Unfortunately Old Harry, the rest of the competitors did not concede in the interturn and the game continues T18 Report and C&D:
Not much happening this turn, other than me having to confirm chopping the hill and researching Writing:
The warrior gets to move onto the hills and scout a bit while making sure the coast is clear for the settler; notice how eastway has built a warrior already. The worker chops as planned, and then I think I'll have it move towards the wheat at the second city--I'm worried about possibly exposing my units, even at this early stage; should I be? Is the "right" move supposed to be settling a much worse spot for my first city (say, for example, the city E of the grassland hill farm to my east--though that city looks a lot better once you realize the eastern pigs is forested, not jungled) just because it's safer? Heck, is it too late to change my plans on that? The settler actually settles on the third turn it's out, the warrior can still guard it in time, the worker gets to the rice in enough time, and I probably was going to research Animal Husbandry next anyway. I actually think I might want to do that--the next settler's coming soon anyway (the plan is Worker (whipped)->Granary->Warrior->Settler (probably whipped)), and if the plan is to build a library in the second city to pop the borders anyway, I might as well produce the scientist in that city as well. Thinking about that, between settling early and the safety of the spot, that spot is probably better than the southern spot
So, for those of you who didn't want to read my rambling wall of text, I'm changing my plans for the first settler; it's going to the spot 1E of the grassland hill farm in the east, since it's safer, settles faster, and isn't noticeably worse at least to start, especially considering I'm planning to build a library in that city and get my scientist out of there, instead of delaying my production in the capital.
Other than that, we have some C&D talk--first we'll cover the top cities, since I didn't do that last turn:
Not much growth other than AT growing as I said. Now to the demos:
The main news here is that Twinkletoes and B4ndit researched techs last turn, and that (one of the) 17000 soldier points people gained 2000 soldier points. Since AT and eastway didn't research a tech last turn, one of them had to have built another warrior; most likely AT since he is still growing.
As for the techs, we know Twinkletoes finished researching Pottery--which, thinking back, we know for sure since we know Twinkletoes has researched the same number of techs as me now, and there's no room for Hunting (or Mysticism ) in there--and B4ndit finished the non-arrow tech (whatever it was), and moved to an arrow tech (we know the boost to 19 is not from working the clams since the min food is still 8--even netted clams would be 7 total--and B4ndit is still at size 1 somehow). We also have confirmation that eastway was the 22 back on T15, since the low is back to 20. The question is, how do you get to 22 GNP with Wheel (a non-arrow tech)?
16 (base) +4 (clams/farm) +2 (3 known tech bonuses, 13*.18)
That means eastway is meeting a lot of civs--and since AT didn't research Wheel until eastway did, eastway must have met both Twinkletoes and B4ndit in addition to me. Either that, or eastway researched Animal Husbandry and built a warrior on the same turn, which is possible, and reconfirms my decision to settle in the safe spot
T19 Report and C&D:
Another boring turn, but we found another food resource--that's something, right?
I like the eastern city spot more now than I did yesterday--the farm city to the far east fits perfectly with that city without any overlap and few wasted tiles (and I certainly could see a city 1SW of the eastern pigs to help use that space), and there's a city to the north by the rice that looks good (either 1W of the rice to share the pigs with city 2, or 1E of the rice if there's more resources in that direction).
Now to demo talk!
AT and eastway both researched techs last turn, but neither one was a soldier tech. The weird thing is that they were both non-arrow techs, unless AT is still avoiding Fishing somehow and is working at most one commerce tile (I guess it would be a 2F1H and 2F1C tile, since last turn the max hammers was 4). I guess they could have both researched Mysticism, or at least eastway did--it makes sense for eastway since he would want wonders (for me to take later ) but why AT?
We also saw an increase in the max GNP to 24--my guess is that someone finished mining the gems and switched to them around EOT--maybe AT, since he would have defaulted to no arrow bonuses, and dropped a bit in food and increased greatly in hammers?
