A few players have asked for a longer set so I'm looking for additional player feedback.

We're unlikely to make Express last for a full seven days. The assumption is that players appreciate a short downtime between resets and that we need to give them some amount of time to create a country before the next round begins.

A lot of the changes you do (removal of the instant bot destock, removal of bonus turns, bots that retal etc) are by design going to lower ending NWs. Adding a day will balance that. So would giving all countries 180 turns as at 1st minute of the set (I never understood why this isn't a thing rather than faster turn rate or more days anyway).

6 days and what Gerdler said.

Interesting thoughts....

Option A) add a day.
Option B) start with 180 turns.


Hard choice, if I had to pick between the two.... B. The downtime is good for recharging enthusiasm.

True

I like the idea of giving non-restart countries more initial turns for a few different reasons. The initial part of the game is rather boring: you can't do anything while in protection and the optimal play is to build lots of cs. Who finds building cs to be fun? There are some things I'm looking at in that area to make startups more fun to play, but adding turns is a good measure in the meantime.

If I give new countries 180 turns to start with, all of the NPC countries would immediately play turns and would ideally put some amount of bushels, tech, and military on the public market. That will improve the experience for players because they could buy food off the public market right away instead of waiting for 12+ hours. The downside is that bots tend to run pretty cs heavy in their initial turns, so they might be vulnerable to landkills by players. So it would be safer to give 90 turns to start with, but then you lose some of the market benefits.

I don't believe in NW parity between resets. I think that the game needs a lot of changes and those changes can't be implemented if finishing NWs need to remain the same between resets. I hope that the seasonal model removes the need for NW parity entirely. The idea situation would be only implementing changes at the start of each season. Admittedly, seasons don't exist yet so the NW parity concerns are fair.

Bonus turns will eventually come back, but the previous state required players to login every 2 or 4 hours to maximize their bonus turns. That wasn't reasonable.

Startups used to be way more interesting back when times were shorter and explores were lower and dropped off faster.

If you dont care about ending NWs at all it would be interesting to go back to 25 acre explores that start dropping off at 1k acres and less turn total turns in a set. Not sure what point people will not need to stockpile tho.

How about extending protection to turn 180 so that it closes the ability to land kill startups....turn 181 you're off to the races.

That feels a bit too fundamental of a change to have on just one server.

*ragequits ee, and buys a slagpit doll to do voodoo*

I guess I should have said that I don't strongly believe in it. I know it doesn't feel great for players to finish with 40 M NW in one set and 20 M NW the next, even though they played top countries both times.

I have no objections to either 1 more day or starting with a days worth of turns.

The seasonal leaderboard is a great idea too.

My last post was made in jest. The seasonal leaderboards not being done yet, you should consider NW parity beteen the sets a low key priority tho, because we do. Once the seasonal leaderboards are done I'm all for winning NWs varying widely between the seasons. From anywhere around 2m NW for the winner to perhaps as much as 10B. Who cares as long as its competition to get higher than others?

I vote yes, six days instead of five. Starting with 180 turns is interesting, but I think it would give too much advantage to people who start exactly on time.

Alternatively, what about a second express server?

How would it be an advantage to start on time exactly?

Yeah I see no advantage there, however you yourself put yourself in a disadvantage by multitapping with SS and hitting humans multiple times instead of doing PS, you're your own disadvantage, bud :-(

already had 4 brigades out

it would increase the advantage of starting on time, vs say starting 1 day into the reset, because late starters would not get as many turns as they would hit max turns and max stored turns sooner.



like for example if u start at 0 turns, and u get a turn every 3 minutes, and u max at 240 turns (120 and 120). then it will take 720 minutes or 12 hours until players who haven't started yet start losing turns. but if u start with 120, then it will only take 6 hours until players who haven't started playing start losing turns. This will unduly harm more "recreational" players who don't have the time to log on immediately and play all their turns.

What I mean is your target selection is what gets you in trouble, you're multi tapping real players :-(

And it's 360 (360) unless I missed something and there's a turn reduction...

Apart from all your numbers being wrong you are right. Which is another way of saying you are wrong.

on Express you can have 360(360) and you get a turn every 4 minutes so you start overflowing friday gametime if you dont login, 180 turns at the start would move that 12 hours earlier to noon thursday gametime.

"Apart from all your numbers being wrong "

That is why I said "for example". I was just trying to illustrate my point, since there seemed to be some confusion on the matter.

You illustrated perfectly that on a hypothetical server such as the one you were describing it would be problematic, yes. That's a poor design of a server tho and luckily we dont have that nor will we ever. :)

Nothing prior in this thread has been about that hypothetical server, it has been about express.

I like the idea of an extra day and a leaderboard for most successful attacks on Tmac.

*banned and deleted for threatening a game admin.*

Stop using big words.

Your deaths stand out more, just saying.

express used to be 450(450) i think and you only needed to play maybe 3 or 4 times a set

one of the reason stored turns was lowered was to help fix the market, and putting some turns at the start would help that a bit more with bots

it sort of functions as an additional rest day in other servers, but that isnt a problem in express, and its probably not good for the game to have a lot of rest days anyway, although i like them for things like tagging up in alliance servers (hoping for ability to have permanent tags and auto tag up!), or getting allies set up (although i like express not having allies so again it doesnt apply here)

it used to sort of matter to play fast because there was no 20 acre daily bonus which gives an advantage to waiting to play, and market prices tend to crash, particularly jets/turrets/oil

and with the old 25 acre explore, and the different explore curve it was actually viable to grab at turn 100, so youd prioritise 20k jets sell 5k at turn 100, wait for it to sell and some turns to grab then use that to build up land

theres no real difference whether that happens on 00:00 or more like 44:00 ish in the old game and perhaps 30:00 ish now for 20m servers

i like that express has a short amount of turns because its different but it might get closer to tourney, though thats weird because its both less and more with the bonus turns and bonus points, and express is losing the bonus turns

but overall its probably good to have turns given at the start of the set, particularly on express

You're awesome enshula, always illustrating things very well and easy to comprehend 👍👍

I prefer to keep Express to a smaller amount of turns similar to Tourney - makes it more unique. (Feel strongly about this)

I prefer starting with 180 turns vs an additional day - the down time is actually nice-ish. (I care less about this.)

I like enshula's point on playing early vs storing turns/playing late as a strategic consideration a player makes.

Seasonal leaderboards is a must!

Ultimately, if I were to articulate what my mental model is for Express:
1) Shorter sets (low total turns)
2) Faster paced (earn turns faster)
3) Frequent (refreshed every week - can take a week off and don't have to wait 2 months for next set; also, if you get suicided, it doesn't feel like you wasted 2 months.)
4) Casual (don't require hardcore logins at specific timings to be competitive - e.g. PS every 2 hours)

Since rejoining mid/late last year, this has been the server I've enjoyed the most, for the reasons stated above.

...And a possible bonus: (worth debating)
5) Experimental (shorter sets means admins should have more agency to try whacky changes weekly, just to shake things up - e.g. grab gains are 3x this set, or explore rates start at 100 this set)

This increases the skill ceiling whilst maintaining the same skill floor - the top players will have to adapt to new rules, but hopefully each experimental change sticks to #4, which is that it shouldn't require you to be logged in constantly to win.

Everyone should start at 99 turns when the game starts

That way the first turn makes the game live for anyone who wants OOP

That way you can leave it at 5 days and still add some turns :)

I am down for any changes

I would be happy with 6 hours more play time on Sundays.