Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City)

[rpietila]

perhaps he would be able to better fend off the dark spirits--with dark spirits.

Excellent logic! Has the oracle been fooling us?? Is this a spiritual disease after all?  

I am getting 2 "free" questions today, right after the voluntary drinking deadline (after ~2 hours).

Instead of me asking stupid questions, why don't we spend some effort in thinking as good as possible questions, whose answers (even if it is "yes", "no" or "idk") reveal much important info. Then I can ask them (and it'd be so good for you to ask more bonus questions as well).

My small contribution to the riddle is the following:

- The objective is to maximize health. It is implicit that it can be maximized individually with ultra-costly drinking, but the public health would be better off with drinking spearheaded to maximum effectiveness drinks.
- It has been told that "spirits", "some drinks among spirits" and "darker rather than lighter spirits" have this effectiveness.

[1715048711]

1715048711

[1715048711]

1715048711

[1715048711]

1715048711

[Febo]

Lord Febo's plague drinking plan:

100 W1600
169 W1601B
21 W1603A
5 RME
5 VOH
100 BEER




What bothers me a bit is costs of drinks. Yesterday I bought 450 bottles of Wine which seemed cheap and paid 75M. 400 bottles should be drank ( i hope i am wrong) in a gameplay year or in real life week. My income a year/week is 5M.

I am not sure how was this planed to be balanced, since drinking was planed to be only 20% of character costs. I doubt I will pay 300 moneros that will one day be worth a fortune to stay in game for a week.

[CK_Zephyrus]

Zephyrus will stay in the San Pietro cathedral, where the poor and needy may seek refuge during those difficult years.

Drinks:

200 W1601B
50 W1603A
150 BEER

[Karl Hungus]

Drink plans:

OZ
W1600: 100 bottles
W1601B: 50 bottles
W1603A: 100 bottles
w1604:   100 bottles
CLXII: 5 bottles
CVS: 5 bottles
RUM: 20 bottle
VOH: 10 bottles
sw1: 1 bottles
SW2: 9 bottles


Hokusai
W1600: 100 bottles
W1601B: 50 bottles
W1603A: 100 bottles
w1604:   100 bottles
CLXII: 5 bottles
CVS: 5 bottles
RUM: 10 bottle
RME: 10 bottles
VOH: 10 bottles
SW2: 10 bottles

The Duke of OZ & The Earl of Ghibli both take refuge in the vacant Tsurugajo Art Gallery. Surrounded by precious and beautiful artworks, they pray to their individual Gods, safe in the knowledge that they have purified themselves in mind and body as best they can from the coming plague. They have plentiful supplies of fresh fruit, vegetables, and some fish & meat for many days, and clean linen for themselves and their inner circle of family, friends and personal servants. Sir Hokusai draws his sword, the aged Duke takes stock of his life and deeds ... and sleeps ... the best medicine of all he is told.
      

[Karl Hungus]

perhaps he would be able to better fend off the dark spirits--with dark spirits.

Excellent logic! Has the oracle been fooling us?? Is this a spiritual disease after all?  

I am getting 2 "free" questions today, right after the voluntary drinking deadline (after ~2 hours).

Instead of me asking stupid questions, why don't we spend some effort in thinking as good as possible questions, whose answers (even if it is "yes", "no" or "idk") reveal much important info. Then I can ask them (and it'd be so good for you to ask more bonus questions as well).

My small contribution to the riddle is the following:

- The objective is to maximize health. It is implicit that it can be maximized individually with ultra-costly drinking, but the public health would be better off with drinking spearheaded to maximum effectiveness drinks.
- It has been told that "spirits", "some drinks among spirits" and "darker rather than lighter spirits" have this effectiveness.

The Duke of OZ sends word to open the Medical Center to assist all those who are willing help ... all those who need it!!

The 6th Company is dispatched to guard the Medical Center and maintain order during these difficult times!

[papa_lazzarou]

What bothers me a bit is costs of drinks. Yesterday I bought 450 bottles of Wine which seemed cheap and paid 75M. 400 bottles should be drank ( i hope i am wrong) in a gameplay year or in real life week. My income a year/week is 5M.

