last set was above average at first and then started to go down. Then when all the cashers started stockpiling, bus/res/bushels went through the roof.

Ok guys, play nice. Lets not change this thread into something it was never meant to be.


Moving away from that - I just hope I make top 10.
I'm off to bed. Lets see what transpires when I get up.

Good luck to everyone who played it fair and played it well!

i'm rank 6 now :(

Is Rob going to sleep through his final jump? Wake up Rob!

Next set isn't going to be any easier. 2 top notch netters will be joining the fray in Primary.

congrats to everyone.
sorry #19, your access to 100m club is denied!!! lmao



1 crown of the valley (#31) 65,078 $138,231,116 RG
2 Welcome back (#62) 80,025 $125,438,602 DG
3 March 17 2012 (#226) 50,721 $123,872,850 RG
4 So Many Choices (#142) 58,994 $117,045,329 FG
5 Chipotle makes you fat (#298) 68,171 $116,307,472 CG
6 Planetary (#249) Game profile 56,504 $115,722,553 CG
7 Incha (#26) 46,821 $111,784,732 R
8 Black magic woman (#98) Game profile 43,662 $104,489,437 DG
9 OneDoesNotSimplyPlayPrimary (#136) 27,489 $100,466,872 HG
10 The Coffee Palace (#19) Game profile 54,756 $99,333,964 HG

He can join my Express club

You finished really well tduong, much higher than i anticipated. Did you actually have stock or was that jump from selling and rebuying?

a few days ago i thought fo sho i would've made over 135m until i starved 4x that cost me about 10m nw.
I also attempted an oil buyout that didn't work and cost me $650 because i didn't cancel my other orders lol so i ran out of cash when the other orders kicked in.
Bought 45m bushels of food in case someone decide to buyout food and jack up prices on last day. I bought it at 42 and 43 and then food dropped to 38 later that day. fml!
I priced my tanks, turrets, jets $10 too high and most of them didn't sell today. Else, I would've made at least $300mil. So instead of reselling I ended up recalling and cost me 3 turns of not cashing which is another $27m.
Jack got hit several times, each time costing me about 750k net.

I made a little bit of cash reselling military and the last bit of my oil. I also had 6 pci booms and 40 mil extra bushels. Then someone sold a massive amount of bushels at $34 which i resold at $36.

I need to be a little more aggressive with my pricing next time i resell. It's better to take less profit than eating maintenance costs and lose money :(

Yes i slept through - since I didnt have a final jump. I was tapped out. Glad i managed to just scrape 100m

I can't believe i just realized this, but we have major proof things are getting more competitive. Round 14 marked the first reset afaik did not top 10. (He finished in 11th.)

so oldman and afaik are did not t10?

And my 10th top 10 in a row
I supppose afaik played this reset "part time".

hmm? snide comments jedioda? je pensais que nous avions plus de respect pour l'autre.

to respond to your 'statement' (for it is not posed as a question)

I experimented with a different strat that did not pay off and was playing catch up all set. I had to give up grabbing and had resigned myself to a poor finish many weeks ago, as my allies will know. I offer no excuse for this for it was planned and didn't work... however I don't think it's indicative of more competition.


What IS indicative of more competition (as has been said) is how close the t10 are. Ending nw's are now getting lower because the server is becoming more competitive (reference to the 150m+ finishes of previous sets... where the difference to 10th spot is also much greater).

There is now far less opportunity to stock in peace, which is also why tduong did so very well... stay mil-heavy and warlike and just keep growing... retals cost you less, the land gains you nw and you don't need to try and stop and net in peace.

Quite a new concept by tduong there - made it work well ;)

No compréndo francés :/

someone said something last set, which was something like

expense bonus means that you can effectively "stock" military when it is cheap instead if stocking food at expensive prices to and destocking at a loss.

my aim this set was to grow until 2 weeks before then end to whatever size i could until food prices started to drop from their peak and buy military when it was cheap, "stocking" military which would also make grabbing me difficult*. i just picked the wrong commie, free lenny, to grab.

*difficult enough that only a limited few could do it.

ya, it is definitely one option, the expense bonus is more worthwhile the greater your expenses. it is still more efficient to stock conventionally, just higher risk. there's a balance as always there somewhere (i.e. you can carry more mil) but it's the continued expansion that has never been demonstrated to that extent (that I recall).

@KoH, that's ok, I wasn't talking to you mate... it also may have been a subtelty of language thing rather than intentional.

