We'll start with some statistics. Round 0 is the first round after the big set of changes. Round 3 was gregg's server. Round -4 was four rounds before the big set of changes. I used a loose definition of "all-X": countries with only a few grabs were counted as All-X. In addition, Countries where the strategy they played wasn't obvious (such as full TMBR destocks) were classified as "unknown".



round 3 top ten stats:

casher: 5
farmer: 2
techer: 2
indy: 1
unknown: 0
all-X: 6


round 2 top ten stats:

casher: 4
farmer: 0
techer: 2
indy: 2
unknown: 2
all-X: 5


round 1 top ten stats:

casher: 4
farmer: 1
techer: 3
indy: 1
unknown: 1
all-X: 6


round 0 top ten stats:

casher: 1
farmer: 3
techer: 5
indy: 1
unknown: 0
all-X: 3


round -1 top ten stats:

casher: 3
farmer: 2
techer: 3
indy: 1
unknown: 1
all-X: 4


round -2 top ten stats:

casher: 5
farmer: 2
techer: 2
indy: 0
unknown: 1
all-X: 4


round -3 top ten stats:

casher: 2
farmer: 3
techer: 1
indy: 2
unknown: 2
all-X: 5


round -4 top ten stats:

casher: 5
farmer: 2
techer: 1
indy: 1
unknown: 1
all-X: 6



It is clear to me that it's possible to finish top ten with most strats in any given round. This isn't a very satisfying definition of balance, but it's functional. We'd expect indies and techers to benefit from the change in turns from 450(300) to 360(360) and to benefit somewhat from the change in public market maximum sell size. Techers should benefit from the increase in public market tech floor. Farmers and cashers should also benefit somewhat from the changes in sell size, since increases in supply will depress prices. We can look at average prices and total volume for turrets, bushels, oil, and bus tech to get a very rough idea of how strats are fairing and the difference from set to set.


turrets
round volume average
-4 69995151 159.0722
-3 110985811 161.5303
-2 138471664 144.0131
-1 104137532 155.648
0 110518451 160.3493
1 164894385 148.5037
2 171942854 155.5173
3 238571963 143.6979

food
round volume average
-4 480414201 40.8094
-3 451422581 42.5564
-2 508749087 43.9342
-1 530639577 38.6349
0 794724370 39.4175
1 663097968 43.5869
2 722100815 42.7506
3 672646788 40.835

oil
round volume average
-4 16888713 101.7523
-3 18600737 188.1423
-2 16433985 179.4773
-1 19729761 90.5741
0 16028452 142.7263
1 17545806 189.0359
2 27328002 103.421
3 19298437 174.4641

bus tech
round volume average
-4 2645394 2218.7824
-3 2225311 2741.6441
-2 2561529 2872.4496
-1 1521366 3045.6838
0 3608269 1987.7155
1 3671426 2415.0767
2 3973413 2353.1957
3 5138060 1806.9289


As expected, we generally see increased volumes and lower average prices. The main purpose of the public market changes was to make strategies that require a lot of public market selling (techer and indy) easier to play. I wanted to make these strategies accessible to more players. Did allowing players to customize market times, increasing the max sell size, and increasing the public tech autobuy price meet these goals? Does anyone have any suggestions to further make express more accessible?

I've seen talk that fascist farmer cannot compete in express. This is factually incorrect. In round 0 a player won with an all-X fascist farmer. You can see the market conditions above: military was expensive, bushels were cheap, and tech was cheap. This player had a tech leech, but still would have finished between #1 - #3 without it.

Oil is very volatile, which is what we want it to be. Adding oil to the private market both helps and hurts oilers. We're essentially putting a weak price floor and ceiling on oil. A player could make the argument that adding this ceiling removes an oiler's biggest strength: a big payday from somehow managing to get oil up for sale for $500 or more. However, even if an oiler did manage to get his $500 barrels to appear on the market, how likely is their sale? Would the high price prohibit countries from making grabs? Would players just wait for lower prices? I haven't checked every single set, but I've never seen an oiler finish in the top ten in express, before or after the changes.