T20 Report and C&D:
Even though a lot of things happened this turn (the chop completed, completing the settler at EOT), you already know that, so I'm using the overview shot to catch up on some things that I've missed while trying to keep my micro plans going:
There's a couple clams I missed, one by the sheep I discovered last turn (you can't see it from this shot, but the spot 2S of the sheep seems good for that area--it shares a wheat and a floodplain or two with the original city 2), and one up north (that's probably destined for a city to the north--if that island is actually an island, that would give me lots of intercontinental trade routes bonus, right? As such, I would want to stuff cities around the island--then again, that's way longer term than I should be worrying about at this point )
West of my capital is tundra--am I supposed to take that as "there's likely no civilization in that direction" or "there's a civ in that direction, and the tundra is supposed to naturally separate the two, at least settling-wise"? (stupid torodial handcrafted maps )
I'm not sure where my next city should go--right now the main possibilities are the grassland farm hill city to the far east, the city 1W of the rice in the northeast, the plains hill city in the southwest, and the city 1S of the wheat in the south. I want to settle the southern wheat city next, followed by the two eastern cities, but I'm still not sure I can defend it--maybe I should build an axe instead of a warrior and put the overflow from whipping the worker into that instead of the granary--this will delay the settler by a lot, but it might be better in the long run, especially considering I want to have the city at size 4 when I start the settler so I can 2-pop whip it anyway--I also might want to put a warrior for intermediate scouting purposes before the settler--maybe I want to not build the granary yet at all, going something like Worker (2-pop whip)->Axe->Warrior->Settler (2-pop whip). I should test that and see if I grow to size 4 in time (and if I grow with the normal Worker->Warrior->Granary->Settler path)--at least I can still sandbox capital stuff without having to do the whole map, like I will when I have to sandbox everything else.
I still need a city naming scheme--granted, no one has seen my capital yet so maybe no one has noticed?
Now to demos and--B4ndit finally grew!
Back to regularly scheduled programming--here are the demos:
Before we get to analysis, I also screenshotted the GNP graph to help with that analysis--I'm keeping track of the graphs; taking screenshots when they've changed (check the folder for some of those), and posting when they become relevant, like here:
That's a large GNP change, especially at size 2--did eastway finish mining the gems and switch to them from the clams? Doesn't look like it, since the min food is still 11 (city+farmed wheat+unnetted clams--that's probably B4ndit)
Moving to the analysis, we see a lot of changes to the score--but this actually doesn't mean anything for the most part, since it's just the land finally being put into the score. My land score is 20, so barring an actually explanation of land score (8 non-water squares->2.5 points per square?), I'll just assume everyone got that extra 20 on the interturn.
Next, we have 3000 soldier points to place somewhere--1000 of that is B4ndit growing to size 2 (which would also move him up to the 15000 min), but the rest needs to be hashed out. Ignoring the land points, the only person to grow in score was eastway, by 13 points total, 7 for the growth and 6 for a tech. Thus, the 2000 point is probably coming from either Hunting or Animal Husbandry (the latter being much more likely, especially considering we know B4ndit was researching an arrow tech, since he was at 19 min while working the farmed wheat).
Finally, we have GNP calculations! We have a new min of 21, as well as a new max of 27--I don't think I'll do actual calculation this time, but I do want to know where 27 comes from:
16 (base) +4 (clams/farm) +7 (mined gems) =27
That seems really low (and researching a non-arrow tech seems weird at this stage--I may just be undervaluing Hunting at this point though, but that still doesn't explain the 24 before--maybe not working the clams somehow, maybe to finish a build?), but let's compare it to mine:
27 (base+tiles) + 4 (1 arrow; 20*20%) =31
Never mind me, I'm just vastly underestimating the arrow bonus at this point--that makes the gems tile a lot strong now
The scout just moved SW-SW uncovering nothing new--you can see it in the upcoming dotmapping pictures if you're that interested
One thing I didn't mention last turn (but meant to) was that the warrior is able to cover the settler as soon as it leaves my territory, which is neat. The annoying part is that if I want my worker to be protected I have to lose a worker turn (aka waste a turn roading) before I can start farming the rice--hopefully I won't see anything, and I'm pretty sure eastway can't have 2-movers at this point (unless he both researched AH at the last branch and Seven gave us both copper and horses at the capital).
On to C&D! Twinkletoes researched a tech, and both B4ndit and Twinkletoes gained a population point--but wait:
The capitals haven't grown--that means we have new cities from B4ndit and Twinkletoes! It makes sense, considering their limited growth that they wanted to get their settlers out early--I wonder how far from their capital they could settle? If they were anywhere close to me, I would sim it out, but I don't care
Note: I took this before triggering anarchy, just to make it look better
Not much here--we have a drop to 18 for the min, which is strangely low--if we assume the 16 base and the 1 from the farm, that's only 1 more commerce somewhere--that could be either Twinkletoes's or B4ndit's new city square I guess? (probably Twinkletoes since just finishing a tech defaults to a non-arrow tech).
