I know they are, but its like EPO in cycling. If one guy does it and wins, whitout getting made. The others are like, yeah we should do it to, or we don't stand a chance anymore.
And before you know it everybody does it, or your just not competitive anymore.

Same thing with farmers, they win the round cause they win maybe 2 wars, but they take 600 pl of each war. Leaving 2 decent fams, that maybe deserve top 10 more then others, done for.

Its always harder to win with honour, then without. Like its harder earning money honestly then illegaly. I mean you can be a drugdealer and work 2 nights a week earn 10k dollars, or you can be a hardworking man/ women, working 12-14 hr days and earning 500 dollars a week.

The tric is to keep believing in the honest path, don't give up. And as long as you stay yourself and follow those beliefs, you can never blaim yourself for anything. Even if it means working twice as hard.

To me the question of planets-for-nap is really a matter of how the defending party responds to it.

I know I'm a month late on this, and as a disclaimer I haven't played for about 5 years I think so I may be out of touch with the current game.  But bear with me here:

Lone Tiger said: "As for new player, it's a part of any game.  You get beaten up a few times, that's how you learn.  It's that way in any war game.  It's a war game."

I couldn't agree more.  Of course, this doesn't mean that it should be ok to just completely ruin somebody else's round, but at the same time being put in extremely difficult situations is part of what makes this game what it is.  Anybody who's been involved in a difficult, long-term wars knows that things don't always come easy.

Honestly, and I mean no offense by this, but if anybody is to blame for planets-for-nap being as common as it is, it's the leaders/victims who have been accepting it.  There are two parts to that kind of agreement, the "bully" who tries to pull it, and the "victim" who lies down and lets it happen.  Don't let it happen.

This used to drive me nuts when I played, not just the first time somebody tried to pull that crap on me, but moreso because some people in my fam (including vice leaders) would occasionally want to give in to the demand.  It was sometimes more difficult to deal with the internal problems this could cause than to actually deal with fighting the enemy.  Still though, I NEVER gave into this. 

Bear with me while I go "old man" for a second:

In MW Round 6 my foohon family was hit HARD by a family called Schizophrenic MILFs.  These guys were way bigger than us, fairly skilled, and their allies were bigger than our allies too.  It sucked.  We fought the best we could but at some point it became clear that we just lost.  Eventually it was offered that our family would be left alone if we provided planets for peace.

I said absolutely not, and was laughed at.

Some of my family members got pretty mad at me, and people would trash me in uni-news for being "stupid" or "stubborn", and for not agreeing to "just give us the planets and we'll leave you alone" and "it's not even that many planets" and "if we fight we're gonna take more anyway".  I didn't care.  For me, it was and still is a matter of principle.  If somebody tries to rape you, you don't lie down and take it if they promise to be gentle.  You fight back.  This is a war game.

This caused some serious heat for me from within the fam.  At one point I recall having to tell my family that "Hey you know what.  You guys elected me leader, and I've brought you this far.  If you don't like this decision you're more than welcome to elect somebody else."  My family members then buckled down and continued to fight with me.  It eventually became a tri-war, one that I remember fondly as one of my shining moments in IC.

Our family was in this war for 19 real life days.

You know what happened as a result?  We caused problems for our enemies.  Certainly more than they expected.  They dropped in the ranks.  They ruined our chance and progressing in the ranks so we did the same to them.  We got a well-earned reputation as being a family who will not go easy.  If you war us, be prepared for a hard fight and don't even dare try to offer a nap for planets because you're just going to anger us and the hard ops will fly.  I, and by extension the early incarnations of foohon families, got a reputation of being serious scrappers.

You don't earn a reputation of being a fighter by lying down to get raped.  You get a reputation of being easy.  So don't do it.  Sure you probably will lose nw and planets and probably not finish the round as high as you'd like, but you will probably get a better experience out of the game and (gasp) more experience fighting larger families.  Besides, there is a certain thrill to fighting a larger family with a nothing-to-lose attitude, causing them to drop ranks.  Sometimes being the underdog is way more fun.

You know what's even more important, is what is taught to your new family members.  Had I said "um, ok here are some planets stop hitting us please" it would have only taught newbies in my fam to do the same.    I'm not going to teach new players to be wimps.

In the end, the responsibility doesn't lie on the attacking family to play fair, it lies on the defending family to respond appropriately when they don't.

But then, this was years ago and I don't know what the current game is like.  Maybe it's bad practice nowadays to stand up to bullies.  *shrugs*

Jesus, people take this game way to seriously and those are the peeps that run off crying and end up quitting the game.  Those players that last for several years playing IC should be used to the game play by now surely?  This round seems to be worse than ever in terms of moaning and whining? Some rounds your fam may get raped, some rounds you may get lucky and random in to an organised family....or a nub family.  Either way, a family that is twice the size of another family is twice the size for a reason. They are more active and are working better as a team etc etc. Its life, the bigger more powerful "one" is, the more "one" gets away with.  It may seem outrageous to ask for such high amount of planets but thats life isnt it? The bigger more powerful are superior over the smaller less powerful? Offering a P-NAP for a number of planets is honourable in my opinion. Atleast the survival of the smaller families round is in "their hands".  Ignoring these terms is just stupid and asking to be owned.  A dishonourable family could just rape the smaller family if they wanted...this is a war game not an honour game. Bigger families grow stronger by feeding off smaller families or by warring bigger families, at the end of the day, its their choice and shouldn't be insulted for it...this is a "war" game after all.

You wouldnt see a general leading an inferior army tell a general leading a much larger and superior army to [blam] off because he is offering terms of a surrender/Peace Aggreement thus resulting in the annihilation of his whole army.  Its just stupid. What do the small families in this game expect? They are smaller meaning they have to pay the consequences, the consequences being the terms that the superior family offer..

IC's basic game design is unique and awesome. It's dying because of poor management and terrible maintenance. Advertising is just one part of the problem.

Mace I half agree with you.  I think you're right that specific tactics (including farming) aren't the problem, but I think the solution is larger than advertisement.

When I look at IC, I see an old game.  I don't mean old for me personally cause I joined a long time ago, I mean DATED.  Let me point everybody to two very clear examples:

http://www.imperialconflict.com/irc/chatguest.php - WTF is with our applet?  Why do I feel like i'm in the 90s when I use this.
http://www.imperialconflict.com/guide/ - Frames?!?  Holy crap.

And this isn't even the actual game!  This isn't charming or quaint, it's embarrassing.  I think IC isn't very attractive to new players because the first impression is a pretty bad, but accurate one: whoever made this game hasn't put effort into keeping it relevant.

In the end, it's all on the admins.  Kudos for the volunteer devs for taking on the responsibility from Stef and MasterMike, but the problem is really at the source.  If IC is to improve, it needs to be a comprehensive improvement.  It has serious issues as a website, not a game.

It doesn't matter how balanced or awesome the game itself might be.  If the medium from which it is played (a website) doesn't keep up with user-interaction standards, people just won't be interested.  IC has not aged well, and I think it scares away potential players.

Pie, yes. There's the visual and layout datedness and there's the fundamental scalability of PHP/MySQL - Maloeran wrote Ectroverse in C as he believed it could handle a vast number of processes without slowdown. To completely re-write the back end and completely overhaul the front end would be a massive investment in time. I suppose as a first challenge a re-design visually would make sense