Boxed in, boxing in, etc. I refer to the act of completely encasing a town in from expansion.


I would be totally cool with this, independent of this rule proposal scenario. I feel that as you start getting a mega gold farm running, you can pretty much reach endgame status in a matter of days. You should still be able to do this with a large enough gold farm that functions properly, but I would not mind in any way, it being harder to obtain plots and/or money.

By endgame status, I refer to basically having all you need to do everything you desire.


I agree greatly with this. In general, this really should be the case that we use cleverness, creativity, and ingenuity to go about things.
In the very least regarding at least this scenario, I think that it really doesn't require much cleverness, creativity, and ingenuity to do things as simple as make proposals to the opposing nation with some incentive to shoo them off. Again, I can see extreme scenarios like Comic is saying, which can be investigated and acted on, but in the end of ones along these lines, it's effectively 'stolen' plots (via barricade) that they can pay to get back.

Yes, I get what it means but how is a box-in of a town abusive where boxing in any town wouldn't be? Are you proposing a list of towns that are "eligible?" I don't quite understand here. I'll address the rest of the points later but I want to get this cleared up before I focus on the other points.

From what I am reading, I am interpreting that as: determining if a town completely engulfing another town should be considered abusive has more factors to be considered rather than just the one condition of just engulfing a town.

From taking the rest of the post and applying it to the proposed rule, what if a town *wants* to be engulfed (or any degree thereof)? The rule flat-out bans it. There isn't any leeway in the rule as written in your original proposal, or "middle ground" per se.

Sorry, a misunderstanding of what exactly you were referring to about the box-ins. The point about abusive/non-abusive box-ins I was trying to get across was more toward what ahelper suggests:

Apologies if I wasn't very clear on that point. I believe there is more conditions involved than engulfing the town standalone, that determine if it was abusive. It feels more complex, exactly what the few underlying conditions would be, but a particular possible abuse I see could be i.e. permanently and/or continually doing it to someone to the point where they cannot ever get a town going on the server. In such a case, I would see what you mean by not being able to have any fun on the server.
Such a case I feel where it can be non-abusive to box in a town, is where perhaps the box-in is not permanent/persistent, and can be lifted upon payment-- it serves as a way of benefiting economically from your opponent, in the same way you can raid them for their stuff, and make them pay you to get it back.

TL;DR: Boxing in of towns I feel is conditionally abusive, dependent on multiple factors, which may or may not make the proposed rule too complex. (I wouldn't think a rule with 6 conditions is a pretty sight to be seeing)

You speak my mind. I also have to say I'm not sure increasing plot costs would deter this kind of abuse. Quite frankly I'm lucky I can buy plots at all and keep my town alive with how much plots cost now. I have a tiny gold farm and a laggy computer (both of which are not my fault). I could sit at my gold farm and gather gold for a week straight, but, like a bunch of us here I'm sure, I don't have the time because of school/work. I can't make my gold farm bigger because of this 10+ year old laggy computer. The farm I have now is 4 blocks an hour at best and I lag, not a lot but it's significant. I feel like increasing plot cost/decreasing townsize will limit my plans for my town as well. I can see why you would consider it, but I feel like there are better ways of combating this like what eleman has posted. I'm just spit-balling here. Not sure if it's much help but I felt like I should say something.

It's an extreme suggestion, but I almost might like it if something completely unfarmable was the currency in the future, like lapis. We could return most of nations' and towns' balances as gold blocks/ingots, and switch to another economy basis. That's a long-term discussion, though, to address the fact that I'm not thrilled about people being able to create giant gold farms and thence not worry about the cost of things.

I see what you're getting at. I'm not thrilled about people making giant farms either. It puts stress on my computer and it feels like it puts stress on the server as well. I was hesitant to make one in the beginning because of that honestly. I've been in a very hardcore economy server one time and they had jobs that you can do to earn money. Maybe that would be an option later on?

It would most certainly be an interesting turn of events if we were to switch the economic system in the future or downscale the gold farm production rate-- I would not be against that personally. I say that because making a larger gold farm, it's again not honestly that hard to get money to keep a town afloat for years, and get all the resources you desire. Long term discussion definitely. Perhaps we can discuss other options such as doing something like Comic said where the town costs more to keep alive the bigger it is.

I of course want to make the server a fair place to play while keeping it fun. I also have to balance my ability to enforce these rules and the effort I need to exert to show proof of users breaking and/or abiding by them. I don't want to imply I'm lazy but I don't want to spend my free time doing research into making sure users are playing within these video game rules.

It's incredibly easy to farm enough gold to, as it was put earlier, achieve end game. I'm more trying to establish a rule that limits the domination of towns/nations/users who have reached "endgame status." I support Kerms proposal to change the currency to a non-farmable entity such as Lapis and perhaps several other blocks. That way if a user were to encase a town it'd take a considerable effort and commitment towards the end goal.

I certainly want to explore the option of limiting the encasement of towns. As it was said earlier, Shoeblox was encased in an hour (where I thought it was an evening).



In the aftermath I received questions about whether there was a rule prohibiting this action. I said no. I was asked if I could make a rule against this and I said no. (I actually don't have those logs, I probably said I'd look into it but I eventually decided against it). I realize I'm admitting to reversing my consideration but my reversal has nothing to do with Shoebloxes predicament but I can't deny they'd be the sole beneficiaries from this. My goal is prevent this from other towns and if I make a rule that prohibits unsolicited encasement then I must enforce that rule against AHelpers town since the issue with Shoeblox is not something that came and went - like the massive TNT incident - and it will persist after the creation of such a rule.

Maybe I make the rule where each Nation can only encase one town at a time. While that'd help, there's still only 3 towns in Edenia while there's 8 in A-E but maybe that's what this rule becomes.

