masteff

Mmmm... dessert.... best meal of the day. That rings a bell. Your soldiers and scientists quit. So you'd be defenseless but money would go back up. I'll play w/ it in Eta to see if they all quit at once or just a couple at a time until you reach equilibrium. Oh, just took a look at my Eta town... got raided. Had no port so the raider only got 53 wood and 7 sulphur.

I was playing around w/ a town in Eta world... I'll take it negative and see what happens.

http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/sho...ead.php?t=39691 Nearly 2 years ago I created the silly messages suggestion thread on SIF. Today, CH posted that Ascaron may actually use some of those suggestions. This is your opportunity to add content for Sacred 2 and be silly while doing it. Please join the fun!

Actually... while I was having my battles I found this thread which explains that loot is how much you can load in 20 minutes. The trick is that your opponent's trading port can be limiting factor. You must have done raids against people with level 2 trade ports which load 30 goods per minutes (20 minutes * 30 goods per minute = 600 goods). And if DreD comes over to us, seeing as he's already done some talking w/ other alliances... he might make a good choice for diplomat. He'd just have to tell everyone about his change in alliance and how would they like to negotiate with him at his new group. -- There's another reason to join, DreD, we'd actually let you be Diplomat. P.S. - See Knuckles signature... we have cookies!!

No harm, no foul. And w/ my real life stress levels, it really was the right move for me personally... I just needed a few days to decide it on my own. Uh hum. *clears throat* Say, DreD, seeing as you're a veteran Sacred player, who has posts on SIF and Dark, you ought to jump alliances and come play with us. This is a great way we can all stay in touch while waiting for Sacred 2 to come out; you'd be building a home for when it's released in September. Come hang with your Sacred pals! @ everyone - Good news. If you have to change your palace/capital to escape an enemy (for example, you're getting beaten badly and want to make a new capital in a distant corner of the world), your old messages in the Diplomacy screen will NOT give your new location away (as long as you don't send new messages to the enemy). I wasted nearly 1200 wood testing this. Built a new palace, changed my capital and had Llama and Knuckles check their messages to see what did or didn't change. So.... you can taunt away at enemies, then change capitals to get away from them and they won't know where you went (at least from your messages). (By the way, changing your capital destroys your old palace, so don't do this lightly.) (I know, it's an odd thing to test, but ya'll aren't the first to think that I'm eccentric.)

And just to make it more confusing... need to do each test w/ the same number of players in the server, so the experience change from server population doesn't alter the results.

I got out of advertising for online payday loan businesses when my buddies wanted to take the profits and switch to being lenders ourselves. In order to keep places like Yahoo and AOL from blacklisting us, we made sure to comply w/ the rules. But I dealt w/ some people that were offshore and didn't care. When the guy you're selling for says they don't care if you spam, just so you tell them ahead of time so they can monitor the volume... it's a pandora's box of temptation. The poison of the internet is: if we can make a little money with 100 emails, then how much more could we make w/ 10,000 emails or 10 million. And the marginal effort is so small. There's no effort to sending junk emails. You load a list and the program does it for you. It took as much time to send 100 emails as it did 1,000 or 10,000. I tell you where one gold mine is right now (and hence some of the worst crooks): "how to get rich off the internet". That's one of my biggest concern right now. My dad saw me make money on the internet and he's not savvy enough to see the snake oil that's being offered. The point of fraud in some of those is that they post copies of checks they claim are proof of alledged profits. The point of fraud is the lack of disclaimer that results are not typical. The point of fraud is monthly fees for services that provide nothing. (Sorry, venting a point of personal frustration. When your own Dad won't listen to you, what do you do? My step-mother says he's spending $50-100 a month on his credit card on this junk; it's lining other peoples' pockets. [/vent] ) If someone tells you that making money on the internet doesn't take work, ask them why everyone hasn't done it already and then run the other way. Real adverstising takes work to write and design. Real email lists require you to purge databases with opt-out suppression lists. Real websites don't come prepackaged for one low price that goes up if you don't buy it on the day of the seminar.

Sorry, that's as fast as my boats can go. Most trades are [ 2 wood for 1 luxury good ] or [ 1 for 1 on luxury goods ]. So you'd want to offer us 2 woods or 1 crystal for each marble you need. To colonize, you need to research expansion, you can then build a palace and then make a colony. @ Myles - sending the usual welcome package. Wood will arrive first. Some crystal shortly after (waiting on my own supply to hit a ship load). Sent you a note in game.

