Cornflakes Goes Classical ... or Quantum?!

[Cornflakes]

Despite someone researching HBR, the power graphs have remained flat over the last 5+ turns since yesterday ... yes, we have a blazing fast turn pace. I have a scout back at the Yuri/Scooter border and I see nothing but chariots and archers on Scooter's side, and a random Sword from Yuri maybe to counter barb archers?

   

I'm 1 turn from Feudalism, then 7 turns to Code of Laws for Bureaucracy. After Feudalism I'll swap back to Serfdom while picking up Vassalage ... partly for the XP and partly to flaunt the early Feudalism to the neighbors and discourage interference.

I received the "free Cover promotion for all melee units" event which is not only nice to have vs. the barb archers, but could also aid a Maces conquest vs. Commodore I'm strongly considering a Maces attack unless Commodore heads straight to Feudalism. In PB63 I discovered that CR2 maces get positive odds on archers and axes in cities. Add in the free Cover promotion and even if Commodore reaches Feudalism or Machinery after we capture the first two border cities, we should be able to brute force the 3rd Pyramids city at which point any of Commodore's remaining military and cities will instantly disappear.

Just an Evil Plot™ at the moment but we'll see how things look in 15 turns once we have Machinery. Someone has Aesthetics now and must be making a play for Great Library. If it turns out to be Commodore ...

[Cornflakes]

If Pyramids had been sequestered in a backlines city I’d most definitely leave Commodre alone and enjoy a the comfortable border that we have established, while Scooter and Yuri deal with their cities-at-4-tiles-distance border tension. But Pyramids … plus 3 captured cities … plus open land to re-settle.

The problem with maces is the 8 turn walk from my capital to the Pyramids city. 8 turns is an eternity in Civ 4 whipping warfare. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Commodore is working on a Great Engineer to bulb Machinery.

I’m up to 7 cities as of this turn a few minutes ago, tied for world most. Although the 8 pop that I whipped into 2 settlers and a work significantly cut into my pop lead and brought my production and food back into the pack. GNP skyrocketing though due to a 2nd academy now in Stoichiometry (+14 bpt since I whipped away the two scientists into a worker). I figure with 150 turns left the Academy now is worth more than a bulb later since I won’t get full value bulbs until Education/Printing Press/Chemistry which is a long time from now.

If I do decide to attempt conquering Commodore, my next Great Scientist is due in 15 turns same time as Machinery and therefore I could launch a GA which with Bureaucracy will let me build 2 maces every 3 turns, and 2-turn them after the GA. Decisions, decisions!

[Cornflakes]

Interesting news internationally:

   

Scooter scooped up Great Library. Someone has had Calendar for 2 turns, but I don't think it's Scooter. I saw Calendar on the tech screen the same turn that Scooter birthed the Engineer and I was sure that Scooter would rush MoM. But since he instead rushed Great Library I'm going to say he is not the one with Calendar or he almost certainly would have rushed MoM instead. Rushing the Library seems odd to me. Sure it will generate 6bpt from the scientists and eventually the scientist GPP will produce an extra scientists and in the distant future another scientist. But it just seems lackluster to spent a great person unless it was just a "nice to have" towards the real prize of the free Music artist, to "fix" his border tension.

I expect another Great Engineer to be born from Commodore or Yuri very shortly to claim MoM.

And I've been pondering Scooter's naming theme but haven't been able to come up with something that these have in common ... oh, wait. Literally as I typed this I figured it out: Things that come in THREEs! Three blind mice. Three colors of traffic lights. Three cities for culture victory. Three states of matter (er, what about plasma?)

   

I'm now up to 7 cities with the three that I settled over the last 5 turns. And I'm now 2 turns away from Civil Service and Bureaucracy.

[RefSteel]

Responses to the rest of your post coming ... eventually

(Thanks for considering even responding at all! This is an area I'm fascinated by and love, so talking about it and improving my understanding of it is always fun - for me! And with this game's turnpace, I don't imagine there's much time for talking about other stuff in the thread regardless!)

On actual game-related stuff though:

But Pyramids … plus 3 captured cities … plus open land to re-settle.

Just in case (like most of us) you haven't played any N-city elim games, I should point out one of the mechanics: With that option checked in setup, the game won't let players keep any cities they capture (nor therefore World Wonders inside them). All captured cities auto-raze with no option to liberate or keep. (I haven't tested cultural city flipping, but suspect it's the same.)

[Cornflakes]

Thanks for the mechanics clarification. I played a few city elimination games back the day, just the Wild West of random lobby games. Mostly I died to double moves before I knew that was a thing. But that was 15 years ago before I found Realms Beyond

[Cornflakes]

I have officially adopted Bureaucracy Here's a peek into the greatest city in the world:

   

[Cornflakes]

Thanks for the reports!  I'm just catching up now and really curious to see how this game ends up evolving, with the highly-unusual (for this site) settings.  I'm too afraid of spoilers to say or ask more about the gamestate, but I do have a bunch of thoughts about your latest physics/philosophy post, so I'm spoiling them here for ease of skipping.

[quote="shallow_thought" pid="861921" dateline="1733346720"]
Philosphically, all physical theories are empirical.

I would say this is true not just philosophically, but by definition.  A "theory" (by colloquial definitions) without empirical support - indeed without an overwhelming mountain of empirical support - is not a physical (or scientific) Theory (by the scientific definition).

