currently there are few viable strategies in express due to lack of players.

casher is the most dominant/easiest strategy to play, and really the only consistent strategy. with time/effort and a LOT of luck, you can succeed as a indy or techer, and with more of all 3 of those, a farmer. due to the lack of any consistancy in the market from lack of players these other strategies really aren't worth playing if you wish to be #1.

i ask if anyone has an realistic solutions that the game mods could/would try.

the only thing that comes to mind for me is one ppl have previously stated, and thats mod run bots that use the AH and increase LGing targets so that everyone isn't in DR

if everyone is in dr, then reduce the dr times.

/shrug.

That'd require a nerf to the other strats then wouldn't it? I mean, demographics wise. A farmer supplise how many cashers? How many people end up playing a farmer/indy, etc, because "cashers are boring easy"

Those indies/farmers/techers all outproduce the actual demand. Supply/Demand, etc.

What you need, (ahem). Is more cashers ;)

And of course, a good way to encourage more cashers, would be to layoff the rampant farming you do to them while playing your indy.

P.S. I'm assuming that prices suck and cashers reign in the top because of it, haven't actuallyed played xpress in a bit.

edit P.P.S. God my spelling sucks. Guess it isn't just my speech thats getting messed up.

farming sucks in express.

cashing is the way to go, and don't worry about growing food, with all those cheap bushels on the market : )

many of the cashers are theo cashing and buying most of thier military off PM.

I am against bots for any reason. Its still unfair cheating no matter why. That would drive me out of this game. And i know everyone here wants me in.

Well in that case, bots would be a real tragedy

i'd love to get another 100-200 real players in here. it's not realistic though.

if anything, there don't seem to be enough indies or resellers right now in express. Too many cashers, not enough Theos.

Honestly, I think either speeding up or slowing down turns would really even this server out a lot. The reason (imo) that the situation is as it is right now is almost completely related to strat maturity. Cashers just happen to mature to their strongest right as the timing for a jump is perfect....speed up the server a bit, and you'll see farmers gain a bit more power. Slow it down, and Indies/techers will start to dominate.

For those of you who aren't getting my "strat maturity" reference, I'm sorry, but I'm just too tired to type all that out atm. Maybe tomorrow.

I disagree. In the old game tourney routinely had over 200 players and casher was still dominant. Casher is dominant mostly because of the set length.

If you want to look at what's viable, oiler and TMBR are immediately out. The private market fills up too quickly for full set TMBR to work, but even if it did, you'd get suicided on because you'd be stuck as a theo with high NW.

Suiciding is a major problem on this server. Did you see how drastically the top ten changed last set in the final five minutes? The top two players even dropped all of their land to avoid suiciders. Farmer, casher, and indy have an advantage over other strats in that they can do effective last ten minute jumps. Techers can't really jump like that. Typically with a techer you'd start jumping before the last ten minutes, which means you're going to get suicided on.



http://www.eestats.com/express/oldmarket/Turrets

Turrets appear to be fairly stable each set. Are $150 turrets enough for a good CI player to win? I'm going to say yes. Look at Battle chess (#82) and five day plan (#61) from last set. Both of those players didn't grab and had bad luck towards the end of the set, yet finished high enough to win a typical express reset. The last time the first place country had more NW than $21,324,350 was June 21st. The reason they didn't win last set was because food was very cheap and bus/res tech prices were absurdly low.



The bottom line is that suiciding directly affects player strategies (in your opinion, for the negative) and decreases the number of players on the server. I'm currently trying to figure out a way to stop most of the pointless suiciding that happens in express. Hopefully I'll get a better idea as to how to solve this problem as I play express a few more times.

cashers is the easiest to play because you can get mil tech and still have full income

farmer can either have mil tech or full income

techer cant guarantee income from a much larger proportion of turns than on any other server, while at the same time military prices dont go very high because average stocks are low making reselling very hit and miss

theres no real reason indy cant function somewhere inbetween casher and farmer, initial statup costs are lower and market is highly volatile, the main problem id think is you get punished the most for playing less often

techer also needs to play fairly often making it a bit of a pain

slowing down the turns would help techers at least. And I was a techer who jumped early last set and didn't get suicided :P had a good spal though so maybe they couldnt spy me? Rank 8 last set

Suiciders is part of the game. I mean its important for people to run a well rounded country. So many of these netter think they will be in top 10 and they dont have any spies. If i ran into a country like that and it was above me- I would use CD or bomb airbases and make it small again. People need to understand it is a game and need to play complete countries.

Thanks for the pro-suiciding platitudes. You contribute so much to this thread.

well rounded sounds very nice dh, but you can't get everything and still make t10 on this server, limited turns and all. no reason you can't have adequite spy defense through a few indies and 2 intel allies though.

slaggy poo i agree with what you CAN do with an indy, techer maybe even a farmer. but you can't do it every round like you can with the casher.

On what basis? As far as I can tell from the market price graphs, turret prices are around the same every set.

and how many indies is that going to support selling only turrets?

You're saying the demand isn't there? Demand was there last set. Turret prices are $178 now. If you're really worried about demand just sell your turrets below theo casher private market price.

damnitt, slag! Quit backing your opinions up with fact....this is express after all!