Feature Suggestion 5: Combat Multiple account exploitation/farms/general banks (Issue)

Its no secret that ikariam is filled with bot/farm/general bank accounts, with or without IP sharing. Here are some ways i think that would help combat this issue.

1) Burning/Destroying instead of pillaging resources

"Pillage" should be changed to "Attack". When you attack(Pillage in corrent language) someone instead of taking his resources, you would "burn" or destroy his resources. more trops=more resources burnt in his town.

2) Removal of Black Market.

black market is being used for bank accounts to sell troops for gold, that is how people use these accounts to get troops fast while it takes days to get these troops, hence black market gives huge advantage for those who are in continuos fight against multiple opponents while playing alone.

3) Make the Resource Mines more productive and personal.

Add more levels to the island resourse mining, decrease the amount of required resources to upgrade it, make it so each player can upgrade their own personal Island mine that way people wont use alts to donate to the resource mines, and people will individually spend more into creating more.

3.5) I suggested earlier to make Monuments as town buildings. That helps combat alt farming as well as not searching preferred islands for specific monuments

here: Feature Suggestion 3: Making The Miracle Monument as a Town Building

4) Creating More Player Collaboration Events

Events like the Hydra raid could be fired more often, Events that require teamming with other players will revive the game and make the players connect more than what we have now.

people will seek alliances, team, member to fight the events together.

Hopefully that helps, Would like to hear feedback and see opinions from higher rank GOs

Additional is to remove or limit trading for each person

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Based on numerous posts on this and similar topics, here are the answers (note that these are not my opinions, but rather the sum of the discussions and I do not necessarily agree with the results - so I'll put it in brackets along the way).

1) This is no different than pillaging, but nobody gets resources. Maybe you'd be able to remove more resources from the host, but the main issue with multis are not resources because these multis that are farms are not in IP sharing agreement either way - it's an exploit of appearing as if they are not multis. Additionally - retaliation would hurt you as well, and you'd have to dedicate yourself to that particular cause putting other aspects of the game aside. (However a "multi hunter" does sound kinda cool)

2) There is a considerable portion of players that rely on black market, you'd be punishing many people in order to handle few

3) This would change the game a lot, so I am not sure how the community would react to that, and I saw some people really clinging to "leeching is a tactic" approach (sad)

4) This is not a solution to multis (but I do support such events)

The only viable solution for multis is based on identity binding, and out of all technical suggestions - none are pleasable for the majority consensus.

The removal of black market would solve general banks, I personally don't mind, but even if we remove the opinions of others - it would be in conflict with your point 4 - i.e. fighters rely on builders to provide troops and makes interesting symbiotic relationships, allies helping you recover, depositing troops to builders to relive maintenance costs (not millions of generals tho) - etc etc...

The same way mechanics can be used for good, and have their own "proper" use, it can also be used for exploits. And trust me, every mechanic has it's exploits.

Forcing players to confirm their identity would reduce the entire player base into one server. Making players pay in order to get into the world would have the same result.

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1) its not the same as pillaging, People pillage to get more resources. There is no reason someone will attack some random neutral person if they wont get resources out of it. Also today people use these so called "Farm accounts" which they farm materials so their main pillage these accounts to gain materials. Its very common and i see these everywhere in ares servers

2) People use the black market as an exploit to store their/their alliance's troops in an account that often goes to vacation, an alliance has few dozens of these. if they are in a long war they will just pull out troops from the black market and make the game unfair, that will ruin the fun since the person will just "pull" out more and more troops instantly from the black market which ruins the battle experience.

3) community needs to adapt to changes, good changes are necessery for this game in order to keep newcomers for longer and potentially larger paying userbase. All the mainstream games, the most popular, change their game, add new content and make it so its less unfair for newcomers and players.

4) Theres already the option to protect your friend if he gets attacked, you can send troops to his town to defend. I was never saying something against protecting players.

If people cant benefit from mulit accounts, either by taking spots or by gaining resources then they wont use it, i dont see someone uses 10 accounts if they have no gain from that. Trying to hunt and fight people who do use alts without IP sharing agreement is useless. People will always find a way. either by vpn or by using their phone bluetooth, by another internet, work internet etc.

Quote from Reaver

With respect to "1)": I don't even understand why you play Ikariam???

There's a game called FarmVille, go play that, it offers you everything you demanded here!!!

Pillaging can be easily manipulated by using alts. one can create farm accounts to pillage himslef

Quote from Reaver

Quote from Katalan

Quote from Reaver

With respect to "1)": I don't even understand why you play Ikariam???

There's a game called FarmVille, go play that, it offers you everything you demanded here!!!

Pillaging can be easily manipulated by using alts. one can create farm accounts to pillage himslef

I understand your concern here, but you want to kill the entire game just for this?

Basically, you are proposing that a player should destroy his own resources (by training the army) just for the sake of destroying other player's resources? This is insane. It won't make any point in having the army, everyone would just farm resources and nobody will ever train troops.

Even big wars are started from the desire of pillage, not from the desire of just having a fight.

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Well that is true, even tho people would still fight for dominance but yes. the game might die without the ability the pillage, however with pillaging available people will just abuse it with using alts from different ips