[PB60] Lurking the Final Frontier

[Tarkeel]

Given that ElGrillo and me were not agreeing, I think the reload shouldn't have happened before at least one other person chimed in; unless you yourself looked into it Ramk. ElGrillo is right that this is borderline.

[Miguelito]

Fwiw I think it was ok. Consequential misclick , no combat, and the game has no issues with pace.

[Tarkeel]

(...)Emp difficulty and no late game trait + a neighbor that took my gems + another neighbor that reached and took another gems that could be mine.. + this being a "this is your blob" style map means IMP was more or less... bad. Creative was pretty good, but as you can see, wasnt a deciding factor on what empires are favored right now. (...)

Im not a fan of set-area maps much anymore. Blob it up from now on /nod.

I don't think the issue was IMP or the "designated land" areas, but more that SD lacked any way to pay for his cities on EMP. With PRO (or maybe even ORG) SD should have been the one to claim most of the contested areas (w/gems). Instead we saw the usual problem with Catherine; over-expansion into a stagnating economy.

[naufragar]

over-expansion into a stagnating economy.

As best I can tell, Superdeath didn't expand significantly faster than anybody.

"Designated land" maps screw Imp, always. Whether than screw is surmountable is another question.

[Tarkeel]

IIRC; he stopped expanding before hitting the contested land because he couldn't pay for his new cities, while others could.

[Thoth]

That's what happens when you take two expansion traits at high difficulty level instead of taking an economic trait. Catherine and Joao are top tier leaders on Noble/Prince but they're distinctly 2nd rate at Emperor.

[naufragar]

I keep seeing that meme, but I don't know why it stays alive. BtS Charlemagne, the Burger King himself, just won the Civforum Huge/Deity Pitboss.

It's not the case that Superdeath stopped expanding before hitting contested land because of maintenance costs. When Mjmd and Lazteuq/Civac grabbed their border gems, Superdeath had one more city than each. Not sure what happened there, since I've only been dipping in and out.

Superdeath went Metal Casting before Currency because he wanted the +2 metal happy, which I don't think was the correct order. He also maintained a gigantic Mfg lead by working some very unpalatable mines. (I saw he improved a desert hill with a mine, but I'm not sure if he ever actually used it.)

There are plenty of ways for Catherine to avoid crashing her economy on Emperor. It can be true both that symmetrical, demarcated maps disadvantage Imp and that Superdeath hasn't played his hand optimally.

[Thoth]

I didn't follow the German PB very closely but if a turkey of a leader like Charlegmagne won on those settings it just underscores that player skill and neighbour luck are vastly more important than traits.

High difficulty punishes those who expand too quickly without adequate economic support. Whipping out cheap settlers is the only thing Imp is good for and it gets weaker as difficulty (and hence maintenance costs) goes up. If Superdeath is losing contested regions to other players in his settling race it wasn't because Imp was weakened by the map. Settling contested regions first is the only thing Imp does well.

[Charriu]

I keep seeing that meme, but I don't know why it stays alive. BtS Charlemagne, the Burger King himself, just won the Civforum Huge/Deity Pitboss.

Deity is only hard for humans. The AI gets a lot of bonuses with it. Among those are heavily reduced maintenance cost.

[Charriu]

I'm so glad that Amicalola played his turn before I left for vacation. I only have a laptop with a broken spacebar, which makes writing these reports annoying. Here is the T150 report. As always all the data can be found here: PB60 Tracking

General state of the game

• The world exploded in violant war all around
  
• We saw GKC taking his last chance in attacking Jowy, who at the time had no real army
  
• But Jowy returned the favor with the boosted Viking navy and some nice amphibious landings with berserkers
  
• Amicalola saw a similar chance against a military weak Lazteuq
  
• Lazteuq hoped to get some military aid from Superdeath, who did declare war, but ultimatly decided on a different target.
  
• That target being Mjmd, who previously had joined Jowy in his war effort against GKC.
  
• Mjmd is enjoying the full IND experience with more wonders: Hindu shrine (102), Hanging Gardens (106), Mausoleum (120), Great Wall (126), Great library (139), Parthenon (140)
  
• But Lazteuq was at least able to take Apostolic Palace (126)
  

First of all the city count

1. Amicalola = 22
   
2. Mjmd (IMP) = 20
   
3. Jowy = 18
   
4. Superdeath (IMP) = 15
   
5. Lazteuq (IMP) = 12
   
6. GKC = 5
   

And here are the current amount of pop across those empires at the T150 mark:

1. Jowy = 141
   
2. Amicalola = 119
   
3. Mjmd (IMP) = 118
   
4. Lazteuq (IMP) = 110
   
5. Superdeath (IMP) = 76
   
6. GKC = 25
   

It's interesting to see that Lazteuq only has half the cities of the top 3 players, but still manages to stay equal in pop. Then again this may change if he has to whip harder in the upcoming turns against Amicalola.

With this PB I'm also tracking gold at 100% and science at 100%, but for these early turns they are identical to the ones 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. Keep in mind that these numbers are virtual as nobody can run 100% of gold or science for all the time. Here you will see the gold numbers with the science numbers in parenthesis.

