Confession. A little birdie told me about this post on a different forum and it was so good I decided to copy it here. If the author doesn't object, he gets a free setup on his next Alamaze game for such useful stuff. This is so useful to new Alamaze players it will be a sticky thread. This is not by me, the author can take credit by replying. Here's his stuff:
Having already familiarized myself with the general rules and commands through my other games, I started by opening up my turn 0 results. The first things I noticed:
- Starting influence of 12.00. This means I can submit 14 orders on the 1st turn and it gives me an idea of how successful my emissaries will be right off the bat.
- Beginning Food of 50,000 and Gold of 60,000. Since production occurs before issuing orders on turn 1, I also want to see what my forecast for next month is, and it is 22,270 Food and 20,835 Gold. Finally, I want to see what my estimated group consumption for next month is: 11,400 Food and 11,400 Gold. So for my first turn's orders, I will have 60,870 Food (50,000 + 22,270 - 11,400) and 69,435 Gold (60,000 + 20,835 - 11,400) available to me. Good to know.
- No High Priestess. I would either have to spend 18,000 Gold to hire one to divine population centers, or use my group's naturally high movement to cover lots of ground looking for them, and supplement that with agents doing reconnaissance.
- Four starting PCs in four different regions! It would seem I'm not in a good position to go after a single region to start out, with groups and emissaries spread all over the map.
Now I needed to figure out my initial goals for this game. World domination? Probably not. Already being in two games, I have a bit of an advantage over most of the new players in this game in terms of the learning curve, so I definitely don't want to go head-to-head with a new player for control of a region or city right off the bat. My goal is probably just to have fun and help make the game as enjoyable as possible for the other players. While it would be nice to stumble into my Early Strategic Objective by turn 10 or 15, it is not a requirement. My initial plan, taking into account that I don't want to go head-to-head with anyone immediately and that my resources are spread out over four regions, is just going to be to lay low and hunt for population centers. Pick up neutral Villages and Towns as best I'm able and just build up my resource base.
So I have 14 orders to figure out. Where to begin? Lets start with the King, who is named Abe. There are number of sole orders available to the king, the most popular initially being #470 (enamor a region) and #480 (expand influence). Since I'm not going after a single region initially, expand influence seems like a good option. That will give me an extra order for next turn and improve the overall abilities of my emissaries:
480 AB
This order will cost me 15,000 gold, leaving me with 54,435 to spend. Since I'm not moving against a city initially, my emissaries are going to be idle this turn, until I discover the locations of some population centers to move them to. My agents, however, have plenty to do! It seems I start with an Agent 3, an Agent 2, and an Agent 1. Not ideal, but I can work with that. Lets assume that their names are Larry, Moe, and Curly. I know from past experience that an Agent 4 gets access to 976, which lets him search 4 squares at a time for population centers. That seems worth getting. The cost to increase an agent by a level is 4,000 right now, so we will issue:
500 LA
This will improve Larry to an Agent 4 for 4,000 gold, so he'll be ready to 976 starting on turn 2. The other two will have to rely on order 970 to search one square at a time. So for Moe and Curly:
970 MO ZA
970 CU ZZ
We are having Moe do a reconnaissance of square ZA and Curly doing recon on ZZ. The cost of doing so is 500*level, so Curly will cost 1000 gold and Moe 500 gold. After issuing orders to all of our agents, we are down to 48,935 gold in our budget.
