Am i the only one who doesn't mind taking the retal to grab big? I see a lot of people don't mind taking a lg to retal big, bit not vica versa? seems this used to be the status quo with techers.

Is this why commies are so unchecked now? and why i'm finding it so easy to grab big lol ??

I'm assuming you're #25?

If you get retaled you'll lose 8-900a making that 1200 grab not really worth it.

hey thanks for not answering the question i actually asked

Not only that, but they will grab you back later, when you've fattened up. Then you will probably end up breaking your gdi on them and get in a war with one or a few of them because you'll be mad at the huge land loss. That's why no serious player grabs with early topfeeds anymore, because you are almost guaranteed to lose out and not to finish the set.

I'm answering as to why no one is doing it.

@deezyboy

The answer lies in efficiency. Attacking big countries is mathematically not worth it, especially since the change that makes building costs go up exponentially with land size about 4-5 resets back.

Basically, you attack someone big, sure you can gain a lot of land, and when they retal, you lose a little bit less, and make a gain out of it. Unfortunately, this usually means


1. You are double building. You building on land that you are going to lose a portion back to the guy you hit. For example, you attack for 1k acres, and get retalled for 600. But that 600 doesn't all come from your 1k new unbuilt land, in fact most of it comes from your built acres. So the actual reality is that although you are gaining 400a on that exchange, but you are losing maybe 500 buildings on the retal, so you end up really building 900a of land.

So not only are you wasting a ton of turns building that 500 structures that you will lose, you also lose a hefty portion of money that could have gone into defense or tech.


2. Top players usually don't attack each other, because of the above Double Building inefficiency, since attacking weak players that have vastly less/no chances of retalling is mathematically more efficient. Sure, you use more turns to make more smaller attacks, but that is still less turns used than the ones wasted in the above "Double Building" problem (and the problem described in Point 3 later).

As a consequence, if 2 top players actually attack each other, it is usually because of some other reason that is not related to trying to maximize their ending NWs, such as warring, or the less scrupulous "bring some guy out of top 10 so my friend can hopefully win the reset", which falls under the deletable rules of coordination, or at least considered underhanded and will earn you a negative reputation.

Techers will usually make 1 grab lesser (daily) than a commie, or casher or farmer, but opt to grab a larger country than those strats (typically about 1/3 NW, rather than the 1/4 the other strats grab at), this optimizes for turn saving.

There's even a strat where a techer will grab to ~30k as a Monarchy before switching to Demo, in order to save grabbing turns, but the cost is ~9%-10% less income (6% less on selling tech, 6% more on buying mil/food/oil), minus the bit of tech you keep for your own growing country, its roughly equivalent since less income does mean slower growth (and slightly less weap% and strat% as well).


3. Being retalled also means you lose out on a portion of your tech base, which negates any tech that you may have grabbed from him. More crucially, you will lose Construction Sites in the retal. The Ideal BPT formula is well known, in order to minimize turns used in a reset, Ideal BPT = sqrt(remainder acres to build / 4 * govt bonus), which you can derive if you simply write down the "Turns used to build X CS followed Y acres", and then differentiate that with respect to turns and setting the equation to 0. This relates again to losing efficiency.

For techers, every turn you lose, you are losing income directly. Every turn you can save now, means you can tech 1 more turn 4 weeks later when you have more land and you are at your land goal, and that translation is massive. You do NOT under any circumstances want to get retalled as a techer. Or even get grabbed. This relates to the Double Building problem. Every time you get retalled, you are losing future turns because of a lowered BPT.

Even on Alliance server, where landtrading is rampant because you can run 90k acre countries on only 1m turrets, no landtrader runs the techer strat, it is THAT inefficient.


4. Commies are unchecked now only because in the first 4 weeks, military demand is high. Once past that, and techers have started stocking, military demand will slump to reset lows, and they get overtaken easily by every other strat. Likewise, farmers start slow, I doubt there are any in the top 40 or 50 in NW because there is low demand for food at the start, demand picks up after techers start stocking in week 5 and they start to grow unchecked. For reference, see crest23's stellar performance last reset (he won last reset as a Demo Farmer, which only started to overtake the Commies week 6 onwards). You can also check how the top techer performed last reset, who finished at rank 2. He certainly only attacked small countries, not large ones. In fact, every top 10 country does that.


