Build up your bpt and also destroy all buildings other than labs cs and have about 5-10% as industrial complexes at 100% for spies.

Don't produce anything other than spies... buy the military you need on the public market.

Don't buy anything other than turrets until you're ready to grab land. you only need a nominal amount of troops and tanks to deter suiciders.

As a techer, always have your land fully built. tech points per turn depends on the proportion of labs:land.

next few turns

don't miss this chance... message afaik as soon as you can. you never know, he might actually give you some of his mojo, which many would desire. (hint: he's one of the best at this game)

Stop right there, wait a minute mr undecided.

The best gains are to be made when you specialise. There are many different strategies you can play but it's best to think about it before blindly building what you think you should be doing.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail - as the saying goes.

Take a look at this link. http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Strategies

An important question for you, are you aggressive or passive?

If you're passive then you don't need jets, mainly turrets with a few troops and tanks (between 5-10% of your turrets is a good start). All you'll be doing to gain land is exploring.

You need to improve your bpt (buildings per turn). Around 60-80 bpt would be reasonable. You can do it all early or you can space it out a little but don't leave it too late.

Have fun.

Techer is the only strat I've ever played (except in express) and grabbing is much more efficient at building up land, however there is a counter point which, until last set in tourney I hadn't contemplated.

When grabbing you have to buy and maintain a decent number of jets and replace those lost in battle. Also you have to create enough spies to be able to efficiently select your targets. I found it (almost) as efficient to stock earlier when bushels and oil were cheaper.

In all I'd say the best time to start grabbing is when you're reaching around 3-4k acres. This could vary depending on just how fat other countries are.

meh, tech is stupidly low for this point too. I don't understand why I'm seeing tech for 3500 this early.

I'm almost contemplating a switch to theo casher.

Stop right there...

Before you make another move, just think about what you want to be when you grow up.

1) If you have green fingers, explore lots, build cs, build farms, buy agri tech. Sell the food. Profit!

2) If you're a brainiac, explore a little, build cs, build labs, research then when you've a little money behind you buy jets and grab land instead of exploring. Buy food when you need it. Sell the tech. Profit!

3) If you just like making money, explore lots, build cs, build ent zones and residences in (roughly) equal proportions and buy business and residential techs. You profit every turn so you just have to buy things. This is a bit of a girly strategy because you're shopping lots.

4) If you like making things, explore lots, build cs, build indi complexes and buy industrial tech and food when you need it. Maybe use jets you make to grab land instead of exploring. Sell turrets and jets. Profit!

For 1-3 above, build between 5-10% of total land with industrial complexes and produce spies only.

If you are a brute and want to attack people for their land, then for 1 and 4, you may want to build a few oil rigs, but oil is usually cheap enough that you can buy it on the public market. Generally you don't have to build oil rigs until oil becomes expensive.

If you are a nice person you will just explore in order to gain land. Don't bother with jets if you are a nice person. You don't need them. You'll want mainly turrets and just a few troops and tanks... troops and tanks at about 5-10% of your turrets wouldn't be unreasonable.

The key is to specialise. When you're bigger, and your main tech levels as almost at their maximum, you'll want to buy other techs that don't contribute to your speciality, eg 1 and 4 will buy bus/res and military techs to increase their net revenue.

Have fun.

I'd like to tout for some techer allies.

meh, I did recall a dumb sale (i think it was 1m+ troops at 13 instead of 130) once knowing that I would run out of money on the 3rd turn, not realising that I didn't have enough food for even 1 turn. I nearly cried when I realised what I'd done.

erp. Don't know where i got 0 jets from

are you selling max tech each day? You should be.
Research mil tech. It will be useful for the last few days as you private market may be cheaper than the public market.
If you need the sdi because you're likely to be warring, then keep it. If not sell it. It should be sell at slightly higher prices than most techs soon.

