[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire

[The Black Sword]

I think I might be getting an idea of plako's strategy. I' guess that he plans to get Oxford up super fast, using IMP to get to 6 cities quickly, PHI for double speed Uni's and the stored GE to rush Oxford. Then use the research boost to get to Rifling quickly. That wouldn't be a terrible idea, and would upgrade my opinion of his pick from 'terrible' to 'poor'.

Seeing the criticism of plako's pick again, I have to say it somewhere, IMO Phi is stronger than Org or Fin. Phi will give you a headstart of thousands of beakers in tech and I doubt Fin and Org will ever manage to catch up to that snowball. The engineer pollution is a challenge certainly, but it can be overcome.

Also on the topic of hyperbolic criticism, this is just flat out wrong:

Also, that RMOG city we just got visibility on, JungleAllOver? Terrible city placement. It's too far away from the rest of their territory, it's going to take forever to improve with workers, and the placement rules out cities on the water. They can't use the fish tile outside of planting an island city, and how do they get an island city with nothing on the coast? Weird place to settle.

*too far away -> 5 tiles from the previous city, you guys have a 4 tile distance in the same area.
*take forever with the workers -> you're commenting on a picture that has 3 workers immediately improving the resource!
*rules out a city on the water -> There are two options, both north and south, including what is probably the most optimal plant, the hill city that picks up both fish.
*So yes, they can use the fish without planting on the island.

That really is weird.

[Krill]

I pick issue with this paragraph:

That said, I really like where we stand right now. Those Demographics are excellent: first in Power and Land, second behind Nicolae (who has not been whipping) in Food and Production, competitive on GNP despite making no real effort to push research so far. And we have a settler finishing at end of turn, plus two more coming out in the next couple of turns, which will give us 8 cities by Turn 218. I was a little bit worried when we weren't out-settling teams in the early turns, but I suspect a lot of our competitors were pushing settlers before workers. Now they've had to pause to push out workers, while we have not, and we're finally getting our expected city count lead. Do not worry about in-game score, it's not particularly important this early on. Alhazard is ahead of us, and he's doing terribly. The Demos are more important.

• First in power? At this stage of the ghame? It's irrelevant at best and more likely a bad indicator of too many hammers invested into military. I think that it is likely an indicator of population though for them, given the investment into court houses.
  
  
• First in land is irrelevant again, it's a mirrored map! Number of cities, dot maps, tile improvements and population matters. Land is, again, irrelevant.
  
  
• Second in food: This is good, but Nic not whipping is irrelevant provided he is keeping up with expansion and guess what, he is. Then again, when the entire leader/civ combo is about expansion and Nic has SPI so IMO has a better late game, this isn't that promising either.
  
  
• Second in production: as above, but this doesn't take into account IMP production bonus and whipping, so I'd be more likely to buy Aztecs being first. I wouldn't bother looking too closely at the numbers at this point, instead number of cities, workers, tile imoprovements and pop being much more important indicators.
  
  
• "Competitive in GNP" is meaningless due to PHI bulbs and EP from courth houses. They'll realise this in about 20 turns IMO, or probably more likely when/if Allhazard hits Communism and Aztecs have one tech.
  
  
• Never place too much value on what you are going to do in the next several turns, because guess what, players of this calibre have their own plans as well.

tl;dr IMO Sullla is misinterpreting the demographics in this game, I disagree with his reasoning and feel that he has more confidence than the Aztec position deserves.

[GermanJoey]

I think I might be getting an idea of plako's strategy. I' guess that he plans to get Oxford up super fast, using IMP to get to 6 cities quickly, PHI for double speed Uni's and the stored GE to rush Oxford. Then use the research boost to get to Rifling quickly. That wouldn't be a terrible idea, and would upgrade my opinion of his pick from 'terrible' to 'poor'.

Seeing the criticism of plako's pick again, I have to say it somewhere, IMO Phi is stronger than Org or Fin. Phi will give you a headstart of thousands of beakers in tech and I doubt Fin and Org will ever manage to catch up to that snowball. The engineer pollution is a challenge certainly, but it can be overcome.

I been thinkin' about this a bit more, I don't think the engineers are that horrible actually. I mean, at first you can deal with maybe 1-2 GEs (e.g. maybe for a wonder like Notre Dame or banking it for Oxford) outta your first 5-6 great people, but later the GE-polluted pools will be just fine for generating GEs for golden ages, west point (comes at MT and costs like 700 hammers or something ridiculous like that in BTS, and remember plako's Imp so he'll get a real fast GG), and Ironworks. So, like, if plako happened to get 5 GEs outta his first 12 GP I think he'd be ok, as long as he was heavily front-loaded with scientists. He could also bulb with them, which is pretty crummy compared to a scientist but hey at least you got those free hammers.

edit: Like, something like:
1st: GE banked for oxford
2nd: GS to bulb edu
3rd: GS for academy
4th and 5th: 2GS bulb astro
6th: GE for 1st GA
7th: GS banked, bulbs chem
8th: GE bulbs gunpowder (and then the GS bulbs chem)
9th: GS bulbs Sci Meth
10h: GE rushes WP
11th and 12th: 2GS bulbs physics
13th: free GS and GE start 2nd GA

so that's 5GE and 8GS and I think it'd work out fine? you just gotta make sure you can at least out-race your second city's GE for your 2nd and 3rd great people to get those two critical scientists. I'd guess that this 14th GP here would be around T75 or so but I'm kinda just pulling that number outta a hat. one thing that's kinda interesting, that I just noticed, is that if we figure Phi is gonna get about a bit under double the number of great people as other leaders, then all the "extra" great people here are the seven bulbing scientists...

