Sometimes I log in after 16 hours and only get 3 bonus turns, sometimes I get 20 free acres and sometimes I log in after a few hours and get 6 free turns.

What gives?

The first login of the day (game time) you get 20 free acres. (I don't like this as it only serves as a built in tracker for when you first log in for the day).

The bonus turns I don't know; haven't ever bothered to pay that much attention.

The 20 acres are always given on your first login after midnight gametime.

The bonus turns is a bit more complicated but I dont think theres a way to get more bonus turns than you get by just being logged in and browsing your country as often as you can. If there is it's very much negligeble and overcome by the advantages you get by being on a lot to check the market for cheap goods or other opportunities. :)

On the other hand if you log in too rarely(?) you can get shorted on the bonus turns to the point it's no longer negligible. I generally get 50-60 fewer turns than the countries I'm playing against over a given round, which is a whole day's handicap. The bonus turn system is weird.

Yeah I do know that Pang re-did the bonus to be if you don't login you lose, not if you stay logged out like it was in Earth:2025.

It really does bug me, I cried about it back in February on the Patron board to no avail. :P I play Primary because it doesn't have the same time demands as other servers. Still though I feel like I'm on a lot, but maybe just during too brief of a window? I don't even know.

Anyway back on the direct topic, to DruncK, i believe the 3 and 6 turn bonuses are still nominally 12 and 18 hour bonuses, but you don't have to be logged out for all that time to receive them. But it's a little more complicated than that too.

You made me curious so I dug up some info:

https://www.earthempires.com/...change-31871?t=1409691527

Example:

Play turns at midnight. (no bonus)
Country play 18 hours later (gets 6 turns from 12h & 18h bonus)
Country plays 4 hours after that (gets no turns)
Country plays 8 hours after that (gets 3 turns from 12h bonus)
Country plays 6 hours after that (gets 3 turns from 18h bonus)
Country plays 8 hours after that (gets no turns)
Country plays 10 hours after that (gets 6 turns from 12h & 18h bonus)
Country plays 72 hours after that (gets 6 turns from 12h & 18h bonus)
Country plays every 2 hours for 24 hours, gets 3 turns at 12h and 3 turns at 18h.


Thus, if you play every day, you should get 6 turns bonus per day, on average; you don't have to wait for the 18h mark, you can play at 16h and then 2h later at 18h to get your bonuses.

Technically, if you play every 6 hours all set, you end up with an average of 8 turns per day, over a 72h cycle. However you'll have a smaller PM &etc; if there ends up being any sorts of abuse with this we can always tweak stuff, but I don't anticipate anything too extreme.

And because I like simple solutions I guess I posted a suggestion on it too:

I figure the change was made to encourage people to play instead of encouraging them not to, LOL. Makes sense.

Like your paste says, though, full-time play means you get 8 turns per day instead of 6. Maybe in reality some players are averaging like 7.5 and I'm getting like 6.5.

It adds up and rewards people that can log in more, even though being logged on more often is already mostly self-rewarding as Gerdler mentions. It bugs me to be at a competitive disadvantage. OTOH I did pay to get the Bonus benefit...

Good point maybe if you pay for premium you should also get all of the bonus turns...

So far, in 1a as of this post, I've got: 162 bonus turns.

How many have you gotten gerdler?

I couldn't tell because Ive overflowed on 4 occasions :(

Damn!

How many total turns did you get last Primary set? I found I had 48 + 6.9 per day, 3295 total.

#pay2win

LoL KoH keeping us honest!

Turns Taken 3352

7.87 bonus turns per day possibly. But I think some of those are bonus points that fell over to turrs through my forgetfulness.

I usually count 7 bonus turns a day when I have to calc turns left and so on.

57 more turns than me is actually standard for very active players. It's the same again this set based on my recent spy op on (I think) your country, and comparisons with Tmac. I also compared with Herbs three sets in a row when he was active and it always landed in that range.

I don't think that's fair, because I don't think people should be punished for having less availability, beyond the gameplay impact that already entails.

I also don't think people should be able to pay for an extra bonus point, and you should really just get saved the trouble of having to click the bonus links, to address KoH's comment. But at least in that case the purpose is raising money for the developers and hosting.

And quite honestly, it's a nominal amount. Hopefully hosting costs and such are at least covered.

I have never played a game that demands more of its users than this. Not even close.

Tho I do not think bonus turns, or bonus points are the most significant problem. Yes, they matter a lot on primary, and bonus points are circumstantially important for specific strats on some other servers as well. But the main issue is walling in my opinion which if you are not available to do 24/7 on seconds notice, well then you are just a dud in war. There should be other options, such as building a fantastic country and somehow it could matter even if you have a badly timed work meeting, or really have to sleep one night.
I think 57 turns, while a lot, is not even close to as much as the difference that is 'your country is alive if you log in within these 20 seconds'/'your country is dead if you don't'.

I have voiced this concern again and again and I believe the devs agree but there is constant pushback from a certain maybe half dozen individuals. I make these suggestions knowing that I'm one of the primary benefactors of the way this game rewards activity.

The anxiety over wanting to perform well in war and wall does make not as enjoyable as it could be. Anything to bridge that gap while still making killing fun is def something that should be a high priority for gameplay experience, at least for war people. I'd prob be more inclined to want to war more often if it were the case.

There have been times where I was mostly available a large part of the day, but there are always times where that is not practical, and most people will have that issue. There are a select few who can be available 24/7, and that is great for them but not for anyone else. Maybe this is a case for the 80/20 rule?

If devs agree, do you know if it is at least 'on their list' or is it a parking lot item that will never come up?

