(June 13th, 2014, 20:19)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: One other comment: Can subbing players log into the game indicating which civ is being played?
mentioned this in the lurk thread. its a good idea, but parkin (and commodore before him) are taking a LOT of turns, and as the ages tick by thats a significant burden. On that note, I think turn split issues are going to be par for the course with multi-subs: no sub is going to be able to observe different log ins for multiple wars and keep them all straight. at least not with a pay raise... I think Parkin is acting in good faith, and I appreciate your being a good sport about it.
What follows is a bit of a tutorial on manipulating the ridiculous diplomacy interface. For those who know their way around this terribly designed "feature", feel free to skip this.
As usual, the glaring weakness of Civ's diplo window is that you can't get a good feel for what has happened without rejecting the offer, looking over the map, and then making the offer again to your enemy, hoping that they'll just blindly accept as you just did not. So, it isn't perfect, but you can get some information in spite of this, and usually enough to make a relatively informed decision how to proceed in an uncertain situation. The first thing to do is to check where units in the relevant theater are positioned. While the diplo screen freezes you from moving the map around, you can still access F1-Fwhatever, so use those. F5 shows unit positioning for whatever is visible for you, both your units and your opponent's.
It may take a discerning eye, but it's easier to make heads from tails in game doing this because the dots flash. It is clear to me that Caledorn's vulture is now immediately next to my worker. Caledorn plays after me, so this is an easy capture if I leave the worker and wasted worker turns if I don't. So, incentive to make peace...
...so long as he hasn't murdered any of my units elsewhere. That can be checked by looking for war weariness on the Foreign Advisor screen. Since this is our first fight, I don't even need to remember where the WW counter is to see if a unit has died. I can see that my chariot is alive (it was never in danger but this is for illustrative purposes), so I don't feel any need to r-r-r-RAGE! on Caledorn. So, press escape, go back to the diplo offer which is still annoyingly in the middle of the screen miles away from conflict and accept the offer. Presto!
That is all I needed to check for this particular scenario, but if you are worried about whether cities have been captured, you can check F1 to see if you still possess the city, and even click through that screen to get to the city screen for individual cities. By doing this, you can see where enemy stacks may be if they are in your city radius, but you can't do much more than see the blob stack (you can't decipher what troops are in the stack, other than the top defender that is displayed on top).
I doubt I'm the only person who has sorted out how to do this, but if you just blindly accept deals in frustration or blind desperation with your fingers crossed, see if this helps.
Anyway, there it is, vulture and worker living in perfect harmony for the next ten turns. I'll found my city on time this turn and not lose any worker turns. And we both have some border security for ten turns and can hopefully go back to farming without worrying about each other thereafter. For a while, at least.
As seen on the F4 shot above, Q also accepted my peace offer. I waited until my scout was on the edge of Q's land so that if he accepted my peace offer I would be teleported in the direction I wanted to go, south, gaining a free movement point. I'm just glad that Ruff didn't murder my poor scout.
Conveniently, the spear has moved a bit out of the way, not chasing my warrior of it's perch covering the worker laying down a road. Inconveniently, another annoying thing about losing a low odds battle is that the lucky winner gets lots of exp, in this case at least 5xp for the barb (I think it was exactly 5xp but I'm not looking it up). That's perfect for a nice double promo heal, .2h to Combat2 @ 1.5h. I can't whack it with my warrior, the odds are ugly, so I set up a test to see what odds are. (I'm terrible with that glorious combat calculator so I just set up awkward tests in a sandbox).
In this setup, I have a slightly stronger (.1h, I have no idea if this hits a break point or not) warrior attacking another warrior that is not receiving the 5% fortification bonus that I think I'll get in the live game, so my odds should actually be a little better than the 4.6% displayed here. I'll take that risk to keep the trains moving on time. Lay down the road and cross fingers.
Dhal still has three cities, I just settled number six and only haven't settled number seven this same turn due to the pestering barbs. Despite his extremely inadequate settling, his score is still ten points above novice/krill. I have no idea what is happening over there, but it seems things are not breaking their way quite yet. Maybe they are locked in a fight to the death with Plako and TBS? I guess I can dream.
Also, Jowy? Don't you get 86 points based on tech and land from your capital by now? Is he playing OCC over there? Someone please tell me (no spoilers obviously but very broad strokes if possible), I'm dying to know what his deal is.
