Mr. D

Sorry, free time used to work on DE seems to come in waves these days and I am experiencing a low tide currently. Will get back to you once I catch a break!

It's all good, the update is now live; please feel free to trade to your heart's content!

Hmm... that doesn't sound good, sorry for this! I will investigate, of course. May I ask what version of Android you are using?

I have to admit that I am completely astounded by the responses in this thread. Let me retrace our steps a little bit: we've had a serious couching issue allowing players who never leave their house to be #1 in the leaderboards thanks to unrestricted trading. We have found a perfect solution that the majority seemed to be happy with, as all trading and land merging now requires some form of travel to succeed. However, after the introduction of the new system a wave of negative feedback was received based around the outrageously high prices of trades and merging; having played for a week myself and checked the totals of everyone's travel points (with the greatest amount to date being around 1700, which involved expensive plane travel, but the majority of players staying well below the 100 points threshold) I have agreed that the merge price is indeed a bit too high, since now very few players can afford to merge lands above level 20, let alone 100. So the price was lowered. However, having the ability to merge level 1 land with another level 1 land (spending 2 travel points in total) and gaining 11 base points (10 from a wall, plus 1 extra from the merge itself) does not make a lot of sense, as in this situation creating only 2 lands in any convenient location and merging them is more beneficial than actually travelling and creating 11 different lands (to receive 11 base points). Naturally, extra points awarded for building merges had to be removed; we cannot have the following 3 conditions be "true" at the same time: 1) Low trade & merge costs. 2) No couching exploits. 3) Points awarded for performing remote actions. If the removal of bonus points from disappearing structures is such a critical change for you that the game is no longer playable, then I have to say you are most likely enjoying the game for the wrong reasons. As always, I am happy to consider any new features that add more things you can do from home in between travels (if you are bored and ran out of remote things to do); please feel free to post your ideas on the forum. But travel-based advancements should and always will be more rewarding points-wise than anything done from home, that's the main rule of "Domination: Earth". There is a difference between a system being "simple" and "missing". Having a 20% VAT/GST tax is simple. Having 25 variable rates and 200 country-specific exceptions is why our accountant has a stash of ibuprofen in the office. I have to admit, I am personally a fan of "intricate systems" with flexible rules myself and more often than not I really tend to overcomplicate things. But unfortunately, the majority of mobile players aren't like me and having a series of complicated formulas is what deters them. I have interviewed a number of former DE fans who've been with us since version 0.x but left in a few months, and they confessed that although they liked the game at first, there's a bit "too much" going on in it right now and I can understand the problem: wars, remote land management, utility structures, all the merging rules and trades; all that is very different from a "one button check-in" concept we started with. The concept that was easy to demonstrate using the examples of "Swarm" (and similar social networks) and explaining why we enjoy the game without coming off as major geeks. So these days I am really doing my best not to add any more unnecessary complexities to the existing rules, as I really believe that a game can be made fun without needing a spreadsheet to understand the rules. However, as stated above, I am still reading and considering every suggestion; your ideas is what powers the progress.

The bases are sorted by distance against your last known position (lat/lng), which may be affected by VPNs & wi-fi networks when the GPS signal is not available. I am assuming that something is interfering with your current position in China and your "blue dot" doesn't actually represent your current location, hence the sorting problems! Alternatively, if you are using a VPN your position may appear in a different country entirely. However, if this is the case you may run into difficulties with our anti-cheat quite soon, so I would advise against continuing to use the VPN!

Okay, the bug should now be fixed and your 7,000 supplies refunded! Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with.

Hmm.. that is unintended indeed and I apologize for inconvenience caused. I will fix the underlying bug and refund you the supplies involved in that trade shortly after!

