Gotm_136

[ZanzibarZim]

mackerel is right. Adding more than two engineers to a job, if done in the typical manner, would be pointless. There is a way to get several engineers to cooperate on a task but it takes some finesse. It is explained in the forum and you can look it up. Having said all that, you never need more than 2 engineers for pollution clean up since two accomplish it in one turn.QUOTE]

This article on Apolyton is very detailed.

Awesome read! Thank you so much for the help. The article on Apolyton says 20 turns to transform my swamps. That sounds about right. So I’m going to start double-stack all my work teams now. This should speed things up considerably. I tested it last night and double-stacking still works fine for railroads, fortresses and irrigation. I was having trouble tracking how long the swamp-to-grassland transformation was taking, due to the fact that I have over 100 cities and hundreds of engineer units by now.

Initially I was double-stacking, and that seemed to be working fine, but then I tried a stack of about 13 and after 3 turns, didn’t seem to be making progress, so I sent them all off to work solo.

Managing teams of 7 engineers all starting at once seems to be too complex to be worth it, so I’ll stick with the double stacks.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

That's odd. I thought I turned off restarts. I would say that destroying the Sioux, Americans, and Vikings should be sufficient to submit the GOTM.

I agree. Of course you are welcome to keep playing and improving the world's condition.
Hopefully Magic will insert his input soon.

 

[Magic_gorter]

That's odd. I thought I turned off restarts. I would say that destroying the Sioux, Americans, and Vikings should be sufficient to submit the GOTM.



I agree. It will actually be easier to manage if the score is still present.

I agree too.

 

[ZanzibarZim]

I'm up to over 500 engineers now, this is getting tedious. I think I'm going to end it soon.

 

[Jokemaster]

Initially I was double-stacking, and that seemed to be working fine, but then I tried a stack of about 13 and after 3 turns, didn’t seem to be making progress, so I sent them all off to work solo.

Managing teams of 7 engineers all starting at once seems to be too complex to be worth it, so I’ll stick with the double stacks.

http://www.sethos.gmxhome.de/English/BookOfWork/HowToGet.html

Basically, it says that stacking more than 2 engineers on a single task wastes Engineer ''points'' (a.k.a the amount of work they can do on a single turn) and is inefficient: at 5+ engineers you're actually wasting them outright.

The problem is that there's a bug with how Civ2 engineering works: when there's 2 Engineers, both of them see their ''points'' assigned to a single Engineer. But when you have 3 engineers or more, points are assigned to more than 1 Engineer. But you only need 1 Engineer to hit the threshold of points required to, say, mine that hill. I'm unsure if these ''wasted'' points are precharged or simply wasted however, but I'm pretty sure that they're wasted. (Somebody correct me if I'm wrong)

 

[ZanzibarZim]

I'm unsure if these ''wasted'' points are precharged or simply wasted however, but I'm pretty sure that they're wasted. (Somebody correct me if I'm wrong)

Based on what I observed last night, it appears to me that the extra points are pre-charged. It's hard to say for sure, though, since I'm running 500+ engineers at this point.

To play it safe, I'm singling or doubling all my engineers. But I had a few instances where I accidentally tripled or quadrupled up. When I noticed the mistake and reassigned them, sometimes they seemed to have retained some pre-charges.

 

[mackerel]

To play it safe, I'm singling or doubling all my engineers. But I had a few instances where I accidentally tripled or quadrupled up. When I noticed the mistake and reassigned them, sometimes they seemed to have retained some pre-charges.

This is expected behavior. There is a pattern to the point distribution when more than two engineers are working the same job. When the job completes, all engineers working the job reset to 0 points. Engineers taken off the job before completion retain their points.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

To play it safe, I'm singling or doubling all my engineers. But I had a few instances where I accidentally tripled or quadrupled up. When I noticed the mistake and reassigned them, sometimes they seemed to have retained some pre-charges.

Yes that's how it works. To better understand this, see chapters 3.3. Charges and 3.4. Assessment order in Info: Settlers/Engineers (GL).


Edit,

This is expected behavior. There is a pattern to the point distribution when more than two engineers are working the same job. When the job completes, all engineers working the job reset to 0 points. Engineers taken off the job before completion retain their points.

Yes, but in order to not lose one turn of work it's important to activate the Settler/Engineer before the computer have assessed the unit. If not, the unit won't be available the same turn.

 

[Jokemaster]

This is expected behavior. There is a pattern to the point distribution when more than two engineers are working the same job. When the job completes, all engineers working the job reset to 0 points. Engineers taken off the job before completion retain their points.

Ahh. That explains everything.

 

[ZanzibarZim]

I'm not sure why this worked, but it seemed to accelerate things if I cycled through all my engineers first, by hitting "W" until I got back to the start point. This discharged all the currently-assigned engineers and allowed me to focus my work teams more effectively.

This was kind of a pain when I first started doing it, as I had hundreds of engineers active, but it really helped me focus my efforts. I don't think it accelerated the engineers' work, I think it just helped me to be a better supervisor.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

I'm not sure why this worked, but it seemed to accelerate things if I cycled through all my engineers first, by hitting "W" until I got back to the start point. This discharged all the currently-assigned engineers and allowed me to focus my work teams more effectively.

This was kind of a pain when I first started doing it, as I had hundreds of engineers active, but it really helped me focus my efforts. I don't think it accelerated the engineers' work, I think it just helped me to be a better supervisor.

Maybe it aided you in supervising them, but under some circumstances it may actually slow down the work. See under "Assessment order" in that Apolyton article I linked to three posts above here ^.

 

[ZanzibarZim]

Maybe it aided you in supervising them, but under some circumstances it may actually slow down the work. See under "Assessment order" in that Apolyton article I linked to three posts above here ^.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it resulted in some wastage due to assessment order, but I think any wastage from assessment order was less than the savings from not sending engineers onto swamps that they didn't need to go into.

For example: I've got an engineer on a swamp. I have no clue how long it has been there. So I send a second engineer to join him. Moving onto the swamp uses up the second engineers' turn. Then later, the engineer that was already there is assessed and the swamp becomes a grassland. So the second engineer's turn was missed for no gain.

With so many engineers going, anything at all that makes administration easier is just too good to pass up.

.

 

[Huizinga]

Can someone explain why Delphi end Nagoya share the same tile?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Can someone explain why Delphi end Nagoya share the same tile?

Delphi and Nagoya are on opposite sides of the "Date Line," which is to say the boundary between the tiles with x coordinate 148 or 149 and those with x coordinate 0 or 1. Due to a bug, cities on the opposite side of the dateline can use squares at the same time.

As far as I know, using this is legitimate in GOTMs.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

My understanding is also that indeed this is considered legitimate.

 

[Huizinga]

Thanks for the info.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

This should have been stated conspicuously in the game announcement and I apologize for that; better late than never:

This GOTM is a two month long game. GOTM 137 will not be announced for August but rather September. There is still plenty of time left to work on this.

(I will put this in the first item shortly and also adjust the deadline from Sep 1st to Oct 1st which is what it should have been in the first place.)

 

[Matrix]

When can we expect the results?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

When can we expect the results?

I would guess that they will be available by early November, but that could change if someone is busy. The number of submissions actually made is small enough that we are not being delayed by sheer volume, but there are a couple issues to sort out.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Would Inkerman and ZanzibarZim please check their Private Messages?