So far this has been a crazy game so far and the players keep on giving.Here is the T100 report. As always all the data can be found here:
PB61 Tracking
General state of the game
Before we start some notable observations in the past 50 turns:
- JesseL gave up on an OCC game and expanded albeit not to the same greatness as others. The recent war declaration against Joshy will be interesting to watch.
- Bing is forced into an everlasting war and race to the bottom by rekenner.
- Rekenner lost a city to barbs, which he recaptured 7 turns later.
- JackRB enjoys the spoils of peaceful development in an otherwise chaotic world.
- Vanrober is enjoying the specialist economy from his T75 Pyramid build and also got the confucian shrine at T95. Should be a great game from here on out.
- Meanwhile bellarch is drowning himself in commerce with his recent T98 Great Lighthouse build.
- Joshy has to show how good he is on the defense, but his recent discovery of Iron Working should help him in that regard.
First of all the city count
- joshybravo693 (IMP) = 13
- JackRB (IMP) = 12
- vanrober = 11
- bellarch (IMP) = 10
- JesseL = 8
- BING XI LAO = 7
- rekenner (IMP) = 4
And here are the current amount of pop across those empires at the T50 mark:
- joshybravo693 (IMP) = 55
- JackRB (IMP) = 55
- JesseL = 51
- vanrober = 49
- bellarch (IMP) = 46
- BING XI LAO = 17
- rekenner (IMP) = 6
The four strongest players so far keep close together, but bellarch needs to keep on his toes to keep up in these metrics (Great Lighthouse will help in that). As you can see JesseL only has one more city then the battered Bing. Oh and yes you read right: rekenner only has 6 pop in his 4 cities. Most of his pop is now in Bingland with an axe and a bow in their hand.
Like I already said in the beginning I'm also tracking the actual gold and science output of the players. But some additional info is needed. Like in previous PBs the gold number does not include maintenance cost of any kind and the science output does not include KTB and prereq bonuses from other techs. Reason is that I want to compare these numbers to the commerce output to see the effect of modifier buildings and in case of science I want to be able to compare the science output between players and KTB and prereq bonus are a distraction in this case. Both numbers do include extra gold/science from specialists, modifier buildings and other stuff I haven't mentioned so far. These actual numbers are most interesting when we add up all the numbers of each turn. For the current turn and the players potential income the virtual numbers are still more useful. These virtual numbers were my previous tracking and they treated the slider as always being on 100% gold or science. At first I want to look at the current turn numbers of the virtual gold income (all players running 100% gold). The 100% science value is parenthesis
- bellarch (FIN) = 161 (194)
- JackRB (ORG) = 150 (185)
- joshybravo693 = 150 (180)
- vanrober (ORG) = 144 (143)
- JesseL (PRO) = 79 (80)
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 51 (50)
- rekenner = 19 (20)
Somewhat similar like the previous metric, we have 4 strong players against 3 weak. It looks like the recent great lighthouse build brought bellarch to the top of this statistic, but his opponents aren't far away. All for strong players seem to have some kind science modifiers or specialist running even vanrober. For him you have to keep in mind that he has a shrine and is running caste system at the moment. From the other numbers I can see that he's making 42 gold while running 100% science, so if you subtract those from his gold value above you will see that he has modifiers in place.
When we look at the bottom 3 we can see that rekenner has more or less given up on making science contributions. He looks to be in full rage mode. Bing is surprisingly good for what he had to take up with. JesseL now gets the late effect of his first 50 turns having only half the gold and science income compared to each of the top players and that's with an equal amount of pop.
But as we know there are more things at play namely maintenance. FYI info this is the sum of all maintenance factors (city, unit, supply and civic).
