[Spoiler Thread] SilentConfusion's Confusing Thread

[scooter]

Question for you - how close was the Sury pick for you? Fin/Phi and Cre/Phi were both still on the board, and I think in your shoes I would have had a really hard time deciding amongst the three. Was it your clear favorite or was it close?

[SilentConfusion]

Question for you - how close was the Sury pick for you? Fin/Phi and Cre/Phi were both still on the board, and I think in your shoes I would have had a really hard time deciding amongst the three. Was it your clear favorite or was it close?

Yeah, those were my choices. Sury was my top EXP leader left and the only two non-EXP leaders I considered were Lizzy (FIN/PHI) and Pericles (PHI/CRE).

I was leaning away from Lizzy as I feel that FIN and PHI are both great by themselves but together they are a little awkward. To fully utilize either trait you have to sacrifice a little with the other. PHI wants specialists to be worked, while FIN wants to work tiles. You can use both half-way and come up with a good hybrid economy, but I wanted to maximize both traits.

I was closer to picking Pericles. CRE for cheap libraries goes well with PHI. I just ended up choosing EXP over PHI. I thought faster Fast Workers and cheap Granaries and faster expansion was something I could better utilize. Specialists are my weakness, but with CRE as my economic trait, I'll have to use them early. I can put cheap granaries in cities and then a cheap library to run some specialists early on my improved food sources. I'll want to fully utilize my Fast Workers to get cities settled and improved quickly.

[Serdoa]

Will lurk your thread - and probably only this one for this game. I am eager to see you doing demo analysis in the hopes to learn something and be sometimes able to do them myself

[SilentConfusion]

Will lurk your thread - and probably only this one for this game. I am eager to see you doing demo analysis in the hopes to learn something and be sometimes able to do them myself

Welcome to my thread. Hopefully it will not be too confusing for you to follow. Trying to learn from other people's strengths is what these games and spoiler threads are all about in my opinion. I have many weaknesses in my game and areas I need to improve, while demographics is one of my strengths so long as I put enough time into it. It is all a bit complicated, but I picked it up in a short time and I'm sure anyone else could too.

Now that I know that at least one person is interested in seeing demographics analysis in action, I'll try to post my efforts and processes in this area. This thread is partially for the benefit of lurkers, so feel free to ask for screenshots of particular things or if you want any of my actions or thoughts explained.

A note about my own perceived weaknesses (I'm sure I have other weaknesses that I don't know about)...

I would say that my weaknesses include the effective utilization and micro-management of specialists. I am a cottager. It's my main mode and I want to pay extra attention to my use of specialists to makes up for this weakness. I am adept at running micro-management spreadsheets, but I sometimes fail to look at micro-management from a larger perspective so my calculations sometimes lack guidance, which can render them meaningless. I used to be very weak at military action since my SP experience didn't revolve much around attacking, but I have recently improved in the area of strategically conducting war in MP, but I still am not real secure on the fundamentals here.

[SilentConfusion]

I need to get myself used to thinking in terms of quick speed. I don't play on Quick much or ever, so I'm not used to it.

Just a reference on the hammer costs of units/buildings that'll likely be available in the first part of the game.

Units:
Warrior - 10h
Scout - 10h
Archer - 16h
Chariot - 20h
Work Boat - 20h
Axeman - 23h
Spearman - 23h
Missionary - 26h
Swordsman - 26h
Horse Archer - 33h
Galley - 33h
Trireme - 33h
Fast Worker - 40h (+25% hammers)
Settler - 65h

Buildings:
Monument - 20h
Barracks - 33h
Walls - 33h
Theater - 33h (+100% hammers)
Granary - 40h (+100% hammers)
Monastery - 40h
Lighthouse - 40h
Stable - 40h
Temple - 53h
Colosseum - 53h (+100% hammers)
Harbor - 53h (+100% hammers)
Library - 60h (+100% hammers)
Aqueduct - 67h
Forge - 80h
Courthouse - 80h
Market - 100h

Early Wonders:
Stonehenge - 80h (+100% hammers with Stone)
The Great Wall - 100h (+100% hammers with Stone)
The Oracle - 100h (+100% hammers with Marble)
The Great Lighthouse - 134h
The Colossus - 167h (+100% hammers with Copper)
The Pyramids - 335h (+100% hammers with Stone)


Some notes:

Working a 3 f/h tile with a non-plains hill capitol will yield a Fast Worker in 10t. If I can get a setup with a combined 4 hammers, then it will take 8t to get a Fast Worker. A Warrior can be built in 4 turns with 3 hpt. If I get a plains hill start and have another plains hill to work it only takes 2t to build a Warrior.

