i am not very good

There are some threads on goody hut outcomes that have had posts from Mike B. at Firaxis and those are revealing. There are some sound management practices you must follow with goody huts in order to maximize your chances of finding valuable stuff.

Unfortunately, the goody hut code was written by a summer intern at Firaxis and I get the impression that the way some things function is not well documented of fully integrated in the game concept. The outcome is based on some choices that are available to each player at the time the hut is popped and then an RNG controls selection. 10 different players playing the same game can different outcomes from the same hut just depending on phase of the moon.

All of the ancient age techs can get popped from a goody hut if you have the prerequisites and don't have it blocked.

In general, it is not to your advantage to wait for a long time to pop huts, but if you can do things to make sure the hut outcome could give you the greatest value everytime, thne you will gain more of an advantage.

My choices in this game illustrate the points even though my strategy may not really have paid off due to resource positions and other random factors.

I set my research at The Wheel initially because that would have revealed horses and non of the other civs but Japan would have this tech. Since I was exploring, this left the options open to get Pottery, Alphabet, Warrior Code, Burial, or Iron Working out of a hut or by trade. Right, wrong, or indifferent, my logic was that none of the civs I would meet would naturally have the wheel.

In the next turn, I could see civs like Babylon, Zulus, Iroquois, and Egypt in my F11 list so I knew that there were a number of religious civs with burial, plus at least two expansionist civs with pottery.

One of my early huts gave me a regional map which in many cases may not be of great value, but it revealed a second hut off to the east by incense just as the Iroquois scout jumped out an popped the hut. In one turn I got a semi worthless map from a hut and saw the Iroqs poach another hut and that could have been fairly depressing. I salvaged the process by trading Masonry (my high value 4 pt starting tech) for Burial and Pottery (both 2 point techs) and 9 gold. So effectively my hut yield from that map hut was 80 points for gained techs, 9 pts for gold, plus 10 points for contact with the iroqs.

With these techs and completion of the wheel the hard way, I chose to block Warrior Code by choosing it as the next research target, because I could potentially get that in trade. This choice left me with only the options of getting Alphabet (5 factor), Iron Working (6 factor 2nd tier) or Mysticism (4 factor 2nd tier) as hut outcomes if the RNG spun up a tech.

Early on I was not getting a lot of hut results and I had the Iroquois scout poaching huts all around me. I saw the iroqs pop at least three huts that I could not get to with my slow moving 1 step units even though I was really close. Not getting huts plus the fact that all our neighbors and horses are so far away almost backfired for my strategy because it looked like I was gonna come up empty handed for a while.

One thing you have to be careful about with the F11 key is that it does not tell you where the civs are and you have to check the F11 key every turn or two to see if the order will shift and give you a glimpse of anybody new. This is discussed somewhere in the "Improving Your Opening Play Sequences" article.

@Cracker - Thanks for the clue with the deceptive power graph.
Factor out CB, and I was behind some of the other players.

What is weird is that I joined to help the lower level players, yet my play sequence will get changed. I think it will now be warrior - warrior - settler (if enough food built), then granary from now on. The results I am seeing show that the early granary before the first settler is not justified.

I will continue on using my game, but I suspect I will continue to fall behind the curve. Civ3 has a stream roller effect, and I started at a slower speed.

What is weird is that I joined to help the lower level players, yet my play sequence will get changed.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I think alot of experienced players can pick up a few tips from this thread, I sure did. Thanks, Cracker.

About the goody huts, here is the quote from Firaxis:

It's not really that it's difficult; it's just that it was implemented by an intern . Here are the conditions:

Gold:
*The tile must not have any type of resource or luxury on it.

Maps:
--always available

Nothing:
--always available

Settler:
*Player must not have a settler (active or in production) or any unit with the Settle AI strategy.
*Number of player's cities must be <= (TotalCities / NumActivePlayers).

Mercenaries (skilled warrior):
*There must be a unit available to the Barbarians as well as the player and that unit must be able to be built (or have been built) by some player in the game.

Tech:
*Player must still be in Ancient Times.

Barbarians:
*Player must not have Expansionist trait.
*There must not be a city within a 1-tile radius.
*The player must have at least 1 city.
*The player must have at least 1 military unit.
*The unit popping the hut must not have the "All Terrain As Roads" ability.


__________________
Mike Breitkreutz
Programmer
FIRAXIS Games


Last edited by Mike B. FIRAXIS on Aug 01, 2002 at 09:37 PM

Click to expand...

