[a26 replay] A pretty good boom

[causative]

There's no appropriate place on the replays forum to post a26 replays so I'll put it here.

As a hobby, instead of actually playing 0ad, I've been trying to theoretically optimize build order for the fastest boom. I developed a program that roughly simulates a single player 0ad economy and executes a pre-set build order. Using that program, and a good deal of trial and error, I developed a Maurya build order to get to 220 population quickly.

Now, I have tried playing out that build order in single player 0ad, with lots of pauses and 0.1x speed to match it as accurately as possible. The attached replay is an age 1 boom with Mauryas, with only the starting berry patch and no hunt except chickens. I get to 200 population by 11:00, and 220 units (not just population, but actually trained units) by 11:44. 141 archers, 75 women, 3 spearmen, 1 elephant. More women would have meant a faster boom, but I limited them because, after all, the point of a boom is to get a big army.

This seems pretty fast for a first try, and I made a lot of mistakes and compromises along the way so booming a lot faster should be possible. You can see around 100 pop where I slip from strictly following the planned build order, keeping food and wood bank really low, to sort of winging it and getting too much wood and not enough food. Also, clearly if I made use of extra berry patches and hunting it could be faster; the only reason I didn't do this was to keep it simple.

Of course, really what we want to optimize is a boom to age III with blacksmith upgrades and a hero, but that's a bit more complicated.

commands.txt metadata.json

Edited May 7, 2023 by causative

[Lion.Kanzen]

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/forum/457-game-replays/

 

[causative]

1 minute ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/forum/457-game-replays/

 

Yes, and where is the a26 section?

[Lion.Kanzen]

15 minutes ago, causative said:

Yes, and where is the a26 section?

You can be posted inside the replays subforum.

 

@Stan` 

How come nobody took the time to make a sub-forum?

[causative]

There should also be an a27 section by now.

[Player of 0AD]

4 hours ago, causative said:

There's no appropriate place on the replays forum to post a26 replays so I'll put it here.

As a hobby, instead of actually playing 0ad, I've been trying to theoretically optimize build order for the fastest boom. I developed a program that roughly simulates a single player 0ad economy and executes a pre-set build order. Using that program, and a good deal of trial and error, I developed a Maurya build order to get to 220 population quickly.

Now, I have tried playing out that build order in single player 0ad, with lots of pauses and 0.1x speed to match it as accurately as possible. The attached replay is an age 1 boom with Mauryas, with only the starting berry patch and no hunt except chickens. I get to 200 population by 11:00, and 220 units (not just population, but actually trained units) by 11:44. 141 archers, 75 women, 3 spearmen, 1 elephant. More women would have meant a faster boom, but I limited them because, after all, the point of a boom is to get a big army.

This seems pretty fast for a first try, and I made a lot of mistakes and compromises along the way so booming a lot faster should be possible. You can see around 100 pop where I slip from strictly following the planned build order, keeping food and wood bank really low, to sort of winging it and getting too much wood and not enough food. Also, clearly if I made use of extra berry patches and hunting it could be faster; the only reason I didn't do this was to keep it simple.

Of course, really what we want to optimize is a boom to age III with blacksmith upgrades and a hero, but that's a bit more complicated.

commands.txt 103 kB · 2 downloads metadata.json 27 kB · 1 download

- what about skipping the berry upgrade? I've made the experience that it's not worth it if you use only the starting patch
- what about getting the wood upgrade very early? I think its very helpful
- and what about using the trees around the cc? Especially with Maurys it can be a good boost, as you can use the elephant there

[causative]

@Player of 0AD

Skipping the berry upgrade, maybe. If I do that I need to have 8 women on berries to match the rate of 6. It's 100 resources for the berry upgrade and 100 resources for the two women, so it's going to be a close call whether it's worth it or not.

Getting the wood upgrade earlier, yes, I just forgot about it until I was halfway done designing the build order, and I didn't feel like starting over. I'll do this on my next run. +25% chop rate at a cost of 300 wood and a little build time (100 for storehouse + 200 for tech). It costs a similar amount to five women and their house, so the optimal point should be around when 25% of the choppers is 5, which is when there are 20 choppers. That happens around 4:30 at 59 pop.

I suppose there's some merit in using the trees around the cc earlier, to reduce walk time. That might save a few seconds. Walk time to the main forest is ten seconds, so using the near trees might speed up the run by five seconds or so, considering that it only affects half of the workers and only early on. There won't be any compounding effects over time because to delay the workers by ten seconds is certainly no worse than to just wait ten seconds doing nothing at the start (all those workers would then be ten seconds late anyway). So I estimate it would just save a fixed five seconds over the whole course of the run.

Edited May 7, 2023 by causative

[sarcoma]

there was a thread with fastest booms and weirdjokes was king, i think

[causative]

6 minutes ago, sarcoma said:

there was a thread with fastest booms and weirdjokes was king, i think

Ah, this thread!

My boom breaks the rules of that challenge because I make more than 50 women by the time I hit 100 pop (75 women). Also I'm Mauryas rather than Spartans. However, I don't take any hunt, which the challenge does allow. I reach 100 units on the map (in fact 102) by 7:25, which would put me in fourth place if I weren't breaking the rules.

[alre]

mmmh onestly the rules of the original challenge made a lot more sense I think (also there were some players who decided to not use additional food, which also makes sense). If you are going to boom to 200 pop you should also get the hero and the upgrades, and have a varied army composition.