Express players, I think it is time we address the issue of the griefing and suiciding that has been occurring in Express for the last few months. I know that it has driven away at least 2-4 of the big names of the server and potentially many of the smaller players. It is time we addressed this and look to provide some sort of framework of "spirit of the game". I know @g0nzo has somewhat touched on this topic (without going into detail) in previous posts, but I think that now it is worthy of discussion in a dedicated thread. The hope would be that the game admins take notice and eventually take action, as the game moderators are hamstrung in that they cannot take direct action.

The griefing and suiciding that has been happening recently in Express is technically within the rules of the game, but absolutely violates the spirit of the game, and ruining anywhere from 2-9 different player's sets is incredibly detrimental to the ongoing future of this game when griefers are allowed to continue doing what they do. I know for a fact it has happened in other servers as well, and it is becoming exhausting when a number of players have to either dedicate an entire set to building war countries to kill off these 1-2 (or more) griefer countries just for others to be allowed to play the game normally or the victims have to convert to war countries mid set just to deal with the issue. This has become a game of whack-a-mole and has developed to be a history of repeat offenses that I believe would be worthy of administrative action. I know Slagpit had mentioned the idea of Sanctions for this sort of play before he took a leave of absence, but this would be a very clear scenario where this sort of administrative action would be warranted.

Does this need to come to a community vote? Can this be something that the admins can delegate to moderators for additional influence?

The most prolific offender of these griefing actions is a player who names their country "Hungry". Please feel free to reply or vent here if you have been affected by similar griefing actions by this player or by others. It is time that this sort of action gets the awareness, and reaction, that it deserves, before it permanently drives legitimate players from this game.

Well he wasn’t lying! Honest advertising!

You definitely want to be nearly done stocking by the final 7 days. Others here may have a better estimate of the number of turns you should aim to be done with grabbing vs stocking vs destocking depending on your strategy.

There’s a few Commies mixed in there too

Y'all got anymore of that oil? *scratch* *scratch* *scratch*

Expenses is a great all-around choice, hard to go wrong there. You can end up holding more military (affordably) for better offense or defense rather than having it tied up in cash or stock.

Resource Decay would be an interesting experiment for a casher or farmer perhaps? And only truly most useful when you have it maxed? But I think Expenses would be the better option.

Turns for techers would be great, though probably still useful for other strategies, particularly early in the set. More front/loaded benefits than the percentage based benefits.

The booms would be most useful towards the end of the set when you’ve maxed out your output and you’re just cashing to stock. I think one boom is equal to about 3-4 turns of output? I’d need to double check that though.

Technically you don’t need max tech for the $39, you can do the math by (starting price/target sale price) or $32/$38.5 = 0.8312 (which the Max military tech percentage for a demo is 0.8167). You use $38.5 instead of $39 since you get the benefit of rounding up.

Using that quick math is a good way to set your required military tech percentage given your desired private market sale price.

At least you haven't been reduced to ramen noodles yet.

I thought we did have at least 2, per the initial round of “who wanted to play what strat”, but perhaps those farms aren’t running at 100% capacity yet. Or maybe there are some supply chain issues at hand.

I ran a lazy, non-optimized, low time investment all-explore theo techer vaguely similar to this without the MBR destock and ended at rank 21M NW. Beating this should be easily doable with any focused effort.

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I’ll be doing an extended tech start, but not a whole set techer. Anyone who needs something in between?

Yes, inching closer to top 10, thanks to all of the great tips from all around!

Yeah agreed, CI takes a LOT of time, especially on the last day. I haven't had weekends open to do so yet, so I haven't been able to finish any CI I have started so far since coming back. Casher though for sure struggles, it is certainly a bit harder to stock/destock due to the massive amount of cash on hand in the last day and lower volume of public bushels to stock with, you end up getting hit with Corruption more easily without good planning.

But #11 is one short of 10! I need to do better with gaining, and keeping land, to have a shot. I am quite impressed with how you guys can hit the ground running so fast on land and NW. It was tough trying to keep pace! Good job all!

Depends on how much land you have relative to everyone else. A CI doing a super optimized, turn storing strategy with late land gains can fly under the radar with little-to-no-defense up until the last day. Harder for a farmer who needs land earlier.

There are a LOT of little optimizations that you can do, but one of the most important things in my mind is to pick a land goal from the beginning, then build your Construction Sites early on to optimally match your land goal, making the most efficient use of turns. Also, you can then determine how much tech you will need. Once you hit your land goal, you must stop and start stocking. I tried to exceed my land goal as an experiment last set as a Tyr farmer and only got a 29m finish when I should have been over 50m. I simply didn’t have enough stock, due to starting too late and not having enough tech. Too much land is a thing.

