Space and Exploration ..Tech

I know this has been asked for many many times, but i would love to see it happen.

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Basically the new tech would increase oil production and the explore yield. Give the Fascist Gov type a new life as the dominant strat.

maybe balance it with agri tech similar to the biz/res tech

where an imbalance of more space_explore tech hurts food production.

for oil production allow the tech to increase it by 300%, but producing oil rigs affect food production.

#1 Fascist Government is fine
#2 Oil tech would weaken oiler
#3 Explore gains do not need to be increased

#1 Fascist Government is fine

While the the fascist gov type is fine, it is by no means a competitive strat outside of the alliance servers. i will say it is a strong strat defensively, but this leaves very little room for an aggressive stance. Fascist gov is basically the balanced average country, good enough, but it's not about to outshine anything else on the servers.

#2 Oil tech would weaken oiler

Where the supply may bring prices down, the proposal is to counter balanced this with a need to buy more food or to build more farms to offset the penalty. So countries would need to sell their oil a little higher or produce less.

#3 Explore gains do not need to be increased.

Land is where the fun of the game is the more land is available the bigger the countries the more people can land grab. the explore gain would give an all-x country a fighting chance. It can still be counterbalanced with a food penalty so we do not get rep cashers going completely out of control ;)

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I just think it would add an interesting twist to the game, and make it more interesting to play as new strats are explored by the changed dynamics. My though is that with a food penalty attached to using the new tech it would keep most govs including the fascist in check from outpacing other strats.

for example you may be producing 3x as much oil but you are only producing half as much food. like-wise you maybe exploring 2x as much land but you are producing 40% less food.

Strats would need to find a happy balance for these new variables. This would affect all gov/strats and perhaps it is some other gov and strat that comes out on top in exploiting the new dynamic. who knows; for one techers would probably benefit greatly from something like this as would republics too.

Fascist government is fine on other servers.

The proposal is needlessly complex. If you want to help oiler, increase oil demand or decrease oil supply.

All-explore is already competitive and does not need a boost.

How are you quantifying the fascist gov is fine?

Complexity would depend on existing code-base and how the code is modified to implement to the additional calculations. I am unfamiliar with the existing code base so cannot speak to the complexity or simplicity of implementing something like this.

I have seen all-x get some really decent finishes, so I do know it is competitive (under the right circumstances). Over time though it would still balance itself out where land grabbers would just get more land and all-x would still rely on market conditions to get their competitive finish. However there may be a tipping point where an all-x could out explore the land grabbers and it would make for an interesting challenge.

not really. IF all-x was better than grabbing why grab.....
grabbing is a balance of target selection and resource usage.

this is just over powered exploring

the good players grab. The best players grab well.
grabbing is something that makes it competetive the best all-xers would do just fine grabbing but for some its a time and commitment thing

also fasc is fine


and oiler needs more demand or less supply

realistically oiler is not going to get more demand unless prices are cheap enough to make it stock-able commodity. In other words it would need to be sell-able on the PM as it is in express. the downside is that production is not high enough to make it worthwhile for PM sales. If farmers did not have a PM outlet it would saturate the market, causing what you see occurring with the oil if production was increased.

The fascist being fine is subjective, however from quantifiable perspectives it is not fine i.e.(# of top 10 finishes compared to other strats) ;p How often do you hear an alliance leader saying we are going to war I want everyone to go fascist? Alternately during a netting reset how often do you hear the top netters (looking for a top 10 finish) saying they will be running a fascist farmer? yet fascist is fine. When was the last time you saw a clan take top average networth while running fascist farmers as their strat to accomplish this? yet fascist is fine.

over powered exploring with a counter-balance, which would need to be taken into consideration, in any strat redesign. This definitely is not a 'we get more acres for free" proposition.

For warring, pretty much everyone is dictatorship or tyranny. You don't see fascists for warring, but you don't see democracy, theocracy, or republic either. As for netting, I do see people play fascist farmers and/or fascist oilers. LaF has 7 of its 47 countries as fascists right now, more than any other government except for Republic. So yes, I do hear people say they're going to use Fascist for netting. Last set's winner on the alliance server was fascist for a very large portion of the set.

Looking at the country lists on individual servers and on FFA, fascist is fairly well represented, given how many farmers and oilers there should be compared to indies, cashers, and techers. Obviously, none of the indies, cashers, or techers will be fascist, but among governments for farmer and oiler, it dominates, and is more common than tyranny, dictator, or democracy for those.

