SGOTM 12 - Plastic Ducks

kossin · Dec 15, 2010

Duckweed said:
Where's the GE?

1W of Moscow (big sign over it "Safe from accidental GA")

srad said:
Congratulations! Very nice game from you (both)! Lurked a lot

Guess you get the crown!

Thank ye!

If you're ever wanting to do more than lurk...

Duckweed · Dec 15, 2010

They are ~5 techs ahead of us comparing with our 1340AD save (not considering Communism). They have done pretty good job, however, they are short of fuel in later stage, while we rided 4 GAs with much bigger empire.

Duckweed · Dec 15, 2010

I invited srad twice, how about third time?

iggymnrr · Dec 15, 2010

Excellent. Followed the whole way.

Duckweed · Dec 15, 2010

I am astonished at Gandhi's situation in X team's save, what's wrong with the AI?

BTW, who is a better candidate for Bronze?

kossin · Dec 15, 2010

Dunno, I'll have to take a look.

Some teams seem to have realized very late (like us :lol:

) that you can't SF friendly AIs so it's hard to tell right now.

Also, a bunch of teams concluded that we did not go GLH...

EDIT: the speculation about our culture is really funny

I'll do a quick analysis of every team in a bit...

LowtherCastle said:
How in the world are the Ducks getting 10,000 per turn? COuld they possibly have 100 sushi cities at 50 resources * 2 per resource?

EDIT2: re X-Team's Gandhi
Looks like he went on a Culture mission... poor him.

Duckweed · Dec 15, 2010

EDIT2: re X-Team's Gandhi
Looks like he went on a Culture mission... poor him.

No, the weird thing is that he only settled 1 city until 1400AD and there's a whole continent for him in early stage! I have never seen such behavior of an AI!

EDIT: the speculation about our culture is really funny

While they are more aware of how much culture produced a turn, I usually pay more attention to how fast you can spread Sushi.

Have you seen STW's opinion on AL?

Also, a bunch of teams concluded that we did not go GLH...

Could you quote them?

kossin · Dec 15, 2010

XTeam
Settled on coast
Oracle>Civil Service 600BC
TGL and Late Pyramids
Settled 0 islands ???
Not a very careful use of land near them
Trying to please AIs for trading... making them more advanced than otherwise
At this pace, they'll need 100+ turns to finish.
GM available... no shrine to combine with Sushi.

Unusual Suspects
Settled on coast
Oracle>Civil Service 225BC
GLH, MoM, TGL, Parth in capital
11 islands settled (apparently too late though, earliest is 840AD)
Good use of land, too many cottages though with their Wonder spam
At war with Cannons vs Churchill, good progress; Mao DG down to 1 city, still at war with Stalin!
They are doing decent but did not REX enough early (stuck in fallout land)
GM available with shrine and Sushi soon
Still 80~100 turns to go.

T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't
SIP
Missed Oracle (350BC) !
Parth+TGL+MoM...building SoL
12 islands settled (too late, first is 1000+AD)
Bad use of land, a lot of empty tiles
No war... Pleased with a bunch of AIs.
Sushi in non-shrine city??? Very slow spread (1 Executive built, 0 producing)
~100 turns from finish.

One Short Straw
SIP
Oracle>Civil Service (1000BC) Skipped a bunch of techs to do this and built a library very early.
Colossus, Pyramids, Hagia Sophia, MoM
HE+OU in capital... peculiar choice.
2 GAs already triggered
Just got Sushi, GE standing by... ~10 turns to Railroad
Very good use of Espionage!
Only 6 islands (pity)
War vs Churchill is going well. Using drafting from a well placed Globe.
Good exploration once again of map.
Their income is their biggest problem though... and they will be down on GAs compared to us.
Bad use of whip...
Still 70~80 turns, they'll be behind 10~20 turns.
They think we still haven't finished

Phoenix Rising
Capital settled SE ???
Settler first!
Missed Oracle (475BC) !
MoM... working on SoL
4 islands settled only
Way too many cottages! And they have a TON of workers sleeping... sacrilegious!
GE standing by.
Seem to be preparing Infantry war... trouble from Privateers
80~100 turns from finish

Maple Sporks
Also settled SE...
Oracle>Feudalism (800BC) ???
Parth+TGL
Good use of land
4 island cities

Almost the whole world is Confu... Churchill's
No GE/GM
Cossacks/rifle war going well on Mao
Didn't whip enough...
Slow bpt output
100+ turns to go

