Oxy was out of slavery for a while. I guess Caste and artists was how he expanded borders in Harding, which explains why it happened so quickly! TIL: I need to be more on the ball with tracking which civics my rivals are in, especially SPI.
It's still empty! He might be in for a surprise next turn. He'll see the settler and the single axe which was in his land before anyway.
I'm starting to think Boldly may be on the same landmass as us. At any rate, we seem destined to be neighbours eventually. They're more experience MP Civ players than me which isn't saying much.
Our econ is starting to tank a little. 50% is very slightly below break even. The shrine will come soon though (GP due in 5), and calendar will help a little both for the vertical growth and the improved luxury tiles themselves.
Sorry Oxy, I wasn't planning to be a warmonger but you've got to prove that you're not overextending in this game.
For those curious (I was!) the W2 axe was teleported to the plains hill 3W of Harding on the declare. I'm sure someone could work out the arcane reasoning behind that exact square, but it sure won't be me!
Oxy has an axe and a chariot that can defend and probably nothing else (I've seen the cow tile). Harding just grew to size 2 so it could whip something but I doubt there's anything but a granary in the queue, as there doesn't appear to be one built yet. I think he's going to have a bad time in Harding if he can whip a spear in there, and an even worse time if he can't.
With this current military concentration, I think I can keep the city, which on a hill is a much better border than the new city (Rigatoni) I also planted this turn on the marked spot. I definitely don't want to go further, unless he does something stupid like leaving a city open to razing with a chariot or W2 axe. I wouldn't want any cities further south even free.
Here's power. Oxy doesn't seem to have much to go with his 7 cities.
Kuro, I have no idea about. That team seems to be the conspicuous team in a noob PB game who are actually noobs. Their start seemed considerably better than ours, and they have great rex traits. They went for a GLH build they should have known was too slow - our start wasn't good and we could have won the race if we'd have committed to it ourselves. Their capital is size 4 right now, but has been hovering around size 3 the whole game as far as I can tell. I'd worry about them a lot more if they had horses but they don't.
Victory screen:
This shows how Molach is ahead - with 30% more land. His GNP is also scary good right now. He is CRE but that's not the whole story. A wild card worry is that he'd strike north with Praets right now. But... I think Oxy would be a much more juicy target for him, or even wetbandit. I think aggressive Rome can go where they want in this part of the game if they want to commit.
Alfredo will pop borders this turn so at least we'll get a little bit more visibility around that border.
Oxy left Harding abandoned. If he had moved anything in I would have killed it at a winning trade, and he can't spare units right now, so I can't blame him.
The pillage gold is quite useful! So is a hill border city with a lot of juicy forests. I'll probably stop here unless Animal Farm is badly defended with no spears.
I could have moved my W2 axe to the hill S of Harding in striking range of Animal Farm (along with 2 chariots) but I think I'd rather have him heal in the city in preparation for a barb hunting excursion to 10xp. And I didn't want to risk that Oxy would trade a chariot for him even though I bet he wouldn't.
Oxy's CivStats shows that he may be checked out of this game. His last turn was 10 minutes long, and the turn before it was 3 minutes.
So I like the state of the empire on turn 100, and we're making progress! We've captured our ninth city, which comes out of resistance in three turns. Calendar finishes this turn so we can get some vertical growth, and several of our crappy city sites will become quite good eventually! Our Prophet is due in 3.
Azza has marble in the borders of a new city. I'm going to try and offer some happiness to him if and when he gets it online. Even the boosted fail hammers for MoM would be fantastic, and if we're first to Calendar it's not crazy we could be competitive in a race for it. I wouldn't bet on it though.
I think I settle on the stone here for a rare 3 hammer city tile, leaving the crappy dry rice for an eventual filler village. The other priority is to settle further south along Noodle Lake. I'd love to control the whole thing and this is looking less and less crazy.
For tech, I'm thinking that we go Masonry -> Mono next, both for walls in border citites and OR. After that Currency seems the obvious economic choice. I'm going to give some serious thought to archery + HBR after that, since we have a pretty sprawling empire to defend. It would be more urgent if our neighbours weren't all running farmer builds.
We got Boldly's graphs:
Considering they're an experienced team with Henge and Mids, I would have predicted higher.
Molach is pretty frightening. He has no late game traits though. Kuro is flat since turn 0. The era of camels, maces and catapults is getting closer and closer, guys.
Food is remarkably close among the whole group.
Boldly's graphs are a lot less intimidating than I expected. It's great news that he isn't building much of an army.
This kind of funny and completely unintentional CivStats stealth:
I took Oxy's city at the same minute Suttree settled one. So I wonder if anyone will just assume that it was Suttree that took Oxy's city, given that he was at war and took one just two turns ago!
I'm wondering what our northern dark green neighbours are doing O.o
Gratz on the city capture! Your warmongering doesn't seem as bad as I worried it would be ;-)
But how is our economy? We're probably in danger over over expanding. Our GNP might look OK, but it's also inflated by the religion's culture.
