What are some good strategies to get to and stay at the top?

specialize. focus on producing just one good, be it

military by building mainly industrial complexes
technology by building mainly research labs and spending your turns teching
cash by building mainly business and residential zones
food by building mainly farms

then use this good you decided to focus on, and sell it on the public market for cash. then use that cash to keep anything onhand you need because you will have negative production in different areas with different strategies.

generally being at the top in the beginning and the middle of the set isnt a good thing, it means your expenses are probably too high. you really wat to "stock" any extra cash you get above $2bill. you do this by buying a good, usually food, and then turning around and placing it on the market at a really high price that you know it wont sell. this is geerally done for 2 reasons. first, there are corruption/deay on cash and food so having too much of either onhand and running turns is a bad thing. additionally, having too much "stock" onhand makes you a target for others to grab, as they get a portion of your goods with every attack.

once you get towards the end of the set, and you have a good amount of food on the market, you need to "destock" the timing of this destock is fairly complex and depends on public market prices, the land you have, and the stock you have. but this is how countries jump a rather large amount of networth at the end of he set. on a server like primary they can increast their NW by a factor of 15+ in the final week or so.


this is pretty general description of the game, it is pretty complex. i really suggest you playing a clan server like alliance or free for all and joining a clan. a lot of the larget clans have systems set up to teach new players.

I'll jump on just to second what ford says.