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Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 10th 2020, 7:54:03

if you produce 50 bushel per turn and you have 450 bushels you will end up with 499 bushels after your turn(0.1% decay rate rounded up from 0.5 bushels). If you had sold 1 bushel and taken the turn at 449 bushels you would end up with 499 bushels as well, but none lost to decay. Its calculated like LI says when the turn ends. Same goes for expenses, Cash decay etc.

Earthquakes, buildings built or captured happens first thing tho, so that will affect your production, pop growth, PCI etc.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 10th 2020, 6:53:32

Grats hellrush and grats ZZ!

Impressive NW hellrush!

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 21:11:55

First off; tech doesnt sell at 6-7k on this server... it will spike to those numbers once or twice some sets when techers are inactive for a bunch of hours or if there are no decent ones. But a large techer will never sell the majority of his techs at any time of the set at anywhere near that.

Supply and demand governs the prices and they are usually around 3-4k then dropping below 3k on early on Saturday. Its too high. But if I could consistently sell at 6-7k I would never get under 100m NW on this server, and I would shame anyone else who failed to as well. :)

Secondly those are not techers I've linked. they are farmers and a casher.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 19:55:55

Yeah TMBR(no oil) has gotten 84m+ here so I would say this is the only server that no oil TMBR is viable bordering on strong. It requires a lot more of the player tho which is why probably its not used all that often.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 16:57:23

Yeah the techer bots didn't jump at the end of the set so NWs were a lot lower. Look at the other bots and you will see its pretty much the same except that we have more bots now than before. :)

Either way its not hard to grab on express now. I got my demo techer to 20k labs by turn 910 last set without working very hard for it or being as active as I have been on some of my tryhard netting attempts. That number is about standard for me and if grabbing was significantly harder I would have noticed it was harder to do that.

The 35 bot days had much higher DR on the bots. You just remember that they had lower def, and the techer bots sure did, and possibly the rainbow bots too, but the changes to farmer casher and indy bots are not all that large, and very much compensated by the fact that we now have like 43% more bots so much more bot land to pick from.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 16:06:59

Nah, I didn't work THAT hard for it. I just grabbed a lot of land, built it with farms and cashed turns lol.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 14:51:23

I won with my only farmer I netgained with but yeah its a lot harder and requires some luck too.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 7:29:39

The assassination itself is nothing I really care about. Its the intent of the whole escalation that is complete fluff through and through, and if not completely DTs fault it was certainly possible to avoid. Like when those sailors violated Iranian waters in 2016 by mistake and the Iranians let them go unharmed. Donald Trump said it made the US look weak and he would have handled it another way, and I think no one doubts it. He would have used that situation which the previous administration manuvered to bring home all their personel and equipment unharmed in a matter of hours, to escalate it into a broader conflict as we have seen over the past few years.

The specific action or words used need not be criticised when the intent is all wrong through and through.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 6:38:26

Originally posted by sinistril:
So you're talking about the economic sanctions now? A couple of posts ago it was all about how they just wanted to enrich a little uranium. Talking points are talking points, I guess

Maybe you are not familiar with the deal but i am. The international community including US posed restrictions on irans uranium enrichment facilities and IN RETURN the sanctions were partially lifted which meant they could sell their oil more freely and they could import and export goods they were not allowed to before. Also frozen assets were unfrozen.

You see both sides got what they wanted.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 6:11:02

Lol the sanctions included medicines and at the time the sanctions were lifted all my Iranian colleagues were celebrating and cheerful at work. One of them even baked for everyone to mark the occasion. According to her her father had died due to the sanctions making it difficult to get the medicine he needed, Im not sure but i think it was insulin.

So I dont know what persians you are talking with but certainly it mattered to some.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 5:51:54

Yeah what good is a fancy spreadsheet when you can just ask Gerdler 98 questions a day, some of which he uses a spreadsheet to answer!?

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 9th 2020, 5:47:04

Yeah its true defenses were lower but drs were a lot higher.

And hessman we've gone beyond that. Everyone knows techer is better and no one is contending with it. What we are talking about is the optimal way to play a non-techer on this server.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 20:54:03

That was not my best casher tho.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 20:47:43

Originally posted by Celphi:
3 Python 17 12 acres $30,758,238 HG 2563187

2 sets ago @26k land and bushels never broke 40.


This is my only netting farmer ever on express. I played like I described here.
http://www.earthempires.com/express/393/ranks
1 Mugelb bu bfo tu ollama Id na (#88) 38,150 $38,298,207 DG


This is my first land record:
387 4 Try if you dont succeed (#80) 53,281 $28,332,981 DG

Also decent NW

Edit: Btw here is my casher the set before. played the same way
http://www.earthempires.com/express/392/ranks
4 yen iehkci kotd na (#84) 39,024 $38,285,759 IG

Edited By: Gerdler on Jan 8th 2020, 20:51:15
See Original Post

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 19:28:39

Originally posted by Requiem:
My tank is for Chevs only

Fixed it for you!

