Islandia, where the economy hates all players equally
Aye cap'n, strange happenings! But there's two turns left and we need you back in character.
<Hands Ahab his wooden legs and a whale bone shank>
Meanwhile, I can't seem to be able to capture the last neutral island.
I am not very good at this "colonization" stuff. I think I will be like SIngapore : rich but tiny. Though the "rich" part is in jeopardy.
Do you understand how the final points are counted ?
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 16 March 2023, 23h03Do you understand how the final points are counted ?
Like in real life: money!
Damn, I may have overspent ^^
The end !
Congratulations, Porkbelly.
If I had RTFM on victory conditions, I think I would have caught back Argyraspide (I overbuilt something like 10 boats, so 150 to 200 points), and more importantly, it could have allowed Ahab to catch back (fully ?) Drake by holding M, D and A until the end (island G was going to change hands no matter what IMO, and J is dirt-poor).
I feel like Ahab's mistake may have been to let me out of "siege" at the beginning. A bunch of explorer ships should have kept me boxed in at almost no cost, and then you would have had 5 islands for you alone. I wonder if you did this to give the AAR a chance ?
I will collect more thoughts about the game soon.
Thanks everyone! Good game, despite all the combat weirdness.
My only strategy was to stop buying anything after Turn 6. I had four islands and a strong alliance with Argyraspide, so figured just to hold out and hope that Scribe and Ahab would stay east fighting over the bigger islands. I only purchased one battleship and one steamship the entire game. The idea was to keep them near port for repairs, but somehow they proved unsinkable. So that was nice.
I also came out of this exercise with some tools to decode BBC compiled basic programs so that's the big win in my book.
I thought I'd have an easier time taking and holding F/A/G/D, didn't think you'd get D first, and thought if you had an economy going, you and Porkbelly would fight around 'L' and make a buffer zone that would keep him away from me, letting me pick on Argyraspide in peace. One of those things wound up happening.
On the underperforming islands, I realized that the 'wealth' shown by explorers is triple what the island actually pays per turn. This is explicitly done in the code and I don't know why, but it checks out - add up the value of the goods produced and it will be about a third of the stated wealth value, and equal what you get paid (subject to goods price fluctuations).
Did a little test and wrote a combat simulator that instead of calculating odds, rolls the dice first and then tells you how many attackers you'd need to defeat N defenders at that roll, which is more or less how things work here.
I don't know if it's the code, the RNG, or just weird luck, but it does seem biased toward extreme results. Only three times out of ten does it fall in the range of 2-8. Four times out of ten you need 10+, and three times out of ten, one is enough. But I don't think the combat logic itself is bugged.
I wasn't expecting you to rake in so much cash, Porkbelly!
As for myself, I never had a single warship. Not because I didn't want one. I paid for several of them, but they never spawned. I reckon I lost at least £100,000 like that.
Here's some data I gathered:
Obviously, the value of ships went up and down as people ordered them. And as you can see, the price of commodities varies very little and never goes really high.
Here is a look at which island belonged to whom, along with their final value:
You can easily see the constant fight between Scribe and Ahab, and my uninterrupted peace. People must have loved it on my islands. Unfortunately, those were also some of the poorer islands, so it didn't do my coffers much good.
In the end, and with 11 turns to play, most of us would have been better off staying home and not spending a single penny. It would be different with a full-length game.
Overall, and despite my crippling inability to purchase ships, I quite enjoyed this. The game could certainly be improved, by reducing the randomness in combat, and maybe with a larger map; this feels a little claustrophobic.
Quote from DDG Ahab on 22 March 2023, 15h08Did a little test and wrote a combat simulator that instead of calculating odds, rolls the dice first and then tells you how many attackers you'd need to defeat N defenders at that roll, which is more or less how things work here.
I don't know if it's the code, the RNG, or just weird luck, but it does seem biased toward extreme results. Only three times out of ten does it fall in the range of 2-8. Four times out of ten you need 10+, and three times out of ten, one is enough. But I don't think the combat logic itself is bugged.
This is interesting, I thought there might be something up with the RNG too. 20% chance of a win at 1:4 is unusual in itself but it still looks skewed. Did you run this test on the BeebEm emulator?
Great job Argyraspide. Can I use your charts for my AAR ?
Yeah. Also I found that if you hit Break to go into BASIC, the RNG seed does not reset, so you can peek at what the next roll is going to be with PRINT RND(1). Actual results are consistent with your interpretation of the code - I did another test to confirm this.
I surrounded Scribe's Island D (4 defenders, fortified) with loaded transports so I could invade with anywhere from 1 to 9 troops. Quicksave, break, PRINT RND(1) displays ~0.5226. Math predicts that if fortifications don't matter, then it will take five armies at those odds. Quickload, invade with four armies, failure. Quickload, invade with five, success. I did this again with an RND(1)=0.218.
Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 22 March 2023, 17h59Great job Argyraspide. Can I use your charts for my AAR ?
I've sent you the file.
I reconstructed my economic history. Feel free to use it, or not. The numbers don't always balance, so there is a "diff" column for deviations due to personal errors, bugs, rounding, or just gameplay mechanics that I don't understand.