(July 28th, 2013, 03:12)Plunder Wrote: I'm wondering what our northern dark green neighbours are doing O.o
I know! My guess is that they are a little weak on Civ fundamentals, and should go study Sullla's videos and other players' PB games. They are keeping up with horizontal expansion with a lot of cities but don't have what's needed to support that.
Quote:Gratz on the city capture! Your warmongering doesn't seem as bad as I worried it would be ;-)
But how is our economy? We're probably in danger over over expanding. Our GNP might look OK, but it's also inflated by the religion's culture.
Thanks, I actually thought we'd need to lose 2-3 units to take Harding, not that we'd just get it completely for free, and have an intimidating military presence in the area still. It's a win-win.
My take on this is that you're supposed to over-expand in this part of the game. I think we're fine: 1. We have a shrine coming up in about 5 turns, with a religion spread to multiple other players. 2. We're ORG, so we're saving on civic upkeep costs. We're paying 4 per turn right now, so saving another 4. That's not FIN but it will get better. We also will get cheap courthouses everywhere, and currency isn't too far away.
Land is much easier to grab early than to conquer, so I think it's the right play to take it as long as we don't completely collapse the economy and have the military power to keep it.
Quote:Why settle on the stone and not one to the east?
You could make the argument but:
+ Stone is hooked up immediately, and it would be really nice to start Moai earlier, and also maybe walls in border cities.
+ It gets +2 hammers in the city tile innately. This plus the fish would mean the city's early curve is really strong with the whip. The worked stone is an 0/5/0 tile - not bad, not great.
Calendar is up and spices are online. This stonehenged our minimap. We also had a brief look at the top 5 before whipping score back down.
I wonder (like everyone else is probably wondering) if there is an east-west coast passage in this game for circumnavigation. That would be a massive bonus in this game, and a massive defensive liability if a neighbour had it. I know which side of a Reg "oar" Rarr galley I'd rather be on. I at least need to prioritize getting a scouting WB over Boldly's land to the north. I also should build a scout to check out Kuro's empire now.
We seem to be at the end of continent to the west.
I'm attempting to tell Azza that we have happiness galore to trade for that marble, when he hooks it up. And man do we ever... We accidentally the whole jungle. We've got multiple spices and sugar, silks, gems, eventually dyes.
Oxy did the smart thing and pillaged the road with a chariot before moving back. I offered a cease fire. I'm not interested in pushing any further if it means taking losses. I'd love to peek inside Animal Farm, but moving a chariot to that hill 2N would probably be suicide even though I'm not sure if Oxy has hunting and spears.
I'm thrilled with how the geographic situation is shaping up down there. We may even be able to capture that incense (like we need even more calendar resources). The extra +2 culture from a Madrassa may shine here. I'm a real fan of that UB now!
I'd like to eventually settle where we razed the barb city. And then it looks like we could own a ring around all of Noodle Lake. Oxy really blundered the chess match in this region, I have to say. And I'm not sure if Boldly is going to contest for this area much. He has low power and may already be extended a ways to the west. The strategy of adapting to the jungle with Iron + Calendar very early is what I'm betting on.
(July 24th, 2013, 10:45)WilliamLP Wrote: Ok, the actual, precise rules for unit teleportation appear to be even much more arcane and twisted than I imagined, skimming from these posts, from RefSteel in PB3. It seems to be some crazy recursive scheme with many cases and tiebreakers.
Actually, as far as I can tell, it's even more arcane and twisted than I thought it was back then. What I was describing there was for the case of a border expansion (from a rival with whom you don't have open borders) forcing your unit out of its newly-expanded territory. There appear to be yet MORE differences for a case (like this one) where borders are closed with a unit already inside them. (Note that the DoW itself does not kick your axe out of their territory; when you declare war, the game starts by closing borders, teleports units accordingly, THEN establishes the war, which has a separate "teleportation" effect for units belonging to the declarer who were sharing neutral-territory tiles with units belonging to the declaree.)
(July 26th, 2013, 17:50)WilliamLP Wrote: For those curious (I was!) the W2 axe was teleported to the plains hill 3W of Harding on the declare. I'm sure someone could work out the arcane reasoning behind that exact square, but it sure won't be me!
This one's actually easy ... once you understand which of Civ4's insane distance-calculating mechanics it uses for this form of teleportation. It 'ported to the tile it did because, due to rounding, there's a four-way distance tie between the desired plains tile, the site where Rigatoni would later be planted, the plains hill to which the axe in fact eventually teleported, and the grass forest 1N of that: Each is "4 tiles" from the axe's starting location and "5 tiles" from Alfredo. And in those circumstances, the tie goes to the [EDIT:southWESTernmost] tile* which in this case was the plains hill.
*- As judged by in-game coordinates, which can be confusing near the world wrap.
If you want to see a weird case of teleportation, build a sandbox of the situation as it stood just before your wardec and try planting Rigatoni just BEFORE you declare war. Can you guess where the axe will go?
It would have teleported INTO the city of Rigatoni, right? It's the closest tile to Oxy's borders that is not WITHIN those borders on the only "4-tile" route between the now-nearest city and the axe's starting point. Right? ... Right?
Nope.
