So I'm vaguely aware that people generally accept some kind of 1:1 retal policy. I understand on games like Alliance there is a 72h window for this kind of thing.

Express is 5x faster so, one might think the retal window is 5x shorter.

Apparently not. I been retalled in the closing hours for 4 figure acreage, for hits made barely OOP.

If thats how things roll though, then....

Yup that's how they roll

most netters play 1:1 set long. more than 1 tho usually results in special attacks.

confirmed. vast majority of players do 1:1 no time limit. anything more than 1 attack usually results in special attacks or death like ashe said. this is why I said it is not worth it to hit humans. you may gain some acres at first, but then they retal for more, and if you break gdi by retailing a retal you get even more screwed.

Interesting you really all seem determined to destroy the human aspect to the game.

I think the point of hitting humans is balancing the risk reward. Something I personally think is a much more interesting mechanic than see how fat I can get hiding in GDI and farming bots.

Running a rainbow and topfeeding is stupid, running a high producing country that has already stockpiled, midfeeding rainbows and jumping out of range... it smarter.

The subsequent random suicide by a wholly “unconnected” country is funny. You know you have them beat if they have to multi :)

500 acres grab early is 5k acres loss later point of set.

It's hard to jump out of range in express. If you are wanting to finish well you have to manage your expenses. Build up too much too soon and you won't be able to jump NW at the end.

Wargaining isn't really effective in express. I am a top 10 whore but I am also pretty lazy so I do what I know will get me top tens without having to war all set long.

The human aspect is all over the place in the market, why do you want to neglect that? We are only saying that if you hit us you lose on it and if you hit us twice you can die. We can still be hit so we still have to defend ourselves against humans and we still have to work/predict the market better which is full of human emotion and decisions. As well as grabbing the bots ofc which is a central aspect of the game as well...

the human aspect of farming players which I do on primary, team and tournament from time to time, was considered a problem that forced players away from the game. The bots fixed that. too late maybe, but they fixed it. caused other problems, yes but they fixed the problem they meant to solve and made the game more fun for just about everyone, be they the farmed or the ones that farmed them.

I agree with you Gerdy, the market is where good express players really compete with each other. Land is just a means to an end, at least for me anyways.

When I finish a reset without being "randomly" suicided, i'll let you know how grabbing humans plays out.

I can't wait to unleash hell on the greedy fluff that double tapped me :-)

Ohh I forgot one major factor why I like the bots; People used to benefit so much from landfarms, still do on team every now and then. It is a problem to me both on the servers where its cheating and where it is not... if you have a landfarm on primary you might not be caught and therefore gain an unfair advantage. if you have a landfarm on team that a friend run for you you gain an unfair advantage even tho its not cheating with the present rules. It's bad for competition.

On alliance a few sets ago a guy had a landfarm for 3 weeks(and two other landfarms for a couple of days) but because of the bots the strong players were keeping up with him(because he was not very good) and he had no chance to win despite landfarms. Remove the bots and he would win even if suicided.

This is a totally legit point imho. It makes it so that, at best, multi runners have a minor edge in knowing their multi(s) are effectively a bot. Actual bots negate any significant edge.

I'm certainly not against bots for this reason. Not at the expense of a bit of Mano-a-mano though ;)