Rank Country Land Networth Special
1 UgolinoII (#6) 17,138 $31,762,529 HG
2 Its only the Sniffles (#108) 24,766 $17,822,326 TG
3 Gronk The Buccaneer (#87) 40,552 $16,493,829 CG
4 U Mother Trucker (#79) 32,240 $14,423,090 RG
5 (#85) 13,773 $13,808,921 DG
6 Snapples (#89) 17,421 $13,752,236 HG
7 Jose Biden (#91) 18,652 $13,078,705 HG
8 Branch Covidian (#77) 10,914 $12,822,198 D
9 l o w p r o f i l e (#45) 16,465 $12,689,291 RG
10 King Slidy (#72) 5444 $12,514,685 H


come on fat lads, have at it ;)

Ugolino, it's only the sniffles!

Gronk the buccaneer, you mother trucker!

Snapples?

Jose Biden, branch covidian, low profile king slidy!

Watch #85 will do a massive big jump in nw last 3 mins to win with 55-60m nw.

Just watch.... i will not be surprised. And will prove my theory

Yup exactly what i thought.

Im tired of losing to a cheater

What's your theory?

The consistency of the finish, and my recent learnings of the new rules, makes me think he's just figured out the formula to winning express legitimately. (I might try this next set!)

How do you think he is cheating?

Main account buys up cheaper market that leaves only his expensive crap on the market

Other account funnels money to main account by buying up military at insane prices. Essentially got 2 accounts or a friend who is colluding to dump to him.

I smelt something fishy back 4 sets ago... and every set there has been a pattern with no name demo reseller winning. Its time the bs stops.

Market information is a dead giveaway

I saved screenshots of the market info...... guess my days of playing this game is over.

I dont play compromised games. I dont mind losing to someone legit but not this nonsense. 2-3 sets ive been robbed of a win imho.

Shouldn't game admins be able to check for collusion here since allies aren't allowed on express?

My theorycrafting:
~$4b stock = ~$20m nw destock.
This is doable on a 6k acre all-x ttr. (What I did 2 sets ago on my first time back, and I missed quite a chunk of turns!)

If you're grabbing, given you can store lotsa turns on express which improves efficiency, and there are bots to safely farm (new learning lol), you can probably get 12-13k acres in the same time or less (~$8b stock).

Given you can boost private market via oil instead of waiting for it to replenish (another new learning lol), you can actually spend turns to the end. (Prob the additional ~$2b)

That ~$10b stock = ~$50m nw destock. Then you can do reselling on top of it to get the last couple million nw.

Feels completely doable (not easy though). Fact that you're not overly reliant on private market replenishment via time/turns or on public market liquidity means it's more consistently repeatable, too. -Shrugs-

Can you honnestly look me straight and tell me there is nothing fishy going on here:

Look at volume and average prices. Its clear as day there was dumping.


Troops:

Time low p high p average p total sold

Jul 26, 19:00Jul 26, 20:00 $122 $125 $123.29 31,616

Jul 26, 20:00Jul 26, 21:00 $110 $298 $154.92 14,914,169

Jul 26, 21:00Jul 26, 22:00 $123 $137 $133.00 553,087



Jets:

Jul 26, 19:00Jul 26, 20:00 $135 $161 $153.52 1,696,899

Jul 26, 20:00Jul 26, 21:00 $143 $474 $303.49 17,756,550

Jul 26, 21:00Jul 26, 22:00 $105 $179 $174.91 4,515,733



Turrets:

Jul 26, 19:00Jul 26, 20:00 $118 $169 $162.39 8,154,010

Jul 26, 20:00Jul 26, 21:00 $134 $494 $252.43 39,005,131

Jul 26, 21:00Jul 26, 22:00 $138 $185 $178.14 8,917,637



Tanks:

Jul 26, 19:00Jul 26, 20:00 $480 $527 $511.65 61,392

Jul 26, 20:00Jul 26, 21:00 $458 $1256 $816.22 3,072,720

Jul 26, 21:00Jul 26, 22:00 $467 $540 $477.14 121,834



The average price screams lots sold at higher proce and volume is magically really heavy only that hour. Compared to other hours. Its just doesnt add up

You need to message galleri so she can get Pang on this, yes they can track it down, this has happened in the past and once they got caught they stopped playing for a bit, looks like they're back.