And another thing I have noticed is that the goody hut, when it does give you a tech, it is almost always the cheapest tech that is available (tech that you aren't blocking). Because I always get Mystism before Alphabet, and alphabet before Iron Working (if I'm not blocking the prerequisite). The hut will only give you the tech you are researching, if there are no other techs available. This would most likely only happen if playing on a huge pangea map with minimal civs (or you find a hut on an island late in the ancient era) and you blocked Alphabet and got enough huts to go all the way down the monarchy line and also picking up Iron Working, horseback riding and all the tier 1 techs.

LK: Whether to build a granary or settler first depends on how much food you have available to start with, and whether you know you will have access to enough happiness factors that you can grow to a reasonable size safely. On lower difficulty levels it may also depend on whether your game plan includes building the Pyramids from scratch.

If you have no bonus food squares nearby, I would almost always start with a granary. If I have a lux nearby, or some rivers for extra commerce (lux tax), then you have enough extra happiness that a granary is often still the best option. On the other hand, shield-poor lands (e.g. flood plains) can be a disincentive to building a granary. There are also situations where it can be hard to choose what will be best, for instance if your capital is buried in jungle.

Still, it comes down to a judgement call -- are you shorter on food, or on happiness factors? Generally food gets the call, in which case you build a granary, but this is not always the case. Additionally, early scouting plays a key role as well -- if your capital is in a relatively food-poor location but you spot a great high-food spot nearby, it may well be worth it to pump out a quick settler before building that granary to get a quick start on your second city.

In this instance, you started with both a bonus food tile and river access, so it's a tough call. The results will depend more on the surrounding terrain than on anything else, and you won't know that until you have some scouts out, so it is a bit of a gamble either way. If the surrounding terrain is food-rich, then the settler first is better, but if it's food poor then your early granary will help more in the long run. Looking at ControlFreak's 2590 map suggests that you have enough food in the area that a settler might have been better in this instance, but you may not have been able to make that call by the time you decided whether to build a granary first or not.

Still, I would argue that your results are not they way they are because of your granary, but more likely because of the tech situation. Your report didn't say much but I didn't get the impression that you got as much tech as Cracker did with trading or Jaxom did by popping huts.

The key rule you want to remember is that all else being equal, growth is king. If you can acheive fast growth by founding a second city sooner, that is the route to pursue. If a second city will not grow that fast, and you think you can keep a larger city happy, then you want to build a granary first so you can double the rate your first city grows. There is no single rule that will fit every situation, so be flexible. Also, don't expect to make the perfect call every time; you're operating on limited information, and good enough is good enough. The whole game is a series of priority calls, and while the earliest ones do matter the most, what really counts is that you call enough of them correctly to get the job done and win the game. Look at RBE2 for an example of what you can do with a come-from-(way)-behind situation.

I wasn't sure whether I should build a granary first or not. When I saw the fertile land around and I wanted to get a settler out before the granary. But then I got a settler from a hut, so this solved my dilemma As Zed-F mentionned, the tech situation is probably what accounts for your lower power LK.

Edit: Oh and about the F11 key, you can also use the spaceship key (I don't even remember which one it is ) and then you can see who are ALL the other civs in your game. I don't use it personally, in my solo games I almost always set everything random and just go with the flow.

I get carrried away too!

Click to expand...

And it happpened! I forgot the 1790bc save, sorry! I feel terrible after just telling handyandy to take care next time!! It seems we all get carried away, handyandy, Borealis, me...

But I have the 1525BC save, phew!

Here's a timeline for each save, merged into one:

2150bc - Put science to 100% so that I'm now breaking even.
- My worker is building a road to Pasargadae for the Ivory.

2110bc - I see hut and blue border with my warrior scouts.

2070bc - I meet Hammurabi of the Babylonians, and give him Pottery + 58 gold, for The Wheel and Warrior Code.
- My Ivory road is finished.

2030bc - The hut I discovered turned out to be barbarians! Grrr!

1990bc - The barbs all lose, and I'm not hurt a bit.
- More exploration commences.

1950bc - Persepolis builds settler, I send it on the goto command to plains next to some incense.

1910bc - I continue exploring with my 3 warriors.

1870bc - I discover an Iroquois scout, and trade with them: The Wheel (mine) for Mysticism (theirs)
- Change Persepolis production to worker.

1830bc - Susa builds spearman, now building settlers.

1790bc - Pasargadae built settler, now building granary.
- I send the settler with goto command 5 squares away, diagonally. It will work in OCP style!
- I FORGOT TO SAVE!

1750bc - While scouting around, I find the Zulu territory.

1725bc - Found another hut! I'll pop it next turn.
- More exploring, like every turn so far.

