PolyCast Episode 180: "Relish In That Opportunity"

How complementary. The one-hundred-and-eightieth episode of PolyCast, "Relish In That Opportunity", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with a runtime of 59m59s. The summary of topics is as follows:

- 01m44s | Senate
The second in three consecutive episodes profiling Civilization V: Brave New World, the Assyrian, Brazilian (13m52s) and Polish (20m39s) civilizations are profiled. What's new and modified to the game's culture (25m45s), and diplomacy (37m55s), systems are highlighed thereafter.
- 54m41s | News
The first substantial details of the upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) Civilization: Online are revealed.

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
Recycling acronyms, premature "classic"ifications and a laugh track lead out.

Recording live before a listening audience every other Saturday, PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production in an ongoing effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice on game strategy; listeners are encouraged to follow the show on Twitter, and check out the YouTube channel for caption capability. Sibling show RevCast focuses on Civilization: Revolution, ModCast on Civ modding, SCivCast on Civ social gaming and TurnCast on Civ multiplay.

Near the end MadDjinn states the Freedom tenant Covert Action increases coup chance. This is incorrect. It doubles the chance to rig elections, which means if you and another civ both have a spy of the same level trying to rig an election, you'll succeed instead of them as long as you have this tenant and they don't.

Don't Siege Towers not provide the bonus if they're not adjacent to a city?

Monthar said:

Near the end MadDjinn states the Freedom tenant Covert Action increases coup chance. This is incorrect. It doubles the chance to rig elections, which means if you and another civ both have a spy of the same level trying to rig an election, you'll succeed instead of them as long as you have this tenant and they don't.

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Correct, except that it's spelt "tenet" not "tenant." I don't think spies "rent" out the City-state per se.

Awesome podcast. Here's a lil help with Portuguese:

São Paolo pronounced like San Paulo.
Pracinha is same as Praciña or Pra-see-nya.
Nau pronounced like Nah-oo.
João can be pronounced like Juan or Zhu-on.

For some others:
Maori = Mao-ree.
Moai = Mo'-eye.
Candi = Chandy

MattZed said:

Don't Siege Towers not provide the bonus if they're not adjacent to a city?

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Correct, but they use a melee attack (like a battering ram), so they'll usually be next to a city that you're attacking.

Noted, Monthar. Hope you enjoyed the show!

ToodleElNoodos said:

Awesome podcast.[/i]

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Thank you kindly.

How long have you been a PolyCast listener out of curiosity? I recall your comment from Episode 175 a couple of months ago.

Here's a lil help with Portuguese:

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Matt, Morningcalm, Aaron: hope you enjoyed the show as well.

Aaron90495 said:

Correct, but they use a melee attack (like a battering ram), so they'll usually be next to a city that you're attacking.

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The thing is, I thought I heard something on the podcast about parking siege towers outside of the range of city bombard and somehow buffing your ranged units that way. This shouldn't work at all, since your towers aren't actually next to cities, no?

MattZed said:

The thing is, I thought I heard something on the podcast about parking siege towers outside of the range of city bombard and somehow buffing your ranged units that way. This shouldn't work at all, since your towers aren't actually next to cities, no?

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I would think you are correct, yes. But I haven't actually listened to the podcast yet, so maybe you misheard a bit? Or maybe it's just wrong. Hmmm...perhaps I should listen!

DanQ said:

Noted, Monthar. Hope you enjoyed the show!


Thank you kindly.

How long have you been a PolyCast listener out of curiosity? I recall your comment from Episode 175 a couple of months ago.

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175 was the first podcast, been following since. I was really interested to hear the arguments about India and decided to give them a try afterwards in G&K. Found the advice extremely helpful, managed to survive a continuous onslaught of 3 civs and still have the most populous city.

Yes, an Assyrian Siege Tower would need to be next to a city -- even if just for part of a turn -- to provide the 50% boost for adjacent units attacking the city as well. That wasn't made clear during the podcast recording (d'oh).

ToodleElNoodos said:

175 was the first podcast, been following since.

