Earth: 2025, any advice for newbies?

[Ribannah]

About to start Castle Gobs in the ongoing regular game, I hope there is still some land left

Questions
[1] What's up with the tax rate?
[2] How many construction sites to up the number of buildings/turn?

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[This message has been edited by Ribannah (edited February 27, 2001).]

[Colonâ„¢]

The best answers I can offer...
1.The higher the tax rate, the less people your country can support.
2.I don't think there's a simple linear arithmetic behind it, it’s certainly not 1 building/turn for each construction site. I don’t think the site owners know themselves.(weird as it may sound)

For both I’d ask at the 2025 forums for details, there should be people who know the mathematics behind the game.

If you haven’t found this info yet, here are the maximum research % you can have:

Military 87%
Medical 67%
Business 200%
Residential 200%
Agriculture 200%
Warfare 5%
Weapons 150%
Industrial 135%
SDI 90%

These figures are a couple of years old already and they may have changed. The age is also why I don’t have any rate for conditioning (it didn’t exist back then)

[Eternal]

It's true those maximums have been changed (or maybe they ave just for the tournament game). See the Quick Answers section from the main page and look under technologies or somesuch.

1) Many strategies I have read suggest 35% is acceptable. I don't like going over 20 because you start losing people fast if you don't explore more. For some strategies thats okay though.

2) The number of buildings you can construct is related to construction sites such that the more land and/or sites you get, the less effective each site is. Building a lot of them is very cool though. In my tourney game its very satisfying being able to build 22 buildings a turn.
-But for the sake of efficiency always try to build as many buildings as you are allowed when you build.

[This message has been edited by Eternal (edited February 27, 2001).]

[Ribannah]

What's best in this game, to diversify or to specialize?
So far I've played 25 turns (Republic) looking for some balance.
The value of my empire has gone up from $4717 to $8235, 98 of our initial 100 acres have buildings on them (8 construction sites) . I'm now planning to do research myself (20 labs) and to buy research points at the same time, before I start to explore.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire
[This message has been edited by Ribannah (edited February 28, 2001).]

[Eternal]

I play for fun so like to diversify. Look on the "strategy" boards or sites and you'll see that the most successful players usually do it through a certain strategy like just building industrial complexes and farms, or just building economic zones and residentials and junk like that. Doesn't sound fun to me though. I build lots of economic zones, residentials, industrial complexes, and LOTS AND LOTS of Research Labs. Research is great.

Still its probably best to have a long-term strategy to drive what you build. And never think that you have more than enough money. I made that mistake when I topped $1 million and after you buy a thousand tanks and jets, you're down to like $300,000.

[Colonâ„¢]

I started my game (randomized) several weeks ago and I’m around the 190-200 spot right now.
In this game my strategy is to produce as much food and oil as possible (over 2k buildings combined) and to sell it on the market. (oil production is why my govt is tyranny) My latest daily transfer to the market should earn me some $15mn which I use to purchase armaments and technology. I do have fairly many business centres (some 500) as well, that give about $30.000-$40.000/turn, when I'm cashing. Even though my strategy is to get money from sales, I don’t feel safe running a deficit. I have about 250 bases and industrial complexes as well to build spies and train the military...

BTW, is there any use of population beyond tax income? I’ve always wondered that, it seems having a large population put you on a disadvantage because of the food they eat.

[This message has been edited by Colon (edited March 01, 2001).]

[Ribannah]

Colon, how many turns have you played?
Does war happen often?

I just played turns 26-60, still under protection
Doubled my empire to 202 acres, the Net Worth is 17K. I am now ranked #13149 (started as #15525).

My military is pretty weak I guess (some 50 tanks etc), how much should I have when the protection is lifted (I expect to have 300 acres by then)?
At what point should I try to make alliances?

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire
[This message has been edited by Ribannah (edited March 01, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Ribannah (edited March 01, 2001).]

[Colonâ„¢]

Ribannah,
Be careful not to have too much land, people love attacking land fat countries. In the group of about ten around you (in the score screen) you should have at least several with more land.

Re turns: never forget using your freebies, it could give an edge.

Re military: I don’t know, you’ll just have to get an army as strong as possible without bankrupting your country. (that’s how I always have done it)
However, since military size plays a large influence in your networth, your military probably won’t be much smaller than your neighbours’.

Re war: landgrabbing (standard striking once or twice, for land only) occurs all the time, especially since the amount of acres you can explore diminishes with the amount of acres you posses. Prolonged wars, in which destruction of the foe is the goal occur less and it is fairly easy to avoid if you don’t do dirty stuff. (anything beyond landgrabbing, missile attacks, bombing runs etc)

Re alliance: you don’t want military allies who are too small because they’re useless but neither do you want allies who are much larger because their battles will haemorrhage your military.
And of course you don’t want allies who fight a lot (unless you like fighting with them) so you should check their activity in the news feature. Using the search feature is also handy because you’ll see the battle lost/won ratio.

