[spoilers] Vi Viqsi Veniversum Vivus Vici (or possibly just embarrasses herself)

[Viqsi]

It does. It also gets modified by whatever traits.

So if you say overflow 5 food-hammers from a worker, if you're EXP, then that gets changed to 4 overflow hammers. Or if you're also IND and working on say a forge or a wonder, then that 4 hammers gets modified to 8 overflow hammers.

Coolness; that'll be a helpful bonus then until I get the copper mine up and running. Perhaps I might attempt to claim that it was planned that way.

Uhh. Yeah, Rego is right. But, um...Rego? Why are you here?

...eep?
Oh.
Oh dear.

Took me a bit to make that connection. Grar.
Um, well, that obviously doesn't change my appreciation for the game help!

[Viqsi]

T16: Oh, that's going to make things even MORE interesting.

Also, Sareln teched again. Eight turns, again. The Wheel, on the way to Pottery? Would make sense.

Worker completes at EOT - I got 5 hammers of overflow.

Around this time I started wondering if it would be worthwhile to wait until Agriculture research completes before switching to Slavery. If I'm lucky that could uselessly confuse people. More realistically, I was wondering if it would help w/r/t penny-pinching micro. So I did a little back-of-the-hand calculating which I am probably doing totally wrong but I'll double-check parts of it next turn.

In particular, I'm not 100% sure when a mine would complete and become available. That makes a significant difference here...

If I delay switching:
T17: Worker moves and starts mine (1 of 4), Myst food 8+6/22, Warrior 0+7/15
T18: Worker continues mine (2 of 4), Myst food 14+6/22, Warrior 7+2/15
T19: Worker continues mine (3 of 4), Myst food 20+6/22, Warrior 9+2/15
T20: Mine completes, worker moves to farm 1N of Myst, research completes, Myst grows with 4 overflow, Warrior 11+4/15 [and I switch]
T21: Worker starts farm, Warrior 11+4/15
T22: Worker continues farm, Warrior completes with 0 overflow. Settler is next.

If I switch next turn:
T17: Worker moves and starts mine (1 of 4), Myst food 8+6/22, Warrior 0+7/15 [and I switch]
T18: Worker continues mine (2 of 4), Myst food 8+6/22, Warrior 0+7/15
T19: Worker continues mine (3 of 4), Myst food 14+6/22, Warrior 7+2/15
T20: Mine completes, worker moves to farm 1N of Myst, Myst food 20+6/22, Warrior 9+2/15
T21: Worker starts farm, research completes, Myst grows with 4 overflow, Warrior 11+4/15
T22: Worker continues farm, Warrior completes with 0 overflow. Settler is next.

If I switch next turn and do a tile switch:
T17: Worker moves and starts mine (1 of 4), Myst food 8+6/22, Warrior 0+7/15 [and I switch]
T18: Worker continues mine (2 of 4), Myst food 8+6/22, Warrior 0+7/15
T19: Worker continues mine (3 of 4), Myst food 14+6/22, Warrior 7+2/15
T20: Mine completes, worker moves to farm 1N of Myst, I switch to work the mine, Myst food 20+2/22, Warrior 9+4/15
T21: Worker starts farm, research completes, Myst grows with 0 overflow, Warrior 13+4/15
T22: Worker continues farm, Warrior completes with 2 overflow. Settler is next.

Assuming I have all the timing correct, switching next turn and shuffling tiles once the mine's done means I could trade 4 overflow food for 2 overflow hammers, essentially. Otherwise they're identical. I think that qualifies as "really bad" - IIRC a whip at low pop is nearly 1:1.5 in the opposite direction - 20something food for 30 hammers, yes?

HOWEVER, I'm not fully certain on that, so I did a little more figuring anyways. So! It doesn't slow down my growth in the short term (at size 2, since I'll be working a 2/4/0 mine I retain a +6 food surplus, so it's 4 turns for size 3 regardless - but size 4 would be delayed a turn). It does nothing, however, to speed up the Settler I have coming next - 12 hammers+food means in 8 turns I'll have 96 hammers towards a Settler - 2h doesn't make that happen any earlier, even if I employ a whip towards the end. (And that had me thinking about "making up" the overflow via such a whip for all of about five minutes before I realized that a penalty is still a penalty even when compensated for and that I should feel bad for contemplating it. )

So if I've got this all this right... I have opportunities to make mistakes and otherwise there's no real difference. Enlightening!

Something to think about.

