Congrats on the win SuperFly!

Haha it was a weird set with no free land and new market dynamics.

I kinda wonder if we can spice things up by changing the bot composition from set to set. Say 1 set we have too many techer bots, then next set too many farmers bots, and then too many indy bots etc.

This might make it so that we get more strats getting to the top, instead of every set being some version of a CI or Demo/Theo Techer on top.

Strangely enough I bought most of my tech sub-2k, even after the bots came back on. xD

...but low effort play, so not expecting a spectacular finish. haha

I basically switched from low effort demo techer to low effort demo casher just looking at these prices. lol

Haha I'd love to gun for it as well - but can't really login proper for this express set. I'd be bummed if you get to 100m nw before I do! Haha

Rob took it with some cash left on hand.
I had like 5b on hand as well. lol Congrats Rob!
(Though I'm certain now 50m on allx is possible.)

I'm trying to prove 50m is doable all-x, though I've been grabbed a bit. lol

Please play the food market and keep it over $100. Thanks!

I figured I might need the last min resell profits to get ahead - I just didn't realize someone would buy and leave me no time to spend it. Haha

Well played!

You bought all my stuff right at the last few seconds and I dropped 2m nw. lol I thought you might've jumped ahead!

Congrats to top 10 and Netsquash for the win! A lot of higher nws this set!

Congrats to the winner!

I really screwed the pooch on the destock, otherwise would have been more competitive! Haha
(I played the large FFO.)

There were 100 countries in the Express server.

Rank Country Land Networth Special
1 Hope Clouds Observation (#89) 12,097 $52,749,820 DG
2 ASTRAL (#3) Game profile 13,104 $37,354,683 HG
3 oompaloompa (#97) 12,305 $31,488,264 D
4 Nancy Pelosi (#84) 28,040 $28,792,993 HG
5 XxAphroditexX (#5) 19,209 $23,536,852 RG
6 halfwit (#15) 10,181 $20,941,232 HG
7 Kahuna (#95) 7244 $20,188,395 DG
8 Gold Bars All Over Your Forehead (#2) 14,810 $19,940,130 CG
9 I love waffles (#91) 22,388 $18,603,660 HG
10 RasTIEfari (#78) 12,971 $16,743,152 H

Congrats to top 10!

Got farmed for >5k acres early on, but still managed to come in for the win! (: (Tech prices were really insanely low this set...)
Was hoping Rob (50k acre rep casher) would challenge, but I'm guessing he forgot to login!

Well, remember I had $2b stolen from me the set I was close to the all time nw record, with an SPAL of ~10:1. It's really hard to keep an effective SPAL, cos a dedicated spy strat will break you even if you go 20:1. lol

Well this set I picked a name that looks like a bot, and I've gotten immediately grabbed already.

...but I'm not playing casher. lol I'm playing techer!

I'm going to play techer this set, but I'm likely doing an indy-ish start, so you'll have to rely on them bots for the tech. Haha

Not that much. In fact, I was actually travelling a lot, and even got on a 20hr flight during the set so didn't even login on 1 day. lol
Played a casher though. Techer is a lot more involved because of timings.

The key is getting to your desired acreage as fast as possible turnwise, and then using your turns on that higher production. It's a lot easier on techer.

Rank Country Land Networth Special
1 DontKnowWhyImStillPlayingExpress (#54) Game profile 20,329 $53,682,306 DG
2 Anya Taylor Joy (#88) 23,609 $52,602,746 DG
3 ASTRAL (#2) Game profile 24,851 $31,646,886 DG
4 A Star Is Born Movie Soundtrack (#9) 33,437 $26,736,222 CG
5 halfwit (#5) 10,544 $22,771,363 H
6 XxDionysusxX (#13) 15,101 $21,464,112 D
7 85 (#86) 22,660 $20,264,913 HG
8 SwordOfFrost (#56) 19,651 $17,584,285 RG
9 Swede (#90) 14,012 $16,163,099 H
10 Deathwish (#33) Game profile 10,566 $14,947,708 H

Congrats to the top 10 and Rob for the win!

Was travelling quite a bit this set but glad I managed to land a demo casher in 2nd place. Close finish! Would've tried something different with destock if I had expected it to be that close! Haha

(Also, Queen's Gambit is a great show.)

(psst it's actually 2 L's at the end of nitell)

Haha yes. Unfortunately got in a bit of a ruckus while switching from Tyr Indy to Farmer but snuck into the top 10.

