But if you destroy or take 100k resources from player X, the result isn't any different to player X. Player X lost 100k resources.
Do you mean to remove pillaging and replace it only with destroying resources?
Yes, i meant to remove pillage. If you wont be able to pillage people then you wont bother with using alts to farm resources since you cant steal from them
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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.
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
Why destroy the resources when you could, I don't know, pillage them?
Because... this thread is focused on how to combat alt accounts?
Why would you destroy the resources instead of take them and use them for yourself?
Because if you can take resources from other players, people will abuse it by creating alt accounts whose farming resources and they will pillage themselves hence there are a lot of alts
Why destroy the resources when you could, I don't know, pillage them?
Because... this thread is focused on how to combat alt accounts?
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I mean seriously - gold, you send 1 tradeship. When was the last time you heard of anyone trading resources for troops? (Using multiple tradeships.)
Maybe someday it might be worth revisiting some of these ideas.
Not a bad idea. Maybe they should add weight to gold, that way legit players won't be affected and everybody can trade gold... As long as they only use trade ships, of course.
I gave some examples on how to combat multiple account abuse in my feature request series.
Here it is: Feature Suggestion 5: Combat Multiple account exploitation/farms/general banks (Issue)
1) burning and destroying troops: I don't see any advantage of that, especially when people get inactive. Getting resources is an incentive that makes people spend them to train troops in the first place.
2) removal of the black market: honestly, and in my opinion, that's a great idea, but some people use and like it. I suggested the idea of charging ambrosia + cooldown time for every amount of troops sold. This will let everybody trade on the BM, will avoid them getting millions of troops and GM will make profit
3) making the mines more productive and personal: I kinda agree with you, but those who have alts will get advantage of that. Still, not a bad idea for those who like to build only. As for the monuments, I don't know. Badidol said that changing too much the game can become a maintenance nightmare
as for 1, pillaging is one of the reasons people make alts, If you cant steal resources there is no need to invest in farm accounts, most of the alts are farm and bank accounts. besides that people still going to have to train troops because clan wars and people who like to destroy others' work exist
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
QuoteDisplay MoreBased 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.
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.
I mean seriously - gold, you send 1 tradeship. When was the last time you heard of anyone trading resources for troops? (Using multiple tradeships.)
Maybe someday it might be worth revisiting some of these ideas.
Not a bad idea. Maybe they should add weight to gold, that way legit players won't be affected and everybody can trade gold... As long as they only use trade ships, of course.
I gave some examples on how to combat multiple account abuse in my feature request series.
Here it is: Feature Suggestion 5: Combat Multiple account exploitation/farms/general banks (Issue)
Additional is to remove or limit trading for each person
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.
"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.
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.
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
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
The town will start with only 3 free building spots, when people level up town hall they will get building spot
that will make the town larger in building grounds are well.
With more buildings suggestion added the towns would eventually need more building grounds.
town hall level 1-2 = 3 free spots, 1 coast building spot
town hall level 3=4 free spots, 1 coast building spot
town hall level 4-5=5 free spots, 1 coast building spot
town hall level 6=6 free spots, 1 coast building spot
town hall level 7-8=7 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 9 = 8 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hal level 10 = 9 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 11 = 10 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 12-13 = 11 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 14 = 12 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 15 = 13 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 16 = 14 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 17 = 15 free spots, 2 coast building spot
town hall level 18 = 16 free spots, 3 coast building spot
town hall level 19 = 17 free spots, 3 coast building spot
town hall level 20 = 18 free spots, 3 coast building spot
town hall level 21 = 19 free spots, 3 coast building spot
town hall level 22 = 20 free spots, 3 coast building spot
town hall level 23-24 = 21 free spots, 3 coast building spot
town hall level 25 = 22 free spots, 4 coast building spot
town hall level 26-29 = 23 free spots, 4 coast building spot
town hall level 30-35 = 24 free spots, 5 coast building spot
town hall level 36-42 = 25 free spots, 5 coast building spot
town hall level 42-49 = 26 free spots, 6 coast building spot
town hall level 50+ = 27 free spots->max, 7 coast building spot->max
It would be better for gameplay if we could choose our 1 or 2 miracle monuments in our cities instead of having one in each island, that way people will be able to choose which miracle they want to have in their city and it they can share in with another towns that have the same monument. With that people wont have to search for island that have these monuments and will be able to have their choice whereever their town is.
each monument will NOT be affecting all your cities, it will affect only the city you have the monument in.
few examples:
Demeter's Gardens
The population of your cities is increasing by 12 per hour
Demeter's Gardens will only increase population in the town you have built it.
