May 11th 2015, 19:55:37
The basic land grab pattern for high acre top ten countries on express is about 25-40 land grabs per day, or approximately 270 turns, @ an 80 BPT. It breaks down as follows:
40 turns spy ops
80 turns attacks
yield per attack = 200(100) or 300 acres give or take
daily average land thru landgrabs = 12,000 acres
150 turns to rebuild land @80BPT
Start of set get the 300 CS + 60 turns for a basic offensive infrastructure
End of set 630-720 turns stocking - reselling/jumping
turns used @ start and end = 1080
this leaves 270*3= 810 turns mid set land grabbing to yield roughly 36K acres.
--- this would equal about 120 countries if they were only hit once.
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Caveat:
Now granted not all countries are going to go on such a land grabbing spree, and doing the above can very well get your country killed.
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The land grab problem is two fold, many players know for a successful T3 finish they more or less need to follow the above. However with so few countries, they choose to go all-x and try to relieve the pressure off the server and possibly allow newer players to enjoy the game a bit more. Adding the bots is a good thing in the sense that it does allow for more land, which in essence should lower the amount of times a player country gets hit in a reset.
So first problem is providing more land to give some breathing room to those who would go all-x or just starting to learn the game.
The second problem is not as easy, it has to do with the amount of times a country gets hit in x amount of time. There are DRs, and potential retals, but these do not stop the multiple land grabs or land farming persay. I will say it is not as bad as it was pre-bot though. What follows is probably not going to go over well with many players, please keep in mind they are just ideas. Hash it out, take what works throw out what does not.
Land grabbing should be limited to some extent, or made to be more challenging. For example, after a double tap or second hit in a 24 hour period, a country only yields ghost acres to the country hitting it. A country can get hit a total of 4 times by the same player in a reset and then it only yields ghost acres. For other players looking to hit this same country the total hits per 24 hour period before it only yields ghost acres = 4 totals hits per resets = 12. This allows for 2 players to hit a country and get max acres in a 24 hour period, and adds a 3rd player for whole reset assuming double taps. If players enforce a single hit rule then 4 players can share a country in 24 hours, and 12 players across a reset.
the upside to the above is player could not lose land after were hit 12 times in a reset, but would still yield a lower amount of land to those who want to land grab. Unless someone is specifically looking to upset other players, this should be ok. Then again if they wish to start a war then they have other ops still available to them, whether thru spies, or thru military, or even missiles.
the downside, it changes the dynamic in that offensive countries that usually do not get hit in a reset, become targets, because they still yield more than just ghost acres. especially toward end of reset a t-10 country that has only been hit 8 times across the reset will be a very tempting target. Players would have to decide when they want to be landfat, and be a target.
overall though it would mean more land in the beginning, most countries would want you to hit them to get the 12 hits out of the way, which would allow them to land grab at will afterwards. It would generate a lot of land, fewer players would need to worry about hiding behind land thin countries, which rarely works anyway. There could be added bonus items created, for example: allow players to use bonus points to take a retal against a country, which would yield more than just ghost acres. Top feeds become fun again, although you still run a risk of upsetting someone over the amounts of military lost. This on the other hand would make military and medical tech very important, to maximize ghost acres and minimize military losses. Medical tech has been useless for most player for years and military tech was used by only the most hardened land grabbers. I can see many more Tyranies on the express server, with potential 60-80 mil net worths.
the idea above has its ups and downs... but it definitely has the potential to change the dynamics of the gameplay, and bring back the warring aspect of game. oilers for one would have a field day, if attack levels go up.
mFrost