I disagree on the retal capability. knowing these countries dont retal is an aspect to weigh against hitting a country with better gains. That works IF, and only if, bot numbers are reduced to the point at which they are always in DR.

All market related things you said are reasonable but you miss the main problem which is the production imbalance. When cashers, farmers and indies get more tech they get more cash for tech, while the techer bots just tech a set percentage of their turns all reset.
Techer bots need to start teching all their turns at one point in the reset and I also think all bots should get more military to balance the fact that they don't retal. Should be both pros and cons of hitting bots, not just pros as it is right now.

Also all these market related issues are only problematic is the npc's are a significant portion of the countries on the server.

Fewer bots create none of these problems.

I don't know that all-xp should be a viable way to win. :) At least not all servers. But in team and tournament it really is from what I understand.

Very good post, thank you.

I do disagree with some points. While I do agree that bot farming is too easy in express and in alliance, I think it takes a little more game knowledge as you actually have to do things like avoid DR, calculate attack returns, calculate breaks based on NW and NW/land or by ops as well as calculate when it is not worth it to grab any more. When hitting the explore button you can just tell a player "go to x acres, then hit cash button" while when grabbing it depends on how much you have to invest in grabbing, how many turns left and so on.
On the other hand it is not much harder when hitting players as long as you are in GDI and single-tap.

And as I suggested, the ease of grabbing bots can be solved by putting in fewer bots. In express maybe 40% of countries are bots, what if it was 20%? what if it was 10%? If 10% then techers could probably not grab bots at all. They would still add land and create some kind of liquidity on the markets, but they wouldn't be very good targets most of the time.

The bots drive the markets as well, it would be reasonable that players should have more impact than the bots as a whole but if you look at the tech markets in alliance and express you see that is not the case. And if you go to the AI-server you will see where bots push the markets (food: always $30, troops $40ish, tanks $200ish, income techs $6000-9999, non-income techs $500-600). This is why techers almost always win express even though the late-start could be an amazing tool for a casher as they don't have to wait for sales to go through.

You have got to be the most uninspired game mod in the history of game mods. Any change or suggestion is a bad one, you are even against some of the ones that have been implemented.

My suggestion to you is that you make an actual argument for a change.

Any interaction is not per se a good interaction. We have special GDI in primary already prevent certain interaction. We have humanitarians, we have protection, we have DR, we have NW ratios for attack returns. We already have bots on other servers, you must think this is a horrible idea there as well. Why are you mod for express if you think it is so bad?

I make a post asking a question and get mocked instead of getting an answer. By a game mod nontheless. You are doing a really bad job at creating a good atmosphere, so congrats on that. I think I have yet to see you saying anything constructive on these boards. Maybe not your job but it wouldn't fluffing hurt either.

----------

Mashal you are also making a mockery of my post because you have nothing to say. As I said a small ratio of bots would still make players interact while reducing the "farming to smithereens"-effect for new and mediocre players.

----------

Does anyone with an actual clue have an actual argument either way?

This is about as poor advise as can be made up.

First off, if anything, the +50% max population makes growing more cumbersome in the early phases of the game. It does however make theo casher viable and make theo techer stay in the green longer.

Secondly you don't need tanks if you are all-explore or if you are in a server that protects you from ABs. You should have some spies, yes. But if and only if you need tanks you buy them. This is viable sometimes even as a commie indy depending on the prices as ICs produce so damned few tanks. Theos definatly buy all tanks with their fantastic private market.

The construction speed is and always has been the key selling point of theo, but the -20% private market costs are a close second as it allows a very powerful jump in the end and if the public market is bought out, thin or expensive you always have a nice private market to rely on.

Constant max price for all would be most reasonable. Either way these prices are unnatural and proving an imbalance in the game.

My sugg would be, as I have said before, to make ICs produce 2.0 troops and 0.5 tanks and somehow incentivise players to send tanks and troops on SS/PS attacks thereby creating a better demand and supply on the troop/tank markets. Reducing the Commie bonus to +25-30% would be necessary to increase public market prices and thereby making TTRs and TMBRs contribute to price stability.

Right now troops have only one use. And this use is periodic. Same for tanks.

So maybe I'm missing something but the way I see it is that there are a lot of mediocre players who do fine early on and then once the top players start grabbing one layer of mediocres after another succumb to an onslaught of farming.

Many of the guys I'm grabbing have been playing their turns, exploring and building mostly I guess and buying mostly defence and are still equal or lower NW and land than they were a week ago. That must feel so useless. And I'm sure it makes them quit the game before they learn it. Bots would allow these players to survive and learn. Why is this not a good thing?

