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?

Ah, I thought it was down forever - thanks!

Sweet Req, thank you!

All the old techers back at it! It almost makes me want to do one too... but then the market will be even more fluff.

And over 100 countries - congrats!

goo wah wah

I think there was too many spam bots at some point. A mod may come along to confirm and provide instructions (probably message a forum moderator for access).

Is Detmer still playing in PDM too? The nth Golden age of ee may be soon upon us.

I know in the past there was an issue with the email server, but I thought Pang or Qz fixed that. Maybe it's acting up again? If you can jump in discord, there may be someone who can take a look, but I think it's a third party email so I'm not sure how long it could take.

LCN is ranked too high.

Damn, great news! Pretty nice present for the holidays.

Whoa, welcome back!!!

lawl, welcome back

The reasons for wanting ClandGDI are valid, but it cut out all diplomacy from the game, which is the main non-starter in my opinion.

From the griefing aspect, when I thought it just meant someone would have to declare war to attack a country in ClanGDI, it seemed like that could work. Griefers could still hit, but only one person per war declare period. It's still a challenge for the small tags, but now a late start couldn't grab 20 bot farmers, grow to 100k land immediately and cause mass destruction. They could hit one target, get into DR, and likely get taken care of.

From the war aspect, if you had to declare war on your opponent, you would need to make sure you finished them off or you're out of action for the next killrun. If you have 10 second kills etc, then of course you can just declare peace with the dead country and move on to the next. HH and others calling out throttling for attacks is a reasonable place to discuss the speed (and something I thought we'd tried in the past - wasn't their C:C DR for fast attacks at some point?).

But that's not actually how it worked, of course. I think adding a formalized process to war seems like the bigger piece that would need more testing and balancing - so probably should follow the voting of #2 - but maybe there's some middle ground where ClanGDI just means you have to declare war to attack (as long as there is still some cost to it - defaulting back to it being free doesn't make sense). This would still help with one-off suiciders and if you have anyone stonewall in the FS, basically buys your whole alliance a reprieve in locking up those attackers to that one country. Not perfect, but seems like a much easier thing to code, and maybe moves a step in the right direction. You still need diplomacy, war is a part of the game that everyone can be involved in, and individual griefers have at least limited damage potential.

So I'll call this option:
1.5) remove the ClanGDI alliance level aspects until further testing, but bugfix so that if you want to attack / perform hostile ops to a country in ClanGDI, you have to declare war first.

Thanks for your continued development, qz. I think there's a lot of ways to improve this old game (with a hundred differing opinions on how best to do it) but we probably need more incremental progress based on discussions with the community (like this thread - well parts of it) rather than a small vocal group pressing you for rushed, game-breaking changes privately.

Wishing you a happy and hairless Halloween!

Why do you say everyone is crying? You told me not to even think about attacking you or you would "jihad" me because you DH'd and didn't want to be punished. And then I wiped you with my FS while you asked on discord how you were supposed to solo war again, lol.

I always hold out hope that people will accept their retals, so we can get to the destock phase but it's a war game (in primary at least), so people can do as they wish. That said, it's a pattern for Ektar and Chevs where they'd rather ruin someone else's finish once they're bored or have other things in life. Ektar has used that excuse that someone was growing and looked menacing to multitap people in the past, when really he just starts a war and then runs off to his "real life" leaving our virtual lives a shamble like the large, sensitive man that he is (apparently). Chevs just outright lies and says "oops, I didn't mean to hit you twice, go ahead and take the second retal" just so he can break GDI and go to war. Nothing against it in the rules, but most people are going to drag you on the forums for being the non-skilled losers (in virtual life) that you are =Þ

Obviously, we (I kind of speak for AndrewMose and other netters, but mostly myself) have played this game long enough that it's only a minor setback, and most of my comments here are flippant, but being a rep (or even a demo) in primary is like a 50/50 chance you get griefed by someone who has little to gain and doesn't even plan on finishing out their set. So while it's a game, it's akin to someone flipping the board or taking their ball and going home, and it removes a lot of the fun.

Yeah, this actually makes commies notably stronger in the NW range we see in primary, where they didn't really need any benefit. This makes it easier for small players to continue to get farmed with the compounding benefit. It also philosophically seems weird that military would get efficiencies of scale, because if anything (e.g. like corruption in game) it tends to be more bureaucratic and less efficient at size. Is there a reason this type of formula was considered instead of a more simple change to increase the denominator for the NW scaling like has been done in the past? Just bumping the denominator up to 600M would make a significant difference, but only for the top sizes in 1a, where the change was most needed.

Thanks for the update, KoH - hoping for the best!

Pony <3

I agree with Marc... and Derrick, I guess. It's always so funny when conservatives think liberals treat Biden with the sort of deference they put on Trump, because no one wanted him but he's the only option against some very serious existential threats as Derrick noted.

