Thesis 1:
Bots in their current form are a detriment to Express.

Thesis 2:
Bots can become a valued addition to Express with a few simple coding changes.

Thesis 3:
Since qz has stated many times over many years that he neither particularly cares about Express nor even understands the server's GDI rules,
it falls to the Express players to specify exactly what changes we want to the current bot coding to improve our server.

Thesis 4:
The best forum for specifying those changes is the Express forum because very few Express players read the AI forum.
Qz does not normally read the Express forum but exceptions have been observed.

Thesis 5:
The changes we need to have to the bots fall into two separate and distinct categories, their defense and their economic impact.

Thesis 6:
Bots need to carry at a minimum 30 turrets per acre beginning at 1999 acres and 50 turrets per acre starting at 6000 acres.

Thesis 7:
Bots need to pay a max price of $4444 per unit of tech, $47 per unit of food and max purchase price per military unit.

Thesis 8:
Bots need to sell whatever commodities they put on the market at the current market price or higher.

Thesis 9:
Bots need to stop buying tech when they reach 90% of max. These 8000 acre R bots with a million units of residence tech are ridiculous.

Thesis 10:
There may not be immediate and unanimous agreement to these theses, so intelligent disagreements and addenda are sought and encouraged.

so I read through each statement and disagree with every one.

this is simple. learn the ayatem, play smart and you can win. stop whining about everything you want to change.

if you took bots away express would be clicky with hidden alliances and people getting gangbanged for land each set. primarily this would be you since you don't have a good friend base in express. bots allow new players to not be farmed as the experienced and knowledgabke players don't hit players unless they have a specific reason to.

GDI rules prevent the reemergence of HoLaEcaust type activity.

Let's just ignore 1-5 and 10. Regardless of if I agree with them or not there is no point in discussing since your mind has been made up.

Thesis 6:
I'll be completely honest, I haven't looked closely at their country makeup early on to know if the numbers you have provided are reasonable. However, I would very much agree that bots should carry more defense. I do believe the 0 defense bots are not as common, but they do still exist.

Thesis 7:
Again, where have you come up up with these VERY specific numbers? I agree with the fundamental argument that a limit should be in place, but I'm not sure these are accurate.

Thesis 8:
Just like a real player, this isn't completely accurate. Based on current trends, play times, and what you need to do with your cash...you may need to sell lower. This would be especially true if they are in a hurry to meet Thesis 6?

Thesis 9:
I don't see a flaw in this at all. I agree completely.

** Let me also add that I think some of these "flaws" are a good thing. Bots aren't meant to be better than players. If anything they should be worse than most. This whole concept was brought in to stop the farming of new players. Better the bots than new players... and to that I'd say they have been a success.**

The one thing I'd like to see added to the bots is a randomized missile retals. For example, every time a bot is attacked, it would run a subroutine which gives (for example) a .5% chance of that bot firing a missile back at you. Perhaps even with an increasing chance each subsequent time you LG'd the bot.

Would add an element to the game if every time you attacked a bot you had a chance of catching a nuke but that's just my noob opinion. -v

there will not be any changes to the bots until pang finishes his side project on rewriting the code where the API can actually be useful and bots can finally make retals like planned initially, atm they can barely play turns via explore/build/sell/tech.

I believe that was something that was discussed and may be implemented when the attack code in implemented. See drkprinc's post above this one.

Need more bots with less defense. They should also sell oil @ $50 and food @ $15.

bots are farms so new players don't get farmed. making bots retal is stupid.

Nothing he said has anything to do with 7 years ago and you still can't pass up the opportunity to swing from my nuts

I love it, lol. Even though you change your Nick, I hope you never cha he gregg/lincoln

thesis X - no bots

Thesis #1-4 I have no comment on, I do disagree on some things and agree on some but I think it is pretty much irrelevant.

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Thesis 5:
-I pretty much completely agree with so no need to comment that.