Different drinks have different effects. Normally better drinks are more expensive but then you probably won't have to drink the full (max) quota of 400 bottles.

In ultima, players will have feedback about the effects on their health when they consume drinks. So there will be many ways to combat health decay.
One could, for example, drink 50 bottles of wine and 350 bottles of beer or mead to prevent a big hit keeping it on budget.

[papa_lazzarou]

Everyone: Master Angus is interested in buying 400 BEER @ 0.003

[rpietila]

Finally: Beer sales are opened by the Church!

When the plague came to gamemaster attention, the normal price sales of BEER by the Church at 0.005 and MEAD by the Town at 0.001 were closed. This was to make an interesting learning experiment on how to act in an emergency when the thing you normally deal with and make commercial profit, suddenly becomes an instrument of life and death for the public, some of them aware of the danger and willing to pay, others either not aware or not having the means to pay even close what the others can.

This kind of challenge is very common in real world and the special trickiness lies in the signal effect on how the situation is handled. If preparation is rewarded, people prepare more in the future. If freeriding is, more of that will happen. But the actions of the different crisis managers are seldom coordinated and typically it is not possible to force a reward for preparation - different relief efforts usually help those in most plight, who sometimes even profit on the expense of those who by their own planning evaded the catastrophe.

So since BEER is cheap to produce, not miraculously healthy, but a very useful drink consumed en masse, and Church is not a commercial entity and does not need to care about gouging prices, I spent countless of hours explaining the challenge to them (yes there are many .

The result was to allocate about 1/3 of the Church beer stock as a gift to those in most need, characters who on their own means usually drink mead. Only 1/5 of all characters were in this category.

Every commoner is entitled to buy their allocation of max 400 bottles at a price of 0.010. For anyone practically considering this, the price should not be an issue so they exercised restraint and made the active players pay for the free distro to the poor (which they did not have authority to charge by GM decision).

Not all nobles are wealthy and many of them drink beer because of this, and others because they don't need an all-wine diet due to being young. Some of these are unhappy with the ban, as during an emergency, they are deprived of a product that they normally can buy, and are forced to buy 10-20 times more expensive product instead. Not all can be made happy. On the other hand, some masters are making small business by selling their excess beer to the market which normally is capped by church pricing but now opened due to the ban.

MEAD is not in my assessment even close to being as crucial as beer in the challenge, but the noble beer ban opens up some interesting ways how to tackle it. I will be making the allocation / opening the sales on behalf of the Town in a few hours.

[rpietila]

No more voluntary drinking plans!!

Plague Oracle Answers:


Is this plague an energetic/mystical/spiritual in its core essence (as opposed to physical): Probably not.

How many times more potent are spirits on average vs. wines: About 5 times.


Specific feelings about the drinks consumed:

W1600M - Whoa! This has been awaited to mature for years, and now it has developed something quite new. The taste is different and the effect compares favorably to almost any wine.

W1600, W1603A - Solid wines, both taste and feeling. This is nothing new of course.

Since long time, perhaps forever, spirits were consumed in quantity in laboratory conditions, and the Medical Center was tasked to keep track of the feelings scientifically. The results had much variance (see how many of certain type was actually consumed to gauge how much) but we dare to give the approximate table of relative benefits composed with our proprietary formula and random-masked, and leave the variance out since we cannot calculate it in the 1600s:

10 - SW1, SW2, CLXII, RME
5 - VOH, CVS, RUM
1 - VOD

The use of this table is on everyone's own risk. Also it does not take into account the possibility of benefit curve being nonlinearly correlated to amount consumed (quite likely actually), or if there is the hinted secret ingredient that kills the disease with a long term effect. This + the oracle answer to the second question should nevertheless provide confidence in financial planning. Helpful is to know that upon evaluation, omniscience is exercised (but the challenge will be much tougher than the ones who started with voluntary drinking).

[canth]

Finally: Beer sales are opened by the Church!

Every commoner is entitled to buy their allocation of max 400 bottles at a price of 0.010. For anyone practically considering this, the price should not be an issue so they exercised restraint and made the active players pay for the free distro to the poor (which they did not have authority to charge by GM decision).

