The Dark arts - C&D Master Thread

[kjn]

T93 - 550 BC

Cliff's Notes: Apolyton grew 2 pop and then 2-pop-whipped a large city (size 8 or 7). The Germans grew their newest city to size 2, and reached 20 pop. They also probably built a chariot. CivFr researched an ancient tech, tentatively Archery. CivPlayers grew 2 pop, one of which was in Tlaxcala, and have 27 pop now. They also finished at least one military unit. CFC grew 1 pop in Mantra, reaching 33 pop.

Demos:

Score table:

Team	Score change	Pop	Tech
RB	20	8 (+3; 45 total)	12 (Currency)
Apolyton	5	5 (+2; 33 total)
Germans	2	2 (+1; 20 total)
CivFr	6		6 (ancient tech; Archery?)
CivPlayers	5	5 (+2; 27 total)
CFC	9	3 (+1; 33 total)	6 (ancient tech; Fishing?)

The turn rolled somewhat as a surprise, since CivFr 1-pop-whipped a city, and then both they and Apolyton ended turn more or less simultaneously. To top it off, Apolyton then did a 2-pop-whip immediately after then turn rolled. So there is plenty to keep track off.

F8 analysis gives only 3 net new pop, but that includes the three whipped pops, so a total net of 6 pop growths as the turn rolled (-1 by CivFr before the turn rolled; +6 growths; -2 by Apolyton after the turn rolled).

Of interest is that the rival total population fell with 190000, despite a net of 2 new rival pop, ie the whips were of quite large cities. The Germans grew their newest city (Wilhelmshaven) to size 2 in 5t. At a guess they might have had an already improved tile from the time before WPC razed the first one. CivFr performed a 3-to-2 whip, given the change to rival best in population. That means Apolyton whipped away at least 175000 in pop, ie they did a 7->5 or 8->6 whip.

Note also how the top cities still show a size 8 city founded on T1, so it's quite likely that it's the Apolyton capital, though it might also belong to Univers.

Rival best in soldiers rose with 5000 (1000 of which came from pop), rival total with 28000, and rival worst with 4000. APTmod data shows no changes to CFC or WPC, and confirms that the Germans still are the rival best. Of the power increases, another 1000 come from pop, to CivPlayers (since Apolyton whipped away their two pop growths). This means that it's unlikely that CivPlayers did a minor power increase - it's probably 2 axes or chariots that were whipped out last turn

I note down a chariot for the Germans.

No new tech discounts were found, so I note down a tentative Fishing for CFC (I had assigned it to them earlier, but that was probably Priesthood), and Archery for CivFr, but the latter is very tentative.

The rival total land area rose with 9000, and the rival best with 7000, from 115000 to 122000. Since the previous rival best (CivFr) had 113000, I think it is them, but it doesn't fit with their newest city expanding borders (it was settled T90), so I just leave that as a note for now.

With Currency, we also received a tally of the rival teams financial status.

Team	Gold saved	Gold surplus
RB	6	7
WPC	8	1
Germans	85	11
CivPlayers	96	0
CFC	13	0

Of note is that CFC probably has finished a spell of deficit research, and that CivPlayers has enough cash in hand for an emergency upgrade of a warrior.

[kjn]

Checking the sabotage EP values, I note that there are only modest increases in the production boxes of CFC's cities, with the exception of Mantra (+22). I also see a granary hidden among the wines of Tlaxcala. Guess CivPlayers aren't that worried after all, though I wonder how they managed to get 92/60 in a granary. Or the values are bugged at times.

[SevenSpirits]

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.

Unfortunately I can't quite tell what you're saying here. It was 5 earlier t92 before the whip, or it was 5 last turn? The whip was for 1 pop? It happened t92 and the turn has since rolled? The granary is there now but wasn't on t92?

There are a couple possibilities for how production could go from 5 to 92. The most obvious one is they had put 5h into a military unit when our axe showed up, but then switched back to what they were building before after we agreed to a NAP. Second option but sounds unlikely is they whipped a sacrificial altar, gaining 67h, but this is only enough if the "5" value was from the previous turn.

[kjn]

The development in Tlaxcala:

Turn	Event	Hammers
91	start of turn	55
92	start of turn	5
92	after CivPlayers whipped and finished turn	92
93	start of turn	0

Hope that's clearer. I didn't see the granary until this turn, but it might have been built earlier - it was quite hard to spot since the wine covered large parts of it.

