The reason hitting your own countries into DR after they make a grab is not acceptable is that everyone acknowledges the right of an alliance to make a retaliation after they've been grabbed.

However, if you are hitting your own countries into DR when they've not made a grab, what you are essentially doing is refusing to acknowledge that other alliances have a right to grab your countries. I could see this stance being acceptable if your alliance had a complete prohibition on grabbing. But how is it possible that an alliance could have some of their countries grabbing other alliances, but they believe that it should not be permissible to grab some of their countries?


Therefore, I suggest that any alliance which permits hitting your own countries into DR with special attacks should be completely denied the right to make any landgrabs against other alliances. They would still be allowed to retaliate for attacks against them, but it is a double standard to grab another alliance while you have countries in your own alliance being protected from landgrabs.

I don't know if this DR conflict will last too much longer here.

"However, if you are hitting your own countries into DR when they've not made a grab, what you are essentially doing is refusing to acknowledge that other alliances have a right to grab your countries"

I am refusing to sit back and encourage them to take a fifteen thousand acre country and attack a fifty thousand acre country.

I will not DR when these people will not be douches. If you blatantly topfeed another country you are refusing to acknowledge their right to keep their land. You, I am positive, believe you have a right to keep your land. This is why you buy defense, this is why you retal. This is why you'd kill me if I farmed you excessively.

Therefore I suggest if your alliance allows topfeeding and doesn't accept L;L retals, then you should be denied the right to tell me I can not DR my own countries.

But if your alliance is willing to put some of its land in a 50k acre country that it puts in DR to keep its land safe, why do you claim the right to take some of my land?

I don't object to alliances putting their countries in DR, just to them putting their countries in DR if they're still grabbing other alliances.

if you allow me land:land retals we would not be having this dicussion.

DR stems from the outright refusal for L;L retals. You got your way on that front (maybe not you, rockman, but the more ubiquitous 'You'), and this led directly to DRing countries into fluff returns (directly is rough, I wans't here to have seen how it went down)

If you took a fifty thousand acre country and hit my fifty thousand acre country, we'd likely both come out well ahead on ghost acres. But this isn't how ya'll play. You take your 12.5k acre country, topfeed, and then come to the boards when we realize DR'ing will maybe prevent this?

we can't self farm, we can't land:land, we can't dr, you (again maybe not you rockman) can't use your sixteen countries to kill a single country then?

why not? this is absurd, everybody will yell. can't use my sixteen countries to run a war chat myself? bullfluff i can't, who the fluff are you tell me i can't? how are you going to stop me, by netgaining away peacefully?

or, on my end, how are you going to stop me, by killing me. you refuse my right to be alive in this game. But i deserve it because I refused to acknowlegde your right to topfeed me?

Braden, you misunderstand me. I'm not arguing against your right to put some of your countries into DR. I'm arguing that if you do put some of your countries into DR, that your whole alliance should lose its right to grab my countries.

If you claim the right to grab any of my countries, then I should have the right to grab any of yours. Putting any of your countries into DR to protect them from grabs denies me this right, thus I think I should deny you the right to grab any of my countries.

I have no problem with you putting your countries into DR IF your alliance never grabs my alliance.

I don't claim any right or want or desire to take a single acre of your land.

if you do not have a country of equal or greater land for me to topfeed back, I now argue you have no right to attack any country with land larger than the fattest country in your tag.

By keeping your acres low you refuse me my right to topfeed you. You topfeed others, it is only fair that others topfeed you.

This is now just getting ridiculous.

Braden - if your alliance doesn't claim any right or want or desire to take a single acre of my land, then I am fine with you GSing yourself into DR. Just make sure you convince your whole alliance to not claim any right to my land.


If you had actually read my post, you'd see that I linked putting DR on your own countries with grabbing someone else's countries. I never made any statements about putting your own countries into DR for alliances who never make any landgrabs.


I don't mind you claiming that I don't have a right to grab your countries, under the condition that your alliance makes no claims to its right to grab my countries.

Do you consider it to be an unreasonable request on my part?

why are people still talking about top feeding?.....

