New high score on sandbox

[Pinstar]

196438! That come near anything you guys got at frog city?

[Charlemagne]

That's the highest score I've seen. We spent moret ime testing the campaign and scenarios though. Was this a 30 year game?

[Pinstar]

Nope 20 years (If it was 30 years, I would have had 6 ships and 6 captins)

Lost colony special
"Normal" for restlessness

Would you like me to e-mail you the saved game so you guys can see for yourselves.

[Black Bart]

Nice Job, Pinstar.  I can't top that, but I can come reasonably close.  No screen shot, but I do have the save game:

Hoard - $16,842 X 3 = 50,526
Pirates - 61 X 36.148 = 2205
Captains - 4 X 1075 = 4300
Ships - 4 X 250 = 1000
Happiness - 52% X 5100 = 2600

Subtotal - 60,691
Difficulty - 258%

SCORE - 156,582

10 year sandbox game, minimum size, lowest vegetation & mineral deposits, highest elevation, restless pirates/captives, Lost Colony special condition.

Overall a nice game where most things went right, but feel that I could do better sometime.

[Pinstar]

I have a new high score to top my old one, breaking the 200,000 barrier. Is this enough to get a title like "king of the sandbox" or somethin?  

Anyhoo, game stats:
Island settings: all 3 except hilliness at a 2
Lost Colony
Restless
20 year game

Heres the screen shot

[TJ]

I finally got around to playing a sandbox game. I have been playing campaign and scenario and scripting up until now. I went for the toughest setting on everything but the Island Stability.

Doesn't beat yours Pinstar, but I thought it was a pretty good first effort.

[Pinstar]

Quite Impressive none the less.

[Stoertebecker]

Here´s my latest highscore.

Island settings: all others 3, size 2
Lost colony
normal
20 years

didn´t do any last minute cosmetics, which results in 300k (see next post)
strategy is outlined here: http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~tropico/cafe/index.php?board=18;action=display;threadid=7176

[Stoertebecker]

The same one with a bit of last minute cosmetics

[Charlemagne]

Nice Job.

[Rebel-Yell]

My last game ended with an highscore near 500.000.
(200% Difficulty, Personal treasure, 30 years, largest island possible, little trees and minerals,hills:4, most difficult starting conditions and happiness setting; I've altered the two positive skills of H.M. to leadership and the 10% speed plus in sea fights).

My tactic: Holding back all rich captives(~70) until about 4 years before the game ends.Ransoming them brought in about 120.000 (30000 to treasure cave).Then I stop cruising and spent nearly all the money to my pirates to get them to 9 and let their happiness rise.One year before the game ends, I start edicts like festival etc.

[Charlemagne]

I wonder if this is near the theoretical limit. (Which I've never tried to figure out).

[Dastardly Dave]

That beats me high score mightily you scurvey dog

[Rebel-Yell]

I was able to finish my last game with an highscor of 570.959.My settings are nearly the same(island a bit smaller and steeper, which results in a slightly higher difficulty)

The greatest problem seems to be the handling of the rich captives.They are crucial for the gold in the treasure cove and must be kept nearly until the end of the game.
Keeping about 120 rich captives and 40-60 pirates happy isn't easy, if you choose the most difficult setting for happiness.Satisfaction for pirates never rises 40+ and most of the time, the ships have to wait at the dock, until the crew is satiefied enough to cruise without causing a mutinity.

[Lachrymologist]

Here's my high score on Sandbox so far, not a bad effort, but I know I can do better.  My layout is improving with each game I play.

Final Score : 565,512

[Stoertebecker]

Lach, Rebel-Yell,

when I try to beat those scores, it seems to me, I run into an AI versus complexity problem. The AI seems not to be able to handle a large game anymore.
Example: I have 250 prisoners, among those enough skeletons, to do all the hauler jobs.
I have tried 15 or even 20 kitchen tents, all well supplied with corn. Although there is food enough in all tents, my prisoners starve ! Distribution of the tents is not the problem, I usually build one right next to the other, if all customer slots are filled permanently, and I build additional ones close to new areas, where prisoners work.
It seems, they can't get there in time, because the AI doesn't sort the priorities right. There are enough streets, too.
Same happens with construction workers. If the game gets to big, they build much slower than in the beginning.
Pirate's ship boarding time seems to depend on the size of the game, too.
The only thing, that seems to help a bit, is to reduce complexity by destroying unneeded buildings and ransoming/release captives.
Anybody had the same problem ? I've seen this with several games on two different PC's one on the lower edge of the requirements, the other one well above the specs.
This alwayshappens sooner or later.
If it is PC related, could you please tell me, which PC's you use ?

[Charlemagne]

Stoertebecker

My guess is that the slow down is due to path requests waiting for action which does mean that your system will make a difference. But when you say:

The AI seems not to be able to handle a large game anymore

I wonder, because this implies your machine could handle a larger game previously. Nothing should have changed from what you experienced earlier.

[Stoertebecker]

Charlemagne,

Translation problem, sorry. What I intended to say is:
The larger the game, the more these problems show up.
I am not sure, wether it is PC related.
The better one of my 2 PC's is a Celeron 1300, 512Mb RAM,  ATI Radeon 8500/9100 64 Mb, IDE-RAID, DX 9 and all drivers etc. up to date.
3dmark2001 SE at ca. 7000, so it is well above spec.
The other one,showing the same problem, is a PIII 500,
where I would expect such slow downs.
If I take a savegame from one to the other PC, I don't see a difference !

So I wanted to make sure, which PC's were used to get those 500K+ high scores.

[Rebel-Yell]

@ Stoertebecker

My system: Intel Pentium IV 2Ghtz, 512 DDR-Ram, Geforce III 64 MB, directX 9, newest drivers etc.

