Alright, so some of these questions are probably pretty easy, but I will ask anyways...

1. Does a spy operation (to check for # of units) count as an attack? e.g. if I do a spy op then a PS can the guy start nuking me?

2. Whats a good SPAL ? (for a casher let's say)

3. Do people spy op before PSing or do they go in according to news/nw/land/gut feel (this might sound stupid, but I went blindfold this set and I got 90% + success rate)

Thanks in advance, probably more to follow :D

spy ops only bust gdi if they are offensive. this includes stealing tech but not the Spy/Spy Alliance/military/Market

SPAL for a casher? Most high end cashers unlikely have more then 15-20 right now. Whereas high end commies probably have 25-30.

When I play CI I spy/spy alliance/then spy on all allies. Though this is my first set as a casher in primary and I'm finding it quite difficult so I normally just spy+spy allies, guesstimate on ally NW and then go for the gusto.

1. Non-harmful ops do not count as an attack.

2. 20-30. 40 if you really don't want to fail ops. But expenses are crazy high on spies, and taking a portion of your land to make indies lowers income further (unless you're indy).

3. People do both. Some always spy, some always estimate, some do both, eg, spy on target but estimate allies.

I spy, ally spy, then spy the allies. But I'm an Indy.

While we're asking questions,

If I have allies and intend to make a strike then let my offensive allies pick up some land from the same land fat country, (its tough now because on of my defensive and one offensive ally are so land fat they would be candidates if they were not allies) would it be better to make a planned strike or use more jets and make a standard strike so that my jets would be available for my allies.

This would see to be safer mode as once a country has been hit by three different people it is difficult to retal against all of them, and once one of the allies does the spying he run the attack calculator for both allies and give them an idea of jets needed., as a bonus the last ally could go ahead and make a planned strike.

Seems workable....

Cheers
Qazulight

Who cares about your allies? Why do you want them to have easier grabs so much that you'd do a SS and get less land? In conclusion, don't bother o-allying anyone.

It's kind of a pain in the butt to do O allies. I tried for a few sets here and used to try in the old 1B. It's always a fight to use the jets first. Then you lose all those jets if you're not first to use em. It ends up being more worth while just doing your own PSs everyday and not bothering with O allies.

with your point I really agree with you.、It's a agreat thing that I want to be your fiend.We have some web sites which you can view exciting games on
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Oh I want to be your friend so badly. I never had one before. I'll go see those sites right away friend!!!

You want to be my fiend??

Nope. Got one now, can't you read? Go away and let us be the best two friends ever. Now there are two in my wolf pack....

Haha apparently I can't read either. He did say fiend. Lol

Sings: We are the two best fiends that anyone can have....

loll serp, are you drunk man?

Ok, I got one more question:

Let's say that I am attacking a country that has a total of 100,000 'defense points' (e.g. counting everything, troops, tanks, turrets, tech, allies, govt bonus etc...)

How many 'offense points' do I need to be successful in a landgrab? 100,001? 10% more? how much?

Thanks in advance

10% more to succeed 99.9% of the time. I'm sure 100,001 would succeed over 50%, but not sure how much more.

Thanks

Account for random chance!
All attacks have some element of chance. Our generals calculate that if we send more than 110% of the defender's power our attacks will be successful more than 99% of the time.



You have to send 110% in order to get at 99% success rate.

Ok one more question. When are the gov't bonuses and weapon tech bonuses calculated?

For example, player A has 2 def. allies (B and C)
Player A has 130% weapon tech and is a dictator.

Player A has 100,000 defense points (not accounting weapon & gov't bonuses)
Player B has 200,000 defense points
Player C has 80,000 defense points

What is Player A's total defense points? is it...
1. (100,000 + 200,000/4 + 80,000/4)*1.30*1.25 or
2. (100,000*1.40*1.25) + 200,000/4 + 80,000/4 or
3. something else?

Thanks in advance!

Edit

#2. Everything for the target is computed first (D bonus, weapons, gov't bonus, readiness). And then you add min(target D pts, ally help pts).

#3

[100,000*1.3*1.25 + (200,000+80,000)/4] * 1.1

=255,750 for SS and 255,750/1.5= 170.5 for PS assuming you have no govern and weapon bonuses

#3

[100,000*1.3*1.25*1.1 + (200,000+80,000)/4]

SS 248750
PS 165825.

Has worked for me 100%.

Ah yes and then the mehul/pang factor at the end of all that.

Thanks guys.

And just to verify, bonuses are multiplicative? e.g.
100,000*1.25*1.30*1.09 (let's say that 9% is defensive bonus)

yes

That 9% needs to be multiplied outside - it affects allied defenses apparently in my experience.

Are the devs holding the formulas from the general public? :P

They don't always confirm all the formulas but many of them are on the formula page on the earth wiki as well as various other pages on there, sometimes in the histories because info got removed in newer versions.
http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Game_Formulas
Just be mindful that some stuff may also be outdated.

Thanks blid.

