Contest 2007 Smalltalk

  • I would concentrate my efforts on offices in brick towns, especially in the North Sea since the Baltic towns take an extra effort to populate their buisnesses. ;) even more though than London.
    I passed on the first fair lady, she was too snobbish to talk to the great unwashed and snubbed the councillors too. Furthermore, a 62% snaikka was not worth my while. My eyes are on a socialite out of Bremen who will bring a cog.
    Using a laptop does not mean you can't use a mouse or trackball. There are some nice switches that convert a PC2 keyboard and mouse to one USB plug. That's how I travel. :170: But, I can assure you that P III even looks good in 1650 x 1080 on a 2216W. After a week I no longer noticed the distortion and have to get used to the old laptop whenever I play on it, the new one is widescreen too.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

  • Just so you know the peanalty for piracy. Currently the average satisfaction levels is, in points:
    rich 1.3, wealthy 2.3, poor 3.0
    The population is made up as follows:
    rich 4.8%, wealthy 16.9%, poor 78.3%


    Do I care? NO, Since I have made up my mind to play at least until the end of 1309. So one year in the dumpster will not have that great of an effect.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

  • After close to one month of begging, borrowing, stealing and trading I managed to improve the sitation somewhat:
    rich 5.6%, satisfaction 1.5
    wealthy 23.4%, satisfactiom 3.0
    poor 71%, satisfaction 3.5
    The 40% jump in wealthy puzzles me somewhat. ?( I have towns where the wealthy are more satisifed than the poor - go figure.


    Catch 22 is the lack of wool, which does not get better very fast since it takes a happy population to come and work on sheepfarms. Six farms are completed but, currently, there are only 25 workers. Because wool is lacking, fisher are not too keen either and Bremen needs fish to make the people happier to get the wool production up. A nice mess I got myself into :giggle:


    BTW, I know how to attract people to town. Besides the obvious, a school is under construction.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

  • Do you mean the saves of the contest2006? they are available here
    The final standings are here
    and the standings by year are here


    ew = population, uw = company value. the tables to the right depict increase in each value.


    Since the contest2007 has just gotten off the ground, and the big kahoona is sorting out webspace, it may take another week, or two, before the saves will be available to the general public. We don't intend to keep them a secret, but we do have other obligations besides P II/III ;)
    I will include the link in the contest details and contet links threads once available. Please bear with us.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

    Dieser Beitrag wurde bereits 1 Mal editiert, zuletzt von bizpro ()

  • I am having some problems, too. Steal, er, borrow a few ships, and they get all snotty on you.


    Now for another question I was wondering about. When you design a new map, you of course have a limit to the number of efficient workshops you can put in cities. Is there a limit to the number of workshops in cities you build yourself? Just for instance, could we build a dozen new cities that all have wool, or vinyards for production?

  • I could not think of any reason against that. Why should it be impossible to build up twelve new production towns all having wine production?
    In the time before the algorithm for optimizing productions in new towns had been figured out, the program allowed us to create a dozen new cities with salt, wood and honey as well. :D


    Of course this is just my suggestion and I have no further proof for or against that.

  • Thanks bizpro. I was meaning the 2007 saves, but was just wondering, not meaning to be impatient :O


    Zitat

    Originally posted by Baltic Trader
    Moving costs. Ouch. Cost me almost a million to move to Bruegge n July. ;( I wonder what they do with the cash? ?(


    What have you all been paying?


    One million seems to be the max; I clearly had less net value than you as I only paid about 600k to move to Gotenburg in ... August maybe?


    My trade offices in Danzig and Reval were both finished exactly one day too late to make the elections there - and I wasn't bothered to replay when I realised it - and the move back to London would have been a clean million in gold so didn't seem worthwhile.


    I guess the cash goes to building a new home worthy of your, ahem, magnificence.

  • One odd thing ... from reading google-translations of the German forum, it seemed that others were getting new production towns offered for Memel, Ripen and Novgorod only.


    As of mid-November as newly-elected mayor of Gotenburg, I'm getting offered Newcastle, Helsinki and Novgorod. (honey/wine/wool - beer/honey/timber - grain/honey/wine). Has anyone else kept track of what towns they were offered?

  • I am not that far along yet, moving pretty slowly, only to July so far.


    I would recommend Newcastle, personally. Novogorod is way out there, off the beaten path. Helsinki, much the same but has the advantage of deepwater port facilities, and close to the Lagoda brickyards and construction materials. What goods were you offered?

  • Zitat

    Originally posted by Baltic Trader
    What goods were you offered?


    Newcastle: honey/wine/wool
    Helsinki: beer/honey/timber
    Novgorod: grain/honey/wine


    However, I'd prefer not to start a new production town until year's end; until then, I'll just worry about the Dec-31 valuation. Unless of course I only have worse options available by then, in which case sacrificing an entire 1 point (1 month of town inactivity) may be a better option :D.

  • I'm still trying to learn fairly basic things about the game ... From my observations, the rough order of things that can be done to increase happiness beyond supplying goods is,


    from most to least effective ...


    Building Wells
    Hosting a Celebration
    Placing an outrigger
    Building roads
    Shipyard activity*


    No effect that I've seen:
    Donating gold to the church
    Granting loans at any interest rate


    I * shipyard activity (building & repairing) as my one test of this gave strange results; poor and wealthy became happier and rich unhappier, but I'm not certain this is accurate. The change was small (~ an outrigger for poor and less for others) at any rate.


    Testing was done by taking my most advanced game (April 1301, standard map, hah!), dumping lots of goods in river town Torun, keeping prices steady there for just over a month, and comparing the 'quality of life' charts.