Don't have problems feeding captives related to pathfinding etc., but most time I run my island with 100-120 captives+ up to 120 rich captives + 40-60 pirates.
There was a steady lack of working captives which I cannot solve, because a lot of captive die trying to escape or were killed by angry pirates.Capturing captives trough raiding settlements was difficult because most times my ships have to rest at the docks.

[Lachrymologist]

Distribution of the tents is not the problem, I usually build one right next to the other, if all customer slots are filled permanently, and I build additional ones close to new areas, where prisoners work.

Sounds to me like this might be your problem.  If I'm guessing correctly, when you click on your tents they are filled with the greyed out citizens most of the time (meaning they are walking towards the tent).  It seems to me that some people might be inclined to overlook the fact that the workers who are in the "pirate area" also need to eat on a regular basis as well as any human dockworkers.  I found that on my first attempt, my dock/entertainment workers were spending a lot of time walking to the facilities.  My solution was to position a few chuck tents very near the pirate zone and the problem seemed to rectify itself.  

If all your tents are full with people walking towards them all the time, I'd say add more tents and make sure they are properly dispersed.  2 tents right next to each other only means that you're forcing people to walk farther to get to that 2nd tent (it could have been positioned closer to them).

As for system information, I have an Athlon 1.6 ghz system with only 256 mb of RAM.  I also noticed that my system got chunky as the island population increased.  I may purchase some more RAM here in the near future because of this game.

Construction workers are an anomaly, the only effective way to get them to work on the building that you want them to work on is to put them down 1 at a time.  I've had workers walk away from a job over half complete to walk all the way across the map to work on a building I just put down (and both priorities were set to normal).  I can offer no insite into their madness.


As for my game, my biggest challenge was enough population and facilities to handle the wealthy captives & pirate needs.  Several times I had to ransom off 20 or so captives just to let my pirates get their fill.  If you notice, the difficulty multiplier on my game is much lower then Rebel's game.  I prefer to play with a game setting that is a little more forgiving with regards to pirate/worker happiness and have an easier time then go for the highest multiplier.  What settings are you playing with?  Have you considered adjusting them?

Also, length of game seems critical, my pirating capacity didn't peak until 12-14 or so years into the game, but by that time, I had a lot of wealthy captives running up their bill.  If the game goes on too long, the island becomes unwieldly, but you need at least a few years at that maximum profitability rate.  I prefer to play with a small island which forces me to plan efficiently.

Hope some of that helped.  Good luck!

[Stoertebecker]

Thanks, Rebel and Lach,

my settings are more like Lach's than Rebel's and as you can see from #8, I could do 300K in a 20 year game, which I think is still the Highscore for 20 years , there the problems just began at the end of the game.

I don't think, I placed my tents wrong. Wherever there is a "cluster" of farms or other working areas, including the dock/amusement zone, there are tents. It's the AI, that doesn't have it's priorities right. It does not send the workers to the tents top priority. Sorry, praying in a church is not as important as food !

My PC should be about as good as yours. However, I am playing a different strategy: I don't keep my prisoners, I tend to make as much booty as possible. I have 6 ships and 80 pirates within 7 years of play (no hoarding). Than I build the island: 260-270 workers, all haulers skeletons and most captives skilled.
Place that on a medium sized island (the 20 year game was a small island) and the AI has problems. That's definitely something a patch should take care of: sort the priorities ! Food must have top priority. The same goes for building priority. One more big problem: Why can't I ransom a captive, while another one is on the run ? Meanwhile those captives block the amusement facilities. That's really another priority bug. Do you think a pirate would allow a captive to sit in a tavern, while he has to wait outside ? No way ! )
Next priority must be: pirate boarding ! Instead of slowing down unnecessary things only, the AI slows down everything ! Of course I stop all unecessary things I can, myself (fire haulers etc.)
I am now in '76 (26th year) and have 120,000 Gold.
I have repeated a savegame ('74, where the problems start) with different placements of the chuck tents, different roads etc., so I am sure it's not my placement, but either the PC or the AI.
Since my PC is about as good as yours, it is the AI. q.e.d.
My only idea to save that game is to reduce complexity:
Stop iron/weapon industry, smugglers cove etc. ransom miners etc. (Which reduces my income !  )
Let's see wether that helps. If not, I will restart for a 30 year game with the settings of my 20 year game.

[Lachrymologist]

Results of most recent attempt:

20 Year game (like the last one)

Size : 2
Hills : 4
Water Coverage : 1
Minerals : 2
Vegetation : 3

Master Gunner, Expert Seafarer, Dreadful Noteriety

Final Score : 586,698

Not sure if you guys want, but I can take some screenshots of my island if anyone wants to see it.

[Stoertebecker]

20 Year game (like the last one)

I thought yours was 30 years ! Wow ! Kudos Lach, that'll keep me busy over the Weekend !  

Not sure if you guys want, but I can take some screenshots of my island if anyone wants to see it.

Go ahead ! Always want to learn a few new tricks
Could you post a pic of your amusement area, please ?
How many captives/skilled/skeletons do you need to run your island ?

[Rebel-Yell]

My new highscor is near 900.000.Same starting conditions as in my last gane, only change: my character was Expert Seafare (thank you for the tip  Lachrymologist-it helps a lot at the beginning) and the negative trait "lazy".

Most time my island was inhabited by 200 captives, 50 pirates and 120 rich captives.At the end, I wasn' t able to cruise again because of the wealthy captives, so I ransom them off three months before the game ends and spend the money on festivals and donating pirates to let them get rank 9.

[Rebel-Yell]

Here is a pic of my entertainment district...