[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, as scooter mentioned, eventually optimizing the dotmap of cities for both frequent whipping and free specialists is going to be an important consideration

[scooter]

Turn 199

Happy settler chop day! At this rate we'll be settling the new city tomorrow morning if I can find the time before work like usual. Nobody has settled their first city yet, so no ultra-early settlers from anyone. I would actually halfway expect someone to settle a city before us. I think it's pretty likely we have the most workers of anyone right now (or at least tied for the lead), so it seems pretty easy for an IMP civ or a SPI civ (fewer workers due to Serfdom, still have Slavery access) to beat us if they hurried out the first settler. I guess we'll see.



Obligatory picture of hitting 237/237 on the nose in one turn. 3 chops through a Bureau/Imp capital in one shot is pretty fun.



I do still think this ought to be our future capital if we can get it cottage'd up. Bureau + Oxford + Academy + cottage cheese in here and that could really push us through the mid-game. No rush though during the expansion phase when both cities are basically whipping posts, and there's not a serious food difference between the two.



We did get a free Christianity spread into the capital which is a nice break. Our western scout will get into Plako's land wedge next turn, so we should complete our contact list fairly soon. Demos below in case you care, but they're still just a function of pop and opening strategy at this point.

[scooter]

Our western scout will get into Plako's land wedge next turn, so we should complete our contact list fairly soon.

This was awkwardly worded. We obviously haven't met Alhazard and RMoG, but we see their land at least. I think you get the idea.

Happy settler chop day! At this rate we'll be settling the new city tomorrow morning if I can find the time before work like usual.

Actually, the turn just rolled onto T200, so this might just be tonight if we can roll one more turn today. All it really requires is Mackoti playing before he goes to bed, because I believe the rest of the players are US-based. The turn pace should settle down to normalcy soon, as we're probably a week away at the most from many players shifting away from predetermined microplans. It doesn't take long before the turns require serious thought on advanced era starts.

[scooter]

One more thing. We're now on T200, and nobody has done a settler whip. Granted, we aren't whipping our settler either, so that isn't necessarily meaningful. IMP civs don't need to whip the first one, but I would expect the SPI civs to whip their settlers. Anyway, with that in mind it seems fairly likely we won't see a new city this turn from anyone (the two IMPs we see are probably too far behind), so we'll probably be among the first to plant a new city. I feel pretty good about that considering we're getting it out later than was technically possible to speed up our next couple of settlers.

Since it's coming tonight, I might as well name our next city.

PB18: Lurker Killer

This felt like it had to be next. As far as I know, this is the only 34 (sort of) player MP game in Civ4 history. If it's not the only one, then it's certainly the only one to ever be played to completion. The truly amazing thing is that it was finished. I only played in the game for about a month or so before handing my civ over to GermanJoey's very capable hands due to an unforseen lack of time, and I was stunned to find months later that the game was still going. I had wrongly predicted it would die in a few months. The name of the city references both a key game event as well as the fact that lurking this thing was a total nightmare. If you somehow didn't watch this game, here are some of the highlights.

* There was a lurker civ in this game. It was a city blocked by ice with tons of EPs and a horde of Great Spies used to walk all over the map and observe the players.

* The game lasted 18 months.

* In the most fitting thing to ever happen in a pitboss, Krill killed the lurker civ with paratroopers. Beautiful. This caused some drama and debate over whether he should be allowed to do this which made it even better.

* Dtay ran out to a lead before a brutal dogpile knocked him out of contention. He got some nice revenge later, though.

* Pindicator had a wild game involving 1) an early war that resulted in him being dogpiled from behind 2) a crazy peace treaty with his original target, and 3) a thrilling defense where he demolished an invading player who theoretically had a far superior army. As his reward for his great defense, the OldHarry + Fintourist team savagely executed him in one of the most terrifyingly unstoppable naval invasions I've ever seen.

* A tense ending involving a cultural attempt by The Black Sword while OldHarry/Fintourist raced across the ocean to try to stop it.

