This is a valid point. You can't drop D allies for sure, and they would be somewhat upset.

In no particular order.

Quarantine
James Craig
Keep Calm Press Cash
Vengeful Spirit
Awesome 2013 (I predict food prices will be as high as last set)

Xchyler, EEvil and Listen to what Xinhuan says are candidates as well.

I am interested to see where the techers end up. It seems that they may be able to get into the $120M range if they sell stock at the peak.

yep, i had a bad day today.

ingle, I believe you are correct in everything you just said.

an added risk to landtrading is that the other guy may have more mill strat than you.

Again, I am not trying to be a pain. But you missed the fact that if it takes 6 attacks to gain 4k acres bottomfeeding you will likely have the same amount of turns to cash.

The key in the analysis is the number of turns it takes to grab for the same amount of land. The variance in build costs will grow (because it is polynomial vs a linear cash/turn growth), but not signifcantly enough to cost you many more turns.. But the number of turns cashing to replace turrets will not change.

:)

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but this is very wrong. I showed an example of a land trade from 52k acres above.

Since my analysis basically broke even, I can guarantee that landtrading at anything below 50K acres would not be smart. You also must do it with another Dictator of the same strategy.

That is why I began this thread because I don't recall a previous set where you could find Dictators of the same size and strategy above 50k acres.

[Your estimate of building only 5500A gaining 4000A is way off, you will be building a lot closer to 8000A.]

It is not way off.

Scenario B:
2012-12-31 00:47:30 PS 14 (#168) PANLV 1 (#155) PANLV 5159A (9246A)
2012-12-31 00:44:08 PS 1 (#155) PANLV 14 (#168) PANLV 4962A (9069A)
http://www.eestats.com/ffa/oldcountry/405/155

First attacker gains 9069 acres and build 4962 Acres.
2nd attacker gains 9246A acres and builds 5159 Acres.

1st Attacker nets 3910 Acres and had to build 4962.
2nd Attacker nets 4284 acres and had to build 5159.

Dictators with the similar NW land trading have to build about 125% of the net acres gained. You lose about 1.5% of your Construction Sites, but you do not need to rebuild at this point because your BPT is already past optimal for the future acres built.

In summary it would cost you 1 attack with likely 4 spy ops so 6 turns and a gain of 4000 acres would take 50 turns to build. It would destroy 1M turrets (on the high side). Costing you $125M (also on the high side since some indys are selling turrets for $95). The $125M is going to take 5 turns of cashing to recover depending on your tech levels. the extra 1k acres built will cost you another $166M or so, so probably 6 turns cashing.

Landtrading gain of 4000 acres nets to 71 turns to build and recoup investment.

Scenario A: Bottomfeeding with 100BPT for 4k land will take 6 attacks (5 turns/attack on average - this is generous, I fail a ton of ops these days). 30+40 turns, so you gain 4k land in 70 turns

The hidden benefit of Scenario A is that you may not be building 4k land if you grab targets of the same strategy.

The hidden benefit of Scenario B is that you are doing your cashing and building at 4k acres more already. So your cash/turn may be increased - depending on tech% decrease.

So in all I am not sure I would be landtrading if I were you, but I wasn't a fool to think about it. And you weren't doing the idea justice in your analysis.

"But this gets worse the more you trade, and you won't have money to maintain your tech base and you will fall behind your non-trading competitors."

No. It improves the more you trade because you gain land faster. The more acres you have the more superior landtrading is to bottomfeeding.

your BPT is way too high. 100bpt is right if you grow to 30k acres or so.

I find the I-Cashers and I-Farmer a refreshing strategy. They give up 20%/15% respectively but they should grow faster with fewer build costs and military upkeep.

And at this point (50kAcres) Landtrading amongst eachother would be profitable probably. My guess is that one trade would yield 4000 acres to both parties with about 5500 acres needing to be built due to the destruction. With turrets this cheap there will never be a better time.

yes

For someone that needs 1.2M spies if I buy up to 110% spy tech that will save me 109K spies per turn at about $1/turn in expenses.

I would need around 57,000 pts for 110%. So it will pay for itself in about 1000 turns or so.

As a Indy I have better uses for my money. I can't think of many situations (even techers) where it is the best place to put your money.

typically a techer will start stocking around turn 1000 unless prices are great and they can grow more.

15000 acres and 10,000 labs? interesting rounding.

Netter for Hire. I got a late start only ran 2450 turns all x.

My "tactic" would be 12% better as a demo, I think that is where afaik was going. But even with the 6% tax it works well because of the market changes in express. Especially if you only play every 12 hours.

how about you tech this set and I farm

a tactic i sometimes use at this point in the set is to sell all my tech at a high price (2800 or so) and put orders for the same amount at a low price (1800) If you're selling 150,000 those swings can make you $100M. Its not going to catapult you up, but if your trying to maximize efficiency it could help.

this is correct.

are missiles, black ops and ABs allowed?

good growth, but as a casher tech is more important than land. You need to buy quite a bit of tech. It is wise to do this as early as possible when you don't need many turrets and you aren't an attractive land target.

