What is a Farmer and how to deal with them - The ultimate Guide

ianhull · #1 02-10-2011, 09:30 PM

A Farmer is someone who, depending on you or your clan’s criteria:

a) Attacks more than twice per (hour, day, week, month, year) and beats you.

This is an unwritten rule in the game. No one seems to know why it is unwritten or who didn’t write it. Perhaps Storm8 did write it once then decided that restricting attacks in a game called World War was a bit foolish so they then un-wrote it!

Be that as it may, this unwritten rule seems to have been adopted by just about every Clan that was ever formed and is now part of the folklore of the game.

b) Attacks you more than once and wins money from you (sometimes referred to as Stealing or Robbing).

c) Has a stronger army than you do which isn't playing fair.

Real Farmers will usually have taken the time to make sure that they have plenty of income and defence buildings. Many players and most clans feel this is not playing in the true spirit of WW because they don't get lots of losses when you sanction them.

There have been various strategies developed to counter these perverted sick bullies and as this is a guide I have summarised them below:

Join a Clan
Clans are a group of like minded people who have decided that the game is more fun if you work together. There is a certain logic to this based on the premise that the many are stronger than the few.

You will quite frequently get unsolicited invites to join clans posted on your wall. These posts are usually along the lines of “XXX Clan is now recruiting, we are amazingly strong and we will help defend you against Farmers and Trash Talkers, all flags are welcome. To join us you must download the free app Palringo and go to Pal room XXX and speak to Major General Von Klinkerhoffen”

Many clans are highly structured and seem to have a division for just about everything. Not only do you get to call people Sir but you also have the excitement of adding Emoji’s to your name. How cool is that ???

There are of course some downsides to clans and to help you decide if a clan is the way for you to go I have listed a few of them.

1. With very few exceptions most clans seem incapable of organising a drinking contest in a brewery.

2. The premise that the many are stronger than the few only holds true if they are organised (see item 1) and the individual members are strong. As a rough statistic, if you look at the profile of the player that posted the invite circa 90% of these have a negative win/loss ratio which to my mind is not overly encouraging when they are offering to protect you!

3. If you are willing to take on board items 1 and 2 above and you still join the clan you will find that the downside is that your win/loss ratio will rapidly decrease and the only upside is that you will be allowed to share in their collective misery and fantasise that you won a battle/war that you actually lost. Some Clans actually go to the trouble of boasting about these mythical wins on their walls which I suppose makes them feel better.

4. You have to call some prepubescent kid Sir

Post on their walls
There is usually a sequence to these posts. The first post should be something like "WTF dude"

If the farmer then continues the second post should inform him that you have correctly identified that he is a farmer. You can simply post "Farmer" or also include mild abuse.

If this does not sort the blood sucking leech out you will need to up the ante. There are several strands of thought here. You can either:

a) Try and appeal to his better nature and simply either ask him why he is farming you. This is a bit of a fail really as it is fairly certain that he is doing this because he is winning money from you. You could also try "Don't farm me can't you see I'm camping"

b) Threaten him. There are various threats you can make, here are some examples -

"If you attack me again I am afraid I will have to report you to Storm8 and get your account closed down” you can add more menace to this by adding "I have done this successfully before"

"Don't you know that I am a member of a really strong clan and if you don't stop we will be forced to retaliate?"

"Just try it once more and I will sanction you 24/7 for the rest of your life"

"If you don't stop I will arm up and farm you back"

c) Mock him -

"You’re only attacking me because you can beat me"

"You're only attacking me because I am xx levels above you and I can't attack you back"

"You’re a loser with no life"

d) Insult him or use sexual references -

Question his intelligence, this usually involves some reference to him or her being educationally subnormal (this is a bit of a fail really as you are the one that is losing).

Question his sexuality (how deeply graphically you want to go into this subject will depend on your age and/or your education level)

Explain to him that you are having an intimate relationship with his mother or sister (mentioning his father or household pets does not seem to occur very frequently). This is approach again is usually age/education dependant.

Ask the farmer to suck or lick your reproductive organs. Once again, usually an age/education dependant approach.

Sanction them

This is the ultimate weapon put there by Storm8 to let you get your own back on this unfair player. Either sanction him yourself or if you are in a Clan get them to sanction the evil son of beelzibub.

How many times you sanction him will depend on how organised you or your clan are, or to be honest, how much time and money you want to devote to this form of retaliation.

