http://primary.www.earthempires.com/spyhelp?

"However, tiny countries will not be able to consistently use large spy networks to unreasonably destroy larger countries."

I call bullfluff. A country with about 1/3rd as many spies as me (but the dictator bonus) is having 90% success rate on me right now even after a couple dozen spy ops. He destroyed 50 construction sites with 6 bomb buildings ops, and is getting 15k tech per turn.

How is this reasonable destruction against a country with 5.7 million spies?

I was on the losing end of a spying campaign against a 6k acre 185k spy country against my 18k acres 500k spy country. He was at like 90% success. Very successful even when I figured spy DR would kick in.

They could just change the page to say "Because most of our changes are geared towards making suiciders powerful, small countries with far less spies than you will be able to rip you to shreds with spy ops"

I agree that spy success rate is broken. I've had people succeed about 70% vs. me (over a large sample of over a dozen ops day after day) while having significantly fewer spies than myself, and even a slightly weaker SPAL than myself.

On another note, changes to the special attack formulas were definitely for the worse, as far as solo servers are concerned. This is just silly:

2012-12-31 22:47:13 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 627 C
2012-12-31 22:47:00 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 629 C
2012-12-31 22:46:40 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 631 C
2012-12-31 22:46:33 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 634 C
2012-12-31 22:46:27 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 636 C
2012-12-31 22:46:10 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 639 C
2012-12-31 22:46:05 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 641 C
2012-12-31 22:45:58 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 643 C
2012-12-31 22:45:39 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 646 C
2012-12-31 22:45:37 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 648 C
2012-12-31 22:45:35 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 651 C
2012-12-31 22:45:05 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) DH
2012-12-31 22:44:55 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 653 C
2012-12-31 22:44:47 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 656 C
2012-12-31 22:44:34 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 658 C
2012-12-31 22:44:25 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 661 C
2012-12-31 22:44:18 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 27B 663 C
2012-12-31 22:44:03 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 28B 665 C
2012-12-31 22:44:01 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 28B 668 C
2012-12-31 22:43:59 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 29B 671 C
2012-12-31 22:43:41 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 29B 673 C
2012-12-31 22:43:13 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 29B 676 C
2012-12-31 22:42:28 AB Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) DH
2012-12-31 22:41:28 BR Communalism (#14) The Stand (#202) 29B 678 C

I haven't spied on #202 to see if it's all built, but he has roughly 10,000 land. 29B per hit? That's 0.29% of his land. The need for hits to "ramp up" effectively makes them near worthless on solo servers like Primary but I've said this before. If the goal of the change was to make it harder to do KRs or easier to wall in Alliance, then the change only needed to focus on civs killed in order to accomplish that. Now ABs and BRs in solo wars are either FAR, FAR too weak, or FAR, FAR too strong (if the target doesn't have adequate defenses, all the c-sites die in like 5 hits).

Well, the ramping up changes are intended for Alliance server to mitigate suicider damage where there are a lot more turns, and to make walling more effective (which in turn makes FSes stronger because you will be prepared to wall - a move I did not agree with).

I don't think there is a good way to nerf suiciders on Alliance (which has more turns a day) and yet make war still possible on Primary.

what fun would there be without suiciders? They add spice to the game.

ttt

Different rules for different servers?

So is this why QZ was hit? lol

That line about not being able to unreasonably destroy larger countries is a carry over from 2025, which had a very different spal formula. In 2025 after about 10 ops done the first stage of spy DR would kick in which had a huge networth component. If you had a huge spal but were going after a much bigger country you would go from getting all 10 ops thru, to 2/10 if you were lucky.