Alright berkley. I usually send the new players some wood and crystal but I managed to buy some sulphur really cheap so I'm going to take a chance and see what you can do with it. I'm not doing this lightly. I started to say no. I looked at your scores and figure you're at a point that you can either build a good army or put yourself out of the game by going broke. It'll take my boats awhile to get there, so sometime tomorrow you'll have sulphur. You don't have to repay me. Just show us what you can do. If you click on your trading port, it will show when I arrive in game time. Game time is GMT+1.

Yep, I'd agree w/ that statement. My boats had zero effect on the last guy to attack me, strictly troop to troop when attacking by land. And I suppose my situation was a little different since my blockade was part of my retaliation... I locked him in for 8 hours (which is the limit for a blockade, although you can always redeploy). I wanted him to know what I could do if he provoked me again. Hmmm... here's a crazy strategy... zero troops but a bunch of boats. No one for an enemy to kill, but they can't get anything because of the fleet. Might be a way to protect a smaller town. What am I missing? Invasions maybe? (Add to that, the fact that I have a good Generals rating because my main city is heavily armed... so how would an attacker know if that city was defended if I use spies to counter their spies).

Go Indy! Go Indy! Go Indy, Go! Are you using blockades? On the Ikariam board, in a basic-level thread about raiding, it suggests sending a harbor blockade to arrive a few minutes ahead of your forces (of course this takes more work... my blockade took 50 minutes to arrive but my forces only took 20 minutes, so had to wait the difference before sending troops). If your opponent is online, they have a window of time to send their goods away on boats. The suggestion is that a blockade can help prevent this. I also have no idea if your attack forces could be killed in the harbor by defender boats, if you're attacking by sea (it does say they can be turned away, but not if they can be killed).

Opps, Indy beat me to the answer. Edit: Congrats on the victory Indy. So did you take the offer and have you figured out how to accept gold tributes like that? The FAQ or somewhere suggests it's possible but I have no idea how it would be done.

I'll remember that when I start my 4th town. Part of my intended strategy for 3rd town is that it's next to my main town, so can take advantage of it's resources/soldiers/trading post. Can balance my goods easily between them.

This evening I will be launching a wood colony. What? A wood colony? Yep. My crystal island has a highly developed saw mill (115/hour). I'm going to put a colony on that same island and have very little else there.... level 5 town hall, level 7 academy, either a tavern or a museum, warehouse and trading port. That's all. Put the max workers into the saw mill. I'll trade wood daily w/ each of you for goods, maybe 2:1 or 3:1 (wood to trade goods). I'll keep the goods I need and sell the rest. The first load or two will pay for the new boats I'll need. Note: don't transfer your capital to a colony w/out good reason... it demolishes the palace at the first one. I've been testing something and learned the hard way.

Woohoo, welcome to the party. A welcome basket is on the way. Good news for anyone wanting to join us in Gamma... just try again every several days... they seem to reopen the different worlds. Guess it's a bit of crowd control.

Spies 101 Okay, I've been playing w/ spies. First I sent one to Wankers town (after sending a warning to him) because if the spy got caught, then it wouldn't get me attacked in return. And when I got attacked by my neighbor last night, I decided to use a spy against him. Here's a little of what I've learned. The game explains a little. That there's a lower risk of being caught when spying on a larger town (more people to hide among). And if you use your spy too much or too quickly then there's a higher risk. Spies are much faster than troops. It took my spy about 5 minutes to travel where it took my soldiers 20 minutes. When your spy arrives, you can do two things... One, where it shows the name of the town you're spying, you can click it and see the town view of your enemy!! And if you mouse over his buildings, the tool tip shows the building's level. You can know how strong his wall and warehouse are! This is important in knowing how successful a raid will be. Two, you send a spy on a mission. Here's a pic of part of the mission screen. It tells the risk of your spy getting caught while doing that action. The longer you wait between actions, the lower the risk of being caught (the % falls slowly as time passes). The warehouse one is good because you know how much loot you might get in a raid (but be sure to look at what his warehouse level is because of the unlootable portion). Warning: after an action, the risk of being caught goes up (and then slowly falls again). The risk after the action goes higher for each additional action. I'm not sure if waiting days between actions (instead of minutes or hours) would keep the risk from jumping so much each time. Tip: only do a couple of actions before withdrawing your spy. You might get a mission report but the spy might be lost because of the increasing risk of being caught after each additional action. (I'm assuming that if you withdraw a spy and then send him back later, then the risk ladder resets.)

