Barren Realms Elite

Investing and Making Money Strategies

Tax Trick #1

There are two different version of the tax trick which I have come across. The tax trick is a way of making hordes of money off the tax you charge your population. I have known people who have made up to 300 million coins a turn off their population and now you can too. Here is Tax Trick #1.

Well... your first and most important step is to send everyone on your board a Free Trade Agreement. This helps with your economy and such. Check your diplomacy relations often because people will constantly join the game and you will have to send them a Free Trade Agreement also.

Your next step is to start buying regions. I find that if you buy a few hundred coastal regions as a base, you will not have problems in the future with too less money. After buying those coastal regions, buy hordes of agricultural and urban regions. Urban regions increase the flow of people emigrating to your realm and agricultural regions produce food for them to consume. You should slowly start making money off your population and you continue buying urban and agricultural regions.

When buying your regions there are two different ratio's people follow. Most people use a ratio of agricultural to urban which is 3:1. Others choose 5:4. Either way works but its up to you to find one that you are comfortable.

As you buy more regions, change your tax rate slowly from 15% all the way down to 3%. Keep in mind that the lower your tax rate the faster people will move to your realm. Also, make sure you always have enough food to support your realm.

This is the first version of the tax rate.

Tax Trick #2

The second version of the tax trick is almost exactly the same as the first. The only big difference is that you change your tax rate to 3% almost immediately. You will have trouble supporting your realm real fast and when this happens, change your tax rate to 50%. With such a high tax rate you will lose many people fast. With the money you gain by taxing your population at 50% you buy more agricultural and urban regions. Keep taxing them at this rate until you start gaining people again. Immediately change your tax rate to 3% and repeat these steps. After a while you will start making 100 million coins a turn at 50% and 20 million coins a turn at 3%. Keep it up and soon you will be making millions of coins a turn.

Investing Strategy #1

One form of investing is to stay quiet for the first 3 or 4 weeks of a round. This means that yiu quietly make allies, buy regions, and try and get your investments done as fast as possible. Buy only coastal and river regions and the occasional agricultural region and make as much money as humanly possible. When you are making 20 or 30 million coins a turn, get your 2bil in the bank and do your investments. If you get full investments before others wait til they have completed then attack. If you start attacking while others aren't ready, you can some real backlash. They could start attacking and because you have a lot of regions and not too much military, they could farm you and your board right away. A big hint for using this strategy is to ally with some of the biggest boards and let people know who you are allied with to scare them from attacking.

Investing Strategy #2

Another strategy is to have one person invest while everyone else sends the money they make to this person. The investing person, most likely the CO, asks everyone to send them everything they make. Every penny. That is,... after they are making 10 or 20 million coins a turn. The investor will quickly get his 2bil in the bank and his investments and a new investor will be chosen. Now everyone sends everything they make to the second person, including the person who has finished investing... (He makes sure he always has a 10 day cycle going though). It should only take 6 days or so to complete his cycle. When this is done a new investor is chosen and the process is completed.

After 6 or 7 people have completed their cycle inform your players to send their money every turn. If they save up their money and send it all, the investor could go over 2 billion coins on hand and all excess cash will be lost. The last few players should be done in a day or so.

Investing Strategy #3

The third investing strategy of my collection is pretty much the default investing plan. Everyone invests on their own and when you are done, help others until everyone is done.

Investing Strategy #4

The next investment strategy is COW. COW stands for Cash On Wheels and to do it you must have a close friend on a BBS which has a low travel time between them.

In COW, one player saves up all the money he makes in a day and sends a trade deal to his friend of the nearby BBS. After he is done playing, he calls his friend up and tells him that he has played for the day. The friend plays BRE on his BBS later on in the day (when the trade deal has arrived) and keeps the money on hand the whole time. What you are trying to do is keep gaining interest off the money on hand. After the friend is done his turns for the day he sends all the money back to you, and the steps repeat over and over.

When one player has 2bil on hand he spends 500mil of the money that is made, either on investments or on military and sends everything back to his friend who spends the money he gains off the interest. Keep doing this until you both have full investments and you are set. :)

Attacking Immediately

Instead of following most strategies, you can buy a lot of military and farm regions off others who don't have a lot. By attacking, you will gain many regions which you can use instead of buying your own. Buy lots of industrial regions in the beginning and send out lots of attacks. Keep turning your gained regions into industrial and coastal regions.

