I find myself almost exclusively using them for the extra turns, I'm curious to see what the more experienced players do.

Expenses

McDonald's egg mcmuffins yum yum

LOL

I usually go expenses but decided to go build cost this set since I was doing a tech start and planning on building on a lot more acres than I usually do.

Expenses is generally the best choice for non-techers, and turns for techers.

Decay is great but only if you can avoid the cash and food stealers, which isn't usually the case.

In the last 15 days or so, a non-techer will switch to booms for his strategy type.

Build cost is good if you are going for a country larger than 60k acres, which isn't likely given the recent set of game changes (increased bottomfeeding unit losses for the attacker). Now maybe 2 country per reset might exceed 60k, with a bunch of others at or near 60k.

Use bonus points for extra turns for building industry.

Also use extra turns to generate cash

I'm going to partly disagree.

Building costs can be great to increase revenue efficiency in the start/mid game which allows for increased tech levels from the extra funds and further production/effectiveness. 1 Pt in CS is worth around 70Mil $$ on a 60k acre country. 1 Pt in expenses is more or less depending on paranoia and increased turret count but most of that benefit kicks in the stocking phase of the game.

Expenses only kicks in the late game when military/spy count is high, but the real advantage over the competitors is usually gained mid-game.

For all explore and small countries below 30K you should probably go expenses to 20% or so depending how many bonuses you miss. I've done some calcs on this but will obviously keep the exact values and such a secret :D

I did some building cost bonus this set as a Tyr techer because I was thinking like turns aren't that useful and if I grab to 35k land and then convert and have to rebuild another 4k I dunno, might be good, but then I ended up getting grabbed a couple times and lost 2k acres so turns is the way to go I guess.

The thing about build cost is that when you invest points into it, you only gain benefit from it *from the remainder of the reset*. Most people don't think about it too deeply about it.

8 points for -1.3% construction costs. But the -1.3% costs only applies for every remainder acre you intend to build for the rest of the set. If you put 8 points into it while you are at 50k land, and if your land goal is 60k land, then you are only getting that -1.3% on the next 10k land you are building.

There is a breakeven point where it no longer makes sense to invest in it, and this happens just a bit before you decide to stop grabbing/gaining land for the rest of the reset.

The hard part is calculating whether this is worth more than -expenses. The same 8 points could go into -0.8% expenses, which will also only work for the remainder of the reset, but the "remainder of the reset" could possibly be more than what you save in build costs. It is even more complicated when you realize that savings in build cost occurs over a shorter time frame (i.e over the next 5 days over the 10k acres you are going to grab/build), but the savings for expenses is spread over a larger time frame (i.e over the next 15 days). This matters since if you get to save the money now over a shorter time frame, that money can be invested somewhere else.

Last set I started with building cost bonus and switched to expenses partway through. It was cool and smart I think.

The really weird part is that because building costs grow exponentially with your country size, it turns out that you actually save more with every % point into -construction costs bonus even though it only works on the remainder of the reset. The amount saved is also "more immediately usable" which can go into tech, oldman's calculations were that it was worth it to invest in -CS cost bonus until the 2nd last day of grabbing.

Xin,

Considering that the first 10days or so you dont have more than 2k land on a tech start, that's the perfect time to put points into construction that applies to >99% of the money spent on buildings. 10 days = 13% construction.

I (and I can only speak to rep-cash as that's the only strat i've ever played) start putting pts in building costs early on and switch to expenses or PCI booms depending on need/playstyle. If I did this right, building on 60K acres will cost somehwere around $7.5B - $8B and therefore a 13% bonus is worth roughly 1B $$. Is that worse than 8% in expenses? If it were, my total expenses paid in the round would have to be greater than $1B/.08 = $12.5B

As an example it's probably optimal to start construction and switch to expenses or PCI boom unless you plan on stocking with 60M turrets with 800turns to go or something like that, in which case bypass the construction bonus and go str8 into expenses.

if that's true that's hilarious. Still worth it to get -1.3% building costs when you have 4000 buildings left to build? Well, maybe, but if that's true LOL.

OK let's see, say your building cost is 275k, and you get that 1.3%, that's a savings of $3575/building. times your 4000 buildings left to build that's like $14m. There's no way that's as good as a boom, I don't think this claim stands up to scrutiny

Yeah, you don't put pts into Construction past the first month man.
If you go building cost you go as early as possible.

My all-explore rep cash last round showed me that every point into expenses is worth $50M and that's on a measily country with max military tech.

A huge country has likley double the expenses puting it somwhere around $100M per expense point lol. Certainly more than $14M that blid indicated.

I tried several bonuses for different strats


1) CI with build cost bonus up to 30%, then 15% expenses then booms
2) Demo farmer with 30% build cost, then 15% expense then booms
3) Rep Casher with 35% build cost then booms
4) Dict Casher with 2 weeks of turns bonus, then -20 expenses then booms
5) Dict Casher with 30% build cost then booms
6) Tyr/Demo techer with defence bonus

I think bonuses are not that important, its how well you utilize them and it also depends on what kind of play style you're playing. There is no specific set of bonuses that a certain country or strat should have every set. I like land, so I go for build cost most of the time.

Strategies by Sir Paul!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzH-2NgtaZk

That was compared to -expenses, not against booms. At some point, booms do become better. Also, this calculation was made on ^1.05 build cost formula, not the ^1.03 one, so yeah, it needs some recalculation.

you sure I said that? You probably misunderstood?
I can't remember the math now though..probably need to crunch the numbers again when I have some time

oldman is disavowing his previous claims!

I'm sure you said that, yeah.

nice

Ived used most on turns.. but have used some on defenses and building cost

expenses or indy bonus

Booms

Defense.

What about free GDI?

I logged in and found I had 16 points and figured what the hell.

Does the math make sense?

yup, always go free gdi if you're netting.

also, bonus.