How do you find stuff to buy?

I had no idea it is so fluffing puzzling.

Come on guys, give me a clue.

if you mean cheap stuff then standing orders.

Yes, I sorta thought that would be good and it works out OK. Buy cheap, tuck it away and hope to get your money back at the end or btter.

I think I can sorta do that bit.

Although exactly when I stop tucking it away and start selling it properly I don't know. I sorta guess about now, right? Cause I need some time to do the buying out private maket thing don't I?

But the real problem is I check in - cash a bit, get near the 2 bill and look around for what to buy THEN. If I'm gonna wait for the Orders to fill I won't have time to cash all the turns. Or maybe I will?

Anyway what do you stock when it's too near the end to just stock bushels or oil. That I think is my question.

Maybe its military and to fluff with increasing the expenses?

As you can see I'm all at sea here.

OK

I think I might be starting to get it worked out. All I need room for is to cash with low expnses up to a certain point. At that point I will have 2 bill in cash and money coming in from the sale of stocked stuff. Now I stop what I have been doing and start the process of buying out my private maket. Expenses begin to rise so turns progressively get less valuable (boo hoo) but by buying off the private market I make room for cash coming in from sales and I make a start at getting full benefit from that private market.

Should the time come when I have so much military that I get to negative income (seems unlikely but maybe it happens) then I am done with turns and it is just a matter of maximising the jump by way of autoselling tech or whatever, geting as much as possible from pm and buying from public market for rest.

So now my question is - if I'm starting to get it right (?) when is that certain moment.

As late as possible I suppose (so maybe cutting it fine on sales of stocked stuff) but early enough to get the best out of the private market. So: less land (hence smaller amount of cash absorbed by units on private market) = earlier (to allow plenty of refresh time); more land = later.

Bet there is some smart ass formula. There always is. (groan)

You got it right. :)

Also, if you're not a Demo, it is usually better to sell to private market at $35 per bushel.

One of the best ways to learn is to observe what the top players are doing, see how much land they grab, when they stop grabbing, how long they are stocking, and when they finally do their jump.

PS. Most people use spreadsheets for this.

Thank you.

I manage OK as a TTR but its definately not so complicated. It's all the damn cash that appears each turn hat makes it more challenging. It seems you can be lucky with the market - stuff ppearing for you to buy at just the time you need to dip down under the 2 bill limit.

I suppose it may not be so critical with the change to decay but I was brought up on 2 bill as a ceiling so I get jittery when it approaches.

Don't think I'll do casher again. It seems to me seriously boring. So I won't need these spreadsheet things. Hurrah.

"Most people" don't use spreadsheets, they cheat off guys like xin.

lol@vic

when you stop and start selling depends how big stock and how much land you got, if hundreds of millions bushels then ~2 weeks before set ends (if you restock mostly via priv market).

ALWAYS a great idea. Knowing who to cheat off is one of the game's best secrets. :D

Anyway I have FINALLY found something to enjoy - and something a TTR player can do.

Second guess the falling market with your stocked stuff!!!

I got oil bang on and now I've got my main stash of bushels on just $1 below the huge pile everyone else has waiting.

Oh, the satisfaction.

I'm gonna have a brandy on it. :) If no fluffer undercuts me before the bushels sell I'll make it a large one.

Trust a techer to outguess the market! What do these cah people know. HA

Hahahaha. I love it

16.4 mins ago
You sold 3,720,380 Bushels for $125,897,659.
No more Bushels remain for sale.

16.7 mins ago
You sold 1,726,948 Bushels for $58,439,920.
3,720,380 Bushels remain for sale.

17.5 mins ago
You sold 500,000 Bushels for $16,920,000.
5,447,328 Bushels remain for sale.

18.5 mins ago
You sold 2,000,000 Bushels for $67,680,000.
5,947,328 Bushels remain for sale.

19.1 mins ago
You sold 52,672 Bushels for $1,782,420.
7,947,328 Bushels remain for sale.

i sold recently few m bushels on standing order, only bad thing was that it was couple 1m orders so my main page was quite filled by market news but no taxes since seller was demo.

Hadn't noticed before that food required per turn is tied to military. Remember wondering if it was tied to population but not bothering to find out.

Another incentive to these numerous fools who won't defend their land I suppose. When a techer jumps he is usually dead in the water afterwards so you don't notice. Different for these casher fellows.

I notice luck with the markt plays quite a part. There is 65 mill bushels there now. At the same price I mean. God knows how much behind that.

Shall I buy it - give them all a shock?

Nearly done. No more turns. Just buy military as the pm refreshes and on the open market.

My brief and largely unhappy casher life done.

Well - am qute enjoying the destock and you do jump a most satisfyingly long way. Forty something to sixth just now, although plenty will come past no doubt. Still.

pop, spies and rest of military eats bushels and then decay takes bit too.

useless to buy unless price is 35 and you are demo with maxed mil tech.

luck plays role no matter what strat runs.

My goodness. First the tech makes you rich then you autosell it for a fortune just when you need a nice cash boost.

No wonder people are always buying the stuff off me.

I am holding on grimly to about eigth or nineth at the moment so top 20 must be a possibility.

Very nice - and totally unxpected. I can see why people muck about with their calculators trying to see where their jump will take them. Sorta nice to just take it as it come tho'.

My goodness, missles are flying, grabs being done, ABs abound and I'm still selling dribs and dabs of oil. With less than 2 hours to go.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, world.

2.2 mins ago
You sold 100,000 Oil Barrels for $8,930,000.
814,540 Oil Barrels remain for sale.

