This age for my own province growth I've found the explore pool to be the surest way to grow quickly and steadily and even after a very late start I'm in the top 250 or so players by NW now.
Of course that relies on the KD having a lot of attackers and being able to keep explore whores from taking all of the acres. I've noticed a number of players in the top 100 who are basically playing solo in their KD and they've clearl used the pool to rocket up the charts.
Has the pool made acres this cheap for the last few ages already or was this experience new this age?
I'm trying to work out how important assigning roles will be in my KD next age.
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Few other quick observations: Seems like your nw/acre is even more important for protecting against random grabs than your dpa. Super KDs are suiciding like I've never seen before... wow, they are kinda shameless at times.
$10/invite is kinda steep. I'd prefer to see this at $10, or at least that you can reclaim that invite if the prov you invested in up and leaves.