I'd be down for that, but it feels like this is all an overreaction to something that happened once. This seems to me something that is not going to happen again. Maybe if it does and becomes a persistent thing then that should be the time when we start talking about encasing rules. I know no one is trying to overreact, but I don't know, it kind of feels like it's a little thing that got blown up or something.

I believe the idea of an "Expansion Blocker", as the surrounding town was in fact originally called, is a poor one. Similarly I believe it'd be wrong to make a ring around spawn (which from the shape of Arcadia one might wonder if the thought had passed through Kerm's mind?). I have no problem with the size of "A-E", as they've played the deception cards excellently and engineered it that way with care. So I don't mind if a town the size of Expansion Blocker can spring up, I only mind if it is touching over 50% of an enemy town.

As to what was said about implicit rules - I agree that that's a better way of going about it, to stop people like AHelper's continual creative use of the rules, but I question Kerm's ability to determine where actions stand before the rules for many reasons, for example his obviously erroneous and single-sided statement that most of the new rules have been put in place to benefit Shoeblox.

Also: " the point of the engulfment is to force the greatly-weakened town in question to abandon its ugly base" - this isn't the first time Kerm has voiced this opinion... I think the server should permit people to build structures however they want, without fear of non-aesthetical prejudice (remember Kerm was also the one who voiced a desire to make a rule banning anyone who was deemed to act too 'stupid', at his own disgression). It's noone's business but the builder's how the building looks besides to state (politely of course) that they dislike the appearance, not to justify actions taken against the town by its appearance, nor for that matter attacking the intelligence of the designer as Charles does - I judge that harassment.

I've been questioning that as well. My only assumption is that there is something they wish to protect down there.



That basically defeats the purpose of an "expansion blocker." I would like to push my idea again, that only one "Expansion Blocker" may be erected at a time per Nation. Though as we only have a 2-Nation server, it's almost a moot point.



I'm pretty sure that's a line of propaganda; I believe A-E's goal is to get rid of Shoeblox and the constant propaganda of this sort supports my theory. While there may be some conflicts between the members of the town, I'm rather positive A-E is out for Shoeblox, not its inhabitants. I should admit that I'm not heavily involved in the politics (for fair administration), I know the bigger points but don't busy myself with the smaller things such as any gripes towards players.

The blocks it covers are within the spawn chunks, and therefore are always loaded. The land provides the ability to build machines that are always loaded. (Not that I'm required to share that, as I'm sure you wouldn't threaten players to find out what their plans are. But I figured I'd throw you plural a bone).

This whole line of discussion is silly, in my opinion, because I believe this is intended as a one-off strategy to address a specific issue, namely another tactic to force Shoeblox to relocate and abandon the ugly box structure. This was the point of the TNT-backed raid, as well, and I'm sure future attempts will/would be completely new things.

Just to clarify, to get rid of the current Shoeblox box, not the town in general. We have been discussing amongst ourselves ways to help balance the nation sizes as well, some of which will require joint administrative adjustment of costs and mechanics, but as always, that's a discussion for another way. I'm glad you're being careful to maintain your unbiasedness in considering rules and administration.

Expansion blockers, in general, are bad. The one that exists currently targets a nation that has little means to pay for its removal and has already been raided to oblivion (prompting the previous rules). It feels like bullying, since it holds the future of Shoeblox hostage as Aeternum-Elysium wants to watch the walls of Shoeblox fall. However, their mayor FrozenFire49, has spent months building the walls; they have strong sentimental value.
Additionally, only one nation is large enough to pull off an expansion blocker, and it is highly unlikely that another nation of Aeternum-Elysium's scale will ever be formed. By leaving yourself with the capability to use an expansion blocker, you basically give yourself the exclusive ability to use it.

I was actually hundreds of miles away from my computer when this happened, so I couldn't have done anything about it, even if I was lucky enough to be watching on the dynamic map as it was occurring.I agree completely. I had been expanding the town in a square to hold all of the residential plots, but I stopped at 13x13 in case I found something that I wanted to claim. If I knew this was going to happen I would have indeed used them all. I don't think nation bonus should be reduced, because I don't think that is the problem. A town of 6 people and no nation could surround a brand new town with only one plot. If anything, I propose that nation bonuses go up in the same linear pattern beyond 60 people, so that nations have reasons to get bigger once they hit that 60 people mark. I think plot cost should be left alone too. Most of the time, it takes more plots for the town than to box it in, making it self-defeating.

Edit:
Kerm has already changed the nation bonuses to extend in the linear direction.I agree with Caleb, I have to disagree with comic's idea. 50% is a fair number to enforce, and if both the towns want to be more than 50%, then let them. Anyway, I thought the point was to defeat the purpose of an expansion blocker. Also, allowing one expansion blocker per nation is a bad idea. That is saying it is OKAY to encase a town, which that shouldn't be the case.This is very true.

Well, we had considered a plan of moving the whole town, plot by plot, away from the blox, though that would give up the walls and cost a fortune we were considering it - but then the expansion blocker made that impossible.

Wouldn't it cost fewer denarii in plots purchased to just delete and re-create the town, if you're moving it anyway? I'm sure one of your allies like RabidRabbit could hold your items while you move.

True, but could it still be considered the same town then? Plus, not unnaturally, keeping some extra nicks is nice, I think.

We did consider doing that to keep the residents, but we had decided to stay, and now the blocker is forcing us to stay.
Anyway, we are addressing the current and future situations, past plans shouldn't be the issue.

Indeed. You guys are welcome to create a forum topic, create an IRC channel, gather on Skype, etc to discuss these types of things.

I still think the most fair thing todo is put a limit of one blocker per nation.