Game rules

The list below are the various Ikariam Game Rules that must be followed.

The following rule set is valid for all normal live Worlds (Servers). Freshly started communities might have some special rules, these will be listed in their respective Boards.

If you are in doubt of any of the points below or have been banned, please contact your Game Operators, for example over IRC, on the Board or through your ticket system. Note that complaints and inquires regarding particular accounts will only be disclosed to their owners for privacy reasons. __NOWYSIWYG__

Reporting
Should you find someone breaking the following rules, you have a few options.


 * For issues related to messages received in the in-box where the offense is obvious, simply clicking on the report button is generally sufficient.
 * For issues related to bashing, pushing, bug using, and generally every other issue please use the support system (Ticket System) found at support.cc.ikariam.com where .cc. is the country code of the community servers you are playing on (e.g. bg, de, en, us, nl, ...)
 * You can also get to the appropriate support page by clicking the support button on your server's message board page.
 * If you have questions about reporting, or if you have questions of if you need to report, please go to your board and click on chat. In that room, you can ask for a GO or SGO and if one is available, ask them if you can query them. In the separate private room, feel free to ask them your questions.
 * Please change to your in-game name as soon as you can /nick  is the command to use to do this. This is simply to make getting you help easier.
 * Please do not talk about bans in the main room, most rooms frown upon this.
 * For those with an IRC client, you may connect to irc.ogamenet.net then join the room with your server name, such as #ikariam.org or #ikariam.com. This will go to the same place as the chat window from the board page.

Note: Use of any of these method in a manner that is deemed inappropriate (such as reporting someone who has not committed a violation) can result in your getting banned for abuse of the report system. __NOWYSIWYG__

Game rules
__NOWYSIWYG__

Abuse of the rules and their applications
Any form, way and or any attempt to get personal profit unfairly out of any staff member's decision is forbidden.

This includes but is not limited to:


 * Non English messages sent to obtain vacation mode.
 * Reporting messages that do not break or point at any breaking of the rules.
 * Impersonating or claiming to be staff with or without intentions of personal profit.
 * En.ikariam.com - Sending unsolicited resources to a higher ranked player hoping to cause a pushing ban. __NOWYSIWYG__

Impersonation
Impersonating a staff member or Gameforge worker, whether directly or indirectly, is a bannable offense.

Possible scenarios:


 * Creating an account with the name of a particular staff member, or one that looks strikingly similar (replacing l with 1)
 * Town name of "GO Account" or other privileged related name.
 * Sending messages to other people stating you are a staff member or Gameforge employee. __NOWYSIWYG__

Account exchange
Account exchanges within a single world must be done with the assistance of a Game Operator.

No complaints will be processed in cases where the players do not change their e-mail addresses after inter world exchanges or free accounts giveaways. Note that the only complaints considered will be the ones that come from the owner of a given accounts permanent e-mail address.

Once a given account changes its owner, 28 days must pass before it changes ownership again. After a new owner takes over a given account he should change the dynamic e-mail address within the first 12 hours after the account switched owners. __NOWYSIWYG__

Account sharing
Each account is entitled to be played by a single player at a time, account sitting being the only exception. __NOWYSIWYG__

Account sitting
Account sitting entitles a given player to have his account watched over. Account sitting is allowed only under the following regulations:


 * A Game Operator must be informed before the sitting takes place, for example by IRC or opening a ticket.
 * No troop movements are allowed while the account is being sat unless an attack that may raid or crash the account is incoming, in which case you may save your troops by deploying or transporting to a city owned by the account being sat. You may not ninja an incoming attack in cases where you would need to move troops for it.
 * An account may only be sat for a maximum period of 12 continuous hours (Game Operator permission needs to be obtained in cases where a time extension is needed).
 * The sitting period will be considered over if the actual owner logs in.
 * No account may be sat during the first 3 weeks of a new World (Server).

The sitter may, on the account being sat and while the sitting period lasts:


 * Spend resources on buildings or researches.
 * Save any troops that imminently endangered by an incoming attack, only with a deployment or transport mission to one of the accounts own cities.
 * Place an account into vacation mode.