You have no jets... Implies you're only exploring, not grabbing. If you're not grabbing then you have absolutely no need of mil strategy. Sell it all

oh, and if you're in a situation where you've got just less than your bpt of unused land,eg bpt=60 anc unused acres > 50, build labs anyway. It's better than researching with that land empty or exploring more and hoping to get it close.
If bpt=60 and unused is less than 40 then i would always leave it and just research.
I guess i should run some numbers on this. It's always been a feeling about when it works to not build with full bpt

get rid of the farms and oil rigs

i'd love it to be a pyramid but there's just too few players

there's not enough players for 3 tourney servers.
Make game a server for 75-80 players with the rest for game b

i've around 3.4m turrets and need a def ally if that's interesting to anyone

need more tanks. You could be ab'd too easily

destroy all buildings other than enterprise, residences and have 5%of total land as industrial producing 100% spies.
Cash each turn (when not building or exploring and with money generate for first half of turns buy business tech and res tech.
Cash last half of turns and buy turrets

Troops and tanks are expensive to keep so have only minimal levels to deter special attacks. If you're not attacking, and you certainly don't need to for a while, then you don't need to spend money on jets.
Gradually build up your construction sites for a bpt of maybe 50-60 you may decide for more later but that' later.
Don't buy other techs, only bus/res for a while. You don't really need them.

Have fun

Perhaps there should only be game A and game B? Drop game C.

There's currently 194 players registered in the tourney games. Perhaps game A could have 80 and the rest for game A.

Fair enough. I guess his military expenses aren't actually that high at the moment so that makes sense.

i'm not a casher, but i think you should be getting yourself military tech... At least to 90% or so.
I hope you've got some def allies... I think you're a little light on your defence even with the high weapons tech
Have fun

tax rare should be 35%. Change to 36 when food costs about 46/47. Do not have lower.
Get rid of the farms, unless iirc food is above 60 and stays therefor a while.
You need more spies.
Turrets and jets are what you should concentrate on, not tanks.
Get indi tech when you can

Fair enough. It's a nice twist and your game has given me a lot to think about.

"As a TMBR you already sell jets and turrets in addition to selling troops and tanks. "

Only if it's profitable. I've only just started playing again but in the last tourney set selling jets and turrets for profit was impossible until the last few days. With prices ranging from 99-110 for both jets and turrets there simply was no profit.

Whilst it was profitable to sell jets in primary in the last set it was only barely so for a while and in previous sets, according to eestats.com, there have been times when a tmbr would not have made a profit at all on jets and/or turrets for a large proportion of the set.

I agree with you and think the market regen@50% would be too low, but I think you're putting it too high with a reduction @25%. I think 35-40% would be closer to maintain the profitability without skewing it too much in favour of the tmbr.

I like it.

ok, absolute min prices, (100% mb with max tech) are...
_________Theo________Demo
_________25%__40%____25%__40%
Troops____77____62______88____71
Jets_____103____82_____118____94
Turrets___112____90____129_____103
Tanks____315___252_____360___288

As well as improving profit on slow selling tanks and troops your change will actually make selling jets and turrets a very worthwhile prospect for an eartly set TMBR - also for a DMBR.

Looking at 10k Theo, 180 cs, 200 ind, 120k mil tech (90.55%) then...

@25%______Private___Public___Units_in_6_hrs__Profit
Troops_______79_______120_______360,000_______12.17m
Jets________106_______130_______300,000_______4.86m
Turrets______116_______130_______300,000_______1.86m
Tanks_______324_______520_______120,000_______19.78m

Total profit = $38.66m
(Demo MBR profit would be $29.58m - no profit on turrets at this price for DMBR)

@40%______Private___Public___Units_in_6_hrs__Profit
Troops_______64_______120_______180,000_______8.78m
Jets_________86_______130_______150,000_______5.43m
Turrets_______94_______130_______150,000_______4.23m
Tanks_______262_______520________60,000_______13.61m

Total profit = $32.05m
(Demo MBR profit would be $29.04m)

@25%______Private___Public___Units_in_6_hrs__Profit
Troops_______79_______105_______360,000_______7.09m
Jets________106_______110_______300,000_______-0.78m
Turrets______116_______110_______300,000_______-3.78m
Tanks_______324_______480_______120,000_______15.26m

Total profit = $22.36m (tanks + troops only)
(Demo MBR profit would be $17.28m)

@40%______Private___Public___Units_in_6_hrs__Profit
Troops_______64_______105_______180,000_______6.25m
Jets_________86_______110_______150,000_______2.61m
Turrets_______94_______110_______150,000_______1.41m
Tanks_______262_______480________60,000_______11.35m

Total profit = $21.62m
(Demo MBR profit would be $17.94m)

[At 60% regen and 40% reductions, profit for
low public prices above would give $25.94m
high public prices above would give $38.46m]

This would, I think, have a small effect on commie indies as mbr would make sales of jets and turrets if they had bought out their tanks and troops.

