RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Irgy]

That sounds like what I'd do. Zig-zagging of course though rather than straight west.

[Lord Parkin]

That sounds like what I'd do. Zig-zagging of course though rather than straight west.

Of course. And following high ground where available to maximise the number of tiles revealed. (Potentially looking across a lake or coast sometimes to test for seafood or land on the other side too.)

Senseless, does that sound fine to you?

[Irgy]

With apologies for derailing again...

I played with the stripe idea. It generated a lot of repeats. It also generated basically all of the original suggestions along the way (except of course the ones that weren't actually symmetric ). It came up with only one genuinely new arrangement, which might not look all that symmetric but is thanks to toroidal world wrap. There was another that looked new, but it was really only two stripes, but on an angle. It was noticably more symmetric on that angle though mind you.

I've also attached an arrangement for 5 that it came up with, because it's one I had no idea existed. You can take two copies of any arrangement for 5, and shift them by any amount you like relative to each other, and you'll get a new symmetric arrangement for 10. So there's infinitely many answers in that sense

I've realised though my crazy petersen graph is never going to work. The two lakes across the boundaries have 6 and 9 civs on them not 5, so even though the underlying graph is symmetric the arrangement is absolutely not. I don't think it can be fixed. A shame really.

[Lord Parkin]

With apologies for derailing again...

No worries!

I played with the stripe idea. It generated a lot of repeats. It also generated basically all of the original suggestions along the way (except of course the ones that weren't actually symmetric ). It came up with only one genuinely new arrangement, which might not look all that symmetric but is thanks to toroidal world wrap.

Cool, that one looks quite neat. I think I'd still be a bit confused if I wasn't the middle civ, but it admittedly looks slightly less confusing that the 7-player arrangement presented by fluffyflyingpig before. (Though still the same concept, I guess.)

I've also attached an arrangement for 5 that it came up with, because it's one I had no idea existed. You can take two copies of any arrangement for 5, and shift them by any amount you like relative to each other, and you'll get a new symmetric arrangement for 10. So there's infinitely many answers in that sense

Interesting. I guess technically any prime number of civs should be balanceable with a toroidal map and a cut-up "stripe" pattern, right?

I've realised though my crazy petersen graph is never going to work. The two lakes across the boundaries have 6 and 9 civs on them not 5, so even though the underlying graph is symmetric the arrangement is absolutely not. I don't think it can be fixed. A shame really.

Yeah, that occurred to me as earlier, but I didn't think it was as big a deal as the 2 vs 3 front issue for some of the civs. In the late game though, the civs with more boundaries with other civs via sea would be at quite a disadvantage.

[Lord Parkin]

Okay, so onto the new turn. First, the Warrior moved 1NW:



Hmm, grassland-hill-river Sheep and coastal whales... not the best of resources, but potentially decent food support for a city in the area if some more attractive resources are nearby too.

Assuming we're going with the plan of continuing generally west, we could head either W or NW next turn. Both seem pretty much equal really, although W gives us 1 turn earlier visibility on extra tiles due to the hill. I don't have a strong preference either way. Thoughts, anyone?

Also interesting is that Sunrise settled last turn, presumably 1-3 tiles from his starting location. I don't usually bother with reading too much into the demographics, but here there is actually an easily accessible bit of useful information:



Clearly most civs have confirmed landlocked starts (guaranteed landlocked if you have 9 land tiles around your capital = "9000 square km"). We can extract an interesting piece of information by looking at the rival worst ("7000 square km" = 7 land tiles) and comparing it to the rival average ("8777 square km" = 8.777 land tiles average). Out of nine rivals, the only way to get that average number is for eight to have "9000 square km" and one (the worst) to have "7000 square km".

The upshot of this information? We can pretty much say for sure that 9 civs have landlocked capitals (including us), and 1 has a capital bordering a coast or lake. Given that sunrise was the only one not to settle on the first turn, and assuming similar starts, we can pretty much confirm him as the logical culprit.