Now that we have new cities, I want to figure out what tiles the new cities are working, so let's do a detailed food analysis:
Max=17, Min=13
Average=15, Total=60-63
Eastway: City tile+Farmed wheat+Netted clams=2+6+5=13
Twinkletoes: 2 city tiles+Farmed wheat+Netted clams+2 food tile=4+6+3+3=17
B4ndit: 2 city tiles+Farmed wheat+Unnetted clams+3 food tile=4+6+3+3=16
AT: City tile+Farmed wheat+Netted clams+2 food tile=15
Total=61
This is just one example, not guaranteed.
That didn't tell me that much, but it did say one thing: Twinkletoes/B4ndit could not have both netted their clams and settled their city with a (non-shared) 3-food tile--that could mean one settled on the coast to pick up seafood--but come to think of it, the max land is only 28k, meaning both new cities either shared at least one tile with the capital or had water in their initial 9 tiles. In fact, the average is so low, it means while one city had 8 new land tiles, the other only had 5! Interesting--either they're trying to get good early growth by settling on the coast and/or settling right next to the capital--heck, I don't think you can overlap 4 of your initial 9 tiles with a single city, so it must be a coastal city, or something like 3 tiles and a lake.
More wild GNP fluctuations--honestly, I think trying to predict when techs will be researched isn't worth the effort--using GNP mainly for tile management and getting an idea which techs are being researched is much easier and worth more (especially when combined with soldier data).
T22 Report and C&D:
On the city 2 front, things look good
Lots of things are happening next turn--not only will I settle city 2, I'll get to make decisions regarding whether to offer Open Borders with my neighbors and I have to whip my worker (since for some reason hammer overflow isn't deposited on anarchy turns even though research overflow is?).
Oh wait, did I say neighbors? The scout move finally revealed new tiles for the first time in a couple turns, and they're very interesting...
Hi B4ndit! I'm assuming this is his second city, since not only do I doubt Seven would put eastway and B4ndit so close to one another, it doesn't look like the city has expanded borders yet. Regardless, I'll find out for sure when I move to the plains hill right next to B4ndit's territory next turn.
On to C&D, and honestly not much has happened
Apparently I'm not the only one not naming their cities
It looks like a lot of stuff happened, but that across-the-board 30 point increase is just the rest of the fat cross of these cities getting counted towards score--other than that, the only change in the demos is the Min GNP increasing from 18 to 19--Twinkletoes just moved to an arrow tech to go up to 20 GNP most likely (since not even the average increased).
I know I promised it yesterday, but I'll probably actually do the dotmapping today--B4ndit being so close actually throws a wrench into those plans interestingly (see, I knew I should wait ).
T22 Dotmap:
Before we get into which cities I want to settle when, here's my two dotmapping pictures--the numbers don't mean much other than differentiating the cities, and I start at 2 since I've been referring to that city as "city 2" for forever
In general, the blue dots are cities I actively want to settle (given infinite time/resources--and some of them like city 9 are very unlikely unless eastway has no clue what he's doing or there's even better land to his south/east somehow), and the red dots are cities that are filler, or that I don't have enough information to know if they're worth settling. Obviously I'm going to settle city 2 next turn, but then I'm going to settle city 6 (the old plains hill) because I need to block out B4ndit a bit (I'm probably chopping out a library there too), and because that city got a lot better with the addition of the plains gold (which kinda got overshadowed by meeting B4ndit in the actual update--yes, that is in the plains city's fat cross!). The next city depends largely on which direction eastway (and to a lesser extent B4ndit) goes--if I feel it's safe I want to try and get city 7 (my original second city), but I have a feeling I'll have to retreat to a site SW of city 8 (which is only where it is because of city 7's location--maybe that means I should shift city 7 to get city 8 in its ideal spot?) and focus on getting the good eastern cities 3 and 4, and maybe another city north of the capital.
