(November 18th, 2012, 07:02)Kuro Wrote: No idea if any of that is right, but the effort is impressive, and certainly doing better. In earlier game terms, I like the dotmap you put out: Looks like something I'd make.
Yay, I feel all validated! Danke.
Ehehe...I like seeing people with drive. It feels good.
How about 2W of the Rice? (AKA 1SE of the Lake). It allows you to obtain both Sugar and Rice, be coastal for 3 food Lake, settle the Rice/Whales city if you want(Though Whales are kinda weaksauce). It'll also have minimal overlap with your cities currently dotmapped or with 1SW of the Clams.
(November 19th, 2012, 20:43)Kuro Wrote: Ehehe...I like seeing people with drive. It feels good.
How about 2W of the Rice? (AKA 1SE of the Lake). It allows you to obtain both Sugar and Rice, be coastal for 3 food Lake, settle the Rice/Whales city if you want(Though Whales are kinda weaksauce). It'll also have minimal overlap with your cities currently dotmapped or with 1SW of the Clams.
I wasn't giving it that much more thought as yet, but on further reflection that may be the best spot in such a plan. I'm not fond of the Rice/Whales location (that's the sort of place I'm used to settling in games where I've normally seen about twelve billion desert tiles by now ). Coastal is very nice, and the fact that EVERY water tile in that radius is coast rather than ocean (as opposed to 1NE) is a nice bonus.
I'm still kind of half-considering throwing a city on that one-tile-wide hill (1S of clams) so as to fit another city onto the bridge there, tho, and that could potentially change plans. So, more explore!
T19: Speaking of 'explore more', I got the save in my inbox shortly after I finished that post! And found lotsa goodies:
Mmmm, tasty.
Tentative protodotmap, subject to review as events and goodie locations warrant:
In particular, I want to see if there's anything to the NW before fully endorsing this. For example, I can see coastline on the edge of the fog, 4W of the sugar. And canal locations are potentially highly useful in this setup, even if fortresses can be used to "fake it". (I don't much care for 'em personally. They take forever in worker time to build and get in the way of other improvements. I've used them before as canal substitutes, tho... in ice, tundra, and desert. )
In demographic news, the spreadsheet will be updated and available shortly. Sareln's capital has grown to 2 and Fintourist has teched again, and that last is being used as an opportunity to re-review my GNP tracking. (In particular, I am now quite certain that for Civ4, 99.99999 rounds to 99, not 100 which affects how I read that part of the screen in particular). My best guess based on the timing and soldier count change is Mining, but I'll try to "verify" that as best I can in the near future.
In two turns, my second citizen in Myst, completed research in Agriculture, and the finished copper mine all arrive. A banner year, that one will be.
And on a completely unrelated note, I've been listening to this way too much:
(November 19th, 2012, 21:44)Kuro Wrote: 1S of the Clams seems bad, you lose the Fish resource. You can cram another city into the bridge with the current Clam city, I feel.
That's part of the thinking, yeah, I was just worried about orphaning anything further to the west, and that's not nearly as much of a concern anymore.
Fintourist has added a tech this turn. Also, rival average soldier count went up 750, which means 3000 soldiers added - 1000 of that is Sareln's new citizen, so the other 2000 is probably a tech. That limits the field to one of Hunting, Mining, or Sailing (he already has Animal Husbandry). GNPs have been pretty consistently in the 19-20 range during that time. In particular, here's the numbers from T13 (the turn before the last time Fin had a tech complete) to T19 (now):
turn
best
avg
worst
calculated
probable
T13
21
19
18
21-[20/19]-[20/19/18]-18
21---18
T14
21
19
18
21-[20/19]-[20/19/18]-18
21---18
T15
21
19
18
21-[20/19]-[20/19/18]-18
21---18
T16
22
20
19
21-[21/20]-[21/20/19]-19
21-21-20-19
T17
22
20
17
22-[22/21]-[22/21/20]-17
22-21-20-17
T18
21
20
20
21-[21/20]-[21/20]-20
21-21-20-20
T19
22
20
20
22-[21/20]-20-20
22-21-20-20
"Calculated" is my math skills at work tying to figure out those two numbers in the middle, and "Probable" is an attempt to narrow down those ranges based on the most consistent numbers (assuming that folks don't keep constantly switching around). Drives me up a wall. Clearly the solution is to kill off one rival so as to make this easier.
