not playing this coming set. will be out for the whole month of feb, so no point playing.

Haha congrats bobby. Palemoon nearly had it too. If he did, you would be pissed cuz you jumped a bit too early in my opinion. But all's we'll :)

You can run use back the same country name this coming set and I can promise you it will come true again :)

is that you afaik?

records updated!

Winner Round 45 - AmazingGrace (#5) - commie indy

Congratulations!

I doubt any of the indies are breaking 115M nw.

Using serp's country as an example, he last logged in with 48 hours to go in the set. So if he does a 18, 18 and 12 hr log in, he gets 15 extra bonus points on top of the 96 turns he will be getting. That's 111 turns total. Assuming he'll log in to 86(80) after the first 18 hrs, that would put him at a total of 235 turns total. Also assuming he has max bonus points on hand now which is about 24 and the last 48 hours will yield another 16 points. That's 13 booms and 2 extra turns bringing his total production to 263 turns worth.

At 65000 acres, he is likely to have 64500 indies and maybe 158% indy tech.
263 turns worth of production will be equivalent to about 40M worth of NW. Adding it to his existing 84.7M will give 124.7M nw. It is likely it will take more than 10M worth of NW to run those 263 turns. Unless he has some stock, he's unlikely to break 115M nw.

Also, dict cashers aren't really cashing that much. The 75k dict's income is like a 62k rep. So yeah, he might pull a 120-125M if done right. I haven't paid much attention to when they stopped grabbing this set since I wasn't in the mix so it's all just a guess from what I see at this point.

Ok I will increase my top10 NW from 80 to 85M.

Heh honestly I am not omnipotent so I can't tell you for sure.

105?

80m for top10 I think.

Happy new year everyone. It's 1st Jan here :)

I still think he shouldn't have jumped early. It's not optimal.

Grimstad did the same thing last set and lost out.

lol, ok got it. Glad your wish came true eh? =)

yeah, serp, tell us!

so who's running oldmanwillnotwin? he's doing it wrong lol.

heh, damn it feels weird not to be in contention for the win =P

nonetheless, Merry Christmas everyone!

I believe it will be around this number, or lower.

you don't know when to give up lol.

I'll be happy if tech allies are modified as suggested by Xin. Agree with most of his points as well except for the part about slowing it down. I like how the game is just 5 days long but the support staff needs to be well equipped to mod such a server, else there will still be many unhappy people even with all the proposed changes.

Agree that DR abuse doesn't seem so rampant nowadays from the posts on the forum, though I haven't played this server in forever heh. But it was real bad when I was still playing.

I might actually come back and play once in a while if these the changes were to be implemented.

I think you're underestimating primary Candy. There are many people capable of top10 finishes in 1a if they ever do try.

Now for the rebuttals...

First of all, some people do save turns during mid set, especially the tier 1s =P I, for one, always have close to max turns on hand even during mid set, yes, that's during grabbing phase.

And yes, grabbing in primary is indeed more straightforward than 1a. Not going to deny that.

I will argue against the richer 1a destock phase though. I've played primary 14 sets now. I haven't seen 2 sets with similar market conditions. Destocking is different under different market conditions. Sometimes you stop earlier to stock, sometimes you grab till 3 days in the set before you start to stock anything and sometimes you do not even stop to stock. I think primary market is much less predictable than 1a's. 1a's markets always have a similar trend, for most sets (not going to say for all cuz I know that's not true). There's also the same consideration of pub vs private jumping and EOS sale as you mentioned in primary. So which market is tougher? I really think they are different and we can't compare apple to apple.

I will break it down for you here. The game is divided into a couple of phases:
a) start up - there's no difference between 1a and primary in this phase. Most start ups are similar.
b) growth - land comes easier in primary vs 1a where you have to camp DR/war gain/landtrade etc
c) stock/continual growth - in 1a, it is always get to some huge land size and start stocking. you always almost never see top10 countries not stocking; in primary, there's the option of stocking or continued growth depending on the market conditions. So I'm more inclined towards primary being more challenging.
d) destock/final market plays - like I explained above, both the markets are very different and each has their own unique characteristics so I'm neutral here.

So the distinguishing factors in primary are phase c) and d) since most capable players can do a) and b) equally well. What about 1a? I personally think phase b) is the determining phase, which is the reason why I don't like it because c) and d) are IMO, the higher tier skill sets and I don't like how someone can win just because they camp better or landtrade (it is of course a different story when tier 1 players go at it in 1a but that is rarely the case nowadays, most are not even trying hard and are just cruising for the most part).

well actually, there're quite a lot of skills involved in 1a on top of what you mentioned.

DR camping - well, this one takes time. so I don't consider it a skill but Xin thinks otherwise cuz there're people who can just click that 0.1 second faster than you EVERY single time.

land trading - it's easy to land trade, but it's difficult to excel at it. Most landtraders suck in 1a. LaF did it once and we showed everyone who's the boss. It involves: choosing the right target; hitting the people of the right size; what NW do I get to maximize gains; whether you initiate the hit or you get hit first; do you save this target for a 2nd hit later on or do I landtrade for the 2nd time now etc. There's alot of considerations that go into it. Good landtrading is a skill.

market play - this is key in 1a. market is a lot bigger in 1a compared to the solo servers. Volatility is there and there's opportunities for arbitrage in all volatile markets. deciding when to destock; deciding when to stop cycling your bushels etc. This is a skill.

warring in 1a - do you kill with GS? do you kill with BR? how fast do you kill? Do you wait for type 1 fast DR to expire before continuing (of course, this has been removed) etc? It takes skill to maximize damage with limited turns.

heh, so don't write off 1a just yet. it's a whole different arena altogether that requires very different skill sets.

