Semper looks to be land trading and prepping for war. It will be interesting to see how it will work out in regards to their builds. What are your thoughts? Will landtrading help them build better war countries or make them weak? I guess it depends on how early in the set they war but I am looking forward to seeing the results.

So let's say they do war and do well, will nbk claim that it doesn't count cause they built better countries by land trading?

Landtrading is a fluffty way to prep for an early-early middle set war. You waste a lot of resources having to rebuilt land.

the better question is if they landtrade and successfully build better war countries would we either a)start landtrading ourselves or b)oop war any war clans that landtrade.

I actually predicted a while back that as soon as a war clan starts selfarming/landtrading that it would be a major change in FFA cause it will force war clans to either follow suit or fight to rid the server of self farming. Thats assuming it works btw. So far in FFA only netting tags have done it so war clans weren't really affected by it and thus FFA was able to be mixed.

Interesting indeed.

Land Trading is weaker than normal Land Grabs, at least initially

that is why Land trading in the first 2 weeks, would weaken them for a war.... by the 3 week, they start to catch up and by the 5 week outproduce other countries, at the cost of weaker SDI, etc.

FS them and find out! ;)

Landgrabs are superior to landtrading up until about 40k acres or so (assuming you've got the time to find landgrab targets for all your countries).

But landtrading will not weaken them for a war, as landtrading is superior to exploration once your each about 5k or 6k acres.

thats about how I figure it as well Rock. I have never tried it though so I dont know how bad it hurts your cash flow early on.

It actually improves your cash flow but the tradeoff is a lower networth >land ratio.

Depends on how much time they give themselves to stock up a bit before they declare. If they land trade for a few days up to 12-15k acres and then spend a few days just building up tech/military, they'd likely come out ahead.

Wartime how would it improve cashflow? You will have to spend more cash rebuilding because of the buildings destroyed with each grab and turn rebuilding CS. Unless I am missing something it seems you would need time to recover like Twain said in order to make it worth it.

More land = less military per acre and empty acres improves how much food you produce.

What's advantageous about the lower nw:land?

I'm not sure it's necessarily the lower nw:land ratio, but probably the fact that if you're land-trading, especially this early, you're probably heavy jets and light defense, which as opposed to grabbing and trying to avoid retals, you might end up getting off cheaper and holding on to more money via lower expenses.

Or maybe I'm just putting words in WarTime's mouth (hands?) that he didn't intend. I dunno.