The really great thing here is that everyone that gets sanctioned dies. After you sanction someone you will always get a message in your news feed saying "xxxx killed xxxxx for you and clamed the reward of $xxx". That should really make you feel better.

You can check on their profile and sure enough there will be 1 more death there. There will sometimes be an increase in losses as well. The only downside is that there will also usually be a far larger increase in wins.

There is 1 golden rule to sanctions - You must either post on his wall, or if you are in a Clan, your clans walls, afterwards.

If you post on your clans walls you must always mention the amount of deaths he has received and the losses (never mention the wins though).

If you post on their wall you should also mention the deaths and the losses but once again never mention the wins! You can also add something like "Now you have been taught a lesson - DON'T farm me"

If the farming stops the person that was attacking you wasn't actually a farmer he/she was an opportunist.

If it was a farmer, he will not usually be deterred and will more than likely farm you again. If he does farm you again, you can try another round of sanctions and follow this up with a post on his wall like "Perhaps now you will learn, every time you attack me I will sanction you xx times"

If none of these strategies work you can try building up your defence. Although this is the most logical strategy, for some reason it is usually the last one that is implemented.

Update - Why using a Zero Income Strategy is perhaps not the brightest of tactics
At first sight, the tactic of going ZI would appear to be a masterstroke. The ZI defence involves spending money to buy enough units with a high enough upkeep to ensure that your hourly income net of upkeep costs is close to zero. The logic behind this strategy is that, as the farmer is no longer making money from attacking you, he will move on and find a more productive target.

If you examine this strategy in detail and consider the ramifications I would conclude that the person implementing this strategy is displaying about as much intelligence as my dog. What you have in fact employed is the Lemming Strategy!

On a side note, my dog is a Golden Retriever. He’s a wonderful dog and a loyal and faithful family member. Unfortunately though, Golden Retrievers are the canine equivalent of 6 fingered banjo players when it comes to displaying common sense.

Let’s consider this strategy in a little more detail. Unless you constantly restore your health, I calculate that the maximum amount of money you could lose in a day is 20% of your net income and you also collect a few losses along the way. This number may not be entirely accurate but it is probably not too wide of the mark.

Now of all the options that are open, such as:

1) Either, banking the 80% that is left (even after the 10% banking fee you are still left with 72% of your net income).

2) Or, investing the 80% that is left in Defence buildings resulting in your attacker having to pay an ever increasing cost in unit losses each time he attacks you.

The bright spark that thought up this strategy has decided that the way to get rid of you is to waste that 80% of the net income that he/she has left by buying units that can’t be used in battle. You don't get any money but neither does he/she. That bright spark has just removed the one option they had left to improve their defensive position in order to teach the farmer a lesson! What is more they have had to invest a significant amount of their remaining money to do so.

Let’s look at how this strategy would be perceived in real life.

If you’re local bank was broken into and the bank robbers took 20% of the money in the safe. Then, as a result, the Bank Manager in his infinite wisdom decided to burn the remaining 80% as a strategy to ward off future robbery attempts, how long do you think he would remain in his job? The most likely outcome is that he would be arrested and end up pleading insanity as a defence.

Now let’s look at how likely this strategy is to succeed.

There are 2 types of farmers:

1. Farmers that actually rely on their income from farming to make up for a lack of solid strategy (building a healthy income and defence). If you are tangling with one of these, this strategy might well work but if you do the math, banking or buying defence would have been a far better option.

2. Farmers that farm for fun. The income from farming is a side issue because they already have a solid income and a solid defence, what they take from you is small change to them. To put this in perspective, if a farmer has an income of 900m per hour and attacks you and gets 50m net of his unit losses, this represents 3 minutes and 20 seconds worth of his hourly income. It may be a lot to you but its chicken feed to them. Their goal is to find players with a poor strategy and educate them. They thrive on comments and sanctions. For them this is their whole reason for farming, they are farming for wins, experience, comments and retaliation. The more stubborn you are and the more stupid you are the more they will attack you. As a result, by implementing the single most dumbest strategy available, you haven’t deterred them you have encouraged them.

If after having read this you still want to go down this route, the only piece of advice I can give you is to check the profile of your attacker. If he/she is farming because they have to it is still a dumb strategy but it may just work. If, on the other hand, you are being farmed for fun you are going to be a lot worse off. No income, no increase in defence and your stats constantly deteriorating.