I've read on some threads about bots or programs that help your country. Are these tools still being used or did I take wrong?

players can't use bots or any other progs to run their countries automatically.

bots are game created to increase land available (and fluff up market but that's side-effect).

Without bots the markets would be trashy as fluff. You can't tell me any of the non bot servers have healthy markets.

well bot servers markets aren't great either.

Bots used to be a thing back in the earth 2025 days, players using bots to run countries, it was illegal back then and would get you deleted and maybe banned, it confused me when I came back to EE to find that now Bots are legitimate entities but describing something different from back in the day. Anyhow seeing as player bots were a thing back then I don't know why they couldn't still be used now esp on FFA???

Here you go http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Bots

Surely if it was possible then, it's still possible now?

possible? yes

against rulex? very much

anything that runs countries/plays turns/submits actions for you -- whether that's a browser extension or an autonomous bot program -- is very much against the rules.

think of the "bots" we run more as NPC countries. These are run on a codebase that we control and are there to provide some stability for land/market. Sometimes that doesn't work as designed, though :p

yeah like when they all used to run a ton of turns with no cash or food and kill themselves..

THAT was the funniest FFA set ever..