Also when I say bots, I do not mean that every other country must be an npc. You could easily have variation in this so that land doesn't suddently become extremely easy and that you would never get anything out of grabbing a player like it is in express nowadays.

Tell me one good reason not to have a smaller ratio of bot.

And don't worry about me I'm not posting this because I'm not doing well. I just feel bad for the players I hit that might be hit 20 times each week until they are out of humanitarian range.

I saw him recently on 2nd place on the top 3 avg NW leaderboard for express. :)

I don't know if this helps. :P

If you don't care, why don´t you just sell military on private to get in range?

Or blow stock if you are below. Solved.

I see no problem with not being able to hit up if you are so bad you can't get into range from below. :)

April fools?

What are you on about? You are not making sense. Go to preferences and set "buy cheapest goods" then you will buy from your private.

Or are you talking about the maximum unit selling price on public? Is it different with different govts?

It is mostly because I was a techer and it would cost too many turns to switch it all for no purpose.

I do think a regular full TMBR-ending without oil has it's merit if tech prices were to drop fast and military prices would be high already by Sunday afternoon.

As for the military tech it was maxed already before dropping my acres as I had to sell all my stock on my private market and I didn't want crappy $35 for my food. I did max sell my mil tech once after selling my food though.

It is very good this express. It pulls you back in. Thats how I came back too!

No wait. This is imposter trying to stir the pot.

Wow, turtle crawler is back.

Are there people who know each others who decide to fight a deathmatch on the team server? why not the AI server/Alfa or express then?

...the untagged wars? What is thier purpose? What is the win condition?

New to this server.

You are having a wonderful reset and I am going to make it more wonderful for you by offering you a small piece of advice:

If you see a tech that is bought out every day, and even sometimes with standing orders higher than the other techs are selling at, maybe it is a good idea to research it.

So, in conclusion, tech SDI tech. I have bought it out for 4 days straight. SDI tech is good for techers too if you double-tap or are not in GDI.

great job lpardess too! You are really improving, just need to math out destocking a little better. Your grabbing is excellent.

I would have finished around 40-45m NW this set if I didn't see your stock when you dumped it all at the same time. That really sparked my competetive drive and I was making market plays all over the place.

I tried, and half succeeded to crash the oil market in order to get cheap oil. There was a really desperate oiler or oiler/farmer out there who had no clue I was mind-gaming him. Oil was at 250 and I crashed it to 100-125 and got my oil there.

I think I bought more techs than anyone in the game. probably over 3m tech points lol. :P

Like switching govt?

You´d have to get a warning though.

Why?

My best 3 avg is now 54965764 and a turd (54965764.33333333333333333333333threeeeeeeee) which is a bit sad because it would be nice to be above the 2nd best finish ever! :)

Hmm. I don't like the fact that the oil destock shows I had 44 land at the end only. I think it tells a whole different story that I grabbed to about 12k acres. I mean it was my choice but going higher is usually better.

That's well over 4k NW/acre. My 70m NW was only a bit over 3k NW/acre and that was with better mil prices, food prices and tech prices.

[quote poster=Zorp; 43001; 809729]
That is pretty epic. Did you math that out? :P

Congrats.

Yes. Switching would cost NW and tech and make me sell bushels at 35. I didn't math that part out 100% but I think with this low oil stock it would have been equal pretty much.

like ~12% cheaper private but 3% less cash, commissions and switching losses. Probably would have gotten max a few hundred k more.

Bamforth shrugs and continues on his merry path after he dispatched temple with a sigh:
2017-04-02 09:38:12 PS the Temple (#28) Shut Up And Dance (#83) DH
0 acres gained, lots of military losses, oil and 2 turns lost.

Croatian retribution is swift, just and painful, owned again:
2017-04-02 12:16:38 PS the Temple (#28) C R O A T I A (#56) 1471A (2352A)
2017-04-02 16:57:03 PS C R O A T I A (#56) the Temple (#28) 2266A (3269A)
86 acres gained, huge military losses, oil, buildings and 2 turns lost.

Superfly won't have it, too bad the set ended so quickly or humanitarians would have been the only thing saving the ruined temple:
2017-04-02 16:20:15 PS the Temple (#28) I R WoG SuperFly (#23) 805A (1454A)
2017-04-02 21:54:51 PS I R WoG SuperFly (#23) the Temple (#28) 1265A (1812A)
2017-04-02 21:55:59 PS I R WoG SuperFly (#23) the Temple (#28) 964A (1464A)
everything lost. Superloss

topfeeder 0 - real players 3.

$55,017,072 NW - afaik 2nd best ever!

