[Spoilers] What's Sheaim to do? Irgy controlling Tebryn

[Irgy]

Oh and forgot to add an update to my cryptic numbers - they're to do with rounding and 10% bonuses. That's enough of a hint that you could get it, but still I'm probably the only one who'll approach the issue quite the way I have to get to these numbers.

[Irgy]

WarriorKnight and myself had a long chat today. I won't post the whole thing because there's no point. Although we don't in theory have anything to talk about beside this game, we ended up mostly chatting about all sorts of other things, including plenty that's spoiler material for other games happening on this website. So I'll just give a summary:

* Neither of us has any real news. He popped a spectre from a graveyard was about as exciting as it got.

* He set me straight about the recent priest. Apparently great people that you earn with GPP appear in the turn log, while free great people from events and lairs do not. So the previous theory I had about a great prophet from an event early on could still hold, while the recent great prophet Cinnia must have been done the hard way.

* Given that, it must have been the Malakim. I concluded earlier from demographics that they were going after Mysticism, and they get half price temples. It also fits in with the next point:

* We concluded (or, more accurately, he had figured out already and told me) that the prophet was probably used to bulb the Runes of Kilmorph religion. I pointed out that this then opens up a second temple to get another priest and build the shrine.

* Following this train of thought further, we are both concerned that the Malakim are turning into something of a potential runaway.

* However, we have no idea where they are. I've only met WarriorKnight, he's only met myself and the Ljosalfar to the east, and the only other civ they've met are the Bannor.

The Malakim are interesting. The biggest advantage they have in this game is actually the map script. Flavour-wise, they're supposed to be in the desert. But it also needs to give them food. So, they almost always get a flood-plains heavy start. Only then does their +1 commerce in deserts come into play, going from a pointless bonus in normal desert tiles to something as good as being financial. So they're the perfect example, arguably better even than Lanun, of a civ that's heavily affected by map script - any non Erebus script and they're highly unlikely to get the floodplains they need.

[Irgy]

So, we played a blitz session, and now it's time for the T50 writeup. Actually it's somewhat overdue now, but I've been a little busy to say the least.

So, first the demographics:

2nd in GNP, which is pretty good for someone with no economy traits or bonuses. Being that that's been my primary focus, I'm kind of happy with that. I think whoever is first at the moment is possibly running god-king 100% gold or some such, as other turns there's been less of a gap or even 1st place for me. That's only going to get better in a few turns once I've improved the two gems.

However, everything else is really bad. Dead last in crop yield and population, and second last in production as well. And that's with an event that gave me a free point of population earlier. The scores (can be seen in the land screenshots below) tell a similar story, near the bottom, and only scraping ahead because I have a stack of extra land points from settling inland. On the whole though, as I discussed in an earlier post, I think I've done close to as well as I could have with what I've been given. Maybe risking less exploration and I wouldn't have lost a couple of turns building more warriors. Also, crafting and possibly also mining before mysticism might have me in a better position production-wise, at the cost of beakers with a later Academy.

So on the whole, a poor position, but nowhere near unsalvagable.

The capital - my only city on T50:

Not sure what to say here. I'm finally working improved tiles, and switching between the other mine and the scientist depending on various things. The rice was switched out to the new city once it was settled. It will get quite good soon when I have two improved gems to work.

Here's most of my units:

Warriors defending the upcoming city site, two workers building mines for it. It's already roaded, including the settling site itself, which, while a waste of worker moves otherwise, will allow the settler to settle the turn it's built (i.e. T51). Only one other unit not visible here - Dunrik, a guerilla warrior out scouting to the west.

My land:

Area around the city. It's hard to see here but note that the southeast is almost certainly a coastal connection, although it's technically possible there's a diagonal isthmus.


The land to the northwest, between myself and WarriorKnight of the Elohim (my only contact so far). There's a barrow and a goblin fort, both of which have been harassing me all game, in the bottom left corner of what you can see here (so just SE of Letum Frigis).


The land to the north. This is my only visible copper (I've since identified another to the far west, but it's not my land).


Land being explored by Dunrik to the far west:

Techs:
In total I have:
Ancient Chants, Mysticism, Agriculture, Exploration, Crafting, Mining.
I plan to get (in roughly the order given):
Bronze Working, Fishing, Calendar, Education, Code of Laws, Knowledge of the Ether, Philosophy, Way of the Wicked, Corruption of Sprit.