- rekenner = 28
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 44
- vanrober (ORG) = 70
- JesseL (PRO) = 73
- JackRB (ORG) = 84
- bellarch (FIN) = 94
- joshybravo693 = 126
Once again we see the power of ORG dropping vanrober with 11 cities to the same level as JesseL with 8 and JackRB with 12 cities below bellarch with 10. Also noteworthy is that all except JackRB are paying between 9 and 13 gold in unit maintenance
With the maintenance at hand we can now include that into the gold income to see how much gold everybody could make this turn:
- vanrober (ORG) = 74
- bellarch (FIN) = 67
- JackRB (ORG) = 66
- joshybravo693 = 24
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 7
- JesseL (PRO) = 6
- rekenner = -9
Did I mention that rekenner is in full rage mode. Well -9 gold income is another indicator of that and no unfortunately I don't know how much cash he has at hand. What I know is that he ran 4 turns of 100% gold, so he won't be in strike immediately, but this will help Bing when the time comes. We also see that the recent expansion of josh hurt his economy a lot. Together with the war against JesseL this will through him back a bit for the next 50 turns.
Now let's see how good the player did across the whole span of 100 turns. For this we look at the accumulated actual science numbers, which I already have described above:
- JackRB (ORG) = 2418
- vanrober (ORG) = 2030
- joshybravo693 = 1955
- bellarch (FIN) = 1899
- JesseL (PRO) = 1445
- rekenner = 1058
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 866
While JesseL managed to keep up in this category in the first 50 turns we now see his decline due to late expansion. I also have to say that the free tech from Oracle for vanrober is not included in this number.
But what exactly did the players do with all those beakers. Well fear not here it is:
One thing that becomes immediately clear is that Vanrober managed to get more techs compared to the other 4, but that doesn't mean that much as the actual beaker count is more important to judge a lead in science. The difference is that Vanrober did not research Currency so far out of the 4 top players. Of course this also means that his science lead can increase with that tech. Some other noteworthy aspects are that rekenner got Iron Working in T87. Will there soon be swordmen in Bingland? I already mentioned that Josh got Iron Working shortly before his war with JesseL, which will be an important advantage in that war. JesseL researched Bronze Working in T60 and also switched into Slavery at that point. Lastly a sad truth is that our warring states of rekenner and Bing are only 2 techs ahead of the barbarians.
Financial Bonus
Last time this statistic was boring, but no more. But first I have to explain how this works for the new players.
Here I collected all the extra commerce a player (would) have gained if he was working Financial tiles. For example if you worked a river hamlet tile you normally gain 3 commerce and 4 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 implementation for comparison. Keep in mind that this is the first time we are playing with the newest FIN nerf, which was that water tiles only give extra commerce with a lighthouse present.
Looking at the current turn numbers first:
- JackRB (ORG) = 27
- bellarch (FIN) = 27
- joshybravo693 = 26
- vanrober (ORG) = 19
- JesseL (PRO) = 9
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 3
- rekenner = 0
We usually expect FIN players to do better in this category, because the have the real incentive to work 3 commerce tiles and bellarch provides in this category. This category also doubles as an indicator for how many cottages a player is running as those are the most tiles that provide 3 commerce. With this we also know that the bottom 3 are far from getting even towards the others. Lastly we also see the effect of a specialist economy with vanrober, who of course has a lower number in this metric.
Here the accumulated numbers:
- bellarch (FIN) = 542
- joshybravo693 = 525
- JackRB (ORG) = 394
- vanrober (ORG) = 226
- JesseL (PRO) = 27
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 21
- rekenner = 0
More indicators for what I've already that above. Stronger specialist economy focus for vanrober. Bottom 3 without any chance of getting back into the game. This especially true for rekenner, who is running no cottages for the entire game. It's safe to say that he only exist to ruin any hope for Bing to get back. This was the most expensive warrior kill for both players.