Insane finish. Well done my padawan, I've created a monster. :)

I tried your oil destock and it is useless; 0/1 victories. :P

Im with syko on this. It would be so great to just play techstart MBR and go to like 1k acres and FA all turns, then the guy you are FAing can give you like half his tpt worth or something for those turns. Would make playing that server less tedious for sure.

Then it's on you too!

When I play I make the mistake of assuming my competition is going to act rationally and optimally in their favour. This is a silly mistake. I suck.

Thx a lot! The stars aligned for me that reset! You should join in the fun and express yourself! :)

It would be fun to compete with you.

Vic trumps Trump.

You get player-player interaction in the market, relations, alliances, FA as well.

If All-xp is the way to go I go all-xp, if grabbing humans is the way to go, I do that, if grabbing bots is the way I do that... The game is fun because in doing that I compete with other players who also try to optimize the same or other strategies and growth schemes. I honestly think I'd have fun in the ai server with a DNH on all player countries.

But yes, bot land is sometimes too easy. Making it harder would do 3 good things in one strike:
1. Dropping the tech prices.
2. Raising the military prices.
3. Making grabbing, in order to beat an all-xp, take some degree of skill again.

I see no problem with hitting bots. I do feel that they are too undefended though, thereby making hitting players completely useless. There should be an upside to hitting a badly defended player. Risk-reward. Right now I sometimes even skip retalling because it is so much better to just hit more bots.

Hey. I hadn't played Earth Empires at all and not earth 2025 for over 10 years when I came back on like February 20th. 2 years away from a server is absolutely nothing.

Well, I've played with the current rules and won 3 in a row, soooo...

Griefing is punished by all major online games and I don't see a discussion to allow it, rather a discussion on how to find such behaviour more quickly. So you are wrong in not thinking it is a problem, unless Riot games, Blizzard and such businesses have independently made the same wrong choice and are actually in need of your expertise.

Ohh plz try it you scrub. :P

Well the game has been around for about 20 years and there ought to be a guide out there somewhere to show a scrub how to stockpile. When he blows his stock on jets he will break, that is the way the game has been set up. What you are saying is that good players shouldn't be allowed to stockpile. To make it fair or what?

You can only stockpile once you have turrets, tanks, SDI and troops so no one can break you in any way otherwise you deserve to get hit based on umm jealousy? Because it is sure as hell not in their self-interest.

In the same way you should not get out of your house if you are not wearing an armor suit that will render you immune from bullets and suicide bombers. Otherwise you are just asking for it.

So right now there are tanks for 341 on the public market, if you know you will miss destocking on Sunday you might just as well buy them. Thats 11.73 m NW/$2B cash which is around maxed mil tech full TMBR-territory!

Only problem is that if you take 1700 turns with them they will cost you quite a lot. :(

Well it is very strong nowadays. Only thing I think with so many turns given a day they could let us sell more per time. But it is not really an issue this late as long as the crap gets sold.

Commie Indy used to be the least tryhard strategy but with the small game and volatile market it is pretty intense.

Third time in a week now. Afaik only happens on first turn of the attack.

Turns: Near max Money: $114,941,982.33333 Food: 146,269 Bushels Networth: $The most
Advisor!
A brigade is out!
Our generals inform us that we launched at least one planned strike recently. Remember if we launch five planned stirkes at once we will not be able to do any additional attacks until at least one of them returns.
Your forces invaded Some poor lands(#X)!
They broke through the defender's defences!

They took:
A lot of Acres(Very many Gained)
The best Buildings(The worst Destroyed)
Some Bushels
A few $ too little
Almost no Technology Points

Your military lost:
No Jets, because I'm awesome

Your enemy lost:
Some Troops
All Turrets
A few Tanks
Tax Revenue:
Expenses:
Net Change: $691,399
$1,415,009
$-723,610 Food Produced:
Food Consumed:
Net Change: 849 bushels
15,155 bushels
-14,306 bushels
Your people demand a tax rebate, lowering tax revenues this turn!
Population gain: 1042 people.
You Produced: T Turrets and B Oil Barrels.

Yes, but farmer and indy bots and especially casher bots dont buy much tech until they are fully built and because of their CS heavy start this happens quite late. So right out of the bat the techer bots are producing but the other bots are not buying, then you get a short equilibrium and then the buying side takes over. So in express this means cheap techs late wednesday and all thursday, slightly higher on friday and then higher still on saturday morning, then starts the decline because every human techer is teching all their turns and flooding the market with more than the casher/farmer/indy bots can buy unless there are very few human techers.

