RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya)

[Maniac Marshall]

You asked about corporations the other day. Here's MY take. Keep in mind, I've played very few games of BtS, and I can tell you the only ones I've ever made are Creative Constructions, Civilized Jewelers, and most especially Sid's Sushi. In this game, all 3 of these are practically useless unless there's something I'm missing.

Aluminum Corp:
Requires: Scientist
Consumes: Coal
Generates: Aluminum
Generates: 1.5 beakers per coal.
Number of Coal Resources in our empire: Unknown, but likely 1.
Unsefulness: Probably not much unless we have no aluminum, it which case it would be a godsend. Would be great if we had a pile of coal, but we likely won't.

Cereal Mills:
Requires: Merchant
Consumes: Wheat, Corn, Rice.
Generates: .37 food per resource.
Number of Resources in our Empire (projected): 7-8
Usefulness: If we can get the # of resources up to 9, thats 3 extra food per city... that's nothing to sneeze at. Probably one of the most useful if we can get up to 9 resources.

Civilized Jewelers:
Requires: Artist
Consumes: Gold, Silver, Gems.
Generates: .5g and 2 culture per resource.
Number of Resources in our Empire (max): 4
Usefulness: The culture is probably useless to us. Two extra gold is nice, but it's not even a trade route's worth. Probably not very useful even if we could generate an artist.

Creative Constructions:
Requires: Engineer
Consumes: Iron, Copper, Stone, Marble, Aluminum
Generates: .25 hammers and 1.5 culture pre resource
Number of Resources in our Empire (guess): 4
Usefulness: Not much. 1 hammer isn't going to make much difference honestly.

Mining Inc:
Requires: Engineer
Consumes: Iron, Copper, Coal, Gold, Silver
Generates: 0.5 hammers per resource.
Number of resources in our empire (guess): 6
Usefulness: This might be our best, along with Cereal Mills. The extra Hammers would be nice, and if we put Wall Street in the same place as the HQ, we could probably make this work.

Sid's Sushi Co: Ok, we have rice, but seriously, it takes 4 rice for one food, and only generates culture anyway.

Standard Ethanol:
Requires: Scientist
Consumes: Corn, Sugar, Rice
Generates: 1 beaker per resource.
Number of Resources in our empire (projected): 7
Usefulness: 7 beakers per city X 15 = 105 unmodified beakers/turn. Plus, this is one we'd probably be most likely to get resources donated to help with from our allies. If we don't go for cereal mills, but do decide to run corps, this is one of the two we should try for along with Mining Inc.

[Maniac Marshall]

I just realized that another opportunity exists to get a 1 turn worker from Temminck this turn if I whip the nearly finished missionary. The city will grow back to size 9 in 1 turn, and size 10 2 turns later if we borrow the FP farm from PR for a turn. Should we do so do you think?

I expect we should stop whipping workers for a while after these 5 (or 4 if we don't whip this one). I don't think 22 workers for 12 cities is gimp at this point in the game, and we do need these cities to grow up at some point.

The Smithsonian Worker Plan has reached the end, and needs an extension.

[RefSteel]

I just realized that another opportunity exists to get a 1 turn worker from Temminck this turn if I whip the nearly finished missionary. The city will grow back to size 9 in 1 turn, and size 10 2 turns later if we borrow the FP farm from PR for a turn. Should we do so do you think?

I don't think so, but I'll have a look at the city if I can get in-game. Mainly because....

I expect we should stop whipping workers for a while after these 5 (or 4 if we don't whip this one). I don't think 22 workers for 12 cities is gimp at this point in the game, and we do need these cities to grow up at some point.

This is correct, and (I assume) doesn't include the one-turn workers we can get out of the capital over the next ~10 turns (no whip required) with creative build queue management. On the other hand: Does it include the worker we're sending off to Byz?

The Smithsonian Worker Plan has reached the end, and needs an extension.

I'll dig out the original from way, way upthread. The one on page ninety only copied about the first half.

[Maniac Marshall]

OK, something screwy is going on. We completed Sankore, but it does not seem to be recognizing our hindu buildings in some cities.... It sees the ones in the capital and in HV, but not the ones in the other cities? The result of this is we're getting only about 20 beakers rather than the 30 beakers we should be getting.

Is there some known issue relating to this?

Hopefully this straightens itself out, otherwise I'm going to be pissed.

[Maniac Marshall]

I'll hop out of the game right now. Take a look at the sankore thing while you're in there.

I'm out.

[RefSteel]

Smithsonian worker plan updated here. I'll try to get into the game now.

[RefSteel]

While I wait for Civ to load:

Okay, I'm at a total loss to explain the whipping bug. But at least I now know what it actually does.

A few observed phenomena:

+25% hammer bonus, 37h remaining: 1-pop whip. (Correct; whip gives 37.5, rounded down)
+25% hammer bonus, 75h remaining: 3-pop whip(!) (whip gives 112(.5 rounded down) hammers; 2-pop would give 75)
+50% hammer bonus, 45h remaining: 2-pop whip(!?) (whip gives 90h; 1-pop would give 45)
+50% hammer bonus, 90h remaining: 2-pop whip(!!!!!) (whip correctly gives 90h exactly)

Look at those last two again. It works the same way whether the hammer bonus consists of two +25%s (OrgRel + Forge) or one +50% (Bureau cap). I can think of no variety of rounding error or simple programming mistake that could explain this behavior; it absolutely boggles the mind.

