Oil and Uranium - Page 2

War4ever · May 25, 2003, 00:12

Straybow, two empires refers to settling both non sets 20 squares apart, there for setting up two different empries to build from....

frustrating in mp b/c the corruption holds you back, but if you have the cash or production you can churn sets out and conceivably claim more land

Straybow · May 26, 2003, 21:23

Of course, it takes you about 20 turns to get that second city settled unless you have both wandering in opposite directions, searching for specials sites…

Having seen the competitiveness between you MPers, it sounds like quite a risk.

rah · May 27, 2003, 08:31

Yes, splitting settlers on the opening is not always a good thing. But if you're on a river that runs east-west in the middle of a special or hut band, it can happen. They get 10 squares apart quickly and still nothing so you're forced to spread them a bit more. Yes the corruption is awful, but if you've gotten a few bucks from huts, it can still work. If you make it work, you've claimed a lot of land. If you do it right, you can spread out from both cities away from the middle of them, and it will turn into a great barb breeding ground that can generate much cash from kings.

RAH

War4ever · May 27, 2003, 14:49

of course, the flip side is you screw up, get bad techs , end up by a neighbor , lose on of the cities and call it a night

but usually when i build late i get a nomad and/or tribe to make up for things

solo · May 27, 2003, 15:05

War4ever,

Sorry in the delay responding to your questions, as I was away for the holidays. It seems SCG has provided good answers to them anyways, but I do have a few more comments:

1) A city's wildcards almost always appear, since they have to be placed in the middle position of their respective lists whenever they do not appear on either list due to their natural supply and demand. The only exception is when a wildcard happens to have the right supply or demand quotient to make it appear in the middle position of the other wildcard's list. Then if the other wildcard is expressed as a wildcard, it will cover up the first one. This is kind of subtle, and it might to be clearer to explain with an example:

Suppose a city has a supply wildcard of coal and a demand wildcard of gems. First supply and demand quotients are calculated for all commodities and the three highest on the supply and demand side are put on their lists. Suppose they are as follows for this city:

Supply Hides, Beads, Silver
Demand Wine, Coal, Copper

In this case the natural demand for coal (which is also the supply wildcard), was high enough to put it on the demand list, but wildcards are applied last to get the final list seen by players in the game. Since coal does appear already, it will not function as a wildcard, so the supply list is not changed. However, gems does not appear on either list, so it must be used in its function as the demand wildcard, and ends up covering coal in the middle position of the demand list. The final lists are:

Supply Hides, Beads, Silver
Demand Wine, Gems, Copper

From this example you can see that the chances of a wildcard not appearing somewhere on its city's lists are very slim.

2) Much of the time the wildcarding of a commodity is just about the only way to get it to appear on supply or demand lists, so I find it desirable to have them as part of the game, although sometimes they may cover up the supply or demand of a commodity I would prefer to trade. In these cases, there is usually something that can be done to manipulate the position of non-wildcard commodities in order to get them to appear from underneath the wildcard. City growth and terraforming come to mind, or the various techniques used to implement or disable the dye-copper bug.

3) The most useful feature about wildcards is that since they are based on map coordinates, you get to pick the ones you want for the cities that you found. This is the best way for establishing supply for a commodity rarely in supply and demand for another that is not often in demand. There is also a very recognizable pattern for each kind of wildcard, so that it's usually only necessary to calculate the set of wildcards for one location, since the wildcards for nearby tiles can be determined by their relative position. When I have a chance, I plan to post copies of the wildcard "maps" I use to locate desirable city sites.

I suppose one way to limit the use of wildcards in a city is to pick a site having the same commodity as the supply and demand wildcard. This will usually result in a supply list untainted by the city's wildcards, since demand takes precedence over supply when the deciding where to put the wildcard.

That's about it for now on wildcards.

I also have an answer to the question on commodity bonus multipliers, which are:

2 for hides, salt, wool, beads, copper, dye
5/2 for cloth, coal, wine, silver
3 for silk, spice, gems, gold
7/2 for oil
4 or uranium

rah · May 27, 2003, 16:35

Thanks for the multipliers. I did't know those.

solo · May 27, 2003, 17:24

Rah,

Your welcome. I noticed you are moderating RoN. I've bought a copy and recommend it. It looks to be especially well suited to MPers such as yourself.

War4ever · May 27, 2003, 18:29

yes those multipliers will be usefull....

so selecting city sites in mp have become even more important now....if you have the time to work out the formulas

rah · May 28, 2003, 11:48

yes, that city you build in the hill range will have better supply and demands, so please place your capital there.

RAH

War4ever · May 29, 2003, 00:09

as long as i have a repeater, i don't care what commodity it is..(its always hides)

duke o' york · July 17, 2003, 11:31

Quote:

Originally posted by solo
When I have a chance, I plan to post copies of the wildcard "maps" I use to locate desirable city sites.

Did you ever get around to doing this because I'm very keen to see it.

Given that the commodities are dependant upon the terrain surrounding the city, would it be possible to exploit global warming to change the supply/demand of cities? I know that warming worsens the terrain and will therefore reduce the SQ but I am desperate to find a good side to global warming. By reducing the SQ and ruining the land, you could make your rubbishy cloth caravan you have held onto for years into a major money-spinner. Theoretically. I suppose that if you were going to the trouble of testing the effects of engineer transformation on the SQ then why not induce a spot of global warming and put the skulls to good use?

Hmm...
It seems that I am a little too desperate to find a use for global warming in the traditional game. Fportunately work is nearly finished and I can go for a good lie down and a few turns of ruling the Americans.