Oil on the PM isn't really preventing oilers from finishing in the top ten. It is simply the nature of the server. Take a server like alliance, with relatively few oilers and massive wars. Even with all of the massive wars, you typically don't see oil go over $200. Many players believe that oiler cannot compete (the truth is that oiler is barely competitive in alliance). Without having huge alliance wars in express, you'll see a weekly demand of around 20M. A 3k oiler produces 18.9M barrels over the full reset: 3000 * 1.75 * 2 * 1800 = 18900000

Oiler has, for better or worse, never been a competitive strategy on non-alliance servers. I'm thinking about raising prices on the private market to help it out a little more, but it will likely not be able to compete with the big four. I also disagree with removing oil completely in express: if some players want to try oiler, why not let them?

As of right now, the dominant destocking strategies (in my opinion) are theo 0 MB or full set CI. Prices and supply are essentially guaranteed, the destocking schemes fit very neatly into 360 turn days, and you can gain most of your NW in the last four minutes, avoiding last minute suiciders.

The new GDI rules have the perhaps unfortunate effect of making theo even stronger: lower SDI does not hurt if players can no longer randomly shoot missiles at you. However, theocracy has always been an extremely strong destocking government. Because of the actions of a few, I don't think that the server can ever go back to an environment where players are free to attack however they like, so we're stuck with this. Still, just because countries often finish theocracy does that mean that theocracy is too strong. As you can see above, there is a healthy spread of farmers, cashers, indies, and techers occupying the top ten slots.



The second big change we made was GDI. Here are attacking statistics for the past eight rounds:

round SS and PS special attacks
-4 941 2538
-3 865 2757
-2 695 4068
-1 685 2450
0 1016 2132
1 919 2386
2 851 1445
3 1517 2297


A few concerns about the allowed harmful spy ops have been raised. The first relates to using GDI status to catch offenders that haven't failed an op. However, the alternative is to allow countries to do as many spy ops as they wish, as long as they don't fail more than two, without fear of harsh retribution. It would be extremely frustrating to see 19 successful ops on your country along with one fail and not be able to retal as you see fit. Using GDI to catch these countries is an unfortunate side effect but it will have to stand for now.

It has also been suggested that players should not be able to steal food, oil, tech, or cash from countries in GDI. I disagree with this suggestion. Removing the threat of random special attacks really doesn't have too large of an effect. For the most part, players can simply skip buying small amounts of troops and tanks. However, players still need make a choice about their spy defense. Removing spy ops would mean that all-X countries could just buy turrets and not worry about anything else. That removes too much from the game.

It's difficult to make an argument that spy ops are not a legitimate means of gaining resources. If a player has lots of turrets but low spies, why shouldn't countries try to do harmful ops? Surely if the situation was reversed: high spies and low turrets, the player would be grabbed and instructed to buy more turrets if he complained about it. If you don't want harmful spy ops done against your country, you have two options: protect your stockpile on the market or get good spy defense.

On the subject of suiciding: I was wondering how long it would take us to get here, but players are apparently suiciding now using DH SSes and PSes in the final few minutes. This type of suicide is extremely difficult to defend against: a properly run suicider can take out ~39% of the defender's NW when the defender has four times the NW of the attacker. Think about that for a moment. If anyone has any elegant solutions to this problem, I'd be glad to hear them.

On the subject of bottomfeeding and DR: currently DR is one of the few protections that lower NW countries have. If you decrease DR, then countries on the bottom will be grabbed more often and for more acres. One option would be to raise the humanitarians limit. As it stands, the grabbers that finish in the top ten tend to not do many hits: the most I remember seeing was 20 or so (there may be exceptions). The countries that do massive farming either get suicided on or don't finish well. Even despite these disincentives, some players will continue to farm.


Finally, looking at server activity, here is a list of alive countries out of protection at the end of the set by round:

round number
-4 84
-3 77
-2 79
-1 78
0 93
1 85
2 100
3 107


The growth looks promising. The more active players we have, the better the market functions. There are also more opportunities for diplomacy and attacking. If you enjoy playing express and wish to help it grow, you can do any or all of the following:

Recruit someone to the game and teach them to play express. Admittedly you are holding their feet to the fire, but they will be able to see the effects of what they do very quickly and be able to try out all of the major strategies in just a month.

