Ok I'm trying to figure out a mystery in tourney.

So I woke up this morning and spent my turns with two successful land grabs and some building. I then decided to check the scores to see how everyone else was doing. What I saw was pretty strange and inexplicable. A single country gained nearly 2000 acres of land in the 30 minutes I was playing without making a single attack or landgrab.

How is this possible? I spied on the guy and he's doing an indy strat with some farms mixed in. There's no way he could possibly explore all that land at this stage (20 acres/turn) unless he saved up 90 turns just to explore.

Yes, it's called batch exploring and is quite common. The idea is just before your explore rate goes down you explore as many turns as possible. This gives you ~100 turns @ 40 acres (or whatever your current rate is) per turn instead of 1 @ 40, 3 @ 39, 3 @ 38, 4 @ 37 ....... and so on.

But that's just it. This guy was at 4k when he did this and has never attacked once. So he must have been batch exploring at around 90 turns @ 21 acres/turn. That just seems wasteful to me. Although he does have 90 turns more than me (I started 2 days late) so maybe it evens out.

It pays off.
Yes having all those acres unbuilt for so many turns is inefficient but the extra acres gained more than makes up for the lost efficiency (usually).

As a side note; I could pretty much keep up NW wise without batch exploring early in the set, but by the end of the set would start falling behind because of the extra acres gained by those batch exploring.

Oh yeah, I usually run an all-x country.

Well, you're missing all the fun we land-grabbers are having!

LOL
I used to do 3-4 grabs a day ... every day ... but now, with the smaller player base it has become much more risky that it used to be years ago.

so pick a noob. declare war and farm

Diminishing returns would make that even less cost-effective then exploring.

I think combining tourney servers together would make for better variety.

Im going to pick a noob then. Ummm tduong can i have your # please? ;)

at 2k land you explore more than 20a per turn :)

then it wouldnt be tourney anymore. it would be primary with more turns or express with less turns.

fwiw i still dont understand the batch exploring concept.

someday ill play an allx in express for a week just to familiarize myself with the batch explore... but its just so not fun when u dont attack. esp if others attack you... and you know they will.

ive never run a country where an entire reset i did not even get hit once lg or special attack. never.

i might be mistaken, but didnt you say you're at least top10 of all of EE?

if so, how can you not know what batch exploring is?

just curious

because ive always felt attacking > batchX

i dont make measly 100A hits in the beginning.

my first hits are in the 300-500A range.

so even if i waste a couple turns spying i still come out way ahead of a batch Xer.

I've had a few resets where I wasn't attacked at all. Sometimes you just get lucky. I have not been attacked in primary this reset yet!


now I am prolly jinxing myself.

the biggest benefit with batch exploring is not land but saving $ on losses, oil, etc...

no, that's just the general trade off of exploring vs. attacking. that has nothing to do with BATCH exploring, the benefit of which IS to get more land. it doesn't get more land than attacking but you won't get retaled at least :]

The benefit of batch explore to explore = what blid said.

The benefit of batch explore to grabbing = what tduong said. Although IMO, that is NOT a benefit. I would rather attack than batch explore once I get to a point where I can grab in the 300+ acre range.

The benefit of batchplore to grabbing is you get to keep more defense = what crest23 said. Ppl don't explore to save on losses.

in solo servers batch exploring is really only used by all explore countries. in tagged servers batch exploring is a common strategy for a tech start.

i mean ill batch from maybe 1800 to 3k~ land or so for my tech start. get around 2500 labs and do my 100k tech phase in whatever strat i plan on converting...

but i dont get the point of batch X from say, 3500 to 7k land.

1. when you batch, even at 3500A. say you are getting 30A per explore, ud have to waste 120 turns or so to gain 3500A.

i can do that with, inc ghost A. 8-10 lgs, sometimes even less.

thats 20 turns spent grabbing. lets say i spend 20 turns spying. (one for reg and one for alliance on EVERY TARGET), ive still only spent 40 turns. thats 80 turns less than the batch X guy.

yes ill spend $ on oil and jets, but if say i was an indy, im making jets anyways per turn.. and if i am another strategy like farmer or casher, im building my land as i get it, therefore increasing my production per turn. im also buying tech inbetween to keep my tech levels up.

lets say you have 170 bus/res prior to batching... as a casher.. by the time u went from 3500-7k land, your tech levels will prob have dropped to the 140s. so for about half those turns, if not more, you are very inefficient, and not to mention you have empty acres that produce very little.

also, lets say you go all D and so forth for those acres. well, i love grabbing all D countries because after your batch, you are probably close to being out of turns, and by the time you build up enough jets to muster a retal, i will have jumped out of your range playing the same amt of turns you played to get the jets...

so i agree with crest on this one. ive never seen the efficiency, other than to get to an optimal teching phase. beyond like 3k land, its super inefficient.

the only server i can see this working @ is maybe alliance with all the NAPs (a server i dont play), and tourney, because with 50 countries or so, and maybe only 35 that actually play out... your targets are limited already. plus, you cant attack less than 1/2 your size without dec war, so maybe its viable.

but its just not a winning play, especially in express.

lets also add that lets say you batch exed from 3500 to 7k land. you just spent 120 turns and you have 3500 acres built, 3500 unbuilt.

lets say i spend those 40 lging, and the other 80 building (cs and buildings). i now have 7k land, same as you, producing twice as much, because ALL my land is built.. that allows me to more adequately defend my land, because if i get hit, i am producing enough to muster up a retal, whereas the batchX country is not.

thats what i meant by i dont understand the batchX concept. i mean i understand how it works, allowing you to spend a bulk of turns exploring versus explore +build and watching the explore rate diminish, but i dont understand why people can see it as a viable and successful strategy.

No one said you'd win batch exploring they were saying why one would want to batch explore. Everyone has their own style of play JJ, just because you like one style doesn't mean someone else wants to explore...