Exploring and doing well is way too easy right now. As someone who explores rather than grabs, I'd like to be given more incentive to grab, not less.

currently an all-x it is played defensively, the transition to an aggressor country would be based on an ability to defend land taken. In most cases the land grab is not worth it unless bottom feeding, or hitting a country that is half your own net-worth or below this mark.

basically if a country twice my size hits me I need to decide: 'do I want to jump in networth @ near their net with jets to take the retal or let it go'. in other words destock or partially destock to take a retal. End result we are defensively equal at that point and can land trade, but open to external interference, and a potentially lower networth finish.

In most cases the jump is not worth it, just like stated someone is grabbing smart. or someone is maintaining a 60/40 ratio of jets to turrets along with healthy tanks and troops. Which translates into hitting someone @ just a little over 1/3 their size. 3 mil net hits 1.2 mil net = relatively safe while still retaining decent returns.

what occurs with the added explore bonus is the land trading would occur more often as it would give the All-x country more of an incentive to partially destock. They can recoup the potential losses thru the augmented land if they decide to go back to exploring.

The added oil bonus would also give them the oil needed with a few rigs without offsetting their cashing or teching balances.

We would see a lot more retals taken, and potentially a lot more countries going aggressive, because the comfort level to transition from an all-x defensive posture and an aggressive one would be provided, thru the added land.

I do go all-x because I do not want to add more pressure to the countries already under attack, it's really not rocket science to land-grab smart. But hitting a country 10-20 times on a daily basis to get an extra 10-20k acres by end of reset just isn't my style. hitting 3-4 0 DR countries once per reset every day if they can be found may be worth it assuming they fall in the safety net range. But even then the odds of finding 180-240 countries thru the whole reset which meet this narrow criteria is pretty slim.

An explore bonus would not give an all-explore country more incentive to destock. It would in fact give them less of an incentive to destock because the gains from the retal would not be as superior to explore gains as they are right now.



Or they could use the public market to buy oil? Increasing the supply of oil is BAD for the oiler strategy. Learn basic economics!!!


Increasing explore gains doesn't give a "comfort level" to buying jets. Are you on crack? Increasing explore gains will make more people go all-explore than before.

Actually I feel because the stocks are slightly larger and the land would be a bit higher the comfort level would be there.

of course this is subjective.



not if there is a dump outlet as it exists in express oil would never drop below $71 a barrel (or what a democracy can clear barrels at) and the upper limit could still be high because the PM sets it at about $337 a barrel. It would probably work out close to where food is at today. More oil cheap being bought for stocking means it would be easier to go aggressive. One of the big drawbacks is price of oil when weighing whether or not to land-grab.




lol, maybe I am on crack :p

but I still feel it would be an easier decision to make if a country is already land-fat with acres to spare to go on a land grabbing spree ;) Acres aren't quite as precious, so retals would not hurt as much.

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Anywho here is the percentage by gov type of top 10 finishes so far.


Tourney 13 Rounds 130 Top 10 Countries

Gov Top 10 Percentage
CG --- 29 --- 22.31%
DG --- 23 --- 17.69%
FG --- 02 --- 1.54%
HG --- 48 --- 36.92%
RG --- 28 --- 21.54%

Before saying there is not enough data to represent an accurate statistic here is Express ;)

Express 73 Rounds 730 Top 10 Countries

C --- 177 --- 24.25%
D --- 077 --- 10.55%
F --- 029 --- 3.97%
H --- 263 --- 36.03%
I --- 004 --- 0.55%
R --- 175 --- 23.97%
T --- 005 --- 0.68%

Now this goes to show that a fascist is not exactly up there with Republics and Commies or even Demo's for that matter. This is before they nerfed the PM food prices.

i don't remember offhand, but isn't the max number of turns per set different across the different servers?

that'll affect which strats have stronger and weaker aspects.

also, it's by far the newest government/strategy, so people are still more comfortable with their tried and true strats.

I still think the fascist gov. has a lot to offer if it is allowed to flourish.

Lol, there must have been a really bad experience in the past and peeps want to make sure the fascist gov type never gets the power to go truly aggressive.

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basically with the amount of players on the servers for land to be comfortably available: One of these needs to occur

1. Increase the length of the resets
2. Shorten the time between turns
3. Increase the explore rates.

The solution I'm suggesting is increase the explore rate but make it so it's a player decision by how much or if they even want to. Have it cost something vs. just changing the back end explore rate for all countries.

