PolyCast Episode 154: "Not Too Shabby"

Passing through. The one-hundred-and-fifty-fourth episode of PolyCast, "Not Too Shabby", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with returning guest co-host Martin "Martin Alvito" Alvito, it has a runtime of 59m59s; listeners are encouraged to follow the show on Twitter, and check out the YouTube channel for caption capability.

The summary of topics is as follows:

- 01m43s | Senate
Planning placement of Great Person improvements in Civilization V and finding a purpose for Helicopter units (08m45s), both in the context of the Gods & Kings expansion pack.
- 13m54s | Forum Talk
First, answering an inquiry about whether or not loosing Aluminum will stop any Hydro Plants constructed from working; then, delving deep into a CivV Social Policy balance assessment in G&K (15m46s) and an alternative approach to the mechanic altogether (37m08s).
- 44m48s | Open Mic
Responding to some comments received from the show's most previous episode, and taking a call-in during the recording of this episode (52m46s).

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
Spring-boarding from an acronym, and the guest co-host expounding on a regular co-host's long-standing position.

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; sibling show RevCast focuses on Civilization: Revolution, ModCast on Civ modding, SCivCast on Civ social gaming and TurnCast on Civ multiplay.

Looking forward to listening today. This show is perfect for when I'm doing the dishes, among other chores that require my eyes but not my ears.

1:07 playing too much DotA?

So what do you think about Deity AI Austria, is it broken, damn strong, ok, weak?

How about med labs and marines? Does anyone actually use them, being so deep inside the tech tree?

I thought it was kind of a shame the SP section focussed so much on individual policies with only a brief nod to broader questions of overall SP selection strategy.

The interesting point for me is the judgment call: on the one hand, the trees tend to be heavily weighted with the really powerful stuff at the bottom if you go right through, often right to the finisher. But the counterweight to this is that later eras unlock new trees, so that early policies from later trees are tantalizingly more attractive than strong late policies from earlier eras.

If we ignore games going for a cultural victory, the standard approach seems to be to fill out either Tradition or Liberty, then take a couple of "filler policies" from Honor or Patronage or Commerce (depending on the map and situation), followed by Rationalism policies as soon as you hit Renaissance (in fact, I've seen strategies recommending beelining something not-very-useful like Acoustics just to open up that tree quickly and minimize the number of filler policies you have to take), and then a mix of Rationalism and one of the industrial-era trees for the rest of the game. As someone pointed out in the podcast, there are rarely enough turns left after you hit industrial to do more than peck at a couple of policies from one of those three, even if you wanted to try to fill one of them out.

OK, that's a formula that works well, but are there viable and interesting alternatives? I know MadDjinn made a slightly half-hearted attempt to defend Piety as a useful tree for spreading a religion, but the fact is that fast science is vitally important whatever victory condition you choose (and more so in G&K, where key military techs are deeper in the tech tree). This means that Rationalism is a very, very strong draw in just about every circumstance. And that in turn seems to be crucial to homogenizing people's SP strategies: if you're taking a few policies from Rationalism every time, then that's happening while you might otherwise be completing (let's say) Honor, and by the time your next choice comes around and early Order/Autocracy/Freedom policies are available, they're so damned attractive that you've just got to take them over anything else.

I don't have a good solution, but it seems a shame to me if variety is lost because taking SPs becomes completely formulaic, and if some of the newly re-balanced and buffed early trees end up not getting used to their full potential as a result.

hobbsyoyo said:

Looking forward to listening today. This show is perfect for when I'm doing the dishes, among other chores that require my eyes but not my ears.

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prince_caspian said:

1:07 playing too much DotA?

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Heh -- to me, I just consider that comment as falling under the "it's Phil" heading.

When it comes to the questions you had afterwards, as well as the comments made by you jango76, I expect them to be raised during the recording of the next episode, and as such I'll respond to them 'at the same time' as my fellow co-hosts.

To the three of you: how long have you been listening to the show, and how did you first come across it (if you can recall)?

DanQ said:

Heh -- to me, I just consider that comment as falling under the "it's Phil" heading.

When it comes to the questions you had afterwards, as well as the comments made by you jango76, I expect them to be raised during the recording of the next episode, and as such I'll respond to them 'at the same time' as my fellow co-hosts.

To the three of you: how long have you been listening to the show, and how did you first come across it (if you can recall)?

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I started listening after episode 153 came out and then went back and listened through the older episodes and seasons. I found out about it through the front page of this website actually. I just joined or I probably would have heard about PolyCast sooner.

And what the heck do I have to do to get name dropped as: Hobbsyoyo, the up and coming CFCer with a penchant for Beethoven ?

Hahaha just kidding.

I really do hope you guys discuss the Austrian UA and the way it plays into the espionage system in a future episode. Quite a few players feel the UA is overpowered considering what you get for so little money. It also gets really frustrating when it's coupled with the endless coup murder-spamming (because there are no bloodless coups) that goes on nearly endlessly in some games.

Oh what, you just dropped 1000 gold to keep that City State as an ally? OH well, because I just coup'd it away from you for free and for the low low price of 500 gold,



Or at least your City State ally belongs to us now. And all it's units, unique luxuries, resources and buildings. And the bonuses, well you'll never get those back, even if you pry the city away from us militarily.

Wanna do this again with each of your other City State allies? No, well too bad because I'm going to do it over and over again anyways.

