Demographics

The CRE team popped borders. They have 13 land tiles in the BFC. We had already concluded they were starting with a WB...

Be sure to note that on Turn 23 Team Sirius will be getting some extra points because of their border pop. (The other teams get their boost on Turn 25). I forgot how many points you get for control of 1 land tile, though.

^ I think it's actually game-specific, probably based on general settings and actual total land area. Not sure what the function is, though? Anyone else? We'll see anyway when ours pops up.

Edit: Good point, though. I was gonna sit down tonight and put together a list of expected ETA's like that... In the works...

isn't it always 1000 points per land tile?

bbp has it right, it's based on game settings. I logged in to the game to check, and it's quite interesting.

The land area score is simply [1000*land/totalLand], where [] means round down. For this game, the value of totalLand is 781. This is interesting because it's a decidedly low value for the settings we have. Your typical random Standard-sized fractal map with Medium sea level has ~900 land tiles. For an archipelago map, the value is typically ~850. This game has even less.

For population the score is [5000*pop/maxPop], where maxPop is the highest population sustainable by the available food in the world (well, roughly at least). For this game, the value of maxPop is 794. This value is typically significantly higher than totalLand - except for highland-type maps. 794 is a really low value to go with 781 land, so we can expect a lot of hills (and/or plains and desert).

These finds are not surprising, given the parameters DaveMcW was given from our polls.

Hmm, so we have even more water tiles than in an archipelago map. Interesting... Both Ragnar and Willem will be laughing all the way to the bank with this map.

BTW, I did remember an aweful lot of ice showing in that barbarian shot that was posted, I assume these don't count as land and also decrease its density.

I'm curious why we can expect so many hills just because the land rating is low.

obsolete said:

I'm curious why we can expect so many hills just because the land rating is low.

Click to expand...

Not because the land rating is low, but because ratio of population to land is low. On a typical archipelago map with temperate climate, you typically have ~1050 maxPop and 850 totalLand. On this map it's roughly equal, 794 to 781. That means the average food yield per tile is lower than a "normal" map, which is typical of a map with lots of hills.

Niklas said:

Not because the land rating is low, but because ratio of population to land is low. On a typical archipelago map with temperate climate, you typically have ~1050 maxPop and 850 totalLand. On this map it's roughly equal, 794 to 781. That means the average food yield per tile is lower than a "normal" map, which is typical of a map with lots of hills.

Click to expand...

i guess we all know what this means... ...have you ever tried running a SE on a highland map with lots of brown stuff... ...wont make things easier for us i guess... ...only good that we all like tough challenges

for niklas finding it out

Yeah, that's really useful information.

Initial thoughts are that it puts a premium on food - although it might not be the case that an SE is compromised that much, as an SE relies on relatively few high-yield tiles. It's just a question of finding those high-yield tiles, and putting our cities where we can easily turn them into 2 specialists.

OTOH, CE is very difficult on brown maps, because every cottage that isn't on grassland loses you food.

Nicely spotted, Niklas!
Question: what's the score value for tech?

Some ETA's for the next few turns. This thread is getting longish, and kinda hard to follow... (Techs have question marks since we're not entirely sure yet)

T-05 3800 BC

• Mass border pops; this happens IBT for all teams, correct?

T-06 3760 BC

• Sirius should complete a WB (6t x 5hpt).
  Indicator - switch to a food/commerce tile.
• Merlot completes Fishing (?)
  Indicator - score increase; possible tile switch to go with WB build.

T-07 3720 BC

• Sirius completes Mining (?)
  Indicator - score increase; 2000 soldier increase.

T-08 3680 BC

• Quatronia completes Agriculture (?)
  Indicator - score increase.

Score value of tech should be 6 points multiplied by the era that it was discovered, so I think ancient techs are all 6 points, classical are all 12 points, and so on.

v8_mark said:

Initial thoughts are that it puts a premium on food - although it might not be the case that an SE is compromised that much, as an SE relies on relatively few high-yield tiles. It's just a question of finding those high-yield tiles, and putting our cities where we can easily turn them into 2 specialists.

OTOH, CE is very difficult on brown maps, because every cottage that isn't on grassland loses you food.

Click to expand...

