Serdoa's SPOILER-Thread: I am legend?

[mackoti]

What are you atacking the half GLH?

[Serdoa]

That's the reader-interaction I was hoping for.. kinda

Thanks for coming by. It's more a "motivate Serdoa to at least post more than once a month about this game". But please no one feel forced to read through this thread. The first pages are boring game-theory that is wrong, partly because the map isn't what I expected and partly because normal and quick speed has different implications in terms of trait-value which I happily ignored in these posts. And the later pages aren't better either - just a few posts about how the game is going, but it's more like being in a dark room and someone shines a light into it every few hours. You really have no clue whats going on, even with that light. 

Well, I think the last page is slightly better with at least an event (war with SD) that can be followed somewhat.

[Serdoa]

T75 came so lets see how Demos look at eot:



GNP looks abysmal but I am not researching currently, so I'm ok with that. Kinda. Ok, lets face it, I can't compete with people having wonders, having GLH, having holy cities and so on. Just the culture production alone makes a difference. In terms of raw research I do think I am actually not that far behind, with Noble probably being the strongest of the bunch just by having two gold + GLH + whatever else they have.

MfG looks good. 4th but only 4 behind the leader. Funnily enough, I am not too happy about that. The reason this stat is good is because I don't have many food sources in my lands but hills and plains. 

Food has gone up as predicted. 4t now. There is more to read from this though. Due to the graphs I know that those below me have to be Bob and SD, even though I don't have Bobs graph yet. Now if we substract the lowest and the highest from the average, the middle three players have on average a food output of 80.66. We know also that the lowest of them has to have between 70 (lowest) and 76 (as I'm 4th, so he can't have more than me). Lets take the average of 73 - unfortunately Graphs lag behind and don't help me to get a better number right now. That leaves 169 between Noble and Rusten. That means around 84-85 for each. But Rusten had 85 last turn already according to the graphs, so while he might not have done anything, it might also be that he does have rather around 90 food, leaving Noble at around 80. So final standings:

Lewwyn: 98
Rusten: 90
Noble: 79
Serdoa: 76
Bob: 73
SD: 70

That could be slightly off, but it seems close enough to me to run with it for now. I will get another 5 food next turn and should get another 8 or so the turn after. So I lag behind the leaders by around 2 - 4 turns. That's bad, but doable I think. Rusten probably will explode soonish, though Lewwyn should also plant his next cities soon. Hopefully they will start pissing each other off by doing so. 

On that note: I am up to 8 cities. Lewwyn has 10, Bob has 8 as well, all others 7. Taking that city from SD was huge for me for several reasons as I explained before. I've now surpassed two IMP civs in city count. I doubt I can keep it this way, but then, we do have settled quiet a bit of the land that is disputed, so everyone should mostly have islands and back-lines left I assume. My hope is that others won't be able to expand to 20+ cities easily while I struggle to find place for 15. Though I fear that is exactly what will happen, simply because I was squeezed from all sides.

Last look at the demos: 3rd in Land Area. I was squeezed and yet I did manage to take as much land as everyone else or actually probably more than one of the IMP-civs, which should most likely be Noble. So not THAT bad yet again. Its just a struggle while it seems Lewwyn and Rusten did find a agreeable line to not settle over towards the other - most likely some inland sea that made it rather obvious at which point to stop. If those two would have raced against each other in settling north / south this game might play out very differently. If Noble had decided to split the gold, it would have to. That was again crippling, not so much for the gold itself, but because it makes it impossible to plant a city down there without it being a strategic nightmare. Together with Rustens pink dot I think I've lost at least a good 5 city spots that I should have had. Not sure if I could have done much to prevent that though. I could have played better after the fact for certain, but it happening was not really preventable I feel, I had 3 cities at that time which both had already been settled in those directions. Short of having another 2 settlers ready and going, I'm not sure there was much I could have done. Pushing more strongly in one direction might have lost me the other even more. Presumably the gold spot was the farthest south Noble wanted to push, so not even settling in that direction and instead pushing hard towards Rusten might have been better. Or taking the gold spot with my own 3rd city. But - and that is the really funny part - my second city was planned to go towards the gold but due to unfortunate movement on my part, there was no unit to accompany the settler and I have had units from others around there, so I was not sure how save it really was. Therefore I've gone towards Rusten with the 2nd city and planted only the 3rd towards the gold. Had I've gone with the initial plan, maybe my 3rd city would have actually been on the gold-spot itself. 