[Cornflakes]

Note that on quick speed mines only take 3 turns (I'm assuming this is quick) and mines are always workable on the turn they are finished. Obviously you must have a citizen working the tile. Other than that observation which jumped out at me I didn't check any of the rest of the micro for accuracy

[Viqsi]

Note that on quick speed mines only take 3 turns (I'm assuming this is quick) and mines are always workable on the turn they are finished. Obviously you must have a citizen working the tile. Other than that observation which jumped out at me I didn't check any of the rest of the micro for accuracy

Normal speed, not Quick. I think I therefore properly accounted for the timing of finishing mines. I hope.

[Cornflakes]

PBEM on normal speed? You're in for a long game then!

[Viqsi]

T17: That's a lot of jungle. And MOAR FISHIES! :D

Interestingly, it looks like that tip of jungle I saw near Tentative North 1 may be connected by land to me. Hmm.

Also, Azza has another tech. I'm not hazarding a guess yet at this time - because I finally leapt into the rabbit hole last night and today and started attempting to teach myself more of this C&D stuff and gathering data. Summary of initial conclusions: I am a fool.
Working on (long) posts relating to that, which will be available "shortly".

Oh, and I went ahead and switched to Slavery this turn.

[Viqsi]

So! On the principle that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, and since nobody said "no, no, you can't do that" after I asked about it twice, I went back and opted to collect Demographics data for each turn up 'till now in an Excel spreadsheet.

That spreadsheet, with comments, can be found here.

This has had a significant impact on several of my earlier conclusions with regard to what folks have researched, so I will be going through them in turn.

T5: Fintourist's First New Tech.

...annnnd Fintourist's score has gone up.

I dismally failed all my C&D 101 classes, but just like how I (think I) remember "como esta usted" means "how are you" in Spanish despite failing that too, IIRC 6 points at this early stage means a new tech has been researched. Five turns means it's probably one of Hunting or Fishing (he's Ottoman - Agri/Wheel), and given the lay of the land (and sea) I'ma gonna go with Fishing.

This was fairly easy to double-check, thankfully, and I think I got this right. Clues suggesting I got this right:

• Fin's soldier count did not go up, so Hunting is definitely ruled out.
  
• The very next turn, the GNP average went up, suggesting a switch to a water tile by him.

One other thing, too:

Later revelations would suggest that I might have botched the total beakers he had from research (see "Hydra's First Tech" below). However, his Financial trait can't come into play yet, and he was in any case no higher than 18 total GNP, judging by later collected data. Besides, the alternative techs that MIGHT have been reachable with a higher BPT are Mining (ruled out also because of soldier count being stable) and Mysticism ( )

So, yay! Go me! For now...

T7: Hydra's First New Tech.

Hydra: 6 points means he has a tech! Took seven turns to happen (they're after me). My best guess there is Mining.

I ended up reviewing this later, and "confirming" my conclusion. In that review, I had a hypothetical question which I am now able to conclusively answer:

So does all this test me out of C&D 101 yet, or am I still failing?

Answer: I'm still failing. Badly.

Hydra's soldier count did not change. Mining adds soldiers. So my guess of Mining is incorrect. And the other tech that I had thought possible in that timeframe - Mysticism - is one of his starting techs. Oh crap.

Basically, I didn't know about research bonuses at all, and only found out about them because I was trying to decipher GNP as a result of Azza's first tech confusing the hell out of me (see more on that colossal misread of mine further below). Mostly because they're apparently all secret and hidden and such. I confirmed this madness with my own research - turns out that I was ostensibly generating 10bpt, but in researching Bronze Working I was actually getting 13bpt. To which I say "lol wtf" and do more investigation.

Said investigation, spoilered because anybody who knows this stuff undoubtedly knows this backwards and forwards already and is laughing at my naivete:

So far as I can tell based on Employing The Google, the bonus is roughly 1bpt period (sort of an "everybody gets 1bpt no matter what"), plus an additional %age for folks you know with the tech (30% of [folks you know]/[folks who started]), THEN plus an additional 20% for having all minimum prereqs with additional 20%s added to that for additional optional prereqs. Rounded down to the nearest integer each time. It makes me dizzy.

But that makes my 13bpt for Bronze Working make sense:

• I have 10bpt. (It later changes to 11 when I swap tiles after finishing the work boat)
  
• I get 1 more because everybody gets at least the 1 minimum extra.
  
• I know nobody. No bonus there.
  
• I have the one minimum prereq for Bronze Working, so that's a 20% bonus. 11*1.2 = 13.2, round down to 13.
  