Fifth Element
Settled coast
Oracle Civil Service (1120BC) ... Math bulb I guess.
ToA+TGL
Mining Inc! but not spreading fast enough... this would reduce their finish date considerably.
Only 6 islands
Decent use of land, some space/resources wasted..way too many cottages.
2-front war on Churchill going well
Barely whipping.
Good bpt but their finish date will depend on whether they start spreading Mining Inc.
~80 turns to go

ChokoMisfits
Settled coast
Oracle> Civil Service (925BC)
Pyramids, MoM, Hagia Sophia
Bad use of workers... so many tiles unimproved and too many cottages
3 islands

No war going on...
Did not whip enough (or at all...)
120+turns to go

Barley Demons
Settled SE as well...
Oracle>Feudalism ???
Quit officially about 2 weeks ago

3rd place: I say US for now, FE if they figure they need to spread Mining Inc ASAP.

kossin · Dec 15, 2010

Duckweed said:
No, the weird thing is that he only settled 1 city until 1400AD and there's a whole continent for him in early stage! I have never seen such behavior of an AI!

While they are more aware of how much culture produced a turn, I usually pay more attention to how fast you can spread Sushi.

Have you seen STW's opinion on AL?

Could you quote them?

Gandhi: yes... culture mission, trying to spam wonders and religions. It's one of those things Pericles does a lot as well. (see TMIT complaints)

Culture: yup I know

They will have maybe 5/ 2 turns while we were at 5/turn...

STW: no...?
EDIT: just read it... lol! He needs to do the math instead of just saying things. You often get disproved this way.

Quotes: yea, I will in a little bit, currently doing a quick analysis (see previous post).

EDIT: analysis done.

Duckweed · Dec 15, 2010

Very good analysis. :goodjob:

IMO the better part of OSS's play is the early war, they stole at least 7 workers from DG!
EP is a good choice for weak techer. We did not have much to steal.

This game again is showcase how cottage is overrated. We laid down 1 cottage in capital and OSS has 0!

kossin · Dec 15, 2010

Quotes

Chokomisfits

Spoiler :

OSS WARNING - VERY LONG

Spoiler :

[Post 2315]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Dec 01, 2010 09:32 AM
[...]
Off-Topic:
Plastic Ducks haven't posted in a couple of days, and their last few play sessions were oddly short and quick in succession... What do you guys think of that? Our graphs just look too similar for them to crush us with some totally different approach, right?

This was Duckweed playing successive 5t sets. There wasn't much to discuss as we were on the last legs of the game.

[Post 2317]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Dec 01, 2010 09:45 AM
[...]
Off-Topic:
Plastic Ducks haven't posted in a couple of days, and their last few play sessions were oddly short and quick in succession... What do you guys think of that? Our graphs just look too similar for them to crush us with some totally different approach, right?
[...]
Speculation at this point tends to be wrong, but my thought today was that they went for a bigger SoD before attacking and then they attacked, which is where their Power Graph jags to the right, similar to what ours has done twice, but their's had a bigger jag so they probably hit a bunch of cities in quick succession, maybe even two fronts.

I've been thinking for a while that they were ahead of us. Now with our power and score graph following theirs, I'm not so sure. THe big question mark is where their research is at. When did they go to castes, how fast did they kick their research forward with that, what's their tech path, etc. Did they bulb GSes? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that they don't like bulbing too much, but rather save GPs for GAs.

THen there's also the question of whether they got into tech stealing as early as we did. We may have had an advantage "gifting" Gandhi Galley City before he got past 3 cities. Once you're past that, then you have trouble gifting to anyone but dG, who's close enough to accept it within 9.5 tiles.

Then there's the question of how much worker stealing did they do, and whether they got Hagia (I doubt it, since they would have had to steal it).

There's also the question of whether they got the stone before dG, because that would have given them a very early Representation+castes and that would have powered their reserach past ours pretty rapidly.

Too many unknowns, but I don't think they're stomping us. I hope not, anyway.

More smaller cities = less score. No worker steals and not as much stealing but more backwards AIs

[Post 2318]
Author : bcool
Date : Dec 01, 2010 09:52 AM

Off-Topic:
Plastic Ducks haven't posted in a couple of days, and their last few play sessions were oddly short and quick in succession... What do you guys think of that? Our graphs just look too similar for them to crush us with some totally different approach, right?

IF they somehow got the Great Lighthouse that could have made a significant difference. I think we are really going to start flying with the tech steals, corporations, etc. But to launch pre-1600 seems quite amazing.
[...]

GLH you say?
We could have launched pre-1700, but not by much and with a lot more micro... which we didn't feel like doing.
Pre-1600 would be very difficult on this map... but maybe just possible!

