[SPOILERS]Novice, Spacemanmf and Athlete4life10 are HUYANA CAPAC OF CHINA

[athlete4life10]

Place holder until I find something irrelevant to put here.

[athlete4life10]

Hello Everybody,

I'm the 3rd member of this squad and will probably be the least involved of the 3 in this game so sorry to my teammates for jumping the gun and creating (and mispelling) our thread! Just saying hi and will post more as the game starts to get underway.

So the lurkers have something half interesting to read here's what Novice sent in a PM to Spacemanmf and myself:

Ok, we've grabbed HC then. An unoriginal, but very natural game plan becomes to Oracle Metal Casting for cheap forges.

I think an ideal civ for this, which we could hope to get, would be China. China has the best starting techs in the game, Agriculture and Mining. It allows us to research BW, Mysticism, Meditation, The Wheel, Priesthood, Pottery, Metal Casting (Oracled). That could net us an early religion to solve our cultural problems, as well. With China we could then run an engineer from a forge and bulb Machinery for early Cho-Ko-Nus.

Ideally Buddhism lands in our capital (we won't have a second city out yet), Oracle is chopped into our second city, and our capital is poised to whip a Forge and run an engineer to overtake the prophet points from the Oracle. The second great person becomes a prophet for the Shrine.

[spacemanmf]

Ooh my very first PBEM after lots of reading other people's. Cheers for setting up the thread, athlete.

novicemanmf4life Huayna Capac of China

I prefer novicespaceathlete.

[novice]

I guess I'm the first member of this team, then. This is also my first PBEM. Currently I'm probably best known at RB for general spamming and for never completing an adventure or an epic. (Or in the rare cases where I do complete one, mess up the variant rules instead.)

For the lurkers, the most interesting variant in PBEM13 is probably that spies are allowed and that all diplo must be done in-game. I'm thinking that our team will follow the intent behind this rule and keep our in-game diplo messages succinct and to the point, e.g. "What do you want for a non-compete clause on the Oracle" or "Let's carve up Arabia together". Hopefully we can gain good relations with a few civs initially not by buttering them up, but by giving them some one-sided deals when it doesn't cost us anything, e.g. gifting a spare resource.

To add to this mess, we're going to let the first player who wants to and is able to grab the save and play it, according to some long-term plans and whatever short term plans we may or may not have had time to cook together in our spoiler thread. So our play will not necessarily be the most cohesive, but it should be interesting to watch.

Athlete has pretty much explained our (only) reasoning behind our civ and leader choices. Basically none of us cared that much, we had many options we were happy with. And we didn't have much time for discussion anyway (and remember, our third trait is Impulsive). Anyway, we're Huayna Capac (sic) of China. So Financial, Industrious, good starting techs, a UU (Cho-Ko-Nu, Crossbow replacement) that could at least be relevant, and a UB (Pavillion, Theatre replacement) that we will actually build (at least 6 of them for the Globe Theatre).

Coming up: Opponent analysis.

[novice]

Right, so the game settings, rules, and player turn order:

Rules

1. No out of game contact (apart from chasing the save )
   
2. Spies? YES but no civic or religion swapping missions
   
3. War Elephants? No
   
4. Gifting units pre HE? No
   
5. Gifting cities? No
   

Game Settings

1. Ivory is ok
   
2. Difficulty? Prince
   
3. Speed? Normal
   
4. Tech Trading? No
   
5. Barbs? Yes - normal
   
6. Mod? No
   
7. Vassal Option? Off
   
8. Events? Off
   
9. Huts? Off
   
10. Unrestricted Leaders? Yes
    

Turn order:
Ad hoc - Louis (Creative/Industrious) of Arabia (Mysticism, The Wheel, [STRIKE]Library[/STRIKE] Madrassa, [STRIKE]Knight[/STRIKE] Camel Archer)
TT - Hammurabi (Aggressive/Organized) of Zulu (Hunting, Agriculture, [STRIKE]Barracks[/STRIKE] Ikhanda, [STRIKE]Spearman[/STRIKE] Impi)
Pegasus - Frederick (Philosophical/Organized) of Sumeria (Agriculture, The Wheel, [STRIKE]Courthouse[/STRIKE] Ziggurat, [STRIKE]Axeman[/STRIKE] Vulture)
novicespaceathlete - Huayna Capac (Financial/Industrious) of China (Agriculture, Mining, [STRIKE]Theatre[/STRIKE] Pavilion, [STRIKE]Crossbowman[/STRIKE] Cho-Ko-Nu)
Ruff_Hi - Sitting Bull (Philosophical/Protective) of Spain (Fishing, Mysticism, [STRIKE]Castle[/STRIKE] Citadel, [STRIKE]Cuirassier[/STRIKE] Conquistador)