If that's too much to ask, talk to people who already play the game who quit express a while back. If they quit because it was too time consuming, point to the public market changes. All-X theo casher is also always very quick to play as well. If they quit because of suiciding, point to the new GDI protections. If you feel like the

you have clearly put a lot of thought into this

thank you for working so hard on this server

I've never run a theo in my life. Maybe I'll try one next set. But I see no real need for further changes. The game has gotten progressivly better, but. At a ceartian point, you will make this server so different from the others that learning to play here will still require a learning curve for the jump to the other servers.

Putting oil on the pm was a kickass change, but it is vastly different method of playing than you will see on the other servers. As of now, there arnt many major differences gameplay wise on all servers except express. If you start doing things like editing goverment bonuses and eleminating oil all together, where is the limit?

My point is, if you make any further changes, keep that in mind.

Excellent, very thoughtful post. I appreciate how you actually read the forums and consider everyone's opinions. Express is better with the changes--I've had even more fun than my first few round without them.

I really like the changes to the market. Being able to specify time on market is incredibly useful for all strats and helps eliminate the frustration of being undercut and not being able to play turns in many situations.

I stand corrected if an F achieved 22 mil and won a round. Very impressive, although I wonder if he could have achieved an even higher NW with a different gov't type. It looks like he ran an all-x F farmer and then switched to H for the jump.

You know where I stand on not counting harmful spy ops against GDI protection. I'm really surprised that more players do not support my viewpoint. I guess it's because harmful spy ops are for some reason seen as taboo. With the current GDI rules, having access to harmful spy ops is pointless unless you've gone to war. I think that using spy ops to gain resources should be encouraged as it adds excitement and another way to play the game. Stocking money or food should be a highly risky activity and stocking resources without proper defense should not be rewarded. People just really need to get over getting so pissed off when someone steals a few tech points or burns some bushels. It's usually less harmful than a LG and players let those slide all the time.

Re: DH SS suiciding, an easy fix is to institute diminished losses for the defender in the case of repeated DHs. The DLs would decrease in the same way that DRs decrease now: with time and as the country attacks other countries. The rates should be more severe than the DR rates. I propose 100% normal losses for the defender for the first 1-3 DHs, then 50% for 4-6, 25% for 6-9, and 10% after that. Tweak the percentages as needed but it should work pretty well.

I find that DR does not protect the lower NW countries. It protects the landfat mid-range NW countries that play very poor strats. The fatties are in constant DR so we have to bottomfeed on low NW countries. The fatties should be landfarms and then the low NW countries can be left alone. No need to adjust the humanitarians, just reduce DR to 4-12 hours. Anything <24 is better than 24!

"if you decrease DR, the countries on the bottom will be hit more often and for more acres." slagpit

like dantzig, i do not believe that is true.

it may be counterintuitive but 24 hour DR does hurt the smallest countries. Slagpit when you play next set every time you log on please look at the DR positions of all of the midrange targets. you will see there are no targets left.

if you want to hit someone, you have to hit up or bottom feed. you know my position on hitting up. as long as the disincentive against hitting up is there, bottom feeding is the only option. ghost acres then tip the scales in favor of bottom feeding.

This set I'm going f farmer to 0mbdestock aim for t10 then I want to be slag first t10 oiled

lets run a 2 week set and see what happens. I would love to see what happens at the end.

1. what strats would win because some are better for long sets then the ones for shorter sets.(commies will most likely be knocked out of top 10)

2. what will the top 10 be and there NW.

If the set were 2 weeks long, GDI should allow 4 attacks instead of just 1.

CIs would still stand a chance at top 10 but I doubt we'd see any F farmers :P Bet the top 10 would be all tech and cash with maybe D farmer.

