Mule History - "Live"

[Gohar]

I haven't seen any thread charting developments/trends in game play in planet mule. Thought making one could be useful when re-read in future. Might also lead to some interesting discussion/opinions.

To give you an idea of what I mean, thought I'd list a few that I've seen over the past 3 yrs. I'd welcome comments relating to both past developments, and new one's people are seeing. Thread however is strictly about Planet Mule, rather than being a thread about C64/Atari Mule or Dan Bunton etc.

1) The now ubiquitous strategy selling of own plot by a player given a free hand to lower the price for himself to buy it later. Now I can't remember whether this started after a game update or whether it was one player's epiphany which others then started to copy.  People only really started to to this 1-2 yrs ago. I certainly can't remember seeing it before mainstream's bot games started up, not that I'm suggesting a link - bot game just serves as a useful marker in mule time line history.  Do any other players remember how the sell your own plot strategy came about and particularly who came up with it or popularised it?

2) As far as smurfs go, then IMO the trend really seemed to set in once true rank started up. There may well have been smurfs in mule before then, but I do remember a dramatic upsurge in smurf accounts after True Rank developed. I'd suggest the reason being that people were happy to have their entire record counted under the original system as that meant every win would be counted and therefore their rank on the old system was as high as it could be, but were less keen when True Rank was developed as now their entire history included their beginners phase when their win % was obviously much lower, and now a complete record was dragging their true rank down. I would say people at that time started they wanted to start afresh so they're true rank only affected their current ability rather than their all time ability.

3) There was a time when I think very few people were manipulating price of food/nrg to deliberately adjust their position in the game. If there were, I think it was a much less well known move than it is today.  Seems common knowledge among MULE regulars now.

4) The development of the "976 game" of course was something that of course came with one of the updates which allowed auctions in round 1. This of course led to counters such as buying ore to raise rnd 2 mule prices thus making the 976 game that much harder.


Any history of planet mule you want to add? Pls do so.

[Death_Mule17]

  Ok, First thing is the land sale rd 2 (after 3players buy a plot first round). First time i saw this start happening alot was about a year ago. Now i dont use this strat very often, rarely...Reason for this is I like to BUY! land rd 1 so im in last spot. And I DO NOT mind anyone doing it...yes it is annoying when the game puts up 2-3 that rd and the player who "sold" there plot the round before to lower price.. lives large. But it is part of the game and would hate to see it go, as it is a backdoor for the player left out after 3plots sell round 1.

And the issue with the smurf invasion is just silly. As far as im concerned "ranks" are unofficial, and making that "perfect" account is time well wasted. Now I do have a smurf, but I needed to make one after the land auction patch almost 2yrs back.Only to make my stats more accurate  as the game had changed alot since the very first version, not to mention restarting hosted games to get a load of abandons. IMO I dont like people who make smurfs to bamboozle you...that is just gay. I like my opponents to know who I am and what there getting into when they play me. eg I give helpful hints during the game that piss most people off, oh well. But at least players can then make a choice if they want to play me or not. Now that some people are making smurfs and changing there ip to "hide" from mainstreams smurfcheck...im actually getting ill, just play mule! Stop looking to get a 1up and play with your "known" account.  Sorry for taking up so much space Gohar...but you did ask for my feedback.


Better take me off your blacklist now gohar, its been almost a yr!
with luv DM17

[Intergalactic Mole]

I am an old school MULE player, but I haven't played Planet Mule enough times to comment on the online community trends.  I am curious though what exactly you meant by "to lower the price for himself to buy it later".  If you sell a plot to someone else, how exactly can you buy it again later?

IMO the ranking system for M.U.L.E. has very little credibility for a number of obvious factors including but not limited to the fact that there is no way to protect it from people creating multiple accounts to exploit the system, which is the case for most online games.  It's easy enough to generate a new public IP address every time you play if that's what floats your boat, and there is no effective way to detect it.  The only reason I can think of for creating a sockpuppet in this game is to hide the embarassing fact that you've played 1000 90 minute games of MULE in the past year (which translates to 62 days of non-stop MULE), or more commonly to hide under a new identity after making a bad reputation for yourself.  (I can think of at least one person who needs to do that right now).

Last night I played a great game with NJDevil in which he manipulated the price of smithore and energy on the last round which I didn't think was possible in the way he did it.  I'm still not even sure exactly how he got the energy to spike but it was extremely well played and it was a well deserved win for him.  I still need to play more PM to get the strategy of that down; it definitely seems different than the Atari version of MULE which is what I am used to playing.

I have no idea what a 976 game is.