Canth buys 400 bottles of beer @ 0.010

[equipoise]

Avitohol buys 400 beers. I'll claim my account in two weeks. Is the testing over?

[rpietila]

Town MEAD sales are opened. The long-awaited distribution plan is simple: the price of MEAD is tripled, it still being only 0.003. We have calculated that the active characters don't want to buy it anyway because aftermarket does not exist and they don't drink it themselves. So the only limitation is 600 bottles per pc for now.

This should leave plenty of MEAD for the evaluation phase, where it will be allocated to be purchased by the willing nobles and needy commoners alike. Since I have promised to use an optimising drinking method instead of game-realistic, the evaluation-allocation to nobles will be capped, otherwise the script would consume the mead for them because it is cheap, leaving the poor without.

Why I ended up not distributing it to all the needy in this phase:
- Church already took care of the poor, and once you have 400 beer, having 400 mead in addition is not a big deal
- Tried to install some realism - the stocks what people have are not visible, and since the deserving recipients are anyone up to Baron, and aftermarket is very clumsy with deals <1 mil in size, dividing all the Town stock equally would not bring the fair result. If the game was actively going, the bulk of the mead would have been given to L1-L4 characters who usually drink it, and they could have engineered the exact distribution in the free market. We don't have the incentive to take care of such small things. Also even at the risk of being unfair, I don't want people to die when the migration is on the corner!

[rpietila]

Avitohol buys 400 beers. I'll claim my account in two weeks. Is the testing over?

It is good to read the last pages in the thread, they contain the schedule of the future events, repeated about once/day to be easier to find:

- Wealth managers take possession of the unclaimed characters today in google version
- Tomorrow is the year change script in google version, and the start of migration
- On Sunday, I start sending out the account temp passwords to the ones who claimed theirs (and to wm's of those who did not)
- After this, you have until December 17th to claim your account any time, and if you want to put it back to wealth management, you are free to make a private deal.

I make the beer buy for you!

[rpietila]

Guidance to Character Management
(intended for the wealth managers and long-absent accountholders alike)

Introduction
This concerns the current state of game engine. In the long term, many features are planned, which make the gameplay more interesting and add a lot of depth to the decisions in the character management as well. Now we can classify the game goals as follows:

- Health. The negative variable. Making bad decisions eats your health and having bad health affects many things in the future, in addition to leading to death and (hopefully) starting over with a new character that inherits the assets of the previous one.
- Wealth. Making wise decisions financially increases your wealth, allowing easier play in health, status and fun sectors, or potential cashout in the future.
- Status. This means increasing your ranking in all the measurable ways in the game - promotions, titles, badges, luxurious items, etc. Often but not always requires money, but of course may be slightly at odds with maximizing wealth sometimes.
- Fun. Everybody perceives this in a different way. Playing the style you prefer is your choice.

Game choices
There is some gameplay happening, especially among the active players (who are designated "active" because of this). The core people spend time daily, up to several hours, managing and organizing stuff, making deals, etc. We encourage others to try out. Meanwhile, for the ones who don't or don't yet prefer to immerse themselves, the following decisions need to be made nevertheless:

- Residence
Owning a house (floor-sqms in a separate lot) is currently the only allowed type of residence. Not owning one, or if it is grossly inadequate for the needs, burdens health, and hinders promotion. Because a residence (at least) holds its value, and gives CUL + IC income, it is not really a sacrifice financially either. It is possible to have several residences.

- Clothes
Clothes are extremely important for health and status. They tend to be expensive but they are durable. This is a cost item in the balance sheet (unlike residence, which is an asset), but (unlike in the past in this game) it is not possible to do without. There are many types of clothes available distinguished by their colors, and it is possible to add precious metals to the more fancy ones. There are treatises written on clothes and they are fully current.

- Transportation
Horse is the way to do this, and that comes in many grades (H1-H9). A minimum level for the horses is specified for 2, 4 and 6-horse drawn carriages. It is also possible to ride a horse, and some prefer to do this if they are fond of their ancient horse. We instruct the ones without horses to go directly to 2 or 4 horse carriages, because the market for good horses is tight, there is no domestic saddle manufacturing and IC-conversion import costs honey, and the town just looks more civilized with carriages. In addition, many of the ones to whom this text is intended, are more than 100 years old, so it's about time to quit walking, yet not to learn riding with bad horses - that is a needless danger.