None of that matters now of course, but I think it is interesting to see how decisions that you make very early in the game can have a big impact later on. In this case, how to move my warrior and being indecisive about my 2nd city-placement up to the turn he was finished will probably decide much of how my game plays out till the very end.

[Tarkeel]

I've read through as promised, and I really liked your thoughts on traits and agree with most of it.

Would love an overview shot of your empire, as it's hard to follow the action from text alone.

[Serdoa]

Hey Tarkeel, I'll try to remember that request when I play the next turn For now you should find one of a part of the empire (the "interesting" part) below. The builds in the cities do not reflect what I build there however... war changes everything

Before we get to that screenshot though, lets talk why I am at war. As we all know, Rusten has encroached on my western territories. I can't punish that city (Inpulsa), as much as I want to, because it is on a hill and has as of this turn 2 Axes and a Spear in it. Happy to take chances, but that's not really feasible at this stage of the game.

However, he has another city further back and a third to the south of that:



Shock Nova is pretty alone down there - a shame if something... happened to it. He does have a settler 2NW of Rostov too, so he clearly intends to settle another city in that region, I assume at the end of the road. This is bad - I would not only lose the territory, it would also encircle my city - not something I will accept easily, but I can't do much about that settler right now. I can do something about Shock Nova though and maybe he gets the message that this territory can't be settled and we can live on in peace. I mean come on Rusten, there is a water body going down from Arc (you can barely see it in the screenie on the left). That is the natural border between us. I guess he would like to have it instead where Rostov is, but that won't happen if I can help it, after all that is just 6 tiles from my capital!

I have a galley down in the south because of the island city you can see, so naturally I was thinking about attacking Shock Nova. I re-managed Rostovs production to get a Chariot on T74 which I loaded on my galley T75, sitting 2SW of Rostov. I'm not sure if Rusten didn't notice the Galley, didn't notice the Chariot, didn't notice that an amphibious attack could  happen - or if he simply assumed it unlikely or could not get more units into the city. 

Whatever was the reason, the course of action is clear: ATTACK!



70% odds, took slightly more than 50% damage, so all pretty much expected. The city is gone. It was at 1 pop unfortunately and I did not intend to wait till it grows to 2 and I can keep it - frankly, I am not at all sure I could defend it right now, I do need some more workers to get my roads built first so a new city could be reinforced more quickly. 

The question now though is: Offer peace? I mean, it is not certain he takes it in any case, but - do I even want it? If he accepts, he has 10 turns enforced peace, enough to probably re-settle that territory. Let's see if I can still read Demos a little and get an idea about his unit composition as of now:

Power: Highest 88k, Lowest 67k, Average 78.6k before and 77.2k after the attack. So, we know that he is neither highest nor lowest (boo!) but in between. I do have 77k Soldiers and am on 4th. His graph as of last turn saw a power of 87k (I think, it really is hard to see, why don't we have numbers on those? I could print it and measure it with a ruler to be certain, it is available data that is presented to the player, just the UI is awful). 

He now lost 7k, so he can have at most 81k. The others should be at 88k (Lewwyn), 77k (Noble), 73k (SD), 67k (Bob). Estimated.

That number is a combination of population (1000 per 2 pop), tech, buildings and military. That makes it hard to gauge how much is actual military, but lets just subtract all the techs we can be certain he has:

Hunting - 2000
Mining - 2000
Animal Husbandry - 2000
Sailing - 2000
Wheel - 4000
Bronze Working - 8000
-----------------------------
Total: 20000 

There are more, notably Archery which I do not know if he possesses, but I go with no for now. Err on the side of caution. He does not have IW or HBR, they are both 10k points and there was no turn ever that he made that much at once. That leaves us with 61k power. 

Pop is harder to gauge normally, but I can see 5 of his cities and he has 7, so I miss only two. Doing so I realized that Shock Nova probably is closer to his cap than I thought. Oh well...
I can see cities sizes 5, 4, 4, 4, 3. Total pop 20, total pop points 90k, 48k, 48k, 48k, 21k = 255k. He can't have more than 350k either as that is the highest (and not him). One of the cities I can't see is his cap. If he had 5 pop there that would bring us to 345k already so the last city would have to be at size 1. Possible but he does have that city since a few turns so that seems unlikely. Being at pop 4 and the other city at pop 3 seems more likely. So we either have 26 pop or 27. That is the same amount for our calculation: 13000 points in military. (Also, it is 27, because he lost 7000 military points, 6000 for the axe, 1000 for the pop, so he must have had an even number of pop before.)