Useful links:
Demographics explained:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...aphics.php

Score explained:

I think these are smart questions to ask, and fortunately I can answer all or almost all of those questions. So here I go. Almost all of this was learned of from Realms Beyond members and pieced together on my own and self-tested, so only the explanation and verification and not the content is my own work. Perhaps some of the demo people would prefer to keep their tricks little-known, but I'm of the opinion that it's better to be open and share with everyone. I can do an article in a public place if one is desired as I have gathered all the information in this area that I could find and put it together for my own use as I couldn't find a good article that had it all. For now I will answer your direct questions as you were clever enough to ask. I still think this falls under game mechanics questions and is not related to your game in particular. I think questions about how the game works are always fair game.



The population score is map dependent. No way to tell ahead of time what each pop point will be worth. It depends on the total amount of food on the map. Hover over your score and look at the Pop score. It should have a fraction x/y. Each pop point is worth (5000/y). The reason for the variance is the way the number is rounded. As with most decimals in Civ it is FLOORed, meaning it is rounded down to the nearest integer. So say that (5000/y) gives you 4.61. If your pop is 1 your pop score is 4 (4.61 rounded down), but when you go to pop 2 your pop score is 9 (4.61 + 4.61 = 9.22 rounded down). This is an increase of 5 instead of 4. That's all that's happening here and with other scores that vary (they all do to an extent).



Land Area is only a little more complicated than the Pop score. The Land Score is also map dependent, so again hover over score and note the Land fraction x/y. This time each land tile is worth (2000/y). The only thing that's a little trickier is that you don't get the score bonus for your land tiles until they've been inside your cultural borders for 20 turns. The rounding and point variance is exactly the same as described above.



Points per wonder don't vary from map to map. They are always worth (5000/310) each. This comes out to about 16.13 each. The rounding is the same so if you build enough eventually you'll get a gain of 17 instead of 16, not that most people build that many wonders, but it could happen. Not sure why it says 5/316 after palace score. It should say x/310 (I just checked to make sure). The number 310 is 5 * 62 (the number of wonders available to build), so in the fraction x/y, I think x is the number of wonders built * 5. But that's not your Wonder Score. When you settle your capitol your Wonder score is 16.



You are correct that that is only for Ancient Era techs. Tech Score is not map dependent either and each tech is worth (2000/334) * Era. Ancient Era is 1, Classical Era is 2, etc. This works out to Ancient Era techs being worth about 5.99 points. This is why everyone starts with 11 points (before you settle your capitol you don't get Pop or Wonder points). 5.99 + 5.99 = 11.98. This is 11 points rounded down, but for a while after that techs will be worth a multiple of 6 points. So The Wheel is 5.99 points and Alphabet is 11.98 points. You add all the techs you have together and then round down to get the Tech Score.



I have found descriptions of how score is calculated on CFC, but no real complete guide on the practical use of it. Some are taking to using NoScoreMod these days to eliminate this part of the game. I have mixed feelings as to whether that's a good thing or not.

The score is not dependent on Difficulty. The Land number for the map does indeed take the total available land tiles into account.

City maintenance explained
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread...473&page=5

Great People Tech Preference
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...e_tech.php

Espionage Stuff (courtesy of T-Hawk):

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/17739...ost5485824

TheirEP = Their Espionage Point count against us
SabotageCost = Cost shown for the Sabotage Production mission
InvestigateCost = Cost shown for the Investigate City mission

Hammers = (SabotageCost * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * InvestigateCost)

Demographics analysis:
We're first in the turn order, so the demographics we see on T1 are accurate for our rivals EOT0, and so on.

EOT0:
Ruff is researching Meditation, building warrior, working town.
Ad Hoc is researching Polytheism, building warrior, and he put one turn into a worker during his warrior build. He's working the grassland town.
TT and Pegasus are researching Mining and building workers while working the rice.
TT started with a warrior instead of a scout.

EOT1: No changes.

EOT2: No changes.

EOT3: Ruff gets a forest growth.

EOT4: No changes.

EOT5: No changes.

EOT6: Ruff discovers Meditation and starts Agriculture (?). TT and Pegasus discover Mining and start Bronze Working.

EOT7: Ruff completes a warrior, starts another (?).

EOT8: Ad Hoc completes a warrior, starts another (?). Ad Hoc discovers Polytheism, and starts Masonry. Ruff switches from town to rice on T8.

EOT9: Ruff grows to size two, works rice and town.

