I feel that now is a good time to share my philosophy towards the game along with a personal development roadmap. My goal is to create and maintain fun experiences for players. I view the three key elements of Earth Empires to be diplomacy, conflict, and market activity. To further explain what I mean by that, below is a list of player actions related to each element. Positive examples are behaviors that I view to be inline with the ideal Earth Empires experience. Negative examples are behaviors which harm the game or aren't inline with what I want to see. Neutral examples are somewhere in between.

Positive examples of player diplomacy:
* Finding ingame allies and forming mutually beneficial relationships with other players over many sets.
* Finding and joining a clan that's a good fit for the player.
* Resolving ingame disputes via ingame messaging.
* Clans signing pacts with one another.


Neutral examples of player diplomacy:
* Players tricking another player into leeching tech.
* Clans breaking pacts with another clan.
* Players who cannot communicate due to a language barrier.


Negative examples of player diplomacy:
* NPCs countries cannot engage in diplomacy.
* Players who are unwilling to engage in diplomacy. For example, deciding that the goal of a reset is to destroy another player's country before the reset even begins.


Positive examples of conflict:
* A country landgrabbing another country with the intent to rise in networth.
* A country using spy ops against another country with the intent to rise in networth.
* A clan warring another clan over an ingame issue such as differing retal policies.
* A clan warring another clan in a pre-arranged war to test their skills.
* Country to country wars over ingame issues, such as too many landgrabs.
* Players setting forum grudges via country to country wars.


Neutral examples of conflict:
* A player landfarming another player.
* Players who seek to war bad actors on solo servers instead of aiming for high networth.
* A clan FSing another clan without any provocation.
* A player using last minute attacks on solo servers to increase their rank.


Negative examples of conflict:
* NPCs countries cannot attack or spy other countries.
* Players pretending to be NPC countries in order to force other players into war.
* Players engaging in cross server attacks.
* Players griefing other players.
* Clan server OOP wars under most circumstances.
* Clan wars on the final day of a reset under most circumstances.
* A player "suiciding" a clan under most circumstances.


Positive examples of market interactions:
* Countries specializing their production and getting what they don't produce off the market.
* Countries selling extra goods off the market.
* Appropriately priced goods sell quickly and reasonably priced goods are typically available for purchase.
* Players taking advantage of market inefficiencies with recycling and reselling.


Neutral examples of market interactions:
* A clan using market buyouts to propel a player to first place.
* Market buyouts done on solo servers in an attempt to make a profit.
* Buying out SDI before a clan FSes another clan.


Negative examples of market interactions:
* NPC countries distort supply and demand for the market.
* Players cannot specialize due to insufficient public market supply and demand.
* Market buyouts done solely to annoy other players, such as purchasing all of a technology type so other players cannot buy them.


I think that paints a pretty clear picture of what kind of player actions I believe to be good for the game and what kind of player actions I believe to be bad for the game. As much as possible, the admins want to facilitate the positive examples by creating an appropriate set of rules for each server. Personally, I would like to allow the neutral examples as much as possible as well. However, some neutral actions may be disallowed or discouraged in the effort to prevent the negative examples. You may note that the NPCs currently negatively contribute to all three core areas of the game. That was our mistake as admins and one of my biggest development priorities is improving the NPC code.

Better NPC code is the foundation for a lot of the development efforts that I hope to add to the game on a medium time frame. These include:

1) Better functioning markets on all servers except Primary.
2) Resolving the core issues affecting diplomacy, conflict, and the market for Express.

Please note that just because something isn't listed here doesn't mean that it isn't being worked on. I'm not the only admin and everyone is focusing on different things right now.

One last thing to discuss is the negative examples that cannot be resolved with better NPC code and cannot be resolved in a reasonable matter with coding, guardrails, or server rules. I understand very well that different players have different ideas in terms of what should be considered to be a negative example. At the end of the day, the admins are going to be strongly biased against behaviors that drive players from the game. I do not believe that a player with bad intentions who drives ten other players from the game is more important then the ten lost players. I kindly ask players who view most of the negative examples listed here as acceptable to evaluate why you choose to play this game. There are millions of free games out there to play. This may not be the right game for you.

