Looking for information on a tech start up. Like how many research centers and how many points you want before converting to main strat. Thanks.

Ask in the primary and/or express server forums, you'll get quicker answers.

Go here and search too
http://www.earthempires.com/forum/strategy-room

Nice, thanks.

Koh...when viewing those tips, strats, and formulas, how many years can you go back?

since post about tips etc were 1st made to strat room. after a lot changes to game many strats posted are obsolete now.

best way to learn what works and what doesn't is to join some alliance like laf on alliance server unless you want to learn by yourself then testing strats on alphaffa (https://earthempires.com/alphaffa).

Ok thanks

The base tech start, with the 25 acre explores that started declining at about 1100 acres, used to look something like;
1.40cs
2.150 farms
3.60 more cs
4.explore and build up to 1k labs
5.tech about 100 turns
6.switch to casher or farmer


With the 45 acre base explore you dont need to get high techs as fast and exploring is quite efficient, and because most servers are longer now as well higher acreages are usually used for these tech phases, so something decent, but by no means optimal, might look something like:

1. 100cs
2. ~1000 farms(or a total of 1000 farms/ICs) and 60 more CS, while taking care to allow pop to catch up with your acres by building CS
3.explore and build labs until you are 1900 acres anf fully built
4. batch explore 60 turns(it will cut you off after about 35-45 turns depending on govt)
5. build up your empty acres with Labs
6. destroy your farms/indies and replace them with labs
7. tech 200 turns
8. switch to casher or farmer

Some people do tech starts for indy and you can do that too. It's lazy and inefficient but it doesn't really matter in most servers so people get away with it. The reason you dont need it for indy is that indy has really solid income at 0 tech, so they can easily grow at full speed and still max their techs kinda early without being underdefended at any point.

If you are doing a theo tech start you will want to sell on the public market and probably use ICs rather than farms, if you are a republic you can usually get away with far fewer income buildings to get the necessary money to build up all your labs because of the PCI advantage.

Tech starts give you good income early and allows you to never look like a good target, but they are turn inefficient.

Ohh and btw back in the day when tech startups used to be really important on some servers it was because you needed to get to a high income/acre so you could hold a good military and grab people really early, as exploring got inefficient so early. The turn inefficiency was mostly of no matter back then as just a few good early grabs from 1-5k acres saved you like 200 turns easily.

So another thing that matters in optimizing the turn efficiency is when you build your CS. lets say you are playing primary and going for 50k acres, after a 4k acre tech start. That means the most turn efficient way to get there is to build 460cs straight away, then build your 3.5k labs, tech 200 turns, switch, then grow and build to 50k acres. Thats optimal turn efficiency.

The problem with this is that you run your 460 turn building CS at a very low income.

The way people used to go about this is they would run lower than optimal turns for the tech phase and perhaps a little lower bpt as well, then right after the tech phase they would build a bunch of CS, maybe not all they need for the round but a nice chunk.
So if instead you build 160cs before the tech phase and 300 CS while you are a high tech 4k acre casher you make maybe around 500-600 million more cash with those turns.
What is best will depend on server and perhaps market conditions. But these are the things you should have in mind.

Thanks gerdler..does the monarchy start up still work or should you just start with Gov. your going to be using?

Monarchy works. But some govts have some really nice bonuses that make your start better. Like Republic or theocracy. If you are gonna switch to tyranny or dictatorship tho you should stay mon until then.

Monarchy also gives you options to change your mind which is nice in some circumstances.

Thanks again. I was always curious about how many res.ctrs. and turns to tech. Nice guide. Would you mind listing the 2 best strats or best strat for each server. With all the gov. and strat choices, along with server length, it's hard for me too decide on the most viable.

Primary(~3000 turns):
Commie indy
Rep casher
Demo/Fascism Farmer

Tech start works well in primary; you got allies to give you that extra 30% if you can find them and doing a straight farmer/casher is hardest on this server. So Tech start his low risk and very competetive.
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Express(~2000 turns):
Commie indy
Theo/demo/tyr techer

Tech start is not needed on express in general but for a casher you might want to do it anyway rather than buying overpriced tech and feeding the techers free wins. Cashers and farmers have a hard time to compete on this server in general.
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Alliance(~4500 turns):
Fascism Farmer
Rep casher
Tyr techer->demo techer

You pretty much never wanna tech start in alliance unless you are planning to war or are up to some kind of cheese strategy. You don't need the early income if you are gonna netgain since you will spend so long building CS that your techs have time to get raised little by little by just buying them every day and growing slowly.
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Tournament(~2000 turns):
Commie indy
Rep casher

Tech start is decent here because it is a solo server without bots so you might not wanna look like a good target as you would doing a straight casher start, and tech prices are sometimes high anyway. Tech start is the safer option anyway, definatly not the best but the safest and lazyest approach.
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Team(~3000 turns):
Commie indy
Rep/demo casher
Fascist farmer/oiler
Rep/demo Farmer
Theo techer

Tech start is decent here because tech prices run incredibly high early on many sets, and the market is sometimes completely dry so you can't even buy overpriced techs. Tech start offers consistency in this regard which is valuable. Also for war you might wanna tech start here.

Nice bro! That should definently be stickied.

Best strats for FFA?

FFA is like alliance, except that you could tech start to give you a leg up when early tech prices are particularly high due to large bot numbers.

A pure Rep casher would work in ffa?

Yes they do. I think better than in alliance honestly. but it depends on prices. Since you are allowed to run several countries there I would advise you to split your countries between different strategies so that you are not completely maimed by a market that is unfavorable for all your countries at once.

something like 1 farmer, 1 oiler, 1 casher and 1 techer would be a great string that can work well no matter the market.

Team(~3000 turns):
Commie indy
Rep/demo casher - what's advantage of demo here?
Fascist farmer/oiler
Rep/demo Farmer
Theo techer

demo casher is usually stronger than rep on an acre/acre basis as long as stocking bushels and other market stuffs is the way to go, due to the 0 commissions. Usually the bigger explores of the rep will outweigh this, but the margin isnt large enough to neglect to mention the demo casher as a viable option.

awesome info

What's optimal tech % or point total before switching?

I remember there were some very good discussions between some very smart people and a lot of math and experience went into it that the optimal 300 turn tech start was about 100 turns of teching. Because the same math applies you will generally want the same 1/3rd of your turns, as you get switched, to have been teching turns or thereabout. If you end up teching more turns, you would have been better off teching at a higher acreage, mathematically.
Ofc stuff like being a target, when its feasible to mass-explore and tech prices plays a role in those decisions the answer might not always be exactly that, but certainly this can be used as a guide.

So if you do a 3800 acre tech start, which is standard, you might wanna be switched something like turn 540 wiith 180 teched turns as a standard. A lot of players tech too much for their own good, and it also hurts the function of the market.

Thanks bud

Great info