04-01-2003 12:32									#1
	REX Tests and Results Enter the AD-FREE zone

This thread is for indicating what REXing tests various players plan to try and the results of such tests.

We can use it to figure out what REXing strategy seems to work best, and then post whatever plan we decide on to our topped thread as a reference for the people who actually play the turns.

	04-01-2003 12:48									#2
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I'm planning to run some tests generally based on the following premises:

1) I want to keep EotS's growth rate as fast as possible, i.e. two turns per pop building workers and an average of 2.5 turns per pop building settlers (or two for settlers where chopping makes it practical). The same philosophy applies to #3 once it goes in settler pump mode, but I'm hoping for straight 2-turn settlers there (not that I'm sure yet that I can get it).

2) At least initially, I'll tend to focus on balanced approaches that build enough workers for tile improvements to at least almost keep up with city production and growth.

3) At least in my initial tests, I'm planning to run two settler pumps in EotS and #3 and rarely build settlers or workers elsewhere until cities reach size 4. (That will slow down REXing a little but leave us with bigger, more productive core cities.)

Nathan

	04-01-2003 17:25									#3
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Are other people having the same trouble I am with disease striking the first turn of the new test game? The test game may need to be redone.

	04-01-2003 18:05									#4
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Okay, I'll run a test where EotS becomes a pump, and #3 if possible (maybe after a worker to help). Other cities produce a mix of warriors and workers (a settler if productive), but no granaries, and no delaying to get to size 4. One of my objectives is to get a road to the Neck fast, preferably with some extensions onto a mountain. (so a largely worker oriented test).

What will be the end date of this test? or should me measure how long it takes to settle a number of cities, and gain a certain amount of gold? Further, we should build a few improvements as well, to simulate we'll build barracks and larger troops. Could be realistically, of course, like one third of our cities get temples, one third get barracks, the rest nothing.

Oh, and I haven't played the initial turn yet, just looked around a bit. Can't help you with the disease question

DeepO

	04-01-2003 18:06									#5
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Other thing to test: chopping / pyramids question.

DeepO

	04-01-2003 18:15									#6
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I'd say build what you want where you want, but treat it like a real game. That way we explore various combinations of temples, barracks, and units. And we know how many shields each item costs, so we can translate back and forth to compare performance.

Nathan

	04-01-2003 18:17									#7
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Okay.

End date? maybe best to keep saves all 10 turns or so, so we can compare when needed. I'm going to start on this after I find some breakfast.

DeepO

	04-01-2003 18:26									#8
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How about if we end when REXing is complete or nearly so, and do saves around the 2500, 2000, 1750, 1500, 1250, and 1000 BC marks and every century thereafter (give or take a little since some of those years aren't hit exactly)? Using years would avoid the need to count turn numbers.

Nathan

	04-01-2003 18:39									#9
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I hate counting turns too, so that one is resolved. As to the end: it won't be the same for everyone, and the results will be different. Some test will have more cities faster, but not producing anything in the new ones. We might get a bit more flexible on this.

Oh well, I'll start, and let you know where I get with this system.

DeepO

	04-01-2003 18:46									#10
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Almost by definition, ending when REXing is essentially complete means different tests will end different years. But I view the question of "When does REXing end?" as an important one, and as long as people keep a save from the last turn of any test that looks promising, they can go back and play it some more if doing so is needed for comparison purposes.

Nathan

	04-01-2003 23:14									#11
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quote: Are other people having the same trouble I am with disease striking the first turn of the new test game? The test game may need to be redone.

Started this morning, but was to tired and made too many mistakes, so I forfeited . I didn't have any disease on the first turn though.

BTW: how do guys do these things, do yo keep notes of every turn:worker/labourer/gold etc.??
(I did so with that pyramid test, but, pffffff........)

