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

[NobleHelium]

Seawalter seas must be at least ten tiles.

[Cheater Hater]

Thanks Noble for the water information.
T7 Report:
After our 24 hour delay, we come back to a scout move:


Annuminas doesn't have that much surprising in it--there's the lake clams along with the plains hill gems, so maybe the resources are identical, not just functionally identical? We can also see the starts aren't exactly mirrored (notice the gems are 2W of Annuminas, while they're 2E1S of Rome, in addition to boring plains/grassland/forest differences).

As promised, I have an overview shot that shows the difference, though it doesn't look that good:


The annoying thing is that the lake clams is positioned just so it hampers the direct line between our capitals in both directions. It looks like it's about 15 squares between the cities via the eastern route, but I don't know for sure until I unfog that direction. I know there's a better way to take these kinds of pictures (I know there's a flying camera mode from other reports, for instance), but I'm not sure how to do it--tell me how to get a detailed picture that shows the full distance between the cities and I'll use it when I unfog the eastern route.

Until then, I have a complicated C&D report to make, not to mention the micro plan/comparison I've promised--the sandbox is in the Dropbox folder if you're interested/want proof I'm not lying about doing the micro stuff eventually.

[Cheater Hater]

T7 C&D:
Obviously the scores says there have been some more techs discovered--eastway--but the demo screen has many more tales to tell today (say that five times fast ):


The immediate thing that should draw your eye is that 11000 best soldier point figure--eastway now has Bronze Working. It has to be eastway since 11000=Mining+Bronze Working+2 pop. In addition, that explains how we suddenly have 22 GNP--we're getting the known-tech bonus from eastway knowing Bronze Working. It looks like it's a ~10% bonus for each civ you have contact with that knows the tech, but I'm certainly not sure (especially since I thought prior to seeing the higher GNP that the known-tech bonus didn't apply until you knew 2 people with the tech for some reason)--clarification on this would be helpful
(I'm sorry I'm asking for all these specific things on mechanics, but I've never played CivIV like this before, and while I know a lot of this exists in some form, the C&D requires exacts, and I don't know where information with the exact statistics is, other than just some information dumps on CivFanatics.)

Looking back at the GNP ratings, we can see another difference: the rival best GNP has dropped from 22 to 20, almost certainly eastway not researching an arrow tech. The much more interesting change is that someone now has a production value of 3. However, this is also explained if you look closely at Annuminas:


Yes, the plains hill has copper on it. Since I assume this will be the case for every capital (given the semi-mirroring), that throws a whole new wrench into the microplan--see, I knew there was a reason for delaying it!

Given that, the only mystery left is to determine B4ndit and Twinkletoes's new techs. Unfortunately, considering I have no clue what techs were researched at first glance (and for that matter, how eastway got to Bronze Working so fast), I'll have to do another detailed beaker count, and I don't really have the time for that right now--knowing eastway went for Bronze Working early like I did is the most important part at least, as well that we all likely have copper under our feet.

Actually, before I wrap up the C&D post for the day, there's one thing I just realized: When you complete a tech by ending the turn, you don't have a tech set when you pass the save on, right? That could mean I'm underestimating the beakers for some teams and/or misrepresenting which teams are getting arrow bonuses. I'll have to take that into consideration when I eventually decide to run the tech numbers. See you soon!

[SevenSpirits]

In addition, that explains how we suddenly have 22 GNP--we're getting the known-tech bonus from eastway knowing Bronze Working. It looks like it's a ~10% bonus for each civ you have contact with that knows the tech, but I'm certainly not sure (especially since I thought prior to seeing the higher GNP that the known-tech bonus didn't apply until you knew 2 people with the tech for some reason)--clarification on this would be helpful

Known tech bonus is 30% * the fraction of players that are people you know who have it. In this case that's 30% * 1/5 = 6%. (You count as one of the people, hence 5 instead of 4.)

In some cases, 6% is worthless. After all, 6% of your 13 bpt pictured in the screenshot is only 0.78 beakers. But that 6% gets added onto the 20% arrow bonus, and 26% of 13 is more than 20% of 13, after rounding down. (3 instead of 2.)

Actually, before I wrap up the C&D post for the day, there's one thing I just realized: When you complete a tech by ending the turn, you don't have a tech set when you pass the save on, right? That could mean I'm underestimating the beakers for some teams and/or misrepresenting which teams are getting arrow bonuses. I'll have to take that into consideration when I eventually decide to run the tech numbers. See you soon!

Yup! Unless you have another tech queued up.

[Old Harry]

Hi CH, good luck with this game!

