What are these, bot countries? What are the rules governing them, do they only explore, or do they landgrab as well?

Thanks!

They are bots. They only explore and will not retal if grabbed.

They grab you by the cooch, Trump style!

Hi new buddy. I was a new player myself 3 months ago n nobody told me bout bots. You cant find anything concrete about them on official earth pages or wiki. Theres good info posted on them on various forums, you gotta search for it. I believe some veteran top players close 2 devs have complete info. on them which gives them n their clan members unfair advantage. As a solo non clan member I have been able to gather the following
Rules governing bots:
They never attack 4 land, only explore. So you can SS n PS them forever without fear of retal.
They play their turns according to a predetermined script designed by devs. Meaning sometimes they make stupid decisions like buying overpriced tech, selling goods at ridiculous low prices. Bots' presence increases the pool of players n is supposed to make the game n public market more stable. It also creates safe space for human players who want to attack for land & grow without getting into a fight with other humans.
Bots have been given common strats to follow such as casher, farmer, techer, commy-indy etc. They follow these strats just as a human would n build the required types of buildings n buying required techs. I.e. if it's a casher bot, it builds Enterprise zones & residences n buys business n residence techs. They build out construction sites till they have 240 ( adjust if govt. type is Theo or dict) n spend rest of their turns exploring n building required types of buildings n buying military and tech as mandated by the script. Some are rainbow bots by design. Different servers have varying numbers of bots. Some don't have any. On express I believe there are about 30 bots.
I have got some good info. on how to identify bots in this thread:
https://www.earthempires.com/...-a-bot-45849?t=1539558983

You can check the news of the country # that you want to grab and if u see lots of attacks on the country and no retal then u know it's a bot.

Chutya I think you've nailed it there apart from you haven't mentioned that bots - (or countries disguised as bots) - have a silly name like 'Admiral William Darkmoon' or 'Extrapolated Toothbrush'

as of yet. if irl keeps qz busy then not in seeable future.

Hey System Glitch, welcome back to earth. Here is a small file I wrote up to send to a couple of new players I've chatted with over the sets. These are based on notes I gathered from forum threads when I first started playing again. Good luck and if you have any questions, just inbox me and I'll help if I can. -v

Bots:

NEVER attack anyone

Usually a 2 or 3 word name (although can be 1 or 4 words)

Every first letter in name is capitalized (except some may have lower case 'von' or 'of' 'the', etc.)

65 build per turn (240 CS or 166 Theo or 350-ish Dictator) unless attacks have destroyed a few.

Normally have a LOT of unbuilt land, especially early in the round.

Almost always have used all their turns. If you see what looks like a bot that is stocking turns, it's a trap. There ARE people who impersonate bots trying to get you to break GDI.

Will usually have been attacked multiple times by multiple countries.

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Helpful Websites:

http://www.eestats.com
Stats, rankings for EarthEmpires games. Go to this site and select Express, then Ranks. You can see how many attacks a county has had against it or made against other countries. Remember, bots NEVER attack.

http://www.earthgraphs.com
- Select Express and the 'countries' selection, then click 'show selected reset'.

irc.earthempires.com - Earth IRC chat. Available via the "Chat" button on earth empires menu.
/join #express - gives real time attacks information
/join #market.express - gives real time market sales information

If a target is in GDI and you are not sure if it is a bot, only attack once as most human players will only retal once so they don't break their GDI (and open themselves up to more harmful attacks such as GS/AB/missiles/etc.).

Yup, good info.

Thanks
I mentioned it in the linked thread post

One of these days when I have made enough netting records, I will disguise as a bot and have me some fun :-D

Bots have allies in Alliances, this causes you to check for alliances in your spy ops. or a DH hit results, I check for it and a lot of the times I hit the weaker Allie first...lol

Do some Bots get GDI ? I was under the impression that they didn't?

They do now. They didn't in the past.

Good to know...Thanks