I reported in game my suspicions of this crap... with the market info

Ill pm as well as you suggest mods

I only rejoined 2 weeks ago, so this last min market behavior was all I know. Haha I just assumed this is what happens normally. (As such, this set I adjusted and did place my military at ridiculously high prices... and they were bought out!)

Yea I'd definitely report for collusion and see what happens.

You got in the way of their scheme and had to eat your sale in order to get the big stuff sold

And no its not normal... this has been going on for 4-5 weeks.

Yes there is a rush to get cheaper military before the end game but not to the point of buying way over private market prices.

Sad part is im still improving my commy indy strat to the point that i can prob beat the cheater if my country plays out perfect.

I even stonewalled a late grab attempt on me which was huge and still come up short to that nonsense is depressing

hmmmmm

Netsquash theres a perfectly valid explaination for those numbers and its not cheating in any sense. I mean there could have been cheating too but what you posted is not. Is there anything else strange or just that? Why do you connect it to a specific player?

I advise that you look to understand before you look to blame.

All i want is mods to look into it

If it isnt cheating or collusion ill accept that i was outplayed.

As koh said they can look it up. It will either be really obv cheating or someone getting lucky with someone buying dumb

They got 4-5 resets to look up info to validate if same players were colluding. Same 2 accounts multiple sets is obv colluding. Its precisely why i didnt call it out right away. I needed to see consistency and not a fluke

Yeah its absolutely not a fluke. It's a pattern. You are just wrong about the source of the pattern.

We tend to not really deeply go into market coordination. But looking at it, Gerdler is correct. Gerdler is good with market stuffs, so is one of those players. And Gerdler knows what is going on, it is not coordination. I appreciate you placing the tip and emailing me.

Maybe want to ask Gerdler to explain to you how exactly this works.

maybe Gerdler could tell us some people know when the bots run and what they will be doing

Only 1 way to find out next set i guess

This is good to hear then - solid play by the winner. He's nailed down the winning strat and repeated consistently. I might try my theory on this though not sure if I have the time to pull it off!

So you are not even curious to ask about how it works out?

P.S. so as not to place a name with a country. That was not Gerdler. I noticed my wording in previous posts made it seem that way.

Ill be blunt. I knew fully well what it waa when you said immediately it wasnt cheating or colluding. There is alot of work to do to improve bot iq and algorithms if your variables are so small that the market gets bought up regardless in a 30-45 min window then its purely human based market.

I knew from the get go it was either someone playing a sneaky collusion game or exploiting pathetic programming metrics of bots. The fact that there is not more variation and randomness to have different endgame outcomes based on random bot personality type additions (conservative vs aggresive), shows there is alot of room to go to improve the game. It feels like a copy and paste job for that part of the programming. Early game bot programming is decent with different build types and even trick based military loadouts.. aka only tanks tricking you its turrets

But if we had more human players... bots wouldnt be needed as much. Still surprised in 2020 the bot coding isnt better then what it is. Time variables and price sensitivity can be coded better if one wants to, just a matter of putting the time in.

Its like going from snes to n64. Yes its more work but the outcome is a much more realistic and enjoyable game. Some bots buy too early a price range... some buy just right... some buy late and expensive but the %s can be factored in to resemble similar to human behavior. In the end the goal is to create a good gaming experience. Maybe very odd game too many buy early... odd game too many buy late. The variation is what makes a game exciting. Will tech be cheaper this set or will military be super competitive pricing.

