How do you organize your turns?
 

So, I've been noticing that there are lots and lots of different little tasks that you need to complete in order to finish up your turn without missing anything. In particular, I've noticed that it's very easy to forget certain actions that may not jump at you all the time and these things can have pretty big consequences (forgetting to recruit units comes to mind).

I've sort of started a system of writing out what I need to do on a pen and paper and keeping a checklist, which is rather funny because we have this pen and paper tabletop type which has become a computer game, and now is back on a piece of paper. So I'm wondering what kind of systems people have for working out their turns and if they would like to talk about how they plan out their turns.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

I am interested in this topic as well.
Nothing I hate worse than taking a magic item away from a commander and forgetting to reset the move order and losing a major battle because of it.

I dont have any special tricks, I use the "n" button alot, I try to keep useless commanders off that list by setting them on patrol or preach if possible. After I have given all commanders orders, I check all my castles, based on production left, and recuit. That is about it.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

I always make sure to go through my F1 list and check on commanders that have "defend" orders before I submit a turn, which helps a lot. I'll usually get the easy parts of the turn over with (gold-related stuff usually, including recruitment, since this tends to be an easy call)

Other than that I usually start with strategic planning and figure out what I need to get taken care of, either enemy threats or objectives I need to meet, and then assign resources as available in order to meet my goals for the turn. I also think about what I'll need for next turn and assign as needed for that, especially item forging. Once I have all my assets assigned the turn's pretty much ready to go. Hopefully that makes sense.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Let's see:

First I check the turn messages and watch battles.
Then I collect goodies from clams and blood hunters if any.
Then I check to see if I got any cool randoms on the mages I just hired, and set them to research typically.
Then I spend my cash money.
Then I move my armies of doom towards the enemy and the survivors of previous "armies of doom" towards the nearest safe area.
Then I hit 'n' to find my sneaky guys and I move them.

Then I sit and think. I might try to do some diplomacy at this stage.
Then I might change some of my previous orders around.

Then I know what items or summons I wish I had, so I forge or summon them if I can.
If I can't do this because of lack of research, I check and see what the heck I am researching and modify it.

Then I double check to see if my battle orders are consistent with my new strategy if I came up with one during the "thinking" stage.

Then I look at the Hall of Fame to see if anyone's SC Pretender died.

Then I hit 'n' again to make sure I didn't miss anyone.

Then I stare at the score graphs for a while if I haven't looked at them much lately.

Then I submit my turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

You don't count forge item orders so you do not overflow the lab? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

I look for the piece of paper where I wrote down what I had planned to do this month. I can't find it. I can't remember who I have a NAP with, so I read through all my PMs. I find all my commanders in mystery provinces and wonder what they are doing there, and send them back to the province they probably came from. I look in my item stash and put some items on commanders that may do some good, and send out those commanders on various missions. I look at my research, and curse when I find that I overflowed my last research level, and make a mental note to fix my research levels before I End Turn this time. I occasionally attempt to keep the game thread alive, and send some messages to my neighbors. I try to think of something fun to do next month, and write it down my plan on a piece of paper so I don't forget. And finally I put the piece of paper somewhere easy to find in a couple days when the turn hosts, and submit my turn. Oh, crap! I forgot to fix my research targets again.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

LOL! Sounds like my turns except I don't even have the piece of paper. Opponents who scout me must think it is some kind of head fake - why does he keep moving that army back and forth?

My magic lab gets filled with all sorts of junk that I don't remember why I forged it. And I usually balance my research just perfect so there is no overflow, then later I make one last minute forging change, forget to look and on the new turn, find I missed the key new research level by 2 points.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Yes, exactly. I have this same problem. Having useless commanders is very annoying because then I get tired of cycling through all of them. I wish I could give them an "Idle" order which means "only cycle to me by pressing the I key, but not the N key." Would be nice is cases where patrolling is not appropriate or where you want to make sure you come back to the useless commander later. Just another pipedream management feature we can hope for someday.