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Thesis 6:
Bots need to carry at a minimum 30 turrets per acre beginning at 1999 acres and 50 turrets per acre starting at 6000 acres.
-I like the idea but your numbers are way too high way too early. The way the bots work now is they basically get defence when they can afford it. Before the last bot change in march to the techer bots they didnt usualy buy defence during the whole reset. And just for the record if we assume that bots reach 2k acres(at 240cs) at around turn 300 their code tells them to get 15 turrets per acre or equivalent. the reason they dont have that is because they can't afford it. so you would need not to change the defence per acre coding but to make the bots ramp up CS more gradually with something like a criteria that they are not allowed to have more than 10%(or 5%) CS covering their land. that would allow them to build those CS while having an income, reduce construction costs and enable them to adhere to the dpa goal sooner.
I do think the dpa goal also needs to be increased, though the main problem is that the bots, especially farmer and techer bots have fluff economy in the beginning and cant afford any defence at all or even to build all their acres.
I would add an exponent to the dpa criteria to add to their defence later in the game instead of early, and focus the early changes on improving the bots economy as I've mentioned.

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Thesis 7:
Bots need to pay a max price of $4444 per unit of tech, $47 per unit of food and max purchase price per military unit.
-Its a supply and demand imbalance. If you just stop the bots from buying tech they will hoard cash and then you opened another can of worms. Fix the imbalance instead.

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Thesis 8:
Bots need to sell whatever commodities they put on the market at the current market price or higher.
-this is ludicrous. again I see the problem with bots pricing but you are setting way too stringent demands on them that will only cause new problems. I dont fully understand the way the bot prices military or tech but it is not functioning properly. though the food pricing is quite as good as we can expect and prices food around -2 to +2 from the market price. if the farmer bots cant sell their food, they cant get any defence. and you got recyclers quite often locking the food price at $35-37 so if a bot would sell at 38 in an oversupplied market it would just get stuck. it still will sell at $38 under these conditions just not all its food.

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Thesis 9:
Bots need to stop buying tech when they reach 90% of max. These 8000 acre R bots with a million units of residence tech are ridiculous.
-again if you stop bots from buying they will hoard cash which creates other issues. 90% of max is way too low as well, thats like 172% for a casher on res/bus, no netter stops at that even. but if they increase the NW/land and dpa criteria they will automatically end up buying fewer tech points due to added expenses, food consumption and higher spending on military. making small changes and fine tuning them til the effects are what you desired is the way to go.
I would like to add that the rainbow bots don't add anything to the game they could just as well be techer bots which would increase the tech supply marginally and increase the military demand marginally and thus help balance the market. Rainbow bots have no function except to show players who spy them how not to run a country.

+1

Also it would be insanely complicated for no benefit. Put that effort into other things.

You can give them more defence if you want but if they retal as well there is no trade-off and you would go back to farming new players out.

Just cut them, and stick and extra CS type building in called 'Colony' to give an explore boost for those who want the land.

The bots are just land farms.

you really are a noob LOL, the bots also stimulate the market, without them you would have to build like a rainbow, not enough people to supply oil/food to all the players then odd sets when not enough C/I's to supply people with military you would be limited to private size by land.

also a reminder Temple country is great for farming he runs his country like an idiot and you can expect to get away with good gains with low risk.

We have two supposed reasons for the bots, I suggest that neither reason warrants their current condition.

The first wild crazy inane supposition is that they protect noobs. How many new players do we have? three? two?
I am not talking about guys who play like noobs I am talking about genuine played less than a year players. I would be surprised if it were more than two. We only have sixty (sometimes seventy) humans playing express and most have played forever. So we disrupt our entire server to protect two players?

The second is Drkprinc's theory they support the market and without them we would all have to go rainbow. If true, this would be adequate reason to keep the imbeciles around. I do not believe that bots who pay far above market for tech, who dump commodities on the market for a song, who buy tech long after it no longer helps them and who break down on a regular basis support the markets at all in fact I believe they severely limt diversity of play styles and government type selection. They incentivize teching and discourage farming and other commodity production.
Because of the bots current programming we have too many techers and not enough producers. If their algorithms
were corrected, this problem would disappear. One of the strategic choices one should have to make is what government type to play. Bots render that decision obsolete.

Gerdler,
You point out that if the bots do not waste their money then they will hoard it and that will bring additional problems.
True enough.

Y

Yes because I get farmed all the time don't I. And never retal.

God forbid that there should different market conditions in in different sets because there are no bots to buy all the tech the netters churn out. The market would even out. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Another truth.

If market conditions varied from set to set that would be a sweet change. Now we talk a bout a micro shift of 2% as though it were a big deal. No need for this, tweak the bots.

turrets $100
jets $99
oil $100

ag tech $8779


How can anyone argue that our bot situation is fine as it is??????