So our King has an order, our Agents have an order, and our Emissaries are on ice. We still have 10 orders available to us, so lets see what we can do with our groups. We start with 4 groups. 2 with troops, 1 merely a patrol (with leaders/wizards and no troops), and 1 inactive at the capital. I would like to activate the 4th one to cover more territory and eventually get all 4 groups big enough to be able to threaten villages and have a reasonable chance of success. Lucky for us, our inactive 4RD starts in Mountain terrain, and one of our special rules allows us to recruit Wyverns when a group is in the Mountains. So we will have 4RD raise a troop of Wyverns. In addition, 1RD is in the same spot and has an extra Adept and Captain that it really doesn't need. So lets transfer those over to 4RD as well. We'll issue:
565 4RD
701 1RD 4RD L (blank) 0.1
The first order is a special order available to us dragons to raise Wyverns for 12,000 gold. So that will leave us with 36,935 gold in our budget. The second order transfers figures from 1RD to 4RD (which will be active at the time of this order because they recruited Wyverns), namely the lowest level leader (L) and an Adept (0.1). With only one Wyvern, 4RD is probably going to stay put this turn, so I might as well take this opportunity to turn that Adept into something useful. I'll issue the Rite of the Magi command, which will hopefully improve the Wizard to Power-1, giving him the ability to cast useful spells. According to my set-up material, the cost to advance a wizard is 11,000 per level (pretty steep!), but I'm going to go for it anyway:
800 4RD
This leaves us with 25,935 Gold in our budget. 1RD is ready to start taking PCs right away with 2 brigades of Red Dragons, but lets supplement it with a brigade of Wyverns as well. If we end up taking casualties later on, hopefully they'll come from the easily replaceable Wyvern troop and not the precious Red Dragon troops.
565 1RD
That costs us another 12,000 Gold, so we are down to 13,935 in our budget. Since 1RD is ready to threaten villages, lets send him out looking for one. We'll use order #725, which orders the group to move until it finds a population center and then stop. Looking at my set-up material, I can see that Red Dragons have great movement rates, taking a mere 3 points to move across many types of terrain. That means I can move 6 squares without having to force march. Lets assume that their starting location is at AX.
725 1RD BY CY DY EY FX GX
That will have 1RD fly over 6 plains squares looking for a PC to stop at. Our other armies aren't in ideal positions, though. Neither of them start in Mountain terrain, so they can't raise Wyverns. Lets have 2RD (which starts with two brigades of Red Dragons) search some nearby Mountains for PCs and 3RD (a patrol with leaders but no brigades) make a beeline towards the nearest Mountain, stopping for nothing. Assuming 2RD starts at OO and 3RD starts at AC, we'll issue:
720 3RD BC CC DC EC FC GC HC IC
725 2RD NO MO LO KO
You might notice that 3RD used up 24 movement points going 8 squares. Since it is Patrol, it will suffer no loss of morale by force marching. It didn't quite make it to a Mountain square, but he'll be able to reach one easily next turn. In addition, we will be notified of any towns and villages that 3RD flew over to get there (but he won't stop, because he used order 720). 2RD, on the other hand, will fly over four Mountain squares and will stop as soon as he hits a population center.
It looks like we have 11 orders above, so we have 3 more that we can do. Our King, Agents, and Groups are all busy, our Emissaries are idle, as planned. What else can we do? We have a little Gold left to spend, but we have plans to raise even more Wyverns next turn and possibly move some emissaries to PCs that we've uncovered. After feeding our armies, we still have 60,870 Food. Food left over at the end of the turn spoils at a rate of -20% per turn. Even after we raise these two Wyverns, our feeding costs on turn 2 will be less than the 20k food we are currently producing. Lets turn this Food into Gold, in preparation for next turn. We could feel out some other kingdoms to work out a trade, but generally people need Gold more than Food early on, same as us. Instead, we are going to trade our Food on the open market, using order #200:
200 F 60000
That will convert 60,000 Food into 20,000 Gold. Now we'll have a piddly 870 Food left at the end of the turn, and a very healthy 33,935 Gold. We have two orders left... what did we forget? That's right, our wizards! We are having an Adept undergo the Rite of the Magi, but we also have two Power-1 Wizards, one in 1RD and the other in 2RD. We could have them use Raven Familiar (spell #888) to recon a square, but that seems kind of labor intensive to issue that order each turn. We have four standing orders available to us, so lets see if we can't put those wizards to use for a longer stretch. Since we'll hopefully be threatening villages with our armies and not actually doing battle, we'll have our Power-1 Wizards Create Food (spell #208) every turn. If we decide later on that was dumb, we can always use order 50 to cancel the standing order and have them do something else:
60 208 1RD 1
60 208 2RD 1
On turn 2, these wizards will each create 2000 Food automatically without me having to issue any orders.
