Strategic Primer: Tenth turn summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer recently finished its tenth turn.

There were two notable changes this turn that, as they happened to all the players, are safe to tell you. First, just like I started using a more detailed and (I hope) realistic model for hunting and fishing last turn, this turn I started modeling the food output of herders properly. I’d previously given a nominal amount of food for each worker assigned to herding; by contrast, I now model how much milk (or, I guess, eggs or whatever&mash;but no-one’s yet domesticated any food animal that isn’t also a dairy animal) the herd produces, and how much of the herders’ time this takes. As you might expect, this is far more than the previous amount.

And second, I’ve gone back over the last several turns and given the players advances based on what their Gatherers have brought in and their explorers have discovered—when a Food Gatherer brings in food from an abandoned grain field, some of that can be used to seed another farm, and when an explorer comes upon a grove of fruit trees, he would probably take cuttings. And so now the players can use those.

Populations keep rising. For most of the players, I’m about to abandon my use of PCGen for generating newcomers, as some populations are on their way past sixty workers, a “party” size that PCGen is entirely unsuitable for. Now, that size is rather unwieldy even for players, so before we begin the next turn I’m working on updates to the viewer that will include helpful unit management capabilities. (Read more about that in my development progress report earlier this month.)

Speaking of population, this is as good a place as any to give fair warning: in a few turns—maybe at the end of the game-year, after the fourteenth turn—I’m going to start tracking other constraints (direct and indirect) on population besides food more strictly. These will include living space, morale, clothing (though each new worker does come with his or her own first set of clothes), resource storage space (including barrels), tools, and the like.

Players continue building, or at least preparing (several of those in forest are constrained by the surrounding trees until those have been cleared), as their still somewhat limited labor supply allows. And they continue to investigate the hints their explorers have reported, which is forcing me to develop ways of determining what an abandoned fortress, for example, would contain, and what might still be found there.

As I keep repeating, this campaign is becoming more exciting by the turn, so I’m constantly looking forward to seeing what the players come up with next. If you’d like to join this campaign, we still desperately need more players, so please contact me.

Strategic Primer: Ninth turn summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer recently finished its ninth turn. (We still need more players; if you’d be interested in joining the campaign, please let me know.)

The most notable thing about this turn is that I finally put the new exploration and encounter model into effect, including for hunting and gathering. Last turn I wrote that “players’ population groth seems to have finally peaked”, but with hunters and gatherers now producing more realistic (i.e. “such-and-such animal” instead of “the-result-of-a-die-roll pounds of food”) results, and any players who started planting a crop early (immediately after or during initial harvesting) are now starting to harvest, some players’ population is on its way up again.

Building continues; most players seem to have long-term plans and are working on creating the technology they need to bootstrap those plans. But labor is still the primary constraint here: there isn’t enough labor to mine the resources needed, or to build the industry needed, etc.

Last tur I wrote that, “the players … are still generally ignoring the discoveries their explorers have already made.” I’m glad to say this is no longer the case; in-depth exploration may even soon become the norm.

After running into the problems with the new exploration model, I’ve decided to start developing a third-generation model. It will require some changes to the map—increasing the resolution, primarily, but also the data the map format can encode—that I’ll implement first. Those changes to the map, and to the viewer, will also allow me to implement vision range properly and make it easier to add features to help me run movement and exploration, so I’ll do that too before starting on the third-generation encounter model.

In any case, as I’ve said for several turns now, this campaign is becoming more exciting by the turn, and each turn I loo forward to seeing what the players come up with next. If you’d like to join this campaign, or a possible next campaign, please let me know.

Strategic Primer: Seventh Turn Summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, recently finished its seventh turn. If enough players are interested, I’ll start a new campaign early next year, with substantial improvements to the design.

Harvest for nearly every crop ended last turn or before; for some crops planting is in full swing. Some players are focusing their efforts on large-scale “brute-force” agriculture, while others continue to focus on industrialization (though often to get agricultural labor-saving improvements in place), but a few are now increasingly feeling the pinch of space from a suboptimal fortress plan: the “default” plan I offered for players with their headquarters in forest only included three acres cleared for fields, which was plenty for harvesting in the first turns (with only ten mouths to feed) but can pose a challenging problem now (with more than four times that number of people to feed and to set to planting). The only way to clear more space so far is to cut down trees.