EOT10: TT loses his warrior on T10.

EOT11: Ad Hoc grows to size 2. Works rice and town. TT and Pegasus finish workers EOT11, presumably they start warriors on T12.

EOT12: Ad Hoc switches to work both towns on T12. TT (or Pegasus) switches to work the plains town on T12.

EOT13: Pegasus (or TT) switches to work the grassland town on T13.

EOT14: Ad Hoc discovers Masonry.

EOT15: No changes. Ad Hoc researching Monotheism.

EOT16: Ruff discovers Mining. TT and Pegasus have their wheats farmed. Both start working the wheat.

EOT17: Average GNP increased to 26 so presumably Ruff is now putting beakers into BW. (He also has Agriculture partially completed).

EOT18: Ruff is back on Agriculture. Pegasus completed a warrior and grew to size 2.

EOT19: Ruff is on Bronze Working. Pegasus and TT complete Bronze Working at end of turn. TT grows to size 2. Pegasus is working wheat and grassland town.

EOT20: Ruff completes Agriculture, continues Bronze Working. TT is working the wheat and the rice and researching The Wheel. Pegasus is working farmed rice(?) and copper, and researching Mysticism, Fishing or Hunting.

EOT21: One of TT / Pegasus is working a town, the other min commerce.

EOT22:

EOT23:

EOT24:

EOT25:

EOT26:

EOT27:

EOT28:

EOT32:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/PBEM13...ot0603.JPG

EOT33:
No changes from EOT32.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/PBEM13...ot0603.JPG

EOT34:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/PBEM13...ot0623.JPG

EOT35:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17043861/ScreenS...ot0081.JPG

EOT36:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17043861/ScreenS...ot0095.JPG

[spacemanmf]

(and remember, our third trait is Impulsive)

This made me chuckle whilst my girlfriend was talking about carpets. Rather than admit what I was laughing at, I instead pretended that I thought it was amusing that we had so much leftover carpet...

[novice]

As always Ruff thinks outside the box. I admit I had to look up some of this information on CivFanatics, I don't think I ever player neither Sitting Bull nor Spain. However, I think there is some method to Ruff's madness.

My guess is Ruff is going to try his luck on the Espionage Economy. Here's my evidence:

Protective: Free Drill I and City Garrison I promotions for archery and gunpowder units. Double production speed of Walls and Castle.

Castle: +25%

Citadel: Replaces Castle; +5 XP for Siege Units

2. Spies? YES
7. Barbs? Yes, raging

7. Barbs? If Raging then No Great Wall

I'm changing my barb vote to YES, but Normal

How can we use this?

1. Ruff_Hi will probably want the Great Wall. We're in a position to compete, but we're not interested. We could let him know we're not competing as a goodwill gesture, or ask for concessions. The catch is I think Ruff_Hi will know that the Great Wall was never on our priority list.

2. If Ruff plans to steal his techs, we can "coordinate research". That is, ally, and we'll provide the financial power necessary to research techs in the first place, whereas he can steal them, and provide useful support to our nation. If Ruff wants a specific tech he can ask us to prioritize it instead of waiting until someone happens to go down that path.

3. Defending against his spies can become a pain. Tech stealing doesn't hurt us, but there are other actions that do. We need to ponder how dangerous this is and what if anything we're going to do about it. The biggest spanner in his wheels would be if someone else built the Great Wall. I don't think we want to do that just for denial, but maybe we can get someone else to do it. Louis is industrious like us, but he's creative so will go for early libraries and won't have an interest in great spies. Frederick on the other hand, is Philosophical like Ruff and could be persuaded to go down that route. Now, do we prefer Pegasus to have great spies over Ruff_Hi? Yes. Is it worth the effort? Maybe not.

[athlete4life10]

(and remember, our third trait is Impulsive).

This made me chuckle whilst my girlfriend was talking about carpets. Rather than admit what I was laughing at, I instead pretended that I thought it was amusing that we had so much leftover carpet...

about the chuckling atleast!

[athlete4life10]

An espionage economy in Ruff's hands will be a lot more dangerous than in Pegasus's I believe. Either we buddy up with Ruff straight away and work something out like what Novice suggests right away RE: Teching (and avoiding all negative aspects of being on the receiving end of espionage), or we really probe Pegasus to get the Great Wall. Or do both . Of course we would need to meet Pegasus early enough to encourage him to go that route.

[spacemanmf]

Nice meta-gaming. I've not done the math(s) - I don't do that stuff, remember - but I presume we can't build the Oracle and the Great Wall without hindering expansion or our general plans.

PS, I take it we can't change our thread title now...