[SPOILERS] SevenSpirits becomes self-aware

[Old Harry]

Its a shame this game didn't last the course, especially when Mackoti dropped out. Serdoa said some interesting things about skill levels in his thread - obviously going down the rankings route is a recipe for turmoil, but I'd love to see a championship. (I haven't read all the pbems yet so I may have missed it if there has been this many good players in a game before.)

You had the advantage, was that due to traits or in-game decisions? And do you think you'd have kept it? Who is the best at tactical warfare and could they have made up for your economic lead?

[luddite]

I liked your trait analysis, but this part seems really weird. You're saying that almost all the value of expansive comes from the cheap granaries, and that the worker discount is almost worthless, and that can't be right. I think you've overvalued late game stuff by using a doubling time of 20 turns, when the early game is more luke 13 turns.

I really do think the worker discount is almost worthless compared to the granary discount.

I don't understand the relation to doubling times.

Are you talking in general, or referring specifically to this crazy setup? I was just talking about a normal setup where the first worker bonus alone from EXP is huge.

The doubling time is going to change how much to relatively value early game advantages. So if its low, early game bonuses like the first worker have a huge value, and increasing it would give more value to things like the ORG factory bonus.

Its not just a small change either. Even just going from 20 to 18 turns would decrease the value of something on turn 100 by almost 50% (half another doubling). So I think to do this kind of analysis you need an extremely accurate value for doubling times snd not just a rough estimate.

[SevenSpirits]

Are you talking in general, or referring specifically to this crazy setup? I was just talking about a normal setup where the first worker bonus alone from EXP is huge.

I'm talking about a normal setup. And yeah, I don't think the starting worker speedup is worth that much.

Why don't you tell me what your evaluation of the value would be?

[SevenSpirits]

You had the advantage, was that due to traits or in-game decisions? And do you think you'd have kept it? Who is the best at tactical warfare and could they have made up for your economic lead?

I definitely think my traits and civ pick gave me an advantage. However, a lot of that advantage (particularly from ORG) hadn't even been applied yet! I think my play was very strong, and my opponents made various mistakes. I think the locations of my 2nd and 3rd cities were perfect, and my tech path was very good (only problem being the hunting hiccup). Other than that I pretty much focused on getting up as many citizens working resources and grass river cottages as possible while always being able to defend against single enemy units from any direction, and trying not to offend anyone.

One thing I did very poorly (i.e. pretty much not at all) was C&D. If I'd been paying closer attention I could have optimized my attempts to grab wonders and religion. Though, it seems everything turned out OK, but that's because I was mostly overestimating my opponents' teching abilities.

I don't know who would have been best at warfare. I don't even know how good I am at warfare.

[luddite]

Are you talking in general, or referring specifically to this crazy setup? I was just talking about a normal setup where the first worker bonus alone from EXP is huge.

I'm talking about a normal setup. And yeah, I don't think the starting worker speedup is worth that much.

Why don't you tell me what your evaluation of the value would be?

Well without trying to quantify it I would rate the first worker, granary bonus, and all later worker bonuses as all roughly equal in importance. The exact order would depend upon map settings, especially how big the map is.

[SevenSpirits]

Well without trying to quantify it I would rate the first worker, granary bonus, and all later worker bonuses as all roughly equal in importance. The exact order would depend upon map settings, especially how big the map is.

Some consequences if true:

* EXP's value varies by 100% just based on whether you can get a starting worker bonus. 1t savings are approximately average case (so worth about 1/3 of EXP's value), but 0 and 2 are both common as well, and the difference between them is the same value as the entire rest of the trait. By comparison, I would also say that CHA is worth about half of FIN. It's surprising that no bigger deal has been made of this insane variance when picking traits.

* SPI is the best trait. Even if it just saves 3 anarchy turns throughout the game, that's about as much value as EXP on its own. Throw in the ability to freely use caste system, various religious civics, and nationhood, and it's easily 1.5 times as powerful as the second-best trait.

* The turn penalties incurred for trait and civ picks in this game were unbelievably harsh. Serdoa won handily.

[luddite]

Well without trying to quantify it I would rate the first worker, granary bonus, and all later worker bonuses as all roughly equal in importance. The exact order would depend upon map settings, especially how big the map is.

Some consequences if true:

* EXP's value varies by 100% just based on whether you can get a starting worker bonus. 1t savings are approximately average case (so worth about 1/3 of EXP's value), but 0 and 2 are both common as well, and the difference between them is the same value as the entire rest of the trait. By comparison, I would also say that CHA is worth about half of FIN. It's surprising that no bigger deal has been made of this insane variance when picking traits.

* SPI is the best trait. Even if it just saves 3 anarchy turns throughout the game, that's about as much value as EXP on its own. Throw in the ability to freely use caste system, various religious civics, and nationhood, and it's easily 1.5 times as powerful as the second-best trait.

* The turn penalties incurred for trait and civ picks in this game were unbelievably harsh. Serdoa won handily.

1)I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned before that EXP is a bit of a crap shoot when you can't see the map in advance? Although, most quick speed games here have map setups that would give it a 1 turn bonus. I would describe it as a ~33% variance from the 1 turn base case.

2) Those turns for SPI are a bit less valuable though- often it lets you do somewhat marginal civic switches that you just wouldn't do if you weren't SPI. It's not the same as saving turns from the first worker, where everyone really wants that worker sooner and you just can't do anything else until it's done. But at any rate, SPI is indeed a pretty good trait- if saving 1 turn is as weak as your analysis has it, SPI's 3 turns saved would also be really weak.

[SevenSpirits]

I disagree with your starting numbers on granary and worker hammers saved. You can see my opinion in the exp evaluation post from pregame.