PTWDG AAR (After Action Review)

[Master Zen]

At max production GoW was producing over 110spt in Skulgaria and Yellowknife albeit with a food deficit. Fortunately both cities had well over half their food box full which meant it was an affordable strategy.

That meant we had 4 cities producing 1-turn Mech Infs. During the buildup leading to the Lego War we had 8 cities building 1-turn 100s units with Killdaria and Tenebrae achieving that number thanks to unit disbandings.

Dreadnaughtica is the little oddball here since what really boosted its production in 1380 was the construction of an Offshore Platform the turn before. It normally had slightly less than 80spt before that (mobilized) and was almost exclusively devoted to naval production (most of our destroyers were built here).

[Krill]

I often wonder what our production would have been with OSPs.

[Master Zen]

Don't worry, Dreadnaughtica was our only city with an OSP.

[Zero]

i heard we(lux) won.

i know, thats simply unbelievable. I'm also quite impressed at how we manage to win with no armies and cities myself.

[DeepO]

More importantly than the raw numbers of the cities, is the things you can build with them. And for that, I would prefer looking back at the numbers before hospitals.

One of the reasons why GS did well in producing units right before the Lego war, was that all cities were tuned each turn, so that no shields were wasted. Most of the cities were frozen at round numbers, 3 at 100 spt or as close as possible to it (one of these needed disbands each turn, as it was a 80 spt one), and most others near the 50 spt or 40 spt marks. Doing so we didn't lose shields, or the least we could. Nearing 800 spt during mob, before hospitals, we churned out 800 spt worth of units, not losing anything. In any of my normal games, I never get this ratio, you always end up with 80 spt cities, building 100 shield units. That's losing 30 spt, or an efficiency rate of 62%

This is no difference compared to all the time before, all our players have micromanaged, some to the extreme (myself probably included, but Nathan and Aeson at least as much). But of course, I'm most familiar with the numbers while I was playing...

There are a couple of reasons why we could do this, as GoW, ND, and Lego can't have been this efficient.
First of all, our city spacing, which was very tight. Most tiles could be switched between 2 or 3 cities, and well below size 12 all our land tiles were worked so it was a constant arranging of workforce each turn. A burden, but when nothing else happens (no war), it gave you something to do.

Secondly, all our cities were highly specialised. Worker pumps were used from the very beginning (did we ever build a settler without a granary present in the ancient era?), and quite quickly growth was stopped in all cities, solely relying on the pumps. So, more or less static workforce allocations were producing round numbers (10 spt is just as well as 11 spt, only it doesn't lose a shield which could have gone to another city). And because cities don't grow uncontrolled, you can stop cities at e.g. 25spt, leaving room for others to grow bigger.

Third, we always had a surplus of workers. This is needed, as every turn you've got to change tiles between mines and irrigation to get the most out of your territory. We used this from the beginning (I saw Nathan doing it many times, even in the ancient era), but especially once we had RR. Workers have allways been a large part of our unit count.

DeepO

[Master Zen]

GoW's widely-spaced cities were actually a relief in the latter stages of the game since extensive-micromanaging was not always needed. What GoW did rely on extensively was disbands to bring cities up to the 100spt necessary to build the units, the first to go was our glut of excess Cavalry. I think we had 50 at our maximum or something very close, most of which were useless in a modern industrial war. Afterwards, the excess artilleries from the Lego war were used for the same effect.

Another GoW tactic used very frequently was short-rushing: the art of using gold to rush improvements or units but after switching to a less expensive build and have the rest compensated by the city's production. This has definitely saved us a lot of gold.

Re-irrigating and re-mining was also used on occasion, though not likely at the extreme level of GS since it wasn't necessary that much. Our worker excess after railroads was also put to good use as they were used to build up cities, particularly the coastal ones which had stock exchanges and quickly had us racking in gold.

