What makes no sense? I never said it didn't currently fluctuate based on demand.

The oil market should function differently. Oil should have a fluxuating price based on demand. It shouldn't be set by each individual oiler trying to undercut another. Oil shouldn't be bought in the market by each player either. It should be obtained automatically each turn based on a percentage of money that the country is willing to spend on it.

There should always be oil automatically in the market as well (to prevent potential problems) the price of it should just be high until oil is infused into the market by oilers (who would set a percentage of their oil to place on the market per turn). So the more oil put into the market the lower the price of oil gets (though it should decrease steadily). Oil sold by an oiler onto the market should give them instant cash as well based on the current oil market prices.

On top of that oil should have an impact on countries beyond just attacking. Such as on a country's economy. Without sufficient oil a country's economy should suffer. Say you need 1/1,000 barrels per population to break even on your normal cash flow. If it drops below that tax revenue decreases steadily. If you buy more than that you stockpile oil for military usage.

Seems to me like some crybabies want to enforce a particular play style on everyone and are inflating a problem that barely exists in the first place. I would also like to point out that it's pretty much impossible to stop douche bags in any game. You can limit their ability but at the same time you often limit the enjoyment of legitimate players as a result. GDI is currently a good answer to this issue and "they won't know to join it" is a stupid counter to it.

3,000/barrel right now

However if your complaint is that people screw it up for others by being fluffs then your doing well kind of puts doubt on your complaints...

If the entire point of the server is to be about growth and gaining imaginary numbers you might as well rename it Farmville and replace all elements of war. People shouldn't be able to run crap military just so they can min/max their way to the highest possible NW. NW would have more meaning if people didn't get away with ridiculous setups. If you aren't prepared to defend what's your's then you don't deserve it.

In my opinion the only time "ganging up" should be a problem is if it isn't justified by the actions of the one being targeted. Though really what's the difference between killing a country completely and just crippling it from hits when it doesn't bother to have sufficient defenses?

How did you do so well if your experience playing was so bad? Kind of hard to understand. I love express and I have yet to run into serious fights on it. Primary is another story though. Does this mean I'm saying express lacks what you claim? No. I just haven't experienced it. I also haven't seen a lot of red names on the scores list (though I'm near the top most of the time so...).

I agree with the Republic part.

(*_* )

Nobody has taken a bite at my totally awesome idea <.<

Ideas for a server (maybe new)

A realistic upgrade for GDI would be for GDI to intervene in the affairs of its member states on occasion. Seeing as any large collective in real life (such as the UN, Nato, etc.) tends to have political motivations from its member states there should be favoritism and knee-jerk reactions from it in regards to hostilities.

GDI should react negatively to the use of nukes and chems by member states or on member states. Even in full fledged war. It should force disarmament on those involved in such exchanges unless they were attacked with the weapons first.

GDI should sanction countries that are Tyrannies, Dictatorships, or Fascisms.

GDI should require a percentage of forces from all member states to remain 'on standby' (though never used) to represent military units that would go to aid GDI's threat power.

Countries should be given a choice in accepting all these stipulations as well. So that some can shirk their responsibilities and leave it to others to uphold the stability of the GDI. The GDI should be able to collapse and it should be a possible strategy of anti-GDI countries to help with that collapse for their own benefit.

>.>

Aww poor wittle techers not being able to rob everyone blind for a set.

What lesson did you teach him? That you could kill him? Was it worth your triple tap? Did your triple tap help you achieve your goals or did the "punishment" teach you that maybe it wasn't worth it?

I guess you can pat yourself on the back for killing this dude. Him leveling you a second time was douchey but it was kind of justified if you were building up again just to kill him. I can't say if I was triple tapped I wouldn't respond in a similar fashion under certain circumstances. Even if it got me killed. They would never reach what they could have if they had been less greedy.

