The BiBiGoN playbook:

1) Go techer.
2) Rarely ever attack, so you can tech many more turns. Good for short-term, crap for long-term because you're land thin.
3) When you do attack, hit the biggest people possible because you like big grabs.
4) You're still so land thin and high networth that it's often not worth it for people to retal right away.
5) Threaten to war anyone who takes more than 72 hours to retal.

If everything goes perfectly and no one hits back, you can finish in about 30th place.

Vic, you grabbed xin and then serp lol. That's 5000 acres to be lost some time in the future. Your finish certainly looks bleak.

What is this "stock phase" you speak of? Does it have something to do with soup?



You make it sound like they have name tags on so that a returning newbish vet knows who to avoid and who not to. Bottom line, if a target is juicy enough reputation alone won't keep them safe. This has been demonstrated to me many times in the past.

haha its ok Vic, you'll learn who not to hit after a few resets. Serp always uses EEVIL WAR MACHINE and Xin always uses To The Top. Both will retal 100% of the time when it benefits them (and hurts you most). I got retalled big a few resets ago by Serp even tho he was at war... lesson learned.

Serp has run that country for the last several years. Being a recent returnee isn't really a total excuse as you can hit the "previous reset" button and see his all caps names in nearly every top ten. Here's last round, start from here: http://earthempires.com/primary/28/ranks

Secondly, there was nothing juicy about Serp or Xin. Given the fact that I know these guys and their skill level, I can pretty much guarantee you that they were two of the worst ten countries to grab in the entire game. You've played a lot of sets of Express, you know how to spot the countries that are guaranteed to be able to pop you later, don't you?

Techers stop grabbing eventually and begin to stock. This is because turns spent attacking and building are turns not spent teching, and a certain point continued growth is not efficient. During this stage, unless you constantly keep upgrading your defense and increasing your expenses, good farmers, commies, etc will begin to pass you by in the rankings. Trying to stop them from retaling you is futile...

So you are saying I should just grab to 50k, even teching, so I can afford the losses? Ok, LATC, you're next. :P

No i don't expect you to know who's who. But grabbing people who can retal isn't always the best move. But then again, maybe you really thought they can't retal, in which case then maybe your understanding of the game may need to be improved.

[quote poster=blid; 33116; 606215]Serp has run that country for the last several years.

[actually EEVIL WAR MACHINE is one I remember]

Secondly, there was nothing juicy about Serp or Xin. [yes there was, they were extremely fat for their ranks at the time I hit them, that is pretty much how I choose targets]

You've played a lot of sets of Express, you know how to spot the countries that are guaranteed to be able to pop you later, don't you? [lol what? I have played like 5 resets of express ever, if even that many]

Techers stop grabbing eventually and begin to stock. [you realize my question was tongue in cheek right?] [/quote]

Sorry for the sloppy in-quote-box reply

This is, I think, my second primary reset on EE ever. I played primary a lot before I became an FA in alliance, then I basically spent all my time talking to people and barely playing. I have a pretty good grasp of things generally, and in fact used to be hStrat for NA. As you can see I still remember how to build a country. Some things don't come back as fast though.

Wow you guys are all so mean lol, no wonder primary is dying! Vic, hit me, I'd love a good retal, especially on a techer .. that's a theo =D

"Extremely fat" != "juicy target" imo.

The only way to stop those players from hitting you back is not to grab to 50k acres, it's to stop attacking ASAP and beef defense all game for the rest of the set, to the point where it wouldn't be worthwhile for them to ever hit you back. But that, of course, would be self-defeating.

the last guy to hit you was a retal

Blid told me I shouldn't go theo if I wanted to tech in primary, I see the light now, but I like playing theo. It is a nice fast starter, which in my experience is pretty important on solo servers for an aggressive grabber.

I wonder if you guys could explain something to me. I see even all the commies only doing PS. Seems I remember that commies, last time I was up on these things, were better off doing SS so that A) they could spend 100% of their turns grabbing and building and B) they would have jets at home to sell. Has this change evolved from the dwindling player base, or some other factor? Even 5 PS/day isn't enough to keep you busy if your bpt is high enough to build 60k acres.

I know



I was actually wondering this too as a oiler/farmer... is it better to explore, build CS, or cash those extra turns?

Typical day for a commie (at least when I was on and rolling lol) would be SS a small target, build to 100% readiness! SS a slightly larger target, build to 100% readiness, etc (autocorrect tried to make that Eric) to like 8 SS, then finish with a PS with like half your jets, then build as much as possible before selling.

Oil prices are making it hard. As a tyranny I'd prefer to find smaller targets and SS them for land but based on the landscape price of oil is ridiculous to do anything but maximize those drops with PS.

PS: Higher land returns, less losses, less oil = better

Edit: You will run out of targets too, you can't do 8 attacks per day unless you multi-tap half the server

So you spend lots of turns exploring?