At any rate. The T17 sudden drop and rebound in Rival Worst was a little odd, but can potentially be attributed to Fintourist abruptly switching away from then back to Fish for one turn; perhaps to get in an extra turn of production. There's no obvious blip in Mfg Goods average to reflect this, but frankly there the numbers are so low he could be anywhere from 1hpt to 3hpt and I wouldn't see it. (Nobody's above 3hpt right now. Growth growth growth.)
I didn't think he was researching a starting tech 'cause I didn't see room for a GNP drop. However, there's pretty obviously lots of room for a 2bpt dip in the numbers up there! So my prior assumption that he was going for a prereq tech is clearly potentially faulty.
Anyways. That all suggests that I can stick to my estimate of 15 bpt for his research rate for a prereq tech and presumably assume about 13bpt for a starting tech. I'm going to blithely assume that he was the rival worst 17 gnp in T17, which means 11 beakers that turn. He would have also have had about 11 beakers overflow from last time - so 11 beakers overflow, 11 from the production turn,and 4 turns of 15 or 13bpt. That gets us:
Prereq tech: 82 beakers now (67 last turn).
Starting tech: 74 beakers now (61 last turn).
No prereq tech can be picked up at those counts. However for a starting tech... Mining, at 66 beakers, fits in nicely there.
How the hell I'm going to be able to keep up with this as things grow I have no clue. I feel like I'm doing submarine navigation, or something else that's similarly handled almost entirely by dead reckoning. Special inspirational photograph here!
T20: Open up the save, and... hello, hello, what's this?
A Hydra! How fascinating. Our scout is a tad shy, though, and heads back inland...
...discovering nothing significant, really.
Back home at Myst...
The mine completes this turn (got myself confused in that last post, d'oh) so I swap to it temporarily to finish the Warrior. Want to get started on that Settler soon.
In demographics news... the spreadsheet is updated. Lots of scores went up by large amounts - presumably thanks to land points being added (that's why Sareln and I were the only ones whose scores stayed the same - Azza and Hydra both added 17 points; Fintourist added 20). Soldier count also shows 2000 soldier points being added.
I'm not quite sure how to distinguish between all the changes quite yet, so I'm merely recording the results for now and will come back to them later. (Also, my sister and her family will be arriving in just under an hour... ) I was at one point thinking "omfg, did Fintourist add a second city or something?" but if that had happened it'd potentially be visible in the Approval/Life Expectancy numbers and they haven't changed.
T21: The save arrived in my inbox not long after gatherings broke up and kids had gone to bed, so despite my Thanksgiving timing-related worries, I got to pounce on it anyways. w00t.
So!
Our Brave Jungle Explorer...
Open up the save and...
Huh. Then I stepped forward (onto the same tile as Sareln's scout), and...
...crowded neighborhood here.
So it looks like my original "central area" map hypothesis may have been correct (despite my getting my own location wrong). In light of that, here's a new variant thereof:
Because it's never too early for speculative bullcrap.
It's probably only a matter of time before I run into Fintourist.
Judging by seeing coastline through fog-gazing, that central spot is pretty darn small, actually. More reason why my Speculative Bullcrap Map is, well, speculative bullcrap.
Back home at Myst...
To Chop Or Not To Chop? That... was the question.
It abruptly occurred to me that Expansive gives bonuses only on WORKERS, not Settlers. Whoopsie daisy. So I was thinking chops would be potentially suboptimal. Then I decided maybe I should, like, y'know, actually plan it out (whoa! ) and figure out what it'd look like.
This is what I came up with. Note: Myst is presently getting 6 food surplus and 6 hammers per turn.
T21: Settler 0+12/100, worker moves to chop hill forest 2S of Myst
T22: Settler 12+12/100, worker starts chop (1/3)
T23: Settler 24+12/100, worker continues chop (2/3)
T24: Settler 36+32/100, worker finishes chop (3/3)
T25: Settler 68+12/100, worker moves to chop forest 2S 1E of Myst
T26: Settler 80+12/100, worker starts chop (1/3)
T27: Settler 92+12/100, worker continues chop (2/3), Myst expands to 3rd ring (includes the wet rice now)
T28: Settler completes 104/100, worker finishes chop (3/3), overflow into Worker2 0+45/60 (I think I've got the +25% right here... 4 overflow + 20 forest + 12 production = 36 * 1.25 = 45)
T29: Worker2 45+15/60, Settler sets forth, worker moves and starts farm on rice (1/4).
