Dave Taste Tests Some Russian Wines

[oledavy]

I was looking for the same thing and haven't found it. The "overall military strength" is your relative ranking by the demographics, +75 means you're first. "Military near city-state" is supposed to count units within 8 tiles, but there's a lot of weirdness here, where depending on the CS's strength only some units count (warriors and archers often won't), and it often appears that farther units can still count and closer units may not.

I don't know if that adjusts for game speed. I've only played on normal where it's t20. I do know that the quantity of gold from ruins does not modify for game speed.

Thanks T-Hawk!

I'm going to assume that t20 holds in that case. Although, it is weird now that I think about it that gold rewards from huts don't adjust for game speed but culture does. I guess culture is more impactful, but it still feels like an oversight.

It may be a moot point. I'm hoping for a hut to the east, and if I do find it, I'll have the option of camping it for a little while.

Regarding city-state bullying:

So, for a 6 player game, what is the "overall military strength" number associated for each place, do you know?

Also, do you know how it calculates the strength of your military within that radius? Is it a factor of the melee strength of those units or is each unit worth a flat amount?

Right now, I'm showing at both Almaty and Kuala Lumpur at +25 for "military strength near the city state." However, one has a scout near it and the other a warrior. My southern scout may be within 8 tiles though, so that may account for the weirdness. I'll check on the next turn.

As an aside, thanks a lot for all the Civ5 reports you have done on your site. They are an invaluable resource for understanding some of the more arcane mechanics that are not discussed elsewhere. I read the Romulus and Remus twin reports last night and really enjoyed them (also, I'm really meaning to get around to playing the board game of the same name...).

If you're bored at any point in the coming days, In the post game I would love to see your thoughts on tradition vs. liberty in this particular map posted in the lurker thread. My sense is tradition, but optimizing has never been my strong suit and at least one of the other players has decided otherwise and chosen liberty

[T-hawk]

So, for a 6 player game, what is the "overall military strength" number associated for each place, do you know?

Also, do you know how it calculates the strength of your military within that radius? Is it a factor of the melee strength of those units or is each unit worth a flat amount?

I don't know either of these. I think each unit is worth +25 if it qualifies, but what makes a unit qualify is very murky. I think scouts are never strong enough to qualify, but not sure.

Tradition vs Liberty - my sense is that Tradition is just about always better on just about all types of maps. Liberty does OK through about the first 90 turns (normal speed), but once you hit the Tradition finisher that's just so much bigger than anything in Liberty. I don't have any sense for if multiplayer makes early expansion matter more enough to put Liberty ahead. I do suppose multiplayer makes Aristocracy less important and maybe Meritocracy more since buying luxuries isn't so easy.

[oledavy]

It's also worth noting in liberty's favor that the Pyramids allow for 1t roads on quick speed. Not too consequential in SP, but potentially really good in MP. I would be more than a little worried, for example, if Ichabod built the Pyramids and came at me with a golden age active.

[oledavy]

Turn 12

Finally got tradition!



Only four turns until the next policy. Chardonnay is going to start acquiring tiles like a weed.

Lots of sad news from our scouts though.

First off, our southern scout got attacked, no great surprise, but still annoying. KL put up a quest for barbarian units invading it's territory this turn, which means the camp south of Chardonnay spawned one and it went towards them.

I went ahead and pledged to protect - we'll see if it gives me anything worthwhile. With their self-produced worker at least 14 turns out and me not able to tribute them at the moment, there didn't seem to be much downside. I will have to figure out who I will worker steal from though - maybe Wellington if Ichabod doesn't beat me there.

My warrior in the west has continued following the river, and found another cotton - ever warmer.

The peninsula east of Kuala Lumpur has no ruins

There's space for at least one, but instead there are none. This means the four ruins I've already gotten will probably be the only early ones I get this game. There still may be a couple of land tiles to defog northwest of Chardonnay, but...yeah....talk about disappointing.

There is a potentially really decent city picking up cows, fish and bananas to be founded east of Kuala Lumpur. The big strike against it is the current lack of a luxury resource in the area (hoping for a sea one). It'll still be awhile before the sea around the northeast and southeast sites are completely defogged though, so deciding which one ends up being by 4th city will wait for another day. The first two cities are definitely going southwest and northwest.

Ichabod's warrior never appeared near my cap, so I'm betting he already turned around. I'm going to be turning my own around in the next few turns. Thankfully, the barbs have not screwed with my tile micro around Chardonnay yet.

