The Dark arts - C&D Master Thread

[NobleHelium]

The sabotage value should be exactly what it says on the interface. When you whip it will show the extra hammers on the item, like 96/60, so sabotage should take that into account too.

[waterbat]

T92 - 600 BC

Decided to do a single turn of C&D just to make sure i could still do it in case kjn got run over by the proverbial bus. This doesnt mean you get a break k

Cliff's Notes: There was a lot of population growths, and not much else for me to worry about! no techs, no land (new or 20t old), no wonders. Just all pop - made for an easy turn crunching the numbers. CivFr most impressively grew both their twin cities to 11 and 10. Apolyton gained 3 growths. CivPlayers grew their capitol to size 7 and Univers added a growth too.

Demos:

These are after RB 2-whipped:

Team	Score change	Pop	Tech	Land
RB	5	5 (+2; 44 total)
Apolyton	8	8 (+3; 31 total)
CivFr	5	5 (+2; 38 total)
CivPlayers	2	2 (+1; 28 total)
Univers	2	2 (+1; 37 total)

Im confident that all of the score increases were from pop! We even had a barb pop growth - the barbs are gaining on the spanish team for 9th place in the population category.

all score should be pop for 2 reasons:
1) if apolypton gained a tech + 1 pop, that would mean that we had 3 barb growths out there - that seems unlikely as total barb pop was 7.

2) there was 600k total rival pop growth. subtracting out CivFr's rediculous twin cities, 171k remains. if there were only 3 growths, the only solution (thanks kalin - this is so much easier than my C++ program as it just works on a turn by turn basis!) is:
[('9->10', 161), ('1->2', 5), ('1->2', 5)]

it shouldnt be possible for a size 10 city to exist and not show up on top 5 cities.

so 171k across 5 growths (3 for apoly, 1 for civplayers , 1 for universe) yields 2 solutions:
[('6->7', 82), ('4->5', 42), ('3->4', 27), ('2->3', 15), ('1->2', 5)]
[('5->6', 60), ('4->5', 42), ('3->4', 27), ('3->4', 27), ('2->3', 15)]

There is a lot of unknown pop in the spreadsheet right now, so i dont know which solution is correct. Therefore i dumped 5 more pop into unknowns.

although..... Tecnochtitlan is showing as size 6 in the spreadsheet! I assume that is because it was on TOP 5 cities last turn. Now we know that the solution is:
[('6->7', 82), ('4->5', 42), ('3->4', 27), ('2->3', 15), ('1->2', 5)]
as Tenochtitlan grew to size 7 this turn.

so which of those other 4 growths is Univers and which 3 belong to Apolyton will remain a mystery for now.

Foreign Prod:

Could use some help in this area divining what was built. THe C&D sheet shows more history - these are just current numbers and deltas. Is there a reference you guys use to read city buildings? I dont know what im looking for, but obviously i see a temple.



So therefore Teravsin must have made a worker? 60h non-building with no overflowage ?

Power:
rival best (german) power went up 6000, total power up 15000. Doesnt look the other 9000 belongs to WPC or CFC. I cant read the foreign prod numbers well enough to assign this 9000 to anyone. Rival worst went up 3k.

Espionage:
wow! After 1 turn, CivPlayers has put 10 EP into us ?! ratio is 10/4 now.

Manufacturing oddity:
last turn we had 47 prod and were #1 in the demos (#1 GNP/PROD/FOOD). rival best was 46, rival average 37.
This turn, rival average went up 1 (so 9-17 hammers total), rival best went to 52 (acconting for at least 6 hammers), but we fell to #4. Ahh - I had forgotten our whip (and possible tile micro) took us from 47->41 in manufacturing.

Love
Our people love their government 63% approval , #1 in the demos for first time.

[kjn]

Thanks for doing this turn!

Only nitpick is that I (after Sullla's style) use the X->Y notation in the score tracking sheet exclusively for interturn changes (whips, new cities, bulbs, et c). I usually don't bother with listing down pop deltas there, either, I just list pop and whips as "pop X" and "whip Y". I've set up a whip tracker in the "Minor trackings" sheet that looks for those strings.

Terasvin probably built a worker. It has a granary and a temple, both built during earlier turns, which would imply sabotage values are capped. We'll have to continue to look at this for the next few visible whips.

No surprise about CivPlayers's EP points - I already knew they had 3 sacrificial altars and generated 10 EPpt from APTmod data.

The pop values for cities can basically not be trusted for most teams. The exceptions are CFC (where we have visibility), CivFr (rival best), and the Germans (rival worst).

As for power, you need to take pop into account. Apolyton, CivFr, and CivPlayers eached gained 1000 in pop, leaving 6000. I think that's a Spanish axeman, and that they just left the rival worst position in power.

[waterbat]

Sweet.. Forgot about pop power - you've made my spreadsheet too good it took care of that itself.

I saw you in there adjusting the format just after I finished. I think you added a German axeman as well?

As far as pop values per cities, I can run my brute force solver on it, but knowing the value of all the cities, we will still have trouble assigning them.

[kjn]

Yeah, one German and one Spanish axe - that's the most likely builds.

Anyway, Univers continue to expand. They performed a 2->1 whip, and then settled their ninth city, claiming nine land tiles. The rival worst approval rate rose from 51 to 52% with this, indicating Univers doesn't have that much more room for vertical expansion right now, or it's simply another team that has just connected another happiness resource.

[kjn]

CivPlayers finished their turn, and I think they're nervous about our presence in the area: they performed no less than 3 1-pop whips, including one in Tlaxcala, before ending their turn.

Some screenshots:

Demos:

Top cities before and after they whipped:

We can see that they whipped Tlaxcala, which now has 92H invested in production (was 5). No idea what that could be. From the top cities screen we can deduce that they whipped their capital to size 6, and that leaves a whip from 5 to 4 as the last one.

[kjn]

How strong is CivPlayers military?

With their whips, CivPlayers are confirmed as the current rival worst in power, with a value of 57000.

Of that, 12000 is from their 25 pop, and 16000 is from their confirmed techs (Hunting, Mining, The Wheel, BW). It's also pretty certain they have researched AH, for an additional 2000, and a total of 18000. That leaves 27000 in power for units and buildings.

We know they have two warriors, leaving 23000. An odd value of power must come from a barracks or an archer. They might know Archery, but that tech and an archer would leave only 14000 to 16000 in units, so I think they have finished a barracks. That leaves 24000 for units, including the two known warriors.

Possible breakdowns are:

3 axes (18000)
3 warriors (6000)

3 chariots/spears (12000)
6 warriors (12000)

2 axes (12000)
6 warriors (12000)

1 axe (6000)
1 chariot/spear (4000)
7 warriors (14000)

[Sian]

how many cities do they have?

I'd say they most likely at the minimum have a unit per city for defensive duties ... 1-2 zone defenders and the same ammount of scouting ...

[spacetyrantxenu]

A bit of a shame we can't just burn the border city since there isn't a lot they can immediately do about it. There's always later.

[novice]

I wouldn't read the 1-pop whips as desperation. They have SA's, they can whip with impunity.