[PB65 LURKERS] We lurk in single-file to hide our numbers

[Qgqqqqq]

What were the settings that made maintenance so bad?

[Charriu]

The same setting that makes it bad in every game:

The need to (over)expand before your neighbor does it.

[Tarkeel]

I'd say it's the relatively low max plot distance, caused by lack of water bodies.

[Charriu]

T179
As always all the data can be found here: PB65 Tracking

Since this PB is running CtH 3.0, we got some new data points. By now I've explained all data points here: data points explanation

General state of the game
City count

1. Mjmd = 19
   
2. Pindicator (IMP) = 16
   
3. Cornflakes = 13
   
4. Superdeath = 11
   
5. sucksatciv = 2
   
6. Bing = 0
   

Population

1. Pindicator (IMP) = 178
   
2. Mjmd = 148
   
3. Cornflakes = 130
   
4. Superdeath = 35
   
5. sucksatciv = 7
   
6. Bing = 0
   

Wonders

1. T158 Spiral Minaret (Cornflakes)
   
2. T168 Parthenon (Mjmd)
   
3. T172 Christian Shrine (Cornflakes)
   
4. T177 Taj Mahal (Cornflakes)
   

Current turn Gold at 100%

1. Pindicator (PRO) = 700
   
2. Cornflakes = 694
   
3. Mjmd (PRO) = 529
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 166
   
5. sucksatciv (ORG) = 36
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 0
   

Current turn total maintenance

1. sucksatciv (ORG) = 46
   
2. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 114
   
3. Cornflakes = 292
   
4. Mjmd (PRO) = 316
   
5. Pindicator (PRO) = 320
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 0
   

The leading players look equal, but the important difference is that Cornflakes pays double the unit maintenance of the other two, while having way lower city maintenance.

Current turn maintenance-gold delta

1. Cornflakes = 402
   
2. Pindicator (PRO) = 380
   
3. Mjmd (PRO) = 213
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 52
   
5. sucksatciv (ORG) = -10
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 0
   

Current turn Science at 100%

1. Cornflakes = 705
   
2. Pindicator (PRO) = 622
   
3. Mjmd (PRO) = 575
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 168
   
5. sucksatciv (ORG) = 44
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 0
   

Accumulated actual science

1. Cornflakes = 22011
   
2. Pindicator (PRO) = 10711
   
3. Mjmd (PRO) = 8242
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 7846
   
5. sucksatciv (ORG) = 4633
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 946
   

A good comeback by pindicator, but not enough to challenge Cornflakes.
But what exactly did the players do with all those beakers. Well fear not here it is:




It should be fairly self explantory. It's all the techs the players have researched so far. The number in front is the turn the players acquired the tech.

Food

Accumulated food towards growth

1. Mjmd = 5905
   
2. Pindicator (IMP) = 5630
   
3. Cornflakes = 4225
   
4. Superdeath = 3946
   
5. sucksatciv (EXP) = 1821
   
6. Bing = 1522
   

Accumulated food kept (Granaries etc.)

1. Mjmd = 4605
   
2. Pindicator (IMP) = 4543
   
3. Superdeath = 3334
   
4. Cornflakes = 3187
   
5. sucksatciv (EXP) = 1347
   
6. Bing = 830
   

Production
Accumulated total production
You will find the unmodified production in parenthesis if it differs. I only show relevant traits here.

1. Cornflakes = 30416 (23893)
   
2. Pindicator (IMP, PRO) = 24637 (20349)
   
3. Mjmd (PRO, CRE) = 23552 (19478)
   
4. Superdeath (ORG) = 16466 (15451)
   
5. sucksatciv (EXP, ORG) = 9233 (8775)
   