Other than that, I need to sandbox out the next stage of the capital (Worker (whip)->Axe->Warrior->Settler (whip) currently) to see when I can settle city 6, and what stage B4ndit and eastway are at--I'm assuming eastway will put out his first settler shortly (and my warrior I stuck in my build queue will be tasked with finding it when it does come out), but I have no clue when B4ndit would want to build his second settler, and where it would go--the scout will try to find B4ndit's capital and see what his land looks like, and where his next best city would be. Of course, throwing a huge wrench into all these plans is where horses and iron end up--I think the plan is to go AH->IW, and then maybe either backtracking to Hunting based on the availability of horses, or maybe even trying an early turn towards Currency and/or Code of Laws. Of course, we need to see how much of a hit my tech rate takes after I settle city 2 and city 6/the horses city. We'll see (hopefully today if we're lucky ).
Things are going as planned with the newly founded Antium (again, naming scheme, etc--though spelling Antium wrong a bunch may cause me to decide on it faster )--worker will farm the rice, chop either the N or NW forest (not sure yet), then road/pasture the pigs (depending on how fast I'll get the borders to pop--actually, I probably will end up chopping both forests, along with maybe a 1-pop whip). What's more interesting is what I'm doing with worker 2 I just whipped in Rome--I'm not sure if I'm going to cottage 1W of the capital or chop the forest 1SW of the capital. Of course, there's complications we'll discuss imminently that may have me insert a second axe into the queue, which would want me to chop a lot more--again I need to sandbox this now--I'll do it as soon as I finish this report.
As for the scout move...
I'm not sure what's more crazy--that Seven left a city with plains oasis, floodplains hamlet, and plains gold (and that's with only half the fat cross visible) on the map, that B4ndit presumably extended way too far to get that city (since I'm thinking this floodplains area is in the middle of all of us), or that he somehow decided to do this without even a warrior escort!
As a reminder, I'm already planning on sending an axe to that area--I think the schedule should be able to fit two in, even if I have to use a chop to do so
On to demos--another boring day
Other than my complete tanking due to the whip, there's not much change here--the 19 GNP increased to 21, and Twinkletoes must have moved up to 21+ as well, but I'm not keeping track of GNP that closely at this point. More importantly, there's no change in soldier points--and since there isn't, I'll remind you of something I'm sure you're interested in given the above:
Quote:B4ndit: Mining+Wheel+BW+2 pop=15000
And notably, there's not a single military unit in there at all, unless he's going to defend Edirne with his scout--this is why you do C&D folks
Before I go (and do some sandboxing), I think we can figure something out from the top cities screen:
How is the top cities ranking determined? I thought it was size->culture->?, which would mean that since Twinkletoes's capital has more culture than mine, Twinkletoes hasn't revolted into Slavery yet. However, I checked the info screens and B4ndit hasn't revolted yet either, and he's below me, so clearly size->culture->? isn't clear-cut--what am I missing, or is it random among cities at the same size? (or did B4ndit lose a turn of culture some other way?)
Edit: Sandboxing Results:
I am shocked--this works a lot better than I thought it would! I can 1-turn the first Axe next turn, then I can 3-turn the second Axe, even without the chop. The chop overflows into the settler, which starts just as I regrow to size 4! The one downside is that I have to suffer a turn of unhappiness the first turn I'm building the settler, but the whip anger expires the next turn, which neatly leads to me 2-pop whipping the settler so it completes end of T29. After that, I need to decide what I'm doing next--building the granary, overflowing into another worker (since worker 2 probably goes with the settler down to city 6/Edirne), building a scouting warrior for eastway, or building an axe/warrior to stay home and guard against more unhappiness. Right now I think I'm leaning towards the axe to stay home, since I'll want to regrow onto the gems tile before having to support 3 (or possibly 4, if I'm lucky enough that B4ndit is not building a worker in Edirne) cities--I don't want to crash my economy too much before I start cottaging my capital
Really? I ask questions and predict almost-certain war due to a neighbor taking a risk and I don't even get lurker thread action? T24 Report:
First, I'll update you with a capital shot (spoilers: nothing's happening), then we'll get into the scout move and its ramifications:
Really, Hinduism? I know it's going to mean I'll have to face 40% culture defense when I take the city, but that's a lot of turns where he's not researching military--and 40% doesn't mean that much when it's warrior vs axe
Seriously, my axe can attack the city on T33 (9 turns from now), and even if we assume the city is building a warrior right now (since it grew), I'm still getting really good odds (assuming my combat math is right; I'm assuming the fortify/culture defense bonuses are additive not multiplicative in this example, and I think that's right--my odds are still good otherwise ):
(2*1.45)=2.9 vs (5*1.5)=7.5
There's basically two cases where B4ndit can defend adequately:
B4ndit researches Hunting and Archery and builds an archer in Edirne: I don't think B4ndit can research that quickly, even though he has the oasis, hamlet, and soon the gems, and then he actually has to build the archer.
