I know this has been mentioned before, but I truly believe that the next big change to this game should be the establishment of a land market. After playing this game on/off for the last couple years, it's clear that (at least in alliance), the biggest problem in the game is issues with land and ways people deal with that issue. Although a land market would not by any means solve the land problem, it will bring a new facet to the game. Consider the following (from alliance server perspective):

1. Let's face it. Land basically determines who will win NW titles. To have one aspect of the game dominate so much is not a good thing. The lack of land is a real problem from a netting perspective. Basically, the ones who win in alliance are either landtraders taking advantage of ghost acres or those who spend the most time camping for DRs. Neither type of player is really "good for the game".

2. A land market, with the proper institutional setup, is self-regulating. I have no idea what the going rate for land would be, but I imagine it would be quite high in the beginning/middle of the reset. But a fully functioning market would follow supply and demand, and so to a certain extent will be self-regulating.

3. Wars will still be fought. The concern may be that with a land market, there will be less incentive to LG and less alliance interaction. This is not true. First of all, wars are rarely fought for land reasons nowadays. Secondly, real LGing will actually be more profitable compared to bottomfeeding. I don't know how landtrading will be affected, but that is something that can be explored. It also presents a whole new strategy for war. Instead of killing, massive landgrabbing to fund a war becomes a feasible option.

4. New netting strategies suddenly come into play. A rep or demo land producer maybe? Think of an all-x land producer. With the right market conditions, that strat could be worth playing. Also, suddenly untags/small clans are not so helpless. They can sell their land and fund themselves to retal. How that affects suiciders is another question to be explored.

5. What happens at endgame? Some will sell their land to buy military from the public market. Others will buy land to increase their private market size. Who knows what will happen? But I'd love to find out which strategy pays off more.


With a new way to get land via the market, this will alleviate the tension that exists in this game in which people do unhealthy things (camp DR, landtrade) to get ahead. A casual player will stand a chance in this game if they play the right strategy and work the market. That's way more fun than sitting their hoping somebody doesn't put your untag in DR, and it might make me consider playing this game again for real and prevent others from leaving.

Denied!

I'm pretty certain there is a land market already. One that everyone interacts with.

1. Isn't it a good thing that since land as you say it "determines who will win NW titles" that it should be tough to get? Even though I think skill and luck in picking the right strat can compete with land.

2. The cost for land right now is typically high in the beginning/middle of the set, yes.

3. I am currently at war in Tourney and I am funding my war plans by grabbing the snuff out of my opponent. I find this better than killing TBH.

4. When I think of an all-x rep land producer my mouth waters cos I will certainly not be paying him directly to get some of his land. I will rather invest that cash in oil and jets to PS him.

5. No comment.

Untags shouldn't be allowed to play in Alliance. You are either in a tag or you cannot come OOP (cannot play past 99 turns). This will take care of DR camping at least and have alliances really interact instead of hiding behind untags.

Yes but all your responses are mostly geared toward other servers whereas my focus is on alliance. Alliance is probably the unhealthiest server in terms of land. The suggestion has always been that alliances should change their policies, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. My suggestions are for how to improve alliance (and I don't think the changes would hurt the other servers).

1. It is a good thing if land was tough to get for the right reasons. Right now, in alliance, land is tough to get and the ones who get it are either the ones who abuse policies (landtraders) or have no lives. Neither is "good for the game". If land getting involved who can play the best strat or do the best math, then it wouldn't be a problem. But that is not the case in alliance.

3. Very nice. My changes would not change any of that.

4. Again this does not work in alliance because of retal policies. With a land market, buying becomes an option while PSing is still an option. If you feel that the latter is still more profitable, then more power to you.

If untags were not allowed, we would still be in a state of basically all-explore, LG pacts, and landtrading. Nothing would change all that much. There would just be less overall land.

My responses were meant for all servers actually, Alliance included. I don't see anything wrong with the system. I see everything wrong with the players. Even in a perfect system as long as you have the kinds of characters in this game playing it it would still be flawed because people are flawed and people play this game.

The system is OK in my opinion, just hit and take your retals and receive your retals. The punishment for the broken "system" which is a result of flawed policies by the various alliances is the difficulty in getting land.

But then again, no one listen to me. I could care less about the achievements anyone gets in Alliance while hiding behind an alliance, mine included. My 1st set there I was into the 3rd week of the reset sitting on 10k land and ZERO military ZERO SPAL and more cash than I knew what to do with. That impunity would be punished severely everywhere else.

land isn't hard to get, there's been many countries over 100k acres in past sets of alliance.

how they got that land isn't something which is liked by part of communiry.

last time I played landgrabbing strat I got bit over 22k (tight embassy) and as all-x I have gotten usually more than that.