Soon you will be making both money and military and try to invest and attack at the same time. Hopefully you will be able to stay above the rest because of your constant attacks but don't count on it. You will not finish investing ahead of others, especially the people doing the tax trick, and they will most likely pass you later on in the game.

Attacking

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Individual Attacks

Normal Attack:

Normal attacks do nothing special. Your military fights normally and captures 15% of your enemies regions, if successful. It is pretty much a default attack.

Quick Strike

Quick strike attacks catch your enemy off guard. These surprise attacks allow your military to fight at 115% their normal ability, but you only take 10% of your opponents regions.

Extended Battle

Extended battles mean that your military fights until 20% of one side's military has been destroyed. Extended battles allow your military to fight at 85% but if you win you take 20% of your opponents regions.

Group Attacks

A group attack allows your whole BBS to join the attack which helps take down BIG opponents. Successful group attacks take 10% of your opponents regions.

Rules of Warfare

• Know your available strategies and tactics.
• Know what your forces can and cannot do.
• Know your enemy to the best of your abilities.
• Always have a reserve force.
• Once committed to the offense, stay on the offense.
• Aggressiveness multiplies your force.
• Power corrupts and greed kills.
• Fear works.
• Destroy the enemies ability to wage war, not the enemy.

Interbbs - Smaller BBS'

In BRE attacking smaller BBS' is often met with some distaste. Nonetheless, it is an EASY way to get regions without looking much military and will help you succeed. If the BBS that you are attacking is really pissing you off, here's how you can destroy them badly. A kill run is where you make over a hundred group attacks timed to leave at the same time and headed for a specific place. With kill runs you can, in most cases, completely destroy your opponent because group attacks take a minimum of 5 regions. To start kill running a person, set one group attack to leave in 120 hours and tell all your team mates to make their own group attacks to match the date of yours. Tell them to make as many as they are allowed to make. When you are withing a day of the departure of the attacks tell everyone to fill these group attacks with military, putting less in gradually. DO this to all the players.

If the BBS somehow survives the kill runs, what you can do are global kill runs. That means that you do the exact thing as above but instead of GA's headed to one player, set them to attack all. This should work.

When attacking smaller BBS', you should never send gooies. What you are trying to do is farm them of their regions but if you send them gooies then their regions are destroyed. Instead, nuke 'em to death. :)

Interbbs - Bigger BBS'

Bigger BBS' are harder to fight, but remember persistence is everything. Even when things look bad, keep up the work. Hers what you can do.

The most important thing you could do to a realm is stop them from making money. You can do this in a variety of ways: undermining investments, nuking regions, etc. Find out how many S-ops you can send out in a day and make sure everyone does the max. Your best bet is undermining and if you can get many through, your enemy will be working hard trying to get them back up, rather than attacking. Anyways...

When attacking, either choose the biggest player or the CO. Make sure everyone sends all t-ops and s-ops to the same player. If his regions are all nuked, his investments are gone, and his popular support has gone down to 0 he'll start to feel the pressure and you'll see a BIG drop in his net worth. Anyways, make a few group attacks and make sure everyone participates.

Using gooies against bigger boards is a necessity. You are trying to destroy their military rather than farm them for their regions and since there are only a few ways to destroy jets, gooies are a good choice. Send them as often as possible.

Interbbs - Quick Strike Method

The quick strike method is another form of attack for smaller BBS'. Your main objective is to take as many regions without getting involved in a war.

What you are gonna do is specify a span of 2 to 4 days in which you will attack. When those days come you will send everything you have in an attempt to take as many regions as possible. Then right after send a peace proposal to the board. Unless they are stupid or something, they will accept, and you have lost a minimal amount of military while gaining many many regions.

Local - Smaller Realms

This is easy. Keep taking their regions. Attack them every turn and you may destroy them. If they are good, they'll constantly send you c-ops so bribe an agent in their realm so none of their c-ops can get through. Make sure you have money cuz most likely they will also send Biobombs atcha and if you have a popular support of 0% you lose massive amounts of military because they "leave". I hate it when it happens.

Don't get others to help. It makes you look wimpy. Just keep attacking until either they give up or you kill 'em off.

Local - Bigger Realms

Send c-ops. It may not seem like anything is happening to them because there are no drastic changes but it will affect them. Demoralize their army and bomb them as much as possible and it will help.