I’ve never had a real timing for engaging in alliances but I do tend to wait when my country is growing rapidly and jumping up in the rankings. When your more or less settled down its easier to find allies who fit you and grow about as fast as you do.

Something to be careful for is just sending an alliance offer to someone without previous contact, because he’ll see your military details and might abuse it. Of course, he could do that just as well when you send an alliance offer after you’ve messaged him already. You could always try moving him into sending an offer first though. (use your charm )

I just had someone who attacked me after I send an offer. A pretty dirty thing to do so I’m now organising a retaliation with 3 allies. First we’ll send missiles and then, unless he pays $3 million in restitution (far less than the real damage he did to me) we’ll use conventional forces.
I’ve send a nuke and a chemical to him already and destroyed about 10% of his land. (300-400 acres)

I’m pretty sure he won’t pay restitution so he’s dead meat.

[This message has been edited by Colon (edited March 01, 2001).]

[Ribannah]

quote: Originally posted by Colon on 03-01-2001 05:16 PM Re war: landgrabbing (standard striking once or twice, for land only) occurs all the time, especially since the amount of acres you can explore diminishes with the amount of acres you posses.

Is that only about barren land, or also land with buildings on it? All my acres have buildings.



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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Eternal]

Yes, land grabs take building as well.

As for military, it's a very good idea to produce almost nothing but turrets for your first 50 turns (before you're out of protection). If you're going to play a strategy where you get lots and lots of money, build nothing but turrets and spies and you can buy other stuff when you need to. Or just build spies and you can buy turrets.

-Remember you don't HAVE to build Jets since they aren't critical for defense.
-Remember that Troops are the only thing taht can counter guerilla attacks so if you really need your food supply and civilians, you'll need many of them.
-And, If you have small construction capability and really need your building, you'll need tanks to protect them from artillery barrage.
-And you can only build spies using Industial Complexes, so make plenty of them (though its hard to say what's best -I have 8000 for 800 acres). Spies can really tear sh*t up.
[This message has been edited by Eternal (edited March 01, 2001).]

[Ribannah]

Thanks guys, I guess I have to buy myself a decent army.
This brings up two more questions:
- what is a good ratio for military complexes : army size
- I bought a lot of Military research points (they were cheap), but the indicator remains at 100%. What's the deal here?

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Ribannah]

I have played turns 61-99, about to come out into the open!! Joined GDI. No foreign relations yet.
The empire has grown to 319 acres, and is now worth 29K. We are ranked #12634 .

This is our army: 444 spies, 1000 troops, 500 jets, 750 turrets, 200 tanks (no missiles). We have an abundance of Oil (almost 10K): there was a big sale .

Should we feel safe?

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[OmniGod]

Well let's just say that a guy has decided to attack me and his army is 25,000 spies; 150,000 planes; 220,000 turrets; and 12,000 tanks.... I thought I was safe and then he strafed me.... My suggestion is to not buy oil as you will produce enough by the time you need to attack... but early I would focus on getting troops up to around 15,000 so there is less Guerilla Attacks... I've taken out two nations with that tactic.. Then aim to get about 100,000 turrets and 10,000 spies.... and do it before you start to expand too quick... there's a couple of nations near me that have 1900 Acres but have no army to back it up.... gobble gobble... And one final thought... get into an alliance or a clan... there's a few nice ones with some ample protection, but remember you have to trust them a little bit since they get free data on your nation in exchange.... there's a nice APOLYON clan that I started... email me to get the pass to join in if you care to...

Present Members include:

ApolytonAlpha
PCO
AmeriCanadians (That's me )
Wittlicher
Phalencia

Membership Rank: 370 Of 1445
Total Networth Rank: 581 Of 1445
Average Networth Rank: 577 Of 1445
Total Networth = $1,683,254
[This message has been edited by OmniGod (edited March 03, 2001).]

[Ribannah]

OmniGod, there's no way my army can be of that size anytime soon! I've just started! But I will keep building it up before starting to expand again. Is there a chance that players who started at the same time as I did - and have more acres - will have an even poorer army?

I bought the oil cheap (around $20 a barrel) with the idea to sell it with a huge profit , not for stockpiling.

Btw mine is a standard regular game, so there are no clans.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Ribannah]

Played turns 100-150.
Consolidated, tripled the army, and did a lot of research.
So far no war , but no reactions to all my alliance proposals either

The empire:

406 acres, worth 43K, rank #12229 (of over 16K)
1915 spies, 3500 troops, 1250 jets, 2000 turrets, 500 tanks

What can happen while I'm logged out?



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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire