Training Zoo 1 - Update #12 Report

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We're 12 updates into the Training Zoo 1 game. It is a 12
country world, where players started on a basic 30 sector
start continent. The expansion territory is guarded with
Terminator defenses similar to the PZ series of games.
We've had 14 players, 2 have been replaced due to not
attending class.

The tech leader is able to build warships.

- = [ Empire Power Report - after 12 Updates ] = -
as of Sun Sep 11 12:23:01 2005

sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money
EmpireKIN 65 79% 45K 550 25 15 27 4.7K 100 350 1 20 1 1.9K
PromisedL 50 97% 47K 600 200 20 750 5.5K 100 900 2 10 3 3.7K
wales 50 90% 46K 500 150 25 24 3.8K 200 1.1K 0 9 0 4.9K
BWCC 60 83% 41K 800 25 0 21 11K 250 500 1 20 0 5.0K
manticore 70 60% 38K 450 75 10 14 3.1K 100 550 3 30 0 993
Mayonasia 60 59% 31K 700 100 5 38 4.6K 100 1.3K 0 20 0 4.0K
Silver_Ho 65 66% 35K 700 20 10 1.9K 1.9K 100 150 1 30 0 476
Niary 45 80% 20K 1.0K 22 0 20 5.2K 350 800 1 10 0 10K
Six 50 81% 27K 950 5 5 4 7.0K 600 950 1 10 0 2.0K
juke 45 73% 27K 800 25 5 7 4.5K 200 1.2K 1 4 1 25K
Gemini 35 53% 18K 1.4K 9 0 9 900 250 250 1 6 0 4.3K
Hell 30 98% 4.5K 100 0 0 0 32 0 0 0 0 0 30K
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 620 75% 380K 8.6K 675 90 2.8K 52K 2.4K 8.0K 10 170 5 90K



During the first 4 updates, I gave very specific advice to the players,
in trying to teach them my lesson plan of making tech on the 4th update.
Ony 4 of them were able to make tech on the 4th update. With my
simple 4-update program, players will be positioned to make both
tech on the 4th update and have ships which can nav.


Here is the lesson plan for all those who would like to do some independent
study:


-----------Course Outline----------
Here is the plan that I want to see all players do:

Update 1)
Explore your start island with one civ everywhere. Make Iron.
Spread out civs so as to not truncate civs yet as to conserve
mobility in the starting sancs for distributing irons. Put some
civs into your mountain to start getting it efficient for making
dust.

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? Not a good
use of your civs this early on in *this* setup, why? Where are you
naving your ships, and why?

Update 4)
Make Tech. Find Terminator. Etc..

Update 5)
Engage Terminator. Learn how to attack basic stuff.



-----------

Lesson for update #1:

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) starting dust
3) preserving mobility
4) not truncating civs
5) putting your civs to work and not waste their work



Bungholio's analysis from the data collected before Update #1

I've analyzed everyone's setup (as of 8pm today) based on your
instructor's opinions of the essentials of the first update's
priorites. I feel that the first update is actually best if
you keep your civs focussed on the essentials. The essentials
are:

1) making iron
2) starting dust
3) preserving mobility
4) not truncating civs and maximizing civ growth
5) putting your civs to work and not waste their work


here's where I found that many of you needed help on my list of
essentials:

1) Players did not initially plan to make enough iron. Many of you
made significantly less than 200 iron in your initial setups. You
really needed to make 500+ iron (minerals resource is 50 in TZ1) on
the first update here. Iron is the essential material in empire,
you need 180 iron for each frigate, and another 150-200 iron for
making 75-100 LCMs of education. Not planning on making frigates,
but fishing boats instead? Don't bother making fishing boats for
exploration, they are way too slow, and as the deity has stated,
the expansion islands are defended, so count on at least one mil
per sector. A fishing boat that carries 10 mils cannot assault a
defended sector, and is too slow, if you didn't read that in the
previous sentence. Frigates are the initial explorers of choice,
for speed and assaultability. Once I've convinced you that you
need to make iron, then you should realize that 0,0 and 2,0 are
the ideal sectors to make it in, because then you don't have to
use mobility to move civs out of those sectors AND then those
sectors will still have mob at the update AND then can
be used to distribute the iron to where it needs to go AND in using
0,0 and/or 2,0 then those civs pay taxes that update because they
are in 100% sectors. (note, don't set both 0,0 AND 2,0 as mines when
in a BIG_CITY game, as you will need the BTUs sooner than you can
make enough LCM/HCMs to rebuild a city, this is not a BIG_CITY game
so we can redes both starting caps). This then means that you need
a temporary low-efficiency cap for the first 2-4 updates (depending
on how well you can manage your BTUs). The mountain will work fine
for the first 2 updates (maybe more, if you are careful with your
BTUs).

