The Next 500 Earth 2025 Turns

Story By: Fingolfin -- Posted On: 8/15/00

So, you have finished your first 100 turns (following First 100, of
course) and you are wondering what to do next. You may or may not
have an ultimate direction plotted out for the rest of the game, and
that is OK. Your next 500 turns will look very similar whichever way you
go. But you will need to decide soon.

The Key to this phase is really three-fold.
you want to grow the size of your country, specifically its land mass.
you want to build LOTS of construction sites (CS). 300 is a good start.
you will want to prepare your country for the next phase of operation.
This is a fairly simple phase of the game. The time consuming part
has generally been simply finding the best land grabs. With no giant
land farms, that process will become even more of a challenge.
Growing: This is an uncertain area with the new rules. Since wild
exploration has been legislated out of existence, all countries will be
moderate in size. At the beginning, most will probably be between
400-800 acres. So the question becomes, should you explore or attack
for land. Here are the advantages of each:

Exploring: you get approximately 50 acres for 2 turns of exploration -
which is how many turns you use to attack. Advantages: you lose no
net worth from military losses in an attack; you do not incur ill will from
attacking others (especially the untagged from other alliances).
Attacking: if you attack those below you in net, you generally get 5%
for standard and 8% for planned attacks. This means 30-65 acre yields
at the beginning, and increasing as the game progresses. You will also
get an additional 20-45% of that land in buildings, thus 36-100 acres
total from each land grab. But because countries are more built up,
they will also have more defense than in the past, so you will lose
more military.
 

Construction Sites:Whenever you are not attacking, exploring, or
building, you should build CS. Consider 20 a day to be your goal. This
will slow your initial growth a little, but will pay off big later on.
Remember, there are several things that will slow your growth initially,
but which will yield tremendous dividends later on. Another of these is
tech. It is particularly a trap for industrialists to not buy enough tech,
and you pay for it in the end, when you really need it for continued
growth.
 

Preparing your country for the Future: This is the area that needs more
tailored thought. There are subtle differences in activity based on how
you want to proceed into the middle part of the reset. Some of these
include: the kinds and quantity of tech that you purchase; the kinds of
buildings you end up constructing near the end of this phase; your
alliances; and your military makeup. You may want to read the rest of
my strategy pages before you proceed with this page