Seems like this was it:
534th round: Feb 17, 2020 - Feb 23, 2020 (117 countries)
1 Planned Strike (#66) 45,148 $66,830,471 CG

And now this is it:
Current round: Sep 07, 2020 - N/A (107 countries)
1 k e y s o n a p i a n o (#88) 12,368 $68,696,443 DG

Yay! (Well unless I get suicided in the next hour. I can't really login anymore so..)

Nice work! lots of reselling on 12k acres I bet

I'm playing the tyranny techer .. and yes I think she is sexy

Cheers

Hess

Thanks! I did play the food market through the set to grow my stock (mostly through standing orders - yay for laziness), but I did precisely 1 military resale for that last push. Haha

Congrats on the new record.

woot woot, first time I had most land for the set! Awesome.

Lol because idiots like rat cant leave vets alone

Youll need over 45k next set. Ill BE back to CI

Then if rat decides to be a douchebag, ill kr him

True, I did see you have much more land that me and was wondering what happened. Those pesky rats!!

Maybe I should go CI too and go for land record. xD

I saw you had all that land I just had to grab some. CM N E T S Q U A S H always like to (#69) Ratzilla (#9) 692B 35722 C
2020-09-13 22:37:03 NM N E T S Q U A S H always like to (#69) Ratzilla (#9) DH
2020-09-13 22:37:00 NM N E T S Q U A S H always like to (#69) Ratzilla (#9) 1001A
2020-09-13 22:21:50 PS Ratzilla (#9) N E T S Q U A S H always like to (#69) 1743A (1939A)
2020-09-13 17:07:06 SS Ratzilla (#9) Sad Lion (#41) 495A (690A)
2020-09-13 17:07:00 SS Ratzilla (#9) Sad Lion (#41) 522A (719A)
2020-09-13 16:53:54 SS Ratzilla (#9) Enoona (#6) 307A (418A)
2020-09-13 16:53:44 SS Ratzilla (#9) Enoona (#6) 367A (511A)
2020-09-13 07:00:57 SS Ratzilla (#9) Spirits of Dakamon (#26) 452A (627A)
2020-09-13 04:36:42 PS N E T S Q U A S H always like to (#69) Ratzilla (#9) 1568A (1705A)
2020-09-13 04:05:24 SS Ratzilla (#9) N E T S Q U A S H always like to (#69) 1393A (1607A) The funny part is the this was first set I still finished in the top 25 in months. I was going to send my missals to you but I waited to long, Thats ok, But you were one of my best hits in express ! And my first hit was SS, and with time running out my last hit was PS I hit the jack pot with that one ! Pesky Rat lol. But I do have to give you kudos for a farmer not bad .

SMH@Ratski



Congrats NiteIL :-)

bonus. wish I had time to play express.

Not quite there yet. You beat mine though:

Gerdler:
1 utskitet av kalk och vatten (#93) 22,485 $71,158,233 DG

Me:
2 Javascript (#96) 21,730 $60,409,461 TG

References: https://www.earthempires.com/...lk/431-44695?t=1520354459

Well ebert00, you're still top on Express best 3:


Rank Name Score
1 ebert00 $77,518,512
2 Unlinked Account $74,997,109
3 Elliot $62,579,269
4 mac23 $62,340,135
5 ssj4goku17 $61,720,209
6 catbus $60,888,436
7 MountainYeti $57,232,384
8 Unlinked Account $55,284,198
9 CX LaE $53,783,767
10 NitelL $53,518,654

What strats were you playing to land those insanely high nws?

Also, I've always considered express to be the least involved server. I login once/twice a day, and use a lot of standing orders.

haha yes, I didn't mean all time record, just 2020.

I was a techer for each of them. nearly perfect market conditions. it was rare.

Ebert has the all time NW record. but the one Celphi posted isn't my best.

my best:
442 1 Flourtandkram motverkar karies (#86) 24,006 $80,524,331 DG

Best ever(ebert):
447 1 DeathFromAbove (#2) 22,844 $83,399,080 HG

Wow that's really high. Were there more players then? It seems tricky to get to 20k acres as a techer in a reasonable time for Express. (The ideal acreage vs turns left always seem to make it land lower.)