5000 turns, nws would be slightly more than alliance prolly

Aliance and FFA have around 4300 turns, more if u do bonuses daily

won't be all that different

what if there was a certain period of time near the end of the set where you could not make any attacks? say 2 hrs from the end of the set? there really isn't any reason to be making any attacks that close to the end unless you are suiciding. I guess then that opens up the possibility of farming right before the timeline so maybe only allow attacks against someone who has hit you within the last 24hrs?

having expressed my genuine appreciation of slagpit's efforts at the top of this thread, it is time to begin a more measured critique. leaving aside my doubts about the methodology of determining the strats of the players, i note with interest that there is no discussion of the gov types involoved. no discussion of whether certain gov types have become obsolete in the post February2010, tpt, and ALCSA rule change environment. the discussion is solely about strats without regard to gov type. perhaps that is as it should be, perhaps diversity of gov types is not important and all that matters is strat. I do not share that opinion but perhaps some hold it.

in order to have such a discussion, certain acronyms have to be used. there have been three big rule changes in the last nine months that must be considered in any anlaysis of the current balance of strat and gov type on express.
when we consider which rule has had what impact on the environment we have to have a shorthand.
i propose feb10,june10 and oct10 as the shorthand names since some find the term ALCSA offensive and since more changes are coming in 2011.


in order to test the current balance of gov types on express we should first take a census of the distribution of gov types pre-feb10, june10 and oct10. the census should encompass both the top ten and the top fifty, so we can determine not only how effective each gov type is but how popular it is with mid range players. ideally we would have one graph with the % distribution of gov types shown vertically and the set dates shown horizontally. we could have another graph showing distribution of gov type in the top ten vertically and set date horizontally and then we could have an in depth discussion.

alas, we do not have such graphs.

we do however have the raw data which i will discuss later, got to go. thanks for your consideration.

lincoln at what point of the reset are you talking?? start, middle or end?

middle is probably the best one to look at , since start and end isnt a good guide

good point warster

I don't really see a point in trying to make all the strats and governments "equal"

if you want to win, you run a strat that is good at netting.

If you want to war, you run a strat that is good at waring.

There is no point in trying to make commies, dicts, and tyrs as good at netting as reps, demos, and theos. They are not netting governments, and shouldn't be used as such.

Such radical changes to the game would be pointless and detrimental to the all around game play. You can't have a strat that is just as good at waring and netting, because then everyone would run that strat and all the others would fall by the way side.

These government bonuses and what not have survived and been accepted for the better part of 15 years. I don't really see why radical changes need to be made now. Even more so on just a single server like express, making the servers vastly different game play strategy wise. When preparing to launch a campaign to massively increase the player base, the more similarities between the servers the better, lowers the already incredibly steep learning curve.

I'm all for game improvement, but drastic changes have no place here.

I noticed that you didn't mention Fs. My assertion is that Fs suck at both netting and warring compared to gov't types that are good for either or both.

Netting only: R, tech strats
Netting or warring: C, D (with sufficient tech), H, cash, indy, and farm strats, running an M until you decide if you're going to net or war
Warring only: I, T

The ONLY time I can see an F being competitive is an early FS with no tech but that's pointless in Express.

Of course Slag claims that my assertion is false but I don't see many Fs placing in the top 10 so I'm going to stand by it until someone can replicate that one country's success.

F can do well, tho i doubt it will happen much on Express

I see a F as more of a alliance server goverment. It does not excell at either netting or warig, but IMO it's the best middle road strat.

It can work equally as well at netting or waring. It's a swing strat. And IMO it's pivotal.

why is no one playing Fs on Express?

let us examine the plight of the F since feb10

prior to feb10
F had 15% farm bonus and 50% oiler bonus
the gov type lacked flexibility and was a terrible casher, techer and indi but that was ok because it was the dominant farmer
there was almost always a midset food spike that buoyed the Fs
on occasion the price of oil would exceed $400 and Fs had a field day
Ds were a solid farming competitor but had to get fully teched to compete so Fs held their own until set end
although if you look at the historical record Fs rarely placed in the top ten

after feb10
F still had only a 15% farmer bonus but now had a 75% oiler bonus
still lacked flexibility
the value of the oiler bonus was debatable
Ds were still pretty much the only solid competitor and Ds got no
feb10 bonus
but with Hs' massive enhancement the Fs fell way behind the H capability and began to fade as gov type