2) Players needed to put just 76 civs into the mountain to get dust going.
Mountains have a max population of 99 civs, see "show sector stat",
combined with 'nation', and you will see that mountains can hold only
10% of the population of an industrial sector, and thus you should only
put 76 civs there so that they grow to 99 at the update (see also #4
below). Also set UW threshold here to 86 to get the UWs moved here at
the update.

3) Players did average at not hitting the mobility too hard in the 0,0
and 2,0 because some moved all of their civs out of these sectors into
adjacent sectors, for productions outside the starting caps. You need
to leave 768 (or slightly less) civs in each of these sectors which
will allow you to save these sector's mobility for distribution.
Mobility is key in empire. Use one or both of 0,0 or 2,0 as your dist
point(s) for the first update. Then the iron that gets produced in
these sectors gets automatically moved to where you need it for the
next update for LCMs and HCMs. Set the thresholds for iron for where
you want your LCM and HCM factories, the distribution will move 100's
of iron for barely 10 mobility points. Leave the UWs in 0,0 and 2,0 -
as in, do not manually move UWs, as they are very heavy. Use the test
command to see how much mob it might cost to move civs and UWs. (ie:
'test c 0,0 50 1,1', or 'test u 0,0 10 1,-1', etc)

4) Max safe civs can be found by the 'nation' command. This number
represents the number of civs in an industrial sector so that when
civ growth occurs, you will not exceed the max population for that
sector. 76 is the max safe civs for a mountain, as mountains hold
10% of the number of civs as an industrial sector (see also #2 above).
Civ truncation will occur if you put more than the max safe civ
numbers in any sectors. 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.

5) Exploring with just one civ or moving a small quantity of civs into
every sector is a waste of your workforce. There should only be one
civ per non-producing sector at this point.



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.


-----
some notes from a helpful visitor / teacher's_aide:

> Announcement from visitor, (#22) dated Tue Aug 30 05:02:24 2005
} 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??




----------

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'.

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 focussing 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', 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').



----------

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 abiltity, without mentioning names)

Continue making ships, frigates at this point, unless you have been lucky
enough to find expansion territory close enough for a fishingboat 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.
SlaveShips? 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.



Countries whom did not make Tech or make nav'able Ships by now will be
automatically reenrolled in TZ2, as you will be required to repeat this
course to reach an empire ranking of "6", as per
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/rankings.html

Players who have a 89%+ Ship at sea, and who are set up to make 7+ dust of
tech this update with edu over 15, can consider themselves as graduates from
this course.


I would much rather help your country get back on track, so that
you can learn how to play 'right', than to have to limp along, trying
to play 'catchup'.



--end--
 
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Archived from groups: rec.games.empire (More info?)

Some more TZ1 info:

=== The Bottom Line ==
Silver_Honour seized thirty-nine sectors from Terminator
EmpireKING seized thirty-eight sectors from Terminator
manticore seized thirty-seven sectors from Terminator
Mayonasia seized twenty-nine sectors from Terminator
BWCC seized twenty-eight sectors from Terminator
wales seized eighteen sectors from Terminator
PromisedLand seized seventeen sectors from Terminator
Six seized seventeen sectors from Terminator
Niary seized sixteen sectors from Terminator
juke seized eleven sectors from Terminator
Gemini captured seven sectors from Terminator
wales took two sectors from Niary
BWCC stole one sector from wales
juke stole one sector from Mayonasia
juke stole one sector from Six
juke stole one sector from EmpireKING



Observers are welcome to pop in to check out the
action or help offer suggestions / options (for tech ~45+)
at:

HOST: sheepfarm.game-host.org
PORT: 6666

COU: visitor
PAS: visitor


or visit the official TZ1 webpage at:
http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/bungholio/TrainingZoo1.html


-Bungy