Everything is inexpensive. Military, tech, food, oil. Great set to cash.

I sat out this set...but it looks like there are some very strong showings. I see that tech prices never fell and food prices never rose. Is that because of changes in the bots or did not enough people tech?

I bought a bunch of tanks and sabotaged missiles every chance I got. Unfortunately he did get a couple missiles along the way which I proudly took :)

Well I was able to grab last set without too much retaliation, but still finished a touch under Ippon. I'll need a new plan of attack this set to break that $35M NW mark.

Congrats Tmac on your 5th set in a row. You must have played nearly perfectly to reach that NW with only 1 grab.

to be clear, most people only attack with Jets. This is because sending troops or tanks out on a PS would lower your defense until they return. Also buying 1 Jet & 1 Turret (4 total power points) is typically less expensive than buying 4 troops or 1 tank. This is even more so when considering the food consumption and expense of carrying 4 troops or 1 tank.

There is still a place for troops and tanks to deter being farmed with the threat of special attacks or to defend against special attacks when you open yourself up to them. But when you have them for this purpose you want to leave them available and thus only send jets out on a PS.

I'll commit to supplying oil

I normally get my indy tech up over 145% before buying bus/res. But go back to indy tech after bus/res is over 125% until indy is at 155% or higher. If you can sell max military every 40 turns or so, that helps a lot.

I had just ran turns selling all of my food on private. I'll have something out there later today, hopefully a bit under whatever price that demo is going to try to resell for.

Each strategy has a different need for tech. Casher, Farmer, Indy, Oiler in order from most tech needy, to least. So it stands to reason that a tech start casher would benefit more than a tech start CI. On primary tech start also slows down growth to make it less likely to become an early target and increasing the returns you will get when grabbing. For example if you start grabbing on day 10 you may get 300 acres from a target. On day 14 that same target may yield 500 acres. You also have access to a lower NW range of targets which over the course of the set may expand your overall attack pool. So if you don't tech start you may save 60 to 100 turns throughout the set, but you have to overcome those difficulties.

Clearly LB is very successful every set with an indy tech start. I don't think that has to do with the start. I think he is a very good player that grabs well. Any start can be made viable if you find the right targets and can balance defense and tech throughout the growth phase.

I went quite a while last couple sets not rebuilding farms and oil rigs. So in part I was a communist indy, farmer, oiler. I even calculated if buy agri tech would have paid off. It would have if I were to keep the farms the whole set. But I knew prices would fall and I eventually rebuilt the farms/rigs to indys.

But this set I have a feeling oil and food will be cheap the whole set (as a overreaction to last couple sets) so I recommend just teching or just producing turrets/jets.

I've got your farmer spot this set...play whatever you want.

I'm going FFO. So we have our 2 farmers already.

Congrats, to Tmac on the top Casher, KoHearts on the top farmer and Tertius on the top techer.

I was hoping to resell some jets/turrets but they never sold. LB and Tmac had some decent jumps in the last hour.

I think the defense loss is somewhat random. Offense loses 8% but defense can lose as little as 4% or as high as 8% I believe.... I've never seen this spelled out, I'm stating from a couple Sets of experience grabbing in FFA.

Should be an exciting finish for 2, top 5 and top 10.

Based on some back of the envelope math, a 125k acre country will spend about $20.66B in building costs the entire set. I assumed building 66% of acres and getting the other 33% from landgrabs. So 1.5% saves 310M, vs gaining 4 turns. 4 turns stocking is better as long as you are making $620 per acre per turn. So I think of 125k acres as close to the break even point.

Some unlucky country or 2 bought $300 food.

Nov 7, 11:00 Nov 7, 12:00 $35 $300 $91.15 61,501
Nov 7, 13:00 Nov 7, 14:00 $300 $300 $300.00 38,000

It was a tough set to tech, but there were a few techers that played a great set. It's hard to guess where they will end up, but they could land in the top 5 as well.

I'm not sure if building costs make sense unless you are above 200k acres. Assuming you are farming bots of the same strategy you are only going to build about 66% of your total acres. Decay is somewhat of a gamble that only pays off if food costs spike and you aren't planning a government switch to destock. I've only played a couple of sets with bots, but in both sets decay would have been very valuable.

Turns are always the safest, and what I tend to use most. The benefit of FFA is you can combine strategies and try to send money from your extra turn countries to your countries that used decay.

Thanks Gerdler. Well said.

Welcome back! I hope you enjoy yourself. I recently came back after about 10 years way. Here are some thoughts.

