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Posted
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March 26, 2007, 2:58 pm
Lesson 16: Reconstruction
The birds wake you from your sound sleep at nine in the morning. You stumble over to your computer chair. You sign in and start to rub the sleep from your eyes. Your eyes are still bleary because you stayed up too late playing Dust Settles. However, even through the bleary vision, you know that red letters on a white background is not a good sign. After reading a half dozen battle reports, your eyes are wet for a different reason. Your camp is shattered. Now what?
It's very easy to get frustrated. However, getting upset is the absolute worst thing you can do. The first thing to remember is, "This happens to everyone, and it happens to someone every day." Your first gut reaction may be one of, "No one has ever gotten hit this bad." Yes, they have, and worse... much, much worse. More importantly, people have gotten hit worse and come back to win the game. In the first 26 days of the round, no matter how badly you get hit, it is only a temporary setback, especially if you have a good team.
So, the first step to coming back is assessing your resource situation. You need two things to start a comeback, turns and population. If you have enough population to send max recruiters and explorers, then you only need 200 turns to start your reconstruction. If you have fewer people and you can't get population aid from a teammate, then you will need anywhere from 250-400 turns to complete your reconstruction. You should only start your reconstruction with fewer than 200 turns, if you have enough population that you can actually stand up an army almost immediately.
You should not start a reconstruction effort without the clock time, turns, population, and other resources to finish it. A half completed reconstruction will leave you worse off than you were before. Sometimes you get sacked while rebuilding. There's nothing you can do about that. However, don't get your camp halfway restored, run out of turns, and go to bed.
So, you've got everything you need. What's first? If you were hit with a coordinated set of attacks including bombing runs, then likely you could start almost anywhere. Start with the end in mind. You want to end your reconstruction with at least as strong an army as the one you lost, probably stronger. Plan to potentially build more barracks, armories, and lots as part of your reconstruction. If you do not produce your own weapons, then buy what you can off the market to replace what you lost. If you use a weapons supplier, then place your order now to give him time to get your gear up before you are ready to stand up your new army.
Almost all reconstruction depends on two things. People and building supplies. You need people for recruiting, for rebuilding lost structures, and for building up a new army. However, for the first turn of reconstruction, recruiting is actually not the most important thing you will do, rebuilding your supply huts is.
Without the supply huts, you may not be able to store enough food even for your diminished population. You will also lose any resources in excess of 100% of storage. So, rebuild them first. If you don't have enough supplies to rebuild your huts, then man factories. You may need to balance manning factories and construction crews for a few rounds. However, this shouldn't require more than a couple of rounds.
If you are unable to build enough lots in the first turn of reconstruction to keep from losing resources, then store the excess in your merchant shop. If you don't have space in your shop or don't have a shop at all, then put them on the trade market at max price. You'll be able to recover them in 100 turns, about halfway through your reconstruction.
After only one or two rounds, you should start sending recruiters again. If you can start sending recruiters from the first reconstruction round, even better. Remember that you can starve your population for four days before they start leaving. If you can pay attention to it, you may even want to pull people off of food production in order to send them recruiting. Just remember to restaff your food production before you start losing population to starvation.
If you are using storm defenses, then after you are sending max recruiters, staff your factories up to the point where you are protected from any storms. Then, rebuild your walls, barbed wire, and guard posts and train a militia. If you've got spare men, then you can consider training a 500 man army. Down in the ranks and early in the game, people sometimes send a 50 man attack at you to see if a camp is undefended. At 500 men, a 50 man attack doesn't exceed the 10% threshold required. However, your would-be attacker doesn't know whether you have 500 men, 500k men, or 5 million men in your army. Also, 500 men is usually a trivial cost. If you get sacked because they sent a real army, then it's not too much productivity wasted.
This is one time when the Cash is King strategy really helps. Once you are sending max recruiters and explorers, every person you find can go into factories. Once all of your factories are staffed, then start rebuilding your other lost structures. For those not using Cash is King, slowly ramp up your staffing of the food and disposables production as needed.
As soon as your camp has been restored to basic sustainability, then immediately start putting people back into labs. Try not to spend more than about 20 turns without at least some minimal lab activity. Turns lost without research is research that will never be recovered.
Once your camp is sending max recruiters and explorers, is sustainable in all resources, and is making good progress on research again, then it is time to look to your defense. Your previous army got sacked. Unless they got sacked for some unusual, hard to reproduce circumstance, the same size army will probably get sacked again. Most armies are defeated because they are too small. Plan to have a larger army than the one you lost. If you build your own vehicles, then start staffing the garages and rebuilding your vehicles. As soon as possible, start adding people to your army. Usually, I will pull my people from my factories and let my CEP diminish for a while in order to stand up an army at least 50% of the size of the army that I lost.
