[SPOILERS]Novice, Spacemanmf and Athlete4life10 are HUYANA CAPAC OF CHINA

[athlete4life10]

Awesome job guys on Stonehenge, congrats. It will be very interesting to see if we can land The Oracle as well though. I've been quite impressed with your ability to C&D. Seeing it first hand rather than try it and fail myself is very beneficial.

Seems things are falling into place for us at the moment.

[spacemanmf]

I'm inclined to a medium term NAP with Pegasus. He's offering us a favourable land split already, whether by design or by inability to count tiles. But I'd like to squeeze him a bit more - he has to worry about TT (which I tried to encourage) so we should be able to take advantage of that. However we shouldn't wreck relations either as Pegasus is off to a good start, and TT is more likely to attack Ad Hoc.

So what are you thinking about when you say a medium term NAP? I did notice that you subtly drop in the copper hint. Nice work.

In practical terms, I think the lay of the land suits the wheat being used from the west. The floodplain city can feed itself, but the land north of the gold is quite barren (although there might be seafood in the waters there).

However, if he is giving us the chance to settle within two columns of the wheat (and the cows) then that would be a bonus. Mind you, he's using that as the furhest west we can settle and he doesn't say where he might settle. He has not said whether there would be culture-led competition for the mid-point.

But feel free to go with what you want.

[spacemanmf]

Awesome job guys on Stonehenge, congrats. It will be very interesting to see if we can land The Oracle as well though. I've been quite impressed with your ability to C&D. Seeing it first hand rather than try it and fail myself is very beneficial.

Seems things are falling into place for us at the moment.

Yes, excellent news to land it, although not unexpected given what we know.

Novice has been impressive with the C&D - and I think it's gaining some kudos points with our neighbours.

Next stop: the Oracle, as you say. Fingers crossed, once more.

[novice]

Thanks for the kudos - the C&D is fun but its practicality is nearing the end of the line. It would be nice to keep it up until T50 though to keep us informed on our wonder competition. It doesn't matter too much though, both wonders were/are planned as 1t builds anyway.

I'm actually feeling pretty good about the Oracle. In fact, we may be planning it a bit too soon at the cost of more rapid expansion. Ad Hoc is busy backfilling worker techs, and really should be worrying about TT. If he doesn't hook up his copper the minute he gets BW he could be eliminated by two Impis. We should sound him out and if necessary warn him when we meet him. Pegasus lacks the techs to compete, Ruff is our ally, so the only wildcard is TT, who's shown a huge fondness for the Oracle in other games. I'm a bit worried that I've lost track of TTs research momentarily, hopefully we'll wisen up soon.

As for the NAP with Pegasus, I'm not sure what I want. I think I have myself confused, as there are two scenarios:
1. We get a profitable border agreement in exchange for a NAP with Pegasus. Really it's Pegasus who needs the NAP right now, so we should just accept the minimum offer of a 10t cooldown if we get a border agreement we're happy with.
2. We don't agree on borders, and go for some aggressive settling. In this case we want a NAP long enough to defend our settlements. I don't see Pegasus falling for this though.

[spacemanmf]

Well let's just say we lack a bit of map information north and south of the wheat but in the meantime we agree not to settle west of the floodplains.

On the Oracle, do you not have it as a one-turn build in the microplan? I know we are using up forests to do that, but they are resource- and trait-boosted chops so worth it. The only downside is being distracted by Priesthood.

[T-hawk]

T-Hawk, are you lurking? I've seen you state that top 5 cities is determined solely on culture. That can't be right as Madrid is ranked third here. Pegasus's size three capital is ranked higher. I wonder what the formula is.

Hey, I just saw this now. Something I've always meant to look into. The Top 5 Cities screen was determined solely on culture (size tiebreaks) in Civ 3, but it appears not to be the case in Civ 4. Here is the formula, from CvInfoScreen.py line 1303.

iTotalCityValue = ((pCity.getCulture() / 5) + (pCity.getFoodRate() + pCity.getProductionRate() + pCity.calculateGoldRate())) * pCity.getPopulation()

In the later game, getCulture() will dominate the other factors, but not so much early. The other factors appear to be simple raw production for food/hammers/commerce. Those three functions are in pyHelpers.py and each calls getYieldRate() for the appropriate yield type. (We see again a confusion between gold and commerce even in the internals of Civ 4. One detail that I think Civ 5 finally got right.)

[novice]

Hey, I just saw this now. Something I've always meant to look into. The Top 5 Cities screen was determined solely on culture (size tiebreaks) in Civ 3, but it appears not to be the case in Civ 4. Here is the formula, from CvInfoScreen.py line 1303.

iTotalCityValue = ((pCity.getCulture() / 5) + (pCity.getFoodRate() + pCity.getProductionRate() + pCity.calculateGoldRate())) * pCity.getPopulation()

In the later game, getCulture() will dominate the other factors, but not so much early. The other factors appear to be simple raw production for food/hammers/commerce. Those three functions are in pyHelpers.py and each calls getYieldRate() for the appropriate yield type. (We see again a confusion between gold and commerce even in the internals of Civ 4. One detail that I think Civ 5 finally got right.)

Thanks T-Hawk! You really read every post on this forum, don't you?

That expression should be roughly proportional with pCity().getCulture() * pCity.getPopulation() * pCity.getPopulation(). Unfortunately I don't see any immediate C&D use for this.

[novice]

Got it.

[spacemanmf]

[Clears throat]

[novice]

As predicted by our modest but brilliant C&D department, Pegasus completed a worker.



Seven moved west, and should head southwest towards the coast next and defog that coastline.



Pocket bullets is now producing 11 CPT and borders will expand in three turns. Our demographics suddenly look a lot better:



Also, a forest grew, two north of the copper. That's nice. We should rework our micro plan to take advantage of it.



Finally, diplo. Ruff confirmed there are cows two north of the wheat:



I just sent a simple acknowledgement. Diplo with Pegasus:



My question is partly stalling, but mostly genuine.