Hi all, After playtesting the new Travel Points for a week we have decided to make the following adjustments aimed at improving the system's balance: Travel Point merge and trade cost per land level has been reduced to 1 per 1 level (previously: 10 points per level). Buildings disappearing as a result of a merge no longer award any points at all. After discussing this internally we have come to conclusion that several extra level points awarded to your nearest base just aren't worth the increased Travel Point merge/trade cost. All Travel Points spent by everyone since the launch of this system have now been refunded, so don't worry if you've already performed a really expensive merge. Please post if you have any questions!

Hi! Did you create a new land before your first flight? There was also a bug prior to my post below due to which some captures did not award points initially: However, this is now fixed so all future captures will award points correctly. Please let me know if you run into this issue again though! There is no maximum, lands can indeed grow beyond level 500 still. Yes, but I have to admit this was an unintended effect. I have adjusted the formula so that the numbers from .5+ are rounded up.

Unfortunately, I think that ship has sailed now that the term travel points is used in a dozen of places in 8 languages. I also think that the term "Travel Points" is pretty much self-explanatory: even without a tutorial you get the sense that you have to travel to earn those points. "Influence" is very generic and without an explicit tutorial text it would be unclear how to earn it.

Hmm... something's not right. Buying a level 1 land is supposed to cost 10 points only. Merging a level 20 land with a level 1 will cost 210 points. If you are buying a level 1 land and getting the 210 points price tag then we have a problem! I will investigate. But yes @Олег Поленин, after you buy a land (10 points) and try to merge it you will have to pay the merge price separately (210 more points).

Hi @Luna! If I understand correctly, you are trying to merge a level 1 land with a level 20 land, is that right? I know that this new requirement may seem a bit too much at first, but it's worth remembering some other new rules and suggested tactics! For example, merging the smaller land will award you with double points (i.e. as if you created another land of the same size, but for free and without actually travelling). Additionally, you have the ability to construct a level 10 sandbag wall, which upon merging will transform into another +10 points (equal to 10 new flags). Finally, using the magnet button for merging does not merge only one land, but all of the surrounding flags touching the larger land. This means that prior to merging you should put up some more flags and merge all of them in one go to multiply the aforementioned bonuses and only pay the merging fee once. And of course, you don't actually have to go 210 kilometers away; the point total grows with every new land capture, even if you are creating new lands in a circle and playing exclusively in your home suburb. I hope this helps!

Deleting buildings deducing base points has now been fixed! All new land captures that weren't awarding points before are also once again functional. Please let me know if you run into any other issues.

Yep, sorry! Regular structures are not supposed to deduce points indeed. There is also another known issue that seems to prevent certain payers from receiving points, that and the deduction problem will be addressed in a hotfix later tonight.

Regarding the promised "land wipe": we have decided to set the old land level limit to 500, so all lands above that have now been "trimmed" (the associated utility structures and buildings remain). Base levels will be recalculated accordingly.

Hey all, Changes described in this thread are now live: You will need to download version 1.20.1 from the Play Store to see your Travel Points. The iOS release is once again falling behind and is unlikely to happen this week due to technical issues: unfortunately, our designated Mac has broken down and we cannot perform any new submissions to the App Store until it is fixed. My apologies to all Apple users, I will do my best to resolve this as soon as I can. Until then you are still accumulating Travel Points and can use all elements of the new mechanics, but will simply not see your current Travel Point total. Finally, this release includes Polish translations generously provided by @Олег Поленин (thank you very much once again!). Please post if you have any questions or run into any issues.

@Eerienkah is correct, it would work in a similar way. Yes, a level 1 land can block an adjacent level 99 until you merge it. I'm sure we could come up with some worse scenarios than that, but it's all in your hands. Perhaps merging 30 level 1 lands in a row is not the best use of travel points. In any case, I remember us having a similar discussion when the resource cost for merging was introduced and the initial price was unanimously deemed too high by our community, so it was lowered and we've ended up with millionaires who have nowhere to sink their resources into. So we are going to try the original formula first; if it's completely unreasonable (remember, I am playing this game too and suffer together with everyone else! ) then I can always lower the price, but please don't count on it happening in the near future. The "stamp duty" is there by design, i.e. some percentage based on the total land size will always be paid to make it harder and harder to advance your lands further. I may be convinced to lower the percentage if the game gets too difficult, but not eliminate it completely. That is another viable alternative, but let's experience the new system first before making it easier.

