There are a couple of design questions around bots here and understanding what the goals are is key.

Is the goal of bots to actually WIN this game, or to make the game more competitive for players?

I'd say it's the latter. Bots are there to provide meat to the market, both in terms of goods and land. They make up for the decline in player base over the years. And as with any player base, there is variance in player skill across the population, and Slag has actually incorporated that as a principle in his bot design too (where some bots are smarter than others).

If every bot just plays like a top netter, this game will be too hard for the vast majority of players.

And to answer your question directly Celphi, if all bots just stored turns like a top netter, then Express really starts on Friday, then demand for tech gets concentrated into a 48hour period, and you'll see tech prices at 4-6k on Saturday because of that demand anyways. lol

Whether to store turns or not is also a strategy question with tradeoffs (tech is more expensive but land is easier). I played turns early last set, and don't think I was particularly disadvantaged by tech prices, weighed against the amount of land I got easily and early.

I realized that as I was writing the above post, Gerdler posted the same points but shorter and quicker. LOL You stealing this from me too? JOKES. xD

Gerdler touched on the point that I planned to make. The only purpose of the NPC countries is to make the game more fun and enjoyable for the players. The principles that guide their actions do not and should not match what an individual human player might do in trying to maximize NW. Farmer is the best example. An "optimal" farmer might save the first 720 turns, then sell food on private every turn in order to get as much tech as possible. What would happen if all of the NPC farmers behaved as such?

1) There would be little to no food available on the public market for at least 60% of the round. Every player would need to build farms.
2) Techers wouldn't be able to sell their agri tech, so logically they would stop producing it. Will the farmers actually be able to find agri tech once they start playing turns?
3) Indies wouldn't be able to sell their military units.

Does any of that sound fun to you?

NPC countries have a large percentage of the server's overall buying power. The change that you are proposing ("NPC countries should wait for cheaper tech") is not at all simple to implement. If market history suggests that the best time to buy tech is 48 hours into the round and enough countries try to buy tech then, suddenly that will no longer be the best time to buy tech. Frankly, I don't even see the issue with some NPC countries sometimes buying tech over $4000. Why is this a problem?

For the record, I think that 16 M NW is a pretty good finish for a country that got landgrabbed 36 times for 8k acres.

Access to alpha servers is only available to players with Premium due to abuse by some players. Some players found out about the links and decided it would be a good idea to kill off countries owned by others.

This is a good point also. Once bots fight back, they don't get hit 30+ times anymore, and once they don't get hit 30+ times, they'll start finishing even higher. Not that that's even the goal!

I think that a bot has finished 11th maybe a dozen times, but never 10th. That's kind of unlikely. I wonder when we get our first top ten bot. Someday the bots might finish top 5!

Table of the best NPC finish per round: https://imgur.com/a/AOZSdHd

My precious children still haven't gotten their first top ten :(

I will name country after the first bot to finish top 10!

Bro, it's gonna be a server wide celebration!

Here's top NPC country NW of the round ordered by networth: https://imgur.com/a/X6ZW9UU

The last four rounds are all in the top ten. It's like one of those global warming charts or something.

Why was my name changed!? Suck on my butt is not that bad!!

I quit

Ofc it isn't lol. But also why does it matter?

If someone picked name for me every round I'd save a lot of time. :)

Earth Empires is a family friendly game!

If the bots are just premium land injectors and a way to provide extra resources into the economy all I can say is how boring..

Imagine playing a game of chess and the computer just launches all its pieces at you for you to easily capture.

There's not even a point to have an explore button. This game has turned into whomever can exploit the bot the best is the winner.

I also don't buy the notion that there would be little to no food if bots played delayed. One farmer can supply almost the entire server (if you were to exclude bots).

Look at TEAM. Somehow the food prices are balanced there and not overly marked and guess what? 0 bots there.

As to your 2nd point since food would be needed more in beginning in set agri tech would easily sell. The only way to play farmer currently on this server is to play delayed.

