These changes are NOT IN EFFECT. The earliest they could take effect would be Round 62 which begins on Feb 2nd.

Changes:

-PM oil sell base price: $30->$60

-PM oil buy base price: $300->$400

-Daily spy operation limit: 100->120

-Slightly increase resources stolen for bomb banks, burn bushels, burn oil, and steal tech ops. Remove the resource destruction effect from those four ops.

-Non-restarts can be created up to 2 days late without losing turns.

-Add an additional restriction to countries in GDI: during the final six hours of the round, countries in GDI cannot grab countries that haven't hit them at least once. Countries not in GDI would still be able to hit anyone according to the usual rules.

-Non-restarts can be created up to 2 days late without losing turns.


Sweet!

Couldnt care less about the others, but Gregg will be fluffting rainbows with the spy changes

excellent changes in spies
changes the nature and tenor of the game in a very positive way
well done
the word slightly does concern me but the %s can always be examined as we go
the improvement in the nature of the ops is going to be great for the game

oil changes should create a lot more Fs which will be good for the game

nice job

the non-restart rule presents a small opportunity for abuse by guys with multiple accounts but perhaps that abuse will not materialize
no comment on the GDI change

I like it.

Having multiple accounts is against the rules. Players attempting to circumvent the turn restrictions with multiple accounts will be punished beyond simply losing a country.

Everyone likes these changes? No complaints or suggestions?

wow. removing the destruction part is absolute garbage.

even more babying??

rest is fine, but come ON. This is one of the only actions we can take to get revenge on people if they out do us militarily.

I like them.

did some tests over the weekend

"slightly" should mean tripled or quadrupled
anything less than that then the costs associated with building a spy base can not be recouped or the ops will only be used on saturday night and later

for example
under the current system
the yield from a bomb banks appears to be .2%
bomb banks of a player with $1.8B receive $3.7M
spy DR becomes effective around 12 and prohibitive by 22
if your SPAL is 3000/1 you can not get through on a country with no spies at all after that
with the recent rule change in spy DR you no longer have a time when you know each country's spy DR is low and success is based solely on SPALs
no country has a stock of $1.7B until saturday afternoon so the spy op is essentially useless prior to that time

it used to be a lot of countries carried billions of dollars into sunday morning but that is no longer the case
since many farmers now sell their stock on the PM or hide it on the public market you no longer find players carrying 23M bushels into sunday morning either


so i hope the new yield will be .6 to .8 on bomb banks, raid food and raid oil

this will make the yield worthwhile for the spy country and be a large improvement over the current system for the target country

-----------------------------------------------------------------
the aid to oilers comes immediately after a set where three Fs finished in the top ten
was that a fluke, an "extreme circumstance", or the first sign of an emerging trend?
i think emerging trend
after the death of LaEx and the passage of the ALCSA more and more players are coming to Express
instead of having 114 players with only 93 active, the new numbers are 132 active players
30%+ increase
many of those new players are apparently techers
if that trend continues
then factor in the new tpt rules
the new PM mil tech rules
and tech stays at $1500 a point after friday night then Fs can get close to $19M without the new rule

only 120 ops?
AND .04 %



OUCH

Please do not edit other people'ss post when qouting thank you

The argument that you made about spy ops (that I accepted) was that all players could benefit from a system where resources aren't destroyed. If you increase resources stolen to 3-4X I doubt that remains true.

ok let's look at what we learned last set

on thursday and friday there were, as is expected, only small stocks

people who left $.5B sitting around lost $2M an op hardly worth defending against and certainly not worth wasting a spy op on
so my guess is there was no substantial spy activity until saturday

saturday night there was one person who left stock out to be acquired by spies
my guess is it was an admin just to test the new rule
with $1.8B and 20M bushels sitting there undefended from spy attack, he only lost $7M an op on banks, $10M an op on food store raids

the target had no difficulty as a result of the ops finishing with nearly $30M NW and the spier rec'd no benefit since he watched the super bowl rather than playing til set end and was killed sometime during the pregame show
because of the new rule that spy DR no longer resets at 0:00 spies are now at their all time weakest