I have to think more on whether this would be a good or bad thing for full or half set mbr. I think I agree with what you say about late TMBR destocking.

Well, I have to say, for an all-x I am seriously impressed. When I played 10 years ago I'd never heard of an all-x techer->mbr. I'd never have thought it possible. I think I have an idea of how to play it now I've given it some thought though.

You're obviously an experienced player but I have to ask, why as a techer->mbr did you have such a low bpt for so long?

The other thing... you didn't seem to research mil tech. Why was that?

Troops and tanks... yeah poor sales which I experienced too. Not my fault you weren't selling so much though. I was only selling serious amounts of them from around 18-Apr-11.

yes, rockman is right... Stockpiling much more is better. I was looking at it more from the point of being a reseller, which is what i interpreted as the aim of the original post and some of it's reponses.
I changed when i did because someone had ab'd 1.5k acres when i only had about $1.7b stockpiled. I wasn't sure whether to rebuild as labs or mb. Didn't think tech prices would hold out as long as they eventually did. Would have been better as labs with hindsight.

well i'm pretty happy. Finished with $22.5m nw. Not bad for late start.

before you make a switch you should have stockpiled...
In tourney game b i just did it - at 11k acres it cost me around $300m to fully convert buildings to mb. so ideally you would have $300m + whatever you need to buy out your pm... Which will probably be somewhere around $800-1000m.
you should work out your costs before making the switch.

reveal yourself... TiMBeR? Well played

yeah, wish i'd stayed teching rather than switching to mbr

with a spal way above 50 all indies should be dropped

It's close to the end of the set now so you're not going to improve much by changing anything, but for the next reset follow these general rules...

2 usual ways to start are:
1) Use first 99 turns on building a few farms, a few ind and mainly CS. Then store turns. ie sit and wait for 18 hours, collect your 6 turn bonus then wait again until the next time bonus and maybe again. By this time, there will be turrets, food and possibly some expensive tech on the market. Depending on your strategy, waiting as long as possible to properly start developing your country can be advantageous when others don't really know what they're doing and price their units too low.

2) Come out of protection straight away to sell turrets or food.
It's not likely that, with 600 acres or less that you will be attacked. It's not really worth it for the attacker (unless maybe a tyranny). It's cheaper for someone to explore and build than attack you with 600 acres. Up to 800 acres is still fairly safe.

Build your bpt to a good level. This will depend on what size you intend to become. My preference is to spend early turns building up to my preferred bpt (around 85-100) as I usually play techer where it's important to spend as many turns teching as possible and I always aim to have around 15k acres or so. If you're playing an indy then it's not as important to get to your peak bpt as early. When you simplify things down to desired size only then there is a way of calculating an optimum bpt which gives the lowest turns needed to build 100% of your land. I'm sure someone has it handy somewhere - it does depend on government too.

Specialize...
Casher
Governments - Rep, Demo, Theo
Build mainly ent and res (stay to around a 55:45 ratio) with a few ind for 100% spies.
Buy (mainly) bus, res and mil techs

Farmer
Governments - Fascist, Demo
Build only farms with a few ind for 100% spies.
Buying tech... buy mainly agri

Indy - build only ind.
Governments - Commie
Buying tech... buy mainly ind and mil techs

Techer
Governments - Theo, Tyranny
Build mostly labs

The above are the usual governments and strategies you might use. You can use others but beware of each governments advantages and disadvantages. Don't try to think that you can do everything as you appear to have done here. Many players will switch strategy types... eg start as a farmer, change to a techer then in the endgame change to a military base reseller (MBR). Having a high bpt will enable you to spend the least turns possible making these changes.