Some players may ask themself, how much would the players have made without the lighthouse-FIN-nerf. For this it is worth looking at the numbers from the previous FIN version, which did apply extra commerce for land tiles at 3 and water tiles at 2. Here the accumulated numbers with the lighthouse variant in parenthesis for comparison:
- bellarch (FIN) = 645 (542)
- joshybravo693 = 734 (525)
- JackRB (ORG) = 779 (394)
- vanrober (ORG) = 403 (226)
- JesseL (PRO) = 374 (27)
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 245 (21)
- rekenner = 21 (0)
Even though this is a map with less focus on water the players managed to run some more water tiles.
Lastly how sever is the recent nerf at the moment. Here the comparison for this lighthouse implementation compared to BtS (delta, reduction in percent):
- bellarch (FIN) = 314 (-36.68%)
- joshybravo693 = 444 (-45.82%)
- JackRB (ORG) = 633 (-61.64%)
- vanrober (ORG) = 293 (-56.45%)
- JesseL (PRO) = 374 (-93.27%)
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 282 (-93.07%)
- rekenner = 50 (-100%)
Those are big numbers, but what I've learned from the lighthouse-nerf so far is that these numbers are to be expect at the T100 mark. This is normally a point in the game in which you already have run a lot of water tiles in the past 100 turns, but the economy was not yet ready to support lighthouses in all coastal cities. We usually see these numbers drop to more reasonable levels at the T150 mark.
Protective Bonus
For our new players here I'm tracking the extra commerce you would get from the PRO trade bonus. This actually a bit tricky when foreign trade routes come into play later. Imagine this simple scenario you only have trade routes to only player and are PRO. Without foreign trade route your trade route makes 2 commerce. With a foreign trade route you would also get 2 commerce. In this scenario my tracking tool notes 0 extra commerce from PRO, because you would get the same commerce from foreign trade. Of course this gets a lot more complicated with bigger empires and for the most part the player can't know how much extra commerce they made. Therefore I calculate the players trade income two times. Once with the PRO bonus and once without. The delta is the actual benefit you get from the trait.
With this in mind let's look at the current turn numbers:
- JackRB (ORG) = 55
- joshybravo693 = 55
- JesseL (PRO) = 51
- vanrober (ORG) = 49
- bellarch (FIN) = 46
- BING XI LAO (FIN) = 17
- rekenner = 6
It's surprising to see so much PRO bonus at this point in the game. There are multiple factors for that. First this is a pangea map with no islands. This makes it harder for the players to connect via sea route. Secondly the players are running few open border agreements. We at least know that JesseL has few of them because of PRO and bellarch because of Great Lighthouse. In addition to all of this we have two wars running.
We will look at the accumulated numbers at a later point. For now the only interesting thing to add is that we have no difference between the current implementation of 100% trade bonus compared to the old 75% bonus.
Misc
I'm tracking a lot more but there is not enough information there to justify an own paragraph. Therefore a little summary here:
- Only 2 great persons are born yet, a prophet for vanrober's shrine and a scientist for josh's academy.
- Everybody is running slavery except for vanrober, who switched into caste system 3 turns ago.
- Organized Religion was adopted by vanrober T89 and bellarch T75
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:
As you can see I changed the layout a little bit again in prepation for the new production tracking. I already color coded the 4 economic traits so that you easily see, who uses which trait. Except for FIN every trait has a hammer bonus so I included all of them. But I'm still disappointed in how this looks. I like how the 4 economics traits have light colors that are easy to distinguish. But with 7 more traits I'm running out of these numbers. If anybody has a better idea how to do this I'm all ears.
As for the actual comparison of traits I have to say after being boring for the first 50 turns this now is a mix of everything. We have
- We have two player for whom AGG would be the best and second best trait (Bing and rekenner)
- All the other three traits are the best, second best and third best trait each time for 2 players
- But if we look at only the 4 top players we get a more clear picture
- FIN gets 2 first places 1 second place and 1 third place
- ORG gets 1 first place and 3 second place
- PRO gets 1 first place and 3 third places
- This now looks more like the usual order.
Stay tuned for the T150 report.