For reference, you can easily check the last few resets on http://www.eestats.com/primary, and check the top 10 ranks of each reset, and see how they grabbed, when they started grabbing, stopped grabbing and so on. The winners list (top 10) of each reset is in a stickied thread made by me on this very forum if you want to cross-reference who was which country, or check who has the most top 10s, what strats make up the top 10 every reset, etc. (Link: http://www.earthempires.com/forum/post/558487/perm). Owners for last reset: http://www.earthempires.com/forum/post/564529/perm

i did notice the building costs my first round bck and thought myself it was pretty easy to deal with by just not grabbing until ive ran my turns and then waiting for a possible retal. i also stock kind of before the grab so i can beef uo my defense right after the grab.

granted this will
be my first entire run in primary since 2001 or so but i found it quite easy to finish 21m nw on express last set doing this and def am nkt back in my groove yet per say lol

i understand the limitations but with 0 other good topfeeders its really been easy pickins fox in the henhouse.

before i started grabbing and waiting for the retal i did notice how bad they hurt i will agree there

On Express, it's kind of "ok" only because land values don't go up as high as they do on Primary. 10k techer, vs 35k techer. You will REALLY notice the exponential extra building costs later. It's just not worth it. I guess it might be ok initially, I don't want to do the math lol.



This again is another inefficiency, because this means your turns spent teching are a day delayed. Or rather, they aren't teching at their max potential. Or in other words, if you're on 8k land now, you tech, THEN grab and build, then wait for retal, you spent your income turns on 8k land while ending the day at 9k.

But if you grabbed to 9k, built, then teched, you essentially earned maybe 8-10% more income since you teched on more labs. The ordering of turns is important.

The point I'm trying to make is that getting retalled is bad, and right now, the strategy is "working" only because there are commies with more land than you. Once those targets run out, and you grab ones with slightly less land than you, the retal will hurt worse than the actual grab, and you'll actually lose land on the retal. Based on all this, it is easy to see that "grabbing up" only "works" when you are in a "behind" situation, a situation you don't want to be in, but overall, it is still less efficient than grabbing down 1/4-1/3 your size.

Commies by default SHOULD be on top right now, if a commie isn't in the top 20 right now, then it isn't going to finish t10 in the final week, that's how the market works, reset starting with high military prices means they grow faster at the start, and only at the start, so commies have to make it count at the start.

And note if you grab anyone in the top 10 twice (can be once now, and once a month later), in most likelihood, that country will AB you to the ground in response and neither of you finish top 10.

whats your country im gonna grab you twice

do you think the countries that haven't retalled you can't retal you? or that they're waiting to do so until the retals really hurt? wait a few weeks until you cluck about the easy pickins in the henhouse. if it were such a brilliant strategy, there wouldn't be "0 other good topfeeders" doing it.

If u grab me I will get more on my retal :p

thanks too btw.

ok fee more Q's. the grabbing up thing... cannot just save turns at that point? i mean save a lot of turns and then grab up again?

i also thought about the TPT being less but was hoping if my grabbing good enough to make up for the 10 percent less tpt, and it kept my defenses up. then it may even out no? i know better players than myself have pulled this off and it seems easier to me now honestly with no one being i guess prepared for that style if play.

could not one also start mid feeding mid set if your better judgement tells
you too. whats the downside of an early jump in land of you evade the retals?

well i know they can retal me i just think they realize they would be better off attacking a better target. they got to the top 10 for a reason.

im also betting they care more about destroying their country than I do lol

my point being i may finish crappy 10 times because i get #rekt later on but theoretically with perfect luck ine could grab themselves into a monster.

no guts no glory guys being too safe takes the excitement out ofthe game :-P

If they aren't retalling you now, it just means they are planning to retal you 10-20 days later. I've seen retals on this server coming in as late as 40 days, retalling for 5k acres over a 80a grab. And if you Retal-On-Retal that, then the result is war, with that country having First Strike on you (due to GDI mechanics, not sure if you know them, they aren't the same as 10 years ago for solo servers, its the same GDI rules as the one on Express right now).

And no, I don't want you grabbing me twice lol. I'm trying to help you here dude, not harm your country.

But yes, if you can get away with it and evade retals, then there obviously is no downside in an early jump in land. It's just very unlikely, because retal windows on Primary are the full reset length. You can try to enforce 72-hours or whatever you think is appropriate, but that country can also enforce a full reset length retal window and just go to war over it. I've seen Chewi or blid go to war like this before.

