How many spies should a country produce? Is there a cutoff point 100k, 15ok etc? Or is there an optimal spy/land or spy/net value ratio?

you should maintain 15-25 spal on soloservers as your country gets bigger.

i see you.... O_o...

How long is a piece of string?

what do you mean? not women's underpants i guess.

There is no limit, but there isn't any benefit to having too much spies, since you only need to have more "spies per acre of land (SPAL)" than targets you will be spying. Spy upkeep is enormous. On solo servers, it is not usual to go above 30 SPAL, for clan servers, some specialized spy countries can go 100 or more.

Thanks for the info

I think having about .5 to 1 spy per acre works

i think you mean 5 spies per acre and even then spal is fluffty.

five spies per acre is what spal, marshal?

5 spal.

Depends on govt, tech [he said snarkily]

only techers and war countries get spy tech and 5 spies per acre is crappy even as dict with maxed spy tech (it'd be ~10 spal).

Wow.

Your posts are - well, wow is the best i can do.

I agree

37.5% spal is fair. 45% is good, 51% is excellent

1

Does anyone know the formula for spy production? Can't find fluff in the wiki

"At 100% production, one industrial complex can produce: 1.86 (troops or jets or turrets), 0.4 tanks, or 0.62 spies."

Source http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Talk:Buildings

OK

So the above needs to be considered quite carefully.

Look at this:

Tax Revenue:
Expenses:
Net Change: $18,182
$4,424
$+13,758 Food Produced:
Food Consumed:
Net Change: 167 bushels
122 bushels
+45 bushels
Population gain: 69 people.
You Produced: 489 Turrets.
Tax Revenue:
Expenses:
Net Change: $18,550
$4,512
$+14,038 Food Produced:
Food Consumed:
Net Change: 170 bushels
124 bushels
+46 bushels
Population gain: 70 people.
You Produced: 499 Turrets.
Tax Revenue:
Expenses:
Net Change: $18,910
$4,602
$+14,308 Food Produced:
Food Consumed:
Net Change: 173 bushels
127 bushels
+46 bushels
Population gain: 72 people.
You Produced: 509 Turrets.
Tax Revenue:
Expenses:
Net Change: $19,281
$4,693
$+14,588 Food Produced:
Food Consumed:
Net Change: 176 bushels
129 bushels
+47 bushel

This is early in a start up showing what happened as I built four csites. Note that turrets went up turn by turn. If I had ben producing spies they would, I take it, have gone up marginally too.

The number of Industrial Cpomplexes was constant so some other factor was at work.

that kind of info can't be posted on forums.

You think there is a forum rule against posting stuff from (and solely about) your own country?

Your post is well within the spirit of the rules, Marshal posts so often he sometimes responds to something from three threads ago. :P

You population now impacts your production. If you have less than max civvies you won't make max production. It is why GS are so crippling now. You can "fix" your production by setting your tax rate higher, but this will need to be corrected over time as 35% is the ideal.

yes there is and if it is written that no sharing any info (even if its your own country) then it doesn't matter if it isn't against spirit of rules cause only written rules matter (unless it is in grey area but then its upto mods who slack alot).

Don't take up law, Marshal.

It is tempting to think that population has something to do with the change in production but far from clear. The change that was made linking population to production requires population to drop to 80% of maximum so that is not a factor here.


"#3) Production based on Population

In an effort to make crippling and failed KR's less pointless, we have made production of indies/farms/labs/rigs based on population.

Basically production of each (&TPT) is multiplied by:

min(1,max(0.2,pop/(maxpop*0.8))

This means once you drop below 16% of population, your production will hit a floor of 20%; production does not get affected until you are below 80% of max population. Given cashers are already linearly affected from 100% -> 0%, this is not applied vs Ent/Res."

It actually is the factor here. Look at his increasing population change. Population growth slow downs when your current pop is 2/3 or more of maxpop. Since it is increasing, he is not yet reached 66% of his maxpop, and thus his production is affected.

This phenomenon generally occurs when you do a batch explore, and is a known disadvantage, while the advantage is getting more land per turn since the entire batch is explored at the first turn's "land per turn" rate.

It is my country Xin and I had been doing one turn explore, fully build, one turn explore fully build and with constant tax for all the turns leading up to these turns (no batch explore).

I guess that, as this is early in a start up, it is possible that a single turn of exploration might increase max population enough to bring the production penalty into play but my instinct is that it wouldn't. Too late to look at the actual population for these turns or to work out max pop. :(

I think there is another factor at work. No idea what though.

I spent the turns building csites so it is hard to think that had any effect.

1 acre of land supports 12 population without any res/bus tech and buildings. When you explore and gain say 45a, you increase your maxpop by 12*45 = 540. Your pop gain pasted is only about +70 pop per turn, so it is very easy to fall out of 80% threshold.

OK, I'll buy that.

Next time I do a start up I'll watch turn by turn.

Not sure it leads to any conclusion, or change in start up procedure. But it might. :)

Certainly adds a minus point to mass explore.