Dictator's Log
9/30/2014

Dearest dictator, maybe you should stop making such stupid, aggressive attacks.

BUT THOSE BIG NUMBERS ARE SO SEXY

Stupid dictator.

OFF WITH YOUR HEAD CONSCIENCE

-LATC

This may be true only years and years ago, but with the dwindling player base, there are less and less countries playing every reset. This means that there are less targets to attack, and targets are limited. If you only do exactly 1 PS on every country, you maximize your land gained from all of them without breaking GDI on any of them. If you SS countries, that means you "wasted" your 1 opportunity to attack them the entire reset by getting less land from them instead of a PS, unless you are sure it is safe to attack that country (i.e newb looking country, rainbow, no missiles, low SPAL, almost 1/4 humanitarians range, or a country that hasn't logged in for 5+ days, etc) more than once.

If you look at the stats of every single reset (in the stickied thread of mine), you'll see that overall finishing land sizes are on the downtrend (it used to be 60k-80k about 2 years ago across the entire top 10 other than techers), last set it is more like 55k-65k. Last set though, there was a logout bonus change made that allowed all countries to gain 30-60 turns depending on your play habits over the previous resets, so finishing NWs and land sizes increased slightly from the additional turn count.

hmm so #44 and #106 just came out of nowhere to suicide on #90?

Pretty much yes, most top players spend half their turns exploring (or cashing for cashers) in the last half of the reset. The risks of eating a retal from good players are too high in the late set. Ask any of the top 15 countries last reset, they all explore 20 turns daily, because there is little else to do with the turns.

There are simply too few countries, and the risks aren't worth the rewards. Even a just a _single_ successful NM thrown in retaliation will negate any gains out of hitting any country twice.

This game doesn't reward warring, it rewards netting, it is the _threat_ of warring that keeps everything interesting.

Dear Diary,

I wasted my PS for the day. Some guy ABd a guy I was setting up to PS like 2 minutes before I launched my attack. I launched my attack and oh so few acres with an unfortunate amount of jets lost per acre return. Ain't that a fluffing waste. Apologies to whomever I hit, clearly your having a worse day than me.

-SkyKing

Define "reward." The game rewards the player with fun, however the player chooses to have it. The scorelist rewards netting. Ask iMag what they think about that reward.

You got me there, Vic!

There is a column called rank on the score list. It's pretty self-explanatory what that means. If iMag doesn't want to play to win, that's their prerogative, sure. But no need to try to get silly and argue that the game does not reward netting

Sigh this reset sucks. Being a techer is awful, its so hard to raise money when you need it... ppl undercut by stupid amounts. I guess I'll spend the rest of this reset punishing the techers that undercut me.. all techs will be on sale for the rest of the reset!

Being a techer is fun. You are right about the money though, some days your stuck. You have to be willing to only play your your attack (and spy)for the day and save your turns over the course of 3 or 4 days to catch back up. I've had to do that at least 4 times now.

PS please don't sell your tech for too cheap! I may have to "consolidate" the sector and do a corporate merger (probably not but it was fun to say). XD

Your retals were essentially free land cause you know there is 0 risk involved doing that. I'm creating a risk.

blid confused me!

Who ever #24 is you're still a fluff!

chewi are u daggerfalls?

Ew no

I'm out of money again wtf! I can't play my turns let alone buy military rawr

I am pretty sure blid was just making a joke about the earthquake name.

He pmed me that =P

I thought he was #24.

how an earth?

LOL no problems here. Glad to see everyone is having at least some problems.

40.4 mins ago
You sold 1 Agricultural for $2632.

That's how. By the way, thanks to whoever bought this, I can now buy 23 turrets. Less with commission.

Wait, is #90 deezy??

Doubt it. deezy would be on here bragging.

Dear Diary,

The more things change, the more they say the same. That is what I love about this game. Simple landgrabs turn to blood baths. Good times.

Big hits today.

2014-10-02 02:08:58 PS Sandwich (#76) If My Mind Puts Me To It (#100) 2177A (3066A)
2014-10-01 09:57:38 PS The 59 Sound (#90) LilAzNThatCould (#17) 2342A (3226A)

That's the second one on LATC.

Hah... My worst set ever!!! Serves me right for traveling and neglecting my country. No worries Vic, I was a tempting target. ;-)

Oh and I've been saving the hits back. Just wanted to clean up some of those good smaller targets first.

if 2k grabs are big then what near 10k grabs are?

1st month of the set 2k are big grabs

Karma's punishing Serpy for dumping me, his long-time ally. Of course, I'm still having a worse set than he is.

Haha.. When traveling in the states, if there is no wifi.... There's no playing. I ain't paying roaming charges, that's for sure. There were some late bar nights that I just said fluff it. Lol

I have another 6 day trip coming up to disneyland later this month too.

Primary takes a 2 month commitment unfortunately, it's true.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Xinhuan failed an attack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!