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This is a Theocracy, Techer, reseller strat perfected by
some of the greats, this strat came in first place the reset of the introduction
of the theocracy strat, a year ago June.
I) Introduction
This strategy paper will contain a thorough discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the TTR strategy which were played with great success. It will also contain a step-by-step strategy which you can use to play through the initial phases, some general directions to pass the grabbing phase quickly and get to the phases in which TTR simply feels great: Stockpiling, Jumping and Reselling.
TTR has definitely been the most powerful strategy this reset, and unless MP makes drastic changes, I fully expect it to be very strong next reset too (although it is likely that the huge success of TTR will cause many players to switch to it, weakening its efficiency by lower tech prices). A well-played TTR is fully capable of carrying you at least into the top100 easily, and possibly beyond. Without the assassination tank multis we would have placed 5-6 countries at 200 million NW (and so into the top 10).
There are many ways to "fine-tune" TTR. I will describe a mix which is arguably slightly less efficient than the optimal version, but maximizes its stability for aspiring non-pro players who want to get ahead by learning TTR. In chapter X) I will discuss some tweaks which can save you about one day worth of turns, but require alot of experience to play correctly. If you haven't played super-slow starts a few times already, please stick with the step-by-step setup for smoother sailing.
It is important that you don't just follow the step-by-step instructions and milestones by the letter, you have to UNDERSTAND the reasons behind them. I will gladly answer any strategy-related questions and will coach all TTR teams which request assistance, try to act as a benchmark and help you to get back on track if your country is screwed up somehow. Contact me over the website or over ICQ.
One request before I go into details: Please don't pass on this strategy guide around all too freely, and please don't post it on public Earth sites. If you have a good friend outside of ROK who really wants to get it, feel free to pass this file on, of course.
II) Requirements for TTR
For a successful TTR reset, you have to fulfil some requirements. Most of them are pretty much knockout criteria, if you simply can't fulfil them, TTR will not work well for you. However, if you find out you have no problems with them, you're set for a great reset!
1) You need a team of 4 TTR players. The main strength of TTR is to exploit research alliances to the fullest, which will yield you massive amounts of free tech over the course of the game. Trust me, getting more than 100.000 free tech points every day later in the game does matter. Have all TTR players research ally with each other once the teching phase begins. It's a good idea to exchange research pacts right away and then just "activate" them when the time is ready.
2) You must exert utmost caution in the grabbing phase. You must make as FEW grabs as possible, and you must NOT be retaliated successfully. Your goal for the reset is 100% successful grab completion and not a single successful grab AGAINST you. Why is that? The most precious commodity you have as a techer are construction sites (CS) giving you yor builds per turn (BPT). Unlike indies, cashers or farmers you do not produce ANYTHING when you build CS, so you can't easily afford to rebuild CS if you lose them. Every successful grab against you will cost you precious BPT, so even if you win 1000 acres and lose 18 CS in a grab/retal incident, you have made a poor deal, since you have just lost 18 turns to rebuild. If Earth play means making 15 grabs of 150 acres a day to you, or grabbing and losing 3000 acres a day, TTR is not a good choice for you.
3) You need a good contact to House of Theives. In the initial industrial phase you can make your spy operations yourself, but once you switch to techer, try to have someone make the spy ops for you. And if I find you running spy multies, I'll personally rip your head off before you are kicked from ROK. House of Theives will help you, get ahold of their ICQ# and come to the site when playing turns, usually a member of house of theives will be there.
4) You need a high dedication and team spirit. Try to play every day, and try to invest 30 minutes in your grabs. If you can't play on weekend, that's ok, but since you're in a team, deserting the game or forgetting to play means letting your teammates down. Making bad grabs which can be expected to retaliated hurts your defensive allies. If you are pissed and mad as hell, calm down before playing, and DON'T make blind hits back! Work hard for the team! The fewer errors you make, the more successful the team will be, and you with them.
III) The Phases of the Game As a TTR, you will have different phases of the reset. At the beginning, you switch to Theocracy and make a standard indy startup. In this phase your goal is to get to your BPT goal of at least 120 as quickly as possible. Once this is done, you switch to a full Techer setup and enter the Tech phase. Here you try to reach your target acreage of 30.000 acres as quickly as possible. Once this is achieved, you enter the stockpiling phase in which you tech with ALL your turns and try to accumulate as many tech points as possible. Around 2 weeks before the end of the reset, you stop playing turns and make your jump, in which you sell off all your accumulated tech and purchase military to boost your NW. In the final reselling phase, you make some extra profit by buying out your private market and selling it on the public market. Voila! Top100, there you are!