I try to retal promptly but if the guy who hit me has less land than me, or isn't "worth" the retal, then I'll wait until later when he has more land. Hey, it's only fair. And if you're a techer, there's gonna be a point where you're stocking and easy pickins for a fox in the henhouse.

Bibigon and Croatia are 2 countries (that use the same country name every reset) that try to do what you do every reset, (for about 1-2 years?), though not on the scale you are doing right now. Every reset, their countries end in war, usually outside top 20-30. :-P

you're right, they are better off attacking better targets right now. and waiting until you grow into a really sweet target. any decent player isn't going to let an early landgrab go unretalled; he'll just look at it as a monster retal sitting in his back pocket that he can use anytime that's best for him. and keep grabbing targets that can't retal him until then. and he'll finish very far ahead of you in the long run.

I find that if you're war prepped you can get away with hitting those late retalers back and not get into a war. They only fight back when they realize I won't stop hitting them.

Yeah but you would also probably war a topfeeder to begin with. Retaling when they actually have land to take is merciful compared to what you'd do

thats what i was thinking chewi if i get hit with a late retal ill just retal lol if they spend that long plotting revenge then i dont mind pulling a vladimir putin and calling their bluff to see if they really wanna trash our countries end set lol

With some people you're guaranteed war, especially if they see no hope for a top finish ;-)

ive never met such a bunch if peace lovin hippies in my life

You will finish outside the top 25 and behind every other decent techer. Any one want to place bets? Some of the countries on this server will be bottom feeding you in a month. Like every one before you, you will come to respect this server. It will chew you up and spit you out. I did the math in a previous set and the amount of resources you are wasting will come back to haunt you.

I actually think there is a chance your strategy works. If most people you hit decide to wait to retal you until you are bigger, you could grow quite big quite fast. The key then would be reaching a tipping point where you could actually start hitting t25 countries that are NOT able to retal you. And since techer is always landthin, the countries that planned to retal you down the road might decide bottomfeeding is more efficient throughout the whole set.

I'll point out right now you have hit 8 people and only been retalled 3 times.

Bobby it's not a winning strategy.

I LOVE TO SEE A NEW PLAYER TO THE SERVER WITH A DIFFERENT APPROACH, BUT....



THAT IS A BET YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE.

SOME OF YOUR RESPONSES ON THIS THREAD SEEM A BIT LIKE YOU'RE TAKING THE ADVICE OTHERS HAVE GIVEN YOU AS CRITICISM. SO, LET ME SAY THAT I AM NOT POSTING TO CRITICISE. RATHER, I AM POSTING TO ADVISE YOU OF WHAT *IS* GOING TO HAPPEN, SO THAT YOU MAY BRACE FOR IMPACT.

ONE OF THE PLAYER'S YOU'VE HIT THIS RESET IS SOMEONE WHO HAS DEMOSTRATED A WILLINGNESS - PERHAPS EVEN A DESIRE - TO THROW AWAY A GOOD RESET JUST ON PRINCIPLE.

HE AND I DO NOT SPEAK TO EACH OTHER - I THINK HE'S A SELF CENTERED, ARROGANT JACKASS. HOWEVER, I'VE SEEN THIS GO DOWN BEFORE, AND KNOW WHAT'S COMING NEXT.

I CAN ALMOST GUARANTEE YOU THAT HE HAS ALREADY BEGUN TO PREP HIS COUNTRY FOR WAR. SOME TIME IN THE NEXT 7 TO 21 DAYS, WHENEVER HE FEELS IT IS MOST BENEFICIAL, HE WILL HIT YOU BACK FOR A HEFTY CHUNK OF LAND. WHEN HE DOES SO, HE WILL BE TYPING THE ATTACK OUT WITH HIS FINGERS CROSSED, HOPING THAT YOU BREAK GDI TO HIT HIM AGAIN.