The axe would have ended up on the plains hill 2NE of the city, across the water channel, right next to the ruins of Avar!!! I would love to tell you why this is, but I have absolutely no idea. If you had a city 3SW of the axe's position, just SW of the cultural border, he would 'port right into the city, but for some reason when it's 3NW of him, just NW of the cultural border, the teleportation mechanics appear to go completely off the rails.
[EDIT]NOTE: As I said, I have NO idea why this happens. It might even be an artifact of the quick-n'-dirty simulation I created for test purposes. I'm still thinking about it, but haven't come up with anything yet....
[AND EDIT]I somehow neglected to mention: It was possible to have the axe teleport to the plains tile where you wanted it; you would just have needed to move it in advance - either to the forest where you later placed your attacking stack, or into the forest directly north of the city. From these tiles, the rounding works in your favor, and the plains tile becomes the southwestern most tile at the "shortest" distance on the "shortest" route.[/EDIT]
So what you're saying is that to me it's indistinguishable from a coin flip, right?
Anyway, thanks for explaining that, even though my head is exploding like that scene in Scanners! I hadn't even considered that a tactical settlement done solely to influence quantum teleportation was a thing!
It's amazing that there are still discoveries to be made about the mechanics of this game.
(July 29th, 2013, 15:59)RefSteel Wrote: It 'ported to the tile it did because, due to rounding, there's a four-way distance tie between the desired plains tile, the site where Rigatoni would later be planted, the plains hill to which the axe in fact eventually teleported, and the grass forest 1N of that: Each is "4 tiles" from the axe's starting location and "5 tiles" from Alfredo. And in those circumstances, the tie goes to the [EDIT:southWESTernmost] tile* which in this case was the plains hill.
That's a heck of an example of "easy". I'm still confused, and no worries at all if you don't want to take the time to unpack that - you probably did in another thread.
So does it scan all tiles adjacent to the teleporter's borders with a path to the unit through the territory? And then the winner is the closest (truncated) Pythagorean distance to the nearest city? And then the first tiebreaker is the Pythagorean distance (truncated) to the teleportee unit? And then the second tiebreaker is the SW most tile?
(Ignoring the completely whacked out cross-water case you mentioned - I'm just trying to understand the "easy" case!)
(July 29th, 2013, 17:34)WilliamLP Wrote: That's a heck of an example of "easy". I'm still confused, and no worries at all if you don't want to take the time to unpack that - you probably did in another thread.
Not really, except in the posts you linked to (sort of). You just got me interested in the question again by linking back to them. I'll see what I can do about explaining more explicitly.
Quote:So does it scan all tiles adjacent to the teleporter's borders with a path to the unit through the territory?
I'm not actually sure what the internal mechanics are; I've never looked at the code for the game. I just infer stuff from its behavior and did lots of tests in different situations to (eventually, maybe) prove myself right or (more often, again and again) wrong. (Most of these tests were done years ago, but I ran a few quick ones just yesterday and today to make sure I didn't offer more misinformation here - which is a good thing, because otherwise I would have!)
Quote:And then the winner is the closest (truncated) Pythagorean distance to the nearest city?
I thought so at one point, but tests suggest that's not quite right. First, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think the game actually uses Pythagorean distance; it uses the same approximation it does for city border pops. In fact, that's probably an easier way to think abnout it: For teleportation purposes, tiles are "three spaces away" from your unit if they would be within the third ring of a city centered on the unit's tile. My understanding is that it's 1 per tile of movement distance as the Gunship flies, plus 0.5 for each such movement that would have to be done diagonally, treating a total of X.5 as X.
So in the normal case, check the tiles where your unit can legally stand just outside the now-closed borders. Each of those tiles is a certain distance from (in a certain "city borders" ring for) your unit and for your nearest city (on that landmass). Add up those distances. I.e. third ring for your unit plus seventh ring for your city = 10. The tile or tiles for which this TOTAL is the lowest wins.
Quote:And then the first tiebreaker is the Pythagorean distance (truncated) to the teleportee unit?
Right, although again I don't think it's quite Pythag, as mentioned above. So a tile that's 4th ring for your axe and 5th ring for your city beats a tile that's 5th ring for your axe and 4th ring for your city.
Quote:And then the second tiebreaker is the SW most tile?
I think so, although as I recall the second tiebreaker is technically S-most tile, and the third tiebreaker is W-most. (I don't remember how I originally tested this, but I think it does occasionally come up.)
Quote:(Ignoring the completely whacked out cross-water case you mentioned - I'm just trying to understand the "easy" case!)
Hopefully it's at least a little clearer than mud now? Bear in mind that the jumping-NE-across-the-bay case is interesting to me because it proves I don't fundamentally understand this stuff either! (Although I do have an idea I might test tonight if I have time....) So if it's still completely opaque, it may just be because, you know, I don't fully even know what I'm talking about!
Their start seemed considerably better than ours, and they have great rex traits. They went for a GLH build they should have known was too slow - our start wasn't good and we could have won the race if we'd have committed to it ourselves. Their capital is size 4 right now, but has been hovering around size 3 the whole game as far as I can tell. 
I'd worry about them a lot more if they had horses but they don't.
The era of camels, maces and catapults is getting closer and closer, guys.
