1st Year Research Calculator

[Maltrease]

I've created a calculator to help determine when you can reach specific research levels for the first year of the game.

The initial version is available (you will need the Flash plugin)
http://www.evilfree.com/dom3/researchCalc-v1.html

Basically you input your "additional" research capacity at each turn. Then the graph shows you your total research for each turn. If your cursor over one of the bars you will get the exact number. I've color coded to bars to change at each spell level so you can quickly see when a new level of research is available. (Right now the values are set to standard research).

Example Use:
I'm playing Vanheim and want to know when my Vans can cast Mistform (Alt 3). I am going to recruit a Vanjarl every turn and I am playing at Magic 1. This gives each Vanjarl a research of 6. So I will set the number spinners for turns 2 to 12 to a additional research value of 6.

If I used my initial Vanherse for expansion and my pretender is asleep I can set 1st turn to 0 and see that at the end of turn 9 I will have reached level 3.

However, say I want to get there sooner? If I put the first Vanherse to work in the lab (set 1st turn to 4) it would cut off a turn.

Or say I want to keep him on expansion duties (likely) and want to use an awake pretender to help out on research.

If my pretender has a research of:
4 - I reach it at the end of turn 8.
11 - reach it end of turn 7.
19 - end of turn 6
28 - end of turn 5

and if I went with bad scales and a rainbow sage with 41 research I could be casting mistform at the end of turn 4.

You can also do things like comparing hiring better or worse researches on different turns to hit the mark when you need it.

If you require multiple paths. Like evo2, alt2 just tally up the total yourself and compare the hard numbers on the graphs.


Questions? Thoughts? Ideas for improvements?

[Horst F. JENS]

nice calculator !

[Agrajag]

1) The graph scales up if you have really high research, but if you decrease your research the graph still stays the same, instead of scaling down to smaller numbers.
2) It is impossible to insert negative values, what if one of my researchers leaves to lead some armies?
3) Only the first 12 turns? If I would've done it I would've made it dynamic
(Then again, I wouldn't do it in Flash, nor do I know anything about programming in flash)

[Maltrease]

Thanks for the feedback Agrajag. I like the idea of negative values to show moving mages away and it was trivial to implement. Also I adjusted the graph to autoscale both directions... although I'm not sure I like this better then only scaling up.

http://www.evilfree.com/dom3/researchCalc-v2.html

This is really only 2-3 hours of work. It isn't very "dynamic" because with the tools I used it was much quicker to hard code it. Plus the first 12 turns have somewhat defined "build orders" (if you will) that you can use against indies or setup your initial planning. After you start running into other player all your plans start changing and adapting. With some races getting a critical combat spell (usually alt or evo) makes a huge difference. So figuring out that you can get their 2 turns earlier by adjusting this and that can be very helpful.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Very nice tool Maltrease. I bet a lot of people use it to test various scenarios....