IF YOU TAKE HIS BAIT, THAT'S WHEN HIS FUN BEGINS. HE WILL START WITH DESTRUCTIVE ACTIONS WHICH DO NOT AFFECT YOUR DR COUNT, PLUS MAYBE A PLANNED STRIKE OR TWO. AFTER HE LEAVES YOU TOOTHLESS AND LIGHTLY BLEEDING, HE WILL POST ON THIS BOARD TO CROW LOUDLY! THIS POST WILL NOT BE ONLY TO SATISFY HIS GIGANTIC EGO. IT WILL BE A CALCULATED MOVE, INTENDED TO INFORM ALL OF THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO WOULD LIKE TO PAY YOU BACK FOR EARLIER HITS THAT YOU'RE NOW A SAFE TARGET. PROBABLY SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF "WHERE DID ALL YOUR JETS AND MISSILES GO?" HIS POST WILL BE MET WITH RAUCOUS APPLAUSE BY THE DROOLING SYCOPHANTS OF THIS SERVER WHO REVEL IN HIS SELFISH ANTICS.

THEN YOU WILL NOT BE FIGHTING ONLY HIM, FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN WAITING TO GET A CHUNK OF LAND FROM YOU WILL TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO. *AFTER* THE REST OF THE SERVER HAS DONE PART OF HIS DIRTY WORK FOR HIM BY STRIPPING AWAY A FEW THOUSAND OF YOUR ACRES, HE WILL UNLEASH THE REST OF HIS ARSENAL. WHEN HE HAS REDUCED YOU TO A CRUMPLED HEAP ON THE FLOOR, HE WILL PLANT HIS FLAG IN YOUR CORPSE AND MOVE ON TO WRECK THE RESET OF SOME OTHER POOR UNSUSPECTING VICTIM, WHO MADE THE MISTAKE OF DOUBLE TAPPING HIM WHILE HE WAS FIGHTING YOU.

AGAIN, I AM NOT POSTING THIS TO CRITICISE YOU.. MERELY TO WARN YOU. THE BEST WAY TO AVOID THE FATE LISTED ABOVE WOULD PROBABLY BE TO *NOT* TAKE HIS BAIT THE FIRST TIME HE HITS YOU. ONCE YOU DO, THE SERIES OF EVENTS ABOVE IS ALMOST SURE TO UNFOLD.. I'VE SEEN IT BEFORE, TIME AND TIME AGAIN.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU SIR,

SAM
PSYCHIC FOR THE COMMITTEE OF ONE,
THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER]!

Hahaha! Like I said,

Or you hit the wrong person and BOOM! Right in the kisser!

SAM...YOUR RHETORIC CRACKS ME UP!

Deezy play how u want. As long as ur not cheating do whatever u feel necessary to play.

Just a game ;)

They will all retal, 100% take it to the bank. They'll be for twice as much as you took, and that alone makes it not worth it. Forget all that math above that is also true, and see only that you are building all this land, just to lose it all again plus more.

LIES, anyone within the t25 can break one another. Unless you pump 5m turrets everyday and stock at 80m turrets.

thanks everybody for all the replies i know theres a lot of good players here. i also feel like a lot have you have got lured into playing in a safe comfy environment nowadays lol :-)

and bobby thats how it worked out on other servers and is why i wanted try on primary. I figure if i can grab to 30k acres early as a techer then i can stay ahead of *most* retals, and if i take 10k acres in retals oh well it was a really fun ride and i would still finish *ok* on 20k acres yea?? lol

dont get me wrong i have no expectation of taking first with some of you really good guys playing lol

h20.. would you waste all your jets on a retal on a skinny techer when you could make two grabs with the same jets?

i didnt as an an indy because its not logical. i wanted to be as big as possible and macimise my landgrabs so i just said fluff it not worrh it.

im counting on someone in a tight race as it is to not want to fall behind due to getting me back for one measly little grab.

serpentor.. every guy is gonna retal me for twice what i took.. lets see so if i hit 20k acres. take 20 retals. so i should finish about -20k acres thats about right?

im actually ok with that. surely that will be a feat in and of itself

oh and ine more thing. im just one techer right now. get 5 topfeeders going. that changes the dynamics of the game real quick. Indies must learn to fear the techer as it is not natural for the cheetah to run from gazelle.

anybody interested in making topfeeding techers next round with me? operation Respect the Tech?? see just how big of an impact we can make?

Gameplay is always an evolving thing. If many topfeeding techers start to play that way, then top countries will also react and evolve by being willing to defend against topfeeding by warring, as a deterrent from future topfeeds in future resets. The end result is the techer's gamble failed, 2 months wasted both ways. Honestly, it wouldn't make much of an impact other than lower top 10 finishing NWs on the whole.

