King Irwin

Ah...that explains it then. There's a big difference between 5 and 25 NS, and I was unaware that tech had ever been worth that much. That must have been before my time (or else I've completely forgotten!)....I'm getting old, but not that old!

Naturally. That is not the only way to succeed and if you don't still do other things right, it won't help you much, but it can certainly help augment success. I still disagree with your statement about 500 efficiency though (unless you could point out a nation or 2...I'd love to see it!). The best players in the game that do not donate seem to be only a little over 200 typically. The max benefits you can get from donating are to have $3M and 50 tech come in constantly (18 slots/month). For a top 5% nation, the money probably only buys you less than 200 infra, so call that 600NS. The tech adds 50*18*5 = 4500NS. Add 1000NS for a donation to your own nation, and that's 6100NS/month from donations. But compare that to the player that uses his aid slots effectively for tech deals ($18M spent per month, 600 tech gained). He would have just 60 less infra, and 300 less tech. (60*3 + 300*5 = 1680NS/mo. = 56NS/day) So in short, I estimate that even through donating (or having absurd amounts of constant aid from other sources), a top nation can only maintain an efficiency about 56 points higher than other nations (and this decreases the bigger you get, since the $3M aid means less and less). Donating to your own nation would add another 33 points to this, but that's still less than 100 points above everyone else, so I wouldn't expect anyone to have an efficiency mcuh higher than around 300 once they start getting into the upper ranks.

Personally, I would love to see a way to compare efficiencies across nations, similar to how we can currently sort by NS, infra, or tech. It's obviously not the "be all and and all" of success in the game, but I view it as more meaningful than NS as a metric of success, since anyone can eventually get large if they've played the game for 10 years, but it takes a lot more skill to rise up quickly. As for your comment about 500...really? Could you point out a top nation with that type of efficiency? My guess is that is somewhat overstated, as it has seemed rare in my experience to spot a nation over 250-300 range (older than a couple months anyway), and those are nations that are constantly selling donations and therefore having massive amounts of aid coming in. You need to gain 800 a day to maintain an average of 100? That doesn't make sense, unless you plan on losing 7/8 of your NS again very soon...

You should also know that there is a slight environment penalty for having less than a 2/1 ratio of infra/land. For most nations, this is still not worth worrying about though, as the benefits of infra considerably outweigh this. But you have about 8 times as much land as you need to even worry about this effect. You will not need to buy land again for a very long time!

I stand corrected. Everyone's allowed to be wrong once in life, right?

This is pretty much right. Although in your case, switch to Monarchy, not Democracy (since it is desired). Definitely don't buy infra after collection, as a couple other posters just mentioned. Read through another recent post in this forum...there was a discussion about 2k infra jump costs. I can't recall what it costs. I'd recommend hunting down a good infra jump calculator personally. It will tell you exactly what you need instead of having to guess.

Global Radiation affects everyone equally, so you can't really complain too much about it. 1) Ignore the stars. Highlight the invisible number to the right of the stars. This number goes from 1 to 11, I believe. It can never be lower than 1 + GRL though. It is a sum of GRL and all of your individual nation's environment factors. Stars are just a pretty visual interpretation of this info. 2) Environment does not effect population. It effects happiness. And I can't recall the relationship exactly off the top of my head. It used to be 0.4 Happiness per Environment point, but it's a little more complicated than that now.

Your #2 and #3 are not great options. These should be what you consider: 1) Keep doing as you are...you're not in bad shape, and I would definitely keep the $3M deal going, as Cattle and Uranium are actually pretty solid resources. 4) Replace silver w/ something like Fish (Wheat or Gems would also be an improvement) 5) Replace silver, gold, and lead with Fish, Wheat, and Water. #4 is certainly better than #1, if you can change and get a new stable trade. #5 is probably the best, but I recommend using the trade calculator to compare their benefits, and then calculate the benefits for your nation, including the loss of tech discounts from your tech sales. The increase in income will likely outweigh this though at your size.

I'm not sure that anything needs to be changed too much. There are several ways to make infrastructure cheap to buy, but relatively few for tech and land. The difference between tech and land is that tech can be acquired via aid. From a realism point of view, it actually makes sense that land isn't drastically increasing. I consider that a simulation of the overcrowding...at this point, most nations are very well developed, and there is little land left to be cultivated and populated. The overall destruction of land makes sense as well, as the crazy number of nukes flying reduces useable land. Eventually nations reach a point where infrastructure is no longer profitable (or barely profitable), and it is actually more beneficial to your economy to purchase land. Not many nations have reached this level yet though. I'd be willing to support a slight increase in the population benefits of land in order to make the decision between purchasing infrastructure and land at least a little more dififcult/interesting for more nations. I don't think any drastic measures are needed though.

My personal recommendation, if you are not at war and have no reason to expect to be attacked, is to decom ALL of your tanks, and keep your soldiers at only 20% of your population (just enough to keep 'em happy).

Tech should only be deducted from your nation when the aid recipient accepts. You are currently involved in several aid transactions. My guess is that 2 different aid recipients both accepted their respective offers this morning, and thus 100 tech was deducted. Check your PMs to confirm...you should see the timestamps on the Aid Accepted messages to verify.

I think this is a good start, and I applaud the attempt to make the FAC useful, but I think it's pretty easy to figure out who sent it, seeing as how you can search for all aid. It sounds like (although not completely clear to me) it would show up for the sending nation's aid transaction as going to ????? and also for the receiving nation's transation as coming from ?????. But the times would match up precisely, so...

