alb@alice.UUCP (10/28/83)
I have been the Deity on harpo for a couple of years now, and in that time we have played through four complete games and are just now starting our fifth. The players on harpo are very experienced and crafty, and we always enjoy games that are of the utmost fun and interest. I have also played as a player on another machine in a few games, so I know how both sides feel. Here are some helpful hints on how to be God (these have always worked for me): 1) Be completely impartial. If you are the kind hearted type of person (which you usually are, if you've taken this job), you will feel like giving all sorts of aid to the weak and victims of attacks. What you must realize is that warmonging countries are part of the game. We have one special standout on harpo, and he has helped to make every game incredibly exciting. If it were not for the aggressive countries, the games would be boring. So resist the desire to help out the weak, unless you are willing to give equal aid to the strong. 2) Never *offer* your services. Always wait until asked. 3) One thing I always do without charge is to crush gold bars. Gold bars have no value whatsoever, unless you consider the meager interest from banks as value. Unfortunately, gold mines quickly run out of mobility in delivering dust out, so some dust gets turns into bars whether or not you like it. It takes five units of dust to make one bar, so I always crush (using empfix) bars into five units of dust each when asked. This is done for free. I have talked to Peter Langston about the problem, and he has promised that he will make an unsmelting sector in the next version. 4) Don't run your own country. This means (1) don't expand country 0 beyond its one sanctuary and (2) don't create a normal country to be run by yourself as a plebe. The temptation to cheat is far too great; don't say to yourself, ''I just won't cheat.'' You will. 5) Because of number 4, you can easily get bored if all you do all day is sit around, answering prayers, and reading the news. So don't hesitate to poke around and cause a little trouble; just be fair about it. Remember, there are no laws, so you can be a bit of a nuisance in order to increase interest. Examples: - Put in a few sectors rich in assays and maybe even containing some valuable commodities. However, make them hard to get to; maybe surrounded by mountains or on a remote island somewhere. - Create new things. The game without source is not at all unchangeable. Using empglb.c and empdefs.h, you can do all sorts of neat things, from fooling with tables to vary what it takes to do what to making new types of ships. I have created radar buoys, which just sit (it takes 127 units of mob to move them 3 sectors) and spy, having a radar range of 10. After a discussion with Peter Langston about something called a war canoe, created a while ago by someone whose name I forget, I created my own. It can hold 999 of everything, shoot 127 guns at once (with a range of 127 sectors), spy 14 sectors with radar, move at incredible speeds, and is totally invisible to enemy radar unless they are in the same sector (due to a bug/feature, ships created by the local God cannot be built by a build command, but by using empfix, you can give them away; I never give away war canoes (I use them for spying and to peak curiosity), but I do sell radar buoys). All of this was done by adding a couple lines to empglb.c. In all, don't be stingy, but don't be over generous. God can make or break an Empire game; it is your responsibility along with the players to keep things going and interesting.
alb@alice.UUCP (10/28/83)
Oh, BTW, before you ask just how good a war canoe is, I ran some benchmarks on it after its creation. On an empty game (I keep a clean world around on another machine to experiment with), I created one war canoe and attacked it with a fleet of 10 fully loaded, mobile, and efficient battleships. The war canoe sunk them all. That's why I don't give them out.
eric@aplvax.UUCP (10/31/83)
I also have played with the war canoe. Another indication of its power is that one volley from its guns will reduce any sector to 0%. On the bright side, they can be sunk by a direct nuclear hit. Definitely not for the use of the real players, and in fact, some care must be taken to insure that one is not captured. -- eric ...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric
hammy@mit-eddie.UUCP (J. Scott Hamilton) (10/31/83)
Along the lines of hacking the .c files, in the present game we made exchange sectors as difficult to move into as mountains. Hopefully, this should keep non-naval trade down to a minimum. I see no problem with naval trade, as you still have to get the goods to the other guy, everything else relating to the translation is paperwork. -- J. Scott Hamilton !genrad!mit-eddie!hammy
hamilton@uiucuxc.UUCP (11/11/83)
#R:alice:-226400:uiucuxc:16400010:000:1528
uiucuxc!hamilton Nov 10 20:59:00 1983
i have an effective but tedious technique for preventing the smelting
of gold dust into bars. it exploits a bug that i'd rather see go away,
so the better solution is to put the smelting operation in another sector
(how about banks? they're pretty worthless anyhow). since there is a
limit of 16* on the number of properties of a sector (delivery/threshold,
conrtract price, checkpoint, defence, quantity of a commodity), arrange
for 15 of those slots to be occupied before the gold mine contains dust.