if someone with a food stock of 20M bushels loses $10M an op, how much should someone with a stock of $1.7B lose?
20M bushels is worth $640M to $800M depending on how you value it, so someone with twice that in cash should lose twice that to an op
remember that for every target a spier finds he has had to spend fifteen ops looking
so fifteen ops to find the target, 80% success rate because spy DR now protects the weak like never before, and in 36 ops you have only acquired $112M which does not recoup the costs of building a large spy base
the other problem with this low % is that it means acquisitive spy ops are opnly useful on saturday and sunday
raid food is better because with a smaller stock target the spier can recoup $160M for the same 20 op attempt assuming 16 successes
i am not sure what happened with oil because last set's two big oilers nearly always had their stock on the market and market spy no longer tells you when the stock is coming back. so market spy ops now have limited utility when the target is hiding stock

what i would like to see is this:
increase bomb banks to .08% yield or to the current raid food yield
restore market spies' ability to tell when the stock will return
restore the old rule that spy DR resets at 0:00

slagpit, thank you for your efforts

No comment on that post

I think that was me you were stealing from, lincoln.

Improving spy efficiency any further will actually be detrimental to the game. Its very easy to build a country with a high SPAL and it will be very tough to defend against if you are a huge country.

Why don't you clowns try fixed Jet price @ 31.00 each.

Oil fixed price @ 1.00 each

Turrets fixed price @ 174.00 each


Get a clue, this is a war game.

RAWR!

Also, get rid of defensive allies, increase offensive ally spots to 12, grant a 85% attack bonus to every government but monarchy, and change the GS formula so that a kill run only takes 10 turns.

Express isn't a "war game" the way most of you guys define the term.

There ya go Spear.

You finally pulled your cranium out of your bung.

Glad to see you finally came out for air.

all of the recent rule changes have been detrimental to spies
they are not even a shadow of their former selves

let us recap
for months upon months, spy ops on express were at 200 a day, which was roughly 40% of the turns on primary

recently that count was slashed in half, in half
to 20% of primary
and then a tiny micronano restoration of twenty turns
so the recent rule is a 40% loss from what it has always been
and far less than on any other server

then spy DR was turned from a nuisance for noobs into a shield for the weak. why? let us restore the rule that as it has always been. spy DR resets at 0:00:00

i hate to think that the exchange for giving up the right to destroy cash, spies got an insignificant increase
right now bomb banks, burn food are not worth defending against
they used to be a threat but since it has cut the damage to the target country by 75% they are no longer
i think the damage to the target should have been cut in half but not cut 75%, that is extreme

i agree with everything spear says, except for gs kills should happen after three successful gs breaks. it is only fair. after all, i am allowed to run turns and gain population.

WAR GAME!

monarchy gets 95% bonus because the king will send you to tower of london if you disagree!

GAME WITH WAR INVOLVED!

Again no comment

The discussion in this thread is poor.

Changes look alright from my perspective.

Country in gdi should be in spy dr after 3 harmful spy attacks :d

I like the changes, I again have one addition. Removing the destruction of CS during a AB BR and so on. It would make the wars more challenging for the attacker and easier to defend. Because the defender can rebuild a LOT faster after becoming a total parking lot.



Don't take it out of the clan servers I know you did it so that it can be viable war strategy. I do some what agree with this.

In a solo server, what the last thing you want to see (other then no population)? 12000 total acers, 11500 unbuilt and 7 CS?

I really dont wanna just hear "just buy some tanks" all the tanks in the world wont stop a determined opponent.

That would defeat the purpose of AB my friend :p

qz has also said EE is not a war game.

true enough

but i suspect we disagree about the reasons that EE is not a war game
you believe in its natural state it is not a war game
i believe in its natural state that EE is a fantastic war game that has been warped out of all recognition by pro-netting rules

examples of pro-netting rules:
DR
SPY DR
artificial restrictions on the number of PS attacks
No drop land rule
limits on number of spy ops
limits on the nature and yield of spy ops

some of these rules have been around forever and may seem to be at the very heart of the game
for example without DR netting countries would have no protection and the game would devolve into...
into...
a war game

another example is the no drop land rule. If this rule were not in place the fastest closers in the game would be heavily teched LG countries
in order to prevent war countries from overwhelming netting countries we do not allow war countries to reach their full potential
it is not uncommon in express to get to 20 million jets, counting tech and gov type enhancements, and if not for the no drop land rule a big tech jet force would finish in the top ten
but would have to hit twenty or more netters in the closing hours,
such a concept is repugnant to the admins

ok, that is a choice made by those who run the servers.
there are rationalizations on why these rules are in place
but it is does not mean EE is not at its a heart a war game.
It simply means that under the current rule set and rationalizations, EE is an economic development game and not a war game.