IV) Grabbing as a TTR
Grabbing is a matter on its own, however, here are the most important aspects about grabbing as a TTR. As it was said before, the key to successful grabbing in TTR is to make as few hits as possible without being retaliated on. Remember: 30.000 acres it is, not 50.000 or more. This has the followin implications:
1) Try to use House of Theives strikes as often as possible. It saves you the pain to invest one spy turn while giving the maximum yield at the same time. If no spy is around, still try to make as many PS as possible.
2) Usually you don't want to make more than 3 hits total per day, sometimes even less. This means that bottom feeding (hitting targets with less than 1/3rd your total NW) doesn't work well for you. The perfect PS targets are no-name alliances between 1/3 and 1/2 your NW, or VERY fat countries with poor defense.
3) In the tech phase, you might want to switch your grabbing to 1 SS and 1 PS per day. Make 1 SS slightly above your lower GDI boundary and 1 PS afterwards. This can work very well, since you can include GDI countries in your grab search.
4) In the late tech phase you usually have reconfigured to a heavy turret country. In this case grabbing the jet countries of medsized alliances can yield handsome acres. Just make sure that the clan in question can't retaliate, or you are in a world of hurt!
5) Executing big retals is a convenient way to gain acres with little risk. Check the retal board often.
IV) The Startup Phase
As stated before, the goal is to reach the target BPT of 120 as quickly as possible. Later in the game, you will try to grab 1500 acres every day, and it shouldn't take you more than maybe 15 turns to build on all the acres you grabbed, so that you can invest at least 25 turns into teching every day. It goes without saying that you should ALWAYS get ALL free turns you can get. The main idea of this startup is to use the huge BPT advantage the Theocracy offers to maximize your own production as quickly as possible while accumulating BPT. In short: Build industrial sites whenever you can and build CS to regain cash. Here is how you get out of protection well:
1) Go to "Purchase", "Sell Military" and sell your 100 troops on the private market
2) Go to "Main Menu", "Country Management" and set your tax rate to 36%
3) Change your Government to Theocracy
4) Set your production to 100% spies
5) Go to "Build"
6) Open up a second browser window to "Purchase", "Sell Military"
7) Open up a third browser window to "Explore"
Okay. You should have three browser windows by now, one Build, one Sell on Private Market and one Explore. Return to this configuration whenever you play new turns again, and before you hit turn 80. Now repeat the buildup process with the follownig rules:
R1) If the build window _SHOWS_ (!) that you can build your full BPT, which will be 7 at the start, build industrial sites (add in a few farms to keep your food in the green, but never more than absolutely necessary). Then, switch to the "Sell" window and sell exactly the amount of spies you produced. After the sales, you should go back to 0 spies, or you forgot to sell once - in this case sell the rest. Go back to R1 and repeat.
R2) If the build window _SHOWS_ less acres than your BPT, build 1 construction site, sell spies, explore one turn, sell spies, build another CS, sell spies and return to R1.
R3) If the build window _SHOWS_ that you have enough acres, but not enough cash to build your full BPT, build 1 CS, sell spies and return to R1.
Repeat this process until you reach turn 80. From now on, you do not sell spies anymore! You have to decide now whether you want to start grabbing right out of protection or not. Grabbing early can definitely save you some time , but of course it's a bit riskier to do. If you don't want to grab, just set your production to 5% spies and 95% turrets and play on Rules R1-R3 (without selling spies anymore) until you get an average of 18 or less acres via "Explore".
Otherwise, set your production to 10% spies, 90% jets, include EXACTLY 5 oil rigs in your next build ONCE and play on R1-R3 (without selling spies) until you reach turn 99. Make sure you don't accidentally play turn 100 and come out of protection, because you'd be an easy prey. Log out at 99 and resume playing tomorrow. The next day, set the production to 5% spies, 25% jets and 70% turrets and start grabbing.
V) The Industrial Phase
In this phase, you want to have a continuous growth in acres and military until you reach your target BPT of 120. The master plan is to instantly build industrial sites on the newly explored/grabbed acres until you run out of cash to do this. Then, build as many CS as you have to build another full BPT batch of indy and continue grabbing/exploring to get more acres.
When you make your first sales after coming out of protection, keep two things in mind: First of all, you need 20.000 units of any military before you're able to SELL them at all. So make sure that you end up with at least 20.000 turrets, or you're in trouble. Also make sure that your stuff sells. If the market price is at 160 or above, don't be so mad to sell for this price. If your units are stuck on the market when the price drops below your limit, you're screwed and will fall behind massively. So I always suggest to sell for AT LEAST 5$ below the market price to make sure you have cash tomorrow.
Here's the golden rule of TTR: ALWAYS SELL ALL MILITARY YOU CAN AT THE END OF YOUR TURNS.