Apologies for the formatting fail.
| Turn | Purchases | Projected cost | Islands | Proj. revenue | Proj. assets | Assets | Diff |
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 300 | 300 | 0 | ||
| 2 | 20 armies, 5 transports |
206.9 | 0 | 93.1 | 93.06 | -0.04 | |
| 3 | 5 battleships | 66.3 | 0 | 26.76 | 26.74 | -0.02 | |
| 4 | 1 battleship, 1 explorer, 1 transport |
31.33 | G | 26.3 | 21.71 | 21.7 | -0.01 |
| 5 | 1 explorer, fortify G+J |
44.51 | FGJ | 45.04 | 22.23 | 12.78 | -9.45 |
| 6 | 8 armies | 43.68 | FGJ | 52.3 | 21.4 | 21.38 | -0.02 |
| 7 | 3 transports, fortify M |
46.49 | FGM | 49.89 | 24.78 | 18.39 | -6.39 |
| 8 | 0 | FG | 38.88 | 57.27 | 57.28 | 0.01 | |
| 9 | 0 | ADFG | 103.23 | 160.51 | 140.03 | -20.48 | |
| 10 | 0 | ADFGJM | 115.88 | 255.91 | 239.83 | -16.08 | |
| 11 | 0 | AFM | 61.89 | 301.72 | 286.16 | -15.56 |
Some notes:
- Orders made on turn 1 are delivered on turn 2, charged to you on turn 2, at the market value on turn 2.
- Nothing you do on turn 11 matters. You get no money at the end of it, so it makes no difference whether you take that island at the last minute or not.
Expense breakdown:
| Turn | Purchases | A cost | S cost | B cost | E cost | T cost | F cost | Expenses |
| 1 | 4 | 12 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2 | 20 armies, 5 transports | 6.7 | 25.07 | 20.72 | 9.75 | 14.58 | 0 | 206.9 |
| 3 | 5 battleships | 5.35 | 16.94 | 13.26 | 5.68 | 7.8 | 0 | 66.3 |
| 4 | 1 battleship, 1 explorer, 1 transport |
5.7 | 19 | 15.15 | 6.69 | 9.49 | 0 | 31.33 |
| 5 | 1 explorer, fortify G+J | 4.54 | 13.76 | 10.49 | 4.51 | 5.85 | 40 | 44.51 |
| 6 | 8 armies | 5.46 | 16.34 | 12.61 | 5.07 | 6.78 | 0 | 43.68 |
| 7 | 3 transports, fortify M | 4.46 | 12.78 | 9.55 | 3.9 | 4.83 | 32 | 46.49 |
| 8 | 4.81 | 14.23 | 10.83 | 4.46 | 5.76 | 0 | 0 | |
| 9 | 4.91 | 15.63 | 12.17 | 5.35 | 7.25 | 0 | 0 | |
| 10 | 4.56 | 13.05 | 9.77 | 3.94 | 4.91 | 0 | 0 | |
| 11 | 4.23 | 12.15 | 9.04 | 3.77 | 4.62 | 0 | 0 |
Island production:
| Food | Iron | Wood | |
| A | 10 | 2 | 5 |
| D | 7 | 8 | 10 |
| F | 10 | 2 | 4 |
| G | 0 | 6 | 8 |
| J | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| M | 4 | 3 | 6 |
Revenue breakdown:
| Turn | Islands | Food | Iron | Wood | F cost | I cost | W cost | Income |
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.1 | 2.35 | 2.92 | 0 | |
| 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.19 | 1.68 | 1.56 | 0 | |
| 4 | G | 0 | 6 | 8 | 1.3 | 1.85 | 1.9 | 26.3 |
| 5 | FGJ | 12 | 10 | 14 | 1.33 | 1.27 | 1.17 | 45.04 |
| 6 | FGJ | 12 | 10 | 14 | 1.33 | 1.73 | 1.36 | 52.3 |
| 7 | FGM | 14 | 11 | 18 | 1.35 | 1.23 | 0.97 | 49.89 |
| 8 | FG | 10 | 8 | 12 | 1.38 | 1.41 | 1.15 | 38.88 |
| 9 | ADFG | 27 | 18 | 27 | 1.4 | 1.46 | 1.45 | 103.23 |
| 10 | ADFGJM | 33 | 23 | 35 | 1.58 | 1.28 | 0.98 | 115.88 |
| 11 | AFM | 24 | 7 | 15 | 1.68 | 1.11 | 0.92 | 61.89 |
Thanks for the documentation !
My take on the game is that... it is a decent game, but with major balancing / playtesting issues (as almost all games of the era).
I think it has some unique stuff : I don't know any colonization game that focuses on the naval aspect, and I really like the mind game where you need to buy stuff in advance AND price move depending on demand (though "offer" seem independant from island). It means you need to spread out your purchases, especially in longer game. I also like games where players can interact with each other from literally turn 1. Unlike Argyraspide, I don't find the game claustrophobic at all : I like the fact that we cannot really develop "on the side". Though I had not understood it, I also like games where your victory points is your main resource, because you cannot build like crazy and just spam your opponent, at least in a game with the kind of length we used (which in my opinion was perfect !).
Now of course the game has some big issues : too easy to block the spawn point of other players, combat odds are all weird and the wind feature is more frustrating than anything else (it creates design space for the steamship, but I would have prefered more types of combat ships and the wind not blocking you but giving you more speed bonus instead).
I feel the game lacked a lot of small things to be great (beyond polish) :
- Instead of one economy phase and then 2 movement phase, do like in RFST : Economy phase + Movement phase, then Movement phase. Less savefile swapping (or seat switching)
- Real exploration, (ideally Fog of War, at least information from your explorers not becoming public),
- More combat ships with different odds and health (eg fast frigate vs slow ship-of-the-line). Simplified land combat is perfect - of course I wish fortress worked... and that they would take several turns to be built.
- Move-after-attack, even if said move is only 50% of the pre-battle movement points, to avoid blocking things
- Better UI to show expected revenue and expensve
- Shore batteries, at least to defend the spawn points, and maybe puttable anywhere to "shape" the geography of the map.
Still an enjoyable experience...
... and next - Nebula !