It's the beginning of the set. Indy prices are always low and tech prices are always high at this time. Been like that for 20 years.

Don't use this to push your narrative. You know damn well this is normal. Supply and demand. Indy is a viable startup technique. It produces early. It takes time for techers to produce.

Terrance temple has be desecrated ...................... its all good!

3567 agri tech points have sold at an average price of 5060. And I doubt its the farmer bots that bought most of that.

The tech prices are lower on late thursday than on friday and saturday quite often, and its because the bots are not buying yet, they are struggling to get fully built, all cash goes into construction.

The first to get out of that vicious cycle are the casher bots. Because they get instant cash every turn and don't have to wait for sales they get reasonably fully built first, they get tech and defence first. Ofc rainbow and indy bots get defence before them because they produce it from their first indies.

The turret and troop prices have been pretty normal to high the past three sets at $120-170 for most of the set. remember C has 35% indy boost nowadays and indy tech is up to 160% so when prices were $170 back in the day with +25% for C and 140% indy tech it matches the income of ~$140 nowadays.
Average prices also give a far better picture than the current prices. As such of course some sets show lower military prices than perhaps they should be but I would say indy is in general the 2nd most competetive strat on express. I have won with techer, indy and farmer and it was far harder and I was far more lucky for the farmer win than the indy win despite selling turrets/jets at as low as 79 early that set.

jets $56
tech $7986

spy a farmer bot right now then. preferably one that just sold, then calculate how much money it will have left after it takes its turns. Its relatively easy math.

Look:
} elseif ($c->empty > $c->bpt && $c->money > $c->bpt*$c->build_cost) { //build a full BPT if we can afford it
return build_farmer($c);
} elseif ($c->turns >= 4 && $c->empty >= 4 && $c->bpt < $target_bpt && $c->money > 4*$c->build_cost && ($c->foodnet > 0 || $c->food > $c->foodnet*-5)) { //otherwise... build 4CS if we can afford it and are below our target BPT (80)
return build_cs(4); //build 4 CS
} elseif ($c->built() > 50) { //otherwise... explore if we can
return explore($c, min(max(1, $c->turns - 1), max(1, turns_of_money($c)-3)));
} elseif ($c->empty && $c->bpt < $target_bpt && $c->money > $c->build_cost) { //otherwise... build one CS if we can afford it and are below our target BPT (80)
return build_cs(); //build 1 CS
} else { //otherwise... cash
return cash($c);

Techer bots are very similar and have even worse economy, especially the tyr ones. As you can see this means they will end their cash with construction costs. you can predict how long it takes for a bot to get defence(in logins or turns) if you spy them(or even calculate) their unbuilt acres at one point.

Go on spy one and do the math. Because if they don't have cash after their last turn has been played they can't be expected to buy tech or defence in any significant quantity.

So you got indy bots selling military and casher+ farmer+ techer bots who cant afford to buy any military in the beginning. Its a supply and demand problem, nothing else. If you force bots to sell at certain prices you will not solve anything. Also if you do that to the farmer bots, and techer bots like you suggest; force them to sell higher than current price, they will likely never find the cash to buy defence. Remember that the techer bots tech all techs and the other bots only buy 5 techs.

So cut the bots and let the market correct itself.

Gerdler,
Thanks for engaging in a thoughtful dialogue.

[quote poster=Gerdler;

Its a supply and demand problem, nothing else. If you force bots to sell at certain prices you will not solve anything. Al. [/quote]

You have outlined the economic problems of bots beautifully. Well done.

But, I totally disagree with your conclusion that forcing bots to sell at a certain price will not fix anything. It will fix the ludicrous imbalance infecting and hurting our game where human techers can buy turrets for $56 and sell tech for $7869 and then parade around as though they accomplished something.

We should try to fix the bots' problems so that they can stop being an infestation and become an asset to the game.

So how about this proposal? Dramatically increase the private market prices for bots only. Specifically take turrets from $52 to $80, boost food to $36 and likewise for other commodities. With the higher private market prices the bots can get on their feet and stop disrupting the markets and favoring one game play style over all others.

Just to be clear, I am a bigot, an animist for sure. I care more about humans than about inanimate objects, the very definition of an animist. I do not want to help the bots for their sake, I just want to make the game better for humans.

Or cut the bots and let everyone fend for themselves.