Eighth Turn Summary

The eighth turn of “the 2009 campaign” of Strategic Primer officially began at the end of the seventh, in December 2009, and ended the following April.

This was the first turn in which I reported the results of orders inline with my restatement of the orders, a format which now seems obvious but which I had for some reason not used for the first seven turns.

There were no significant changes to players’ general approach; they continued to develop the plans they began in previous turns.

Because no player was harvesting a crop, no player had sufficient food surplus to attract newcomers to increase his population. On the other hand, this turn marked the end of planting for most players’ first crops, a planting that for players in forest who had gone with the “default” fortress plan was significantly constricted by the lack of land designated as cleared. Some players shifted the workers released by that to planting a different crop, and some others assigned them to cut down trees to clear land for planting, but most players sent them to work as Food Gatherers.

Players’ explorers continued to return from the long journeys they had been sent on; the players in most cases instructed them to make shorter trips thereafter, but nearly all ignored the discoveries their explorers had already made.

This was planned to be the last turn before I switched to a new “exploration model” based on “encounter tables” instead of a single “event” per tile, so in preparation for the switch I determined the main kind of rock under each player’s headquarters and the main kind of tree around those in forest tiles, and gave this information to the players.

One player wanted to use some rock without going to the trouble of mining it; after some discussion, I ruled that some of the displaced rock (rubble) from the fortress’s initial construction back in the first turn was available, and began tracking it. I can do the same for other players on request, though such rubble is of little general use.

Players’ investment in scientific research began to bear fruit, with many of their scientists seeing initial breakthroughs (which I did not report to the players, as they were merely the first steps toward the advances in question), and a few players had discovered new advances or domesticated new animals. Workers’ skill improvements also continued at their previously-mentioned rapid pace.

With harvest ended, and the new hunting-and-gathering model not yet developed, all players’ populations remained the same as last turn and the turn before:

• The smallest population was 12 workers.
• The largest was 73.
• The average was 32.
• The median was 28.
• The standard deviation was about 20.5

This turn saw some players producing production-ready wood, but fewer than the turn before last.

• Some players neither produced nor used any wood.
• The smallest gain by a player that had net production was about 320 cubic feet.
• The largest net production was about 350 cubic feet.
• The smallest net usage by a player that had any was “statistically flat.”
• The largest net usage was about 250 cubic feet.
• On average, players saw a net gain of about 50 cubic feet.
• The median net usage was no production and no usage.
• The standard deviation was about 213.1.

After these changes, or lack thereof:

• The player with the most wood had about 540,000 cubic feet.
• The player with the least wood had about 13,000 cubic feet.
• On average, players had about 290,000 cubic feet.
• The median stockpile was about 240,000 cubic feet.
• The standard deviation was about 238,000.

Here are some statistics on players’ scientific and technical advancement:

• Most players gained no advances
• The player who gained the most, by absolute number, invented six advances.
• The player who increased his advance count at the largest rate this turn did so by about 5.3%
• The average increase was by a single advance.
• The average percentage increase was 1.0%
• The median increase was 0 advances.
• The standard deviation of the increase was about 2.24

After those discoveries and inventions were accounted for:

• The player with the fewest advances had 61.
• The player with the most had 119.
• The average player had 73.
• The median advance count was 67.
• The standard deviation was about 20.2.

Here are some statistics about how many tiles players had explored (or otherwise knew about):

• The player who had discovered the most tiles knew about 396 tiles, about 7% of the map.
• The player who had discovered the fewest tiles knew about only 16 tiles, which is about three-tenths of a percent of the map.
• The average map size was about 187 tiles, about 3% of the map.
• The median map size was 213 tiles, about 4% of the map.
• The standard deviation was about 134.

I won’t give statistics on how map sizes have changed this turn, because plainly (and as I warned) most of the counts I gave in the seventh turn actually included this turn’s exploration; I will include such “delta” statistics in next turn’s results.

• 2009-2022 Campaign Turn Summaries