[PB58 Spoilers] Sea Monsters and Other Lurking Types

[pindicator]

No barbs this game

[pindicator]

Well I don't know if players have scouted enough to notice but I'm kicking myself over gold/silver placement. Some players have it close enough for their 2nd city (even if a stretch) and some do not - i did not think to check that when I was placing those resources, I was just going general vicinity to capital.

[civac2]

This settling of unsupported far-off cities baffles me.

[Mjmd]

This settling of unsupported far-off cities baffles me.

Gold shines bright in the human imagination.

I don't like ATs second city btw. Sure it will be ok with creative, but is 5 turns no improving the pig really a good thing? Also, if he had placed differently he could have picked up 2 more forests for his wonder ambitions. It would have left a little strip not taken later and cramped some other cities, but it would have been faster and better at getting whichever key wonder he is going for.

Also, been meaning to say. While on tighter maps I hate barbs and don't think they are needed, on larger maps like this one I would have definitely wanted them on to keep people from being too greedy.

[pindicator]

AT, that Silver is maybe your best tile and you're not going to give it any good food resources?

[Bobchillingworth]

Are you implying that it's not a great idea to settle an early city for a mining luxury with only a handful of FP for food??

[Mjmd]

It is a tough area to dot map. His more recent dot map is better; mostly. I skimmed most of the rest of the post. The deer yellow dot can share pig if he 2 pop whips Durkon. I hate the westernmost yellow dot. He should settle orange on the spice first probably. I know he's creative, but even still don't like not settling 1st ring food to get it improved pronto. Farm the floodplain and turn it into a production city. That western most yellow dot just seems like pure filler.

[Charriu]

Our group of civ4 speedrunners already sprinted past T50, so let's have a look at their numbers. As always all the data can be found here: PB58 Tracking

Before we start some notable observations:

• All except for AT opted to move their capitol to 1E towards the deer
  
• Serdoa built Stonehenge
  
• Quiete a few players settled their next cities further away from the capitol towards gold
  
• The start was approached very differently. Some went for workboats first (Jowy and AT), some later (Serdoa and Ruff) and some very late (Tarkeel and Superdeath).
  

General state of the game

I've added quiet a lot more data for this and all the following PBs. First of all the city count:

1. Tarkeel = 4
   
2. Serdoa = 4
   
3. Ruff = 4
   
4. Jowy = 4
   
5. AT = 3
   
6. Superdeath = 3
   

And here are the current amount of pop across those empires at the T50 mark:

1. Tarkeel = 8
   
2. Serdoa = 8
   
3. Ruff = 6
   
4. Jowy = 6
   
5. Superdeath = 6
   
6. AT = 5
   

With this PB I'm also tracking Gold at 100% and Science at 100%, but for these early turns they are identical to the once from Total Commerce. Mind you these are not reduced by the maintenance and science is actually 1 beaker higher then these numbers, which is the standard 1 beaker you always get even during anarchy. With this in mind here are the current turn numbers

1. Tarkeel (ORG) = 25
   
2. Serdoa (FIN) = 24
   
3. Superdeath = 21
   
4. Jowy (ORG) = 19
   
5. Ruff = 18
   
6. AT (FIN) = 13
   

At is notably lagging behind, but for a better overview let's look at the cumulative numbers. Just as with the current turn numbers you have to add something to these numbers (51) to get the science numbers. This is also a good time to tell you that these are the beaker numbers including modifiers like from libraries or from scientist specialist. The only modifiers that I've excluded are the KTB and the multiple-pre-requiste tech bonus. I did this so that we have numbers that are better to compare between players especially on a per turn basis.

1. Serdoa (FIN) = 654
   
2. Jowy (ORG) = 649
   
3. AT (FIN) = 628
   
4. Tarkeel (ORG) = 595
   
5. Ruff = 582
   
6. Superdeath = 553
   

We can see multiple interesting things here. First of all AT isn't doing as bad as the current turn numbers suggested. Remember at this early stage the current turn number fluctuate a lot because of low pop numbers and whipping. Second we can see that Serdoa is doing very well even though or because he didn't go for an early work boat, but keep in mind that he is playing FIN and as we will see later he did profit from FIN with 66 additional commerce. Without FIN he would be sitting at 588 just a bit better then Ruff. The same goes for AT, who would be at 576 behind Ruff. If we account for the FIN bonus then we see that Jowy would be on top as the earliest work boat builder, with everybody else way behind.

Now we have to set everything in context of maintenance. Thankfully I am now tracking the full picture of maintenance across all relevant data (unit cost, unit supply, civic maintenance, city maintenance and inflation). Adding everything together we have the following current turn maintenance numbers:

1. Tarkeel (ORG) = 9
   
2. Ruff = 8
   
3. Serdoa (FIN) = 7
   
4. Jowy (ORG) = 7
   
5. Superdeath = 5
   
6. AT (FIN) = 4
   

Now keep in mind that Superdeath and AT have 1 fewer city then the rest. With this maintenance we can now get a clearer picture of the current gold and beaker rates, which present themselves this way (keep in mind to add the extra beaker for science)

1. Serdoa (FIN) = 17
   
2. Superdeath = 16
   
3. Tarkeel (ORG) = 16
   
4. Jowy (ORG) = 12
   
5. Ruff = 10
   
6. AT (FIN) = 9
   

AT is doing a lot worse, but he isn't alone. But as we already know the current turn numbers are prone to fluctuation in these early turns. Luckily I can now calculate the cumulated gold - the cumulated maintenance.