T30: Worker2 completes with 0 overflow and moves to rice, Settler moves to second city site, Worker1 continues farm (2/4)
T31: Myst gets +6 hammers on something (need to figure out what to build - potentially a third Worker, as Pottery's a ways away), Animal Husbandry research completes (The Wheel is next), farm completes, second city founded, Viqsi pats herself on the back (this step optional).
T32: Mostly vague, but presumably I'd want to send my workers to the cows adjacent to the second city and pasteurize 'em, and my second city will be partway through a Work Boat.
It fits so nicely that I decided to go for it. We'll see if I got the numbers and timing right in a few turns or so.
Incidentally, if it weren't for being Creative, I wouldn't be able to get the rice farm done that quickly because it'd be outside of my cultural borders when I get the first Worker on it. I love that trait more than is probably healthy or legal.
In demographics...
The spreadsheet is updated. I had suspected that 17 points was the magic number for "first ring land tiles controlled" in this game, and sure enough it was. The only changes of note this turn are Sareln's score catching up (he also founded his city late) and Azza's earlier whip anger fading. Oh, and my score going up 27 points due to land+research+growth all in one turn.
Fintourist has an extra 3 points that arrived last turn along with land tiles score jump. I still don't know what that's from and it has me a teensy bit worried. My best guess is that this is my indication that he was the guy who didn't have a lake in his first ring, but the math seems kind of off for that. (3 points for one tile?) Still, I can't think of any other reason why he'd have that point difference.
I seem to have only one other rival who's actually built a Warrior (that's my best explanation for last turn's soldier count jump). It wasn't Azza or Hydra, as in either of those cases Rival Best or Rival Worst would have changed (13000 Best if it was Azza, 4000 Worst if Hydra because that would have sent Sareln back to the bottom), so either Fintourist or Sareln also have weapons of WAR. I strongly suspect that production has been put towards Warriors by others (for growth time), but none have actually been completed. If present trends continue, though, then over the next 120 turns I can march my fearsome Warrior against my single defended rival, win the coinflip because it's either that or I ragequit, then walk into everybody else's undefended capitals and claim victory by conquest. RAR!
Also, I went ahead and snapped a shot of the Top 5 Cities, just because:
Trivial bonus from Creative: having the top city in the world in the first few dozens of turns is pretty easy. We're #1! We're #1!
Please pardon my being especially weird and/or silly today. I've spent most of the day chasing around my 6-, 5-, and 2-year old niece and nephews, and that tends to have a fun effect on your brain.
Report on The Game? Yeah, it went great! The Team Up North has been duly chastised, and we've got our perfect season! True, the petition for a presidential pardon so we could play in the National Championship's been removed, but still...
...wait, what? Oh, the Civ4 game.
T22: Status on opening the save:
Looks like we could have Azza paying a visit in 7-10 turns or so. Sareln's scout is heading northwest, which makes me feel better about my guess w/r/t his general location (north of me).
I was planning on heading to that same hill as Sareln's scout, actually...
...and now it's just him and me alone against the world.
Speaking of Sareln and I against the world. Let's look at that screenshot again, only marked up a little this time:
Note the following:
Both Financial District civs (Azza and Fintourist; I'm not sure which is which but those are my best guesses) can be approached from two tiles, and have two tiles they'd have to defend (one especially so).
Hydra can be approached from two tiles, and has only one tile to defend.
Sareln and I? We can be approached from FOUR tiles and have two to defend.
In the immortal words of Jubal Early (the bounty hunter, not the Confederate general), "Does that seem right to you?"
I'm beginning to wonder if I should push early for Iron Working. Creative means no early border in the 'verse can stop me, and I can develop quickly enough to potentially make that happen. But the focus is supposed to be on navies in this game, and so that may be a sucker's bet. Hrm.
Also, I finally remembered that I can now decide where to spend espionage points now. Starting all on Azza to get graphs.
Rival average soldier count went up 500, indicating 2000 new soldiers - all of which are on the Rival Best figure, which we're confident is Azza (thanks to Bronze Working). So that means he's probably completed a Warrior. There go my conquest plans.