Congrats to the rest and Netsquash for winning on CI again!

Good acreage from MILORD - were you a demo casher?

Got it. I might try to test it again!

Does this need to be at 100%?

I tested this at -10% resource decay bonus in Express last set and it seems there is no corruption above $2b cash? (There was still food decay though). Am I just completely mistaken?

I assume corruption works like food decay, where it just happens to the amount on hand and is not reflected in the turn-by-turn +/- changes (e.g. +$1.2m cash, -30k bushels when you use a turn). I basically looked at cash on hand, spent 1 turn, and see the difference between the cash on hand vs the cash change on that turn for using the turn. My new cash on hand is exactly what the cash change on turn is (therefore no corruption), but I lost more bushels than I ate (therefore food decayed).

Is this accurate?

Congrats! Good finish as usual.

What terrible tech prices (for techers) this set. lol

Congrats to 1st place!

Would've been a close one. lol Left turns and cash on hand thinking I'd login in the last 15min, and only just remembered to do so.

It's not really screwing his set up because of what happens after.

In order to retal, 4-5 guys bought a ton of jets (because of his really high defence). Now, instead of 1 guy with jets to break the top humans, you have 5-6 guys with enough jets to break anyone in the game, which means everyone now has to raise their defences if not you might be grabbed with no recourse.

So everyone raises their expenses. Unless you play it risky, and luck out by not being grabbed.

Is this even a legit thread? Haha

The bloke decided to hit 10 humans (single taps) and jump in NW to defend his acreage (buy tons of turrets/tanks) - love it! Typical old school Earth solo server style ("try to take it back punk!"). Unfortunately people ended up using turns/cash on hand to jump in NY (buy jets) and retal. lol Too easy in Express to have 300 turns stored and make retals.

Not enough indies, clearly a reaction to last set's too many indies. lol
Also, still a bunch of larger acreage techers on top so there's the supply.

It was pretty funny. I had $30m on hand I think on first day and it disappeared really quick before I managed to build my land and was wondering what's up. Went back to market and realised what I had done. Lol

I got >10 tapped and ran outta food >10 times. Lol

I'll tell you right now I'm the guy who sent you $6m in the early game cos I bought your bushels without checking the price and wondering how I ran outta cash so quick. I also sent a couple million to the guy who sold food at 279 after buying out the 179s. Haha won't make that mistake again!

Congrats Netsquash on the win and Hessman for the close fight!

I'm surprised I finished anywhere at all given how much I got farmed. Lol

Well, he was definitely in SKA! Haha

This thread seemed to have gone do

I just saw this thread. Hi mazooka!

I've been trying to convince Trep to come back for a set with me. lol I just started playing express again a month or two ago. I wonder where our SKA and strat room folks bobby/raheel/slagpit/kingme/mikers/braden etc. are these days...

Oooo... if we do that, I'm pretty sure we can convinced a lot of people to rejoin for 1 set.
I'd say Poker Tournament style, so top 5 get something but in exponentially decreasing amounts.
(Assuming we can get at least 100 players interested)

Those two definitely look like collusion/multis.

Aren't they ABing each other?

Had $19b on hand, so it was very difficult to spend it ASAP. lol
The guy who spied me had something like 1mil spies (40:1 SPAL) but am guessing there are diminishing returns at some point.

The mistakes were pretty basic, though the losing $2b was prob the biggest difference. Haha I'm not sure how much more SPAL I should be holding though.

Haha yes. I also got very lucky and managed to sell tech over $4k all set.. even up to the last day.
It's really a bummer I didn't have that last $2b (but again, my fault on SPAL). What's a good SPAL to hold?

Also, given the sheer number of mistakes I made this set.. it really does seem like 100m nw is possible in Express.

Great finish too Netsquash!

2 N E T S Q U A S H (#100) 53,488 $67,963,427 CG
3 Bowflex Max Trainer M5 (#12) 54,284 $35,384,327 C

2 very big commies on my tail. Haha I really don't know how much SPAL I need to keep. I've already doubled it since last.

So I tried a number of diff things again this set and had a rough one.

Picked a bot-like name and got 4-tapped right off the bat. lol Got grabbed another 2 more times. Ran outta food at 28m nw. And then had $2b cash stolen from me (had 10:1 SPAL, clearly not enough). Prob had a shot at ebert's record but missed. Could've gotten $90m+ nw if I had destocked better (and had that extra $2b lol).

