The Ranking that Matters (October 2014)
Walhallah
Hi People of eNL, and especially a warm welcome to our new and young citizens,
the story is not new anymore, so for those who just want the graphs, skip to there 🙂
Standard Story
The question I asked myself is, what are the best choices to make in this game. We all face many choices every day, yet we can do so little sometimes. I am slowly working towards a general view how to approach this game in an optimal way.
This is very difficult, because there really is no optimal way. The optimal way would bore you to death and you would quit, being the most effective player ever. So there are tons of options you have that are trade-offs between the maximum efficiency and 'just-enough-fun-to-keep-you-playing'.
Picture this somehow as a line that starts at zero, but goes not in a two-dimensional graph, not even in a three-dimensional graph but somewhere in a complex multidimensional infinity. I have tried a little linear programming to calculate this optimal path. But I gave up. This makes my brain boil.
There are certain lessons from this exercise that I regularly share with you. These lessons are 'ingredients' that you can use to improve your own game. But they are by no means the only way, and they are by no means the optimal way to play this game (optimal excluding the component 'fun').
One of the most important lessons is that XP is sticky, dirty stuff. Actually, that is not true. Well, it is true because it can stop you from achieving your goals. The game presents this as a valuable asset for you. The ranking is based on XP, sometimes you get it as a reward in missions and last but certainly not least for most everything you do on a daily basis (work, train, fight etc.). Even today, the weekly challenges are a trade-off between XP incurred (albeit called 'prestige' there and cash for weapons and food versus gifts that you can obtain. (some of these gifts incite you to get even MORE prestige (XP)
To understand why XP is dirty, you should picture yourself as a young player in D1 with 0 XP. What are your ambitions? Whatever they are, you will probably need gold to accomplish those ambitions. From day 1 you will want to:
1) be able to afford weapons and food. (so you can fight and have fun, I think those are the most modest ambitions)
There are VERY limited ways to get this kind of money. Working in your own companies will earn you small change of around 5 cc per day. Working in a commune can earn you up to 45 cc (in eNL anyway), working for an employer you can find up to 25 cc per day. Then you can beg your friends for gold or supplies. But mainly you can go for achievements (medals). Here comes the catch. Some medals are not profitable (TP, MM) depending on how you play (SS) or limited to one per month (CP,Congress,HW) or just near to impossible to get when you are in D1-3 (CH, TF).
Basically there is only ONE medal that is infinitely available, fun to get and profitable, and that is BH. In order to tap into this resource you will need to be able to do a certain amount of damage on average while incurring minimal XP. For D1 you need around 2.5 million, for D2 over 8 million and for D3 around 20 million. If you cannot do that kind of damage in D1 with around 10-20 clicks you have no sustainable access to this resource. Then you should DEFENITELY not rank up, because it will get only WORSE. I guess in D2 and up, nobody can, but then combinations of medals and CO can lead to profitable fighting.
Im telling you this to create the right mindset, not because its the undisputed truth. If you ever want to achieve this goal in reasonable time, you will need to harvest this BH medal. And you can only succesfully do this by following an optimized path that im presenting you here. This optimal path is based on incurring little XP when you do maximum influence. In order to achieve this you will need to start training hard. That should be your first goal, to gather enough gold so you can train at 90. (why i say 90 instead of 91, read Weekstroms article)
When you train at 90, your strength will increase at maximum speed. If and when you hit during this time, you will gather MORE rankpoints per XP. Training hard will bring down the amount of XP you will need to trade off to get the next BH. Bringing down the amount of XP you incur will allow you to stay longer in your division and tap into this resource. Yesterday somebody stole a BH I was aiming for with 6 clicks. 6 clicks to a million damage in D2 (currently D1) , for somebody who has lower XP than me is awesome. He will probably stay in that division a long time and already had over 500 BH medals. (1500 gold) Imagine what you can do with that kind of gold. (based on old divisions)
In order to get attention for this I am presenting you with a regular Ranking, based on X/S. Because this is a clear indicator of how succesful you are doing in your Div. The actual indicator should probably include rankpoints (or HitQ7) but X/S is a very good, easy to understand, measure.
THE RANKING THAT MATTERS.
I want all of you not to make the mistake I made, and actually try to get up on that ladder Erep presents you. Instead, try to improve your ranking below!
For reasons why, read my previous articles.