[Post 234]
Author : Mitchum
Date : Sep 23, 2010 06:08 PM

It looks like the Ducks have started. Their power climbed 6K in 32 turns. They cannot have learned BW (8K). This implies:

Option 1: Archery (6K), capital must still be at 1 pop. Not likely. Who would research Archery unless they are really spooked about a nearby AI? They seemed to have a crystal ball in SGOTM 11 by predicting the presence of the Horse resource near their second city, so you never know...

Option 2: AH (2K) and Wheel (4K), capital must still be at 1 pop. This would appear to be a SIP, worker -> worker start. I'm not sure, but I think BBP's suggested opening would put us in about this same place.

Option 3: Wheel (4K), capital at 2 or 3 pops (1K), 1 warrior (1K), no AH. Not likely as AH seems like an obvious choice if you're not settling N+NE and learning BW.

Option 4: AH (2K), Barracks (3K), capital at 2 or 3 pops (1K). Not likely.
There are many other options, but I think option 2 is the most likely.

However, I can't figure out how they got a score of 130 so fast. I played an AH -> Wheel and worker -> worker start. I had 10K soldiers like they do but my score was only 113 by T32. I did research Writing next, which wasn't done yet. But if I researched two cheaper techs instead of Writing (i.e. Fishing and Mysticism), my score would have been 125. The Ducks (and the Dwarf cry team) have a score of 130. Growing 1 pop = 5 points. So...

This is what they must have done: SIP (had they settled N+NE, their land score would be too low), researched 4 techs, built a single worker and then grew their city while building something other than another worker or settler. The total of all four techs and non-worker builds had to equal 6K soldiers.

Who said the graphs weren't spoilerish...

Not quite... Ag>AH>TW>Fishing, 2 workers.

[Post 235]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Sep 23, 2010 06:22 PM

Yes, I'm pretty confident both Ducks and T'dr SIPd and went AH/worker.

Same as above.

[Post 243]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Sep 24, 2010 09:52 AM

Unusual Suspects:
Settled NNE, researched Fishing-BW.

Ducks @T32:
They hadn't grown to size 2 yet, as that would give them 11k soldiers. I think they built 2 workers. Agri-AH-Wheel fits best. I don't know about a fourth tech, since it seems impossible to get four unless if you start by mining gold. Maybe land score is higher than we think in the actual game, and they didn't even research a fourth? Alternative would be that they are going straight for an Oracle shot, at something like COL (this might make sense, if they found it gives them peace or Alpha trade?). This would mean AH-Myst-Medi-PH before Wtg. Not sure if they complete this path by T32.

I just saw that they played another set. The extra power seems to be 2 warriors + Pop 4. Pop 4 accounts for +15 score --> 145, so 18 points missing. They must have two more techs at this point, which would gives 12, and they'd have their 3rd border expansion included by T47.[...]

Correct, because we went worker * 2.

t47: our second city.

[Post 275]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Sep 25, 2010 11:33 AM
[...]
@All: Had an interesting test game today. Stalin got a religion, Gandhi met him, hated him, and as soon as our warrior found him and we DoPed, he wanted OBs and traded techs... ::: Speaking of which, one of the Duckweed scenarios for 130 points is Myst-Medit(+Buddhism)-AH-Phood. If they did that, they just eliminated the bestest of the bestest scenario wherein G trades them techs... (Unless G's really close, doesn't get his own religion, theirs spreads,...)

[Post 284]
Author : Soirana
Date : Sep 26, 2010 12:29 AM
I am fairly convinced Ducks might have gone AH>Wheel>Agri> fishing

There is good second city which can borrow second gold [lessening food stress in cap] and rice will be needed both for cap growth and fighting unhealthiness...

Spot on for techs... wrong order.

[Post 285]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Sep 26, 2010 12:44 AM
[...]
I am fairly convinced Ducks might have gone AH>Wheel>Agri> fishing
Why on earth would they not just research Agri first for the discount then? I'm pretty sure those are their techs, though.

There we go!

[Post 381]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Sep 30, 2010 10:30 AM
[...]
By the way, guys, I revisited the Ducks question of what they researched at the beginning. I don't know how we concluded it was AH-TW-agri-fishing, because that gives them 11K power if they have 130 score points (including the necessary pop2). So the only, but only, way I can get 130score/10Kpower is wkr-rax and any combination of AH+agri and myst+fish. Then their next turnset only adds 6K power, and now they've added another 7K power. Surely they added the wheel in their second turnset (or?) so that tells me that they don't have BW, probably not math. Their second turnset also probably included ...+phood and I think they stopped now at 1480bc after a CoL slingshot. In any case, their graphs don't look very good to me at all. Graphs can be misleading, but I think their start was a disaster. Maybe they saw that Stalin had grens and, being relative newcomers to SGOTMs, feared for their lives and hurried the rax, just in case.

