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.
Shine Cycle Online 