The sitter may not:


 * Transport resources, neither between cities of the account being sat, nor to any other city.
 * Spend resources on defensive structures or troops.
 * Sit an account if he sat another one within the previous 7 days.
 * Sit an account that was sat within the previous 7 days.
 * Remove an account from vacation mode.
 * Change or delete any account characteristics. __NOWYSIWYG__

Bashing
No player is allowed to attack any given city more than 6 times in a 24 hour period. (This equates to no more than 1 attack every 4 hours)

Bashing is only allowed when your alliance is at war with another alliance. The war must be announced (.en only " 24 hours beforehand ") on the official Game Boards, in the correct forum and must comply with the boards specific rules.


 * Note :
 * Attacking troops that are completely destroyed do not count towards the bashing rule. __NOWYSIWYG__

Clarification

 * As the rule text itself says (any given city), this rule applies to all cities, active or I|inactive.
 * If your units are completely destroyed when you attempt to create a blockade or to pillage the town, it is not counted as one attack towards the town.
 * An attack that results in the creation of a combat report is counted as one attack towards the town, provided the attacker does not lose all of their units.
 * A blockade created on a town with no ships on defense is not considered as an attack, as it does not create a battle report, and the ships basically just arrive to blockade a town. There is no combat there. The defending town may make as many attempts to break a blockade or occupation as they wish. Attempts to free your own town do not count towards the bashing rule for either side.
 * As of October 21st 2011, the US community is not enforcing the bashing rule. See the relevant board thread for more information.
 * As of May 18th 2013, the EN community has removed the bashing rule. See board thread for more information. __NOWYSIWYG__

Bug using
Using a bug for anyone's profit intentionally or not reporting a bug intentionally is strictly forbidden.

If you do find a bug, please contact a Game Administrator, or report it on the board in the appropriate section (most communities have a place for reporting bugs on the boards). __NOWYSIWYG__

Content
Anything that causes offense by being of an unacceptable quality that may hurt an individuals integrity is strictly forbidden. The standards in the game environment will be set by the game team to meet the users' moral views. Content might be censored, or punished in a temporary or permanent basis; no complaints will be processed about this and as always the final word will be with the game team. __NOWYSIWYG__

Language
The game publisher reserves the right to exclude players from outside the publishing country or these ones who are not able to speak the respective native language. This includes but is not limited to: Game, Board and IRC official chat-rooms

Special reminder regarding on:


 * Ingame personal messages, ingame alliance pages, ingame alliance applications and ingame circular messages.
 * Take into account that a member of the game support team might block you on a temporary or permanent basis. This includes both, accounts which might or might not have broken any of the points above.
 * At the same time take into consideration that your behavior on any of our services might end up in a permanent or temporary ban from the whole community and its services.
 * The Terms and Conditions stand above the rules, please read them as well. __NOWYSIWYG__

Clarification
Due to the international aspect of the EN.ikariam.com community, chosen by many regional groups of people to play on these community servers (e.g. from Philippines, Pakistan, etc. ...) The administrators have decided to allow these players to create language-specific alliances, where members can interact using their own native language, under a few rules explained clearly on board. __NOWYSIWYG__

Multi accounting
Each player is allowed to control no more then a single account per World (Server).

If two or more accounts are usually, occasionally, or permanently being played from the same network a Game Operator must be notified, without exception. In these cases the accounts will not be able to have fleet contact while on the same connection. __NOWYSIWYG__

Clarification
You must post an ticket to a Game Operator if you use your account on the same network as another player, either at work, school or at home. The GO will require the names of other players that share the same IP address and will add a note about IP sharing in your accounts.

Once Gameforge have been notified, you must not have fleet contact with these players whilst on the same network. In other words, this means you must not trade goods with them, attack them nor defend them, in their home towns, if they are attacked. Failure to do this could get you Banned. Contact fleet rule does not apply (yet) to Piracy. __NOWYSIWYG__

Names
Use of inappropriate names for your town, player, alliance, etc. (such as, but not limited to, swear words and offensive names) will result in an account ban. __NOWYSIWYG__

Proxies
Players logging on using their mobile phone, or a connection through a proxy server in general must tell a Game Operator beforehand. __NOWYSIWYG__

Pushing
It is not allowed for any account to obtain unfair profit out of a lower ranked account in a matter of resources.