Before you stand up a new army, make sure you have armaments for them. Those armaments should be at least as good as the ones you lost. If you had riflemen on the front line and got sacked by a camp with rail guns, why would you put more riflemen on defense? Get railguns instead. Have the weapons in camp before your army is trained. Don't have the weapons? Then don't stand up the army.
Experienced players target armies that were just created for two reasons. One, the armies are going to be Green unless the alliance has the Coercion mastery. Two, most camps stand up their armies and then go looking for weapons. So, if you can hit them in the first few minutes, there's a good chance that the army will be underarmed and maybe even completely unarmed. If someone decides to go after your young, inexperienced army, make sure they have nice, bright, shiny new weapons to try out on the attackers.
In addition to weapons, your new army needs officers. If you only had enough officers for the army that was defeated, then you have no officers now. If you ever find yourself in that situation, then before you stand up your entire army, train enough enlisted men to become officers and immediately promote them. That way, your officers precede your enlisted men.
However the best way to address this happens before your army is ever even defeated. Have more officers than you need, lots more. I train my officers to handle the next order of magnitude sized army. That means, when I train my first 1,000 men, I have enough officers for 10,000. When I hit 5,000 men, I train enough officers to cover a 100,000 man army. So, I never have less than twice the number of officers that I need. That way, I can always easily scale my army. Also, if I lose those 5,000 men and their officers, then I will still have enough officers to stand up a 10,000 man army without having to worry about mass confusion in the ranks.
Having an army is not enough to provide for an effective defense. You must have an effective army. That is your goal for reconstruction. Once you have completed that, you are now back to building up for your next set of goals. One last reminder about cooldown, no one can attack you. Cooldown lasts for 108 turns. If you already had 100 turns banked when you went into cooldown, then that's enough to rebuild under no threat. By the time you come out, you should be able to restart your nuke and gold production. However, if you are Army path, then cooldown is especially good for you. You can build mechs during cooldown and be ready to use them the moment you come out. As counterintuitive as it sounds, it's quite nice being blue.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 26, 2007, 4:19 pm
Lesson 17: Special Ops
Like air raids, special ops are a disruptive, tactical tool, not a replacement for full scale army attacks. If you have the Ingenuity mastery for your alliance, then you have a decent chance of winning a special ops mission versus an opponent with ops defenses. Otherwise, the effects are likely to be minimal. Defenses against special ops, walls, barbed wire, guard posts, militia, and light posts, are all easy to construct in sufficient quantity that almost all camps will almost always be 100% in each category. Generally there are three reasons to run a special ops mission: defensive disruption and intel, population control, and focus path disruption.
Disrupting and reconnoitering an enemy's defense is usually only achievable by someone with a very high Ingenuity. However, the benefits are potentially high. A successful recon mission can tell you how many of what kinds of weapons and vehicles a camp has. It can also tell you whether the camp has sufficient, borderline, or insufficient officers for its enlisted men. Both of these items cannot be learned through paid spies, and that makes them particularly valuable information. In the case of borderline officers, a subsequent officer assasination mission can make a huge difference in the number of soldiers lost during a ground attack.
The poison crops and poison water ops are usually best run after a camp has been sacked to allow for the greatest effect. These methods of population control can also destroy food production centers which may need to be rebuilt. However, don't run these ops against a Goofball, who is likely to be buying all of his food from the Auto-exchange. Instead, run the Factory sabotage ops against a Goofball. It doesn't control the population, but it will disrupt both his civilian and military efforts.