You can allow camera flying by changing a line in the civilization.ini file to camera flying =1 before you boot up the game. Then ctrl+alt+f in game.

Where are you in turn order?

[Cheater Hater]

Hi Old Harry, nice to see you around (in more than just the lurker thread )

I'm at the front of the turn order, which is working well for C&D purposes.

[Cheater Hater]

T8 Report:
Since my worker completed at the end of T7, I'll give an update on what's going on back at the capital:


The build path is Workboat->Warrior->Settler--and no, I don't have any reasoning for that other than my one test
Honestly, I think I'll do some sandboxing tomorrow--today I was busy at the Born of the Gods prerelease, and I'm tired

The plan for the Worker is farm the wheat, mine the gems, then possibly help chop out the settler?

Scout move isn't that spectacular, but here it is anyway:

[Cheater Hater]

T8 C&D:
Barebones C&D report today (at least for now), but there isn't much new to discuss, other than the lingering threads from yesterday:


Quick hits:

• AT researched Bronze Working
  
• Twinkletoes and B4ndit have researched Mining sometime (and no other soldier techs/units)
  
• The 17 GNP is a non-arrow blip from AT
  
• Everyone would have completed their workers, so expect 4 growths (including mine ) in 4 turns (assuming they farm the wheat)
  

That's all these demos tell us, but I still have to figure out what the second techs researched by eastway, Twinkletoes and B4ndit were--but I can do that tomorrow

[Cheater Hater]

Fast turn today, maybe we'll get another today?
T9 Report:
Quick turn, so quick report--scout move!


Eastway also 1-pop whipped Annuminas, presumably to complete the workboat--that also means there's a turn of anarchy somewhere between researching Bronze Working and this turn (I'll cover that in the C&D post, along with C&D messup #1074 by me).

[Cheater Hater]

T9 C&D:
First of all, the demo screen to give the discussion context:


First of all, yes I thought the pop increase was only 1 point and not the 7 points it actually was, which means that eastway only researched Bronze Working so far. The GNP could tell us some more (one of the civs without Fishing is researching a non-arrow tech, for instance), but I'll do that when I do the detailed C&D to figure out B4ndit and Twinkletoes's techs.

Edit: And that time is now!
Current GNP values:
2 21's (Fishing+arrow)
1 19 (Fishing or arrow)
1 17 (neither Fishing nor arrow)
Spoilers for the math as always:

Beaker counts go until the end of T8 (so 9 research turns)
Reminder: Base beaker count of 10 (palace+city square+free beaker), 1 for riverside 3 food, 3 for clams, 2 (20%) for arrow bonus), 1 (6%) for known tech bonus
eastway: 15*5, 16*2=104 (Bronze Working)+3, anarchy turn, (13 or 15)*1=16 or 18 beakers (arrow or non-arrow tech?)
AT: 13*8=104 (Bronze Working), 11*1=11 beakers (non-arrow tech?--Fishing or Wheel?)
Twinkletoes: 11*4=34 (Fishing)+10, 13*3=43 (Mining)+6, (13 or 15)*2=32 or 36 beakers (arrow or non-arrow tech?)
B4ndit: 11*5=34 (Fishing)+21, 13*2=43 (Mining?)+4, (13 or 15)*2=30 or 34 beakers (arrow or non-arrow tech?) (maybe?)

Summary:

• eastway and AT researched Bronze Working, and AT is researching a non-arrow tech (probably Fishing or Wheel)
  
• Twinkletoes researched Fishing, then Mining
  
• B4ndit either researched Fishing, then Mining (researching Mining a turn before finishing Fishing) or researched Fishing, then Hunting (with 11 beakers in some tech)
  
• Twinkletoes, B4ndit, and eastway could all be either researching arrow or non-arrow techs--I'm not sure, and probably won't be until either the GNP changes (possibly from 2 civs meeting each other and applying a known-tech boost) or one of the techs completes
  

One other thing I probably should be trying to calculate is eastway's hammer counts so I can tell when his next build (presumably a worker, but that worker would have nothing to do other than mine the gems until Agriculture comes in--although Agriculture probably would come in even with the whip overflow and the food from the netted clams) would finish, but that's probably better to be done practically with the sandbox (which I probably would have done by now if the turn didn't come early).

Now that that's done, a couple more questions:

• Based on what I saw, I'm assuming an anarchy turn would end when the player in anarchy ends turn, meaning all the demos would go back to normal values and I wouldn't see any 0's, right?
  
• Do you get the free beaker during an anarchy turn? I know you get shrine income during an anarchy turn, do you get anything else? (maybe settled GP benefits?)
  
• Does research in uncompleted techs decay, and by how much after how long?