[SPOILERS] Nyles Standish goes full retard

[BRickAstley]

So I've realized that you are alone in here and haven't posted on RB before this game, so I wanted to interrogate you a little bit.

How did you come to RB? Have you just recently found out about it or have you been lurking a while? How long have you been playing Civ? What's your grand master plan for victory?

[NylesStandish]

Thanks, lurkers.

This changes the first worker to a 10 turn build instead of 11 if I go worker first. However, I've tested it out and it seems slightly faster to go workboat first. I get my first settler out 1 turn earlier, with the same number of workers and warriors. I also get slightly more commerce from working the fish earlier. I could post the build order if anyone's inerested.

Also, map speculation:

Anyone want to organise PB27 on a real map of some part of the world? Japan sounds decent...

That's Krill in the first post of the PB27 signup thread. BRick and Joey haven't been too specific about the map, but it's apparently "realistic" terrain, everyone starts with fresh water, 80 x 100 tiles, probably some other stuff I missed. I'm guessing it's either Japan or some other real world archipelago.

[NylesStandish]

So I've realized that you are alone in here and haven't posted on RB before this game, so I wanted to interrogate you a little bit.

How did you come to RB? Have you just recently found out about it or have you been lurking a while? How long have you been playing Civ? What's your grand master plan for victory?

I first came to RB because of Sullla's Pitboss 2 writeup a couple of years ago (don't remember exactly when). I've lurked occasionally since then, and read through some Pitboss threads, like Serdoa/NobleHelium's PB12 and BGN's PB18 thread (and some of the shorter threads from people who got eliminated early).

I started out playing Civilization 3 about 10 or 11 years ago. About 6 years ago I started playing Alpha Centauri obsessively, and then Civ4 a couple of years later. Almost all of my experience is single player. A friend of mine, with whom I share most of my meager MP Civ4 experience, agreed to team up with me but hasn't registered yet. We're communicating via text but it's inefficient for anything of length and that problem's just going to get worse as the game progresses

My super secret grand master plan is to keep up in early expansion and at some point to switch gears and make use of my Aggressive trait by eating some other civs

[NylesStandish]

By the way, I've done Option A as described in the thread "Multiplayer after GameSpy - Lobby and NatNeg". After doing the host file fix and installing the appropriate mod I was able to connect to PB18 using direct IP (I didn't log in or perform any actions, but I saw the screen where you select your civ). I've also downloaded 3.0.0.4. Should I be good to go for this game?

[NylesStandish]

I answered my own question.




Logged in, moved the scout, founded Babylon, selected a work boat, selected fishing tech and logged out without ending turn. I'm the 4th person to found their city. I presume most of the players will settle in place since plains hill starts are a non issue.




Here are the demographics so far. Notes:

-one of my opponents is working a tile with 1 commerce
-none of the four who founded as of these screenshots are working a tile with more than 2 food
-nobody has more than 8000 km^2 of land, meaning everyone that has settled has at least one coast (or lake) tile in their first ring
-rival average of 1045 implies one of our rivals has 2 water tiles first ring

I still need to come up with a theme for my city names. Some ideas:

[flugauto]

Is that an ice forest?

[NylesStandish]

I didn't notice it at first, but yeah, that's an ice forest. Logged in to doublecheck.




Pretty weird.

Six more cities have been founded, and I've taken a few demographics screenshots. I might do more C&D later.

[BRickAstley]

It sounds like your post in the tech thread says you keep logging in to check if people have settled and ended their turn; did you know that there's a pitboss status page you can check those on? http://www.civstats.com/viewgame.php?gameid=2889

[NylesStandish]

I did not know about this; thanks!

I wasn't just checking for settlement/turn ending though, I was also checking demographics for C&D purposes.

[NylesStandish]

Everybody has ended turn except Tasunke and ReallyEvilMuffin, who haven't claimed their civs. REM said he'd be back Monday night and it's Tuesday morning here.

Gavagai ended turn without settling.

Four days and literally dozens of demographics screenshots later, I've figured out some things. Basically I tried to log in after each city founding in order to determine that civ's demographics by shuffling around tiles (and putting the citizen back on the plains forest ivory when I'm done). If multiple civs founded in between screenshots it was usually not possible to make any assumptions about any particular civ; an exception was land area. There were enough digits to figure out total land area from the average, whereas the fact that fractions of gnp, crop yield and manufactured goods are rounded down made precise calculations impossible.

Almost everybody has 8 land tiles. The exceptions are:

Molach - 9 tiles
Serdoa, Retep, Elkad, Cheater Hater - 7 tiles

I think everybody has a coastal start and Molach moved off the coast to settle for increased security and superior tiles in the capital. Six commerce for a financial town beats 4 for a financial coast with Quay. Most everybody else probably settled in place, with the possible exception of Ichabod (post #73 in the Tech Thread):

...my capital already fits the criteria. Settling on corn best move confirmed!

Either that's a joke or they've got such a food rich start the 2/3 food lost from not working the farmed corn is not that important.

Donovan Zoi is working a 3 food tile.

Nobody is working a tile with 0 food (or everybody who is also settled on a food bonus). Getting only the food from city tile puts me at 20th in crop yield, and it appears that when demographics tie, tiebreaking is based on a certain order that appears to be the revers order in which the civs are displayed on login. I'm second to last and DonovanZoi is last on the login screen, and he is first on the score list and I'm second. When DonovanZoi settled, I went from 1st to 2nd in land area despite both myself and my top rival tying at 8000 km^2. Since I know DonovanZoi has 5 food, and I would win any tie if anybody else was running 2 total food, 20th means nobody is. Several people are running 2 (city) hammers, probably also those running 5 food, but I don't know who most of those are.

Molach is working a 2 food 1 hammer tile, probably a grassland forest.

Cheater Hater is working a 1 food tile with 2 or 3 hamemrs.

Yuri is working a 3 F 0 H tile.

Barteq is working a 2 F 1H tile.

Retep/Ichabod are working a 1F 2 or 3 H tile.

TheWannabe is working a 2F 1H tile.

That is all assuming nobody settled on food.

Some (or most) of the tile yield guesses are probably wrong. I'll post the most recent demo screenshot and not the other 46 I used to figure this out:




Happy to be "#1" in Mfg