1. AT (FIN) = 583
   
2. Serdoa (FIN) = 579
   
3. Jowy (ORG) = 573
   
4. Ruff = 539
   
5. Tarkeel (ORG) = 507
   
6. Superdeath = 485
   

To no ones surprise the two FIN leaders are doing well, because the FIN bonus already applies thanks to water tiles. It's also very interesting to see that AT as the only player settling in place is doing so well, but like I already mentioned him and Serdoa both benefit a lot from FIN. Without it they would be near Tarkeel's numbers.
We can also see that the players going for later workboat are doing the worst in this category (Tarkeel and Superdeath). Jowy is the best non-FIN leader in this category thanks to his early workboat start.

Financial Bonus

As a disclaimer just as last time, here I collected all the extra commerce a player (would) have gained if he was working Financial tiles. For example if you worked a coast tile you normally gain 2 commerce and 3 commerce with FIN. In this case my tool notes down 1 extra commerce. You will also find that I am tracking the CtH implemenation of Financial as well as the normal BtS implemenation for comparison.

Looking at the current turn numbers first:

1. Serdoa (FIN) = 6
   
2. Tarkeel (ORG) = 4
   
3. Jowy (ORG) = 1
   
4. Ruff = 1
   
5. Superdeath = 1
   
6. AT (FIN) = 0
   

Still a lot of fluctuation with these numbers in the early turns. AT is the best example of this. Right now doing 0 extra commerce, but as we will shortly see he earned his fare share via FIN already.

Here the cumulated numbers:

1. Serdoa (FIN) = 66
   
2. Ruff = 56
   
3. Jowy (ORG) = 52
   
4. AT (FIN) = 52
   
5. Tarkeel (ORG) = 15
   
6. Superdeath = 2
   

No wonders here. Those who worked water tiles early are doing good here. Now regular readers of my reports will know that I also track the BtS implementation, but as of T50 there aren't any notable difference in the numbers, which is simple because the water bonus is the same in both versions. There is on notable exception and that is Tarkeel, who started working some land tiles which would have earned him 32 commerce in BtS and Jowy, who would have gotten 62 commerce in BtS.

Readers of PB56 lurker thread will know that I already started tracking my 2.0 implementation of the water tile bonus. This bonus is essentially the same, but you need to build a lighthouse to unlock it for the city. But I have nothing special to report there because almost everybody made 0 extra commerce from FIN without early access to lighthouses. Only exception here is Tarkeel, who made 9 cumulative commerce under this new implementation.

Protective Bonus

Nobody took PRO in this game, but that shouldn't be a reason not to track it. I'm skipping the current turn numbers because they are boring. So here are the cumulative numbers:

1. Superdeath = 36
   
2. Serdoa (FIN) = 23
   
3. Ruff = 18
   
4. AT (FIN) = 6
   
5. Jowy (ORG) = 0
   
6. Tarkeel (ORG) = 0
   

3 players made sure to connect their cities and 3 don't. But there are some hidden details as we will see shortly. Similar to FIN I also started tracking my new PRO implentation (+100% trade yield instead of 75%). Across the board there are no differences with one exception that is Jowy. He would have earned 28 extra commerce under the new implementation. This is because his second and third city actually have a trade connection via the river (see here). Now as you may there his cities do not show a trade icon near the city name, but the actually have trade connections. The trade icon only appears if you have trade connections to your capitol.
So Jowy actually ran into one of the edge case I mentioned with my newest PRO implementation, but I think this totally ok and won't make the trait to strong.

Misc

I'm tracking a lot more but there is not information there to justify an own paragraph. Therefore a little summary here:

• AGG isn't generating anything so far
  
• ORG isn't generating that much. The player with the earliest ORG reduction is Jowy at T46 with 1.
  

I'm also tracking the labor civics and therefore can determine, when everybody switched to slavery. These are the times they did.

1. Serdoa (FIN) = T16
   
2. Tarkeel (ORG) = T24
   
3. Superdeath = T31
   
4. AT (FIN) = T31
   
5. Jowy (ORG) = T31
   
6. Ruff = T34
   

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:




Not that much can be said about the traits in this early stages that we didn't already know from past PBs

1. FIN is the best economic trait, mainly because it generates commerce as soon as you work water tiles.
   
2. PRO is the second best economic trait in the early game.
   
3. AGG and ORG only contribute more after T50
   

More can be said at the next report at T100, which I assume the players will reach in the next hours with their turn pace.

[civac2]

Interesting. I had assumed ORG reduction would already be in effect. Must be the low difficulty setting. Otherwise, I'm not sure the commerce comparison is meaningful at T50 (while it definitely is at T100, T150). The early game is about other things provided you can finagle just enough commerce to get vital worker techs. The analysis mainly concluded that FIN gets relevant early tech speed from water tiles while PRO gets relevant early tech speed from trade routes both of which are obvious without the analysis.

[Charriu]

Well you need to generate at enough civic maintenance to get ORG into effect. Because the empires are rather small in pop and city count and most players are running low cost maintenance civics you normally do not generate them that fast. Most of the time slavery gets first into the area of ORG related maintenance cost due to it's medium cost. And it's not like ORG isn't in effect; just only it started at T46.

EDIT: Also you are correct about how meaningful this report is. But it will be good to have the T50 report to look back at with the subsequent reports.