[Chuckie Chuck]

You don't actually sell the plot.  You put it up for auction when you know you will be able to outbid any potential buyers and hold onto it, but the strategy can't cut the price of the true auctions dramatically and gives the rich guy a chance to get dirt cheap plots when everyone else is broke.  The unpurchased player sold plot doesn't cancel out the other auctions like an unsold claim, it just cuts the price in half a round faster, and gets the guy with the money a cheaper buy.

Example:

Rnd 1 - Someone or more than one person bought plots at $900+ (Usually $972)

In round 2 you expect any auctions to start at $912.  Well that's usually killer to buy at that price in round 2, you can't recover as easily as you can in rnd 1 usually.

But...

If you put your plot you claimed in rnd 1 up for auction, and you have the most money when rnd 2 starts, your auctioned plot will reduce the true auction plots to starting at half that, and you'll be able to get a dramatically cheaper plot.  At times this strategy works so well that a player gets lucky being able to buy several cheap plots in a row, and pretty much wins them the game.

[Intergalactic Mole]

If you paid $900+ for your plot in round 1 then you don't even have enough money to purchase a MULE... meaning you have no goods to sell in the auctions..

How would you be able to afford to buy it back? Sounds risky.

[Death_Mule17]

You NEED to play more mule mole, paying 972 rd 1 for a plot leaves you with 28$. With that and catching the wampus (100$) gives you 128$, just enough to drop a food plot. And I believe chucky explained the rest for a noob to understand.




xoxo
Dm17

[Intergalactic Mole]

Round 1:
 Grab a plot in land grant
 Buy a plot for $972
 Put the plot up for sale
 Catch the Wampus
 Outfit a FOOD Mule
 Sell the 2 or 3 extra food you have for approximately $20
 
Round 2: Starting money $23.00
 Your plot goes up for sale.
 Someone else buys it.


Seems like a losing strategy. Wouldn't take long for a noob to figure that out.

[Chuckie Chuck]

You got it wrong, the person that buys the plot in rnd 1 is not the one that sells it...

The guy that did NOT buy a plot sells his, so he can double down on the next auction when everyone else is out of money from buying plots.

Round 1:
 Grab a plot in land grant
 3 - Auctions
 Orange, Pink, and Blue all Buy a plot for $972
 Green knowing they can not possibly buy it, puts his one and only plot up for sale.
 Outfit a FOOD Mule

Round 2: Starting money for GREEN $970 or so when everyone else is at $20-$60 something.
 Green plot goes up for sale.
 No one has money to buy it, so he keeps it.
 Real Auctions take place at half price, green buys two plots.
 By the end of round 2 - green has 4 plots.

You'll note if you reread what I said before, I said, "The guy with the money sells the plot."  I did not say, "The guy that bought the plot and went broke."  Green didn't buy a plot, so he has money, so he's selling his, knowing he can prevent anyone from buying it, but is able to cripple the auction values and get a cheap plot that no one else can afford.

[Chuckie Chuck]

This can happen later in the game as well, usually someone will take a huge lead with a smith run, double the cash over everyone else for it to happen later, then sell a few plots, if the sale value of a plot was up over $3000, buy the end of his mock sales, it'll be down to just slightly above whatever the 2nd richest guys pocket can buy, say that player with most money has $4000 and the next player down as $1200, if the player with $4000 planned and setup the auction to sale plots ahead of time, he can make sure the player with $1200 can't buy his plots, then he will buy any plots that come up for auction just high enough that no one else can, and at $1200, he can afford to buy two.  This strategy has been known on a rare occasion to win Mr. Money Bags three extra plots in one round, guaranteed win.

[Intergalactic Mole]

Better explanation, and wow.. good find!!!!  I never knew about this strategy which I can confirm is 100% legitimate and should even work in the original Atari MULE game based on Kroah's reverse engineering!!!!      

[Intergalactic Mole]

By the way, nobody ever explained what a "976" game is ..

[Chuckie Chuck]

972/976 is the line where purchasing a plot and developing it on first round becomes impossible, however, with the current strategies, some people intentionally don't develop first round anyways, so anything goes.

[Intergalactic Mole]

Aha. I'm grateful for this thread then. I learned a new strategy, as well as a new counter strategy.

Thanks !!!

[Intergalactic Mole]

By the way, the land selling strategy is very risky in Planet MULE.  There is a high chance of getting the null point exception error if you put one of your plots up for sale, in which case you won't be able to continue playing -- and it will count as an abandon.   Don't know if anyone else has, but I messaged Peter and confirmed this is a known bug.

[Scroteus T.Bag]

DOOM![/b]