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 19:19:29

Making oneself a target is obviously a problem. Used to be almost guaranteed to get hit if you pass 30k acres on this server.
Either the climate changed while I was away or last set was a one-off because I forgot GDI and could still net the set out, no ops on me, no missile barrage, no ABs, no topfeeds. Maybe it was just because the usual suspects had new years break or something.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 19:15:29

30k buildings is well worth it in this server as a non-techer.

at 30k acres your build cost is 91500 which means at 11 bushels per farm selling at 36 with taxes has a 246 turn repayment. Add a few tech points(that give you NW) and the jets/oil and missed cashing turns and you can generally grab to about 350 turns from the end. It is certainly not difficult to get to 30k acres by turn 1550. And ideally you do that on Sunday with loads of turns to take in the last few hours.

I have never seen a point to play serious farmers on express except for my land record runs. And for those land record runs I used all my resources to grab late instead of jumping, so I have a good idea of the costs of late grabbing on express. The thing is the DR is lower and the bots are bigger so grabbing is generally not all that expensive.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 18:46:50

And as for the money it doesnt matter which money was used. Its semantics.

But also there was no 100-150 billion dollars given to Iran as the Trumpet keeps claiming. Thats a lie. It was Iranian assets, owned by companies and private citizens as well as I suppose the Iranian government, that had been frozen as part of the sanctions that were lifted when the deal was made.

For better or worse you fought in two wars against their neighbors who they are friendly with, and you call them terrorists for helping their friends(Assad and their Jemenese friends). At least use the same ruler for yourself then.
Im not saying what you have done in those conflicts were wrong, or that what Iran did was right or wrong. But you were fighting a proxy war against them since you attacked their interests. Thats all fine, messy but fine. But you did the same things to them that you are now calling them terrorists for doing to you. The whole term terrorist is flawed in this case.

Flying into skyscrapers killing near-only civilians or driving trucks through civilians, that is terrorism. Attacking military personel that is waging war against you cant be terrorism. The word becomes devoid of its meaning if you apply it to every enemy combatant.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 18:35:11

The US regime sponsors terrorist organisations too. Its all in the eye of the beholder. You have been in a proxy war with Iran since the Syrian war started. That was unavoidable. You have been sponsoring groups that were terrorists to them, and they have been sponsoring groups that were terrorists to you. That was true under Obama and it was true under Trump.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 18:27:33

There are 2 sides in Iran in conflict with one another; the often religious hardliners vs the progressives. When Trump hits Iran it boosts the hardliners. That was the beauty of the now broken Iran deal that Obama signed, It showed that Iran could prosper by peaceful means... Gave the progressives in Iran and the rest of the world a win. And dont let them tell you the deal was fluff. The deal in terms of uranium enrichment regulation was solid. The uranium enrichment facilities were regularily inspected and Iran, led by the emboldened progressives who doesn't even want nukes, and they were indeed not enriching Uranium to any concentrations that could be used to build nukes - which was the purpose of the deal.

In the eyes of the whole world Trump started this conflict. First he talk about breaking the deal, then he did it. Then he retaliate against Iran for shooting down unmanned drones in their airspace. The whole point of unmanned drones is that they can be shot down without a loss of human life. The hardliners got strengthened they are gaining more and more control.

Everyone thought Iran was the irresponsible actor that couldn't be trusted 10 years ago, chanting death to Israel/USA, now the US is the irresponsible actor.

Ohh well Iran has given him one last chance to deescalate it seems... will he take it?

Either way he is playing a dangerous game with a nation that could have been more or less benign if the progressive forces were given more victories. Rouhani will soon be exchanged for a new president, It may be another Ahmadinejad, and if it is that is mostly Trumps fault and it will be another 10 years of conflict, terrorism, threats and nuclear proliferation.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 16:44:51

No need to do the expensive oil destock when you have 30-40k acres in a 1900 turn reset. The stock is small enough that you can dump it all on private in a few hours of replenishment. The ability to profitably take all turns is a great benefit of casher/farmer/indy. Techers always land at around 100 untaken turns which is about 5% of the turns of the reset.

Doing an oil destock costs .615 barrels per NW beyond the private market cost, and is even as a TMBR more expensive than buying the military from a normally replenishing private market. The reason it is done in 1a and team is that the public(or private) market cant cater such a large demand in those servers, unless jumping very early and thus losing a several days of income in the end, as the stocks in long sets are huge

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 16:13:25

Originally posted by UgolinoII:
Hello. This is probably a n00b question but I always though optimal BPT was roughly sqrt(land/4)

I'm feeling like there is more to it cos I'm feel a little feeble with my 180 BPT !?

