[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[MindyMcCready]

Turn 21:
We're dead Last in food.

Can only go up from here.

Darrell is only putting 2 EP on us every turn. I can't understand why, unless he forgot to move EP off the lurker civ after meeting us.

Sounds like an unconsious decision. Likely confirms the triangle theory.

I'm not going to settle aggressively early on, honestly not because it couldn't be a good move but just because the kind of early game that can lead to isn't the one I want to play. Or, the time to be aggressive with Mongols isn't during the early city plants.

Hmmmm, 12 tiles. That's pretty close with amazing land in between us up for contention.

It was Rego & Darrell who made that pink dot attempt on Athelete in PB2. Not sure how much of that was Darrell vs Rego or how much that play means to this game.

I don't know about every effort to play nice. That pig-corn-ivory site could be a regional game winner. If you're saying that you're going to save your aggression for Keshiks that's something - but you're not exactly saying that.

Your reputation/low propensity to attack is going to work against you if its a constant. Starting next to WLP means farmer's gambit since you can trust his playstyle to keep you safe. Put a city on the border and expand aggressively in the other direction until you outgrow him.

If that land shape means triangle like you're saying, that's going to give Darrabod a bit of a land advantage.

Is the PB13 RB-mod current?
Expansive + Imperialistic = 100% for markets + grocers + aqueducts + harbour + custom hose
Industrious + Organized = 100% for lighthouse + forge + courthouse + wonders/nw.

At face value we're going to have a production/output advantage (mid-game) while they'll get the tech advantage. But largely these will neutralize each other as they get an early production/output advantage from their early start while we get a tech advantage from organized. I can't really see a significant advantage for either of us except for our UU and later their UU. So in a sense, non-aggression means that we're relying on luck/external factors to decide who's going to 'win' between the two of us.

When someone faces Keshiks, there are two reactions:
1. Fear them and try to prevent them from acquiring horse. While they'd likely be capable of doing this given Joao, Ichabod's PB13 experience against you will make him hesitant to take early aggressive action.
2. Hope for peace while developing. Ichabod's experience + your general reputation will make that the likely outcome. Complete peace + farmer's gambit until he's ready to attack us.

So if they follow a farmer's gambit how are you going to outplay them? If you rule out warfare and don't chase wonders we're really going to be bypassing our advantages. Having said that, I don't think that we can chase wonders since Joao could really lock us up landwise.

Anyway, very early to think about this stuff. But it's also very early to rule out aggression if it's a winning move.

Is CivStats not part of this game? If that's the case, the will make a huge difference in the ability to rush someone. Especially if Darrell doesn't reallocate EPs. We'll have to revisit after we discover BW and/or discover our second neighbour.

[WilliamLP]

Darrell is only putting 2 EP on us every turn. I can't understand why, unless he forgot to move EP off the lurker civ after meeting us.

Sounds like an unconsious decision. Likely confirms the triangle theory.

If it's unconscious and he has never reallocated, it could just be divided with Commodore / Sulla's civ. Everyone is in contact with them since they apparently have Great Spies shadowing our scouts. But, this would mean he's not paying much attention to the details of the game. On the other hand, with two contacts I can't see it ever being the correct move either.

Speaking of triangle theory, I had a dream last night that the map was of this character:




Like an isometric grid world. (You know you've been playing too much Civ when...)

It was Rego & Darrell who made that pink dot attempt on Athelete in PB2. Not sure how much of that was Darrell vs Rego or how much that play means to this game.

Yeah, that Paris plant didn't go so well for them as I recall.

I don't know about every effort to play nice. That pig-corn-ivory site could be a regional game winner. If you're saying that you're going to save your aggression for Keshiks that's something - but you're not exactly saying that.

I'm saying hold off on final decision making and don't make early decisions that burn all bridges to having a peaceful relationship. I'm not ruling out aggression at Keshiks.

Graph theory's opinion on what is "fair":




The squiggly tiles are equidistant between our two capitals. Trying to strongly claim anything beyond that would probably be considered an act of aggression, or it's what I would think. (Then there are people who think that anything remotely in your direction is aggression, even if it shares food with your capital... but I don't put Darrell in this category.)

If Darrell weren't there, I'd strongly consider a third city site 1SW of Ivory (get happiness online very fast) or 2S of Ivory. The second one is on our side of the trench, but if our first two plants are forward in their direction, and more forward in their direction, well I most would take that to be a signal that we intend to play at war for the rest of the game.

