Qz, some of these bots have billions on hand and I've been using them for stocking cash.

However, it will be interesting when the trigger applies where they start to buy out the military market. Military prices seem to be in decline despite this war effort, and I'm curious on the kind of effect the buyout may have.

Has anyone else noticed some of the bots with lots of cash on hand and no military?

shh

as a farmer i've got extra stock already because looting bots gives me enough money to maintain tech levels as i grow.

Yup. It's been an issue for quite some time & in my opinion, they were purposely meant to do that.

Hm they definitely weren't *meant* to do that; I could have them try to keep a balanced budget.... suggestions to the code? https://github.com/jhaagsma/ee_npc

Shhh.

Sure...

if($c->money > 100,000,000) {
// buy food
// place food on market @$400
}

I noticed you already have a destock function, so at end of set, have the bots destock the $400 food.
Eventually the bushels will drop off market., so....

Have another function that:
if($c->food > 2,000,000) {
// place all food on market @$400 (if farmer) (but leave X amount on hand for other classes)(x amount has already been programmed into your code)
}

Both of these would prevent the bots from stocking over 100mil cash / 2mil food.


both codes should be placed just after:
if(!$c->turns%5){ //Grab new copy every 5 turns
$main = get_main(); //Grab a fresh copy of the main stats //we probably don't need to do this *EVERY* turn
$c->money = $main->money; //might as well use the newest numbers?
$c->food = $main->food; //might as well use the newest numbers?
$c->networth = $main->networth; //might as well use the newest numbers?
$c->oil = $main->oil; //might as well use the newest numbers?
$c->pop = $main->pop; //might as well use the newest numbers?
$c->turns = $main->turns; //This is the only one we really *HAVE* to check for
}

== place it here ===

:) I can do something simple like that I suppose; busy the next couple days, but it would be nice to get some more work done

nice work celph

X100

I'm not a fan. I'd much rather see the bots buy military to some level first. Part of the value of the bots will be to have viable countries to farm as you grow. Thus you have LARGE countries still able to get land vs the past where bottom feeders had to intentionally keep networth low.

So adding to the if statement perhaps an and so they buy turrets if < 1,250,000 sum of (jets, turrets, tanks, troops) < 3,000,000


Something like that.

Buying military will only accomplish one thing:
a) makes it harder for the lower netting countries to grab them.

The stronger players are going to be able to grab them regardless.
Buying jets (which will never be used) tanks (never used) troops (never used) makes no sense to purchase.

Since bots will be farmed to about 15DR regardless, it makes no sense to buy additional turrets either. Thus, they may as well begin stocking so it doesn't get taken by SS/PS.

Note: It has been proven by Mrford, that a country can literally go without any defense and still perform well. Using DR as a control measure, a bot can exploit its fate.

Commie indy's get big to the point they can't hit these bots. Some bots do go turrets and are hard to hit for those not holding huge amounts of jets. The issue in the game is today you have commie huge countries, the middle class, and the untagged masses. What made the game more fun back in the day is having an upper class middle class, lower class, and untagged. I think bots can give us that again but a few game changes might be needed later.

Still more targets for the top 25 so they can get BIGGER is huge imo.

qz, i've got a bit of experience in this, if you want me to give you a hand let me know :P

@hoop

Having the bots buy turrets is not going to work. If you check every set, all the bots have at least 10+ DR. Not all the bots stockpile large amounts of cash. The ones which do, shouldn't even bother buying military.

The commie bots are not the ones stock piling cash. The reason you're pointing out the commie bots is because your net is simi-close to theirs and you're unable to LG them, and so you're reasoning that if the other bots had similiar militarys that they'd all have great defense. - NOT TRUE.

But what really happens: the top players become the only ones able to tap these free land farms,. and they'd just hit them multiple times creating an even larger gap between the weaker players and the stronger players. Esp on alliance when you can carry 90% jets, there's no bot ever going to stop an attack from happening.

Hoops has a great point they need turrerts even your clan mates need to buy more turrets 2m on a 54k country is weak (n00b in training)

the problem with not buying military is then you get tyrannys hitting them for 20 acres which is better than exploring for 6

you want to create a situations where there are tiers of bots not avoid it

its even sillier if you have all the bots stay small and then you get people running no tech and no defence to stay in humanitarian range of the good land, being easy suicide targets and a really odd system

having the bots keep less than 100mill cash on hand is silly. what human player plays like that?

Let's examine your argument for a second.

You're saying a Tyranny gaining 20acres per turn is overpowered, but:

2015-03-17 17:09:00 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF 400 C A T S hoop (#288) MD 11221A (16097A)
2015-03-17 12:19:03 PS 400 C A T S hoop (#288) MD Mediadefender (#111) LaF 11129A (15882A)
2015-03-16 10:08:39 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF 400 C A T S hoop (#288) MD 9865A (14432A)
2015-03-16 09:54:44 PS 400 C A T S hoop (#288) MD Mediadefender (#111) LaF 10021A (14298A)

is OK.

