[PB64] Lurking Randomly

[Mjmd]

So this is the last version of CtH where you get +1 trade routes at optics, which with his empire is just another currency. It is / was WAY too good. Why build castles for trade routes when you just get them for free? Ginger bulbed optics with his scientist he thought it was so good. If Comm just builds WE and cats he will be fine short term. It also gives him caravels if Amica gives him an opening. Long term yes he needs to get to galleons asap.

Edit: looks like Commodore changed planned tech to engineering. He is turtling when he should be ecoing. Again, galleons are where he actually gets vulnerable, he is turtling short term and leaving himself exposed long.

[Charriu]

T150
As always all the data can be found here: PB64 Tracking

Before we start some notable observations:

• You will notice that in general development is way slower compared to other PBs. That's because the map isn't as lush as our usual custom made maps.
  
• I'm not tracking anything that the players got from a hut. I tried to backfill gained techs as best as possible, but here I mostly rely on the players reporting.
  
• Game-wise the game got a lot hoter. We saw Gavagai, Amicalola and Naufrogger enter into a mutual slow-down-development phase helped by each other.
  
• Commodore made a comeback and even tried to make some gains against Amicalola and Ginger.
  
• Ginger enjoyed a mostly peaceful phase of development.
  
• Meanwhile Superdeath sits in his corner smoldering.
  
• More wonders were finished T105 (Pyramid, Gavagai) T136 (Shwedagon Paya, Ginger) T138 (Great Library, Ginger) T141 (Great Wall, SD) T144 (Parthenon, Ginger)
  

I also wanted to point out that this is a very interesting game for its economics. Unlike most other games players do not rely on the (by now somewhat stale) cottage economy. So far it looks like the economies are setup like this so far.

• Commodore: Water tiles with Colossus
  
• Ginger: Serfdom mills and going specialists with wonders
  
• Gavagai: Representation-Pyramid specialists
  
• Amicalola: No-cottages, Great Lighthouse, someday serfdom
  
• Naufrogger: FIN, ORG water tiles
  
• Superdeath: Mines
  

Now there is no new data compared to PB61, but I was able to fix the production trackings. Here a brief explanation of the new stuff:

Actual gold/science: This works like the previous science and gold tracking, but this time the slider setting is included. Therefore we know exactly how much everybody produced in those areas.
Production and TotalProduction: I thought about how to better judge all the hammer bonuses for buildings, units and wonders and thought that tracking the actual production might be a good metric to track. The production metric is somewhat useful though.
Tech Tracking: Similar to wonders and great persons I'm now also tracking when each player researched each tech. Small downside, I'm not tracking which tech the players choose from Oracle or Liberalism and tech tracking. The former should still be easy to guess in the context of other techs researched and the last is only used in diplo games in the past, so I didn't bother so far.
Tracking all the civics: I already tracked the labor civics in use. So why not track all of them.

General state of the game
City count

1. Amicalola = 15
   
2. naufragar = 12
   
3. Commodore = 11
   
4. Gavagai = 11
   
5. Ginger (IMP) = 8
   
6. Superdeath (IMP) = 8
   

Population

1. Ginger (IMP) = 81
   
2. Amicalola = 63
   
3. naufragar = 63
   
4. Gavagai = 61
   
5. Commodore = 59
   
6. Superdeath (IMP) = 51
   

Ginger is making a pretty good example that pop is sometimes more important then more cities for economic development. Still as others have pointed out in a war he might be lacking enough production lines.
This is also a first indicator that Superdeath is checked out.

Current turn Gold at 100%

1. Commodore = 315
   
2. Ginger (PRO) = 294
   
3. Amicalola (PRO) = 270
   
4. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 224
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 169
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 165
   

Commodore made a good choice with going for Colossus as it seems. Forcing him to go for Astronomy might break him. Gavagai is the only player running a specialist economy so I briefly want to mention how much virtual science he is making: 220. For all other players virtual gold and science aren't that far apart.

Current turn total maintenance

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 210
   
2. Gavagai (AGG) = 177
   
3. Commodore = 148
   
4. Ginger (PRO) = 136
   
5. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 126
   
6. Superdeath (FIN) = 100
   

Amicalola and Gavagai are hit hard by maintenance. For both a good chunk of that comes from unit maintenance as they both pay the most in that category (Gavagai 44 and Amicalola 54). You could also say that Gavagai is playing towards his AGG trait. Amicalola as we know also started on some courthouses helping bringing down his maintenance further.
Superdeath is way low in this ranking. This is because of two factors. First not running some expensive civics and second a heavy focus on courthouses bringing down his city maintenance to 29 compared to the other 8 city player Ginger with 51.

