"and req: my point is as an admin. the community has a very steep learning curve to be a part of, especially the alliance server (which is where everyone wants the growth, thus, is the topic of discussions, eh?). This is one of the hurdles we wanted to overcome. We made the game with a "if we give the community a better game, that will spur players to make hosting sites, create guides and content and create the resources needed to make the game grow"

But that hasn't really happened -- we get lots of user-created content, but it's typically focused on the users who are already highly engaged with the community and it's often locked behind clan sites. On this server specifically, many alliances just polarized their stances and opinions while continuing down the same path we were on during the end of E2025, making their members follow suit. That was focus on yourself at the expense of ALL others. I remember back in the day there was plenty of public content and strats and stuff when I started playing, hosted on third-party websites (one offs, hosting sites, etc).

Considering the amount of time and effort required by the staff to do all the things that we had hoped would be done organically, the question is more about allocation of scarce time and resources by a handful of contributors who already have full plates + busy RL. I have other projects I'm also excited about and have a much more direct impact on my real life than EE (hi Detmer! :p). I'm not trying to make excuses or complain, but I'm just being candid about this issue.

But like I said, there's lots of stuff that could be community created and vetted, like new documentation, guides, strats etc. I already outlined what has to happen from a dev perspective above :p"

~Pang on AT

I think the primary community can do a number of things. Let's form a committee to form a committee to decide how the primary server can contribute.

Off the top of my head
1. Improve wiki articles on solo server specific strategies
2. "Interviews" with top players to discuss the specifics of resets that they won
3. An active presence on the player advice forum.

What else do you think would be helpful, and where can you volunteer?

I think this is the approach we need to take in order to get the admins to pay attention to primary, and to give us the changes (and new players) we want and need.

Lol, this sounds like something I heard on Yes, Prime Minister.

yes, it was meant to be a joke=)

Problem is that in the mind of most alliance players "admins included" every other server is just side BS to test strats and for fluffing around on. Alliance is the only one that actually means anything. Which is funny because primary is closest to the real old school earth that we all got hooked on playing.

You are aware that there have been plenty of changes that screw up alliance right?

Who cares about Alliance?

But they were all meant for and geared towards alliance server. The fact they don't work out is besides the point.

"What can we do to improve the game?"


Not play it.

Convince our "cousins and roommates" to play.

It would be interesting to get some game specific data to make a targeted approach on what needs to be addressed

of x countries how many are active
How many are single server countries
How many are new
How many complete a set

i think bonuses need to be linked to what you actually do rather than vote

helping new players in my opinion is worth more than clicking vote as everyone knows its a gimmick really
which would get all of those strat threads answered more personally/maybe allocate a mentor to each new player who wants it

Proposed changes should be voted as we should be a democracy not a tyranny in such a large running community we all understand the mechanics to some degree and this would make a big difference as alot of you feel let down by the recent changes which would naturally affect a 80k commie with building costs etc

the other thing if you vote changes its alot easier to discuss them rather than actually code them in then ask for feedback but thats not two cents

I think the wiki is a gimmick and dont know how many use it same for writing strats its not going to retain old players some who have said they will stop playing due to this and date
and new players will prefer being spoonfed rather than going to look for info realistically

the other thing i think on each server the forums should be coded into the left hand menu or like a bulletin board or somethig and you can view it in your country file as alot of newbies would broswe it
but wouldnt come to the main forums unless there was more incentive than 4 bonus points.....


also think all of eestats should be coded into the game as someone who knows a website shouldnt get an advantage over someone who dosent

those are some really good points trainboy. Thanks!

~Break out!~

This guide is a step by step breakdown of how to play the 1st 5 Days. Explananation of strategies and key game concepts are incorporated into the guide to teach apprentice player core Empire Earth concepts.

This guide is intended to help the bottom 50% of Primary players get into the top 50% instead.

After reading,understanding, and implementing your newfound know-hows, YOU have no excuse to be in the bottom 50% of Primary players.

~Warning! Stop! Don't Move!~
YOU may become addicted to Earth Empires and transform to a Landgrabber instead of being my good farm!

This will directly result in MORE TIME LOST playing this game!
This will directly result in MORE Hate Generated from those that you grab!
This will result in a Bigger Ego as a direct result from moving from a punching bag into the punisher!

If you don't want the above,

Desist.

***Important Disclaimer***
This guide has many inefficiency incorporated. This guide is not intended to help you know everything that I know about the game, nor do would I play the exact way it's written. However, I do adhere to the principles that are explained in this guide. If you follow this guide and do a little bit of homework yourself from reading the links at the bottom, I guarantee you will be in the top 50% of Primary Players instead of being in the ghetto 50%.
____________________________________________________________

Your Learner Strategy is Communism Industrialist aka Commie Indy

Turn 0

Do:

"Manage"
Change Gov't to Communism
Change Tax Rate to 70%
Set Production Rate to 100% Turrets

"Private" (Knowns as Private Market [PM])
Sell your 100 Troops

Turn 1

"Build"
Build 1 Construction Site (CS)

Change Tax Rate to 35%

----------------------------------
Explanation:
Communism is the only viable Industrialist Strategy because it possesses an awesome +35% industrial production bonus making your Industrial complexes that much better.

The rule of thumb ideal tax rate is 35%. Higher taxes directly correlates with a lower population. The tax rate is set at 70% for turn 1 to take advantage of higher tax income at the expense of a losing population. This is okay for turn 1 because you are going to lose those folks anyways when you set your tax rate to 35%. This way you are getting more money at least for turn 1.

100% Turret is set because selling turrets on the private market generate the most income when taken in the production rate of all other military units.

Selling your troops is important! This gives you money that you will need eventually, and it eliminates military maintenance cost!

