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@Alex if you are going to do this, can you at least give each person 2 seperate api keys, one for public apis (war, alliances/nations etc) and one for private apis (alliance members, bank)? I can't grant edit access to my sheets to anyone now because they'll just be able to open up the script editor and look directly at my api key, then use it to pull whatever private alliance api data they like.

Things move slowly in the desert. After all, the last time something happened here, the Nile flooded and everything got swamped. And yet as the Egyptians were laying the groundwork for another Pyramid, they came to realise that they’d forgotten to actually do anything at all, aside from building some obnoxious polyhedrons. The first was high time to take a trip down the Nile towards the cooler waters of OWR (Kith-land). Article I: Non-Aggression On account of conflict being detrimental to the export and construction of bloody-great big stone blocks, the growth of “what do you mean, opium poppies?”, and leading to crippling economic depression, the undersigned agree to abstain from any deliberate action contrary to the wellbeing of either signatory. Any and all issues that arise will be resolved through diplomatic channels. Article II: Mutual Defence If a foreign entity tries to cross the Saharan Desert or the equally inhospitable and desolate borderlands of Lancashire and Merseyside, the signatories agree to intervene militarily, politically and, if they desire, economically to assist the other in their defence against aggressors. Article III: Intelligence Sharing If either party should learn of foreign intent to desecrate the Pharaoh’s tomb or trample the fertile Gardens of Spud, the undersigned agree to inform the other party as soon as reasonably possible. Article IV: Non-Chaining Since one both parties totally condemn slavery, they agree that chaining people unnecessarily isn’t nice - unnecessarily being the key word. In the event that a signatory is attacked as a result of their fulfillment of third-party obligations, Article II of this treaty is to be considered optional. Article V: Cancellation Should the Nile run dry or the roses wild, and the treaty be rendered surplus to requirement, either signatory may provide 72 hour notice prior to the termination of this pact. The terms of the treaty remain enforceable until this termination period has elapsed. Signed for Egyptian Empire: El Chach, Pharaoh Asierith, Senior Vizier RedPhx, Senior Vizier Signed for the Order of the White Rose: Sval, Prime Greypher, Legate Luis, Legate Dr Rockso, Legate Kabu, Legate Tl;dr: OWR and EE sign a long overdue MDP and hereby mutually condemn Greypher as an unholy Weeb Yes, we deserve to die for that title

What’s better, being a pixelhugger and not being shy about it, or hiding it behind bigger alliances?

Scarf. I uh. I think he was being sarcastic.

They won't. They didn't learn back with the two past bank heists, let alone this one. It's just a matter of when the next coup/bank heist will happen now, but good reply nonetheless.

Something nobody has actually given me room to talk about: His coup was more or less legit imo, mechanically speaking at least. He played his cards well and pounced on the right sentiments in the right moment. Now, it would have all shattered and fallen apart because (as far as I've seen) he's weak as, but he definitely got to the top in a pragmatically legit way. His absolute lack of follow-through and runaway into VM was just straight up silly though, a complete blunder and laughable. To reiterate: 2/10 micros have done better. And putting Pantheon in a situation that was mechanically irreversible while also sacrificing his "active" involvement in-game made it obvious that this was an amateur and shortsighted ploy. And Pantheon should honestly take stock of this situation and be appropriately embarrassed, being completely honest. I hope and pray they learn a thing or two, and am optimistic about that despite the public's lack of faith in them.

I get it. You're a firebrand, It's okay. Calm down. Everything will be okay.

Week seven was spent, fittingly in Seven Kingdoms. I love these guys so much. They are a ton of fun, their Discord is poppin, Squeesquee didn't leak any of the sekrits we shared, it was a Great! time. I have two major regrets from our time in SK: 1) I was super busy with work and real life and didn't get to spend nearly enough time with them. 2) We failed to coordinate a karaoke night. That said, I feel confident that SK's future is bright in Squeezee's supple hands. They have a tight, cooperative, fun-loving community. They are one of the oldest alliances in the game. They even locked down the naming rights to their color sphere! What more could you ask for in alliance? We're not sure, so that puts Squeebee's Seven Kingdoms in the front runners for future Hobo-homes. --- While we were in The Enterprise, we had our first forever home placement! Doctor Robbins found a niche and decided that the suit and tie were her cup of tea. We wish her all the best and we are ecstatic that the purpose of this joy ride is being fulfilled. We also picked up a handful of new Hobos from across Orbis. Kilo, Hannah, Maia, Kitschie, and This Effing Guy have all hopped aboard our choo-choo train and embraced life on the rails. Our next stop is... Rose! Just in time for their elections. I wonder if they will let us vote... Stay Great! Charlie Traveler

