Hawkeyee, thank you.

Can you point me at a large website run off advertising revenue? If it is a gaming site so much the better. :)

I am not knowledgeable about ad revenues nor about making sites more prominent through search engines.

Are there any large sites run off advertising revenues?

Your investigation is flawed.

Beer = NOT good in the morning

:(

You guys better invest in some luck, you plainly don't have much of your own.

There used to be lots of crap clans and every time you checked in there was another recruiting message.

But I've played in 1A for a few days now and not received a single recruiting message. Maybe my (default) settings explain that or its the fag end of a set. Still.

If I can find someone to help with setting up a site I might have a go next set.

The days of running large sites off ad revenue are long gone.

Oh, and you might consider removing that link in your sig. Apparently it is not appreciated.

The profile of your country as a techer should be quite a few CS (a techer must utilise the maximum possible turns clicking on the research button so can´t afford to spend more turns building than s/he must) - try to build them early - as a beginner maybe 120 cs would be good but more if you can or are ambitious, just a couple of hundred Indies which you set to produce 100% spies (you need to generate a lot of spies, again turns lost to failed spy ops cost you dear), and ALL the rest labs.

As a beginner be a bit obsessive about that profile. When you gain some other buildings from grabbing take the time to knock them down and rebuild with labs. This is because, as explained in-game, your tech per turn is greater if the proportion of labs to other buildings is high.

You should aim to grab by way of one PS, spend time developing and then tech out your available turns. Then sell. Return once your tech has sold, find a targer, rinse and repeat.

You must also spend some time reading the market so as to price your tech well. You have to play several full sets to get a feel for what particular techs sell well at what various points in the cycle.

Because you need to do well at finding targets and well at pricing, techer is a more difficult specialism than the others. It is also a lot of fun.

It is not a ladder p1co, A is above the others but B and C are equal.

Hmmm. They live in their own world within the game but it is difficult to think of a reason why they should be excluded.

A bug I should say.

Wonder if the "reduce expenses" bonus catches them? If not bug for sure.

I rather like the look of the game as it is. Couldn't really say why.

Very hard to imagine anyone but an enthusiast spending the time to run the site let alone to pay for the privilege.

But surprising things happen.

Finding a way to make it commercial would be way beyond me.

The game is not commercially run. It's original owner is long gone. It is maintained by and for enthusiasts.

Try it, if you like games. If you prefer money you are in the wrong place.

(edit: Or not, see below.)

Oh Deezy, Deezy. I was camped out ready to take a sizeable chunk of that $2 billion at maxed out Military Theo private market rates (well plus my VERY reasonable profit of course). All you had to do was start buying and the troops and tanks would have been there, fully equipped, freshly painted and in their best dress uniforms.

The disappointment for me was the way the military market stayed virtually inactive for the last 12 hours of the set. I remember having fun as a MBR frantically playing the market w/o screwing up de-stocking but in this market I just sat twiddling my thumbs and watching my goods fail to sell. I think I sold just three modest parcels of troops the whole time.

The private market refreshes amazingly fast so I guess people just use that to destock and don't have to buy on the open market. But I still don't really understand. SURELY a Theo maxed out in Military can make sales? But I couldn't.

I'm also going to have to work out how to deal with tech having a 1,000 autobuy price. Oh, and this 2 hours on the market thing.

Or maybe try farmer. :) Never done that.

You were holding third until the very last seconds, deezy, but Westar Maxus got his or her jump in just in time to pip you.

Anyway, well played. :)

1 Time is Now (#43) 22,031 $31,521,837 CG
2 Fine Day (#90) 8950 $26,528,619 HG
3 Westar Maxus V80 (#57) 19,548 $26,021,553 CG

Well I find it amazing that people are managing to destock solely out of their private markets. Also I have seen few people making noticeable jumps in the last 24 hours.

