Tiny Empire Friends

[Xristopher Denimore]

So, yea, I am looking for some Tiny Empire friends.....I am in an awesome kingdom, and I want to see if anyone needs a leige. I will be more then happy to guide them and help them along the way.

 

Thanks!

Xristopher Denimore

[Storm Clarence]

Maybe I had this all wrong, I thought tiny empires came with built in friends; isn't that the whole purpose?

[Venus Petrov]

Let's see.  You belong to a 'family', you are in an 'army', and you are looking for a Tiny Empire to take you in?  You sound like a busy fellow!  I think that if you search groups on 'tiny empire' you will find several you can check out. 

Good luck!

[Griffin Ceawlin]

Create a few (more?) alts and have your subjects recruit them. You'll be a Prince in no time.

[Feldspar Millgrove]

Tiny Empires is a game of recruiting people to be in your kingdom.   The game consists solely of various points ("acres", "gold", etc.) on a scoring HUD that you wear.  (The game does not take place in SL, really.  There are no kingdoms or castles or jousting going on in SL -- it's just make-believe messages that come across the HUD.  There is no land or L$ or anything like that.)  The point of the game is that it is an excuse to meet people. There is no other reward.

The OP wants to recruit more people into his kingdom, thereby getting more points.

 

(The "built-in friends" someone mentioned above would be the people who recruited you -- you are part of a kingdom of other players.   Each kingdom usually has an SL Group that they can chat on.)

[Griffin Ceawlin]

Also built into the HUD is a way to recruit (bribe) other players to leave their kingdom to follow him as their liege. He might want to try that...

[Marigold Devin]

Welcome to Second Life Forums, Xristopher. It sounds like you are enjoying your game within a game!

I met some Tiny Empires players today, but they weren't at all as friendly as you sound. Mind you, they were actually using the Tiny Empires game as a front to hide the fact they were there faking the traffic figures by hanging around aimlessly, with their bent bot knees, in a plywood skybox.

I think it would be jolly interesting if you could give us here on the forums a potted rundown of the benefits of joining Tiny Empires, and how much it costs, and the downsides of course. 

[Feldspar Millgrove]

Bots don't play Tiny Empires.  So, you're saying that you found some bots somewhere, and you spoke to someone controlling them, and they claimed they were playing Tiny Empires?  That does not make sense.

Where were these bots?  Why did you go there? How do you know they were bots?  How did you talk to them?  What exactly did you ask them and what did they say?  And what do you think they were doing?

The results of SEARCH used to be biased towards places that had "traffic", but LL changed the way that works so that it doesn't really figure into it any more.  LL also instituted some rules for bots.  What part of the rules do you think the bots were violating?

Bots don't play Tiny Empires.  It would be (a little) difficult to program a bot to operate the HUD and play the game, especially since the game has bot-detection countermeasures built into it.   If bots are really playing, please report them by name to the Tiny Empires creator, so he can ban them.

I've watched people play Tiny Empires (over their shoulder) a lot, and lord knows they've tried to get me to join in.  I can answer a lot of questions about it!   (Unfortunately, LOL...)

[Feldspar Millgrove]

To answer your questions about Tiny Empires:

1. It costs a few hundred L$ to purchase the HUD, but then there are no other charges.  (There's also a free version of the HUD to get you started that lets you play up to a certain point in the game, then you can buy the regular HUD and continue from there if you want.)

2. The benefits are that people think it's a fun game.  The players tend to socialize.  As they recruit more people and answer more puzzles and get more points, they get a feeling of accomplishment.  (There are some emerging theories of how this kind of thing affects the human brain.)  There is no other benefit of any kind whatsoever; just an addictive timesink.

 

The OP here is not wanting anything to do with bots, or scamming people, or anything like that.  He just wants people to join him in the game so that he can get more points.  Maybe he wants to be friends with them.  Normally you badger everyone you know to play with you, and for them in turn to recruit their friends, too.  He is probably a newbie on SL and doesn't know anybody, so he figured he'd try asking here.  Kind of not totally clear on the concept

 

You can go to http://tinyempires.com/standings/ and type in anyone's name to see if they have the HUD, and who  is in their kingdom.

 

 

 

[Marigold Devin]

Yes. I know bots don't play Tiny Empires!!!

And bots just might have been my wrong choice of word right here.

Let me explain myself better.

In 2008, when search rankings were solely based on traffic numbers, a whole load of people used to have skyboxes containing all their spare avatars/bots.  Of course, LL changed all this. I remember it well. Nowadays a different system is used for calculating search ranking. I know this too, but some people still find a way of having high traffic to their land, because to some people it still counts for something.  For example, if they wish to sell on their land, and want people to know there is already a high number of visitors, it could help the next business to have a ready-made market as it were.  And, of course, a lot of green dots on a map is so very often seen as a popular place to random explorers, or people who are looking to purchase something will see the green dots on a map and assume green dots = customers = good place to shop. 

And so to 2011. There are still some people inworld who feel very much it is a dog eat dog world and now have discovered a great way to "hide" their fake traffic, fooling LL so no action is taken against them. Tiny Empires.  You stick two or three alts in a skybox above your main store, pay for them to progress through Tiny Empires, and bung in a whole load more avatars on a text-only client to make up the numbers.  Voila, a popular place with high traffic.

And yes, people really do go to all that trouble/time/expense, as they did with the bots back in 2008.  And it seems to be growing in SL, while running the risk of bringing the reputation of Tiny Empires down with it. 

I thank you for your advice; I will be contacting the Tiny Empires creator each time I see this occurring.

[Marigold Devin]

Yes, thanks again, I appreciate all the information. Truly.

I've been working through the list of names I find purporting to be Tiny Empires players; some names are listed on the website, some are not.

I'll work through this can of worms.

To the OP, forgive me, my tone of yesterday. I was not suggesting at all that you (or Tiny Empires creators) were scamming people. My previous post probably explains my thought pattern and observations on TE better.

 

[Janelle Darkstone]

Just so y'all know, I've been trying to get Marigold to put on the skintight spandex superhero outfit for the last several weeks so we can fly around the grid doing heroic deeds and fighting crime.

 

...ell, she fights the crime and I stand off to the side saying stuff like "Holy land bots, Marigold!" and changing the oil on our heromobile, but you know what I meant.