A smaller market means lots of players are trying to be selfsufficient instead of relying on the market. This of course makes the market even smaller thus it is a self-enhancing problem.

Solution: Really ram one up there on the tech starters who have too long tech phases.

How to do it: Set a "safe tech" of lets say 30 total tech points per acre. Then the rest of the tech is subjected to destruction based on labs destroyed. For example if you lose X% of your acreage in labs you lose X*.5% of your tech surpassing 30 tech points per acre. Lets drop that to X*0.3% of your tech if the destruction was caused by someone else or by earthquakes.

There you go, now tech starts will have to be short and people will rely on the market more than before to get those precious techs.

So you want techer to be even more powerful than it already is? No thanks.

In Express where techer is overpowered tech starts are either short or dumb so it does not affect on that server. When was the last time a techer won team, tournament, alliance or Primary? Techer is not overpowered anywhere but express.

Plus my suggestion screws the oil destock for techer quite a bit too so even if it would get a big boost in alliance and team it would have to either destock some other way or overcome an additional hurdle.

*grabs pitch fork and torch* time to riot on this guy!

If you learn to use the market to buy and sell stuff you will learn to be a much better player DP. And perhaps you can take those lessons learned to in the game and utilize them in real life so you can go to the supermarket to buy potatoes produced by farmers who know their fluff and have your car built by professionals so it doesnt fall apart so goddamn always! :)

If you learn not to shove your own ideas down everyone's throat you'll learn to be a much better person.

Off the top of my head, I remember these two.

A techer won the set before last in tourney:
http://www.earthempires.com/tourney/88/ranks

My buddy Getafix was just shy of the top slot in alliance a couple months ago here:
http://www.earthempires.com/alliance/44/ranks

On team and primary, it could still be viable early and then you could switch to something more profitable. This change would totally nerf this ability.

The tech market on FFA is a joke right now precisely because there are way too few techers and apparently very few people tech started.

On the other hand, I fully agree the oil destock should be curbed, though I would go further and scrap it altogether. On team just about the only winning strat is a Fascist farmer/oiler dropping land at the end.

My point is techers are not overrepresented in the top ranks of any game other than express and extremely underrepresented in primary. In team its hard to define where techer is at but not overpowered at least. So it would not damage the balance in the way you suggested in your first post.

I'd kinda see the merit of the oil destock as a doable but inferior route so that players are incentivised, but not forced, to interact on the public market and yet there is oil demand at the end still. There is a problem with oil being completely without demand in the endgame in that it makes oiler really volatile and that affects the other strats too, since if oiler is useless because of a useless endgame it means people would have problems interacting through the war room due to low oil supply all set. I don't like the oil destock where it is though.

I think a better option would to increase the auto buy price at start of set and have it slowly lower so more people will go techer and stay techer once they can actually make sales.

or cheaper techs early, when price is 6-9k bucks then not many buys it early in set.

DP you are missing the point. We want to make players interact through the market not player vs enviroment. Selling to auto buy prices only solves the problem for one party.

Last set on primary I tried to buy SDI with my cash starting casher, but quickly realized it would take over a week to get the missile protection I needed to multi-tap people.

So basically the tech market is thin because tech starters get a significant portion of the tech they will ever need through their tech phase instead of through the market. Force them to go through the market instead, it will result in the market prices being slightly higher in the beginning to mid set maybe, but likely not in the endgame. And the market will be way more liquid.

Cash start casher won the last primary set and the last tournament set anyway and what I'm suggesting will likely increase the power of the tech start casher/farmer/indy as long as that tech phase is short as tech prices will rise. It will render the long tech phase useless though which is what I want.

Your name makes me vomit in my mouth, but I 100% agree with you *gulp*

Bots make techer OP midgame in 1a, but it also has to do with the quality of players left. Tech should always be #2 priority (#1 being bpt). However I would have to argue that destruction of tech for techer should also be met with destruction of units for commie destroying ICs.

Civilians should imo, riot with the destruction of buildings for any strategy change, not just government. At least let them go on strike until a certain percentage of empty land is rebuilt if ya catch my drift. If not, that's fine, because of all the fluff you gobble and all.

Destruction of units for indies I have not a problem with it but on the other hand I don't see a problem it would solve as there are rarely any indy starters in the game any more. Edit: Plus you cant 'stock' military like you can with tech without a cost due to expenses.