The focus path ops will not change the tide overnight. However, the grinding effects of many people running ops against a single target can dramatically slow that camp's growth. It will not stop it, and it will not even really slow it over a short run. However, over the course of several days, you can easily eliminate a significant percentage of a camp's focus production. Army attacks are more effective, but ops are cheap to replace. If they aren't doing something else, send them out against an enemy camp. Make them work for their food.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 26, 2007, 5:01 pm
Lesson 18: Spies
There are only three ways that a player with money can gain an advantage over a player without: buying CEP, buying a Scribe, and buying spies. Of these, only one will help you in battle, the spy. You can have up to ten of these little jewels. Here is a sample spy report for those people who haven't seen one:
Camp: Baldr
Last Login: February 24, 2007, 10:24 am
Last Active: February 24, 2007, 10:25 am
Number of Logins: 30
Score: 51137558.114895
Alliance: Asgaard Class: Goofball
Militia: 8725
Army: 1024745
Defense Type: Forward Concetration
Rations: 1
Research Report
Camp: Baldr ()
Research Bonus: No
Basic Labs: 100000 (100000)
Total Basic: 307.655
Type Complete
Recreation 10.017
Gardening 1
Coercion 10.167
Ingenuity 10.6
Tracking 10.151
Architecture 10.369
Housing 10.195
Recycling 10.099
Marketing 10.111
Time Management 5.289
Domestication 0
Power Generation 5.324
Mechanical Engineering 75.011
Vehicle Transport 20.123
Recycler Prospecting 1
Weapon Design 50.579
Wall Strength 1
Military Tactics 63.621
Medical Technology 1
Food Preservation 0
Spatial Logic 1
Communications 1
Waste Management 5.078
Advanced Labs: 0 (0)
Total Advanced: 0
Type Complete
High Explosives 0
Uranium Extraction 0
Isotope Gathering 0
Subatomic Structure 0
Reaction Stability 0
Propulsion 0
Stability 0
Automated Trajectory Calculations 0
Ballistics 0
Aerodynamics 0
Last 30 Logins
1 February 25, 2007, 8:12 pm
2 February 24, 2007, 6:54 pm
3 February 24, 2007, 6:47 pm
4 February 21, 2007, 9:14 pm
5 February 21, 2007, 12:15 pm
6 February 20, 2007, 7:42 pm
7 February 20, 2007, 4:47 pm
8 February 19, 2007, 2:55 pm
9 February 16, 2007, 7:07 pm
10 February 15, 2007, 7:04 am
11 February 14, 2007, 11:22 pm
12 February 14, 2007, 9:47 pm
13 February 13, 2007, 5:17 pm
14 February 13, 2007, 3:52 pm
15 February 13, 2007, 3:37 pm
16 February 13, 2007, 10:15 am
17 February 10, 2007, 4:57 pm
18 February 9, 2007, 11:43 am
19 February 7, 2007, 12:06 pm
20 February 6, 2007, 4:05 pm
21 February 5, 2007, 10:13 am
22 February 4, 2007, 5:42 pm
23 February 4, 2007, 1:14 am
24 February 3, 2007, 6:36 pm
25 February 3, 2007, 6:29 pm
26 February 1, 2007, 6:39 pm
27 February 1, 2007, 6:35 pm
28 February 1, 2007, 6:18 pm
29 February 1, 2007, 12:00 pm
If you haven't seen several very juicy pieces of information already, then allow me to point out a few.
His last login and last active are nearly identical. That means that he probably didn't do anything the last time he signed in. He was just checking in.
It's near the end of the round, and he's logged in 30 times. That means he basically logs in only once a day.
He's short on militia. He may not have enough militia to cover all of his guard posts. Thus he may be open to special ops.
His army is at 1mil, but you don't know how many officers he has. If you have a 2mil man army and equivalent weapons technology, then you can probably safely attack him.
He's got at least 400k civilians working in labs. So, he probably isn't under a great deal of civilian pressure at the moment. He could probably use a good sacking. Also, with only 100k labs going as Goofball, he's gaining but he's basically done with the research this round. He's more or less coasting on research.
Most of his research topics are only to 10. He doesn't have farms, but that means that he understands that farms are inefficient. So, he's probably not a newbie. He didn't bother with any of the second level research that isn't critical, another hint that he's no newbie.
His Mechanical Engineering is 75. His Weapons Design is 50. His Military Tactics is 63.6. Since his Military Tactics is not at a natural stopping place, it's fair to assume that this is what he is working on. Also, this gives him heavy mechs as well as heavy weapons and rail guns. He's got the highest level of weapons technology available to produce. So, in order to take him, you will definitely need equivalent weapons technology and a significantly larger army. A quick check of his mech score in the statistics page will also allow you to estimate how many mechs he can have on his defensive line.
Finally, his logon history tells you that he is on all the time in the afternoon, but almost never in the morning. If you want to plan a coordinated attack against him, then get your team together in the early morning.
If you are on the first page, assume that you have at least one alliance who has a spy looking at you. If you are in the top 10, assume every other alliance on the first page has a spy looking at you. Once you know that your opponents have this information, you can manipulate it to suit your own ends. The best double agent is the one who doesn't realize that he is a double agent.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 26, 2007, 5:26 pm
Lesson 19: SGDSLive!
SGDSLive... Watch it!
While there are only two pages in SGDSLive, both are of very high value. First, the main page is the only place where you can see everyone's score without putting that little asterisk next to your name. Want to catch someone moving up the ranks while you are "away"? Then sit back and refresh that page every few minutes. However, the real jewel is the real-time page.
On the real-time page, you will find two very useful sources of information, the leaderboard and the "Last Announcements" scroll at the bottom. The leaderboard is the only place you can find who has the most population, the most land, the most money, and the most victory score. If there is a population farm in your near vicinity who also happens to be on that leaderboard, then that person is a very high value target. If you see someone who has a ton of land, then you should be aware that he will recover his population faster than you think after an attack. If someone has a ton of money, then remember that he can run a deficit on all his other activities for a while in order to maximize his army or crank out a ton of mechs. If someone has the highest victory score, then that person is susceptible to a larger drop in score, if he gets sacked.
