I think the hope is that eventually the bots will attack, that would definitely help!

I 100% agree with you.

I see your speech skills came from iSoviet. Terrible skill.

😂

I think this is where your understanding of the game is falling short. The eventual winners of this set is already in the top 10 and massively turn delayed.

You're generally looking at 40k acres at turn 1100 with 400+ cs. You can be anywhere from 50-75k acres by turn 1500, with 400+ cs. That's what a good finish looks like. I agree not many people can do this, but we do see quite a number of countries around 50k acres, and these are the ones that consume a lot of oil.

I'm not sure what "5mil net by turn 550 w/ 200+ CS" really entails, since nw is not important until the final minutes of the game. In fact, you'd want have as low nw as possible in order to nw match the bots you are grabbing. And 200+ cs is really not a winning bpt unless you are a techer.

He took a roundabout way to answer my question. He could have just said "very" and moved on.

Celphi, I see at least part of the problem. You're implicitly insisting that every strat should have an equal chance to win - i.e., that "balance" between the strats is somehow optimal for fun or enjoyment. That is categorically incorrect. The best games never have perfect balance.

Look at video games - Hades won everybody's GOTY in 2020. It has 24 weapon aspect options and modular difficulty from 0-64. The weapons are not equally optimal to maximize the difficulty, or for speedrunning. Some are just better than others. And that's a single player game. Nobody would argue that every role/strat is equally effective in COD or Minecraft either.

Look at TTRPGs. D&D has been around for 50 years and a slew of editions now, and it has never once been "balanced." Wizards are always OP. And yet, it remains the world's most popular RPG.

Look at board games. In the modern board game scene, there are too many to look at. Take a popular one like Splendor. Perfect balance in a vacuum - but as soon as you lay out the board and see what nobles and cards are available, it's completely unbalanced, and it's a race to capitalize on scarcity. Take Arcs, the spaceship game. Unbalanced out of the gate (pun intended because I'm not a coward) due to the layout, and even more so if you use the advanced rules. The Dune board game, which has been popular since the 70s, gives each player *different victory conditions.*

In summation, your basic premise (that the strats must be balanced perfectly) is intrinsically flawed, as games with perfect balance are actually boring.

I read all this, and all I can contribute is... you nerd!

@vic

You’re misreading my argument. I’m not claiming every strat should have an equal shot at winning or that we need perfect balance. What I am saying is that when the game boils down to just three dominant strategies and everything else becomes unviable, it narrows the experience in a bad way.

Your examples from Hades, D&D, and board games actually support this. Those games succeed because even the suboptimal options still see play and can be fun, viable, or situationally strong. In Express, that's not the case. Oiler, for example, is borderline unplayable in serious competition. The diversity might technically exist, but only a few paths lead anywhere meaningful.

This isn’t about making every strategy win. It’s about ensuring the game remains rich enough that more than just a few routes are worth exploring. When only three strats are viable and one of them, delayed landgrabbing, often dominates, we’re not in the realm of deep strategy, we’re in the realm of repetition.

So no, I’m not asking for balance for balance’s sake. I’m asking for meaningful variety.

Four different strategies have won over the past 2 months.

I personally feel like the small nerf to farmer made this server more competitive than ever from a strategy standpoint.
A player that employs good fundaments playing farmer, casher, indy, or techer has a shot at a win.

@slagpit

casher is 4th?

April 14-21st.
https://earthempires.com/express/803/ranks/32

I don't think the ee bots ever had an oiler - when I ran bots on AI I made an oiler strat and had the other bots buy some.

They did. It's in the ai bot code.

Actually... lol. They coded it but never finished it:

 public static function txtStrat($cnum)
    {
        global $settings;
        if (!isset($settings->$cnum->strat)) {
            return;
        }

        switch ($settings->$cnum->strat) {
            case 'C':
                return CASHER;
            case 'F':
                return FARMER;
            case 'I':
                return INDY;
            case 'T':
                return TECHER;
                break;
            case 'R':
                return RAINBOW;
            case 'O':
                return OILER;
        }
    }//end txtStrat()

The oiler strat file is empty.

Let's do better code...

public static function txtStrat($cnum, $settings)
{
$stratCode = $settings->$cnum->strat ?? null;
if (!$stratCode) {
return null;
}

$strategies = [
'C' => CASHER,
'F' => FARMER,
'I' => INDY,
'T' => TECHER,
'R' => RAINBOW,
'O' => OILER,
];

return $strategies[$stratCode] ?? null;
}

@badonkadonks:

you don't need:

if (!$stratCode) {
   return null;
}

in your code. If the key is not in the array it will return null.

I see you played oiler kingme.

How'd it go? lol.

Yes, this is what I discovered!

Easy enough to do, but I got so carried away refactoring code there was no way anything I did could be merged. Not to mention the new code changed loads anyway in a totally different direction!

If I didn't have a job I think I would write a new bot from scratch. Still not true AI, but just a robust bot that makes sensible decisions from turn to turn. With some basic stocking/destocking.

I think I'm going to try to create a true ai solution for all x-plore.

The annoying part is reverse engineering the population code to create the env.

[quote poster=Celphi; 53578; 1054486]@badonkadonks:

you don't need:

if (!$stratCode) {
   return null;
}

in your code. If the key is not in the array it will return null. [/quote]

We evolve the code together :)

I learned things! It's tough for sure.
You can make top 10, I sold most of my oil on the PM for 72. You probably noticed I missed the end of the set and had almost 2B on hand.

Yup. I noticed; but, I'm sure you noticed the amount of oil consumed isn't as great as many here think.

I mean, maybe. It's also more than you think. The avg is 20m for express, with some sets going as high as 50m, and others less.

You can't win with oiler, but it's easy and lazy to play for sure! I just logged in and smashed the explore/build buttons.

I have decided to play this reset (and not fumble my startup). As such I have been smashing the explore button super hard too.

Good luck! lol. Report your finds here after the set if you don't mind. :)

I see you have 19k land Ugo... that's not even 1.7 mil cash a turn if you're selling everything on private. bc from looking at public nothing is selling.

19000*1.5*60=1710000.0

and now that i think about it,. it's even lower than that bc oil wouldnt be sold at 60 for THEO

I don't think he's playing oiler.