(June 13th, 2014, 20:19)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: One other comment: Can subbing players log into the game indicating which civ is being played?
mentioned this in the lurk thread. its a good idea, but parkin (and commodore before him) are taking a LOT of turns, and as the ages tick by thats a significant burden. On that note, I think turn split issues are going to be par for the course with multi-subs: no sub is going to be able to observe different log ins for multiple wars and keep them all straight. at least not with a pay raise... I think Parkin is acting in good faith, and I appreciate your being a good sport about it.
Thanks for this. I understand that nothing is going to be perfect when one or two lurkers are having to routinely pick up slack for other players. I was more frustrated than anything when I wrote that, but I'm always trying to think ahead and prevent issues from happening later when the consequences are certain to be more severe. Realistically, I think we may need to get a couple more lurkers who can somewhat regularly play a turn here or there (in addition to regular turn players being a bit more plugged in playing their own civ...).
My primary concern is how we are going to handle regional conflicts when they inevitably arise. In my neighborhood, Caledorn has needed fairly frequent subbing, Q has tried to sell his civ repeatedly with no success, and Dhal is just fine missing turns. I see a scenario where all three of them may have a sub and if I'm at war with one or more, or even at war with these guys in succession, it will be very difficult for the sub to compartmentalize his knowledge and not use it to my disadvantage. It would not be an intentional effort to cheat me, nothing like that at all. But when you are playing for someone, you try your best not to wreck things for them, so that usually means doing everything you can think of to keep things from going sideways. I see unintentional consequences as very possible in this scenario.
All that said, I think it is still better than having turns missed and reverting to AI and I remain grateful to our Lurker Sub Overlords.
(June 14th, 2014, 13:06)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: 78% to raze the city, 72% to kill the vulture. I could totally kill the city and have my chariot in position to attack his Vulture near my upcoming city, should he decide to take vengeance.
But instead, a show of good faith.
Wow, what a nice neighbor you are! I would have totally taken the city shot.
I'm not sure if I've articulated how thin my military is right now. I just want to keep accelerating the growth curve. I think that I will outgrow Caledorn by a hefty margin when all is said and done, so I'm putting every effort into doing that. I have water on 3 sides and lots of empty land in the south that I mean to deny Caledorn while he has opponents both east and west and will have to defend two fronts. The fronts aren't close enough yet to be meaningful or advantageous in conflict, so I'm thinking I'll narrow the distance between us and hope his western neighbor does the same then if war comes later, I'll be able to concentrate forces better than he will due to having to defend both fronts from potential aggression.
Also, there is the concern that warfare at this point just puts both of us behind the rest of the field. Even if I cripple him by killing a single city, he still can throw waves (small ones, but still) of units at me and hamper my growth. It wasn't a decision made out of niceness, just calculated necessity. All things being even, I'd much rather raze that sucker and let the chips fall.
I'm going to hurry here, USA/Ghana is about to kickoff and I don't even have my scotchy-scotch-scotch-scotch poured yet...
Killed the barb warrior, workers laid down roads, city founds next turn.
I checked our stat tracker page earlier today at work and noticed a massive score increase for Oxy and knew immediately that so much score could only be Oracle + Tech + Religion at this point, so it was Code of Laws. And so it is. I hadn't considered that path and he could take Philosophy before I'd have a chance, but why do that? I'm sure he has other needs at this point and techs to back fill.
I'm running two scientists now in Lamar Valley. 14t until Scientist #2. I haven't figured up the exact number of turns to tech Currency/CoL/Mysticism to bulb Philosophy and take Taoism (and perhaps Ankor Wat for a shrine too), but I'm guessing I'm in the ballpark. I can throw in some wealth builds as needed.
Another reason not to antagonize Caledorn: I'm not strictly losing.
Now, to the main order of business...
AND BEFORE I FINISH THE REPORT, A SCORE IN THE FIRST MINUTE!!! jive:jive:
...with my scout, so not really war. I had no good safe options out of Ruff's borders. You can see the barb invasion stack (warrior + bear) indicated by the sign. Hopefully Ruff won't whack me. I'll try to avoid being obnoxious. I did not offer a cease fire because I don't want to be teleported out of his borders and into the firing line of the barbs.
Now that I think about it, it is a bit odd to see barb animals and spears on the map at the same time. Weird.
Enjoying enforced peace and scouting. Worker, breathe easy.
The barb problem is solved in the far south and I have a new city. Hooray. I put all three worker turns into the corn farm this turn. However, you can also see that the barb spear is on my other corn. I'll have to kill it after it pillages. Meh. Or maybe it will offer combat instead?
I declared war on Ruff and hopefully he will play before I have to leave for a trip tomorrow at 6:30a local time. I'll play if I can. If not, I may ask someone to check in and see if he killed my scout and to play the turn for me if I'm going to hold the game up. I should be home tomorrow evening, hopefully in time before the turn would roll.
