I've often wondered how much difference it really makes when deciding what Gov you'll run your retallers with.

Now, I'm not talking Mid to late set Theos that are monstrously weapons heavy, but rather early to mid set countries. Obviously, Dicts are favorable in terms of weapons, but if your strategy includes growing your retallers and you don't get grabbed much,Dicts fall off the pace pretty fast; they're not the type of Gov to do all-x with considering the construction penalties.

Commies come to mind as well. IMO, Commie Indies are superior to have as retallers to say, 5K acres or so, but considering having to rely on selling weapons at an at least break even price with consideration of growth, I don't see a Commie Indy as an endgame country if your intention is to have all your countries with max net worth.

I've messed around with a bunch of combinations, and haven't been tremendously satisfied with any of them. I'm thinking that a teched up, jet heavy Rep Casher might be the way to go considering that I never want to have a low NW retaller.

What do you guys like to run?

Dictators don't have to fall off the pace pretty fast ...

Explain how and why, Rockman? Unless you do a massive CS start, they can't possibly build the acres they may gain on fat retals.

Now if you're taking other countries and thinning your Dict down, I'd agree, but how many Dicts do you ever see in the top 25 at the end of any set?

I like tyr-techers. Any type of techer can survive with lower land, so doing your retal and then farming the land away won't necessarily kill growth as long as you have plenty of turns to tech with.

Also, with the tyr gains bonus, tyrs are monstrous good for grabbing/retalling.

Dictators don't jump as dictators.

I don't see why they can't possibly build the acres they gain on fat retals. We're not talking about a dictator techer, right? Dictator farmer and dictator casher have no problem at all building their land.

Tyr Techers are a nice choice. They suffer a PCI penalty, but that only matters if you really are in love with converting to a casher-only strat.

Tyrs can do anything but casher just as well as any other strat in terms of using them as a non-specialized country.

I messed around with a couple Dict retallers this set and frankly, between the fact that I don't play the Dict strat nearly enough to be good at it, that I never got grabbed much, and that it takes too long to build acres gained, I won't revisit the Dict strat. Especially in what's pretty much always a one or two man clan. If my clan was the size of, say, PAN, I might have a Dict role-player.

I think you're spot on with Tyr techer.

There's more than one dict strat. There's dictator casher, dictator farmer, and I've even seen good dictator techers.

I'm not sure what you mean by a massive CS start, but if you're not a techer, then you can build CS while growing, taking away the need for a high CS start.

It doesn't take that long to build the acres gained. Even with just 60 bpt, you can build up 4k acres in a day's worth of turns.

They build their land at a rate 20% lower than any Gov and there's no "Construction Tech" to overcome that penalty. At some point, turns taken to build become counterproductive from a net gaining standpoint, IMO

I've always played tyr techers as retallers.. tyr gains bonus is just too nice. And it's easy to keep weaps/mil strat up as a techer obviously.

not to mention that Tyr's get a land bonus on grabs so you will get more out of the retals :)

If you're not a techer, then the bpt is not really an issue. And that point at which turns taken to build become counterproductive is probably not until about 2/3rds of the way through the set.

Personally, I think unused acres, or the extra turns involving building them is inefficient netgaining.

What??? At what point in the set do you think it is no longer worth it to build your land? And what would you do with the turns instead?

Turns can be rather spent cashing, teching, stockpiling or building weapons for resale.

If you consider the number of turns required to build acres on a Dict compared to other strats, how and where do you find it more efficient to be a Dict?

If you aren't a techer or casher, a turn spent building does not cut into your production at all. And if you are a casher, it only cuts your production by 17% to cash that turn.

Even for a techer, its not until some point during the 2nd half of the set when its better to just drop unused land rather than to build it.

Dictators have +32% building gains on attacks, which gives a huge increase in gains not just for land-trading, but also for retalling, topfeeding, and bottomfeeding. Additionally, the building gains bonus saves you turns on building buildings if you are grabbing someone who is playing the same strategy as you.

Personally, in Alliance, I retal with a Dict Techer, and I mostly do it all set long. Hard part is the beginning to get the set BPT you want and go from there. I've never had trouble keeping pace with any alliance that tries to hit us and outgrow, and Im never in a shortage, until end set [2-3 weeks left to go]where everyone is jumping. Otherwise, all reset, I can keep up to ANY strat that tries to hit us and "thinks" we cannot retal. K4F is my witness to this situation, too! Along with several other NBKers who play in my Alliance clan :P

Let's look at a few examples:

15k acre techer
building 80 research labs will add 0.5% to your production (80/15000)
It will cost 3.72 million

A 0.5% increase in production means that if you tech for less than 200 turns, you would have produced more if you had dropped the land instead of built it. If you tech more than 200 turns, you got more production by building that land instead of dropping it.
The cost of 3.72 million cash to build the land takes roughly 1/3rd of a turn's worth of production. So you need to not just match the production you had before, but get an increase of about 33% of one turn. At 0.5% more per turn, that will take about 66 turns.

So when including both building costs and the inability to use a turn for teching, it is only worth it to build 80 more research labs on a 15k acre techer if you are going to spend at least 266 more turns teching (or about 4 days worth).



Let's look at it for a 30k acre casher with 80 bpt.
Building 40 more enterprise zones and 40 more residences will take 1 turn. It will add about 0.25% to your production.
But instead of costing you a full turns worth of production, it cost you 17% of a turn's worth of production. This increase in production will be met after 68 turns used.
The cost of $7.32 million to build your land is equal to about half a turn's worth of production. With a 0.25% increase in production, it will take about 200 turns before the increased production makes up for the money spent on buildings.

So just as above, if you are using turns for at least 4 more days, it is worth it for you to build your land.

If you are larger or smaller, and have more or less bpt, and are casher vs techer, these numbers change, but not too dramatically. If you have at least a week more of stockpiling, then you can safely assume that it is worth it for you to build up your land.

You should be fully built prior to stockpiling, and you should be stockpiling for over a week. So you can safely assume that unless you have already started stockpiling, it is ALWAYS worth it for you to build up your land.

Thanks for the insight. Gives me something to think about.

No problem. As a math person, its second nature to me to setup the equations correctly, and the math is extremely simple. But most people find it intimidating to try and model a situation like this.

The only overnment to retal with is a ty with 139-140% mil strat, 95-98% of the countries NW.

Tyranny techers for me .. they retal well and techers on, say, 12k acres can still finish respectively as far as NW

some of u people think wayyyy too much about this game...

lol @ bsnake, these R sum serious playas Bsnake.
That's y I read these boards, u can always find sum useful info floating around.

hey i post heaps of useless info too ;)

that's gotta help...


and i take killing very serious....

just run 4 techers out of your 16, when you get grabbed, max mil strat on one and convert dict. this one will now grow through retals. problem solved. commie indies are a big waste of time past day 7. Using any gov other than tyr or dict for retals is just stupid.