Our 14 orders for turn 1:
480 AB
500 LA
970 MO ZA
970 CU ZZ
565 4RD
701 1RD 4RD L (blank) 0.1
800 4RD
565 1RD
725 1RD BY CY DY EY FX GX
720 3RD BC CC DC EC FC GC HC IC
725 2RD NO MO LO KO
200 F 60000
60 208 1RD 1
60 208 2RD 1
When all is said and done, I should be left with 4,870 Food and 33,935 Gold at the end of the turn, which will mostly carry over to turn 2 (with the exception of the 20% Food spoilage). Hopefully that will be enough to recruit some more Wyvern troops for 2RD and 4RD, move an emissary or two to PCs that my patrol uncovers, and we'll continue on our hunt for neutral PCs. I have no doubt that after next turn, I'll be able to look back at these orders and think of something I could've done better. And so goes the learning curve of Alamaze.
Disclaimer: Names and locations have been changed to protect the innocent!
Finally, a few notes about filling out your order spreadsheets. Put your real name in Player Name. Put the correct turn number in the Turn Number section. The front page of your turn results will tell you the naming convention that they would like used (in my case, I saved the file as 105_RD_T1). Do not cut and paste (or even copy and paste) in the spreadsheet, because it will screw up a formula. Always email your orders from the same email address. Don't send them numerous sets of orders and revisions.
Double check your orders. Then triple check them. Then have a friend check them. I'm hoping that the GM is forgiving of our large group of new players, but they seems pretty prickly over there about not being responsible for checking your orders or fixing a completely obvious error like putting in the wrong turn number. Its best just to pay close attention to detail and get things right on your own.
Having already familiarized myself with the general rules and commands through my other games, I started by opening up my turn 0 results. The first things I noticed:
- Starting influence of 12.00. This means I can submit 14 orders on the 1st turn and it gives me an idea of how successful my emissaries will be right off the bat.
- Beginning Food of 50,000 and Gold of 60,000. Since production occurs before issuing orders on turn 1, I also want to see what my forecast for next month is, and it is 22,270 Food and 20,835 Gold. Finally, I want to see what my estimated group consumption for next month is: 11,400 Food and 11,400 Gold. So for my first turn's orders, I will have 60,870 Food (50,000 + 22,270 - 11,400) and 69,435 Gold (60,000 + 20,835 - 11,400) available to me. Good to know.
- No High Priestess. I would either have to spend 18,000 Gold to hire one to divine population centers, or use my group's naturally high movement to cover lots of ground looking for them, and supplement that with agents doing reconnaissance.
- Four starting PCs in four different regions! It would seem I'm not in a good position to go after a single region to start out, with groups and emissaries spread all over the map.
Now I needed to figure out my initial goals for this game. World domination? Probably not. Already being in two games, I have a bit of an advantage over most of the new players in this game in terms of the learning curve, so I definitely don't want to go head-to-head with a new player for control of a region or city right off the bat. My goal is probably just to have fun and help make the game as enjoyable as possible for the other players. While it would be nice to stumble into my Early Strategic Objective by turn 10 or 15, it is not a requirement. My initial plan, taking into account that I don't want to go head-to-head with anyone immediately and that my resources are spread out over four regions, is just going to be to lay low and hunt for population centers. Pick up neutral Villages and Towns as best I'm able and just build up my resource base.