1 Ephemera Withering (#71) 19,122 $80,608,113 DG

Will ebert and Gerdler return to defend the record? Haha

Congrats! Saw your #3 finish. Good one!

Oil market is.. the hardest to play imo. It's like a "go big or go home" that usually ends in the latter. Haha

Congrats! That's a good non-GDI finish!

I had a terrible set that began with forgetting GDI, running outta cash/food a lot, getting farmed a little, eating missiles, having to run a (successful) kill run, getting ABed, rebuilding and sneaking into the top 10. lol

I might try primary next set. See if I can convince someone to rejoin and take a stab with me. Haha

To what extent is primary today like the old "multi-tap if you can get away with it"? And are the people at the bottom continuously bottom fed then?

For sure! So far every set I've been learning things the hard way (like ending a set with a few million tech pts like yourself), also botching a gov change the first time I did it on returning. I think a few sets ago I took a risk and bought up the food market and tried to sell my own food in the mid-40s. I sold half my stock and got blocked. After which, I played my destocks safer. lol

The best thing about Express is.. if you make a mistake, the next set is the next week and you can iterate again.

I didn't know this! Haha Possibilities are endless. Are both of you netting this set?

Yea that makes perfect sense. Given that both of you have ended higher (>80m nw), you're probably closer to the optimum and I have to try it at some point. (Realistically, I don't see how much more I can optimize a 12k acre techer to add another 10m nw.)

[quote poster=Gerdler; 49379; 959782]

This is probably the key thing. I'm still trying to figure out.. how to balance supply with demand if you have so much tech to dump in a day. Probably involve selling multiple times in a day to spread out that supply... which is very involved. Or maybe breaking it into multiple blocks to make it 'appear' smaller and prevents aggressive undercutting by others.

(Also, I spent like a set or 2 in LaF a very very very long time ago!)

This is actually an enjoyable thread btw. I'm learning a lot through this discussion!

...and I forgot to join GDI. lol

Gerdler:
Great post! On the latter half, so far, my feel of the set has landed me at the lower end.

One of the things not accounted for there is the actual 'day' of the set. So while you get a lot of tech points on say 18k acres (and you mentioned you'd be driving supply up and hence, lower prices), you're probably getting there on Friday/Saturday instead of Thursday, which means you miss out on the much higher prices on Thursday. Selling 1 tech point at 5k is equivalent to selling 2 tech points at 2.5k, so there's definitely that. Or in Hessman's case, $8888. lol

st0ny:
You're absolutely right. Gradual increase = standing orders getting filled. Like I said, I play very lazily.

The thing I tried last set that I didn't do the prior sets, is actually use standing orders to destock entirely and trust that they will be filled. That allowed me to destock at a really low $/nw on public. I actually jumped VERY early (I only used ~1600 turns total in the set) - to give you some sense, I started gradually "destocking" on Saturday (for a Sunday night finish). I got to ~47m nw easily in this case (I was at the same nw as Hessman). I then resold the military on the bot buyout (like Hessman mentioned), dropped to 30m nw, and then, in an act of faith, used standing orders to destock again. I could've pushed for more nw but I put really high prices on my standing orders and people were filling it at the limit. I had $16b to blow after the military resale so it wasn't clear if the market was deep enough; turns out, it was deeper than even that and there was plenty of military on in the last hour unbought.

A lot of the principles I use for Express are just stuff I have from the days I played tourney, which is also ~1800 turns. (I'm the record holder for most top 5s and most #1s in tourney 2a in the old Earth 2025, pre-Earth empires donkey years ago).

Hessman:
I feel like at this point you basically know how I did it and can just recreate it. lol I'm going indy this set (worst set with so many Cs), so I'm likely not gonna finish too well.

You've actually hit the nail on its head there. The moment all the real farmers start to raise prices to >36, that's basically your chance to dump all the cheap food you've amassed. You don't actually need to buy ALL of the food up beyond that price, you just need everyone to move the median price higher at the right time.

Part of it is getting lucky too. lol There might be other demo resellers who see what's going on and double down on the activity.

You can push prices up to $36 with no risk, and you'll be surprised at how thin the market is above that when you've got some early stock (I keep $2b on hand all the time).

Another small thing on playing food market.. I tend to help clear people's food stockpile (inadvertently) at the end of the game so they have money to destock. That cash will then clean out all the cheap military on the public market, allowing my more expensive stuff to sell.