Since transportation is not mandatory unlike residence and clothes, and despite the long life of both horses and carriages, is on the cost side of the equation, the instruction is to consider it if it fits the playstyle, or a good opportunity presents itself, or there is an aspiration to gain levels and status, since nothing is more visible than a nice carriage.

- Silver/CKS
Ardent research is going on, with conflicting results, about the role of silver items in boosting immunity and health. In addition to health, it increases status (silver can exist in any form) and its conversion price is tied to gold price so it is not a real cost to have it (it does not pay dividends though). Zenon has theoretized that up to 100-200 CKS would be beneficial for health, and therefore it's advisable to acquire some.

- Other items
There are many items, most of which do not yet have ingame benefits, some of them are collectibles for fun and profit, others not. Owning items is a sign of active gameplay and will be rewarded in promotions. When the systems emerge, things like furniture will become as practically mandatory as clothes are now, and it always tends to happen that the first adopters of things receive their reward later if not sooner.

Investments
When wealth exceeds the playstyle, the excess is invested in things that are hoped to increase value or bring cash flow:

- CKG
Receives the Town dividends and has increased in value a lot in the past. The most liquid, if not only way to make large investments.

- Land
Raw chapelry-size land is bought cheaply from the town and trades in these big increments. In the future it might be nice to own a large land area in the very heart of the town (all land now existing fits in 1-mile radius from the golden obelisk).

Zoned land containing buildings produces a nice cash flow but requires management attention.

- Financial instruments
CON is a bond that Town pays fixed 0.1 XMR per week forever, so might be cool if XMR takes off. Many companies also have stock, which have not historically been very liquid though. It is possible to deposit money to Bank or lend it to other characters. All these have issuer risk.


For wealth managers
WM1 deals are made between you and the client and none of my concern. WM2 is "town-appointed" deal to a character that owns ~1,000 CKG or more (in the past, this was the buy-in to the game). WM3 is any poorer character, typically younger as well.

The most important thing is to prepare for the plague according to the means. Here WM2 allows much better preparation and no expense should be spared. (Only the bottles that are needed are consumed anyway). WM3 try to do what you can.

WM2: Buy a fitting house if the character does not have any, or it is too small. Why skimp, since it is good diversification and provides dividends, benefits and diversification. WM3: get a house from the giveaways or cheap offerings.

Buy clothes if ever that is possible. The color coding is the same as always.

If the character is old (or Baron, or aspiring Master), go for a carriage, nice color. It's not too much to have. The new ones don't need it, and cannot afford it anyway.

At this point don't too much care to manage the items or list them for sale if something is in excess. That can be done in Ultima much better.

Exercise judgement when making the purchases, since you are yourself involved in the seller side. This does not mean "don't buy from yourself" but act honestly.

[rpietila]

Character claims and wealth manager situation

Why hide this info as it is public in the /CHAR anyway. Column "F" reveals:
"C" a claimed account who is responsible for his stocking of drinks now and will get the account Sunday.
"iC" likewise.
"WMx/y" tells the type of WM deal and the manager's initial. If your character is WM'ed against your wish, you can just PM me and get it

I am extremely busy currently with the plague, the year end and the migration. Sorry if I don't have time to chat about random subjects that I usually do I have scheduled the weekend for these matters and everything is going as planned.

As for the plague preparation, we got a lot new information in the last info round, which was also the last, so that only SCI can help us any more!

I checked that there are plenty of stocks for voluntary purchase, including all spirits, most wines and BEER and MEAD. Hopefully Roopatra comes online soon, since she is rumored to have authority to list the wines from OZ to the market to provide relief.

[Roopatra]

Karl Hungus Medical Center in 1-C is open and extends a helping hand during the Plague

The doctors prescribe darker spirits and wine in moderation to anyone who can afford it. Beer and mead, with the occasional spirits or some bottles of wine for those with less means. Church is distributing beer and mead. The Medical Center is the place to see a doctor, if you feel any first signs of illness.