Thats true for non-dict/non-theo.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 16:12:24

USA like the other times :P

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 15:11:00

Techer has to make more than farmer, per acre. Being able to play delayed is a benefit not a loss and techer will be unable to play its last 100 or so turns. Its still not balanced tho. Equilibrium prices should be 2-2.5k for it to be balanced (which it actually has been a couple times when Ebert, I and one more big techer each had a decent set at the same time)

Agri is not the most expensive tech, Res/bus generally is at a higher price on bot servers which is a bit stupid too.

Farmer is useless in tournament too. Its partly because of the low turn count its bad as well, too short time to stock and let the prices be high.
The fact that you can save turns and take like 700 turns on the sunday, grabbing to 30k+ acres and buying the tech that techers are fireselling to jump as well as take all the high acre- low DR bots since all the techers and most others have stopped grabbing already is a great benefit to non-techers in express.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 13:37:51

Originally posted by En4cer:
yeah true that - i don't mind if someone wants to flatten some bots if they get that kind of itch :P


Lelani (#110) has been a real jerk lately.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 6:26:41

You are just saying that to direct the attention elsewhere! :)

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 6:01:41

Well he doesn't have that. But with 100 bpt you wont ever keep up with the ones going for high acres.

If you want to build 40000 buildings in the least amount of turns you will want 100 BPT. For 90k buildings its 150 BPT. So if you are competing with someone to 100k acres and you build 100bpt and he makes 150bpt you are already handcuffed by your bpt. He will spend 130ish turns less than you on buildings which is a lot to make up on better grabs etc.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 5:35:08

My point is that the bots are balanced for more than the normal amount of techers and it drives up equilibrium tech prices too far. The amount of tech sold at the auto-sell is just a fraction of the total amounts of tech being created in express and other strategies than techer might benefit nearly as much from auto sell at 1k.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 8th 2020, 4:32:37

En4 has 500 bpt.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 7th 2020, 8:11:08

If enough players play techer it will be good again for cashers and indies.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 6th 2020, 20:45:04

Gems and coins are silly.

But pay to babysit is something that would make war less cumbersome for people who dont live in american timezones.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 6th 2020, 16:46:59

Yeah its been this way for a while. Commie indy is the one strat that can compete with techers some sets.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 6th 2020, 16:13:46

EWPP I thought was implemented not by alliances but by mods/admin to curb the early wars(but the alliances agreed to it and to police it). Something like anyone starting a war before day 21 gets gangbanged.

I'm a fan of early wars because they are strategically more interesting than an endless string of GSes which is what late wars are. I'm not sure what the motives for EWPP were and I disagree with the immediate intent, but perhaps not with the overlaying intent. Either way Im not gonna defend or condemn it.

Imo the game is stale because overpowered things dont get removed or curbed by admins and so players and clans work out how to abuse it and then it just stays like that forever. Frequent balance changes would be ideal so that everyone has to think on their feet and the so called "Arms race" is not just about numbers or activity but also about understanding and adapting to changes better.

If GS are too strong(which they are at this point, recent wars were 90-95% GS) they should be nerfed to some degree, and warring alliances will work to adapt when they still do GS and when they do BR. Those who dont adapt will be weaker for it.
It applies to netting as well in that the options to an oil destock (in 1a) are far less potent. I have wanted to change this for a while now, not because I think the oil destock itself is bad for the game, quite the contrary, but because I dont think the choice should be so obvious to destock a particular way.

Changes are not needed every set but perhaps one changeset a year and then the changes that were proven flawed/unbalanced gets immediatly revoked/balanced after 1 set.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 6th 2020, 10:34:50

Autosell is only for the last 500-1000k tech points and before that tech prices stay higher than the autosell as equilibrium. Its the equilibrium being high that is the issue and that is there because there are 50 bots. Cut it down to 40 maybe? They used to be 35 and it was maybe a bit low but now they have more defences so it will be more common to find bots in low DR than before.

10 bots less mean $5-8B less demand to the tech market per day on the last 2-3 days and that will mean lower prices no matter the autosell.

I think dropping the autosell to 750 wouldn't do any harm tho, but wont solve the imbalance on its own for sure either.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 6th 2020, 3:05:50

Rank 3 was casher and theres possibly one other there but Im not sure.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 5th 2020, 20:22:09

This is that handball game you guys play right?

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 5th 2020, 17:26:23

That said over the years the bots have been acting silly in one way or more most of the time. Not being consistently on(still an issue at times), Techer bots not teching(fixed), techer bots teching with no regard for market(fixed), techer bots hoarding billions of cash(not fixed), indy bots producing no jets at times even when the jet price is twice that of turrets(still an issue in some stages of the reset), casher/farmer/indy bots buying just one tech at times (still happening every now and then).