I would guess that you will have a hard time keeping your acres.

While exploring you want to keep your tech levels >155%, and you want your tech levels to be above 125% before your first batch explore.

308.4 as techers

The past two sets I have teched at 55k-60k acres, producing around 30M pts per day between my 16 countries.

Can someone please step up and make sure that supply is filled, I will need to buy a bunch of tech next set.

Thanks in advance.

I have always built 500 Indys and sold turrets to finance my first 2000 labs. Not that its the right way to go, thats just how I do it.

build construction sites. you should have a bunch more in your first 100 turns

interesting. I typically only do a farm OR Indy start. Not both. I normally stop at 500 Indys.

Is this how you always start your techers?

yes, I can't possibly break that outside of extreme market conditions. But I can reestablish a modern rules record that i believe drinks holds.

so only one of your 16 matters. and the rules are no special attacks? so there are no repercussions to farming.

You probably need at least 4 participants to make it interesting.

I could see myself wanting to join this on a couple sets after i break the single set networth record ;)

I think there is definitely a place for this within a tag. No need to push this style on others, you are just competing with players of the same mindset.

question, is the goal to get one of your countries to the top, or best total NW.

I just lost 120,000 spies due to failed ops. You would think that they should work like attacking, if you have a better SPAL by 10% you should win 99% of the time. Only difference is if you have a lower SPAL you should have a <50% chance.

your welcome. I was feeling generous.

Monks

farmers need to grow.

Kingme, I don't think you were wrong to try to keep up with the top. It is just a difficult set with the tech levels. Indy's are able to grow despite tech levels but Farmers and Cashers don't have that ability.

When tech levels drop you may be able to get yourself back into it. There are only 10 or so countries that may choose you as the best target, so if you can survive the next few days of their attacks and last until techers start to stock, you can begin to grow again.

It seams like the definition of a good SPAL increases every set. I fail ops all the time (probably <75% success) and mine is 30+ right now.

Is everyone else experiencing this too?

I don't think weapons tech would be cost effective at this point compared to bus/res. It would be better just to buy turrets or jets than weapons tech. This will change of course when he needs 7 or 8 million total Jets/Turrets.

i spied him and another guy, I can't relent why I didn't grab him, but I'm glad i didn't. although he can't retal everyone who hit him

I have found that not playing for 24 hours before your jump is most effective. That way most of you're units bought are tanks and troops which have the best $/NW. Just put in orders to buy enough food and tech so you don't depend on the market in the last hour.

A few minor tricks are to sell tech after you run turns, sell all your spies before you run turns and cancel your relations when you sell spies.

the tech difference was gone a long time ago. At this point the 30k pts he teched are less than 1/4th of the tech pts he has. He is catching up just because he is more agressive grabbing.

When tech is <$3000 cash starts are far superior to tech starts. It is hard in express to coordinate 3 good allies for a tech start. You are also behind on turns quite a bit.

The best all-x Republic Casher I ran was a cash start to 1900 acres with a 58 BPT. Batch explore to 3800 acres and then explore and build from there until 14,000 acres. I just took corruption during the stocking and sold tech in the last hour. I made some mistakes along the way, but I think I could repeat that almost every set for $24-$25M finish. If I cut out all of the mistakes and with a good casher set it can finish easily over $25M.

Yes I was confused about that... thanks for fixing that :). Next time I will take my revenge when I loggin with 2 hours remaining in the set :) So don't attack me.

I believe that #234 is equal to #188 at this point as far as techers go. But I haven't done ops to see how many turns each one has on hand.

It is rare that the entire top 10 was >$20M.

Blid, I agree that it seems like an out of this world score. But from the looks of it he did it honestly.

"My end production was about 125k turrets/troops/turn. I keep more turrets than I like because I was worried 107 or 121 would retal me"

Smlandau84...I would have retalled. I didn't login until the point when GDI prohibited attacks. You took quite a bit of stock from me. If you had a couple more targets with similar stocks, that would go a long way to helping your finish.

any leaches used by 90? or was that score legitimate?

I picked the wrong set to tech.

At these prices techers may spend a few more days growing, which would keep proces higher longer, and keep food lower longer. But as soon as the top 4 techers spend two full days teching, food will jump.

9, I forgot how to landgrab this set.

As a casher I usually stop exploring with 400 or so turns remaining. Farmers or inidies can explore longer.

d.drifter your first step is to get to a point where stocking is the right choice. In express you should still be growing. In the last 500 or so turns you will want to hold as much cash as possible and wait to spend it.

If you are a commie, then you spend your cash by simply running turns until your expenses have ate through all of your cash.

If you are any other form of government you will want to buy military from the public or private market.

Note: in express it is rarely worth your while to stock food, oil or tech before your jump. Just hold onto cash even with the corruption.

because there is nothing on the market. Interesting.