I have mostly explicit directions on my micro plan, but I am waiting to see what a barb spear may have done near Lake so I don't have everything 100% laid out.
In a bit of a hurry so I'll just dump this here for my use later. This is the worker micro for Grant Village, the new city in the south. It will be size 4 with a granary in 11t.
T76 - A road1, C move NE/N, D move NE/NE; chop1 shared forest (goes to Grant)
T77 - A road2 (done), C chop1, D chop2
T78 - A move NW/SW/S/SE, C chop2, D chop3 (done, chop to Grant: whip granary next turn to 11/22)
T79 - A road1, C chop3 (done, chop to Canyon granary due EoT/grow to 2), D move SE, past1
T80 - A road2 (done), C move E/SE, past2, D past3
T81 - A moveS, farm1, C past4 (done), D move NW, cott1?
T82 - A farm2, C move NW, cott, D move SW/S/SE chop1/cancel
T83 - A farm3, C cott3, D move 1S, farm4
T84 - farm5 (done), C cott4 (done), D road1
T85 - A move 1N chop1, C move W cott1, D road2 (done)
T86 - C cott2
Other notes:
GS due in Lamar Valley EoT 86 (CoL 408/603: maybe build wealth elsewhere to afford better than breakeven research)
(June 17th, 2014, 20:52)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: I declared war on Ruff and hopefully he will play before I have to leave for a trip tomorrow at 6:30a local time. I'll play if I can. If not, I may ask someone to check in and see if he killed my scout and to play the turn for me if I'm going to hold the game up. I should be home tomorrow evening, hopefully in time before the turn would roll.
I have mostly explicit directions on my micro plan, but I am waiting to see what a barb spear may have done near Lake so I don't have everything 100% laid out.
In a bit of a hurry so I'll just dump this here for my use later. This is the worker micro for Grant Village, the new city in the south. It will be size 4 with a granary in 11t.
T76 - A road1, C move NE/N, D move NE/NE; chop1 shared forest (goes to Grant)
T77 - A road2 (done), C chop1, D chop2
T78 - A move NW/SW/S/SE, C chop2, D chop3 (done, chop to Grant: whip granary next turn to 11/22)
T79 - A road1, C chop3 (done, chop to Canyon granary due EoT/grow to 2), D move SE, past1
T80 - A road2 (done), C move E/SE, past2, D past3
T81 - A moveS, farm1, C past4 (done), D move NW, cott1?
T82 - A farm2, C move NW, cott, D move SW/S/SE chop1/cancel
T83 - A farm3, C cott3, D move 1S, farm4
T84 - farm5 (done), C cott4 (done), D road1
T85 - A move 1N chop1, C move W cott1, D road2 (done)
T86 - C cott2
Other notes:
GS due in Lamar Valley EoT 86 (CoL 408/603: maybe build wealth elsewhere to afford better than breakeven research)
Iknow you like microplans if i do this kind of stuff my game would be excelent,anyway building wealth is a very good move,becasue you have an academy some libraries so return from them will be greater,even focusing on hammers on some cities to build wealth will be very good for you.Some cities work cotages some hammers, building wealth makes things so easier comparing with not building wealth.
I declared war on Ruff and hopefully he will play before I have to leave for a trip tomorrow at 6:30a local time. I'll play if I can. If not, I may ask someone to check in and see if he killed my scout and to play the turn for me if I'm going to hold the game up. I should be home tomorrow evening, hopefully in time before the turn would roll.
I have mostly explicit directions on my micro plan, but I am waiting to see what a barb spear may have done near Lake so I don't have everything 100% laid out.
In a bit of a hurry so I'll just dump this here for my use later. This is the worker micro for Grant Village, the new city in the south. It will be size 4 with a granary in 11t.
T76 - A road1, C move NE/N, D move NE/NE; chop1 shared forest (goes to Grant)
T77 - A road2 (done), C chop1, D chop2
T78 - A move NW/SW/S/SE, C chop2, D chop3 (done, chop to Grant: whip granary next turn to 11/22)
T79 - A road1, C chop3 (done, chop to Canyon granary due EoT/grow to 2), D move SE, past1
T80 - A road2 (done), C move E/SE, past2, D past3
T81 - A moveS, farm1, C past4 (done), D move NW, cott1?
