Secrets of the Deep: Northstar (Lanun) vs. Mardoc (Svartalfar)

[Qgqqqqq]

See, neither of those two is what I'm considering. If I do anything it will be to make it flagged as a spell, and only usable once per turn.

Why leave open a door to cheating at all?

Dave answers this well, even if it wasn't directed to it. I'd add that by the point one reaches Guybrush, one has literally dozens of ways to abuse the RNG if one so chooses - exploring with each of ones units, trialling each odds, and so on. If someone wants to cheat, they can do so easily, and leaving a single RNG call open is going to have an enormously trivial effect on that.

Not to mention reading threads, opening opponents saves t0/cracking saves later on in the game, and so on. Making things slightly harder for people to cheat in a very noticeable way under very specific circumstances is not, and never will be, a high priority in this community.

[Kragroth]

Low hanging fruit should be a priority for any organization

[Bobchillingworth]

I didn't realize Qg was an "organization" :P

[Agnes The Orphan]

Should they? Maximum efficiency must surely be achieved by approaching those problems with the greatest advantage relative to the cost invested.

In that context, low hanging fruit are not necessarily the priority, as they may still not give the best possible return on effort.


Anyway, that was all off topic even for the off topic. The point here is that even tasks which I would consider phenomonally easy to code are not no effort involved - I'd estimate that's an extra 10 minutes of work between locating the necessary files, making the change, saving all the files in the appropriate places, saving in my test-build, testing for errors, etc. That might seem like nothing, but given that its an issue I strongly believe has come up exactly never in the history of competitive MP here, and the minimal cost to people liking it for the feature as it's intended, and it's not even clear that this is a positive change to make.

-Qgqqqqq

And that's not even considering that this is another thing to pile on top of all the work that needs to be done, which slowly increases the level of intimidation for me wanting to code it.

[Northstar1989]

Alright, so my Worker has begun making his way east to farm some Flood Plains...



Interesting thing I noticed (and the reason for my taking a route over the Cotton to get to the Flood Plains)- a Plantation takes exactly the same number of turns as a Farm to build...

This means it may actually be worth considering farming-over the Grassland Cotton instead of building a Plantation over it...

After all, I only need 1 Cotton resource for the happiness-bonus, and with Agrarianism+Aristocracy the Farm would become +1 Food +2 Commerce- strictly superior to a Cotton Plantation (+2 Commerce) and better yet after Sanitation (if this game goes that long- highly unlikely) or one of the random events that improves a Farm's yields... (for which the Plantation has no comparable random events)

By the way, does having more Farms improve the chances of getting one of the random events that affects Farms


Anyways, the Warrior is now 10 hammers from done...



Also, based on the projected growth-patterns from before, I realized I can re-assign my 2nd citizen to work the Remnants for a few turns (up to 3 without delaying any growth-thresholds) and still get exactly the same net result...

I might want to hold off on doing that, however. My Warriors won't do anything but sit around my capital anyways (I don't intend to risk them exploring- all it would take is a Giant Spider in hiding to make a nice meal out of one...) and if I'm extremely lucky I might actually get a trait-change to Raiders or Aggressive before my next Warrior completes...

Technically the same could be said for Workers with Industrious- but they actually DO SOMETHING every turn, so there is a penalty to waiting to produce them...


Also, here is a zoomed-out view of the map:



Notice Letum Frigus and Bradeline's Well to the east. If I had wanted to be REALLY EVIL, then I would have pulled a double-take on Mardoc- already I lead him to believe I would probably be picking the Lanun by asking for a water-rich map, so he felt safe including All Unique Features... I never actually said anything about my civ pick until the map was decided on, however- so I could have chosen the Illians, and had a guaranteed Aggressive trait from Letum Frigus (of course I would have gambled in doing so on Letum Frigus being easily-found, a bet that as it turns out would have paid off...)

Anyways, my sense of fair-play runs deeper than that. I only requested a water map (a request which Mardoc could have easily denied) in the first place because I wanted to give the Lanun a try, and IMHO they are an extremely weak faction without water nearby (although this map seems to be pretty dry- I don't see how this could possibly be the water-rich map that Mardoc promised...) Of courses, Mardoc chose the Svartalfar, and it's looking more and more like this map contains very few forests (and even fewer resources under forests aside from a couple Silk) so it doesn't seem that it worked out particularly well for him either...


Now, on to the Demographics...



