Cheater Hater's PBEM58 Thread (with a surprise post lead!)

[Cheater Hater]

T5 Report:
Loading up the save, we have met a friend!


Hi eastway! Considering some of the decisions eastway has made so far (more coming in the C&D post) he could be an early target, depending on the distance between me and him. As such, I moved onto the tile with eastway's scout:


So many floodplains! The more food we see, the more Elizabeth seems like a perfect choice for this map. The spot 1N of the plains oasis already looks like a plausible city site with less than half the tiles revealed--that would be 3 good city sites now. I think the plan with the scout is to hopefully find eastway in a SE direction, then circle back to the east so I can find eastern sites. I think the plan is to go to a warrior after the worker to explore west of the capital and eventually find its way to the first city site (probably the gold site at this point--I'll make a full dotmap when I start building the settler/have circled back with my scout).

[Cheater Hater]

T5 C&D
This update can be split into two parts: I'm a savant vs I don't know a thing.

On the good side, we have city growth!


And yes, it is eastway going workboat-first, just as I thought. As we can see from the score updates, we have eastway and B4ndit each researching a tech (along with the one point from eastway's city growth). However, that's about where my savantness ends, as I need to redo the tech situation again

Since I actually bothered to look at the tech tree in-game this time, I realized the tech costs on Quick are actually 87.1% of Normal costs (not the 66% I thought it was for some reason ), which means I can actually keep track of which techs could be researched.

To help with this, we have the new T5 demos:



Since the worst GNP is now 19, we know AT was researching an arrow tech and B4ndit was not, and both eastway and B4ndit moved to arrow techs (and eastway's second tile is the riverside food tile).

Now, to figure out the actual techs, we have more math! (hidden in spoilers for the non-math inclined)

Beaker counts though end of T4
eastway: 15*5=75 (tech complete end T4)--61-75 beaker tech (Masonry?)
Twinkletoes: 11*4=44 (tech complete end T3), 13--34-44 beaker tech (Fishing/Hunting)
AT: 13*5= 65 (no tech)--66+ beaker tech (Bronze Working/Animal Husbandry/Masonry)
B4ndit: 11*5=55 (tech complete end T4)--45-55 beaker tech (Mining)

Summary:

• Twinkletoes researched Fishing
  
• AT is probably researching Bronze Working or Animal Husbandry--we'll see when the tech is researched to be sure
  
• eastway must have researched Masonry?
  
• I have no idea what B4ndit is researching--the beaker count points to Agriculture/Wheel, but those are his starting techs--did he switch techs halfway? It also couldn't have been Mining since there are too few soldier points at this point for that.
  

I feel like I'm missing something, but I'll leave it here for now.
GNP rankings:
1. 22-eastway
2. 21-Cheater Hater
3/4/5. 19 (Twinkletoes/B4ndit/AT)
Average is (22+3*19)/4=79/4~=20

Another "I am not good at C&D" moment is the Soldier count--of course the average would be affected by getting a soldier tech
(Fixed) Soldier math in the spoiler!

Start-End of T3: 2 Minings + 2 Wheel = 2*2000+2*4000 = 12000, 12000/4=3000--my math works this time!
End of T4: 2 Minings + 2 Wheel + eastway's 2 pop=2*2000+2*4000+1000=13000, 13000/4=3250--same as the average, so no military techs were researched

Right now there's some phantom points in the overall based on the average--the average is calculated by just taking the mean of all civs' soldier points, right? At the very least, it means no tech worth soldier points has been researched yet.

That's all the C&D math I can do for now--I may come back to it, I may not

[NobleHelium]

Hi eastway! Considering some of the decisions eastway has made so far (more coming in the C&D post) he could be an early target, depending on the distance between me and him.

I'm interested in hearing you elaborate on this.

[Cheater Hater]

Hi eastway! Considering some of the decisions eastway has made so far (more coming in the C&D post) he could be an early target, depending on the distance between me and him.

I'm interested in hearing you elaborate on this.