The other piece around political discourse is that it's hard to have a discourse these days. Facts are considered mainstream media parroting and people can twist logic to explain away anything they want to. Discussing big vs small government; what social nets we need at a minimum; how we should prioritize funding for education, healthcare, military, etc were always good topics on the philosophy and goals of us as a people. Now, I think you might actually find a lot of people on both sides agree with the ideas, but they believe the lies (like that Trump is going to save everyone from every problem they have, while not having any evidence of ever following through on the most basic of things - other than stacking the supreme court with the help of the Senate which is devastating and another conversation entirely).

Hybrid/oil is quite expensive in terms of $$/NW, but it shines when military expenses get very high, like at high NW - because expenses are dependent on your NW. On solo servers, FFO is not the preferred destock, but there are many methods which are competitive. On 1a, with all of the bots and high acreage, expenses dominate for top networths, so FFO is the only real way to win (with a few nice techers thrown into the mix on some sets, but they're likely still using oil to destock unless the public market can handle their 1.5B bushels).

Congrats LB.

Chevs RoR's and the whole world starves.

Syko/Karnage: It's pretty funny how you try to say I don't know what I'm talking about and three other people jump in to shut you down, because it's just so clear.

And yeah, you didn't attack with Rokkie - and that's not me "not doing my homework" but because it happened multiple times. Repeatedly.

AndrewMose: Yeah, I saw it was LaF but didn't check that it was Syko directly - but that tracks. I mean, because



that's the narrative. You somehow think Evo was behind every bad thing that happened to you, when Evo was pacted to everyone. Even PDM wanted FDP because of the suiciders going around *cough blackhole*. LaF was looking for any pretense to go to war with us, starting with dropping the pact randomly because of Req, when really it was that tmac set a record which hurt some of LaF's feelings, and their leadership couldn't have that.

Even the FA as I've noted was a pretense, because it was one guy who sent it to SOL / SOF and he even posted on the forums that he expected Gains or Gerdler to reach out for diplomacy as they typically did if it was a problem, and guess what, they didn't. Rather than LaF have any extremely basic semblance of diplomacy, they killed a bunch of non-war prepped countries who did not send the offending FA. And then, by getting killed and actually fighting back with our restarts, you somehow think that makes it okay to grief us more? So by your logic, if Evo was the larger member alliance, we should be able to tag kill you for multiple sets in a row for transgressions by single players, like you and Rokkie? And if you fight back, we'll add on a few more sets. And we'll hit your close allies... uh, so I guess just LaF... but do you see that you're actually worse than the other "block"? I've tried to make it really clear.

TLDR for Req and others - Karnage admits what we've been trying to say all along, LaF didn't want Evo to net if they couldn't net, though they got into the war due to their poor diplomacy and then continued to fight it of their own volition (OOP FS FTW), and then refused to admit they lost but also whined they couldn't net, until they cried for development to let them save face to the detriment of every other player.

Derrick - I think most people are just ignoring you? The rest of us agree with KoH that this is the worst server, so we're not debating him. We all know he's right.

Great question, BH!

No, it ruined the game. I'm saying LaF are hypocritical sacks of fluff who lack diplomacy, want rules for others that they don't follow, and pushed for changes that selfishly benefitted themselves without any thought to the impacts on the server as a whole. *winky face to show that I'm passive aggressive but chill* Mostly I only post to combat the misinformation that their dumbest members keep spouting, because I have officially stopped playing all servers now.

You are so delusional. "You are obviously missing the point." Again. LaF is the one that wouldn't let Evo ever net again. 1 person sent aid beyond mercs (which was explained and accepted by LaF) and then no diplomacy was offered before they killed all of the netters in Evo (except for the two ex-LaF players that we took in). Then in each set you were at war, if you couldn't net, you didn't want Evo to net. And you didn't even want Evo to net on other servers. You targeted AndrewMose repeatedly in team and 1a even though he never sent any FA, doesn't discuss politics in any form, and just wants to net. Gerdler even reached out to him with an olive branch, but you (Rokkie, Karnage) dumb fluffs didn't want him to have success if you couldn't have it. ClanGDI finally allowed him to run a single set without your griefing, all because you're not honorable and are trying to ruin the game for people, and as KoH noted - this server is the worst (which many on this thread are saying is due to LaF and ClanGDI) - and many other servers have dropped their players counts dramatically. But as long as you're happy, that's all you really care about, so... congrats?

Karnage: Like you suiciding on Evo randomly for multiple sets after any connection with the war, just because you can? I always find it so funny when LaF tries to use honor as a basis for their arguments.

Yeah, I mean the 85 AB's was certainly reason for a kill - the history part is if you're going to get killed anyways.

Also side note, some people might jump in on kills near the end to try and pad their all time server stats, though that's probably a bit rarer.

I'm with BH on this.

That's happened with me as well, but it certainly depends. I retal'd SF and he was cool with it "but damn, why'd you have to hit me back so hard?". I retal'd Symba and he RoR'd and then I escalated and got killed (with him phoning it in from an overseas airport). The next set we made up.