I fundamentally disagree that I ever will have any desire to get attacked by a bot in this game. And I think of this current moment in the games history as enjoyable because it is the only time I've ever played where I wasnt getting shrekked by bots.

And I still think clan GDI bones the warclan and doesnt prevent suicides for us at all. We had a suicider ruin a players 2 months just last week and nothing I've seen suggested or at least accepted that addresses that.

I think you're correct about MOST positive/negative/neutral interactions (again.... really just not into having a bot hit me. Like at all. I've had enough of that haha), but implementation will need to be hyper player focused. I might not play a game where I'm getting suicided as a wardog and getting hit by bots netting. That's going to be a tough sell for me. I'm just being honest. Because if bots drop missiles or something and it is done at random, winners will win based on randomness and not skill. And if I get suicided more warring it may ruin both aspects for me.

That all said, every change you've made so far I've been super happy with and feel like it improved my experience massively. I'm a bit miffed about what the future holds but the road there has been one of marked improvements so I'm along for the ride. We'll see where it takes us. And if there's anything I can help with, I'm easy to find.

Different servers offer different playing experiences and players will continue to have some say in what the NPCs do. For FFA, right now my thinking is that NPC countries should not retal players just because FFA players already have to manage 16 countries. On Express, NPC countries definitely need to fight back. For Alliance, it's hard for me to view grabbing NPC countries without any risk of reprisal as a good playing experience. If there is no meaningful diplomacy, conflict, or market play for alliance netters, then what is left of the game? Why not play in a spreadsheet? Attacking a country that will never hit you back goes against the natural order of things and it distorts the market.

Under current plans, avoiding NPC country attacks will be as simple as not attacking them. If that changes in the future, we will be very clear about which servers allow NPC countries to attack players unprovoked.

I will say farming bots with no risk is tedious and not what I would consider a fun playing experience.

I'd be interested to hear more about your thoughts re repurposing Team server. If it had the same set length as Alliance I would be interested in moving there.

Sounds like good ideas.

It hasn't been fully planned out, but yes, it would have a similar total turn count to Alliance. Resets might be faster than 60 days.

I agree requiem, but I also fail to see how a bot attacking me creates meaningful diplomacy. People are still going to farm the bots and not players...I think obviously.

The main people I've spoken to advocating for it just want them to bounce a hit here and there and keep netters buying some defense. Slag wants them to occasionally suicide tho which I think does not increase player on player diplomacy or conflict. Like, you and I wont have any less or more conflict if a bot suicides me.

I agree they need balancing market wise. Sure. There's a lot that can be done to make them better. But I dont see how having a bot attack me solves any core issues. And if they missile me theres even less of a point of trying.

But mostly it will literally change nothing. People will still farm bots in the same tedious way, but some of them will ruin your set instead of some idiot playing the game. And again, I'd rather be pissed at a player than a bot because you know....diplomacy and that.

I mean honestly. My vision of how this is executed actually makes war significantly worse, traps suiciders into hitting only war tags, while bots ruin sets and the winner is decided just on luck of the draw on how bots retal. If one of the techer bots decides to missile me netting, it can literally destroy half my country and this is better gameplay? Than what?

Wow I'm so grateful Salty Jacob Stormbeard suicided me instead of chevs or macdaddy my experience is so improved.

At least I was mad at human beings and trying to make diplomacy before. Not just sitting around pissed because I got ruined by a salty Jacob. Friggin salty Jacob.

Found a game you might like.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel

Slagpit has a great point. Taking out the human interactions and farming bots with predictable market actions turns this game into boring asf excel game.
Who wants to spend 20 mins a day bashing the attack button in a 60 day reset. Adding a new unknown is a great option. Hell earthquakes can ruin a reset already.

Maybe I'm missing the point.

How does adding bots attacking humans increase human interaction? I'm over here assuming bots are not humans...

Like the players will attack each other more because bots retal or what?

Yall sound like underwear gnomes. It's like

STEP ONE, BOTS SUICIDE YOU
STEP TWO .....
STEP THREE, MORE HUMAN INTERACTION

I don't see at all how you're getting from step one to three. In fact, things like clan GDI and such seem to desire to pull us further from human interaction. I agree the game needs it, and I think this actually achieves the opposite. Fracturing the player base does the opposite by splitting us down war and net lines rather than those being matters of diplomacy.

