.

as with all of these things i reckon it's heavily market dependent. longer sets work better as there's more chance for reselling even if time to market is longer. i'd usually advise not to mbr destock unless you have a larger than usual stock at the 2/3rds set point. i.e. market favourable early.

metygl is just a wizard at working things. i was impressed anyway... he was noobish only a few months earlier then went and aced various finishes with all sorts of different strats. he did put in the time though, both to the strategy thinking and the actual playing i.e. no sleeps. made it worthwhile for sure though!

as with everyone else.. your point?

i reckon boltar can outnet elves 11 sets / 10. but yea, this server isn't exactly difficult to win.

excuses already boltar? we're only just starting lol!

you should do more to inspire loyalty in your men (and perhaps not kill them for several sets then invite them back for the war set o_O)

best of 5 colo? by my count it'll be over in 1 more set then :)

wargaining ftw! if i recall correctly we won last set at both netting and warring.

i'm still not quite sure why boltar started killing us randomly, or what his beef is other than we fought back for once, but we seem to be handling it pretty well so far. even if we lose we're 2-1 up :P

.

also bonus

casher to commie makes no sense (casher is weak early, strong late; commie is strong early, weak late)

the main use of a govt switch is to benefit from the theo private mil price bonus during destocking. e.g. cash until you've saved up as much as you can, switch to theo and buy out your private market to destock. you get a better $/nw with theo private than any other govt.

you will of course lose at least 14% of everything by switching, so it's a careful calculation depending on how much stock you have that will tell you if a switch is beneficial or not. generally speaking, unless you're experimenting or have very large stock, don't bother switching in solo servers.

not sure about random teams myself either. too many fools to make that work, or like marshal says, everyone would just over-use the defect button.

monex's idea is the best so far, but i think the 5 hits limit should be within a timeframe rather than full set, otherwise normal grabs and retals would just create war (as is the case currently)

primary is brutal for super-late topfeeds... it results in some interesting dummy-spits (the likes of rockman don't take well to expired retals :P)

13 day colooutlaw? you obviously net a lot ;D

how about 30 days lol... many times.

that definitely doesn't sound like something boltar would say?

.

good idea qz - i'd be interested to see what's up. i too get capcha on every login from every device, but i'm not active enough for it to worry me.

0.0

.

.

bonus. also, blid... it sounds a lot like you've not done enough killing with either tyrs or strat my good man! come play with us in team server sometime :)

on topic, i'm a little perplexed by the increased minimum spy success rate. with 10x the spal of my attacker in primary i was losing out huge amounts to harmful ops already. i guess we'll see how this pans out and what the threshold affected is, but it doesn't seem logical.

.

.

.

bonus. but also even i noticed this on my throwaway... confirmed!

...

bonus post..

also wait a minute, i stopped grabbing this guy when he messaged me early in the set (i'm 81)

i posted on the boards that i thought he wouldn't suicide if we left him alone and nobody touched him all set until SF took a few hits.

we had no agreement and this wasn't a DNH - he's still an untag in a team server lol.. join a fluffing tag jay!! pact us!!! it's pretty obvious by the server name what you need to do and we've actually given you a break this set when you asked for it.

@eevess - he DOES suicide us every set lol... by his country name we expected more of the same.

ttt

early to say such things, however perhaps someone else thought so too?

boltar want battle!

*dis dun b 4 u m8

clean buildings is far more important now with teh build cost increase, as a later conversion at higher acres will be double punished.

last set i made use of the mixed strat with commie (i.e. non-clean buildings - saving up and converting later) and it worked well... you've just got to plan it carefully.

if you've a contact, get in touch with me via board pm asap please.

Ennuyeux

ETFT EFFT EFTF - contacts in no particular order, me, ingle, trainboy.

if you've got any spare turns, iscode is #30, kingme plays for us and is a much better player: he doesn't suicide and die all the time :P

sorry late to this discussion, but i think the opposite vic - the better players will start stocking early, which means those not stocking or aiming to finish as high will be more easily able to topfeed during the stocking phase.

if you tried to stock on 23ka in primary you would be farmed silly (or else have to either make lots of expensive retals, or grow def all set with everyone else, and become inefficient towards the end of the set)

low acre stocking really relies on either being so small you are not a lucrative target (wouldn't compete in primary), or having some form of tag protection so the grab will be heavily retalled without costing you too much (the ability to cash in stock to make a huge retal simply isn't enough of a deterrant in primary - i'm not sure why as it should be, but from experience this isn't the case). the cost of these constant retals would undermine the strat.