I would say most people who can consistently finish top10 in 1a can do well in solo servers, but not the other way round.

well, instead of saying I suck at DR camping, I would rather say I don't have the time to do it. I can only come online for a couple of hours every day and that's not good for DR camping. If I ever had the time to DR camp, I might outcamp him, who knows.

my back to back wins weren't all that fantastic. Candy himself aided me with 1 minute to go in the set for the 2nd one, so that win wasn't well deserved. But then again, nobody cares about 1a. I got the win, and that's all I needed to complete my game profile.

well, no t10 for me this set.

guys, give candy a break. He's decent heh.

We all still love you at the end of the day candy.

Lol candy bashing thread. I'm a lucky man.

is it me or the countries this set are smaller?

oh, i've a couple of retals to make and i'm so looking forward to them haha!

lol, so who runs #84?

I think one of the most significant reasons is the presence of many suiciders 5-10 years ago. To avoid suiciders, one typically stocked early and try to keep a low profile until the end. With the introduction of GDI protection, this is no longer an issue, hence people start grabbing more and stock later.

There have also been changes to the game mechanics in terms of the formulas (building cost; attack gains; military losses etc) though these were pretty recent.

The number of people playing this game also plays a part. There's less land to go around nowadays compared to 5-10 years ago. So it was easier to get to the desired land target in the past and hence the early stocking.

nowhere near stocking season unless you're a techer.

many Singaporeans around.

come on guys, we all know candy plain sucks, nothing more to that =P

get many tanks and buy SDI =) Don't double tap, single taps are usually fine but do expect retals.

records updated!

3rd all time highest fascist records (Round 19 onwards)
3. 22,687,891 NW (Round 44 - Never #32)

New Entrant to 30M NW club (Round 19 onwards)
25. 30,089,693 NW (Republic, Round 44 - Earth Empire Technologist #26)

Winner Round 44 - Earth Empire Technologist (#26) - rep casher

Congratulations all!

you still get help from your allies in vacation.

Bonus

I like 1A? heh, since when? I only play it cuz of my alliance mates. Nobody likes 1A

hmm, lots of 1a folks coming over cuz 1a sucks =P
good luck lenshark.

heh, sorry I won that set boltar. But I did get BR 3-400 turns into the set and I ended up with almost no CS after those BRs.

something's wrong with this thread...or is it just me? page 1 is empty.

=( I didn't finish set 16 cuz I went on a long holiday! So it's not counted! My top10 streak is 8 =P

based on his profile, he finished 4th, 6th, 4th, 7th, 9th, 4th, 8th, 5th, 7th in the last 9 sets.

I believe that's the longest active top10 streak. My streak stands at 8 only.

Take care galleri, you've been a great mod, always responding to my requests :)

Good luck IRL!

Xin's top10 NW thread has links to all the 'XX set talk treads'. That's probably enough?

now own up, who runs this country? haha

OldmanWillNotWin #84

awesome! thought we would have to wait till next set with all the other stuff going on.

well, to be factual, qwertyh's 700k more tech than me at that point of time can be translated to about 2-2.5 days of advantage, which is substantial.

I think we are all in agreement that qwertyh did not leech (one way use of OA's jets). His allies did get to use his jets once in a while. Even so, the advantage he pulls out is immense. OA is hence way overpowered. I think Xin gave an example earlier in this thread on how much it can save the OA user everyday.

On a side note:
I lost 410k tech points.
Xin 490k and PaleMoon 650k.

All my tech was stolen by #269 (100 successful op out of 103 attempts)

Xin's tech were stolen by (24 out of 26 attempts by #269; 28 out of 31 attempts by #229; 21 out of 24 attempts by #132)

PaleMoon's tech were stolen by (31 out of 32 attempts by #132; 63 out of 63 attempts by #269; 44 out of 55 attempts by #18)

lol, success rate was 93.1%. The 3 of us were intel allies =P

records updated!

New Entrant to 35M NW club (Round 19 onwards)
11. 36,020,898 NW (Republic, Round 43 - baka #9)

New Entrant to 30M NW club (Round 19 onwards)
19. 31,271,646 NW (Republic, Round 43 - Earth Empire Technologist #32)

Winner Round 43 - baka (#9) - rep casher

Congratulations all!

Records updated!

5th all time highest Fascism NW
5. 93,317,249 NW (Round 23 - Olympus Has Resurrected #23) - LATC

New Entrants to 100M NW club
9. 122,119,832 NW (Communism, Round 23 - Meaningful Nonsense #144) - oldman
13. 120,925,797 NW (Democracy, Round 23 - BatChatillon 25t #129) - Grimstad
23. 117,027,000 NW (Communism, Round 23 - Industrial Velocity #90) - h2o
54. 107,005,167 NW (Communism, Round 23 - EEVIL WAR MACHINE #31) - Serpentor
61. 104,093,403 NW (Republic, Round 23 - MOTHER fluffIN SNAKES ON A PLANE #164) - euglaf
73. 101,364,462 NW (Republic, Round 23 - Squares #189) - Xinhuan

Round 23 winner - oldman (Meaning Nonsense #144, Commie Indy, 122.1M NW)

100M/125M/150M club ranking updated!
Biggest increase in rank - euglaf +2 rank (25th to 23rd); Xinhuan +2 (6th to 4th)
Biggest decrease in rank - OneMansArmy and tduong -3 (14th to 17th)

Congratulations to all!