	04-01-2003 23:19									#12
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I had the same problem, and first I thought I just added a worker after disease... but this is not right, of course, as production was off. To counter it, I added a worker to the city before hitting ENTER, which died of disease immediately... no problems anymore (and certainly not worth it to redo the test!)

As how I run these tests: if you really want to go for it, you need to write down exactly what happens each turn. I've got an alternative plan for the first 8 or so turns (which I'll post very shortly), in which it is critical to be very precise. After that, I intend to follow a few guidelines (like: use the chopped forest in EotS to add to a settler), and don't keep track perfectly. It won't matter anyhow, as by that time the test scenario will be too far from the real situation. But at first, be precise

DeepO

	04-01-2003 23:31									#13
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I believe I stopped the turn after disease struck Eye for the first time. Forgetting about the "2-rule" for disease, I packaged the save and send it off. I used the solution DeepO mentioned to deal with disease. Adding a pop and taking away a Laborer sets things to normal.

Are you guys planning to always remove disease in this way in your tests, or go along with it? What about Barbs: rapid execution with an MA, or not?

As a baseline for our tests, I suggest we define REXing as being "over" when all the city sites in the city placement proposal have been settled. The year at which this is complete is definitely to be taken into consideration when comparing our tests.


Dominae

	04-01-2003 23:56									#14
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Well... maybe it's best to always counter disease in these tests, to get a good comparison. In the real game, it won't be possible, of course. Further: barbs: same thing. Disband a warrior, create a MA, and deal with them. But note how much gold you gain this way.

DeepO

	05-01-2003 00:01									#15
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Very basic question: do you get gold from disbanding a unit "in the field" (i.e. not on a city tile).


Dominae

	05-01-2003 00:09									#16
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Okay, while I was doing it, I might have found an alternative to using the production in EotS and Hurricane, so I'm posting it here to not lose track of it. I haven't gotten far enough, and things might still change (especially later on), but these are my first 8 turns which I found to lose very little shields or food.

2850 BC: EotS builds pyr, uses 2 river furs, 1 fp. Hurricane uses forest, builds warrior
2800 BC: EotS uses 3 furs (1 of which forest). Hurricane uses forest
2750 BC: EotS uses 3 furs (1 of which forest). Hurricane uses grass, finishes warrior
2710 BC: pottery discovered. EotS changed to granary Eots finishes granary, uses 2 river furs, 1 fp. Set to warrior. Hurricane uses grass, building worker (could be something else of course, depending on the test).
2670 BC: EotS uses 2 river furs, 1 fp. Hurricane on grass.
2630 BC: EotS uses 2 river furs, 1 fp, finishes warrior. Set to worker. Hurricane uses grass
2590 BC: EotS still uses 2 furs, 1 fp. Hurricane the same
2550 BC: EotS finishes worker. First worker (who was improving fps) nearly finished on road of 3 fp. citizens set to 2fp, 1 fur. new worker moves towards forest. Hurricane now can use one of the irr. furs.
2510: EotS changes back to 1 fp, 2 furs. Hurricane set to grass
2470 BC: EotS grows to size 4.

After this, I've been running tests on how to get EotS to grow to size 5 in 2 turns, finishing the 1st settler once it gets there, but always miss one shield. It will be on size 5 for one turn, and finishes its first settler in 2650 BC.

Of course, it will be possible to make it a setler, in stead of that first worker.

(sorry the rest isn't finished yet)

DeepO

	05-01-2003 00:10									#17
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Dominae: no. You don't get gold when you disband it anywhere, only shields within a city. This changes after recycling.

DeepO

	05-01-2003 00:14									#18
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Always build the Settler first.

If disbanding does not give gold, it should be possible not to get any surplus when dealing with Barbs.


Dominae

	05-01-2003 00:18									#19
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I wasn't far enough to compare it when building a settler instead of a worker, but will try to calculate it without testing...