Overall though GoW was far more efficient than our "reputation" seems to imply. In the buildup to the Lego war we were buiding 8 100-shield units per turn and most other cities were wasting no more than 20% of their production to build similar units in 2 turns. Overall then there was about 10-11 100-shielders being built per turn.

[Krill]

You disbanded arties that cost you nothing in upkeep?

[Krill]

didn't you have any arties of your own to disband?

[Master Zen]

Only about 1/3 of our Arties were built by us

The others were the 16 that ND gave us and almost 30 were the ones we captured from Lego.

[DeepO]

BTW, there were other reasons for our production.

We always have shortrushed whereever possible, apart from a period in the industrial age when we really needed all the cash we could get, to keep our research going.

We also forested all of our territory. This gave us 830 shields, all of which have speeded construction at the fullest extent (no waste!). You can only do this, when all your territory is RRed, or nearing to get RRed. Then, 12 workerturns will give you 10 shields, which becomes even more profitable when you've researched replacable parts. As we had workers with the dozens (at one time, we had over 80 workers, I believe. most of these were either working on RRs, or on foresting), this was not really a cost. Also, commerce was not such a problem because of our seas, but production was at a premium.
In order to do it, I kept a map of all the tiles which were already forested at one time or another, to avoid doing tiles twice. I believe I missed once, where I 'lost' 12 workers on a tile that I did before.

Rushing production in one way or another is always nice to get more stuff, but it's double important when rushing something gets you a production advantage sooner. Apart from the 2 warriors we rushed at the very beginning, I don't think we ever cut a forest unless we were either building a factory (or had to finish a market before a factory, in which case rushing the market is just as good), or a granary. This pays double: those 10 shields count as at least 20 shields if it means you will build a factory one turn sooner. This is, because you get one turn of extra production in a city with factory and Hoover. If you gain more turns, the gains are only higher. Foresting all our territory gave us an estimate of some 2000 shields compared to the 3 others who, I think, didn't go through this trouble.

Last important thing, was that in wonder building we tried to single out those things that meant we didn't have to construct something.
- We tried for the pyramids at first and would have gotten it too, if it wasn't for some poor timing in 2 or 3 turns (in hindsight, the Lighthouse was more useful, as it gave us Vox. The pyramids would only have hindered us by starting our GA a couple of turns sooner).
- We build Sun Tsu (20x40 shields, is 800 shields we never had to 'pay'. in 20 cities we produced veteran units at one time or another) We got this one by a GL, so it didn't cost us any shields either.
- Hoover, is another of the free building wonders, and while not so big in terms of investment versus shield profit (we simply didn't have enough cities worth it, only 10 or so would otherwise have build a coal plant), it meant that none of the others got the gain, and had to build power plants. It again gave us a couple of turns virtual profit.
- And finally we built the Internet, free research buildings everywhere. Well, we never profited from that one, as we didn't get out of mob long enough to build us some unis. But the same thought applies as with Hoover: others had to build research centers if they were to go to Alpha Centauri, we didn't.
These 4 wonders are the only ones that directly affect production, all others affect commerce. No wonder we went for them given half a chance.

I think it is one of the things we Stormians can be proud of: we had the smallest land area for most of this game (Vox and RP not counted, of course), yet in total spent most or nearly the most in shield counts. It was one of those things that kept us alive for so long. It nearly balanced out our diplomatic difficulties

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, MZ, don't get me wrong, I don't want to imply GoW was wasting shields everywhere, that's not how I saw it. And shortrushing in itself is of course used everywhere... but the reason I mention it is that at one time, we shortrushed every building to some extent. Money always has been less of a problem to us than shields, so trying to convert gold into shields was always useful.

BTW, we never got to build stock exchanges, at the end we had 1 bank. We entered a full-stage military buildup around the time most others started on factories, and never left... markets we had everywhere, and luxury things in the cities that counted, but other than that a minimum of other buildings. We only had a couple of unis, I thought, some cities didn't even have libraries. But those cities that had, were specialised into research metropoles, with Colossus, Newton, Copernicus, and every high commerce shield in reach.