Finally to your 3rd point, there's 0 bots on TEAM and again Commie does just fine in beginning and finishing set.

The team market certainly isn't anything close to what I consider 'fine'. Look at team for exactly the type of market we want to avoid everywhere lol.

My analogy would be you are sitting across the table from another person, and the bots are a part of the gameboard. Because even if bots are on the server, we're primarily competing against other humans.

Also, they're going to learn to retal and war, so capturing bot pieces won't be so easy then.

https://www.earthempires.com/...n-team-49891?t=1619705115

Molotov. The bots attacking back will only create a larger gap between the players who "do" & "do not" exploit the bots.

By the bots attacking back, they'll lose DR which means greater opportunities for those who know how to exploit bots to get even more land.

Furthermore, if the code to for them to attack back looks like anything like the code which helps them net, it will be a lot of DHs.

Well in all honesty I haven't played TEAM in several months. If it's true there's 0 Commies then that's a missed opportunity for someone to have won that set.

it seems like you are just arguing to argue now... if the bots can fight back then "exploiting bots" will look exactly like land grabbing weaker players on any other solo server. And that's the point

I've won the server already. I think it's like in top 5 score on EXPRESS ever?? I have nothing to prove. I know which govt has the greatest advantage. You can all act like it's all fine and dandy but it's just the same people winning using the same tools where nothing is even calculated anymore.

The bots were never meant to be land farms. They were never meant to be identifiable. Instead of fixing the problem of making them unidentifiable they were all flagged as NPCs.

I'm going to assume once the feature to attack back is added you're going to see players with like 70k-80k land per reset. And a techer at that amount of land doesnt need anyone to buy, because at 1k per tech they'd be making a min of 23mil a turn.

o_O

Celphi, I'd invite you to play a round of express this set and see what it takes to 'exploit' these new bots as you say.

It's not that straight forward anymore. In fact, I don't see any outright exploits like before.
(This, coming from someone who have done most of the exploits you have mentioned in this thread.)

Also, if you played before the latest farmer bot and bushel price update, the 4-5 rounds prior saw either NO food on market or food sitting at ~$100 for the first day or so. That's like unplayable for half the set - not a great experience for players (and consequently, a lot of players dropped out/lost turns/stopped playing mid-set).

I agree with Molotov that bots are just pieces on a chessboard, and it allows better competition to return to human players. Last reset, for a moment, I did think about grabbing Gerdler to slow him down since he was the only one who could compete for first. It's been a while since we have a viable market where a large human casher thought about grabbing a large human commie in the fight for #1. lol

NiteIL there's still exploits. Watch the bushels on market come Sat. When the price goes up then the bushels are on hand with the bots. They'll have like 30-40mil bushels on hand. So that's an easy 100k a bushels per op. I mean these are huge exploits bc 100k bushels & possibly more (depending on your own resources).

Yes,. bushels are at ~$100 on first day because no farmer will have a chance unless they play delayed. I'm not suggesting making all bots play same way (ie all delayed). They should have various strengths just like humans. Nobody here can deny how much more enjoyable the game is with more players. The bots IMO should seem like players and undistinguishable from players. A player shouldnt have the security of knowing if an enemy country is a bot or player. Right now they do and it makes the explore button completely pointless.

Also, knowing which countries are bot is only 50% of the equation. If you don't know what their DR is or which bot offers the greatest returns you're really still a great disadvantage of all the other players who know how to exploit the bots.

Also certain Govt always have same ratios of defense making it super simple to use a basic formula to attack a country and use 0 spy ops. (That's basically saving a turn for every country you atk).

Which also includes all of one specific type of bot has 0 defenses upto X time in game. It's all so predictable.

What is your highest? We are 4 that passed 80m I think and I have 5 above 70m, and I am only 3rd in the T3 average.

@Gerdler
Yeah I'd be willing to bet most of the ones you're quoting above are in past 200 sets where it's easier to get higher net.