No way Erkon set up a dangerous map, imo. He wouldn't want half the teams dying in his first SG scenario.

Kinda off there LTC...

[Post 384]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Sep 30, 2010 10:38 AM

By the way, guys, I revisited the Ducks question of what they researched at the beginning. I don't know how we concluded it was AH-TW-agri-fishing, because that gives them 11K power if they have 130 score points (including the necessary pop2).
Pop 2 is not necessary. With Agri-AH, they wouldn't be able to improve the horse, meaning they're still building the second worker until T29, I think. The save in question is T32 - so no way they'd grow in this scenario.

Graphs can be misleading, but I think their start was a disaster. Maybe they saw that Stalin had grens and, being relative newcomers to SGOTMs, feared for their lives and hurried the rax, just in case.
I would hardly call Duckweed, kossin and dingding newbs. They did really rush through it, considering how unconventional the start is, but I doubt those guys ever have a disaster of an opening.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!
We rushed through it because we had been play-testing for over a week already. Once we looked at the save, there was no different conclusion so we went according to the plan:
worker*2, warriors, settler

[Post 388]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Sep 30, 2010 10:45 AM

Pop 2 is not necessary. With Agri-AH, they wouldn't be able to improve the horse, meaning they're still building the second worker until T29, I think. The save in question is T32 - so no way they'd grow in this scenario.

I would hardly call Duckweed, kossin and dingding newbs. They did really rush through it, considering how unconventional the start is, but I doubt those guys ever have a disaster of an opening.Pop2 is necessary to get to 130 score points. How else do you get from 124 to 130? That means 1K. Add 2K for AH and you've 3K unaccounted. So TW is too much. Can't be an archer. Can only be rax.

I'm not calling them newbs. I'm saying that last SG was their first, as least that's what they said. Gyathaar always designed his CIV SGs to make sure no teams died early. Erkon knows that, they may not. FOr example, in SG6, Always War, the three AIs on our continent started with scouts instead of warriors. And so on.

Same as last few comments...

[Post 390]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Sep 30, 2010 10:53 AM
[...]
Pop2 is necessary to get to 130 score points. How else do you get from 124 to 130? That means 1K. Add 2K for AH and you've 3K unaccounted. So TW is too much. Can't be an archer. Can only be rax.

I'm not calling them newbs. I'm saying that last SG was their first, as least that's what they said. Gyathaar always designed his CIV SGs to make sure no teams died early. Erkon knows that, they may not. FOr example, in SG6, Always War, the three AIs on our continent started with scouts instead of warriors. And so on.
4 techs don't get them to 130? That's what I was figuring back then, now I'm too lazy to calculate any more... IDK then.

First SGOTM, yes, but definitely not first SG - they, and esp. Duck, have played some sick ones. Both Duck and kossin are brilliant at dealing with early wars at standard Deity even. Seriously doubt they rushed into an unnecessary barracks here on Emp, with gimped AI starts. Besides, 1480 BC Oracle would actually be quite good. Knowing them, I really don't think they'd wait that long to settle the second city, btw.

Getting warmer...

[Post 407]
Author : Mitchum
Date : Sep 30, 2010 03:47 PM

By the way, guys, I revisited the Ducks question of what they researched at the beginning. I don't know how we concluded it was AH-TW-agri-fishing, because that gives them 11K power if they have 130 score points (including the necessary pop2). So the only, but only, way I can get 130score/10Kpower is wkr-rax and any combination of AH+agri and myst+fish. Then their next turnset only adds 6K power, and now they've added another 7K power. Surely they added the wheel in their second turnset (or?) so that tells me that they don't have BW, probably not math. Their second turnset also probably included ...+phood and I think they stopped now at 1480bc after a CoL slingshot. In any case, their graphs don't look very good to me at all. Graphs can be misleading, but I think their start was a disaster. Maybe they saw that Stalin had grens and, being relative newcomers to SGOTMs, feared for their lives and hurried the rax, just in case.

I was thinking about this at lunch today. If they haven't researched Writing yet, the only obvious thing to build while growing your city is a Barracks, right?

I think any team that does not build a cheap Library early on is going to fall behind in the tech pace, which can have snowball effects...

Earlier second city is arguably better than a library. 4b vs 2F1H3C (-2gold) + a tile worked?
I'll take the second city any time.

[Post 411]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Oct 01, 2010 12:37 AM

Ok, so if we have 118 points with 2 techs, wouldn't they have 130 with 4 (Agri-AH-TW-Fish)? They can finish these 4 on T32 exactly, with a two-worker start and clear/pasture cow first.Okay, I found the discrepancy, but don't understand it. On T32 in our test save, we have 33 (21/1244) for the land tiles. In the real save we get 38 points from 21 tiles (didn't write down the exact number of total tiles). Mybe the equation factors in the total amount of tiles on the map?

