1) Renaming "Primary" to "Classic"
2) Granting 80 turns to each player's first country of the round to cut down on the dead time at the start when everyone is in protection and there's nothing on the public market.
3) Remove humanitarians limits only for spy operations.
4) Allow players to change the maximum number of hours goods will remain on the public market before returning. This is set at the market good level for each individual market package. This functionality is already present on the Express server.

Now is a good time to speak up if any of these changes sound bad to you.

I don't play here,. but #2 sounds cool idea.

Don't fix what's not broken, we need more players, not changes to the server.

please leave primary alone. its fine the way it. its the like the old 1a without tags

#2 sounds very reasonable.

With the player counts so low any other changes likely are not going to enhance player counts which is the largest issue (regardless of who does or does not like the ideas). At best it may balance out with those who come because of the changes or leave in there wake.

Some sort of altered GDI might be of benefit for the NOOBS. But will also upset some of the vets. I think of when I first started playing and I'm almost certain had there only been 50 players I wouldn't have kept at it long. I can't imagine how much it sucks coming to run your rainbow with 50 players. Cause it even sucks coming to run your 27 year fine tuned strategy.

And it makes little sense to come down on noobs because they are and always were what made the game truly great. Strength in numbers. especially noobs. And it still makes sense there will be those people very interested to play; but even like myself to get started with your first countries and not even thinking of the possibilities of looking into finer details of strategy. But just winging it. It was very sustainable and a lot more fun back in the day. Which always brings me back to; THIS GAME IS fluffIND OLD. Not all things will with stand the test of time. At best I would say it would be very lucky to get the player counts back into 100-200 range. Even with a mass ad campaign. Which I do not think would generate enough income to even break even on the ads. I think that is at least partial as to why the original EARTH 2025 also was lead into demise.

Beyond the turns it just seems questionable any changes even if coming from a great intention to help improve the current experience.

I definitely vote for the turns.

Starting with 80 turns is a great idea!

Also if you could make it 50 or 100 free acres per day instead of 20 would be cool 😎

The humanitarians thing I think is a bad idea because it’ll just lead to mass farming of the small countries .. I’ll play a fascist farmer and just SS tiny countries all day long.

I also think the PS changes are a bad idea as well

5 PS limit is fine and the current rules for humanitarians are what makes this server better than the other servers in the first place

If I was a new player who got hit by a bigger country which I couldn't even attempt a spy op on due to "humanitarians" then I would quit the game. It obviously feels unfair to the smaller country. We need some solution to this problem. If you don't like removing humanitarians then suggest something else.

Perhaps some kind of an Earth University to help new players learn the game or simply some better ingame explanations of what is happening

Lets use the scenario above where you are new and you get farmed by someone who jumps out of range

When you try to Retal you get a basic generic message about humanitarians which is vague and doesn’t properly explain what has happened

Perhaps if the new players understood the challenge they face with better ingame explanations that help them understand what has happened? Or if they had a simple straightforward way to figure out what has happened rather than going to post on the forums?

Personally I don’t think the problem is the game mechanism the problem is in the communication and lack of explanation

Perhaps making only spy ops not subject to humanitarian rules is a fair compromise. Suppose a bigger country farms a small country and jumps in NW.

Scenario A: the small country tries to get an op and fails. They aren't frustrated by humanitarian rules and move on.
Scenario B: the small country successfully gets an op and realizes that the country that hit them is a big, beautiful country that they can't effectively hit. They aren't frustrated by humanitarian rules and move on.
Scenario C: the small country does some harmful ops as revenge. They aren't as frustrated by humanitarian rules. The bigger country could hit back with harmful spy ops, but would they really bother?

Nah, humanitarians didn't prevent farming small countries, it only prevented small countries from being able to do anything back (b/c big country would just net out of range).

