Round 6 is up guys.

MVL Round 6

I've been reading the seminal threads by Wyndstar, Purge and Mumblefratz on strategy for GA, posted by them in October, 2007, and have a question: Were these strategies developed while playing DL, or were they playing DA by that time?

Some of Wyndstar's most vital ideas had to do with the tech speed in the game conditions. I had been playing all my games at normal tech speed, so I thourght I would try one at the fastest tech speed. Just when I thought I was going to win the game, I had to leave for a dental appointment. I hurried back as soon as I could, but the AI's already had photon torpedoes and influence techs to flip my colonies and I only lasted a few more turns.

Important news:



Now there's only 141,991 points between us and 4th place. Now lets go "save the whales"!

DA at the time for me, although I have about equal game time on both versions. I know Mumblefratz is still DL. Can't answer for Wyndstar, although if it's the thread I saw, he was DA, because he was talking about extreme planetary colonization. I've found many of the strategies work well between versions though.

I do recall the thread too i believe, and yes DA. The three guys you just mentioned CaliDude, if you read all that they have to say about the game and it's strategies, then you will be on the right track. Mumble and Purge for your big maps and Wyndstar for your smaller ones, though many strats can be used on both.

Great to see you in our thread Purge, don't be a stranger now, Mumble has his own seat here now!!!

i'll try to get in a Giga map before I leave for Michigan tomorrow; see if i can close that gap or hopefully pass it.

141K you say? I'll hopefully get this game of mine posted this weekend and it should exceed that with no problem

Thanks! I do tend to lurk when work is slow!

I hope you bundle up real good. It's supposed to get pretty cold up here this weekend. About 5 to 10 degrees F (wind chill is gonna be like -10 to -20 degrees F). Oh yeah, and about a 90% chance of snow in some places (but that's really nothing new - I mean...snow?...in Michigan??...in Winter???).

haha i know right?! i always check the weather before I go; my mom lives right on the lake shore so she gets a lot of lake effect snow and my Mustang just isn't made for those kind of driving conditions. I'm not worried about the temperature, its not that much warmer down here in Indiana.

Well you should well know the 4 seasons that Michigan has: Winter, Almost Construction, Construction, and More Construction.

((I'd should stick deer hunting in there, that's pretty much a state-sanctioned holiday season right there))

I started to pose this question on the DA forum, but decided it was subtle enough to warrant the attention of the pros here. It involves better understanding of how the overall productive capacity of a colony (its GNP, if you will) can be used to the fullest extent in situations.

Let's say that at a point in a game you want the absolute maximum investment in research that your race can get. And let's assume you have moved the slider to 100% research and 0% social and military, and clicked on the planet focus bullseyes for all-out focus on research. A simple question arises: can you still add something to your research effort from a given colony by either leaving the starport idle, or by not having any social building project in progress, or both? If the colony is not building a ship, and not building a factory or research center or anything, does that mean it is doing a little extra to speedup your research?

If after setting the slider and planet focus bullseye appropriately for maximum research, your colony shows 0 shields and 0 social production and 37 flasks, say, then maybe the answer to this question is obvious...nothing can be gained by leaving the starport idle and not scheduling any social building projects. But maybe not...there could be some effect by the mere fact that there is something in the pipeline for ships and social improvements as against nothing.

But I've noticed that quite often even with the slider set to 100% and the focus bulleye set to mazimize one of the three, the others do not drop all the way to zero. So, still talking about maximum research, let's say that after settng the slider and focus bulleyes for research, you still have 6 military, and 5 social units. If you don't make your starport idle and delete all social projects, over a long enough period of time a ship and factory will eventually be produced...some of your GNP is going into these. Can you channel that into research by leaving those pipelines empty?

The same kind of question might be asked in terms of maximizing shipbuilding or social building instead of research.

I won't be offended if you think I'm getting down to too fine a point. Thank you your replies.

if you're slider is at 100% for any given field (you shouldn't need to focus on whatever you are making 100% as there is nothing to shift) then it doesn't matter if you have buildings or ships in queue.

Sometimes...certain structures, planetary bonus, racial bonuses, and asteroids may results in other fields producing a very trivial amount (like 1 unit).

Note that some structures that give bonuses don't increase your focus. For example the Tech Capital doesn't increase your hammer production at all even though it greatly increases your tech points.

Make sure that your Mil/Soc slider is really at 0; the game will try to counterbalance you sliding any particular one, so you have to manually move it to 0 yourself.

Also, when using a Labs Approach, when in Debt, focused production will still occur.

This thread here explains how production works in a detailed manner:
WWW Link

Just posted 11.5k game. Come on, evil must prevail! Whoops, there are an infinite number of monkeys at the front door wanting to talk to me about this Shakespear draft they've typed up. Will start another game later, but. . . the monkeys are persistent.

Dax

monkeys? did i leave the basement door open again?

yeah i posted a 14.5K last night and am working on another one now. We should have it once the weekend is over.