I thought this was supposed to be a civil server.. Damn it people, quit fluffing things up! :(

It is brutal server, once you fall behind it is very hard to catch back up. Set is over in a fairly shortly so you will get to try again.

Build construction sites early (at least that is what I do), and keep up with the top guys for your strategy in land and tech for production. Try not to fall below 1/2 of the top guys networth and you will avoid most attacks I think.

Does GDI work similar in Alliance?

Correct, you can't stop countries from grabbing you by going heavy spies. It may work against some countries who don't spend to many tries to get in, but they could also get lucky, or with persistence they will get a spy report eventually.

The idea is to get enough SPAL to where you can spy into the majority of countries you are grabbing without failing much. Depending on the strategy, turns are precious and you want to save as many as you can doing other things like Teching, Cashing, or Building.

In short, it doesn't work very well, IMO.

Harmful spy ops have a large success window just like the information ops. It is not like the attack formula where you need to send 10% over to break. A person can have far less spies than you and they will still succeed on some Spy-Ops.

Try stopping spy ops at 30k+ land, with over 1.2mil spies, both allies with over 1mil spies, and spy tech at 150%. It is impossible to netgain competitively and stop these spy-ops from countries who run low land and high spies. The worst part is the spy ops not covered by GDI, so any fluffer can do it regardless of whether you have hit them before or not.


But here is the formula anyway..


SPAL implies Spies Per Acre Land

(spies*govtbonus*spytech + 1/4 allies)/land

vs your enemies

(spies*govtbonus*spytech + 1/4 allies)/land

Wouldn't expect a strong finish from me. I am spending ~$1.33 billion on a big fireworks show soon. :)

A question still stands.. if nobody can place oil for that high of a price.. how did some get on there for $50k?

Kind of defeats the purpose of going corruption bonus, but that purpose was really defeated when food prices didn't spike like the last few sets. I didn't take into account for fluffty players bombing my banks when I decided to give the corruption bonus a try.


Seriously though.. If these new changes go live next reset without any of the changes that us solo players have been asking for.. I may break from playing this game until management gets their head of of their asses and realizes there is much more to this game than the fluffty Alliance server.. It gets old playing versions of games where the developers have no real interest in, don't pay attention to, and end up screwing up because of this lack of care.

Day1: 10/10=100% Successful bomb banks at ~50 SPAL.

Day2: 19/20=95% Successful bomb banks at ~60 SPAL.

Day3: 10/12=83.33% Successful bomb banks at ~65 SPAL.

Conclusion: It is impossible to stop, don't try.

All from a guy I have never done anything to (and claims it is his first set!)..

Continuing after further investigation..

The Communism Indy pulling the spy ops on me has a SPAL of 118 before allies with 1.2mil spies, 120% tech, and 12.2k acres.

After yesterday I upped my spy tech considerably and have a SPAL of just over 60 now. 1.2mil spies,

Today I get 20 more bomb banks with 19 of them successful...

As any strategy other than an Industrial, I don't think getting enough spies to stop these attacks by the end game would be a feasible netting strategy if you wanted to finish in the top ranks. Just to match his SPAL I would need over double the amount of spies I have now. And to put this in time perspective, there is 13.5 days left in Primary set of 2 months.

This is the kind of move people come back and screw the guy's next set over (and maybe the set after that too).. I wouldn't be surprised if you just made a multi-set enemy with this.

Well my own was just over 50 SPAL (including allies and tech) when the 10 spy ops got through (100% success, I found him by GDI letting me attempt to missile him). But I do not know what his SPAL is yet. I will see if I can get this info when I log in today, but I am not going to waste too many turns on it.

And btw, to me it doesn't make sense to both screw suiciders, then throw them a bone. Either yank the rug from out under their feet or allow them to do what they want. Don't tell them suicide is bad, but then still give them ways to do it..

Should probably spam post this on every solo server board to get as much attention to it as we can. Like Slag said, the developers don't play the solo servers. The only way they will get the hint is if we voice our opinions as loud as we can!

+This^

I currently do have a SPAL of over 50, with lots of spy tech, over a million spies, both my Intel allies have over 1mil spies as well, and I am sitting on 36k acres. But it doesn't do a damn thing to stop 10 successful bomb bank operations from a country I have never attacked before. His country has 12k land and he is a Communism, not even a Dictator. I had the steal tech problem last set, so I got even more spies this set, and a non-Dictator can still have his way with me spy-wise. I am afraid the amount of spies needed to counter this behavior would no longer be considered a viable netting strategy..

I don't see why GDI was added to protect against suicides, but then intentionally left wide fluffing open to certain spy operations. Is this a way to give the smaller guys the ability to retal the bigger guys in some way? If so, then we failed to make sure the bigger guy actually hit the smaller guy at least once before being opened up to these attacks..