-Key Concept 1: Upkeep!-

It costs money to maintain land, alliances, and military. The overwhelming majority of maintenance cost will be military costs. The best players always try to balance out the need to have just enough military to be safe with more money produced per turn to better facilitate growth. There are players who are so afraid of being hit that they have too much military for their size and end up shooting themselves in the foot because they all their money is going into upkeep and has little leftover for growth.

-----------------------------------

Turn 2-60

Build 59 More Construction Sites (CSes)

-----------------------------------
Explanation:

-Key Concept 2: Building Per Turn (BPT)-
Construction Sites will save you a LOT of turn in the long run by speeding up how many buildings you can construct per turn. With 60 CSes, your bpt is now 20 instead of the 5 you started. Granted, you already spent 60 turns, but you are now building 4x quicker than you were in the beginning. Top players always have at least a couple hundred CSes built.

-----------------------------------

Turn 61-120

Build 20 Industrial Complexes (ICes)
Sell all turrets on Private Market (PM)
Build 20 ICes
sell Turrets on PM

Build ICes/Farms as needed & "Explore" Explore
Repeat the above to Turn 99

Place a Standing Order in the private market for like 20k bushel at a reasonable price of lower 30s.

-------------------------------------
Explanation:

Soon your net production of bushels will go into the negatives and eat away at your existing supply. Build just enough farms so that you never run out of food but don't overbuild them as soon you'll be razing them down once bushels are open on the public market.

-Key Concept 3: 0 Cash or O Bushels!-
Running out of food or cash. If you ever run out of food or cash when spending turns, you'll lose a portion of existing military and resources and any queued turns will automatically terminate. Before the end of 300 turns, you'll be in the red for net income and bushel produced per turn, so watch out!

Stop at turn 99 so that you are in protection and no one will can hit you with zero military. However, to be honest, even if you are at turn 100 with no defense, the likelihood of you being hit is close to nil anyways. But why take any chances when you don't have to take any?

Wait for bushels to arrive the next day so you can start buying bushels instead of building farms.
---------------------------------------

Don't sell any more turrets in the private market (PM). Stock them up to be sold in "Market" for at least 2x the price.

Turn 100-120
Explore/Build ICs

121-End of your 3rd Day

Build all CSes!
Save one turn and sell Max Turrets on the public market!

-Key Concepts: Playing the Market-
Golden Rule: It's way better to lose a few bucks on the prices than not to have your goods sold.
Learn to spot trends and understand the market dynamics of the game. Try to price your goods competively, not cheap!

Let me stress now, the importance of buying as cheaply as you can and selling as high as you can. For the sake of demonstrating this very important concept and pretending my math is correct, if you were able to sell a measly 5% higher ($147 instead of 140) and buy it 5% cheaper ($3135 instead of $3300 for Industrial Tech) which result in YOU directly buying more Industrial tech to boost your industrial production by an additional 1.5%. This 1.5% compounded for 50 days, 1.015^50 = 2.105 or 2.1x bigger than you could've otherwise! (I know it's illogical to use the compounding formula, but it gets the point across!)

Before you get too excited, I shall repeat to you the Golden Rule:
It's way better to lose a few bucks on the prices than not to have your goods sold.
Learn the market trends. {http://www.eestats.com/primary/market}

When selling unit on Market always sell the Max Amount!
You should never sell troops and tanks because they are don't pay as much as selling jets and turrets!
The only time you should ever produce tanks or troops is when you expect warring action to be conducted against you!
---------------------------------------

Beginning of the 4th Day to Turn 161

Build CSes

Your Country Should look somewhat like this:
Total Acres 1040
IC 910
Farms 30
CS 100

Turn 162 To End of the 4th day

Change Military Production to 25% Spies and 75% Jets

Replace Farms with ICs
Build IC/Explore
1 Turn saved to sell Max Jet/Turrets on Market

Your Country Should look somewhat like this:
Total Acres 1710
IC 1610
Farms 0
CS 100

----------------------------------------
Beginning of the 5th Day to the END (Minus maybe 10 days to networth jump)

Build ICs/CSs & Explore/Landgrabbing!

Each day from here till the final few days, you should be spending all but 9-13 turns spying/grabbing/building ICs. The 9-13 turns left should be spent building 8-12 CSes and 1 turn left to sell. You can stop building CS when you have about 100 BPT.
---------------------------------------
Explanation:
-Key Concept: Hitting for Land aka Landgrabbing (LG)-
Hitting for land is the best and most efficient way to grow. (Essays can be written out landgrabbing so I just give you so quick details)

Golden Rule: It's better to hit a smaller target for lesser chance of being retaliated than to hit someone your same size and asking to be hit back!

When should you LG?
Take the amount of land you can explore and x4. If one can grab for at least 4x that amount, go LG. If not, explore. All your attacks should be Planned Strikes (PS). Most top players stick to making 5 PSes per day.

Go to {http://www.eestats.com/primary} to find potential targets! (Too much work? You can do the old school way of using search and using news! Trust me unless you have some access to some bots or programs used by Clans in the Alliance server. Eestats is the most efficient way to go.)

Visit Empire Earth for more info!!!!!!
http://wiki.earthempires.com/...p/Category:Basic_Gameplay
http://wiki.earthempires.com/.../Playing_your_first_turns
and much much more!

The reason we are not building anything else but IC & CSes is because we benefit the most from building ICs with our innate gov't bonus!
Expect very soon to have negative cash flow! This is okay and expected! In fact, late game Indies are millions in the red per turn but they produce many more units that are worth more!
-------------------------------------

Final Comments:

I know there is a learning curve. I was once also a punching bag myself. But if you stick to it, I promise this game will get you hooked as it has to many players who has been hooked to it for decades.

That's my 2 cents of contribution to the community/Primary. Don't say I didn't do anything now.