How about changing the "Tech Ally" to a "Production Ally" (or some other name) that works for all players. Basically just like a Tech Alliance, except it shares a percent of whatever is produced that turn (cash, food, oil, military units, and tech). Might have to lower the percentage shared with allies to reduce the overall gains. But the pact would become useful for most strategies and not focused on just the techer strategy and tech resource.

Disclamer:
This idea came to me after reading Qzjuls post here late night after my classes. I am pretty tired, and haven't given this a whole lot of thought. What do you think?

So with the "Ramp-Up" effects gone, does this make special attacks useful again in Primary wars? Or does the new changes still nerf the ability to kill/cripple countries in Primary?

One of my big complaints was that I had no real way to combat these thief countries who just stole your tech/money the whole set. Since special attacks were worthless in damage and raising my SPAL to the level needed to hit them back efficiently with spies meant dropping a ton of land.

Can we finally get back to putting these kinds of players in check by hitting them with special attacks that do more than tickle their junk? Also, does Bomb Buildings still destroy considerably more buildings for less turns than BR/AB runs?

I think some people play Techers expecting huge profits because tech sells for $1-2k per point. But they fail to realize that the quantities sold are only a fraction of the bushel/oil/military unit quantities sold.

So the I guess what needs to happen, is we go make an clan of Primary/Solo server players on the Alliance server. The clans ONLY mission would be to do continual spy-ops against qzjul, iZarcon, and their clans members. Relentless spy-ops all set long until they get the hint that they are overpowered and need to be changed.

The idea here is that since they are not going to pay attention to the Primary/Solo servers, then the Primary players need to bring Primary's problems to the Alliance server and force them to deal with it one way or the other. Either fix it, or deal with the broken spy attacks continually each set until you do fix it.

Not that difficult if its spread out over a 4-5 days. If I remember correctly, last set I had kept mostly just over $2billion in cash on hand while getting my banks bombed for about $10million each spy-op. At about 20 spy ops a day that was about ~$200million stolen a day. Of course their gains also depend on how much money the thief has on hand, but this doesn't seem to be very difficult to reach the amount needed to get some pretty good returns.

But hey, at least every other strategy in the game can hide the goods they feel are in danger of being stolen or blown up on the market or by some other means. Techers are truly fluffled in that there is no way to avoid holding 3/4ths of their entire tech stock on hand at any given moment. If these thieves ever got smart they might figure out that stealing tech from the top Techers and selling it on the market probably yeilds more profits than stealing cash from countries holding just above or below ~$2billion on hand.

I think some of the top players used to considered under 100mil a bad set. So its probably possible still. But trying hitting 150mil+ club now, I dunno.

I don't write the code, all I can do is bump the good ideas so they don't get lost. I am bumping it now because the Primary set is past half over, but I believe there is still enough time to do something with it before next set. I might play next set based on how my first week of classes goes next quarter. Fixing some of Primary's problems would be a nice thing to come back to..

~3 weeks left in Primary this set..

Hey all, poking back in, I see there is ~3 weeks left in the set! What is everybody's thoughts on the new changes now that you have played with them for awhile? Also, has there been any improvements to the game yet that the Primary/Solo server players have been asking for?

Just give them a message that says, "Your help request has been submitted, you can see the responses here: [Insert Link to their help thread]"

I think he is playing, but not a serious country. He has what is called "Cruise" this semester so he will be sailing on a ship for 2 months starting sometime in the middle of this set. So he may not be able to finish the second half of the set. I think he said they will only have internet when they pull into port. This is part of his college education for a degree in engineering.

He chose a different country name this time though, so you will have to PM him for his country number. I have already forgotten what he said it was.

Have fun being a neglected test subject..

Shoot me a PM if the developers start to care about Primary.

Ill check back now and then to see if anything changed for the better..


Good luck to everyone!

My bro played a Casher Dictator - Violator (#5).

