Rules of Conduct

We are trying hard to keep our games and websites a positive and helpful place. In order to do so we need to employ strict rules about your behavior. Read and accept these simple rules and you will become a valuable part of the game community.

1) Be positive or be constructive

In order for your post to be helpful to the community or the developers it must bring value. The value could be practical or emotional. Postings that have a positive vibe help to improve the atmosphere of the community. In case your message is not positive - in order to justify its existence - it must bring practical value by being constructive. If you are not happy with something, try to explain the reason for it and propose potential solutions if possible.

If your message is neither positive nor constructive, you are not adding value to the forums with it and only sadness and entropy. It is better that keep your doom and gloom to yourself!

2) No trolling

This should be obvious from #1, but worth mentioning separately because of the consequences. If you behave aggressively toward other users, both directly (including but not limited to insulting, provoking, defaming, intentionally misleading, libeling, belittleing of others) or indirectly (including but not limited to flood, cross-posting, offtopic, advertisements, malicious information, posting account or server passwords), this kind of behavior will be detected quickly and punished without remorse. So please do not try our patience!

3) Read more than you post

Always spend more time reading than writing because very likely your questions have already been answered. Also use the website search before creating a new thread.

In most cases the answer is there, you just need to find and read it. Creating duplicate threads and questions is not only frowned upon but you may also be punished for that.

4) Post for others, not for yourself

The games and websites are not private mail. Your messages will become public domain and will be visible to everyone. Therefore, they need to be helpful to others. The subject of the thread you create must be precise, detailed, and should not contradict the content of the thread. Subjects like "question", "crash", "bug" and the like are heavily frowned upon. Instead of "question" write the short version of the actual question in the thread. Instead of "crash" write something more detailed like "Games crashes when I try to open build menu in some towns" as the subject.

Even if you are asking questions for yourself - your question will be looked up by other players looking for the same answer so take time to make it usable. Re-read your message before posting. If it has no value, please refrain from posting it.

5) Don't take it personally

Our games, websites, and communities are just games, websites, and communities - nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with real life, so don't take your failures and conflicts with other players as personal conflicts. All of that is just a part of the game. The fact that some of our games are competitive does not mean that other players are aggressive toward you because they are mean or have some personal feeling against you. Most likely they know nothing about you and treat you just like any other game element that can be interacted with. It is just a natural course of the competitive gameplay so take everything happening in the game with a grain of salt.

Furthermore, sharing personal details in the games or websites is prohibited. It can be used against you to hijack your account or even to reach you in real life. We are doing reasonable effort to protect your privacy, but in the end it is up to you how seriously you do care about the security of your identity online.

Please note that moderators/administrators/developers will NEVER ask about your personal information in the game, on forums or in private messages. If someone is trying to do that, claiming he is part of our staff, most likely this person is a fraud. You should report it immediately.

6) The games are for playing, not for breaking

The games could be buggy because they are constantly in development, but that does not mean you should take advantage of it. All bugs you have found have to be reported. You are not allowed to abuse the bugs - and especially - you are not allowed to use the bug for your own good if you haven't reported it to us and kept it in secret. If you think the bug is too serious to be reported in public, send the private message to one of the developers or administrators.
Failure to do so will result in serious punishment when we find it out - up to and including the permanent termination of game access. Play to make the games better, not worse!

7) Punishments

We reserve the right to judge and apply punishments at our sole discretion. Although we will try to explain the reason behind the punishment, we are not obligated to do so for various reasons. There are many factors taken into account, so if someone is punished for similar misbehavior and received a different punishment, do not appeal to us using that fact as an argument. It is also prohibited to discuss moderation and punishments in public like in game chat or forums. If you really need to appeal - do it in private. This is not a court and we provide our service "AS IS" without any explicit or implied warranties. Each successive punishment usually will be significantly larger than the previous one.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of possible punishments:

• Blocking the ability to post messages on the website with your account (forum silence/ban)
• Blocking the ability to post messages in the game with your account (in-game silence)
• Blocking the ability to enter the game and play with your account (in-game ban)
• Random in-game penalties like reducing level of all buildings, taking away items, units, resources, etc. (may be used to punish in-game cheating)
• Blocking the ability to access the game and website completely with any of the accounts (total ban).

Please keep in mind that donating money to the games does not bring you any special treatment regarding games and websites rules - you will be punished just like any other player, no matter if you spent thousands on the game or nothing at all.