As for tributing, my scout being wounded lowered me to third in military standing.



Which had this effect with Kuala Lumpur:



Well, you can't see it, but it lowered my overall military strength to 37. I'm still curious how 1 warrior equals 25 and 2 scouts also equals 25. Maybe just the first scout counts?

Anyway, here is my speculation on how your standing affects your overall score:

1st: 62
2nd: 50
3rd: 37
4th: 25
5th: 12
6th: 0

With a flat 25 for each military unit you have around the city, but with only up to one scout counting. That's the theory I'm going to operate on for now anyway

[oledavy]

Turns 13-14

The biggest international news is that I found Ichabod's capital, Persepolis



We learned a few things from this. 

1. Starts are basically mirrored. Ichabod got cotton in place of wine. He settled the coastal option (as surmised earlier).
2. Ichabod is hurting for gold (lowest GNP in demos, making 0 gpt). Not that avoiding working cotton early is a bad idea though, but this means if he aggressively settles in my direction (which - of course he's going to), he can't buy tiles right away. 
2. The sea to the west makes me basically certain now that we're on a three man continent. The mountain is the center, and there is a CS to the southwest. My southern scout should be able to confirm this in about half a dozen turns or so. Speaking of:  



Being pursued by barbs. Looks like Pindi is having fun too. 

I headed west and:



Bingo. I'll have eyes on his capital next turn. 




Ichabod is at the bottom of the scoreboard in troops. I guess he went scout -> monument -> worker/shrine. Pindicator is earning a lot of gpt, I guess he's working all his dyes. The rival worst food and MFG is really bad (4 in each case). 

I'm fourth in soldiers, but my overall military strength with KL and Wellington is still 37? I give up on trying to understand the tribute system for now...

I haven't pledged to protect KL yet, getting eyes on the whole area just in case they have a worker for whatever reason...  The barb quest should also allow me to run through their borders with impunity.  

My warrior and southern scout are coming back to the capital to scout the immediate area, guard my worker, and escort my settler. 

I'm trying to do something clever with tech. If I don't need the effect of the tech right away, or to beeline past it, I'm researching most of it them, then switching to another and leaving them unfinished so I have the most possible time to get the known tech bonus for finishing them. Mining is 4 beakers from completion, and if I don't get any bonus towards calendar before finishing it, I will switch off to archery and come back. I'm 4 beakers short of being able to research calendar, archery, and the wheel by t25, so hopefully I get that much in tech discounts and don't have to compromise my micro.  

So yeah, I did something uncharacteristic yesterday, and worked out micro for this game for the next 12 turns. My question was basically to answer whether it was more efficient to grow to size 5 on a worker then build a settler, or go max hammers immedietly. I initially was leaning towards the latter. It allowed me to get the worker and settler out a turn earlier (+11 hammers) at the cost of 10 food, 9 gold, 7 science. A larger trade-off impact was mitigated by the fact that getting the city a turn earlier allowed for an extra 2 food, 1 production, 1 science, and 2 culture. However, then I remembered I'm getting in Goddess of Festivals on t22-t25. Not having that extra pop denied me the option of working the 2nd plains wine while building a second settler/chariot archer,  and worked out to costing me culture and more critically, faith - at least 4 but more likely 9.

So, in the end, I'm taking a slightly slower start to get us to size 5 sooner and have more faith, science, and gold down the road. 

I really want to do two settlers in a row after the worker. Stagnate at 5 and get settlers out of the way for awhile so I can focus on growth in Chardonnay and get full use out of Landed Elite/Granary/Watermill. However, I'm not sure I can go that long without building a chariot archer to help clear barbs. I'm hoping however, that my scout and warrior can tide me over. With this in mind, the timeline tentatively looks like this:  

t19: Worker
t25: Settler
t31: Settler

then

Chariot Archer -> Granary -> Watermill -> Worker/Military

The positive side of this build path is that it gets my 2nd and 3rd cities out quickly to start growing, acquiring tiles, producing culture with their free monuments, and benefit from tradition finisher. It also allows me to focus on growth in the capital and maximize the impact of food producing buildings/landed elite. The fourth settler will either be bought, or hopefully come out of one of these additional cities after they reach size 3/4. No though, I've worked out worker micro that I will have the happiness to make this plan work (especially once Monarchy comes online).

