Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[NobleHelium]

I thought if your units were teleported (due to being in someone's borders when you declared on them), that the teleportation used their movement points?

Nah. I don't think you can definitively say that the warrior would have been teleported south though, nobody's ever figured out the exact teleportation mechanics.

[SevenSpirits]

Nah. I don't think you can definitively say that the warrior would have been teleported south though, nobody's ever figured out the exact teleportation mechanics.

I sure can. I've looked them up a couple times.

First it finds the closest city. That's Luna, because we founded Luna before Rhea, and they are tied for distance at 2 away. 2 by the formula max(dx, dy) + 1/2*min(dx, dy) [keep in mind this is all integer math]

Now it looks at all the plots in order. The order of plots starts in the bottom left corner and goes right, then repeats upward (left to right in each row going up). The goal is to find that plot that minimizes the following for distance from current location (dx, dy) and distance from the closest city (dcx, dcy).

2 * (max(dx, dy) + 1/2*min(dx, dy)) + 1 * (max(dcx, dcy) + 1/2*min(dcx, dcy))

The simple explanation is it wants to minimize the total distance according to civ IV's distance formula, but it cares twice as much about the distance the unit actually has to be teleported as it cares about the distance the unit will be from the closest city post-teleport.

This case is really straightforward. There are two plots that give a total cost of 3 (1 distance (x2), and 1 city distance). Since they're both in the same row the warrior will teleport to the leftmost one.

[NobleHelium]

Nice. That's the first real description of the teleportation determination algorithm that I've seen. I didn't realize it checked for nearest city.

To clarify: is the distance mentioned here plot distance, or movement distance? I.e., are diagonals same distance as full adjacent plots?

[SevenSpirits]

Nice. That's the first real description of the teleportation determination algorithm that I've seen. I didn't realize it checked for nearest city.

To clarify: is the distance mentioned here plot distance, or movement distance? I.e., are diagonals same distance as full adjacent plots?

Distance being used here is what I think of as CIV distance, given by the formula

max(dx, dy) + 1/2 * min(dx, dy)

in English, the greater of the x and y distances, plus half the lesser of them. You may notice this is the same formula used for culture border level reach. It's also used as the distance value for trade routes and random religion spreads, and probably other stuff I'm not thinking of right now.

So no, it's not movement distance. One other thing I didn't mention: while it does not check for the actual path (i.e. it may teleport you across an inlet of water without caring), it does not like to teleport onto an entirely separate landmass. Doing so costs 3 times as much by its algorithm.

[novice]

The world is dissolving into war. Sian declared on Fierce this turn, and everybody's power is rising. Mackoti has researched guilds and now construction, and is going all in, it seems.

He's really giving us a taste of our own medicine, as we really want another 6 peaceful turns in pacifism and caste system, so we can grab communism with liberalism. We've already had to detour to construction, and if we research engineering and/or gunpowder too that will really delay communism. If we make do with catapults and drafted macemen, we'll probably need slavery, but that will really hurt our economy too.

I almost regret not accepting this turn's peace offer from Mackoti:



Ariel and 200 gold is quite a price, but it would secure communism for us and might send Mackoti's knights crashing through Luddicator. State Property is worth 75 gold per turn just from the free distance maintenance.

We'll probably stay in pacifism as long as we dare, to try to get as close as possible to Communism before adopting slavery and crashing our economy. I also think we should consider offering Ariel for peace - the city has a granary, a lighthouse, and a silks resource.

[spacemanmf]

Ooh yeah, mackoti's power has really spiked, way past (y)ours. Fresh knights in the two visible cities, and presumably a number of others.

Looks like iron won't be hooked up for 5 turns or so yet, so no pikes for a while.

Oh and a first cataphract appearing in Yuri's lands...

[SevenSpirits]

Yup.

So we just finished t94. Our detour to construction means Communism on a direct beeline is due eot101 now, assuming no slavery. t100-106 are Taj golden age turns. Our tech rate is:

~100bpt.
+100bpt if in Caste (not Slavery)
+100bpt if in golden age

Gunpowder is a 1050b detour; Engineering is an 850b detour. Both would obviously be militarily valuable. The former because it makes our draftees stronger and invulnerable to shock. The second because of the road bonus and potentially the ability to build pikemen, though I question whether that beats building catapults. It's not like we'll have anywhere near the numbers of pikes needed to attack his presumed knight stack.

But the road bonus could be critical if we're to avoid him running rampant through our lands and outmaneuvering us. So, how much does a good defense cost?

Engineering: 850b = 3 GA caste turns, pushing communism back to t104.
5t of Slavery starting t97: 500b = 2 GA caste turns, pushing communism back to t106. Realistically we'll be sacrificing enough pop that we probably lose another turn or two.

That's not awful. And I think we need maneuverable catapults to deal with knights. Say he comes with 16 knights. According to my sims we need about 4 cats and 28 maces to deal with it. Additional cats are worth about 2.5 maces each.

Right now we have about 10 available maces for this defense force. We get 3 more each turn. I think this'll work. We need to grab as many maces off the islands as we can carry though.

Let's plan to get engineering, and also to revolt to slavery t97 though t96 may work out, we'll have to see. But since engineering's effect is immediate, how about teching education next turn (with a bulb + a turn), then planning to get engineering t96-97 (easy with the merchant gold) but also offering mack a pretty good peace deal, so that if he accepts we've invested very little.

[novice]

I like it. Good work as always, Seven.

Another reason to offer Mackoti a generous peace deal is that peace will let us settle our planned island cities. If communism is delayed until t106 we might have to delay new cities until then as well.

Pop quiz; how much gold is Ariel worth? Would we rather give, say, 300 gold for peace or Ariel for peace?

[SevenSpirits]

An intriguing possibility, btw:

Our, say, 300g could be in the form of 30 gpt. And guess what? If we fire our merchants, our gpt right now (at max gold) is like 4. Which means that after we spend all our reserves, we could fire our merchants and be at say, -26 gpt at 0%. A strike.

The penalty for a strike increases every turn you have a strike all game. The first ever turn there's no penalty. So we immediately save ~30g, because you don't go below zero. Second and third turn, you lose ONE unit. It's random, but you basically can't lose important civilian units unless there are no other targets. We'd lose a military land unit that's outside our borders, basically, and it would be slightly biased towards the cheaper, less experienced ones. So if we rescued our HE WC first, it would be 2 WC for ~30g each. On the fourth and fifth turn, you start losing 2 units, and it keeps increasing, so we'd want to hire our merchants back at that point.

Btw I would value Ariel at 450g right now, though it would be pretty easy to convince me of any other number.

[Ceiliazul]

The first ever turn there's no penalty. So we immediately save ~30g, because you don't go below zero. Second and third turn, you lose ONE unit. It's random ... slightly biased towards the cheaper, less experienced ones.

That puts the "min" in "min/max"!

Tell me Seven, do you still see little 3d sprites running across the terrain... or do you see the waterfalls of green text from The Matrix on your screen?