Immaculate-002: Late Age for Noobs (GAME OVER: ATLANTIS/SHATNER WINS)

[Immaculate]

for me that was very helpful.

[Moanerette]

Great stuff Shatner, a really nice demonstration of how to glean information from the graphs.

[triqui]

Yep, that's exactly what I meant with an inform
Very helpful, thank you shaetner. I would had made one if I weren't so damn busy lately, but it's a good thing to do in newbie games, so everybody learns how to extract data from the graph charts.
Nice job!

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Sorry about the taking so long to send in my turn, everybody. We lost power here, and I couldnt get online.

[Immaculate]

Stuff happens. Seems like we are all good now.

[Immaculate]

tell us more about the unrest events.

[triqui]

There are several beneficial events that reduce the unrest in a province. If you have 0 unrest, they do nothing. If you have 5 unrest, they reduce it to 0. So if you have taxed your province at 110% tax rate for a couple of turns, and you hit one of those events, you have got extra free gold. If you don't, just go back to 100% taxes and leave the province at any unrest level from 1-5, which does not hinder you at all (you need unrest 6+ to lose gold). You get a few extra gold coins this way, and in the begining, that might mean the difference quite a lot. Buying one extra mage at turn 3-7 means a LOT of research through the game. Buying a few extra soldiers might mean the difference between taking 2 provinces in turn 4, or taking 1, and so on.

Another popular strat with some nations (Man, Tien Chi, bogarus, Pangea) is to patrol your capitol at 200% tax rate. Those nations have very good patrolers (either free patrol bonus, or very cheap high movement or flying units, such as Pangea). This way you get an extra punch of gold in the begining. Overtaxing your capitol and/or main provinces in the first year might give you an extra 5000 gold, which mean 3-6 castles (specially for nations with good Administration in their castles, such as Bogarus or Man). That's a nice bump. Getting a good headstart might give you a much more confortable midgame: it's way easier to fight midgame if you are leading in provinces, income, castle, or resarch (or any combination of those), than if you are a mediocre nation (or the underdog).

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Thanks, Triqi, this has been extremely enlightening! Since we are on the topic of unrest, I have a question- I've read that friendly dominion decreases unrest. Is it known by how much it does so, and does it scale with dominion strength?

[Calahan]

That’s some pretty good newbie advice you’ve been giving out there shatner and triqui, much credit to you both for that (and indeed some well seasoned players would do well to listen to what is being said regarding the autotax as well, since while it cuts down the MM loads, it really is pretty inefficient at its job as triqui says)

But thought I’d correct a few points in passing (since one of my many faults is hating to see misinformation, even if it’s only slight in this case, but it's best to drill-in correct info from day 1 IMO, rather than aim to correct it later once the pupil becomes more educated)

Originally Posted by shatner

Income
On turn 1, everyone's income is the same +/- their scales.

(what follows are very minor points, but thought I'd mention them for those like myself who like to be anal about every minor detail )

1 – The starting income is highly influenced by scales as you say (and so again as you say, the turn 1 income graph is a great source of intel on the enemy scales in this regard), but it is not the only factor as you suggest. Since it has to be mentioned that the type of fort a nation has at their capital also affects that nations turn 1 income. i.e. if you start a test game with EA Ermor and EA Agartha, and take max positive income scales with both, then you will see a distinct difference in their incomes due to EA Ermor having a Great City of admin 60, and EA Agartha having a Cave City of admin 30. And those 30 admin points can make a noticeable difference in turn 1 incomes. (watch out for differing populations throwing the figures off though. See next)

Also the starting population is not exactly 30k for each nation, as it can be anything between 29500 and 30500 (or maybe 29501 and 30499). And while the 1k difference between the max and min values doesn’t make the biggest difference in the world over the long haul, 1k of population will probably add something like 15-20gp to the income if a nation has taken good scales

Originally Posted by triqui

Unless the unrest is 6+, there's no drawback. So you can set all your provinces with unrest 0-4 to 110% taxes, and leave it to 100% taxes when it goes unrest 4-5, without any drawback.

Second, the AI overreact to unrest. You clean 1 unrest for each 2% taxes left.

2 – Your unrest data is a bit off triqui. Firstly under-taxing reduces unrest by 1 for each 3% below 100%, and not for every 2% as quoted above. (this formula is given in the manual (and the Wiki - http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Province), and it is correct on this one). So setting taxes to 90% reduces unrest by 3.3 (rounded down to 3) and not by 5. Although unrest can be reduced by more than 3 with 90% taxes due to the effect of positive dominion. As positive dominion can reduce unrest by between 0-2 each turn (which might be where you are getting your figure of 5 from). But note that there is no guarantee that positive dominion will reduce unrest, only a chance that it will. So 90% taxes is only guaranteed to reduce unrest by 3 and not 5 (excluding all other factors of course), but unrest can be reduced by 5 with 90% taxes if you get a good roll from a positive dominion unrest reduction.

Also any amount of unrest will affect income, as it is certainly not ignored until 6+ as you state. IIRC you lose something like 2% of income per unrest point. This is easy enough to test as well by starting a new game (take neutral growth), making note of the cap income for a few turns (although watch for variations due to temp scales changes), set 110% taxes for a turn or two to generate 1-2 points of unrest, then reset taxes to 100% and take note of the income figure. You should see that income is down by a few percentage points due to the unrest in the province (and by too much for it to be just the loss of a few tens of populiation caused by the overtaxing).

So running provinces with unrest until they hit 6+ before looking to reduce it is not likely to be very efficient IMO. (speaking as the MM loving freak that I am, I often run income provinces in positive dominion at 110% until they hit 2 unrest, and then reduce to 100% and let positive dominion reduce them to 0. Then rinse and repeat. Which it seems is roughly what you are suggesting, albeit a less efficient version IMO due to your figures being off, but the basis of your idea is good none the less IMO).


Although it should be noted that there are several events, both good and bad, that are triggered by having unrest in a province (As you indicated in regard to unrest reducing events). Not sure if this can really be factored into an “allowing unrest” strategy or not though. I wouldn’t completely rule it out, but I can’t imagine it ranking anywhere high on an efficiency scale. Those interested in the mechanics behind the random events should follow Edi’s signature links to the list of random events and their triggers for more info on the subject. (Edit - link to event list - http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45185)



And I hope you will all please excuse this intrusion, especially if it was unwanted (it's one of my many bad habits as I said), and hope you both keep up all the good newbie education that you are doing

[triqui]

Thanks for the corrections, enterteining read. The admin in the capitol is quite good advice, I overlooked that. Certainly, Man would probably lead just becouse of that, even with average scales. Good advice.

It has been a lot since the last time I read through the math of the game, so my memories might be wrong. However, what you says makes me remember it was so.

Just that I thought 5 unrest was the right move regardless, becouse 4 unrest gives you -8% income, while you get +10% from having 110% taxes, and that's why I decided to stop once you get to 5 unrest and then swinging it back. Probably it's not the best way to do, though, but having some extra gold in the begining is better than having some extra gold in the long run. That's why you pay an interest for a credit :P