Edit:
Just checked the history between you two. Kind of funny that his leveling you the first time and then a "second" time only had a two hour gap. So how did you build up in between to hit him again? Seems like he just leveled you and then you killed him off. You also started leveling someone else the same day. What's the story with that?

I would generally agree with you. A lot of painful things (for some people) need cut out and there needs to be a change to the way bills are written. A budget has no meaning when you can slip in a million here or few hundred million there for whatever pet project you have.

Imagine a family that is on a tight budget just to put food on the table but it allows every member of the household to spend money outside of the budget on frivolous things. That's a good analogy to the way government handles money right now. It needs to be changed because there is no way to have a balanced budget like that. Money in government is looked at with the mentality that it must be spent. Either by increasing the size of some favored program or by creating a new program.

They say that to give the illusion of an effect. While in reality the money they are saving in the meantime (small as you point out) disappears when they spend more later on. Never trust them when they say they are saving a billion here or a hundred billion there. They will be spending that money (and more) later on. The whole budget process for the government is a mess. Increasing revenue through taxes without fixing the problem isn't going to help. The problem isn't lack of taxes. It's wasteful spending.

Taxes raises should come after getting things in order. Not before.

Vice taxes are moronic. They are an overreach of government into the lives its citizens. A slippery slope that can change simply by who is in power and what they consider a vice that needs "taxed". Not to mention the fact that vice taxes are hypocritical. You are taxing something as a means of eliminating its use but are profiting from it's use as a result. It's also unsustainable if it turns out to be effective. You reduce the vice or eliminate it and then have to search for a NEW thing to tax.

Another thing increasing taxes beyond a reasonable threshold is a short term solution. The more money put into government the more money it has to spend. Government rarely ever (like as rare as a green flying whale) returns money it doesn't need. Instead it makes room for spending it either by increasing the budget of a program or creating a new program. That's the fundamental problem with government budgets. They tend to scale upward continually. Government (particularly the US government) doesn't spend money effectively and that needs to change first. Not just increase taxes and forget about the underlying problems.

Medical technology presumably isn't just what you have in civilian hospitals. Better tools and methods for field hospitals should impact losses. However if you want to be completely logical then medical technology shouldn't impact the survival of jets/tanks/turrets ANYWAY. :|

Medical down to 60% sounds appealing to me.

Everyone plays those servers too right? RIGHT? >.>

If we're talking about issues with oil perhaps that's part of its issues on those servers. If more of it was sold on the private market then it would help oilers and also make oil more competitive on the public market.

What about all the pollution? Why should oilers be getting anything when those countries can work out alternative fuel sources? (not serious)

I don't agree with the solutions but I agree that oil is not perfect. The amount oil sells for on private markets should be upgraded a bit to make the public market more competitive. The amount of oil for military units shouldn't be constant either. It should take more oil to send jets than it should take to send tanks (jet fuel is harder to produce) and it should take less oil to send troops than it does to send tanks. Say 10 jets barrel, 20 tanks, and 50 troops per barrel.

(o )( o)

The ability to get land in totality wouldn't change though. The land being sold would have to be obtained through normal means (unless you are reselling land...) so it's still the same limited amount of land going around. Someone is having to sacrifice the land they have for profit. Sure in an alliance this can be abused. If everyone can do it though how is it a huge issue?

Instead of being able to drop land I think it should be possible to sell land off on the public market. I don't think it could be abused very easily since land is still limited in totality the same as it currently is.

Has this ever been discussed before?

You have to undercut the competition no matter how little sense it makes!!!!111!!1

Lol it's not a gameplay issue (which is why it's easy enough to ignore). It's just always been hilarious to me that countries smaller than cities have piles and piles of military units on them. I always imagined giant turret walls boxing in a country.

There would be no perfect name change and making the usage of acres more logical would ruin the game. It's funny none the less, though.

This has bugged me since I first started playing earth in 1999 (though it's not super important). Why are the land measurements in acres? How much sense does it make that a country 10-20-30-40-50k acres large has them entirely filled with buildings and covered in heaps of military units? What sense does it make that a country operates 50-100x their population in military units? Are they robotic?

