We had much more sexies back then

I think the two things missing that would make it like the "good ole days" are honor and respect, but somehow it seems to have gone AWOL the last few years.

I see more and more dirty playing and underhanded ways to try and get around the rules.

Good ole days:
If someone broke a NAP they were the bad guys.

IC now:
If someone breaks a NAP, then the family that has the NAP broken on are called whiners and to just shut up and play.

Good ole days:
Planned top family EOR wars.

IC now:
Break NAPs and say there was a loophole some where.

Good ole days:
A chance to always improve and learn with each round.

IC now:
Called a noob and not given the time of day (but the noob needs to do his/her part also).

Good ole days:
At the end of a war many posts on what happened, what went wrong, congratuated the winners and commented on their good strats.

IC now:
Insults and degrading remarks, families raped till they have nothing left

Good ole days:
Only war families that are worthy opponents.

IC now:
Farm small families till they delete or go inactive because they will never be able to do much with what is left.

Now, not everyone and every family is like this but it seems there are more than are not. I hear many cry out for more honor and they want the mods to inforce honor in this game but honor and respect start with the players. The players have turned this game into what it is now. If you want it back like the good ole days it starts with each of you: every player, every leader, every family.

"If someone breaks a NAP, then the family that has the NAP broken on are called whiners and to just shut up and play."

That's just because you get utterly sick of people constantly whining about it.

the thing that killed the game is the 'fam bank' strategy.

the core idea of it is being as efficient as possible to get the best infra possible in order to win. it forces one or two players, normally just the leader, to be super active to make it work well, and makes them do all the planning. almost all the other members of the fam bank have very little idea of what is happening throughout the fam, and they certainly dont know why each thing is being done. so they all learn nothing. they all become automatons. this means no one new learns much. the direct result of this is that there are only a limited number of people who can run a fam bank effectively left in the game, leading to the massive lack of competition present in mw and andro. Most of these fam bank leaders are vets of people who have been lucky enough to learn alot from one or two vets. these people are slowly disappearing as more and more of them retire, further increasing the massive lack of competition.

pairs were so much funner than the fam bank. as well as having competition between the families to see which had the best set of players, you had competition inside the fam for the team that pulled off the best start, the team that had the best iron, endo, food, octo and cahs incomes, and comeptition for number of attack done and planets gained by each time. with the fam bank you only have 2 or 3 real attackers and the rest of the fam are made bankers or resourcers. each banker or resourcer is told what to build and the leader always makes sure the attackers are different sizes and have differet sized fleets, which means they cant have fair competition between themselves.

so the fam bank is killing the game becos its boring as hell and becos it teaches new players almost nothing. the only effective way to learn is to have to work thins out yourself, the only effective way to understand what works best is to have tested and experienced various ideas yourself.

fam bank is however the most efficient strat with the current gameplay. IC is like a game you've had for a few years for you xbox/playstation/wii/wotever, a game that you've totally cracked, a game on which u can beat the top level CPUs with your eyes closed, a game on which u have 99-100% completion. you know it inside out and so its just not fun to keep playing it anymore, there's no challenge or excitement of discovery. so if we go back to ic, the problem is that we know the am inside out. the best strategy has been found and thats it, either you do it or you dont win. so in order to live ic needs sum radical changes to the gameplay, some new features that will force us all to take a good look at the game and say to ourselves "how can i use this to do better than everyone else? what possible tactics could i use these things for?".

until that happens i am begging you all to go back to pairs or small teams. its not all that much less efficient but its 10 times more fun. i tried it this round but i seemed to be the only one doing it, and i had a fam that was very much hoping to win, so we ended up switching to fam bank about 5 days in becos we just couldnt keep up. thats why more fams need to go back to pairs, and to go back to the fun.

Allow IA. It fixes all these things!

How long have i been saying this!!!

lol@ Acrid's retirement thread

w000 the first hive

I've seen this honour/respect/fair game play disappear in other games as well, as the game gets older. Just recently I've went back to playing Starcraft on battle net after 4+ years of absence. The game experience with people has hit a low. People seem so desperate to win; backstabbing, hacking. Even skill level has dwindled.

As for IC, the fam bank has surely sucked a bit of life out of the game. I enjoyed team play, it was more amusing, competing with other family members. But I've also noticed that people started getting paranoid about spy (ies) within the family and slowly competition threads disappeared and that was that. The last time I experienced team play was back in Tri.

Removing virgo won't do anything significant.  The game will remain the same: stale.

People can argue forever about which detail of the game needs to be adjusted.  It's moot, adjusting the details will do nothing that the players can't adjust to in a few months.  It's the means of achieving victory that need to be changed.  Perhaps even how victory is defined.

"Of course u will always have babies like archangel whinning over losing 1 planet like the n00b he is"

a) this isnt true

b) what does this have to do with anything. how about a warning or forum ban for the sudden spam/flaming. PP has come back to annoy us all again, sumthing must be done!