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In addition to the episodes since and including #175, hope you were able to find one or more in the show's archives -- from the ongoing season or prior -- that have also caught your interest.

I was really interested to hear the arguments about India and decided to give them a try afterwards in G&K. Found the advice extremely helpful, managed to survive a continuous onslaught of 3 civs and still have the most populous city.

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I'm happy to say I finally got to listen to the show again. Whenever I tried to click on the link to the polycast.net site, it was blocked by my company. But today I decided to try clicking on the YouTube link and, surprisingly, it wasn't blocked. Now I can get my Monday Morning Civ Stretegy fix again.

shaglio said:

I'm happy to say I finally got to listen to the show again. Whenever I tried to click on the link to the polycast.net site, it was blocked by my company. But today I decided to try clicking on the YouTube link and, surprisingly, it wasn't blocked. Now I can get my Monday Morning Civ Stretegy fix again.

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Hooray for improved Mondays!

Really enjoying your podcast. I've known about it for years but didn't really start listening until right before BNW launched.

If I may be allowed to make a suggestion for a future show topic, I'd like a more thorough discussion of Tourism and Culture. I think the "Tourism and Culture" mechanic is poorly explained and presented in BNW. I'm not saying the mechanic is bad, but the implementation is terrible.

I know many BNW players "get it". I know "getting it" should be easy. And I even get the basic concept that Tourism is offense and Culture is defense. What I don't get is how the Tourism game is interacting with the AI. MadDjinn does a good job explaining the basic concept but when he moves into the interaction explanation he loses me. Plus and minus percents, plus this Tourism vs. the sum of this Culture = barf! I HATE MATH.

This isn't a knock on Polycast. It is a criticism of Firaxis. In my current game, I have +22 Tourism. If I hover over it, the game tells me where I am getting my Tourism. If I click into the Culture menu, I am assaulted by numbers. I'm "Rising Slowly" against Denmark. I'm "Falling Quickly" against Korea. I see tiny gray bars on top of long skinny pink bars. I see numbers all over a table. What is the player supposed to do? Is +22 Tourism good or bad? In contrast if my happiness or gold turns red, I know that is bad. I also know the answer is "build some stuff". I know I can "build some stuff" with the Faith points so having more is better. I know having more Culture points is better because I can "build social policies". What am I building with Tourism? Where are the points going? Every turn I get +22 points of Tourism that disappears into the ether. Or maybe it makes my tiny gray bar just a tiny bit bigger?

I will save the trolls some time and energy by agreeing that I'm a dummy for not "getting" Tourism. I'm not the sharpest stick in the bunch, and the only math I enjoyed in Trig was calculating how fast the stupid class ended. Fun for me isn't looking at bar graphs and calculating nebulus bonus percentages. I don't think I'm alone in my unbridled hatred of mathematics. Well, maybe I am alone in that respect but everyone should hate math. Math sucks.

So for all of us non-math-letes out here on the Internet, can you cover the Tourism concept without all of the number mumbo jumbo. I can spend gold, food, hammers, culture, happiness, and faith. Where do I spend Tourism and what can I buy or build with it?

Love your show!

@Jatte Pake

Tourism for Dummies:

If you have Rising Slowly or Falling Tourism against another civ, it's too low vs. that civ. Each civ has a different amount of Culture resisting your Tourism, so different amounts of Tourism are required to be Influential with different civs. If it is Rising, the tooltip over the arrow will show how many turns until you are Influential with that civ. Keep building your Tourism to reduce the amount of turns till you are Influential. When you are Influential with all civs, you win a Cultural Victory.

You don't need to worry about the numbers, just know that it needs to go up until you are within a few turns of being Influential with all the civs.

City Flipping:

When civs are of different ideologies, they can make each other unhappy. The more Tourism a civ has, the more effect they have on the civs of a different ideology. You can be effected by multiple civs of both different ideologies. So 3 Order civs have greater effect than 1 civ that is Freedom.

When the effect is strong enough, a city may flip to the civ that is giving the greatest effect.