I lost over a billion cash to bomb banks from $245 and another billion in production losses when I launched missiles at him. Stopped calculating the damages after that when he hit back before getting deleted.

Violator is my brother (Popaskonyak). He improved greatly from last sets! =)

I on the other hand did a poor job as a techer this time..

Missing your 12 or 18 hour bonuses? Not to mention, this would require you to price low so that most of your goods sell off within a few hours of hitting the market. Or waste another 3 turns every time you wanted to sell more tech by recalling the unsold. Because you can only put up 1/4th of your total tech on the market, including what is on the market. If you put up tech and non of it sells, you would have to recall, buy, or tech more in order to place more. Then pricing low would drive the average price down further hurting techers. Additionally, every turn spent putting goods on the market is not gaining income by teching.

If it wasn't for the thieves, then logging in once a day to Tech all your turns for that day and then putting all that tech on the market in one turn for above the average price seemed more profitable.

Yeah, I think I reached a peak of just over 8 million total tech points on hand at one point this set. Probably similar numbers last set if not more since I had a little more land and prices were better allowing me to resell more. Last set they stole tech and this set they bombed banks (on me anyway, others got both). I mostly had just over $2 billion on hand during stocking this set and the average taken per op was $8-9million.

Show me the light!

Good luck as a Techer, losing billions to thieves, or even worse a market price crash is fun and all, but I think I might try something else if these new changes go live.

If people are stocking earlier it means there will be more food demand and prices should increase earlier in the set no? Farmers might not have to wait so long for their grown spurt if that is the case.

The quick and dirty, since Primary ends in 2 days, (Easiest first):

1) Don't roll out the new changes on Primary (or other solo servers?)

2) Change GDI to protect against steal spy-ops until a better harmful spy-op code can be implemented.

3) Disable Offensive Alliances & Research alliances in solo servers until a better code can be implemented.

It would be good to re-read the entire thread because there are a lot of good ideas in here. The easiest one would be #1, just don't do anything to the solo servers until the rest can be done properly. I think the majority of us playing Primary at least would rather not see the new changes happen.

I am tempted just to go CI so that if anyone steals from me I can pump mad spies, turn them into a parking lot with minimal jets, and continue on my way..

On the portal page linked below it tells you the start/end dates of each server:
http://www.earthempires.com/portal

Both Blid and myself did the same thing last set. We were able to mitigate some of the damage of the food spike by making a profit turning as much cheap tech as we could find. However we both got hit pretty hard by the food prices crash because we still had to spend a lot of money on food to avoid the corruption while teching/reselling (thought I made that clear, sorry). We didn't sit on it, we resold it, made more profit, and had orders up for more cheap tech. But whatever those orders didn't spend above 2Bil had to be spent on food stock to avoid corruption.

I think both Blid and myself mentioned to each other that if we didn't have to take such a large hit on food price we could of finished around 150mil networth. This is what led me to try out the corruption bonus this set, but food prices never spiked so I would of been much better off with extra turns this time. Can't predict what the market is going to do, I lost this gamble.

My reasoning for saying its bad tech set has to do with the amount of undercutting I saw and how fast the prices crashed in the last few weeks. From $1500-850 hit me hard because I was trying to accelerate my tech sales at this point to get ready for an early jump. I guess others had the same idea, because prices nose dived hard. The only bushels I stocked this set were to avoid getting my money stolen..

Is it just the Techers getting fluffed with or are the Indies, Farmers and Cashers getting it too? I know last set tech thievery was rampant. This set it was all bomb banks that on me.


Edit#[??]: For the record I like Oldman's layout. Prices laid out over a time frame do more to explain things in my head than total averages over the set. But then again I guess it all depends on what you are looking for in the data.

