Explore

This seems self explanatory, but I have my doubts. As the game progresses and turrets drop in price, invading other nations becomes almost prohibitively expensive. If you consider that top players will lose up to 50,000 tanks and 1000000 troops/jets an attack, you can see that this is expensive. Lets do the math. Assuming that you are paying late game 130 for a troop and 150 for a jet, (lets average out to 140) and 500 for a tank, it works out to be about 25 million dollars in tanks and 14 million dollars in troops/jets to make an attack. One single attack costs 39 million in troops for 200 acres... That means that one acre is 195,000 dollars. If you add the price of oil to that, (volatile prices, so harder to say, as I write this oil in Express game is 225 a barrel * 1.2 million troops and 125000 tanks (my actual attack size) /25 = 55000 barrels of oil, at spot market price of 225 = 12375000, for a total price for ONE SINGLE ATTACK of about 51 million dollars. That means that 1 acre is going to set me back 250,000 dollars. Seeing as that much cash is worth about 12.84 networth an acre by invasion, and has a networth real value of 45 networth an acre, war truly is madness.

As I write this, I have about 6200 acres, and exploring gets me 15 acres a turn. My costs per turn right now are -54,000 dollars a turn (I am a techer, trying to keep costs low) and -1300 food a turn, so the total cost of me gaining 200 acres would be as follows:

54000*14turns + 1300Food * 14 turns * market price of about 40 dollars a bushel= 756,000 dollars expenses plus 728000 dollars for the food. At a total cost of about 1.484 million dollars for 200 acres, this means that exploring will cost me 7420 dollars an acre, or only 0.371 networth a turn to explore.

For completeness, lets work in opportunity cost here. I create 1661 technology a turn, selling for minimum of 4.1 million a turn at 2500 dollars per unit of tech. Instead of researching, I will need to explore for 14 turns, so the cost of me doing so is 58 million dollars. Add in 100 construction sites allowing me 30 buildings a turn, that would be 6 more turns * 4.1 million =27 million more dollars. Exploring is looking more like 85 million dollars for that 200 acres. So as you can see, this strategy is also VERY expensive for a techer.

However, desperate for land, and considering the benefit that a full turn load could get me 15 * 450 maximum turns (express server) = 6750 new acres (plus another 225 turns to build it all); I am seriously considering it. I would effectively double my tech production to 8 million dollars a turn for the remainder of the game. As of this writing that would be about 775 turns left before the reset. Subtract 675 turns, and I would have about 100 turns of production, or 800 million cash. If I subtract the 100 turns I have wasted on spy ops, cruise missile attacks, standard strikes and planned strikes, that would be almost 1.6 billion in cash. And I am not even a GREAT player.

I wrote this to think aloud, so excuse the non wiki style format. This page was blank before I put this here, so edit this as you see fit into a more standardized format. You get the idea though.

Final thoughts are: If you are competent, using this exploration strategy could be a winner, because if you followed it to the letter, you would only purchase turrets and build spies. If you tweak it for maximum effectiveness, create a golden formula, and maximise this as a strategy, you would be a very powerful nation indeed. Best of all? This COULD work for other styles of play, (oiler, farmer, etc.). I have pulled the chart below from the advanced strategies section, have a look.

Non Rep Explore Rates 40 - 1924 39 - 1995 38 - 2069 37 - 2148 36 - 2232 35 - 2320 34 - 2413 33 - 2513 32 - 2618 31 - 2730 30 - 2851 29 - 2979 28 - 3117 27 - 3265 26 - 3425 25 - 3598 24 - 3785 23 - 3990 22 - 4213 21 - 4458 20 - 4728 19 - 5027 18 - 5361 17 - 5735 16 - 6157 15 - 6638 14 - 7189 13 - 7829 12 - 8581 11 - 9447 10 - 10467 9 - 11664 8 - 13072 7 - 14727 6 - 16674

Rep Explore Rates

48 - 1918 47 - 1977 46 - 2038 45 - 2102 44 - 2169 43 - 2239 42 - 2312 41 - 2390 40 - 2471 39 - 2556 38 - 2645 37 - 2740 36 - 2840 35 - 2946 34 - 3058 33 - 3177 32 - 3304 31 - 3439 30 - 3583 29 - 3737 28 - 3902 27 - 4080 26 - 4272 25 - 4479 24 - 4704 23 - 4949 22 - 5217 21 - 5511 20 - 5836 19 - 6195 18 - 6595 17 - 7044 16 - 7551 15 - 8127 14 - 8789 13 - 9557 12 - 10459 11 - 11532(not correct..) explore rate is at 11 at 11451A 10 - 12731 9 - 14149 8 - 15802 7 - 17727 6 - 19968

Well, back to the game! Cheers, FearFighter!