I agree completely. I think mdemon should absolutely kill him. But whenever you put that on a forum there is risk of other people killing him too...and on a solo server that's not a good idea.

you can't put that on here. however taboo all jetters are, you can't put that on here

I've got one more intel spot if anyone is interested.

Anybody big out there looking for a new DA?

you guys can form the cartel all you want...but at the end of the day that food needs to be consumed or sold on your private market.

Eventually, whoever is buying it up and reselling is going to get hurt.

yeah it looks like we don't have enough farmers this set.

So I haven't played express in a while, and I used to play mostly a casher. I am regretting my choice of teching this set. Are these prices abnormally low for the past few sets? Or is it now impossible to sell tech? I haven't had a point sell yet...it's bounced twice now.

just buy your tech, we are selling it at walmart prices anyways.

even at 10% over I think 1/100 will fail.

You got more than lucky oldman. I was amazed at the pace of your growth. I spied you after a couple of weeks and expected to see that you cut short on CS's and tech...but you planned it perfectly.

Very well played, I couldn't keep up last set.

was Afaik not Monaco Lights? Sure played like Afaik normally does.

PM me, I would love to look at this when I get a chance.

Sure as long as you promise to sell units for <$125

I'm full on of Defense allies now, but I do have a tech spot open if someone is interested.

A farmer with max decay could sell bushels at $60 instead of stocking bushels. It is a risk to have all of your stock in money on hand, but the advantage is very large as there is no cost to stock and you can take full advantage of the bushel peak.

With that said it looks like jedioda played the top farmer, and he was a demo. So I may not have a good point.

The question I have is how is it that a big Fascist Farmer with maxed resource decay didn't win? I thought ASDL would have had more stock before he was attacked.

I have time to play express this week and will be running a techer. Shoot me a message if you are teching or if you will have a strong defense out of the gate.

Good luck this set everyone. I'm glad to be able to play.

some of the top players in primary have been double tapping consistently. I assume they carry troops and tanks for that matter.

Well then maybe I am making too big a deal out of this...I didn't know that.

Next set I will see what I can do.

I think the formula is this when you are small in acreage.

(Land^2)*7/1500+3*Land

I should caveat that this is all during the growth phase. Once you stop growing/landtrading. It is very easy to buy up enough defense to protect your countries.

It all comes down to cost and benefit of defense. The cost of defense is forfeiting the top spot...the benefit is being "safer" against suiciders.

I don't think that makes netting very enjoyable.

I would much rather protect against landgrabbers who are trying to compete with me for TNW, and be allowed to grab from those who are competing against me and running 0 defense.

You cannot compete for TNW and defend from suiciders.

You are comparing apples and oranges. I don't play 1a but because there isn't land trading the cost of having a large defense is much lower. I wouldn't play tournament, primary or express without defense either.

But landtrading becomes much more costly with defense. And FFA is the only server with landtrading.

I may not be the best but I am trying to beat the best though. I believe I finished with the top TNW last set and I was certainly pushing the envelope with my strategy this set to see just how high I could go.

I believe that the top TNW string this set will be one that ran 0 defense.

Mike, can a string with defense while landtrading finish with the top TNW?

I think the answer is no, but maybe I am wrong. I'll try to find out next set.

I still think that the point of defense shouldn't be to resist suiciders, but to resist attacks made with the intention of benefiting the other country.

I want to reiterate that my point is not that you shouldn't have a defense while netting.

The point is that clan politics have detered landgrabs so much that it encourages 0 defense. And the netting competition feeds this as well.

Suiciders (without being instigated) have the ability to ruin the set of the best run countries.

I do believe that any defense is suicidable.
And I dont' believe that suiciders will move to the next chap...I think their goal is to ruin the set of the biggest chap.

the countries that suicided on me weren't people that I have attacked. And this isn't only about me, if I was the only player this has happened to there wouldn't be anything worth debating.

The defense you described above closely resembled the defense of SG2 which was part of the suicide run. But that is not the point either.

I can easily run with that defense, but the cost of doing that prohibits me from winning. That is my point. I think this game was made to be played with defense, but you can't win with defense now.

It has come up a few times now, so I thought I would explain my perspective for what it's worth. All of what I saw is under the premise that the goal is to attain the highest TNW. I understand that many of you have different goals of playing, but that is where my reasoning comes from.

Fact #1 anybody can break the defense of even the strongest country if they plan well enough.

Fact #2 some attacks are intended to benefit the attackers country and some attacks are intended only to harm the defenders country

Fact #3 alliances can deter attackers who wish to benefit their own country because strong alliances guarantee a successful retal

Fact #4 if you do not land trade you will not compete for the best TNW.

Because of those facts I believe that the 16 country string the the greatest TNW each set will be a 0 defense land trader in a large alliance who did not get suicided on during the set.

With that said alliances cannot deter suiciders because a suicider does not care about what happens to their country they are simply trying to ruin someone else's set. So there is a large element of luck associated with winning a TNW competition. I got lucky last set when suiciders only took about 150M NW, this set I was not lucky.