Plans:
Finish the current settler, and settle SW in the marked spot, to share the rice and eventually work the fish. Build another settler, a third worker, and a pyre zombie or two (in some order or other) and try and claim the flood plains near Letum Frigis. The next settler will then go to the copper. Rex peacefully, extend the current NAP with WarriorKnight, and scare away any attacks with Pyre Zombies.

That's about all I can think of. Anything else anyone wants to know?

[Irgy]

So, onto more specific and recent things.

I've finally settled the second city, and it's stolen the rice. It's working on a monument for now, and will switch to a workboat once it's finished (pretty sure I'll have fishing in time, though haven't actually checked).

My micro was only really planned up to the end of the settler. Since then I've made a bit of a mess of things really. Basically what I want is a pyre zombie to escort the next settler. Pyre zombies are great against both the problems I have near LF. Not because they explode, but because they're undead. Immune to poison and death, meaning skeletons and goblins are only St2 against them. Whereas their only unusual damage type is fire, which still works on both.

But I don't have Bronze Working just yet. So I built a warrior in 1 turn, so far so good, (it was terrible rounding, losing 0.9 hammers, but whatever). Then I realised I could start on the settler while I was waiting for Bronze Working for the zombie, so next turn I did that. Now I've realised I really need a third worker before the next settler anyway. Don't know if I'll switch to the worker now instead or what.

Like I said, a bit of a mess, but nothing terrible.

Dunrik is still exploring to the west, hasn't found much of note, some floodplains and another copper. He's relentlessly pursued by a skeleton, only 1 step behind him. But he's still alive for now, and that's good.

I plan to pop the graveyard the same turn I finish Bronze Working. Not before, or I risk mostly wasting the best graveyard result available (free tech). I also investigated the option of getting rid of the barrow. Apparently, if you have 9 units, you can surround a dungeon and prevent anything bad from spawning. It's been done in another game here with no complaints so I can only assume it's considered fair game. Currently, I have 5 warriors and 2 workers in the area. What occurred to me was whether the city itself would also stop a unit from spawning there. So off to worldbuilder I went.

I tell you what, that was a close call. It seemed to be working, I had "lair explored" messages with nothing spawning. But it didn't seem quite right, as from past experience you should still get the message that something is spawning, it just then doesn't appear. So, I kept testing anyway. On about the 6th or 7th go, something different happened. The remains of old warriors rose from the dead... on my capital. Or where it had been. Glad I didn't try that trick in the real game then!

That's about it for news. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I'll take some snapshots next turn.

[Irgy]

And so the answer to my puzzle that evidently no-one cared about anyway. At least the answer itself is something a little bit interesting. Although not spectacularly so. Actually it's probably extremely boring unless you're obsessive like me. If you don't care about rounding feel free to skip it, or skip to the conclusion anyway.

Why is it that the 10% penalty from Apprenticeship hurts so much? Why is it that the 10% bonus from Nationhood helps so little? Why is it such a good idea to run the two together? It all comes down to rounding.

Late in the game, rounding isn't such a big deal. You have lots of hammers, and losing a few more than you should (or gaining a few less) here and there doesn't hurt so much. Early in the game however it can really hurt. When many of your cities are only producing ~5 hammers per turn, losing 1 to an Apprenticeship penalty is significant. The 10% penalty becomes effectively 20% less production.

To investigate this, first I look at things in multiples of 10%. There's a civic or two out there that give a bonus that's a multiple of 5% and not 10%, but they come a fair bit later when it's not so critical anyway. You can then view a larger modifier as stacked up 10% modifiers, e.g. pacifism's 20% penalty is made up of two 10% penalties. Then, factor out multiples of 100%, and multiples of 10 base hammers. Every 100% bonus gives you no rounding losses, so ignore it. Every 10 hammers gives you no rounding losses, so ignore them to. For instance, if you have a 140% overall production bonus, and produce 23 base hammers, 23 hammers from the first 100% worth of bonus, 8 free hammers from the remaining 40% applied to 20 of the hammers, and finally the rounding comes into play when applying the remaining 40% to the remaining 3 base hammers. The point of breaking it down like this is that you only need to consider from 1 to 10 base hammers, and 0% to 90% worth of bonus to have completely solved the rounding problem.

