Alright, first let me provide an upload link to the Excel document I've put together for this game:
http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/P.../RBPB2.xls
In theory I will keep this updated on a turn-by-turn basis. In practice, that assuredly won't happen, but we should be able to wring some very useful information out of the numbers regardless. One thing I would like to request is that you grab a screenshot of the Demographics screen (F9) with every turn played, Speaker. I'll be taking them myself, but I may ask for a picture if I miss one or two along the way.
If you take a look at the above file, you'll see that I've chosen to track four different areas during this game: Score, Population, Technology, and Power. This is a major difference from the Apolyton Demogame, where I spent large amounts of time tracking the GNP and Food/Production graphs. Ultimately I've come to feel that was a waste; you can get essentially the same information just by eyeballing the graphs and not bothering to analyze them in detail. Might as well spend your time concentrating on things of more importance, no?
First of all, you can glean an enormous amount of information just by watching CivStats and monitoring the score increases and decreases. I have a spreadsheet up to track this: whenever any team's score goes up or down in the game, I'll see it via CivStats and make a note of it here. That will let me see a number of different things: population increases/decreases, tech discoveries, and wonders built. Only those tricky land points make this a tough category! This is a really useful category for tracking what's going on with unmet civs out in the fog, as you can often figure out what they're doing with a high degree of accuracy.
The second spreadsheet tracks city population, with me essentially copying mostly_harmless' extremely effective work from the Apolyton game. Not terribly helpful in the early game, later on these numbers let you see AP/UN diplo voting with ease, and sense where and how population whips or drafts are taking place. The third spreadsheet is simply a tracking of what technologies everyone has, done for my own sanity because "No Tech Trading" makes it tough to see this in-game. (You can see what techs they have that you don't, but not the reverse, unless that's been changed since I last played this game.)
The last part is the all-important Soldier Count (Power rating), the single biggest thing to track in the game. Yes, my table looks very neat at the moment, but it will become a mass of confusion very shortly. Nevertheless, despite the fog of having to guess and infer what units the other teams have, Soldier Count provides the best warning of future danger and gives a potential chance to ward it off before disaster strikes. It was instrumental in our success at defeat Imperio in the Apolyton game, as we knew exactly what units they had to use against us long before the attack began! (Not that the other teams here would be stupid enough to let us run a scout around in their borders endlessly, watching all of their military builds.)
For the moment, the most interesting data appears from another part of the Demographics screen:
![[Image: RBPB2-4s.jpg]](http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2-4s.jpg)
Look at that Land Area stat. The way this works is that one tile under cultural control = 1k land points. This number is very interesting for us, because we can see that we have the LARGEST land area with 8 tiles under our control (the lake tile doesn't count, as it's water). Now the next-highest team has 7 land tiles in their starting radius, and all the others have less than that. Since every team other than LiPing founded on the starting turn, and LiPing still hasn't founded her capital yet as of this picture, we can conclude that
every team other than LiPing founded their capital on the coast. I suppose it's possible that someone has 7 land and 2 lake tiles preset, but that seems unlikely, especially given that this is a balanced map designed to ensure fair play. I'll wager my Civ4 Alpha Test CD that all ten teams began on the coast, and probably all had a seafood resource in range as well. We're just the crazy yuks who moved AWAY from the seafood resource and into the hinterland!
This has some interesting implications... First, scouting by Work Boats would likely be very effective at contacting other civs. We should build one when we have a coastal city later. Second, our capital will be safer from being inland, but we will be weaker in naval power in the earlier stages of the game, with likely 8 rival coastal capitals. Third, with all that competition, I think it would be foolish to go after the two coastal wonders, Lighthouse/Colossus. Let the other teams race after them, we'll go in another direction entirely. (Not that we have all that much choice, having planted our flag inland!) No, our wonder targets will be the Great Library and the Mausoleum, and I think we'll have a very good chance at getting both. Fourth, ten initial coastal starting positions means that we can start to make some more intelligent guesses about the base map script for the game...
If you open up the game and look at the F8 Settings screen, you'll find some interesting tidbits in there. Naturally we can't see the exact map script (this game having been loaded from a Worldbuilder file), but we can see that we're on a Standard size world, with Temperate climate and Low sea level. Now those climate/sea level settings already rule out about half of the maps in and of themselves, since maps like Highlands don't even have them as options. Have to wait and see a little more of the map before jumping to any conclusions, but I think we're probably on something relatively standard, Pangaea or Hemispheres or Custom Continents, etc.
The Standard size also holds implications for us. Ten teams on a Standard map will be a little on the cramped side, as the default is seven for that size. Yes, we do have Low sea levels to help out, but still. Gonna get competitive pretty quickly for the good land, and early war could be a real possibility. That shouldn't change our strategy - if someone chooses to attack us in the first 25 turns, the game is simply over - but we do need to keep it in the back of our minds. At least we're going for Bronze Working first, and that will make our Soldier Count *LOOK* much better for those who don't understand what the numbers mean.
Now we're just waiting on LiPing - end your turn when you're finished, girl!
