Order of Business
Jayson
After squeaking out a few hours here and there to learn a bit more
about how things work, I have come up with a very novice approach for
what I should be doing in the first few updates. How off am I?
Designate all sectors +
Designate one of the capitals as a mine
Build a warehouse, library and lcm factory
Setup distribution and thresholds
Build a harbor
Build a patrol boat
Sadly, that is about as far as I have gotten, before I need to take
care of something else, or there is a server reset, or my tiny nation
is overrun. How off am I for the first few rounds?
Generally speaking, what should be the order of business in the first
20 or so updates?
~~J
Gemini
Bungholio said it best. All of this is stolen from his Training Zoo Annos
(modified for generic use). This was all Bungy - I take *NO* credit for this.
I know the TZ was a lot of work, but, think we'll have a TZ II? I flunked out
of the first one - I'd like to retake the class...
Jayson - I have a Slow "Blitz" running called Doppleganger that usually has 3
updates/day, but is current;y running at 1 update / 28 hours. I posted
connection details here if you want to join, there's still room. UNICEF and
Cohiba have been great teachers so far - apply pressure, but not overrunning
everyone yet.
I edited a bit, but, there may be some errors left that relate to the TZ game
itsself (like having dust in mountains) or reference outdated features (like
`bud h 1`) - but the general principals and ideas areound this should be enough
to shift the focus of the budding Empire player to what's important.
Enjoy.
Gemini
Update 1)
Explore your start island with one civ everywhere. Make Iron.
Spread out civs so as to not truncate civs. Conserve mobility
in the starting sancs for distributing iron.
Update 2)
Make more Iron. Make Dust. Make LCMs. Make HCMs (if you think you
want to make ships? do or don't you, and why or why not?). Make Oil?
Try to read the deity's game set-up / world size to see if ships are
important this early on. Learn to use Distribution to get stuff where
you need it for the next update (to make Edu, Oil, Dust, and prep for
Tech).
Update 3)
Make Edu. Make Dust, Oil, LCMs, and HCMs. Making Bars? Where are you
naving your ships, and why?
Update 4)
Make Tech.
<COMMENT FROM GEMINI>
I would suggest you make frgs instead of pbs. frgs can asasault so that when
you find land, you can immediately claim it. pbs might be cheaper/faster - but,
once you find land, you need to nav an frg there anyway...slower in the long
run.
</COMMENT FROM GEMINI>
Bungy suggests keeping it simple. The first update is actually
best if you keep your civs focussed on the essentials. The
essentials are:
1) making iron
2) preserving mobility
3) not truncating civs
4) putting your civs to work and not waste their work
} Demobilizing mils at this point is a good
} idea too, as you can't use the mils (in this setup)
} until you have ships to put them on.
Emphasis here is on "in this setup". In island games
it is usually better to demobilize forces, save the money
to pay them and have them increase population
(aka taxpayers) and workforce.
Games with "continents" usually require the initial mil
to expand as countries are separated by Diety mil.
And demobilize them as reserves. You might need them back
some day.
And maybe sooner than later: If you decide to build
three frgs - where do you get the 180 mils as crew??
Another important point to make, grasshoppers, in your trainings,
is that you need to be generating news. Anno's, telegrams, etc.
Tell a tale of the history of your people, a funny story about
that time your uncle willy got caught in the barn with 2 sheeps,
what was for dinner, how's the weather, etc.
Your instructor's lesson plan for update #2:
1) Continue making iron.
2) Need to now decide on whether to focus on Tech, Exploration,
or a Hybrid combination of both.
2-tech) Get oil started. Not much out there, so gotta get it started,
and plan on making 15 dust of tech kinds of numbers the following
update. Make sure your Mountain has max safe civ/uw.
2-exploration) Use post update avail in your harbors to get the civs
that are there to finish the ships. 'bud h 1'. <==I don't think you can do
this anymore
2-hybrid) My favorite, some of both worlds. Giving up a few deci-
points of tech in order to make a few ships. If you played your
cards right in the first update, you can do this no prob.