How does 20acres + 10 ghost acres compare to 16k(5k) acres from 2 turns?

The point I'm making is bots are going to be farmed to max DR regardless. Buying more military is NOT going to change that. Because almost everyone on alliance carries 90% jets and about 10% defense. (The only exception is if it's a war set).

There's no defense a bot can possibly do to defend against that. So, my suggestion is that they don't bother with defensive units and just use DR to their advantage by spending their $ into more tech, or via stocking. The only thing defense is servering for the bots are more expenses. Keeping massive amounts of money / food onhand serves no advantage or purpose.

Another agrument you made is that players will run with no defense: that already happens., the bots wouldn't give good land in perma DR. And as for sucides, place all the bots in GDI. Easy fix.

Bots / humans two different things. What advantage does it serve to have more than that? I'm suggesting bots carry 0 defense, so why would they need more than 100mil?

this isnt express. we want the bots to be able to hit back eventually. you are moving away from that. stop please.

I'm well aware this is ALLIANCE and it's not EXPRESS. At least on EXPRESS players carry 60/40 70/30 80/20 def/off.

Bots that attack back is a long long away. It requires quite a bit of coding and the last major bot update was the GOVT_Change function on Dec 16, 2014.

My suggestion takes 1 minute to copy / paste my code and it takes out the exploitation of hitting bots for 40 mil per SS/PS.

so what if you get cash from grabbing the bots? why is that a problem?

i dont see why you want to limit them to only 100mill on hand. that seems like a silly low number that will cause troubles further down the road. like when they have negative income and have to hold turns till goods sell and if they get undercut it will drive the market further and further down. just because you dont like it that active grabbers get some cash?

Once the bots have been given the ability to attack back, then YES, it's logical to have them buy military; but, that's not the case right now. They won't have that ability for quite some time.

So to take full advantage of their inability to attack back, is to exploit their DR. Buying troops/tanks/jets/turrets is not going to do anything. On EXPRESS is does more than ALLIANCE, because most of the players on EXPRESS are defense heavy.

However, most of the players on ALLIANCE are offensive heavy. So to buy any type of military is pointless from the current bot situation.

making the bots have 0 defense is dumber than limiting them to 100mill cash.

it still limits who can grab them. 6th restart suicides could get a good jump from news camping 0 defense bots. that is a stupid prescient to set. not to mention that any offense carried at all is a penalty for farming bots. you want to remove that...... wtf.

Restarts would be hitting a bot with at least 20DR if the change was made. That's hardly anything to benefit from.

If you examine all the bots which finished the best, it's only the bots which carried the least amount of military and spent most into tech / stock. The aggressive military spending bots did poorly.

<---Strongest players-----------------------------in middle-----------------------------------------Weakest players-->

When you buy more military for the bots, their NW climb and the weaker players cannot LG them.
Thus creating a larger gap between the weaker and Stronger players.

When you buy less military for the bots, the weaker players can benefit the most from the bots. Which is why the bots were designed in the first place.

" B) By providing many additional countries in the low end, shield/hide ACTUAL new players from being farmed to death.

C) Similar to B, by providing many additional countries in the low end, provide countries to be ranked against for ACTUAL new players, and targets for new players, so that they can participate in attacking, and also feel like they are making progress, in being able to go from say rank 1500 to rank 500 rather than perpetually being at rank 750 because of farming, lack of targets, and lack of other countries of similar skill."

so your goal for the bots is to net best? and why would bots all be in 20 DR? eventually most fat farmers will grow out of range of these zero military bots and the restarts will have field days with low to no DR bots.

you are looking at this from too limited a viewpoint imo. but to each their own. im just against further changes without thinking about the adverse effects like some of the attacking changes of the last few years. they drove players off and it isnt something we can afford anymore.

the bots were designed so the tryhard farmers grabbed new players less. not so the new players could get land. fyi. landtrading also has taken some heat off them. what little there are, if any.

C) Similar to B, by providing many additional countries in the low end, provide countries to be ranked against for ACTUAL new players, >>>and targets for new players<<<,

targets for suiciders restarts. which was my entire point.


i feel like we are getting off track here. 100mill is a stupid low number to limit the bots to.

The solution I'm giving is to close an exploit. A solution nevertheless. Players can complain, or offer solutions. Players can quit, or offer solutions.

I'm offerring solutions. Bot getting farmed isn't going to change. Giving bots 0 defense compared to 100k turrets isn't going to significantly change the amounts of land players already get from them. Stronger players are going to select Landtrading over bot hitting anyways.

The whole server is being coerced to playing the landtrading strategy because it's the only strategy that gives you t30 chances. Sad, but true.

THe idea of 100m is not a new idea. The C/I bots already have it coded to carry even less than 100 mil. There's only a specific type of bot that carries large amounts of cash/bushels. My suggestion is targeted at those bots primarily.

making the bots 0 military and have no cash onhand will force the server deeper into landtrading...

Think about what you're saying.