Yes, bots buy most of the turrets and humans buy most of the jets. I don't see a problem there, a player who plays CI will most likely produce mostly jets and if the jet prices are above the turret prices the bot C/Is will too. When bots are in the equation there is also the supply-demand glut in the AI-community. Bots produce more food and military units than they buy and waaaay less tech. This can be fixed quite easily I'm sure.

First off, what you think or what this makes you think of en4 has no relevance. A game that is shrinking just lost one of its oldest players who has been through it all hundreds of times. Most of the people I knew from when I played 10+ years ago has quit for this very reason, and I did too. I probably wont keep playing very long though or at least not in alliance.

Griefing is punished in CS, LoL, WoW etc which have automated or player/mod/tribunal systems that deal with these things and try to set the game up to make it harder. These games are (arguably) more successful than EE or E:2025 so why do you assume EE/E:2025 did this better than them?
LoL is probably the most successful online game ever created, do you honestly think they are wrong? If so you should be able to consult for them and argue for removing the barriers meant to keep toxic behaviour out. They will likely ignore you, possibly laugh at you but probably feel sorry for you when you bring up this obscure dying text based math game as a proof that no such measure is needed.

I get the impression this is the reason most players quit, and as such it is a problem that if dealt with will bring players back or at least reduce the shrinkage. The game at ~600-800 players is not as good as 6000-8000 players so cure the shrinking, and as far as I can grasp this is how.

This has nothing to do with alliance btw. Greifing is and always has been a huge problem in all game servers except maybe tournament game A. This is why I always loved tournament, because scrubs were kept out by their own lack of skill. Now tourney game A is really easy to get to and therefore scrubs can join, sadly.

It has nothing to do with low price sellers. The market works perfectly. If you sell to high your goods get stuck. The problem is that the production boost of +25% for commie has become +35% and that tech has gone from 140% to 160%. If prices for jets/turrets were 160-180 like they used to the C/I would make far more than any non-techer.

Don't get me wrong; these are good changes, it just tips the balance point of military prices so TTR and TMBR don't function unless also the private market prices were changed to balance it.

My suggestion for fixing this:
1. You could generate a demand for troops and tanks by creating incentives for players to send them on SS/PS attacks, such as an attack boost if the jet is matched by a tank and a troop for example. This would increase demand for troops and tanks and raise prices for military units in general which helps the indies.
2. Drop the commie bonus back down to 25%. This reduces the C/I power sligthly. But it would also raise military unit prices.
3. Make IC base troop/jet/turret/tank production 2/1.86/1.86/0.5 instead of todays 1.86/1.86/1.86/0.4. This would be a boost to indy's especially in combination with 1.

The dynamic would be that TTRs would create a soft price ceiling and a price floor for each of the military unit markets and while in normal price ranges C/I still makes more by producing mostly turrets/jets they would at times be producing tanks/troops for more profit and also for their own use.

Pros:
Tech per turn is doubled
Market commissions replaced with a 5% VAT that works in the same way.

Cons
Humanitarians stop every attack (ofc)
Oil rigs produce nothing. (let it stay in the ground)
Burning oil for private market units is impossible (Carbon cap)
Exploring gains -50% (nature shouldn't be exploited)
-40% food production (Organic, non-GMO)
Food cannot be bought from the market (all others produce GMO and non-organic)
Military units cannot be bought from the market. (ofc)
Workers strikes are x20 more frequent. (greens are basically marxists with a fancy costume)
Teching is restricted to non-warfare techs, Spy, SDI, Weapons, Warfare, Military and MStrat cannot be teched or bought (self-exlainatory)
Teching is random, among the non-restricted techs, you cannot chose what to research.(While the greens like supporting research, it is generally not the research that results in increased productivity that they support)
1% change of switching republic, dict or fascist every turn taken, with switching losses. (we don't know yet :P)

Yes, this is what is killing the game. Always has been.

I remember En4 from the echelon/swirve days but never had any dealings with him so far as I can remember.

Either way this is a problem that can be fixed and has been ignored, which is resulting in a steady decline of the game even though EE is much better now than E:2025 ever was with all these new features like standing orders, market history, constant tweaks to govts/techs/bots to keep things somewhat balanced and at least cheating is less rampant now. Everything is better except this. And so a good game dies.

Bye En4. Hope you change your mind. But even more I hope it will be brought on by a change in the game mods/admins minds.

I told you not to jump too late. This is waaaay too late. If you had logged in with 10 minutes left I would have probably gotten 1m more NW. So it is all your fault.

This one is on you! 100%!

I'm a good player but other people ruin my reset all the time!

*runs away and slams door*

I might add that when I was destocking with my demo I was actually planning to do it mostly from the private market, but the public market kept giving me cheaper stuff when I jumped so early.