6. Bing (PRO) = 4959 (4802)
   

Total unmodified whip production

1. Superdeath = 7040
   
2. Mjmd = 6130
   
3. Pindicator (IMP) = 5300
   
4. Cornflakes = 3450
   
5. sucksatciv (EXP) = 2110
   
6. Bing = 1110
   

Total chop production

1. Cornflakes = 1499
   
2. Mjmd = 1102
   
3. Pindicator (IMP) = 1068
   
4. sucksatciv (EXP) = 942
   
5. Superdeath = 848
   
6. Bing = 713
   

Normally I would split up these numbers to their respective modifiers here. But due to a bug I am no longer able to do this. This bug wrote down the production object of the last turn even though it was finished already. I was able to fix that manually in the data for the T100 report. But for the T150 this is just too much work. That bug is already fixed in later versions. Although there seems to be another one that RefSteel noticed. In short the production code is nasty. smile

Financial Bonus
Current turn FIN bonus

1. Mjmd (PRO) = 139
   
2. Pindicator (PRO) = 111
   
3. Cornflakes = 69
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 16
   
5. sucksatciv (ORG) = 4
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 0
   

Accumulated turn FIN bonus

1. Mjmd (PRO) = 6683
   
2. Pindicator (PRO) = 5297
   
3. Cornflakes = 4023
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 2435
   
5. sucksatciv (ORG) = 1570
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 570
   

Severity of FIN nerf compared to BtS
Here the comparison for this lighthouse implementation compared to BtS (delta, reduction in percent):

1. Cornflakes = 3118 (-43.66%)
   
2. Pindicator (PRO) = 2060 (-28.00%)
   
3. Mjmd (PRO) = 1763 (-20.87%)
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 1009 (-29.30%)
   
5. sucksatciv (ORG) = 997 (-38.84%)
   
6. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 803 (-58.49%)
   

Protective Bonus
Current turn PRO bonus

1. Pindicator (PRO) = 86
   
2. Cornflakes = 56
   
3. Mjmd (PRO) = 60
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 3
   
5. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 0
   
6. sucksatciv (ORG) = 0
   

Accumulated PRO bonus

1. Cornflakes = 2681
   
2. Pindicator (PRO) = 2475
   
3. Mjmd (PRO) = 1728
   
4. Superdeath (FIN, ORG) = 350
   
5. Bing (FIN, PRO) = 256
   
6. sucksatciv (ORG) = 256
   

Misc
Great people born

1. Cornflakes = 12
   
2. Mjmd = 4
   
3. Pindicator = 4
   
4. Superdeath = 1
   
5. sucksatciv = 1
   
6. Bing = 0
   

I'm tracking a lot more but there is not enough information there to justify an own paragraph. Therefore a little summary here:
Civics
Government: Cornflakes still is in Representation thanks to Pyramids and pindicator, SucksAtCiv and Mjmd are still in Hereditary Rule. Although Cornflakes switched into Police State the last two turns
Legal: Cornflakes stayed in Bureaucracy until T178 when he switched into Nationhood. Vassalage is still the civic for Superdeath, Mjmd and sucksAtCiv. Pindicator joined them in T161.
Labor: Cornflakes switched into Serfdom in T150 and pindicator joined him in T161. The rest are slavers.
Economics: Cornflakes just switched into Mercantilism in T150 and pindicator in T167. The rest is in Decentralization
Religion: pindicator and Mjmd remain in Organized Religion. Cornflakes made a short visit to Organized Religion for 7 turns before turning to Theocracy in T157.

Comparing traits

The main goal of all this tracking of course is to compare the economic traits related around commerce income or maintenance reduction.




This really is a cottage poor map so far which explains these numbers somewhat. Also a bad map for PRO.

[pindicator]

So,  the timeline as I have it is:

• Pin and Mj coexist during expansion.  mjmd' s cultural pressure is annoying to pin, but that's Cre
  
• Pin eats most of Bing (And does all the work), Mjmd nibbles a bit at the margins and takes two cities for himself
  
• Cornflakes sends chariots through pindi's territory and taxes an unguarded city or two of Mjmd's. pin even helps him, building some roads. 
  
