STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://www.accessv.com/~wulkan/fmt.html) VOL 13 August 16, 1999 CONTENTS Feature Article - Playing Multi Anonymous Starweb Games by Lee Knirko Questions - High Scores? SEDG Web Page URL The Captain's Log - Information Management (One way to do it). Correspondence - Anyone want to play a 2 person game? - EB industry building - my math corrected. FEATURE ARTICLE Playing Multi Anonymous Starweb games by Lee Knirko (71361.3005@compuserve.com) Editors note: Lee's article describes playing a particular character combination and I would welcome further articles on this topic describing other combinations (PLEASE!) A multi games consists of five players each controlling three different positions. The game is won by the player whose lowest score of the three positions exceeds the VPT. Multi Starweb is offered in regular and long versions. The long game is where turns are due in one month instead of the usual two week intervals. The game is also offered in regular and anonymous versions. I prefer the long anonymous version. This gives you time to work on a turn in the intervals when other regular games are not active (you do play more than one StarWeb game at a time, don't you?). The anonymous version is much less work because of the absence of active diplomacy. It would be helpful if a series of standardized actions could be decided upon to communicate in anonymous games. Until then, we are largely on our own. Almost everyone selects a Merchant as one of the three character types. The other two are selected based upon your playing style and possibly your familiarity with playing specific characters. Artifact collector is not a good selection since it involves trading or capturing arts from other players which is difficult absent open negotiations with other players. Other choices to avoid are types, which compete for certain assets, such as Empire Builder/Apostle. For playing "not to win", the Pirate/Berseker combination is powerful. I prefer playing to get maximum points, and so usually select Merchant, Apostle and Berserker. At game opening, gift the Merchant HW to the Apostle, and follow previous suggestions for opening orders. Gift worlds captured by the Merchant and the Berserker to the Apostle based on population and limits. For example, delay gifts of worlds with maxed out population until pop can be reduced. When the mapping is developed far enough, find the world(s) that are no more than three worlds away from all of the three Home Worlds. This (or these) becomes Stockpile (S/P) worlds. Gift Berserker (and Apostle) keys to the Merchant to enhance hauling. Use Apostle keys on the S/P to bring metal back to the S/P including worlds four away from the HW's and three away from the S/P. It is desirable to have the S/P world owned by the Berserker to facilitate transfer of keys from the Merchant and the Apostle to the Berserker as the game progresses. When metal becomes plentiful, use the Apostle keys to recycle metal from the HW's. Arrange for 60 metal to be dropped by Merchant keys at the HW's, (assuming no increases in Industry) and haul the 30 extra metal (33 to be exact) back to the S/P. Be sure to send one ship Merchant keys to the S/P for the subsequent turn hauls. When the Merchant score is 10,000, retire the Merchant by transferring the keys to the Berserker. Meanwhile, send Apostle fleets to adjacent worlds as far as possible. This allows capture of Worlds/Keys, or creating converts which act as spies. In my experience, there is often a dropped player in the game, and your exploration is designed to locate that area. The S/P world is the best launching pad for feeding many ships to that area for conquest. As population grows to maximums, or are at maximum, have the Berserker drop robots (or fire at population) to reduce pop to about 50%. This enhances convert growth to conversion resulting in the full 10 points per turn. Where certain worlds, principally with Industry, that have over 50% convert growth, gift the world to the Berserker with Iships to AC each turn giving the Berserker kill points and the Apostle martyr points. This goes on until the Jihad stage is reached. For the end game, plan to obtain an influx of Berserker fleets to invade a neighboring area with large Apostle fleets and one ship Berserker fleets, declaring your Jihad on the target. Transferring ships to the Berserker to robotize worlds while the Apostle does an AP shares points for both types. Hopefully by this time, you have captured one or more HW's to supply more ships. If your timing is right, you will win. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? Can you believe it - no new questions? So I have one to tease you with. What is(?was) the highest score seen in Starweb? Watch out this one is a trick question. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP - is now available on the web. Look for our new MAPPER'S SECTION on the SEDG Web Page. http://www.accessv.com/~somnos/sedg.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE - THE CAPTAIN'S LOG 990808.0907-4 By Walt Schmidt walts@dorsai.org "That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms." - George Bernard Shaw Okay - so what is "not on equal terms? Let's look at another quote: "Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as... a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume... that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over. - Arthur Schopenhauer Can you say _I_N_F_O_R_M_A_T_I_O_N_ ? Of course you can! So then - can you say Organized-Information, or, better yet, Carefully-Reviewed- Organized-Information? Again, yes to both. But - do you practice what you can say? Ah, bet you that's a whole different story - and there in starts my log for this issue of SEDG. 'Cause you can bet the farm, that the majority of your fellow players are not - or at least by their actions don't seem to be - really studying their information. By the way, whether you keep your controls manually or automatedly - that's up to you. I use to use paper - I'm using automated tools now. We have worlds, paths and connections, we have keys to fight with and to transport needed metal, we have the need to build and we have the need to explore and defend. And while the rule-book is thorough, it doesn't delve too deeply into strategies. And neither am I - at least not in this journal. What I am going to address is _o_r_g_a_n_i_z_a_t_i_o_n_ and _r_e_v_e_i_w_. [OKAY Nemo - I was trying to bite my tongue and not say anything - but last journal you went hyphen-crazy - this time it's like you get a commission every time you use a macron - enough already!] [Alter - have you yet learned the finger you type a hyphen or a macron with is the third finger on the right hand, not the fourth - the pinkie - like you threatened me with breaking, last journal?] [BIG deal - I was including the thumb!] This, so you can ensure, as Schopenhauer (look him up - search YAHOO, learn something new) said, "...what you know has been abundantly thought over." We start with four simple categories: worlds, fleets, industry and metal. And three simple tools: a map, a list of worlds and a list of fleets. Depending on your druthers, you can load-up your map with a myriad of information - all based on what your current FBI turn-sheet includes. I use to do that, too. But found my own short-hand notes to be more of a bother than they were worth. Instead I depend heavily on my world and fleet lists. Don't forget Schopenhauer. We're trying to teach ourselves to review - to think over - the information we have in order to gain the advantage. So I have a world list, in world number order - and a fleet list in fleet number order. These lists include only my fleets and my worlds. As I am deciding on my orders, and after referring several times to my map (more like many times ), and as I decide the fate of each fleet, I place their final destination next to each fleet on the fleet list, AND, place the fleet number next to each world it's winding up at, on the world list. If I'm sending them to where no man has go..., er, where I haven't explored yet, I'll write that in, on the world list. I'm also keeping track of the metal I expect to have available the next turn, which includes the metal I'll be off-loading to my homeworld. At the same time I'm doing all this, I'm also deciding which fleets I'll build to - and which fleets will be transferring ships. There being no right way to do all this - I do it in world number order, leaving my homeworld for last. When done with all this - I've moved (or not moved as the case may be) every fleet, and with a quick look at my world-list, I can tell which world will have what (if any) fleets. I can also tell how many ships I have on each fleet, with Yet Another Quick Look [I'M interrupting Nemo here, as I'm sure he thinks everyone knows that YAHOO initially stood for Yet Another Hierarchal Officious Oracle. Well, if you didn't - you now do] [they knew - you just couldn't stand being quiet], this time to my fleet-list. Now comes the most important part - I go - go to work, get a bite to eat, get a cup of coffee, read my email, watch the sun rise and set - or in other words, I put the turn aside for at least a day. Then, with the map in front of me along with both my lists, I re-think why I sent, what I sent, to where I sent it, and why I didn't send something to wherever. I re-think the routes I took (or didn't take) to get