By empirical I mean derived experimentally, as opposed to theoretical being derived from principles. And really all scientific theories are a mixture of both, converging on a more and more accurate understanding of reality. Take stoichiometry for example, and the astounding leap forward in understanding that we gain from Avogadro's number. The gram-to-gram proportions in chemical reactions are obtuse. But after experimentally determining the atomic masses and comparing them via Avocado's number, suddenly we arrive at a simple theoretical relationship (the Chemical Equation) with simple whole number proportions of atoms and molecules. And this simple theoretical relationship has further application in thermodynamics with experimentally derived Enthalpy values.

In the past, the various experimentally determined physical constants such as the speed of light and Avogadro's number were refined in accuracy and precision. In recent years there has been a shift such that instead of measuring the speed of light (empirical), the speed of light is now defined with a specific value as a physical constant (theoretical). And instead of measuring Avogadro's number (empirical), Avogadro's number is now defined with a specific value as a physical constant (theoretical). And the defined physical constants are then used to refine the precision of the units of measurement.

I don't know whether this is a good or bad development, but my current impression is that defining a physical constant with a specific value having a bunch of significant digits is not a step forward. Why define the speed of light "c" as 299,792,458 meters per second (NIST) with 9 significant digits? Why not define the speed of light c as "1.00000000 Lightspeed"? Of course the practical answer is that this would require adopting a new unit system which is expensive. But if we are going through the effort of re-defining the physical constants, why not just go the extra step and define "scientific" or "quantum" units as long as we preserve a means of converting between the theoretical "scientific" or "quantum" units and everyday units of meters and feet?

A few years ago I listened to a college course lecture series from Stanford on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The main takeaway for me was that in the theoretical derivations, the units can be defined in any way that is convenient regardless of the physical meaning as long as, as long as there is a means preserved to convert back to a unit system that has physical meaning. The context of this statement was that by using a unit such that the value in the theoretical derivation is equal to exactly 1, sometimes enormous simplifications and/or insights can pop out unexpectedly. And also the units do not have to be linear but can be unequal steps (e.g. interstate highway exits in the USA used to be numbered sequentially 1, 2, 3, etc. regardless of the number of miles between them ... if you said "go 2 exits" it might mean 2 miles or 50 miles depending on where your starting point was, but the map preserved a means of converting the "exit numbering" units to "miles" units).

And this discussion of units brings me to the "Photon". What is a "Photon"?

Based on the unit analysis presented by FractalWoman's YouTube video that I linked in the first post of this spoiler, it seems to me that: the Photon is to Light Energy as Gallon is to Mass. And yes I understand that gallon is not a normal unit of measure for mass. But compare a gallon of water to a gallon of sand, and then use that analogy to consider a photon of infrared light vs. a photon of ultraviolet light. Or another analogy might be...

Photon : Light Energy :: Mole : Mass

And bringing this back to the Civ4 game, the above thoughts played into the naming of my 5th and 6 cities of "No Duality" and "It's A Wave": The photon as unit of measure of sorts rather than a physical particle, and thus light as a wave and not a wave/particle duality.

[Cornflakes]

Since I'm growing my capital up to maximum size I've decided to go for Hanging Gardens since I will need the Aqueduct health, and on this food-poor map it will help boost my city sizes. I often see Hanging Gardens built via chops, only for the +1 pop to get whipped away. Seems like a waste of good forest to me. In this game I'll use the pop to work more tiles, and speed up the timeline for when I can start working a couple scientist specialists again

   

Hanging Gardens will be 10 turns (3+7) but like I said, I need the health from the Aqueduct anyway, and if I get failgold with +50% stone and +25% Organized Religion bonus that will be quite alright.

[Cornflakes]

You know what looks absurd to me?

   

All three of my opponents have researched calendar in the last 4 turns ... but none of them have a GEngineer ready to rush MoM MoM is boosted by Marble which is absent from this map and therefore makes a perfect Engineer rush target, not to mention it is a valuable wonder. All three of them are either PHI or have the Carnegie Library, yet none of them sync'ed up their Calendar research with birthing an engineer. Scooter confuses me most, having rushed the cheaper Great Library. Why not hit Calendar first, rush MoM, and then go to Literature?

I chose to bypass the competition for all the early wonders in favor of double Academies and early Bureaucracy. We'll see how this works out.

[Cornflakes]

I've benefitted from at least 30 bonus worker-turns from Serfdom (on average I'd say 1 free turn on three quarters of all my improvements) plus at least 150 commerce from farms, and at least 100g saved maintenance from low cost Serfdom vs. Medium cost slavery (it was saving me 1 gpt every turn in Serfdom once I had 2 cities, and now 3gpt). I'm currently working 10 farms and saving 3gpt which is probably half of scooter's FIN bonus at present. But I've also saved 2 actual turns of revolt (and 4 turns compared to my neighbors being able to get into my current civics/religion) not counting the swaps back-and-forth between Slavery/Serfdom.

On another subject, Machinery will be granting +18 commerce/turn from the Lumbermill +1c in 2 turns, which is more than the Currency trade routes and about a 15% increase in breakeven research plus it unlocks Watermills. After Machinery I've decided to pick up Aesthetics to build Shwedagon Paya so that I don't have to research Theocracy, Philosophy, or Liberalism any time soon but can still swap around between all of the religious civics. I have lots of production now so I can afford to spend some of it on a better-than-wealth-building conversion rate. Planning to build the wonder at Planck where the +8 culture will be helpful in holding the line against Commodore's culture.