DeepO

	05-01-2003 00:26									#20
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Hmmm... building a settler starting in 2630 BC instead of a worker in my plan again leaves us with one shield too few... first possibility to build it in 6 turns, right after getting to size 5, or the moment we would get to size 6 (hence fall back to size 4 in 2390 BC). Sorry, this needs more testing, if we can postpone everything by using 2 furs, 1 fp in EotS now, we should be able to choose before the next turn finishes (we have 2 turns on 2 furs anyway)

DeepO

	05-01-2003 15:30									#21
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Just in case it's relevant, it looks like the test game gives us one more shield toward our granary than we ought to have. It probably missed our losing a shield when we got enough shields for a settler but not enough population before we switched to the Pyramids prebuild.

Nathan

	05-01-2003 15:59									#22
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I ran a test building back-to-back-to-back-to-back settlers using chops (briefly switching Hurricane over to the Pyramids during the chops) and it worked like a charm. First settler completed four turns after the granary. Second settler four turns after that using one chop. Third settler completed four turns after that using another chop (done by a worker from Hurricane). Then it was six turns for the last settler in the bunch just because EotS started at size four and lacked the production to do better. Nicer still, because the second and third settlers were completed at size 5 rather than size 6, by the time EotS grew past size 5, there were enough improved tiles to go around, so no need to build workers beyond the first two until we want to (although it might have been worthwhile to go with two workers instead of the fourth settler, especially given the need to connect our horses in a reasonably timely manner).

Nathan

	05-01-2003 16:01									#23
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Damn... that is relevant. I need to redo testing to compensate, but I think we can't get to the granary so fast anymore: we should have used 3 furs previous turn (I think). I'll retest with this info (Thanks Nathan!)

The following few hours will be spent on testing, but I have to say this is going slowly... it's clear I'm not part of the economic scholia

DeepO

	05-01-2003 16:35									#24
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I checked it myself, and it's not possible at this point. We'd need to work three tiles with two shields each for three turns (technically we could use a tile with one shield the last turn), but we'll only be two turns from Pottery when we start our next turn. And we're already scheduled to complete the granary the turn after we get Pottery.

	05-01-2003 16:49									#25
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Yeah, I thought so. Because we didn't use the 3 furs, we have 1 shield too few. Damn.

Oh well, I'm sure we can get a better plan going, with minimal losses.

DeepO

	06-01-2003 01:24									#26
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Uum, is the test scenario I created buggy? I've been reading the threads and it appears we're off one Shield in Eye. If so, I can easily remedy the situation because I have the saves from earlier turns. Sorry if this is causing some troubles...


Dominae

	06-01-2003 01:37									#27
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It looks like you didn't do the bit where we lost a shield from reaching a point where we had the shields to build a settler but not the food just prior to switching to the Pyramids. Does that sound right?

Nathan

	06-01-2003 01:41									#28
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

I'm not sure. I attempted to follow the 'Turn' threads one by one, but it was difficult to piece everything together (Sir Ralph's turn descriptions are a lot more complete that nye's were). I'll go back to the turn in question and fix the problem.

Come to think of it, do you have a complete history of our economic decisions from turn 1? The forecasts we've been posting are rarely adhered to.


Dominae

	06-01-2003 02:15									#29
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The history of our economic discussions is scattered among about two zillion threads. Actually, unless I missed something, we followed Arrian's "five workers" plan in the topped thread (aside from switching to a FP a little later as we approached size 3) until we had enough shields for a settler, but then we switched to a granary before we had enough food for the settler. From then on, it was a straightforward matter of working two irrigated furs and one FP until this last turn when Sir Ralph temperorarily let Hurricane borrow an irrigated fur.

Nathan

	06-01-2003 02:19									#30
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quote: Originally posted by nbarclay It looks like you didn't do the bit where we lost a shield from reaching a point where we had the shields to build a settler but not the food just prior to switching to the Pyramids. Does that sound right?

Ok, I got the spot now (didn't know we screwed this up, I just switched to Pyramids immediately). I'll fix it shortly.


Dominae