You make profit with every sale, and you must not be stranded without cash, since you will start going into the red now. This rule holds true every time, so don't forget to do it.
The production setup should be balanced, for example 5-10% spies, 5-10% troops, 30-50% jets, 30-50% turrets, 5-10% tanks. Don't produce more than 10% tanks, you should buy those on the private market. As a general thing, ALWAYS sell ALL military you can at the end of your turns, you need the cash to finance your acre growth. If you have surplus cash at the end of your turns, spend them for tanks first, your goal is to reach 20k tanks ASAP, so that you can start reselling them, and reselling tanks yields a handsome profit.
When grabbing, you have to remind this: Never hit a target with less than 800 acres on a PS, and try to avoid using SS. Your acreage growth will depend on the amount of hardware you sell, and the less you lose in SS, the more you can sell (and build).
Since you will be maximizing the built on acreage with this strategy, you will rise in ranks quickly, and it will take some time for the Indy Commies to catch up on you. When they do and pass you, don't fret. You're not playing an industrialist, and you will reach 120 BPT soon, when you switch to Techer and rule the world.
Look at your teammates. If you find out that you're lagging behind in BPT, only make one larger PS with all your offensive units every day and just build CS with the other turns. Don't resell your excess cash anymore, you will need it for the switch. When the first team player breaks the 300-CS barrier, he should inform the others, and they have to hurry up. The 121 BPT goal line is at 324 CS, try not to be the last to break it. If you're one of the first, continue to build CS. A BPT of 130 or maybe even 140 will help you later in the game.
VI) The Teching Phase
First, you have to do the switch. Open two browser windows, one "Build", one "Destroy buildings". Always destroy exactly your BPT, then build your BPT in research labs. Repeat until you're out of cash or turns. If you're out of cash, sell military, stop playing and resume tomorrow. The final configuration should look like this:
_NO_ Business, Residential, Military Bases, Farms or Oil Rigs. Plain NONE. 200-300 industrial sites (for spies only), lots of labs and some CS. That's it. Teching is percentage-based, so make sure that you ONLY have labs, indies and CS. Set your production to 100% spies, activate your sleeping research alliances and you're set.
From now on, you will make 1-3 grabs a day, tear down non-labs, build labs and spend at least 20 turns a day teching, preferably over 30. Make sure that you and your teammates research the same technologies to get the maximum profit out of the research alliances. Here's a suggested list:
1) Business and Residential until you reach a tech level of 150%
2) Weapons until you reach 130%
3) SDI until you reach 60%
4) Military until you reach 92%
Personally, I prefer to sell business and residential on a daily basis, and SDI if the prices are very good. Make sure you research at least 20 turns Bus and Res every day. The tech sales drive your cashflow, and you will need alot of cash now. During this phase, your upkeep will go up to 5 million $ in the later stages, don't worry to run in red. Your tech sales more than make up for that.
Very soon after switching to techer you will notice that your rank will skyrocket. You buy your units cheaply on the private market, you have excellent tech percentages and the tech sales outperform every casher as long as the tech price stays above 2000, and it should.
Grab carefully. If you can grab 1000 acres a day, that's perfectly fine. If you can grab 1500 or even more, it's great! Just make sure you're not retaliated on, because the BPT loss sucks. If you break into the top10 region, reconfigure to turret monkey: Try to get a huge amount of turrets so that other medsized alliances can't successfully retaliate against you anymore. Try to accumulate land and avoid risky hits. If you're in doubt whether or not your target might be able to retaliate, don't hit it! He will just buy jets and whack you.
The last 2 turns in every day are always the same. First, sell all business and residential tech you can, and throw in other techs if they are very expensive. Then, use your surplus cash for military purchases (usually tanks, turrets and troops) and sell all military you can on the public market. So you're set for tomorrow!
CAUTION! Always keep at least 10 million$ cash on hand after military purchases. If you forget to do this, you're suddenly stranded because you can't pay the upkeep of the military sales! In this case you can't resell anymore and have to wait until your tech has sold!
VII) Stockpiling Phase
When you have reached 30.000 acres, you have the option to continue grabbing to a maximum of 40.000 acres or just going into stockpiling mode. Don't be overly greedy and only make "safe" hits anymore. Top100 is within your grasp already!
Depending on your grabbing skill, there may be about 5 weeks left in the reset. You stop grabbing altogether and just tech 49 turns every day. This way you're making insane amounts of money. The longer this stockpiling phase is, the better is your ranking going to be. Just make sure you have enough food and enjoy the ridiculous amount of tech you're hauling in.