Which, I think shows I have much to learn, especially on this interesting server. :)

PS - ahhh, what I am not allowing for is the speed with which the private market refreshes. Perhaps that is why the military market is dead.

But why is there no activity on the military market? You can't destock #2b from private market alone.

One thing I have noticed is that after the AB and GS runs which break out mid to late set there are people around with very high DR. They have been unable to stock themselves so might as well continue being aggressive.

Sitting behind a wall of turrets may provide some protection (and that looks like what the leaders are doing) which mostly prevents stocking or, I supose you can try to time your run to the line so as to keep the period of stocking as short as possible before you jump.

Hard to do, that, I suspect.

MBR would be good but there doesn't seem time and anyway, the military market has been virtually inactive so even that doesn't look as though it would be effective.

A lot to think about.

Thank you for your insight.

??

Take out the other material - ghost acres, buildings, bushels, money and tech seized.

Look, you ought to stop doing this.

All the detail there, bushels, money and tech seized; troops turrets and tanks destroyed provides information to people about the configuration of #89 not available to them without carrying out a spy.

I suggest you replace the material from your country's report with an extract copied from the news - available to all w/o need to spy.

By all means tell the world that you have had to tie up a bunch of your troops for a couple of hours, THAT disclosure only harms you.

Nah! It's all the fault of the oilers I tell you. Go get 'em Getafix (if there is one - an oiler that is??).

I thought that old post must be out of date. Haven't found anything with the current base figures (for oil). Thanks for the sell to figure Celphi, but what are the buy from figures?

Well if people don't want to play that is plainly a matter for them.

I am intending to play in 1A next set and have been thinking that there are perhaps not enough crap clans about. So maybe I'll start one. If SoF don't need their site any more I'd have a use for it.

Let me know.

And if there are a couple old FIST members snoozing quietly around the place it may be that it would prove to be not so crappy a clan as all that. :)

I found a post saying sell to the private market at 30 and buy at 300. But it is rather old and I wondered if it had been changed.

What does oil cost on the private market?

You might delete that information about #9. If it is based on actual knowledge. The forum rules preclude posting information which would require taking a turn to spy (or whatever).

Similarly what you say about BYOB going turret heavy.

Not a lot of point having them unless you use them.

And once you have used them, well they are gone you see.

Deterrent value limited.

Notice, for example that you have not used them on #72.

Nor on #9.

Try having the quantity of land which you can defend and learn how to stockpile and destock. You might find yourself with somewhat expanded boasting rights.

Most of the cheats seem to have gone but I see there is one (small timer) left.

How long do you allow yourself for your retals?

And some, perhaps, not quite so good.

The Strategy Room isn't much used I notice - as was the case on Earth 2025 when I was there, as far as I remember anyway (now where did I put those glasses?).

It is bottom feeders (on the Alliance server) who don't spy. The occasional bounce doesn't much matter (as long as it IS occasional) and the loss of military from oversending is also no big deal when the number of units is small.

Lots of retal targets stacking up.

But I thought you were still working on this one

PS Jul 30, 19:16 Cows With Guns (#72) 123456 (#100) 182 A
PS Jul 30, 19:21 Cows With Guns (#72) Seven of Nine (#22) 366 A
PS Jul 30, 19:59 Cows With Guns (#72) CEO (#8) 158 A

Still, you did get a couple in. I suppose the thing about stacking up is you have to find time for them all. Like persuading builders to finish the job.

The one which best suits the good which you plan to specialise in.

Everyone has a few handicaps to overcome, I guess.

Impressive player.

Or you can just change your country name. That works. :(

Good luck.

I have no answer to getting flattened by ABs, Arkuss. Almost certainly you start by dropping most of the empty land (to cut the cost of re-building such acres as you can manage). But apart from that I have nothing to offer.