So I have 14 orders to figure out. Where to begin? Lets start with the King, who is named Abe. There are number of sole orders available to the king, the most popular initially being #470 (enamor a region) and #480 (expand influence). Since I'm not going after a single region initially, expand influence seems like a good option. That will give me an extra order for next turn and improve the overall abilities of my emissaries:
480 AB
This order will cost me 15,000 gold, leaving me with 54,435 to spend. Since I'm not moving against a city initially, my emissaries are going to be idle this turn, until I discover the locations of some population centers to move them to. My agents, however, have plenty to do! It seems I start with an Agent 3, an Agent 2, and an Agent 1. Not ideal, but I can work with that. Lets assume that their names are Larry, Moe, and Curly. I know from past experience that an Agent 4 gets access to 976, which lets him search 4 squares at a time for population centers. That seems worth getting. The cost to increase an agent by a level is 4,000 right now, so we will issue:
500 LA
This will improve Larry to an Agent 4 for 4,000 gold, so he'll be ready to 976 starting on turn 2. The other two will have to rely on order 970 to search one square at a time. So for Moe and Curly:
970 MO ZA
970 CU ZZ
We are having Moe do a reconnaissance of square ZA and Curly doing recon on ZZ. The cost of doing so is 500*level, so Curly will cost 1000 gold and Moe 500 gold. After issuing orders to all of our agents, we are down to 48,935 gold in our budget.
So our King has an order, our Agents have an order, and our Emissaries are on ice. We still have 10 orders available to us, so lets see what we can do with our groups. We start with 4 groups. 2 with troops, 1 merely a patrol (with leaders/wizards and no troops), and 1 inactive at the capital. I would like to activate the 4th one to cover more territory and eventually get all 4 groups big enough to be able to threaten villages and have a reasonable chance of success. Lucky for us, our inactive 4RD starts in Mountain terrain, and one of our special rules allows us to recruit Wyverns when a group is in the Mountains. So we will have 4RD raise a troop of Wyverns. In addition, 1RD is in the same spot and has an extra Adept and Captain that it really doesn't need. So lets transfer those over to 4RD as well. We'll issue:
565 4RD
701 1RD 4RD L (blank) 0.1
The first order is a special order available to us dragons to raise Wyverns for 12,000 gold. So that will leave us with 36,935 gold in our budget. The second order transfers figures from 1RD to 4RD (which will be active at the time of this order because they recruited Wyverns), namely the lowest level leader (L) and an Adept (0.1). With only one Wyvern, 4RD is probably going to stay put this turn, so I might as well take this opportunity to turn that Adept into something useful. I'll issue the Rite of the Magi command, which will hopefully improve the Wizard to Power-1, giving him the ability to cast useful spells. According to my set-up material, the cost to advance a wizard is 11,000 per level (pretty steep!), but I'm going to go for it anyway:
800 4RD
This leaves us with 25,935 Gold in our budget. 1RD is ready to start taking PCs right away with 2 brigades of Red Dragons, but lets supplement it with a brigade of Wyverns as well. If we end up taking casualties later on, hopefully they'll come from the easily replaceable Wyvern troop and not the precious Red Dragon troops.
565 1RD
That costs us another 12,000 Gold, so we are down to 13,935 in our budget. Since 1RD is ready to threaten villages, lets send him out looking for one. We'll use order #725, which orders the group to move until it finds a population center and then stop. Looking at my set-up material, I can see that Red Dragons have great movement rates, taking a mere 3 points to move across many types of terrain. That means I can move 6 squares without having to force march. Lets assume that their starting location is at AX.
