quick question:
say i had 100 turns to use and i wanted to put on as many acres as i could with the current amount of CS that i had. would it be best to do the exploring all at once in the beginning or do it turn by turn as needed when i couldn't build a full amount?

does the answer change if the building type changes?

Building type is irrelevant.

Build cost of 1 building is (acres x 3) + 1500. So the more land you have, the more it costs to build a building.

You can batch explore a lot of acres, but if you do so, you are building all of it at a higher building cost since you have more acres, than if you explored and built as needed.

But the explore rate goes down as you gain more land, batch exploring allows you to gain acres at the current explore rate for the batched amount of turns. So there is a choice between more land versus less construction costs.

It is generally accepted that in most cases (especially while explore rate is high) batch exploring for land is more efficient than exploring turn by turn.

The thresholds for explore rates (i.e. the point at which they drop) can be found on the wiki.
http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Explore

I find that it's better to build on every piece of land, and then batch explore. You get quite a huge jump in Networth...especially at the beginning.

yea to be able to spend all turns in hand to batchexplore its best to have land built to under current bpt.

When batch exploring make sure you have enough food and cash on hand, it's easy to run out when batching especially as a indy.

Depends where your playing i guess. If you have backup, then batching is the way to go most of the time. But if your in a solo server, and you do a big batch, you end up with too much land and not enough cash to buy the defense needed to protect it/build/buy tech. Its a judgement call really. Kinda depends on what the scores list looks like at the time.

what building (imo) may be relevant.

if i was building research labs then doing one at a time would not give me any incremental gains given the problem statement, but building indy for example i would get incremental production

Good point br3nt00.

i think it depends on how much better explore gains are via batch exploring as opposed to incremental exploring. does anyone have any info/formulas to share?

Here is a quick example (numbers are approximate):

1924 -> 3844 = 48 turn batch explore

1924 -> 3849 = 65 turn by turn

i think explore rate drops to 39 after 1920 acres, explore rates might be posted here somewhere.

EXPLORE RATES
Normal
40 1
39 1925
38 1996
37 2070
36 2149
35 2233
34 2321
33 2414
32 2514
31 2619
30 2731
29 2852
28 2980
27 3118
26 3266
25 3426
24 3599
23 3786
22 3990
21 4214
20 4459
19 4729
18 5028
17 5362
16 5736
15 6158
14 6639
13 7190
12 7830
11 8582
10 9476
9 10559
8 11896
7 13590
6 15806

Republic
48 1
47 1919
46 1978
45 2039
44 2103
43 2170
42 2240
41 2313
40 2390
39 2472
38 2557
37 2646
36 2741
35 2841
34 2947
33 3059
32 3178
31 3305
30 3440
29 3584
28 3738
27 3903
26 4081
25 4273
24 4480
23 4705
22 4950
21 5218
20 5512
19 5837
18 6196
17 6596
16 7045
15 7552
14 8128
13 8790
12 9558
11 10460
10 11533
9 12833
8 14438
7 16470
6 19129

after 1st batch at 1915 acres that chart is quite meaningless.

Why would you say that Marshall?

since you do 1st batch explore at around 1915-1920 acres and end up to around 3.8k acres and explore rate has dropped to 22-23 and 3rd batch will drop it to 14-15 etc.

I think an over haul of explore rates is in order, self farming has become way to lucrative.

Increase minimum land gained/turn to 12 with a new bonus that increases your explore rate =D

Ofc all this depends on which server we are talking about. Theoretically you could do a 360-turn batch explore on express.

i think 360 turns batch explore would get halted unless its done after explore rate is ~20.

unless ur life revolves around EE to sit there with a calculator and all that, that chart really is useless..at least to me it is...u loose track of all the "by the book" stuff and improvise, or u'll loose

err....I am rather offended by the statement "unless ur life revolves around EE to sit there with a calculator and all that". Earth was always designed as a strategy game, where you have the option to work out the most advantageous way to grow based on given formulas. Anyone that is good has in some degree worked on the formulas and attempted to figure out the best way to play.
And the exploring chart is provided in the wiki and is easily accessible.

I think you should be able to do a 360-turn explore on express at round 6k acres, explore rate 17. Not that it would be the smartest thing to do, but still.