Yet another deity game

Yamps said:

I was planning to get the second city out fast to connect it and to use the capital for pumping settlers and workers. Later on the capital will hire scientists and won't work the tile. There was also some expectation from those empty plains to yield a strategic resource in the BFC. But when I think about it now, you're absolutely right. The capital should have gotten it, it's a strong tile that I could have worked at size 3. As you can see, I am putting emphasis on working the furs, that one earlier would have helped too.

Click to expand...

I'm guessing Iron is going to pop up in your capital, unless the map script has unusual capital BFC settings.

^yeah, I'm guessing that too. The script has a lot of options and I left everthing at default, including the standard resource placement.

Hmm, I'm wondering how much land is there on the continent, Hammurabi has 7 cities but I still have some space to expand...Next round due tomorrow.

Did give this a quick runthrough with BW after Agri and the Oracle, maybe you are screwed anyway but it doesn't look that bad
The Fur in capital would have helped maybe as Rusten pointed out, i was struggling a bit with commerce, put some hammers into SH to not go broke and even disbanded a warrior and a fast worker

No barb problems thou, you had a decent landshape to set up 2 choke points with just warriors imo. Unlucky with copper too, the bfc suggested there should be a strat. ressource around.

@Mylene

Nice job with the Oracle! Although I'd say that's pretty lucky at 1680 BC on Deity.

Regarding the barbs, the reason you don't have problems with them is that you only have 1 city. On T39 2440 BC there are streams of barbs going my way from far parts of the continent. This can happen when there are more than 3 cities per player on average and when barbs decide to go into the 'area offensive mode' This happens if there's lots of barbs around and if there's not enough barb cities on the continent. That's a random factor, it's much easier if there are barb cities around. You can see another wave in my current save, new area offensive has just started.

At your current point in the game, I'd expect serious barb trouble when you settle your second city.

Heya, i'd say about 60% chance to get it.
Maybe a bit more if you immediately put some pre-chopped hammers into it (did that), cos the AI will see the progress on your Oracle.

I like having just that 1 city till iam a bit more ready, as you pointed out much much less barb problems (did set up some fog busters too).
If you settle cities quick, they will most likely be busy producing units, and not developing much.

Mylene said:

Heya, i'd say about 60% chance to get it.
Maybe a bit more if you immediately put some pre-chopped hammers into it (did that), cos the AI will see the progress on your Oracle.

I like having just that 1 city till iam a bit more ready, as you pointed out much much less barb problems (did set up some fog busters too).
If you settle cities quick, they will most likely be busy producing units, and not developing much.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I know about that wonder building trick. It wont delay them if they already have Priesthood though. 60% is a fair asessment and I'd agree it might be higher. This is an interesting point, I'd not go for some objective at those odds while you would.

I can't check your save now, but I see that you've skipped AH on the way to Writing. Nice spawn busting network, but you can never know just how many cities does the AI have and are there barb cities around to reduce the chance for the area offensive mode. If that happens, they'll skip your network and beeline for the cities.

1 city vs more is also interesting. Expansion also has merits here, the Bombay spot with furs, deer, clam and fish is nice to improve.

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Anyway, I have to dig myself out of the hole here. Mansa will be a big problem in this game, but what matters is to stay ahead of Hammurabi and to invade him eventually. I'll need that culture bridge city up asap to get in contact with the other continent. First GS will be settled in the capital and the second one will be used to bulb Philosophy, regardles of what Mansa does. Other civs on his continent probably won't have it so it will be a good trading chip.

Well, we'll see...some other tips before I continue?

Well yip, i might not do this in a competitve game that counts for something.
Or maybe i would take the risk if i consider it the by far best option (usually it is at the position you are in), and consider it a lost game if i fail.

T123 200 AD, time for a checkpoint.

Summary:

0% research while waiting for the first GS (Academy) -> Meditation-> Priesthood -> Col (revolt to Caste) -> Alpha

First trade with Hammurabi:



Philo bulb using the second GS for the second trade: (Mansa was first to Tao, but nothing to do about that.)



In the meantime, 3 more cities were settled and culture bridge to Mansa Musa established. Christianity spread to my land so I converted to Pacifism to go with Caste. I had the plan to spread the missionary to Hammurabi but he got Tao from random spread just a few turns after I adopted Christianity. >.< Solved that problem with a tech gift somewhat later to get him to pleased again.

