I think the last few sets have shown a bit of an imbalance in the strats for netting. Techer seems to be quite overpowered with the new bonus changes and has shown it can easily break 200mill without even getting to 30k acres.

Casher seems strong and with a solid land base it seems to be able to compete with techer. I'd say it is the middle strat at the moment.

Farmer however is lacking in strength. It hasn't shown much ability to compete for top spots(excluding those with massive land totals) with the other two main netting strats. Even when food is at its peak I believe that a stocking casher and a stocking farmer make very similar incomes.I didnt confirm that fact but I had it off of someone who claimed that.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge can show me I am wrong but if not then perhaps a balance issue is being shown.



This doesn't include indy(most of the time) or oiler(always) still not being viable which is another topic altogether.

YOU ARE WRONG

i think the problem is more of a supply/demand thing than a strength/weakness of strategy, although difficulty and time input has something to do with this too


there are generally a lot of farmers compared with techers, and while lots of people stock food, decay bonus and overproduction kill the food market. i think i saw the math recently that said a fully teched fasc farmer needs consistent sales at or above $45 to compete with a fully teched rep casher.

and that sort of leads into the next thing, fully teched means that the demand for tech is huge. everybody (except oilers lawl) want the techs for primary production, and that gives the techer strategy a huuuuge boost. by the time they're more or less useless (end of set), the techers are like "lol i has foodz" or "lol i has decay and eleventy billion dollars". but it's hard to run a techer properly to reach 200mil nw, and i'm pretty sure the guys that hit that with techer would have the ability to do so with most any strat. unless you're hurri or chewi running an oiler.

most of the time i see the "strong" strat fluctuate. one reset cashers pwn, and a lot of people go "woah cashers were pwning" and run a casher the next set, and the demand for food and tech spikes higher, and people then go "woah farmer rocked pretty hard" and the next reset food never goes above 37/bushel.

tl;dr: i don't think "easily break 200mil" is accurate :p if it was easily done, there'd be a lot more 200mil nw countries than i see in an average alliance reset

Farmer is weak because there's always too many people playing it, thus food prices cannot go as high as they should. If we cut the production of farms down slightly, that would cause farmers to be strengthened because it would be much more likely that the food market would empty out. If we increased the production of farms, it would merely increase the profitability of selling food on your private market, which would decrease the ability of the market to balance out strategies.

Indy is weak on because there's not enough military demand once countries slow down on growth and start stockpiling.

Oiler is weak because there's not enough demand for oil when people aren't warring.

If we decreased the upkeep on military, that would make it easier for people to carry larger militaries while stockpiling, which might give indy a slight boost in demand needed to make them stronger. Additionally, it would cause indies to have less military expenses.

If we made military require oil for upkeep instead of food for upkeep, that would help oil demand, especially oil demand when countries are not at war.

And you didn't even bother to mention that MBR is also a fairly weak strategy due to the lack of demand for military, especially the lack of demand for troops and tanks.

watertowers, why do you insist that casher is a weak strategy?
your tech argument has a few holes, primarily that a properly teched farmer will have the same (or close) bus and res levels as a casher. plus agri tech.

Please stop complaining that the strategies you choose to play are weak. Not everyone finds them weak and underpowered.

Especially since you don't know how to play the strategies and make comments like "172% to 174% is the max a casher should aim for." Maybe the reason you think its weak is that you aren't playing it properly?

172-174% ??? maybe when the limit was 175..

Casher isn't weak. Techer is stronger I'd say though. And farmer isn't weaker than casher, have you not seen the huge farmers in the T10 even before we increased the bushel price via the inverted military tech on PM sell price?

Should a farmer need to get to 70k acres to have a shot at winning? Getting top ten isn't super hard most sets with any strat as im sure you know anyways.

The problem is the high private market sell price for bushels. It makes farmer too safe and thus we get a glut of food. That is why farmer is weak. One of the reasons casher is so strong is due to the low food prices. Indy a little weak, but mostly it is just more difficult. Techer is very powerful.

Answers are:
-Bushel private sell price is dropped to $10
-Jets, turrets, tanks require oil instead of food for upkeep
-Remove market recall
-Have GS steal cash and bushels instead of destroy bushels

Correct, decreasing the private market sale price would have a similar effect to decreasing the production of food of farms. Decreasing the production of farms, though, would also have the effect of causing the optimal portion of farmers on a server to be higher than it currently is, which I think would be a good change.

Rockman, one issue id have with decreasing food production is that for the most part during the food peak a stocking farmer isnt even selling much food. So all you would have is less food at the end to destock with.


Could a different private market sell price for the fascism government vs the the others work also? Just curious

I would like to amend that to say, remove unlimited market recall. I do think having, say, 3 recalls in a round would be a fair number to make up for mistakes, stuck goods, or whatever.

And as you noted, the high private market sell price of food serves to decrease the strat equalizing effect of the market. Decreasing bushel production does increase the optimal fraction of the server as farmers, but ultimately that only serves to make them more competitive without enhancing the ability of things to naturally balance themselves. We could just give all goods certain private market sell prices if we want to force all strats to always be equal. I think decreasing the private sell price is the better alternative.

locket - you're assuming that a decrease in food production will not lead to an increase in food prices

that may or may not be true, depending on how excessively overplayed farmer is right now

nah I just think that the prices when a farmer destocked most of its food would be the same... it might increase it as you say though which would weaken the other strats... but its an odd way to go about it :P

It always bothered me about stocking and farmers.

Cashers stock food, techers stock food, oilers stock food, etc.
Then farmers stock .. food?

If there was another stable commodity farmers could actually take advantage of those higher food prices without being a demo and the food market might actually be stabilized against the massive peaks.