0 defense would make hitting bots more appealing. If the bots were too hard to LG, MORE people would do landtrading.

you just said 100K and 0 makes no difference. you are taking away the stock gain for hitting them. you just made hitting the bots less appealing. not to mention you put them out of range of a lot of the larger countries because they have no NW from military. landtrading looks better and better.

If you're suggesting that for LGers to compete with landtraders, to give them the ability to gain 30-40mil a turn from hitting a bot, then you're only rewarding the players who hit the BOTs the soonest.

Landtraders are exploiting both. It's time to close the exploit the one can be fixed in 1 minute.

The last 10 hits on alliance made by the #1 ranked player:
2015-03-27 22:01:21 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF Doggy Sir Cougar (#218) 87A (94A)
2015-03-27 22:01:11 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF Doggy Sir Cougar (#218) 116A (125A)
2015-03-27 22:00:52 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF Doggy Sir Cougar (#218) 154A (166A)
2015-03-27 22:00:34 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF Doggy Sir Cougar (#218) 203A (219A)
2015-03-27 00:56:14 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF The Mouse (#166) 172A (187A)
2015-03-27 00:56:10 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF The Mouse (#166) 226A (246A)
2015-03-27 00:56:05 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF The Mouse (#166) 293A (323A)
2015-03-24 23:32:23 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF Hatchling Forsaken (#123) 395A (450A)
2015-03-24 23:31:07 PS Mediadefender (#111) LaF Hatchling Forsaken (#123) 489A (581A)
2015-03-24 23:30:10 SS Mediadefender (#111) LaF Hatchling Forsaken (#123) 385A (482A)

They would still gain networth from exploring and buying tech.

jesus christ you are all over the place. it isnt an exploit. stop trying to fix things that arnt problems, you only create more problems.

tryhards always have an advantage. trying to mitigate that is a fools errand on a scale this small.

i dont know about the bots here on alliance, but most of the ones i see on FFA that are getting hammered have about 400K NW in military at this point in the set. that is a drop of 4mill NW in hitting range. sure they buy tech, but they are paying $280 per NW in military, and what, $1600 per NW in tech? it isnt the same.

We both have different definitions of exploits. The bots were not designed to carry large amounts of cash on them. It's a small oversight in Qzjul programming. All his bots address it, except 2 strategy bots. I'm not the only one who believes it to be an exploit. Even enshula himself doesn't like the landtrading concept, but he recognizes that in order to win, it's the only way to go. And until it's fixed, he & many other players will continue to use it. And yes, I call it an exploit. If the #1 player and perhaps the best player on Alliance, says it needs to be 'fixed' I'm not going too far out on limb saying it's an exploit.

There's a big difference with military nw and tech nw though. Military nw costs money each turn. Tech NW doesn't cost anything. Earlier in the set it doesn't matter so much. But once your military expenses are running at 5-6+ mil a turn, that's 5-6+ mil extra a turn the bot is making. In both situations the bots are farmed out the wahzoo.

the goal of the bots isnt to net, it is to feed land to the players. what you are talking about only matters in the final week of the set.

with military in addition to the tech (they wont need much because they will be low land) they can stay in NW range of some of the larger countries, and prevent suiciders and restarts from having their way.

Quoted from Qzjul Bot Project goals:

The goals are thus:

A) Smooth the distribution of countries out (towards the low end especialy), so that there is a more natural curve to average land and networth, rather than an abrupt dropoff below the major clans; this will provide more "targets" for more people.

A.1) Caveat to that is that the "targets" should not be land farms; <<<<<<<<<

F) Later goal: Make FFA strings able to compete together in FFA <<<<<<<<<

G) Later goal: Make Teams to provide competition in Team server, and to provide small alliances to contend with in Alliance. <<<<<<<

H) Later goal: Make small alliances (possibly able to accept/join human clans??) able to compete in alliance/ffa <<<<<<<<<<<

they should not be landfarms, so make them have 0 military?

Again,. my suggestion is a temporary fix with the given situation. Not until a significant amount of programming is made to allow the bots to retal will they be able to buy enough turrets for it to even matter.

Also, my suggestion only targets a specific strategy bot which stocks massive amounts of cash/bushels on their country.

It's not possible to sell more than 1/4th of military (which is created by commie bots). All the bots would remain the same except for the (already low NW bots who have 1.5+ billion on hand.) The suggested change is actually very minor.

them having more defense will limit those that can grab them though. it also encourages efficient ghost acre DR grabbing. reducing that number to 0 is counter productive. you are supplementing a current goal for the possibility of a long term one.... an all or nothing attitude with little hope of making any difference other than for suiciders and restarts.

im not talking about the cash onhand anymore. stop combining the points. just stop.

If your concerns are restarts using bots as springboards back into action., you'd be helping the situation by removing that excessive amount of money on hand.

If you think about it,... players already do what I'm suggesting on ALLIANCE. THe only difference is the bots get hit and the players do not.

Enshula netted to about 30ish million net, and jumped to 350mil net in like 10 mins via destocking. People avoid hitting him because of the clan he's in, not because he has a ton of turrets.

stop

combining

the

points

I can't tell when you're switching.

then read.