The "Last Announcements" scroll shows current in game activity on ground battles, air raids, and special ops missions. Because the notifications stay in the scroll window, you can scroll back and see who was doing what and when. The information on special ops is especially important since those are not listed anywhere in the game. Also, while you can see the results of a particular person, it would take a lot of work to identify from the battle results pages who attacked whom and who won. However, here it is all listed for you. You can see that the guy next to you attacked the guy ahead of you and lost. The Last Announcements makes for excellent information for an opportunistic camp.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 26, 2007, 5:48 pm
Lesson 20: Human Intelligence
Sometimes the best source of information on an enemy doesn't come from the game. It comes from another camp or even the enemy himself. This is a social game. Use your social skills. Make friends in enemy alliances. Information is an asset. Buy it using other commodities you have that your friend really needs right now. Enemies are even better sources of information than friends.
Talk to your enemies via private messages. Don't overstep the bounds of common decency. Don't do something illegal, like threatening someone personally. However, taunting is acceptable. Exchanges like this can be very useful:
"Dude, your army sucks. Get some better weapons."
"Bring it, punk. I'll have rails next time. Your riflemen are going down."
However, the very best place to get this kind of information is in the IRC channel. The channel is #survival-guide on the irc.slashnet.org network. Most of the people on the first page check in there on a regular basis. Taunting jibes and a little bit of trash talking occurs frequently. Useful information can be gleaned not only by what people say in the channel but also what they don't say. Even if you don't learn anything useful in the current tactical situation, you learn more about that player, and that can help you in the future. This is a team-based player versus player game, and the social interaction is key. Join us and participate.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 4:55 pm
Lesson 22: Coordinated Assaults
Some team aspects of this game are generic. We share masteries with everyone on our team and likely resources, too. However, at certain times players act in a coordinated fashion against other players. This is where the team aspect of the game becomes much more important. All of these strategies assume two attackers versus one target, but certainly more can play, too. Also, all of these strategies need to be coordinated in real-time. The delay between the action of one camp and another should be a matter of a couple of minutes at most.
Occasionally, what is impossible with one camp is possible with two. Frequently, the difficult can be made trivial through cooperation. Certainly, it is safer to attack and move in groups. Some different types of group assaults are: hit-cleanup, set-spike, and raid-sack.
Hit-cleanup is a basic strategy where one attacker hits the target hard enough to reduce its defenses to the point where a second attacker can complete the sack. Use this strategy any time that the two attackers cannot individually sack the target. The first attacker will take a loss and will lose points for that in addition to the loss of the army. So, that camp should ideally be in a good position to recover from the loss. Also, when the second attacker finishes the target off, the first attacker should get as many hits in as possible against the now undefended target to recover as much score as possible.
Set-spike is a variant of the hit-cleanup strategy where one attacker hits with just enough force to bump the target into range of a significantly stronger attacker. Use this strategy any time that one attacker has a strong military but too high of a score to attack the target and the other attacker cannot sack the target on his own. With a set-spike, it is generally better to send in the "set" attack using an unarmed army. The attacker with the higher score is usually in a better position to replace his lost weapons, especially against a significantly weaker opponent. Alternatively, if you have old weapons on hand, then send them in with stuff you still have in your armory but would never use in normal combat.
Raid-sack is a team-based version of the strategy of using air raids to scramble defenses. Against a camp with a strong aerial defense, you can lose an entire attacking force, even if you do significant damage to the target. Frequently, it would take so long to recover from that loss that you risk the target recovering. Then, a sole attacker would take further losses against the reduced but probably not eliminated defensive army. So, this strategy distributes the losses and shortens the time that the target can recover between attacks. The first attacker sends in a heavy fighter contingent with his bombers; 10:1 is a good ratio of fighters to bombers. If the first attacker deals sufficient damage, then the second attacker can either attack or hang around to help defend the first attacker until he recovers. If the second attacker chooses to attack, he can either send in an air raid against the hopefully now defenseless target or can go right into a ground assault, depending on the objectives and damage done during the first air raid.
There is plenty of room to build new team based strategies that haven't been documented here. These are simply examples of how two camps can work together. Hopefully, more group strategies will emerge that differentiate the integrated teams from the loose confederations of opportunistic individualists.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 5:47 pm
Lesson 22: Manipulating Score
Score is very important throughout the entire round. Your score at the end determines what trophies you may receive, but your score determines your threats, your opportunities, and affects your growth throughout the entire round. While it may seem strange, score is a resource that can be manipulated within certain limits.
Score is one dimensional; you can only move it up or down. You can move it up or down to move out of range of would-be threats. You can do the same to move into range of camps. In general, the way to move score is to identify the fluid aspects of a camp that give a high amount score per unit. The most fluid resources in a camp that give a significant enough amount of score to greatly affect your attack range are militia, army, officers, and mechs. Militia each give 1 point. Army each give 2. Officers give 3. Mechs give 1 for lights, 2 for mediums, and 5 for heavies.