T82 - A farm2, C move NW, cott, D move SW/S/SE chop1/cancel
T83 - A farm3, C cott3, D move 1S, farm4
T84 - farm5 (done), C cott4 (done), D road1
T85 - A move 1N chop1, C move W cott1, D road2 (done)
T86 - C cott2
Other notes:
GS due in Lamar Valley EoT 86 (CoL 408/603: maybe build wealth elsewhere to afford better than breakeven research)
Iknow you like microplans if i do this kind of stuff my game would be excelent,anyway building wealth is a very good move,becasue you have an academy some libraries so return from them will be greater,even focusing on hammers on some cities to build wealth will be very good for you.Some cities work cotages some hammers, building wealth makes things so easier comparing with not building wealth.
I agree with this 100%. As much as I like a good cottage spam, I'm going to need lots of hammers to build up armies at some point, but I'm not there yet. In the meantime, those hammers can help me keep a high slider in my commerce centers.
My last note at the end that you quoted above regarding progress to CoL is not even a good estimate because I paused every unit and selected long builds in each queue so I wouldn't waste time while I sorted out worker movement at the new city. Very likely I'll be closer to CoL than that number even without using Wealth. That said, though, I do intend to burn a number of turns building Wealth, at least until I reach (or fail to reach) my target. I want to win Taoism at Philosophy, so after Currency I'll still need Alphabet, CoL, Mysticism, and Meditation (pre-req for Philosophy). I'll have a GS for Philosophy, but probably not another one to bulb Alphabet to make 100% sure that I get there first.
Anyway the main point of all of this is for shrine income on a huge map with tons of players. The shrine is going to be worth a lot of GPT, which is great for me because I'm going to have cheap Universities and Observatories, so I'll be inclined to build a lot of them and the shrine gold will help me to run a higher slider. Even if I could get another GS to clear both Alphabet and Philosophy, I may not want to do that because I don't want to generate my Great Prophet as GP#4 at 400 GPPs. That would take a while (57 turns with just a temple for a GP at 7 GPP/t), and 300 GPPs is much easier to achieve (43t), particularly if I build Ankor Wat, which I probably would if I landed Taoism. The sooner I get the shrine up and spreading along trade routes, the better off I'll be later on when the cash modifying buildings start to pile up. With a temple and Ankor Wat, I can get a Great Prophet in just under 9 turns as the third GP and 12t as the fourth. This might actually make a decent argument for starting up another GS now so I can bulb Alphabet and Philosophy; the three extra turns in generating the great prophet is more than offset by the amount of time it will take me to research Alphabet and this allows me to tech Philosophy faster, increasing my odds of landing Taoism, and also lets me get started on Ankor Wat earlier, increasing chances of landing the wonder. I doubt seriously, though that anyone is aggressively going for that wonder. I could be wrong. Others with religions will hopefully either have been slowly generating a GP with a temple for ages and won't need this one or be willing to invest 500h into it. Yikes.
I have an additional incentive to boost my research infrastructure: Classic Literature.
******************** *CLASSIC LITERATURE* ********************
--==Scenario==--
"Our eldest scholars have collaborated on an effort to collect, record, and preserve all of our oral traditions and unwritten literature."
--==Quest Help==--
"Classic Literature. You are tasked by your scholars to build enough Libraries to hold the newly recorded texts of our ancient stories and oral traditions." "To complete this quest, you must build X Libraries in your various cities. An additional reward option will be available if you control the Great Library if and when this quest is successfully completed. You will fail this quest if a rival civilization completes it first, or if you reach the Renaissance Era without having met the conditions."
--==Mechanics==--
Chance of Event in Game = 20% Required = Writing Tech Obsoleted By = Renaissance Era (Nationalism, Printing Press, Education, Gunpowder)
--==When Complete==--
"Congratulation! You have met the goals of our scholars and built for them enough Libraries to store their newly recorded works. Please choose a reward from among the benefits your new treasure trove of written literature are able to provide to you."
--==Options==-- "Our library with the largest repository of classic literature receives a research bonus." "Discover and decipher lost knowledge from within some of the literature." "The Great Library receives additional scholars to help boost research."
--==Results==--
Option 1 - "Our library with the largest repository of classic literature receives a research bonus." Cost : None Result : Library Yields +2 Research Commerce
Option 2 - "Discover and decipher lost knowledge from within some of the literature." Cost : None Result : Receive Technology from Ancient Era not Discovered
Option 3 - "The Great Library receives additional scholars to help boost research." Need : Great Library Wonder Result : Scientists where Great Library is based
--==Failure==--
"You have failed the quest of Classic Literature."
--==Appears in Events==--
"[Civ Adjective] scholars have successfully recorded all of their oral traditions and stories in to a new compendium of literature, thereby completing the quest of Classic Literature!"