Perhaps a floor price for oil on private, gives two options (or one) for most strats outside their own production commodity for stocking.

Honestly the ability to sell oil on the PM will surely fix the market, alas more oilers will play and the peak price will be a lot more stable...

This will allow oil as a stocking commodity (that doesn't decay), this will in time; fix the problem of having too many farmers as the population of oilers increase, the amount of farmers should decrease.

I would say is worth a shot to allow oil to be bought and sold on the private market... And make it fairly similar to food prices on the private market...

Typing in this phone is crap....

If everyone else has to pay $60 for food, then farmers are capitalizing on high food prices, because they don't have to pay $60 for hundreds of millions of bushels.

The problem is that too many people play farmer every single set.

hmm.. devalue food more?

Most farmers have close to max tech by the time food breaks $42.

Which means most farmers arent actually selling bushels when they hit $42+. They might sell some bushels to 'top off' their tech or to get military tech. Or they might sell some bushels to get close to $2b, but u wouldnt do that if ur LGing cause then the retals would take you cash. But instead they would sell some bushels for oil and building and military.

So basically when a farmer starts stocking, out of the 500m bushels it stocks. It would prob only sell around 50-100m of it on the market anyway. So the people supplying the bushels at $42+ would be mostly people warring or farmers selling a small proportion of their stock.

So farmers arent capitalising from high food prices, they just arent paying high food prices since they produce it themselves. (IE if food prices were $80 a casher effectively halves their nw. While a farmer stays roughly the same, might gain 10-20% or something. Its not like since foods $80 then farmers double their nw)

Rockman: I wasn't thinking of it like that :P

You are correct that the fluctuations in oil price screw with wars unnecessarily. The easy solution is for people to buy oil before they go to war. If people aren't bright enough to do that, then they are digging their own grave. We don't need to remove oil completely and make the game easier for dumbasses, we need to reward those who plan ahead. And if very few people plan ahead, then the few who do will be at a huge advantage.

You don't have to use oil the same day that you buy it. Smart netters realize that you don't have to spend all your cash every single day, and smart warmongers realize that you don't have to use all your oil every day. Unfortunately, smart warmongers are very very rare. But we shouldn't dumb down the game just because warmongers are not nearly as smart as netters.

By the way, Watertowers, please stop editing the wiki on strategies and claiming that rainbows are better in war than techers and cashers. You are not an expert on strategy.

Not just General Earl, but all the major war alliances, too.

CM & BR hurt a casher's production, but so what? Why does that make them weak in war? CM & BR hurt the production of all countries, and any country that gets hit should immediately sell off 25% of its tech and military to generate cash for stonewalling, rather than relying on its own production. And they can and should receive FA if they are stonewalling. If you set your tax rate down to 0% after getting hit, it won't take that long to get your population back; it will take much longer to get your buildings back than to get your population back.

Additionally, what portion of an alliance's countries have been BRd/CMd in the previous 24 hours but are still alive? Even with a great stonewalling alliance, its not going to go over 10%. So you're talking about a very minor portion of countries when you talk about those who have been BRd/CMd and are still alive.

Rainbows are far far more fragile than cashers or techers in war because rainbows will have far far less tech and military to sell off when they get hit.

If you look at respected war alliances that are preparing for war, and see that over 3/4ths of their countries are techers or cashers, thats a pretty good indicator that techers and cashers are good in war.

In your own words WaterTowers, you said to Rockman in an edit comment (http://wiki.earthempires.com/...rategies&oldid=10090) and I quote, "take to talk before such a major edit", is exactly your words. Which is exactly what you should have done before posting a lot of the things you did. Anyways, this is a closed matter. Move along, nothing to see. We all know to use talk pages now.

Rainbows are not better than cashers in war.

A fasc Oiler/Farmer with 700 ICs for spies, counts as a rainbow? :P

Nope. Only a country that has military bases, research labs, enterprise zones, or residences while not focusing on one strategy.

Industrial complexes, farms, and oil rigs have the same production regardless of what portion of your land they occupy. Military bases, research labs, enterprise zones, and residences are more productive when they occupy a higher portion of your land. That is why the rainbow 'strategy' is discouraged.

Although this set I didn't quite get to labs or switch to demo, and it was pretty much rainbow, 1/6 bus/res/indy/oil and 2/6 farm which turned out pretty decent. I tend to war with a demo-techer pretty much every time. I swear by them.

TLDR ideas

1) Increase incentives for warmonger/warpreping countries to NOT run farmers, as tyr/dict farmer is still one of the most popular strategies. Special attacks bonus for Indi's? Cashers generating 15% more income on turns spent on special attacks? Oilers *gasp* using LESS oil for special attacks?

2) tyranny and dictatorship farms produce less because those type of political leaderships usually are harsh on their civilians and if Fascist has a penalty on producing cash, then there should be governments with penalties to bushels productions.








Honestly, as a person that has made t10 with a farmer, and also t25 with all x farmer in a set before that.

i want to say that farmers are 'fine'. But if in the same reset, an all x farmer played to 98% perfection will hit 140m, while an all x casher played to 98% perfection should hit closer to 150m.

that is the problem. The peak of both all ex might be 160~165m. but it's much easier to have a better finish with a casher right now on the alliance server. because farmer is a 'safer' strategy, you shouldn't run out of resources and you definitely won't have to sell once you reach land goal and tech goals.

heck, I had to BUY bushels on my 140m all explore country because I was making $2m profit a turn not cashing.




however, if we are talking about GRABBING casher vs GRABBING farmer.

then hands down, Cashers will overtake farmers in terms of peak finishes potential with our current alliance market. There are simply too many damn farmers out there.

Tyrannies getting a food production penalthy?

Historical facts to support this?