Fintourist's score goes up 4 points, and the Rival Best in population is now 21000. Conclusion: his capital is now size 3 - confirmed this via the Top Five Cities screen. Rival Worst Crop Yield has gone up from 9 to 10 at the same time. That could actually be him, although I'm somewhat tempted to assume otherwise - if during that hypothetical swap from GNP to production he also went low on food (but not so low as to become the new Rival Worst, giving a food surplus of 3), that'd give him enough overflow that 5 food surplus (9 rival worst - 4 for two citizens) would be enough to grow in four turns. Seems a little counterintuitive to me for some reason, but it does fit with prior assumptions. I guess I'm not fully trusting my own dead reckoning.
Unshakable proof of Civ4's shabby and disrespectful treatment of fractions: Rival Best production is 4. Rival worst is 1. Rival average is... 1. Last I checked, (4+1+1+1)/4 = 1.75 which rounds up to 2, but clearly we use the "new math" here.
Sareln has a 6 point increase, indicating a new tech. He last finished on T16, so let's get out the GNP tea leaves table again...
turn
best
avg
worst
calculated
probable
T15
21
19
18
21-[20/19]-[20/19/18]-18
21---18
T16
22
20
19
21-[21/20]-[21/20/19]-19
21-21-20-19
T17
22
20
17
22-[22/21]-[22/21/20]-17
22-21-20-17
T18
21
20
20
21-[21/20]-[21/20]-20
21-21-20-20
T19
22
20
20
22-[21/20]-20-20
22-21-20-20
T20
22
21
20
22-[22/21]-[21/20]-20
22-21-21-20
T21
22
21
20
22-[22/21]-[21/20]-20
22-21-21-20
T22
24
20
18
24-[22/21/20/19]-[20/19/18]-18
24-22-19-18
My prior assumption has been that Fintourist was basically #3 in rival GNP for a while, then had one turn in which he did a temporary swap away from commerce (that kind of dramatic swing is possible if you're working a two-commerce tile and are Financial), and then took over #2 (because he added another citizen the next turn). So that would ostensibly put Sareln in the #3 (20) slot. The numbers suggest an immediate drop afterward, which could mean he was going for a prereq tech, or could just mean he's focusing on production instead after getting a technology. In any case, he'd be getting about 14bpt for a prereq tech and 12bpt for a starting tech.
He also added a citizen on T19, though, and the numbers suggest it was put to work immediately on a 1-commerce tile. So he has two turns of 15bpt prereq/13bpt starting.
I have no idea what his overflow would be - I haven't tried to track it at all. So some flexibility in this matter will be necessary. The extreme upper limit would be 11, as my assumption for his prior tech (The Wheel) is a starting tech so he'd get the lower rate.
Ostensibly, bonuses for knowing other people who know stuff could come into play now. In practice, though, those bonuses are so ephemeral that they wouldn't actually add anything - and we'd see that change in the GNP numbers.
Finally - we know he has Mining and Fishing, and are assuming he's added Agriculture and The Wheel. That leaves the only starting tech candidates as Hunting and Mysticism - and as we know his soldier count is the same, IF he researched a starting tech it'd have to be Mysticism (66 beakers). This makes me more inclined to believe that I've got this "starting tech" thing off, but we'll see.
So! Three turns at 12/14 and three at 13/15 for six turns total. The candidates are:
Prereq tech: anywhere from 87 to 98 beakers (72/83 last turn)
Starting tech: anywhere from 75 to 86 beakers (62/73 last turn)
...well, fsck. The only thing that fits those parameters is Mysticism. I intensely distrust that result, but it fits with every assumption of mine other than "Mysticism is a stupid priority and he should have gone for Pottery". On the other hand, he's not Financial and so cottages have less impact. On the OTHER other hand, two of our rivals ARE Financial and so getting started quickly is, like, important and stuff.
I can't tell if this is me having different ideas of what would be good play, or me flubbing reads of the numbers. It's confusing, and as both are easily affected by the "Viqsi is relatively new at this mishegaas" factor they're arguably equally likely.
Sigh. I'll stick with assuming Mysticism for now and see if he builds Stonehenge or something. Could be he just wants the free monuments and GPPs too. (Today's misclick: Accidentally switching research to Mysticism in the process of checking whether or not Stonehenge had any other tech requirements. )
T23: Funny how the biggest delay seems to have come shortly after Thanksgiving... Go figure.
Anyways! The first obvious thing noticed:
Why, Hello again, Hydra! Also, Sareln and I apparently have the same destination in mind, so I stepped forward, and...