Hephaistos' Forge
All combat units receive +2 armor and cause +20% damage
Only recieves +2 armor and cause +20% damage for the troops in your own city.
The miracle monuments have only 5 levels, the new level stracture will allow it to have more levels. All Levels will share the same affect the Miracle has at its max level. For an example
Poseidon miracle will have 100% increase at level 1. Each level will slightly decrease the Miracle cooldown activation for your own city.
The same way the other resources work, some islands will be moved out 1 coordination south to make space for new metal type islands and existing islands to move a little bit behind. Most of the islands are already empty and the game is dying, they have to add new content and strategy.
I have no access to ikariam code but i know that games use to code base templates and store their child classes under super-classes incase new instances from that class will be imported. so once they have resource base they can just add it as a new resource sub class, unless ikariam code is outdated to todays standarts it shouldnt be that hard to implement that.
Well the existing buildings would still be there. to get metal you can just pillage, make a colony on that island, trade with other players, premium trader and so on, its not that hard to get also for islands players could be able to get island transfer to compensate
A new material that could be added to Ikariam is Iron, Can be mine in Iron mines. WIth Iron added in Ikariam as the 5th resource(6th with wood) It can unlock a lot of possibilities. for few examples:
Existing troops(like Steam Giant and Mortar) as well as new more advenced troops and warships could be added and trained with iron resource.
Higher levels town wall (30+) and other certain buildings could use more marble and iron although empires didnt use a lot of iron in their buildings in ancient times.
Could be used to improve certain units in workshop instead of crystals.
You guys can add more examples.
A new reduction and Production buildings(like the other materials) for iron.
Each town will have its own trading ships, if you want to trade marble from town B to A you would have trading ships in Town B already(These are not the ships from town A).
You would Load the marble in Town B, then ships go with your marble to town A, then they return back to town B empty.
More buildings will give more content hence make the game more interesting, as well as researching more and have a larger capacity of building spots in your town as you increase your town hall.
Freighters carry up to 50k resources but slower speed. Frieghters are another type of ship that help players transfer resources in parallel to pillaging other players/barbarians. In the harbour there should be an option(for advanced players) to upgrade freighters as well 
Basically: "Change the whole game"...
Game needs better mechanics. and more diverse set of gameplay.
Right now a player has to buy a trading ship with gold. each time the player buys a ship their next ship will cost more gold and the next one after that even more and so on, eventually players will have to waste millions of gold just for 1 trading ship. Another thing is that trading ships of a new player can travel as far as a player with developed town and advanced research, Also trading ships unlike units and resources have no returning path, that means if you sent all your trading ships from town A to town B and these reached town B you will be immidiatly be able to send more resources from town A to town B again without your trading ships to go back and you can do it again and again, which makes no sense for newcomers.
I suggest making a new building named "Harbour" -- 'a place where trading ships may find shelter and protect them from strong winds, rough water and pirates'
the higher the level of the Harbour the more trading ships you can store in your town,in addition to allow players to have a limited amount of trading ships without the harbour maybe like 5.
so the math is:
max available trading ships in town = 5 + Level of the Harbour in your town.
In addition the ship prices will be constant, for an example each trading ship will always cost 20000 gold and 500 wood no matter how many trade ships you already have in your town.
By default trading ship wont be able to travel more than 10 islands larger than that might increase the chance of the ship to be lost and your troops and/or resources to be scattered, Changing the porpuse of Sea Chart Archive to be able to increase the max distance of ships to travel instead of trading ship speed, which would make more sense to the building name. Also Sea chart archive should be researched slightly earlier for that matter.
Upgrading the ships can be used with gold, and could be upgraded from the harbour. The trading ships can be upgraded by stages(similar to workshop for units and warships).
Capacity: Increasese the capacity each trading ship can carry.
Speed: Increases the trading ship speed from this town. Speed wont be affected by Sea Chart Archive Anymore.
Trading ships should by default return to the town they were sent by when the player transfers resources between towns. For an example player wants to send resources from town A to B, the ships load in, go to town B, then return empty to town A.
In compensation for the extra wait, trading ships by default would be twice as faster as they are.
(Note: this feature suggestion will stack up with other update suggestions i have)