Anyway, yes, no doubt we're back to our original thought: Ducks researched TW for 4K. So they didn't build rax, didn't go to pop2 and the only question remains is whether they researched agri before or after AH (or at all). So their game isn't a disaster (yet), but I still think the earlier library is worth more than the 20% bonus they got for agri or whatever. Furthermore, what did they build instead of library? Settler? Worker? Time will tell.

Yup, more workers/settlers.

[Post 716]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Oct 15, 2010 03:51 PM

Diversion: Culture graphs are up

Here's my first buckshot at the Ducks:

T69 Oracle - Currency (MC?) Not enough cpt for CoL
T88 3-4 cities, no new wonders
T92 GLH (?)

T69 = CoL
T91 = GLH
3 cities
Good insight!

[Post 718]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Oct 15, 2010 05:20 PM
[...]
DUCKS:

Turn Score Power Culture Base Culture Extra culture
32 130 10k 128 128
47 163 16k 192 188 4c / 13t
63 204 23k 302 252 46c / 16t = 3cpt
83 303 35k 532 332 150c / 20t = 7.5cpt
92 342 36k 762 368 194c / 9t = 22cpt
100 383 47k 1070 400 276c / 8t = 34cpt

+2cpt on Turn 45 - Library?

+2cpt on approx. Turn 59 - Second city?

Either:
(a) Oracle COL on about Turn 78 (that would be very late)
Or:
(b) Oracle MC/Currency on about Turn 74 (also quite late)
Or:
(c) Self-tech COL on about Turn 69-71
Or:
(d) Something like library in second city OR third city founded on Turn 75 with self-tech COL on Turn 72-74

None of those seem very impressive, I suppose.

Turn 92 save:
If they did build (a) or (d), then they either have 5 cities with 1 library, or 4 cities with 2 libraries, or 3 cities with 3 libraries, or something similar.
If it's (a), then they only have 2 cities at this point, or just founded a third.
If it's (c), they REXed hard, to 5 cities min, more likely 6.

Turn 100 save:
Seems like a wonder... Could they have gotten GLH as late as Turn 95 or so?

Some of it is accurate.
Obviously Oracle>CS.

[Post 719]
Author : bcool
Date : Oct 16, 2010 08:46 AM

For the Ducks culture analysis, I didn't see the +4 cpt for an academy accounted for. Maybe that and a new city/library accounts for late culture boost?

Yea, less cities but Academy.

[Post 1692]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Nov 14, 2010 09:18 PM

Oh, good. Just wait 'till the Ducks kick our butts with Oxford and cottages in GP Farm now...
[...]

[Post 1848]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Nov 21, 2010 10:34 AM

Judging by the graphs, it's another 2-horse race now. Xteam obviously settled Moscow on the horse and had an awful opening, but they seem like they might leapfrog everyone else. Our score graph is staying just ahead of Ducks, with power even and culture behind. I think the difference in culture (ca. 500 pts) is Oracle (that alone is 200 roughly) and earlier REX.

GLH, earlier Academy.

[Post 2341]
Author : Mitchum
Date : Dec 01, 2010 02:21 PM
[...]
Agreed. I'm not overly concerned with hammers, food, exact worker actions and such. The test game will be very valuable in testing war plans, verifying espionage missions costs, understanding impacts of spreading corporations to all cities or just key ones, etc. IIRC, the Ducks had a very accurate test game in the last SGOTM all the way to the end. We did on Fifth Element as well.

Oops... I stopped doing that ~t170 ish... can't remember.

[Post 2426]
Author : bcool
Date : Dec 05, 2010 09:36 AM
[...]
I know it might be too late to change course, I was just curious whether or not it would be better since the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 AD and I don't see us getting the full use out of the corporations on that timeline.
[...]

Key of corps is spreading fast... Duckweed made a very good point about that when we decided to go Mining before Sushi.
Late game hammers are the most powerful yield.

[Post 2428]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Dec 05, 2010 10:07 AM

the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 ADHow did you determine that?

[Post 2430]
Author : babybluepants
Date : Dec 05, 2010 10:27 AM

I know it might be too late to change course, I was just curious whether or not it would be better since the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 AD and I don't see us getting the full use out of the corporations on that timeline.
I doubt they've finished. And if they have, there's nothing we can do about it, except play our game out as well as possible. I was the biggest supporter of State Prop here, but I don't doubt Corps at all now. Erkon loaded the map for Sushi - you can't have more resources than this.