My strategy is a little like CUnknown's except that I tend to rearrange the list in a random order, bash 'n' and F1 a lot, flail about, yack on IRC, come back to the job, bash 'n' some more, then press 'e' in frustration and mail in the turn. Then I go find my piece of paper and see if I can submit an updated copy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif

Also, I really really really wish I could queue up a set of research targets like Const 6 -> Thau 2 -> Evo 2, etc. Because sometimes, having access to that particular spell a turn earlier can make the difference between winning and losing a battle. Maybe someday... Until then, piece of paper is my friend. Actually, one of the fun things about having the piece of paper is that you can kind of process the 'idea phase' of your turns without a computer. If I could only figure out a way to neatly print out a copy of the map with just the borders and neighboring province links, but without the extra artwork, it would be even better.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

1. Set some commanders to move to a province.

2. Now select the province your commanders are moving to.

3. Hit 'y' on your keyboard. Vuala.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Seems like I am not the only one with turn organization issues.

The one thing that I always do is start my "N" button cycle in my capitol and I leave one commander there without orders so that I will always cycle back to it. That keeps me from going through all the provinces multiple times.

Another item to add to my list of end of turn omissions is forgetting to change orders of an army that attacked the previous turn, is not attacking this turn, but is now adjacent to a force that requires a different spells/troop placement plan. Included in this is the death of a critical commander that I didn't notice because I was too lazy/rushed/drunk/tired/stupid.

Other than that I have made every mistake previously itemized, and will make them again and again.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

The only thing I do that hasn't already been mentioned is look at the right column buttons before ending the turn. Did I tweak magic research? Did I recruit everything I wanted? Did I check whether I need to renew mercenary bids?

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

1. View messages, battles. Resolve anything important related to those messages. I get a lot of the large strokes out of the way here.
2. Press F8. Assign items forged last turn, figure out what I need to forge this turn.
3. Press N. A lot. This is the main army movement/combat phase. Eventually I'm left with just a bunch of hiding scouts, so then...
4. Recruit from all my castles. Any units I wanted to recruit out of castles was handled in step 3, but I recruited them last turn so they were set to defend.
5. Press F5. Set research. I always do this last because otherwise I am 2 research points short or several hundred over like previously pointed out.

----

The biggest problem I have is pressing F8, assigning items, and then forgetting where my hammers are or what I need to forge this turn. Still haven't figured out a good way to do that. But I catch 99% of everything else.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Remembered this thread the other day. Bumped for new players that have not seen it.
-ssj

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

I like to first take a long hard look at the turn. Watch battles, check for found sites, events, scouts/scry reports and then I exit the game.

I usually wait at least a few hours but sometimes a day or two contemplating my options, threats, resources etc. If I'm at war I also think about my enemy, what did he do? what does he like to do? how does he equip his SCs etc?

Then I form a rough plan for the turn and near future and I write that down. I double check against the information and notes I wrote down from previous turns and update that. I have game plan document for each game I play or ever played (I kept them all, together with turn backups :) ). So I can go back and consult how I solved similar problems, like that player likes RoS ambushes and elemental protected SCs (and usually neglects MR). What did I do back then?- Maybe it can work now?
I also write everything worth note I see about everyone in the game. Army composition, important provinces, blood provinces, SC type, equipment stats and weak points etc.

Then I do diplo - which is fun :D

Last, I go through the mundane & somewhat boring phase of clicking all the consequent orders.

Oh and at rare turns of epic memorable battles I take screenshots displaying the battle from start to end. I keep all those screenshot for my screen saver.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Mine is pretty much like everyone else.

The only notes I tend to take is if my scout watches a combat where one of the other nations fights independents. Some provinces are worth noting. Certain defenders, especially in a province such as mountain which is likely to provide extra resources, can be a goal to keep in mind as I expand in that direction. Even if I reach it with very little army left it can be a good spot to put PD into and start rebuilding an army there.

Also, in my turns the last thing I tend to do is to hit the mercenary screen to make sure I have my contracts up to date. I often hit the screen early on to pay-up the contracts before I start recruiting but Im so forgetful that I also check it just before hitting END to make sure. I hate that message that says my mercs have left for someone else. Especially if I was counting on them that turn.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

The one thing no one has yet specifically mentioned is the moving boosters around mini-game. How can I manage to cast ritual A that requires paths X and Y at the same time forge item B that requires path Y and Z (all needing 5+ levels in those paths)... Ah, if I give my pretender the single-path booster and this other guy the ring of sorcery... Darn, where did that ring go? I could have sworn I had another thisle mace somewhere. Oh, I sent it off site-searching. Bother.