While I think the Land Market suggestion is workable, I also think the following needs to be added for it to be viable:

A) Grabbed acres cannot be sold within 24 hours (similar to not being allowed to drop them)

B) You may not sell more than 1/4 of your acres per sale (like military)

C) Sold land must be empty acres - this forces the buyer to need to build them, and not be able to buy prebuilt buildings. Likewise, a player cannot get rid of land without first paying to destroy the buildings (right now, you can only drop empty acres, not buildings).

D) Private market regen must not scale linearly with the number of acres the player has, otherwise the Theo 0 MB jump will easily become the best jumping strategy by being able to buy a lot of acres and shorten the destock time (assuming the additional stocking time gained will more than cover the land purchase cost). I suggest it will have to scale with number of built acres (not built MBs).

E) With regards to (D), it also might not happen, because players that choose not to destock by private market will simply choose to sell most of their acres once they begin their jump (as they will no longer be spending turns). The land supply might be greater than the land demand, so the PM jump vs public jump still applies.

hmmm
the last time this was suggested a lot of people shot it down.
I'm not against this at all, and Xin raises some good points.

a: 36-48 hrs could be better

b: yep

c: i agree

yes the point is landtrading is not healthy for the game and frankly ghost acres take away from the realism of the game. i would even suggest getting rid of ghost acres in tandem with the land market. at least there is some historical basis for the buying and selling of land (louisiana purchase). not so much for land suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

agree with a, b, and c. not sure about d yet. it depends on what the going rate of land at the end of the reset would be.

i should also add that i think this is much more viable and easier to implement than the land bots idea which has also been tossed around. this actually brings in a whole new set of strategies for playing this game, which will keep the game fresh and exciting.

It does seem a little weird though doesn't it/

Not any weirder than ghost acres.

EE/E2025 has not had a significant change like this probably since the introduction of oil. I think it's at least worth considering and maybe even testing.

bring in bots, not a land market.

I just came back and thought a bit more about this again. A land market can potentially result in a runaway country situation.

A country can buy land to produce more income, which allows him to buy more land at a higher price, to produce more income, which in turn allows him to raise the price of land even more until he is the only country remaining in the server that can afford to buy land.

This is just speculation. The market may correct itself by flooding the land market (if enough players think exploring to sell land is profitable as the price goes up), or it may not.

Interesting.

While this can potentially happen, I think if the price of land is high enough, a lot more people would be selling land. Let's say land got up to $500k/acre. So that is about $50M for 100 acres, which is expensive but not too ridiculous a price to pay given the scarcity of land these days. A landthin rep who explores 48 acres/turn would be earning $24M/turn, which is equivalent to a techer teching 10k tpt at $2400/tech point. I would totally run a 1k rep all-x if that were to happen.

I think this game needs something to spice it up. This just might do the trick!

+ my vote

we neeeeeeed the bot api to be finisheddddddd

I thought about Xin's situation as well.... in fact it was the first thing that came to my mind... ("doesn't land produce income, which now produces land (via the market)"?)

One offset to this will be the need to defend all that land. Assuming market transactions are seen in real time, I imagine these transactions will be closely watched. The buyer will need to have the military to defend the new land and the seller will need to defend their wealth.

If grabbing can yield buildings but only empty acres can be bought, there will still be a tradeoff at some point where it makes more economic sense to grab than buy, especially if your target has the building setup you prefer.

A mechanic-driven offset idea would be to increase the expenses cost/acre as the total acres rises. This would start to introduce an artificial "cap" on the optimal land size for a country which would prevent any one country from hoarding all the land.

Building costs increasing as you grow will keep that in check.

I think you could be right there. I expect Farmers, Oilers and Indies would possibly stock by hitting the explore button instead of the Cash button. At the 500k/acre you mentioned, that would be 3m per turn at the explore rate of 6 acres per turn.

This additional influx of land could prove to be very interesting.

Another possibility is that Land itself could also potentially be used as a stockpile (instead of food), particularly for oilers that do not rely on any particular tech. The land market speculation at the end of a reset might work in the favour of land stocking, or possibly even for Demos reselling food price down to convert it into land, then back into food.

I like how you guys are putting all sorts of makeup on this pig trying to make it a princess. It's still a pig.