I like this thread. Just trying to sort through it in my head.... musing out loud....

Combine idea of troops/tanks for land/ghost gains with air superiority.

-In order to gain land from A SS/PS attackers troop/jet strength must outnumber defenders troop/jet strength (including tech bonuses etc). So long as attacking country breaks defending country land gains will be made.

TROOPS:
- Attack gains range from 80-100% depending on attacker troop strength to defender troop strength.
- If attacker has less troops than defender then gains will be under 100% normal gains to a floor of 80% at 50% troop amount or less.
- If attacher has more troop strength then gains will increase to max of 120% normal land gains at 200% troop strength

TANKS
- Attackers tanks must outnumber defenders tanks in order to gain ghost acres.
- Again oversending increases ghost by 120% for a 200% tank strength.

That would take some major rebalancing of indy production, and a look at how MBR will function.

oil upkeep is a good idea :-)

Mag -7
sof 15
lcn 24
laf -17
evo 10
omega 21
rd -6
sanct 12
icn 9
pdm -13
monsters 13
fluff 8
wof 10
na 3
sol -47
m0m0 4

To add to WH - i'd get rid of all non ENT/RES buildings except for 200-300 indies.

The formula for Ent and Res are is based on the % of land that they cover, and thus will be more efficient if there are no other buildings.

You then buy farms/oil etc from the market.

I reckon your BPT is fine for now. You desperately need bus/res tech though.

Keep growing, and try to purchase tech after every turn you build. Buying less tech, more often, is more efficient than buying in big batches as it has a chance to build on itself throughout your turns. The other thing to consider is maybe leveling out your ENT and RES buildings. People argue about ratios, but generally a 1:1 ratio of ENT:RES suits most people fine.

Oh and the other thing is bump your tax rate to 35%. The optimal tax rate is 35 or 36 depending on food prices.

2 things can be done to help improve oiler.

1)A base price on the PM - 90-100 sounds about right.

2) Increase oil consumption

a) More countries grabbing

b) Oil as a per turn expense (say one barrel per 200 acres over 7k land), combined with a reduction in oil consumption on attacks (down to 1 barrel per 60 or so units).

This could make oiler a more stable strategy, but still provide a jump in price when alliances go to war.

was fun SoF - best of luck next reset

I put some thought in to costs bonuses here Kill4Free

http://forums.earthempires.com/...a-customisable-government

Even look at the old Utopia system of declaring war.

Team A declares war on Team B

a certain amount of hits have to be exchanged from both sides for a state of war to be entered.

Team B has the option of declaring peace with Team A so the war never gets off the ground.

There were heavy penalties for hitting outside of war, and growth was severely inhibited.

dagga - you don't know me, but for once I actually agree with you. There were times when IX and SoL were on the same side of politics but I feel that was out of convienence(Days of NATO - IX Arrow LCN Steel SoL) which ended in the ILS incident (I was on a cruise ship when that happened so I obviously don't know the full story) and IX going on a mission to wipe Arrow/SoL from the game for the next few resets.

They were fierce enemies until Angy was a head in SoL (we found out SoLs FA was an ex-IX head but didn't know which one) and seemingly teamed up with Floyd of IX and LCN was bent over. I must say it was a piece of political mastery and prayed on LCN's frailties at the time and we were done like a dinner. I was as surprised as anyone when IX and SoL teamed up that time.

iMag -2
sof 7
lcn 16
laf -17
evo 9
omega 12
rd -1
sanct 8
icn 8
pdm -9
monsters 8
wof 8
na 0
sol -35

Evolution - yes we do eat them as they are fantastic drunk food. IMO they taste at their best after a hell of a lot of beer.

Ivan,

"Numbers advantage - this won the war for ECM" - it had a large contribution, but was not the only deciding factor.

"FS killrates - imposible to wall during the FS/initial runs due to lag" True. But it was the same for both sides so was not a contributing factor to the outcome of the war.