Next set I will landtrade with defense but I will not be able to achieve the best TNW again. That would not be possible while there are some that will run without defense and get lucky.

The cost of landtrading with defense is large, and the benefit is rather small. If I carry a ton of turrets and tanks then a suicider can still ruin my set if they want, I just make it harder. Defending from a suicider is not the same as defending from a landgrabber, it requires much more defense. A landgrabber will look for the weakest country with an acceptable land return. A suicider doesn't care about your defense, they care only about the impact they can create on the server/individual.

I think that this type of environment on this server makes it much less enjoyable to net. There is far too much risk and luck needed to be the top netter in a set.

I propose that rules be implemented to make suiciding more difficult/impossible.

AND that rules be implemented to deter 0 defense countries.

GDI can be changed to help illiminate suiciding, and clan politics can be changed to allow the landgrabbing of 0 defense countries. This will eliminate some of the luck needed.

I just decided to play this round so I am not strong yet...but I normally can put together a good country.

I'll be worth it when I can play my 300 stored turns. PM me if your interested. I'm only good for a DA, I'm playing a Casher.

I would suggest that you buy tech when you build construction sites. As a casher or farmer (assuming you are selling on private market early) the best approach is to do this every turn leaving only enough cash to build 1 building. If you have an indy start you will buy after each public market sale.

After your construction sites are built up and you are exploring the tradeoff is more difficult. You will need to balance your military with tech. An all explore country can buy more tech than one that landgrabs, but they will grow slower. Acreage and technology are both very important, I am interested to hear how the top players ballance this after they are finished exploring. It is my guess that early on acereage is more important.

Should take me 370 turns to rebuild (240 CS + 130 buildings). It will cost $2.074B.

Not sure how turns are normally valued in this case.

I would argue that I have 370 fewer turns to stock. Since my goal acreage was 55k (tpt = 18333). If average tech price is $2500 then I just lost $16.279B after tax.

So $18.349B is my calculation of reps.

I just got the PM. I'll do the calculations and see how much this sets me back.

Why was I bombed 59 times? I'm missing 21k buildings including 240 construction sites. I'm just wandering who you are and what sparked your interest in suiciding on me.

haha, nah I stopped playing after I wasted +50 turns (well I made a couple retals first) I'll have to work my way back up to A with a better name then "Test Test"

From my experience with a commie destock it is powerful because much of your destock is just running turns and covering the expenses. When you get to the point that per turn military expenses are greater than the cost to buy on your private, then you buy...but when you average the entire destock the NW/Cost is much less than the private market NW/Cost.

I hope that makes sense. It can be a harder destock to plan.

The top 3 should be close between A tail to remember, Monaco Lights & Propelyne Oxide. ASDL may have a good shot too. The fifth spot could go to anyone but I'll guess the spider.

It depends on how many turns are left and the size of your country. I would expect that right now its still a good buy for you

I stopped clearing a couple days ago. After 530 Construction Sites it wasn't very beneficial to keep building those and I didn't want to buy enough tech to clear bushels at 5k acres.

Looks like someone else is enjoying the profits though. I made about 500M cumulative on each of the 2 countries I had doing it. This late in the set you can almost make that in 1 day.

Seems the tech market is lower than expected at this point in the set. Do you think that's because people are teching to war prep or because more people are teching as a netting strategy this set?

Clearing bushels, and profitting on them are two different things. If I had it my way I wouldnt buy 35 buahels and make everyone sell at 34. But someone else out there is buying 34, so my profit is cut in half.

haha, I didn't tech. I have a unique strategy for my demo techers. I tried it with only 1 country last set and finished 520M NW. This set I'm testing it with 2.

You noticed :) I haven't been the only one clearing food though. My demos have been fighting someone else to make a bit of a profit on the private market selling.

A well planned retal can be very beneficial. You can probably get back 3 times the land later in a set than you can now.

probably not the best idea to resell bushels on the public market this early in the set. I think that would be a lot of capital tied up waiting for them to sell

I didn't play this set...but I can't believe 20M won...must have been a weird market. Congrats Shaney.

I won't be able to play much this week, but I guess I have to give it a shot.

Congrats, I had almost the exact same set as the month before. I'll have to change something up this time.

I play with Pan and they helped me quite a bit this set.

Previous two sets I had used FFA to learn new strategies. The first time I was untagged and got killed. The 2nd time I was recruited by "Nice Guys" and then they picked a war with Deadlysmurf and we got tag killed after putting up almost no fight.

This is a great server in that you can enjoy all the strategies at once. I played each (casher, techer, indy, farmer, oiler and even MBR). Not all of them are very conducive to netting, but I enjoyed it.

I did slightly better than 265 this set, and I was far from perfect. Late set suiciders stole 33.5B in stock and their attacks killed 23M networth of military. Without those I would have been at 275M... so hopefully I can do better in my 2nd netting set in FFA

But it was a fun first go.

If I don't put up 300ANW next set I'm going to be dissapointed