Bombay while waiting for religion:



Tech:



Overview:



Current situation and general plan:

I've been pumping great people from Delhi and Bombay non stop. 2 GS were used for the Academy and Philosophy and I have 2 more standing by. In 3 turns a GM will be born to get the trade route gold and 13 turns after that there will be another GS. I'll use the trade route gold to clear Compass, CS and Paper (hopefully with some trade) and then it's 2 GS for Education and 1 for Liberalism. Still, if Mansa goes directly for Liberalism I'll lose it. He already has Banking and Paper so that's quite likely.

I could put some espionage to check his research, surprisingly he's not putting much EP on me:



Not sure that I have the resources though and I don't really have other options besides Liberalism. Well, I'll trade it around for more useful techs with Hammurabi and Gilga in any case.

War plan:

Hammurabi has 15 cities while I only have 6. The idea is to attack with cuirassiers and most likely with some slow moving drafted muskets/trebs as well. Nationhood will also help with espionage. Mansa will run away, but I'll use his cities on my continent for tech teft later in the game.

Check out the wonder screen:

For the love of god man, granaries! Perhaps the most important building in the game, yet you have none. I can't emphasise enough how much production you miss out on from not getting them.

You're spiritual too, so there's no excuse not to whip.

^
Getting out of Caste is 5 turns without strong GP production, I can't afford that right now.

Pottery came really late here by trade and all the important cities already hit their cap (happy or food) so I hired scientists and merchants with Caste to get to tech parity which was the most important thing to do imo. I'll chop the granaries while the cities are stagnating, there's plenty of forest to do that. And I do have one granary in that 'capture barbs' city. I'll grow all those cities rapidly when I get the needed great people, don't you worry.

I finished the next set before I went on my vacation, but didn't have the time to upload the report. Then when I got back home, I was very eager to play and got the 'just one more turn' syndrome... Well, the game is finished.

1080 situation:

Tech screen:



Overview:



Full war preparation at this point. The plan was to mass draft 30 rifles in 10 turns (using the culture slider if necessary) and to attack with rifles & trebs. Cavalry would follow later on to reinforce the front, no MT yet. Workshops at full strength (Caste, Guilds, Chemistry) for the research push. I had ~15 workers there to get the tiles I want for the specific game period immediately. This was also the time to start building windmills.


Demographics:



However, GNP figures tell the true story. I had a virtual economy based on bulbs and trading while the AI was flying like a rocket.

And this is where I left it before going to the beach.

1210 AD

Tech:



Here comes Rifling, but at this point it was clear that the plan wouldn't work. Hammurabi was just too strong. He got to MS for grens and more importantly, his GNP was out of control. He was also the first to reach AL, it didn't take him much more from this point to get it. I guess 23 cities helped a bit with that.

Demographics:



At this point, there was just one thing left to try. I had the plan to setup the espionage economy against Mansa after the war with Hammurabi. Therefore, I settled the trap city on the border with Mansa. With small distance, religion and culture I was expecting around ~2 for 1 . With all the espionage buildings and hired spies, even a small empire could give a lot of espionage points.

Fast forward to 1470 AD:



Well, well! Base beaker cost for Communism is 7098/1.5 = 4732 and here I am paying only 1206 , that's almost 4 for 1 ! It's the -50% from City Culture which makes the big difference.

This is the screenshot immediately after gifting the city to MM. The spies were already stationed there for an immediate -50% boost. At this point I took Communism and some other stuff too. I didn't have so many points on him at the time and I needed Communism badly for another ~40 per city.

However, the City Culture bonus started declining in the following turns. I didn't know the exact mechanic at the time, but I knew it was from Mansa's culture of course. Notice my border cities building culture? This doesn't help at all to keep the bonus high. After some reading, I've learned the mechanic and this is what I want to share here:

The City Culture bonus comes from, well, City Culture and not Plot Culture. The bonus is equal to 0.5*MyCityCulture/TotalCityCulture. So, it helps to build as much culture as possible before gifting the city. It also helps if your opponent isn't running 100% culture slider for the cultural victory. Culture bombing the city before gifting would work great as well and of course, gifting mature cities works too.

Note however that your opponent needs to have some Plot Culture on the city tile to accept the city for sure. Sometimes they are willing to take the city with 0% Plot Culture, but not always. (?) Also note that your Plot Culture, unlike City Culture, goes away from the city tile and the surrounding 8 tiles when you gift the city.

Screenshot from my trap city on the next turn: (not from the actual game, here I just hit end turn for this example)



So, Mansa has 2 invested there. Note that my border cities building culture took some tiles, building culture does help with that of course. Let's see how much City Culture I have there:



The Spread Culture mission would insert 5 into the city. This means that the TotalCityCulture is 20 times that amount, 100 . Mansa has 2, so I have 98. The City Culture bonus is therefore 0.5*98/100 = 49% as you can see on the screenshot. Btw, coincidentally 14 city Mansa peacefully vassalized to 23 city Hammurabi right there.

