Dec 12th 2011, 17:14:01
133,179,59,170 all look good - I could see all four of those commie indies finishing t5. And 210 has a big enough land advantage that barring topfeeds, we should see a dictator in the top 5 at the end of the set.
50 (the top rep casher) and 183 (the top demo farmer) are gonna have to compete with bigger commie indies doing commie indy destocks. That's going to be real hard. Unless one of the top 4 indies gets chain topfed (like happened to 164), or doesn't know how to destock as a commie indy, then I think it will be 4 commie indies in the top 5. Military prices seem to have stabilized at the moment, they've stopped dropping. If military prices are in the 130-140 range, and then climb up once people start destocking, I don't think 50 or 183 makes top 5. And I don't think 210 will be close to winning.
Tech prices have fallen far enough that I do not think 73 or any other techers have a chance at top 5.
Commie Indy destock is powerful because as a commie indy, you use turns until your expenses plus food consumption minus your tax revenue combine (just called expenses, for simplicity) to be just shy of 150 times the number of jets created that turn. If you produce 200k jets per turn, you start your destock with maybe just 2 million in expenses, giving you a crazy $17/nw. Your expenses then increase close to linearly, but with 200k jets per turn production, you can use turns until you reach almost 30 million in expenses. Once you're at 30 million in combined expenses, its costing you $30 million to get 120k networth, which is equivalent to buying troops off your private market for $125.
If a commie indy uses up all its cash using turns until it gets expenses equal to 150 times the number of jets it creates, then it gets pretty close to $125/nw, depending on how close to positive income it was before it started destocking. With 84% military tech and 165% bus/res tech, it should be able to be pretty close to positive income before starting to destock.
Once its expenses get high enough, it uses the rest of its cash to buy troops and tanks off its private market at about $250/nw.
So if it uses up 1/2 of its stockpile just using turns, and then spends the rest of troops/tanks, it gets about $190/nw for its stockpile - which is about what a Demo MBR gets. If it uses up even larger of a portion of its stockpile using turns, it can get an even better $/nw for its stockpile.
I'm not sure on the math for how much stockpile a commie indy can drop per acre by just producing, but its pretty crazy how high it is.