[Spoiler Thread] SilentConfusion's Confusing Thread

[SilentConfusion]

Thanks, Tatan.

Glad to know I'm not the one who starts surrounded by deserts and peaks. I can start planning my initial moves.

PS: It wasn't meant as criticism, but I'm glad it prompted that awesome picture.

I'm thinking I better go Warrior first now that I've seen the start. I think Worker first is too risky.

EDIT; After further consideration. I'm thinking settling in place is probably the way to go. The defense bonus from settling on that hill will also come in handy.

[pocketbeetle]

I like the fact that he bothered to make it all ice, just in case you manage to survive the tanks.

[SilentConfusion]

This game seems like it will never get going. First Cjreynol had mac issues. Now he has not-being-here issues and Shoot the Moon needs a sub.

I am getting impatient. I want to start thinking and strategizing. You lurkers can read all of this and then write it in your "About My Opponents" section if you play against me in the future. The reason I like Civ IV so much is because of the strategy. The strategy involved in making efficiency calculations of potential actions, the strategy involved in finding out all of the information about my opponents that I can, the strategy involved in talking to them and getting them to feel just right, the strategy involved in planning military surprises and take-downs. I used to play exclusively Single Players as did a lot of people I think, but once I found my way into multiplayer play, I just find it so hard to go back to playing against the AI. I tried my hand at regular real-time MP games, but I hated it. There was no time to even move all of my units, much less change city builds or think about what to do. It's all frantic reacting. I like these games because they're slow because I can devise and revise my plans. But sitting here, anxious to start and having to wait is killing me. WarriorKnight has already taken his turn, he's going to have plenty of time to refine his plan.

I posted a post in the thread prodding Cjreynol to hurry, but he also missed two turns in a pitboss that I'm playing with him at Apolyton, so I'm a little worried that he'll go AWOL at times and continue to hold the game up.

Ok. Well I was going to wait until the game started to get into some demographics discussions, so I could use real life situations, but I am so bored, I guess I'll give a basic outline of how I approach what I call Opponent Analysis (OA) which includes, but is not limited to Demographics Analysis.

My plan for OA:

Early Game:
-Demographics:
This is the best time to use demographics as later you will have graphs and communications to gain information from. The GNP, MFG, and CY categories are useful to predict builds, growth, and tech progress, but they give only limited information that can be utilized in a larger strategic plan. You can usually tell if someone's going for worker first, or max-hammering out a work boat, or working a lake tile to guarantee a religion grab. This can also tell you the tile composition of their BFCs, but I am not sure that this is very useful most times. The Land Area is useful before you find their cities. If you know they are coastal you know to send your scout along the coast to look for them or get out a scouting work boat. Power and Pop are probably the most useful numbers and they stay useful longer than others. Power gives vital clues about warriors being built and helps identify techs researched. Knowing that your opponent hasn't built a warrior and that they can't build one before you get to their capitol is the kind of info that can be game-winning. Power is a complicated number that changes based on population, techs, units, and buildings, so figuring out what's a 2000 point tech like Hunting and what's a tech like Mysticism while building a Warrior can be difficult. Unfortunately too many things give 2000 points in the critical early game. Pop can tell you if they're going worker first. Approval Rating (AR) and Life Expectancy (LE) are of limited usefulness. They can tell when resources are hooked up or when forests are chopped. Exports - Imports (E-I) is completely useless in the beginning except to see where you rank in tie-breakers as everyone will have 0 for a while.
-Score:
Score changes are plain to see and much easier and less time consuming than demographics analysis, but they can't always tell you as much. The main thing this tells you is when they grow in pop and when they gain a tech. Usually you see a score change and try to verify it with the demoscreen. Ok so there was a +4 score increase, which is consistent with a pop increase, so they probably grew. Looking at Demos we see that the pop leader now has one more pop, so there you go.
-Victory Condition Screen:
This can be used to tell approximate total land tiles on map. It can tell you total pop too, but that should be easier to see in other ways. Once you meet someone you can track their culture and subsequently you can track the culture of the civ with the most in the early game. This can tell you when a monument was added to a second city and therefore when the borders will pop.
-Top 5 City screen:
In this game it will list all 5 capitols. This can be used to tell populations. The algorithm used to rank them uses culture and population and I'm not really sure what it is. In theory if I knew it I could perhaps find out a little more, but I can assume when populations are equal in the early game the CRE civs will be on top due to larger culture.
-In-game messages:
With events off, this will really only tell of wonders, GPs, and religions happen. Still could help to confirm something else, like figure out what tech was teched.
-Barbarian Activity:
To a small extent the current technological advancement of the barbs can tell you if you didn't already know what techs must have been teched in the past. I know the rule for barb technological advancement, but I doubt this will come into play. This is a long shot.
-Scouting:
This is a straight-forward method of information gathering, but extremely important. If I go for a double Worker opening however, I may be a bit limited in this category because of not wanting to let my warrior go too far from my capitol. Hopeful I can make up for lack of this with extra demo analysis.
-Diplomacy:
This is a powerful tool for information gathering once you meet someone. There is plenty of room for creativity and manipulating in this area. I know the value and the basics, but I could probably improve in understanding the best way to phrase things.
-F4 Screen:
Once you meet someone, you can see their civics here. Not too much else before Alpha.
-Diplo screen:
Once you meet someone you can open a diplo screen and count their cities (plus 1 for capitol). You can also see resources and techs if you have trade route or Alpha. Also an OB possibility means they have Writing.
-Graphs:
Once you meet someone and acquire EP on them you can see their graphs. These are always 1 turn behind, I think, although I've never played sequential turns before. Although in SP which is sequential, I think I've also seen this. They also don't have numbers, but you can use a photo editor to overlay a grid on it and use last turn's demo numbers as a reference point. In this way you can find more or less exact numbers for opponents you have EP on.