• When I added another bpt after the tile switch, 12*1.2=14.4, rounded down to 14.

I'm still happily following along, despite my developing headache.

That neatly invalidates much of my theorizing which I was so proud of. So I dove into this whole thing because I "had" to figure out what the hell he'd researched anyways.
Okay, no, I didn't really HAVE to, but by now I was deep into the rabbit hole and didn't know my way back.

So. What the hell DID he research just then?

This is where portions of that prior theorizing are still useful. My suppositions as to his work priorities are likely to be fairly similar. I just got the resulting numbers wrong because I didn't know about research bonuses that impact starting-game techs when you don't know anybody. So!

• I know from Land Area numbers that with only one exception, EVERYbody started with a water tile in their first ring. As he's a Fishing civ, it seems likely Hydra would have opted to do this and work the "fish". So he's at what I had initially thought to be 11bpt. Only that number is, like, wrong.
  
• If he's researching a tech with a prereq, he'd get 14bpt for 98 beakers. No prereq techs available to him can be reached with this total, so he didn't do this. (And vague impressions from the GNP numbers suggest that only one other player was researching a prereq tech anyways.)
  
• For another starting tech, therefore, it's 12bpt for 84 beakers (72 in the turn prior). There are two techs that this could have been, therefore: Agriculture and The Wheel.
  
• Hydra's soldier count did NOT go up the turn he got that tech. Therefore, it's not the Wheel, and must be Agriculture.

New Conclusion: Agriculture was researched, with 5 beakers of overflow.

Okay. We're still sane. For now.

T8: Sareln's First New Tech.

• Sareln: 6 point increase. Tech, took eight turns. That means Agriculture or The Wheel. I think Agri is the safe bet.

Early GNP figures suggest that my assumptions of 10-12bpt or so were not entirely off the mark. Therefore these two possibilities are still the most likely. Sareln's soldier count did not change, so I'm sticking with my conclusion of Agriculture.
Hallellujah.

T10: Azza's First New Tech, or "When Viqsi Really Realized Something Was Very Badly Wrong".

Also, Azza's score has gone up 6 points. Another tech, and one that took 10 turns (he's before me). My first though was Pottery, but that requires The Wheel and he's Fishing/Mining. So my best guess at this point is Masonry... which is odd, because I can't imagine Walls, Quarries, or the Great Wall being big objectives at this point, and going early for the Pyramids would be pretty silly.

So either I'm missing something, or he's going hard for the Pyramids. I'm thinking the former, but, hey, who knows? Maybe he's got stone at his start.

I take some comfort in knowing that, having concluded that I was most likely missing something, that I therefore arguably called this "correctly". It's a small comfort given the comedy of errors in my analysis here, but I'll take it.

The first early hint which I squandered:
Azza was probably researching a prereq tech. This is because thanks to Sareln moving, his GNP was "Rival Best" for my T0, and it was at 21. (4 espi, 2 culture, 12bpt raw, 1bpt base bonus, 2bpt prereq bonus, 0 expenses.) Given the resulting research rate of 15bpt (!), this should have been my first clue as to what was going on, but I did not put two and two together until...

The first clue I actually noticed:
Rival Best in Soldiers leapt from 4000 to 11000 when his research completed! This had me utterly confused for a long time and wondering if our previous soldier count leader (Fintourist, thanks to The Wheel) had built something to help inflate things (this would be a nice example of my power of self-deception ), until I discovered that Bronze Working adds 8000 soldiers. I'd already known Azza would be at 3000 (Mining+pop), so it added up. This had me utterly confused and lost until I remembered that his civ is Financial - and so obviously he must have been working the fish all along and getting a bonus from that trait. Huzzah! Enlightenment!

...and then on later review, I realized I had already come to that conclusion previously when I saw his GNP in the clear on T0!
I fucking earn that "scatterbrained n00b" title, damnit.

Now, the kicker...
The clue I SHOULD HAVE noticed long before I started any of this demographics mishegaas:

I AM A BLIND FUCKING IDIOT. [...] He's whipped something, sure as hell. How could I miss that? Gah!

In T12, Azza's score dropped 4 points. It rebounded the very next turn. Despite my scorewatching, I managed to miss this entirely.

Somehow I thought that no notification of adoption of Slavery meant that nothing like that had happened, so I was questioning my first clue when I happened across it. This is because I managed to completely forget that you don't get those notifications if you haven't met the people involved.