"Target selection - killing finishers/midbreakers is fun and all but doesnt matter when all your breakers are dead and they would have been without the number advantage" - See below

"Nothing wrong with our strategy, dont need to keep 8m troops and 5m + turrets when all your breakers/midbreakers are dead"

SoF, for being such a good war alliance, were not able to counter the numbers advantage in any way shape or form, so something clearly IS wrong with your strategy. You did not adapt your country setups when you saw that ECM had a numbers advantage and did not either forsee or ignored that they could have the ability to outlast your breakers. That was another significant factor to the outcome of the war.

Running 10k tyr techer->farmer with massive SDI/SPAL/Missiles/Breaking power is great for a FS on an unsuspecting target, or a war where you will gain a significant advantage within a couple of days. Either your leaders didn't forsee that or thought that ECM would be a lot easier target than they were. A longer war obviously needs different planning, and that did not happen effectively enough in SoF. I'm not saying it would have changed the outcome but it definately contributed to that.

meh

I know this has been suggested and howled down in stupidity previously. But, the new bonus system has got me thinking.

1) We keep all current government types.

2) Add an additional 'customisable' government type.

This government type starts with 3 points that can be assigned to different bonuses.

1 point
+3% increase PCI
+3% pop max
+3% bushel production
+3% indy production
+3% Oil production
+3% TPT
+5% base explore rate
+5% Tech effectiveness
+5% Construction speed
+7% mil strength
+10% spy effectiveness
+10% buildings gained from attacks
-10% mil expenses
-10% building costs

2 Points
-5% pm prices
3% market commission (instead of 6)
1 turn attack
+5% tech max
-20% decay/corruption
-20% oil consumption
-10% food consumption

3 Points
0% Market commissions

Once those points are used up, then the country can gain more points for the following penalties

1 point (max 1 or 2 reductions per area)
-3% increase PCI
-3% pop max
-3% bushel production
-3% indy production
-3% Oil production
-3% TPT
-5% mil strength
9% market commissions (2 points can only be used once)
3 turn attack (2 points can only be used once)

Once set, bonuses could not be switched. Thus, if a player wanted to switch bonuses he/she would need to go to monarchy first and then back to custom (14% penalty etc etc). It would allow a more customisable approach, and an option for different styles of play. People that are new to the game can begin with one of the current governments and as they learn then they can start to customise. The other thing is that it would ensure that players had to take on penalties in order to get bonuses. Of course with specialisation there would be penalties that would make minimal difference to income etc.

Flame away

nice country name lol

I actually liked the days of dialup - you had about 3.5 minutes to get online, and could actually wall.

That being said - it is nearly impossible to defend a 1 minute kill run, but a 2 minute kill run is perfectly defendable. But getting people hitting efficiently and doing a sub-2 minute kill is very difficult. It means that countries killing have to focus less on being 100% efficient (as in 1/3 of military etc) and more on speed. It just breeds a new way of doing war tactics, and puts more focus on an efficient country in order to maintain military levels whilst not hitting in an optimal manner.

I haven't had a chance to wall yet so I can't comment on walling - SoF can you please rectify that?

its been fun so far SoF.... lets keep doing it :-)

I prefer the strategy of starting a rush with virtually no bushels.....

*insert trash talk here*

good luck SoF..... I have enjoyed killing you guys.

I apologise in advance for my restart name :-)

Unsympathetic, I thought Pang had finished playing the game.

Anyways I'm of the opinion that more land available is not a bad thing and could well encourage newer players to stay for longer. Thus I'm not against AI countries, so long as the scripting in the end is controlled by the admins. IMO they are the only ones who could be trusted to impartially implement and run the system..... it is their game and if they abuse that power then bye bye players (and game).

I like the idea that AI countries could retal - with chances of retals increasing as the number of hits increases. Additionally if the country cannot break the type of retal differes due to number of hits as well. It will act more like a newer player (ie get grabbed twice, respond with a couple of GS's or a missile etc if a SS or PS cant break).