This path requires Mysticism, Polytheism, Aesthetics, Literature to get the two free Great Scientists from the Great Library. I have to say, this is very tempting. With the four free GS, that would be (3x4) + 2 + 150% = 35GPP/turn from just the GL. Add NE and that is now 42GPP/turn. The only thing is I do not know if these additional scientists produce GPP or just beakers.
Anyway, these are my thoughts at the moment. I know this was a bit of rambling but it helps me to put my thoughts down where I can put some numbers to things. I'll catch up on turn reports a bit later today.
The south is now secure at Grant Village. I don't know why I didn't name that city Canyon instead of the one on the hill. It's on a river between hills. Sounds like a canyon to me.
I finally got graphs back on my near neighbors, so for posterity:
The power graph didn't take properly, but I'm ahead there too thanks to the recent axe builds. Overall, I'm secure over here. Every now and then I think with regret about not killing Cal's city (or at least trying), but I think I probably made the right (boring) call. The good news there is that my war declaration apparently caused him to realize the danger of spending all of his espionage points on me forever because he's stabilized now. This is good, now I can finally get graphs on wetbandit. I'll probably stop with graph chasing after getting Nakor's, he's my only immediate neighbor that I'm missing. I should have gone for him first, but when I started spending on wetbandit I didn't know Nakor was my neighbor and deemed wetbandit the greater threat.
I went over this in the last post. I'll need 11 libraries to complete the quest, which is a lot, but I have some time to get this done. The downside is that it expires with Education, which I want to target early with bulbs to churn out my half-priced Universities. I also want Metal Casting soon because I'll have secured all three precious metals in short order and this will let me work a bunch more cottages in my commerce cities. And I'll need to go back and get the religious techs too. I'm going to have to prioritize because I can't do everything. The Great Library is doable, though, and I'm thinking many people will ignore it, partly due to the bystander effect and partly due to the likelihood that at least half of the teams will not have access to marble. Hopefully the other half of the civs border a burgeoning juggernaut (like me ) and will feel the need to invest more in expansion and won't have time for trivialities like wonders. Wish in one hand..., right? We'll see.
Rival best crop yield went up 14 from T75 to T76. Wowzer.
Some welcome news, for now. I'm still going to chase Taoism because the shrine is going to be awesome, but this is nice to have as a backup option in case things don't work out for me. This was bound to happen sooner or later with Mardoc right next door.
There are a couple of converts to the Jewish faith, but the founder has yet to take the plunge. Good for whoever that is. And that makes me think that whoever founded Judaism is at least an immediate neighbor to both wetbandit and Hashoosh.
I'll unload my archer on the island next turn to stake my claim to the stone. Originally I was going to have an axe to land as well, but my cardboard cutout defense proved insufficient in the south so I had to scramble this planned defender down there. I'll load the settler from Yellowstone next turn and found the city 2t after. I won't have Masonry for a little while yet but that's ok. I don't need the stone NOW, I just want it for later.
Cal threw down a new city, Jade. I'm still trying to work out a dot map down here. I may see if I can plant 1E of the lake with sheep and horses first ring. That would be controversial, though, and perhaps not worth it. In my sandbox I had settled on where the horse is, apparently having missed that there was a horse resource available here. Another option is to settle 1S of the PH city that I had simulated in the north (which shares Lake's corn) and settle the next city 2E of the tundra deer for both sheep. I don't see this being a crowded border if I settle like this, but I don't particularly love the dot map either. I would actually rather grab silver with my next city down here, taking both sheep and silver with one city. Plenty to think about here, but my next wave of settlers will definitely need to claim land here before Caledorn gets to it.
Five more turns of security. After that, I'll see about moving my chariot out of the way, the one from the Buddhism splash screen at the top of this section, or if that is even necessary. I kind of like having it parked on such a juicy location. While I would love to settle there, it would almost certainly cause a fracas and, unless I somehow was able to wrest a first ring pig away from Cal, would be relatively food poor. But it would get marble, and I've done worse to get marble in the past.
That 116 crop yield must be laps ahead of anyone else. Mao maybe?
I had no good safe options out of Ruff's borders. You can see the barb invasion stack (warrior + bear) indicated by the sign. Hopefully Ruff won't whack me. I'll try to avoid being obnoxious. I did not offer a cease fire because I don't want to be teleported out of his borders and into the firing line of the barbs.
) and will feel the need to invest more in expansion and won't have time for trivialities like wonders. Wish in one hand..., right? We'll see.
