M.U.L.E. Post your scores here!

[8BIT 1337]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Has anyone else ever done a "real-estate" strategy?   Where instead of producing goods, your goal is to snag the most promising plots free or cheap.    Then you wait for the right moment to sell them to other players at super high prices.   You don't develop any of them except maybe a single food plot to sustain you.

 

I do this sometimes and have won the game using this strategy. 

This has never occured to me, but I love that it actually works.

[+therealbountybob]

On 5/25/2022 at 3:53 PM, zzip said:

Has anyone else ever done a "real-estate" strategy?   Where instead of producing goods, your goal is to snag the most promising plots free or cheap.    Then you wait for the right moment to sell them to other players at super high prices.   You don't develop any of them except maybe a single food plot to sustain you.

 

I do this sometimes and have won the game using this strategy. 

interesting 

On 5/25/2022 at 5:52 PM, 8BIT 1337 said:

This has never occured to me, but I love that it actually works.

probably only against the mechtrons, usually pay way over the price against my human opponent as it's a big land grab to maximise production!

[carlsson]

Carlsson (Green Humanoid, 2nd place) - 20474 pts
Colony Total - 79955 pts

 

A rather varied first half of the game, until the red computer started to take a too big lead. Also not a single pirate through the game, which of course affects the outcome a bit.

 

 

Rd Land Auction       Event              Smit Crys Food Ener  Order
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1 772VC 712NS        Planetquake          64   --   15   10  BC RC VC GH
 2 --                 Sunspot Activity     57   56   34   10  BC RC VC GH
 3 348BC 288NS        Fire in Store        57   68   78   22  GH RC BC VC
 4 544RC              Crazy Mule GH        --  144  229   13  BC RC VC GH
 5 --                 Fire in Store       147  132  184   21  BC RC VC GH
 6 --                 Pest Attack RC       69  120  151   85  GH RC BC VC
 7 --                 Sunspot Activity     50  100  174   28  RC GH VC BC
 8 --                 Pest Attack GH       50   56  180   10  RC BC VC GH
 9 --                 Meteorite Strike BC  50   92  137   17  RC GH VC BC
10 --                 Planetquake          50  124   82   22  RC GH VC BC
11 --                 Acid Rain Storm      36   64   30   35  RC GH VC BC
12 --                 Transport Ship       50  148   15   33  RC GH BC VC

 

Plot inventory:

Red Computer: 7 crystite, 2 energy, 1 food, 1 smithore (11)

Green Humanoid (me): 3 crystite, 3 energy, 3 food, 1 smithore (10)

Blue Computer: 9 smithore, 2 energy, 1 crystite (12)

Violet Computer: 8 smithore, 3 energy (11)

[tompateus]

Haven't turn on my Atari for several months, but after carlsson's mule report, i was: yes! mule!?

 

Kind a boring round!

2 fire in the store, but could'nt make anything of it! 

High food and energy prices quite alot

I had very good plots, but crystite prices was pretty low most of the game. 120 was the highest price.

Fun anyway! Don't play often with humanoid.

[carlsson]

My colony total was only 583 points, or 0.7% more than yours. Yet you had a better run than me.

[tompateus]

Yeah! I saw that we had quite similar totalscore?

[tompateus]

You should go for crystite only carlsson and forget about smithore!

[carlsson]

I almost never outfit for smithore, except when I'm forced to pick (or is given) a mountain plot without any crystite findings and I have no surrounding crystite plots. Usually it happens late into the game.

 

However as you can see, the one time smithore was at almost 150, the blue computer jumped into the lead, for falling behind later. I should probably add to my stats in which rounds it was declared food and energy shortages, which kind of can be seen from store buying prices but not fully.

 

 

[8BIT 1337]

Just had one of my best games of MULE ever - although have to admit I was obviously a bit lucky.  Twice meteroites hit my land to give me two 4* crystite patches, and I had 2 of the 3* patches.  "Grew" 54 units of Crystite in round 12 (and the pirate ship came only once, in round 3, where I lost only 4-5 units). Also managed to grab 13 plots of land and at one point was the only one "Growing" energy, so I made out super well overall.

 

Probably my first time playing as a Leggite too.  Or space ostrich as I like to think of it

 

Final score: 34,932

 

[Gollumer69]

Hello Everybody, just discovered this thread! I wanted to post my high score in MULE! I used the Gollumer, which is my favorite species, but I don't remember specifics as the game was played in March 2022. The game was played in the Altirra emulator with a copy of MULE I have from a classic download site. I actually have the original 1983 disk somewhere but I have not turned on the Atari 800 in over a year, happy campaigning to all!

[+therealbountybob]

On 7/23/2022 at 11:03 AM, Gollumer69 said:

Hello Everybody, just discovered this thread! I wanted to post my high score in MULE! I used the Gollumer, which is my favorite species, but I don't remember specifics as the game was played in March 2022. The game was played in the Altirra emulator with a copy of MULE I have from a classic download site. I actually have the original 1983 disk somewhere but I have not turned on the Atari 800 in over a year, happy campaigning to all!

 

Welcome Gollumer69, we are honoured to have your first post here on the MULE thread I was thinking of runnning another MULE tourney soon so will let you all know!

[Kenshi]

I love this game. Here are my scores from today and yesterday. I'd say I did pretty well today.