* Roughly 3,000 conflicts including a brutal slog between BGN and Krill that took BGN out of contention. Also about 40 other things I'm skipping over due to time. Feel free to add any things I missed.

We will never see another game like that one again. Whether that's a good or bad thing probably depends on whether or not you played it.

[Sullla]

Everything is still looking good so far. That religious spread into the capital is especially nice to see, since we’ll need religion for Great Person generation in Pacifism when we pop our Golden Age. I have Pocketbeetle building a monastery down the road in the micro plan, since we couldn’t assume that we would get a religious spread in the capital or third city. If we get really lucky and see Christianity pop up in the third city as well, I might be able to rewrite that into something else (more units probably).

I’m uncertain about making Pocketbeetle the capital down the road. While I agree that the land is better for mass cottaging, the Palace increases in cost based on the number of cities, and we’re going to have a lot of cities here. Maybe eventually? I don’t think I’ve ever actually moved the Palace, since I always seem to have more important things to spend production on.

I think we’re looking reasonably strong compared to the other teams. Demographics are very solid and that’s with 6 workers + 1 settler out on the field, as opposed to spending those turns growing upward. According to CivStats, we’re tied in population with the other Imperialistic teams, 2 pop behind Alhazard, 3 pop behind Nicolae, and 4 pop behind mackoti. Or at least that was the case; mackoti just 3 pop whipped what is surely his first settler, so now he’s only 1 pop ahead of us. I’m sure that mackoti used some of his forests for that settler, since a 3 pop whip still only nets him 157 production in his (non-Imperialistic) capital. Alhazard did a single population whip, which means he’s probably getting another worker out and is nowhere close to a settler. I expect Nicolae to whip his own first settler this turn or next turn. It’s kind of interesting how the Imperialistic and Spiritual teams are converging like this, getting the first settler out at roughly the same time despite very different paths to get there.

At the very least, I believe we’re ahead of the other Imperialistic teams and Alhazard. Mackoti and Nicolae seem to be roughly on par (or ahead of us) as best I can tell.

Let me try to outline a bit more about the philosophy behind our Great Person / Golden Age plan. The general idea is to use the first Great Person for a Golden Age to do civic swaps / adopt religion / push out Great People for lightbulbs. We’ll be getting our first Great Person out of the capital on T216, and I think we’ll want to trigger the Golden Age shortly thereafter that turn. We’re looking to get three Great People out during this Golden Age:

1) Great Merchant: This guy is intended to lightbulb 2/3 of Constitution tech. We want this to be the first Great Person generated, since we’d prefer to be running more Scientist specialist turns than Merchant specialist turns right now. (Our expenses are low and we want to generate more beakers to push for Constitution tech. This might be incorrect from a T-Hawk theorycrafting perspective, I’m not exactly sure.) But we also need the Great Merchant to come out first because the Merchant GPP pool has to be pure. We can’t afford to see a Great Engineer pop out at low odds. We must get a Great Merchant so that we can lightbulb Constitution tech and revolt into Representation civic on the final turn of the Golden Age. That means using the capital to produce the Great Merchant at the 180 GPP threshold, and it also means we need to build a market ahead of time, so that we can run a Merchant specialist via Mercantilism if we need to delay the Golden Age. (Which we likely will; I don’t think we’ll be able to line things up neatly enough to be triggering the Golden Age on the exact turn that the capital generates the first Great Person.) Fortunately a market isn’t really a bad build anyway in the capital, as it increases the happy cap and generates more gold at 0% science. If you’re seeing the market in the micro plan down the road though, that’s the reason.

2-3) Great Scientist or Great Engineer: For the other Great People, we’d like to get Great Scientists or Great Engineers. Ideal would probably be one Great Scientist and one Great Engineer, but any combination other than two Great Engineers is good here. (The odds are very low of getting two Great Engineers, probably less than 5%.) Great Scientists are the best type to use for lightbulbing, and they lightbulb two techs on the path to Democracy tech: Education followed by Printing Press. Getting two Great Scientists would significantly slingshot us down the tree, and would also put us close to Replaceable Parts / Rifling if we chose not to go for Democracy and the Statue of Liberty. One Great Scientist and one Great Engineer would likely be even better, allowing us to save the Great Engineer for the Statue of Liberty and still letting us lightbulb Education (early start on universities for Oxford).

