The cost for the infinite BPT bonus has been lowered from 24 points to 8 points.

Thank you for playing Earth Empires.

Solid

Slagpit, is there any thought about reducing the building cost for that infinite turn, or do you think that would be too much?

Holy crap.

Welcome back Slagpit, thank you for the communication.

Not eliminating the permanent bonus would greatly increase the utility

Agreed.

Slagpit, 2nd request– have you considered any of this?

Seems like the bonus has been very deliberately built as it is. I don’t think farmers and cashers need any additional bonus help. If farmers or cashers could use this late set the winner would be determined almost solely by who could best maximize this one narrow aspect of the game.

Well considering it was just modified we can prob go back and forth on a few points you brought up.

I disagree. But I'm not sure that counts since I'm not a Patron?

I think not losing bonus make it way too OP.

Trying to balance the number of acres you can use this for (ie how late you can leave it) with the bonus still available over the rest of the set feels like a difficult problem with no right answer that creates diversity in strategy.

Another option, as is, might be a total late set switch on a lower acre strat choosing to sacrifice any other bonus one might have benefitted from until that point for a significant change in direction (make TMBR great again?).

If you were able to keep bonus then I think the optimum switch would quickly get 'solved' and would be more line with the oil destock where there was little nuance and just a series of steps in the endgame to maximise net worth based on how much stock you grabbed over the rest of the set prior.

Don't get me wrong, I am a low effort ez mode player, I liked the Oil Destock. However, I think the game is better without it as it injects more chaos and variety into the endgame.

Sage commentary, as always =)

I agree

the oil destock still exists. I hear what you mean. I gotta say though that the endgame chaos is a bug not a feature. it may be solved by the current destock method becoming routine, and with guides and spreadsheets for everyone as the oil destock ended up becoming. That will not be enough tho as an untimely click will always ruin 2 months of effort now.

I dont really feel like the land dropping meta should come back. But QoL wise the current endgame meta is considerably worse. That can be solved with ingame features or 3rd party tools.

It took many years for the oil destock to become known and wide spread. Do we have that long?

It didn't take long, I remember when en4 thought of it.

Slag can just share what he did to set the Coop NW record so far.

Doesn't seem that difficult.

It did take forever for the oil destock to be known and utilized outside LaF. And there's nothing Slag did last round that is unknown. It was just a exceptional execution in the early game that made him win and played the rest of the round cleanly. The NW itself can never be beaten currently because he could get 240 turns on hand and we can't do that anymore, but what he did is being done by the top players every round, theres no mystery at all.

Z won last round, slag won the round before that :D

You are assuming players will not get better.

I suck but I still have fun.

Winning.

Req flexing on em.

I'm not flexing but until LaF proves their dominance in the game, let’s focus on the people who are consistently winning every round (SKA)—and, by the way, they’re not too proud to share advice with others.

LaF’s first round win was a fluke, handed to them by a broken tech market and pure luck. Since then, SKA has been wiping the floor with them.

Winning a round means that you've got to be or beat the best casher, best farmer, best indy, and best techer. Techer is equally accessible to all players yet every single top ten techer has been tagged LaF so far. The round one first place finish wasn't luck.

There are a lot of different ways to compare LaF and SKA:

LaF:
1 TNW win
15 top ten finishes
1 first place finish
5 players in top ten "best 3" leaderboard

SKA:
2 TNW wins
3 AVG wins
14 top ten finishes
2 first place finishes
5 players in top ten "best 3" leaderboard

I've never felt like SKA had a locked in win until the final day of each round. I think the tags are closer than you give them credit for. With that said, I welcome healthy competition between tags and hope that players take pride in their tags.

You're not wrong. That is prob unfair of me.

I haven't looked deeply but had trouble finding any quickly, does ska have any competitive top countries this reset? Only one competitive last round.

Maybe a lot of techers?

Appreciate the positive descriptor of "competitive"! I wasted at least 200 turns and almost certainly 300 turns being an idiot and figuring out my plan along the way in my first set in 4-5 years. I guess very much in line with "mid" effort! (Even Slagpit, after seeing my statuses, thought I was full of crap when I said I was on track for top 5 with three weeks left. Might have been easier for him to assess if he had gotten more than like 4 ops on non-NPCs last set as our support country!)

But for this set, which countries are competitive and who the owners are is classified information. Except for Requiem - I'll tell him anything he wants to know.

Also, bonus post.

I appreciate that Z! Always a gentleman :D