Planet Baen: Web Game for free eBooks

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I'm up to Level 11 as of this cycle.

Population: 2,289

I'm just amazed that you're able to level up as much as you have with that little population. The game is clearly weighted towards income generation because of population increases. I rather expect you'll either have to start increasing your population or level up very slowly from now on.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I'm just amazed that you're able to level up as much as you have with that little population. The game is clearly weighted towards income generation because of population increases. I rather expect you'll either have to start increasing your population or level up very slowly from now on.

It's mostly due to that Bynum Brothers Broomworks asset, which has a truly disproportionate Bucks-per-cycle yield which I expect to see scaled way down once the programmers are back from vacation.

Anyway, I'm fine with slower levelling (though I should be able to make L13 sometime tomorrow). Sticking at just the natural 2% per-cycle Pop growth seems a lot more relaxing than trying to keep from getting Food/Energy/Bliss deficits and/or digging oneself out of the ensuing holes from overpop.

Also, I expect to have a full courseload next semester. The more leeway I have to neglect my freehold in the future without having it descend into some kind of apocalyptic famine scenario within a single-digit number of cycles, the better.

[cromag]

Just for the record, I've been "Trashing" population gifts -- as ruthless as that sounds. Except for making an occasional low-population gift to someone on a low tech level.

I figure for most folks the gift of more population isn't really a gift.


If anyone wants more, let me know.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Anyway, I'm fine with slower levelling (though I should be able to make L13 sometime tomorrow). Sticking at just the natural 2% per-cycle Pop growth seems a lot more relaxing than trying to keep from getting Food/Energy/Bliss deficits and/or digging oneself out of the ensuing holes from overpop.

If you drop food or energy just enough to be slightly negative, you can go several cycles with a 1% bliss drop and no population increase. The big problem with ignoring the game is that you're likely to get whacks that clobber energy or food without also clobbering population, which destabilizes everything.

[koland]

right now, though, it's nearly unplayable, due to the slowdown of the last couple of days.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

If you drop food or energy just enough to be slightly negative, you can go several cycles with a 1% bliss drop and no population increase. The big problem with ignoring the game is that you're likely to get whacks that clobber energy or food without also clobbering population, which destabilizes everything.

Well, that's why I'm gradually building up 6-digit surpluses on everything besides Pop (and Bliss, but I can always surge a couple of high-level assets to make up for that; a few extra shots of 80,000 Bliss should be more than enough for my 3084 people, even if they've grown 10-fold by then). And statistically, there should be some Bloodsport and Plague and Crow whacks among the lot if I let things go long enough.

Anyway, current stats say I should be able to get to L14 in about 2 days:

Baen Bucks: 3,187,634
Baen Bliss: 17,291
Population: 3,084
Food: 445,525
Energy: 493,813
Military: 442,334
Surge Pts Left this Cycle: 65/65
Total Bucks per Cycle: 3,526,967
from Assets: 3,486,875
from Pop.: 40,092
Political Adj to Asset Bucks: +25%
Bliss - Base Need: 4,955
Low-Bliss Cost: 0
Energy - Base Need: 472,225

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Well, that's why I'm gradually building up 6-digit surpluses on everything besides Pop (and Bliss, but I can always surge a couple of high-level assets to make up for that; a few extra shots of 80,000 Bliss should be more than enough for my 3084 people, even if they've grown 10-fold by then). And statistically, there should be some Bloodsport and Plague and Crow whacks among the lot if I let things go long enough.

Anyway, current stats say I should be able to get to L14 in about 2 days:

When you get to level 14, you can get 10 or so methane cores and really bump up your energy and food!

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by koland

right now, though, it's nearly unplayable, due to the slowdown of the last couple of days.

I leveled up to level 15 in the last cycle, but I didn't have enough money to upgrade all my methane cores. It took an hour for me to move things around and level up everything in this cycle. There's no way I can do anything from my nook color other than surge assets while it's this slow. I can see that I'm going to have to hope that it's tolerable tomorrow morning for me to set it up so that I can just surge a few things at work around noon and then do the rest after getting home before the evening cycle starts.

[Freeshadow]

Hell if I don't start soon I 'll have no idea how to play the new stuff.
Ok, I lied. I'm clueless already : D

[bgalbrecht]

The strategies aren't really all that much different from the beta. As I see it, the main differences are that you have to complete projects in order to level up for every project, and that a population increase requires a corresponding 7.5x increase in energy and food, instead of 7.5x energy and 1x food in the beta. Some of the assets are new, but you still need to decide whether you are going to take it slow, create large surplusses in food and energy through surges and gifts, and let your population increase by 2% each turn, or use gifts and population/core surges to increase your population and struggle to keep food & energy from going negative. And watch those whacks!

[bgalbrecht]

One other note, I think its actually cheaper to have 8 of the highest surging population asset and move them around your cores before surging them, than it is to try to surround most or all of the cores with population. It's relatively cheap to move them compared to buying or upgrading the population assets.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

One other note, I think its actually cheaper to have 8 of the highest surging population asset and move them around your cores before surging them, than it is to try to surround most or all of the cores with population. It's relatively cheap to move them compared to buying or upgrading the population assets.

That's the way I do it

[weedfreak]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

One other note, I think its actually cheaper to have 8 of the highest surging population asset and move them around your cores before surging them, than it is to try to surround most or all of the cores with population. It's relatively cheap to move them compared to buying or upgrading the population assets.

The only problem is that it takes me about 5 minutes to move each asset!

I just tried a ping test and while the ping time was passable there is a 14% packet loss.

[ATDrake]

I don't even bother upgrading my cores. Too much hassle to move stuff around so it doesn't get eaten (or just sell it), and then put in things to provide the necessary upgrade components and I don't particularly need boosted yields for my low-Pop freehold. Maybe if they bring back those City Core Upgrade drop things that would do it without messing with the grid arrangement.

Anyway, unupgraded cores are a good way to eat up those smaller amounts of extra surge points that come from doing a mix of higher level project-completion-supplied assets and regular surges, I've found.

[Ekaros]

Game has been quite sluggish lately. Still, I have minor issues with methane town at 13, can't just get population low...