Kinda wonder if I should try to hard grab to 20k acres one of these sets and see how that goes. I'll almost surely be topfed.

usually I started stocking around turn 900-1000 with 20-25k acres. Ebert did theo and he liked to be smaller, so he probably stocked turn 800-950 most of the time with 18-23k acres.

That's interesting. Do you use turns to the end? (~1800ish)

I've found tech prices generally drop later on with the supply of tech (not last 2 sets, but the couple prior), so I start stocking earlier around turn 500-700 (usually end up 11-14k acres) to take advantage of high early tech prices. Also, I jump really early to destock more cheaply, so I use ~1600 turns. (When I tried using more turns I just end up with too much unsold tech points, crashing the tech market, and then destocking really expensively.)

I've tried Tyr-->Demo, straight Demo, straight Theo, TMBR and found the straight Demo to be the most... straight forward. lol

I might try straight demo to higher acreage at turn 800-900. It's amazing how you get to 20-25k acres as straight demo. Haha 3 turns per grab is so rough!

This set though I'm thinking of going CI.

Damn... look at all these insanely high nett records. Really feel like coming back and trying for a 100m nett. Hahaha

I’m still having problems understanding how you guys get it honestly.

Like this set for example. Nitiel said he played the food market and only did one military resell for this push.

I’m wondering how much you can really make from the food market. You probably earn $2 from each bushel as a demo reselling food, you need to resell 500m bushels to make 1b. The entire set sold roughly 800m bushels so 1 person reselling 500m bushels is kinda hard for me to grasp. Also, how much nett can 1b cash get you?

Then his 1 military resell. From EE records, he did this resell at the last day of the set. He’ll definitely get tons of cash on hand but my question is where does he spend it. At his land size, he’ll wipe out his private market and still have billions on hand. He’ll then have to rebuy the military at the same prize he sold them for roughly so that won’t increase his nett too much.

Also, checking from his country’s history, he did most of his teaching at 9-10k land. How much tpt is that? How does he make so much cash to make such a big jump with so little tpt? He also needs to buy bushels to resell with this tpt.

I just can’t seem to wrap my head around these questions. Could someone here please help me out? 😬

Happy to answer! The more netgainers back the merrier.

I can make anywhere from $1-$6 per resell of bushel if I resell on private for $35 and buy everything lower. If I stock bushels and resell on public, I can artificially push prices higher to dump my stock in the high 30s or 40s (i did this in previous sets, but not this set). I'm not sure how much I resold, but couple 100m bushels for sure. Easily.

On tech, I was selling initially around mid 3ks and then realize I could actually sell mid 4ks. (Hessman was selling at high 8ks. lol) I started stocking around turn 600 last set and teched ~1000 turns, so it's not just my tpt, but how fast I got there and how long I teched. I'm guessing most people started stocking and teching way later.

The two things above got me close to $50m nw.

1 military resell = bot buyout. This gave me $16b more to jump from 30m nw. This was a big hail mary play as I wasn't sure if I was able to spend the money but Hessman (who ended second) had more land and tech, so I had to take a risk to beat him.

I'm generally very lazy with reselling and destocking, so I use standing orders for everything. I was surprised I managed to blow all my remaining stock pretty quickly. I got desperate towards the end and raised the prices of my standing orders (and people started selling at the max price of my orders) - I prob should've just stayed at the lower prices and maybe break 70m nw. There was still quite a bit of military on public when the set ended.

Wasn't a perfect set either - earth quakes galore and I ran outta food multiple times batch teching.

Also, how are you seeing this EE records thing now? lol am I playing this on hard mode by just sticking to the in-game market 'History'?

I do not understand too. I think it's either manipulations with bots or a slew of players. I often see various types of goods on the market, with low or high prices.
P. S.
It is easy to achieve high power if you create one or two more countries from different phones. Then buy food for $ 100 or medical technology for $ 999. There are many recipes.

I spelt it out 1 post above yours. (:

Another small thing on playing food market.. I tend to help clear people's food stockpile (inadvertently) at the end of the game so they have money to destock. That cash will then clean out all the cheap military on the public market, allowing my more expensive stuff to sell.

Up to 34, a Democrat can easily buy food. Above 34, in order to seriously influence the food market, the total capital of several players is needed.