[Tatan]

Your start:

[SilentConfusion]

I have two starts?! Do I get to choose which one to play?

Thank you Tatan, you're up to +3 for "You Made a Map for Us" and "You Posted Our Start."

Could be a -1 is in order for giving me only 1 usable resource before IW and Calendar and having 4 jungle tiles in the BFC. Will withhold judgment until can see full BFC. The two fogged tiles in current potential BFC are both flat lands, so could be a food resource.

And I definitely will consider moving. That's not a spot that screams settle in place. There's a Ph I can move to for the extra hammer, but right now I don't see a good 4 hammer combination to get me faster workers at the start. I'm going to plan on quick expansion to make the maximum use of my fast workers and cheap granaries and libraries. If I'm surrounded by jungly land that might slow my expansion a bit. One problem with moving is that it looks like I'd add a peak to my BFC whichever way I move.

OK. I have a wall (?) of peaks to my East and Lake/Coast to my West. Looks like expansion will have to be North - South and perhaps around this Lake thing. I think 1N makes the most sense for Warrior as it sets him up to go 1NW the next turn, which should give good visibility to the North. If that's not a lake, but rather coast, then my capitol is not on fresh water. That's not ideal.

This gives us a lot of interesting decisions, more so than if the start were a clear settle in place start.

Things to consider:
-Freshwater
-Peaks
-Jungles/Plains in BFC
-Another Food Resource
-Expansion (i.e. move in the direction of more land to get settlers and workers and military units there more quickly.
-Value gained by wasted turn (can't start builds or techs until settled)
-4 hammer tile setup for faster Worker (saves 2 turns with 4 hammer setup in first ring, or 1 turn if have to wait for a border pop)
-possible location of metal (i.e. that plains hill just might have a metal and settling on it for the extra hammer might sacrifice future hammers, although will also gain a hammer to city center when metal become visible)

[SilentConfusion]

And thus begins our story... finally.



Our fearless leader Suryavarman II of India... We are the only one without either of the overtly economic traits, although many traits can be leveraged economically. We'll be trying to go for expansion and growth and trying to utilize our Fast Workers as much as possible with micro-managing.