after june10 (the TPT enhancement)
with the influx of ag tech the 15% farmer bonus was diminshed because the Ds could get that tech very quickly and inexpensively
the food spikes started to diminish in severity and duration
because oil is not teched the value of that market was diminshed as share of world GDP
we saw the rise of the H and R dashers and Fs simply could not compete
slagpit says that one F actually won a set at the end of this time frame actually the very first oct10 set but looking at the record there are very very few Fs in any top ten
and dont tell me there were a lot of Fs who jumped as Hs without proof because i was watching for that and did not see it happen
but they were still fairly represented in the general population

after Oct10
the private market for oil makes its appearance
a ceiling of $300 is imposed on oil
with the prevalence of Hs on the server the actual ceiling is around $240 since the Hs can buy it cheaply on their private market
a fully mil teched H can buy on the private market and compete with Fs on the public market
there was nt a midset food spike in set 3 or the gregg set
the number of competitive Fs is reduced to 3 or 4
D has become the dominant farmer
there are more Is than Fs

as to any assertions that Fs are vital for clan games, that is not relevant to this discussion
"F can do well on other servers" so what?
and the argument that you can not change F on express because it will confuse clan players on other servers has no merit

the issue at hand is what can we do about the indisputable fact that no one is playing Fs on express
we do not want a server where everyone plays one or two gov types do we?

So you're suggesting that Fascism should be made more prevalent as a casher/techer to balance out the server?

Demo's were always good farmers if u were netting, I might play one again

If you eliminate all of the dumb combinations, government choice for a strat is generally about style. For example, theo casher is the standard for express, but I bet that a skilled player could do well with a dict casher by making the right grabs or with a demo casher by making the right investments. Fascism is a weak government for destocking, but I don't see it or farmer as a particularly weak strategy at this time.

You can probably finish well with any decent combination, except for oiler. An oiler has never finished in the top ten (or if it did it went full TMBR). We might try to work on that, we might not. The point is that if a farmer can be successful, then both fascist and democracy can work for farmer. There are other government choices as well.

Skepticism is fine, but the fact remains that there have been at least 15 farmers that finished in the top ten over the past eight sets. I labeled these countries as "farmers" because they ended the set with a ton of farms. Fewer indies have finished in the top ten than that. All of these farmers were not demo: at least one was fascist. I don't have access to that type of data. If I was going to run a farmer, I'd pick a fascist over a democracy. For the purpose of illustration, fold the 15% food bonus into tech. So you can imagine that a demo farmer has agri tech that starts at 100% and that ends at 243%. A fascist farmer has agri tech that starts at 115% and ends at 264.5%. Your argument is that a democracy can get tech that much faster simply because it does not pay 6% commission? The fascist farmer will definitely be able to get agri tech faster.

Of course, you don't want to destock as a fascist farmer because it's easy to put your goods on the market and then switch to democracy or theocracy, depending on the destocking path you wish to take.

Regarding the turn issue: I like the fact that we have two ~1800 turn servers, two ~2880 turn servers, and two 4320 turn servers. Two weeks doesn't strike me as fitting the "express" label and if you allow a ton of turns (5k for example), you'll get huge differences in countries simply because one country played that day's turns and the other did not. I imagine that there would be market issues as well.

So far I feel like that we've made necessary changes due to the unique circumstances of express. For some game mechanics, such as stealing food or oil, players generally don't internalize formulas. They simply judge if a country has low enough spal and high enough resources to make it worth it. Therefore, using different rules for clan and non-clan servers is on the table, within reason. Special government rules for express are off the table for right now.

Part of the issue with harmful spy ops is that players are sheltered against them. It also seems like a bit of a waste to see 10M bushels gone just so someone could get 2.5 M bushels. In addition, countries often don't stop after just a few ops. If they find a good target, they go to town.

DR already affects SS military losses: the majority of the damage will be done on the first five hits. In addition, there are valid reasons to grab in the final two hours. Besides the obvious retal example, grabbing for buildings or resources is a risky strategy that can pay off.

For these landfat countries that are protected by DR: how many of them typically finish in the top ten?

If you have 7k land and your getting hit for 250 with no DR something is horribly, horribly wrong. :-P

Im playing a farmer this set, and mathematically it makes no sense to even try playing one.

A 9k F Farmer with 220% Agri produces 120k food per turn.
A 9k R Casher with equal # Tech, produces 5-6M a turn ( 5 standard 6 cash ).