Mine's from about 3 years ago.

1	utskitet av kalk och vatten (#93)	22,485	$71,158,233	DG    <--- you
2	Javascript (#96)                        21,730	$60,409,461	TG    <--- me

That set is one of the first with 50 bots yes, which is why NWs shot up for you and everyone around that time. That was not a particularily great set for me...

This was:

381	1	One (#1)	22,643	$70,829,188	DG

NW record from before that, taken with 35 bots.

Yeah i dont take netting as seriously as you do. Too many ways of people xferring wealth on servers that it's not worth my energy. If qzjul opened an api to allow players to make bots on live servers i would win express every set

New change, I like it. Since peaceful countries will be harder to rob, for those who like to spoil the game.
Well, this change should also significantly help those who produce oil and jets. LoL

I don’t like them indy tech prices. $9000 tech wtf. It’s been $6000+ The last 3 hours

wow, quite empty

Fire sale right now. Just $4773!

Indy tech was ~2300 when I woke up tho.

Early bird gets the indy tech!

You on the other side of the world by bro :p. I woke up at 6am today and it was $4800 then I went back to bed and woke up at 7:30 and it was $8000.

Currently sitting at $4200 which is to expensive. I only buy at $3500 and under so if you techers wanna adjust pricing I am ready to buy lol

According to multiple people on this board SF you should be ok buying tech at 10k.

Military prices too cheap. I been selling turrets at $135-$145 to run turns and not get stuck slow playing.

If I was selling for $170+ I might increase my tech price to $4500 but still I am cheap so probably would just wait for my orders to fill lol

@SF

No man. Check thread. They're saying >> 10k << tech is worth it. You need calculations to prove it wrong.

Its because you dont have 25k tpt Superfly.... if you did the tech price would be lower.

Why do you only say that bots buy expensive technologies?
Maybe because many of you don't like playing as teachers and want cheap technology ...
It's not just technology that bots buy expensive! They buy expensive troops if there are no cheap troops or buy expensive food if there is no food for $ 40 or less.
Bots just follow a given program. They make up for the lack of players.
And the market lives by its own rules, by the rules of the market. If there are no farmers in this set, then the food will be expensive and there will be a high demand for it, well, in this spirit.
If you want to regulate the purchase of technology by bots, then adjust the price of their purchases for other goods as well.
This will be true of the teachers.
P.S.
I also want to add that, orientationally, most of such strategies as cashier, oller, farmer, indie, teacher have equal chances of winning. But there are many players, and there should be 10 winners. The winner is the one who chose the right strategy, who feels the market, who knows how to calculate, and sometimes take risks.
And bots have nothing to do with it, they follow their program. They enrich the market and share the land with us.
Bots are not disingenuous or corrupt. LOL

Remove SS and add one more PS, this is ridiculous DR mania.

@KOH
http://earthgraphs.com/...=countries&searchstr=

I see plenty of good targets right now.

Uh huh.... Double digits DR is good...

@KOH 10k is good tech price and anything above 100 DR is good target.

Grab the countries not in double digit DR?

I'll just go ahead and hit humans 🤷

You have to remember that DR on express has ~1/3 the half life and reset time that it has on all other servers. Meaning when you see a bot listed at 10 DR on eestats it can actually be in anywhere from 1-10 DR. But if you see a bot on alliance listed as 10 DR on eestats the actual DR will be 4 to infinite, since the reset time is 72 hours there, which means hits from up to 72 hours back count towards DR.

All else being equal a bot in listed as 10 DR on eestats in express will be in around the DR that a bot with 3 or 4 as the listed number in eestats in alliance server.

The other thing is that this is a much shorter round, meaning that for larger part of the reset we are at close NWs with the bots we target, which gives vastly more land, plus the bots have no def allies.

Heck, I got 50k acres very easily last set with 50 bots, now we have 60 bots. It should be easier.

TL;DR: 10 DR on Express is better than 3 DR on alliance.