Edit#[???]: I believe Blid is correct in that if you have a sizable food stock, putting it all on the market at once isn't a great idea. If you dump ~400+million bushels on the market for the asking price or more, chances are pretty good you are not going to sell it all off that day. You are not the only supplier of food and many others will undercut your price as soon as your food hits the market. This starts a chain reaction with people who have been stocking food. When prices start going down they not only stop buying, but dump too and try to get out. With all of this extra food on the market, nobody is selling out immediately and may have to repeatedly recall and price lower. So then what was the point of dumping it all at once? IMO, this is as Oldman put it, a Greed issue. I don't think its the price though, but rather the quantity of bushels they put up at once. They want to sell off their stock for the best price and they think the best is now. But just because you put it on the market doesn't mean it is going to get sold. You have to look at how much QUANTITY is being purchased daily and try not to flood the market. If nobody realizes you are dumping stock slowly as the first one, then they are more likely to keep buying and hold onto their own stock until they feel its their own time to sell off.

Not much to say, fluffty tech set. Nice Casher set. Damn all the thieves..

I don't see why, there were a TON of techers this set who flooded the market with cheap tech. 7 days left in the set and tech is already selling for $100 above the auto sell price.. fluffing ridiculous.. Primary is full on Techers!

I have now lost over a billion in cash to a single person who I have never done anything to yet this set. And if I had done anything to him before I make networth jump, he would of been able to completely decimate my country via spy ops. Over half my missiles will probably fail too because he does have SDI.

The only difference is the damage being done benefits the person using the spy op. From the viewpoint of the receiving end, there is no difference when someone you have never done anything to decides to spend 10-20 spy ops a day stealing your hard earned cash. It is a person looking for war, who has no chance to finish high in networth, but knows he can screw with the top players finish and maybe provoke one of them to war. If this is not a suicide then I want to hear your definition of it.

Allow us to buy and sell spies and we can make this comparison.

We have to actually produce our spies, which means we actually have to build Industrial Complexes. For any other strategy other than Industrialist, this presents a problem in that the more land you have as Indys the less money you can make producing your main good.

Taken from the Primary thread on the B&S area:


By this logic, I would need to have about 40% of my buildings as Indy to get a SPAL of 120, and match this guys SPAL of 118. Then according to Blid's tourney numbers, this would still let in 70% or more of the spy-ops. Since Blid says he actually had a better SPAL than the guy succeeding 70% of the time, I assume the success rate would be more than 70% if you just match their SPAL.

What is the difference? Spies don't do anything to stop the thieves currently anyway. I could of sold off all my spies this set and my aggressor would of gotten maybe 4-5 more successful ops in (the number he failed so far).

Would the cash you get from selling your spies be worth it? Can you buy a different military unit for that amount of cash which would give you more than 1 networth each?

What would the message it gives be? Would it sell immediately or as a Standing Order maybe when the goods hit the market?

Hell, most of this was stolen when I had roughly ~$2.3billion on hand. Except for last night when he caught me with ~$4billion after my tech sold off. It probably would of happened with or without the corruption bonus.

Last set they were stealing my tech instead of bombing banks. Truthfully this current guy probably could of gotten more cash in the long run by stealing my tech and selling it. And since there is no way for me to protect against that, I am fluffing out of luck anyway.

Difference is this set was not a good Techer set. I am not going to finish very well. Ignoring the Bombing of Banks, the whole point of going corruption bonus was to avoid the food spike. But the food spike never happened anyway, making the whole investment a bad one in the first place. Can't always predict what the market is going to do, it was a gamble I lost.

So, tossing an extra billion on the loss pile and lighting it up like the 4th of July sounds like fun way to end this set from my view anyway.

Oh.. Well then he must have been doing some stuff I was not aware of. Gotta obey them rules!


@Rob - Had a country I never hit before decide that ~$800million of my cash was really supposed to be his via spy ops. Figured I would give him the whole show even if it costs me an extra billion in lost revenue (tech prices took a dump).

They are all gone pretty much. One self deletes after getting into a war and top-feeding you. The other is in a big war. And the Third seems to have already made his jump and stopped Teching. Oh well, I only have another day left of Teching myself before I gear up for the fireworks show.