I almost 100% agree with braden here, but I see your point Rockman. Most people who make really fat countries have no desire to grab outside their tag with any countries in their string anyway.

No one who self farms hits CC in general, so I can say that this is a non-issue for us.

especially when the bottom feed like mo fo's

Which is why I think it shouldn't be hard to convince them to formally renounce the right to grab my countries if they wish to engage in the activity of putting their countries in DR.

Because just because you don't acknowledge it does not mean it does not exist.

"Just make sure you convince your whole alliance to not claim any right to my land."

this right here is unreasonable, yes.

if you want to landgrab then everybody in your alliance had best be hardcore netgaining. kill squads? the taking out of suiciders? No good. You want to landgrab, landgrab benefits netgaining and only netgaining, so either your entire alliance netgains primarily, or you're warring and I get all my acres back.

If we can agree on this, I believe we're good. We stop DR'ing, non netters stop landgrabbing.

sound good?

If someone's self-farming/self DR-ing and grabbing your countries at the same time, they're probably not very good. And in most cases they're probably fatter than you and you should be able to win out in a retal anyway.

Pretty much everyone accepts two-stepping and 'reverse' two-stepping as a big no-no anyway.

ps. ive talked my roomate out of DRing cause i think its gay. Result? His countries been hit 3 times in 72 hours every 72 hours since he started self farming. Some NBK countries arent netting, yet are grabbing (has states so in messages). The point of the grabs are solely to be douches. If you arent netting, and arent even warring, the land gives you no benefeit other then to harm others.

From an outside perspective looking in on this argument Braden, that came off as completely retarded. Although I know what you are getting at, you attached your argument to a stupid assumption that land grabbing only benefits netting alliance.

it lowers techs, it wastes military, it is a target for the enemy.

if you're at 6k acres and want to landgrab to 12-13.5, yes, it will benefit your war country. If you're at 18k and start hitting 50k acre countries and before long you're at 29k acres yourself, then you are not furthering your war capabilities.

as an insider looking in at this argument, aponic, it is all retarded. what he suggests, and what i counter with.

Braden - You just lost credibility when you claimed "landgrab benefits netgaining and only netgaining."




Havoc - my point is that the whole alliance should abide by the same policy, not just the individual player. If you war as an alliance, and retal as an alliance, then your techniques for grabbing & protecting land should be alliance-wide and not up to each individual. You shouldn't be able to selectively say "these countries in our alliance are allowed to grab any of your countries, but these countries in our alliance are off limits for any of your countries to grab".

you lost credibility when you suggested a single DR removed the entire alliances "right" (whatever the fluff that means) to landgrab anybody.

so, we're in the same boat.

you are more than welcome to landgrab any single DR'd country. You choose not to. I am welcome to landgrab any 1k acre country with my 50k acres country. I choose not to.

Rockman-
We dont dictate how our members play. AS long as they follow the general guidlines of the server they dont have to follow a certain strat or play a certain way. Thats what attracts people to TKO. Because one member is using one tactic does not mean we will force rules upon everyone.

If my country is not DRing, and he is, you can still get the same returns on a grab, or retal if i grab you, then if he isnt DRing. His action do not affect my country, nor does it affect yours.

he suggests that alliance policy be alliance wide, and not pick and choose. but if the alliances policy to is to go either way you want, then what rockman wants is already in place.

much like landgrabbing only benefits netgainers is absurd and offensive, my dr'ing removing anybodys right to landgrab is absurd and offensive.

i met absurdity in kind.

How is it unreasonable? Why do you get to grab me for the best gains you can get, but you get to take away my right to grab your alliance for the best gains I can get?

If your putting countries in DR doesn't remove someone's right to landgrab those countries, then if I GS a country after it grabs you, then I've not infringed upon your right to retaliate.

Your claim is equivalent to permitting people to make a landgrab and then GS the country to minimize the retaliation. And that is absurd.

The "it doesn't affect the rest of you" argument is crap. I'll let you guys figure out why.

I don't grab you. Why does somebody else in my tag who hits you mean you're attacking one of my countries?

