[PB64] Lurking Randomly

[Psillycyber]

If we just want to take lurker subjectivity out of the equation, and make the rules as unambiguous as possible while also keeping a quick turn pace, we could alternatively just have games where the whole game is a double-move free-for-all, during war and all. It would almost make Civ4 into a game with RTS elements, where real-life factors beyond just factors in-game, like a cat stepping on your keyboard during a Starcraft match, or having to work early and not being able to move first/last in a turnsplit, could influence win/loss.

But that is problematic for Civ4 not only because Civ4 players play Civ4 and not some RTS game for a reason (they psychologically find a TBS game more rewarding and don't like the idea of real-life limitations, like having or not having twitch reflexes, or having to work late, influencing the game-state), but also because Civ4 rewards playing last in a turn more than playing first (in most cases). If Civ4 always rewarded playing first, then at least it would incentivize PYFT and there would just be the psychological aspect of the game's becoming part-RTS for players to get used to. But the problem is even worse than that because players would be incentivized to hold up turns at important turning points.

Also, consider how different chess becomes if you play chess with snake-turns. In other words, white goes first, but then black gets two moves, white gets two moves, black gets two moves, white gets two moves, etc. Totally different game than sequential (vanilla) chess. Even more different still would be "free-for-all pitboss chess" where any turn order is possible so long as neither player has played n+2 moves where n=the number of moves the other player has played up to that point.

[Miguelito]

Amica is at 541gpt at the first turn of a 12 turn golden age. I’m a little shocked because I don’t see how’d they’d jump up from ~240 when they have < 200 pop, but it’s pretty terrifying regardless.

Probably just building wealth?

[Mjmd]

Going to post my proposed rule changes here first just to see if anything is obviously broken on them:

New Rule
After a war in which cities have been razed any cities settled by the person in 2nd half of former war should be settled in 2nd half for five turns.

I wanted to allow a faster turn pace with this while allowing players to pivot to other wars if they wanted to easier (very common reason for peace is then to go bash someone else / defend from someone else).

Modify rule #6. Added portion underlined.
6. In a peace-time turn split (eg a settling or hut-popping race) the turn you realize there should be a split is when the order is established. If a player has double moved into, future turn order shall be decided by lurker dice roll.

 I would love for all settling races to be decided by dice roll, but I don't think I'm getting that, so went with more limited verb-age. There is also a case where you double move and settle a city the turn you double moved but didn't know until you double played. I don't think* it makes sense for someone to have to stop their turn to get a lurker roll? Thoughts? I obviously favor my verbage just to keep the game moving, but I could see otherwise.

[Miguelito]

I would love for all settling races to be decided by dice roll, but I don't think I'm getting that, so went with more limited verb-age. 

I also want that! And I believe Cornflakes also has said so. We should put it to a vote in Civ General!

[Psillycyber]

Quiet turns lately. The calm before the storm? Can we gin-up some player paranoia with a flurry of posts in the lurker thread and get things a-jumpin'? (Just kidding, just kidding...)

[Magic Science]

Can we gin-up some player paranoia with a flurry of posts in the lurker thread and get things a-jumpin'?  (Just kidding, just kidding...)

Happy to help.

[Charriu]

As if this game needs more tension

[Krill]

How is this game still going? It is like the inertia of a big game has been triple distilled and then given as an enema to all the players.

[Charriu]

T200
As always all the data can be found here: PB64 Tracking

Before we start some notable observations:

• You will notice that in general development is way slower compared to other PBs. That's because the map isn't as lush as our usual custom made maps.
  
• I'm not tracking anything that the players got from a hut. I tried to backfill gained techs as best as possible, but here I mostly rely on the players reporting.
  
• Game-wise we saw the decline of Gavagai in the dogpile by all of his neighbors.
  
• Commodore amazingly still holds against Ginger
  
• Ginger continued to keep his tech advantage, but it is shrinking
  
• Meanwhile Superdeath managed to acquire the most important city of Gavagai: The pyramid city
  
• Amicalola and naufragar continued their healthy relationship
  
• More wonders were finished T153 (Temple of Artemis, Ginger) T161 (Confucian Shrine, Superdeath) T170 (Jewish Shrine, naufragar) T183 (Hanging Gardens, Amicalola) T189 (Mausoleum, Amicalola), T194 (Chichen Itza, Superdeath)
  

I also wanted to point out that this is a very interesting game for its economics. Unlike most other games players do not rely on the (by now somewhat stale) cottage economy. So far it looks like the economies are setup like this so far.

