[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[NobleHelium]

You know, we didn't really leverage our EXP bonus all that well. It would have been a lot more efficient to chop the second worker. But if we had researched BW first then the worker would have been not doing much for a few turns, just building roads. On a lower difficulty it would have been much better. Or if Krill had placed a forest hill in the inner ring. Maybe I shouldn't have told them to ban Suryavarman II since we ended up getting second pick.

Anyhow, played the turn. Chops came in, settler due same turn as Mysticism. We revolt to Slavery on the turn after that while the settler moves to the gold. Found next turn, trade route already in due to the road on the gold, start gold mine, one worker is already chopping one of the Stonehenge forests. Unless I decide to cancel the Stonehenge plan, of course. We'll see what the C&D says about Jkaen in the next few turns.



Kuro got a tech. It is likely Fishing unless he researched Hunting instead, which wouldn't make sense. No other changes. According to the spreadsheet it has been 7 turns since Jkaen grew to 3, with a 5 food surplus each turn. The 3->4 food box is 26 food, so he would have grown to 4 by now. So he is either building a settler or building a worker. If he built a worker after the work boat then it would be done in 6 turns (10 production a turn from 4 hammers + 1 EXP bonus + 5 food), and so would have been done EOT (his) last turn. Unless he finished a scout after the work boat, in which case he would have been delayed two turns, and the worker will then instead finish at EOT (his) next turn. If he didn't at least put a turn into the scout (or Stonehenge) after the work boat he would be getting decay by now, at least by my estimate. I don't remember the exact number of turns before decay, so if any lurker could tell me that'd be highly appreciated.

This is all in the spreadsheet of course.

[NobleHelium]

Hmm, did some searching on hammer decay and finally found something of value. Apparently searching for "production decay" is more effective than "hammer decay." Although I did eventually come up with a post by Blake on Apolyton with the former search term.

Anyhow, it seems decay delay for units is 10 turns and for buildings (and by extension wonders) 50 turns. And it doesn't scale with game speed. Wonder who overlooked that. Also, the decay delay allowance is for the entire lifetime of construction, so putting another turn in does not reset the delay until decay.

If Jkaen was indeed working on a scout at the start he would have lost one hammer since the work boat took 11 turns to build. Not really significant, but that's that. If he was building Stonehenge then he isn't going to get decay since either he'll finish it or we'll finish it, heh. I did some estimating and it seems there is a slight chance (maybe 10% or so) he can finish it on or before EOT 35. Probably not though, so we should be good. Hopefully by the time we get the settler out we'll have a more accurate estimate.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 24. I think I'll always note the turn number from now on, it helps when going back to double check stuff.



Noncreatives got land points. Kuro got his third ring. Jkaen's GNP went down by 1 and his MFG went up by 1. And his CY went down by 1-2. Hmmm. Well the only tile that makes 1 commerce for him is the corn, so he probably swapped off that. So he could have swapped from the corn to a 2/1 forest tile, which matches the MFG gain and the CY drop. The only reason why he'd do that is if he weren't building a food unit (since he already has the EXP bonus and he's not IMP). So his worker probably finished and he must be building something else now. Hopefully it's a warrior or something else that shows up in the demos (and is not Stonehenge ).

But, considering he finished the worker six turns after when his scout would have been finished if he had finished it after the work boat, I'd say it's safe to say those are correct guesses. So he should have a scout, warrior, worker with a netted fish right now. No idea what he could be building now that isn't a food unit, but Stonehenge is safe if these guesses are correct, since we will have two workers chopping three forests starting in four turns. Plus we're IND obviously.

Edit: I just double checked the spreadsheet and apparently his worker would only have finished EOT his last turn (23) if he finished the scout after work boat. So that's probably what happened, and his governor swapped to the forest tile for him. There should be nothing in the queue right now, so he could be building a food unit next after all.

[Lewwyn]

T25 demos:



I'm back, will look at the spreadsheet this evening too.