The tradeoff is that this leaves me weaker on military, worker labor, and without an early caravan to bootstrap growth. I think I can get by without more of the first 2 for now (with existing units and a worker steal), and I'm not sure of getting an early caravan (especially with barbs around) exceeds the benefit of an earlier city.  However, we'll re-evaluate this around t25.

[T-hawk]

asdfion posted a reference to tribute mechanics in the Civ General forum: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/question...ute-values

[oledavy]

Thanks! I'll check it out later.  

On another note about this map, the lack of a horse abundance serves as a nice stealth buff to Russia. From what I can see, each civ has only 4 horses in their immediate sphere of influence. Russia being able to field 8 horses where other civs can field 4 is a bigger advantage than say, being able to field 16 when everyone has 8. At a certain point, you just aren't going to build that many horse units. I'll be very curious to see what the iron situation looks like.

t14 Map Review:  

I'm really liking the map so far Chumchu. The starts offered some interesting trade-offs. From what I can see so far, the map makes liberty viable. The center is lush enough to encourage competition but not so much to serve as a win button. Desert folklore isn't overpowered, nor any other pantheon just an auto-win (from what I can see thus far). I hedge all these thoughts with the fact that I don't have that much of the map explored so far, and I may not be noticing certain things now.  However, what we're playing on so far is extremely interesting.  

My only critiques thus far are two: 

1. Wines are a better calendar resource than dyes/cotton due to GoF. 
 - This may not be a huge issue though, as working gold plantation tiles early is not ideal. +1 culture and faith does not overcome the growth deficit you incur in my mind. I also know there aren't enough similar calendar resources to not encounter this problem in a six player game. I'm not sure off the top of my head how you could have done this better, the only things that come to mind would be to put one of wines/incense on a tundra/desert something like that. This, however, would unfairly punish the incense/wine player who does not get GoF.
2. The lack of peaks. I like that there are no huge mountain ranges dividing the map, but I would like an occasional peak to enable observatories, Machu Picchu, and Neuschwanstein. There don't seem to be any on my section of the map, so I assume the same is true elsewhere. That might have been an additional interesting trade-off for the capital location, put a peak off the river somewhere to invite a river vs. observatory decision.

With those thoughts in mind, well done Chumchu

[chumchu]

Thank you!

I cannot comment on your critiques without giving away information in some way.

[oledavy]

Thank you!

I cannot comment on your critiques without giving away information in some way.

Understood, I look forward to talking about it after the game

Turn 15

Quiet turn. Still waiting on one of my neighbors to research a tech. 

Found Pindicator's capital: 



I'm bringing my warrior back to Chardonnay, and I found Ichabod's while on my way:  



On the plus side, he's not lurking around in the fog to nail my worker. 

Next turn my borders grow and I get to adopt oligarchy.

[oledavy]

Turn 16

Pindicator managed to do a couple or irritating things on his turn, first off: 



He either bought or culturally acquired that horse tile, booting my scout NE. Irritating because I was planning on moving him SW-SW this turn. Headed northwest around Three Mountains instead.  

In the east:  



Pin moved his scout to the hill where I was going to move. With the lake blocking the other path west, and the path around the lake taking me past the barbarian encampment, my only option for moving was to move W -SW in Kuala Lumpur's culture. So, I will be taking another influence hit there, for whatever it's worth. 

Neither of them have researched a third tech yet, and Pin still has yet to pick a second SP, which I did this turn:



My hand is now revealed. Ichabod built a building or unit, as his GPT went down again. He's now making 0 GPT. I don't know how long he's going to be able to sustain his heavy production focus at this rate. By comparison, Pin's GPT is so high because he settled on a dye and has been working them instead of hammer tiles like the horse and deer. He has tons of gold, but I imagine he's behind on production. 

I did catch a break with tile acquisition around Chardonnay:



Got a tile near the plains wines, which are being targeted next. Pretty fantastic. I will still need to buy the sheep tile to make my settler building micro work, but now I will definitely be able to work that second plains wines instead of a deer while building a settler for +2 GPT (and eventually +1 faith and culture).

I have to say though, the turn pace is pretty disappointing right now. I keep hoping we can manage a blitz session to get the game to more interesting turns quickly, but it seems like it simply won't happen. Nic being in Australia with a very narrow window means the game probably won't ever achieve much better than 1 turn a day at best. People also can't seem to check to make sure their turn is uploaded, and that has caused several delays already.