Current turn maintenance-gold delta

1. Commodore = 167
   
2. Ginger (PRO) = 158
   
3. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 98
   
4. Superdeath (FIN) = 69
   
5. Amicalola (PRO) = 60
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = -12
   

It's not looking good for Gavagai.

Accumulated actual science

1. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 6763
   
2. Ginger (PRO) = 5721
   
3. Commodore = 5208
   
4. Amicalola (PRO) = 3895
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 3777
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 3388
   

Very impressive numbers by naufragar. But I find it more impressive what Gavagai achieved so far with so low a science number. Poor brute force against his neighbors. It's fair to say that without Pyramid he would be totally dead already.
But what exactly did the players do with all those beakers. Well fear not here it is:




Ginger is still holding a lead in tech thanks to bulbing. Meanwhile Gavagai, Superdeath and Amicalola are in a tech race with the barbarians. Never a good sign.

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

1. Amicalola (EXP, PRO) = 11872 (11365)
   
2. Ginger (IMP, PRO, Forges, marble wonders) = 10660 (8769)
   
3. naufragar (ORG, Organized Religion, 3 forges) = 8085 (7211)
   
4. Gavagai (AGG, EXP, stone Pyramid, T143+ forges?) = 7851 (7109)
   
5. Superdeath (IMP, stone Great Wall) = 6968 (6798)
   
6. Commodore (CHA, Forges, Copper/Colossus) = 6779 (6289)
   

As you can see I also added the relevant traits in there based on what buildings are available by their tech. But due to lack of enough data I can no longer differentiate the extra hammers to their respective bonus. Still there are some interesting infos.

Amicalola only made 507 extra hammers, 283 more then T100. I would bet those mostly came from more granaries. maybe a wonder attempt or national wonder too.
Ginger made an astounding 1891 extra hammers, 1644 more then T100. At T100 he already was at 7 cities, so those extra hammers must have come from forges and those marble wonders although I would contribute most extra hammers to the presence of forges.
Naufragar made 874 extra hammers, 623 more then T100. He is running Organized Religion since T126 or so and he build Ziggurats almost everywhere. Those those two must be the biggest factor in that number. We know he has only 3 forges after all.
Gavagai made 742 extra hammers, 418 more then T100. Those most likely came from stone powered Pyramid and Moai.
Superdeath only made 170 extra hammers, 120 more then T100. We know he built stone powered Great Wall and more cities via IMP.
Commodore made 490 extra hammers, 289 more then T100. My guess is those came mostly from forges and some monuments.

I think Ginger is making a pretty good example how strong the IND forge bonus can be even though he isn't playing IND. He was incentivized to go early forges by a quest and IND players are similarly incentivized by their trait.

Financial Bonus
Current turn FIN bonus

1. Commodore = 63
   
2. Amicalola (PRO) = 53
   
3. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 39
   
4. Ginger (PRO) = 39
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 22
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 19
   

Since this is a rather cottage poor map this data indicates, who is working more water tiles. We already knew that about Commodore and naufragar, but it's interesting to see that Amicalola and Ginger are also more focused on water tiles. And I hate to point this out, but Superdeath totally misplayed his FIN trait. All of his coast cities have more then enough production tiles to easily build lighthouses even without the ORG bonus. Just build those lighthouses and work water tiles.

Accumulated FIN bonus

1. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 1998
   
2. Commodore = 1322
   
3. Ginger (PRO) = 1149
   
4. Amicalola (PRO) = 1139
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 575
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 495
   

It's safe to say that naufragar played into his traits.

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

1. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 189 (-8.64%)
   
2. Amicalola (PRO) = 561 (-33.00%)
   
3. Commodore = 522 (-28.31%)
   
4. Superdeath (FIN) = 665 (-53.63%)
   
5. Gavagai (AGG) = 904 (-64.62%)
   
6. Ginger (PRO) = 772 (40.19%)
   

Now keep in mind that only two players are incentivized to work towards improving FIN numbers. We see that naufragar is a lot less affected by all the FIN nerfs, while Superdeath suffers a lot more from the nerf. This is most likely because he has some more 2 commerce tiles, which under BtS would get the extra commerce.