If you break GDI, the smaller country is now able to retal with ops/missiles etc

Ok that's fair, another change you can make to improve the market is having the option to set how long goods can stay on the market like in coop, that would really help IMO

I'd be fine with adding dynamic market time, but are there any objections to it?

Change #2 is likely going to be universally appreciated - no one loves the dead start!

#3 change would be bad for reasons that Hessman mentioned - I'd just end up farming the small fries (I'm probably already the most prolific bottom feeder on this server) to no recourse. They may be able to retal with nukes, but paired with the #4 SDI change where you'll want to maximize SDI, you can 5-tap the small fry 'til they self-delete. Slagpit's suggestion on removal of humanitarian for Spy Ops only is a good middle ground.

For #4, I welcome any game play changes that would change up strategy. Right now, techer doesn't seem particularly competitive on this server, so making some techs more valuable may help increase demand.

I'm not totally sure how to fix the new player experience - the skill gap on the server is huge (2 sets ago, only 14/74 countries broke 20m nw - winner at 98m nw; last set 19/69 broke 20m nw - winner at 85m nw). The one thing to prevent snowballing is probably to neuter the ability for any country to farm another one indiscriminately (I'm guessing this is your impetus for change #4), yet if we reduce everything to the point where people stop taking risks and just not break GDI, it wouldn't take long to 1-tap the entire server, making for a fairly boring player experience. lol

making only spy ops not subject to humanitarian rules is a fair compromise for sure 👍

The little guys should at least be able to launch missiles at the guys who break GDI.

“ I'm not totally sure how to fix the new player experience”

You need an influx of thousands of players at once. Advertising is the only thing that’s going to save this place. Otherwise any new players will get swarmed. You are at the point where the goose that lays the golden eggs has been killed. You have like two sick chickens now that are roosters and pissed off instead.

For the humanitarians thing, I struggle to understand how a country at 6-7m NW can attack me at 1.8m NW and then I can't even try to poison food supplies.

This is my first set back and I lost like 600 acres last night to a guy I can't even hit back now and even if I could, would probably be a waste of resources.

I started the set late, and I'm back to play for real, but I really think this would be a scenario where a lot of new players would just quit. I mean, I get it, i was more than 25% the size at the time of attacks, but it's still a 4m NW difference. It's not possible to defend yourself then. The GDI ranges get wonky as you go up.

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe it's adding a cap to the $ difference in NW? Like 1-2m max difference. Then, it would be actual war where the early and fast starters might actually attack each other instead of stealing land from tiny countries.

Then, this person attacking me would have to grow some stones and fight someone who poses an actual challenge :)

Thousands of players at once sounds so 2000. Imagine logging in to a new set. Players: 2356. 2000 noobs especially with that miraculously successful advertisement campaign of thouasands of dollars.I still remember fluffting bricks when it got down into the lower 300's. That sounds sweet as hell, now. Markets are tricky. Sure sometimes I can toss out at a decent price. But demand is not consistent enough (especially if lacking money to attack and build). To mess around too much. I've got caught hanging couple of times more than 24 hours. So then I just go low 🙃

When I play Indy or Farmer I'll often take 2-3 turns to sell my goods at this stage in the round, instead of selling everything at once It's worth it to try selling 1/3 's at 3 different prices

Good marketers can sell a false pyramid scheme to someone. You don’t even need a good product you just need someone who is good at marketing. It didn’t even matter if 75 percent of them leave as long as you keep them coming.


Retro Gaming Is Popular Due To More Than Just Nostalgia

https://classicreload.com/...-more-than-just-nostalgia

The Growing Popularity of Retro Gaming and Why It Still Matters

https://bleedingfool.com/...and-why-it-still-matters/

Couldn't agree more, retro everything is comin back around, retro gaming too

Just need a better marketing scheme, there's a market for everything, there's even a market for pet psychologists

Maybe the game should work on getting a better/easier sign up process? and could add a bonus/free premium credit or somethin' for every time an existing player recruits a new player or somethin' like that ?