Call me sour but thats like getting shot through the wall in cod warzone with your arm sticking through the wall. Oh i know that weakness in programming code so ill take advantage of it. Only after understanding getting pwned and how it happened can a player get much better.

It isnt cheating but if its something very few are aware of it gives the few a massive edge. I personally dislike it unless its common knowledge to most solid/ok players.

Anyhow ill have to decide in a month if i want to keep playing / donating money to support the server. I feel like the game needs people like me that actually want to help increase user base and help weaker players play better. I know positive interactions and laughs makes the game worth it even after a couple bad beats but thats only part of the game. Thus the exciting factor.

Examples last set:

6 mins ago

A brigade from Asheville (#30) has invaded your lands!
Their forces broke through your defences!

They took:
1354 Acres (1929 Gained)
1915 Buildings (575 Stolen)
5935 Bushels
$882,593
2866 Technology Points

5.5 mins ago

1,500,000 Turrets were returned from the market.

Fk me... just dodged natural stonewall

Then when it goes good

4.7 hours ago

Im a human I will retal (#104) attempted to spy on your country! You killed 4505 enemy spies.

4.7 hours ago

Im a human I will retal (#104) attempted to spy on your country! You killed 4417 enemy spies.

4.65 hours ago

Spend 10 turns cashing @ 145k turrets a turn. Grab the popcorn to see the end result

4.6 hours ago

A brigade from Im a human I will retal (#104) has invaded your lands!
Your defenses held against the invaders and forced them away! 

Your military lost:
6310 Troops
1,044,968 Turrets
3378 Tanks

Their military lost:
686,640 Jets


Im done ranting... i just want a fair consistent game. I want better endgame bot algorithms. Pandoras box blown open... dont care... needed to be said. If this game is to continue on, it needs to be improved slightly imho. That big of a slacking algorithm that can be manipulated for big nw gain is a shortcoming that needs to be addressed.

Wheres my beer. Im done having you holding it for me

Bot code is publicly available... specifically the destock behaviour is here:

https://github.com/...a462dad70/ee_npc.php#L295

(line 286 for the condition)

This may not be the exact bot code, but lots of anecdotal evidence to suggest the destock behaviour hasn't changed.

I hacked on them for a while, threw an oiler in the mix and had them stockpiling but there were no API calls for destock.

Last time I looked something had changed on AI server so my code stopped working, its kind of all over the place too as I haven't really done any PHP for like 10 years but I just had a little tinker and seems to have fired up so head over to https://www.earthempires.com/ai/control/general for bot related fun!

i find its a shame only a few people really know whats going on in the game and can /do exploit it

its a pretty well known mechanic and I don't think anyone is keeping it a secret. people will always have different degrees of knowledge and experience in games like this.

its just the nature of things, the more effort you put into understanding the various mechanics the better results you'll get.

I think most would agree that the game is better with more players that know what they are doing - lots of people are more than happy to offer advice in that regard! Not always well received though ;)

Fact! Always try and hit the botter destock if you want to do any good as its solid profit.

The few sets that I tried I put my stuff up too high and it didn't sell lol!

It's funny since I wasn't necessarily aware of the bot behavior before this, so I assumed it was just real people who just blew it all on public market cos they couldn't login right at the end for whatever IRL reasons. lol

If I recall it correctly this has been around for a while but it didnt really matter before the techer bots started teching. none of the other bots have any real cash to speak of which means their contribution to the buyout is kinda small. But when the techer bots started teching it messed this up. I was looking to suggest a change that made the techer bots keep exploring a little bit even after reaching their "target acreage" thus reducing the stocked cash a little bit and adding a little bit more land into the game. That would also increase military demand during the mid-endgame, prior to the buyout, and make them have less money to spend on the buyout.