You nicely put words to what was going through the back of my mind. SE isn't compromised as much as CE in the early game. In the late game, I've seen the tremendous power of a windmill-based CE on a global highland map first hand. But at that point, so many other factors determine the outcome anyway.

babybluepants said:

Question: what's the score value for tech?

Click to expand...

Score for techs and wonders is always the same in all games (since it's the same techs and wonders in all games ).

For techs: [techPoints*2000/334], or almost 6 points per (ancient) tech. Note that the value is floored, so the first tech is worth [5.98] = 5 points, and all techs will be worth 6 points (per techPoint) for a good while after that. The techPoint for a tech is the same as its era number: Ancient = 1, Classical = 2, Medieval = 3, Renaissance = 4, Industrial = 5, Modern = 6.

For wonders: [wonderPoints*1000/310], which means ~16 points per wonder. All wonders, both world and national, are worth the same 5 wonderPoints, and [5000/310] = 16.129...., so roughly every 8th wonder a team has will be worth 17 instead of 16.

One other thing to note about the score for land - you only get points for land tiles that have been inside your borders for 20 turns (hence DMOC's comments above).

Right now every team has 33 points:
- Pop: [1*5000/794] = 6
- Land: [0*1000/781] = 0 (since no team has had any tiles for 20 turns yet)
- Tech: [2*2000/334] = 11 (for the two starting techs)
- Wonders: [5*1000/310] = 16 (for the palace, a national wonder)

Hmm, due to the low maxPop value, we will not be able to distinguish tech score boosts from pop score boosts (typically the maxPop is ~ 1000, which means 5 score per pop, not 6 as in this game). We should still be able to track it through demographics though, but if two teams both get a boost of 6 on a given turn, one from tech and one from pop, we won't know which team is which. Devious.

Great stuff there!

Annoying with the tech score/pop increase, but far better to know now than make a wrong assumption... guess the soldier point increases from tech might help differntiate slightly.

There's actually a soldier-point increase of 1000 for every second pop point, too.

One more thing to share which may be important in determining city population:

The demographics calculate population as (x^2.8)*1000

So a civ with a size 1 capital has (1^2.8)*1000 = 1000 population in demographics which is what's shown there now anyway since each team has a size 1 capital.

A civ with a size 2 capital has (2^2.8)*1000 = 6964.etc which rounds down to 6,000.

A civ with 2 size 1 cities has (1^2.8)*1000 + (1^2.8)*1000 = 2000 population.

There's a team with 21 GNP now. I guess a FIN leader's working a 3cpt seafood tile. Can we confirm that this change hadn't happened with another team last turn? We missed Sirius' last turn... The 5 MFG is gone, too, which would confirm Sirius switched. The highest CY is 7, which would indicate a fish with 3cpt. Those don't typically occur very often, but I guess this map isn't typical. It would mean they grow in 5t?
21 GNP = 4 EP + 2 Culture + (8 Palace + 3 Seafood + 1 Free + 1 CC) * 1.2.

The land area is intriguing - seems we have an extra land tile over any other team? The 11000 lowest is interesting - 10 sea tiles to our 7?

CDZ completed a tech, giving them a 2000 soldier increase by the looks of it. We thought they were on a 2nd-tier tech, based on the initial GNP. Obviously seems wrong. Have to think they teched Mining? That would mean they worked a 3cpt tile? Oasis, I suppose.

Since the last screenshot, someone else upped their GNP, to bring the average to 19 (can't post screenshot right now, will edit it in later). CDZ and Amazon played in the mean time.

We know:
21 (probably Sirius) + 20 (Amazon) + 16 (Merlot) = 57; that leaves 38 between CDZ and Quatronia. CDZ was previously on 19, that we know for sure. If they weren't on a 2nd-tier tech, how could they have that number? We were assuming either 17 or 18 for Quatronia. I think it was 17, which would put CDZ at 21 now... If they are really working Oasis, while building a worker, they would now have: 4 EP + 2 Culture + 1.2*(8 Palace + 1 Free + 1 CC + 3 Oasis) = 21. So Mining, followed by a 2nd-tier tech (BW?)

After a few turns of nothing happening, this should get more complex now. We should be taking snapshots after every team again.