Not that we didn't wanted, but we had to sacrifice everything for military production.

and Re: the workers, we did add them to cities, of course, but there is nothing to add once you use all tiles, or are stuck at size 12. This happened before RRs came a long, at one time we had 30 workers cleaning pollution, switching improvements, and guarding our coast (against Vox, mostly, but also against a possible Lego invasion while we were at sea with most of our army)

DeepO

[Theseus]

Could somebody (Trip?) figure out some overall stats?
* Number of players
* Total threads - public/private
* Total posts - public/private
* Total word count - public/private

Kurt Squire is doing some stuff about Apolyton University that will hopefully end up in Computer Games Review, and I thought it might be a good opportunity to start publicly unveiling the sheer breadth of the PTWDG.

[DeepO]

I'm interested in the GS stats as well.

Originally posted by Theseus
* Number of players

I don't know how many we had, but certainly more than any other team. I guess at least 10 people played a turn. We had 5 regulars.

* Total threads - public/private

Another record I guess... especially private. But this could be close, our threads had many replies.

* Total posts - public/private

Huh. I guess GS has 30,000 posts easily. I myself have some 7000 posts made in our forum. Others come close.

* Total word count - public/private

If you count stuff like some of our plans, or some of the reports we send to GoW and RP, this again is going to be a lot.

we might not have won the game, we certainly won the post count race

DeepO

[Krill]

GS: Gathering Spam

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by DeepO

I'm interested in the GS stats as well.


I don't know how many we had, but certainly more than any other team. I guess at least 10 people played a turn. We had 5 regulars.

* Total threads - public/private

Another record I guess... especially private. But this could be close, our threads had many replies.

* Total posts - public/private

Huh. I guess GS has 30,000 posts easily. I myself have some 7000 posts made in our forum. Others come close.

* Total word count - public/private

If you count stuff like some of our plans, or some of the reports we send to GoW and RP, this again is going to be a lot.

we might not have won the game, we certainly won the post count race

DeepO

Ahem...

[DeepO]

Well, this post perhaps, but if the forum ever opens, I invite you to read through the 900 post turn threads in the Lego war, and tell me how much of that was useless information. It will take you a couple of hours, but consider that at the time, several of our members were typing over 12h a day to fill it, while the others tried to keep up. I remember vmxa complaining that he was always 2 pages behind, no matter how fast he tried to read

DeepO

[Rhothaerill]

Oh I believe you. I was an active part of the strategy forum and AU forum for a while until I finally lost interest in playing SP games so I know quite well the windiness....err, prolific on-topic writing tendencies, of many members of GS.

It's like Arnelos posting in a political discussion at MZO.

[Krill]

Ah, as bad as I felt after that event, those turn threads are truely amazing. The forum visibly slowed down on those evenings.

several of our members were typing over 12h a day to fill it

Primarily You, DeepO, and Aeson, although Cort and I got about 60 posts each from those threads. It was frantic.

[Master Zen]

Hmm... I probably don't have more than 2000 posts in the GoW forum, and that's pushing it.

I am also willing to bet I'm the top poster in our forum so I honestly doubt the GoW forum breaks the 10,000 post mark. Probably somewhere in between 5k-10k.

My team, unsurprisingly, got bored to death during the post-Bob war building spree. I think I was the only one enjoying it since I'm somewhat of a builder who still hasn't come out of the closet.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Krill
Ah, as bad as I felt after that event, those turn threads are truely amazing. The forum visibly slowed down on those evenings.

It's true... everyone was refreshing so frequently, that it took a while to get through. 'poly couldn't keep up. Frantic indeed...

DeepO

[Master Zen]

Btw, this is the little spreadsheet which had our buildup timeline before the Lego War. It was for Panzer32 who took charge of the team while I was computer-less in Geneva.