I prefer that you're able to hit me netting if I'm running my mouth to you hawk. I think you do too. You can't say you're attempting to increase human interaction while effectively doing the opposite and just say HUMAN INTERACTION 10 times and make it so. This isnt Beetlejuice.

I'm trying to imagine a scenario in any circumstances where having a robot attack me increases my human interactions. Maybe someone goes "hey derrick you got missile dumped by a techer bot your sets over." I guess that's a human interaction, right? Like the guy who tells me I got hit talked to me lol.

I play earth because it is a skill game. If you take away the skill aspect and add randomness it becomes less enjoyable period, unless you add more human interaction, which I dont believe this does.

Players making choices about what it means to adequately defend their country improves the conflict aspect of the game and will hopefully result in a better functioning public market. Someone won the last set of Primary on 60k acres without GDI. If players can successfully avoid retals from other players then they can certainly avoid them from NPC countries, if they wish to do so.

So could we assume bots will only hit back if countries are running inadequate defenses?
Would that also include sdi?

I think they would bounce hits, but they'd still send them.

The way I've been led or perhaps misled to understand it, is that they might use ABs, they might use missiles, they might farm you. The plan is not just like a 1:1 retal that bounces if you have defense. It's far far more random than that.

So like if I hit a techer bot, and roll a 1 on a d20, it will flatten me with all 60 of its missiles. My sdi will stop around 40 haha.

BlueCow, you seem to be on the fence. I'd ask why? How do you feel like this will improve your experience or increase interaction? I'm clearly missing something that maybe youd be better at explaining to me than anyone else lol. A bit surprised youd lean towards clan GDI over fixing war, and bots suiciding over players being able to.

I'll play it and try it and could be totally wrong. But it looks to me like the opposite of more human interaction and playability. Decreasing or eliminating suiciding/war situations for netters while simultaneously increasing bot interaction seems seriously the opposite of that.

This just seems like the wonkiest of ways to fix the market. Idk.

The idea is that players would make the same calculations as if they were attacking another player. Does the potential target have a lot of tanks, jets, or missiles? If so, maybe someone else would be a better target. Deliberately exploiting gaps in NPC code is not how we want the game to be played.

How do you want the game to be played? Particularly for a war player like myself? Having bots hit me will take away from the war, lowering the quality of my human interactions. Clan GDI will isolate suiciders against war players increasing a problem we already have, while also disallowing me from diplomacy wars with half the server. My prospects for something other than a friendly war with sof every set are already thinning, and people are already tired of that. And they're also tired of being suicided throughout the set already.

I feel like I've come up with a million different ways to meet war players in the middle on this, but there just isn't a desire to hear us. I can say without a doubt clan GDI will improve my netting experience and ruin my war experience. As far as bots attacking me.....just no. It doesn't improve anything for me. Turrets sell for 140 instead of 110 and C/I is still not viable at high acres due to expenses. It doesnt even succeed in rebalancing that, it just makes a couple MUs more expensive which jets sell fine and CI is still trash because the expense formula bones.

I think your heart is in the right place man, but I'm telling you as a war player this looks bad for us. And I find it sort of shocking BlueCow disagrees with me considering his playstyle. Either I'm confused or he is because it totally takes away from ~half of his playstyle.

Actually doubling team turns per day compared to alliance is a good solution if your going to allow kills. Because it makes it a lot easier to get kills with only 5 people in a system that restricts killing outside formal wars.

My preference for team has always been just disallow kills to stop the barrier from entry being as high and reduce reward for collusion between teams. And its nice to have different servers where something isnt possible.

Some solo servers are still good options for a server where killing isnt allowed though that would be more to save moderation effort.

But this is a good alternative

I agree with almost all general points in this roadmap.

When it comes to bot retals I share most of Derricks scepticism depending completely on the implementation. Given how difficult it may be to get a proper implementation, how much work and how risky it is that you get the balance wrong and it just makes the game unplayable I dont see the risk-reward to be favorable.
I do see that in theory a decent implementation could improve the market and make certain other aspects of the game more interesting.

The only way such an addition could be any type of improvement is if the code offered the players a counterplay. There are so many ways you could go wrong with this.