eg, if the gold mine has civilians and food, set up deliveries for
everything (cmfsgpidbolh). it doesn't really matter where they go,
and the thresholds can be 999 for civ and food; i'm assuming there's none
of the other commodities to deliver anyway. that'll use up 14 of the 16
slots available; now checkpoint the sector, or contract mil or something
to take #15. after dust accumulates, you'll start getting messages
about 'no room to produce gold bars'. now, all this is pretty gruesome,
and eats up BTUs, so you probably won't want to do it for isolated gold
mines. i'm using "clearcut" mining/oil drilling: perform the above steps
for 10+ sectors in a row, designate them 'g'; come back when gmin is down
to zero and the dust is all delivered out, and re-des them 'o'; when the
oil is all depleted, the sectors may be useful as roads after the extra
deliveries and contracts are cancelled.
wayne ({decvax,ucbvax}!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!)hamilton
(we are running the 20 may 82 version; has this been changed?)gs@mit-eddie.UUCP (Gordon Strong) (11/12/83)
We are also running the 1982 version. There is NO need to thrash when it comes to dust and bars. The simple solution is to deliver dust out of the gold mine sector. I never make gold bars, and I do need lots of dust (dust=tech,research,nukes). Making nukes eats up dust at a phenomenal rate. Unless you have planned in advance, you won't be able to make very many. A good gold mine can produce 200 units of dust. 999 civilians mine it out very fast, too. Just deliver the dust elsewhere and you will NEVER see any bars. It doesn't matter where you deliver it. I have delivered dust through other gold mines and no bars have appeared. Delivery routes do the right thing. Since you're making delivery routes, you should probably deliver all the dust to a warehouse. Dust is rather heavy and tends to chew up mobility. When you want to move dust somewhere you can move it in bulk and take advantage of the 10X bonus that warehouses give you. Use the original gold bars as an offering to the deity at a stategic point when you need a favor. Then never make another bar and never designate a bank sector. You'll be glad you did... -- Gordon Strong decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!gs GS@MIT-XX
hamilton@uiucuxc.UUCP (11/14/83)
#R:alice:-226400:uiucuxc:16400013:000:412
uiucuxc!hamilton Nov 13 23:45:00 1983
hmm. maybe our dust is heavier than yours? 999 civilians will mine
my gold faster than they can deliver it out, especially if they have
to deliver it thru another gold mine (with 5 min ETUs, it only takes
a few hours to deplete a mine; oil wells take a bit longer for some
reason). do you have a low tech level perhaps? mine is only about
500 (78%).
wayne ({decvax,ucbvax}!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!)hamiltongs@mit-eddie.UUCP (Gordon Strong) (11/16/83)
We have never played with a ETU faster than 10 minutes (one game). Most were played with it set at 30min. In both games, we never had any problems with delivering dust. In the last game I didn't work on tech (it was a "speed" game and I couldn't waste the resources). In the previous (30min) games, I had a tech of about 400 max (but it was slow at that time because I went for the nukes). In that game, I didn't have any problems either. It took about 3 days to mine out a sector in the first game and less than a day in the last one. I still have never had problems with bars. The mobility costs for the different games shouldn't make a difference as it is gained back at a constant rate. Maybe your gold IS heavier. Look at the empglb.c file and see what it is set to. I don't know ours offhand, but I'll look it up if you care. -- Gordon Strong decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!gs GS@MIT-XX
hamilton@uiucuxc.UUCP (11/19/83)
#R:alice:-226400:uiucuxc:16400014:000:92 uiucuxc!hamilton Nov 18 17:50:00 1983 it's probably not important any more. we've started over with 30min ETUs. god, is it SLOW!