The Dark arts - C&D Master Thread

[luddite]

Their city has been size 5 forever, so we can't assume they won't grow while building the Oracle. Even size 5 they can reach 15hpt, working cow, deer, grass mine, 2 forested plains hills, with +1F (11F 15H).

And even without a bare plains hill to mine, they will get 2 forested plains hills, so that would still put them at 17hpt at size 6.

But from your math, they need 17hpt just to tie us, so for every turn they get just 15 hpt they fall behind. If they get 15 hpt for just 2 turns before growing to 17 hpt, they'll fall behind by a turn. So unless their BFC is significantly different from ours, or they grow next turn, we're going to win.

[NobleHelium]

Well, there is also overflow. Normally, maximum overflow would be one less than their maximum food surplus + hpt (overflow out of a worker). However they could do consecutive overflow like overflowing a worker into a settler that was almost complete, etc. I doubt it though.

[SevenSpirits]

Their city has been size 5 forever, so we can't assume they won't grow while building the Oracle. Even size 5 they can reach 15hpt, working cow, deer, grass mine, 2 forested plains hills, with +1F (11F 15H).

And even without a bare plains hill to mine, they will get 2 forested plains hills, so that would still put them at 17hpt at size 6.

But from your math, they need 17hpt just to tie us, so for every turn they get just 15 hpt they fall behind. If they get 15 hpt for just 2 turns before growing to 17 hpt, they'll fall behind by a turn. So unless their BFC is significantly different from ours, or they grow next turn, we're going to win.

No, they need 15hpt to tie us. If they produce 15h for 10 turns, they finish oracle on t68, even without overflow.

[luddite]

Their city has been size 5 forever, so we can't assume they won't grow while building the Oracle. Even size 5 they can reach 15hpt, working cow, deer, grass mine, 2 forested plains hills, with +1F (11F 15H).

And even without a bare plains hill to mine, they will get 2 forested plains hills, so that would still put them at 17hpt at size 6.

But from your math, they need 17hpt just to tie us, so for every turn they get just 15 hpt they fall behind. If they get 15 hpt for just 2 turns before growing to 17 hpt, they'll fall behind by a turn. So unless their BFC is significantly different from ours, or they grow next turn, we're going to win.

No, they need 15hpt to tie us. If they produce 15h for 10 turns, they finish oracle on t68, even without overflow.

Yeah you're right. Well at least then we don't need to worry about overflow, since its highly unlikely they would have 15 hammers of overflow to save another turn.

How likely is it that they can really get 15 hpt? That requires 3 forest plains hills plus deer and plains Cows, right? That's not possible from our start.

[kjn]

How likely is it that they can really get 15 hpt? That requires 3 forest plains hills plus deer and plains Cows, right? That's not possible from our start.

Please read my earlier outlines about possible hammer breakdowns, and assume a similar tile distribution as a capital 1N of our banana capital. This ain't rocket science - just tile counting.

[kjn]

T60 - 1600BC

Cliff's Notes: WPC gains land points and grows their capital to size 7. The Spanish gains land points and grew their capital to size 5. The Germans grew their second city to 4 last turn, whipped it to 2, and probably grew it back to 3. CivFr grew their capital to 6 and probably discovered Writing. CivPlayers grew their third city to size 3. CFC grew their capital to size 4.

Demos:

It's apparent that we most teams are starting to get momentum on their snowballs right now, since the score increases are coming fast and furious. Late on T59, the Germans did a 2-pop whip, and then they immediately gained a pop point as the turn rolled over.

Team	Score increase	Land	Cause
RB	8	0	Tech + 1 pop
WPC	10	7	1 pop
Spanish	9	6	1 pop
Apolyton	0	0	No change
Germans	2	0	1 pop
CivFr	9	0	Tech + 1 pop
CivPlayers	2	0	1 pop
CFC	2	0	1 pop
Univers	0	0	No change

So I have to make sense of 1 tech, 6 new pop, a population growth of 268000 (new rival worst is 75000), 10 newly claimed land tiles, and a rival total power increase of 20000, of which 3000 came from pop (WPC, the Spanish, and CivFr).