Also note, by the way, that if you put another hammer or two into the builds, you can whip these builds for the correct number of pop and the whips generate the correct number of hammers! There is no problem at all with the way the game calculates the number of hammers generated by a whip - only with the way it calculates how many whips will be needed!

Oh, and:

+50% bonus, 135h remaining: 4-pop whip. Naturally. (3-pop would give 135 exactly)
+25% bonus, 150h remaining: 5-pop whip(!!!!@$*&*#E$*!!!!) (4-pop would give 150 exactly)

So after staring in dumbfounded amaze at this for a while and running a few more tests, I think I have detected a completely illogical but apparently correct pattern:

While a 25% [b]or 75% (or 125%, etc.) total hammer bonus applies, it is not possible to whip an even number of population units if doing so would complete the build to the exact hammer.[/b]

While a 50% (or 150%, etc.) total hammer bonus applies, it is not possible to whip an odd number of population units if doing so would complete the build to the exact hammer.

Now, as far as I can tell, this makes no sense - trying to imagine the insane contortions of code that might have resulted in something this preposterous is making me see cross-eyed - but for purposes of city planning, all that really matters is that it's true.

[Maniac Marshall]

We've actually only gone up 16 beakers since last turn. We whipped 6 pop away (Actually only 4, 3 at HV and Ornata, but both grew between turns), and we're no longer working the gold at Ornata, so that's part of it, but on the other hand we ARE working the gems at FS again...

It displays the beakers from the buildings next to the buildings, but if you check the calculations for each city at the top, only the Cap and HV appear to be getting the beakers.

[RefSteel]

Also, on cultural conflicts:

Truth be told, being the first to put culture on a given tile doesn't make a lot of difference - especially if it's just a matter of a turn or two. Long-term, the things that really matter are the total culture being generated by the city, the distance from the city to the tile under conflict, and the speed (if the difference is great enough) with which you can extend culture BEYOND the contested tile. Fighting multiple cities' culture can be particularly challenging, but not impossible. I'll address our specific cities below, working under the assumption that Ruby Tuesday's third-ring borders will pop within a turn or two of when Thundara's and Savannah's second-ring borders do:

Thundara
First Ring: Even if Ruby Tuesday pops its third ring borders before Thundara pops its second ring, Thundara will always control all its first-ring tiles. RT will only be putting ~3 culture per turn on Thundara's first-ring tiles, which won't catch up to the amount of Friendly culture already present before Thundara pops its borders and its ownership of those tiles becomes indisputable.
Second Ring, currently neutral: Once it pops its borders, Ruby Tuesday will control these tiles until a little while after Thundara gets a theater. For every turn RT has culture on these tiles and Thundara has no theater, it will basically take two turns longer for us to regain control (unless we also build a temple or monastery or library or something before that happens, in which case the time will be reduced). This city won't strictly need these tiles for a little while yet, but I still suggest delaying the forge until after a Theater and probably Temple are built here.
Second Ring, currently in Mali culture: These tiles will belong to Ruby Tuesday eternally unless Ruby Tuesday is conquered by someone. The only exception would be if we put Thundara into all-out culture war mode AND Mali conceded the tiles to us (i.e. didn't fight back in the culture war).

Savannah
Wheat Tile: Mali will control the wheat pretty much as soon as they pop third borders, unless we build culture (working the plains hill mine) continuously for several turns. How long we'd have to keep it up will depend on how soon we can get the theater. Once we have a theater up, we'll start turning the tide slowly in our favor. I suggest that this city chop a granary and a theater - probably but not necessarily in that order. I'd have to know how many workers are going to be helping this city in its first few turns of existence before making a more specific suggestion. This is also almost certainly a case where the temple should predate the forge.

Marble Garden Zone
This all depends on one thing: Do we intend to take those tiles (the fp and peak in the southwest and third-ring banana) from Byz? Your chat seems to imply they're okay with us winning the FP (and peak) at least, but doing so quickly will also most likely mean winning the bananas. Let me know if you want me to build a plan for doing this (or if e.g. you want to get the FP but leave the bananas to Byz, which might be a little challenging.)

[RefSteel]

Okay. I'm looking in-game. First of all:



Yay, us! Also note that there really *is* real fighting going on out there somewhere. (So says Georgy.)

Second of all, here's what Maniac's on about:



You can see under "Buildings" that the Hindu Monastery thinks it's generating 2 beakers (the temple thinks so too, but it's not visible in this shot) but when you mouse over the beakers generated, you see that the buildings are lying. Here's what it's supposed to look like, for comparison. (At Hukawng Valley, where it's working properly.)



I'll see if I can figure out what's going on, but if any lurkers have insights about this (yet *another*) obvious bug, they'd be appreciated.