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Feb 25, 2011

Bog iron in Goblin Camp

Okay, so Blogger tells me that over the last few weeks, several people have come to my blog by Googling for "goblin camp bog iron". In case you're doing this because you're wondering how to gather bog iron, here's what you do:

1. Designate an area of bog (Orders -> Designate bog for iron)

2. Go to the Territory menu and mark the bog you've just designated as part of your territory

3. Designate a stockpile to receive Metal ore

4. Order up some bog iron in the Stock Manager

Your goblins will start collecting iron. I imagine the trouble is caused by phase 2, which is undocumented.

Hope that helps!

**

If you need more pointers to get your Goblin Camp going, there's a video tutorial series on YouTube.









That should get you started!

Feb 23, 2011

Goblin Camp 0.14 out!

The new version of Goblin Camp is out! Get it at goblincamp.com. I had a go at it over the weekend.

Here's a lovely view of Camp Sixteen...



...just before imps attack from the charcoal burning clamp and set it on fire.



It wasn't so bad, actually. I only lost 5 orcs and 8 goblins. That is, until a swarm of killer bees and another bunch of imps showed up, and set everything on fire again.



At the end of the day, I'm down to five orcs and 16 goblins. Any way you look at it, it's way too few guys to defend a camp this size, which is conveniently proven true by two packs of starving wolves and, yes, a third group of imps. Now my camp is on fire and overrun with wolves.



After a party of kobold raiders also pays us a visit, I'm left with two orcs and six goblins, and a wrecked camp.



Having gone from a total population of 50 to eight, and with the camp in ruins, I might as well quit. It's hopeless.

Or is it?



Incredibly enough, I've managed to get the camp cleared up somewhat. At best, I had four orcs and over a dozen goblins! A fired golem later, the orcs were down to one and the goblins had taken a beating, but it looked like I might get this thing up and running again.

Until the imps showed up.



And it was all over.

**

No matter; let's try again. Here's Camp Seventeen:



And just as I was getting it up and running, guess who waltzes right in?



And this is what happened.



Goblin Camp. Harsh, but fun.

Feb 14, 2011

Can't explain that

As we all know, fundies say the darndest things. My personal favourite from the site is this gem by awesomestnerd:

"One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it."



Yes, awesomestnerd, they certainly would.

Recently, conservative political commentator Bill O'Reilly offered his own contribution to science concerning the heavenly bodies, specifically the Moon.



From the LA Times blog The Big Picture:
"But when it comes to seeing the world through the wrong end of a telescope, no one tops Bill O'Reilly, who has been the butt of a thousand jokes after confronting an atheist on his show with irrefutable evidence of the existence of God--using as his evidence the fact that the tides come in and the tides go out. I mean, O'Reilly said with great certainty, who else could possibly be controlling that?"

When confronted with the more conventional explanation of the tides, O'Reilly went one level higher and speculated on the origin of the Moon.




All this has caused much hilarity on teh internets, and you too can participate in the meme with the handy MemeGenerator.

Here's our contribution:

Feb 11, 2011

Camp Five

Here's a composite image of my fifth Goblin Camp camp:



Population around one hundred; click on the picture for a closer look. You can see some of the main features of the camp pretty well in this large-scale image. Your orcs and goblins muddy up the ground and leave copious amounts of filth behind; you can see the main thoroughfares outlined in brown, as well as the brown piles of filth at the south and west gates, because of the permanent guard stationed there. And then there is, of course, the giant pile of filth that is the main camp, slowly spreading outward and seeping into the river.

For security, I've gone with a concentric layout of palisades and moats. There are gates and bridges only at certain points, which channels incoming attackers there, to be dealt with by my guards. The other security risks are the improvements that occasionally spawn monsters; ants will attack from your stone quarry, golems from the clay pit and so on. You can see all of these improvements just south of the south gate, meaning that mostly (mostly) the guards at my south gate deal with the bad guys before they get into my camp.

Another notable feature are the huge lumber yards that dominate the outer two circuits of the camp. The game is set in a forest, and one ends up cutting down quite a few trees to make way for moats, workshops, stockpiles and so on. Of course, you could just leave the logs lying around, but I like my huge lumberyards.

**

Now that I have a camp this size, I thought I might weigh in on some problems I've read about people having with Goblin Camp. For starters, several people have complained that their camps get bogged down with interminable hauling jobs, especially of seeds. If you take a look at my camp here, you may notice that the fields aren't very large at all. That's because in my experience, it's very easy to destroy the efficiency of your camp through one simple expedient: overfarming.

Starvation is a constant threat early in the game, so I see the appeal of planting as many crops as possible. The problem is that the yields in the game are quite generous: bloodberries IIRC 5:1 and nightbloom trees 4:1, and with very little wastage. In 0.13, you start with 30 bloodberry seeds. Plant all of them, and by next fall you have 150. Another year of maximum bloodberry farming? 750. And so on. See where the endless seed hauling jobs come from? The size of the fields needs to grow relative to the size of the population in the camp. It's not that hard; as you might guess from the name, this is my fifth camp, and because I got the farming right from the get-go, I never had a problem with starvation.

The other point is that the day-to-day operation of a goblin camp is messy in many ways. Seeds and other things just end up lying around and if you're anal-retentive, they need to be cleaned up into their appropriate stockpiles. Another essential thing is to give your goblins time to do that. If they're constantly running around on errands and constructions jobs, the hauling jobs are going to spiral out of control because nobody's doing them. So take a break every now and then and let your goblins clean up the camp. Even with that camp, I've managed to get my jobs list down to one screen.

Managing your job queue is a question of resource management, and that is, after all, the point of the game.

Feb 9, 2011

Feb 2, 2011

Musical Minecraft

Minecraft is the best game in the world.