Are they giving up?

The men of the west will never give up.

Tired of being farmed I guess

I don't think the bots much mind. The majority of them spend the game in DR and giving up not much, then out-netting the same guys farming them with half the land but twice the stockpiles LOL.

are they offline

They started late. Ppl went so crazy with thier DR lg's though... this will be a thinner set. g=)

Yes, I can also see some late game nasty retals happening since some people went pretty hard with the early land grabs. I'm positive there will be a few if you catch my meaning lol

There should be some nasty retals, makes the game more fun! Farming bots is boring. People used to fight each other in this game, now they farm bots without fear of retaliation. A certain someone this set had 36k acres and less than 10k turrets. Why back in the good ole days, they would have been farmed into oblivion by the whole server. *shakes fist at cloud*

Yup, that's definitely a risk you take running no defense. I recently got my son into the game, this is his first full set. I was just explaining to him that I never used to see people running no defense before bots. It really changed the game, much less risk when attacking. But I do understand the need for them. I think the game may die out without them.

That's awesome you play with your son! Must be difficult to get a kid to choose this over something like Fortnite.

I get the need for bots, the player count is anemic. But man it's changed the way people play for the worse. Fortunately all it takes is one semi-competent person spying on the fattest countries as a sort of "defense check" to put a stop to that, at least partially. Maybe we'll have that in future sets and the meta will change.

Thanks, he's 13 and does enjoy fortnite, but he's starting to branch out. Hell, he even plays chess pretty regularly now, stomped my ass again this morning. Though that's not really saying much lol. He really like anything that involves strategy, and he's getting interested in economics. I thought this would be right up his alley. So far he's liking it, but he's got a lot to learn.

As far as EE, it could be fun being that person one of these sets. Right now I'm just focusing on relearning the game as it's been a bit for me too. Maybe I'll get more aggressive pretty soon though.

Farming someone because you feel they have no defense invites kill run retaliations, so yeah.. consequences. You can almost garuntee retal on retals in express, cause those guys don't really care. In this mode where you get 360 turns a day, no amount of defense is enough. It doesn't make you semi competent to play "police man" and topfeed people because you feel they've farmed bots too much. If you prefer a mode like you've been describing with no bots, it's called primary.

I guess I agree, you really don't have to be even semi competent to farm the best players for thousands of acres. Which to me seems to indicate the problem. I don't care if people farm bots all set, go for it. That's fair game. But having tens of thousands of acres with zero defense? Now that's inviting consequences. And it seems like half the server plays that way.

Your hitting people with hundreds of turns, offense, and $$. It isn't Turret defense, but in this mode it is a deterrent for people interested in a decent finish. Yes you can take their land, but their not going to let you do anything with it. If your playing this mode just to wreck countries that play differently than you think should be done, that's pretty lousy. g=) Having low defense isn't inviting a regular player to farm you, a regular player knows KR's coming after that. Play however you want to play, but back in the day it was bot farming just like it is now, only we pretended they were real people back then while hitting 1/8th to 1/10th of our nw...

As it stands now, I only attack bots unless I'm retaliating, I learned some lessons a few years ago when I started playing express, and as you said, you really never can have enough defense and those late game retals hurt. Usually I'm only getting hit if I'm doing exactly as Daniel said, running very low defense. It can be very frustrating, but it's definitely a risk I know I put myself in when running zero defense. I don't feel like anyone is wrecking my set or farming me when I'm only hit once, but I will definitely retal once. And it has caused me to change up my gameplay to focus a little more on defense. It's when they take multiple runs at me that I feel like they may be trying to wreck me.

Had one guy hit me 3 times this set, 2 of them were pretty late game and could have been in response to my earlier retal. I wanted to smash him, but I was still on track for a good finish for me (ended up in 4th with about 28 mil nw) and it seemed like he was just throwing his set cause he did the same thing to at least one other guy. I left it alone.
Those are the type of people that I feel ruin the game for others, and that's not really what I thought Daniel and I were talking about.

You make good points A-rod but I still believe turrets are a deterrent. Not from a late top-feed or two (which as Kevro said, isn't what I'm talking about and doesn't ruin sets anyway) but from someone taking thousands of acres with little to no effort. I saw this myself because after spying most of the large players the last couple sets, not all run zero defense. And the ones that have defense, even just a modest amount, aren't the ones getting into set ruining scraps. So it IS still a deterrent, despite the massive number of turns everyone has.

Bottom line is none of this is an issue if the player count wasn't so low, but the one thing we can all agree on is that's never going to change at this point. I think we all long for the glory days of vibrant severs with thousands of real players.

A-rod, I was just looking at the winner last set and saw it was you. Congrats on a nice win! Did you run as a Theo farmer the whole set or do you switch governments at some point?

