[M.U.L.E.] Whats the point of the last round?

[twh/f2]

Hi everybody,

 

since I'm the owner of the fantastic Multijoy I can play M.U.L.E. on my 130XE with up to 4 human players. One brilliant thing about M.U.L.E. is, that even non-Atari /non-Gaming people can quickly get into the game and enjoy it.

 

One feedback of my friends is that they don't understand the trade-sequence in the final round #12.

It does not really make sense to trade at all, since all goods are already enlisted in the total score. So any movement here would obviously not impact the score. That "logic" is even coded into the AI of M.U.L.E. itself, so computer players *never* trade any goods.

 

Or do I miss here something? I mean, would it harm the gameplay / game logic if the trade sequence in round #12 would be simply skipped after right after production?

 

I thought about "manipulting" (code change) M.U.L.E. to speed up the round #12. That way we could safe some time and decide to play one more round

 

grtx,

\twh

Edited February 17, 2013 by twh/f2

[+therealbountybob]

There was a recent thread about this, you must have missed it!!

 

Round 12 just lets you see what you produced and the final prices of the goods - there is no point trading! Often the price of Crystite decides the game as one player hoarded it and another sold it on Turn 11 - sometimes it's the only way to have a chance of catching your foe

 

To speed things up it's worth everyone moving to buy (if the shop is empty) as if there are no sellers there is no auction. Another tip in the game (if playing against a computer Mechtron) is to press fire to skip their turns (though keep an eye on their assaying), also if all players press fire at the start of the auctions this speeds things up by skipping the production messages (I think); you can tactically hold fire down to stop others seeing what you have produced if you know already it can be an advantage

 

Remember folks even without a multijoy you can play 3 player on the XL/XE using 1 stick and a set of paddles

 

Great game and I've put a thread for ALL 2013 MULE SCORES in the HSC, just for fun of course

[twh/f2]

HI trbb,

 

thanks for your explanations! Looking forward to contribute some scores

[Chilly Willy]

You need more than one player for round 12 to be meaningful - with more than one player, have one person sell while another buys. Run the price as high as possible! RUN until the VERY LAST SECOND before you sell/buy ONE SINGLE UNIT. Do that on everything. The final score is based on the LAST PRICE anything sold for, so driving the price up as high as possible in round 12 gives the best possible outcome for the colony. You can easily double or triple the worth of the colony this way.

[+therealbountybob]

That sound's like cheating

Are you sure that's right - how would you know? I would have thought a game so well programmed with lots of nuances would have accounted for that ?

[JamesD]

You need more than one player for round 12 to be meaningful - with more than one player, have one person sell while another buys. Run the price as high as possible! RUN until the VERY LAST SECOND before you sell/buy ONE SINGLE UNIT. Do that on everything. The final score is based on the LAST PRICE anything sold for, so driving the price up as high as possible in round 12 gives the best possible outcome for the colony. You can easily double or triple the worth of the colony this way.

That pretty much defeats the purpose of keeping track of high scores doesn't it.

[+therealbountybob]

You can tell MULE was a labour of love and the programmers played the game a lot (the manual makes for an amusing read about their strategies). I find it hard to think they missed somthing but either way it's still one of the best, if not the best A8 games going. The HSC MULE post is only for fun, if it gets 1 more person into the game then my work is done

[Chilly Willy]

Yes, back in the day, many people considered it cheating. Places that kept high scores for MULE usually had two pages - one for just letting round 12 time out, and one for driving the price up. You can EASILY tell the two apart given that scores are usually AT LEAST twice as high. If you stockpile Crystite for the final round, the end score can be five or more times as high because Crystite goes up by FOUR instead of ONE, meaning you can drive the price through the ceiling. The problem with that is if you try to stockpile Crystite, the pirates will usually come and steal all the crystite, at which point you're hard pressed to have the colony survive, much less get high scores. In fact, when we played the "cheating" way, we'd swap ALL PLOTS with crystite knowing that even one unit would be worth more than anything else. You also get a production bonus when most/all your plots are one thing. So we'd end round 12 with no food, no energy, no NOTHING but crystite... and get scores beyond your wildest dreams!

[+therealbountybob]

thanks for that Chilly Next time I play might have a go - just to see the top rating message!

 

I'll put a note on the HSC thread about not trading at the end of round 12

[twh/f2]

Very well - good that we talked about it