tHE yEAR inVERSE

Some 2022 draft blog posts such as
"Sedron Time Stream" and "Pantechnyk"
that I expect to complete and post in 2023.

Here near the end of 2022, I'm preparing to publish my annual "year in review" blog post (last year). However, there is also "the rest of the story"... the many blog posts that I've delayed posting during the past six months because I'm still trying to organize my thoughts about the Sedron Time Stream and those special individuals who I've begun to think of as having a vynculochronyc sense.

The first vyncuchron who I knew was Angela Fersoni. More recently, I became aware that Rylla's grandson, Brak, will have retro-vynculochronyc abilities. As far as I know, Angela was antero-vynculochronyc and received information from the past. However, Zeta is skeptical and believes that Angela could have obtained all her knowledge of Deep Time by means of access to a Reality Simulation System.

I suspect that Brak will be like Rytya; with the ability to place information into the Sedronic Domain. Time has a different "flow" in the Sedronic Domain and information can be extracted from the Sedron Time Stream by a vyncuchron. The means by which a person can practice vynculochrony is a mystery. Maybe someone like Angela had a special zeptite endosymbiont that gave her access to the Sedron Time Stream, but those in the know, such as Manny the bumpha, are not eager to resolve this mystery.

more draft posts

Even if there is no actual time travel, what if it is possible to send information from the future to the past? We might define "actual time travel" as moving matter through time in a way that seems to violate the standard physical laws of the Hadronic Domain of the universe. The vynculochronyc transmission of information makes use of the Sedronic Domain as an extra-dimensional path for the exchange of information by the chronocateni such as Angela and Brak.

Paradox. I've become intrigued by the idea that vynculochrony can create temporal paradoxes. This seems to be entirely analogous to the temporal paradoxes that cling to time travelers and used to limit their knowledge and actions. I imagine that there is a vast amount of information available in the Sedron Time Stream, but paradoxes might severely limit how much of that information can be accessed and shared by a vyncuchron such as Angela.

searching for answers

 Complexity. We get comfortable with Time functioning as a way to keep events organized in a single sequence. However, what can Eddy do if information obtained from the Sedron Time Stream is made available to him in a seemingly random order? When dealing with an avalanche of data made available by vynculochrony, sorting events and understanding causal sequences of events can become a serious challenge. Wish me luck in finding my way through this complex temporal labyrinth that I stumbled upon in 2022.

AI-generate images in 2023.

Figure 1. 10 years old, plenty of amenities

 Summer Winter Game Time. Most years, I have a mid-summer video game vacation. For example, in summer of 2021, I played some Outback Tycoon. However, in summer of 2022, I got involved with reading some old Sci Fi anthologies (example, Conklin's 1951 anthology Possible Worlds of Science Fiction). It is only here in December that I finally had time to return to Outback Tycoon for some more down-under gold rush fun.

Shown in Figure 1 is the most recent city that I founded in Australia. I was trying to re-name "Guildford" to "Saltlick", but typing a "k" in a city name automatically triggers a screen-shot.

Figure 2. Tea is served at the Great Barrier Reef National Park near Perth.

Figure 3. South Wyncot.

  Manny Luxuries. I'm glad I accidentally captured that screen-shot (Figure 1) because it makes the point that I am sometimes too obsessive about obtaining as many luxury resources as possible. My only reason for making a city in the location of Guildford was to get the nearby salt resource (left edge), but I did not need that additional luxury resource at this late time in the game. It probably would have been wiser to build the last city in that game in a heavily forested area (see below, Figure 12) with no luxury resource.

Figure 4. Northwest Australia. Click to enlarge.

 National Park. For the game shown in figures 2-7, I built my first city near the Great Barrier Reef in order to get the scientific research benefits from that natural wonder (Figure 2). There were several luxury resources near the reef including diamonds, gold and tea. Since there were three tea resources in a row (a very rare sight!), I did not mind preserving one of those tea resources inside a national park. Late in the game, a uranium resource appeared in the park. 

Figure 5. Uluru wonder.

In the Outback Tycoon scenario, the game always begins with an explorer unit in the same place: southeast Australia near New South Wales. For this game, I quickly sent my explorer to claim the valuable Great Barrier Reef, but I then sent my second settler back east to found the city of South Wyncot where I could get a wine resource and a cotton resource (Figure 3).

Figure 6. Salt Pearls.