I think it's pretty funny that all the people complaining about Alex interference are generally people who don't approve of VM abuse (war dodging, mainly). Alex made the case that VM = Inactive and then said he doesn't mind helping an alliance get an active player into leadership if the alliance owner goes inactive with no heirs in place. Which is what he did here. I think that's a fine standard, for the most part, and anyone trying to make the case that he is trying to equate going inactive to breaking the rules is just stretching super hard to make a case - he only brought that incident up to contextualize the precedent that, yes, he is perfectly fine getting involved with things like this when he deems it appropriate. We can agree or disagree on whether or not it actually was appropriate all day but at least keep your arguments straight. I think considering the fact that you can't use VM to hide a bank is a pretty good place to inform this instance but instead of hoarding resources and cash this guy was abusing VM to completely gridlock an alliance. Strictly speaking, based on the game rules, VM has a very limited purpose. To pause your nation and make sure it is protected while the player is unable or unwillingly to actively play the game. Anything beyond that is abuse of the mechanic and can warrant Alex's intervention imo. (Sidenote: I'm of the opinion that people in VM should get warns for posting on the forums but that's just me tho.) This dude clearly didnt coup Pantheon and then hop in the car to drive down to the beach lmao. Especially considering he was actively interviewing with basically anybody that reached out to him at the time. So he abused VM mechanics to hurt an entire alliance without offering them a fair way to retaliate within the mechanical confines of the game. So they prayed unto Alex and he spoke down miracles from the heavens.

Thanks to EE for helping me complete my article. Congrats on the upgrade, I look forward to the drop of your other protectorates (including the recent drop of Acadia) and your move towards FR.

Immigrants asking to vote in Rose elections? What has the world come too..

Next episode will be this Wednesday at 9 PM ET. We will be having Roquentin on for an interview! See you there!

Great. Now I'll never get that song out of my head.

In all seriousness, I don’t know why he VM’d to begin with. Far more damaging to just demote everybody and sit “actively” as leader. What’s the worse that could happen? Get rolled as a low city count nation? Demote everybody, change permissions, slap everybody into a 100/100 tax, reap the rewards. Let the cash sit in the alliance bank. Amateurs looking for that quick fame.

So in your mind it's cheating to go into VM and talk on discord or the forums. Boy am I glad nobody takes your opinion seriously. Also, suspiciously everyone in favor is syndicate or pantheon members with... What is it? Two exceptions to that rule so far? Even in discord servers it falls pretty much along those lines. You wanna talk about thinking it's funny who the opposition is, look in the mirror.

I mean sure, he can. If he wants everyone to stop playing of course. You say "ah but there's no competition", but look at the various skilled programmers dedicated to the community and, in the mindset of an admin running a company and a game, tell me you feel no fear. The last thing Alex needs or wants is to start alienating the entire game until the community decides to make a game themselves. We already have people as good and better at programming than Alex, and more of them. It's not difficult math.

Almost 4 years and still going strong.

Sure you do. I did when I couped pantheon. Can't hit a nation that deleted and rerolled lol.

Ok but why?

El cach leader? Better be ready to get hit, violating a peace treaty.

We'll have to get us a karaoke night set up before too long, with some special guest singer hobo's

Hello Hobo Express!! TFG and I are excited for our travels and future experiences with you guys! ? Choo Choo!!

Thank you for having us, Seven Kingdoms. Be prosperous. Looking forward to our visit to rose. The Hobo Express is a wild ride!

