No timelines on this right now, but I'll share my current thinking. The goal of this change is to make the server more challenging, to improve the health of the public market, and to encourage players to interact more with each other instead of just with NPC countries.

NPC countries will have one of six attacking styles. The attacking style is randomly decided at the beginning of each round at the country level.

1) Never attacks
2) Only retals 1:1
3) Retals + prefers to attack countries with the most land on the scores page
4) Retals + prefers to attack countries with the lowest NW/acre on the scores page
5) Retals + prefers to attack countries with the lowest NW on the scores page
6) Prefers to attack random targets

Specific behaviors/changes:

* NPC countries can get defensive and intel allies.
* NPC countries can landgrab both players and other NPC countries, even if they haven't been attacked first.
* NPC countries will generally only attack and retal when their country is in good shape. Good shape means having high readiness, a minimum number of acres, being mostly built, and having enough cash, military, and oil to perform the attacks.
* NPC countries will not perform landgrabs against countries in heavy DR.
* NPC countries may choose to retal countries that perform harmful spy ops on them.
* NPC countries will pick a "retal window" between 24 and 72 hours.
* NPC countries will only SS, BR, AB, and launch missiles.
* NPC countries will not attack if they cannot get a spy op.
* NPC countries will not attempt to get alliance spy ops. They will make a random guess as to the defensive power provided by the target's allies.
* NPC countries will only perform special attacks if they have been attacked by their target.
* If an NPC country decides to do special attacks, it will generally perform many of them.

The overall number of NPC countries will be increased.

I understand that these changes may not be entirely popular, but please share any constructive feedback that you have.

I like it, it'll get me playing Xpress again!

I like the proposed behavior!

1 thing worth discussing wrt to the current state of Express at least:
3) Retals + prefers to attack countries with the most land on the scores page
4) Retals + prefers to attack countries with the lowest NW/acre on the scores page

In Express right now, the country with the most land also tends to be the lowest nw/acre; this happens as a few countries break away with 30-60k acres from day 3 onwards whilst the rest stay small.

Does this mean if we get a lot of random rolls of 3/4 on the bots, then we should expect a whole load of bots just trying to hit the top land person?

It's interesting behavior for sure, though I wonder if it means that even if you keep high defence alongside 2 good def allies, you could get 20-30 bots just SSing you and failing, but reducing your military. lol

(I'm also assuming with these proposed changes, that we can increase the number of bots as well.)

For 3 it'll seek out the countries with the most land that don't have too much DR. If it can get a spy op then it will consider doing an attack. If the target's defense is too high then it may choose to move onto the next potential target.

The behavior is meant to emulate an unsophisticated human player. It's not using any third party tools to find targets. It just goes after who has attacked it or who appears to be the easiest or juiciest target at a glance. If the target has relatively strong defensive allies then the attack is more likely to fail.

I updated the main post to add more bots to the server.

Makes sense - these are great changes!

Make turrets great again

I'm pretty sure a lot of people will start playing Xpress again with these changes.

I’m nearly almost possibly perhaps considering thinking about planning on theoretically playing again.

If you don't play then I'll make the bots use your old country names!

Lots of theory in proposed changes.. Should be interesting on how it materialize to actual game.

But Slag... congrats on addressing the biggest issues with the bots. Solid & creative solution.

Nooooooo not wwf/e wrestler theme!

<double post>