Your reputation/low propensity to attack is going to work against you if its a constant. Starting next to WLP means farmer's gambit since you can trust his playstyle to keep you safe. Put a city on the border and expand aggressively in the other direction until you outgrow him.

That guy would never make a move like proactively declaring war and razing cities on disputed borders against three other players, while locked in a 100 turn war with a fourth, right?

If that land shape means triangle like you're saying, that's going to give Darrabod a bit of a land advantage.

Well, if he plays that kind of opening game, that's one of the scenarios where he's going to have to micro against Keshiks for a while. But if he wants a completely peaceful border with a good-faith effort to divide fair (and not more or less than fair) I'm not going to be the first one to break that potential contract. (Not in the opening anyway.)

Is the PB13 RB-mod current?
Expansive + Imperialistic = 100% for markets + grocers + aqueducts + harbour + custom hose
Industrious + Organized = 100% for lighthouse + forge + courthouse + wonders/nw.

Yeah, those are still that way. The most recent changeset is here.

At face value we're going to have a production/output advantage (mid-game) while they'll get the tech advantage. But largely these will neutralize each other as they get an early production/output advantage from their early start while we get a tech advantage from organized. I can't really see a significant advantage for either of us except for our UU and later their UU. So in a sense, non-aggression means that we're relying on luck/external factors to decide who's going to 'win' between the two of us.

It's not lopsided. My feeling is that courthouses and forges are must-builds for every city though, forges even at full cost. The Expansive market is a good building for any commerce city but it takes a long time to actually pay off its cost to where it's an advantage. (My guess is the courthouse bonus is worth about twice the market bonus, because courthouses are going to go in every city vs just some of them.) Grocers are pretty late in the game. Customs Houses are very late. Aqueducts are junk. Harbors are very situational. For buildings I see a considerable advantage for our traits. For +60% on settlers and +35% for workers and workboats, not so much.

This mod is supposed to balanced though, right?

So if they follow a farmer's gambit how are you going to outplay them?

Maybe another farmer's gambit! They start more quickly but the cap on how quickly they can grow and still tech is higher for us, because of Organized and the passive civic upkeep savings.

To be clear I'm extremely not ok with a "peaceful" outcome where he out-expands us and claims the better half along our border. If he can out-expand in the other direction or to the east, fine, we can catch up later.

Is CivStats not part of this game? If that's the case, the will make a huge difference in the ability to rush someone. Especially if Darrell doesn't reallocate EPs. We'll have to revisit after we discover BW and/or discover our second neighbour.

Ah, Novice and Plako actually coded up an amazing replacement! Props to them, it needs to work with the mod and it has to serve the web site from the machine the PB game is running on but in many respects it's better than the real CivStats.

[Commodore]

You're counting tiles from where you started or where you finally settled?

[WilliamLP]

You're counting tiles from where you started or where you finally settled?

Hah, good point! How are they going to know where I moved from though?

Edit: For the record I just accidentally clicked the lurker thread, saw nothing and immediately got away. Damn surfing RB with brain on auto-pilot.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 22:




The lion appearing made it a pretty easy choice to loop around the north. Darrel's capital is not on a hill. Also his worker moved onto the hill, which is presumably going to be his third improvement. This suggests he's on a 2-food capital, perhaps. So, advantage us, if so. However he does have a clear 4 turn head start on us.

His demo history:

Turn 11: Teched, probably Agriculture.

Turn 18: Grew to size 2. This is the normal worker on T12 for EXP, and working +3 food until finishing off with an improvement. We are size 2 at T22 so this is a 4 turn lead on us.

Turn 19: Teched, probably Mining.

Turn 20: Popped a tech from a hut. I'm hoping this wasn't Bronze or Wheel. The power graph in a few turns will tell us more.

Turn 22: Grew to size 3, again 4 turns before we will.




Yay being in the middle of the pack after the growth to size 2.

As far as C&D goes, my weird research swapping play is going to have some eyes rolling and I love it. I'm researching Bronze but not finishing it, then will finish Agri from T27-31 so we can start a farm on T32. The aim is to reduce rounding by tending to work Bronze at +11 and +12 beakers, then Agri more at +13 and +14 where the 20% prereq doesn't round nicely.

How much does this little conceit save?

Mining + Agri is 83 + 103 beakers in this game, or 186.
BW is 207.

T1-21: we make 11 bpt.
T22-25: 12 bpt.
T26-29: 13 bpt.
T30-33: 14 bpt.
T34-39: 15 bpt.