Maybe I am missing something here, but you clearly stated that top two people are only making 4,320 calls, and the Avg person 780 calls, so will dropping the limits to 5,000 and 2,000 really don't do anything if most are not even close to those number of calls?. think you hit it on the head when you clearly stated its poorly made, cutting the number of calls people can make to a number no one is reaching, I do not see how this fix the problem. If I am not wrong most of the calls are about the market prices and such, you really want to change it then stop people being able to pull the market via the API and watch the lag stop.

Well that didn't last long.

Id laugh so fricking hard

A five city nation leading the fourth largest alliance. I have to ask. Is this some sort of... Off-season april fools joke? Is there something i'm not getting here?

Well now Buorhann, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. BK doesn't have ties, those are all merely mergers in progress. It's little distinctions like that which are important in FA, can't mess it up.

This disagreement is about common sense. I mean I guess you could say PnW lacks common sense. No argument there. If that's what you think Alex said, then you really didn't read between the lines. The only trash here belongs to you for either lacking deeper understanding or not appreciating what's understood. If you don't get it, then you're unworthy of enlightenment. If you don't appreciate it, then you're too hopeless to bother.

But why is this even a debate to begin with? As far as I'm concerned, Alex is God of Orbis and supreme ruler of the game. What he says goes and he can essentially do whatever he deems to be the right thing to do. I sincerely doubt any manner of discussion will change that fact and if people don't like the admin interfering in the game, they could always stop playing.

I'm not going to try to explain the motive behind the interference here, I'm only trying to say that in the end it's Alex' game and he can do what he wants with it. Whether or not you approve or not is a matter of personal opinion but that opinion doesn't actually change anything. I mean, I don't think you should speak for Alex as for what he needs or wants. He's perfectly capable of making his own decisions and has done so. If people decide to quit because of those decisions, potentially dooming the game, so be it. What matters is that he's the one that gets to make those decisions and we all either have to live with them or move on. If you wanna gather P&Ws programmers and get started on a new game, I'm all in favor of that. But this game belongs to Alex and if you're going to play this game you have little choice other than to accept that.

And this post as well, please and thank you.

Hello everyone, Even after doubling our server size recently, we are still struggling with excessive load times due to excessive load on the server. I believe that the source of this excessive load currently is due to heavy usage of the API endpoints. If you are unfamiliar with the game's API, then you can pretty much ignore the rest of this post as it's aimed at API users and will not impact you. First, I understand that the API is poorly designed, poorly optimized, and all around needs to be completely re-done and expanded upon. It's near the top of my to-do list, I am finishing my undergraduate degree this semester and post-graduation I will be spending my time working on the game and will start getting big projects like re-factoring the API done. However, in the meantime, the excessive load on the server is unacceptable. As a result, I am taking a blunt force action to curb the strain on the server until I can set up a proper API system. Beginning at 12:00 AM server time 3/18/2019 all API endpoints will require your API key to work. This should give everyone a few days to get their ducks in a row before the change occurs. There may be bugs as it hasn't been thoroughly tested on all of the pages; if there are report them in the Tech Support subforum and I will have them quickly resolved. API endpoints that already require your API key are not being changed by this update. I am also reducing the number of API requests per user per day. The standard number of calls has been reduced from 10,000 to 2,000 and the number of calls for VIP users has been reduced from 999,999 to 5,000. When the API is refactored this will be changed to a rate limit instead of a daily limit, however I am simply working with the existing interface because I do not have time to rewrite the entire system currently. I understand this is a significant decrease in the number of calls allowed. However, there are 15 API endpoint pages, if you call each of them every 5 minutes every hour per day, that's only 4,320 calls per day, which easily falls within the VIP limit. Realistically, you shouldn't need to call each page every 5 minutes anyway. As-is, the two highest request users are just barely reaching over 2,000 calls per day, with an average of the top 10 users being 764.7 calls, a median of 507, and a range of 1962. I understand not all calls are being recorded here, but the point is that for the average API user this should not be a significant limitation. The point of this update is to curb usage of the API, and by creating a scarcity I am hoping to discourage people from making too many calls and causing ridiculous load times for regular users. Yes, it's a poor fix, but as I've stated it is a temporary solution until I have the time to properly refactor the API. I did not want to have to do this, but it seems to me a necessary sacrifice given the conditions the game is currently operating under. If you have any questions, please ask below.