Many players also make it a point to always retal, even if it is an inferior option economically/mathematically, especially the ones that re-use the same country name from set to set, because they want to enforce the notion/impression that they ALWAYS retal and thus, it is not wise to grab them in the first place.

I get that you want to push your luck, and I wish you good luck on your endevour. :P

lolol

I guess I better buy warefare tech and lure you to hit me twice :)

This has happened a few times now, players in the top10 have risked grabbing me when I was stocking. In one set I took 3 top 10 hits and I jumped ans retaled 2 and let the third go which is rare but sometimes happens. But if someone topfeed me at this point I would just multi tap them back and go from there.

As Blid and Xin have said theres players that do this and then end up in a war, wouldn't be the first time I warred someone for this and wont be the last.

xin if all the indies are warring all the techers (especially 5 that hit them) the cashers will win every set? they'll either eventually take their licks like a man, learn to not be a fatty fatcakes, or we'll keep warring every set like a bunch of flufftards. either way the indies are not unchecked dominating every game.

I like warring so i mean thats not really a good incentive to give up this strategy. Hell i through away my #1 country on FFA just to fluff with TKO lol im not reaal serious about this i just wanna have some fun


I was just wondering though guys. When i played in the old days it seemed techers all wanted to hit the big boys and tech as many turns as possible. this new fear of indies and retals is something i dont recall being so prominent.

I would think the extra 80 mil u could make from not grabbing and instead teching 10 turns would keep you safe or at least pay for building costs

Once again thanks for all the replies guys even if i do think you are a bunch of raging emasculated fluffots

skinny techer? a 30k techer is not skinny. with you topfeeding, you probably will hold alot of jets and lesser turrets than the others. Definately gonna hit you, and with you double-building those land, u're not gonna have any stock to RoR me.

techers have to stock some time, at that point they're easy to hit, the whole idea that a techer should be able to 'push around' the commies is short-sighted and dumb; commies start faster, commies have more staying power, while techers have to settle down, stock, and then just jump near the end.

10 years ago, the grabbing formula is different. You got more land by attacking larger countries, and less land by attacking smaller countries, percentage-wise (a step function, in fact, players would manipulate their own NW to go under a NW threshold, say making the target country be 31% of your NW instead of 29%, and that makes grabbing returns increase significantly from 3% to 5% of his land, or a 66% increase).

That formula has since changed so that the maximum returns %-wise is now at attacking someone about 100%-105% of your Networth, and is now a "bell curve". In other words, "topfeeding" as it was 10 years ago, defined on attacker having a lower Networth than the defender, no longer exists.

Nowadays, topfeeding is more or less categorized based on intent. That is, bottomfeeding is to attack someone with no intention of eating a retal, because they are not capable/unlikely of doing so. Topfeeding is to attack someone with every intention of eating a retal, and hoping to come out ahead in the exchange (and so you won't try to avoid the retal at all, since it would cost too much upkeep). Midfeeding is to attack someone in between those 2 (typically countries half your NW), and then actively avoid being retalled by jumping in defense.

Thing is, you say that indies would more likely bottomfeed twice to get the same acres as retalling you. I can say the same thing about techers. A techer can also bottomfeed 2-3 times to get the same land as one topfeed, and not lose any of it to future retals.

I assure you everyone that has posted here so far will not hesitate to retal you (and have all played over a year at least), and some will even war you or farm you. :)

In fact, not retalling actually encourages other people to also grab the same country, there have been cases where 1 country decides to attack someone just 1/2 or 2/3 of his NW, suddenly 2 days later, 4 countries follow that up because he chose not to retal, and the assumption is they are also unlikely to take retals.

Given 2 identical countries to attack stats-wise, would you attack someone that has no history of retalling, or someone that has retalled every hit?

Where'd the idea of dominating commie/indies come from? Check the recent winners. Maybe one Indy win in 2 years or something???

Winners are all cashers, with the odd farmer no?

On the plus side, #13's trying the same top feeding start and bouncing his attempted grabs. At least you'll finish ahead of him.

This is comical. Lets see how you finish the set? If your goal is to find a war I think you will meet that goal eventually :)

Whoever runs Kansas...lol tarded!

He found one already just waiting to happen now.

Any idiot who hits the #1-5 guy daily is gonna get punished.

I feel bad for anyone dumb enough to ally a player whos gonna waste their NW making bad grabs.