Which means my "confuse people" throwaway attempt at wit earlier w/r/t my own Slavery switch is utterly meaningless too.

Anyways. Since I know how his GNP came together, it's easy to see after the fact. He was getting 15bpt. That's 150 beakers after 10 turns, and 165 after 11 (the actual number of turns it took him, despite my saying 10 in the original post; seriously, I think the only thing I got right in that first assumption was "I'm missing something" ). BW here is 158. Easily done.

So, yeah. I was missing something pretty huge, and continued to miss things afterward. Repeatedly.
But at least I know better now, right?
Right?
...right?

Incidentally, based on Food production numbers that appear immediately after that pop regrowth, and lack of Soldier count changes, I suspect he started by building a Work Boat, then (having probably not completed it yet 'cause of the focus on food rather than production) used the whip to finish the boat and put the overflow into something else, most likely his first worker. If that's true, that seems a little overly "pro" for the n00b division...

T13: Hydra's Second New Tech.

[...] Hydra's score has gone up six points, which means another tech. This... confused the hell out of me, because I wasn't sure what tech that could be (normally I'd just guess Mysticism, but that's one of his starting techs!), and my attempts to find out have seen me mostly reinventing the wheel w/r/t C&D... and doing a undoubtedly massively crappy job of it, as it's caused a six hour delay between "send save" and "post in spoiler thread".

If I'd merely known that he'd grabbed Agriculture last time and so Mining was still available, I'd just assume he got Mining instead previously. And indeed, rival average soldier count went up this turn so that's actually a strong candidate. But my bpt assumptions had been wrong, so I want to refigure it.

Then again, they may be right by accident. GNP has stayed at more or less the same levels all this time, despite Hydra's extra population. Indeed, the average went up a bit when Fintourist presumably swapped to a water tile... and then went DOWN two turns later when Hydra's population went up and has stayed there all this time. So it's probably safe to probably assume that his bpt is probably about the same and he's probably not researching a prereq tech. Probably.

Anyways. 12bpt in 6 turns with his 5 overflow from last turn is 77 beakers (65 last turn). That... actually makes Mining (at 66 beakers) look pretty good as a conclusion. I had assumed in my earlier theorizing that he was working a tile that added commerce, but GNP changes have not borne that assumption out. I think that means he's gone strong for production in that time, so if anything his bpt may have gone DOWN. 11bpt in 6 turns with 5 overflow is still 71 beakers, though, so Mining is still feasible.

So despite the fact that it puts me in the seemingly ludicrous position of having guessed both his techs correctly but in the wrong order I'm going to conclude he picked up Mining.

T14: Fintourist's Second New Tech.

Also, judging by the score Fintourist has teched again. This time it's after nine turns; that seems to limit the candidates to Masonry, Meditation, and Pottery (and also suggests he's making use of them fishes). I didn't get a Buddhism FIDL message so it's probably not Meditation, unless that's changed from SP. So I'm going to assume it's Pottery, for developmental purposes.

I feel a tad better w/r/t how on the ball I was here. Not 100%, as I still undoubtedly got the techs wrong. But a little better.

I'd figured out from his tile switch and the GNP figures that Fintourist's GNP had likely gone from 18 to 21, which meant he was certainly researching something with a prereq. That said, I had the range of techs incorrect. He'd have had something like 8 beakers of overflow on his Fishing research, and would be going at 15bpt, which means 143 beakers total (128 previous turn). That means either Sailing or Animal Husbandry.

His soldier count did go up this turn, too, by 2000 soldiers. While that seemingly confirms one of those two techs, it doesn't help us pick between them! However, I've been assuming mirrored starts or at least very similar ones, and we all start quite a ways from the coast, so Animal Husbandry would be of much more immediate use.

Therefore, that's probably what he took - AH.

Of future note: Fin's GNP didn't drop any after this research. So he's not looking at a starting tech.

T16: Sareln's Second New Tech.

Also, Sareln teched again. Eight turns, again. The Wheel, on the way to Pottery? Would make sense.

Hydra's last tech had taken him out of the Soldier Count basement and put Sareln there; on this turn, though, Hydra was back as Rival Worst with 3000. 4000 soldiers were added among rival civs this turn, so The Wheel does seem to make a lot of sense.

I don't think Sareln's GNP has made many changes in that time either, although it's hard to tell. GNP reading requires extra-strength Tylenol.

T17: (just now!) Azza's Second New Tech.