It can be risky also to buy military: I bought jetsonly for lower expenses

yeah, the balance is difficult.

and yeah, tdoung was expanding impressively. he certainly played. requiem quitting gave him a nice little boost just at the right time, and from there his expansion was unstoppable. i'm sure he would have found other targets, just not so easily. i think his major saving was actually game-playing time

yes indeed. But I did try out something interesting. I spent all my bonus points on PM regeneration to prepare for my switch to TMBR. It worked out pretty well.

Only 3 bad things happened to me all set:
1. bad reselling during the last 3 days (nothing sold, and I had to log in to sell lower resulting in decay of my PM) - this resulted in a loss of about 4M NW
2. a blunder while playing on mobile (buying ~5m bushels for $194 and selling them for $55) - this costs another 4.5M NW
3. a 10-day old retal that took away 10% of my land while I was stockpiling - I estimated I would have stocked another $1.5-2b more if I had 10% more land. That's another 9+M NW

I timed the food market perfectly (bought all my bushels below $42 and sold all of my food for more than $55). So I would have ended with about 110M if I had a perfect set. But then again, there's no such thing as perfect set as exemplified by the 3 bad things that happened to me haha. There's always a next set though =P

oldman, i have planned to play a tmbr or dmbr but i would've done it differently.

oldman, i had a plan t play mbr. But i would've gone with more land(35-40k) and invest in building cost to 50% then switch to pm increase. By the last week you should still get 8+% pm increase but with much more land. Your building cost should not be out of control either.

I would prefer to do casher instead of techer because cashers can get fat faster and build more cs. If you have a bpt of 200 which is entirely possible, you can give yourself an extra 2-4 days of stockpiling,depending on land goal, when you switch to mbr.

honestly, if there was a real market for troops/tanks or commies is nerfed a bit then this plan would actually give you the win.

lol tduong is so emotional

I was actually on my way to 141m net if i didn't screw up so bad the last few days. Over pricing resells, starving my people 4x, turns lost from recalling market units, my food and oil blunder. Only used 3x2 pci booms instead of 6x2 at the end. I also forgot to increase tax on the last turn with the pci boom. Of course, jack's war didn't help my nw either.

throughout the set, I lost nw due to forgetting about food over 20 times. It was killing me when JJ was getting farmed as I spend 3-4 turns a day just recovering the lost defense. My maintenance cost was higher than i wanted because i kept more tanks and turrets than i wanted. Afaik is right, i traded some production and efficiency for pushing past the normal land barrier. If anyone wanted to land trade, I was ready to war.

The spy situation was not good for me and cost me a few DHs on attacks. I limit myself to 3 spy ops a day so i don't lose spies and keep it at 35-45 spal. 3 spy ops is not enough and sometimes forced me to do blind PS.

JJ and jack making weird decisions forced me to hold more turrets and burned more units helping them. JJ got caught up with express playing style of low def, high offense to retal and went spiraling downward. His first time playing demo techer, low tech prices, people aiming for him all equates to a disaster for him. My country suffered minor damage as well but, I really could've used that cash on more jets or tech instead of buying more turrets. Then jack's war lol. Because of jj and jack's warring and low d, i was forced to have higher defense. Which resulted in higher cost and losses lol. The worst effects was that the higher defense narrowed my target range for LG due to higher nw and lower offense.

well, tudong, you may or may not be right. I haven't done the calculations but what you proposed seems plausible.

On the other hand you got 13,000 land from Requiem. Win some, lose some.

yeah, i can bet both jack and jj cost you lots

3 spy ops/day? wow. i can see how multitapping will save a considerwble number of spy ops but that, to me, sounds ridiculous. there were days i was making 15-20 spy ops in order to get 4-5 ps attacks made with reasonable success rates. i've records of more than 270 spy ops (normal and allies) and i know i did more. perhaps i do too many.

being a casher, i don't want to dedicate too much land on indies as it kills my pci. Even with my tech up to 185%, i still can't get 56pci while a rep enjoys well above 60. You can check it out if you want, my country status is open.

I hate losing 20k spies for failing an op so i don't do it. Failed spy ops + 3 turns per attack means that it doesn't leave me a lot of turns for cs or cash. I also promised jack i would give him good targets everyday so i usually spend 2 spy ops for him. That is why i prefer farming and i made myself feel better by helping the noobs after i farm them. I do have a soul!