Well really you could by 99.99 with minimal increase in bills and purchase cost. At that point you generally want to buy around 200 more to get to around 2200. This is a generic estimate though. The exact amount needed to make a jump profitable varies based on trade set, improvements, and which jump we're talking about. IIRC, it's pretty much profitable to get over the 2000 hump as soon as you can buy a solid new improvement, as long as you're buying in a reasonable order.

"global radiation = (total nations hit by nukes [in the last 30 days] * 300) / total nations" So effectively it could take up to 30 days for that effect to wear off. I don't think this is the only effect of war on your economy though. For example, one effect on your happiness is: "Military casualties – Casualties increase war weariness" Can someone elaborate on that? I don't know if this is just based on your total nation casualties, or if it is somehow a measure of recent casualties that would eventually wear off.

1) When did the global radiation level maximum change? I thought it used to be maxed at 10, but it is clearly at 5 now. 2) The Radiation Cleanup bonus says that it reduces nuclear anarchy by 1 day. Do you have to have this resource before getting nuked, or could you get it after a couple days of nuclear anarchy and still reap this benefit?

This is always a heated topic, and I have actually posted suggestions much like the OP here. There are two issues really. One is that the server is swamped at a specific time. Two is that there is a huge advantage to the players that can be on at a specific time, which is somewhat unfair for a worldwide audience. For some of us, that's the middle of the night, others the middle of the day; but whatever the time, in a turn-based game like this, I don't believe there should be huge advantages at certain times. No matter what changes are implemented, getting your first blitz in right before update will always be a tactical advantage, even if you can't get a quad attack, since you are still able to get 1 extra day of attacks that your opponent will not be able match. Also, there is some tactical advantage every additional day to getting attacks in before your opponent, so when he attacks, he will be slightly weaker already. Both of those seem reasonable, IMO. The quad attack has never seemed as reasonable though. First of all, within the context of the war simulation, it doesn't make much sense. The nations can only attack twice a day because the are too tired. And yet they can attack four times within a few minutes. Not terribly logical. Second, within the context of gameplay, I think this minimizes the point of the turn-based system and provides too much advantage to those that happen to be in the right timezones and/or have an overzealous commitment to the game. I like two of the solutions that I have seen here, which I believe would address both of the issues mentioned above: 1) Restrict all of tomorrow's attacks by X hours after today's attacks. For example, if X = 12 and I ground attack at noon, airstrike at 8PM, and CM at 11PM, I can't launch any attacks at all against the same opponent until 11AM the next day. Setting separate restrictions for separate attacks becomes way too complex. If anything, maybe certain attacks could be exempt from this altogether (spies?). 2) Simply provide better advantages for attacking at other times. If there was a much bigger advantage for daytime attacks than nighttime attacks, many more people would opt against attacking right at update. There may be a slight server load as soon as "daytime" starts, but it would be minimal compared to the way midnight is right now. Keep in mind that this advantage has to be an attacker advantage only, not simply a tech factor for both nations or something similar as it is now. Alright, there's my 2 cents. Don't spend it all in one place!

Yeah, depends how confident you are in your trade agreements mostly. If you're in a stable trade circle, and you're part of a major alliance, and you definitely get on CN every day, I guess there isn't really a big risk. I've had too many trade partners cancel for no reason or just get deleted for inactivity, so I might have a pessimistic view on this.

Sounds like a threat!

Hmmm...not exactly, as it's somewhat complicated. The most important factor is infrastructure. Land also directly contributes, but at a much lower rate. Other factors: Clinic +2% each Hospital +6% each ADP Land bonus increased from .2 to .5 DRA +3% NEO +3% NRL +5% UHC +3% Cattle +5% Fish +8% Pigs +3.5% Sugar +3% Wheat +8% Military - the more you have, the fewer citizens you have (but the higher the population) Sometimes events effect population as well. There may be more, but I tried to list everything I could think of. The easiest way to determine the equation is to buy a bunch of infra and note the population change, and same for land.

I just want to say that you are quite the popular guy! It would probably take you a lifetime just to say all their names! Personally, I think that 19 days is too risky too. Aside from the risks mentioned of not being able to log in, you could always have a trade suddenly cancelled or someone attack you on day 19, and there's not much time to resolve it. But if you are comfortable with that risk, that's obviously your call. If you can't get the wonder until after the event expires, you should be able to calculate which is more important. XRCatD just said that it would be the UHC (and I'm pretty sure he's right), but you could certainly verify this. (+4%) vs (+3% + 2 Hap). If my quick calculations are right, I think you'd need individual tax to be in the 250 range for that 1 extra percentage point to be better than 2 happiness (depending somewhat on your trades)

^This. Naturally, the likely responses aren't going to be coming from those players that just check on their nation for 5 minutes a day. For me, it varies quite a bit. I always try to keep it to just 5-10 minutes a day....some days I'm successful, other days I manage to waste 3+ hours. Overall, I'm pretty sure it averages out to less than an hour though. Still way too much if you ask my wife!

Still looking...

I did not see any postings for circles with these resources still available. They are pretty sweet resources that will fit into most sets though, and there are several sets that would be adequate for me. PM me if interested. http://tournament.cybernations.net/nation_...tion_ID=1002123

Is this accurate? I had thought that all attacks had some cap on the amount of damage that could be inflicted, be it a firm number (like $1M stolen) or a percentage (like up to 5% of defending nation's infra). These numbers are probably wrong anyway, but just examples. If that's not true, then you're telling me a nation with almost infinite amounts of tech could destroy all of a weaker nation's tech/infra/land in 1 attack? (assuming that hypothetically there was some way to have waged war in the first place if they are that different).

If your alliance doesn't give you daily footrubs and freshly baked pies on demand, then you are clearly in the wrong alliance.