I built five of my 8 cities along the dry north coast of Australia and ended up building a large number of ranches and Outback Stations. In this game, my last city (again, Guildford) only grew to size five before the end of this particular game (Figure 4, upper right). In its more favorable location, Perth grew unusually large (city size 18, Figure 2). Bunbury was close to the Uluru natural wonder (Figure 5). The city of Slat Salt Pearls (Figure 6) was one of my more successful efforts to build productive ranches and Outback Stations in a desert.

Figure 7. Resource rich York.

The city of York (Figure 7) had four luxury resources: pearls, gold, diamonds and gypsum. The way I usually play the Outback Tycoon scenario, without destroying forests, I usually score in the 400s. In this particular game, I almost reached 500, which is pretty good for my style of play.

Teleculture: human-alien hybrids

 Time Travel. What I enjoy most about playing Outback Tycoon is how the game can create the sensation of receiving information from the future. For maximum efficiency, it is desirable to find a gold resource by turn 7 of the game. As illustrated in Figure 2, sometimes there is a convenient gold resource near to the Great Barrier Reef, in that case, just to the north of the city of Golden Tea. In other "Realities", with a different resource map, it can be difficult to find gold. For example, in the "Reality" of Figure 1, a city similar to South Wyncot (Figure 3) had a nearby gold resource, but I had to repeatedly "travel through time" in order to find a way to reach it by turn 7.

I'm currently writing a story called "Teleculture" which is simultaneously set in a past Reality while also set in the far future at a time when humans have spread out from Earth to Alastor Cluster.

creating Galaxia

 Coming in 2023. In "Teleculture", telepathy experiments take place on Alastor 2672 that involve creating "hybrids" that contain mostly human chromosomes but also some alien gene patterns obtained from native creatures of that world. The intelligent natives of Alastor 2672 (Dethevicinelec) are aquatic and they exist as a type of telepathic group-mind. 

For the Exode Saga, I imagine that R. Nyrtia was forced to turn Humanity into the Galaxia group mind in an attempt to liberate our species from the pek. However, in the next Reality, Nyrtia had the luxury of a temporal "do-over" and was able to find a satisfactory way for humans to be provided with telepathy while not forming a group mind.

avoiding temporal paradoxes

 Paradoxical. Eddy is the narrator of "Teleculture" and he provides a written account of his visit to Alastor 2672, a journey that takes place in the past/future by means of Reality Simulation. However, his trip to Alastor 2672 takes place in the year 2040 and information about that future visit to the past is sent by vynculochrony to the year 2022. 

How does Eddy, in 2022, become aware of the telepathy experiments on Alastor 2672, yet he does not visit that world until the year 2040? You'll have to read "Teleculture" to find out. 

 More time travel in Australia. There are only a few locations on the map of Australia where the Great Barrier Reef can be placed for a game of Outback Tycoon. One such location is shown in Figure 2, but another is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. The Great Barrier Reef requires a linear coast line, six spaces long.

Figure 9. Locations of four gold resources.

For the game shown in figures 8-14, it was not convenient to build my first city at the Great Barrier Reef. All of the gold resources on the map were far from the Great Barrier Reef, and only one was visible from a ship in the ocean (near the top in Figure 9).

To make sure that I created my first city in Western Australia near the reef, but also make it possible for me to reach a gold resource in time to start a gold rush in turn 7, I sent my explorer along the south coast of Australia, went right past the reef and started up the west coast. That allowed me to found Perth in a resource-rich location and my explorer was able to continue along the north coast and reach the gold resource by turn 7.

I had to search the entire map to discover that this strategy even existed and then I "traveled back through time" and implement the strategy. I made two mistakes in this game.

Figure 10. The Northeast cities of Wine Forest and York.

Figure 11. The city of Pearl Tea Pines, next to the Pinnacles wonder.

Why does anyone with access to a time machine ever make a mistake? In this case, I had originally planned to get the diamonds resource that can be seen near the upper left corner of Figure 9. However, there were few food resources in that area, so I built York slightly to the north, a location where it could benefit from some fish resources (see Figure 10). Thus, diamonds became one of the few luxury resources on this map that I did not acquire during the game (another was citrus; all the citrus was in the southeast, near New South Wales, where I had no cities).

Figure 12. Chopping down forests near the city of Banana Forest yielded productivity bonuses.

The unexpected discovery of natural wonders in the middle of Australia.

In this game, I tried building my last city in a forest (see Figure 12). By cutting down trees, I was able to complete the Commercial District (with a market, a bank and a stock exchange) for Banana Forest in the course of about 12 turns, just before the end of the game. 

I would have been able to successfully complete a stock exchange in every city, but I failed to take advantage of a forested tile that became available to York right at the end of the game when in the process of building a ranch, the city border expanded (at the extreme right in Figure 10). There's never a spare farmer around when you need one.

