i am not gregg but here we go

the purpose of these rule changes is to restore balance to the gov types and end the reign of cashers only on the server
for those of you who want it in a nutshell go to the third post in this thread

THEOs lose their construction enhancement
they are still a powerhouse

who could benefit from the construction enhancement with a nice quick start? hmm
lets give the construction enhancement to the commies
for the first half of the set nothing but commies in the top ten just like the good old days
commies lose their market enhancement

the gov which is supposed to play the market is the democracies so lets give them the market enhancement, they can sell up to 50% of any of the restricted commodities at a time or if the rule does become 45% for all the other gov types make it unlimited for democracies

republics are supposed to be fast closers so lets increase their max turns to 650(300) and let them dash for the finish line but it will not be as easy as it has been

dictatorships are nicely enhanced now but they always get killed and in fact there were only one or two this set. People hate getting hit by an I and some people have a philosophical abhorrence to Is competing for NW titles
set I's sdi at 40% to start the game but that wont be enough

Fs and farmers generally. raise the private market price of food to $38 for fascists only stays $32 for everyone else
or if the coding is not too hard, the private market price is $38 for any country whose land is more than 50% farms

Ts- get nothing. People play them even now and often revert to them in war situations so we just leave them alone
________________________________________________
the Techer protection act of 2010

slagpit once asked why techers can no longer compete
and in fact three of this set's big techers all quit on Sunday
the answer is actually obvious and the solution is simple
the coding may not be easy but the game theory is easy

first a look at the current situation
because a player can have 1100 turns to play in the last 24 hours the cashers have ruled the game
in this last set for example, 103 was sitting at about 50th rank for most of the game with several hundred turns to play in a casher strat with $1.5B. if he hadnt been hit five times in the final hours he wins handily
the last few sets have been won with amazing fast closes

they sit back with a billion dollars and 500 turns
when the price of bus and res tech falls to $750 they buy it and cash for 450 turns passing everyone in front of them who paid $3500 for the same tech
the techers who were competitive fail because they have to sell for $750. This last set i bought over 500,000 bus and res in an effort to thwart this strat, for a moment the price of res was $3498. seconds later the price fell to $2800 and then moments later the cashers who had used the tech put theirs on the market for $999. so 103 was able to execute the strategy into second place

so how do we keep techers playing after sunday afternoon and stop cashers from a last second buying bonanza win?

PRIVATE MARKET FOR TECH
the market buys the tech at a set price so the techers know they will never have to sell for $750 per unit
the price the private market pays has to be chosen so as not to give the techers too large an advantage
i think techers will keep playing if the price is $2000-6%

too much text to read...

summarize...

or stfu...

ok for those of you in LaE

private market for tech

Hs lose construction enhancement
Cs get construction enhancement
Fs get $38 food floor
Is get sdi enhancement
Ds get market enhancement
Rs get stored turn enhancement

i didnt realize i was in lae :P

Thank you gregg, this was a very interesting piece of fiction.

Last round there was four cashers, three indies, two techers, and one farmer in the top ten.

I played a techer and would have won if I didn't get nuked and lemminged down to the tune of 8-9mil NW. I finished in 3rd anyway. My experience does not support your argument.

However, you do propose a convincing argument for decreasing the max turns available to play. Cashers tend to wait until near the end of the set to play all of their turns and greatly benefit from cheap tech and goods while avoiding the main challenge of playing the game--avoiding getting attacked while growing. The winner of the last set was my ally and did exactly that--he proposed alliances to me early on, played very few turns all set and leeched from the research alliance I foolishly accepted from him (he had purchased just enough tech to make me think he was teching and to benefit from my research), then played all of his turns when he had max turns stored.

Cashers and indies both benefit. Farmers could benefit in theory, but it's basically a big gamble. Techers get screwed. Oilers don't matter.

L.

O.

L.

