Colonizing

[Lepidus]

Food for thought:

First of all, my intention is not to cause problems for ET.  But ...

Given the high cost of wool/cloth, and the ability to bring up new games rooms quickly and cheaply, has anyone seriously considered the possibility of creating an ET colony (New Englishtown) in a high wool producing area?

Some things to consider:

Needing 15+ for a hanse to trade wool back to ET.

Being able to create 13 MU game rooms very cheaply.

Population flow to/from Mother country (middle levels in the colonies, when they reach 12-15 they go back to ET to create their game room.)

Not having a common chat room.


Any thoughts on this (especially from Boomer and Nikita)

Lepidus

[TheBoomer]

This strategy was considered and rejected.

Shlimazl and I first thought about doing this about a year ago. We along with Nikita discussed this extensively during the first half of 2003.

We did seriously consider doing this, but in the end we opted for using different financial management strategies.

For those curious, some of the proposed names for the new town were.

New Englishtown
EnglishTown Heights
Englishtown Lakes
Englishtown Hills


Several factor let to us rejecting this idea.  First and foremost was the fear that such a system could lead to a two-class system.  

As for Lepidus's orginal point regarding wool/cloth prices.  About a year ago, prices were even higher.  In fact wool prices were about 40% higher back then.  But it wasn't wool prices that worried us back then, it was food prices.  

Boomer

[Paradox99]

Bottom line, we don't seem to have trouble clothing our citizens, and we have gamerooms for just about everything.

As long as we prune the ranks or inactive/underactive members sufficiently we should be able to keep ourselves clothed.

We have an olympic stadium with 6 slots waiting to be filled and 8 citizens at W14 (i..e one level from getting their own gameroom) so I think we are alright there too.

[TheBoomer]

Part of the reason my first answer to this question didn't include many specific is we(ET) don't like to state(in public)  specific details on the financial side of town.  

Not that we view the meta-game as a hostile situation, we actually try and cooperate with as many towns as possible.  The reason is, if we give specific number of details on our strategy, we give information to other towns that they might use to their advantage and our disadvantage.  This is terms of market prices and trading situations.  Also some of the market strategies we have adopted would be less useful if other towns adopted them also

Furthermore, the details of the met-game do change from time to time.  Back in september for example, the resource allocation between the host town and town of the players changed from 50:50 to 75:25(in favor of the players towns).  This single change greatly deduced the benefit to the town the hosted the game.  

As Paradox stated, we also do not have a great need for game rooms.  Other than the stadium, we have built very few in recent months.  If we wanted to, we could build more, we just don't have a need.

One of the reasons that we rejected the idea of a "2nd ET" was if we magically had 13 more game rooms, what games would be build?

As I see the needs, the only gamerooms that would be of any benefit to us are:

Bohn Duell and Manitou, which we don't have and would probably be of minor benefit to us.

Metro and Cafe Intl, which we don't have and would probably be of great benefit.

Attika and Alhambra , which we have but only in people's houses.  Building these would free up a w15 to be able to change their game to a new one in the future.

TA, we lost 1 of our 2 rooms when Mahjong left.  A 2nd TA room would be of some benefit.

Can't Stop.  Since this is a quick game and is very popular,  a 2nd room would be useful.

That makes 8 possible useful game rooms.  We have 7 rooms pending(6 in the stadium and 1 form either Ren or Redeye I forgot which hasn't put a game in their house.  Then we have the w14s, we should be adding approx 1-2 new w15s a month for the next 5 or 6 months.

So as paradox said, we really have no shortage of game rooms.

[Nikita]

We don't really have a resource problem.

If a resource problem should occure, it won't really be a problem... there are always solutions...

When we get the game rooms in the Stadium there shouldn't be any game rooms we really need either (except for a TA room that I hope someone will pick for their game room).
If we suddenly start to need game rooms that will come as a result of higher play in our game rooms, which again will give us enough resources to build what we need...

The manager situation is of course depressing as it is totaly unfair to everyone. We can only hope it one day will change.

When that is said, what is the goal for EnglishTown?
Being the most wealthy town in BSW or the most happy one? :-)

Before we created EnglishTown two years ago it was very hard to find other English speaking players at BSW. Those you knew you had on your friends list, and meeting other English speaking players in a game usually felt like winning in the lottery.

Our goal when we made the town was to create a meeting point for English speaking players in BSW, with special focus on helping new English-speaking players to become comfortable in BSW. And I still think this is where our focus should be. Not the meta-game in itself, but EnglishTown as a mean to make BSW a nicer place to be for those of us that don't understand German.
I don't say that we shall ignore the meta-game, but we don't need to "win" it in regard to wealth.

If we managed to have more games going in ET it would probably be more attractive for English speaking players to use /manager eng instead of the main manager when they are looking for a game. Which again would make it more attractive to use /manager eng instead of the main manager...

At the same time, playing games and having fun doing so are why we are here :-)
If people find it easier to find games outside of the EnglishTown game rooms then play outside EnglishTown. EnglishTown is not here to make gaming harder, but easier.
When that is said, on average I don't think I use more than 2-5 min to get a game going in EnglishTown. I just go to /manager eng, find a room, do a /ctell asking for players. If that doesn't help much I follow up with a  /gameyell and a message in the SPV channel. With a gameyell and SPV message in English you usually also get players that understand English as other players will be reluctant to respond to a message they don't understand...

Boomer have said what need to be said in regard to a "New EnglishTown" I think. As the situation is now with 10-30 players online at the same time I don't think EnglishTown is to big. This might change in the future though, but I think this is far ahead.  

In regard to playing the meta-game there is a computer game called Patrician. (Now out as Patrician III).
A nice game if you like to build cities and trade resources :-)

-Nikita :-)