To give you a small interpretation. (subjective and debatable, please do)
X/S 1 3 6
Something insane happened! There are several people now with X/S
Mind you, D4 is added on request. For D4 this is not entirely relevant. Altho you never know when the game changes. And as you are all aware by now, it recently did. My predecting capabilities appear to be boundless. Several D4 people got divved down to D3 and are now profiting from having a lower XP compared to their former competition that is now still in D4. In D1 2 more people joined the exclusive
For those that are clueless what im talking about here, read for example this:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/mijmeringen-van-een-strateeg-x-s--2308365/1/20
Added to that, there are 2 things you should keep in mind in order to benefit from this ranking:
1) top prio, enjoy the game. Dont ruin your game by sticking to wallies rules.
2) Train harder, rather than fighting less, in order to improve on the ranking and make wallie happy
Training Strategy
Its crucial to train as hard as possible. To do that, the optimal training path is presented below.
The green cells are the optimal parth. Daily net profit is presented there. The first two fully upgraded training grounds are still profitable, while you are already incurring 30S per day. Thats actually not enough to do your DO daily. You can save this gold so you can upgrade your other traininggrounds. As soon as all four are upgraded you can buy a training contract 90% and you can train for a month almost cost-neutral, and you will be gaining 2700 Strength.
In the graph below you can see how the different DIVs are doing in terms of max training. The vertical line in the middel indicates the reshuffle, greatly messing with the percentages. However, a clear increase is permanently visible. Keep it up!
What we see happening is a small number of strong D1 players ranking up to D2. This gives a minor effect in D1 and its clearly visible in D2. In other words, they are already contributing!
Regards,
Wallie, your personal drill sergeant
Dont hesitate to ask for personalized advice.
And dont forget to join the Bilderberg Groep!
And dont forget to join the Dutch Armed Forces!
Comments
great article!
Ahí, jordic top1
o/
still not there, twice now 😛
sorry 🙁 I dont know how this happens.
Thanks to your articles my ranking is slowly but steadily improving. Thank you!
From 56th to 40th! 😃 Nice article again!
first time i showed up in the list (div4 at that time) is was 4,98 now 2,98 so it's gotten better in about a years time.
When I realised this last year august my X/S was over 6. In a years time I got it from 6 down to 0.83. That in itself says nothing, but it means I changed my patterns from having 2.500 Strength at 15.000 XP, to 36.000 Strength at 30.000 XP. making me one of the strongest in D1. If I DIDNT change that, I would have either 216.000 XP for my current strength (way deep into D3), or have 5.000 Strength only when at my current XP. (be meaningless in either Div)
well i still don't matter for shit in div3 😛 but it's a nice personal achievement.
it matters for you in a way that you came from Div4, but because of your lower XP you are now in D3 since the reshuffle. And you can make more of a difference there for the same strength.
😮
v
Wow, congratz to all
I am looking good. But i am doing everything by random!
I'm getting better but the damn D1 tanks are moving up.
voted
From 10.3 to 5.36. YES!!!!
Thanks for this great article again. It really makes us all stronger!
Yep and doing some meaning full damage for your country when required.
I've the tendency to fight to much , so i'm hovering arround the same position .........but who cares as long as you have fun 😛
well, you are at 2, so shouldnt complain 🙂
i'm not complaining m8 , like i said as long as you have fun with the game.
We can never compete with visa players anyways 🙂
depends how you mean compete..... we are probably better at efficiency 🙂
missing probably the best X/S player in eNL with an X/S off 0.26 ; http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/8135890
What's in a name...
Perm banned...
and temp banned 😃
[removed]
V!
Have you calculated the cost versus the return for this maximized training routine? For example the amount spent on the upgrade along with the daily cost running the extra training, versus the gold received for the “super solider” and the possible “battle hero” medals. Just curious thanks…
Like you can calculate with the BH medals.... There isn't really any other destination for your gold because you will stay too weak to realy participate in the battlefield anyway.
And yes, it will wlearn you a ton of gold if you are patient.
Almost there
haha 😛
Nothing you can do, except maybe arrange another war with Norway.
meer oorlog !
I don't appear to be on there any more? I used to be on previous ones... 😕
I'm 10k short in strength according to these screenshots
Yet again like your articles on X/S
very strange, and about 12k XP
http://www.egov4you.info/citizen/overview/6431853
strange indeed..
Fantastic article, thanks a bunch Walhallah!
I'm not included in D4! 🙁
JIJ DOET NIET MEER MEE!
In div 2 my ranking looks nicer than in div 1 🙂