While the nature of the map (mostly land, with a few large bodies of water, rather than the other way around) makes pedestrian or mounted exploration practical, the “lakes” can prove to be major obstacles, as some players’ explorers have been finding the last few turns. For nearly all players, exploration is still limited to sending a worker to wander over the world to fill in the blank spaces on the map and perhaps stumble across something interesting; few have investigated those interesting sites in more detail.

Most players are now dedicating substantial labor to scientific research (largely domestication); this takes longer to show results than I’d expected when I designed the rules, even though in this campaign it ignores several factors that the game should have modeled. (More about that in a later post, perhaps.) On the other hand, all players’ workers are showing good improvement to their skills, and some may start “leveling up” in about four or five turns.

Player-sparked scientific discovery, in contrast, still varies from player to player. A couple of players made discoveries out of necessity (a solution to the too-few-cleared-acres problem I mentioned above), but one (at least temporarily) resumed the explosive pace of the first turns. And, as usual, this mechanic is taking the game in directions I hadn’t even thought of.

Even the solitary-player element of this campaign is becoming somewhat exciting; I’m looking forward to what the players will come up with next. If you’d like to join this campaign, or the possible next campaign, please let me know.

Strategic Primer: Sixth turn summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, recently finished its sixth turn.

The trends outlined in last turn’s summary continued; food harvesting for the first year is winding to a close, and nearly all players are substantially increasing their industrial output.

Players are finally starting to delegate administrative responsibilities to their workers, causing a (so far limited) chain of command to form. Most human players now have at least one worker assigned to management duties.

One new player has joined the game; I’d still like several more, and despite my fears the game has not yet reached the point where adding more would cause trouble.

Other than those items, nothing really notable happened that would have reached the other players (since these turn summaries are basically a global rumor system).

Some statistics: Populations vary from 12 to over 45, and food stocks vary from one hundred pounds of food to over two thousand pounds.

Strategic Primer: Fifth turn summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, recently finished its fifth turn. The following is a summary of the turn’s results. Two new players are expected to join the game starting next turn; I wrote and ran strategies for them up through this turn.

Most players have shifted most of their farmers to harvesting apples, since most other crops’ harvests ended last turn. This has prolonged the period of food surplus somewhat, but most players’ population growth has slowed or even stopped. Several players have also begun implementing different approaches for getting around the new concept of food spoilage.

The trend of shifting emphasis away from agriculture toward infrastructure and exploration continued. Several players have discovered major deposits of natural resources that they can have their workers mine; this has forced me to invent rules for mining, and also prompted them to ask about resources that I hadn’t thought of when I was placing those resources on the map.

Last turn I said that I hadn’t figured out how worker advancement would work; I created rules governing that and implemented them. Many workers have gained a level in at least one skill, but most still have not.

A few statistics: Players’ populations vary from a mere 12 to 33, which is the most possible so far because of the cap on population growth. Food stocks vary from a scant 101 pounds to 5835 pounds.

We’ve just finished the fifth turn, but it’s still possible for a new player to join the game. Since two new players are expected to join the game next turn the need for new players is not quite so acute, but any newcomers would still be quite welcome. If you’d like to join the game, please contact me.

Strategic Primer: Fourth Turn Summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, recently finished its fourth turn. (But because of the nature of the game so far, it’s not too late for a newcomer to join, and the campaign still desperately needs more players … will you join the game?) Today I’ll summarize the results of this fourth turn.

There were two major news items this turn. One is the first meeting between two players; one player’s explorer happened upon another player’s headquarters. Fortunately for both players, neither was inclined to be initially hostile. I ran this diplomatic encounter outside of the normal strategy-submission/results-reception channels, and that was an at least qualified success.

The other major news item was that a rule change I discussed in previous turn summaries, about food spoilage, went into effect this turn, affecting food harvested this turn or later, so each players’ results now include breakdowns of food stocks by age.

As initial harvests drew to a close, most players continued their emphasis on major construction, usually infrastructure, and on exploration. Because of the vast quantity of wood in each player’s starting package, most players have no shortage of materials for building products; the primary bottleneck has been labor, which has become much less of an issue. But because seasonal food production at harvest is limited to those fields that were planted, year-round methods like hunting produce a very small output compared to most farms, and the first harvest had “planted” only enough for the workers allocated to farming on the first turn, population is plateauing and is still limited enough to require players to make difficult choices in how they will use their workers until the next harvest begins.