• Commodore: Water tiles with Colossus
  
• Ginger: Serfdom mills and going specialists with wonders
  
• Gavagai: Representation-Pyramid specialists
  
• Amicalola: No-cottages, Great Lighthouse, someday serfdom
  
• Naufrogger: FIN, ORG water tiles
  
• Superdeath: Mines
  

Now there is no new data compared to PB61, but I was able to fix the production trackings. Here a brief explanation of the new stuff:

Actual gold/science: This works like the previous science and gold tracking, but this time the slider setting is included. Therefore we know exactly how much everybody produced in those areas.
Production and TotalProduction: I thought about how to better judge all the hammer bonuses for buildings, units and wonders and thought that tracking the actual production might be a good metric to track. The production metric is somewhat useful though.
Tech Tracking: Similar to wonders and great persons I'm now also tracking when each player researched each tech. Small downside, I'm not tracking which tech the players choose from Oracle or Liberalism and tech tracking. The former should still be easy to guess in the context of other techs researched and the last is only used in diplo games in the past, so I didn't bother so far.
Tracking all the civics: I already tracked the labor civics in use. So why not track all of them.

General state of the game
City count

1. Amicalola = 17
   
2. naufragar = 15
   
3. Commodore = 12
   
4. Superdeath (IMP) = 11
   
5. Ginger (IMP) = 9
   
6. Gavagai = 3
   

Population

1. Amicalola = 151
   
2. Ginger (IMP) = 107
   
3. naufragar = 106
   
4. Commodore = 73
   
5. Superdeath (IMP) = 53
   
6. Gavagai = 26
   

Amicalola finaly is able to grow his large empire into a lead in pop.

Current turn Gold at 100%

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 878
   
2. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 466
   
3. Ginger (PRO) = 405
   
4. Commodore = 345
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 214
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 85
   

As you can see quiet a lot has changed in this category. Amicalola switched into serfdom some 10 turns ago. This increased his gold by roughly 250. naufragar is benefitting more and more from FIN. Ginger most likely ran more merchant specialists (he generated 3 great merchants)

Current turn total maintenance

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 298
   
2. Ginger (PRO) = 225
   
3. Commodore = 198
   
4. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 197
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 188
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 68
   

Amicalola is on top no wonder with his large empire. What is curious is that Ginger is in second place. He ranks high in all 4 maintenance categories. naufragar of course benefits hugely from ORG. Superdeath also managed to press down on maintenance with a lot of courthouses.

Current turn maintenance-gold delta

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 580
   
2. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 269
   
3. Ginger (PRO) = 180
   
4. Commodore = 147
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 26
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 17
   

Amicalola is steaming ahead.

Accumulated actual science

1. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 16278
   
2. Amicalola (PRO) = 15753
   
3. Ginger (PRO) = 15020
   
4. Commodore = 11455
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 7804
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 5537
   

If it wasn't clear already it is now. We have 3 leading players.
But what exactly did the players do with all those beakers. Well fear not here it is:




Ginger is still holding a lead in tech thanks to bulbing. Of note Superdeath is only 1 tech ahead of the barbs. It's a shame that Superdeath gave up on this game so early. He had a good position would have been easy to set up a coastal FIN economy like naufragar even without ORG, because he had enough production.

Production
Accumulated total production
You will find the unmodified production in parenthesis if it differs. I only show relevant traits here.

1. Amicalola (EXP, PRO) = 26388 (22695)
   
2. Ginger (IMP, PRO) = 22621 (17563)
   
3. naufragar (ORG) = 17379 (14919)
   
4. Superdeath (IMP) = 15974 (14565)
   
5. Commodore (CHA) = 14608 (13319)
   
6. Gavagai (AGG, EXP) = 11141 (10261)
   

Financial Bonus
Current turn FIN bonus

1. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 103
   
2. Amicalola (PRO) = 87
   
3. Ginger (PRO) = 75
   
4. Commodore = 58
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 27
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 13
   

Accumulated FIN bonus

1. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 5809
   
2. Amicalola (PRO) = 4328
   
3. Commodore = 4299
   
4. Ginger (PRO) = 4211
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 2121
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 1011
   

It's safe to say that naufragar played into his traits.

