[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire

[The Black Sword]

Wouldn't you get the free hammam in ren?

Yep, aqueducts are free.

Scooter's T218 seemed like a good time to compare their slavery first approach with the serfdom first I used in my sims. Overview shots:






There are 3 major differences in our plans; the early settler chop, the early 2 forest chop into the library in city 3 for the academy and spending the first ~20t in Serfdom. I'm sure micro could be tightened on both sides and we also chose different city locations but I think those are the 3 big differences.

IMO it looks quite good for the Serfdom first approach.

*It has 10 extra pop while scooter has 2 extra city centres. A city centre is worth roughly 3 pop, a settler costing 5 pop and
immediately giving 2.
*Both setups coincidentally have exactly 10 workers.
*Scooter has slightly more infra/units produced I think, probably on the order of 3 pop worth. I have 2 libraries compared to their 5 SAs.
*The serfdom approach is up a fair bit of gpp in the capital since the third city beat it to great person.
*Most noticeable difference is surely the extra 50bpt at 100% science due the academy. Scooter has a GP too of course and it's not showing any effect on the demos. I'd argue the academy is better value than anything they can do with an engineer though. Alternately you can think that those 2 early chops in the library would have snowballed into more raw pop(4?) if we'd gone for a worker/settler instead.
*The serfdom approach has had an extra revolt turn, being in HR/something religious. I think this is equivalent to being a turn ahead, because the only way to regain the extra turn is with an early golden age, which has its own drawbacks.

[Zalson]

The Black Sword: were you able to find a benefit from running serfdom, a la Joey's math here:

What you're saying here is that the Ren era start lowers the time it takes to complete an improvement to 90% (the iImprovementPercent variable in the XML file) of its full value. Thus, a plantation (or farm) goes from 5 -> 4.5 worker turns needed to finish. Without serfdom, it still takes 5 full worker turns to complete the improvement. However, with serfdom it completes exactly in 4.5/1.5 = 3 turns!

Were you aware of that when you started this simulation? Or is it a happy benefit of your serfdom approach?

[The Black Sword]

I noticed it while playing and benefited to the tune of 2 whole worker turns!

I didn't think through the reasoning behind the extra reduction though.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

In PB33 I used this kind of thing with worker labor to keep track of how many turns per improvement had been completed in serfdom vs in caste (or whatever). For example, cottages require four worker turns without the serfdom bonus. In serfdom you could complete the improvement in 3 turns (1.5x3) but this is still a little wasteful because you end up with 4.5 worker turns. As often as possible, because I was swapping from serfdom to slavery and back, I'd try to keep my workers on even worker actions completed per tile so that I could get the maximum benefit from serfdom, which allowed for shorter tile improvement times on tiles in many cases even when I was no longer in serfdom. So instead of finishing the third cottage tile improvement in serfdom and ending up with 4.5 worker turns into the cottage, I'd instead start another adjacent tile and "bank" the serfdom bonus on that tile, then go back later and finish the last worker action on the 3/4 finished cottage tile to get it to 4/4 rather than 4.5/4 when I would no longer get the serfdom bonus.

It was a bit of extra counting but not really anything difficult to do, I just had ugly signposts all over my civ. This is a very minor advantage and it is seldom if ever more beneficial to do this than to finish the tile improvement if you are able to use it. And it is possible to get behind on worker labor doing this kind of thing and not finishing improvements so you really need to have a plan for worker management or else this becomes a mess with unfinished tiles here and there.

[Mardoc]

Also: mackoti spammed out that many settlers WHILE building an eairly library for an eairly great person WHILE pumping reserch, WHILE not being imperalistic. Unless he has somehow broken the law of averages, something has to have been traded off in return for all that. he is either behind on worker labor, or basically no infastructure as he pumps out nothing but workers and settlers.

Well, there are implicit assumptions that might not hold...

Like needing the same amount of worker labor per city, for example? I understand that Scoolla's settlement plan was all about picking up resource tiles and I didn't put many resources in the sea, but Mack is getting a lot of value from founding his fishing villages anyway.

[Krill]

Well, you don't need the same amount of worker labour per city given Serfdom, and SPI do you? And different capital/second city locations have different number of forests and tiles available, so different food and growth values.

But more pertinently, he's assuming they played a perfect start. I don't think that's the case, simply from looking at what TBS put together.

[Zalson]

You both have excellent points. I'll be interested to see how they would adjust their openings in hindsight. Since no one has played a Ren start in a while, it's a learning experience, for sure.

One thing I've always wondered about is: do people invest in simulating their opponent's play? That might identify some of these issues with mistaken assumptions or missed mechanics optimizations -- although it might be more pertinent to a demogame than a 6-player/team pitboss.

[GermanJoey]

Generally no, but on mirrored maps like this you can usually make some reasonable conclusions based on your own sims.

[Krill]

Actually simulating an opponent's play through demographics does happen. Best example is PB16 where Seven figured out Retep exact play and worked out how to Impi rush him, which is essentially why he won that game.

[Mardoc]

I also see people simming battles from the opponent's side to answer the question of 'should I try to hold this position or retreat?'