And I realize some of these things will take time to code, especially changing how the allies work. But there are temporary solutions, like disabling offensive/research allies all together on the solo servers, until you can get the reworked ally fixes in place.

I endorse this thread and all its wisdom. Please stop forcing Alliance's fluffty problems on the Solo servers.. If the problems don't exist on some servers, it makes zero sense to implement them and screw up a mostly working server.

10 successful bomb-bank operations tonight from a communism country I never hit before.. I had an SPAL of just over 50 too..

Too many crappy Techers playing this set who don't know how to price their goods correctly. Tech prices goes by the thousands.. You do not have to undercut the person in front of you by $200 a day just to sell out moments after it hits the market..

That is what joining GDI is good for.. Even if you are a warring country. It stops the random special attacks from countries you never heard of before.

There isn't much you can do to mitigate the end game expenses other than hold less military until you are ready to dump stock and jump. This is only good to do if you think you will not be attacked even with less military. Generally as a Techer near the end my the set, I have already maxed out Business/Residential/Military tech, so there isn't another way to reduce the money lost per turn.

If your Tech Per Turn (Cash after sales) isn't able to cover your Expenses Per Turn, then you should stop Teching turns. When the money you would make from putting your Tech on the market, no longer covers the Expense of spending the turn required to put goods on the market, then you should stop selling Tech on the market. Remember when calculating the cost to spend a turn, you should include any food expenses. I even calculate the food decay in my expenses when I do this.

We have Alliance members playing Primary who message countries to come join their clan and play on Alliance.

But do we have any Primary players in Alliance who message people to come test their skills in Primary?

HOLY fluff, what kind of land are you sitting on with that many spies!?

And note that he says MOST people. From my view, there has been an increased number of people grabbing targets their size or smaller this set. And I am referring to the players near the top of the leader-boards, not the lower net players.

I had this before and it also gave me an error when searching for Bushels during this time.


My report on it is here:

http://forums.earthempires.com/...0218&z=market-history

Casher is sounding good after that PCI boost which really wasn't needed on Primary.. heh

We will have to see how it plays out I guess..

But i will admit I am a little saddened to hear the Techer networth record for Primary that I made last set is probably old news now.

There is roughly ~23 days left in this Primary set. Lets get some positive changes for the solo servers done by then please! :)

[quote poster=BobbyATA; 23423; 444657]

Not for Techers! =D

Also a ghost acre reduction to everyone if I read correctly? Wonder if Military Strategy tech will be in higher demand to compensate for the 5% reduction.

Did I read that explore rates are going up? Wonder what the new cutoffs are and how much extra land we can get by batch exploring at the start.

Building until 4000 acres is cheaper too I think someone mentioned? So some start-up strategies might need to be changed.

Since we are in the mood for making changes to the game, how about making this tech more useful? I have seen it brought up before in a few other threads buried deep in this B&S area. I think the responses were mostly positive.

To make Medical tech more useful, it needs more uses other than to lower Defensive losses and cure Bio-terrorism. How about making it reduce Attacking losses and losses from Special attacks as well. Meaning it would reduce losses from both offense and defense, and for special attacks like GS, BR, AB. It could also reduce losses from missiles like EM and CM's.

This should make medical tech more useful to the bigger countries later in the set who have to spend a lot of military to make their grabs and always lose 8% of what they send. For people who are at war, this tech would be more appealing to reduce their losses both on offense and defense.

Just tried to pull up some market history, didn't change any variables from the default when you first arrive at the page.

It gives me the message:
"You did not search over a proper time period."

In game time:
Current Time: 02:38:06 Apr 7, 2013

Default Search Parameters:
Time Period (Start) = April 4, 02:00
Time Period (End) = April 7, 02:00
Good (select one) = [happening on all goods]
Interval = 4 Hours


If I put the (End) time back 1 hour to April 7, 01:00 it does work. But this shouldn't happen on a default search right?

I tell people it is the best non-graphics strategy game I have ever played. Then I usually get the response. "What is a non-graphics game?" haha

You cant just look at the portal page:
http://www.earthempires.com/portal
and grab the start/end dates from there?

Stocking bushels can already be avoided by going with the Corruption Bonus. There must be a down side to storing money in a bank. Like maybe you can't use it whenever you want, but only every 48-72 hours as it earns interest.

Acres lost & gained are relative to your land vs the persons land you are grabbing, their DR level, government bonus, and military strategy. Generally, if you have a bit less land than the person you are attacking, you will gain more than they would gain had they hit you. But this is not always the case. A Dictator or Tyranny with 140% military strategy will likely gain a bit more land than other governments with no military strategy tech on a similar grab.

Primary is not only a race for land, but sustainability. As you can see now that we have passed day 30, a number of the countries that you saw dominate the top 20 during the first 30 days, are now falling off in ranks and will continue to slip away.