1700bc - Persepolis builds a worker, and I change it to build Settlers again.
- I set the worker to build a road to (Ctrl+R) the new city place next to Incense.
- 50 gold gained from hut.

1675bc - I discover writing and my new target is Map Making.
- Buy embassy with Babylonians - Their capital of Babylon has 2 warriors and is building a spearman.
- I build 2 more cities, Arbela next to Incense, Antioch in a grass/forest area. Both building spearmen.
- Iroquois give me Iron Working and 3 gold for Contact with Babylonians.
- No-one has any communications, yet.

1650bc - Just more exploring.

1625bc - Warrior set on goto for some unexplored mountains. Another sees a hut!

1600bc - I'm next to hut, ready to pop it next turn.

1575bc - Hut deserted, not fair!!!

1550bc - Exploring.

1525bc - See an Aztec city of Texoco
- I contact the Iroquois, hoping for the Aztec's contact. They give me Aztecs contact + 17gold for Alphabet.
- The Aztecs have a technology, Horseback Riding. They want atleast 3 techs for it!!! Terrible!
- I sell the Aztecs' contact to the Zulu's and Babylonians for a total of 85gold, and treasury of 121 gold.
- Then the Aztecs accept Horseback Riding for Iron Working and 95 gold. Ouch!

That's my timeline, much happened here, and I discovered 3 new contacts, and many new techs! Goes to show that exploring is important!!

Based on this round of discussions it seems my initial play weed was 1)building a granery in the middle of bonusified grasslands instead of getting a settler out there, and 2) researching Alphabet first. Alphabet being so expensive, it would have been better to start on something cheap and grab the expensive techs through huts or trade.

Regarding the granery, I guess I did have enough info to see the need for a quick settler but hate giving up the two pop points without shortening their time to return. I just hope I can make up for it now that I can crank out a settler every 5-6 turns. I think I realized that it would have been better to delay the granery because I am doing so with my worker factory until I get a few more workers in the field. It will be faster to build a granery in a food town once the grass is mined.

I am noticing that huts made a difference in the scores and results of the first few rounds in a couple of ways.

First, depending on what you were researching, you could have gotten "free" techs from huts that were 40 points or so higher in score if you researched cheap techs early. Had I known that I would get 4 techs from 4 huts and that I could steer which ones came up I definitely wouldn't have researched Alphabet first.

Second, I think I grabbed some of the AI's goody huts (one of them I know was between the borders of Aztecs and Iroquois). This has made all of my AI really behind in Tech. I have a minimum of two tech lead and upto 5 techs on some. This meant that after pilfering the huts, there was little left to trade with the AI. One tech and they were out of cash with nothing else to offer. How are the AI in other peoples games?

Lee,

Another factor in your game is that you made the decison to move your settler. I think this was a marginal call based on my personnal decision rules that say "only move when I can pass one of these specific tests ...". You can see the basic tests that I use outlined in the "Improving Your Opening Play Sequences" article.

I think that the net impact of your move was to delay the first settler by 1 extra move while gaining no additional power or movement savings up until you hit pop 3 or greater in the capital.

Since you were going for the early granary, that would delay the first settler by an additional 8 to 10 turns but you would hopefully make up for the delay with a higher rate of settlers afterwards.

Adding the 2nd warrior, delayed the first settler by an additional 3 to 4 turns. I am not sure how the happiness balance would have worked out but keeping the 2nd warrior as garrison may have been possible to let him explore and just use cheap early luxuries to compensate. I was using micromanged luxury balance extensively in turns 30 through 80 to try and get around this exact issue even when I had teh maximum of 2 MPs available.

So all taken together, the sequence you chose delayed your second city by 1+3+8= at least 12 turns.

Your early lead seems to be more of a lucky break on the hut techs while internally you were lagging in base growth elements.

------------

Another thing that I would really emphasize is that you should never memorize an opening sequence of moves such as "Warrior-Warrior-Settler". The AI does this religiously and it destroys them 50% of the time if not more often. Your opening build sequence should change to match the power and power mix of your starting terrain plus the traits of your civ, your global map position, and the strategy that you choose to follow.

The AI never likes to grap goodyhuts!! I don't know why, they just don't! I always do. Like even at the start, the one N of Persepolis, I just took a chance! Maybe I shouldn't, but there you go!

CF, an early granary is rarely weed. ( :nosmoking: ) Weed indicates a *bad* move, not a suboptimal one, and I certainly would not call a granary weed here. Whether it is optimal or slightly less than optimal is another question; in this case it's a close call, and we will see if the faster growth in the capital lets you and Lee catch up more in the long term. Another thing a granary lets you do is keep your capital larger longer, so you do pick up some extra commerce that way as well, as long as you have a worker there improving the tiles you are using.