You can push prices up to $36 with no risk, and you'll be surprised at how thin the market is above that when you've got some early stock (I keep $2b on hand all the time).

You can buy all the food from farmers and set any price, no more expensive than a private market ...
But this project requires the total capital of several players.
up to 36 -37, one player can probably raise the price, having a government of democracy ...
Farmers, seeing how you inflate the price, will seek to sell at the highest price, depriving you of the speculative interest. It's hard for me to imagine if it will be beneficial.

You've actually hit the nail on its head there. The moment all the real farmers start to raise prices to >36, that's basically your chance to dump all the cheap food you've amassed. You don't actually need to buy ALL of the food up beyond that price, you just need everyone to move the median price higher at the right time.

Part of it is getting lucky too. lol There might be other demo resellers who see what's going on and double down on the activity.

Anytime I've played demo reseller I've always got my PM sell price to 36.... Then you can buy any food under 36 and burn it on your PM and really play with the food market

The military resell at the end of the set is huge too which I didn't take advantage of enough last set

You can sell at almost any price and your military will sell at the right time on the last day because the bots all spend their stock at the same time and they buy out the public market of military completely

I sold 2 million turrets at 484 and 2 mil jets at 333 last set... and I played tyranny techer and I hit 55 mil NW with relatively little effort.. I just sold a lot of tech for 8888 all set :)

it is nice to see both new and old names in this post. keep express great!

If you have 1B cash as a demo you can buy all the food at 36 and below for free and the food at 37 you can buy a billion of.

The market is super thin for a demo until about $45-55, no matter the amounts sold below that.

When I stock with a 20-25k acre demo techer I generally have to temper my purchases of food so as not to temporarily buy out hte food market. The bots oversupply it but if I buy it up to 55 or something I will be unable to buy cheaply for many hours and it will probably ruin my reset.

Anyway I never seen a point with recycling past 35. As a demo techer Ive always wanted the food market as low as possible so I could stock more. Maybe a breif buyout at some stage. But express has such short market times its really only luck that dictates how well you do.

I really dislike the insecurity of theo techer because there isnt always a 'sentient' demo out there to recycle my $35 food. It's just such an annoying feeling so I always played demo or even tyranny to get it sold guaranteed at decent prices.
--------

With regards to stocking acreage yes it is true that tech prices drop and its something you gotta account for. But if that were not the case the target would be cumulative tech points teched. That usually maxes out at like 25k acres. Acres also help your pm replenish, so they have a value on their own.

Calculate the cumulative tech you can make on different acreages. Assume maybe that you stop taking turns at turn 1800.
A good approxmation is TPT = Land/3

so 9k acres on turn 500 means 9k/3 *(1800-500)=3.9m tech points
12k on turn 600 means 12k/3 *(1800-600)=4.8m tech points
15k on turn 700; 15k/3 *(1800-700)=5.5m tech points
18k on turn 800; 18k/3 *(1800-800)=6.0m tech points
21k on turn 900; 21k/3 *(1800-900)=6.3m tech points
24k on turn 1000; 24k/3 *(1800-1000)=6.4m tech points
27k on turn 1100; 27k/3 *(1800-1100)=6.3m tech points

Of course some of these acreages are easier or harder to achieve on these turns and that plays into this as well.

Your land has nw. so that brings the optimal up.
Tech prices decline. so that brings the optimal down.
Land allows your private market to replenish faster. That brings the optimal acre goal up.

What ends up happening if you compare the extremes say a 10k acre techer or a 25k acre techer is that the 25k acre techer will be able to dump his stock later, he will be able to stock more turns, and he will be able to make positive net income on some of those last turns that the 10k acre techer wont. This effect is hard to compare in general but when you play it every set you get a feel for it. this brings the optimal acre goal higher.

Then you got your own effect on the tech market. If you are a 10k acre techer you wont have to think at all as much about how much tech you place on the market at once or how much the market demand is at each given time. with a 25k acre techer you must do that. This causes a 25k acre techer to spend more turns selling tech and perhaps selling at a lower price even at the same time. this brings the optimum down.

I do understand all that I think.