Often for Techers and Cashers, it is because they did not build enough Construction Sites during the early game. Meaning that when they start making grabs each day for a total of 1000+ acres, they have to spend a lot of turns building up on those acres instead of spending those turns earning extra income. This may be different for the other strategies who produce the same amounts no matter how the turns are spent (Indy/Farmer/Oiler).

Another reason some fall off the top scores list after the halfway point is because they didn't keep their tech levels up enough. Their production capacity is not being utilized to its optimal potential. Therefore they are unable to keep up with those with higher tech levels who are producing and selling more than they are daily. I think it was mentioned in another thread that tech levels for both Farmers and Cashers are the most crucial to keep up, while Indy can be a little more forgiving.

I have told others this before, but if all you buy is turrets, you WILL be grabbed eventually. Some people do not care how many jets they have to send if they have already spent turns spying into you. 6mil is a lot of turrets to break, but if they have no reason to fear a retal some will do it no matter the cost. As a general rules I like to stay about 50/50 or 40/60 turrets/jets. If a country feels that they can be grabbed back, they are much less likely to hit you. Of course there is no sure way to avoid grabs. A lot of the top countries have been grabbed or retalled this set at least once.

Well, they did get screwed pretty badly last set. heh

If you highlight what you want on the page and copy it, then do a Paste Special in Excel it puts it into cells without all the formatting that comes with the page.

Well.. I do similar with a spreadsheet, but I don't have VB log into my account and do it for me. I just copy and past the info myself when I am online and it does the calculations. Best to ask a Mod if its legal to use a program that logs in and pulls the data for you.

You can get GDI for free after you join it first by using the bonus points. But as mentioned above, you first have to join GDI first, and to do that it must be before you make any attacks or spy-ops. Once you have joined GDI, you can't leave it for the remainder of the set.

Yeah, that is the problem with this idea, and why I didn't see it happening on team servers where multiple countries doing kill runs on a single country is a common thing. I don't have a good way to determine who did the work, only who got the last hit that ended up killing the country.

On a solo server though, if someone steals the kill and gets the reward, the person who actually did the work might decide to war the person who sniped their target.

Ouch, on the up side you BPT is even better now! Heh

If you are playing on Primary..

Joining GDI provides the following protection:

Unless you have attacked a country twice or more, that country will only be able to commit the following attacks or harmful spy ops against you:
standard strikes
planned strikes
steal tech
bomb banks
burn oil
burn bushels

Joining GDI also restricts your attacks:

After joining GDI, the only attacks you can commit against other countries who have not attacked you more than once are:
standard strikes
planned strikes
steal tech
bomb banks
burn oil
burn bushels

GDI costs $5 per acre of land (unless you get the free bonus) and must be joined before making any attacks. Once you join GDI, you can't leave it. Additionally, in the final six hours of the game, you will not be able to engage in any offensive actions against countries that have not hit you at least once.



However, to address what is stopping you from hitting countries back that are too big, it is the humanitarians limit I believe. In the primary server, humanitarians will not allow countries to attack other countries which are either four times bigger or smaller than themselves. If you take your networth and multiply it by four, but it is still smaller than the big guys networth, then humanitarians will not allow you to try and hit them back. What probably happened is that they were just within your humanitarians limit, but after making their attack, jumped up in networth above the humanitarians limit. To try and get them back you will have to get your own networth back within the humanitarians limit.

Could make it so the attacker goes into country to country DR twice as fast on a dead country to limit the gains per attacker. But then maybe reduce the readiness of a dead country to the minimum allowed on defense. With nobody to lead the country the military would be in shambles trying to coordinate the defense of its people.

Now, for countries that are actually killed by another country. How about the killer gets the dead countries land and money (or a portion of it) for putting in the work to actually kill them? Wars are not cheap and can do a lot of damage to your networth. Getting some benefit for killing a country other than the satisfaction would help with some of that cost. I don't see how this would work on team servers where multiple people gang up on a single country, but on Solo servers it might be an interesting addition..

to get better.

Yup, the trick then is to remember to actually use them when you do log into your country.. hah

I use a mix of EEstats market history and the in-game market news to price my goods, but I still get tech stuck sometimes. Depending on whether I need my goods sold in 12 hours or 18 hours, I price them according to the average prices. If I need them sold off quicker, price at or a little below average*. If I am going for my 18 hour bonus, I usually price a little above average*.

Another thing to watch for is changes in volumes sold each day. If suddenly more of one good is demanded and the market becomes empty of it, prices will usually rise to meet the increased demand. On the other hand, if demand suddenly falls and goods get stuck, prices will usually decrease in an effort to sell more.

*This is considering that prices are fairly stable and not crashing or rising by the $100's each day..

After sending out 5 brigades and going to my War Room, the blue [Home | Rules | Privacy Policy | About us] bar that is supposed to be at the bottom, appears at the top of the page with the text overlapping the EE pic at the top left side.

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