The 100%s and 10s of base hammers just affect how much of a big deal rounding is in the first place. If you have a lot, then the rounding is less significant, if you have few then it matters more.

My next thing to note is that it's costly to change civics. Even as a spiritual leader it takes 10 turns. So when deciding the impact of rounding on the merits of various civics, you can usually assume you'll be working a range of hammer values, both across the empire and within the same city. If you want to get more detailed and consider the specific values you'll be working then good for you, but otherwise what I'm considering here is just one step less fiddly (still pretty fiddly anyway in the working, but the result is less fiddly). So, here's the specific question I ask:

Consider an empire with 10 cities, each working a different number of hammers from 1 to 10. Imagine you make a civic shift from an (X-10)% bonus to an X% bonus. How many extra hammers does your empire get? Note that you're producing 55 hammers total, so you'd expect on average to get 5.5 extra hammers. The possibly familiar looking values below are the answer to that question:
X%: bonus hammers
10%: 1
20%: 5
30%: 6
40%: 5
50%: 7
60%: 4
70%: 6
80%: 5
90%: 6
100%: 10

So, what do these silly numbers actually mean? Basically they give you how useful that bonus is from a rounding perspective. Going from nothing to a 10% bonus with Nationhood gives you 1 extra hammer, making it useless. In comparison, losing 10% from Apprenticeship loses you 10 hammers. That's why both of them are quite bad on their own, but ok cancelling each other out together. Stacking pacifism on top of apprenticeship gives you a completely fair loss of hammers (6+5 compared to the expected value of 5.5+5.5). Stacking any of the above on top of God King bonus in the capital gives you much less rounding loss than on their own, but still worse than it ought to be.

The implicit assumption here is that over the large number of turns you'll be running a particular % modifier you'll be running a range of last-digits in your base hammers. This isn't quite the best model in general you will tend to have more of the lower numbers. The net effect of this is a different story, but in summary it basically just makes all of the effects shown even more significant.

Summary:
* Stick to rounder numbers for bonus %s and you'll lose less hammers to rounding.
* When you do end up straying into non-round modifiers, be aware of the impact of rounding.
* Don't worry about rounding late in the game, but early on it matters. Probably a step less important than the finer details of worker micromanagement is my guess.

Tune in next week for another of Irgy's failed attempts to get someone else to post in his thread!

[Darkmantle]

I do love the finer details of micro Keep up the good work and go kill somebody!

[Ilios]

Interesting...

[Irgy]

Thanks guys, good to know there are still readers I'll try not to whine so much next time I convince myself I'm completely alone.

Well, I think I promised screenshots (plural), so my apologies for just having one. All it shows is the new land discovered by Dunrik, and that he has somehow finally managed to shake the skeleton off his tail.


Back at home, the workers roaded the barrow, because they didn't have much else useful they could do this turn anyway. Next turn they'll move to the jungle, where they will be ready to start chopping as soon as Bronze Working is finished.

I've switched from settler to worker. In total, my indecisiveness over what to build has cost 1 or 2 worker turns total (depending on whether the warrior first was really worthwhile - it probably wasn't) and probably a rounding hammer in there somewhere too. Annoying but it's not the end of the world.

The new warrior is in the graveyard, patiently waiting for Bronzeworking to complete before robbing it.

[Irgy]

An exciting turn, and I've launched back up to third in score. Through no real skill of my own mind you

Bronzeworking is in, and the workers are busily chopping the jungle off the gems. This will put my health cap up too, although I don't have much growth at the moment with the new city stealing the rice. Now that Bronzeworking is finished, I explored the graveyard, and hit the jackpot! No horses anywhere to be seen though


Here's an overdue screenshot of the new city, and the surroundings. They're a turn old, it's now grown to 2 population in fact and is working the grass river hill mine.

Between two techs in two turns, and a new city up to 2 population, I've moved forward in score a bit. Still only really ahead because I settled inland and have a bunch of extra 'land' points, but whatever. By the time the gems are ready I'll probably be looking quite good in the demographics. The third worker will speed up getting to the second gems too.