If i hit you, and DR'd the country, I agree with you, this is terrible and unacceptable.

but if Kethcup landgrabs you for 1k acres and you retal for 1k acres.. where does my DR'd fifty thousand acre country come into the conversation?

If you have an inherent right to take my acres, I have an inherent right to take every single one back. L:L is going to be accepted, dr'ing will become a waste of turns otherwise spent taking many, many retals until our land is returned.

The easiest way to get rid of DR on this server, is not to force absurd rules like no landgrabbing rabble rabble rabble, but to allow L:L in blatant, absurd topfeeds.

You have the right to grab us. Feel free to. Honestly your grab on a 150k acre DRed country is about the same returns as my grabs on a 15k acre country. So i think you dont have a right to grab, unless you gave a 40k+ acre country.

New policy: If your tag doesnt have a coutnry that is 40k acres, you shouldnt have a right to grab us, since you are refusing us our right to make a profitable grab on you.

"If your putting countries in DR doesn't remove someone's right to landgrab those countries, then if I GS a country after it grabs you, then I've not infringed upon your right to retaliate."

I was under the impression that countries were killed for doing this? Warrers to netters alike kill countries for doing exactly this? I could be wrong, this is my first ffa since earth:2025, or mars or whatever the last one i played was.

so, i mean, you'll be dead which i feel superscedes any alliance wide moratorium on DR'ing.. no?

ps. there is less logic here on rockmans side then anti-self farmers in self farming threads. and thats saying something.

That sounds about right.

Why should it be different if Ketchup grabs me than if you grab me?

I'm saying that if you claim the right to grab my countries, that you should not have the right to put your countries in DR so that I cannot grab back.

Saying that since not all of your alliance was in DR, so I still had the ability to grab back is like saying that my country was only in 7 hit DR, so you could still do your retal. By putting your largest countries in DR, you limit my gains on grabbing your alliance.

So saying "I can grab you but you can't grab me" is an unfair policy is illogical? You have a weird definition of logic.

If i grabbed you with my 50k acre country and then DR'd it, you would kill me. NOt be angry at lost acres from the fluffty retal. You would have my country die.

That is the difference. YOu are now going to kill my countries because I gs'd them while you didn't have a claim to any of them? a claim and a right are two different things. (referring to land here)

if topfeeding became unacceptable then dr'ing wouldn't need to be used.

You topfeed me with your right to attack. I retal and get less acres. You may well have literally dr'd that country. there is no difference. you are fluffing about returns based off of DRs. I am fluffing about returns based off of math.

You say welcome to the game, I return the welcoming in kind.

Rockman you are free to grab any TKO country. Knock yourself out

The only reason this is a topic of discussion is because historically war clans (HWC's, if you will) allow it.

It makes no sense for him to landgrab any country in dr. unless his country is so low in acres that the retal would be similar to the grab against the dr'd country. he gains nothing. if anything, he looses.

This is the same principle of attacking anybody but yourself after a certain amount of land. I can hit your 25k acre country for 3k acres or what not, but his retal against my now 53k acre country is going to make it not worth my while, let alone the military lost breaking his what we can only assume would be a well defended 25k acre country.

I'm saying that if your alliance topfed me and then put its large countries into DR, thats when I would be upset. If your alliance doesn't grab me, then I have no problems with you putting your countries into DR.

So what I am saying is that by grabbing any of my countries, thats when you give me the right to grab any of yours in return.

You'll notice that I've specifically tied the claim to your alliance grabbing me first. If your alliance does not grab me, then I make no claim to the right to grab your land.

And since GSing a country interferes with the right to retaliate against it, I think its logical to also conclude that GSing a country interferes with the right to grab it.

I think i understood that one better than the others, rockman, sorry it took so long :P

all your countries are open to be attacked, whereas out better ones are often dr'd and not worth it.

but you'd only want to hit those "better" ones because you knew you;d be topfeeding and coming out well ahead in acres.