[carlsson]

Since I didn't fancy any more Missile Command, I played another game starting on the letter M.

 

This was a strange round. Have a look at the screenshot from the last production. I was the only player to produce crystite! I was in the lead from the end of round 5 to the very end, but got outnumbered by the violet mechtron by a margin of 67 measly points!

 

 

Carlsson (Blue Humanoid, 2nd place) - 22203 pts

Colony Total - 83276 pts

 

Rd Land Auction       Event              Smit Crys Food Ener  Order
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1 624GC              Acid Rain Storm      43   --   15   10  VC RC GC BH
 2 616RC 556NS (1)    Planetquake          43   84   15   10  RC VC GC BH
 3 366VC              Pirate Ship (2)      43   --   15   10  VC GC RC BH
 4 --                 Acid Rain Storm      50   76   15   24  GC VC BH RC (3)
 5 402GC 342VC        Pest Attack GC       43  132   15   48  BH VC GC RC (4)
 6 --                 Planetquake          50   92   17   27  BH VC GC RC
 7 942VC              Fire in Store        57   96   26   10  BH VC RC GC
 8 882NS              Sunspot Activity     50  120   15   10  BH RC GC VC
 9 --                 Acid Rain Storm      50   76   19   10  BH RC VC GC
10 --                 Meteorite Strike RC  57   92   15   10  BH VC GC RC
11 --                 Sunspot Activity     43  108   48   10  BH VC GC RC
12 --                 Transport Ship       57  112   82   10  VC BH GC RC (5)

 

(1) Both plots had been identified with medium crystite, but red computer never utilized it.

(2) As mentioned, I was the only one to suffer, 13 units + production to waste.

(3) At this point, I ended the round with $3 in cash so no development for me in the next round.

(4) One round later, and I was sitting with $3507 after selling off crystite. That is more than $3500 net improvement in a round!

(5) Yes, the violet computer as mentioned

 

Edit: This marks my 6th game in a row which I failed to win. Last time I won was in June 2019, so pre-Covid!

Edited December 30, 2022 by carlsson

[+therealbountybob]

13 hours ago, carlsson said:

Since I didn't fancy any more Missile Command, I played another game starting on the letter M.

 

This was a strange round. Have a look at the screenshot from the last production. I was the only player to produce crystite! I was in the lead from the end of round 5 to the very end, but got outnumbered by the violet mechtron by a margin of 67 measly points!

 

 

Edit: This marks my 6th game in a row which I failed to win. Last time I won was in June 2019, so pre-Covid!

nice write up C. It's always interesting to find something in a favourite game. Looks like next season for MULE tourney, I made less Atari time than usual this year 

[8BIT 1337]

On 12/31/2022 at 6:58 AM, therealbountybob said:

nice write up C. It's always interesting to find something in a favourite game. Looks like next season for MULE tourney, I made less Atari time than usual this year 

Agreed - I've never considered writing down the metrics from each round like that.  Makes for good reading!

[carlsson]

I began documenting it like that in April 2016, a total of 27 rounds now (all on the Atari 8-bit). Of course it helps that I have my Atari and my PC next to each other, but I could just as well scribble down the data on paper and later transfer to a text file. It lets me figure out if land prices are going up or down, the likelihood for various events, prices on the commodities and which order we'll take our turns. Some of it is more useful while playing than other parts of the data.

Edited January 12, 2023 by carlsson

[tompateus]

Yeah! In trade, it sometimes can be very important to know in which order we'll take our turns!

So i use this very analog device😁

[carlsson]

If M.U.L.E. had been published by Infocom rather than Electronic Arts, they may have included similar feelies and other non-digital items to the game, not required to play it but enhancing the experience.

[+therealbountybob]

4 hours ago, tompateus said:

Yeah! In trade, it sometimes can be very important to know in which order we'll take our turns!

So i use this very analog device😁

That would significantly increase the shipping costs

 

[carlsson]

Now it is less than 5 weeks until M.U.L.E. turns 40 years old, specifically May 23rd.

[carlsson]

On second thought, EA packaged and shipped all five games already on Friday May 20, 1983, which makes me wonder why M.U.L.E. somewhere was dated to the Monday 23rd, if it took three days for the first batch of games to reach stores or if that was the official date to start selling the games, even if those were shipped a couple days earlier. Probably the fact there was a weekend in between makes a difference.

[tompateus]

How popular became M.U.L.E. to be amongst people in that time?

Did it sell good..?

 

For me, it is one of the greatest game!

When i got an Atari a coupple years ago, M.U.L.E. was prio one to get!

 

[carlsson]

Apparently it sold in rather small volumes, at least in relation to how big it's publisher became. Frequently pirated but perhaps also too complex for most casual gamers, something we can see still today.

[tompateus]

Yes i can understand that.

I'm stunned to this day how advanced the game is for it's time! Truly a masterpice!

[zzip]

6 hours ago, tompateus said:

How popular became M.U.L.E. to be amongst people in that time?

Did it sell good..?

 

For me, it is one of the greatest game!

When i got an Atari a coupple years ago, M.U.L.E. was prio one to get!

 

It came out during a time when people were just starting to buy home computers en masse because prices were coming down due to Commodore's price war.   But I think many of those computer buyers didn't bring home a floppy drive right away because they were still very expensive.

 

So the potential market for MULE wasn't huge when it released.