If you can get their popular support down low and their military support to 0% it will help you a lot. The lower their military support is the worse their military will fight. Send biobombs at them constantly.

Some people like to nuke 'em to hell, but if your opponent has full investments all the nukes will be is a little nuisance. By biobombing them, you have a chance of making his army leave his realm.

To help lower the enemies net worth, attack every turn. Even if they are bigger than you. To destroy their military, send attacks of 1 trooper, 1 jet, and, 1 tank. About 3 out of 5 times you will destroy a lot of their military... thousands of tanks and turrets with your measley attack and you won't even lose a thing. If you find that you can't get to happen, biobomb them. It will make them fight worse... as I said above. It works... I once fought a guy with a 60mil net worth (compared to my 300k nw) and everyday I knocked off about 5 million tanks because of these small attacks. I got him down to 10 mil before his allies kill runned me. :( All well...

Remember, persistence is everything. If there is no way of stopping him from taking your regions, let him. Put your military on the trading market on your last turn and stop him from destroying your miltary. Take it off the next time you play and continue attacking and saving military til you have enough to attack him and win.

Region Selection

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What do the different regions do?

Coastal Regions

Coastal regions are the second best money-producing regions. I like them because unlike river regions, they are consistent. The only problem is that coastal regions, which bring in tourism, can be affected during war.

River Regions

River regions produce the most money by using hydro-power. The only problem is that two out of every ten turns, your workers stop producing hydro-power and become fishermen. It isn't always good to have only river regions because when I say two out of every ten, that is an approximation. Sometimes your workers can fish for ten straight turns.

Agricultural Regions

Agricultural regions have only one purpose: to produce food for your barony.

Desert Regions

Desert regions are the third best money makers. Most people use desert regions because it is a very stable source of income during war times.

Urban Regions

Urban regions increase the flow of people immigrating to your barony. The more urban regions you have, the more people will immigrate. Urban regions are good if you are planning to use the tax trick. Go check out strategies to find out more about the tax trick.

Technology Regions

Tech regions slowly reduce the cost of maintenance by inventing new stuff. Inventions won't be big but you will see a decrease in costs. To make a significant difference you must have at least 500 tech regions, otherwise the change is so minuscule it isn't worth the cost of buying them.

Industrial Regions

Industrial regions create military for you to use. One of the most important regions to have after getting full investments.

Mountain Regions

Mountain regions make money, but the least out of the four. In most cases, stay away from buying mountain regions... that is, unless you like living poorly or something. I have heard, though, that mountain regions increase the production of your industrial regions, so if you are one who depends heavily on your industries you may consider buying some mountain.

Military Selection

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What military you buy depends a lot on what the game settings are. It used to be that jets and turrets were the force to buy but now with the introduction of the SDI Program jets have a bad side. People are now favoring tanks and troopers as the new dominant force. Each military unit has a offensive value, defensive value, or both. The following is a table explaining this.

Units value grid

Unit	Offensive Value	Defensive Value
Troopers	1	1
Jets	2	0
Turrets	0	2
Tank	4	4

^{* Bombers are not normal units. They can only destroy jets.}

From the chart you may get the impression that tanks are the best unit to buy. I agree with you but one thing that you must know is that tanks are pretty expensive. They are about 4 times more expensive than troopers. Troopers themselves are pretty good except that you have to pay a hefty amount to house them and you have to provide food for them. Jets have HUGE maintenance costs and are sometimes a pain in the ass to have. Depending on how much money you are making, jets may be a good choice for your barony.

What you have to be aware of are the following facts:

• Jets have no defensive value
• Bombers have no defensive value
• Bombers can only kill jets
• Troopers can kill anything but jets
• Tanks can do anything troopers can
• Turrets have no offensive value

I tend to favor tanks a lot during the game and so, whenever I buy military, I only buy tanks.

Military Pros and Cons

Troopers

Pros - Very cheap to maintain and buy. You can buy 7 troopers for the price of 1 tank. Troopers help defend you against s3sabres.

Cons - Easily affected by t-ops and consume a lot of food.

Jets

Pros - Have a very strong offensive value. You can get 6 jets for the same price as 1 tank.

Cons - High maintenance costs and you need carriers to take your jets to the battle field. SDI program can destroy up to 30% of incoming jets and are susceptible to Bomb Airbases.

Turrets

Pros - Have a strong defensive value and cannot be destroyed by t-ops.

Cons - They are also very expensive to maintain. Will drain heavy cash outta you.