Nukes and gold bars can not be moved, not even destroyed, and militia, army, and officers are resources that Army path camps already have the infrastructure to manipulate. So, Army camps have an advantage in this aspect of the game. The easiest way for an Army camp to manipulate score is to sell some mechs to allied camps who have the store space to relist the mechs in their stores for purchase later. So, when assessing your possible threats, don't consider just who is actually in your range, but also pay close attention to camps who are outside your range but have the tools to flex their scores into your range.
Camps who have an aerial target just above you present a significant risk. When a camp sends out an aerial assault, it loses all of the score associated with the army it sent the turn that the attack was sent. The next turn, when the army returns, the camp gets no more than half of that score back. So, a 1mil man army sent on an air raid can leave a camp with 1mil points less in only two turns without affecting the army at all. If losing 1mil score would put that camp in range of you, then you could be open to attack.
If you are reviewing the spy report on a camp and you notice that the camp's score suddenly went up by 1mil points and its army went down from 3mil men to only 2mil, then don't assume that you can close that gap. That camp's effective score has not changed. If you proceed into range of the camp's previous score, you may find yourself being attacked by the full 3mil army. What that camp did was promote 1mil of its enlisted men to officers. Once the promotion was complete, the camp used another five turns to allow score trending to take effect. In order to attack you, all the camp had to do was bust those extra 1mil officers down to enlisted men and use five turns, instant 3mil man army.
Promoting an excessively large number of officers is expensive; it costs 10 CEP per man plus 10 turns to train plus five turns to trend up plus another five turns to trend down. However, especially late in the game, that's a price many camps can pay. You can do something similar with militia. In that case, it only takes three turns to gain the score and an additional five turns for it to trend in. The downside to using militia is that it shows up on spy reports. The upside to using militia is that it doesn't affect your army's competency or your morale to stuff a bunch of extra people into the militia for three turns. In addition to using score dropping to open up new opportunities, you can manipulate your score higher to chase after camps who have raced ahead without sufficient army to defend themselves.
At the end of a round, you can also manipulate your score to get just a little bit higher than you were before. That can make the difference between a first and a third place trophy in some cases. My last few turns of a round, I dump everyone except teachers, medical staff, and incinerator staff into the army, morale be damned. I do make sure that I have some armaments for them all, even if just level 2 weapons, and I adjust my defense page. If I run out of barrack space, then I train the extra people into militia. Then, I train the classroom staff into militia, leaving only medical and incinerator staff. Then, I burn 5 turns to allow trending to take effect. Hopefully, those are the last 5 turns I will earn for the round. I sign off, watch SGDSLive, and wait for the trophies to be awarded.
Score manipulation strategies tend to be the ones held most secret. So, you may have to investigate other strategies as you learn about them or come up with your own.
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PS - Yes, I know that the previous Lesson was titled Lesson 22: Coordinated Assaults, but it should have been Lesson 21.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 6:20 pm
Lesson 23: Protecting Assets
Everything in your camp is an asset. However, almost everything is subject to being destroyed by an enemy. However, thankfully, there are ways to protect your assets. CEP and ore do not need protection; they are invulnerable to attack. Anything that can be sold on the market can be protected, and people can be protected.
There are two ways of protecting people and a third way that everyone thinks of but doesn't work. If you send a batch of recruiters and explorers out on a mission for five days but end only one turn, what happens if you are attacked? Sadly for them, those people are subject to death along with nearly everyone else in your camp. If more people are killed than who actually are in your camp at the time, then those extra deaths are carried into your explorers and recruiters. However, good people that they are, their ghosts faithfully fulfill the tasks assigned to them. After bringing in their reports of new land, crates of salvaged food, and new recruits, their phantoms join their ancestors in that great thermonuclear wasteland in the sky.
The only people not subject to death are army who are away on a mission and officers who are not needed for defensive duty. If your army is merely queued for an assault but you haven't ended that first turn, then they haven't left the camp, yet. Once you send them, you cannot recall them. However, you don't have to end enough turns to bring them home after they sack their target. Replacement army won't train while they are away. So, the only defense your camp has is the army and militia left behind. Still, the army that is away is invulnerable until you end enough turns to bring them home.
Officers are cowards. If you only need 1000 captains to man a defense but you have 5000 captains trained, the other 4000 captains hide in some super-secret bunker along with 10% of your population, probably their wives, children, mistresses, and favorite cooks. Those extra captains are immune from any form of combat save officer assassinations. I generally keep an equivalent of max recruiters and explorers tucked away as extra captains. I lose their productivity, but if I am ever sacked into near oblivion, then I will still have enough people to send max recruiters and explorers even without needing an infusion from a population farm to get me started.