In contrast to sector24, I find I pull items to the commanders I want them on rather than going from the f8 screen. I mostly remember what I forged each item for, and then when I get to the plan of which that commander is a part, I give them the item.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

I have crappy memory. So ReNaming commanders can help. I often rename mages in ways that remind me of their skills, or not to move them, or where they are headed.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

I'm fairly new to multiplayer but I have quite a few games on the go. So I'm using a mindmap outliner to keep track called freemind. I sketch out general strategies in one section, Another is intelligence including documenting blesses, sc's, gear choice, army selection.

Most turns I record a basic turn strategy. However, not every turn. I especially record plans for globals or big rituals so I remember why I forged that booster.

1) Read all messages, watch battles, look at the map in general, look for found sites.
2) Blood slaves - to lab or transporters, gems from items - to lab. I prefer not to click the pool button, since it can remove some important gems/slaves that shouldn't be removed. Besides I just like to see all this income 'in person'. :) Give obvious forged items to commanders. Moving scouts.
3) After some critical point in the game (first war maybe? don't know) here I usually just shut down the game and go to work/sleep.
4) When thoughts on the next turn are more or less formed, I continue with equipping other stuff for current tasks (sometimes they are not the same that the items were forged for), assigning armies and moving commanders. Usually I first look at the most important points on the map and analyze who can go where, then give the orders based on that, and then proceed to less important points.
5) Forging.
6) Search spells for unemployed mages.
7) Research for all others.
8) Recruiting.
9) Here I press F1 and scroll all the list looking for 'defend' order. Each case has to be explained.
10) Finally I adjust research levels.

I rarely write things down, usually I have them in my head, or most of them. The single exclusion here that jumps to my mind is Qwerty game where we had to forge gear for 3-5 SCs a turn and it was really hard to remember what was already done without notes, I just made a list of SCs that had to be equipped, the slots for each were represented by lines, and I crossed that lines when I gave order for corresponding item, also the same I had to do with province numbers and GR/trapeze.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

1) Change research distribution if necessary. Check new magic sites in case I found anything particularly nice.
2) Watch the battles I fought on that turn.
3) Immediately go and rescript anything that I did the previous turn that was stupid.
4) Equip newly forged items and figure out what I need to forge this turn.
5) Look at the state of my empire and take account of the threats I'm immediately facing.
6) Give obvious movement orders.
7) Go back to my mages doing forging and change orders around if there's anything critical I didn't notice before.
8) Recruitment.
9) Summons/rituals.
10) Finish giving attack/movement orders.
11) Diplomacy.

Once the game reaches the point where I am doing a lot of fighting I'll start sleeping on my turns before sending them in. I have aspergers which makes it incredibly hard for me to concentrate, and I think my best when there is nothing around to distract me. Often I will think of things that I hadn't realized or considered before that significantly alter my plans as I'm falling asleep, or when I wake up the next day. So in a game where I am in crunch mode, I add a step 12) of sleeping, and a step 13) of fixing any dumb mistakes I made the previous day. I make many of these, so step 11 is crucial.


Wraithlord, I would bet some of your files are worth their weight in gold :P. Not that they're likely to weigh much. But you get my meaning.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Yes, that kind of intel both on enemy nations and on my own can be devastating in the wrong hands at the wrong time.

See (long and boring) example from my last finished game of a random turn notes:

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

That is one great tip. I thank you and Micah for bringing it up!

My much less efficient procedure is to make sure no commander has defend orders by pressing the 'n' key and ignoring siegers.

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Wow, now that was something :) Unfortunately I don't have the patience to do something similar, so usually small mistakes here and there lead to big problems at the end...

Re: How do you organize your turns?
 

Im too lazy for good notes. I tend to use something like AutoHotKey to create macros then update them. Such as, the "important provinces" part of WraithLord's notes would be something like Ctrl-Alt-C for CHECK which does a # then types in the province number. That way I can use it to make sure I roll thru each one and add recruiting. Then I just edit the macro to add each new important province.

I could even change the macro to do the recruiting so that one keypress does it all in 100 provinces but kindof kills the game for me.