[GermanJoey]

I pick issue with this paragraph:

• First in power? At this stage of the ghame? It's irrelevant at best and more likely a bad indicator of too many hammers invested into military. I think that it is likely an indicator of population though for them, given the investment into court houses.
  
  
• First in land is irrelevant again, it's a mirrored map! Number of cities, dot maps, tile improvements and population matters. Land is, again, irrelevant.
  
  
• Second in food: This is good, but Nic not whipping is irrelevant provided he is keeping up with expansion and guess what, he is. Then again, when the entire leader/civ combo is about expansion and Nic has SPI so IMO has a better late game, this isn't that promising either.
  
  
• Second in production: as above, but this doesn't take into account IMP production bonus and whipping, so I'd be more likely to buy Aztecs being first. I wouldn't bother looking too closely at the numbers at this point, instead number of cities, workers, tile imoprovements and pop being much more important indicators.
  
  
• "Competitive in GNP" is meaningless due to PHI bulbs and EP from courth houses. They'll realise this in about 20 turns IMO, or probably more likely when/if Allhazard hits Communism and Aztecs have one tech.
  
  
• Never place too much value on what you are going to do in the next several turns, because guess what, players of this calibre have their own plans as well.

tl;dr IMO Sullla is misinterpreting the demographics in this game, I disagree with his reasoning and feel that he has more confidence than the Aztec position deserves.

wow did he really say that? geez, that guy just cannot help himself but trash talk other players when he plays...

i gotta admit here, when they were talking about espionage missions, i made a comment in their thread about plako's PB22 game, as kind of a subtle hint-hint that "HEY DUDES, DON'T UNDERESTIMATE PLAKO BECAUSE HE TENDS TO DO SOME MIND-BLOWING SHIT WHEN PLAYS CIV4" because they just keep bashing on his game... but of course they totally ignored it. ;( it was the same sorta thing in PB33... when they get on a roll about themselves, they get on a roll.

[Mardoc]

tl;dr IMO Sullla is misinterpreting the demographics in this game, I disagree with his reasoning and feel that he has more confidence than the Aztec position deserves.

I think in large part this is just Sullla's general approach to games. He rates a reliable, repeatable effect much higher than one-time effects like bulbs, no matter what the arithmetic might say. Sure, running a scientist for twenty turns to become 2000 beakers is equivalent to the scientist producing 100 bpt, but he'll look at it as 'just a one-off bonus, my empire is stronger as you can see by the 10 bpt lead in the demos'. You can see it in his FTL streams, too - if he picks up an awesome missile or bomb, he'll often forget to even use it, while lasers are his favorite weapons.

To be fair - it's a good heuristic! Most of the time, the correct move is in fact to pick up the reliable constant helper instead of the one-time bonus. Sullla could stand to be better at noticing the exceptions, but that doesn't keep them from being exceptions.

[Krill]

I think that's a very good explanation Mardoc.

[picklepikkl]

I've only been casually lurking this game; do the Aztecs have a deliberate great person plan of their own?

[Fluffball]

I've only been casually lurking this game; do the Aztecs have a deliberate great person plan of their own?

Their long term goal is SoL, so I believe they intend to pop a GA and then eventually use an engi on the wonder.

Sulla's approach is entertaining, which is why myself and many others are fans of his streams. He's almost always wrong, ONLY because he views it in such black and white terms. For example his dismissal of slavery as utterly wrong in PB33 only to be out-produced by slavery. There are always multiple valid approaches in games like this, and whatever he picks he goes all school-spirit on his choice. Or saying a city is complete worthless garbage because he disagrees with the placement. It's fun to see what comes next.

Many of the comments in all the teams here are along this line though. All of them are almost surprisingly evenly matched right now, and many of their comments are like "what the heck are they doing, they suck!" Just human competitiveness I think.

Edit: The Aztec SA choice was heavily influenced by Sulla's personality trait as well, even though he finally admitted it was a mathematically inferior choice to hammam.

[greenline]

You can see it in his FTL streams, too - if he picks up an awesome missile or bomb, he'll often forget to even use it, while lasers are his favorite weapons.

Missiles and bombs do generally suck in FTL, though. Breach2+Ion bombs take just as long to charge as Hull 3 or Burst 3 laser but cost ammo to do an equivalent level of damage. Small bombs/breach1 can charge fast and do incidental damage to particular systems but relying on them is problematic because ammo is scarce and ships with, say, medbays aren't. Missiles have the same problem. The only good ones are artemis/charge but you still can't rely on them for consistent damage because they chew through ammo way too fast (1 ammo for 2 or 3 hull damage is pathetic, it will take 3-5 ammo to kill weak ships and 6-12 for strong ships...).

[GermanJoey]

Edit: The Aztec SA choice was heavily influenced by Sulla's personality trait as well, even though he finally admitted it was a mathematically inferior choice to hammam.

The SA is definitely not mathematically inferior to the hammam. They didn't do their analysis correctly.