Commy Indy is the most time intensive depending on how you play it, but can be the most rewarding in the end, even with poor early prices.

Farming can be the other one, but you tend to have to get your land much earlier than CI so you end up being a big target.

Speak for yourself!

I feel stupid all the time!

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I’ll go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt that you just had a lapse in judgement when saying this, because that’s a rather silly thing to say. It was done in jest, given it was already a copied name of a bot, nothing more. If I happened to copy the same name you were using in a game, would we suddenly be working together and colluding?

Congrats to Cordy on another win!

The only reason to go in my mind is for the biscuits.

To me, if you are going to show how netting can be done by hitting humans, then hit humans and then actually net. If you are just going on a mission to farm humans without netting, you are just suiciding, trolling, and griefing and you aren't proving any point you were trying to make. You are just driving people away from the game, and there aren't many left, so that doesn't seem like a very smart idea.

I was having a decent set until someone decided to suicide, so I went on a kill-run and then still casually, half-tried to net and still wound up in top 10 without even stocking/destocking. I had decent defense, but you can't reasonably defend from an all-jetter when you are still mid build on late Wednesday/early Thursday. I hadn't even gotten set up for teching yet.

If those "human hitting players" think that's the best way to save the game and show that it is the superior way, shouldn't they be getting top 10? Winning? I don't see any of them up there...I mean, numerous bots even beat them, so does that mean all-exploring is superior to hitting humans?

If you want to make and prove a point, go do it. Net and win, or at least try. Until then, no one will see this as anything but trolling and griefing.

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On the topic of bots being totally on or totally off, has there been consideration for a “mixed” implementation? If the intent is to not be able to grab bots and thus go back to grabbing only other humans, then turn off the ability for them to be grabbed. They could remain in the game to balance the market, as Tmac mentioned.

Or, to mirror what happened recently in Express, have the bots play just their first 500-1000 turns and then not do anything further. This will stabilize and jump start both the market and land grabs early but will then rely on humans to take over afterwards.

Looking for a possible compromise that meets all the needs. Thoughts?

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Fair enough, I should have clarified “one of the inventors” given his research being directly related to eventual creation per this excerpt on his Dr Malone’s wiki page:

Malone claims to be the inventor of mRNA vaccines, although credit for the distinction is more often given to later advancements by Katalin Karikó or Derrick Rossi,[8][5][9][10] and was ultimately the result of the contributions of hundreds of researchers, of which Malone was but one.

This is your set to win, right?

While yes, mRNA has been around for a while, this particular vaccine has not. In fact, I watched/listened to a podcast from the original creator of mRNA vaccines and their technologies, Dr. Robert Malone, and even he stated that the way that they developed the COVID vaccine was a bit alarming (not following standard practice and procedures) and he believed there to be many more inherent risks with this vaccine than any of the other mRNA vaccines. One specific concern being that a lot of the contents of the vaccine end up being absorbed into reproductive cells.

See here for the link. You can certainly watch all of it, but this link goes to the timestamp where they begin talking about the vaccine in greater detail: https://youtu.be/9E2UkhCWosg?t=922

I support vaccines, but there is reasonable hesitancy when you combine actual statements from people like this with the fact that someone like Bill Gates, who is so heavily involved in this particular virus and vaccine even having patents to the vaccines but not being involved in other medical concerns, is involved and has also spoken openly about population control. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there are a few fishy coincidences there. And for the original creator of the mRNA vaccines being censored and saying he has concerns? I am going to be concerned too.

Was this the new method to get humans to hit each other?? /s

It could be linked to the data stream both are pulling on from the game.

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Bone us

Most NW is from Military.

Troops are worth 0.5 NW
Jets and turrets are 0.6 NW
Spies are 1 NW
Tanks and tech are 2 NW

Yeah GG for my set, that definitely makes the game a bit less fun for me.

I already tried that and failed last set!

Not a vet, but I’ll do some farming this time I think. Open for def/intel alliances

Players are doing a networth jump at the end to gain a huge amount of networth via military. You do it all at the very end so you dont have to pay the expenses holding the military every turn.

Wow very impressive finish Tmac! You got ahead early and snowballed your lead very effectively!

Edit: and very impressive overall scores in top 10! Lots of high NW numbers there!

I saw you were a Fascism last set. What was your building distribution and tech numbers?

I almost feel like we could use a thread here to archive some of the most incredibly silly sounding bot names. The name generator has made a number of good ones recently, I just chuckle reading them sometimes.

Thinking of trying an all-X this set. Keeping it low key for a busy weekend!

Well I appreciate the kind words guys @cordycsw and @Gerdler, just trying to learn from all of you top players! I was telling Tmac and Nite I was going to try the Theo conversion after watching how they did it. Still much improvement to be made