there, and if these routes are as good as I think they could be. I usually wind up changing something (hey, this isn't an exam - where I rarely change my first impression) - many times it's the allocation of ships to my keys, or, the worlds I will be visiting next turn to stock up on metal for the turn thereafter. In other words - I do a "Schopenhauer" - and in doing so, have Yet Another Round Of Fun And Gam..., er, another round of serious campaign strategizing! Shai Dorsai ! Nemo ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRESPONDENCE >> Dear Elliot, thank you very much for your SEDG-mails, really great! Some years ago I played a 2-players-SW-game and I would like to do it again now. Each player has all 6 characters, one character twice - all in all 14 positions, 7 positions for each player. Is anybody interested to play such a game with me? If yes, please contact: Michael Hammerschmitt, micc@compuserve.com Thank you! Michael << I will put your letter in the next SEDG - I hope you find a partner. Gary Schaeffers did not like my math in Volume 12 of the SEDG regarding payback of an EB building industry enough that he phoned me. (Is it time for an unlisted phone number to avoid irate SEDG members :-)? Your reference to the industry an EB can build being paid back in 4 turns is strictly correct. I wrote: Total investment of ships was 170 ships BUT if the HW were never built up you would have only built in those 4 turns 120 ships. 71 industry will replace the 120 ships lost in just 1.7 turns. Apparently ignoring the turns that the industries were building was not a smart move on my part. Actually, payback of the 170 ships includes them and would take 6.7 turns. For a solitary built industry the building time is only 1 turn and recovery the remaining 3. If you keep building industry for sequential turns they become the most significant time involved where you lack the ships. Here is a more detailed examination of recovery times for an EB who wishes to build industry. Yes, compound interest does occur but the effect is not as dramatic as I originally indicated. Let me give you an example. If you had a world with 4 industry and let it build ships for 10 turns you would get 40 ships. But if you let it build only industry for 10 turns it would have 29 industry with 5 surplus I ships and would actually pay back the potential 40 ships lost in another 1.2 turns. It looks like this. Turn Industry I ships surplus 0 4 0 1 5 0 2 6 1 3 7 3 4 8 4 5 11 0 6 13 3 7 15 4 8 19 3 9 23 6 10 29 5 By the end, the industry built on top of the industry built exceeds the initial investment of 4 industry. That's how payback is faster than 4 turns BUT IT WAS PREDICATED ON THEIR BEING 10 TURNS TO BUILD WITH. I guess you need to include the turns the industry is working. Am I splitting hairs - would you say that 10 turns means you did take the 4 to replace each industry? The answer is still no. Compound interest still holds. If you only build industry with industry for 10 turns then if it takes 4 turns to pay back you should see payback at the 14th turn. We see payback at T11.2. Clearly there is a catch up effect. But the concern is that you don't have the ships for 10 turns leaving you vulnerable. Doesn't this count? Well, when you only build industry for 1 turn you are without the ships for the turn you built industry and the subsequent 3 turns (on the 4rth you have fully repayed the debt). That is the 4 turns of payback. In my 10 turn scenario you build industry for 10 turns and are paid back in 1 further turn. Clearly the longer you build industry the faster is payback but you are still without the ships for a while. So a more useful table might be how long is payback of the ships - so you can determine how long to keep building industry in a game. Same 4-industry world is considered here. Turn Industry I ships surplus Ships invested Payback turn Total turns invested 0 4 0 0 0 1 5 0 4 4 turns 4 2 6 1 8 3.5 (1 ships 4.5 surplus plus 2 per turn over the 4) 4 8 4 16 3 turns (4 7 industry surplus X 3 turns + 4 Ishps) You can see the time to recovery is shortening - instead of requiring 8 turns from the beginning of the experiment it requires only 7. 8 19 3 32 2 turns 10 10 29 5 40 1.2 11.2 Clearly the industry built at the end is being paid pack quicker (11.2 turns versus 14 turns). This is a more accurate table reflecting payback for building industry. My advice is if you can spare a world with 3-4 industry you can build a second HW in a game without damage and still have your HW production to keep up with the Jones'. Well, that's it for Volume 13. Don't be afraid to submit articles or suggestions. They don't have to be long. Address your correspondence to Elliot Hudes at somnos@compuserve.com