Einer

Bump - at least one slot open again. Maybe two - I'm still trying to decide whether to wait for a non-paying nation, or just go complain to his government.

Edit: And slot is filled.

Sigh. I was getting ready to drop my warchest into CMs, bomb everyone, and take the rest of the round off. Now I might feel compelled to try rebuilding.

Sorry Taeper, you must be thinking of someone else. And it's easy to rack up the NS imbalance when your opponents declare right at the 2:1 NS limit. (Not all, I'll note, but 2 of 3.) Infinite - not necessarily challenging the methods, just the manhood of my specific opponents. After all, they had three days to get it done the old fashioned way...

So, apparently LE felt the only way they could put my poor little 1500NS nation into anarchy was with a nuke. Sad. Very sad. (Combined NS of my six opponents: 17,500 ) (Not counting the guy that I anarchied and then peaced out with. My anonymous pal owes Oxnose 80 infra for that one...)

If by "nuke free", you mean free of TPC nukes (I assume this will be fixed shortly). According to the news reports, there have been nukes launched by Infinite Citadel, Sopwith Aviation Co (x2), Red Baron, Latveria, Aviator (x2), LittleBigNation (x2), and Sissy La La. Try another one, plzkthx.

Yes, so now with OB the nuke count has gone from 54 versus 5 to...54 versus 5, because OB doesn't have any. I think you can hold off on the gloom and doom for a little while longer. (They do have a big brass pair, though. And pretty soon they'll have a big brass trio, due to radiation-induced mutations.)

Given that the standard war declaration seems to be "You are #2, were #3", I humbly suggest that this should be known as the Apostrophe War.

Bump - still one slot open.

Bump again. Now I need at least two, and perhaps three sellers. Two have switched to buying, one looks like he's quitting after his nation got demolished by Goons.

Bump - need another tech seller...

Someone I attacked had a warchest of $50k. Sweet Jesus Mary and Joseph... (On the bright side, at least all their nukes are protected by silos. This'll let me check "glow in the dark" off my to-do list for the round.)

Y'all know how this works. I finally got around to buying a DRA, need another tech seller. I'm currently buying from 2 inside my alliance and 3 outside, in case you want to check character references. Preference given to nations in largeish alliances, with at least a few thousand NS, or that otherwise look like well-managed workers' paradises. Probably easier to send a message in-game. I'll check back periodically throughout the afternoon and update here once the slot is filled. My nation: http://www.cybernations.net/nation_drill_display.asp?Nation_ID=324421 Edit: Filled again, at least for now.

Hmm. Good point - that's probably the easiest equation to force 50% odds at even strength, but still asymptote appropriately at the extremes. If you have two nations with 550 spies and (for example) 200 points off bonuses, so 750 vs 750, then the odds of success are 50/50. If one of them then buys a CIA and 250 more spies, then they go to 1100 effective strength (+250 spies, plus a +10% total bonus). The odds are then 41/59. So yeah, the CIA is only good for a 10% bonus, and less on defense since you only get +10% strength on attacks. On the other hand, this suggests that the value of spies increases almost linearly at the extremes, but only very slowly near parity. If I have 50 (so 250 effective) and my opponent has 550 (so 750 effective), my odds of success are 250/1000 = 25%. If I buy another 50 spies, they then go to 300/1050 = 28.6%. Buying another 50 beyond that goes to 350/1100 = 31.8%. In contrast, if you're at 500 (700) versus 550 (750), buying that last 50 only increases your odds of success from 48.7% to 50%, a 1.3% improvement. (This ignores threat level, of course, which gives some advantage to the defender.) I just tested this against somebody, and it holds up. The formula says 74%, and the spy screen says 70 (which presumably means anywhere between 65% and 75%).

Heh. I didn't necessarily say that I have zero! I'm just weighing the value of jumping to 550 now, versus buying other shiny things. Idle posturing aside, though, thanks for the clarification that the bonuses refer to effective spy counts. Given this, do we know a rough form for the success probability equation? In other words, if I'm a few hundred short compared to an opponent, is that as good as having zero? This question is largely irrelevant for older nations that've had time to buy most of the good wonders and can max their spy count. However, newer nations still need to weigh the relative merits of (for example) CIA versus Pentagon/DRA/Great Temple. (If anyone wants to spend some time doing science, we could try to map this out. We get a few people with different numbers of effective spies, then I gradually buy spies and we see how the probabilities change at different levels. I have to imagine someone's already done this by now, though.)