As far as strats go, have them as a mix of market dependant and self sufficient strats, ranging from reasonably efficient to completely random. This would at least ensure that AI countries dont have a chance to compete for higher ranks.

The other thing we can look at is that more land in general means that smaller alliances have a chance to get fatter through grabbing. This also leads to improved midfeeding/landtrading gains. I vaguely remember the days of Vingthor and SoF being botted out of the swirve servers, there were a lot of fat (and somewhat crap) small alliances, and TeamHunters, LaF and some LCNers were midfeeding very successfully on them. It didn't matter that the smaller clans were losing land and couldn't retal as they were able to make up for lost land elsewhere.

I'd love to see them also respond with abusive messages as well lol.

I agree

never mind.... re-read the post

sorry to bump an old thread..... BUT, generally speaking, the thing with teenagers etc is they have a short attention span than most of us when we were teenagers (I should know I'm a high school teacher). They need to be able to see progress and even success quickly whilst still learning the game and NOT be reading through a wiki. Games like Evony did that well, with certain goals throughout progress of the game.

A few thoughts:

1) A no-attack all-x server that runs at the same time/pace as the express server (and maybe even shares a market?). This would be open to all players so that vets and less new players could optimise starts, all-x strats and learn to play the market. This stops new players getting farmed to death and giving up within a day or two for that reason.

2) To enable Indies/All-x TMBR to function build in certain military requirements for each land goal that are based on 'the norm' - things like 5k acres = 6k troops, 30k jets, 300k turrets and 6k tanks or something like that. This would also teach new players about military minimums before they went into an attacking server.

3) A expansion of the tutorial mode that is available. The old question marks next to any part of the game. For instance, in the building screen a question mark next to labs could say: "research lab - allows you to research technology to make your country stronger" or residences "residences, increases the amount of population you have". Something short and to the point (plus the ability to turn this mode off for experienced players).

4) Maybe a 'tutorial' that shows them turn by turn how to do a generic 100 turn mon-indy startup. With the option to then play casher/indy/rep. The tutorial guides them to certain checkpoints like 2k acres and 35bpt, tech percentages at particular stages, 50 bpt and 5k acres reminders to buy food, sell military. Teach them the dynamics of the game, without giving away the optimal strategies.

5) Honestly, maybe a revamp of some of the pictures in-game. Mafia Wars was/is insanely popular and was just text-based with a few carefully placed pictures.

6) Facebook users need not get an email notification or anything like that, they could have messages sent to the facebook inbox.

If anyone has any of KoD's old stuff the way he described many of the game concepts was great.

Fooglmog,

The alliance I was in was just about to migrate accross. I recall it took a reset or two of EC for everyone who ended up moving accross to move. I stuck me head in a reset or so after I left and most had moved accross.

I've applied to Evo, if they say no i'll knock on Omegas door.

Servant - I remember warring LaF alongside you (I was under a different nick). I was automatically going to apply to NM except you are looking to war this set. We will see what happens in the future as there are some vets there who I do remember well.

Hanlong.... I'd love to but LaF used to war too often. I remember a number of wars with them in my time.

iTavi - If I ever get tired of netting I'll head back to my old warring home

I everyone - I'm an old earther who left in the swirve days.... about half way through the 1a migration to EC. I want to play for the next reset or two in a netting alliance.... my days when I used to play were spent killing and being killed nearly every reset. Where are the places to safely cultivate some trees these days?

Theo casher....... I never thought I'd see that day lol.

I just looked at the game updates.... it makes sense now.

The +50% max pop would make that a viable choice. So pump bus/res to 140-145% and grab like mad for a day then stock. That looks like a good idea.

I've been out of the game since the swirve days.

I'm thinking I'll do one more round of grabbing to say 8.5-9k and then start stocking and praying for no suiciders? Any thoughts apart from tech prices seem to suck atm.

Are you the guy I farmed that retalled with a PS, 2 missiles and is now my def ally?