This leaves us now with 48k power in units and buildings. But buildings are probably none, as those would be Walls or Barracks which I don't think he built and all others are not yet possible to be built.

Also I can see 2 Axes, 1 Spear and 1 Warrior. That alone are 18000 points. Leaves 30k. That could be at most 5 more Axes. But realistically, it is 4 Axes and 3 Warriors. Or 2 Warriors and a Galley. Can we find out? Lets look at the graph, what happened in terms of points?

2000: Hunting at start
4000: Mining
7000: 1st Warrior + 1 Pop (2-3 total, 1000 Points)
18000: 2nd Warrior + BW + 1 Pop (4-5 total, 2000 Points)
17000: -1 Pop (2-3 total, 1000 Points)
20000: 3rd Warrior + 1 Pop (4-5 total, 2000 Points)
21000: 1 Pop (6-7 total, 3000 Points)
20000: -1 Pop (4-5 total, 2000 Points)
21000: 1 Pop (6-7 total, 3000 Points)
27000: 1st Axeman
28000: 1 Pop (8-9 total, 4000 Points)
30000: Animal Husbandry
29000: -1 Pop (6-7 total, 3000 Points)
33000: Wheel
39000: 2nd Axeman
40000: 1 Pop (8-9 total, 4000 Points)
41000: 1 Pop (10-11 total, 5000 Points)
42000: 1 Pop (12-13 total, 6000 Points)
41000: -1 Pop (10-11 total, 5000 Points)
47000: 3rd Axeman
49000: Sailing
52000: 3 Pop (16-17 total, 8000 Points) 
51000: -1 Pop (14-15 total, 7000 Points)
50000: -1 Pop (12-13 total, 6000 Points)
52000: 2 Pop (16-17 total, 8000 Points)
58000: 4th Axeman
64000: 5th Axeman
63000: -1 Pop (14-15 total, 7000 Points)
65000: Galley, Warrior?
68000: 3 Pop (20-21 total, 10000 Points)
69000: 1 Pop (22-23 total, 11000 Points)
68000: -1 Pop (20-21 total, 10000 Points)
74000: 6th Axeman
75000: 1 Pop (22-23 total, 11000 Points)
76000: 1 Pop (24-25 total, 12000 Points)
81000: 1 Pop (26-27 total, 13000 Points), 1st Spear
87000: 7th Axeman
88000: 1 Pop (28 total, 14000 Points)

Ok, I am sure if someone matches this to what Rusten actually did there would be some differences, but that shouldn't be too far off. But in any case for our cause we can conclude that there are most likely 6 Axes remaining (as I killed one) and probably 1 Spear and 3-4 Warriors. Maybe a Spear and a Warrior instead of one Axe, but we'll calculate with 6 Axes for now. A total of 10-11 units of which I know the location of 4 for certain. Some of the others will be on the borders on the western side and towards Lewwyn and SD, so lets assume that 4 units will be over there and neither logistically nor strategically part of this war. Lets say 2 Warrior and 2 Axe. That leaves us with

1 Spear
2-3 Warrior
4 Axes

And that should be maximum, I would think that actually there is probably one more Axe out of the picture tbh, as he has 3 other neighbors he has to take care of somehow and it makes not much sense to have those units towards me when so far we were friendly with each other. 

So, back to our question: Offer peace? I think white peace for now. These units are not threatening to me, I have myself 2 Axes, 2 Spears, 2 Chariots already close by with another 5 potentially whipped units if necessary before he can reach either of my cities. 2 Axes are not great and the Spears seem currently unnecessary, but if he attacks I'll have easily enough to hold him off while being able to circle around with the Chariots. Even if I can't raze any more cities, just destroying his improvements and having him build more military would be worse for him than just accepting. In my opinion. Of course, one is seldom as rational when being attacked. We will see.

So what do we gather from this turn? 

1) Don't build coastal cities without checking each turn what is going on close to them.
2) Don't trust a neighbor to not take a cheap shot a you, especially when there is nothing lost doing so. 
3) Be aware of players that are behind.