I would appreciate if you didn't put words in my mouth, my example is perfectly correct. You only gain bonus points to your base based on the merged land level, but you will be paying a full price of the combined level every time (consider it a "stamp duty" on high-level lands!). So yes, it would be a terrible value to merge a level 1000 land with a level 1 three times in a row, which is why it would be wise to merge more than one land at a time. Nope, sorry! Utility structures already awarded your base with a point when they were constructed, they will not do so again. But thanks for reminding me about these, there is another new rule that I forgot to mention: Deleting a Utility structure will now deduct its levels from your base. When the "delete" button was introduced it was purely due to a large number of requests wanting to switch solar panels for turrets, turrets for silos etc. etc. So the fact that this button is currently used to clear the same spot and continuously re-create the utility structure is another couching technique that we've been meaning to address for a long time. Correct! The more lands you merge in one go the fewer travel points will be spent in the long run. The idea is to prevent a very strong "pay to win" incentive. Introducing upgrades in this equation sends a clear message that 100 travel points can be obtained for 5 Unobtainium, so players with plenty of Unobtainium can resume the original couching techniques via merging that will now become perfectly legal. I was planning to introduce the facility to purchase travel points in the future, but at a much lower rate to preserve the same balance as we have with the resource purchase currently: you can do it via Unobtainium, but it is much easier to just go out and collect them for free. The same applies to travel points, but 100 points (100km+ of travel) is way too much for 5 Unobtainium; at that price it would definitely be more expensive to travel to another city than purchase a land upgrade! I don't see how this affects your trips, to be honest! If you capture a land in point A before boarding the train, upgrade some lands while travelling for 150 minutes, then exit at point B 100km away and capture a new land you will receive 100 points. Alternatively, if you capture a land in point A, perform some upgrades, capture a new land while travelling 10km from point A, do a few more upgrades, then capture another land at point B (now 90km from the interim land) you still get 100 points, same as the first scenario. If you feel that you will be losing points by performing upgrades during a travel please describe your scenario in more detail so that I got a better understanding!