Figure 13. Southwest Australia.

Uluru was lost in the middle of the continent.

 Figure 13 shows the locations of my first three cities, Perth, Fremantle and Port Shugart. Perth had gypsum, marble and cotton luxury resources. Port Shugart had sugar and Fremantle had salt along with the Great Barrier Reef. Fremantle had important science benefits from the reef, but had relatively poor food resources and only reached size 12 even-though it was founded before Port Shugart.

 Totally Random. In this game, the Uluru wonder was in a desert in the middle of Australia where it was not of use to any of the four colonies.

Figure 14. The contested border between Fremantle and Moonta. Click to enlarge.

image source

Fremantle had a contended eastern boundary. Another Australian colony built a city close to the eastern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Control of the salt resource near the border changed several times during the game. For a time, the other colony had a miner on the tile of the salt resource while it was on my side of the border. Eventually, I had control of that salt mine at the end of the game (see Figure 8). I built three districts near the salt resource (commercial, entertainment and education) so that I could push back the border and keep control of this luxury resource.

While there are advantages to building cities in forests (see the image to the left), Figure 12 shows the city of Silver Whales which was built in a desert in order to obtain the whales and silver luxury resources. The city was able to grow by making use of fish resources in the sea and also four nearby sheep and cattle ranches. By positioning Outback Stations between the ranches, Silver Whales was able to get enough food to increase its population to 10 before the end of the game.

My city of Wine Forest (see Figure 10) was built second to last, but by chopping down some of the surrounding forest I was also able to complete its commercial district buildings before the end of the game.

Next: the year 2022 in review.

Below: more postcards from my gaming vacation in Australia...

S1. The Great Barrier Reef in northeast Australia.

Reef in upper left; image source

There seem to be only four places on the map of Australia where the Great Barrier Reef can be placed. My favorite is shown in supplemental figure S1 (above). There were no luxury resources available to the city of GBR, but it got the full science benefits from the reef. I don't know the algorithm used to place the Great Barrier Reef on the game map, but occasionally a map of Australia is generated that has NO Great Barrier Reef at all. 😖

When playing games of Outback Tycoon there is never any tundra, but the image to the right shows a regular game in which a reef (only two adjacent tiles) was located on the map in a cold location.

S2. The closest gold resource.

For this particular game of Outback Tycoon in which the Great Barrier Reef was in the northeast (S1), time travel revealed that the only way for me to obtain gold by turn 7 was to visit what eventually became the location of my city Gold Port (S2, above). Gold Port was in a desert, but with some nearby fish resources, two farms along the river and a sheep ranch, Gold Port managed to grow to size 11.

Resource Rules. Regardless of the image shown to the right, I don't recall ever finding two gold resources in adjacent map tiles during a game of Outback Tycoon. I don't believe that the placement of gold resources on the map is totally random. They do often tend to get clustered in one part of the map, just not in adjacent tiles. In contrast, I recently had three citrus resources all next to each-other (look north of the Fruity city center in figure S6, below).

example of a mountain range

This clustering effect seems to be a general rule. Forest tiles are not just randomly distributed, they cluster into forests. Also, mountain tiles sometimes form large clumps or long mountain ranges. If I find one luxury resource at a map location, it often pays to search that region for a cluster of additional luxury resources. Also, there must be an algorithm for clustering together ranches in some regions of desert so that players can get the full benefits of Outback Stations.

S3. The first city.

I decided to build my first city (Perth) in a centrally-located forest along the north shore of Australia (S3, above). I only cleared one forest tile, but all of the saw mills turned the lovely forest into a... well, it don't look good.

I enjoy playing the Outback Tycoon scenario because it is peaceful. However, there should be an option to allow occasional natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and tidal waves.

S4. The last city.

starting in the jungle with two units

The last of my 8 cities was More Gold (S4, above). The only reason I built a city in this location was to get one more gold resource before the end of the game. More Gold was at the edge of a desert. I chopped several nearby rain-forest tiles in order to rush the completion of the commercial district buildings for More Gold. 

In this situation, it worked well to build Outback Stations on the newly cleared forest tiles next to a ranch (see the tiles shown at the bottom of figure S4).

a tea party starting location with a tea picker unit

 Variety is Good. I understand why the Outback Tycoon scenario was designed to have players start with a single explorer in an ocean tile adjacent to the city of New South Wales, however the game would be more interesting if there were several start options such as having both an explorer and a settler in turn #1.

S5. The city of Pearlcury had pearls in a lake (upper right) and a mercury resource (lower right).