3) Keep distribution in check. Use 0,0 & 2,0 again, or if you have
a nice new harbor being built to over 60%, then that makes for an
excellent dist point.
So you should be making at least 100 LCMs, and 30 HCMs, as minimums,
give or take, depending on whether you are focusing on tech,
exploration, or both.
Here's how Post Update Avail works, for your harbors:
This update:
Put enough civs to get your harbor to 61%, or more if you plan to
make more than 2 frigates, as you need 22 avail per frigate to
start them.
After the update:
Do a 'bud h 1' ** I THINK THIS COMMAND IS NO MORE **, which will
then make your civs that are in the harbor work at the update to
build the ships in the harbor, versus work to just make avail for
the following update. If you plan to start more ships the
following update (recommended), then you need to plan on having
additional civs than that is required to finish the ships that
are in the harbor being completed to produce avail for the next update
in the harbor.
An example of using Post Update Avail:
Scenario:
You have a 61% harbor in which you just built 2 20% frigates (assuming
it has 48l & 48h in it to complete the 2 frigates), and you plan on making
1 frigate after the update.
When using P.U.A., you need to put enough civs there to make the avail
needed to finish building the ships, this update, which is 176 avail
(110 avail/frg * 2 * 80%), plus the avail to finish the harbor, plus any
avail you want to carry over to the next update to build more ships.
Avail = (#_of_workers * workers_growth_rate) * (ETUs/100) - %_eff_improvement
So in this example, you need 39*2 + 176-39 + 22*1 = 237 avail.
The 39*2 is because your civs will first finish building the harbor while
building ships so these civs work half on building the sector and half on
building the ships, then 176-39 is the amount of avail to finish the ships
after the guys who were half building the sector also worked on the ships,
then the 22*1 is the amount of avail for the frigate you intend on starting
after the update. I'd say that 310 civs would do it, with a little spare
for rounding errors.
Workers are civs, UWs, and mils. Civs have a 1.3 for the growth_rate, UWs
have a 1.15 for the growth_rate, and mils have a 1.00 for the growth_rate
and a 40% work rate (ie: only 40% of the mils work 'effectively').
<COMMENT FROM GEMINI>
I think the above might be more complex than it should be. I'd like to get more
clarification on this. Anyone have any solid info regarding post update avail?
I wrote a post a bit ago that had an AVAIL formula, but, may be off a little -
not sure - doesn't seem to be, but, I'm a noob so...
</COMMENT FROM GEMINI>
Pre-Update #3 Plans:
Now is the time to plan for the next update, as you should be planning
on making somewhere around 75 - 125 or so of LCMs into education on
update #3, which should put your education level to the 14 - 21 range
(respectively). You will need to be getting oils going, and needing 5
oil per dust of tech that you will be producing.
Bungy's Advice for Update #4:
Make Tech. If you are not making tech now, then you will fall behind in
making tech. If you think you will catch up later, think again. Tech
production is based on a logarithmic function, and at log base 2.25 here,
that means you need to make a lot of extra tech to catch up, costing a
whole frack of a lot more than if you just made it now. Therefore, if you
failed to make tech at update #4 and failed to make ships that are seaworthy,
you need to focus your country's strengths onto expansion, diplomacy, and
annoying/complimenting others. (note: some countries have a native knack for
this ability, without mentioning names)
Continue making ships, frigates at this point, unless you have been lucky
enough to find expansion territory close enough for a fishing boat to reach
with 90 mob and unload into the 2%+ harbor that same update, cuz having
civs stranded at sea it usually a very bad idea this early in the game.
slave ships? Forget about it. (what slaves at this point in the game need
moving?)
Here's how you can calculate how far ships can move (from 'info nav'):
mob/sector = 480/(speed*eff+(speed*eff*(50+tech)/(200+tech)))
a 100% tech 0 frigate takes 15.4 mob/sector, thus 5.86 sectors/90mob.
a 100% tech 0 fishing boat takes 38.4 mob/sector, thus 2.34 sectors/90mob.
THANKS BUNGY!!!!
Scott C. Zielinski
Gemini ]G[