Bronze Age in 13 minutes

by Ken Stanley (postscript file)

Bronze.ps (.zip, 38 KB)
Bronze.ps (.tar.gz, 37 KB)
Bronze.pdf (.zip, 36 KB)

Comments

"I have left out several details, notably that around minute 6 or 7 your first berries will be exhausted and that you should switch many of these gatherers over to your second food source as soon as possible.

In my present postscript file I slow down producing villagers towards the end of the tool age. This is a mistake. You recoup your investment in Villagers in under three minutes, nothing else matches that return.

With 20 villagers and 5 boats, you shouldn't need to spend more than about 30 seconds in the tool age before upgrading to bronze. (It takes 2 minutes to upgrade from stone to tool and it should only take 2 and a half to build up 800 food if you can keep 13 villagers and 5 boats busy gathering food). Keeping 13 villagers busy is only possible if you find a third source of food, but I claim that is often the case."

Possible improvements

"I have several new ideas, but I haven't taken the time to validate them. I would like to time the productivity of X people on one bush versus one or two per bush. My theory is that you can have alot foragers per bush but if you have too many they can't get back to the granary efficiently. I suspect that 6 foragers can create 150 food per minute (i.e. 3 villages per minute) if placed two to a bush. With 3 bushes in a row and a granary placed opposite those 3 bushes. But, again I haven't validated this.

I also suspect that Oak forests are almost 10% more efficient than palm forests (I forget where Pine forests fit into this scheme).

Last but not least, I would like to convert the goals into goals that can be checked in a live game. i.e.

1. Start 8th villager before 2 minutes
2. Build storage pit near forest at minute 5 (not validated)
3. Send villagers to food source 2 and 3 at minute 8.

But, like I said I can't take the time to do this right, so do as you please with what I sent earlier."

Ken Stanley

Of course you should also build walls and train a few bowmen during the Tool Age even if you concentrate on getting to the Bronze Age before actually building up a military force. Your villagers will be dead meat if found without protection. Anyway, download this guide, it has contains some observations and statistics that no one has made before. Telcontar

Bronze.ps (.zip, 38 KB)
Bronze.ps (.tar.gz, 37 KB)
Bronze.pdf (.zip, 36 KB)

Every descent printer can print postscript. To preview it, use ghostview (type "gv bronze.ps" in the Linux or UNIX prompt after unpacking the file). Don't ask me where to download ghostscript for WinDOS (it exists).
To order Linux, go to Redhat's page.
Alternatively, you can use the Acrobat Reader 3.0 for the .pdf version.

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