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Topic: I suck at this game

hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-03-09, 20:24

Upps I need to say sorry. As I watched the wrong replay.

most of the things have already been explained by niektory. However some more tips: It is absolutely recommendable to show the census string of all buildings so you would see which buildings have problems. Additionally it might be a good idea to set priority for rations in coalmines to high to get more coal. But this might be only an intermediate measure and needs to be adapted if for example later on we lack iron.
Generally you need more then one building of each kind. E.g. you need 3-4 farms to supply one bakery fully. Unfortunately we don't have any exact values available for this but you could figure this out experimentally. you may start to build 2 buildings that produce a ware for each building that consumes this ware.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2020-03-10, 08:46

mxb2001 wrote:

I have played the campaigns, and actually quite a lot of games (dozens) so I do know the details of how things work. The problems seems to be that I am too slow to build things. I suppose pausing the game more often might help some.

I don't hink this is needed. I play normally at 2x speed and win each game (except some challenge maps).

I wonder if the trick is to try and build every building as soon as possible. I tend to wait until I need them. Maybe sitting back and reacting to events is not a good way to play this game? Does one need to plan out the whole thing from the start? I'm not big on planning... I like to wait and see what happens.

I do also not planning, at least after i have some basic buildings. But what i do is to bring up the inventury window (by pressing 'i') and click on the third tab. This shows me all wares stored in warehouses. This gives me immediately a hint of which ware might be missing. For example if blackwood turns to zero, i have to think of how to get more blackwood . The goal is to have always some wares of all kind in your warehouses. And if the default amount has been reached i can think of building a building which needs this ware. E.g.: If you have a lot of flour stored, build a new bakery. A good economy does never reach the set default amount stored in warehouses, but also never misses wares.

On big maps it is helpful to prefer some wares (mainly wares for building buildings) in a warehouse which is near the border. Preferring soldiers in the same warehouse is also helpful: New soldiers coming out of a training site will go to this warehouse and the time to get a new (trained) soldier to a military building on the border will be as short as possible.

Experienced player's have other tips, but i think with the tips shown here you should be able win each game against the AI face-smile.png

Edited: 2020-03-10, 08:53

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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2020-03-10, 15:39

I grew up playing Civ I and I guess it is ingrained in me that you can only have 1 building of each type. I'm always reluctant to build a second building of the same type and from the replies it seems that's a major flaw in my approach. I also like to expand fast and spend most of my time building sentries until I notice that they're not being built anymore due to shortages. Only then do I go back to the prod. buildings and look for problems.

So, to sum up, I guess my error is not to produce enough materials and not reacting strongly enough to shortages? I always think, well let's wait and see if the shortage goes away... : ) Sometimes it does because the cause is time lag and the system eventually catches up but I suppose that's not usually the problem and I should go mad and build tons of stuff needed to end a shortage.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-03-10, 20:29

mxb2001 wrote:

I grew up playing Civ I and I guess it is ingrained in me that you can only have 1 building of each type. I'm always reluctant to build a second building of the same type and from the replies it seems that's a major flaw in my approach. I also like to expand fast and spend most of my time building sentries until I notice that they're not being built anymore due to shortages. Only then do I go back to the prod. buildings and look for problems.

So, to sum up, I guess my error is not to produce enough materials and not reacting strongly enough to shortages? I always think, well let's wait and see if the shortage goes away... : ) Sometimes it does because the cause is time lag and the system eventually catches up but I suppose that's not usually the problem and I should go mad and build tons of stuff needed to end a shortage.

wow, i also grew up with civ 1. still playing later civs nowadays.

anyway i haven't watched the replays, but if you were making only one copy of most buildings then yes, it's too slow. ideally, you want to fill with buildings every single cranny in your land. even in small maps, you should try to have at least 4 or 5 farms running. you can get away with a single training site per type because those require a ton of resources and lesser buildings to be worked up to full capacity.

the economy is like a pyramid. at the tip of the pyuramid you have your training camp. this requires weapons, so you go down a level with a weapon smith and armor smith. you generally need more than one to feed the training camp a steady flow. and those need metals, so you need to go down another level, and again you need several smelting works to feed a single weapon smith. and below that level are the mines, and below that the food producers, all the way down to the primary producers, those buildings that create resources without requiring anything. farms, wells, woodcutters... and every level of the pyramid is bigger than the one above it, so you need a ton of those primary producers to supportthe buildings on top. we have no exact numbers (actually i bet worldsavior has them calculated, but if he has, he's never shared them), and they change for every tribe anyway, but it takes 10 to 15 farms to support a training camp running at 100%

at the beginning i mostly go by eye to figure out which buildings to make, but if i have a big map i then regularly check the stock, specifically the "wares in warehouse" part. if i see some ware at 0, i make more buildings that produce that ware. if i see a certain ware accumulating, i make more buildings to consume that ware. and i go on until i run out of space. i also make sure to build strong roads, especially on larger maps; the bigger the map, the more wares you have, the better roads you need to transport them. but handling nthe really large maps is a separate skill.

Edited: 2020-03-10, 20:43

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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2020-03-11, 18:20

Ah a Pyramid, that actually makes sense. I usually try to make 1 or 2 farms supply everything but I noticed that many buildings need their output (inc. easy to forget cattle/horse farms heh).

In my latest game I'm trying out some advice about watching the 3rd inventory tab (warehouse stock) instead of the 1st as I've done so far. I think it may be helping. Trying to rub out those 0 stock items heh. Easier said than done of course.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2020-03-11, 19:08

The Problem with the first tab is: The values are the count of all available wares, which is:

all wares in warehouses
+ wares that are on a way
+ wares which are in production sites

Especially the last addition is sometimes confusing if a ware is needed by different production sites. Sometimes one production site is full of wares (eg. iron) and another production site hasn't this ware. When looking at the first tab, one may see that the ware is available, but in fact it isn't, because it is stored at a production site which might does not need it. E.g. the toolsmith is full of iron, but no need to produce tools, while at the same time the Helm smithy lacks iron.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-03-11, 19:38

mxb2001 wrote:

Ah a Pyramid, that actually makes sense. I usually try to make 1 or 2 farms supply everything but I noticed that many buildings need their output (inc. easy to forget cattle/horse farms heh).

and it's made even worse by the farms being the slowest buildings of all. it takes 80 to 100 seconds for a farm to produce a single ware, while most other buildings work once every 30 to 60 seconds.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2020-03-11, 22:53

kaputtnik wrote:

The Problem with the first tab is: The values are the count of all available wares, which is:

all wares in warehouses
+ wares that are on a way
+ wares which are in production sites

Especially the last addition is sometimes confusing if a ware is needed by different production sites. Sometimes one production site is full of wares (eg. iron) and another production site hasn't this ware. When looking at the first tab, one may see that the ware is available, but in fact it isn't, because it is stored at a production site which might does not need it. E.g. the toolsmith is full of iron, but no need to produce tools, while at the same time the Helm smithy lacks iron.

I suggest that not the first tab should be the default tab, but the third.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-03-12, 07:41

I suggest that not the first tab should be the default tab, but the third.

+1


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2020-03-12, 10:53

+1 and implemented

https://github.com/widelands/widelands/pull/3765/


Busy indexing nil values

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