Here's our start again. I was looking at this in-game and the first thing I checked was whether the water tiles that we start next to are Lake or Coast and they are indeed Lake, so a city settled in place would have fresh water. But as a non-FIN civilization having that many lake tiles in my capitol's BFC is less than ideal, but then again there is much that is less than ideal about my starting location. This is not a criticism of the map-maker. I trust that the other starts similarly have draw-backs. With all of the plains, lake tiles, and jungles, this is quite a weak starting position and nothing to take advantage of an EXP first worker (i.e. no 4 hammer set-up). Also only 1 forest so a 2-Worker chop plan doesn't really work very well either.



Ok. So the first Warrior move was 1N, to unfog the last two tiles in what would be the BFC if the Settler settled in place. The Warrior plans to move 1NW after that to the Ghf (Grass hill forest). He marched up to the top of the hill to see what he could see:



And that pending -1 diplo hit for the map-maker looks like it will not be assessed, due to the irrigated Corn that was uncovered. Also the peak placement seems to strongly urge the player to settle in place, and we can see from people's scores that everyone else settled in place.

So I settle in place:



Anywhere I moved would have added multiple peaks to my BFC, so in place it was.

Here's the city screen:



I decided to abandon the 2-Worker BW-chop opening after seeing that we only have 1 forest in our BFC. I set our research for Agriculture planning to go for AH next. Our Worker can mine the Ph (Plains hill) before farming the G-Corn (Grass Corn) on the next turn. After improving the Corn he can improve the Gh-Pigs (Grass hill Pigs). I work the unimp'd Gh-Pigs as it's the only tile that gives me 3 hammers/food.

Now for some Opponent Analysis...

Score Analysis:
Everyone has 11 before settling for their starting techs (FLOOR(5.99 + 5.99)).
Everyone has 34 after settling. The 23 added points come from the Palace and the population. The land they have will not give them points for 20 turns (I'm pretty sure this doesn't scale with game speed). 16 is from the Palace wonder and therefore 7 is from the population.

Hovering over our score shows us this. We are interested in the x/y numbers for Pop and Land scores.



So y for Pop is 701 and y for Land is 804. This means that every population point is worth 5000/701 or about 7.13 points. Every land tile inside cultural borders for 20 turns is 2000/804 or about 2.49 points. These are rounded down so the first population is worth 7 points.

The Demographics Screen:



GNP: The high value is 19 and the low value is 16. My value is 18. I get 8 commerce (and therefore beakers) from the Palace, 1 commerce from the city center, and 1 free beaker which everyone gets, so 10 beakers per turn. I get 4 EP and 2 culture from the Palace and I get 2 more culture due to being CRE. We have one other CRE leader in the game and that is Shoot the Moon's Willem van Oranje. This has to be the high value and this means that they are working a tile that has a commerce. Whoever has the low value is working a non-commerce tile and researching a starting tech.

The average value (with 4 opponents) is calculated with the function:

FLOOR((value1 + value2 + value3 + value4)/4)

The FLOOR operator makes us unsure of the sum of our opponent values. We don't have this same problem with the Soldier, Land, and Pop values. The Average is 17, and 17 * 4 = 68. But the sum could be anywhere from (Avg * # of players) to (Avg * # of players - (# of players - 1)). So with 4 opponents our sum could be 68, 69, 70, or 71. We know the high and low values. In this case 19 and 16 (total of 35). The 2 unknown values must add to a number between 33 (68 - 34) and 36 (71 - 35). The possible values are: (16,17), (16,18), (17,17). A value of 17 means that the person is researching a starting tech (no extra beakers from prerequisite bonus) and working a tile with 1 commerce. A value of 18 means that the person is researching a tech with a prerequisite like Bronze Working.

MFG: All opponents have 1 MFG. This is from the city center and therefore none are working a tile with a hammer.

CY: All opponents have 5 CY. 2 are from the city center and therefore they all are working a 3 food tile. I do not have one of those in my first ring, so the starts are not completely mirrored. I would guess that they are working a Grassland Corn/Wheat/Cow/Pig possibly on a river in some cases.