I don't think there would be a perfect solution to this (that doesn't destroy the current way the game is played) but I think one solution that is slightly less comical than what is currently in place would be to change the name of acres to "sectors" so that their exact size is a mystery. It's pretty hard for me to imagine a country building everything in one acre lots.

For the record I never mentioned increasing explore rate. I mentioned decreasing it.

@Terius: My reasoning is that +20% PCI is too weak and +20% explore is too limiting. +30% PCI emphasizes the main difference the government type has over other government types. +20% PCI is decent don't get me wrong. It just doesn't have as much of an impact as the bonuses most other government types have.

@Detmer: That's not what I said. I said that I don't necessarily agree that government stats should be the same on every server. Any alliance can make up for the weaknesses of a government type or exploit its strengths.

A suggestion is a suggestion. It's not a demand and I won't be angry if it's ignored. I started playing e25 back in 1999 so I'm not completely new to most of the game even though some things have changed. Why don't you explain why my suggestion wouldn't be a good idea.

I get the feeling that the reason why most suggestions are shot down in discussion isn't because of playability concerns but because of bias. Not saying anyone here is being biased but I haven't heard any reasons in this thread for why it's a bad idea other than "republics are strong in alliances". Which is pretty close to bias.

Heck I don't care if you put it bluntly like Rockman. I don't get offended easily. I just want some actual reasoning.

@Rockman: Why do I get the feeling that there is some sort of competition you are trying to have with me? Do we have to get technical? 20k+ isn't large, fine ok, that's not my point. So by the time you've built up 40k+ acres (or continually build it up depending on circumstances) the building cost bonuses have more than made up the difference that another bonus could have given?

My point isn't that it's completely worthless. I just don't see it being worth it out of the options available. I guess I'm wrong about that though (which is fine).

@Slagpit: *nod*

For one thing I don't really agree with having the same country statistics across the board. The weaknesses of anything can be supplemented by alliances.

+30% PCI
+10% X
-20% Mil

That's overpowered? I think that balances out much better myself. Retaining a weak military and not being able to explore as much are a large trade off for +10% more PCI.

Alliances... Yeah sorry I'm not talking about just when you have a tag to hide behind. Are you even being serious?

I was factoring in the difference more acres would make. Take the expenses bonus. I think it has more of a financial impact than the building cost one no matter how many acres you have. You will get more money for that bonus (by losing less to expenses) than you make up for by reducing building costs per acre.

Also I played e25 before I came here. I had taken a couple year break from e25 before it was closed down and I only recently (like within the past month) was informed about EE's existence. So my record on here is very lacking. Especially since I've been trying out strategies I don't usually use.

Has anyone crunched the actual numbers long run for expenses bonus vs building cost even for large 20k+ acre countries, or is this just something that's accepted based on assumption? If I'm wrong I'm open to that possibility.

How so? When you can spend the points on better bonuses that more than make up for it. Also nice of you to assume my country sizes, derp.

Being the most played doesn't mean much. They are easy to play as but they don't really excel except during specific situations. Cool that I'm clueless though. Thanks for informing me.

This bonus is not worth it my opinion. Does anyone use it to great effect? The impact it has on building cost is practically negligible for the amount of points spent. I think having it cost 5 points would be a far better payoff/cost ratio.

Their bonuses are too weak (well the explore one isn't). If there was more of a trade off between explore and per capita they would be more balanced. If no one agrees I won't be crying about it. It's just my opinion.

They aren't unplayable or anything (obviously) and in certain situations than can do well enough, but still...

Republics need to have their Per Captia bonus buffed. 20% is too weak. It should be +30%

People selling oil. Your prices are outrageous. That is all.

The Colonel knew best and his chicken beats the rest.

You should be ashamed

Laaaame

:/

Master of Orion I