To make 6M a turn, a F Farmer would have to sell his food at 53.

Cashers also aren't subject to the market wars that Farmers get into constantly.

Then there is the issue of Destocking, which F's are traditionally terrible at. Cashers don't have that problem.

Now Mathematically a F farmer will always make more in pure food sales then a D farmer. The issue is that Demo farmers make much more overall as they have the ability to resell. A Demo farmer could easily buy out a competitors food, thus increasing the price of there food, and MAKE money on the food purchased. They also have the ability to stockpile much easier, and can drop food at 39 in PM with 130k~ish Mil Tech.

To make Demo and Fascism even remotely close to the same tier, you would have to up Fascism to 25% Bonus.

i take it the F here is for the government if so

how does comparing a government against a style of play work??

each government has its strength and weakness, rep has its miltary weakness, Demo was the 3 turn attack weakness ( only really hurts u a little in war) Fas have its income from pop weakness

i could go on but whats the point, you guys want to switch once and play a government to the end of the round, you can do that

but switching governments 2 or even 3 times a reset can be very helpful, in express u have to do it by turn number, alliance and ffa u do it by what day of the reset it is or when u hit a certain land or stock goal

They are strats. If a casher is X% more effective then a Farmer, theres no reason to play a Farmer when you can just naturally do more as a Casher.

Comparing F Farmer to D Farmer.

Its the exact same playstyle. Make Food, sell food, profit.

Demo's however have access to ALOT more then F's do, which is the issue. Theres just no possible way a Demo Farmer doesn't make more then a F Farmer.

F Farmer makes 120k at 9k acres same tech
D Farmer makes 105k at 9k acres same tech ( I just switched from F to D in express ).

F Farmer sells 120k at 40$. 4.5M Profit after taxes.
D Farmer sells 105k at 40$. 4.2M Profit.

Now a D Farmer spends 42M ( 10 turns) on jets at 100 each. 420k Jets.
F Farmer spends 45M ( 19 turns ), on jets at 100 each. 420k Jets cost 4.45.

The difference is now 50k a turn. Naturally. F Makes 50k more, in a straight farmer strat, a turn.

Any Tech purchases, Resells, anything puts Demo way above F.

u forget to mention that a casher has to buy its food with 6% tax, then if it chooses to sell its stock on the market it also gets another 6% tax against it, where as a farmer DOESNT have to buy food so in total it pays 6% not 12% in total like the casher

about destocking, you didnt state if it was a Fas or just farmer you were talking about

now that you are talking farmer vs casher in destocking it means that there is no difference if ur a farmer or a casher destocking is exactly the same

Fascism Farmer not having to buy food is irrelevant. Im not sure how that's even a argument.

Farmer sells food. 6% Tax. Farmer buys Units. 6% Tax.
Casher buys food. 6% Tax. Casher buys Units. 6% Tax.

There exactly equal, except a Casher makes a lot more with same land same tech. Hench a Casher will always be better.

Destocking is also irrelevant. Even if a Casher pays 6% more in total for stock, hes going to make much more then 6% over the course of a set then a Farmer.

If standard food sales are at 42$ average over the course of a set, a Casher is going to make 1M more a turn. That's 20% more then a Farmer, giving it a 14% total bonus after stock/destock.

Thus, a Casher is 14% better then a Fascism Farmer. We already went over how a Demo Farmer is better then a Fascism Farmer.

Fascism needs a bump in food production to even compete on the same level.

JJ23 once upon a time Rs were more susceptible to being hit

but a stat check over the last several sets would show that of identically defended countries an F is more likely to bet hit than an R

clearly you have no idea on how to play a decent farmer

Are you just ignoring pure math?

@JJ23, Farmers have to sell food on the market in order to make decent money. In order to do that, it takes time, people undercut you, etc. Depending on the server, that time could mean you have virtually no defense.

It's much more likely that farmers are much weaker then Rep Cashers, even with -10%.

I won't play a Fascism Farmer again until they get changed. I mentioned the exact math involved, There is just no reason to play one over a Demo. And next set, I am targeting all farmers early.