One other thing to bear in mind, don't put too much emphasis on the power formula. It is fine as far as it goes, BUT bear in mind that certain things are more important at certain stages of the game than other things are, and the formula doesn't really take that into account. For instance, players that got lucky with goody huts or with good tech trades early have a significant advantage in the power formula over those that do not. Still, at this stage of the game you're still in exclusively high growth landgrab mode, and what matters most is not how much tech you have bartered for (you can do that any time, depending on when you get contact) but how much land you can grab and hold and populate quickly. So long as you do pick up that tech at some point before or when you need to start worrying more about the benefits those techs provide, then there's no problem with not having them yet. How efficiently you trade for techs is often important, and the formula ought to take that into account, but the exact timing of the trades is less important, despite the fact that it is highlighted here by virtue of some players having made lots of trades while others haven't gotten around to it yet. Also, consider that there is some value in being generous, depending on the diplomatic state of the world, especially if you are aiming for a diplomatic victory or if you want to avoid pissing off your neighbors.

In the same manner as Cracker suggested not locking into a starting sequence, don't lock into a universal measure for your opening move performance. A formula can be a good tool, but don't be a slave to it; it is neither a perfect measure nor perfectly applicable to every situation, so take it with a grain of salt. Use your judgement to figure out which factors are the most important for your game plan at whatever point you're at in the game, and evaluate yourself based on those criteria.

CF extinuishes roach without inhaling

Well, hope there are no suboptimal moves in this round. Here's #6.

Turns 51-60
50-1790BC Iroquois are only one with 2 cities.

51-1750 Settler blt, ord. Setter sent to Cow NE. S War and NE War SE. NW war S.

52-1725 Susa blt spear ord worker. Irrigation done, rd start. Wars west.

53-1700 Arebela founded, ord worker. Zulu have another city, all still broke.

54-1675 Iron connected, start mine. Rd done, move worker to start rding to incense. S War S, NE war E,NW war NE to mtn. Whip temple. Sci 50/0 writing in 1.
55-1650 Settler blt, Settler ord. Temple blt, Spear ordered. Settler sent toward horse. Rd starts Nw of Susa. . Antioch founded set to warrior. Wars west. Sci to 100, MM in 16 -2 gpt.
56-1625 Susa blt wrkr, ord wrkr. wrkr to help road. S war S, NE war E, N War N.
57-1600 Rd advances, S War S, very fertile here with 3 game. E War E, N war N. All civs but Babs have three cities. No tech advances.
58-1575 Rd continues, settler walks toward horses, Warriors explore orthogonally. Contacts are ripe for selling but noone can buy.
59-1550 Borders expand bringing Ivory into the fold. Settler blt and ord. warriors explore to hills and mtns. Settlers advance. Wake spear and send to parsargae. Hoping lux will keep people happy, want to defend towns.
60-1525 Susa blds workr, ord Worker. Antioch bld warrior, ord worker. Susa wrkr SW to mine/road. Rd completes to antioch. Settler moves toward horse, settler moves toward Forest NW of Mtn in grass land North of persepolis. Spear almost to parsagae. Warriors head SW, N and N. Switch Parsagae to barracks. This will be our military producer, good sheilds and Iron within city. Iroquois found Allegany (4th city). Still no purchase power.


SAVE GAME

BTW, I usually type out the turnnumbers into my turnlog before I start playing. When I get to the SAVE GAME line I save. Just how I prevent keeping cracker bloated on White Fudge Covered Oreos.

I think that you really can't judge the start until the early middle ages. Until that time, random events mean too much. By the second rung of techs in the niddle ages, those things should begin to stop oscillating and the true outlook of the game should start to be seen.

Lee, don't count your granary out just yet, you haven't let the power of it work for you long enough to see if it truely wasn't the way to go. That said, most of the time (on average starts) I will get a settler out early to get the second city off and running. I also try to maximize income to trade for techs with. I notice in most of the games I have played with you, you tend to improve before you road, and I do it the other way around. I think roading first gives a small but significant difference, especaillyt since most ofg the early terrian improvements tend to be mines. Once you have multiple workers, roading first allows workers who come free to step unto the square and help finish a project the same turn it arrives.

Here is the updated power graph for data up to 1525bc.