Who was the farmer? I'm pretty sure the D was tech->cash. Did someone run a farmer and switch to H to jump and I just missed it?

the cashers were at $20M

the indies were at $15M

Slagpit you may consider that competitive but I do not

Top indy took 40 missiles and other attacks and lost ~7500 A from nukes. Second indy got ABed for no reason.

slagpit might be calling 72 the farmer

i spied on him several times during the set because he was the only other D running with us in the top 20
he was running kind of a half and half but he was clearly just raising cash for the end of set fire sale

he closed fast not because he was a techer or a farmer but because as a D he played the market

ok but if i hadnt hit 103 five times and taken $130M from him he would have been at $22M
and who knows where 55 would have been if i had not gsed him 73 times and wiped out his citizenry?
and 300k bushels?

ok wait i dont want to argue
i think you are doing a great job
and here is my input
take it or leave it

so gregg you suicide people because you dont like the strats they choose to play?

i really wish the admins would ip ban you from the game, you contribute absolutley nothing to this game.

pain

i didnt suicide
i gsed him because he hit me with 11 missiles for no reason
i would say getting $130M is worth hitting someone

and pain just because you and some others are incapable of theoretical discussions about the future of the game does not mean they are not worth having

I appreciate you taking the time to post your ideas, but if you refuse to admit that you're sometimes wrong then they will always be tainted.

i admitted i was wrong when i thought posting spy ops to the forum insite message board should be illegal
i admitted i was wrong on four other occasions if you want me to specify i will

i am not sure why a discussion about the reasonableness and feasibility of addressing the cashers' late set advantage had to turn adversarial
i regret that it did
i tried to ignore your insult
and i did not mean to insult you

so you didnt suicide unprovoked THIS time. dont pretend your innocent otherwise.

PUBLIC ADMISSION THAT I WAS WRONG

even though there seems to be a general consensus that lincoln and i are the same cat, fostered in part by his humor
i should apologize since i was shown to be wrong

so lets make another public admission in hopes that we can move past personal animus and get to a discussion of the state of the game

i was shown to be wrong when i said the admins were nothing but netters
they are working hard to make worthwhile adjustments to the game including making LGs a viable tactic, Is a viable gov type and allx dominance a thing of the past

slagpit's $15M outing with a single tap C is both a personal success and good for the server
we are fortunate to have an admin playing this server every set
i look forward to seeing what he has to say after a tech set
so i apologize for agreeing with HWCNG when he said admins pay no attention to this server
that is certainly not true now

i see that some of my past posts were overly strident in criticzing the first steps of a process as though it were the entirety of the work

when i said that the tpt change would unduly aid theos and then gloated when they won repeatedly that was wrong
the process is still under way and they may yet be cut down to size
plus i underestimated the willingness of techers to give away their product at set end when the big cashers finally show up to play the game
i have newfound confidence that the admins will address the unusual aspects of express which favor allx netters

i supposedly am gregg
these are not my rules

i do not favor a private market for tech
unless the market only buys at most a quarter of the country's tech

as far as the guys who lurk with $1B and 500 turns, let countries raid them like W and detmer and I always advocate

i do like the idea of taking away the construction bonus from theos, they simply do not need it, i do not think Express is long enough to let people catch Cs if they get it though.
I do not favor a food floor to raise the price of food

I just wanted to confirm that Lincon is tainted. That is all.

the last set demonstrated once again that sunday night prices of tech are insanely low and once again a guy who sat in 50th place all set long bought it up at $756

i am hopeful that the admins may come to dislike this strat and fix it

the admins have proposed some rules to limit this dash for cash strategy

the proposed public market tech floor increase and the 360(360) rule changes should impede this dasher strategy while still allowing it

it is still possible to play 1080 turns in the last 24 hours and fifteen minutes but that moves the turn max nine hours away from set end and increases set end prices by 33% to the dashers
that nine hour window gives predators additional time to find and make adjustments to the dasher's NW

the $1000 tech floor though will actually depress prices earlier in the set but perhaps not signifigantly and not enough to offset the inability to buy $750 tech Sunday night.
this is true because a techer who is considering putting his wares on the market for $1188 will have to ask himself whether someone else will soon put theirs on the market for $1000. If others beat him to the $1000 floor he might never sell his goods period so the prudent course is to drop the price from $1188 to $1000 and get the sure sale
the invisible hand does not seem to guide many of the tech salesmen however and we shall see how this government intevention in the market plays out

tech buyers' optimal purchase time is moved up by several hours but they should find a wide variety of $1000 tech with many hours left in the set, i like that idea
i fear we will see more techers quitting on sunday afternoon as we have seen the last couple of sets

i think we will ultimately have to go to a private tech market like they are proposing a private oil market but it will be interesting to watch

theos are keeping their construction bonus and commies keep the market sale % bonus, i do not understand the theory behind this. It reminds me of the old joke about the discounter who loses money on every sale but he makes up for it in volume.

raising the F's ability to sell early in the set and at set end to a guaranteed $36 a bushel should prove a minor help but no where near enough. a destocking F who sells 12M bushels at $36-6% instead of $32 is only aided by $20M hardly a windfall

freak