2.2 mins ago
550 Weapons were sold for $517,000.
I mean just look at it. Oil selling, weapon tech selling. And I'm hanging on to ninth and moving past the no 8 man. Could it be a too ten finish here. Surely not.

3.6 mins ago
You sold 70,000 Oil Barrels for $6,251,000.
914,540 Oil Barrels remain for sale.

6 mins ago
You sold 50,000 Oil Barrels for $4,465,000.
984,540 Oil Barrels remain for sale.

6.2 mins ago
You sold 121,163 Oil Barrels for $10,819,856.
1,034,540 Oil Barrels remain for sale.

three minutes left to sell 700k oil. Almost believe it will sell. Shall I put it back up? No time to get it back if I do. Or play safe and sell on pm.

Well no contest really.

Still worth remembering this last flurry.

Well, with an hour to go it does indeed look like a top ten finish for the novice casher. Lying seventh and little sign of major jumps yet to come.

Will Furious be tempted to try the casher thingy again? Absolutely not. The boredom level is extreme and it is just oo lonely a life. Not one single soul came to call all set and I made no visit to anyone else myself. You'd have to be a very antisocial person indeed to go for this sort of thing. The flurry of activity and interest at the very end is not enough.

Over and out. I've enjoyed the insightful contributions to the thread and was able to learn a lot (sort of).

Boring or not, mastering each and every strategy does help in predicting market trends in whatever other strategies you find more interesting to play.

Since it is your first time playing a casher, you have also not quite figured out the most optimal time to jump, and how. Sometimes it is better to exceed the 2b cash limit (the portion above 2b starts to decay 0.1% per turn, like food), because the decaying amount is smaller than what you would lose if you buy food for say $43 ($45.58 after tax), only to sell it to PM for $35.

There are lots of small tips and tricks you can apply. Food upkeep is based on your military at home and your population. So if you store 1/4 of your military on the market at the start of your turn (or PS them out), and then recall them at the end of your turns, you save on a tiny bit of food upkeep. This is worth it for non-cashers in general, whether it is worth it for cashers, needs some calculation and math, but generally for a well played casher, it isn't worth the additional "cashing income" lost.

If you're a Demo casher, you can do even more. With your cash, but food cheap, sell it higher (while food price is rising). Buy cheap tech, sell it higher. Buy oil, sell it higher. When food looks like it is going to crash, sell as much of your food as you can, store turns, and buy it back cheaper later. Etc.

Casher is by no means "boring" as you claim it to be. It's all about what you do with your turns. What your actual strat is matters not as much. :)

Meh, all-x rep cash is pretty boring.

All-X anything is boring.

Xin, I could have expanded there, sounded like furious played all-x rep. Of course all-x is boring haha. You are 100% correct of course that learning any strat makes you better at all of them.

I am thinking about giving theo casher a whirl, which server is friendliest to that setup?

kingme and i think maybe cx too have had success with it on express in the past, vic. you could try it on team, too, but you'd need to grab well to compensate for the loss of explore from the rep

Yes, it is the all-X aspect which makes it dull.

Xin's point about deepening an understanding of the market is, as his points invariably are, insightful. My transactions with the market were as a buyer not as a seller and it felt weird for quite some time. Orders become a very valuable tool and I will certainly now incorporate those into my play much more than I have been doing. As in all strats, lots of free time allowing you to camp the market gives a huge edge. I left my machine only to make regular cups of tea almost throughout destocking. :) (And THAT was NOT boring HA - weird creatures gamers.)

I don't think tweaks would have done a lot for my end position (tenth I see). My basic strategy was to set a low land goal, use turns as late as I could on the falling market, be land thin and lurk well down the scores list. But I like to defend my land and I carried a goodly collection of turrets. That turned out to be totally un-necessary and I have not much doubt that I could have finished two or three places higher by carrying half those turrets. Of course I'd have put a little more pressure on myself to find good purchases but not much.

Xin's tweaks are nice and I am sure more could be found but to win you would obviously need to set a high land target, get landfat and get lucky with Bus/Res early. So that would make getting the balance between defence and expenses much more critical. You would need to time the use of turns very well and find ways to avoid the attention of predators. Not easy, I think. So that would make it more strategically interesting and get a bit of adrenaline going each time you checked in. :)

Not for me though. Theo techer rulez!!

Since you like teching, you should try rep tech on something like 5k acres, get your casher techs high, then do another batch explore and convert to cash, then start grabbing. I would not suggest trying this for the first time in Express, unless that is the only server you play.

I've tried two or three sets in tourney Vic and I started a country in Alliance just to remind myself what goes on in there. But clan stuff sort of sucks you in. So that is where I will be mainly playing now, I guess.

I did a pure cash start in the last express but a tech phase makes a whole lot of sense. Which is better must depend, I think, on how many techers there turn out to be. So the winning strtegy may be to find a way to preserve flexibility until you can see what people are playing. Whether that would make the start too slow I am not sure. But my one set as a casher has made me realise that holding back, whether at the beginning, middle or late end game is actually fine for a casher. So I'm pretty sure this is the way to go. Preserve options then determine your overall strategy with max information.

Like backgammon.

for express you can hold turns, wait for the inevitable cheap tech and during your CS phase you can get your techs up to tech start phase.

How many rounds of cashing to do you do per session

Before you hit your land target, none. You hit the explore button a lot (or the buttons you hit when grabbing) and then hit the build button a lot.

Once you reach your land target the cash button is all you hit.

It's pretty mechanical.