What does this mean for us? If it's a lake he got, no big deal. Assuming it's a coast and not a lake, he'll be the only civ with a coastal capital, and will probably have the easiest access to the Great Lighthouse (and maybe Colossus) if he chooses to go down that path. Assuming he got additional food bonuses as well with his capital (why else would he move from a presumed plains-hill?)... probably seafood... then he could potentially have quite a monster capital. We'll have to see anyway.

Fortunately, if he turns out to be a runaway civ later on, at least his capital will be the most vulnerable of anyone's to a naval invasion. Time will tell though, it's early days yet.

[Senseless]

Is that tundra bleeding through onto the two grassland tiles NW-NW and NW-W of the warrior? It's a bit hard to tell from the screenshot, but it looks like it is.

I would favor moving onto the hill tile with sheep 1 tile W of the warrior over moving 1 tile NW. Isn't the vision on the sheep tile strictly better than the vision provided by the grassland tile?

[Irgy]

Are those bodies of water salt or fresh? If I'm reading the yeilds right the southern one is fresh and the northern salt, not sure if that really works though. If I'm right, then in between the whales and sheep will get some nice lighthouse-enhanced lakes, which are reasonable tiles.

If you had demographics from last turn you'd know for sure if sunrise was coastal. Was he one of the (many) industrial civs?

Oh, and do the settings tell you what the map-wrapping actually is or not?

[Lord Parkin]

Is that tundra bleeding through onto the two grassland tiles NW-NW and NW-W of the warrior? It's a bit hard to tell from the screenshot, but it looks like it is.

Indeed it is, good spotting. Actually, I didn't pay attention before, but we have snow-covered forests to our north and regular forests to our south, which suggests that we might in fact be near the top of the map. Of course, it's a custom-made map, so the terrain features might have been reversed just to confuse us. Or if it's a toroidal map, then there's no meaning to being at the "top". Still, good to notice anyway.

I would favor moving onto the hill tile with sheep 1 tile W of the warrior over moving 1 tile NW. Isn't the vision on the sheep tile strictly better than the vision provided by the grassland tile?

Well the thing is the grassland tile is looking across coast, and will see into land tiles further up north. Strictly speaking there's no real difference between 1NW-1W and 1W-1NW once you reach the second tile (each option has 1 tile the other option can't see opened up; a coast tile in the former case and a peak (?) in the latter case). That's unless I'm miscalculating. 1NW does leave open the option of 1NW-1NW, but I'm not sure we'll want to do that.

Anyway, we're talking about ridiculously small differences, so I don't think it really matters. But if you're keen on the Sheep, the Sheep it is.

[Lord Parkin]

Are those bodies of water salt or fresh? If I'm reading the yeilds right the southern one is fresh and the northern salt, not sure if that really works though. If I'm right, then in between the whales and sheep will get some nice lighthouse-enhanced lakes, which are reasonable tiles.

You're correct, the southern one is fresh (mouseover says "freshwater lake") and the northern one salt (mouseover does not say "freshwater lake"). So that freshwater lake would certainly provide some nice tiles with a Lighthouse (settling 1N or 1NW of the Sheep).

If you had demographics from last turn you'd know for sure if sunrise was coastal. Was he one of the (many) industrial civs?

Nope. He's Shaka of the Zulu - the one standard combination picked with unrestricted leaders.

Oh, and do the settings tell you what the map-wrapping actually is or not?

It doesn't appear so. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but it doesn't seem to be on the F8 Settings screen at least.

[Irgy]

It doesn't appear so. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but it doesn't seem to be on the F8 Settings screen at least.

In that case, you can at least work it out from the maintenance costs once you have a second city. Apparently the distance from the capital is scaled differently in each of the x and y directions depending on the wraparound, to account for the fact that everything is generally closer if the map wraps.

I don't know the formula though so it might be a bit of work to figure it out.