The destruction of buildings in general is in my opinion only a problem because of 2 things:
1. The oil destock being too powerful thus removing the incentive to take risks on the the public market for destocking.
AND
2. the long tech starts reducing the volume traded on the tech market.

I guess a sizeable general cost increase for building destruction would cure these problems as well, though I'm not against switching in general, I'm just against the strats that discourage market interaction in one way or several.

If long tech start Fascism farmer oiler with oil destock ever becomes a thing for netting, 100% of the players can play that and the market is useless for everyone else...

or a real solution as changes haven't been made for years is to get this, get more players :( so we are fluff out of luck.

Yeah but the market works with 50 players on a server, just as long as those 50 players use the market.

Team tech market is a joke. I experimented a while back when I netted for a few sets and found the shorter tech start up to be better for casher, did not notice much difference in farmer/oil tho.

Agreed.

I think one could get t10, possibly even top 5 some sets, without entering the public market or the war room in team as it is now, which is a problem imo. I'm completely fine with all explore being competetive for netting, but not if it doesn't use the public market lol. :/

How much do you really think tech starts are teching? I only tech about 200k points before converting, and after that I still need to buy a million or so points, so it's not as if I'm depriving the market substantially in the long run. I've done the math, it doesn't even make sense to tech much longer than that, and if people want to be dumb and do so, I say let them. This is only a problem in the beginning, and prices are high enough then already. This would only drive prices higher.

You do the standard 4k acre 150 turn tech start then I suppose. With my change you'd be fine if you teched like 30 turns less and put your tech on the market for the lab destruction. Like I said, the short tech phase I'm cool with.
What I want to reach are the tech starters who sit and tech for 300-700 turns and tech all or nearly all their income techs, SDI, warfare, mil, mil strat they'll ever need. You'd be surprised how common it is, mostly for warriors but it exists in tourney, team and primary for netters as well. Heck, 2 players that do it every set afaik are regular winners on primary (like half the sets of last 1.5 years).

On team I think ~10-15 players run these long tech phase farmers/cashers every reset based on my spying and talking to people. This would change their play style but not make them significantly weaker at any point.

btw the 30 tech points and then 0.5*x% tech destruction above is just my idea for destroying the long tech phase. If you have another idea that has a similar effect it might be better.

Without rhe tech start wouldn't they have less money to spend on tech once they do leave their tech phase?
Less tech is less money to spend, so fewer points sold, no? (I am asking, I assure you, not telling) (or maybe this isn't what you're talking about so, um..)

I listen to ingle or maybe afaik told me, but I don't do a tech start. And I'm the greatest ever to play team, so take that for what it's worth.

Cash start casher or farm start farmer will buy more tech than tech starters, maybe not at any given moment but at least for the majority of the reset. The short tech phase has always been a gambit on higher tech levels at the expense of everything else, including income.

So yes a 4k acres tech started casher with high tech levels does have a lot of money to spend on tech, but so does an 8k acre cash started casher with OK tech levels. And they will land on about the same tech per acre in the end, difference being that the cash starter will have more acres and will have bought all it's tech from the market.

TTT - TOUCH THOSE TECHSTARTS

Tech markets seem fine in Alliance. Techers are OP in express and strong in FFA. There are no markets in team and primary from what I remember so it's not like people have a choice in whether to do a long tech start or not. Never played primary. Seems like a bad and unnecessary idea.

If long tech starts are no longer possible in team, primary, alliance and tournament, where they are frequently used to the detriment of the market liquidity, the markets will support more full techers AND tech markets will be liquid enough that at least one player can max his techs without ripping a hole in the tech market.

Yes, In alliance you got a good market if you look only at prices and dont care about how thin it is, the bots make sure of that. But you go ahead and try to max one of your war techs with a fat country in one day.

The goal is to make people interact on the market as much as possible though, if you think that is a bad thing, please tell me why.

Pfft I'm reselling oil, turrets and lots of freakin tech in 1a as Tyr.

Have you seen the people who play this game? Why would anyone want to interact with anyone who plays this game?

I like the intended ends but not necessarily the means. Perhaps simplify it to just tech decay that isn't reliant on labs destroyed.

Your choice would be lose the tech, tech more, or buy it.

I prefer the "increase consequences for destroying buildings" idea.

Sooooooooooo does that mean Tech Booms and selling tech on Private out of the question?