If you have a worthwhile chunk of Spy/Warfare tech you can turn into quite a surprisingly powerful suicide country after dropping the acres. :)

Going back to recovering from GSs an additional point is that you have to watch out for the point at which you have recovered enough population to get near your maximum because at that point setting tax to 70 will lose you population. So at that point put tax back to 35-37, whatever your favourite number is, and the job is done. Buying (or researching) some Residential is likely now to be a good idea.

And the answer (who will be killed off first) is

Late Arrival #121
PS Aug 2, 11:48 Late Arrival (#121) C R O A T I A (#41) 851 A
PS Aug 2, 11:49 Late Arrival (#121) C R O A T I A (#41) 867 A
PS Aug 2, 11:49 Late Arrival (#121) C R O A T I A (#41) 718 A
PS Aug 2, 11:50 Late Arrival (#121) C R O A T I A (#41) 521 A

BR Aug 2, 16:21 C R O A T I A (#41) Late Arrival (#121) 18 B
10 C

Late Arrival (#121) Dead

So you are the target of a GS kill run which comes up short. Maybe the enemy did not have enough turns, maybe you are an ace stonewaller. Anyway, what next?

The answer is that your production is crippled. This is because of a programming change which links production to population.

You will want to get production back up again and, other things being equal, this is the way to do it. Of course you want to increase your population but meanwhile you also want to get production moving upwards asap. The first thing to do is to dump as much residential tech onto the market as you can. Try to get it to the smallest level as you can as quickly as you can. This is because your production is linked to the proportion between your actual population and your maximum population. So you want to reduce maximum population. (Maybe you also want to get rid of residences on your land, for the same reason, but I have not tested that.)

Until you can get back up to 20% of maximum population production is going ton stay at the same, miserly level. So put tax to zero. But, oddly, once you get back to 20% or more you should change tax to 70%. This is because the formula for the effect starts with "(1-0.95 x tax rate)". If you put tax to 70% and monitor production turn by turn you will see production rising. If you are a techer put tax to zero on any non teching turn and to 70% whenever teching.

Putting tax at 70% comes with the cost of slowing the recovery of population. But it does give you better production while recovering. If cash and other resources are abundant you may just be able to set tax at zero until recovered. But mostly that won't be the case and you will find the above technique useful.

It's now pretty clear that #118 simply wanted to accumulate kills of tiny countries. S/he managed two.

S/he went on to kill #52 (who came back to hit #118 with a re-start).

There does not seem to be any diminishing returns abuse.

Maybe there is an award for the most kills of (tiny) countries?

This has got to hurt

PS Aug 2, 02:28 kamall (#13) Cypselos (#92) 286 A
PS Aug 2, 13:23 Cypselos (#92) kamall (#13) 1092 A

Retaliation limits of 1:1 or land:land were developed by clans as policies which provide a framework within which diplomacy between clans can take place. But, of course, people get used to the idea and, as here, want retalling "rules" to have relevance on solo servers.

There is some relevance to 1:1 retals in tourney or express. Whether because of an inate sense of fairness or from familiarity with the alliance server approach, people are much more likely to accept a 1:1 retal w/o flying off the handle.

But that is it's only relevance. There is no right to a retal written into the game. It is enforced (on the alliance server) by clans organising themselves to enforce their policy and negotiating around their policy. To elevate the policy idea from something used in a clan context to something built into the structure of the game would be entirely new - and very destructive of the psychological aspects of solo play.

The reason Ebert makes his suggestion is that he likes to netgain. And he is good at it. As a netter he likes to play techer and he is fair at that. But a techer must protect his land as well as anyone else. If he chooses to go light on turrets to keep his expenses down he should not be surprised when he is grabbed - whether once or multiple times. If he wants to be in a position to threaten dire consequences to anyone who doesn´t politely stick to policies which would allow him to net in comfort then he will do well to play Indy or some other strat which allows him to punish his opponents more effectively than he feels he can playing techer.

The point is that it is not up to the programming of the game to protect netters, it is up to them to use skill in exploiting the programming, and the psychology of their fellow players, to enjoy the freedom to netgain successfully.