Finally, Dunrik has spotted the text box mentioning the existance of the Guardians of Pristin Pass, but it appears he hasn't activated it. In fact I don't really know how it ever gets activated, it's on a mountain so you can see it from two tiles away anyway. I can also see that Remnants of Patria are right next to it, and another special feature just to the north to top it off. There's also a named level 3 hill giant in the area. I'll bring a screenshot next turn.

[Irgy]

Diplo update: Still haven't met anyone else, though I'm trying to:


WarriorKnight and I have continued to chat though. Here's what we've been saying (sorry, I've got a little behind in reporting on all this):

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Greetings Irgy Arbandi

Congratulations on building an Academy in in your glorious capital of Galvehome. The Elohim are trembling in fear from your increased cultural output.[/COLOR]

Thanks. Couldn't have got it much earlier : ) I'm sure Tephus himself would be happy to show you around the place if you ever visit. Of course for all that effort we're still only 3rd in GNP, but I suppose it's hard to compete with the financial coastlines and beefed up floodplains that I can only presume are topping out the list.

That's true. The Lanun need no explanation with their financial pirate ports and now the Malakim have Runes to go with their soon-to-be Financial trait. We're trying our best to keep up with them and you are too. We can't let them start running away.

I notice from your own God King status that you're aware of Mysticism yourselves so I can only imagine philosophical people like yourselves might found your own academy some time in the future.

I couldn't possibly comment.

And congratulations to you on the founding of Glens Killybegs. You've actually caught me right in the middle of my demographics analysis (give or take a series of interruptions since I started writing this), and in fact I've only just now noticed its existance. I'm curious as to where it is, but feel free to keep that to yourselves if you'd prefer.

Thank you. I don't mind telling you that Glens of Killybegs is to the east of our capital. I'm sure that you will will match this accomplishment some turn in the future.

I have to confess my our own plans for further settlement have been moving along quite slowly, between sages, workers and goblins defeating our warriors on forested hills.

We have read from the stars that the Sheaim are prospering. Congratulations on founding the city of Grottiburg. May the Sheaim live long and prosper (or not, if you don't want to ).

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]Well, we can't all live long and prosper, it just wouldn't work. But I certainly plan to myself.

Yes, finally founded an expansion city, I'm pretty sure we were the last to do so. If you're curious, it's in a quite nearby and inoffensive coastal location just SW of Galveholm.[/COLOR]

Do you have any idea where Orthus is? No-one but Sciz should know for certain, but maybe he's spawned near you (he hasn't spawned near me AFAICT).

Why Sciz? Is he the only one who gets that little pointing arrow because he plays the turn last? In any case I'm sorry to say I haven't a clue, I was even a turn late in noticing that Orthus had spawned. I need to get more diligent about checking the events log every turn.

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Yeah, because he's last in the turn order, he can see the barbarians moving. This includes Orthus spawning and thus he is the only one who gets to see the pointer.
[/COLOR]

(at this point it was announced publicly that Orthus is dead)

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]Sounds like Sciz definately knew where Orthus was. Not good news that he's got that freaking axe as well now.

My current exploring warrior Dunrik has made it as far as the Guardians- I can see the tag text for them, although I haven't revealed the tile itself. I can see Remnants of Patria are just next to them, and something else I can't remember a bit further north. All of which you know already of course. Where he is at the moment, there's a large desert,which notably contains a named level 3 Hill Giant. Do you know anything about where that one might have come from? Or is someone else exploring lairs around here? Between the guardians and that hill giant it's no wonder there's been no contact from the west, although it looks like Dunrik is going to make it through alive at this rate.

No real news on the whole though, just keeping in touch. We found some ancient scrolls relating to methods of caring for animals, of all things, in a nearby graveyard, if you're wondering how our score has suddenly shot up from last to third.[/COLOR]

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Shame Sciz got the axe, but at least the Orthus phase is over. Wouldn't have been pretty if he spawned a long way from civilization and was still running around by T70.

You've made it to the Guardian/Remnants of Patria? That's pretty impressive. Unfortunately my scout didn't make it there before becoming Griffon food. I don't know anything about the Hill Giant, he's probably level 3 thanks to doing what barbs do best, killing stuff.

My sources tell me that there is a possibility that the Malakim (due to all the desert) are a bit further W from the Guardian. If you want to find them, hopefully you might find a river nearby that will lead to his floodplained capital.

And congrats on getting AH from a graveyard. That's got to be a nice boost.[/COLOR]