Oh boy, lots to go through! Thanks very much for your (mostly) positive feedback, guys! I am really glad that to see that the majority of posts support the new feature! So, questions, let's begin! You can, it is not illegal, but I would advise against doing this too much: as mentioned in the other thread, I will have to trim many lands to a certain level (we haven't yet decided on that level, but I'm estimating it would be somewhere in the region of 1000), so if you go above that threshold this land will be lowered to the new one-off "hard cap"; you are free to level beyond level 1000 after the release though. I know this is painful news for many of you, but imagine what it would take to achieve the same level for any new player in the new system, we are asking people to travel 10,000km+ here. So we are going to start afresh in a way, but yes, I am hoping that I will never have to do this again. Nope! We don't actually need to know where you are at any given point in time. Data required for the new system to work is already in place: once you capture a new land its coordinates will be compared to the land you captured before that and the distance is used to reward you with the appropriate number of points. That's it, no extra GPS operations anywhere! Regarding a start from the utility structure: I believe it's a fair request; unless anyone can think of a way to abuse that I think I'm going to add this to the new rule list. Not sure what you mean by "interest system" though, sorry! If you travel 100km from the last land/utility structure you will receive 100 points. Please note though that the distance is calculated in a straight line, so zigzagging on your way to the next capture is not going to award any extra points (for that we would need to constantly track your GPS and that's not something I want to do ). Nope, the anti-cheat works perfectly well and we aren't introducing any new GPS operations; all point calculations are purely in the server's database (distance between the two existing lands)! So unless you intend to start using FakeGPS to gain travel points there's nothing to worry about. 95% of it is actually done (I'm already testing all of the new features in a dev version of the app), but I do need to fix a couple of bugs, make a few final tweaks and resolve a few platform-specific issues (iOS release is giving me an extra headache), so my current ETA is the end of next week, but the release may happen sooner or later (depending on 3rd party real-life circumstances and day jobs ). Will keep you informed! Don't see a reason why not, but that will delay the release, so maybe it will be added separately unless I get a few unexpected hours of free time somewhere. However upgrades of lands and utility structures work currently the same rules will remain. So yes, upgrading lands still advances your base, no changes there! Sorry, I was responding in a rush from my phone while running to work, so I did leave some ambiguity in this matter indeed. I meant that all duplicates of the structures that you are able to "paint" on your land after level 100 will no longer award points upon merging. One of each of these structures (the highest level or a randomly picked structure if they're all of the same level) still awards base points for merging. Example: I have one level 3 sandbag wall and 99 more sandbag walls of level 1 on my land. Merging that land will award my base with 3 points only from the highest level sandbag wall. If I also have a guard tower there, it will award my base with extra points separately. So lands below level 100 are unaffected by the new rules in that aspect. And of course, same as before, premium structures disappearing as a result of a merge will refund your Unobtainium spent. Yes, I believe there's been somewhat of a misunderstanding; I have included this new rule in the list as a result of a potential exploit report by a player, but while working on the code today I was unable to find any logic supporting that claim... oh well! If anything, that's good news for you as nothing is nerfed in that area! Yes, you will receive a number of extra base points equal to the level of the merged land. Upgrades will not participate in any part of the algorithm for one simple reason: they can be done remotely. The same applies to new flags created as a result of a remote resource station capture - these will not award you with any travel points. However, as mentioned above, at this moment in time I cannot see any harm in considering in-base objects (utility structures, which cannot be upgraded remotely) as a starting point for the distance check. You would still need to leave the base area and establish a brand new land to receive travel points after that though. Running back and forth between two solar panels around your house is not going to cut it. I think I covered everything, but please post if I accidentally missed someone's question!

There you go!

As mentioned in this thread: The land trade system removal is now cancelled and instead we are going to release a set of game mechanics changes. Some of you may find them harsh, but we believe these changes to be in the spirit of "Domination: Earth's" core principles and values that we try to uphold, primarily the need to travel to advance. This is a semi-official announcement, as the new features are still being developed and the list may change. However, this should give you a bit of a heads up in regard to future travel planning. So the main changes are: - A new resource is introduced named "Travel Points". Travel points are only obtained by (you guessed it!) travelling in real world. Every new land you create will award you between 1 and 100 points depending on the travelled distance from your last land capture (1 point per kilometer, at least 1 point awarded at all times). Upgrades and utility structures award no points. - Land merging and trading will now require to expend travel points (amount depends on the merged/traded land level). Buying a level 1 land requires 10 points. Merging a level 100 land with a level 5 will require 1050 points. - Automatic land merging will be removed; only the magnet merge remains. - Merging a level 2000 land with a level 1 will no longer award your base with 2001 points, but only 1 (the difference) instead. - Duplicates of merged structures on level 100+ lands no longer award base levels, so there is no longer a need to fill 100% of your land surface with walls to maximize the benefits of merging. - Deleting a Utility structure will now deduce the previously awarded level points from the base's total. That's it so far, please post if you have any questions!