Sell your jets and replace them with tanks and turrets. Try to limit your upkeep: If you reach 5 million, don't purchase more units anymore, and just purchase food instead (if it's at 6$ or less) or keep the tech. Here's a small equation to illustrate the power of this phase: You get 49 turns every day with all extras. Since you usually research around 10.000 points every turn now, you're gaining 500.000 tech points on your own. Add in the more than 100.000 free ally tech points you get, and celebrate that with the mediocre price of 2000$ per tech point you're making 1.2 billion $ every day. Not bad, eh?
However, don't sell all the tech yet. Just sell enough to maintain your cash and food upkeep and try to break 10 million tech points in your status report. You will need it for the ...
VIII) Jump Phase
Around 2 weeks before the end of the reset you should start to "jump". Ask the veterans for the exact timing, this requires some experience. Cancel your research alliances. Then, sell all the tech you can as quickly as you can, and use the cash to purchase LOTS of units. Make sure you don't sell too much tech, because of the hard limit of 2 billion $ cash. Purchase lots of tanks and troops from your private market, and if this is empty, go to the public one.
First of all, STOP TECHING NOW! The military upkeep will skyrocket to insane amounts, more than you can make by teching. If it's not yet the last week, you can make 1-2 grabs just to get some more acres and to enlarge your private market (which is acre-dependant), but don't build anything on the acres anymore! The only turns you play now are grabs (if you want) or sales (which you need).
The goal is to "work off" the tech stockpile as quickly as possible, so that you still have the good prices before the tech market crashes. Sell all techs, just keep enough military (to keep the good prices) and SDI (to keep missile protection). If you can, log in every 8 hours to speed up the sales/purchases. You always wanted to break 150 million $ networth? If nothing went wrong before, this is your time!
When your stockpile is gone (the combined tech points sold are below 100.000), you enter the final phase ...
IX) Reselling Phase
You're almost over the goal line, now you make some finishing touches to maximize your networth. Enter GDI for maximum protection. Since you still make profit by reselling, you keep your private market empty by bying it out all the time. Then, put enough tanks, troops and jets (but those only if you have to, they only yield little profit) on the market for a combined worth of 1.8 billion cash. Then, repeat this until the reset is over.
Congrats! If everything went well, you're definitely top100 now, and if your reset was really good, we're talking top10 now.
X) Finetuning TTR for professionals
If you want to force the utmost out of TTR, you can do this by increasing the CS portion in the startup phase. Ignore the rankings in the beginning, and just build as many CS right away as you can afford. I decided against describing this start because it requires alot of experience: Nothing sucks worse than not reaching 20.000 turrets for the first sales in time. You will also be much more vulnerable during this time. If you're a seasoned pro and accustomed to super-slow starts, you can save about one day's worth of turns in exchange for slightly less acres and some less military.
Another possible improvement is to start stockpiling food early in the game, when you can get it for 3-4$. This way you keep your upkeep lower and save some extra bucks since you don't have to purchase food later, but you will also have a worse NWLG and will be found in the grab databases earlier. If you're a good grabber, you will know to protect yourself though.
XI) Strengths and Weaknesses of TTR
The main strength of TTR is the huge netgaining potential. I honestly believe that a full team of 4 inter-allied top players can beat every other strategy handily in a peaceful no-suicider no-multi environment. As long as the tech prices stay above 2000, they simply "make more".
Another strength is that TTR is relatively stable and unaffected by crazy markets. The private market ensures a constant cheap hardware supply. The BPT boost makes sure that you come out of the gate extremely strong on your own, and the resell capabilities give you some extra networth in the last 2 weeks when the other governments are basically paralyzed after their jump. Additionally, you only have to do one switch(Indy-->Tech) and don't even have to change governments for this. Simply less possibilities to screw up.
Finally, if you're the victim of a tank multi late in the game, you can just make your jump early and resell for the rest of the reset. This way you will have a decent finish with a country which is totally crippled.
On the downside, the huge weakness of TTR is the "Dump Missiles here" plaque everyone wears. The horrible maximum of 66% SDI tech leaves every Theo open for missile attacks, and there is nothing you can do against that. If you find a target which retaliates hits with nukes, think twice before grabbing it.
Another problem is the TTR's very limited war capability. If you're the victim of a minor AB wave (losing 1/2 of your buildings), you're basically crippled. Your tech output won't warrant using research turns to regain readiness, so you're basically totally without income and just living off your stockpile. If you're already late in the stockpile phase, you're sitting pretty of course, because your tech stockpile will turn you into a monster, but if you're still in the teching phase, a medium barrage spells BAD news for you.
Finally, the huge success of TTR will cause alot of copycats to run it next reset, so the tech prices should suck compared to this reset. Still, as long as Tech remains above 2000, TTR will be strong, and I doubt that it will come to this.
I hope you found this guide worthwhile! Thanks for staying awake
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