Btw, the black line is the date we launched our ships. It was also coincidentally the turn I finally had a computer again.

[DeepO]

It's different for a player when building, as opposed to the others. Nobody is interested in all the litle tweaks, and you can't really plan this as a team neither. Instead, you can do other stuff, like start threads on post-Lego defenses around the time you discover steam. But I agree, you need members who enjoy this, to keep any interest in the forum at building times.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Hum. Looks like I forgot to install Office at my last computer crash... I can't open it. I'm certainly interested in information like that, MZ. We kind of settled to a certain thread template ourselves, but I don't think any GSer ever used something like Excel. All calculations were done by hand, most in the head. A lot of the tweaking were last moment things we spotted.

DeepO

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by DeepO
Hum. Looks like I forgot to install Office at my last computer crash... I can't open it. I'm certainly interested in information like that, MZ. We kind of settled to a certain thread template ourselves, but I don't think any GSer ever used something like Excel. All calculations were done by hand, most in the head. A lot of the tweaking were last moment things we spotted.

DeepO

It's not very elaborate DeepO, since the actual building orders were explained in the forum (I can quote that post if you want). It is simply a timeline which shows each city's production and what it would be finishing building on what turn. You can also check what was each city's waste considering what it was building (the only real waste was two bombers built in Dreadnaughtica after it had finished building Destroyers).

Also it does not include the first half (more actually) of the buildup since it was done only for the turns Panzer was to be playing.

[ZargonX]

Hehe, went back to the very first page of our Lego forum, and found this little post from Odin on Nov 11th, 2002:

Once we get a few good size cities we should be able to expand like a giant ameoba, barbarians permiting. If we give a far-flung city for peace let's not give away one that may have a good resorce later in the game, we don't want Glory of War to get uranium.

How right he was!

[Master Zen]

Here's another spreadsheet I had, this one for the nuclear building program. It's quite confusing though since I did it only for myself so I really didn't have need of explaining much - consequetly I think even I forgot what much of it means

From what I recall:

The first colum has the city's production, the red-colored turn tiles show the accumulated production so far. The "Dif" column shows the shields that are still needed. The x27, x25 etc columns show how many of those type units would need to be disbanded so that we could rush the nukes. The "Tot" column shows how many extra shields would be obtained from the disbands thus it needed to be equal to or larger than the "Dif" column.

There were some changes done mid-way through. For starters we only built 5 nukes on that first turn since the 6th nuke would have been impossible to launch (no nuke sub for it). Also once we conquered Roleplay, the extra cities messed up the corruption of our core cities so the next phases had to be slightly adjusted. I don't remember if those changes were made to the sheet or just in my head so if the thing is messed up, don't blame me.

What might be interesting though is our "target" list. In the event it ended up being rather different that what we had thought of initially. All in all GoW built 14 tactical nukes and we used 7 of them (I could be wrong, must check battle reports)

-MZ

[Ennet]

Originally posted by Master Zen
I guess that's what pissed my team off so much, not just the fact they didn't want us to explore their land, but the fact that they didn't want that, yet considered it their right to explore ours.

It was a while back, but if i remember correctly it was more the delayed tech trade that upset us. I dont remember clearly if we had a signed deal or not, but when they wouldn't send us writing until after we moved out of their terretory most people on the team got mad. Honestly it could have been easily resolved if they just given us the tech and we then moved out of their claimed lands, that way we didn't need to lose thoose turns of precious research. So we felt pretty much like they partially atleast, broke the deal.
The privacy of their lands i think noone was too upset about, that was a logical wish.

[Ennet]

ohh sorry i was a page behind, didn't realise anyone would want to post so many posts it would exeed the fist page! :S

[Krill]

I've been meaning to ask this question for a long time: Where to RP start the game? Where was their capital originally founded? I joined the game after RP had palace jumpto , and lost, Pamplona, so I have no idea...

[Master Zen]

Madrid, which was apparently on the site of New Madrid.