In order to generate them, we need to hit 270 GPP and 360 GPP in our cities. The obvious choices are Pocketbeetle and the third city, both of which fortunately have enough food to pull this off. They will also both need religion present, which is why I have Pocketbeetle building a monastery in the micro plan. We can’t assume that religion will spread on its own to the third city, and we can’t do this without Pacifism. So when we trigger the Golden Age, both cities will likely need to be size 7, where they put 2 citizens on food resources (enough to hold off more than modest starvation) and the other 5 citizens plus the 1 Mercantilism free specialists on Scientists/Engineers. 6 specialists * 3 base GPP * 3 (for Golden Age/Pacifism) = 54 GPP/turn. That’s easily enough to hit the 360 GPP needed before the Golden Age runs out. Then we’re back in Slavery and whipping away once the Golden Age ends. We don’t really need libraries in these cities ahead of time because we’re fine with getting a Great Engineer at low odds, which is why I haven’t gone out of my way to sneak libraries in their build orders. They are mostly whipping out more workers and enough defenders to keep our cities safe as we keep expanding.

The other requirement is that we need to be able to lightbulb Constitution tech by the final turn of the Golden Age. I think that we’ll be in position to do this naturally, since our science rate is going up pretty quickly in the micro plan, and we’ll have 7 turns of Golden Age commerce to help out. The Great Merchant lightbulb knocks out about 1050 beakers from the cost of Constitution, which means we need to produce a little over 600 beakers into the tech ourselves. We’ll be able to test this in the sandbox, but this is why we also might need to wait a few turns after popping the initial Great Person before triggering the Golden Age. Lots of moving parts here that have to line up correctly for it all to work.

Two other points about getting these new cities up and running in the micro plan. We whipped the initial two cities down to pop 1 for immediate workers. That is *NOT* the ideal way to manage new cities. We only did that because we were desperate for worker labor at the start of the game, not because it what we wanted in an ideal scenario. Instead, we’d prefer to have new cities fill up their granary boxes as fast as possible, and they can generally do that faster by having 2 pop points to work tiles over just 1 pop point. (This is largely true because there are so many 3+ food tiles on this very fertile map.) Take the third city, for example. It has 2 deer resources and then another deer resource that it can share with the capital. Slaving this city down to size 1 to get out a single worker is silly; it will grow much faster by working two deer tiles (which very quickly take it to +8 food, since we can borrow the capital deer while it’s whipping out a settler) and then whipping with a full food box after growth has taken place. As long as the new city is being supplied with worker labor, it’s better not to whip right away.

The other point is about worker whips. As we know, 1 pop whips tend to be inefficient in Civ4. It’s also a good policy to spend as few turns as possible building workers or settlers, as those are turns spent not growing. This is why we like whipping and chopping workers/settlers so much, as we get to produce those foodhammer units while barely pausing to stop growth. So while we could 1 pop whip out workers in a lot of cities, there’s a better way. Our strong cities can instead set things up to 2 pop whip out a pair of workers. This only requires the city to avoid growing on 3 turns: the initial swapping turn, the whipping turn, and then the overflow turn. We just have to provide fewer than 17 foodhammers on the first turn, which otherwise turns the 2 pop whip into a 1 pop whip, which is not what we want. I’m trying to have strong cities like Pocketbeetle and the third city do this as much as possible to supply our ravenous need for more worker labor. Swap to worker, double whip worker to completion, overflow into second worker, then back to growing again. If you see some weird stuff in the micro plan about avoiding 17 foodhammers while building a worker, that’s the reason why.

Still poking around in the worker micro for the fourth city up in the north. I think I’ve almost got it down.