To the south of More Gold was the city of Pearlcury which also benefited from the rain-forest to the north (S5, above). Other trees to the south and east of the city center were suitable for the construction of sawmills. The road leading south to the city of Fruity can be seen at the bottom of figure S5 where it winds past a citrus grove. The mercury resource for the city of Pearlcury has a mine in the S5 screenshot, so I provided the image to the right which shows many undeveloped mercury resources and looks like it might be the planet Mercury.

S6. The city of Fruity was close to the Kakadu natural wonder.

S7. An army of South Australian settlers.

The city of Fruity is shown in figure S6. Fruity was near a large number of citrus resources, one wine resource, a salt resource and also several marble resources. The eastern border of Fruity was disputed by another Australian colony. Sometimes the computer algorithms in Civilization VI go nuts. I guess the Kakadu natural wonder was an attractive nuisance for the game AI which kept manufacturing more and more settlers and sending them towards the eastern border of Fruity (see figure S7 to the right).

S8. The desert city of Silver Diamonds.

S9. Uluru National Park.

My city of Silver Diamonds in eastern Australia was located close to two luxury resources: silver and diamonds (see figure S8, above). Silver Diamonds had some fish resources and one ranch, but only grew to size 9 before the end of the game. Maybe Silver Diamonds can't be counted as a true desert city since it had a lake to west of the city center.

My second-to-the-last city was built close to the Uluru natural wonder (figure S9, to the right). Since my plan was to create a nation park next to Urulu, I called the city Uluru National Park. By cutting down some of the forest along the coast I was able to complete the commercial district for Uluru National Park before the end of the game. In fact, this may have been the first time that I completed the construction of a stock exchange in each of my 8 cities.

One of my highest scores (657).

 9 Outback Rules of Acquisition. As I've become more willing to destroy forests, I've achieved higher scores in my Outback Tycoon games. Here are nine useful strategies...

 Rule 1. Make use of bonuses from natural wonders, particularly the science benefits of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Early in the game, having the GBR makes it much easier to progress through the technology tree. I don't always build my first city at the GBR, particularly if it is a resource-poor location. However, either my first or my second city is built at the GBR. 

 S10. Resource-poor land near the GBR.

Figure S10 shows an example of a game in which there were few resources close to the GBR. However, in this game there was an easy-to-find gold resource near the GBR (bottom of S10).

 Rule 2. Always find a gold resource by turn 7. The sooner you get your settlers and found your cities, the sooner you can make profits. Having seen a gold resource greatly accelerated getting 2 of your 8 settlers.

S11. Trees are good.

S12. Another coastal location with low $ production.

 Rule 3. Trees are your friends. Shown in figure S11, the city of Spark Tea was founded late in the game, much later than Sparle Wine (on the coast). However, by harvesting some of the many trees around Spark Tea, that city caught up (reached size 10) and produced much more gold (123 vs 57).

 Rule 4. Use "time travel", otherwise known as "cheat". You only have 60 game turns which makes it hard to explore the entire map. 

View time travel as part of the game.

Explore into the future and find the locations of important resources. Once you know the best locations for your cities, travel back in time and build your cities in those good locations. I don't think of this as cheating; in my view, time travel is part of the game. The explorer unit was crippled by the game designers and so using time travel is a reasonable response by players to the bad game design.

S13. Mertrus, another profitable inland city.

S14. The city of Silverado.

 Rule 5. Follow the luxury resources. In the game shown in figures S10 - S15, there were relatively few luxury resources near the coast. On such a map, exploring inland and building inland cities can lead to better profits. Compare the cities of Perth and Mertrus in figure S13. Perth was my first city. It had good growth potential (it reached population 17), but Mertrus (size 9) produced more gold (102 vs 87).

 Rule 6. Invest your profits. Cash on hand is useless in this game. Spend your profits to speed the growth of your cities.

S15. City #8 of 8.

 Rule 7. Use trade routes wisely. You can build traders in high-productivity cities, but transfer them to new, low-productivity cities before making your trade routes. I like to use the government policy that gives production bonuses to domestic trade routes.

 Rule 8. Control your borders. The computer players like to build cities close to your borders and take control of your land and resources. Push the borders back by building districts along the border.

 Rule 9. During the end game, don't waste productivity or cash. I try to complete my commercial districts, but there are additional ways to make $. On coastal cities you can build sea ports and sea-side resorts. There are two resorts visible in S10. Inland cities can make $ with AIF projects. In the final game turn, set the policies to maximize $ and emphasize $ in the production controls of each city.

Next: the year 2022 in review.

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