Any items you have for sale at the NEC, either in your shop or on the Trade Market, are immune from combat. Obviously, anything you put up for sale on the Trade Market can be bought by anyone except an ally. However, if you put it up at max price and an enemy buys it, then you just turned a nice profit. You should have enough CEPs to turn around and buy what you need. You'll only be able to recall whats on the Trade Market after 100 turns. So, you can stash some stuff there while you are working on other activities and burning through 100 turns. Then, it'll be available when you need it. If you worry about someone else buying it, even at max price, then you can put it into your store and just not put it up for sale. Obviously this clogs your store and you can only hold limited quantities, but it is immediately available in exactly the quantities you need when you start your recovery.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 7:12 pm
Lesson 24: Alliance Structures
Each alliance is as unique as the combination of individuals of which is is constructed, and each alliance is organized uniquely. However, some organizational patterns are more common than others, and some are more effective than others. Effective does not mean better. Effective just means that it wins more often.
The most effective alliance structure that I have seen amounts to something we all learned in our social history classes back in grade school. The first thing ancient societies did, even before they had actually evolved into modern humans, was to train individuals in specialized areas and divide labor amongst the tribe, pack, clan, whatever. Some portion of the tribe raises the children (population farm). Some portion of the tribe makes trinkets for trade (CEP farm). Some portion of the tribe hunts (weapons and vehicle manufacturers). Some portion of the tribe learns useful skills (mastery researchers). If you're too old to remember it, it's called Specialization and Division of Labor.
I recommend the following specific structure:
1.) one Goofball who races for vehicles, tanks first and then mechs
2.) one Nerd who races for weapons, rails first and then mechs
3.) one Goofball who generates vast sums of CEP
4.) two Populars who race each other for the Vehicle Transportation mastery and eventually start sending excess population to the other camps
5.) one Nerd who races for the Power Generation mastery and will eventually go Nuke
6.) one Nerd who races for the Tracking mastery
7.) one Nerd who races for the Recycler Prospecting mastery
8.) one Nerd who races for the Domestication mastery
That leaves one camp remaining who can go for one of the minor masteries as needed. Only three camps have their focus path specified by their role. However, in general it is better to have no more than two Econ path and two Nuke path camps in any one alliance. Otherwise competition for gold and population can cause problems. The other six camps should all go Army path. Initially, four of those six must rely on the weapons and vehicles produced by their teammates while they work on the masteries. However, after achieving those team goals, they should look to their own weapons and vehicle production. The reason for assigning Power Generation to a Nuke path camp is to give that camp the best shot at defending its nukes with Patriot missiles.
The risk to this model is that it can be brittle. It requires a lot of pre-round planning and competent execution during the round. If any one camp gives up on the team or the game, then it greatly affects the entire team. Also, since not everyone is completely self-sufficient, an aware strategist can target specific camps to shutdown certain types of activities within the entire alliance. This model is also heavily dependent upon the ability to funnel population to needed camps. An alliance using this model must win the Escort Army dominance war, or it will likely fall from being unable to move resources.
While this has been a successful organizational scheme, it is not the only one. One variant is the half-Musketeer model in which there is exactly one Econ or Nuke path camp. The focus of everyone else in the alliance is on protecting that camp and feeding it resources to allow that camp to focus solely on its focus path. "All for one..." The weakness of this model is that it depends upon that one person to drive the overall success. That one person has to be one of the best players in the game and has to be really on the ball at all times.
Another alliance model is the completely decentralized model. While they might work together and share masteries, they may not share any other resources. Each member is responsible for his own security and success. The benefit of this model is that it is very resistant to having even a large number of its members under near constant pressure. The downside is that it is not as efficient since almost everyone is doubling up on nearly every type of resource.
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 7:42 pm
Lesson 25: Planning the End Game
The early game is about establishing the team and the fundamentals of camp sustainability and defensibility. The mid game is about establishing the team's position and achieving focus paths. The end game is about Winning.
The end game occurs in the last 72 hours of the round. That is the time at which you either have it or you don't. You either have turns stored, or you don't. You either have people, or you don't. You either have the land you need, or you don't. You either have focus, or you don't. Your either have enough research to build four nukes at once, or you don't. You either have escort army dominance, or you don't. You either have position, or you don't. This late in the round, it is too late to try to achieve these goals. If you achieve them in the last 72 hours of the game, they are unlikely to strategically affect the game.
How you plan the end game depends greatly on whether you are on top or coming from behind. If you are on top, then your goal is to stay on top. You are totally on defensive and risk taking is not a good idea. Hopefully at this point, your alliance has established a perimeter of Army camps between the alliance's Econ and Nuke pathers and the rest of the world who wants to unseat them. The Econ and Nuke pathers should try to get their score as high as possible. Their goal is to shoot for the moon. In order to do that, they should go into the end game with lots of turns, high populations, and all the resources they need, including land and ore. During the end game, they should steadily burn through all of their turns keeping some in reserve in case the Army perimeter breaks down.