[Post 2432]
Author : bcool
Date : Dec 05, 2010 10:56 AM

the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 AD
How did you determine that?
Just a random guess since they haven't played a turn set in a while. No other evidence. And bbp is right of course we play our game.

[Post 2638]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Dec 09, 2010 08:16 PM
[...]
Edit: I'm no expert on corporations, but if you look at the Ducksesses latest culture graph, I'd wager that's a Sushi spam, with all its attendant culture. Edit2: And that jag on their score graph, from T212-T218 was a poprushing phase in which they poprushed a mess of execs and maybe chs and other infrastructure as well. That tells you about where they are compared to us, if my guessis right.

and with that, I bid ye all farewell till the morrow...

T212-218 was Factory+Coal Plant whips and some other things. CHs were mostly done already.

[Post 2686]
Author : Mitchum
Date : Dec 10, 2010 04:30 PM
[...]
Agreed. I think we need to push things as fast as possible. The only thing that could hurt us is if the Ducks are doing what they are currently doing without golden ages and they are able to outbuild us at the end...

Yea... and our science slider was turned off actually.
There are no strong techs besides Education for a while... why rush through research while you can wait for better multipliers? (unless you're using a Liberalism beeline for a big tech fast with bulbs)

[Post 2728]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Dec 11, 2010 07:39 AM
[...]
Looking at the Ducks graphs again. In the last ten turns they've produced 4000 per turn, which is about 25 Sushi branches with 40 resources. Took them ~20 turns to spread them. What's most interesting, though, is their power graph, which has skyrocketed much faster than their score graph, so it can't be primarily from population. That's probably an indicator of Mining Inc. And the power points have to be units. Now why in the world would they spam so many units, so late in the game? That tells me they hadn't taken out Roosy yet. Probably they decided to let him research some more techs for them, like Rifling, Democracy, maybe even artillery.

So my estimate is that the Ducks got Sushi around T210 and MInings Inc around T225.
[...]

No Roose was pretty much gone by that time... they went for the tougher Churchill and we picked the softer (and more rewarding) Roosevelt who spammed some wonders with our Marble

Mining came first, after AL. We were building 1 Exec/city per turn... 1,2,4,5,5,5,5,5....

[Post 3056]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Dec 15, 2010 04:25 PM

Well, now that we have some "down time," we can talk about hte graphs. I bet teams are kind of amazed, looking at the Ducks' graphs. There are something else, aren't they? Especially that culture graph.

It's also interesting how intertwined we are with them on the score graph. I wonder if they're somehow significantly ahead of us.

Hard to say if we'll finish a lot ahead tbh, I think it depends a lot on what decisions they make. Their 4-GA plan is pretty unrealistic, I hope they run a trial using their test game to get a better estimate.

[Post 3060]
Author : mdy
Date : Dec 15, 2010 04:40 PM

The Ducks didn't overtake us in culture until around 125 A.D.- though this may be due to them building more wonders than us (like they did in the last game). With very similar scores they could hardly be significantly ahead of us in both REX and tech.

That big culture spike can only really be explained by founding Sid's at that time (unless may be they ran the culture slider very high to combat WW-but it is very difficult to see how it could be that big a problem for them.) So we should at least found this corp before them.

Culture slider was only used very late when going after 2~3 AIs at once.
We're way ahead in REX but slightly behind in tech for a while still.

[Post 3129]
Author : LowtherCastle
Date : Dec 15, 2010 07:45 PM

How in the world are the Ducks getting 10,000 per turn? COuld they possibly have 100 sushi cities at 50 resources * 2 per resource?

100+ Sushi in ~45 cities, Sistine Chapel and a lot of infrastructure. Some slider on top of that during wars.

[Post 3135]
Author : bcool
Date : Dec 15, 2010 08:06 PM
[...]
How in the world are the Ducks getting 10,000 per turn? COuld they possibly have 100 sushi cities at 50 resources * 2 per resource?
Might be using the cultural slider for happiness since it looks like they are in the last phases of the game, spaceship ready, but need to war and clean fallout so why not go 100% culture?

Close... we launched as soon as we finished... 1 turn after our 48-turns GA.

EDIT: cleared extra stuff and added some comments.

kossin · Dec 15, 2010

Duckweed said:
Very good analysis.

IMO the better part of OSS's play is the early war, they stole at least 7 workers from DG!
EP is a good choice for weak techer. We did not have much to steal.

This game again is showcase how cottage is overrated. We laid down 1 cottage in capital and OSS has 0!

Yea, they did very well with worker steals. I'll have to watch that part of their game carefully...

Our research was too strong to be much use to steal... however with better preparation we could have stolen Constitution and SP.

kossin · Dec 16, 2010

More quotes

I can't find the one post that concluded we didn't get GLH...