[NobleHelium]

Good to have you back, missed ya.

I put some more signs up and renamed the workers to Chopper and Roader, as a reminder that one worker should be roading the gold and the other should start heading to the signed forest to chop. Only ONE worker should be roading the gold, not both, this way there are no wasted worker turns. The other worker should head to the marked forest immediately (via the gold tile) after the current mine is done (which should have been completed during the turn you played).

I'll probably be pretty busy tonight but I'd like to talk about the post-Stonehenge-chopping micro. What I had the workers doing was building mines on both hills after chopping, and the one next to the rice would finish right before the border pop, letting him scoot over to the rice and start farming it. But it's pretty slow since it's one worker farming on normal speed, ideally we want both workers farming it. But if I move the workers off the hills before they build the mines then we'll waste another worker turn per hill later. So what I'm thinking instead is they both build a road on each hill, and then the one next to the rice will move north back onto the plains and build another road there. That uses the same number of turns as a mine, and he can move onto the rice next turn as before. The other guy on the hill SE of that (east of the gold) will probably finish his road at the same time (he gets fewer turns since he starts his chop later due to the gold mine taking longer), then he moves NW-NW onto the rice and can still start farming the same turn. I'm not 100% sure if that works out, but he can always put a turn into a mine if he has an extra turn to work with. Then they can get back onto the hill N of the gold and still start mining on the same turn. We spend some turns on roads that are not strictly necessary but we'll get the rice farmed faster. I haven't tested this so some of the turn counts might be off, what do you think?

[oledavy]

A couple posts ago you mentioned hammer decay. What is the rate of decay after the 10t/50 threshold and does it scale with game speed? It's a game mechanic I've never really understood and I can't seem to find much about online.

[novice]

A couple posts ago you mentioned hammer decay. What is the rate of decay after the 10t/50 threshold and does it scale with game speed? It's a game mechanic I've never really understood and I can't seem to find much about online.

The decay rate is 1 hammer per turn. It doesn't need to scale with game speed since build costs do.

[NobleHelium]

Fantastic, there are actual people posting in my thread.

Anyhow, based upon my searching the hammer decay is actually not 1 hammer per turn, it's 1% of the total cost for buildings and 2% of the total cost for units, rounded up. Which often comes out to be 1 hammer per turn in the games that we play, which are Quick speed and generally end before the expensive Industrial+ things come into play.

Check DanF5771's posts here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=280372

[NobleHelium]

Okay, finally got a chance to look over the demos. I was about to say there were no visible changes until I noticed the life expectancy line. Top rival life expectancy is definitely Kuro right now since he's the only person who hasn't grown besides us, and that went down. Previously it was 85 which is equal to 6/7 which is his base value + corn. So he lost one health which obviously means he chopped at least one forest. I expect him to have chopped two forests, since we started with 4 and it is likely everyone else started with 3 (rather than 2).

Now if you look at the spreadsheet there have been exactly 7 turns elapsed since he researched Bronze Working. A chop takes 3 turns, and he needs 1 turn to move onto the second forest. So he could very well have completed both chops with one worker. If he built a settler after his first worker, then it would have completed the turn after the first chop. So he would have had three turns to move to a new city location by now, and there hasn't been a new city anywhere. There is only one tile on the island (assuming near-identical islands) on which the settler cannot found within three turns, and that is the forest 2N of the gold on our island. So if there isn't a new city next turn then I am going to say he went with a double worker start like us, unless he is doing some funny queue manipulation to screw with my C&D.

And it appears Jkaen stuck with his tile arrangement. So he is definitely not building a food unit now.

[oledavy]

@Novice & @Noblehelium - Thanks for the clarification.

@Nobleheium - lol, I feel your pain, rarely have people posting in mine; just so much easier to simply lurk than inquire or comment it seems. Still, have started lurking this PBEM. I'm lurking globally so I won't be able to say too much, but I'll be around :D