Strategy Thread - for quick strategy questions and answers

[NobleHelium]

Yes. I do think I have a good understanding of it, but occasionally a situation comes up that baffles me. PBEM 52 for instance.

[SevenSpirits]

Do you have a link?

[NobleHelium]

Don't click if you're playing.

[NobleHelium]

SPOILER FOR ALL PBEM 52 PLAYERS

According to DanF5771's findings, Mardoc couldn't get a route because it went through ocean and he didn't have Astronomy. But according to Sian's posts a few turns prior, he was getting routes before getting Astronomy, so I'm not sure what's going on there. It could be that my interpretation of Sian's posts is off and he did actually have Astronomy when he was getting routes. Or maybe there was some unshown coastal route via the western islands that Sian later settled but didn't mention. It might have gone through a Sian-cultured ocean tile there. That sounds like the most likely explanation now that I think about it.

[SevenSpirits]

Ah. Well it's clear now, right? The cities need to be connected.

[zanth]

I can't find how cost of passive spy missions is determined, can someone explain please?

[WilliamLP]

I can't find how cost of passive spy missions is determined, can someone explain please?

Passive Espionage

We'll tackle this first. Espionage points grant passive benefits against enemy teams as they accumulate over time as follows:

Passive Missions
Base Factor * (100+How much they have against you)

Demographics=0.3
City Visibility=1.2
Investigate=2
See Research=0.75

Note that this is where the famous "43/43" espionage point spending agreements come from; your 43 EP divided by their (43 + 100) EP becomes 43 / 143 = 0.301 and enough for both teams to see one another's Demographics.

Also note that City Visibility is not constant though: it depends on a bunch of mysterious multipliers on a per-city basis. E.g. whether it has your religion, how far it is. If the exact formula to determine if you have vision on a specific city is out there, I've never seen it.

[Catwalk]

I'm all confused about tech cost. Assuming that this thread is correct, this is the formula:

Technology Cost = FLOOR (FLOOR (FLOOR (Base Cost * (Difficulty Modifier + 0.5 * # of teammates)) * Map Modifier) * Speed Modifier)

The difficulty modifier can be found here. Now, what puzzles me is that the difficulty modifier goes down when levels go up. Moreover, it seems to have miniscule impact because of the large modifier from player count. Are both of these conclusions correct, or am I just misreading it badly?

EDIT: Crap, realized my mistake already. Somehow I took "team mates" to mean "players in game"... Still, does tech cost actually go down on higher levels? That doesn't seem right, and I can't figure out where I'm misreading that.

[DaveV]

The difficulty modifier is iResearchPercent, which increases as difficulty level increases. The number of teammates is not the same as the number of players, but refers to team games, where players are permanently allied for the whole game. In a normal game, it will be zero.

[Catwalk]

Hmm, I read somewhere that I should be looking at iNoTechTradeModifier. Do you know what that one does? And thanks!