Cloak & Dagger the easy way

[T-hawk]

As many of us know, it's possible to work out the current hammer count in a rival city's production box by looking at the cost shown in the espionage screen for the Sabotage Production mission. Here's the original post at Apolyton.

I just figured out a better way than that formula, so you don't have to go fishing around for the EP numbers on each side. The key is the Influence Civics mission and its constant base cost of 600 and the fact that the exact same multiplier applies to both it and Sabotage. The formula comes out this easy:

Hammers = SabotageCost / InfluenceCivicsCost * 100

And it's very easy to approximate in your head thanks to that 100 factor. (It appears because the base cost for Influence Civics is 600 and the cost for Sabotage is 6 * hammers.) When the sabotage cost equals the civics cost, the city has 100 hammers. Twice the civics cost means 200 hammers. Half the civics cost means 50 hammers, and so on.

Edit: Turns out that the cost for Influence Civics IS modified by game speed. So you need to include the game speed factor to get the hammer count.

Hammers = SabotageCost / InfluenceCivicsCost * 67 (quick speed)
Hammers = SabotageCost / InfluenceCivicsCost * 150 (epic speed)
Hammers = SabotageCost / InfluenceCivicsCost * 200 (marathon speed)

Also, if you are in exactly all the same civics as your target, there will be no value shown for Influence Civics. If you have a different religion than your target, you can use Influence Religion instead with all the same math. If your civics and religion both match your target, you can use the Support City Revolt mission as a baseline. This is the formula, which is not modified for game speed:

Hammers = SabotageCost / CityRevoltCost * 650 / 6

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Ooh, that's clever, you got some of the values to cancel out. I've always done it the old-fashioned way, just get an excel spreadsheet with the formula implanted into it already.

[Shoot the Moon]

That's really neat!

[T-hawk]

I edited the first post with some fixes. Turns out the cost for Influence Civics (and Religion) IS affected by game speed. I originally grabbed a save from Epic 24 as my test case, forgetting it was on Normal speed and not Epic.

That modifier actually doesn't make logical sense to me, though. The "damage" inflicted on the target doesn't increase with slower game speed, since the waiting period to switch civics or religion back is still the same constant 5 turns. So I would think the cost shouldn't escalate.

[novice]

While you're at it, I know that the steal treasury cost is related to a player's total population. Do you have a neat formula for calculating the rival's total population if you know how much gold he's got (readily visible after currency)?

Also someone really should make a program/spreadsheet that brute forces all possible city size breakdowns given a population number and a ceiling on the number of cities, and possibly a set of know sizes as input.

[T-hawk]

From these original equations:

StealCost = Multiplier * 3 * Treasury * CityPop / TotalPop
InfluenceCivicsCost = Multiplier * 600 * SpeedFactor

TotalPop = Treasury * CityPop * InfluenceCivicsCost / (StealCost * 200 * SpeedFactor)

I get that formula by algebraic transformation to solve for TotalPop. The espionage cost multiplier does cancel out. The formula isn't quite as simple as for sabotaging, but it might still be useful.

As for brute forcing the possible city size breakdowns, I'll think about it, but feel free to do it yourself too.

[Krill]

You guys are starting to make me pine for PBEM4 and no F9...

[spacetyrantxenu]

If your civics and religion both match your target, you can use the Support City Revolt mission as a baseline. This is the formula, which is not modified for game speed:

Hammers = SabotageCost / CityRevoltCost * 650 / 6

To clarify, is this formula the same irrespective of game speed or have you not posted a game speed modifier (if any)? I'm playing a SP game on quick speed where I have the same civics and religion as my target, and I was unsure whether or not to take the result from your formula and then multiply it by some additional modifier (likely * 0.67).

And thanks for making C&D so easy a space tyrant could do it.

[T-hawk]

There is no game speed modifier. City Revolt costs 650 base on all game speeds.