1. Researching Mining -> Agri -> BW:
T1-17: 187 beakers to finish Mining + Agri with 1 left.
T18-21: 44 + 8 (prereq) beakers, 53 toward BW.
T22-25: 48 + 8 beakers, 109 toward BW
T26-29: 52 + 8 beakers, 169 toward BW
T30-32: 42 + 6 beakers, 217 to BW, which finishes at +10, then gets rounded down to +8, taking the 20% out. (Presuming the rounding works the same way as city builds.)

2. Researching it the other way Mining -> BW -> Agri:
T1-8: 88 beakers to finish Mining with 5 left.
T9-21: 143 + 26 beakers, 174 toward BW
T22-24: 36 + 6 beakers, 216 toward BW, finishes at +9, rounded to +7
T25: 12 beakers, 19 toward Agri.
T26-T29: 52 beakers, 71 toward Agri.
T30-32: 42 beakers, 113 toward Agri, finishes at +10.

So the net gain of this is 2 whole beakers! This is because the first path spends 16 turns on BW instead of 15 for the second path which is a good thing because overall research gets +2 beakers for the extra turn because of the prereq. There's another juicy discrete math beaker in this somewhere if you can overflow BW at +12 instead of +11 because then it would round down to 10 instead of to 8!

The second path doesn't quite work since I need to finish Agri on T31, but but by getting nearly all of Bronze early the two beakers can be saved as long as 16 turns are spent researching it instead of 15.

Obviously, this is not overthinking at all.

(Incidentally I pity anyone trying to do precise micro to optimize rounding for RBMod EXP's +35% for workers... In general you want to prefer to work multiples of 3 hammers, but overflow is weird: 3 food-hammers of overflow rounds down to 2, and 4 food-hammers also rounds down to 2 (divide by 1.35), so there's a useless hammer going from 0->1 overflow, 3->4, 7->8, 11->12, etc. And as pointed out by others before, EXP is actually a penalty when building workers with only food, because of the rounding at the end.)

[NobleHelium]

So the net gain of this is 2 whole beakers! This is because the first path spends 16 turns on BW instead of 15 for the second path which is a good thing because overall research gets +2 beakers for the extra turn because of the prereq. There's another juicy discrete math beaker in this somewhere if you can overflow BW at +12 instead of +11 because then it would round down to 10 instead of to 8!

Nice, I approve.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 23:




Darrell moved his first warrior to block scouting his capital which I wasn't going to do anyway. I don't think this is a more aggressive move than that. There is no sanity in sending your first warrior at someone, especially not when you're IMP and are going to fast expand. And if you are, you don't let them know by moving where they can see it.




Just more nice land.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 24:




The scout took a bad roll against the wolf taking 6 hits, but still won at 99.7%. However, the odds of taking 5 or fewer hits were 97.9%.

Even more interesting, the lion shown has eaten someone's scout! So this is a third player confirmed. (As if we were going to get all this eastern land to ourselves...)

Darrell moved his warrior SE. This might be additional scouting or he might be planning his first city here. As Joao I expect a very early second city, probably not later than the low 30s.

I moved SW and passed, since ending next to any animal on any terrain means death. A wolf or panther in the fog does too.

We will get graphs on Darrell in 2 turns.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 25:

Our scout's chance of surviving this adventure are not high:




The wounded lion is pursuing, there is a recently scouted lion to the southwest, and Darrel's warrior is to the northwest. I tried to juke to the south.




Defensive terrain doesn't matter at 0.2 health so I hoped to end somewhere where there wasn't an animal attacking and fortunately there doesn't look to be.

Based on little information, the east looks less contested than the north. The scout is already 10 tiles east of the capital (12 tiles east of the starting location) with no sign of neighboring culture.

And, we're last place, next to the lurker civ! This is because of settling 1 turn late and so our border pop land points haven't been added yet, and also my idiosyncratic research strategy. Seriously though, it's actually because I'm in the lower 3% in skill level at Realms Beyond. Look out Bantams, I'm coming for you.

[MindyMcCready]

So move SE-SE for hill top visibility before he dies a wilderness death. Or SE-S?

It would be good to know who we might be facing while our scout still lives.

ManBearPig-Elephant location as the 3rd city. :LOL: We need to get that city:
+1 happy in our cities is like adding an extra city early on. With all this food, happiness is our biggest problem.
+Elephants for mounted defense
+No elephants against our Keshiks for Darrabod.

If we're being open-minded about the use of our UU and you're not 100% locked into peace and only using Keshiks for scouting, then this is a pretty major consideration.