Like if the bots will stock for 13 days to suicide your fluff at random for a single tap thats a good way to ruin the game by offering 0 counterplay to the player who's only options would be to rely on luck, all-exp or just tanking the suicide and trying to win anyway.

If the bots decide at random but by probabilities based on how many times you hit it compared to the others that have hit it in a certain time-frame that this time it owes you 1 AB(or other attack type at random) and it sends its tanks on you, that is a good coding because it offers me two obvious counterplays:
1) I can make sure I am not the only hitter on a bot and that others have hit it more than I.
2) I can make sure that particular bot can't break me by spying it and defending myself properly by getting more tanks than that bot can send.

It would also make sense since logically players also should want to retaliate on the person hitting them 5 times more so than the player who hits them once - bots should act the same way in this regard. This is critical.

-----

Some people express themselves as, and I'm paraphrasing, 'you are just abusing the bots' as if that is a bad thing. Back in E2025 I abused players, I still do in primary. It's a major part of the game there still. The bots were added so that we don't have to abuse players. The bots are there for us to abuse. Now with that in mind; The bot code and how they retal should definatly be abuseable, that is half the point of their existance if not more, the other being to bring liquidity to the market. If bot retals make the market better and perhaps increase the complexity of grabbing them it can be a good change that forces players to make more complex decisions, but in order for that to be the case there has to be decisions that are right, in terms of grabbing them. Decisions that end up with the player not being retaliated successfully/hard based on what the player does, and not only random chance.

The bots are there in order to improve players game experience, and for the most part does so already even if they are imperfect in many ways. It's important to not lose sight of this.

Derrick, of all people. I feel like you have the brain type to see this is a new challenge. But you are focusing on the wrong thing in my opinion. I get it, nobody likes change when they have mastered aspects of the game. Initially it's a pain to figure it out again.

But now is a chance to create, understand, define, master, and DOMINATE at a whole new set of rules. I can think of a dozen effects that this small change will have and how I am going to personally exploit it (or at least try). This is back to the ways of old and I think its going to drive more interest. The people who still play probably don't do it for the game play, but the people that left probably left because of the game play.

I enjoy having 500k acres and 1m+ oil a turn in FFA, but I am excited to see how this is going to change how we play. Who knows what the next dominant strategy is going to be. I do know its not going to be a zero defense FFO that grinds its way to the most land in a safe tag.

I say well done, Slag. Shake it up. Improve it. Appreciate the inclusion and understanding what is happening. Gives me the warm and fuzzies.

Derrick - you know where to find me. I'd be interested in debating why this might be a cool thing vs. why you think its not going to be. A man can only drink lemonade every day for so long. Sometimes you just want a damn liter of cola.

FFO will still dominate because techer bots have 40 times as many missiles as farmer bots. It wont be chance that techer bots will be 40 times more likely to missile you, making the building less viable to grab and the strat less viable to run.

Getting rid of oil destocking will reduce the FFO narf but also significantly reduce oil's inherent value. So you might see more farm centric FFO's, but it will still be the best production strat by some margin. And I think techers will actually be less competitive.

Until the expense formula is fixed C/I will remain nonviable as well. I think it would actually reduce strategic parity.

pfffft, that is why I said ZERO DEFENSE. Nooblet. Talk to me on discord. Or else this post will be 500 messages by tomorrow.

I just see new and unique problems no matter how it is looked at. I see this as causing new players to get shrekked by bots while vets skate because they know exactly how to hit them and not get hit back increasing the barrier of entry to newbs and casuals, lowering the experience of the majority to benefit the few.

Either way, I think it is near impossible for me to believe that clan GDI in combination with bot retals won't fundamentally destroy the war experience and the need for diplomacy for a 30 dollar increase in turret price and a netter still eating missiles. *shrugs*

I honestly just believe the way to improve the experience for both killers and treehuggers is to make kill teams able to kill suiciders preemptively by forcing a war clock into the wars. We dont improve and grow the community by splitting it into half of two sides that dont even need to communicate, and one side not even getting their side to be playable.

We increase the community thru the need to intermingle not making an isolationist competition against the bots.

The following scenario will not be programmed into the NPCs:
1) A player grabs a CI NPC country
2) The NPC country switches to 100% tank production
3) 10 days later, the NPC country does 50 ABs on the player country

So.. What if a player grabs a CI bot that has more production anyway and it already has enough tanks to break and does so and sends 10 AB's on a player with say 300 CS?