I absolutely think 85 AB is a great response to 3 LG's given your history, but also, the main way to make it stop is to have a full team that has diplomacy / an outright DNH. It's not perfect, but the other suggestion had been for you to change your name (just to make it harder to quickly identify you), but a solo tag doesn't earn tag protection on its own, and now that teams is the only server where you can actually war, it seems less likely that the "live and let live" mindset will flourish here without getting direct agreements with every other team.

I know you certainly have good reasons to distrust some people on these forums, and lumping everyone together in your arguments certainly makes it difficult to make any broad generalizations. That said, I'd like to state that outside of farming newbs, I was never awful, even long ago, and I have told the truth with as much reason and as little bias as possible. And while I'm biased, these things are true. Here's the thread where Gerdler called himself fartboi bragging about the SF kill.

https://www.earthempires.com/...-no-re-50846?t=1649337409

It's actually pretty humorous, and of course SF, was excited for the challenge, but didn't find out it was actually Gerdler behind everything until much later, when his profile showed who he was. I think there was another issue surrounding all of that, but the details are fuzzy, something about Gerdler trying to convince SF that Gains was spying on them, but instead it was Rokkie (who you may recall more recently suicided Evo after detagging LaF). I'm sure Coalie has a screenshot of it somewhere.

BH:

Oh man, I remember that time when Gerdler got to tourney game A and then he solo killed SuperFly OOP, and then used a secondary forum name to taunt him about his kill and did not come clean on who was behind it. That guy, such a funny friendly dude, who spent months and months to get to tourney so he could grief another player and then taunt him on the forums anonymously. lawls. And that wasn't some long ago example, this was just a few months before all of the recent wars. Then he spent the next several months war prepping under various names in tourney for SF to return and then attacking netters who started their jump because, hey, he sacrificed his networth to run high SPAL, so why not make use of it randomly. This is a war game, right?

I mean, wasn't G the one saying he'd never surrender and that the war would go on? It seems relevant to the continued warring if both sides' leadership are unwilling to budge. Also, the whole time I'm pretty sure he was hating and trying to manipulate people on discord himself (or at least I saw multiple chats where people shared his sad attempts), so it sort of renews the focus. Nothing is done in a vacuum. That's the whole point about LaF being poor diplomats, and having to rely on the devs to save them. "You can have a pact with us, but you have to promise to never say anything critical of us on the forums"... wow.

Feeling cute, might AB some buildings later...

Pretty impressive fireworks from a number of countries this set. Diplomacy / good target choice will absolutely decide top countries with the player base this small.

Very nice finish in a weird set!

Hope your energy levels are starting to improve!

I'm not here

That's notably less land than the last two sets where they hit about 30M NW. Do you think it was just a great commie set, or do you think top NW is going to be much lower than we've previously seen with the lower country (and land) counts?

Yeah, that's why I was guessing it was the same person (it's a good theme, so that is more in keeping with the spirit).

Well congrats for your win last set! Two really nice reps at the top given the land. It'll be interesting to see how you convert your land advantage this set given the grabbing.

Yeah, premium players can change their name in protection, which I view as a bug given the spirit of the server (e.g. the name is meant to carry over).

Hate from people here or on reddit?

I guess we didn't do this last time - I was just noticing that the top land rep this set seems to be the same player (going by Wind, so a guess), though there's been some shenanigans at the top in the news. Congrats to those in the mix for the close finish last set!

There were 19 countries in game A the Tournament server.

Rank Country Land Networth Special
1 Earth (#4) 15,040 $35,998,381 RG
2 Ufo full of nefilim landed (#5) 15,558 $35,418,314 RG
3 Ippon (#1) 41 $34,739,509 HG
4 Dun Bhlathain (#11) 20,221 $29,755,307 CG
5 p h i l t r e (#17) 18,952 $29,653,466 CG
6 Swamp Guardians (#2) 14,305 $23,446,997 HG
7 Yodal33t (#18) 20,241 $22,427,427 RG
8 Finite Simple Group of Order Two (#14) 15,428 $20,747,389 CG
9 Skol (#7) 13,996 $18,020,577 HG
10 I Braineater (#16) 9977 $17,962,465 HG


There were 23 countries in game B the Tournament server.

Rank Country Land Networth Special
1 Dead Poets Society (#9) 13,209 $29,197,704 RG
2 serra ab comme de la merde (#13) 15,358 $21,297,862 FG
3 Oops (#12) 101 $20,984,709 HG

There were 23 countries in game C the Tournament server.

Rank Country Land Networth Special
1 Feyenoord (#2) 16,921 $23,602,726 FG
2 ASTRAL (#6) 15,322 $18,304,538 CG
3 splat (#19) 16,676 $14,527,053 CG

Preemptive request to mods to allow topping of old threads if there are good reasons (like this one, and the Fiesta server enhancement request).

Oil was very unstable. I was going to buy it up to help with a hybrid for Cath, but then couldn't get past $165 with the volumes. I then wound up reselling most of that for $270 just a few days later.