So if you were #95 all along, and you weren't able to pull off 78K this round, what's to back up the wild claim #1 could have made 78K land?

Need to manually edit the list to exclude spot 19, and bump up the surviving 26.

78K land from 37K, with turns essentially fully used at that point and the game well past the half way point? I doubt it. And don't forget the people hitting him weren't done with him either.

Lets just say that his SPAL was atrocious, obviously for such a large amount of land. So it is not a stretch anyone could easy pass and get an OP. I had a look before he dropped and I didn't see too much. He could generated enough cash to stay afloat by selling all his stuff. And he obviously sold off most of it by now too. But what's the point if all you're doing is sustaining a certain land value that is reaching it's plateau? In the meantime #47 and #95 continue to climb because they were not rendered inoperable that early on. He could have maybe stayed top 4 by end of round by land record of this round. He won't win it for sure nor get 2nd place.

How much land do you think #1 could have continued to generate when he had maybe 2K buildings at most of his 37K land?

Judging by the AB results at the end, before #1 dropped land, where #58 was yielding 4 buildings per AB on #1, I'd say you can pretty much surmise #1 has nothing left. 90% free land probably. An op isn't even needed to get the gist of the situation.

Also, there was nothing to be gained by keeping the land at that point. As you can tell #95 has way more than #1 ever had by now. And #1 after he was parking lot'd would have been rendered useless for the rest of the round. Unable to significantly climb on the land totem pole. Maybe he dropped it as a way to bow out and not draw attention to high land/low NW - which is a sign of failure.

^Should note, the secret sauce to the success of #95 appears to be the fact he hit bots and not humans. Although none were in GDI. Where the other two land record attempts were different and failed was they went after humans unlike #95.

Looks like a couple of people were going for the land record this round and failed. Maybe because of the discussion about land records recently. I think #1 is another one - went from most land to least by end of round from dropping it after being parking lot'd. Looks like #95 may be the winner who came out unhurt.

Yeah. Noticed this for a while too.

Actually it's entirely not working at all now. Not getting bonus points. I don't even bother with it now. Not worth the effort. I wish they removed it and just give more bonus elsewhere.

Other than making a larger buffer, does it make sense to quicky use turns to pump up population to a higher level? Isn't the sweet spot where efficiency is highest, especially when ganged up on, where the attacker can only drain 5 civ per turn with BR while you pump out your 40 per turn?

So when you have total population of 100 or so as your target to maintain and keeping it at this level.

If your total population is higher, you make more civ per turn, but the enemy gets to drain your population at a higher rate also? Efficiency not as high as the 40:5 when you are at the bottom of the barrel?

Playing devil's advocate, but you can wall sure. Once you get down to them attrition 10 citizens max per BR for 2 turns but it takes you 1 turn for 20(?) citizens.

However you have to be online and playing the entire time. Not everyone hits the refresh every few minutes.

Not if people start hitting lurking netters. You can often tell. Perhaps high land. More likely than not a farmer as commies and techers need to grow organically. Then a normal and market op later and you know what's up. Then you hit em.

Might want to join GDI next round. As history has shown on this server, it's only a matter of time until you win the Darwin award as well.

To not be trolled without GDI will require high SPAL and high SDI as well, on top of high turrets, tanks and troops. That's quite a tall order. There are many ways for trolls to break people, particularly early to mid game.

And when you do have high SPAL and high SDI, or even lots of expensive to maintain tanks and high SPAL, these "protective measures" to preempt being trolled are actually counter to getting high networth, because you'd rather have spent that money on useful stuff like military/residential/business/agricultural/industrial research instead. Or instead of high SPAL and tanks, reduce the cost from owning turrets/jets when you're in GDI.

So I don't really see a real benefit to purposely not joining GDI and beefing up all defenses (other than as a finger to GDI netters by implying you're somehow better). Money is being wasted. There is no way of telling which way the troll will get you. You can't possibly beef up against all avenues. You will have a rainbow coverage and be jack of all trades and master of none. Then the troll with 1M tanks breaks you anyway. Or missle dump. Or all the ops they will do on you because their SPAL is super high.

Joining GDI simplifies things. Turrets & jets. Don't double tap. Done.

The only high ranking non-GDI players you see are normally people that 'fly under the radar' from the one or two full time trollers that sink early top players. So they do well because they lucked out from being selected. But if there were enough trolls handing out Darwin awards, then there should be no reason any non-GDI make top 25. Not enough players for that though.

its been acting up lately. sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. at least a week it's been like this. i don't even bother trying half the time now.

That was a self delete. And it wasn't cheating what he did. Also, as many have said, join GDI.

The only reason one doesn't join GDI is either (i) they are noob to the server, (ii) want to take a risk at a slightly higher networth by lowering costs without GDI membership or (iii) they plan to war. Joining GDI is not a disadvantage when every other netter joins it. It's an even playing field among all GDI players and acts as a signal that says "I'm netting". Without GDI it means "I'm a risk taker" or "I like to war". Sounds to me like you're the former. You took a risk and you lost this round.