• Corn sends anl modest attack stack on Mjmd's border city,  Mj tries to hold
  
• Pin snipes two (?) Mjmd cities from the Inca conquest
  
• Mjmd is enraged by the backstab, abandons his defense against corn and gives him peace with significant concessions <- this is the moment when Corn turns from leader to pretty much won the game
  
• Mjmd does some attack (don't remember) on pin, eventually they make peace with more or less status quo ante, but they both hate each other deeply now
  

... which to me appears that pindicator first backstabbed Mjmd,  who was fighting the game leader, and then got furious when Mjmd responded.  And ever since he's been banging on  on how crazy it is for Mjmd to fight him when Cornflakes is the clear game leader. Which is precisely what he himself did,  when in fact Mjmd already had taken up the fight??

So in this story pin is the clear villain, who is totally oblivious as to how his own actions caused the mess they're in. But that sounds a bit absurd,  so probably there's an episode of that story that I'm missing? Of course that's a question directed as well towards pindicator for after the game's over (tomorrow?)

Also,  what a masterful, creative and entertaining game by Cornflakes.  finally one where all the evil plans come to fruition.
I long thought that Arabia had a lot of untapped potential,  but in a regular pick it's difficult to  justify the techs.  He really brought it home here.

This sums up remarkably my own thoughts as well, down to the feeling that I've missed something because of the apparent absurdity.

I haven't gotten through Mjmd's thread yet but you are missing the complete misunderstanding of diplomacy messages. Messages I received from Mjmd I took as demands - for example, he had a message come through where he asked me to give him my only wine in exchange for nothing. In addition, every time I suggested we gang up against Cornflakes he would counter a proposal which I interpreted as him wanting to go after someone easy and I could take on Cornflakes by myself. 

I would say things were already frayed well before the Bing war and the fallout from that.

Edit: I don't mean to say those are the correct interpretation of the messages. I'm just giving an insight into how I interpreted them at the time and how that was a basis for my thinking about Mjmd. I certainly remarked on several occasions about how baffled I was at understanding what people meant with the diplo messages I received

[Mjmd]

I was looking for help a lot of the time. I saw you as antagonistic without giving anything back. See excerpt from T100. 

T100

I've been trying to get Pin to throw me a happy. We are supposed to be allies, but you know..... evidently that only goes as far as letting him settle cities in my face. I do have some hope he may actual give now as he launched a GA and should have some happy to spare, but only some small hope.

If you read the thread there are large swaths of economic woes caused by lack of happy. I did not mean them as "demands" but as a "come on ally throw me a bone".

And yes I wanted us both to go after weak other people first. 1) I had no economy and no whip capacity (see happy issue) along with horrible attack paths vs Cornflakes. 2) This plan probably would have been successful if SaC didn't keep hemorrhaging cites to Cornflakes every 15 turns / I think we had a descent chance if I didn't get backstabbed at a crucial moment......

[Mjmd]

I do want to note: people seem to think of me as a pscho illogical player, but I challenge you to find many players willing to live with a city placed on their border 3 tiles away. I honestly can't think of any instance this has happened and resulted in long term peace, except this game. At least until I was backstabbed.

[pindicator]

I don't want to go circles on what we've already covered, but I don't think you are a psycho illogical player. I'm hoping to understand your thinking better and to show you mine, not to say I'm right and you're wrong or vice versa.

AI Diplo is very fraught with misunderstandings. For instance, I never thought Fish for Fish meant eternal allies. I just wanted a safe border on your side while I aimed to expand into Superdeath. The game didn't play out that way, but that was my initial plan.

[Mjmd]

Ya rereading my James Craig placement thoughts, part of why I placed it there was to try to have the largest gap between our cities that I could imagine so we would never have a reason to fight. IE you go west mostly and I go east mostly. However, my thinking changed when you placed Citadel as my reading was "I'm placing this because it is very obvious who the leader is and I can get away with it". From that point on I kind of expected you to be a little more cooperative, as I was putting up with that plant for the sake of not weakening either of us with goal of taking down the leader. So ya I made some "demands" (was actually begging), but it was because by that point I thought we had evolved to a higher level of cooperation.