The Medical Center is giving out 5 bottles of W1600 to every character from novice to master (L4-L6), in hopes that a few bottles of good wine will keep them healthier than just drinking their staple beer.  Altogether 195 bottles of W1600 were given for free to the most needy.

In addition The Karl Hungus Medical Center gives 5 bottles of VOH to each character that previously did not own any! Hopefully the ancient spring water can ward off sickness. (all drinks are already recorded for the eligible characters) Altogether 305 bottles of VOH were given for free to the most needy.

In addition HSH Duke of OZ is offering to sell some of his extensive supply of drinks at reasonable prices, and for fair distribution offers very good discounts for the poorer characters for limited amount. All drinks on offer, the special deals, amounts and prices are listed in /DRINKPRICE.

[rpietila]

The Die has spoken

When I rolled about the severity of the plague, the result came as the fateful 10/10, the worst possible. While this was not in my hopes, the gamemaster is bound to obey. As long as your character is not marked with "X" in the column "JC" in /F_OWN in the Game DB, you can still buy drinks on the market. All other living conditions have already been evaluated and cannot affect the health challenge results any more.

Similarly, as the evaluation proceeds, you are free to list the drinks for sale in /DRINKPRICE. Upon "X", I have deducted your own consumption so the rest is ready to be sold to the needy, unless you want to keep it. Please do it so that there is a specific admin to record it; I will not have the opportunity to update the asks based on thread requests, because I am tied with the evaluation script myself.

If any character dies, it is most unfortunate. There is no estate tax in this situation, so the gold and land holdings are unaffected and you can start a new character to continue play, and the history of your (most) ancient character is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

I am sorry for the die roll, but ready to start the evaluation.

[rpietila]

The evaluation of plague has been done for char_id's 1-80. Nobody has died yet, but the challenge has been brutal. Hundreds of bottles of spirits have been consumed because nothing else seems to help.

The figures of consumption are available in /F_OWN and the resulting healths in /CHAR. The die surprised us all by raising W1600M, previously of no known nutritional value, to become the most consumed drink (second only to BEER). Until this day, the King has only gifted, not sold, this drink. Therefore it is relatively abundant among the characters and widely distributed.

Previously we had much ado about the allocation of beer, even mead. Unfortunately it seems that this kind of plague is little affected by either. It is of course better to drink them than not, but if a severe health decline is to be avoided, only spirits or the choicest of wines are of use.

The markets are open all the time, and I exhort everyone who is already evaluated (which means what they have drunk is deducted from the /F_OWN) to list their remaining drinks for sale. You can save lives!

The script is expected to be finalized by evening as scheduled.

[generalizethis]

Since the plague has kept me indoors and solitary, I've been able to study the Kingdom's architectural rules and have finished (hopefully) my plans for the lot in 9-C-A1. The plan calls for on adding a second building at a later date (museum or library most likely). I would like the area known as The Chaum Center. The first building will be a cryptocurrency research lab.

Basement: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wc3Sz-HARzVoTTVox5Eqontxc1XQPjesfvSk2kNJXnM/edit?usp=sharing

First Floor: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C3p0rAS1h_NRa0_SV1l5m7GkcL-4rDHcZskbTewWqUk/edit?usp=sharing

Second Floor: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16CEve3yQGzQs1Wlou_RO6U7DX5N-sxaImbQgDR-gdb8/edit?usp=sharing

Third Floor: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M54lALYUCkbDtMWBaH5og24oCORg-xBDKt20ZHqcTnE/edit?usp=sharing

Street View West: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NDvcfQOvh_jLObkH48SMht2ODw_nuPtBklRWyxWMQU8/edit?usp=sharing

Noms and Roopatra were a huge help in answering my many questions--though I left a few more in the inline notes. Realizing how busy the admins must be, I'll gladly wait for their building approval when they have more free time.

Hope everyone is healthy, happy, and prosperous,

Crichton

[XMRpromotions]

Is there a getting started guide for this game? From looking at the thread it seems like their are a lot of rules and it takes players significant time to come up with good strategies for growing their kingdom.  That is likely a good thing for making the game "sticky" but it also could be a barrier of entry for casual players.