(note how the results are magically updated and available for your viewing pleasure less that 45 minutes after the last save game was uploaded. Who is that masked man? )



(James, your 1790 data is a swag, average, guess)

At the rate you guys are starting to rack up the oreo penalties, I'm gonna need to start feeding them to the hapless zulus.

Part of the discussion about recognizing that the power formula is not the only thing you need to watch for is very true, but also keep in mind that this game has a preset objective of an early Space Race victory regardless what else you decide to do. In these type games the power formula can be particularly appropriate.

Things the formula does not yet recognize include: unit experience levels and whether the techs, units, and or improvements are even remotely appropriate for the circumstances.

First a few admin updates:

Do not post any save files beyond the 1525bc timepoint until I post a release message here in the thread. We want to give andy a chance to catch up to where we currently are before we push forward.

Looking ahead (but don't upload them yet) the next 3 time points will be:

1275bc (turn 70)
1025bc (turn 80)
775bc (turn 90)

turns will be getting a bit longer here and a bit more complex because we are getting 2 to 3 times more going on in each turn. SO be patient with the game and pay close attention to your 10 turn blocks.

Be particulary careful not to miss the 1025bc time point because that is right at the key 1000bc timepoint that will let you compare your game to other QSC games that you may encounter.

DISCUSSION IS FORMALLY OPEN for the next active discussion period.

Discussion should continue at least until end of the day Wednesday, November 20th so we can give some time for reflection before we move on. (updated the discussion traget to Wednesday to give move time.)

We are getting ready to approach a point in the timeline of the games where a lot of different things will start happening and it is important for us to tie down this early expansion and exploration phase first.

I will try to post some data tables as soon as we get handyandy's next games uploaded and included but I think we have a lot to discuss even without those games.

Remember, that the focus of the discussion should be on trying to understand what happened in the various versions of the game and discussing the strategy of why people did various things. We should continue to avoid discussing future plans if at all possible because this alters the progression of the game.

Some great comments are coming in from all sources so I encourage everyone to continue and participate in the discussion as actively as possible.

This is a nice thread for newbies to see differences in taking some actions. I'll recommend it for that.

Looks like Jaxom has already launched his spaceship. Look at his trace on the graph take off, even passing Cracker! Whats the secret?

Actually, looking at the turnlog I would guess the difference is in getting a 2nd and a THIRD level tech for free from the barbs. Yeah, the RNG does love you J.

I've got to get more explorers out there.

Yeah, thanks to the RNG I have skyrocketed. In a higher difficulty game this would even out eventually but at this level, I doubt the AI will contribute much to global science.

When Cracker puts up the data table, I will factor out all I gained from huts, although factoring out the first settler will be rather difficult.

Early exploration is a very high priority, the higher the difficulty level, the higher the priority. Not for what you can get out of goody huts but for the contacts you will gain. The more civs you know, the cheaper technology is.

We are just waiting for Handyandy to catch up to the 1525 timepoint so I can output the datatables so everyone can see these elements. I have a couple of other graphs also.

I also updated the plan to let us keep formal discussion open all the way through the end of the day on Wednesday, 20 November before we try to move on.

Jaxom,

You are in a great position so far. The early settler will give you the power to stay at the front or near the front of the pack for quite some time because of the compounding effect. It's not just that you got the early settler for free, its that the early settler came at a perfect, perfect, absolutely perfect time and place.

On the value of contacts, remember that the tech cost is dependent on the number of civs you have contact with who already have the tech. So in this game the tech cost will not go down for the leading edge techs because usually no one will have them.

Another problem on this low difficulty level is that the AIs are so handicapped and "not too bright" that they will rarely have anything of value to trade you for your obsolete techs except right at the time you make first contact. Its almost like running a Salvation Army thrift store of technology.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the QSC scoring formula is still being tweaked. We will probably adjust the scoring bonus for some of the techs down a bit, because it may be overemphasixing tech value even though that is part of the intent. The idea is to try and push us to research the 2nd and 3rd level techs whenever all the other choices are equal. This is because it is generally more powerful (but not always) to pick a strategy to get to at least one of the 4th tier techs as quickly as possible.

Personal schedule note: I'll be out of pocket most of today because of my teaching schedule and a dinner engagement but will return later tonight.

All players have a lot to discuss just by looking at the save games in the last round and if you look closely you will see that most players are clustered togethers in a common path of progress while a couple of players are below the curve and a couple are above. I know the charts would help but we just have to wait a tad on handyandy, If any of you locate him while I am out, try to help him along.

sorry i can not play civ for a bit as i have s.a.t test revision to do
but when that is over i will try to catch up.

SAT's! Well, I guess I'll have them soon, but that's a bit further off for me!