Tanks

Pros - Have strong offensive and defensive value and don't cost too much to maintain. The more you have the less effective incoming chems will be.

Cons - Expensive. With no HQ and low military support, they will be weak.

Setting Industries and Specializing Them

In the systems menu (press * in the military purchasing menu) you can do two different things to help your industrial regions produce what you want them to. You can "Set Industries" and "Specialize Industries". Setting industries allows you to control how many of each unit is created. Remember, I tend to favor tanks, so here is what I use:

Example production

Unit	Percentage
Trooper	5%
Jet	5%
Turrets	40%
Bombers	5%
Tanks	40%
Carriers	5%

^{* Please note, if you never set your jets over 90%, you don't have produce more than 5% carriers. You need to transport jets to your battlesite via carriers. Each carrier can carry 100 jets.}

Another function in the systems menu is the "Specializing Industries" function. This allows you to increase production of a certain unit by 25% but all other units will decrease production by 15%. I specialize in tanks. :)

S3Sabre Settings

S3Sabres are a weapon you can use for Interbbs BRE. It is found in the Special Operations menu and can help you dearly. Here are the settings that you can choose from.

S3Sabre Settings

Setting	Description
0	Bomb Agents
1	Bomb Agents
2	Bomb Residences
3	Bomb Residences
4	Bomb Turrets
5	Bomb Jets
6	Bomb Jets
7	Incinerate Regions
8	Incinerate Regions
9	Bomb Residences
10	Develop Regions

What T-Ops to Send

T-ops should always be sent before you send out individual or group attacks. They help to weaken the enemy lines of defense. Here is a table showing what you should send:

T-Ops Units

Unit	What to Send
Troopers	Demoralization, Dissentions, Bomb Food Markets
Jets	Bomb Airbases
Turrets	Demoralization
Tanks	Demoralization, Bomb HQ

Using Agents

Agents are a big part of BRE. They are used for C-Ops (Local only), T-ops, and for S-Ops. The more agents you have the more effective your T-ops and S-ops will be. Also, the more you have, the less effective your enemies S-ops and such will be. Your best bet is to buy at least 300,000 agents. This will give you enough to last the whole game and be pretty effective. Some people go a little overboard when buying agents and buy over 2 million. I find this to be a complete waste. Sure... no spies will ever get through but still... ain't that a bit too much? Anyways, another thing agents are good for is that the more you have the chances of your investments getting undermines lessens.

Investing

Investing is one of the most important things you must do in a game of BRE. With investments, you are guaranteed to have some kind of financial support to fall back on if you need help. In BRE, you can get a maximum of 2 billion coins a day from investments which will be spread over all your turns.

I find that the best way to get full investments is to first save up 2 billion in the bank. When this is in place, you will be making what you usually make off your regions plus an additional 30 mil a turn. Now you start investing.

Everyday, save up all the money you make and on your last turn, visit the bank and make an investment for 10 days will all your money. Tomorrow, you do the exact same thing; save all your money and invest it for 10 days. In 10 days your investments will start coming back and if it isn't 2 bill yet, repeat the process. If it is 2 bil though, save up what you need to make one complete investment then you have an excess of 1 billion you can spend on your empire. Great, eh?

Avoiding Pirates

Pirates are one of the nuisances you will come across in BRE. They steal your military, food, and money. If you aren't planning to send out any attacks, you can follow this plan.

On the first turn of the day, put all of your military on the trading market. When they are their, you don't have to pay for maintenance and all and the pirates wont be able to get to them. Now don't forget about the military. When you are one your last turn of the day, take your military out of the trading market. There you go.

General Facts and Miscellaneous Hints

Here are a bunch of facts you may find interesting about the game. Some of them are pretty kewl.

• There is a maximum of 2 billion coins in the bank.
• There is a maximum of 2 billion coins out of the bank.
• You cannot send stuff from league to league.
• The more agents you have, the more t-ops will get through.
• There is a maximum of one treaty at a time with another realm.
• Bombers are the only thing that can destroy jets in an attack except for a s3sabre and t-ops.
• Always play the lottery. It is free and you can win money.
• If you have multiple group attacks headed to one planet, put less in the last few than in the first few.
• T-op costs go up with the number of regions you have. The more regions, the more expensive they are.
• Agents cost more every day you play.
• Don't forget to build your headquarters.

_{Original source: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Fortress/1948}