Aug 3rd 2010, 15:44:39
enshula, thx for your thoughtful response
i know you to be a smart experienced winning player
so when i disagree with you i do not do it lightly
but first lets go over the ground we agree on
the timing of some things in express needs to be adjusted to better fit the compressed schedule
you mentioned DR i totally agree
it does seem to be on 24 hours
some people say it is on 4 but that has not been my experience this has to be changed
nothing we can do about multis and clans taking each other into dr but we can make them do it more often
the same with spy dr, it should be four or fewer hours not 24
ending alliances has to be shortened from 72 hours
during hours eight to 36 i am the best research ally you could ask for, after that i am a total leech. i have usually been ABed fifteen times by then and have no interest in teching
i should be able to drop my allies so they dont resent me or they should be able to drop me. same with defensive allies
this timing needs to drop to 12 hours or fewer, if i am in dr and likely to stay there why do i pay for defensive allies?
the set does not have enough turns
i propose adding 120 turns at one fell swoop during the food peak to aid farmers, say 36 hours prior to set end
its just not the right strat choice for the server
that is a flaw in the server not the strat
this flaw is easily fixed
now lets get to our disagreements:
the I advantage is grabbing and KEEPing land
qz seems to share this view
this is just flat wrong especially in express
your stats are correct of course but they disregard the opportunity costs of building
when you are building you are not capturing more booty
in order to make land worth keeping, you have to be able to build on it in an expeditous fashion
50 buildings at a bare minimum per turn
anything less is just too turn costly during prime growth time
so instead of using 200 turns to build cs an I has to use 260 turns to get the same ability to build that is 60 turns
and that sixty turns only catches you up to a monarchy not to the faster growing strats
in express that is 3% of the total turns on nongrowth activity
that does not count turns spent building on land that you keep. if you capture and build on 4000 vacant acres that is another 80 turns that could be spent elsewhere
and those 80 turns are spent during hunting season
those 80 turns could capture a lot more than 4000 built acres not counting the cash, food and tech
your biggest mistake is assuming that it takes a 5m jet PS to capture $100M plus land tech etc.
we are talking the express server
all i play is express, i have spied on every top 25 player for the last six sets, i have never seen a 5m jet air force in express maybe somebody on the last day gets there but i seriously doubt it
other than mine the largest air force i saw last set was 1.4M
again maybe somebody got bigger on monday afternoon but not during hunting season
last set on my $116M hit the net was $100M plus land
but after four or five hits the land so reduced my weapons tech that i could not hit the next target up the line
express is a target rich environment
let us make this simple
suppose there were four players each with $1B, 10k acres and no defense
you have 600 empty acres and can build at thirty a turn
you have twenty turns
do you spend twenty turns hitting or twenty turns building?
express is like that, it is a target rich environment with stockers galore
if we just return to the original rule that you can drop land it is a humter's paradise
if we have to make up a new rule that dropping land is illegal let us at least drop the timing on our made up rule to fit the server, say eight hours
enshula i look forward to your response
if you can win a game without ever fighting a battle; it is not a war game