F8 screen:

The F8 screen tells us that the German city of Wittenberge has expanded its borders to the second ring, so that solves the 10 claimed tiles. They have also reached a minimum level of 57 claimed tiles, since they now control 2% of the total land area.

Top cities screen:

Lots of good stuff here. The top size 6 founded on 4000 BC has to be CivFr's capital. WPC grew their capital to size 7, since Apolyton (rival top in population) didn't grow a city, and are the only other team with a size 6 city. Have to check the #4, but since Webringen is still size 5, the Germans must have whipped a size 4 city last turn, ie I guessed wrong in my T59 pop growth assessment: CivFr grew a city to size 2 and the Germans one to size 4 (which they promptly whipped back to 2).

That leaves 99000 over 4 pop, which means 1 city growing to size 5, 1 to size 4, and 2 to size 3. (Yes, I've set up a spreadsheet to help me do this now.) Candidates are the Spanish, the Germans, CivPlayers, and CFC.

CFC has cities of size 2 and 3. That puts the growth to 4 on them, which also gets them to 75000 in population, which is the rival worst.

The Germans has cities of size 2, so they grow one of them to 3.

The Spanish has cities of size 4 and 2, but they need a size 5 city to get above 75000.

CivPlayers has cities of size 4 and 2, and get the final size 3 city.

CivFr also gained a tech in 5t, and we got a sizable drop in GNP: from 53 to 46 in top and with 2 in average. The drop of 7 corresponds to a raw beaker output of 35 provided a single-discounted tech. Assuming 35 base beakers, they can research Writing in 5t, and it fits neatly with 53 GNP from 4 CRE cities and 10 in maintenance.

Total power rose with 20000, of which 3000 came from pop. Rival top rose from 60000 to 67000, so it is likely one of WPC or Spanish (they gained 1000 in power from pop - CivFr also did so but has been identified as rival worst earlier). Rival worst rose from 28000 (CivFr) to 30000 - it might be an axe or spear build for CivFr.

ETA: Cliff's notes, and some incorrect info removed on the German whip.

[Sullla]

I'd like to thank kjn again for putting in the time and effort to keep tracking this data. I've done it myself in past games, and I know just how much work it can be. Thanks a ton.

[NobleHelium]

Can we get the Cliff's Notes section filled out in that post?

[NobleHelium]

Not sure where to put this but I think the diagonal from us to the Germans is steeper (less x-distance) than the diagonal from us to WPC. The map is toroidal (it is right?) so if the diagonals were the same angle then that would mean WPC is due south of CFC which doesn't make sense. Or maybe the diagonal to WPC is steeper? Either way, I'm sure the angles are different (30 vs 60 degrees) if the map is toroidal.

[kjn]

The APTmod web site exposes a bunch of info that isn't shown in the base game. I intend to set up some tracking of these, together with some bits of the F8 screen.

Under Game Details > Demographic Info > Gold our current gold reserve is shown, as well as our rank and a graph showing our gold reserve together with the rival best and worst. Right now the top value is somewhere around 160, and it has been stockpiled since T53. Taking into account the small dip in the curve, that leaves 6t for going from 20g to 160g, ie it's a rate of circa 24gpt (for comparison, we got 35 on T51 and 38 on T60).



So, which team can it be? It obviously must be a team that has limited teching during these turns, and I have the following candidates:

Apolyton: Researched BW on T55 in 6t. However, they tentatively teched Writing on T49, and may be stockpiling gold while they're waiting on a library or even a GS run to finish.

The Germans: No tech since T52, when they researched Pottery, but I can see no reason for why they would do this.

Univers: Researched Pottery on T53, and no tech since.

The Commerce (GNP) graph is also very interesting. It shows two GNP dips to near 0, ie aside from our two spiritual teams (Germans and CFC) only two teams have revolved to Slavery. We know WPC is one from F4 civ info, and that CivFr is the other one since they've whipped their cities. So we are 60 turns into the game, and barely more than half of the teams have revolted to slavery yet...