All these yellow non player countries come from in the last few hours of the game? I don't understand and its annoying to lose 30 spots in the rankings to them.

I don't know exactly how the bots play, but it seems like they must stockpile a bit and jump nw. Most players also use this strategy to give one last massive boost to their nw and raise their rank. Basically, you choose a point in the set where you stop growing and simply stockpile money to later buyout your private market and jump nw.

Thats a good question. g=) To answer, i'll explain the phases in this mode and it will hopefully make a little more sense why you see them seemingly come out of nowhere at the end.

Phase 1: start up, turn 1-500. Building CS and buildings, setting up what kind of strat you will run like farmer, indy, techer, casher.

Phase 2: grabbing and growing, turn 500-1000/1500. This is where everyone is getting thier target land and tech by landgrabs or exploring in the case of the bots(yellow npc's). Different strats vary, but somewhere between 1000 and 1500 you switch focus.

Phase 3: Stockpiling. turn 1000/1500 to the end. You've reached your target land and tech levels, specialized into a Net gaining machine. Now you store up all your resources and prepare for a big jump at the end to spare expenses.

Phase 4: Destock. All those resources you saved. Time to turn it all to cash and buy military! go from 5-10m to much higher depending on your stock.

The bots are all destocking. You are seeing them convert several billion $ into military to jump at the very end.

g=D gl!

Phase 1: collect underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: profit

Here's a specific all-explore strat to add more color to A-Rod's post above. This was written for Tournament to get a 21-22m nw finish (which would put you in the top 10 in game A), though you can adapt it for Express by following the phases A-Rod suggested, and grab the yellow bots instead of exploring. If you pick a strategy (casher, indy, farmer, techer), happy to give more specific advice!

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ALL X TTR
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Sell 100 troops and 100 Bushels.
Change tax rate to 35%.
Set production to 100% Turrets.
Government remains at Monarchy.

Build 20 CS (10 bpt)
Build 100 Farms
Explore whenever possible
Sell food on private market whenever possible
Build 20 CS (15 bpt)
Sell all food

Change Government to Theocracy (21 bpt)

Build 500 ICs
Explore when necessary.
Sell food whenever possible.

Note: If you can't build all 500, build CS 1 at a time and sell food every turn until you can build 1 full bpt of ICs. Stop at 500 ICs.

Build 140 CS (70bpt)
Explore and build ICs to 2k acres

Store turns
Batch explore to 3k acres
Build land as ICs

Store turns
Batch Explore to 6k acres
Build barren land as Labs
Convert the 3k ICs to labs 1 turn of building at a time

=Stockpiling=
At this point, its day 9 and you should now be a fully converted 6k acre techer. From now to day 24, tech all your turns. You can sell once or twice a day. If possible, remember to get the 3 turn bonus twice if you double sell. If not, just get the 6 turn bonus and sell once a day.

What to tech:
Bus/Res - Sells well, and gives you positive income
Agri/Indy - Sells for even higher, but has no effect on your country
Military - Sells the highest towards the end of the set.

On day 24, you should have teched a total of ~1,260,000 tech points. Sell as many tech points as you can but leave 60k military tech untouched. The 1.2m tech points would translate to ~4.2b cash. Since you can only hold 2b on hand at any one time, the rest of that stockpile has to be stored in bushels. So buy food while its price is still low.

=Conversion=
You should now start converting to full MBR. Destroy all your labs at one go, and rebuild them as Military Bases. This conversion will cost you ~$130m and take ~85 turns. You would thus be left with ~4b to destock with. Since you started conversion on the 24th, you should be done by the 25th.

=Destocking=
With 60k Mil tech, a 6k acres MBR would destock at $180/nw. On a 30 day set, you have 5 days of market replenishment left (from 26th-30th). Buyout your private market entirely, and logout with an empty private market. Login the next day and buyout the whole private market again. Remember to always logout with an empty private market to allow for maximum market replenishment. Just repeat this daily until the 30th. You should be able to spend 2.65b on your private market, which would translate to 14.7m nw. Since you started with ~4b, you still need to spend the remaining 1.35b on the public market. I suggest you spend this on day 26 while public market prices are still low.

As half of your stock is in bushels, remember to sell them so you login with 2b again the day after you blow your first 2b.

=Your finishing nw=
Start with 1-2m nw
Blowing 2.65b off private @$180/nw = 14.7m nw
Blowing 1.35b off public @$265/nw ($150 turrets) = 5.1m
Total finishing nw = ~21-22m nw

This strat was detailed without reselling. If you manage to make additional profits from reselling military on the last few days, you might end up with an additional 1-2m nw, giving you ~23m nw or possibly more.

Ratski you're not alone lol