While we're on the attack topic, is there a webpage that holds the 'news' for attacks longer than the in-game one? I think the in-game one holds last 72hrs or whatever.

I can swear I've seen someone post it but I lost it.

http://www.eestats.com

It's down now?

It's not down.

When it is you can use earthgraphs.net, though.

Err, I guess eestats.com doesn't like me then?

They ipban leechers.

??

Lol

Everyone knows you have 3 Offensive allies. Easy to confirm by spying or sending you an O-pact that bounces. Just like the pair of countries that got deleted. Or by looking at countries you grabbed and concluding that it takes X amount of jets to break them because everyone else also grabbed those same countries before 0-1 days prior.

I don't understand why those countries got deleted. We're they Offensive allies sharing intel amongst themselves?

Cheers
Qazulight

I don't deny having OAs. I just have a difference of opinion with what you guys consider as Offensive leeching and normal fair offensive allies.

@Qazulight, they were deleted for "coordination", OAs by themselves is neutral if there is no prior arrangement or coordination. The whole no OAs is a player enforced rule to prevent Offensive leeching.

@Xinhuan, I think the fact that I am not deleted means I did not have prior arrangement or coordination with them.

what does coordination mean? I don't understand the context.

As for prior arrangement? Doesn't everyone try to get allies at the beginning of the set? Surely you don't want to run with no allies until you randomly stumble on one?

I don't know either since I have no idea why the admins deleted those folks. I just assumed it has something to do with "coordination" or illegal "prior coordination".

@qwertyh I didn't accuse you of coordination. I accused you of having 3-O allies.

One word, Viva. That is all. Delete the fluffing loser on sight already. fluffing douche cheats on an anonymous free online text game. What a loser.

If you have 3 offensive allies and share intel with them, is that considered dis allowed coordination?

Qazulight

The reason he and his friend always gets deleted as a pair is because he either runs 2 accounts and calls it his friend, or he really has a friend that plays for the soul purpose of benefiting his country. That's coordinating on a solo server.

This is why some people hate having o allies and tech allies on solo servers. One guy can get 3 clan mates to come here and run all jetters for him. and then he has 1.5-2x the offense of his competition with no o allies. This means he can grab easier, and put huge amounts more money towards growing to get way ahead. Lots of people consider it an unfair advantage. Normal use of O allies is not that beneficial because usually its a fight amongst each other to use the jets first, and usually you don't get many jets left to share from your allies if they too are grabbing for themselves.

Same thing if you got 3 friends to play all techers and pump free tech into your country. Same idea of coordination for one guys gain. Gets guys deleted.

From what qwerty has told me, his o-alliances are not a leeching arrangement. This isn't quite how he's doing it, but, like, if me and Xin made a deal, where I'd get his jets one day, and he'd get mine the next, and on and on, wouldn't that be a mutually beneficial arrangement? And therefore not "leeching"? I still don't like the concept... it makes who your allies are a little too important because of how powerful offensive alliances are. I like top players just to avoid it. But it might not be fair to just assume qwertyh is pulling a Viva because he has o-allies, either.

although he may not be coordinating, he is still getting to use at least 1 of is allies' jets everyday. I'm going to say this, I spied on him a while ago and I know who are his off allies. Did a quick mapping of his and his allies' grabs since 20th Sept, and he's getting at least 1 ally's jets every day. There are a couple of days where all 3 of his allies' jets are available for use.

That's a significant advantage in terms of the reduced number of jets to send for each PS (less oil spent means more money can be pumped into the ridiculously high priced tech this set; less jet losses means more NW conserved especially with the NW factor multiplier to military losses this set; less jets used also means he can have higher defence to avoid retals).

Taking into account he does at least 3-4 PS a day, the advantage piles up. I'm going to say this outright, his indy looks like the best one out there now and he will walk away with the win if it continues.

oldman are his jets ever home when his allies grab?

Yeah, oldman, were my Jets ever home when my allies grabbed? Btw, if you don't mind, can you tell me who you were keeping tabs on since the 20th? MSG would be nice. I may have changed a few past the 20th.

To clarify what Blid has said, the example that Blid gave out is a way of showing what I am doing with my OAs is different than what Viva does and different from the Offensive Leeching that that everyone hates, (myself included). It is NOT how I am actually running my OAs or how I explained it to him.

The point to take from Blid's statement is that I am running my OAs in a way that all my offensive allies myself included benefit, which is why I take issue when you guys start pointing out that I am "offensive leeching". Leeching in my mind means its one-sided, which clearly is not the case. Instead I am benefiting from having offensive allies just like my allies are benefiting from me.

And from my discussion with Blid yesterday, I have already agreed to drop my OAs, (2 has been dropped since yesterday, one more to go after minimum time is up) since I don't want to create bad blood in our small tiny community of maybe 30 folks?(primary at least).

If you want to accuse me of having Offensive allies, I agree with you. But if you want to accuse me of offensive leeching, I disagree with you 100%.

(As a side note) @Xinhuan, you accusing me of having 3 O-Allies was wrong. I had 1 when you said that. :P