Co-op Game Feb 2010

[trst]

Hello.

I'm interested in playing a co-op game with ppl who are already hip this weekend; where "co-op" means we are colluding for the highest possible colony score and "hip" means you already have a feel for the economy and can roll with random events. I can host and we'd want everyone to have good pings cos an AI coming in would screw the system.

Was talking about this with C64 and there are two ways this might work. One way is for each person to monopolize a resource from round one; although in looking at the other co-op post in here it might make more sense to forgo crystite. The other is that we are all self-sufficient and take a corner of the board but still collude to maximize profits.

Either way it seems like we should try to huddle our lots together and decline auctions to keep the smithore price rolling naturally as long as possible.

I've only been playing for a month and would like to hear anyone's thoughts or experiences from previous attempts and try to find other ppl interested in this.

thanks,
trst
 

[C64 nostalgia]

I'm in.

[C64 nostalgia]

Is anyone interested?

[mikman]

I'm down for playing a game like this, it would be interesting to see if we could maximize all things.  I think we may need to play a couple of them tho to first get the ground rules down and learn any goofy things before playing the main "give it all we got" game.  Let me know when you guys want to do it and I'll set aside the time.

[keybounce2]

Sounds like fun

[piete]

I'm interested too but don't know if I can schedule a fixed time since my kid doesn't know the time yet...

However, this type of game should be thoroughly planned, if I were to participate a game where the objective is not a personal win, I'd like to have made all possible preparations to ensure a really good colony score. Like considering the effects of global events and such...

What I thought in the beginning would be to sell all plots to one player at a time to enable the exploit of adjacency and eos bonus from round 2. Like player 1 buys (cheap of course) at least player 2's and 3's plots on round 2 (which on the other hand means that they could sell their food and energy for that round since they don't need them). In the meantime, player 4 would produce food or energy...

Or, since on round 2 players have already 2 plots, maybe two players could sell their first plots to the two other players in order to start mass production by two players...

Ok, it seems that the possibilities here are numerous, and maybe the best possible score could be reached by playing and experimenting, but anyway, think about what I wrote, maybe it would work that way or maybe not...

[trst]

that's interesting. one of the things i was thinking about is how plots don't make more than...8 or10?...resources each at max. seems like having two players owning half the board each would insure that the plots are making max.

everybody has got to have something to sell to the big producers though, cos everyone would need money to buy up overstock, right?

[C64 nostalgia]

I've been thinking: it seems manipulating the price of energy might be possible and beneficial -- Selling one unit at a very high price to keep the price of energy high. If we only focus on smithore, we don't have enough money spread around to absorb 200 units every $230 cycle. Various ways of inflating prices to "donate" money to other players exist, but those would affect other parameters. In the end, it seems to make the most points, we need everyone to make money.

[Pescado]

that's interesting. one of the things i was thinking about is how plots don't make more than...8 or10?...resources each at max. seems like having two players owning half the board each would insure that the plots are making max.

I think the optimal layout is two players, each owning most of half the board, one player owning the river, and one player owning about 6 flatlands and producing energy. This maximizes the EOS/LCT benefits for everyone. Then you hike the cost of food and energy through the roof and never sell to the store to kickback the energy/food producers so they are funded for Smithore buyback. To maximize the time to full development, the food and energy players sell their extra land grants to the miners. The selling price, however, is tricky: If you sell high, this will inflate the perceived value of land at auctions, and any money going to the "store" is a loss to the colony, so you want to keep land prices at dirt cheap so any land auctions can be snapped up for a mere $80.

Of course, if COLLUSION were put back in the game...

[Rhodan]

Here are my thoughts on how to achieve a high colony score.
The only way you generate income in the game is by selling to the store. So you must sell to store when its high and buy when its cheap and repeat. To drive energy and food prices up there must be a shortage.
So I propose two players specializes in food and energy with their remaining plots producing smithore then cyrstite in the later rounds. By diversifying those players can limit production when there is to much product on the market by swapping out mules. The remaining players will always leave themselves short by one on food and energy to drive the price up. The food and energy producers will sell when high and everyone will buy next round when cheaper so you can get rid of product by spoilage remembering someone must remain short to hopefully send price back up next round. I dont know how well this will work because I think in regards to energy and food  the game looks at total supply vs demand and sets price base on if there is an overall shortage in the colony. Same principle with ore.
At some point there will to much product to buy and you will loose money. That is why each player needs to be able to switch out and produce crystite when there is to much of the other products on the market to buy and resale at a profit. Some math will tell us what these numbers are.  So everyone needs to produce as much ore as possible early on to maximize the amount and number of rounds to sell at 230. Buy land cheap, 11 plots each with good grouping to max production, everyone gets a high and adjoining plots. Same with the ore. Two people equally produce food and E so they swap out in one round when there is to much on the market. Same with the miners swapping to stite when there is to much ore. Hopefully a fire in the store will help destroy product to increase the earning potential.

[russel4reeves]

I AM Still looking for co-op players......

[Keybounce]

It seems to me that the only way to truly "milk" the store for money is to have crystite. At some point, you will run 200@230 in smithore through the store. From that point forward, unless you have a fire destroy the store's smithore,  the best you can do is cycle the smithore -- sell at 230, buy at 110, repeat. New smithore doesn't help -- you want to move everything to crystite.

How many plots should one person own? +1 for adjacency; +1 per three. If you want +7 for volume, that's 21 crystite plots. Each side of the river is 4x5, or 20. If you need some energy plots, three E's make 4 (plains) + 1 (adjacency) + 1 (volume) is 6*3=18; 6 plots go up to 7 per, or 7*6=42. That's enough energy to supply the colony. That gives 17 mines on each side.

To get two sets of 18 mines, you have to have energy on the water; that means less food. Or, have energy stored in the store.

Milking the store for energy? Bad -- that means that you have plots going unused.
Milking the store for food? You could run at a 1 unit shortage. Not good planning -- you will need to have time to switch smithore/crystite.

Better to store extra food/energy in the store, for later in the game when you are trying to run extra mines. The cost of storing a unit in the store -- about 35 -- is cheap compared to the multiple ores you'll get from doing so.

This version lets you sell plots with mules on them. So, the extra players (the food and energy people), in addition to developing 3 food or 3 energy plots early, start doing land grabs of plots, putting mining mules on them, and then selling them to the miners.

Finally, those food/energy people have to be "given" money so that they can participate in the 50 units each smithore hording. So initially, the price of food/energy has to be artificially raised (store emptied) to give a share of mining profits to the rest.