Strangely, Mardoc's statistics seem to still be flat. He hasn't increased in food-production like would be expected if he had started off with a Worker (Elven Workers are only 20% slower...) He hasn't grown like would be expected if he started off working on anything else. And even his Soldier-count hasn't increased like would be expected if he had been churning out military-units instead of a Worker...

I can't figure out what he's up to that his economy would have remained so absolutely flat...

The Solider-counts and population-totals *DO* update at the end of each turn, right?


Oh, and last but not least, here's more confirmation that Mardoc's population hasn't apparently grown yet...



Maybe he decided to prioritize a Farm under one of the handful of Forests near the start position. But with the availability of a Grassland Rice so nearby, that seems absolutely pointless for an opening-move...


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Our Scout reached Letum Frigus!



But, of course, there is nothing useful we can do here... Too bad I didn't choose to play as the Illians (who also have the rather nice ability to neutralize the Amurite Golden Age with Stasis, if I'm not mistaken... Golden Ages *DO* continue to tick during Stasis, right?)


Also, it turns out my whole micro-predictions from before were broken/incorrect. Why? Because it takes 5 turns to build a Farm on a Flood Plains instead of 4...



Not that it would have changed my Worker priorities- but it MIGHT mean it was a good thing I switched off Remnants of Patria before (in fact, by shear chance, my timing for that seems to have been perfect- I worked it *just* long enough to get a Warrior with a free Commando promotion on the last turn before I lost Raider due to Insane, but not a turn longer than that...)


And, the Svartalfar have grown!



It seems the reason their city growth remained flat an extra turn was due to revolting into Agrarianism! I should have thought of that when I was confused before:



Their food-production now actually exceeds mine, but luckily my Workers are faster... Still, thanks to having a more appropriate starting-tech for this map (Agriculture when tons of food resources and Flood Plains laid nearby) as well as a TERRIBLE traits-gen with Insanity for me, it looks like the Svartalfar will soon (slightly) have the advantage... (my decisions so far have been spot-on perfect, there is not a single thing I could have done better- it has just come down to bad luck with the map-gen and my Insanity role that have disadvantaged me... Of course, if I could make things worse if I start making mistakes in the future, or Mardoc could lose his advantage by doing the same...)


I mean honestly, what could I do? This was supposed to be a water-rich map and I choose the Lanun (who are only good on water-rich map), but somehow Mardoc genned a land-rich map (which makes me question whether he actually used the map settings he said he would and didn't choose something else by accident or forgetfulness- which I have no way to check as the mirror maps' water settings don't show up under Settings...) And, by shear chance (assuming he didn't cheat by re-genning maps until he got one he liked- which I am NOT saying he did...), he generated a map where starting with Agriculture gave him an overwhelming advantage, and next to a Unique Feature (Remnants of Patria) that also neutralized the main early-game benefit (a higher happy-cap) of one of the traits (Charismatic) that I could, and in fact did happen to gen into with Insane...


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

But, of course, there is nothing useful we can do here... Too bad I didn't choose to play as the Illians (who also have the rather nice ability to neutralize the Amurite Golden Age with Stasis, if I'm not mistaken... Golden Ages *DO* continue to tick during Stasis, right?)

No.

Boy would it be stupid if they did.

Why? Because it takes 5 turns to build a Farm on a Flood Plains instead of 4...

Something I told you in another thread.

[Northstar1989]

But, of course, there is nothing useful we can do here... Too bad I didn't choose to play as the Illians (who also have the rather nice ability to neutralize the Amurite Golden Age with Stasis, if I'm not mistaken... Golden Ages *DO* continue to tick during Stasis, right?)

No.

Boy would it be stupid if they did.

Awww.. Still, the Illians would have been AWESOME on this map. With such a fertile start, and Letum Frigus so nearby... *shudder*

Why? Because it takes 5 turns to build a Farm on a Flood Plains instead of 4...

Something I told you in another thread.

Ummm, don't take credit for what Molach told me on PBEM 41... (though it appears *HE* was right)

The only other thread you could've posted it in would have been my duel vs. Bob, and it definitely didn't come up there... (because there were, thankfully, no Flood Plains near the start)


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

Err...

Nope, they don't. Try building a farm on a floodplain(/desert), and it'll always take longer than on the same grass.

(This is the case in base, and has not been changed in EitB.)

[Northstar1989]

Err...

Nope, they don't. Try building a farm on a floodplain(/desert), and it'll always take longer than on the same grass.

(This is the case in base, and has not been changed in EitB.)

That was only AFTER Molach first brought up the subject. And frankly, I forgot about it since it was just you chiming in to back him up (he was correct).


Regards,
Northstar