This includes but is not limited to:


 * Resources sent from a lower ranked account to a higher ranked one with nothing tangible in return.
 * "Loans" that are not returned within 48 hours.
 * Trades in which the higher ranked player does not return the resources within 48 hours.
 * Trades that mean an unfair profit to the higher ranked player by make use of range of ratios which are far off the world-specific ones.

Notes:
 * Extorting a lower ranked player for resources is permitted, as long as it has been approved by a Game Operator beforehand. (see clarification, not allowed on us.ikariam.com )
 * If you unexpectedly receive resources from a lower ranked player, you cannot keep them. Contact your GO immediately and send the resources back to a town owned by the player who pushed you.
 * After a pushing ban is over you MUST send the resources back to the player who pushed you.

Bounties need to be acknowledged to a Game Operator before they happen. They can only be paid for after the conditions of the bounty have been fulfilled. __NOWYSIWYG__

Clarification

 * En.ikariam.com - At the ban end, you must send back exactly the same type and amount of resources received. If the pusher is still banned or in vacation mode, then you must find an agreement with the GO who follows your case: normally, resources must be sent to the nearest staff village (list is provided by GO itself). If the amount of resources pushed is very high, so that 48 hours are not enough to complete the shipments, you must send back as much resources as possible, then notify a GO who can delay the time limit.
 * Us.ikariam.com - Sending resources to a higher ranked player in response to an extortion threat is not permitted as an exception to the pushing rule.
 * Patch 0.4.2 has made changes to the trading posts, that has eliminated the ability to push via the markets.
 * After a pushing ban is over you must send the resources back to the player who pushed you WITHIN 48 HOURS or you might be banned again.
 * Pushing is not allowed within alliances, even when you are at war.
 * You cannot "replace" the resources used by another player if they were defending you from an attack. __NOWYSIWYG__

Real life threats
Voicing the intention to find and harm to another person (for example user, team member or Gameforge representative) within the game, forum as well as the official IRC channel is strictly forbidden. __NOWYSIWYG__

Scripting
Using a program as interface between the player and his game is prohibited. Any other form of automatically generated information generated for a group of players advantage with malicious intentions is forbidden as well.

This includes but is not limited to:


 * Bots
 * Macros
 * Automated island databases

Note: Only exceptions to this are programs that are expressly approved by Gameforge. Using scripts that are not approved by Gameforge may get your account permanently banned.

A full list of approved scripts can be found on the following forums: EN.ikariam.com (where script usage was not allowed any more) and US.ikariam.com (Removed/Disabled). __NOWYSIWYG__

Clarification

 * In January 2011, a base script used in multiple popular scripts was altered to begin deleting towns. As the scripts on player's computers updated automatically, players would begin to lose towns. Warnings went out to deactivate Greasemonkey, and servers were rolled back. Scripts are programs that run on your computer and that have the ability to change things and to gather information. Unless you have the ability to read and understand all the code in a script, you are trusting the person who wrote the script, and all the scripts that he used, with some degree of access to your game and your computer.


 * Note the "Automated island databases" section. If you are using a site that contains information that you, or your alliance members, did not gather personally, you are probably in violation of this rule. Sites that use "bots" to crawl the servers are not allowed to be used. __NOWYSIWYG__

Spam
Any action obstructing the player's overview are forbidden.

This applies amongst other things to:


 * Spam through in-game messages
 * Commercial for games and other contents respectively __NOWYSIWYG__

Banable offenses that are not Officially listed as being in violation of the Game rules
__NOWYSIWYG__

Account phishing
Any attempt to get vital account info from another user (eg. through the messaging system) is forbidden. This goes for both account e-mails and account passwords. __NOWYSIWYG__

Payment fraud
Attempting to get ambrosia or other paid items without actually paying yourself through approved or legal means.


 * Note : : This can result in you getting permanently banned from all Gameforge games and servers. __NOWYSIWYG__