

No one is selling for $99...

I play with my kids and it seems really basic compared to MTG but I haven't played that in decades. I'm sure they both focus on pushing the meta with every new, frequent expansion though so maybe that's just how it goes now.

Anyone need a def ally?