Phoenix Rising

Spoiler :

[Post 725]
Author : Kadazzle
Date : Oct 17, 2010 05:20 PM

Why has it become a recurring thing for everyone on our team to compare our game to Plastic Ducks? First off, we have no clue what they have actually done - sure, you can tell if someone found a religion or attacked someone by culture and power charts, but we have no idea to the specifics.

Seriously. I think settling where we did and going Settler first, as not on the right but the best decision for this game so far.

I say this very very politely: I don't know how much testing they did, but we tried the settler first approach and it falls behind very fast. Apologies if it sounds any other way!

[Post 1250]
Author : vicawoo
Date : Nov 23, 2010 02:33 AM
[...]
People are for peaceful teching->democracy? If so, I don't want to hear anyone mention Plastic Duck's having a much higher score again. We can still win however we want, but we're not matching their aggressive decision making, and we should expect a more conservative score. Presumably they went for a faster war, then used their golden ages to crank out great people instead of infrastructure (since they are deity players), then used those great people to get bulb toward higher tech units, and cleared out the rest of the landmass.

We would also be better off trying to speed up the AI by tech trading a lot instead of hoarding, assuming we can get liberalism.

In a time limit game, cottages take too much time to contribute, especially in a fallout-covered world. Once a new city is up, you want it to be contributing as fast as possible, that's resources, farms, mines, windmills+watermills at RP, workshops once they give +3H.

Speeding up AI tech has a nasty consequence: you must finish the "gifting" techs faster (Music, Liberalism, Physics, Economics...). In our case, we traded very little and managed to get AL from liberalism... big boost!

[Post 1304]
Author : Gumbolt
Date : Dec 03, 2010 01:14 PM

I think Americans already had economics before the start of the turnset. I still have no idea how PD completed by 1540ad. I doubt they would stop to pause for thought.
[...]

Not done... busy.

[Post 1197]
Author : lymond
Date : Nov 20, 2010 09:40 PM
[...]
It seems obvious that PDs are grabbing a lot of land and have probably whittled the AI down to nothing. Their score is outrageous but they may not be teching as fast and looking for a late game boost with all that land.

Yea, that's it. Big empire + Golden Age = outrageous tech/production.

[Post 792]
Author : lymond
Date : Oct 22, 2010 01:44 PM
[...]
First, it is interesting that CoL has not gone. Do we push for a religion. If PDs have an early religion it is likely that they Oracled CoL or they detoured for Mono. I know Kossin loves OR but would usually trade for Mono which is unlikely early hear.
[...]

Teched CoL early.

Fifth Element

Spoiler :

Unusual Suspects

Spoiler :

T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't

Spoiler :

This one I laughed aloud...

[Post 1745]
Author : Trystero
Date : Nov 15, 2010 04:11 AM

I thought it was: Win. Soon.

Speaking of: Oh, look! Plastic Ducks raw score for their 1200 AD save is only 700 points ahead of ours. I was interested to see if their score would continue to increase as a logarithmic function.

[Post 639]
Author : neilmeister
Date : Oct 02, 2010 10:05 PM

The ducks have focussed on REX I think. Score is mainly population.
[...]
EDIT: The ducks will not be in peace yet I think. This might cost them later!

GLH then REX.
War: we got concerned a time or two when AIs were using Stalin as a weight to get enough power to DoW us... and that Churchill in-out WHEOOHRN for 30-odd turns.

[Post 770]
Author : neilmeister
Date : Oct 08, 2010 04:41 PM

I have been trying to figure out what the ducks have been doing. Their score is a bit better than ours, but our power is almost double theirs.

The divergence in the score graph occurs between t25 & 35.
Up until t40, we have the optimal micro for settling in place. I just do not see how it could be improved upon.

This is where our power derives from.
techs:
2000 soldiers Hunting, Mining, Animal Husbandry
4000 soldiers- Wheel, Alphabet,
8000 soldiers- Bronze Working,
10000 soldiers- Horseback Riding,
units:
2000 soldiers Warrior, we have 3.
6000 soldiers Axeman, we have 2.
pop:
17 pop means 8000 soldiers

So, we have 18,000 'soldiers' from actual units, 32000 from techs & 8000 from pop.
58,000 in total. (the test game has us at 68000, so I don't know what the difference is)

But that doesn't really matter, its all relative after all.

The early difference in score makes me think they settled the coast. The coastal option can grow very quickly once the first WB is built, and then spam workers & settlers. Score is mostly population after all. From the power graph, I can't escape the conclusion that they have skipped maybe BW & definitely HBR, and are relying on Archers to defend their cities.