[Cheater Hater]

Wasn't there another ~40 player game we found while trying to get CivStats to work? (yes, the game was so big it broke CivStats, so we ended up rolling our own solution for turn tracking) I have no idea if that game ever finished.

Another anecdote from my side: I was playing as two civs at one point. I started in one corner, where I eventually got eaten by dtay. However, I managed to get out a Settler on a galley and settle it on a random nearby island, where it survived for ~30 turns. After I got eaten, I subbed in for another civ in another part of the world. As part of that, I eventually helped take out Xenu--except that he had a city on another landmass so i couldn't take him out, so "Pirate Xenu" tormented me for the rest of the game (and I'm still not happy about it).

[scooter]

Turn 200

This will be a short one relatively speaking.



Quick explorer update. This is Plako's finger of land that we're wandering into. We should make contact with him pretty soon, at which point I'll probably offer a map swap. It seems Plako has been a bit of a hermit given that nobody has his maps, and he hasn't wandered into our land yet despite bordering us. Hopefully we'll know more soon.



We settle the new city next turn. As Sullla mentioned, Mackoti triple whipped this turn, so he may be settling as early as next turn or more likely the following turn. As I type this, RMoG just double-whipped something. They are IMP like us, so it's very possible that it could be a settler too. REM/Nicolae are the only team left to play (assuming RMoG end turn on this login), but I think they're at least a turn away. Not sure on them - I forgot to check and see if they've hit sz6 yet in their capital.

I think we're going to get graphs on Mackoti next turn which should be fairly interesting. We can switch to Nicolae next, although that'll take longer as they already have 24 EPs on us.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 199–200: HAPPY SETTLER DAY

Across the world, the first organically produced settlers spring out of cities, after players carefully calibrated their chops and whips to complete the vital units on the perfect turn. The Aztecs' settler is the result of a flawlessly timed triple chop, which with their civics and specialties has edged out a tidy production with zero overflow and zero shortfall. The C&D is pleased. This coming third city of the Aztec nation will be named Lurker Killer, in honour of Krill's infamous parastrike in PB18. And as if more good news couldn't wait, the Aztecs' capital has converted to Christianity, which might mean fewer monasteries and more soldiers in its build queues down the road. This conversion will be an important cog in the Aztecs' plan for global pre-eminence, for the C&D have prepared a shopping list of techs and great people to outpace the opposition and secure the Aztecs' status as a frontrunner.

[scooter]

How does first city planted with 6 workers and without whipping the settler sound?

Report later tonight. For the previous turn I took two screenshots. According to my screenshots folder, this time I took 15 for the nice round number of Turn 201.

[Sullla]

I never thought I'd say this, but could we maybe have a slightly slower turn pace in this game? At three turns per day, we're flying through so fast that I feel we don't get a chance to discuss things in any kind of detail. It also doesn't leave much time for planning things in the sandbox. I suppose it will slow down soon enough though; we should probably enjoy it while it lasts.

Micro plan is updated through T210 at the moment. I'm hesitant to go any further in time until we know where we want to place the fifth city, and that's something that we can't do with an informed decision until we get closer to the turn itself. I did figure out the micro up at the fourth city though. The trick is to delaying cottaging the floodplains, which is located in an awkward spot for worker movement purposes. We come out ahead by improving the bananas, then the horses, and then the spices, followed by the workers dispersing to chop the 4 forests and turn them into a 1 turn settler (for the corn location further east). I'm actually getting 236/237 production on the settler right now, but we can fix that with some minor tile swapping.

Mackoti, Nicolae, and RMOG all triple whipped what has to be settlers last turn. None of them regrew this turn, which means they whipped as soon as they hit size 6 (which is probably the correct call, given the strength of getting cities planted quickly). Scooter just planted our third city on CivStats a few minutes ago, making us the first to 3 cities and the temporary score leader. And unlike those other teams, we have another settler coming out of the capital in 4 more turns. Looking pretty good for the moment.