Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[SevenSpirits]

I've made a very interesting and pertinent discovery about trade route mechanics. To summarize:

The reason our trade routes with Sian are being wasted (on cities that would get the same profit from internal routes) is because he comes before us in turn order.

The implications of this are that the later you are in the turn order, the more the trade route mechanics will screw you! Here's how it works:

First, our cities are ordered by their trade route modifier. Cities with ToA or harbors would get bumped to the front, cities with pop over 10 get a slight edge, and tiebreaker is the city order (generally the order of founding). Being on an island is irrelevant for the sorting (even though it's liable to cause overseas bonuses) because we don't know where the trade route is leading at this stage. Overseas-ness is relative.

Second, the game looks at the first city in our list of cities (which is going to be our highest pop city right now - size 12 Callisto, beating out size 12 Io due to founding order) and assigns it the best possible trade routes. To do this, it loops through all the players in player order with no special case made for ourselves. So Callisto gets Sian's two island cities, because Sian comes before Yuris in turn order. Io gets next pick and takes the last available overseas route, from Yuris, and then gets the route to another of Sian's cities.

This is just a $2 route like one of our internal routes, but it goes to Sian's city because he comes before us in the turn order, so the game saw that his city was tied for best first.

This is a ridiculous bug. I guess we're lucky we're going second in this game. I'm inclined to play with a mod that fixes this in future games (not RB mod though).

[novice]

That's interesting. I guess the reason this bug has not received more attention is that it wouldn't affect single player games, where the player is usually first in the turn order.

Nice detective work.

[Commodore]

I've made a very interesting and pertinent discovery about trade route mechanics. *snip*

This is a ridiculous bug. I guess we're lucky we're going second in this game. I'm inclined to play with a mod that fixes this in future games (not RB mod though).

Holeee crap, that's terrible. As the GLH holder and last in turn order in 24, I've been experiencing this myself but I just chalked it up to the game being weird. That's...really annoying.

[SevenSpirits]

The short of it is, Sian started a golden age, and we popped two great scientists. We've got four now - we could totally go scientist-rush someone.



After some calculations and discussion with Novice, I opted to offer Mackoti 1gpt for OB. But that was technically unavailable, so...



OB should give us 7 or more gpt, and him at most 15. In a 6-team game that's good, even if he's our most dangerous competitor.

Cities and demos:


Due to not getting the 3 scientists + 1 engineer result, we need to research Aesthetics next turn. And we'll have to start some other builds on those cities that are about to finish galleys. I set tech to 30% so we could for sure spend all our saved gold next turn, in case we needed to tech Machinery. Luckily, we don't!

[novice]

Got it.

[Rowain]

This is a ridiculous bug. I guess we're lucky we're going second in this game. I'm inclined to play with a mod that fixes this in future games (not RB mod though).

Maybe I'm dumb but what is the negative effect of this Bug? As I read it you get 2c-traderoutes with Sian instead of 2c-traderoutes with yourself so what am I missing here?

[novice]

Maybe I'm dumb but what is the negative effect of this Bug? As I read it you get 2c-traderoutes with Sian instead of 2c-traderoutes with yourself so what am I missing here?

Our mainland cities are using up all Sian's mainland cities on 2c-TRs, when they should have been using (unlimited) 2c internal TRs to our own island cities. That would allow our island cities to get 3c-TRs with Sian's mainland cities. Instead, our island cities have to make do with 2c internal TRs to our own mainland cities.

[Rowain]

Thanks now I see

[novice]

This was the last turn of our golden age. We researched Aesthetics on max science. Next turn we'll overflow into Civil Service (will take 2-3 turns) and bulb Machinery, Optics and Astronomy.



Mackoti discovered Monarchy last turn, and Yuri got it this turn. I guess they're both worried about our power and are headed for Feudalism. We do have a lot of soldiers, but we also have a big and elongated empire to defend.



Optics will help with giving us advance warning, and Galleons will give us a lot of options both defensively, aggressively and peacefully.

Demographics before and after ending turn:





Sian's in a golden age and passed us in MFG. Our GNP took a big drop, partly due to the end of the golden age, partly because we have no tech selected.

We're due a civics switch, but we need to see our ETA on Civil Service to decide whether or not to wait for Bureaucracy.

[Rowain]

Nice to see that the GNP is still 100 higher than the next best despite someone beeing in a Golden Age.

But but you are only 3rd in MFG so somebody besides Sian outproduces you