Friday, July 20, 2007

Kill the Geese and Let God Sort Them Out

I'm still sick. It's getting annoying. I just want to be healthy, or near death so people fuss over me. As it is my throat hurts and I want to rip it out but other than that I'm fine. Today's Roads and Boats project was to investigate the tip that WerBaer posted on the 'geek that "there are places where you haven't built anything". I decided to build more primary producers to see what happened. I wasn't particularly concerned if I didn't produce a stock bond as in yesterday's success - I just wanted to see what the production capacity gave me so I could formulate a better plan to use what I had.

I started with the opening that worked for me yesterday - a quarry and a wood cutter to either side of the pasture in the bottom right corner, followed by a raft factory and a saw mill outside those. I was then able to build a wood cutter next to the second quarry, and needed to start mines in the mountains. At about Turn 8 I realised I wasn't far behind yesterday's schedule.

Turn 1: build quarry and woodcutter
Turn 3: produce donkey
Turn 4: produce donkey, build saw mill
Turn 7: produce geese, build second quarry
Turn 8: produce geese, build raft factory and paper mill
Turn 9: produce raft, build second woodcutter
Turn 11: produce research, build specialised gold mine
Turn 12: produce research and raft
Turn 14: produce raft, build second specialised gold mine
Turn 15: build stock exchange and oil rig
Turn 16: build mint
Turn 17: produce coins, contribute 2 bricks to the wonder
Turn 18: produce coins, contribute 1 brick to the wonder
Turn 19: produce coins, contribute 2 bricks to the wonder
Turn 20: produce stock bond, contribute 2 bricks to the wonder

Aargh, again! One turn short of a second stock bond! But my score was 2 wonder rows, 1 stock bond, 2 coins, 0 gold for 220 points. Another PB!

Notice that opening up the extra territory didn't cost me anything. The extra donkey I was muttering about yesterday was out to good use building roads with the output of the second quarry. The output of the second wood cutter produced two of the rafts (and I only got 2 completed yesterday). I would say that the aggressive expansion was successful.

I have some more ideas. Firstly, there's one space I forgot to build anything on! By the time I realised I know I wouldn't get anything out of it. Secondly, it's a very long way from where the paper is produced to the stock exchange. If I produce the paper in that empty space I can feed the paper mill with logs from the second woodcutter. But I'll have to move the geese all the way around there. Thirdly, if I produce a charcoal burner instead of an oil well I can produce one less research and not have to breed geese at all. The charcoal burner can go on the pasture where I was formerly breeding the geese. Hmm... I need the paper before the charcoal... maybe put the charcoal burner on the left and the paper mill where I had it, but a turn or so earlier. It took a lot of mucking with rafts to get the oil rig produced and I wouldn't mind seeing it go away.

It's a shame about the geese though. I like the geese.

2 comments:

Mark Haberman said...

Stop making me want an $85 game!

Friendless said...

I haven't reported on the expansion yet!