You can prevent flipping by changing to the ideology of the stronger civs or by increasing your own Tourism or Culture or going to war against them.

Had to chime in too:

It's weird with the two definitions of Tourism.

1) Tourism (City Attractiveness) is the briefcase number. Bigger number is better for your a culture victory. Increased by placing great works and artifacts into buildings, or building hotels and airports.

2) Tourism (Foreign Interest) is the culture screen. Everything on there just ignore, te most important info for non-math folks are these terms.

Important Culture Screen Terms:

Unknown - No foreign interest from that civ.
Exotic - a little foreign interest, but nothing substantial.
Familiar - Beginning to make an impact, their people know you.
Influential - Their people are dying to get more of you.
Dominant - Their people act, dress, and speak just like you.

Rising - Green colored and means you will win against them. Hovering your mouse over Rising will tell you how many terms till knock them out culturally.

Rising Slowly - Means you're starting to affect them, but need more Tourism to beat them. /rise through influence rank.

Static - Means you need to start producing tourism, or get them to open borders with you.

Falling - Red is bad! People are losing interest you. Start importing products by setting up a trade route, make them open their borders to you, send your missionaries to convert them to your religion.

Falling Rapidly - Red is super bad! You're no longer interesting! People don't want any of your things! Destroy them and wipe their cultural presence off the face of the planet!

ToodleElNoodos said:

Had to chime in too:

Rising - Green colored and means you will win against them. Hovering your mouse over Rising will tell you how many terms till knock them out culturally.

Rising Slowly - Means you're starting to affect them, but need more Tourism to beat them. /rise through influence rank.

Static - Means you need to start producing tourism, or get them to open borders with you.

Falling - Red is bad! People are losing interest you. Start importing products by setting up a trade route, make them open their borders to you, send your missionaries to convert them to your religion.

Falling Rapidly - Red is super bad! You're no longer interesting! People don't want any of your things! Destroy them and wipe their cultural presence off the face of the planet!

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Rising: Your current Tourism per turn is higher than their current Culture per turn. A turn can be calculated in which this would result in victory (but may be > 10,000 turns from now)

Rising slowly: Your current Tourism per turn is high enough vs their current Culture per turn such that the percentage is still increasing. You can calculate what the future ration will be on any given turn (at current rate); including the limit as you approach infinity which is Calculus 101.

Static: Normally only seen when you have 0 tourism (because you don't actually reach that constant ratio above until turn infinity, it's going to be a tiny amount larger or smaller)

Falling: Culture per turn isn't even high enough to maintain current percentage. Note there are one turn timing effects that could cause you to panic. (AI used a Great Writer). Check next turn to see if its really a problem.

I've never head of falling rapidly.
I have heard of falling slowly, which I think is the case of you are greater than 100% but you don't have enough tourism for your ratio to continue to maintain the same percentage (the ratio is falling but at current rates would stop decreasing before you lost a level.)

You're absolute correct, I don't think there is one, I'll edit it. But I was explaining it as non-mathematically as possible, and how your response would be.

If you wanted to be technical...you could always argue that:

(T1* - T0*)/(C1 - C0) > 1, then it is Rising Slowly.

Or could even put it as:

C is the set of all civilizations with cardinality defined by the player, where c_i is an element of C, i is the set of natural numbers. c_i = (0,1|1 if influential, 0 if not). If the sum of c_i = |C|, then player is victorious.

Consider for all civilizations C s.t. civilization 1 is in C. If T, C, and V are real numbers and a function of t, and V(t) = T(t)/C(t), the V'(t) = lim h approaches 0 of [V(t+h) - V(t)/h]. If t>0 s.t. for given t, V'(t) > 1, then civilization...you get the point.

And I know it's a lot of this is wrong, I haven't done touched this stuff for a solid 3 years! XD

On all the Culture and Tourism discussion: noted for the next episode recording!

Jatta Pake said:

Really enjoying your podcast. I've known about it for years but didn't really start listening until right before BNW launched. [..] Love your show!

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Thank you kindly.