Regarding the Spread Culture mission, it isn't particularly effective for increasing the City Culture bonus. However, it's impact rises when cities accumulate a lot of culture. (the +5% applies to total city culture) There's also an impact to Plot Culture from this mission, related somehow to the size of the CC bonus. ~5 spies at the right time could be used as a mini culture bomb to take over tiles and I did that somewhat later
in the game in that trap city when Mansa started his cultural attempt.


As for the game itself, later on I took AL, Industrialism and Rocketry from the same trap city to start the Apollo. In the process, I had to tackle Mansa's cultural attempt. I was flipping him constantly from Free Speech to Bureaucracy (I had to use it to keep Hammurabi happy, no Nationhood) and from Universal Suffrage to Hereditary Rule to prevent rush buying. Also, ~15 spies destroyed all health buildings and all cathedrals in his third city to get him under control. Of course, I had to defy some UN resolutions as well. Luckily, votes for the diplo victory were spread between Churchill and Hammurabi with no decisive advantage.

Military option to win the game wasn't an option, no Oil available (while the AI gets it in trade for Bananas ) and nukes got banned. Couldn't defy everything and anyway, they'd crush me with nukes and not the other way around. Despite all this, I still had the chance to win by Space. Mansa started teching again and he also got the Internet for us to share the knowledge! (No copper for me to attempt the project.) I actually could have beaten MM in the race, his commerce cities vs my +100% workshop cities and a bunch of spies to keep him grounded. However, his big daddy Hammuraby who picked up another big and advanced peaceful vassal (Lincoln) had his own space plans. Churchill with 20+ cities of his own and a war vassal Gilga too.



Final espionage on Mansa Musa. It took some settled Gspies with late game Pacifism too to get this. For the final lol, I gift my own Globe Theater city to Mansa. First things first, I have to destroy my ex security bureau:



And then, I steal everything needed except Fusion. He didn't have it, started with culture business again.



If you calculate my to ratio, you'll get 4.45 : 1. Almost 35k in espionage invested, that's 156k in beakers stolen. Note the low success rate on the last screenshot. This has to be from all these spies on the same tile, or maybe Hammurabi's culture has something to do with it. (?)

As I said, this was for the final lol only, Hammurabi launched on that turn. (T254, 1720AD) Nothing to do about that, he had almost 40k of espionage invested against me, with Churchill too only a few parts behind him.

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Well, a loss is a loss. But you know what they say, you learn much more from your losses than from wins. Great...

Anyway, this game gives me a whole new perspective on espionage. It's quite easy to get the 4:1 ratio when you set things up properly:

*1.50 the starting modifier
*0.85 different state religion
*0.50 for City Culture
*1.10 distance
*0.50 for stationary spies
*0.80 espionage spending

That's 24% 27% total from the base beaker cost. (due to integer math and rounding down on each multiplication slightly better than 28% you'd expect)

And this is without the holy city bonus. If you have that, 0.85 gets replaced by 0.6 and you get it down to only 10%! 19% (integer math kicks in, making a big relative difference from 20% when numbers are low! ) EDIT: well, 19% is nice too. There's still room for improvement though, I had 1.05 for distance in the game and 0.71 for espionage spending. If I had a holy city, I'd get 16%.

The important City Culture bonus can stay high for a longer period if the starting CC is high. It's also very useful to have another city nearby with cultural influence on the tile to enable Spread Culture missions, these are most useful to take over tiles and to keep the gifted city at low production. The biggest problem is to get the AI to accept the city (their cultural influence on the tile) and you also need some space in the first place to settle it. But that's just a matter of planning and at worst, some old border city you don't really need would work for sure.

Finally, you don't have to gift it at all. You could DoW them and arrange it that way. For AW games, this is a great way to get the upper hand. The first great spy from the Great Wall or from a courthouse has a much bigger weight than expected when you account all this, 3000 translates up to 30000 15000 no problem if you get the holy city and if you keep your city culture high compered to your opponents culture.

EDIT: I've made some errors in this post, overvaluing the impact of rounding down errors. That's what you get for posting late...I'll go through the actual calculation step by step on the next post. 30000 beakers from the first GSpy won't happen, 15000 is a realistic assessment. To get this, City Culture bonus has to stay high and you need a holy city.


References:

Complete Espionage Mission Cost Guide, Coanda's addition

I've used his modifier calculation procedure and it agrees with in-game numbers, the integer rounding down is an important part here. He's assuming the wrong base 1.25 multiplier though that Detektyw used instead of the actual 1.5. Also, his culture bomb idea to press the target city didn't work because you need City Culture for the bonus, not Plot Culture.

