But, my understanding of gdi is that its supposed to aid your country from larger countries. While, in its current form it only serves as a pleasant way to block special attacks and harmful ops. When I get farmed by someone 3 times my net, what are the real odds i can ever retal? Sure i could build up and bla bla, but they are 3 times the acres of me so they have a financial output far superior to mine. So, is there a point to anyone outside the top 50 to even continue playing the server? I feel like outside the top 50 makes you a server farm, and if you get hit 5 times a day, a recovery seema implausible. Just some thoughts.

GDI has a different purpose on this server.

Yea, to protect from specialized attacks and ops. But, where does that leave new players to the server?

The point is not to be able to retal every hit or not. It's to learn from your mistakes and failures to get better and then you can try to advance into the top group of players. This is a much more individually competitive server as opposed to alliance, where you can hide in a tag behind the rules agreed upon by the masses and never have to worry about getting better because nobody is allowed to hit you.

It's all about what you enjoy.

Some people like to interact with their clan mates and run a lazy country, or prefer to sit low and stock while their alliance protects them, or love to war together on Alliance Server as a team. That's great if that's what you want. If you want to tough it out through the trenches and emerge on top of a solo server where everyone is on their own. That's fine too. That's why there are all these dif servers.

I suppose i could be looking at it wrong, i prefer a fighting chance is all. Primary is being played completely different than every other server. That confuses me more than anything i think. Owell, just my thoughts.

It's not played much differently than the other solo servers

Express and tournament play entirely different, from day one. Express is closest i think, but even with marginal similarities the bottom 50 on express aren't farmland.

crow,

I once felt the same way. I've been playing this game on and off for over ten years it seems and was always getting farmed by the top players. And yes you are right, you can't have a fighting chance when you are getting popped on a daily basis.

But I decided to change tactics and mimic what the upper guys do. It all boils down to getting out of the gate quickly, attacking for growth, and attacking for more growth.

And did I say attacking for more growth?

Though I'm not a top ten player yet, I can manage some top 30 finishes most sets...

Hang in there!

EGG

I think Serp nailed it. My first five or so sets were so frustrating. Hell, my first 2 sets I was running rainbows not having a clue, but just by watching and reading the Wiki and forums I realized what not to do and started getting farmed less to the point that its actually fun now. Although I got super farmed last set so that wasn't fun. waaa

also, what is up with dr on primary? im at a higher than average dr and im still losing closer to 400 acres a hit.

Yes they are, check their DR. They're always all in heavy DR. Same with Tournament, in fact in Tourney if someone is weak enough I might hit them 10 times.

Nothing is up with DR in Primary, but remember attacks fade off every 24 hours.

http://wiki.earthempires.com/...x.php/Diminishing_returns

shouldnt dr cause diminishing returns, ill toss it out there that my last hit when i was at 4 dr netted the attacker close to 400, which is above average the other attacks.

Few things:

1. It's usually after you are in DR 5 that grabs become smaller. Also the amount of land someone grabs is based on your NW and their NW as well as their military strat. So a guy that's near you in NW with high military strat will get a lot more acres than a guy 3x your size w/ very few military strat, even if guy 1 hits you at DR4 vs guy 2 who hits you at DR3.

2. GDI in primary DOES prevent you from being farmed. Look at alliance server, untaggeds are ALWAYS at least DR5, they get about 2 seconds where they aren't before someone comes in and farms them multiple times again. In primary Have some tanks/missiles and it'll deter ppl from hitting you more than once.

3. Don't worry about how the rules aren't helping you, rather figure out how to use the rules to maximize your country. It's not that the top players don't get farmed, it's that they figured out how to get on top first and stay there. It's the same thing in life, you can spend your time/effort hating on ppl who are successful or you can spend it figuring out how they got there and how you can mimick their strategy. You have to earn your way to the top, sadly no one's going to give you handouts in earth or in life.

4. That being said, message some top players running your strat and ask them for help. I did that just a few sets ago (and still do) and learned a lot about what I was doing wrong. I finish top 25 easily now.

Lol im not hating on anyone, just making observations. Yes i played a bad set, but anyone that loses 4500 acres in 3 days will of course be kind of annoyed. I personally feel dr is worthless on primary. If the top 5 all attack me same day, they each get 500 acres, plus ghost. Again, just my thoughts. Any help is welcome, but im by no means upset at the people being winning or what have you. Props to them for understanding the workarounds.

The thing though, is that if you are in 3 or more DR, I'll rather not attack you, and leave your country for the next day. :P

It's like 300a more land at this stage of the game.

LOL..this is a pyramid scheme! We should write to the GDI Committee to fix the corruption!

^^this guy gets it lol

This is my first set. I got grabbed 25+ times in the first month but by having high weapons, going dict and then spending my stock on a healthy amount of jets and turrets I've managed to climb to close to 20k acres.

I'm not going to be close to a top 10 but it's recoverable :]

Last set I fell down a bit and got grabbed a bunch and got caught in that cycle but I pulled myself out by making a lot of retals. Wasn't a great finish, 17th place, but I was grabbed 23 times (14 successful, heh)

I think that was like 4 days for me this week, im thinking i will stick the set out and see what i can make of it. I atleast know everyone in my score range now has wayy more land than i do ha

And grabbing from the top will already be slowing down.

Stock tech & less bushels!

Good point, I need SDI anyways.

What Serpentor said!

Only because you didn't join GDI lol.

I think they need to drop the GDI garbage. If somebody hits me I need to be able to strike back-and if they're three times my size and it's futile for me to retal-so be it I want to retal anyways.

If they are 3x your size, you CAN retal...

Really? I had 1.5 mil net worth and was attacked by somebody with about 4mil net worth. I tried to fight back and it said "Your army refuses to go against an opponent who will slaughter them"

That means you aren't sending enough military. I forget what the formula is, but if you undersend by too much it gives you the slaughter message. The 4x limit says humanitarians won't let you attack someone that big.

"Your army refuses to go against an opponent who will slaughter them" is a message you will see if you are sending an amount of units that is so ridiculously low that the attack will definitely fail.

While I don't know the exact numbers for this, I think it means you are sending less than 1/6 or 1/10 the amounts required to actually get a successful attack.

I believe it is 1/8.

I thought it was 1/4

words of wisdom

damnit! LATC, make #3 more concise! its too long for me to use as my signature! lol

haha how's this: "Don't complain. Assess & adjust."