I think they've tried some ideas like buffing restarts for example but there's not necessarily a simple solution.

On the other hand they could just give us 8 bonus turns with our 20 acres every day instead of the current fluffamamie bonus turn system, and then sore losers won't have that turn disparity to blame for their finishes.

I lost so many bonuses this set on Primary..... Insane, usually I'm on top of it, not this set 😣

I agree LOL

As far as I have gathered from my conversations with them they don't know how to solve it. They have a general idea of the problem but have not settled on a path to solve it.

I am of the opinion its a more central problem than the UI.

these things are legacy quality of life problems

having to login on a weird schedule for turns and bonus points and rolling forwards of dec war times are the last remaining ones

but it used to be worse with the 24 hour bonus time thing, and i think ps's used to be 24h not 22h as well

and the login bonus used to be a logout bonus as well which was supposed to ease server load, but seems like a bad design feature


if you wanted to get rid of all the remaining ones then changing turns to 6-8 given any time in 24h calendar day, or giving full bonuses as long as you login 'enough' with perhaps slight leeway so people could login inside say 32 hours as long as their next login was within 16 hours they would still get full bonuses sort of thing would be a fairly fair way to do things without forcing exact 24h schedules

and the bonus points i think should just appear automatically for patrons without logging in

and for non patrons theres no way around the 22/24 times given the way the sites work although id structure it so that as long as you maintained greater than x% of time with the bonuses on cooldown youd just automatically get full bonuses even if you missed an hour here or there or the odd day, rewarding people for being good enough rather than being perfect

that way you could shift both to 24h cycles which seems more intuitive

then the last one is dec war, even changing it to 47 hours would help a lot with peoples playtimes as the set goes on since even 5 minutes * 30 potential windows is 2.5 hours which could be enough to make someone not enjoy having to play outside their preferred window, though of course you wont use all 30 windows each set


also 20 bonus acres a day is arguably not a good system anymore as it was really just a way to give 1200 extra server average land for a 60 day set when there was no ghost acres

Why is 20a bonus not a good thing? I mean sure in alliance it doesn't really matter, but its kinda big on tournament, primary and team. Does it do any harm?

the login time thing

theres a lot of things it could be changed to, like a bonus on the first explore of the day, which could even be a bit bigger

That's why I don't like it. If you guys want it to stay it needs to be more than 20a to make an actual difference IMO.

Ahh yeah I can agree on that. Maybe just flat increase explores by 1 acre would have the same effect more or less.

I think server length(in turns) has become misaligned with explores and other stuff to a degree. I can't be sure of that because I missed the early years of EE. Im just comparing to when I used to play E2025 with 25a explores for instance the feel was completely different. The start-up was way more important and no one in their right mind explored past 1500 acres or so.

Because we have more turns and more servers to play now this is perhaps a better way because it reduces the time spent on the early stages of the set quite a lot. But it also makes it quite uninteresting for the first 1k turns or so (not in express).

Actually I was considering that after 1000 turns given all explores are increased by 1, and the same happens after 2k, 3k and 4k turns given.

That would shorten the early game and make the mid-end game less stale in servers where grabbing early is not the meta (primary, team, tournament). The problem I can see is it will buff FFO in alliance and that is certainly not necessary. I have spammed this and other forums with suggestions on how to change the oil destock tho and that would make this possible. :)

it wasnt just 25 acres, the curves changed as well

thats why old tech starts used to be way less acres

sure changing explores based on turns run or server average land would be fine

i wouldnt agree a slight buff to exploring mid and late set helps ffo dramatically in alliance where they are grabbing

If the bots get fatter late game it helps only the FFOs since the other strats have all stopped grabbing.

Techers don't get helped in their grabbing at all, Cashers and CI's maye get very slight help for their last grabs, but FFOs rake in those big acres from 10 days out when the bots explore 11-12 acres per turn instead of 8-9 and therefore become significantly bigger than today.

Makes sense, damn FFO's are already OP af.

I'm pretty sure I have the bonus turns figured out and it's not complicated.

It doesn't matter how often you login

The 18 hour mark from your last 6 turn bonus is the only time that matters.

Login every 18 hours for your turns so a new 18 hour timer will begin

If you're logged in at the 18 hour mark you'll have to wait for your next turn before you get the bonus

That being said, I'm all for getting the bonus turns with your 20 acres for your first login of the day =)

Tmac read up if you want the precise mechanism. Cheers

When I first came back, I read up as much as I could to try to understand everything. I don't recall reading anything about this subject besides you don't have to stay logged out for 18 hours to get your bonus turns anymore. What I posted is my assumptions based on my experience, not facts.

And that is why you’ll always be second best my friend.

Not in getting bonus turns unless I don't login 18 hours after my last 6 turn bonus.

.djf

Are the rules same for express?

No. You start with 180 turns in express, plus you get a 6 turn bonus after 4 minutes of the set starting. After that, no more bonus turns.

Damn!

How do I remove acres from my country?

from the build menu click destroy on the bottom

https://www.earthempires.com/alliance/build/destroy

opens this page, then you want to go to the last option and destroy some, for the bonus acres if you were a techer and didnt want them it would be 20 for example

Drop Unused Land

ive left the browser open all day with refreshes throughout and still get the bonus turns. not sure it matters what you do inbetween when they are distributed

Bingo. Refresh it, don't refresh it, doesn't matter. Just refresh it after 18 hours to restart the timer. You don't have to worry about the 12 hour bonus at all because the timer doesn't reset until the 18 hour timer resets. Collect for 3 turns if you want, and you'll get 3 more when you reset the 18 hour clock. Don't collect the 12 hour bonus and you'll get 6 turns when you reset the 18 hour clock.