No other demographic numbers (aside from Rival Worst GNP, which is decidedly not Azza ) were affected today, so this took him 7 turns. Rival Best GNP was largely unchanged at 21 - until T16 and this turn, when it becomes 22. (Suggests he shuffled citizens to add a little more commerce, maybe.)

Anyways, he's seemingly still at 15bpt, and has 7 beakers overflow from BW, which puts him at 112 beakers - 105-beaker techs here are Pottery, Meditation, and Masonry. No soldiers were added, but that just confirms our assumptions w/r/t cost. I still have no notification of Buddhism's founding, so I'm going to assume Pottery was what he picked up.

Other Data Uncovered In Re: Settling

I got the opportunity to discover a lot more about people's starts in the process. There's a few cute tidbits to note:

• At one point, production for all rivals drops to 2-1-1-1. Obvious conclusion: most of my rivals aren't on hills. If we do have mirrored starts, that means that a lot of folks moved-and-settled. Hmmm.
  
• One rival did not have a water tile in his first ring. Everybody else did. I know it wasn't Azza; the timing of his border expansion (and the size of his GNP ) revealed as much.
  
• By the time all initial border expansions were done, everybody had a water tile.
  
• Initial production levels: 4-[2 or 1]-1-1. Which means someone else was settled on a plains tile and working a 2hpt tile - presumably to get a Work Boat out.

If starts are mirrored, that suggests the following:

• Three move-and-settles - two (including Azza) likely south of the lake (move 1NW and settle, like I was originally thinking), one 1S of that (move 1W and settle).
  
• Sareln settled in the same spot as myself.

Alternatively, one of the three may have settled in place, but in that scenario I have no idea where Sareln could have gone. Or my assumption that starts are mirrored could simply be wrong.

Sareln's also one of the two rivals of mine who hasn't added a population point yet (the other being Fintourist). So I suspect he's played a very similar opening to me. Again, assuming mirrored starts. It looks like Fintourist might have done the same if he could - he couldn't because he didn't start with Fishing.

Conclusion: State Of The World, T17, in Turn Order

• Sareln: Started with Fishing and Mining; has since added Agriculture and The Wheel, is probably headed towards Pottery, and his capital is probably in the same "mirror-spot" as mine and at the same population.
  
• Azza: Started with Fishing and Mining; has since added Bronze Working and probably Pottery, has a capital that's probably (relatively speaking) 1E of mine, has already whipped one pop and gotten it back, is very effectively leveraging that Financial trait already, and therefore probably qualifies as our "frontrunner" (such as it is).
  
• Viqsi: Started with Fishing and Mining; has since added Bronze Working; still learning this mishegaas and hoping not to die.
  
• Fintourist: Started with Agriculture and The Wheel; quickly added Fishing and immediately made use of it; has also since added Animal Husbandry.
  
• Hydra: Started with Fishing and Mysticism; has since added Mining and Agriculture Agriculture and Mining and a population point.
  
• Of note: Nobody appears to have any military units.

One other weird thing I noticed: Rival Worst GNP managed to stay at 16 (4 espy and 2 culture from castle, 9bpt raw, 1 bpt starting tech research bonus) for a LONG time. Either this is a hint that starts aren't actually mirrored, or they are and someone was making an error w/r/t citizen micro. Hmm.


Am I doing better? I'm certainly doing more.

Also, I originally thought this was going to have to be broken up into multiple posts due to size restrictions or something. I probably should have regardless, but, well, I'm lazy.

and I think I'm going to go to bed now

[Kuro]

No idea if any of that is right, but the effort is impressive, and certainly doing better. In earlier game terms, I like the dotmap you put out: Looks like something I'd make.

[Viqsi]

No idea if any of that is right, but the effort is impressive, and certainly doing better. In earlier game terms, I like the dotmap you put out: Looks like something I'd make.

Yay, I feel all validated! Danke.

[Viqsi]

T18: More seafood, more sea. Today's shot is an overview of the entire Eastern Bridge as presently revealed.

I'm still not 100% sure how I'd want to dotmap this thing, although I'm already thinking of putting a city in that single grasslands tile 1SW of the clams, and then having a fill-in somewhere adjacent to the lake (E, NE, SE, dunno.)

Demos spreadsheet updated.
Today's notes:

Fintourist capital size 2. Still assuming mirrored starts, I think Azza is working improved fish and a unmined copper grasslands tile (2-1-1 capital, 6-0-3 citizen 1, 2-1-0 citizen 2?).
I wonder if Fin was also previous Rival Worst GNP.