You should consider which techs will benefit you most. If you attack for land then Military Strategy is of some use. If you don't, then it's useless. Others are less likely to attack with missiles if you don't attack for land so you wouldn't need to spend on SDI either.

Use http://www.eestats.com to it's full potential by looking at past games to see market prices as well as searching for potential landgrab targets.

You may want to decide on whether you should go all-x (that is, all explore). If you do, you can concentrate your military purchases to (mostly) turrets. This will save on upkeep for jets. You can always explore to around 2k acres then decide whether to get jets then to make some grabs. It is possible to explore to 12k+.

Mainly though, specialize. The other stuff isn't as important.

Have fun.

caff

haven't finished building on the last grab. I'm buying out my pm twice a day - when someone isn't selling tanks at 475. Never had time to stock food so all i'm selling is military.hoping to make around 15-20m nw

too many troops. What do you need them for? They are expensive as defence and you wouldn't want to be attacking with them. You'd be better buying turrets

I concur. It is amazing. Can't believe I was giving him advice earlier. I still think he should have grabbed to get up to 20k acres

Also, I still can't understand why, early on, he appears to have researched agri tech (or indi techs). Sure they seem to get more income early on in the set but it doesn't make up for having more military, business and residential especially when reselling.

On reflection I've sort of had a change of thought...

I don't have a problem with someone attacking - even unprovoked. I appreciate the fun involved in being in a war. If you're netgaining and you don't want the risk of being suicided on then you should be in GDI.

I hadn't overlooked GDI... I'd overlooked Getafix's issue of being a netgainer and being attacked.

Ravi said:
Looks like #82 did some good work...complete solo kills, which the Mods have said is acceptable on this server.

I'm not sure I understand why you think this is the case. Any idiot can, without much skill, take down a country in express. The number of turns that can be accumulated and played in a short time allows this to be the case. A country, of small size may defend itself with a few thousand turrets with the, obviously wrong, assumption that it is unlikely to be attached. The attacker simply has to buy/produce enough jets/troops to do a kill run.

This is senseless other than to acheive malicious fun on the part of the attacker.

I think my main problem is that these kills had no real skill/strategy involved. 8 minutes to achieve 2 kills...

Kingme said:
Also, I completely disagree with your statement about this not being a server for beginners. If that truly was a new player, do you not think they will research into GDI this set? or learn from their mistake and get bigger before logging out?

Fair enough. I would't want everyone agreeing with me. It would make for a boring life.
I'm a tenacious sod. If someone did that to me, I'd want to try again and again until I was happy that I'd tried my best. If I'm still crap, then so be it. I might just leave at that point.

I'm just concerned that others aren't quite as stubborn as I am, will face this situation and give up before being able to have a proper try. Perhaps that's the sort of person that shouldn't be playing this game.

Anyway, wall of text. Sorry. If you read it, well done.

Have fun.

I don't have a problem with someone that wants to suicide. What bothered me in this case is #82 just killed 2 people without having been attacked by anyone. Perhaps I have a different definition but this is not a case of #82 committing suicide.

Suicide is attacking to damage or kill a larger opponent knowing that you could/should be squashed.

If we look at the first country killed, #146... this country probably built many cs and explored its way to 345 acres. This could have been a new player that looked on these boards and saw that having a high bpt was a good thing. Instead of being able to learn anything of running a country, this player has probably just come out of protection and could have possibly left the computer for lunch. Between 12:35:05 and 12:38:43 this country has been destroyed.

4 minutes later the second country is killed.

It just seems bizarre that the express server would be sold on the wiki as:
"The Express Server is for those who like it fast! With the fastest turns of all the other servers this server allows you to try new strategies in days not weeks. This is a great server for beginners because you can mess up your country and start over in a few days. "

It is not for beginners.

I don't know what stopped #82 from countinuing the attack on 3 2 1 (#130) did well to recover and come in 11th.

And yes, if you could show that the other countries worked outside the confines of the game to plan the kill then they should be banned too.

I haven't overlooked GDI.

I'm not a farmer, but that seems an insanely low bpt for the size you are even though you're an all-x

shhh