I feel you on those late game topfeeds. I hate getting hit on sunday when i'm stocking my PM before jump. At that point it isn't worh the retal. I lost ~40k bushels per turn for my last 340 turns right before jump because a guy retalled my retal, and I had a reasonable amount of defense and D allies. He was just being a turd g=)

Thanks! I ran farmer -> theo destock. I overflowed 100 turns waiting to see if the bots would start, almost didn't play this set like a few others. A lot of ppl ran lower than usual defense for longer this set because of the late bot start. We were all running a day behind, so there were more aggressive top feeding than normal, and it was REALLY tough to find non DR targets. There is a line you have to walk between having enough defense to deter, and staying in range of the targets. You can normally hit on Saturday for 500-600 acres plus buildings, add in that we were all sitting on 5-600 turns trying to stay in range. It was an ugly reset.

Say what you want for the bots, but i've found the botless sets to be the most boring ones. low porduction, most the server all Xplore except the indies. With this setting and so many turns anyone can retal, so no hit is safe, you can't outgrow someone that can cash out 300 turns and sell out for a retal. Thats why if you like that style primary is better for that. Slower limited turns, creates strategy about who to hit, when to hit, when to break GDI and when not to. In express the separation is in market manipulation and quality LGing.

Nice! When you say Theo destock, you mean you made the government switch right at the end, correct? I think I remember there being a pretty hefty penalty when switching governments a second time. So did you stay monarchy til the end or actually do a second switch? Just wondering how your prep for the switch. Do a big sell off, put all your money into bushels and put them in the market and then make the switch? Sorry for all the questions, but somewhere along the line I feel like I'm failing at the end game/destock. I can't seem to get much more than 30 mil nw.

I 100% agree about the bots. I do think express would get old without them for many people. I won't speak for the other servers as I've only played each of them a handful of times in the past 10 years or more. There's just not enough real people to get enough land and not have all hell break loose every set with wars in express. The bots are needed.
But I was just understanding where Daniel is coming from, they have changed the game a lot. People have adapted to having them, and the change in playstyle can feel bad when I think back to how the game was back in earth 2025 when there were thousands playing. I never remember anyone running with zero defense and finishing well.

New Rule stop the bots from growing after GDI kicks in on Sunday, Yes ?
Ohh, OG Kush 51 hit 84, and 84 retailed and 51 came back and smacked 84 again, and there was nothing he could do about it he couldn't buy enough jets to get past 4 million turrets for another retail.
And with the late start by the bots forced country's to build defenses or be easy targets, I just wish my spies could get the same results in other servers as I get in Express.

FYI Superfly, it is against company policy to have more than one (1) account. Hang out in the "gray zone" all you want. Griefing/suicide to "teach hi land, low defense players a lesson!!!" is still griefer shenanigans even if mods ignore and follow you into grayzoneville. Hit 1 time is reasonable, farm 10 hits is suicide. Farm 5 players 10 hits, mod approved because "TEKNIKALLY Is not rules blablaxcuse." Every player here knows, we just can't talk ab- (POST DELETED. BANNED)

Well that cleared everything up.

So you want to run whatever strat you are playing normal through Saturday to whatever your target land/turns is.
Saturday night have all your tech or put in orders for any military tech you still need and don't log in again until you're going to jump Sunday near the games end. Log in, burn your turns, theo destock. https://www.earthempires.com/...estock-51486?t=1680943538 <--- this is to the strategy boards on this forum where Cathankins posted the steps. I usually get my PM bushel sale price to $36 not $35, because the cost to get there isn't terrible if you buy the cheap stuff at the end, but to get to 37 is significant and IMO not worth what it cost to get there. You will take a slight hit changing from your govt to monarchy, but its worth it, and you will take NO hit changing from monarchy to Theo afterwards. Upping your private market and destocking theo you should see an increase in finishing NW

I don't know why everyone thinks servers were thriving with real people back in the day. They were flush with multis, bots and land farms. That's predominantly what ppl were hitting and countries MUCH lower in size than them that had no chance to retal. Alliances pacted anyone that could hit them. The alliances that topfed did not run top countries, did not have the best finishes.

Maybe my nostalgia has clouded my memory but I don't remember the Echelon and early Swirve days being that bad. Multis were usually deleted. Don't recall bots ruining anything. Alliance was indeed a hellhole which is why I avoided it. 1b was fun though and tournament was great. FFA never interested me in the slightest. I didn't have time with my dial up connection to run 15 countries.

1B is primary now. 1A is alliance

Thank you for this. After seeing this, I'm thinking one of my big problems is logging on too often to use turns and buy up my pm. Im wasting tons of my money on military expenses. I will definitely be experimenting with the Theo destock.

NP! If you have questions, you should always ask! There is actually a great community of top notch netters here. In game, on the boards, they're happy to share what they know or talk about a particular topic!

Truth

Any reason we can't commit espionage this set against the bots?

If I'm not mistaken, you can only commit Espionage on countries that did not join gdi. Maybe the mats you were trying to hit or still in? I know some of them are not, you'd probably have to look for those

Get the bots running through ChatGPT, they will present more of a challenge.

yea

They’re down again?

They are back up

shouldnt have lost any turns. might have stored some. Should make for slightly different dynamics this round.