Anyone going Worker first will take 10 turns to build their Worker (just like me) unless one of the EXP leaders got a more EXP-friendly start (I hope not). Anyone building a Warrior first will take 10 turns to get out their Warrior at the current set-up and they will grow on T3. If no one grows on T3 we know everyone's going worker first.

Soldier: Everyone should have a certain number based on their starting techs and whether they start with a Warrior or Scout. All should have started with a Warrior. meatbalz should have 6k (4k from Wheel, 2k from Warrior). Cjreynol should have 8k (4k from Wheel, 2k from Mining, 2k from Warrior). Shoot the Moon should have 6k (4k from Wheel, 2k from Warrior). WarriorKnight should have 2k (2k from Warrior). And everything computes, so all normal starting values are in place.

Land Area: I have the least land. Someone is completely landlocked with 9k and the low value is 7k, meaning 7 land tiles. The other two values add to 16k, so they are either (7k,9k) or (8k,8k). I would have much preferred to not have a big lake next to me, especially when others don't have that, but oh well. Don't know if the 7k person/people are lake people like me or coastal.

Pop: Nothing interesting here. Everyone has 1 pop point.

Approval Rating: All the same since we have no CHA opponents.

Life Expectancy: There are two other EXP teams. I have 6 health (2 from EXP, 2 from Fresh Water, and 2 from difficulty level). I have 2 unhealth due to pop and darn jungle. So I have 6/8*100 = 75 Life Expectancy. Assuming that everyone has Fresh Water (and I think that's a fair assumption for balance reasons), So the other two EXP teams have 6/7*100 = 85 as a base LE level. Since the high value is only 80 we can assume that the two EXP opponents either do not have fresh water or they too have jungle. The low value is a non-EXP team 4/6*100 = 66. This means they do not have any unhealth from jungles (they may have a jungle, just not enough to give 1 unhealth) and at least one of them doesn't have any health bonuses from forests. Total value is 276, 277, 278, or 279. Total unknown value is between 130 and 133. A value of 80 could be 8/10*100 but that would mean that they got 1 unhealth from jungles/floodplains and 2 health from forests. I'm hoping that some EXP team didn't get a forested floodplain start.

Exports - Imports: Useless. All values zero.

Here's the Settings. Most notable are no barbs and Monarch difficulty.



End of turn:



And I took this shot of my friends. They're so cute.

[SilentConfusion]

Turn 1, 3940 BC

Moved Warrior 1NW to Ghf. Saw the Coast (not Lake) tiles north of that and way too much jungle.



Turn 1 Demographics:



GNP: Interestingly the Average increased. This means someone changed tiles or changed their tech. I realize now that this is probably Shoot the Moon working a different tile after the borders popped. That means that they have 2 3-food tiles in BFC, one with +1 commerce. It's possible that someone changed techs to Bronze Working, though.

Land: The other CRE team (Shoot the Moon) now has 20 land tiles inside their BFC after their borders expanded at the end of their turn. They are mostly landlocked. They may have a 1 tile lake or a tile of coast in their BFC. They either had 8k or 9k before they popped borders. The total unknown value is 17k, 1k more than it was last turn. This means that StM wasn't the one who had 9k last time. They apparently had 8k, so this suggests they are landlocked with a 1-tile lake.

All other values had no change.

And after my turn my borders popped and the map looks like this:



I am on the bottom edge of the map, so I don't have to worry about attacks from my South. All in all I have a very defensible position, although it doesn't look really very expansion friendly with all of that jungle. Iron Working may be a priority. It looks funny to me how all of that jungle is bordered by plains. All of the hills and peaks suggest a highlands map perhaps. We also know that the world is flat with no toroidal wrap and I'm guessing no cylindrical wrap either. At least I can see some usable food and my next city may be a production city with Corn/Wheat + Grass hills. I have map border to my south. I have a large lake and large jungle to my East. I have peaks to my West. I have at least a little jungle to my NE.

[pocketbeetle]

lol @ the pigs.

Careful with chopping that forested hill.
It would -really- suck if a jungle spread before you managed to get a mine on it. You don't have much production.