I just don’t really get how the destocking portion works for a 12k country I guess. I looked at the history and i can’t make any sense of it. There was only one big jump at 12m to 18m nett which means you(nitiel) bought out your PM at that point. After which the increase was gradual meaning you were buying off the public market mostly no? If you were buying off the public market, how can you resell half your military and make any sort of significant nett gain as a techer on 12k land?

I’d understand if you were a casher, farmer or commi because the reduction in military cost on these land fat strats makes a significant difference, but on 12k land? I just don’t quite get it.

Also, gerdler just pointed out that you’d probably need to jump a lot early as a “thin” country to catch the best prices which you did not. As far as I can tell, you were still buying and gaining nett till the last few hours of the set.

I have not learned enough playing this game to fully comprehend this. I’d like to learn so I don’t have to spend the entire week sitting for targets to get out of DR. Lol

Gerdler:
Great post! On the latter half, so far, my feel of the set has landed me at the lower end.

One of the things not accounted for there is the actual 'day' of the set. So while you get a lot of tech points on say 18k acres (and you mentioned you'd be driving supply up and hence, lower prices), you're probably getting there on Friday/Saturday instead of Thursday, which means you miss out on the much higher prices on Thursday. Selling 1 tech point at 5k is equivalent to selling 2 tech points at 2.5k, so there's definitely that. Or in Hessman's case, $8888. lol

st0ny:
You're absolutely right. Gradual increase = standing orders getting filled. Like I said, I play very lazily.

The thing I tried last set that I didn't do the prior sets, is actually use standing orders to destock entirely and trust that they will be filled. That allowed me to destock at a really low $/nw on public. I actually jumped VERY early (I only used ~1600 turns total in the set) - to give you some sense, I started gradually "destocking" on Saturday (for a Sunday night finish). I got to ~47m nw easily in this case (I was at the same nw as Hessman). I then resold the military on the bot buyout (like Hessman mentioned), dropped to 30m nw, and then, in an act of faith, used standing orders to destock again. I could've pushed for more nw but I put really high prices on my standing orders and people were filling it at the limit. I had $16b to blow after the military resale so it wasn't clear if the market was deep enough; turns out, it was deeper than even that and there was plenty of military on in the last hour unbought.

A lot of the principles I use for Express are just stuff I have from the days I played tourney, which is also ~1800 turns. (I'm the record holder for most top 5s and most #1s in tourney 2a in the old Earth 2025, pre-Earth empires donkey years ago).

Hessman:
I feel like at this point you basically know how I did it and can just recreate it. lol I'm going indy this set (worst set with so many Cs), so I'm likely not gonna finish too well.

...and I forgot to join GDI. lol

I did account for that:

and here:


Its a pareto optimum we are trying to find. My point is that you are losing out on 2-2.5m tech points with your method and you are forced to jump sooner because of it. I do take falling prices into account I just dont take only that into account.

If you read my post you will see that I have given several reasons to go above optimum and another couple reasons to go below optimal acreage for max cumulative tech points. It's your choice which reasons should weigh the most and how much they should do. But it seems like Ebert and I have put much higher weight on cumulative tech than you have, and we have higher NWs.
"Get fat and win" is a common saying in LaF. It's usually true. The few hundred turns you are teching 4k tpt and selling at $4k are all nice but you pay for it for 600-800 turns that you are teching 4k while Ebert and I are teching 6.5-8k which makes up for the early prices you got and then some.

Yea that makes perfect sense. Given that both of you have ended higher (>80m nw), you're probably closer to the optimum and I have to try it at some point. (Realistically, I don't see how much more I can optimize a 12k acre techer to add another 10m nw.)

[quote poster=Gerdler; 49379; 959782]

This is probably the key thing. I'm still trying to figure out.. how to balance supply with demand if you have so much tech to dump in a day. Probably involve selling multiple times in a day to spread out that supply... which is very involved. Or maybe breaking it into multiple blocks to make it 'appear' smaller and prevents aggressive undercutting by others.

(Also, I spent like a set or 2 in LaF a very very very long time ago!)

This is actually an enjoyable thread btw. I'm learning a lot through this discussion!

Stop learning. Its toxic to your health

There are fairly regular times that bots buy out certain tech markets completely throughout the set as well

If you can learn this and sell at the right times you can get an advantage in the same way as the military sell near the end

Especially as a demo you can influence this yourself ... thin out the agri market and then burn a ton of cheap food on your pm once you’ve got your agri tech up for sale for an absurd price .. a bunch of farmer bots just sold their food and will buy your tech :)

I didn't know this! Haha Possibilities are endless. Are both of you netting this set?