Please keep discussion focused and on topic in this thread. If you have an unrelated gameplay change suggestion then create or TTT a thread on B&S.

Bug: if a player does too many offensive actions in too short of a period of time towards a country with more tanks then it may find itself getting ABed, just as a player would do.

Can you respond to me at all please? I know you're reading what I say.

You've posted 13 times in this thread. I only have so much time to respond to player feedback. There's a lot of other work that needs to be done.

Well. At least you can't claim war players arent offering suggestions again because you have 13 posts of it here.

I won't lose faith that at some point you'll understand that its equally as bad to get suicided and blindsided as a wardog as it is netting, and that fixing that for everyone instead of half of the community is the best path forward. I can't force you to understand that, I can only try to explain until I'm heard.

Gerd raises some particularly good points about the important role bots play in improving the game experience. Under Slagpit's examples, I would categorise 'bots not being able to retal' as a positive example of conflict. As someone who is time poor, I just want to log in, play my turns, and quietly net. For me, it's a positive knowing there are NPCs I can abuse without going into conflict with the player base. If these proposed changes cause too much effort/uncertainty I can see myself stopping botgrabbing entirely, which then leaves all-X, which I can't see myself playing for too many sets.

Interesting discussion.:)

I expect that some grab rules will be implemented for NPCs to prevent major F*ups. Nevertheless something will go wrong at the beginning and I hope it won‘t be with my country. But in general, I think it is a good idea.

However, as I am also time poor quite often, I would prefer if only a part of the NPCs are retalling e.g. 50%. That way I do not have to spend too much time grabbing safely every day and if there is a bad behaviour of retalling NPCs I can avoid them/you can delete the countries with hopefully not too much harm to the reset as non-attacking NPCs remain.

Thanks for your efforts!

Market activity?

How about vastly reducing the price controls on items?

Especially at the end of the set

How am I supposed to setup to recall wall if I can't even place troops on the market at a price without them selling?

Never had this issue in the past because I could sell things like troops, turrets etc for over 12,345$ per unit

Now as a dict in 1a max sell price is under 400$ which is being instantly bought

But don't worry u can still sell oil over 2500 per barrel

Yep totally makes sense

The sale price limit is calculated in a really weird way imo, I can agree with that part and I would like to see it changed as well.

However, this is not even remotely new and so the player has options to recall and sell again so the walling troops dont get bought by the bot destock which is the same time every reset. The onus has to be on the player to learn patterns and adapt to the environment and the mechanics and at some point in time long after a change was made the responsibility for a play with counterplay has to lay at least partly on the player, no?

But no I have to have 100m turrets 20m tanks, 80% SDI as a netter or I deserve to be suicided, while warriors cant even learn to plan for the bot buyout of the public market in what 2 years? I warred 3 sets in a row in 1a very recently and it was super easy and super chill. You got outplayed by bots.

I expect you to never suggest a netter should have had more defence when they get suicided ironx, hahahaha.

I couldn't read what you wrote

Your tears made it illegible

All I'm saying is that clearly less than 400$ per unit as a max price for military is BS

I have stated this before (just not recently) and it fell on deaf netter oriented developer ears then when this change was made, gee it sure looks like history is about to repeat itself again.

It was a dumb change then and it's still a dumb limit now

Also for the record.

I didn't get burned. You know me better then that

I only wish I could have sold them for double because they would have sold for double as the market was totally empty

So much for "free" market, Venezuela has more transparency then this game

You are the one crying all over AT and in this thread that the bots outplayed you.

its pretty odd to have a war still evenish and ongoing during the last few days of the set

and then its not every set you get empty market either, seems like a pretty big outlier condition

The highest ever price for a troop sale on the market was $402 over the full history of the Alliance server. It was never possible in this game to sell military units for $12345 per unit. There have not been any recent changes in this area to my knowledge.

yeah its always been capped, i think it might have decreased by 25% at one point but that probably wouldnt stop 'hidden troops for walling' being boughht at this point anyway

theres sets when netters cant even put oil on the market to hide it from oil stealers and that market cap is way higher than mil

typically oil+food are only a problem very late in the set once humanitarian restrictions kick in though