I think the bots were a great addition to the game but they were introduced just around the time when the devs kinda left the game so all the obvious errors persisted for years instead of being fixed in the first months of their introduction. I think taking in feedback(mostly not from players, but actually observing what happens and comparing it to the intention of the change) and acting on it is 90% of what makes a change successful. Its very rare to make an addition or alteration that is perfect right from the start.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 5th 2020, 17:00:59

Shouldn't primary and tournament playerbase have skyrocketed when bots were introduced on the others servers then?

When I look at the rankings I see a very steady decline in player numbers before the bots were introduced. It was 800-1k players in 1a early on in EE and it was down to 400 by the time bots were introduced. Since then it dropped another 150 players over the next 4.5 years with bots. I think its the fact its a text based game of a past era that requires too much of the players and give too little reward that makes it decline.

Either way the numbers dont support the arguement that bots were the downfall or even contributed to it.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 5th 2020, 13:57:55

Landtrading or being fed land?

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 5th 2020, 5:47:54

Land trading well requires a lot of math and effort as well as cooperation and game knowledge. Its uncompetetive because of bot grabbing but I still dont see why it would be such an issue if it was competetive.

I know people hated it but apart from Requiem its probably about the same crowd that hates bot grabbing right now. They will just hate anything that netters do no matter if it hurts anyone or not.

Gerdler Game profile

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Jan 4th 2020, 16:17:32

It may be illogical that landtrading can be beneficial but is it really bad for the game?

Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 31st 2019, 21:28:02

It matters a lot to all-xp.

Consider that from early stages of the game if you want to grab bots you are gonna need real defences, thus you cant go as high CS start as now which will cost you turns.
Further the defences you have to keep and grow will lower your returns, as you cant NW match at all as well and later it will still make a tiny bit of difference that you are carrying maybe 1-5m NW extra of tanks and turrets in some stages of the game.
Lastly, you will have to pay expenses for the extra military.

Depending on how the retal types are coded you might still take the occasional missile as well.

All this will cost ending NW for grabbers, at varying amounts. Possibly up to several hundred million NW. This makes all-xp phases much more competetive. Not pure all-xp but being able to run 0 def for say the first 1200 turns while building CS with 80% your turns will certainly be an option. Also tech phases will be more competetive I think. As long as non-grabbers are not hit, this should add a plethora of viable ways to build a country efficiently and competetively. Right now that is lacking.


Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 31st 2019, 13:19:06

They are fine now but they will be too low when the war preppers go to full stock mode.

Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 31st 2019, 9:37:29

Originally posted by sinistril:
Originally posted by Gerdler:
Ideally they only make like 1-3 attacks a day, some of them being missiles.

The biggest problem I see with it is that they would have to introduce oiler bots or make rainbows build rigs, you cant have 250 bots suddenly craving oil no matter the cost to make an attack, thats gonna make for some retarded market events if its not countered by a similar addition to the supply. I always thought rainbow bots were the most useless bot, but such a change could finally give them a purpose.


Not sure how that kind of randomness is different from untags grabbing LaF. Presumably some people will be hit by bots many times and some won't be hit at all. You might have a happy median who are hit an equal amount but it's a similar situation where some people's sets are 'ruined' by the untags hitting them

You mean retalled. Not hit. Im very much against bots grabbing players. Always will be.

Bots should be easy to defend against when you choose the bot that wants to try and retal you. There's going to be a number of turrets that are 'enough'. So if your set is ruined by a bot it's all on you, same as if you farm a player and he suicided you. Thats just poor play.

Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 31st 2019, 9:24:08

Also just changing the server offers different thrills.

Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 31st 2019, 1:44:44

Plus im looking forward to a time when LaF doesnt feel the need to play 20+ FFOs

Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 31st 2019, 1:39:18

Ideally they only make like 1-3 attacks a day, some of them being missiles.

The biggest problem I see with it is that they would have to introduce oiler bots or make rainbows build rigs, you cant have 250 bots suddenly craving oil no matter the cost to make an attack, thats gonna make for some retarded market events if its not countered by a similar addition to the supply. I always thought rainbow bots were the most useless bot, but such a change could finally give them a purpose.

Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 30th 2019, 20:18:06

boom!

Gerdler Game profile

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Dec 30th 2019, 15:20:55

Originally posted by Red X:
Originally posted by Gerdler:
No the point of bots is to add land and to add market volume. They will do that still if they retal... id be very sceptical about bots grabbing players tho. That would fluff up all-xp for no reason.


I think bots should ab gs ss and missile retal but it should be limited to like 1 grabber a day and they should only go for special attacks or missiles if they were hot twice or something like that.


I think they should retal per the hits. If they get farmed its all out, if it is a PS then they should if they can break send a PS or a SS.

PSing could add another layer of skill/effort/outplay potential to grabbing since we would then have a bunch of bots who sent out a portion of their defences on PS. I guess it has both pros and cons.