It is as though someone made up rules restricting techers, farmers and cashers
suppose e.g. a rule saying one could not research more than 20 times in 24 hours, or could not cash more than five times a set,
EE would not be much of a netting game under those rules.
while the above restrictions seem arbitrary and capricious to us, they are no more arbitrary than the current restrictions on war countries to which we have become so accustomed that they seem natural and mandatory.

my point here is not to criticize the admins.
my point is merely to demonstrate that EE could be a great war game and could attract a lot of thougtful sophisticated war gamers

that is why i have said before and will say again, EE will take off when and only when players are able to host their own servers with their own rule sets selected off a dashboard.
war gamers should be able to host servers with war rules,
all xers could host servers where attacks are banned,
some could host clan servers,
hosts can select EE standard rules, swirve classic rules,
there can be short games, fast games, year long games, mano a mano games, king of the hill games, hosts should be able to select how often turns arrive, which rules appy, whether to allow bots, if so how many, the potential is limitless.
Each game could be tailored to suit its exact audience.

that is my vision for the future of this game

it may sound like that is a long way off, that it is impossible to do, but there are many examples of similar sites everycyberwhere

a classic example is bridgebaseonline.com
there anyone can host their own game, select their own rules, their own scoring system, invite who they want, ban their enemies, select how long the game will last, etc.
the dashboard is so easy to use a third grader could do it

you say well, BBO is different
tens of millions of people a year play that game, and spend billions of dollars a year all over the world to play it, its top players make millions of dollars a year
EE will never get there

no EE will not but there is no reason the site can not emulate BBO and offer its players a ton of playing options all selected off a dashboard by the host

i look forward to that day, i fervently hope we get there
until then i will keep playing express even though i dislike the game philosophy of the server's rule selecter.

the server at bbo.com is not responding

yeah that game works great, perhaps you should try to learn how to stockpile instead of only stealing others stockpile lincoln?

Just a new amazing idea I had

I was interested in building a solo war server with brackets and seasonal winners but the demand simply wasn't there.

im pretty sure the demand is there. It might reduce suiciding if everyone gets to war.

If this was a war game at heart, we dont need to rank players by networth now do we? Thats what determines the winner, not how many countries one kills or, population killed, land grabbed etc.

Isnt netgaining the main purpose of this game?

That would defeat the purpose of AB my friend :p [/quote]


isnt having to use all your turns enough to get yout point across rather then having to use 100 turns just to have a decent enough BPT to just to rebuild, then you could be back into the war?

slagpit,

"if you build it, they will come" -unidentified voice from the ether

When I first floated the idea there was less than ten people who were interested. They were enthusiastic, sure. But that's simply not enough people.

Detmer set up an unofficial 1v1 contest in primary. Last I checked only 3 countries had signed up.

a 1 on 1 subserver in primary is not a fair measure of demand
i am sure you know that

look at the nature of EE players
if a new server, any new server, appears, they will try it out.


once they see EE in its solo war game mode, the enthusiastic will become zealots

you know how many people you have and will have if EE is never tried as a war game
you do not yet KNOW how many players you will have if EE is ever tried as a war game

try EE as a solo war game

if you build it i will come

Give it a rest lincoln,

Express is not a war server, it mostly is for us who net to test our strategys for the other servers... fast turns just makes the beta run quicker... i think if you have a need for war, just go to FFA or some other team based server. 1v1's are not wars, thats just one country attacking the other one relentlessly untill the other country sais ive had enough. and starts hitting back.

"Try your hand at running a country. Develop its technology, military, and land while dealing with war, trade, diplomacy, and more! Best of all, compete with thousands of others who are also trying to become the most powerful country on the planet!"

War is just 1 facet of this game, and not a necessary one. The thing that originally made Earth 2025 popular was the flexibility to build any type of country you wanted - war, net, spy, whatever. The fighters can fight each other, the netters can compete, etc. The community you see today grew from those foundations.

I would have thought you had been around long enough to come to understand that fact gregg...but perhaps you were too busy coming up with fun little acronyms to notice.

mods go f'up another server like fluffty FFA or some sheet.

Leave express to the war mongers. It's our heaven.

Get a clue.

Ok fatty you know better then the people who made the server,

i post a suggestion about how to maximize flexibility by allowing people to host their own sets with their own rules, their own philosophies, their own preferences be they netter or warrior, their own turn rates, their own size choices, etc.

EE can be a war game
EE can be an economic development game
EE can be a hybrid of both
the rules can be tailored to suit individual preferences

HWCNG says i do not understand that flexibility is important
...

fatty explain to me in detail how express is a better war server then one that allows you to run up to sixteen countries by yourself?