Culture Mechanics Disassembled

The Spread Culture Espionage Mission revealed

Snaaty confirmed recently that stacked spies have reduced chances of success.

Anyway, great display of late game espionage, this is not widely spread enough

kossin said:

Snaaty confirmed recently that stacked spies have reduced chances of success.

Anyway, great display of late game espionage, this is not widely spread enough

Click to expand...

Thanks!

This game could be relevant for the way we're planning AW4. As for stacked spies:

Sure they have reduced chance of success value, often it drops from ~90% to ~70% with the second spy added. 3th, 4th don't seem to matter much. Stacked spies also have a higher chance of being detected, there is some threshold for this though.

Hanging around with all these out of control AIs surely deserves credit

I've corrected some calculation errors in the previous post. Here's the complete modifier calculation step by step, using my first theft screenshot:



Communism has a base beaker cost of 4732 beakers. (from the F6 tech adviser screen) Base espionage cost is 1.5 as much rounded down, 7098 EP.

-15% for our state religion -> 0.85
-50% for City Culture -> 0.50
+9% for distance -> 1.09
-50% for Stationary Spy -> 0.50
-19% for Espionage Point Spending -> 0.81

Calculation procedure:

Start with 100%. 100*0.85=85. 85*0.5 = 42.5, round down to 42. 42*1.09 = 45.78, 45. 45*0.5 = 22.5, 22. 22*0.81 = 17.82, 17. So, the reduction here is 17% of the base espionage cost. Total cost is therefore 0.17 * 7098 = 1206 EP rounded down and this agrees with the number on the screenshot. Compared to the starting beaker cost, that's 25%.

If you simply multiply 1.5*0.85*0.5*1.09*0.5*0.81*4732, using your calculator you play civ with, you'll get the approximation of 1331 EP needed.

Another example:



9295 beakers for Fission, 13942 base espionage cost. Modifiers are 0.85, 0.50, 1.05, 0.50 and 0.71. 100 -> 85 -> 42 -> 44 -> 22 -> 15. 15% of 13942 gives 2091, as shown on the screenshot. That's a nice reduction, 22% of the starting beaker coast.

Let's see how much for Feudalism. I'll assume:

-40% for different state religion and holy city -> 0.60
-50% for City Culture -> 0.50
+10% for distance -> 1.10
-50% for Stationary Spy -> 0.50
-20% for Espionage Point Spending -> 0.80

Feudalism has a cost of 1183 beakers, 1774 base EP cost. Modifiers: 100 -> 60 -> 30 -> 33 -> 16 -> 12. 12% of 1774 = 212 EP. That's 5.58 beakers for 1 EP, not bad at all. So, at this rate 3000 EP from that first spy would translate to 16740 beakers. Key thing to get that is to keep the City Culture bonus high and there are more ways to do it. IMO, 4000 culture from a great artist is the best way.

A point on Espionage Point Spending, 0.80 is a modest assumption. The multiplier is equal to (2x + y)/(x + 2y), x being their total espionage spending against all civs, y ours. Maximum discount is therefore 0.5, 2 is the worst case. In the early game, 3000 points from infiltration matters a lot. Let's say they only have 300 EP invested total and that we have 3000. The multiplier is then 0.57, 43% for 'Espionage Point Spending'. Let's see 1000 vs 3500. It's still nice, 31% for EPS.

Dirk1302 said:

This game could be relevant for the way we're planning AW4.

Click to expand...

Yes, I'm following the AW4 thread. I have some ideas regrading that, I'll post them there.

kossin said:

Snaaty confirmed recently that stacked spies have reduced chances of success.

Anyway, great display of late game espionage, this is not widely spread enough

Click to expand...

Dirk1302 said:

This game could be relevant for the way we're planning AW4. As for stacked spies:

Sure they have reduced chance of success value, often it drops from ~90% to ~70% with the second spy added. 3th, 4th don't seem to matter much. Stacked spies also have a higher chance of being detected, there is some threshold for this though.

Click to expand...

I cannot reproduce this behaviour. Not by using the worldbuilder, nor find any code supporting this in the sdk.

I can only influence success percentage by targeting capitcal/non-capital cities and stack counterspies by the defender.

^I'll give a clear screenshot example of this behavior once i update AW3. Took a save where i steal communism. 2 spies success chance is 73%, i move one spy out of the city and the success chance for the one remaining spy shoots up to 92%. Strange you can't find it or isn't this what you meant?