There is no need to recall goods now that you can specify the time on market unless you completely screw up when pricing your goods or enter a typo for the time on market. In my experience, 2-4 hours is usually sufficient time on market during the day. 8-12 hours is ideal overnight unless maybe you play your turns in the middle of the night. F farmer sucks. D farmer can be very strong if you manage to get enough of the right techs.

the admins have done everything they can to make sure that netters are not vulnerable to attack.

if your banks get bombed or your food gets burnt in massive quantities it is only because you have not used the built in netter safeguards

JJ
i do not want to teach you how to play the game but you might want to go back and read old enshula posts

it is very easy on express to run a netter strat, have zero spies and still not be vul to spy ops. if you dont believe me, believe enshula

A well played farmer can compete with a casher you just want it so you can compete as a fas farmer and I don't think it should, and if it was changed it should only be 5% higher

A rep farmer can do it.
And unless your a demo you should never buy food as a farmer unless its super cheap

Plus you keep changing what you want, first its a fas farmer can't compete then its a farmer can't compete

Fas farmer - can't compete
Farmer in general - yes can compete

I was comparing Farmer to Casher, not as a issue of being able to compete, but rather a overview of how far behind Fas Farmer is.

the reduction to 100 spy ops a day has enabled people to play with no spies and not have to worry about espionage

that is a negative development for the game

the penalty against hitting up has got to be examined
this is crazy

i hit a guy with 18k acres but because he has a much higher nw than i do. he only lost 888 acres

i could have done better just bottom feeding
which of course is terrible for the game
what rationale justifies such a result??

the whole point is to make people hit around their own size

its something alot of players on the alliance servers forget when doing retals

the theoretical justification for punishing uphitting is nonexistent

its simple the part of the reason the gains for uphitting was reduced is because no matter how much defence you got, an all jetter with decent allies will always break you with less networth.

the goal is to get people mid feeding again because thats where you gain the most

that being said the same applies to bottomfeeding, if you are 4 mil net hitting someone 400k net ur returns will be low compared toif you were in the 350k to 450k range

i suggest that the recall goods option is removed for express.

I say this because it really isnt needed now that we can specify how long goods stay on the market.

I think it would encourage competitive/smart goods pricing.

let me say this new S#!+ sux

I started late built a country ... got LG'd by 3 different countries which conveniently put me in a place out of their GDI range -- IT SUX that YOU CANT EVEN TRY TO RETAL AGAINTS THE ONE THAT HIT YOU -- OR ATTACK EM WITH AN AB/BR to make em pay for stealing ur land.

OH I forgot ... bottom feeding the little guy is ok but - topfeeding is some how unfair -- BS

Explain to me how its Reasonable for this to happen:

player A 300knw B 200knw A attacks B 50knw goes to A and B is reduced by 50knw A is now 350knw and b is 150knw due to new GDI effects B can't retal against A with anything but a SS/PS ... It seems that the best think B can do is go all jetter since he doesn't need any defense because its useless to have your NW tied up in defense -- you have to have large offense to even hope to retal once you return to a size large enough to attack

There is no "GDI range" in Express and there is nothing preventing you from landgrabbing someone larger than you besides humanitarian restrictions.

true enough

however, it is fooloish to grab someone much larger than you because the yield is negligible
if you hit someone eight times your net worth you get nothing
much better to bottom feed against five guys who are one eighth your size because the ghost acres will exceed your yield against a high NW opponent

Just curious, does the spy DR work the same way for every server? For instance, in express do you have 5x the DR limit as on alliance, due to increased turns? and by limit, I mean can you do 5x as many harmful spy ops for the same failure rate as on alliance?

Also, I think it has been mentioned before, but I think that demoralize should be one of the ops that is available on GDI targets, especially if you are bottom fed, that may be the only way you can make the retal and it seems even less harmful than bomb banks and such.

keep up the good work.

i would like to see some changes in the form of jets to turrets ratio.

something along the lines of maybe a max of 2jets:1turret...

this would really curb those top feeders.

you want to do good? then learn how to play properly and play every few hours. otherwise get left behind. this is the express server. if you dont have the time, then play some other server..

was there changes to the game on retalling the last hour ?

i got a "humanitarian block move" when i tried for an op