tsf@druxn.UUCP (FisherTS) (06/25/85)
Is it a bug or a feature ?
There is a neat little characteristic of the Old Empire update algorithm
that allows one to use the same civilians twice in one update. It is
very useful in the early stages of a game when you need civilians.
Here is your map: - - - - - -
- c g m u -
- - - - - -
1) Day 1: move 1 military from the capital to 2,0 and 3,0 and designate
2,0 a mine, and 3,0 an urban area. You get the map shown above.
Also set a delivery route of ore from the 'm' to the 'u'.
At this point the only thing in 2,0 and 3,0 is one military.
2) Time Passes - the timestamp in the 'm' and 'u' does not get updated
because the workforce is too small.
3) Day 4: Assuming that there were 127 civilians in the gold mine busily
mining the ore since Day 1, set a delivery of civilians, zero
threshold from the 'g' to the 'm'. Set a delivery of civilians
with a threshold of 80 from the 'm' to the 'u'. Now everything
is set up. Do a mov c 1,0 0 . This pumps the civilians that
were toiling away in the 'g' over to the 'm'. Now do a census or
two on the 'm'. The civilians there do 4 days of work, and multiply
as if they had been there 4 days. The overflow over 80 gets
sent into the 'u'. The ore gets pumped into the 'u'.
Now set a delivery of civilians with zero threshold from the
'm' to the 'u'. Do a mov c 2,0 0 and a mov o 2,0 0 to
pump all the remaining civilians and ore into the 'u'.
Now the civilians that have already done about 8 days worth are
sitting in the 'u' to be exploited again. Do a census on
the 'u' and watch your population grow !
This is a 'simple' example of how one can use those civilians many times.
I know of one case where someone had some very old sectors (timestamp was
weeks older than the current date), and managed to build a harbor and
several battleships all in a few minutes when his undeveloped coastline
was threatened by an approaching raiding party.
We have a proposed fix for this, but before implementing it, I would
like to know if the current empire has the same characteristic, and if
people consider this a bug or a feature. So far the comments locally have
been running slightly in favor of calling it a bug.
Tom Fisher ihnp4!druxn!tsfmazina@ee.UUCP (06/28/85)
> Might I suggest that you shar it up and post it to net.sources.games?
Yes, Yes, YES!!! Please post the thing to net.sources.games, especially
if it is only 11K long!!!! I want to try bringing it up on our Gould PN9080!
Thomas Ruschak
"No, there is no message here."