I wonder how they will secure peace???

edit: I am still very happy that we did SIP. So don't misinterpret this analysis

Coastal capitals do indeed grow faster, but not right away. It still takes them a while to catch up due to the fallout effect.

[Post 1658]
Author : neilmeister
Date : Nov 10, 2010 03:14 PM

I agree that we have almost certainly won the game. I am dying to know what the Ducks are doing. If it wasn't for them, the graphs would look so much better.
[...]

Sorry... you can always tick off a team if you want better comparisons with closer teams.

[Post 1773]
Author : neilmeister
Date : Nov 22, 2010 10:47 AM
[...]
On another note, what the hell are the Ducks doing?, they must have conquered half of the world to have the scroe they do.

That's about right, maybe a bit more around that time. By the end of the game we have 66/71 cities

EDIT: reduced extra stuff and added comments.

kossin · Dec 16, 2010

kossin said:
1010AD IW iIrc.

Anyway, sorry for the silence in the past days... been pretty busy.

I've just completed my first run to launch date on the test game. I did little micro because it takes too much time.

Turns to launch from now : 38
Built a complete spaceship.
Research: I did cross the 10,000 beakers mark! (This meant techs start coming at 1/turn for virtually all techs).
GP: I got up to the 1600 gpp GP, however, I did not micromanage this.
Research Institutes: they give about 40 beakers a piece!
Workers: we're going to need more! Not only do we have to clear out all fallout, but we will need more to modify some improvements in our land to save 1/2 turns on launch.

With better micromanagement (I ended up with some 3,000 gold), we can lower this to 35 turns or a few less even. This means we can probably keep running GAs until the end of the game.

Mining: indeed goes everywhere
Sushi: I did not spread it very much, but we should spread it to every city that will be building spaceship parts. This means all improvements can be changed to Workshops = more production etc.

Anyway, I will formulate a plan for the next ~5 turns in the next couple of days.

We launched in 32 turns compared to my estimate.
Also, as we saw, we could have gone full research 1 turn earlier (maybe 2~3, I kept getting techs at 1/turn until FT #5 iIrc).

I think it's possible to shave 10 turns from our launch date. More than that would be very difficult however.

Duckweed · Dec 16, 2010

Thanks for quoting, It's the most interesting thing when reading other people's guess and I also enjoy guessing.

My prediction based on my BOTM29 result was more close than your real test run.

If we were able to steal workers as OSS, the result could be significantly improved, other wise, not much since every earlier turn in later stage is ~8K beakers.

kossin · Dec 16, 2010

Duckweed said:
Thanks for quoting, It's the most interesting thing when reading other people's guess and I also enjoy guessing.

My prediction based on my BOTM29 result was more close than your real test run.

If we were able to steal workers as OSS, the result could be significantly improved, other wise, not much since every earlier turn in later stage is ~8K beakers.

As I said, I did 0 micro and barely spread Sushi

Jastrow · Dec 16, 2010

Another question.

In Kossin's overview of the other team above, he makes a big deal of the number of islands settled and the date of first settling. Why is this so significant (compared to total number of cities, or similar, which is not mentioned.) Is the off-continent trade route bonus THAT significant, or is there another reason?

Thanks

nishant1911 · Dec 16, 2010

@kossin and duckweed
congrats ,great job :goodjob:

Duckweed · Dec 16, 2010

Jastrow said:
Another question.

In Kossin's overview of the other team above, he makes a big deal of the number of islands settled and the date of first settling. Why is this so significant (compared to total number of cities, or similar, which is not mentioned.) Is the off-continent trade route bonus THAT significant, or is there another reason?

Thanks

Kossin was kind of over-criticizing other teams. For teams with GLH, island cities are very important because not only every island city get 4 trade route to pay for itself immediately, but also the cities in the main land get the inter-continental domestic trade routes. However, for teams without GLH, actually most of teams, ~6 island city before Corporation is reasonable play. X-team settled 0 island city, that's a very bad play without any excuse.

kossin · Dec 16, 2010

Well, a lot of teams tried to play some diplomacy with the AI, which gave them intercontinental trade routes to someone other than Gandhi. In this case, more islands is good.
Also, in the case of US who went for GLH, it's also a bad idea to wait until 840AD to settle the first island. As evident from our play, first ~6 cities on islands are strictly positive on income with GLH so you'll want them ASAP.

And then there's also the "the sooner you settle it, the sooner it can start contributing".

As you might have noticed as well, those that didn't settle most islands got some stolen by the AI...

But yea, maybe a bit harsh otherwise.

SGOTM 12 - Plastic Ducks

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

*hugs*

Deity

Deity

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