The bots buy quite regularily, it's the lack of human techers playing at some point of the set that dictates if techs are bought out(or not).

But yes, a demo can buy tech to sell it higher. This is not a huge thing and can easily backfire, but some sets it can add a few million $nw if you do it right and/or are lucky.

Most of the NW you make is the direct result of the turns you spend teching and the money you make selling that tech. The other stuff are fringe stuff that you should not focus on but can add a little more potential after you have perfected the important stuff. Getting to your stocking acreage fast, watching the market to understand what prices to sell at and knowing when to destock and how; these are all difficult things so much that no one perfects them consistently, therefore it's something you should keep the focus on at all times in your EE career, everything beyond this is periferal and potentially fleeting. This may not be enough to get a NW record but you certainly won't get close without it.

Couldn't agree more with you on this, you need to get to X acres by X turns and you need to be online constantly watching the markets if you're really going for a net worth record, but I would emphasize your very last sentence in that I think to truly set a record you also need some of try some of this fringe stuff and have it hit at the right time on the right set when everything else has gone well....

The fringe stuff can burn ya, but in a perfect set it could help you set a record like a Wayne Gretzky points record... It's really hard to mess with the markets successfully though.. when I was playing more seriously I had one set where I hit 20k fast enough and was doing everything right but ended up with 4 million unsold tech points, so that was a good learning experience.. I guess with the unpredictability of other good players it makes more sense just to play smart and don't take those crazy risks

Last set you got lucky to resell all those bushels and get to where you did for a net worth because I accidentally sold my food (about 100 million bushels) at 36 on the public market when I should have sold it on my PM at 35.. so that allowed you to do what you did.. I could have sold on my PM and bought the food market out myself for an attept of my own at reselling for some absurd price late game..

Thanks for the interesting discussions on this thread. I learn a lot of interesting things.

For sure! So far every set I've been learning things the hard way (like ending a set with a few million tech pts like yourself), also botching a gov change the first time I did it on returning. I think a few sets ago I took a risk and bought up the food market and tried to sell my own food in the mid-40s. I sold half my stock and got blocked. After which, I played my destocks safer. lol

The best thing about Express is.. if you make a mistake, the next set is the next week and you can iterate again.

Ya, I have a hard time with express.. I like this thread and discussion and I like playing express once in a while but I typically just play primary now because I can log in once a day for 5 minutes and there are no bots .. its all human players only and so every land grab decision has to be a good one in more ways than vs bots.. and it makes for a more challenging game in my opinion

I might try primary next set. See if I can convince someone to rejoin and take a stab with me. Haha

To what extent is primary today like the old "multi-tap if you can get away with it"? And are the people at the bottom continuously bottom fed then?

Everyone plays different styles.. casher in primary seems to be the techer of express but farmers, indy and techer can win too..

Everyone has their own grabbing style... gdi is nice to take advantage of.. but ya you can play with humanitarian ranges late game.. but for the most part I just try to hit everyone once and only farm players once I know I am about to completely outgrow them because their playing some kind of rainbow

I learned a lot on this topic and set my own record. Didn't have time to sell 10,000,000 barrels of oil ... waited for oil to be bought and fell asleep 10-15 minutes before the end of the set ... We had 5 in the morning)

Congrats! Saw your #3 finish. Good one!

Oil market is.. the hardest to play imo. It's like a "go big or go home" that usually ends in the latter. Haha

So I tried a number of diff things again this set and had a rough one.

Picked a bot-like name and got 4-tapped right off the bat. lol Got grabbed another 2 more times. Ran outta food at 28m nw. And then had $2b cash stolen from me (had 10:1 SPAL, clearly not enough). Prob had a shot at ebert's record but missed. Could've gotten $90m+ nw if I had destocked better (and had that extra $2b lol).

1 Ephemera Withering (#71) 19,122 $80,608,113 DG

Will ebert and Gerdler return to defend the record? Haha

You sick monster

Yeah remember that set i netted $67m nw. Yeah didnt win lol