The Army pathers' goal is to prevent anyone from getting past. They should go into the end game with a full army, full lots, and as much distance between them and the Econ and Nuke pathers as possible. A defeated Army camp is a good springboard up to the Econ and Nuke pathers. Once an enemy gets up there, the Army pathers are unlikely to be able to assist. During the end game, they should maintain the perimeter while burning as few turns as possible until the last couple of hours. In the last hour or so, large movements are unlikely. At that time, the Army pathers can burn all their turns to try to gain as much score as possible.
If you are an Army pather whose alliance is coming from behind, then you are trying to burst through the perimeter of the top alliance and clear the way for your own Econ pathers to try to make their way up into the top ranks. At this time, it is unlikely that a Nuke pather will be able to make a significant run. There just isn't enough turns, usually. However, a Nuke camp that can build four at once and has 15mil nuke factory workers can successfully make that run, building a few thousand nukes in only a few hours. However, the Econ and Nuke pathers must wait for the Army pathers to clear their way. There is not enough time to rebuild populations this late in the round.
Planning for the end game should actually happen about day 20 to give the alliance enough time to hit population, turn, research, and resource goals. However, remember that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Every alliance has a plan to get to the top, even if it is fractured and disorganized. Keep your plan flexible. While strategically little usually changes during the last 72 hours, tactically there are always surprises.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 8:06 pm
Lesson 26: Planning the Next Round
So, this round is almost done. How did you do? Did you achieve your goals? What mistakes did you make? What can you improve? This is a time of self-reflection. Review your plan for this past round and change it.
This is also a time of recruitment. If you are an alliance leader or want to be, then you should start recruiting new members starting no later than day 21. A lot of people bail on the last few days of the round. Don't wait to announce your intentions until late. Someone may want to stick around and try out your new idea.
If you want to be a member of an established alliance, then watch for their announcements for next round. Some will reform, and others may dissolve. Most alliances operate on a first come, first served basis after applying some usually fairly generous filtering rules.
Once you've been accepted by an alliance, you will probably be assigned a role to play, some goal to achieve for the sake of the team. That goal should factor heavily into your plan for next round, and you should have a plan. It should be detailed. You have up to three days of no SG:DS to do nothing but work on this plan. Ok, so you probably have to work, go to class, eat, sleep, etc. However, now that the round is over, you should have more free time. Use a little of it to create a detailed plan. What does a detailed plan look like? Funny you should ask, here's the first part of a generic version of mine:
*** Win Condition
Overwhelming concentration of mechs yielding the highest victory score
*** Basic Philosophy
Accumulate scarce resources early (land, people)
Get ahead and stay ahead
Hunt, Hunt, and then Hunt again
*** Basic Strategy
Military
Cash is King
Keep 800,000 people protected as captains
*** Detailed Strategy
Class: Goofball
Terrain: Forest
Focus: Army
Dawn of Man Hunt (40 research):
Use mini-game to find 14 people (+4 starting): 1 recruiters, 1 explorers, 6 laboratory, 5 shelter 3, 4 minters, 1 messenger
Buy Minting License
Build Laboratory
Learn Marketing to 10
Learn Ingenuity to 10
Learn Architecture to 10
Build Weather Station
Build Small Generator
Build Factory
Turn on Weather Defenses
Learn Recreation to 10
Build Recreation Facility
Build Barrack
Build Classroom
Train Army
Train Militia
Build Pillbox
Build Trench
Build Hairpin
Build Wall
Build Guard Post
Hunt and Rebuild
Stone Age Hunt (65 research):
Learn Tracking to 10
Build Fuel Refinery
Build Garage
Build Lot
Build Buses
Build Communications Facility
Open Alliance
Build Communications Relay
Learn Mechanical Engineering to 5
Learn Weapon Design to 10
Sell Minting License
Build Swords and Bows
Build Light Post
Hunt, Ops, and Rebuild
WWI Age Hunt (105 research):
Learn Vehicle Transportation to 10
Learn Power Generation to 10
Build Gas Generator
Learn Weapon Design to 20
Build Pistols and Rifles
Hunt, Ops, and Rebuild
This is my plan, and it will not work for everyone. Pick a format that makes sense to you. The point is to have a plan and improve it every round.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 8:16 pm
Lesson 27: Winning
If you achieved your win condition or your goals, then you won. I congratulate you, even if no one else recognizes it. Even if it never shows up on a trophy list, you should feel very good about that accomplishment. The ability set a goal and achieve it is unfortunately a little too uncommon.
Winning means very different things to very different people. Try to remember that not everyone is playing the same game as you. Yes, we all play the same physical game, but not everyone is playing for the same reasons. The goal you achieved is largely uninteresting to someone else. Some goals are ones that most people want, but there is no goal that everyone wants to achieve. So, definitely celebrate your victory, and join in the celebration of others, even if you don't understand why.
