February 19th, 2015, 16:12
(This post was last modified: February 19th, 2015, 16:13 by The Black Sword.)
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Quote:The thing you're overlooking is that it doesn't matter how many beakers get lost to Espionage, it's what percentage of their beakers that get lost.
I don't agree with this. 
Civ A is going all commerce, he runs a low gold percentage and he's teching something that gives +1 trade route. Civ B is only running the bare minimum commerce to cover the slider, instead he's growing to whip in a building that gives +1 trade route.
In base BTS, Civ A will discover the tech on the same turn Civ B whips in the building. In 20% Esp BTS, Civ B will get the extra trade route before Civ A. So Civ A, who ran the most commerce but lowest gold slider, is penalized more.
February 19th, 2015, 17:34
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Lots of people who voted for Zara Yacob. I guess two major points of contention are Mao vs Elizabeth, along with Zara's behaviour in choose religion settings. I perhaps over-rated the latter point because I expect Zara to go crazy with war declarations early on and fail to snowball. Now I'm nervous because apparently he is a crowd favourite. Someone like Mao or Victoria will hopefully be unaffected by the religious fervor. Elizabeth is probably safer bet between two Southern civs, but Mao's land and resource allocation just seemed to be superior - I hope all the flood plains and gold can compensate for his lack of tech ability.
February 19th, 2015, 18:02
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Mao has all that nice land to expand into, so long as Zara doesn't muscle him out of it I can see him winning at a canter.
Also the starts are way more imbalanced than the % a civ is going to put into EPs anyway so fixing the EP thing would be pointless...
Completed: RB Demogame - Gillette, PBEM46, Pitboss 13, Pitboss 18, Pitboss 30, Pitboss 31, Pitboss 38, Pitboss 42, Pitboss 46, Pitboss 52 (Pindicator's game), Pitboss 57
In progress: Rimworld
February 19th, 2015, 18:32
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(February 19th, 2015, 18:02)Old Harry Wrote: Also the starts are way more imbalanced than the % a civ is going to put into EPs anyway so fixing the EP thing would be pointless...
We have a winner!  You guys are taking this way too seriously. It's not a competitive Multiplayer game. There's no money riding on the outcome. We're playing with non-mirrored starts on a random map with goody huts kept on. I could care less if some of the AIs wind up dropping some of their commerce into espionage spending. I want to be able to hit F9, call up the bar graphs, and move on with the next turn. The end. Appreciate the suggestions, but I simply do not care enough about this issue to explore potential solutions. It is what it is.
Would you believe that we're up to 55 entrants now on the spreadsheet?  I'm going to have to put in my prediction right before starting tomorrow. I couldn't do them last year because all of the reports were pre-written ahead of time. (Yep, I kept consistently 2-3 weeks ahead of the reported pace in case things would come up in real life and delay me. Never happened though.) If you ever wanted to see how bad my predictions are, you'll have the chance.
February 19th, 2015, 19:49
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I think Zara is the best AI of this bunch, at least he always did well in my SP games. But I think Mao's start will give him enough lead to kill Lizzie and snowball from there. Hence, I voted Mao as winner and Zara as second place (and Lizzie elliminated first).
February 19th, 2015, 22:06
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Based on the quality of the surrounding land and their initial scout movements, I think both Zara and Elizabeth will expand towards Mao with their free Deity Settler, while Mao expands into his backlines. Also, Mao will probably be the worst enemy of every other leader because of peace weight, at least until religious differences become an issue. And the AI is bad at managing health, so all those floodplains might actually stunt Mao's early growth. That's why, despite his crazy start, I picked Zara to win and Pericles (Creative leader surrounded by friends) for second.
Hammurabi is first to die because he's stuck on a peninsula and has warlike traits, but his only build focus is culture. 
February 19th, 2015, 23:57
(This post was last modified: February 19th, 2015, 23:58 by DMOC.)
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Are we allowed to view our predictions before the game has been played? I'm asking because I submitted something and can't see a current update on how many people have predicted or who predicted what. I'm not expecting to be able to see the spreadsheet (since it's a contest, after all...); I just wanted to confirm that I wasn't potentially missing anything.
(February 19th, 2015, 19:49)Ichabod Wrote: I think Zara is the best AI of this bunch, at least he always did well in my SP games. But I think Mao's start will give him enough lead to kill Lizzie and snowball from there. Hence, I voted Mao as winner and Zara as second place (and Lizzie elliminated first).
I agree about Zara. In my opinion, Zara is one of the best AIs because he's one of the more balanced AIs. I generally view balance as winning out in the long run.
Though I think I also voted Mao to win...can't remember. 
February 20th, 2015, 09:28
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Sorry to have derailed the thread a little with my question about Espionage! Whoops.
To answer your question, DMOC, when I submitted mine I was given a private link that I could use to access/edit my submission at any time, but I'm not sure that there's a way to get that link after you've moved on from that page. Potentially (if Sullla is okay with giving a bit of a mulligan on this first submission) you could submit a second entry as "DMOC 2" and have him discard the first entry.
As for my own (probably misguided) prediction, I'm going to second my thoughts from the liveshow that Pericles has a ton of space and so I'm going with him as my winner and then picked everything else under that paradigm.
February 20th, 2015, 10:08
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Just poppin' in to say I thought last years version of this was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to watch along this year!
February 20th, 2015, 11:40
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DMOC, for me there was a screen afterward that allowed me to 'view results' or something and see how everyone else answered the questions by percentage, etc., though the individual voters' names didn't appear to be given.
I voted Elizabeth to win out of bias (I'm morally obligated to cheer for England in this competition), but all my votes tell a coherent story: Elizabeth and Zara Yaqob squeeze and crush Mao Zedong, who is the first to die. Elizabeth uses her Financial trait off of the resulting land to tech to space, while Zara doesn't use his because he doesn't have it and comes in second. The number of wars (9) and victory-turn (357) were mostly random, as I couldn't be bothered to consult last years' games again to see what reasonable numbers were. 
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