maybe. I think that It would have been better to batch explore to 3800 though.

The biggest issue is I wasted a lot of future targets attacking them when they were 2000 acres. Even though they had 0 defense at the time I now have to live with a lower target population.

Oh yeah I never start to grab until like 4k acres

I start grabbing from 2k. Batch exploring to 4k is a waste of turns that can be used building CSes.

I did a batch explore last set to around 3.5-4k as a rep casher last set.

This set i grabbed from slightly over 2k.

I can tell you for sure, exploring sets you back

Oversending by 10% will get you through 99.9% of the time.
To be 99.99% sure, you will need to send 15% more. It's a normal distribution curve. I worked out the std deviation and mean a while ago, but I can't remember the numbers now.

Also, start grabbing from 2k, never explore after that if you intend to win =P

i disagree with this one. AM's point about target selection is very valid in primary... still, depends on the strat and the server. these things aren't black & white, but i almost never grab from 2k myself.

maybe that's why oldman's been winning so many recently ;)

I agree with both of yall. You can grab much more efficient than 40 acres/turn, that's true. But then I've had times in the past where I did that and then later on I find some fat looking targets, and notice I already hit them for 200 acres 20 days ago.

I'm in the bulk explore to 3.8k acre camp for AM's reasons.

One more point to make it even less black and white is the early growth allows for faster growth which leads to better grabs earlier which again leads to even faster growth and it goes on and on. So the snowball effect will make up for not being able to hit that fat target - especially in primary with so many players

I've been looking around. Some people are better than I at finding early targets.

I looked for people that had 0 defense and attacked without spying to maximize turns building CS. As a result I gained between 90 and 200 acres per turn, I also failed 3 attacks out of 20. So out of the 40 turns I used to attack I averaged 60 acres per turn.

Looking at #228 he was much more efficient. It hurts to be a commie because you can't keep your NW Low and buy defense after the attacks.

As a farmer I'm not finding it easy at all to get a land of lot, defend it and also keep tech levels decent. So it seems to me you're condemned to a somewhat slow start as a farmer anyway.

Now I know oldman played a farmer last set, so I'm probably doing something wrong.
Even so, Im 'only' about a day behind in land compared to his farmer last set. Which I partly blame on tech prices :P
Hmm.. not sure it matters all that much.

Oh good, there's at least one known farmer out there.

Anyone's playing techer?
The tech prices are ridiculous!

Three techers in the top 20 just got done grabbing each other. Better hope that is as far as it goes. A war between three techers near the top would probably do a number on tech prices!

Well couldn't they be friends? Just research-allied with each other .

No, RAWR or BUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to have to send you an updated one KoH. I found a bug where there is a 100% chance that if you hit someone without spying their allies and used the doubling of their defense, you would fail the grab. I forgot to add in the Pang factor.

Hmmm, it hasn't got me yet :-)

Does your sheet let you put in alliance expenses and spit out their def ally possibilities?

I wish, you'll have to ask Xin for that one. If they have DA alliance cost, I'm getting the real numbers so I spy.

I really use the command line to calculate my breaks, not an Excel sheet. :)

I don't always spy D allies, I sometimes just assume double and send.

I always spy (well today I made a blind hit, but almost always) and look at the alliance expenses. And then I check if they're spending over .2% of their nw on non-GDI alliance costs and if they ARE then I never bother trying to think about it further and just spy on alliances. With the proper analysis you could obviously come up with all possible types of alliance combinations they have. Speaking of, and here's the real reason for me writing this post, what kind of expenses do people pay on pending offers? Because I've done enough ops to tell that you do have to pay for those...

Wait, what? You pay for PENDING offers? I know I see the cost but always thought it was just a bug.

You don't pay for pending ally offers, both sender or receiver.

Your actual Advisor will display the correct cost, after accounting for free-gdi.

Spyops are different. The sender of a pending ally request will have the alliance cost added/shown in a spyop. The receiver of a pending ally request does not have the alliance cost added/shown in the spyop. Free-GDI is not shown in a spyop.

Spyop is not Advisor. The new saved spyops are shown in advisor format, which is a bit problematic because the advisor format takes into account free-gdi and only counts real allies, not pending ones. So if you go to your saved spy ops right after you spy, the number will be different.

It might be a bug, or it might not be.

hmm

You don't necessarily need a SOA even if they have higher than 0.2%. What a waste, a person with 0.3% are highly to have 2 res/int or 0.45% to have 3 res pact and so on.

I brought this up before.http://forums.earthempires.com/...8836410&z=spy-history

Its annoying when you want to look at an old target and you see his alliance expenses is like 0.52 and you're like wtf..

The spreadsheet I use has been updated since I uploaded that one I linked. Tells you how much military is lost in the attack. Has a SPAL calculator on it. Also has a spot where you input their networth and land (if in GDI), then adjust 3 variables based on the limits of 0-3 alliance slots until you match their expenses. Of course it can't tell you what allies they have for sure and sometimes multiple combinations will work. But in Primary you mostly see Defensive/Intelligence/Research allies, so it lets you make a quick guesstimate and spy when defensive allies can be matched up.

Careful, while it is true that when their non GDI ally expenses equals .3% of their networth they are most likely to have 2 Intelligence or 2 Research allys. They could also have one Defensive (or Offensive) ally and two trade pacts as well.

OneMansArmy, trade pacts in Primary?

I only mention it because I have seen a one of them this set so far. Maybe they use it as a cheap way to insure you don't get grabbed by that person? lol

They use it cuz they're newbs and the game pops up that message "you have open alliance slots!"

Is it hard to remove those ally options(Trade pacts) in those Solo servers like tourney?

No. It's exceedingly easy to remove, but qzjul has been very relunctant to remove Trade/Offensive allies from Primary/Express servers because of 500+ commits of changes on a secondary branches (which is no longer a valid reason since all of that is now actively merged and in use).

Probably about 5 lines of code max on a guess. One to check server, one to not display the HTML tables for it, one more to check the server again on receiving an invalid ally request from a "hacker".

I have a question. I am currently working on an Excel spreadsheet that will contain all my information and statistics from my advisor screen. I am setting it up so that it will automatically update itself with little effort on my behalf.

I am considering adding in a feature that will capture the statistics I gain from spy operations, and use that information to calculate whether or not an attack will be successful, and how many military units I should send to carry out the attack.

There are also many other useful calculations I will be able to do with it. Any calculation I derive from the use of this program could be obtained with a simple calculator but it would be more time consuming and less organized.

My question is this, would I be violating any rules or breaching the Terms of Service contract by using my Excel Spreadsheet to pull the data directly from my account? I would not have access to any information besides what would normally be available to me. Its not hacking or anything. Its simply using a Excel/VB program to log into my account and compile large amounts of data about my country in a matter of seconds. I am excited about working on this project, but I want to be sure that what I am about to do will not violate any rules.

Well.. I do similar with a spreadsheet, but I don't have VB log into my account and do it for me. I just copy and past the info myself when I am online and it does the calculations. Best to ask a Mod if its legal to use a program that logs in and pulls the data for you.

Automation is against the rules. However, you can "view HTML" manually, and copy paste that into your spreadsheet for it to parse. Specifically:

If you highlight what you want on the page and copy it, then do a Paste Special in Excel it puts it into cells without all the formatting that comes with the page.