It's come to my attention that bot behavior is leading to some bizarre public market mechanics which are getting exploited by players. I would like to address those. Also interested in what else could be done to make the bots better. Things I'm aware of:

* bots all destock at the same time and buy out everything regardless of price
* bots sell tech below $1000 and a little above $1000
* techer bots should choose tech based on market demand
* techer bots stop exploring too quickly
* indy bots seem to perform quite poorly
* bots seem to buy too much tech in general
* techers don't need 240 cs

They don't retal, MEFA!!!

Make Express Fun Again!

Yeah, I forgot to write that one down. Right now my thinking is that the bots need to be more competent before we can add retals.

Maybe have bots actually stock bushels and oil if they are above 1.7b cash?

The main thing is that we are not comprehended by the apocalypse and bots do not destroy the remnants of humanity on this server. LOL

One of the reasons I don't play is because bots, if you're not able to rape them as soon as they come out of DR you simply cannot compete for a top 5, let alone a win, when bots weren't a thing here you could actually win going all X in this server, it's just not fun anymore unless you have time to farm bots 🤷

regarding tech, without bots, on every server, playing techer would not be viable.

Alliance for example in its current state, can't handle more than 1 netting techer, due to the arranged late wars etc

I got 7th this reset with an all-X farmer after not playing for 10 years. Someone finished top 5 last month as an all-X. It seems very possible to me.

Is it really every server? This guy seems to have done pretty well: https://www.earthempires.com/primary/66/ranks/1

Yes and before bots $25m could snag you a win, now you need $40m+ to be in the discussion.

Part of the rise in NWs is due to people taking advantage of the bots in unintended ways. That's what I'm trying to fix.

Saying that an All-X should be able to easily win is the same thing as saying that landgrabbing should be a networth losing endeavor. Why? Whenever I've won as an all-X I've always thought that it was a sign that the server wasn't healthy. It's an especially bad thing on express where ingame alliances aren't even allowed.

I never suggested easily, competing is different from easily winning.

Agreed on all above points.

And yes, being able to win as an all-x means server is broken.
5 a l l e x p l o r e r (#84) 8166 $43,976,300 DG
My last all-x country would've finished higher than any country this set (including mine lol).

The easiest fix to bot abuse for now is to remove the bot buyout <-- basically stagger their buyout time across a longer period of time (and add in some randomness to timing per bot - conceptually 'spend slowly over the last 24 hours' or if easier to code 'blow stock at a random time in the final 6-12hours') rather than having a single point in time market buyout.
...Or do away with them stocking and buying out the market altogether. Just play turns regularly right up to the very end.

So I don't actually know how the bots play (haven't seen the code/script), so here's just my take going by feel:
* bots don't retal.
* farmer bots seem to be selling food too low.
* indy bots are selling military too cheaply.
* somehow, techer bots aren't producing enough tech. (but are able to sell tech at higher prices relative to food/military)
* all bots seem to keep gaining land, even for techer bots (and maybe that's why they aren't producing enough tech).

And one I'm less sure about:
* do bots buy tech on the market at a specific time/regular intervals?

A harder to abuse exploit here is.. say.. if the above is true, putting agri tech at a high enough price, then buying out the food market to give farmer bots cash to then buyout your high priced agri tech.

Yes you could space this.

umm? is this a problem?

Look at the code. They do. Based on the market price they are actually MUCH better at this than the average human techer. It would be good if they took in info about volume and historical prices but based on the information they have they tech the right techs.

Yes, I have the code to solve this laying around I think.

Yes, I think I have sent the code that should fix this to devs already.

Are you sure that is a problem? Whatever the bots stock there will be problems. this allows techers to function more or less. Tweaks are in order to what they buy and perhaps its possible to like stock a little food or war techs to stablilize the market some times (buy whatever is low price for instance)

If we want them exploring more maybe they do. BPT doesnt have to be optimal. the bots are there to serve the player base, not to win.


Thats a server with no bots and techer is only really viable there once every 2 years or so. I dont remember a techer winning actually. Chevs is bang on in his assessment for techer in 1a.

It is a problem that the farmer/casher/indy bots will buy to whatever price whenever in the set. Like if bus tech is selling at $800 and res tech is selling at $7500 they will buy res tech if they have decided that is what they need. THAT part should be looked at lol. :)

Ohh and also, with regards to the indy bots. They actually worked perfectly before. The last round of bot changes there was a focus on giving all bots more defence and they gave indy bots a high enough defence requirement that they would almost never produce any jets. Before they responded to market prices only, which was actually excellent, as they had greatly variable defences from day to day or bot to bot.

Yeah, they are wasting money because the market will auto buy anything at $1000 or lower in express. If we want them to retal then we need to stop wasting money. I would also argue that pricing tech at $1001 is the worst possible price for express. One dollar less and it would be an auto sale. So it probably makes sense to provide some space between sell prices and the floor.

Don't get me wrong. I bought lots of weapons tech at $1050 or lower and it was a great investment. But that felt like I was taking advantage of the bots (assuming that they provided some of the volume).



I already had. There's some funny business going on there: https://github.com/...d70/techer_strat.php#L243

I don't know how PublicMarket::price works, but I'm assuming that it's $0 if the public market price is also $0. So if agri is bought out and there's 1 unit of medical tech for $1001 (with no sales), the bot will tech a lot more med tech than agri tech. There's also the chance for some techs to not be teched at all due to the rounding and the bot is biased towards SDI. I don't think that prices are so great for express. They can be anything at any given moment. Whenever I played turns as my farmer I seemed to buy out everything that I needed.

I'd rather just look at total volume sold over the past X hours. That isn't hard to do. If bots are there to serve the players then it makes sense to produce the tech that players need.



I'm not comfortable with bots having a second purpose to subsidize the techer strategy. If we want them to retal then they need to waste less money on stuff that doesn't help them. One way to do that is to buy less tech. If folks are saying that we can't reduce the tech buying but we also need to add retals, I don't know where that leaves us.

It also seems apparent that techer is way overpowered on express. I assume that bot tech over-demand is part of the issue. Why shouldn't that be addressed on the express server?

He was the only techer. You made my point for me

You are correct techer is overpowered on express, on every server there is basically 1 strat that is better than the rest. For example on alliance, playing FFO plays essentially the same as Rep casher, except casher is weak and sucks compared to FFO. If you look at the data I’d guess that you’d have the following

Primary: casher wins 90 percent or greater
Alliance : FFO wins 100 percent
Tourney: who cares
Team: FFO 90 percent or greater
Express: techer wins 95 percent or greater
FFA: no idea probably 95 percent FFO

Retalling doesn't cost much. Two turns, some cash for oil, a little cash to buy back lost military. Bots have great income. And your point about subsidizing strategies, that is exactly what retals will do, it will subsidize CI and Oiler at the expense of subsidizing techer less.

If you dont trick the bot to overbuy military it can't afford to pay the expenses for to make a retal, it should be fine. Bots make a lot of money, they have a great build.

Techer bots are not poor either, I do take your point that there could be a floor in their sale price at $1 over the server price floor but that isn't because I think techer bots need more money lol. :)

no GDI for bots, and they should always retal and try to do kill runs too.

The first report I get about bots "coordinating".... I am blaming you :P

EVERYONE DO BOT NAMES!