Ok guys, you asked - we listened. As mentioned in my second post in this thread, I am fully aware of all the advantages of the trade system; it is not due to the lack of such that the removal of trade system ended up in our list. Our only issue is with the way the trade is abused right now. But let's not repeat what's already been stated above! I believe I finally have some good(ish) news! It appears that we have found a foolproof solution at last, which will allow us to keep the unrestricted trade system and all of the associated strategies. This solution involves some drastic changes to the core game mechanics, which may not be appreciated by everyone because these changes will make certain aspects of the game a lot more difficult as they eliminate the "illegitimate couching" strategies pretty much entirely. The new changes are undergoing some rigorous testing to make sure we don't introduce any new exploits, but so far things are looking very promising and a fairly significant release is now to be expected within the next few weeks (removal of the trade system is hereby officially cancelled). Because of the fact that this update makes it significantly more difficult to end up with a single enormous land all pending punishments for exploit abuse have been postponed, as after this release all land-related leaderboards will be reset (and some of the obscenely huge lands - nerfed. Yep, sorry folks, but leaving these level 4000+ lands in the game will not be fair in light of the new mechanics). Please note though that the original exploit is still strictly forbidden and if I catch you doing it before the release you are risking of losing your entire account. More details will be posted closer to the upcoming update.

Additional costs for trading a land still make the whole cheat worthwhile: the point of the exploit is that you can grow lands & base to an insane size without leaving your home. None of the cheaters seem to experience the lack of resources, so it's not going to stop them; it may make the process a bit longer, but we're still discouraging genuine players from real-world travels by allowing the abuse. The risk of having someone attack your land isn't going to mean much as the process of the "illicit exchange" is super quick: I send a trade offer to my 2nd account, re-login, accept the offer, done. It's highly unlikely that someone will manage to do anything in these few seconds. And simply adding a luck-based chance to lose the offer/land (e.g. due to attacks of the Ai) is going to be punishing legitimate traders and causing frustration. So the problem seems to remain!

Was there an alternative suggestion? I am basing my thoughts on your original proposal: Anyway, what bothers me is that we'd either restrict the system too much by preventing trades within your current territory and all the "former capital bases" (what exactly is left? When would I actually use the trade system, if in most cases it's disabled wherever I play?) or there's an option to cheat in one of these zones until a certain amount of check-ins/land levels. What is the benefit of re-developing a huge chunk of the game mechanics to end up with a severely limited trade system for which it is hard to come up with a use case (but still allowing some distant possibility of abuse), while we could simply swap it for resource trading and keep it unrestricted, clear and easy to explain? This would be very much fault-proof and quite easy to develop. Am I missing something?

@Олег Поленин thanks for your constructive ideas! Apologies if I misunderstood something, but I think ideas #1 and #3 still have some potentially exploitable flaws: 1. If the limits are applied only to the "Capital Base" (i.e. based with the largest amount of [anything]), then people who move (like myself) still get to experience at least half of this exploit. A made up example: I live in London for many years and have a base level 30 there. Then I move to Scotland and now can "multi-log-trade" from my new home to my heart's content until my new base becomes as big as the original Capital (which is going to take a while before I feel any restrictions). Would it really make everyone feel better that I only get to cheat up to a certain level? Unless the system is 100% cheat-proof there would still be attempts to abuse it and the associated demoralizing effects on the other players will persist. Plus if I can travel 100km sideways and move my Capital Base using Unobtainium, then resume my unfair levelling of the newly established base in the original spot, this would introduce the brand new concept of "pay to cheat", since moving your bases around would become the new easiest way to advance in leaderboards. And just to confirm: yes, some of our cheaters whom I am currently reviewing have supported the game previously by purchasing Unobtainium. 3. Tracking trade values isn't going to help much against multiple accounts (or playing with a partner/friend who's "in on it"): all I need is to sell an equal amount of lands to my cheating account #2, while doing the same from that account and selling its lands to cheating account #1. I.e. if I actively play using both of these accounts then I won't feel any difference. On the subject of account reviews and punishment: This is still happening (and is extremely time consuming); a number of accounts will be permanently removed from the leaderboards in the next few days, and I am still deciding on the additional punishment for those who are still abusing the system while this discussion takes place, and also for those who confessed (please note though that any subsequent exploit abuse will invalidate your confession and the maximum penalty will apply).