    I haven't looked at church extensions properly. Can anyone rank them or other things in order of importance, such as harbour/gate towers, town guard size & town coffer size, or contradict the order above?

  • Most effective:
    Sell key goods at prices that are not too high. ;) This will outperform any other combination.


    Proving work and accomodations will have a positive effect but only after an initial negative effect. Whenever builidngs are completed, the mood of the rich will take a nosedive. It does no tmatter where the buildings are.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

  • I finished 1300 by evicting about 8000 poor from my Hanse ... has rather a negative effect on industry :D.


    Just to make sure it's worth it, can I confirm that when scoring:
    number of rich/wealthy/poor are added up from the town view for Dec-31, not from the statistics window which give out-of-date numbers (and >100 points less).


    Final stats, done by town windows:
    Rich - 14.64% (4436 of 30300)
    Wealthy - 26.89% (8147 of 30300)
    Happiness - 6 for all classes
    Production - 1071


    Stats window gives 11.4% (4068 of 35730) and 21.7% (7760 of 35730)


    BTW, lots of the Germans seem to be founding a new production town on Dec 30/31. There's no particular reason for that, is there? I'd rather wait a few days for Jan-10, 20, 30 or so.

  • @ Starstruck:
    You are correct, the number of citizens for each social class are being read off the actual town window. Very impressive stats :170:, did you submit yet?
    The only reason to start a new production town in 1300 could be to squeeze in 2 recognitions in 1301, but that can also be done by starting sometimes in January. Provided the building materials are there, Memel can be completed in less than 6 months.


    @ all
    Just to clarifiy there are 6 construction crews in a new production town, The 6th shows up a day or two after placing the buildings.
    I placed: market hall, citiy hall, arsenal, weapon smith, trade office, 1 ht house, & 3 grain farms. The hth was the first building that was completed, all 5 city buildings were being worked on. That's 6 in my books. However, it appears that no more than 5 work on the wall - go figure. Maybe it's my glasses ;)


    The contest2007 is actually a good vehicle to clear up some common misconceptions regarding satisfaction.
    Let's take my Stettin (sometimes in 1301)
    No mint, no school; the church is still in it's original state; wells & roads @ 0; no outrigger nor any fortifications. The lonely port bombard fell when unknown pirates plundered the town in the summer of 1300.
    Population make-up and satisfaction level:
    Rich 474 very happy
    Wealthy 1,035, very happy
    Poor 1,759, very happy
    However, except for bricks, IG and skins there is ample supply of everything and most is sold below cost.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

    Dieser Beitrag wurde bereits 2 Mal editiert, zuletzt von bizpro ()

  • Thanks Bizpro. I submitted a couple of hours before you replied :).


    I'm up to Feb 5 now; my population is roughly back to its pre-crash level but my Hanse is nearly out of hemp ... combination of all hemp farms being in underpopulated Oslo, and half-production in winter. Bergen and Ladoga are frozen over :mad:.


    I found something new (for me) - there's a maximum rate at which happiness can drop, no matter how bad things are in a town. So for a happy town, being short of, eg, grain, has the same effect as being out of grain, fish, beer, timber and everything else. Using that on a few towns with everyone "very happy", I now have 3 or 4 town-months worth of beer, grain and fish extra, and some merely-satisfied citizens :D


    I've never been offered Memel ;(. At the new year Newcastle was my only new town option (Helsinki & Novgorod were seen in Nov/Dec); I got Novgorod back in early Feb. Still haven't founded a new town (in any game actually!), but planning to settle Newcastle sometime soon when I can try and manipulate the resources it's created with. Still trying to expand my brick industry ...


    Has anyone had a siege yet? The prince has been quiet to date, of which my industries are very glad.

  • I had the announement of a siege in Bremen, but, after removing the 5 M out of the coffers the siege never happened. The announcement was in May of 1301 and I fast forwarded to August.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

  • Just to let everybody know, the link to the saves is under 2007 contest links as well as in standings & commentaries.
    Commentaries for 1301 & later will be seperate threads but links to the saved games will remain the same. The link to the standings will remain in the standings thread - bookmarking will help ;)


    Bremen has now been attacked. The annoucement came August 25 and the mauraders come on September 27. Lt. fast fwd they stay until end of October and do a number on population levels and their satisfaction.

    Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new
    Wer niemals einen Fehler gemacht hat, hat noch nie etwas neues probiert Albert Einstein

    Dieser Beitrag wurde bereits 3 Mal editiert, zuletzt von bizpro ()

  • Up to March 6 and Lord Mayor of Brugge. I had planned to found a city on March 1, but the option for Newcastle disappeared on February 22, leaving only Novgorod ;(, so I went back and founded Newcastle on Feb 21 with timber/iron ore/wool.


    54 efficient brickyards ready and 24 more queued have made for another timber shortage; I'm trying to get more timber out of Edi/Bre short term and later New/Ber/Lad. I rejigged my arbitrage in Brugge to generate a bit more money and grant more loans - Bizpro's loan stats are insanely impressive. I have about 600 granted but not many being defaulted on yet. Currently making just about enough money to grant all loans when not moving town or buying lots of meditteranean goods.


    Population at 47500 and production 2000. Happiness varies from annoyed to very happy. Most shipyards lying idle until more hemp gets made/distributed :(, but I have enough ships from pirates not to be running short. Bizpro's wall-building dates spreadsheet was very useful {thanks! :170:} until I decided to stop encouraging wall building for the sake of more industry ...


    I'll be running out of housing space in London, Bergen and Brugge before the end of the year, so those are my priorities for second walls. Oslo may also be needed.