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LOAD "D:STRATEGY.RPT" COLONY STRATEGY =============== < BACK TO THE COLONY REPORT |
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| These are the things I've learned in about two hundred games, half of them in a dorm room in 1983 and half of them this year at my dining room table against people who are shorter than me and getting better fast. I'm not an expert. I'm a guy who's lost to an eleven-year-old more often than he'd like to admit. |
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> RESOURCE BY RESOURCE FOOD. Never run out. Food is time, and time is everything else. A colonist with no food gets a development turn so short he can barely walk to the corral. Put your first M.U.L.E. on a river plot for food, and don't sell your food at auction unless you're sure you have enough for next month. (Nicole: I'm talking to you.) ENERGY. Every working M.U.L.E. needs power. The more M.U.L.E.s you have, the more energy you need, and people always forget that until a whole row of their plots sits idle. Plains are best for energy. Buy it at auction early in the game when it's cheap, and you'll be glad later. SMITHORE. The money resource in the middle of the game, and the one that controls everything else, because the store makes M.U.L.E.s out of it. When smithore runs short, M.U.L.E.s get expensive, then they're gone. Whoever has smithore then has everybody over a barrel. Mountain plots, the more peaks the better. CRYSTITE. In the games that have it, it's pure money, and it's worth a lot. It's buried, so you're guessing where it is until you find it. It's also what the pirates come for. Don't fall in love with it. A crystite mine that gets raided once is a crystite mine that didn't pay. LAND. Plots of the same kind next to each other produce better than plots scattered around the map, and owning several of one kind helps too. So once you pick a thing to make, make a lot of it, and keep it together. Plots near town also save you walking time on your development turn, and walking time is food. |
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> PHASE BY PHASE EARLY MONTHS. Feed yourself and power yourself. Food plot first, energy second. Don't buy land at auction yet unless it's cheap. Don't try to do everything at once. Get to where you don't have to buy food or energy from anyone, and you're ahead of most players. MIDDLE MONTHS. Now specialize. Look at what the colony is short of and what the prices are doing, and build what nobody else is building. If three players are making food, the fourth one making smithore is going to get rich. Watch the store's stock. When the store is low on something, that's what's going to be expensive next month. LATE MONTHS. Stop building, start selling. A new M.U.L.E. in the last couple of months won't pay for itself. Sell what you've got stockpiled while the colony needs it. Count up what everybody's worth and go after the leader. And keep an eye on the colony. Remember the whole colony gets graded at the end. EVERY MONTH. Know how much of each thing you need for next month before you walk into the auction. Then you know what you can sell and what you can't. |
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> THE AUCTION * If you're the only seller of something the colony needs, walk slowly. The buyers will come to you. * If everybody's selling, sell to the store and get out. * Don't get into a staring match with your own child over the price of energy with the timer running out. You'll both lose. Ask me how I know. * Watch the other players' stock. If somebody's short of food, they have to buy, and they'll pay more than they want to. |
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> THE WAMPUS AND THE PUB The Wampus blinks on and off in the mountains on your development turn. Walk onto it while it's showing and you catch it and collect a bounty. It's a nice bonus when you've finished your real work and have time to kill. It's a terrible idea when you haven't. The pub ends your turn and pays you for the time you had left. So when you're done, go straight there. Every second you spend wandering around after you've finished is money you're throwing away. |
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> THE RANDOM EVENTS After production each month, something happens. Some events hit one player and some hit the whole colony. One thing worth knowing: the game tends to hand the good luck to the players who are behind and the bad luck to the player who's ahead. So if you're winning, expect trouble, and keep a cushion. The colony-wide ones we see most, and what I do about them: PEST ATTACK ... eats a food plot's harvest. Keep a little extra food. PIRATES ..... steal crystite. One more reason not to depend on it. PLANETQUAKE . hurts the mines. Smithore gets scarce; if you have some saved, now's the time to sell. SUNSPOTS .... more energy for everybody. Energy prices drop; don't buy energy the month before if you can help it. ACID RAIN ... good for food, bad for energy. FIRE IN STORE the store loses its stock. Whatever you have, people now need. The personal ones are mostly jokes, little bits of luck and bad luck written up like a small-town newspaper. My kids read them out loud in silly voices and it's become a bigger part of game night than the game. |
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