Prima - looking at the governments people end with is not a reliable way to see how effective each government is. Many people switch governments late in the set to drop stockpile, and of all the strategies likely to switch governments to drop stockpile, farmer is the most likely one to do so.

Your assumption that increasing explore gains will give countries "acres to spare" shows that you don't know how to properly handle fast growth. Increasing explore gains won't make land less valuable or make retals hurt less. If anything, it would make retals hurt more because of the increased build costs as one grows larger.

People's stockpiles would not be slightly larger, as a higher portion of their income would have to go towards building their land and maintaining their techs, so their stockpiles would be smaller, especially when taken relative to their landsize.

You mention those stats being before the 'nerf' to PM food price, but you don't mention that many of them were also before the boost to PM food price moving it from 32 up to 39, and now down to 36. Last I checked, moving food from 32 to 36 was an INCREASE not a decrease.

You still have a lot to learn about the basics of the game.

ok here's another note for you prima.
primarily, destocking is done as demo or theo. i'm not sure at all why there are so many countries in top 10s that *aren't* one of those two.

ending government means squat to the strategy the country played as.

If Prima doesn't know that the proper way to destock as a fascist farmer or fascist oiler is to switch to democracy or theocracy, maybe thats why he thinks they need a boost. If he learned to play them properly, he'd find them far more effective than his current opinion of them.

actually it goes to show a commie or rep is just as effective destocking without the switch to Demo or Theo ;) Which cannot be said about the Fascist.

It has to do with the strategy, not with the government. Indies tend to grow bigger and have higher networth pre-stockpiling than any other strategy. They stand to lose much more to a government switch than any other strategy. As for Republics, that just shows that newbs play & succeed with republics more often than they do with fascist farmers.

Contrary to what you might believe, if you have 50 countries, it doesn't work out that 10 are indies, 10 are techers, 10 are cashers, 10 are farmers, and 10 are oilers. This imbalance of strategies is not a flaw that needs to be corrected. On non-alliance servers, the demand for food is low enough that a very low percentage of countries as farmers is needed, whereas the increased demand for food on alliance based servers due to longer stockpiling periods means a higher percentage of the countries on an alliance based server should be farmers. This does NOT make one strategy stronger or weaker than the other - as long as players fall in line with the correct distribution of strategies governed by supply and demand, the strategies will all be fairly equal.

The fluctuation of market prices from set to set ensures that an intelligent observant player base will over time end up being very close to the necessary amount of each strategy every single set. If the need for a certain strategy is way too low, such as how oiler was 8 to 10 years ago, or how early set TMBR is right now, then that strategy could use a boost to allow the ideal portion of countries playing that strategy to be a noticeable amount, rather than being 1% at best. Farmer and oiler are in no danger of falling into the extremely low demand category, and thus they do not need a boost. The only strategy that could use a boost right now would be TMBR. TMBR income per acre is just fine, but the problem is the lack of demand for troops and tanks allows for such a tiny portion of players to be playing early set TMBRs. Luckily, the strategy is an advanced enough one that very few people play it, so tank & troop prices have not ended up ridiculously low the way oil prices were 8 to 10 years ago.

Fascist is fine. Just keep learning the basics of the game, and eventually you'll be ready to start learning and understanding the intricacies of the game.

I'm still thinking a Fascist farmer should be able to consistently out-perform a rep casher, but for some odd reason it does not.

either the game is out of whack or market prices at the times I play are not optimum, to make this a reality.

note to self: join Rockman's alliance to learn his secrets :)

why, exactly, are you convinced that fasc. farmer should do better than rep cash?

just a gut instinct, I know the numbers do not add up to this being true. (maybe it's more of looking at market prices and the food spike... i just haven't found it yet.)

The Republic explore bonus is too much for a fascist farmer to overcome. Per acre, a fascist farmer is slightly better, but not enough to overcome the Republic +20% explore gains bonus.

Heck, some people play all-explore rep farmer, switching to fascist farmer once they get big enough. Thats how silly the Republic explore bonus is.

do you mean you think that it "should be able to" in the sense that it deserves to, or in the sense that you think that that is how the balance currently is?

because i must say, fasc farmer is okay, but rep casher is better, BUT it is also a more difficult strat typically


(that said, they're both pretty easy compared to some other strats)