725 1RD BY CY DY EY FX GX
That will have 1RD fly over 6 plains squares looking for a PC to stop at. Our other armies aren't in ideal positions, though. Neither of them start in Mountain terrain, so they can't raise Wyverns. Lets have 2RD (which starts with two brigades of Red Dragons) search some nearby Mountains for PCs and 3RD (a patrol with leaders but no brigades) make a beeline towards the nearest Mountain, stopping for nothing. Assuming 2RD starts at OO and 3RD starts at AC, we'll issue:
720 3RD BC CC DC EC FC GC HC IC
725 2RD NO MO LO KO
You might notice that 3RD used up 24 movement points going 8 squares. Since it is Patrol, it will suffer no loss of morale by force marching. It didn't quite make it to a Mountain square, but he'll be able to reach one easily next turn. In addition, we will be notified of any towns and villages that 3RD flew over to get there (but he won't stop, because he used order 720). 2RD, on the other hand, will fly over four Mountain squares and will stop as soon as he hits a population center.
It looks like we have 11 orders above, so we have 3 more that we can do. Our King, Agents, and Groups are all busy, our Emissaries are idle, as planned. What else can we do? We have a little Gold left to spend, but we have plans to raise even more Wyverns next turn and possibly move some emissaries to PCs that we've uncovered. After feeding our armies, we still have 60,870 Food. Food left over at the end of the turn spoils at a rate of -20% per turn. Even after we raise these two Wyverns, our feeding costs on turn 2 will be less than the 20k food we are currently producing. Lets turn this Food into Gold, in preparation for next turn. We could feel out some other kingdoms to work out a trade, but generally people need Gold more than Food early on, same as us. Instead, we are going to trade our Food on the open market, using order #200:
200 F 60000
That will convert 60,000 Food into 20,000 Gold. Now we'll have a piddly 870 Food left at the end of the turn, and a very healthy 33,935 Gold. We have two orders left... what did we forget? That's right, our wizards! We are having an Adept undergo the Rite of the Magi, but we also have two Power-1 Wizards, one in 1RD and the other in 2RD. We could have them use Raven Familiar (spell #888) to recon a square, but that seems kind of labor intensive to issue that order each turn. We have four standing orders available to us, so lets see if we can't put those wizards to use for a longer stretch. Since we'll hopefully be threatening villages with our armies and not actually doing battle, we'll have our Power-1 Wizards Create Food (spell #208) every turn. If we decide later on that was dumb, we can always use order 50 to cancel the standing order and have them do something else:
60 208 1RD 1
60 208 2RD 1
On turn 2, these wizards will each create 2000 Food automatically without me having to issue any orders.
Our 14 orders for turn 1:
480 AB
500 LA
970 MO ZA
970 CU ZZ
565 4RD
701 1RD 4RD L (blank) 0.1
800 4RD
565 1RD
725 1RD BY CY DY EY FX GX
720 3RD BC CC DC EC FC GC HC IC
725 2RD NO MO LO KO
200 F 60000
60 208 1RD 1
60 208 2RD 1
When all is said and done, I should be left with 4,870 Food and 33,935 Gold at the end of the turn, which will mostly carry over to turn 2 (with the exception of the 20% Food spoilage). Hopefully that will be enough to recruit some more Wyvern troops for 2RD and 4RD, move an emissary or two to PCs that my patrol uncovers, and we'll continue on our hunt for neutral PCs. I have no doubt that after next turn, I'll be able to look back at these orders and think of something I could've done better. And so goes the learning curve of Alamaze.
Disclaimer: Names and locations have been changed to protect the innocent!
Finally, a few notes about filling out your order spreadsheets. Put your real name in Player Name. Put the correct turn number in the Turn Number section. The front page of your turn results will tell you the naming convention that they would like used (in my case, I saved the file as 105_RD_T1). Do not cut and paste (or even copy and paste) in the spreadsheet, because it will screw up a formula. Always email your orders from the same email address. Don't send them numerous sets of orders and revisions.
Double check your orders. Then triple check them. Then have a friend check them. I'm hoping that the GM is forgiving of our large group of new players, but they seems pretty prickly over there about not being responsible for checking your orders or fixing a completely obvious error like putting in the wrong turn number. Its best just to pay close attention to detail and get things right on your own.