B4ndit builds an axe in Istanbul and moves it to Edirne: The key here is that we're working on the assumption that B4ndit extended too far to get such a good city, which means that the axe has to walk a long way to get to Edirne. In addition, it seems like B4ndit is possibly building another worker since he hasn't grown in a while--either that, or he still doesn't have Fishing and is just growing really slowly.
One of the keys to making sure I don't horribly botch the war and risk losing City 6 in the process is watching B4ndit's power like a hawk: 2k is a warrior or Hunting, 6k is an axe or Archery, 1k is a pop point--the annoying part is the overlap, but I can tell based on if score increased from the tech at least
In the next post, we have a really full C&D feature, so stay tuned!
T24 C&D:
On to C&D--first we have a new feature in the religion screen!
Since we can assume Hinduism was founded when B4ndit ended turn, we can say that Edirne is the only Hindu city, which means there are 9 cities total--considering we said there were 8 last turn, there must be a new one
Next, to top cities:
Not much here--AT grew to size 4, and Edirne isn't showing up on the top cities list despite being size 2--clarification on the top cities rankings would still be welcome
Finally, to demos and actual C&D calculations:
The solider points are interesting--2k total increase, but that's spread out between AT and eastway's pop increases (AT's capital to level 4, and Edirne to 2 for a total for 4 for B4ndit). This also has more ramifications:
Back on T20 we assumed eastway had researched AH to become the leader with the 2k pop increase, since he was the only one to research a tech that turn. Obviously we now know AT was the 19000 and not eastway, which means AT must have built another warrior that turn.
B4ndit is now at 16k, which means he's not the min power anymore and we need to keep track of the averages more closely (or hopefully Twinkletoes rockets up by building an axe or researching IW or something so I can keep track of B4ndit more easily )
Since I'm always looking for it, the updated power rankings as of T24: AT: 20k (Mining+BW+(Wheel)+2 Warriors+4 pop) eastway: 17k (Mining+BW+(Wheel)+Warrior+2 pop) B4ndit: 16k (Mining+BW+Wheel+4 pop) Twinkletoes: 15k (Mining+BW+Wheel+2 pop)
Now to score analysis!
AT increased by 20 points: 2 pop points (the capital growing to size 4 and the mythical 9th city from the religion screen) and a tech
B4ndit increased by 13 points: 1 pop point (Edirne growing) and a tech (Polytheism)
While we're here, I want to figure out how many techs each person has, and how many of those techs I can figure out. The easiest way to figure that out (at least for now while the land score is constant for everyone) is to calculate the land, population, and wonder scores for everyone, then figure out how many techs that is. After that, I can go incrementally from this post and update it a lot more often.
Note: I'm calculating my information to make sure I'm doing this right
First, land points for everyone is 20+30=50
Second, my wonder score is 16, so I assume everyone's is (from the palace I guess?)
Third, going back to the original scores, everyone starts at -1 for some reason--any reason why that is?
Now pop points:
AT: 4+1=5, 5*7=35
B4ndit: 2+2=4, 4*7=28
Cheater hater: 2+1=3, 3*7=21
Twinkletoes: 2+1=3, 3*7=21
eastway: 2=2, 2*7=14
Now remaining points:
AT: 142-50-35-16+1=42
B4ndit: 135-50-28-16+1=42
Cheater Hater: 128-50-21-16+1=42
Twinkletoes: 128-50-21-16+1=42
eastway: 115-50-14-16+1=36
Interesting stuff--it also shows just how much of a detour Polytheism was for B4ndit. Obviously I won't have a crystal-clear picture until Alphabet (which is basically a worthless techs with all the bans instituted--all it does is allow building research and open Currency and Printing Press), but it's giving us a relatively clear picture of the important parts (notice how eastway and B4ndit are a much clearer picture than Twinkletoes and AT).
It's at this point when I'm realizing I probably should put this stuff in a Google docs spreadsheet--I'll do that the same time I move all my pictures around in my Dropbox (honestly, since I gathered it all here, it shouldn't be that bad)
Keep up the good reporting - we're lapping it up. I wish I was unspoilt so I could comment more though.
I believe top cities is based on the output so food+hammers+commerce+culture. I dunno if Great People points or anything else is included too. Noble might know?