Protective Bonus
Current turn PRO bonus

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 31
   
2. Commodore = 8
   
3. Superdeath (FIN) = 0
   
4. Ginger (PRO) = 0
   
5. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 0
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 0
   

Spot the great lighthouse player.
Accumulated PRO bonus

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 2023
   
2. Commodore = 521
   
3. Superdeath (FIN) = 199
   
4. Ginger (PRO) = 169
   
5. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 153
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 158
   

This happens when you have the most cities + Great Lighthouse and not enough foreign trade routes to fill them up.

Misc
Great people born

1. Ginger (PRO) = 3
   
2. Commodore = 3
   
3. Amicalola (PRO) = 1
   
4. Superdeath (FIN) = 1
   
5. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 1
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 1
   

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: Gavagai is running Representation since T105 (obviously). The others discovered Hereditary Rule for themselves (T129 Amicalola, T130 Ginger, T131 Commodore, T143 Naufragar). Superdeath is still a despot.
Legal: Vassalage was introduced for some players (T131 Commodore, T136 Ginger, T143 Naufragar) The rest are still barbarians.
Labor: Ginger discovered that you can exploit your population in serfdom too since T130. Commodore made a dip into Caste System in T148. The rest are still slaveholders. The Barbarians remain steadfast in their abolition of slavery since T97.
Religion: Naufragar went for Organized Religion since T112 and Ginger for Theocracy in T136. The rest are still pagans.

Civics
Nobody had any unhappiness due to war weariness so far.

Comparing traits

The main goal of all this tracking of course is to compare the economic traits related around commerce income or maintenance reduction. So let's do this:




Very interesting statistic. Of course FIN is strong with Commodore and naufragar because of their water based economy. Similarly PRO is best for Amicalola because of Great Lighthouse. Gavagai is making a strong showing of AGG. Superdeath too, but you are FIN my man. It's a shame that FIN is third for him.
But for the most part we see that ORG is the best general trait as this is a cottage poor map.

I think this game is still wide open with no clear favorite.
Stay tuned for the T200 report.

[Mjmd]

Is SD aware you can cottage grassland hills? Hippo should probably steal the grassland sheep and every one of those riverside grassland hills should be a cottage. He needs 1 dedicated commerce city........ He doesn't appear to have tried to specialize cities but rather is just every city gets 1 cottage and 4 mines........

[Mjmd]

Poor Gav got hit HARD. I do like Nauf peacing out for another city if he can. He can't really make more gains atm anyways, and if he flashes forces north it prevents Amica from feeling too spicy. Don't know if he will or not mind.

[Magic Science]

Charriu, that's the PB65 trait comparison screenshot, delete it quick.

[Sullla]

Thanks for the notice Magic Science, I removed the accidental screenshot from Charriu's post.

[Mjmd]

Is it sad that I read Charrius post, but I since I generally just read Charriu's conclusions I didn't even notice. I was more mad SD was doing crappy with my lovely Vicky.

[Charriu]

Ah sorry for the wrong screenshot and thanks to Sullla for correcting the mistake. The correct screenshot is now in there.

Also @Mjmd, I have conclusions?

[Magic Science]

Observations in honor of Turn 150:


Nice diversity of tile improvement schemes. Ginger is a miller, superdeath is a miner, Commodore refuses to learn Agriculture, and of course Amicalola refuses to build cottages. naufragar has explored Amicalola's core tiles now, yet he still mentions the threat of "maturing cottages".

I love the inversion of the usual disclaimer situation about the tracking. . "Now, Commodore's statistics make FIN Lighthouse look strong, but keep in mind that this is misleading because if you were an actual FIN player like superdeath, you would use a different strategy that would make the FIN bonus weaker."

Has no one built the MoM? Surely Ginger should have?

naufragar, all you must do to enjoy your 15 happy turns of peace is stop initiating wars with your neighbors. You are FIN/ORG Sumeria with a good city count and no crippling flaws in other characteristics. The situation is not so desperate. You can afford to wait a little while. Well, maybe not after this last round of conflict among the Big Mainland Three, but certainly before.


Great game.
And thanks for the prompt unprompted response, Sullla.

[Miguelito]

I strongly suspect that Ginger doesn't have Calendar. naufragar has it, but has to spend all the hammers that he doesn't have on units for wars that he declared but never wanted (fwiw that's working out better for him than I expected).