This may have gotten lost in all the (confused) math I did in the C&D post, but there are two main reasons I could attack eastway early:
1. He went workboat-first (or at least not-worker-first), meaning his growth will be slower than worker-first (not by that much, but probably a noticeable amount, especially production-wise)
2. According to the C&D he researched Masonry first, which makes no sense but along with Industrious points to an early Pyramids try (or a massive failure of C&D on my part)

I don't know if I can accomplish an early war successfully, but I will hopefully have Praets (assuming SevenSpirits wasn't mean enough to not put iron on the map or something ), and if I have an opponent who's too busy chopping out the Pyramids to actually build a few axes, opportunity could strike--or I could wait way too long to actually attack like I normally do in my single-player games

We'll also have to see where my other opponents are--hopefully there's no one hiding immediately to my west, and any opponent to my north doesn't want to try to expand in the direction of the jungle.

[NobleHelium]

Why specifically do you say work boat first will lead to slower growth? Can you provide numbers?

[Cheater Hater]

Honestly, I think "workboat-first is bad" come from just hearing stuff over time--I probably could make a chart based on the projected start (riverside 3 food farm resource first ring, lake clams/crabs first ring, plains gems second ring), but I don't think I want to do that tonight. I still probably will want to (considering the worker-first start is probably more-or-less going to be my micro plan), but the one notable thing I can think of right now is that going workboat first allows you to do is not have to research Agriculture first--then again I still have no idea why you would really want to go anything other than Agriculture, Bronze Working, or Wheel first, and all of those help make the case for worker-first.

[SevenSpirits]

Since I actually bothered to look at the tech tree in-game this time, I realized the tech costs on Quick are actually 87.1% of Normal costs (not the 66% I thought it was for some reason ), which means I can actually keep track of which techs could be researched.

Quick techs ARE 67% the price of normal speed techs. But other factors influence tech cost too: difficulty level (noble, in this case) and map size (standard, in this case). That's why it's generally easiest to just look in-game.

GNP rankings:
1. 22-eastway
2. 21-Cheater Hater
3/4/5. 19 (Twinkletoes/B4ndit/AT)
That doesn't explain why the average is still 19--with those rankings the average is 20, but only just--is it a rounding/floating point error if the average is exactly an integer?

The average doesn't count yourself. It's the average of all the other players.

[Cheater Hater]

Since I actually bothered to look at the tech tree in-game this time, I realized the tech costs on Quick are actually 87.1% of Normal costs (not the 66% I thought it was for some reason ), which means I can actually keep track of which techs could be researched.

Quick techs ARE 67% the price of normal speed techs. But other factors influence tech cost too: difficulty level (noble, in this case) and map size (standard, in this case). That's why it's generally easiest to just look in-game.

Okay, so I'm not going crazy--that's good at least

GNP rankings:
1. 22-eastway
2. 21-Cheater Hater
3/4/5. 19 (Twinkletoes/B4ndit/AT)
That doesn't explain why the average is still 19--with those rankings the average is 20, but only just--is it a rounding/floating point error if the average is exactly an integer?

The average doesn't count yourself. It's the average of all the other players.

Oh, okay, now everything makes more sense--while that explains the soldier points issue, it also means I'll have to go back and check my GNP stuff yet again to see if Twinkletoes was actually a 17 GNP, or actually was 19

Edit: Everything still makes sense with the GNP stuff if Twinkletoes is 17--the most obvious thing being that I would have been 4th in GNP at the start if there were 3 19's

[Cheater Hater]

T6 Report:
This is an interesting turn--on the C&D side it's actually really boring (no techs being researched means AT isn't researching Animal Husbandry, but not much else happened), but the scout move (aka what most players would focus on instead of the math discussions) was more interesting:


Hi Annuminas! We'll be able to see the city tile next turn, so we'll be able to keep tabs on eastway more-closely. In addition, eastway's even closer than I thought--I should take a screenshot of the full area next turn (once I can see Annuminas) so I can calculate the distance (at least from this direction--going east-first would probably be faster, but we'll see once I unfog that direction.

Also, note all the coast tiles around--what's the minimum number of tiles for a area of water to be coast/sea?

(Note: eastway's scout moved to the gold tile; I just didn't get a picture of it)

[Cheater Hater]

Just so you know, the micro comparison of Worker-first/Workboat-first is coming; as a teaser, I can get a settler out end of T21 going Worker-Workboat-Settler (one chop, but I fit the Slavery anarchy in there--this is just my first try)