Some great finishes there, Evo dominating again with the top 6 places, so congrats in order to: En4cer, Tertius, Cordy, LightBringer and Rossoneri!
Monsters the first non evo at #7, congrats to cyref, then Syzygy and Sphinx for PDM in #8 and #9 respectively, with crackhead from monsters rounding out the top 10.

congrats to all!

Man, getting t10 is harder than I remember :)

That was a seriously impressive effort from Tertius this set with that commie indy.

I think that last changeset was the ideal tweak to even out the playing field.

This next one though will totally undo the balance that was just created between the strategies.

I think this set we saw 2 Techers over 1b a Rep Casher over 1b a 1.5b CI and then I got lucky with a goods sale during my 40 hour logout to just pip him and Cordy at the post.

Nice finish everyone.

Gimm back my oil, you bastid!

Congrats to all the top, some very impressive finishes!

I think next set will be interesting, but not as unbalanced as you might think. Both CI and techers are really limited by market demand, whereas FFO is somewhat agnostic (they use tech and jets, but if there's "too many" FFO it doesn't really impact their play as they stock way more bushels and oil than they sell). This was a really nice set for commie, and that strat is pretty new (the expense formula / constants had to be discovered with play and then determining how to plan for the destock is all new fun for the math nerds) - so I think it can be improved, but I also think next set with even just a few more CI trying it out, the market will limit it closer to 1.2B, pretty much in line with techers - and even a casher. So the main aspect of the balance is that FFO will need to do more of a hybrid destock like everyone else. They still get a bonus bonus and produce the goods they need so they'll be less impacted by the semi-expected food and oil spike to come as things rebalance. They'll just have to destock like in the old days (e.g. start buying off their PM quite a bit sooner and/or balance out the costs of oil purchases without MB).

All that to say, the main balance is this will reduce FFO's top spot in the meta (which honestly is good, because as I mentioned, they don't see the impact of market pressure as much, which sort of reduces a major aspect in the game) but everyone else can see some success depending on market conditions. There could be alternative ways to mitigate the low acre oil destock, but change can provide a little bit of fun as everyone works to figure out the new meta together.

I think the casher is nerfed with the changeset too they also have the low land tmbr or hybrid destock available to it. This changeset will put downward pressure on the cashers too.

The types of finishes we are seeing with the FFO's is several years of tweaking and improving... commies just this last 3 sets have gone from 600m pre changes to 1.1 to 1.25 to 1.5b.

I would much rather the changes to game formula not happen so often - we are still learning about the last changeset. Or at least implemented on test servers or others that aren't the main one for trial first.

I agree with your sentiments on game changes - it's good to let it settle before making a new one unless it was really just the wrong / unexpected direction, but three full sets in alliance seems pretty reasonable given the flurry of new ideas. I do also agree it would be nice to see some of it in a test server, or have a chance in express / team before it gets to 1a (mostly because the turns are faster and the sets are shorter, not because I think less of them) but that timing won't always work out.

congrats all!!!

awesome CI almost got the win!

Congrats....took a lot of your life but you sure showed those bots a thing or two!!

Maybe we need to be able to sell nukes to get around the drop in land dropping :)