Maybe if both sides agreed that on one end we wouldn't dr away returns, and on your end you don't landgrab any countries with more acres than your fattest country.

you have 41k acre country in your tag, you can attack mine. you don't have 55k acre country in your tag, you can not attack mine.

does this sound fair?

Braden is still drunk from yesterday.

keep bad talking me and your country will meet one of mine, and we'll truly show everybody why blatant topfeeding is bullfluff :P

If your alliance only grabbed my countries with like-sized countries, then I wouldn't get upset. There you're not looking to harm me, so much as generate ghost acres that would mutually benefit us. But if you're grabbing me knowing it will hurt my countries, either through a bottomfeed or a topfeed, thats when I would be upset if you deprived me of the right to make a grab back on your alliance that would benefit me and harm you.

Its related to something I criticize LaF for. If you bottomfeed an alliance, and they cannot retal, then topfeeding you back is a way to deter bottomfeeds. Similarly if you're having problems with one alliance topfeeding you, a way to deter them from topfeeding you is to either topfeed or bottomfeed them back. I think its necessary for smaller alliances to have this ability to deter alliances from pushing them around.

I agree with the idea. However TKO doesnt topfeed. So you wont have issues with us.

I think i pulled this on pan, and it got so annoying we put each other on DNH :P

The issue i got into was i kept topfeeding a guy who wasnt doing any grabs on us, so i felt bad. lol

"If your alliance only grabbed my countries with like-sized countries, then I wouldn't get upset. There you're not looking to harm me, so much as generate ghost acres that would mutually benefit us."

this is how we feel, too. except nobody hits us with like sized countries. nobody takes their 150k acre country and midfeeds another 150k acre country. This just does not happen. So the only way to defend the 150k acre country is to have it in DR. Or to blow my stockpile, I'd actually have to reach my stockpiling phase, so I can't defend my acres. You now apparantly deserve them more than I do. OK, i guess? Except it isn't?

The other issue with midfeeding is: Who is going to run tys with high mil strat? because if not you have to hit up to make a profit. If i hit a country with 120% mil strat, and am a republic.... a ty with 140% mil strat retals for him, and gains more then i took...

There's also the fact that as of now, absolutely everybody on this server has the ability to put themselves in DR and self-farm if they want and it doesn't break any rules.

Yep, this wasn't directed at TKO.

It was directed at the idea in general that grabbing an alliance to take advantage of them either by topfeeding or bottomfeeding while depriving them of the ability to topfeed is unfair.

Its hard to get upset and declare war over a few 3k acre grabs where the attacker and the country retalling each take 3k acres + 1.5k ghost acres.

But its when one alliance is grabbing another alliance and harming that alliance through the grabs, that protecting the land of your own countries is an unfair tactic.

If I ran 16 countries next set, and had 8 of them landtrading between each other and growing nice & fat, and the others were tiny tyranny topfeeders that were also putting the top 8 countries in constant DR, then I would expect people to be upset.

If I had a 5k acre tyranny techer that grabbed a 20k acre country, and that person saw a 40k acre 5 mil networth country of mine on their scores page that was in heavy DR, they should be upset at me.

Thats really the point of the "not accepting landgrabs from alliances who put their countries in DR" assertion.

If TKO had some 20k acre countries grab some 20k acre countries in NBK, that'd be a good way to establish some good will between the alliances. In fact, it could even be a way to deter topfeeding by them, if you let them know that you'll willingly exchange 20-30 grabs a day between similarly sized countries (maybe within 20% landsize of each other before the grabs) so long as they dont make any topfeeds on your larger countries.

Then by making a topfeed for 6k acres + 3k ghost acres and getting retalled for 2k acres, they would deprive themselves of having 20 countries in their tag who get hit for 3k acres and get to retal for 3k acres + 1.5k ghost acres.


Its rare for alliances to grab each other with the expectation that both alliances will gain through ghost acres, thus most grabs are the "I'm going to take advantage of you" type, in which case I do believe that it should not be acceptable to do that type of grab while GSing some of your countries into DR.

As far as I know, no one is doing those types of grabs aside from a short issue with TKO/PAN which lead to a DNH.