A draft guide, for anyone who wants to read it

[vulture]

I've put together some notes from the discussions here (and borrowed from CFC) to write a guide for how expansion / empire maintenance part of the ancient era (mostly). It's pretty haphazard now - it starts off in too much basic detail, and meanders around aimlessly at the end. Very much a first draft, waiting for comments from anyone who cares to read it. The guide is in .pdf format, and can be downloaded here from the uploads/downloads section. EDIT: The file is now 280K, and about 39 pages long. The 'broken' figure mentioned in this post before has been fixed.

The list of names is no way complete. I was noting down names from threads as I was reading them, but not very thoroughly, and didn't do it for all threads.

Any comments, errors etc, feel free to post them here.

Hope the download works...

[Cort Haus]

Let me be the first to applaud vulture for this. I had a flick through, and dived for the reply box.

Awesome stuff, vulture - I look forward to reading it. This could be what the world needs - the AU Strat Guide.

[Rhothaerill]

I just want to say WOW!

Great job Vulture. I was only able to take a quick look at it right now, but I intend to sit down and read through it fully soon. I just have to say that this needs to be added to the top of the links in Theseus' thread...whether it's a first draft or not.

[vulture]

I've just changed the dodgy images. The new file is exactly the same, but only about 250k - so 10 times smaller. The figure changed is fig 3.3.

No new link, since I removed the first version and replaced it with the new one with the same file name. Let me know of any download problems.

[Cort Haus]

Little typo: p21 sect 2.3.4 'Barracks Cities' : says "A pretty simply idea". s.b. "A pretty simple idea". (I assume).

New download works a treat.

PS - wanna hand proofing and editing?

[vulture]

Any help with spelling, better ideas for organisation, editing, things that are missing etc. gladly received.

Typo corrected, along with a formatting error (I used html codes for bold face
at one point for some reason...) I won't bother uploading the corrected version until there have been a few more changes made I think.

[Nor Me]

Looks good!

It covers the basics well and simply explains all the things that I wouldn't have trouble putting into words. I had the earlier download and was going to complain about fig 3.3.
You've missed out the latest corruption abuse, although there is no way it will survive another patch so that's fine.

It's all theory and there are no actual examples of how this would unfold in a real game. I tend to find that the hardest part is to balance what happens immeadiately with the later game.

For something that short, simple and comprehensive though, it's close to perfect.

I've no idea why I've been credited as I can't remember contributing anything useful to anything you've actually discussed. Not that I mind.

[Dominae]

Awesome effort, vulture.

You're right that it's definitely in a draft form. There are, as usual, the usual typos to seek and destroy.

But one other thing I should comment on: I think you should revise the text, giving serious thought as to who your target audience is. Some parts appear to be for pure beginners, while others are too theoretical or advanced for even the most hard-core veterans (for instance, the difference between knowing what 'Food', 'Shields' and 'Commerce' do, and the Corruption formulas). If you're writing for one or the other you're going to have to edit your content appropriately; if you're going for a definitive guide for all levels of expertise...well, good luck to you (those are notoriously difficult to write)!


Dominae

[vmxa1]

I grabbed and will read it. I just want to say if you do decide to remove any sections to met any target, put it in an appendix. Then it will not be lost and us nuts can reference it.

[vulture]

Dominae: yes, that's the big problem with it at the moment. It started out very basic, and I couldn't keep going at that kind of detail, and near the end I was running out of time to work on it and was just throwing stuff down as it came into my head without real planning. It certainly needs to be pitched at a more consistent level, and improved presentationally.

Some things, like the corruption formula, could certainly be thrown into an appendix, since the details are less important than the game-play observations drawn from those details.

[Mountain Sage]

MS weeps. He had just finished his first chapter about the early game when somebody else came and did it better. Sniff...

Well, there are other chapters in being.

Vulture, what about helping me with the 'Guidebook'?
I could send you my first chapter about the early game, so you can incorporate it.

Thes chapters about game strategies, levels of play and wonders are also finished, btw.
I'm starting on the chapter about specific civs.
Let me know.

[vulture]

Sorry 'bout that MS - I started it just before your 'best threads of the past year' thread appeared, and did mean to tell you that I was doing something that could be a part of that, but forgot. My bad.

I'd like to see your early game chapter - the stuff I compiled was meant to be a summary of what had been thrashed out here over the last few years, much like your project, so it'd be good to see what you've included any how you've gone about it.

I ought to mention though that I've been doing this with the 'Latex' package, and am using Linux workstations, so MS Word documents are pretty much unusuable to me. I do have a program to pull out the raw text, but it isn't very reliable. So if you have a plain text version...

[Thrar]

looks very good, vulture!

here are a couple of comments:

Resources: at least Wine on bonus grassland is possible, see AU106, 2 tiles south of the northern mountains on starting island. Of course it may have been added in the editor, but it's not entirely impssible.
Game gives +2 to food, see any game with game in it.

on p.12 in the explanation (last paragraph), i suppose you are referring to F_D instead of D_D? Maybe it would be a good idea to list how many tiles the usual map sizes (tiny to huge) have? As Dominae already mentioned, this is quite a lot of theory, and maybe could be put in an appendix as vmxa1 suggested. Instead, maybe a summary would be better for readers, that don't want that much detail.

p.19: "You will always want to produce some units to explore (and some to guard your
capital) before you start producing your first settler."
I'm not sure if you meant that, but this sounds like you'd need at least 3 units (4 for non-exp.) built before your settler - another scout and 2 warriors for defense. Imo, this is too much. Depending on the tiles available for the capital (how fast does it grow with decent production?), i'd say build 2 more units at the most, then start the settler. The capital should be size 2 after 10 turns, and if you have two 2/1 tiles (say, one improved grassland and one shielded), you'll get the settler in another 10 turns, just in time. If there are bonus tiles, which allow faster growth, i'd build only 1 warrior, in AU209 i even got by with building the settler right away (thanks to expansionistic). More than 2 imo is only appropriate if you start with several 2/2 tiles, like forest+game/plains+cattle.

overall, maybe you could add some information about hills/mountains? Things like the defensive bonus for city placements on hills, or irrigated (bonus, if possible) grassland to work a mined hill (after despotism) come to my mind. Another thing to mention in the forestry section might be, that if a city/colony is placed in forest or jungle, that tile is instantly cleared, something to bear in mind for city placements.

this is great so far, thanks for all the effort you put into this!

[GodKing]

After a quick look, all I have to say is good job.

[Mountain Sage]

vulture,

never feel bad for doing a better job...
All my text is on Word. Would it help you if I just sent you an e-mail with the text (i.e. no Word attachments?), or otherwise, how can I send the text to you?