The Dark arts - C&D Master Thread

[Sullla]

I'm going to stand by my opinion that picking Holy Roman Empire (a medium to weak civilization) and insisting on taking Organized trait (forcing the Exp/Org pairing here and giving up Fin) is an underpowered combination in the setup we have here. I also believe that rushing to Code of Laws (over Currency) in order to whip out a bunch of rathauses is exactly the type of play that inexperienced teams have done repeatedly in our past games. UniversCiv has a truly terrible economy in this game, and I can post the bar graphs showing exactly how terrible when I get home tonight, if anyone is curious. I don't really care what the abstract mathematics suggest on this; UniversCiv has played a mediocre game thus far, and we've researched fully double their beakers while also piling up 50% more population. Just because a rathaus is more economically efficient than a missionary build doesn't mean that UniversCiv's play has been good here. (And since when have I suddenly become this apostle of missionaries? I just said that they were a good deal for our team because we have an early Shrine on a Huge map.)

T-Hawk, while I'm always interested to hear your thoughts, bringing up posts that I made three years ago and trying to make me look hypocritical is not really doing anything to help this team.

[novice]

Org Rathauses are pretty good, I guess the problem with inexperienced players playing ORG/HRE is that they are often unable to produce the revenue part of their economy, and fail to expand their empire to a size where the Rathauses start to shine.

Our missionary for archer deal is also pretty good, with a net cost of 16 hammers yielding 1gpt now and a probable 2-3gpt later, all eligible for full percentage modifiers in our shrine city.

There's no need to infight - there's also no need to paint our situation in the best possible light and our opponents' situations in the worst possible light. We've already been beaten to many of our strategic objectives (Oracle, MoM, dyes) so there's no need to get complacent.

[T-hawk]

I meant it as friendly teasing, apologies if it didn't come across that way.

I agree UniversCiv's play has been weak so far, but now they've done exactly the move they should do and were designed to do all along. Give them some credit there. I didn't realize they rushed CoL over Currency, which is usually wrong, but the one situation it might be right is exactly Org Rathauses. Yeah, Org Rathauses don't beat Financial, but it's not a bad play. (What should they do, not build them?)

If we're trading missionaries for archers, yeah 15h/1gpt is a fine deal.

[novice]

net cost of 16 hammers

yeah 15h/1gpt is a fine deal.

It's been a long time since I played on normal speed - I took the 16 hammer archer cost and added 50%.

[kjn]

Some whips before T110 ended:

CFC 2-pop whipped the city of Terasvin (where they are building the Pyramids), probably a build switch there and overflow to the wonder.

CivFr performed 2 1-pop whips, one 7->6 and one 3->2.

[kjn]

T111 - 100BC

Cliff's Notes: CivPlayers built the Apostolic Palace. Otherwise a mixture of pop and land score. Power saw only small increases, and Univers didn't whip courthouses last turn.

Demos:

Score table

Team	Score change	Pop	Tech	Land	Wonders
RB	28	12 (+5 pop; 83 total)	12 (Code of Laws)	4 (5 tiles; 145 total)
Spanish	7			7 (KwaDukuza 9 tiles; 89 total)
Apolyton	12	5 (+2 pop; 43 total)		7 (Ankara? 9 tiles; 105 total)
Germans	4	4 (+2 pop; 42 total)
CivFr	5	5 (+2 pop; 60 total)
CivPlayers	28	5 (+2 pop; 36 total)		7 (Tlaxcala 2-ring 9 tiles; 115 total)	16 (Apostolic Palace)
CFC	8	8 (+3 pop; 64 total)
Univers	7	7 (+3 pop; 53 total)

Score analysis

F8 analysis shows 14 new pop globally, and GNP analysis no new known techs. There are 27 land tiles to assign from T91, all with known sources. 18 land tiles were claimed, and rival worst in land rose from 99 to 106 tiles.

Spanish: Received land score for KwaDukuza.

Apolyton: Received land score for their T91 city, leaving 5 score to assign as pop, 43 total.

CivPlayers: The third team to get land score this turn, this time for when Tlaxcala expanded to 2-ring. They also built the Apostolic Palace, leaving 5 score for 2 more pop, and 36 total.

CFC: Grew Lana to size 10, as well as two unknown cities. We know they didn't research a tech, since Lana's pop growth would give 3 score, leaving only 5. They have 66 total pop.

CivFr: Grew one city to size 3 and one to size 7 per rival best in population (another possible solution, two cities growing to 6, doesn't work since they only have the one size 5 city). They have 60 total pop.

Germans: Score from 2 pop, and 42 total.

Univers: Score from 3 pop, and 53 total.

Power analysis

The rival global power only increased with 16000 this turn, and 7000 of that came from pop. CFC increased their power with 12000 (2000 from pop), so the Spanish or another team must have had some losses, though the diff is only 1000.

Other

Sullla remarked in his report on the rival best in GNP/Production/Food probably not being the same teams, and it's true. Per APTmod data CFC is the rival best in production (75) and food (193), but their GNP is only average right now (130). Their highest GNP during the last few turns was 216 at T108.

Whatever Univers whipped last turn, it wasn't courthouses - they still produced 4 EPs last turn. Their culture production increased from 22 to 24, though, and it looks like they have completed several 2cpt buildings lately, in all likelihood libraries.

[T-hawk]

Courthouses do not produce EP on the same turn that they are built, so those whips could still be courthouses, the EP won't increase until a turn later.

Libraries do produce culture on the turn they are built, so they built one library at most in that whipping spree if they gained 2 cpt.

[kjn]

Ah, good to know that about courthouses and EPs. Tricky keeping track of those details.

Yeah, one library last turn, but I think they've finished several during the earlier turns, just from my eyeballing of the late values.

[kjn]

WPC settled their tenth city, Arctica. It claimed 6 tiles and put them at 30 pop, increasing their power with 1000..

CivPlayers continues to 1-pop whip, and did another one in an unknown city. This lowered their power with 1000, and confirmed they are still rival worst in power.

I note an axe loss somewhere, since the global power fell with 6000 between Sullla's turnplaying and I logging in to grab the demos after WPC settled their city. Candidates are CivFr, Univers, and WPC.

[kjn]

Before ending their turn, CFC performed three whips. Lana was whipped from size 10 to 8, Lakshmi was whipped 6 to 5, and an unknown city was 1-pop whipped.