Could someone clarify something for me? On the help page, it says: * Attacking spies chances of success are determined by (number of spies) + (technology level / 20) * The defending nation's counter intelligence systems are determined by (number of spies) + (technology level / 20) + (land total / 70). Threat level modifiers are also taken into account for the defender. How are these chances of success actually used? I take it they're percentages? And are they independent, such that the attacking odds only affect success and defending odds only affect the chance of revealing the operation? Or is there some sort of opposing check (i.e. attacking odds minus defending odds, or some more complicated way of balancing them)? I'm basically trying to determine how soon it's really useful to buy a full set of spies, and if it's even worth doing so before you get the CIA. If having an extra 250 spies gives anyone with the CIA a 90% success rate against you, then you might as well just punt and keep that money in your warchest. Thanks! E

I couldn't find anything about this in the wiki, so I thought I should ask here. You can normally only be nuked once per day (at least in TE). If you have an SDI and it blocks a nuke, does that count as your daily incoming attack? Or can your opponent just keep firing nukes until one gets through? If the former, SDI sounds like a great deal - a one-week war would mean eating (on average) less than three nukes. Otherwise, it seems like an SDI is really only useful if you're going to be fighting a long war and the other side might actually run out.

Dispatch from the front: [b]Send more Superfriends.[/b]

[quote name='unruly' date='19 April 2010 - 09:25 PM' timestamp='1271741115' post='2267513'] ... [/quote] What can I say? I was confused by that whole TPC thing - were they us... or were we them... or was it all just a cosmic coincidence? Anyway, I decided I couldn't go too far wrong by placing my nation alongside that of the enemy.

...heh. Quite right - you don't.

I'll buy at 3m/100 for new nations, but I'm happy to pay for convenience, so I'm willing to buy at 3m/50 if you meet certain criteria: 1) Nation strength of at least 4000 2) Some token evidence that you're otherwise an upstanding citizen (i.e. your aid history shows money coming in and tech going out, or you're in an alliance that cares about such things) 3) You're either in a major alliance, or otherwise look like you know how to deter half-hearted raiders. Drop me a message in-game if you're interested. I'll update here once the offer closes, though it'll be opening back up again in about 8 days, so I'll come back and bump the thread then. E Nation: http://www.cybernations.net/nation_drill_display.asp?Nation_ID=324421 Update: Trade slot filled. I'll open this up again in 5ish days when another slot opens up.

Heh. Tillistan, as long as you can get 3m/100, then more power to you. The market obviously supports having some people sell at that rate, so nobody can complain that you're negotiating a good deal for yourself - it's not like we (or at least I) believe we're divinely entitled to 3m/50. At the same time, there are a significant number of people who seem content to accept 3m/50. Maybe they don't want the hassle of chasing down traders at 3m/100, or maybe they think the higher-level nations selling at 3m/50 are more reliable business partners. Hell, maybe using decent spelling, grammar, and punctuation in all my PMs (split infinitives aside) makes my business preferable. The point I'm trying to make is that in the absence of a unified trade cartel, the price will adjust to whatever people are willing to pay. If there are more sellers than buyers, then the price will drop. If the reverse, then it'll rise. You can try to fight a price increase for tech, but unless you successfully organize that cartel (and it's certainly been known to happen IRL), then you'll eventually find your bids undercut by more desperate people who think 3m/50 is better than 0m/0. I don't know detailed numbers on demographics, but I suspect that there are more high-end nations buying tech each day, whereas the overall flat population suggests that the number of tech sellers is flat or going down. That is not a situation where one would typically expect prices to remain constant.

My citizens are just numbers on a page. They take no actions, therefore they aren't economic actors. I, on the other hand, got a nice pay increase when I started taking 3m/50 from people who either couldn't find or didn't want to take the time to find 3m/100 deals.

Heh...and one more little tip that's useful for everybody: Market forces operate anywhere that you have people exchanging goods and services, and while you might not be interested in the market, it is most certainly interested in you...

Odd, you imply that you disagree with my hypothesis, then spend the entire rest of the post agreeing with it. Business is exactly what this is, and there are better and worse business partners. High-level nations are good trade partners. Low-level nations are not. If everybody can get 3m/50 tech trades, then that's obviously because the market has already inflated far enough to allow it. My hypothesis is that it's the nations with high NS, no wars, and stable alliances that lead the way at each price jump, though. In fact, I shall make a testable prediction in the name of Science! When the aging demographics of Cybernations push the price of tech even higher in the (perhaps not so?) distant future, it'll be the high-end sellers (with NS of ~10K or more) that first succeed in demanding 6m/50.