p.s. protip - without me or tripp playing this will be a strong commie set... you heard it here first!

i personally think it's more than a playerbase issue. the combination of no allies, no gdi and short sets doesn't seem to stack for me and limits the freedom of play that (for comparison) primary enjoys.

i find myself either raping some little country really hard, or landtrading with the same few countries every set. it's getting stale.

i was very tempted to go out with a bang with some of the guys who topfeed me every set, but i decided they hadn't done too much to warrant it... so a quiet retirement. i don't expect to return here.

@jedioda - two sets and you'll be back in front of the t10 leaderboard mate, well deserved as well :) i think i've only finished outside the t10 five times since EE begun... not a bad legacy, especially where there's no GDI protection lol... but not really worth playing just to maintain. and if i don't care enough, i doubt anyone else will :D

me too, the server is very boring.

blid is accuratly representing the voices of the majority of the server here slagpit - dismissing it out of hand isn't very constructive.

what you may mean, is that it's too bad the admins don't listen or consult or even play the server they make sweeping changes on... it is an example of the blind leading the very clear-sighted.

also, making changes like this but doing nothing to address the ludicrously overpowered spy op issue, shows a lack of regard for the server and people who play on it (i.e. willing to make changes - but not the changes that are needed).

seriously - the spy op thing is out of hand.

great job rob - i sent you some congratulations ingame but then read you'd gone back to bed with a hangover haha!!! solid set, well played.

hi slagpit, long time :)

i can add to this discussion: it isn't just due to the larger countries in primary, as blid's post attests, and i can vouch for from low-acre wars.

the spy op balance is best at present in express server, with a 1/4 of the active set dr period. the success rate is still too high, but the long dr mitigates this slightly.

the same effiacy on servers with only 60 turns per dr-period is really what makes this overpowered.

when you also factor in the larger land in primary it multiplies the power even further (you mentioned in the primary thread high land was one of the causes - although, not knowing the formula, i don't see why)

last set i was decimated by a player with far lower spal (i.e. less than half my spal), through GDI, both on high acres.

while i agree with teh need for skepticism to temper knee jerk fixes causing further problems etc, this isn't a new issue, it's just more people have started exploiting it, and it is becoming (has become) a huge problem.

to say 'it is impossible to stop a determined op', may sound like a grand overstatement, however i think there is a general agreement that you WILL always get through if you try, so the statement may actually be true. if not, then it is true for all practical purposes.

lol ^^ and pansys. he's definitely a pansy ;)

but yea... as he can't war, and he can't net, he can only suicide and be killed by his own tag. that's some sweet sweet justice and i didn't even get to login yet... hands free killin!

way to succeed at losing iscode.

they say everyone's good at sthing and it's good you can help make that point :)

late to the thread, but i support all five of these.

#5 is not needed on primary or tourney so much, but on express it is urgently required.

regarding tech allies: a temporary quick fix could be that 50% of your buildings need to be labs in order to benefit anything from a res pact. that would cover the exploit while keeping the coding changes to the most simple of lookups.

by the growth and late t10 emergence it REALLY looks like bakku, but i don't see him going ape over a single topfeed when teh retal recovered the losses... (I'm guessing magellaan didn't figure on this either)... by the reaction my guess was rockman.

so, rockman?

no i don't play alliance either blid... i much prefer solo play.

i would support the establishment of a consultative panel of players from the solo servers to input to future proposed developments, before they are implemented. the current changes are a strong example of why this is required. and yes, xinhuan should be president!

yea if you're going to switch and rebuild, you absolutely must get it out of the way early, before both build costs and time remaining to stock make it infeasible.

of course, nobody will ever switch above 15ka ever again with the new build cost forumla :/

i think it also depends on the cash you are carrying at the time of the op - was this parameter the same in both test cases?

not sure if relevant, but in express i always get zero blown up regardless of what is stolen, but then it's always someone's multi doing the stealing so they have little to no cash themselves.

@ zip, i disagree that the op is underused. depends on the server - it's not acceptable in alliance servers but is rife in solo games.

how the fluff wasn't there a farmer in the t3 o_O great job andrewmose as a casher with these food prices!