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Utopia - thoughts?


cvga

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Thanks to the Flashback, we've been playing a lot of Intellivision over the holidays. I introduced my 8 year old to Utopia tonight. I haven't played it much, if at all, over the past 30 years so it seemed a little new to me also. He really enjoyed it. I did also but it took us a couple of rounds to figure out how to build buildings, plant crops, and fish. We spent most of our time chasing schools of fish around the screen. Fun but a little repetitious after a few rounds.

 

Do you have any particular strategy that works well for a high score? We played cooperatively and scored higher when we didn't purchase a fort (since we weren't attacking each other). Also, lengthening the rounds to give yourself more time to fish will help you accumulate gold more quickly.

 

This would be a good candidate for a Super Pro upgrade (or Ms. Utopia, I'm not picky) :P

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A working strategy for me is to maximize factories. It keeps the population low (with pollution) and the gold high (with production). However, each round needs to be short with many rounds. If the rounds are long, I tend to go "naval" and buy PT boats to harass the other country fishing boats, and buy multiple fishing boats and forts to protect them.

 

Short rounds make Utopia more of a strategy game. Long rounds make it more of an action game. For me.

 

 

 

 

There's also some wacky ideas for a "super pro" upgrade:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/229196-wishing-for-an-intellivision-game-refresh-utopia/?hl=%2Bwishing+%2Bfor&do=findComment&comment=3062565

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Note: My strategy is based on maximum number of turns, maximum length game. My brother and I actually play a bit differently (and we nearly always played cooperatively), so I can give some comparative notes too.

 

Also, if you want to know the algorithms, read Utopia Revealed!

 

For me, the game has three phases: Opening, Midgame, Endgame.

 

Opening phase:

  • Buy a fishing boat. Those are my first two keypresses of the game. :-)
    • Always have at least 1, and try to have 2 (a backup).
    • Pirates have a very difficult time of getting into your home port (esp. on the left island), so that's where I usually park my spare in this phase.
    • A fishing boat nets 1 gold bar per round just by existing, so any fishing boat bought with more than 25 rounds remaining pays for itself and then some.
  • Chase rain patterns to lay down crops. Crops crops crops. See the Weather Bias in Utopia? thread for weather pattern analysis. Or just play the game a few times. ;-)
  • When not chasing rain to lay down crops, go fishing.
  • When you get enough money, buy your first factory, followed by your first house. Houses do increase your round score, but do not increase productivity.

 

Midgame:

  • Buy at least one fort out on a peninsula that you can park boats around.
    • Forts protect boats from pirates, 1 card radius.
    • Forts only protect parked boats of the same owner as the fort, but will protect active boats of either color.
    • Pick a peninsula on the leeward side of the island—that is, away from the weather.
  • Park as many fishing boats as you can around that fort. They'll make 1 gold bar/round, plus extra passive fishing.
  • Build factories as you can, but still chase weather for crops occasionally.
  • Try to have at least (population / 500) - 1 houses.
  • Build 1 school for every 3 or 4 factories. Schools reduce fertility and increase production.

Endgame:

  • Buy your first hospital. By the very end of the game, maybe have two.
  • Island should now be clogged with development with no room for crops. Roughly 2/3rd factories, and the rest split among houses (3 or 4, maybe 5), schools (3 - 4), 1 fort on a peninsula, and your first hospital.
  • Spend the rest of your money on fishing boats and build a flotilla. NOTE: Do not exceed 65 combined fishing boats + crops due to an overflow bug in scoring.
  • Fish, fish, fish!

 

That's how I play. My brother goes heavier on factories early on, buys few if any houses until much later in the game, but still buys schools to make the factories more productive. But, like me, he chases weather for crops, and loads up on the fishing boats.

 

Differences in style: He nearly always ends up with more money. I nearly always end up with a higher total score. Take your pick.

Edited by intvnut
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Ok, I went back to my own Utopia Revealed! article, and put all those formulae into a spreadsheet. Turns out, I'm building too many hospitals (you shouldn't build any), and not enough schools. An optimal arrangement that maxes out your round score at 100 seems to be:

  • 10 schools
  • 0 hospitals
  • 13 factories
  • 1 fort
  • 0 crops
  • As many fishing boats as you can build, up to 65

Thats good for a population up to around 2750. Above that, the score starts creeping down a bit. You need 10 schools to max out the General Welfare sub-score.

 

Anyone want to try it for me?

utopia_score_optimizer.xls

Edited by intvnut
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Ok, I went back to my own Utopia Revealed! article, and put all those formulae into a spreadsheet. Turns out, I'm building too many hospitals (you shouldn't build any), and not enough schools. An optimal arrangement that maxes out your round score at 100 seems to be:

  • 10 schools
  • 0 hospitals
  • 13 factories
  • 1 fort
  • 0 crops
  • As many fishing boats as you can build, up to 65

Thats good for a population up to around 2750. Above that, the score starts creeping down a bit. You need 10 schools to max out the General Welfare sub-score.

 

Anyone want to try it for me?

 

I forgot to say "and 5 houses". You have 29 squares on your island, and the above only adds to 24. I knew I missed something. *d'oh*. It's in the spreadsheet, though.

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  • 1 month later...

I found your Utopia Revealed thread from 2012 and built my own spreadsheet to model this! :-) Between that and the Utopia weather pattern model that you did, I learned so much more about this classic game.

 

I came up with the following distribution to get to a perfect 100 score:

Schools (35) 10 Hospitals (75) 0 Factories (40) 15 Crops (3) 0 Houses (60) 4 Fishing Boats (35) 4

 

The other awesome thing about this (and your) distribution is that the population actually slightly declines each round, because schools decrease the fertility rate to 2.4% and with 14 factories, the mortality rate would be 2.5%. The only thing is, it will be difficult to keep 4 fishing boats from being sunk, so I like your idea of 1 fort (build it on the coast) replacing one of the factories in my model and leave 3 of the 4 fishing boats parked within 1 cursor range of the fort, and then fish with the 4th boat. This will still give you a perfect score in the housing and food category assuming your population stays below 2200, which should likely happen with a neutral population growth rate.

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Ugh, my cut and paste from Excel didn't stay in table format, so here's my numbers for the 29 plots of land on the island, in addition to 4 fishing boats:

Schools - 10

Hospitals - 0

Factories - 15 (changed to 14 using the "modified 1 fort model"

Crops - 0

Houses - 4

Fort - not originally listed, but would build one in the place of a factory in the "modified 1 fort model" to protect 3 fishing boats.

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