The objective of almost all of everyone’s exploration so far has been to cover as much ground as possible, producing a map of the most obvious features, with any discoveries beyond the basic terrain as an added bonus. Only one or two players have had their explorers search an area intensively; in cases where the more cursory pass warranted this, it paid off handsomely.

Nearly all workers from the beginning are nearing the point where they’ll show some obvious advancement of some sort soon. (I haven’t yet figured out exactly how that will work.)

I plan to change the low-level details of how the map works and is represented to increase the possible level of detail available both to me and to the players. I’ve written several posts about the challenges involved in this over the last few Wednesdays. While these changes will be visible and perhaps even obvious to the players, they shouldn’t require much in the way of paradigm-changing or cognitive shifts other than recalibrating how to estimate distances.

Even though I’ve just finished the fourth turn, I would be delighted to welcome a new player to the campaign and help him or her through these first turns; the campaign still desperately needs more players. If you would like to join the game, please contact me.

Strategic Primer: Third turn summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, recently finished its third turn. (Given the nature of the game so far, though, it’s not too late for a newcomer to join, and the campaign still desperately needs more players … will you join the game?) In today’s post I will summarize the results of this third turn.

While still dwarfed by the special case of the first turn, there was more construction this turn than last, as players often put their new workers to such tasks. At this stage of the game nearly all construction is infrastructure.

This turn a player called my bluff and sent an explorer to investigate a tile about which I’d said earlier explorers found “signs of a long-ago battle.” This, like a player’s earlier instructions to his explorers about what to look for that made some sort of quasi-random events mechanism necessary, prompted me to think about what might be found on such an ancient battlefield. In this case, it was all benign, but this will probably not always be the case.

Food stocks continued to grow. Some crops’ harvests ended this turn, but others continue. The rule about food spoilage won’t take effect until next turn at the earliest, but some players are already inventing technology to lessen its effects. I’m also still trying to think about food requirements for livestock … suggestions?

Most fortress populations grew again this turn, and indeed most of those hit the cap again, but some populations leveled off until the next harvest begins (with more workers to bring it in).

There was more scientific and technical discovery this turn than last turn, though less than the first turn. Again, however, I can’t say much here because each player’s status is to be kept confidential.

As an aside, I’d like to note the peculiarities of pseudo-random number generators. Some players have had to reject newcomers to their fortresses because the new workers were so inferior in several categories, and I recall one batch where all or all but one came close to that threshold. Similarly, running one player’s exploration results, the explorer in question rolled just too low to notice every “event” (thing on a tile) the explorer had passed this turn.

Even though I’ve wrapped up the third turn, I’d be delighted to welcome new players to the campaign and help them through their first turns. If you’d like to join the game, please contact me.

Strategic Primer: Second turn summary

The current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, recently finished its second turn. (Given the nature of the game so far, though it’s not too late for you to join, and the campaign still desperately needs more players.) In this post I’ll summarize the results of the second turn, including rules changes, interesting statistics, and (as generally as I can), what happened.

There was very little construction this turn, especially compared to the special case of the first turn. (With the missing player’s construction, the first turn the average player used the equivalent of over 318,000 cubic feet of wood.)

The major player innovation this turn was multiple-turn exploration orders. Most players had explored squares around their headquarters fortresses their first turn, covering as large an area as possible while still ending up where they started, but this turn several players sent their explorers off to make several-turn circuits that would end up in their starting place.

Food production continued apace. I introduced a rule about food spoilage because the various players were producing so much food, but it won’t take effect until after the third turn at the earliest. I still haven’t made a ruling on food requirements for livestock, and would like suggestions.

At the end of this turn, newcomers joined each player’s HQ population. I changed the rule slightly, imposing a cap so that the population can grow by no more than half its current size each turn. With that cap in place, the average player’s population grew by 4, or 40%.

There was also quite a bit of scientific and technical discovery, including domestication, though not nearly so much as the first turn. However, I can’t talk much about that here because each player’s current state is to be kept secret from all the others.

Even though I’ve wrapped up the second turn, I would be delighted to welcome a new player to the campaign and help him or her through the first two turns. If you’d like to join the game, please contact me.

Strategic Primer first turn summary

The first turn of the current campaign of Strategic Primer, my strategy game, is just about over. (I’m still waiting on last-minute clarifications from one player, and have given up waiting on another since I haven’t had non-face-to-face direct contact from him in months.) So, at this point, I’ll summarize the results of the first turn, including rules changes, interesting statistics, and (as generally as I can) what happened.