Why, hello, Fintourist! Looks like I may have had him and Azza mixed up. we'll see.
The second obvious thing noticed:
Another 27-point leap for me! But this time it's exclusively due to land control; nothing else of major significance. Alas!
In other demographics news... The spreadsheet is updated, and now includes an additional sheet attempting to track techs folks have more reliably. Highlights:
Score changes: Sareln up 4 points, Azza up 6 points, myself up 27 points and Hydra up 6 points. Fintourist's score is unchanged.
"Rival Best" GNP is now up to 30! (Average indicates that it's likely nobody else has significantly changed.) There's room enough in the numbers for that to have been someone overtaking the prior best of 24. The best conclusion I can come up with is that one of my Financial rivals has pasturized their "sheep on a hill" and is working same. Azza doesn't have AH yet (or wouldn't have before this turn; still dunno what he has), so that's got to be Fintourist.
Someone else has stepped up a bit on production; Rival Best is up to 5 now. This also means that Rival Average has finally made it up to 2.
There's also a similar increase in Rival Best Crop Yield. Again, I'm pretty sure this is Fintourist.
Rival Average population is up 15K. Indicates that someone had a city go up from size 2 to 3. Sareln's up 4 points and was previously size 2. And yet the Top 5 Cities screen still shows Cayenne as being size 2, not size 3. I am... confused. I'm going to assume Top 5 Cities is slow and that Sareln really has three citizens in his capital now.
12K of soldier points has been added. DAYUM. Could be units, but we also had two techs come in this turn - from Azza and Hydra. 4000 of that is definitely Azza's, since he was Rival Best all this time prior. That already suggests from the start that Azza added The Wheel and Hydra added Bronze Working, but we'll double-check those later.
All other numbers are fairly static. (Approval and Life Expectancy have gone down somewhat, but you'd expect that from the addition of a pop point. Rival Worst Approval was affected, whereas only Rival Average expectancy was touched. Had me wondering for a bit until I remembered Fintourist is Charismatic, so his growing to size 3 earlier would have less impact on Approval numbers and that they'd likely otherwise be mirrored.)
On the subject matter of technology, I've had another "Jebus fsck, I am a goddamned drooling idiot" moment: today I realized that I had concluded Azza picked up Pottery on T17 before he ever had The Wheel The alternative there (assuming my numbers figuring is accurate) is Masonry, which seems silly but it's at least RESEARCHABLE. I'm beginning to seriously question my ability to manage this mishegaas at all; I don't have that apparent intimate "feel" for the tech tree this sort of thing seems to require.
But enough with mistaken conclusions made in the past, let's talk about potentially mistaken conclusions right now.
Once again, I already think Azza brought in The Wheel, based on soldier count. However, let's check that. His last tech was brought in T17, so he had 6 turns for this one. Last time we assumed something like 7-9 beakers of overflow (depending on whether or not he went to 16bpt for those last two turns of I-thought-it-was-Pottery-at-the-time research. I'm not feeling confident in my ability to guesstimate whether he's higher or lower than average, so I'm just going to go with my prior estimates and hope for the best. Those would result in:
Prereq tech: 97-99 beakers (75-77 last turn)
Starting tech: 78-80 beakers (65-67 last turn)
Thankfully, The Wheel (79 beakers) fits in there. That also makes it seem like my prior conclusions on his beakers added are more or less safe. But then again, the last time I assumed he had Masonry I horribly embarrassed myself in the process, so I'm all consumed with self doubt and such now.
As for Hydra, he took 10 turns and catapulted out of the Rival Worst soldiers category; I already suspect the tech brought in was Bronze Working. GNPs have gone steadily up during that time (I'd assumed he was previously Rival Worst, but left that position). So that means he can probably make it up to as high as 15bpt for a prereq tech or 13bpt for a normal one - with possible dips below that early on, but much less likely. And he'd have had anywhere from 5 to 11 beakers overflow last turn. That means:
Prereq tech: 155-161 beakers total (140-146 last turn)
Starting tech: 135-141 beakers total (122-128 last turn)
Helloooo, 158-beaker Bronze Working!
I think I'ma gonna push harder with that scout of mine to try and see what folks are, y'know, actually working on. Some confirmations would be very very nice.
Danke.
Starting all on Azza to get graphs.
![[Image: whew.gif]](http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/whew.gif)