Severity of FIN nerf compared to BtS
Here the comparison for this lighthouse implementation compared to BtS (delta, reduction in percent):

1. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 362 (-5.87%)
   
2. Commodore = 812 (-15.89%)
   
3. Gavagai (AGG) = 1150 (-53.22%)
   
4. Amicalola (PRO) = 1246 (-22.35%)
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 1346 (-38.82%)
   
6. Ginger (PRO) = 1424 (-25.27%)
   

Now keep in mind that only two players are incentivized to work towards improving FIN numbers. We see that naufragar is a lot less affected by all the FIN nerfs, while Superdeath suffers a lot more from the nerf. This is most likely because he has some more 2 commerce tiles, which under BtS would get the extra commerce.

Protective Bonus
Current turn PRO bonus

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 88
   
2. Ginger (PRO) = 28
   
3. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 14
   
4. Commodore = 12
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 0
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 0
   

Spot the great lighthouse player.

Accumulated PRO bonus

1. Amicalola (PRO) = 4759
   
2. Commodore = 895
   
3. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 536
   
4. Ginger (PRO) = 347
   
5. Superdeath (FIN) = 199
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 178
   

This happens when you have the most cities + Great Lighthouse and not enough foreign trade routes to fill them up.

Misc
Great people born

1. Ginger (PRO) = 10
   
2. Commodore = 5
   
3. Amicalola (PRO) = 3
   
4. Superdeath (FIN) = 2
   
5. naufragar (FIN, ORG) = 2
   
6. Gavagai (AGG) = 2
   

I'm tracking a lot more but there is not enough information there to justify an own paragraph. Therefore a little summary here:

Civics

Government: Gavagai was forced into Despotism and then Hereditary Rule after the loss of pyramids. Superdeath used it for 13 turns of Representation and 11 of Police State. The others are still in Hereditary Rule.
Legal: Everybody except Superdeath is running Vassallage by now. Even the barbarians.
Labor: Ginger is all about Serfdom. Amicalola switched into it in T191. The rest is still holding slaves. Except for the barbarians.
Religion: Ginger is running a tight Theocracy for the last 50 turns. Superdeath and Amicalola are still pagans. The rest is organizing their religion (yes the barbs too). Oh except Commodore, who switched into Theocracy in T191.

Civics
Nobody had any unhappiness due to war weariness so far. Ginger may have had 1 unhappiness for 3 turns.

Comparing traits

The main goal of all this tracking of course is to compare the economic traits related around commerce income or maintenance reduction. So let's do this:




Very interesting statistic. Of course FIN is strong with Commodore and naufragar because of their water based economy. Similarly PRO is great for Amicalola because of Great Lighthouse. Superdeath wanted to be AGG, but got FIN.
But for the most part we see that ORG is the best general trait as this is a cottage poor map.

With everybody laser focused on Ginger right now, I think this might be Amicalola's chance to march ahead.
Stay tuned for the T250 report.

[Psillycyber]

It will be hilarious if Commodore kills Ginger's merchant and diverts Ginger from his questionable invasion of SWOL Superdeath.  It will be hard to resist killing that merchant.  If I thought that I was imminently about to be at war with a player regardless, and knowing as much as Commodore does (who thinks it's a given that Ginger will be significantly diverted to the SD front), it's what I'd do.  But I really think it will end up playing into Ginger's hands if Commodore does that.  Ginger's invasion of Superdeath may indeed end up getting wrecked by Superdeath, whereas Ginger can easily hold his eastern frontier with Superdeath on the defense with cannons and stack-moppers while Ginger directs the bulk of his forces at Commodore.  How much do we want to bet that Superdeath chickens out of the war with Ginger if Ginger doesn't go on the offense on that front and instead hangs back with his cannons while going after Commodore?  It would be the smart play from Superdeath.  SD could gobble up Gavagai during the 10-year peace.  But, it would hang Commodore out to dry and really reinforce the idea that Superdeath's war alliances are not to be trusted.