[SevenSpirits]

So they whipped a building with 55h in it for +37h (OR bonus), after switching the build back from a military unit they had started. It's a strange move to whip a granary that you could have finished without a whip, but if we can't see any other buildings there, I guess that's what it was. Maybe this specific situation warranted it. We can probably tell from the hammers invested next turn what they used the overflow for.

[kjn]

Ah, the OR bonus Thanks Seven.

[SevenSpirits]

Glad I could find a place to contribute 0.000001% to the total C&D effort.

[kjn]

CivFr performed yet another 2->1 whip. It's at least their third such. They now have cities of size 11, 10, 6, 5, 2, 1, and 1, for a total of 36 pop in 7 cities.

[waterbat]

bringing this over from the diplo thread:

ok, so i admit to slightly trolling this thread earlier re: Fintourist and doing C&D on cancelled worker actions. The point was made that CFC might see us roading. I said that Sullla cancels the actions, but they would be able to find out that we roaded it anyway with waypoint tricks.

I'm going to spoil the whole thing here to not derail the conversation, but posting the same thing in the C&D thread.

And in fact, your questioning made me doubt myself, so i fired up a quick hotseat to verify. I discovered some useful tips in doing so. i've been having some trouble with civ4 crashing lately, so it crashed before i could finish testing everything - but i got some screenshots. Actually, some things didnt sit well with me, so i loaded up the autosave and had at it again.

Indeed, since you can ROAD in another team's borders (provided you have Open Borders Agreement), if you have vision on their tiles, you can determine if any of those tiles contain half finished roads with the use of waypoints. Loading the game up again allowed me to find the trick for other improvments! Yes we can find out turns into MINES, FARMS, PLANTATIONS, etc.

Here's a shot:




Here, after waypointing a move (holding shift and moving) to the dye tile, i then hover over the "road icon" (marked with light blue) and it tells me... 1turn to road! So i know my opponent has put a half turn.

Unfortunately, there is a quite limiting and very important prerequisite. The worker you chose to investigate the tiles MUST be able to do those actions on his own tile himself. So if are checking for turns into a ROAD, he must be able to road himself. If he is on a roaded or city square, forget it. Same way with MINES - if you want to check how many turns a team has into a mine, you must be on a HILL or un-tapped minable resource. so.... when we need to know just how many turns that nasty neighbor has into his FORT - we just need to find a tile we can fort to do so. If we want to find out how many turns he has into his banana plantation - we need to find a worker on an untapped sugar/spice/banana/silks/incense/etc. to do it.

Note the picture above: My worker is on a un-roaded hill (one outside my borders although that doesnt matter) as the icons below indicate i *could* build a mine or a windmill. If i waypoint to the hill 1E of the dye and then hover over the Mine icon.... i get 1t to build a mine! So we know Tokugowa put 2t into it. The ideal tile to be on in that situation would be an unroaded forest hill - that way i could check all 3 tiles indicated: forest chops, roads on the die, and mine turns.

Also WARNING: if you do this with a worker with movement points, it is very easy to give him false orders. You must hold the shift key during this entire process - if you release the shift key at any time, the worker will move. In order to circumvent this - you can use a worker with no MP - just subtract one from the total indicated on the HUD to determine how many more turns are left in the improvement. You can then use the cancel button to clear the waypoints. What i do when using a worker with MP - I continue to hold shift at all times , click on the worker icon (marked with red arrow in pic above), then click the worker itself and select "SLEEP ALL" from the pop-up menu. Only then release the shift key. This seems to be the only way to reliably give the worker real orders (wake him and then issue new orders). Using the cancel button is inconsistent in my experience.

[waterbat]

Apparently, this trick works through the fog... EVEN if the improvement is complete. I was thinking that if someone moved a stack of workers in the fog to 1t a mine, we'd never know - it would show "4 turns to build" before they put their turns in, and it also shows "4 turns to build" after the turns are in. But there is an additional line that shows for complete improvements - "WILL DESTROY THE MINE" clearly showed up when i tried to mine an empty hill that my opponent had built a mine on.

This works on chops too - so if we expect we might be racing someone for a wonder and have fogged (or unfogged) vision on their forests, we could see if they were pre-chopped or not with this trick. (of course, we'd need a worker in a forest to do so)