1) I need to focus a while on real life things. Might put my account on vacation mode for a few days. So... I've transferred the Leader position to Llama. A neighbor of Cyclops has applied to the alliance, so you guys need to decide if going to accept people outside of Darkmatters posters. I gave Llama the details. I don't know how you've handled the other games that Dark posters have teamed up on. 2) Wow, if I divert my townpeople to all making gold, it adds up super-fast. I'm better now as long as I don't have to go to war again soon. I also have some experience now using spies, so I'll write up a post on them later. Llama - not sure that even w/ a trade treaty we could trade that far away. I've figured out the distances are island sized grids on the board and it counts in steps x+y (so 2 down and 2 right = 4 distance). Better use of your gold is either to buy things trading cheaply near you (I got 600 sulphur for 10 last night ) or buying defense upgrades for your soldiers (after my little war, I see the real value of those).

Which world did you join, berkley? We're in Gamma. You would have to be in Gamma too to join us. 22:39, town called Grimmhaze, it's one island away from my marble colony. EDIT: I got attacked in my capital by my neighbor, korkus. Killed all 11 of his swordsmen. I'm counterattacking (harbor blockade and pillaging). EDIT 2: I found some sulphur near me to buy. I'm close to having enough wood for a palace upgrade. I'll need to rebuild my gold stock after all this combat and buying supplies. EDIT 3: I pillaged his town and took lots of loot. I'm letting my spy sit in place for awhile before I try to check out his current goods levels. If he's got enough left, I'll pillage him again. EDIT 4: I should have left it alone. Lost most of my 2nd force. Going to build some more ships to sustain my blockade. As long as my enemy has no sulphur he can't counterattack again. Here's a good thread on the Ikariam forum, Implemented or not

Hmm, apparently Gamma's full. I tried Eta and it let me in. Maybe they just didn't have a new world open when you tried? Try again. Sorry you won't be in the same world as us.

I regret to report that my marble colony got raided... http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg258/m...NewPicture2.jpg

Yup, it does indeed go back to normal. Glad to know we can reinforce our own towns w/out problem. Given this is a beta test, I wasn't ready to leave it to chance. Biggest beta problems right now are just the lack of translations in odd places, especially some of the in-game communications.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Wankers. But I guess we really should decide the long-term structure now because whomever is going to be leader will have to invest in upgrading embassies. Not that it's tough to do but it is resources that might have gone elsewhere during critical expansion. By having to put more into defenses and embassies, the leader is committing to taking a slower growth curve. I'd have sent the others res even if I hadn't been leader, so I really shouldn't play that card now. I guess I need you guys to educate me on how serious and involved this alliance stuff is in this style of game. And we need to decide if we're really going to try to grow the alliance outside of people posting on the FDM forum. If this is going to get big and involved, then Llama's ogame experience will be important. If it's just the five of us (or maybe a couple more), then do we care? In a way, I'd be happy to let Llama take over, I could focus on giving Indy some points competition.

Hmmm. So Indy and Cyclops, what do you think on making Llama be the alliance leader? I mainly got it cause I pushed my research and Llama was probably asleep or at work when the time came. I will admit that I have the least experience playing an MMO strategy game like this. The only negative to making it be Llama is that his islands are so remote from the rest of us. (I'll put aside the personal resentment at Dred's presumption that more points means Llama would be a better leader and not a simple fact of him starting the game before the rest of us.) I could also point out... who do we having waiting to get in because we don't have enough dilpomacy points? Fury has a problem not having enough points right now, we don't. Their problem should not influence our distribution of rank. I'll do what's good for the alliance. How do the two of you vote? this is how you beat the computer in Age of Empires on the hard levels... you have multiple computer opponents, let a couple of them stay ahead of you, the computer targets the strongest player (even if it's another computer player), you build your resource base, then... BAM, you take them with overwhelming force. (Though I confess I gave up on Stronghold:Crusaders because I could never beat one map... just couldn't beat the computer's growth rate.) Plus all the res I sent the late comers set me way back but gave them a great jumpstart which was good for the alliance. So I win by them being close behind (or even ahead) of me.

Look out Llama! After noticing that Indy's now 100 points ahead of me, I've decided that I'm above the arbitrary rankings of points... I play only for the thrill of the game. (That and I'm obsessive/compulsive and I don't know that I could make myself stop at this point.) That's what I'm hoping. Figured I'd test now w/ 1 unit rather than us find a big bug later on.

I'm testing what happens when I transfer troops from one town to another (sending 1 slinger to my capital). I know the unit should cost me more upkeep while in transit, but I'm hoping the upkeep will go back to normal once the slinger arrives (it's my own town, why should it cost more to be stationed there?). One really weird thing is that under Military Reports, it shows up that my one city is attacking my other!! We noticed earlier that returning trade ships show up in troop movements. But this is even stranger. I sure hope that my slinger doesn't get killed when he lands in my other town!