Honestly, I believe this attack could be discussed in a multitude of ways and agreeing or disagreeing with it are both valid positions. But my stance is, that I will take my chances, because frankly, no matter how much self-motivational posts I write, the truth is, I am lagging behind the actual contenders by quite a bit. Enough that it is very unlikely that I can catch them. Now sure, you can say I should just farmers gambit my way back into the pack, but for that, someone else would have to go to war and they all seem content to play themselves a farmers gambit instead. But, do I gain anything from this attack, except an upset neighbor? Probably not, but ... there is an outside chance I will, so lets see what happens.

[Tarkeel]

How many of his cities have you unfogged? Any city that is revealed lets you zoom in and see individual buildings, so you can manually check for walls and barracks.

I can't remember if the CtH version you're using has BUG support, but that would give you options on the graphs.

[Serdoa]

How many of his cities have you unfogged? Any city that is revealed lets you zoom in and see individual buildings, so you can manually check for walls and barracks.

I can't remember if the CtH version you're using has BUG support, but that would give you options on the graphs.

Thanks for the comments Tarkeel. 5 out of 7 cities are unfogged and you are of course right that I could have looked for the buildings. Zooming in was a reason I realized he had a Lighthouse and therefore Sailing. I haven't seen Walls anywhere (and really, who builds them if not at war?), haven't looked for Barracks but none of his units has upgrades or glows, so rather unlikely. It could in theory be that one of the 6000 soldier point increases he got was a Barracks + a pop point + a warrior - but again, that is unlikely. I'd rather overvalue him by an axe - and still be ok with the attack - then undervalue him by telling myself that all his soldiers points are surely something else than units. 

But the main reason I wrote that in all that detail is that I hope it kinda is an interesting lesson about what can be gleaned from all the data available - down to when your opponent grew, how many and what units he has and the techs he researched. In this game I'm mostly indifferent to this data - yeah, Oracle, Stonehenge and GLH fell and while I can see that Noble has the GLH I assume both other wonders have gone to Lewwyn due to his extremely high score, but why should I care, it is not like I could divert attention to building wonders - but I think in many games this can help tremendously to inform your decisions. Should you go for Oracle? Well, how likely is it that your opponents have researched Priesthood already? C&D can often answer that, because you know when he got a new tech, you know if that was one of those giving soldier points, you know if he has certain tiles improved that need certain techs. I assume if I put my mind to it, I could go through all the data I have and tell you most likely down to the turn number when Rusten researched which tech. Or if SD settling in the jungle has made him get IW early (no, it hasn't).

These games lead one to easily ignore all these things and concentrate solely on what you do - which can cost you dearly. Heck, I did that in this game for 30 turns, that's why I am behind that much. Had I realized earlier how badly I am doing, maybe I would be in a better position now. Though to be fair, it does not look that bad anymore - first SD losing 6 food and me gaining it, now Rusten losing 6 has put me back into 3rd I think. I might actually not be that far behind Rusten. Noble should actually be pretty equal to me, just much better economy now. And Lewwyn... well, if one of the guys bordering him could maybe also destroy one of his cities, it would be helpful... really surprised that he could go up to 10 cities with none of those being somehow undefended enough to swoop in. But I guess no one looks for these opportunities except me.

As for the graphs: There is BUG suuport in this version, that at least made it possible to change the graph-lines to be at 1,2,5,10,20 (respectively x1000) increases. Which made it possible together with Paint and zooming heavily in to see what is going on. Numbers would still be easier. Like I wrote, the info is already there anyway, right now players with bad eyesight are just disadvantaged.

[Charriu]

Yes numbers would be nice on the graphs, but tje Civ4 UI code I can work with is a real bitch, if I may say so. I'm happy that I got the changes in that I could and the lines should make the Paint job a lot easier I hope.

[Old Harry]

Numbers would still be easier. Like I wrote, the info is already there anyway, right now players with bad eyesight are just disadvantaged.

I was going to say CivIV is a young player's game, but given the RB demographic profile that's clearly not true...

[Serdoa]

Yes numbers would be nice on the graphs, but tje Civ4 UI code I can work with is a real bitch, if I may say so. I'm happy that I got the changes in that I could and the lines should make the Paint job a lot easier I hope.

It does - I seem to remember that back in the day I did indeed measure them to be certain if it was 50000 or 6000 points. Anyhow, didn't mean to take away from your work Charriu, I do appreciate it.