1) Pick a strategy (farmer, casher, industrialist, techer, farmer/oiler) and master it, before moving to the next. Don't be a rainbow.
2) Play express and work on a different part of the game each time. Start, Growth, Stock, Destock. If you can't finish the set no worries, just try to improve in the area you focused on. Ask questions whenever they pop into your head.
3) Pick a clan server to understand. They all have nuances and you will enjoy them more after you learn the nuances. Your clan can help you, and these servers tend to provide a more protected environment.
4) Play primary, but don't be offended or discouraged if you don't do well. Primary can be very enjoyable, but the server dynamics leads to ruthless play and the best countries try to take advantage of any country that isn't one of the best. The wild nature can reward or punish aggressive play, and the line is very faint. I find that very enjoyable and believe that those who can finish top 5 set in and set out are the best in the game. My first set of primary I got crushed, my 2nd I fared well but made a lot of mistakes. I'm hoping to finish my 3rd set in the next week without a catastrophic mistake. When the next set starts, you should try it...just don't hold yourself to a high standard on your first set back.

Good luck

I too had to rebuild 849 buildings today...this is such a pointless part of the game.

I've got an SO for 25M bushels of food out there if anyone wants to unload stock quickly.

Congrats Tmac. Very nice set.

Tech has held up remarkably well even to the last few days.

And Ippon will likely win again.

That's a tough retal to take Delphinus, they jumped $5M NW. I will say it was his first retal so maybe they are working from newest to oldest...Let's see if #38 is next. This is why grabbing is do difficult because it's hard to tell which countries can jump up so quickly to take those retals.

I'm #4 and I approve this message.

Never underestimate TMac. #74 has great chances too. At these prices of tech and military, cashers should be able to grow by 5 grabs a day. 4 turrets per turn production is only $400 right now. Cashers are 50% higher production per turn.

Yes, I was the one that screwed that country up. The round before was my first set back in 10 years and I got out of the boxes to slow and got farmed. Then last set I was too aggressive. I'm trying to remain somewhere in the middle of being too slow and too aggressive this set.

Last set I learned that if you don't break GDI and begin growing too quick then you will run out of targets that can't retal very quickly. And without a steady availability of targets you can't keep growing and the rest of the pack catches up...and then the retals come.

that was me last set :(, I learned

That is a strategy some use to get in the top 10 every set. And if you aren't paying close attention selecting targets you may hit the wrong country...I'm speaking from experience there.

Ouch https://www.eestats.com/primary/country/44

If the first half favors indys and techers, the back half is for the cashers and farmers.

I remember you played for TKO. I was on PANLV and we had some competitive sets.

Congrats to the K4F for another win.

$13,543,563,831 for Swamp Guardians

Congrats Bad4Us. You all are extremely consistent.

Ko, be fair to the rest of us and don't put him too deep into DR. We all need a fair chance at his land.

Thanks Primeval. It's a tough spot in the middle of destock and having to guess if 2100 bots are about to run 120 turns or not.

The set just started. Ironically last week when there were bots, MORE humans finished above 2.5M NW than previous sets. Sure there may be people signing up to play without bots, but as a measure of if they are actually running turns I just picked 2.5M NW finish. The developers maybe can see how many human turns are played as the best metric, but my guess is it's relatively the same with bots or without.

I only play 1 out of ever 4 express sets, but I made time the first set without bots, and then played at about 80% effort the 2nd set. But wouldn't have played with or without on the 3rd set. That could just be me though as I typically don't have a lot of time on weekends.

Beerdrinker may be one of less than 5 techers this set -some of which were warring not netting. If he doesn't hit $100M it's a mistake.

FFA Bots have stopped completely again. They restarted after I posted this the last time...hoping to get the same response :)

at this point they are overflowing turns too. This also explains why my public jumping countries didn't gain any NW over the past 2 days :(

I was out of town for a few days and didn't pay much attention. But it sure feels like the bots lost power again. Were they destroyed by the hurricane's storm surge?

I don't believe that EEStats is updated right now. Probably related to an expired site certificate.

It's been 35 minutes into the tournament set and I haven't received a turn yet. But I have received the 20 acre bonus twice.

Yes, I believe everything is multiplied. So if you have 100k jets, 100k *1.3*1.5 would be your offensive power. The same applies on the defense side with the only caveat being weapons tech doesn't aid defensive allies. So as the set lengthens and weapons tech is more and more important, defensive allies contribute less protection overall. Typically early set countries don't have significant weapons tech because they are focused on production techs and military. This is also why it is easier to retal late set.