3.0 game guide

[Firetooth]

I know this is a bit out of the blue, but 3.0 has been out a while now. Is it even still in beta? Either way, I think work should start on a game guide, because a lot of players are still confused about how exactly everything works. Even though I've played a few 3.0 rounds now, I still feel there is a lot of information I can't easily find that could help optimise my runs. Returning players new to 3.0 have also found it more difficult to adapt due to the lack of a game guide.

I think it'd also be good to help a lot of the newbs we have at the moment learn how to play. There are a few that have played this and last round, but still haven't really progressed.

I know things are subject to change, but still. Better to have something in place that can be changed than nothing at all. I'm sure people will be happy to help contribute as well.

[windhound]

If someone is willing to condense and write some pages I'd be happy to make the guide functional again. 
Its a wiki, I can give you permission to edit from your game account.

I'm not familiar enough with RWL3 to do it

[Firetooth]

If you give me access, I'll be happy to contribute some stuff. lI'm not familiar with a lot of the finer details of 3.0, though, so that's best left to somebody else.

[windhound]

Okiedoke.  I'll fix it this evening then and set up a skeleton guide people can add to

[taekwondokid42]

I have a lot that I can contribute. Especially once my house has internet (12GB/month woohoo!) I'll be coding rwl again.

[windhound]

Alright, game guide is up, both reg and turbo and a rather horrible version for not-logged-into-a-game.  The last just needs to be box'd in, design wise its not made to stretch across the entire screen.

Firefight, Taek, hopefully you have edit rights.
Again, what's there now is a carbon copy of what was on reg.  You can edit the text blocks but not the menu list, that's hard coded.  Let me know what you want added or removed.

[Firetooth]

Thanks WIndy. I think you should add a page on workers early in the guide.

[Firetooth]

Ok, I add a construct page (we didn't have one anyway) and amended a bunch of other small stuff. I also fixed the "learning leaders" and "extras" pages some, but they still need work done.

[Shadow]

fyi firetooth, buff effectiveness maxxes out at 20% huts, not 30

[Firetooth]

Really? See, this is why we need a game guide.  :P Luckily, I have only been building 20% huts anyway. Thanks for the info!

[taekwondokid42]

And technically, it's just 20 leaders/land. You can be on 11.5% huts and still get the full bonuses.

Request: I'm re-doing how the 'beginners guide' works (if anybody is against this, let me know):

1. merge 'First 100 turns' and 'Second 100 turns' into 'First 199 turns'
2. move 'Adjusting Settings' to the almost end.
3. move 'extras' somewhere else. Perhaps we can add a strategy category where we list the various rwl tools (things like indy, dropping land to ratio, casher strat, etc.). My idea for the basic tutorial is to set someone up with a very basic idea of how the game works so they can jump in without falling on their face. I'm not expecting the beginners tutorial to make you anything close to a good player - that's where the rest of the guide comes in.
4. move 'keeping out of trouble' to the very end so the final list looks like:

Game Basics
First 199 Turns
Entering the Battlefield
Learning Leaders
Adjusting Settings
Keeping out of Trouble

General plan:

Game basics: explain turns, what a 'run' is, and give a race suggestion.
First 199 turns: handhold a new player through protection, giving them land, income, an army, and some leaders
Entering the battlefield: explain attacking and land-flow
Learning leaders: really basic stuff about leaders. what a ratio is, what shields are, and little more
Adjusting Settings: explain what all the manage army buttons do (but don't go into details of how they are useful)
Keeping out of trouble: this is last because it's pretty important and people are most likely to see the first and last stuff. Also it has a prominent name so it's pretty likely that a new player will at least look at it if they don't feel like reading the whole beginners tutorial. Basically I'll talk about boosting income and reducing expenses, using cluny's hut for emergencies, and in general keeping your cash/food above 0.


edit: I think it would be good to have a 'running' section as well, perhaps after 'learning leaders.' Right now I threw all that information in the 'basics' page and it's definitely too much. I can't explain why you need to wait till you have 550 turns to run if you don't know why land is important.