Also, make sure you celebrate your team. Most people participate in the social aspects of this game and the team. Even if your team didn't achieve every goal you wish that it had, it is nearly certain that you did more together than you could have done apart. Remember to appreciate and celebrate your team.
If you placed first in some category, then you have an especially important obligation to celebrate your team. No one gets first in any category without the support of their team. Someone in your team gave up something so that you could have that trophy. Make sure they know that you appreciate it.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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March 27, 2007, 8:27 pm
Lesson 28: Losing
Congratulations, you lost! In very few cases does anyone in a highly competitive environment achieve all of their goals and have an unmarred success. When it does happen, it's boring. Each round continues to educate the players who participate, even the veterans.
For most people, this game is about the point score, and there is only one winner per month. That means there is an awful lot of losers. To date, I have never won a round. I have been losing this game for eight months now, and my wife thinks I'm crazy to keep playing.
I do keep playing though, and each round is more interesting and engaging than the last. Each round I turn one disadvantage into an advantage, and I get better. I hope these Lessons help you to do the same.
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Experientia Docet
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Posted
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June 29, 2007, 5:45 pm
Corrections:
Lesson 2: Loki's Gambit
Goofballs only start with three land, and one is already occupied by a Shelter Level 1. Because the shelter is occupied, you cannot queue it for demolition. So, you must either build your Shelter Level 3 or your Laboratory on turn 1, and the other on turn 2. I recommend building the Shelter Level 3 first, and then building the Laboratory on the second turn.
As of round 19, there are now three maps in the mini-game that have a survivor.
"So after learning each of the above topics to 40" should read "So after learning each of the above topics to 10". 40 is an awfully high value for all of those in the early game.
Lesson 4: Busses
"If you are sending 20 times circumference recruiters and explorers, then you will need to research Vehicle Transportation to 37." should read "If you are sending 20 times circumference recruiters and explorers, then you will need to research Vehicle Transportation to 40."
Lesson 8: Evaluating Weapons and Vehicles
Some of the examples are incorrect in that they assume that the defenders will strike first in all cases. That's not actually correct. The defender strikes first for any given weapon type, and the weapons strike in order from top to bottom as listed on the Defense page. For example, if an attacker has pistols, rifles, and tanks and the defender has swords, rifles, and heavy mechs, then the order of fire will be (assuming everyone is in range): defender's swords, attacker's pistols, defender's rifles, attacker's rifles, attacker's tanks, and defender's heavy mechs.
This is important because it means that heavy mechs on defense might not ever get a chance to fire, if an overwhelming number of attacking tanks is sent. Ergo, an attacking army that has at least five times greater numbers than the defenders can use a significantly lower level of weapons tech and still come out not only victorious but also having taken only minimal losses.
Lesson 9: Offensive Military
The last instruction in sending an attack, "On the defense page, reset your defensive weapon configurations." apparently needs to be: "ON THE DEFENSE PAGE, RESET YOUR DEFENSIVE WEAPON CONFIGURATIONS." If i could have set the font size to 24, then I would have done that, too.
Lesson 15: Defensive Structures
With the change to officers, officer assassination can now turn the tide of a battle. So, it is becoming more common to send several waves of ops against a target to wear down the militia and kill as many officers as possible. So, with that change, I suggest going to 20k militia to keep from having less than 100% militia coverage.
Lesson 16: Reconstruction
You can no longer stand up officers in advance of the army, and with the cap on officers at twice what your current size requires, you will almost assuredly need to train some as you rebuild your army. One way to do this is to train up your army before you actually need it, and then queue your officer training. Once the officers are queued, bust down the extra enlisted men back to civilians to continue the rest of your reconstruction. Just make sure to keep enough enlisted men in the army to cover the officers you are trying to train. Otherwise, at the end of the training you get no officers. This does mean you have to pay twice for your army. However, the period of time in which you have an army in "mass confusion" is very small, between when you end the last turn of army training and bust down the army (after queueing the officers, of course).
Lesson 22: Manipulating Score
A few examples here talk about a camp gaining score the turn that they return from a battle/air raid or the turn they complete training. That is not actually the case. Score does not start to gain for the returned/new army until the next turn. This is very important for using air raids to drop score. With a large number of targets, a player can maintain a low score for a long time using air raids.
Hiding army as officers and then busting them back down to score drop no longer works due to the change made to cap the number of officers.
Lesson 23: Protecting Assets
Hiding max recruiters and explorers as officers no long works due to the change made to cap the number of officers.
Lesson 28: Losing
Thanks to the other members of RaNDA, I finally won a round! Woo hoo! Still, I've lost many more rounds than I have won. :)
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Experientia Docet
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