The bots I have on AI now smoothly destock by hoovering up goods that are cheaper than a certain $/nw towards end of set the default is:

  public static function dpnwFloor() {
    //exponential function that ramps up as we approach end see: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/gdfvui1jpx
    return 1000 * (Server::turnsRemaining()**(-1/3));
  }

They also have better scoring wrt priorities for buying tech. They don't aggressively undercut the public market.

The code is a mess because its a combination half the original bot code, and an abortive attempt to refactor some stuff which I got tangled up in! code is in the strategy branch here: https://github.com/sgbett/ee_npc/tree/strategy contributions/suggestions (competition on ai) welcome.

I was able to use the bot on AI server during the seminar, never after or before. I dont know if they changed anything but I have tried countless hours to get it to work. It's really difficult to suggest changes when you cant test them yourself.

The problem with the bots have always been that large changes have been made when a problem has been identified and reported for like a year straight, then new problems arise which are seen immediatly but theres no follow-up. Its not really the fault of devs because its hard to see problems when they dont play. But that we cant play on the AI server with the bot to test changes is a big hurdle in the development, at least from my contributions perspective.

Yes there was some change or other to do with https I think - I just fixed mine yesterday (the 118a062 commit)

I also added docker build instructions so it should be relatively easy to get running (though i'm not sure how you go about that if you are on windows - maybe docker desktop is easiest)

Edit: Actually version on GitHub isn't up to date so it wont run! I'll update soon

i dont see THAT demo yet this set, i has something for it

I'm basically running what I think THAT demo is running, so please don't mistakenly suicide the wrong person. Haha

:)

Was that you commander punishing me for forgetting to join GDI? Haha

I accidentally didn't GDI and im just waiting for the suicide ;)

sunob sunob sunob.

In case no one reads the bug forum.. I'm experiencing a weird TPT bug now. lol
Fully built 9k acres 600 TPT. Should be closer to 3k TPT.

.... :o you shoulda said so earlier.
Lol na jp am netting too and now that I read your comment, I realize that I too forgot to join GDI damn.

Also netsquash I suggest you farm/suicide your cheater, and post your info so we can "watch" the fighting, and not join in.

i have only hit bots, i have 36 chems waiting for a double tap that didnt happen :(

just send em at me. I got nothing else going on :D

Hell na am trying to get good at this nneh-ne-tthing stuff.
Am on your az boi.

1 Mercs (#13) 35,028 $41,364,836 CG
2 whenYOUaddONEtoNINETYNINEyouGET (#100) 8289 $34,665,696 D
3 Myron Biden Now Im Jewish Really (#5) 21,757 $31,441,380 HG
4 shaZam (#51) 10,758 $28,827,826 MG
5 flock of eagles (#88) 21,269 $27,490,856 HG
6 knott this time (#89) 17,936 $26,990,384 HG
7 0 0 0 0 0 (#103) Game profile 22,082 $26,535,302 DG
8 ASTRAL (#19) 28,778 $18,709,595 TG
9 I am a meat popsicle (#9) 8526 $16,804,890 HG
10 XxDirtBeerGuyxX (#48) 12,585 $15,247,499 HG

Congrats to whoever first is!

Well second place ain't bad! Got to 12k acres before turn 500. I stopped netgaining at turn 1400 (first of the string of suicides), and then used the next 150 turns to stonewall. Stopped using turns at 1550 and jumped prematurely. If I had been on the original plan (use turns to 1800) and kept my land (larger PM), could prob push 70-80m nw. So it seems the theorycrafting I did was accurate enough!

Thank you Netsquash for punishing me for not joining GDI. I wonder who the others were. Haha

omg...you must be a cheater then!

BONUS

Lol hes the guy Netsquash was talking about.

bonus

Thank you Netsquash for punishing me for not joining GDI. I wonder who the others were. Haha


Lol i was friendly about it. If i dont join gdi by accident i turn into a griefer. Easier to enjoy the game. Plus got a kill

true dat. no gdi equals wildcard. might net, but could quite easily go postal :)