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 666 (740)
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 596 (648)
   
3. Mjmd = 505 (498)
   
4. Lazteuq = 312 (401)
   
5. Superdeath = 283 (316)
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 77 (91)
   

This was already foreshadowed in the city and pop numbers, but we can see a clear split into three groups. The leaders (Jowy, Amicalola and Mjmd), the middle (Superdeath and Lazteuq) and the dead (GKC). We also see that some players have more modifiers, specialists etc. in place then others (Jowy, Lazteuq vs the rest. Oh and don't ask me how Mjmd manages to make less science then gold. This is the first time I saw these numbers and I have no clue why.

Next let's see how the players do if we add up all the gold numbers (and science in parenthesis).

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 24761 (26376)
   
2. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 21607 (23299)
   
3. Mjmd = 20388 (20048)
   
4. Lazteuq = 16974 (21566)
   
5. Superdeath = 16846 (18428)
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 10531 (11516)
   

Amicalola managed to overtake Jowy in this category. Other then that we see a similar divide in groups like above.

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. GKC (AGG) = 63
   
2. Superdeath = 211
   
3. Lazteuq = 249
   
4. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 267
   
5. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 290
   
6. Mjmd = 330
   

We once again see that ORG helps managing a larger empire quite effectively, especially if we consider that Mjmd has 2 cities more then Amicalola.

With this maintenance we can now get a clearer picture of the current gold rates, which present themselves this way

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 340
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 253
   
3. Mjmd = 84
   
4. Lazteuq = 57
   
5. Superdeath = 45
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 14
   

Now here things get a lot more interesting. We now see that the maintenance makes life for Mjmd a lot harder pushing him out of the top player group. We also see that Jowy can still hold on the top spot.

Will we see a similar picture with the accumulated numbers of accumulated gold - the accumulated maintenance.

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 12561
   
2. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 12303
   
3. Mjmd = 4607
   
4. Lazteuq = 3890
   
5. Superdeath = 3824
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 2766
   

More or less yes.

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 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:

1. Mjmd = 96
   
2. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 85
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 83
   
4. Lazteuq = 77
   
5. Superdeath = 43
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 18
   

From the other numbers at hand I can see that everybody has lighthouses in play in almost every city. Would be really nice for Mjmd to be FIN.

Here the accumulated numbers:

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 3587
   
2. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 3401
   
3. Lazteuq = 3240
   
4. Mjmd = 2891
   
5. Superdeath = 2710
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 1910
   

Jowy lost his initial lead towards Amicalola.

But 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:

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 3898
   
2. Lazteuq = 3888
   
3. Mjmd = 3509
   
4. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 3466
   
5. Superdeath = 2912
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 2159
   

Only major change here is that Jowy is pushed down into 4th place, but he gained almost the same commerce as with the lighthouse-nerf, which only means he worked around that nerf very effectively on this water heavy map.

Lastly how sever is the recent nerf at the moment. Here the comparison for this lighthouse implementation compared to BtS (delta, reduction in percent):

1. Lazteuq = 1616 (-33.28%)
   
2. Mjmd = 1224 (-29.74%)
   
3. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 918 (-21.25%)
   
4. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 817 (-18.55%)
   
5. Superdeath = 783 (-22.42%)
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 666 (-25.85%)
   

Like with previous PBs we see that the lighthouse nerf is down to some reasonable percentages at the T150 mark with it being between 18%-33%
It's also good to know what the reduction would be without the lighthouse-nerf:

1. Lazteuq = 968 (-19.93%)
   
2. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 853 (-19.75%)
   
3. Mjmd = 606 (-14.92%)
   
4. Superdeath = 581 (-16.63%)
   
5. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 506 (-11.49%)
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 417 (-16.19%)
   

Looking at all these numbers it looks to me that the lighthouse nerf had just the effect I wanted that is reducing the commerce output in the first 100 turns.

Protective Bonus

This is the first time we are playing with the 100% trade PRO bonus, but I'm spoiling you right away. There is no big difference between this and the previous version at this state of the game. Here are the current turn numbers:

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 99
   
2. Mjmd = 42
   
3. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 33
   
4. Superdeath = 22
   
5. Lazteuq = 6
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 4
   

We clearly see the effect of war around the players when domestic trade routes become more lucrative again.
Also here are the cumulative numbers:

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 2674
   
2. Mjmd = 1241
   
3. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 942
   
4. Superdeath = 884
   
5. Lazteuq = 870
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 411
   

Amicalola's combo of PRO and the great lighthouse clearly contributed to his great standing in this game.

Misc

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

• AGG is there and may be noticable at this state of the game. Then again it can't (and shouldn't) compete with the rest of the eco traits
  
• Jowy is still paying the lowest unit maintenance out of the top players
  
• Mjmd generated the most great people so far (4) followed by Jowy and Lazteuq (3) and Amicalola (2)
  
• Players really running slavery. The other civics were only briefly used during golden ages.
  

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:




Regular readers will notice that I changed the layout for these:

We see some notable changes in the trait evaluation compared to previous games:

1. Now at the T150 mark FIN is back into pole position followed by the usual ORG>PRO>AGG
   
2. Except if your name is Amicalola and you own the Great Lighthouse
   

Stay tuned for the T200 report.