[SilentConfusion]

WarriorKnight has played his first turn and has sent the save to Cjreynol. I am last to go, but I can't wait to see the start. Tatan has not given us screenshots of our start so we could start planning as Krill did in the other game, so I imagine this first turn will go a little slower for people just so they can get their opening planned out. Maybe the first move is obvious, but things like warrior/worker and tech path will still have to be determined based on starting location and resources.

Just a note about going last. I am pretty sure this makes me PlayerNumber = 5 for demographics tiebreaking purposes. Never really played a sequential game before. I could do a test to make sure this is the case. Going last means I have to be 1 turn faster than my opponents in all race situations (wonders, liberalism, navigation, etc.). Going last does give me the benefit of seeing barbarian activity happen. For others they can only see the results, and they may not notice a barb passing by or may not see the barb's movement. Another thing it does is (if I'm correct in assuming I'm PlayerNumber = 5) it will give me the tie-breaker for all demographics ties. I would trade this tie-breaker for the wonder/race-situation tie-breaker any day, but it gives me a little better ability to tell the numbers of my opponents. You'll see more how this works when I look at the demo screen for the first time. Going last means I'll be able to distinguish the demo changes that happen from turn to turn. In summary, I think going last is a non-trivial disadvantage, but I will try to make full use of the small advantages it gives me to minimize this disadvantage.

Too much text, so this picture is to keep my thread pretty. I'll try to post screenshots often to keep the thread from looking like a solid wall of text. Perhaps I can play with formating to make posts more enjoyable to read.

If anyone knows who this is I'll be really surprised. She plays poker and I have a pretty serious crush on her, but she's not that well known.



I'll post some game-related pictures as soon as I get the save (and can figure out how to open it correctly).

Then I can start thinking about my opening.

[SilentConfusion]

Well since we're experiencing technical difficulties involving Macs and Admin passwords, two things I don't really know anything about, I'm hoping that someone on this forum does and can help us out.

In the meantime I guess I can use this time to think some more about the opening.

I am CRE/EXP.

The ramifications of this for my opening are:
-Capitol's borders will pop on T2 (requires 5 culture) and so will Shoot the Moon's but the other capitols will pop borders on T3. My capitol's borders will pop a second time on T13, whereas non-CRE civs will only do this on T25.
-I can get an extra hammer towards building a Worker if I can come up with a 4 hammer start (either a Ph start or the ability to work a Phf).

I start with Myst and Mining.

Therefore the only worker action I can perform (aside from exploring) is mining an unforested hill.

The techs I can research from the start are:
-Fishing:
-The Wheel:
-Agriculture:
-Hunting:
-Meditation:
-Polytheism:
-Masonry:
-Bronze Working:

The cost of these techs depends on the Map Size and Difficulty, which I don't know yet.

If I have a 4 hammer start, I can put 5 hpt into the 40h Worker, meaning done in 8t.
If I have a 4 hammer start, but only after my border pop (T2), I'll put 4 h/fpt in for 2t, leaving 32h, which will take 7t at 5 hpt. So a total of 9t.
If I have no 4 hammer start, it will take 10t to build an initial Worker.

[Serdoa]

Pic: Liv Boeree

Regarding demos and tie-breaker: That is interesting - I was wondering how the game decides the rank if there is a tie.

[SilentConfusion]

Pic: Liv Boeree

Regarding demos and tie-breaker: That is interesting - I was wondering how the game decides the rank if there is a tie.

The game uses reverse player order to break ties in demographics and also when choosing which score to put on top if two are the same. I know how to tell this in a Pitboss game, but for now I'm going to assume the play order corresponds to the player number. We'll have to see when I look at demographics. Best way to do this is to look at scores when tied or at Exports - Imports since all will be zero at beginning. If it says you're 2nd in E - I out of 5, then you must be the 4th player.

[Tatan]

Tatan has not given us screenshots of our start so we could start planning as Krill did in the other game, so I imagine this first turn will go a little slower for people just so they can get their opening planned out.

Oh, sorry! Here ya go: