invy's Epic23 - Focal Point report

[invy]

Link:
http://invy.web44.net/Games/Epic23/epic23_partoone.html

Summary: I tried to play peaceful game here heh, the goal was to stay diplomatically neutral, no religions, no war declarations, no conquering. Guess how that went, this was probably the bloodiest game I played. I defended my skin most of the time, got DoWed dozen times and lost 7 cities total during the game, so I hope it will make an entertaining report.

There's also funny ending to this game.

[Kodii]

Interesting ups and downs in this game... dunno if I've seen so many close calls! Definitely saw some of ruff's scenario intentions playing out in your game.

A shame that you worked so hard only to narrowly lose, but it sure sounds like you enjoyed yourself

[timmy827]

Wow, that was really something, great job staying on the knife edge jumping from one near-disaster to another, only to lose at the end. Sort of like a Michael Crichton story

LOL at Boudica having Astronomy on this map while behind on all other key techs. On the other hand, Louis was an evil genius, hiding behind your superior might literally and figuratively, blocking a shot at a diplo win and stealing the game by culture. Would it have even been possible for you to stop him by war? I remember in Dutch Masters not being able to get rid of a voluntary vassal; they were smart enough to take all my demands with no more resistance than snide remarks.

[invy]

I think Ruff should have set victory condition to Diplomatic Victory and no DoWs as goal it would be interesting

Hm good question, I could stop Louis in the end easily with my superior and larger army, but I didn't want to break my own rules or I would feal crappy . I didn't think about breaking vassal deal tho, would it be possible?! I'm not sure since I have never done it before.

[Ruff_Hi]

invy- thx for the report. It certainly looked like a very interesting game. I think Louis was going for a cultural victory in my game too - just that the game didn't go that long :D.

[T-hawk]

Sounds like quite a ride! Well done on sticking it through! The report was very compelling, I took two days to read it all.

Yes, it was very hard to keep up with the unit production of eight AIs at once. Against tech peers, the human player can usually sustain a kill ratio around 3:1 with superior tactical maneuvering and AI suicides, but that's not always enough. Did you ever have a clear window of military tech advantage, or was it always peer units? (Corporation before Rifling or Steel or Military Science in a warring game? ) My game had lots of Knights too, but they were on my team.

You never really got to go on offense to conquer some economic territory for yourself. That was my first strategic priority - I wiped out Russia and turned that land into my economic breadbasket. I had five cities in that slice that didn't need to worry about units or defense and could just work lots of cottages instead. But your approach sure made for a compelling ride and report! And nice use of combat artist bombs too.

Yes, wow, Louis manipulated you the way the human player usually manipulates their vassals. Ruff and I both got to domination soon enough to avoid any threat of AI culture or space victory.

Louis's GNP came from culture. In BTS, the GNP graph includes culture and espionage too along with gold and research. Culture gets way higher production and modifiers than research: +300% or more from cathedrals and Free Speech, compared to +75% research (before laboratories). So a civ (AI or human) going for culture victory always rockets up the GNP graph, though it doesn't equate to research.

[Ruff_Hi]

Louis's GNP came from culture. In BTS, the GNP graph includes culture and espionage too along with gold and research. Culture gets way higher production and modifiers than research: +300% or more from cathedrals and Free Speech, compared to +75% research (before laboratories). So a civ (AI or human) going for culture victory always rockets up the GNP graph, though it doesn't equate to research.

This is one 'feature' that I don't like. Is there a better way to measure commerce. Maybe a set of graphs that exclude the multipliers and just measure base production (hammers, food, commerce, gold, beakers, culture, espionage, expenses, etc)?

[invy]

Did you ever have a clear window of military tech advantage, or was it always peer units? (Corporation before Rifling or Steel or Military Science in a warring game? ) My game had lots of Knights too, but they were on my team.

Louis's GNP came from culture. In BTS, the GNP graph includes culture and espionage too along with gold and research. Culture gets way higher production and modifiers than research: +300% or more from cathedrals and Free Speech, compared to +75% research (before laboratories). So a civ (AI or human) going for culture victory always rockets up the GNP graph, though it doesn't equate to research.

I have lousy timing, my troubles came out of variant I chose in this game - no DoWs from my side, be nice . And in adventure34 I played powerplay style.. Pyramids early, and went for domination. I should reverse orders of my variants and I would be ok, probably.

I did have military advantage once I researched Rifles, and used it partially to wipe out Boudica from Sitting Bull's land as she was getting stronger than other AIs, And I used it to attack Spain and return one of my cities (btw there I broke my own DoW rule, but I wanted my city back).
I could get Rifling way way earlier but I misjudged my position badly and found myself under attack.

Hehe and in the end I did have Modern Armors in the end while some of the AIs were running with Cavalry's, but Louis outsmarted me .
Wierd way to calculate GNP rating from culture... I can see mechanics, but its illogical..

[T-hawk]

This is one 'feature' that I don't like. Is there a better way to measure commerce. Maybe a set of graphs that exclude the multipliers and just measure base production (hammers, food, commerce, gold, beakers, culture, espionage, expenses, etc)?

Not by default, though it could be modded in (not Python, in cvgamecore.dll). The best you can do unmodded is examine the GNP graph, and subtract out the culture and espionage graphs; although since the culture/espionage graphs show total amount rather than per-turn production, you'd subtract out the change (slope) in those. Not great unless your target audience knows calculus and derivatives.

The current behavior was by design, in order to capture everything that can be produced by the commerce slider. If culture were omitted, the graph would show wild swings based on moving the slider from turn to turn. But it kind of ends up doing that anyway. I don't really like it either, but perhaps it's better to not have quite so precise information on AI research and economic capability. (If you want to track your own research, just look at the beaker count on the main screen.)

It's still better than the vanilla GNP graph behavior, which calculates only raw commerce minus expenses, leaving out a zillion factors (all multipliers, all specialists, and shrines.) See here.

[Olodune]

Looks like a contentious game -- nicely played Playing a peaceful builder game seems to be the most challenging approach on this map.

The best you can do unmodded is examine the GNP graph, and subtract out the culture and espionage graphs; although since the culture/espionage graphs show total amount rather than per-turn production, you'd subtract out the change (slope) in those. Not great unless your target audience knows calculus and derivatives.

The current behavior was by design, in order to capture everything that can be produced by the commerce slider. If culture were omitted, the graph would show wild swings based on moving the slider from turn to turn. But it kind of ends up doing that anyway. I don't really like it either, but perhaps it's better to not have quite so precise information on AI research and economic capability.

The equivalence of EPs = Beakers = Gold seems like a reasonable approximation to economic power. Culture can be misleading, unless a cultural victory is being pursued, in which case it's very relevant. In particular the Sistine Chapel creates a lot of "phantom" GNP inflators.

I actually like the implementation overall -- having too much information about the exact nature of the AI economies would remove parts of the strategic value (and fun) of scouting, imo.