[Post completely revised from original version. It now includes all bonus progressions.]

Each bonus has three tiers--the cost and the benefit increase with each tier. When a bonus is used, it progresses the bonus to the next tier. Once a bonus has been used twice, all additional uses of the bonus will be at the third tier level.

Multiple different bonuses can be activated at the same time but only one of each bonus may be active at one time (e.g. you can activate both the PCI and food production bonuses at the same time but you cannot activate 2 instances of the PCI bonus at the same time).

Some bonuses have a limit to the maximum number of times per country they can be used (currently base explore rate, attack strength, and spy power).


2 points
2 Turn Bonus
For the first round the bonuses are available, a 2 turn bonus option will also exist. In future rounds, this will no longer exist.


Per Capita Income
1 point, +10% Per Capita Income, Increase your country's per capita income for 10 turns.
2 points, +15% Per Capita Income, Increase your country's per capita income for 10 turns.
4 points, +20% Per Capita Income, Increase your country's per capita income for 10 turns.


Food Production
1 point, +10% Food Production, Increase your country's food production for 11 turns.
2 points, +15% Food Production, Increase your country's food production for 10 turns.
4 points, +20% Food Production, Increase your country's food production for 10 turns.


Industrial Production
1 point, +10% Industrial Production, Increase your country's industrial production for 12 turns.
2 points, +15% Industrial Production, Increase your country's industrial production for 10 turns.
4 points, +20% Industrial Production, Increase your country's industrial production for 10 turns.


Base Explore Rate (Max: 3)
2 points, +10% Base Explore Rate, Increase your country's explore rate for 10 turns.
6 points, +15% Base Explore Rate, Increase your country's explore rate for 10 turns.
8 points, +20% Base Explore Rate, Increase your country's explore rate for 10 turns.


Reduced Expenses
1 point, -10% expenses, Decrease your country's expenses for 3 turns.
2 points, -25% expenses, Decrease your country's expenses for 5 turns.
3 points, -50% expenses. Decrease your country's expenses for 10 turns.


Tech Production
1 point, +10% Tech Production, Increase your country's tech production for 10 turns.
2 points, +15% Tech Production, Increase your country's tech production for 10 turns.
4 points, +20% Tech Production, Increase your country's tech production for 10 turns.


Oil Production
1 point, +10% Oil Production, Increase your country's oil production for 10 turns.
2 points, +20% Oil Production, Increase your country's oil production for 10 turns.
3 points, +30% Oil Production, Increase your country's oil production for 10 turns.


Attack Strength (Max: 4)
1 point, +10% Attack Strength, Increase your country's attack strength for 30 turns or 10 attacks.
3 points, +10% Attack Strength, Increase your country's attack strength for 30 turns or 10 attacks.
6 points, +10% Attack Strength, Increase your country's attack strength for 30 turns or 10 attacks.


Population Growth
1 point, +10% Population Growth, Increase your country's population growth for 10 turns.
2 points, +15% Population Growth, Increase your country's population growth for 10 turns.
3 points, +20% Population Growth, Increase your country's population growth for 10 turns.


Spy Power (Max: 4)
1 point, +10% Spy Power, Increase your country's spy effectiveness for 10 turns.
2 points, +10% Spy Power, Increase your country's spy effectiveness for 10 turns.
3 points, +10% Spy Power, Increase your country's spy effectiveness for 10 turns.


Building Cost
1 point, -10% Building Cost, Decrease your country's building cost for 10 turns.
2 points, -20% Building Cost, Decrease your country's building cost for 10 turns.
3 points, -40% Building Cost, Decrease your country's building cost for 10 turns.

Additional bonus system detail: Points must be used within 48 hours of earning them. There are currently 4 ways to earn 2 points every 24 hours. This means that a player can have a max of 16 points available at a time. One could save up points and then have up to 160% production for 10 turns or have +40% attack power for 120 turns/40 attacks. It seems that the production bonuses would be best used at the end of playing your turns.

do you AIM? Also check your private messages.

I'm talking about the bonus with a few people too.

Anyways 2 turn bonus is the best, but it won't exist anymore soon.

Attack strength bonus is the best of the remaining ones.

Out of the production bonuses, tech bonus is the best for the same reasons you gave.

Pop growth and food consumption are the worst.

Building cost bonus is mid tier but I prefer production bonus.

Pang just clarified that bonuses don't stack :(

Therefore the max: limits are the numbers of times per country that a bonus can be used.

That really changes things...guess you just want to pop the production bonus that benefits you most, then the next best one or two. E.g. use -building costs at beginning of turns, then +tech production for all turns teching plus whichever of the others gives the most benefit.

When batch exploring, the 10% exploration bonus is about 13 times better than two free turns.

exploration bonuses and building cost bonuses work in batches but no other ones do.. even though it says the bonus ended after 10 turns it continues as long as you dont stop exploring and start again same with building

It's very helpful to know that the building cost bonus works in batches. Batch explore+batch build w/ bonuses might be a worthwhile use of points.

I just started a bunch of FFA countries to investigate the bonus progressions. I'll update this post after I've been able to check them all out.

All progressions now listed.

Interestingly, the oil production bonus is the only one that scales at the rate of 10%/tier and +1 point/tier. Pop growth scales linearly but the others scale non-linearly. The 3rd tiers of the food consumption (expenses) and building cost bonuses are much more effective than the preceding tiers and may be very effective.

Analysis of 3rd tier bonus value:

Per Capita Income
Food Production
Industrial Production
Tech Production
0.5 turns production per bonus point


Oil Production
1 turn production per bonus point


Building Cost
((acres*3+1500)*bpt*# of turns built*0.4/3)/(dollar value of 1 turn production) turns production per bonus point since the bonus stays in effect when batch building for over 10 turns


Base Explore Rate (Max: 3)
# of turns explored * 0.025 = # of turns saved when exploring equivalent amount of land without the bonus (the bonus does not always have an effect due to issue with rounding)


Food Consumption / All Expenses
(5*country expenses)/(dollar value of 1 turn production) turns production per bonus point
THIS BONUS IS BETTER THAN INCREASED PRODUCTION IF YOUR EXPENSES ARE GREATER THAN 1/10 OF YOUR PRODUCTION!


It does not seem possible to assign a value to the Attack Strength, Population Growth, and Spy Power bonuses.

The timer for this needs to be shown!

RPG buff's don't vaporize if you don't use them though you can save them for when they're the most effective to be used.

If you convert the bonus to turns - you can use the turns when you want to unlike any of the other bonuses - since you have to apply them within 48 hrs or loose them.

How about they don't expire but you can only get a max of 16 like if you don't use your turns and you max out 120(120) or what ever it is you just loose them. -- if you have 16 points and you try to get more you don't like loosing turns.

Also the same as not clicking the bonus earning link every 24 hrs you just miss out on getting the points.


The main reason is because of how the bonuses based on turn type work.

for example you want to block explore and build ... if you select both of those at the same time so you don't loose em ... the next 10 turns you use regardless of type of turn uses em up -
if you have a buff that works on the next 10 attacks it doesn't get used up by 10 movements / defends

Bonus that work for only one turn type shouldn't get used up if a different type of turn is run:

Example ... you select the build bonus you set up to build just at that time someone LG's you several times ... even if you know it .. your build bonus is now completely wasted since you don't have the acres to build. Any turns you run to get acres to build uses up the bonus but doesn't give any benefit.

same problem if you get Attacked and your TPT changes during the teching batch there is no way to stop the teching run.

I calculated my teching based on ~700 + bonus tpt selected tech types and distributed the points based on that amount.

started the teching batch during which I got LG 4/5 times which progressively modified my tpt to >500 tpt during the tech'ing also lowering the bonus - obviously making my calculation worthless and used up several more turns that I expected. Basically it was though I asked for 200-300 more tpt than I actually had and the last turn used wasted a turn to tech less than half tpt for that turn

(ok I get that you won't want to let the tech bonus batch up like the explore bonus ...
but can't you make it so it either stops or at least doesn't change the base tpt + bonus for the batch - aka LG's AB's ect that change the TPT don't change during a batch)

The bonuses are meant to give strategic advantages so I like the idea of having to plan how they're used and devote X number of turns toward that activity (e.g. 20+ turns to exploring or building to get a real benefit). If you activate a bonus and then get attacked and your plan doesn't work out, that sucks but I don't think you should be able to get your points back.

Don't want the points back ... just want the counter to only apply to the type of turn it works on.

you choose to use points for next 10 Builds/Explores/Researches and you do a turn type other than that it shouldn't waste one of those.

Otherwise just give me the 2 extra turns instead.

the increase or decrease production ones don't suffer from this kind of penalty.

Since teching is the only turn-type based bonus that doesn't work as a "Block" submit Pleas do something about this situation

(using round numbers for ease of example)

700tpt 10% bonus =770

start tech batch for 7700

turn 1 770
turn 2 660 attack lowers tpt to 600 presume w/bonus 660
turn 3 660
turn 4 550 attack lowers tpt to 500 presume w/bonus 550
turn 5 550
turn 6 440 attack lowers tpt to 400 presume w/bonus 440
turn 7 440
turn 8 440
turn 9 440
turn 10 440
turn 11 400
turn 12 400
turn 13 400
turn 14 400
turn 15 400
turn 16 310

Situation uses up 6 extra turns not accounted for
best solution ... Teching stops if attack occurs

The "food consumption" bonus has been updated. It's now properly designated as "-XX% expenses". I don't know what the 1st and 2nd tiers are yet but the 3rd is

3 points
-50% Expenses
Decrease your country's expenses for 10 turns.

Value = (1.67*country expenses)/(dollar value of 1 turn production) turns production per bonus point

It's now only better than a production bonus if your expenses are > 1/3 of your production...

How is everyone strategically using these bonuses? I'm particularly interested in how people are using them in the longer-term games (Primary, Alliance, Tourney) since they play a much bigger part than in Express.

In Express, I've been using the exploration bonus 1-2 times for batch explores, the attack bonus once when I really want to hit someone special or what to do a number of quick grabs to gain a lot of land, the reduced construction cost bonus for batch building, and the increased production and reduced expenses bonuses at the endgame when production and expenses are highest.

The reduced construction expenses bonus has changed how I play my Primary and Tourney turns. I now spend the first third acquiring land, the second third building using the reduced construction expenses bonus, and the last third building CS with a production bonus. I used the exploration bonus for my first batch explore and might use it 2 more times for batch explores mid-game. I'm saving the attack power bonus for late mid-game when I might need it for a juicy grab.

i spread bonuses quite widely, mostly building cost, income, expenses and pop growth.