Still can not get it to download via Zune. I emailed you back and forth over this Dan and whatever you did, well sorry, but it did not work. Zune always hits me with error that the download address is bad.

DanQ said:

Heh -- to me, I just consider that comment as falling under the "it's Phil" heading.

To the three of you: how long have you been listening to the show, and how did you first come across it (if you can recall)?

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Well with my comment to that comment I'm sure I come across as very new. Ep 154 is in fact my first and I listened in to see what you all would say about placing GP tiles. In fact I'm still not finished with the rest though I will say not bad - it corroborated for the most part with my "cow" experience

hobbsyoyo said:

I started listening after episode 153 came out and then went back and listened through the older episodes and seasons. I found out about it through the front page of this website actually. I just joined or I probably would have heard about PolyCast sooner.

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On your going back through previous episodes over the past couple of weeks or so: was that select episodes, some, most or all?

And what the heck do I have to do to get name dropped as: Hobbsyoyo, the up and coming CFCer with a penchant for Beethoven ?

Hahaha just kidding.

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Slimrock said:

Still can not get it to download via Zune. I emailed you back and forth over this Dan and whatever you did, well sorry, but it did not work. Zune always hits me with error that the download address is bad.

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Are you using this address -- http://civcomm.weplayciv.com/polycast/PolyCastOnly.xml -- to try to add via Zune and getting an error message still?

prince_caspian said:

Well with my comment to that comment I'm sure I come across as very new. Ep 154 is in fact my first and I listened in to see what you all would say about placing GP tiles. In fact I'm still not finished with the rest though I will say not bad - it corroborated for the most part with my "cow" experience

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Glad you've been enjoying the episode, first time listener , and hope that it won't be your last. All of our previous episodes are available for download as well, in case you're so inclined between now and when have you.

I've only been listening for a few months - saw it on here.

I too am catching up on old polycasts, ones where the topics sound interesting and where it doesn't seem like they'll be completely redundant post-G&K That still leaves a lot of hours of listening.

You guys do a great job - thanks for putting the effort in. Only thing I'd say is that Dan Q really needs to get a better quality microphone! All the other regular presenters are like an FM-quality broadcast, while Dan always sounds like he's talking through a sock.

jango76 said:

I've only been listening for a few months - saw it on here.

I too am catching up on old polycasts, ones where the topics sound interesting and where it doesn't seem like they'll be completely redundant post-G&K That still leaves a lot of hours of listening.

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You guys do a great job - thanks for putting the effort in.

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Only thing I'd say is that Dan Q really needs to get a better quality microphone! All the other regular presenters are like an FM-quality broadcast, while Dan always sounds like he's talking through a sock.

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It's not my microphone that is the issue, but rather the technical setup for uStream -- the service used to broadcast the show live while recording -- and my being a PC user. You can view the full details by following this link, but in short while it works it's cumbersome such that my audio quality is not reflective of my microphone's quality. (As a means of comparison, listen to what I sound like on TurnCast.)

I'm hoping to at long last have a work-around soon, but no guarantees.

Okay, so I just listened to the "settling great person improvements" section again and I still don't really get it. What, exactly, was the conclusion reached in that discussion? All I got from it was that the best tiles for that are sheep, cows, and petra desert tiles. As for non-river grassland tiles, I heard conflicting reasoning on that: one person in the polycast said it isn't worth it, but someone else said it is okay to settle on those as long as you use the sheep and cows first? I'm about to start up a Babylon game and I still have no idea what tiles I should settle my scientists on (if I am unlucky and have no sheep or cows around).

1) Sheep and cows
2) Petra desert tile
3) Non-River Grassland?

meteo63 said:

Okay, so I just listened to the "settling great person improvements" section again and I still don't really get it. What, exactly, was the conclusion reached in that discussion? All I got from it was that the best tiles for that are sheep, cows, and petra desert tiles. As for non-river grassland tiles, I heard conflicting reasoning on that: one person in the polycast said it isn't worth it, but someone else said it is okay to settle on those as long as you use the sheep and cows first? I'm about to start up a Babylon game and I still have no idea what tiles I should settle my scientists on (if I am unlucky and have no sheep or cows around).

1) Sheep and cows
2) Petra desert tile
3) Non-River Grassland?

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The science of settling is yet to be settled but cows are definitely the best spots for GP tiles.

Sheep - debatable because unlike cows, sheep pastures add +2 food which could be really important in a food-starved location. If your capital has a lot of grasslands then by all means settle on them but then again, why wouldn't you settle on grassland instead? You get +2f +1h from a sheep pasture, but only +2f from a grassland. I guess that's not so debatable is it?

Grasslands - generally ok.

Petra deserts - flat deserts are generally the ones to settle on, you don't want to settle desert-hill-rivers as a farm there yields insane amounts of food+hammers.

A few more GP-worthy tiles which are not mentioned are grassland-stone, bananas (come on what's 2 science compared to 8) and deers.

DanQ said:

On your going back through previous episodes over the past couple of weeks or so: was that select episodes, some, most or all?

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Basically all of them. I don't play multiplayer, so the GMR conversation has no relevancy for me. I also don't play CIV anymore, so those conversations aren't as relevant either. However, I have found that there are enough general tips and interesting conversation in any topic that I still listen to episodes that I don't have any obvious interest in. I guess that speaks to the quality of the show overall. (And I was pleasantly surprised to hear that episode 136 turned into a looong discussion on CiV instead of a long discussion on CIV health mechanics - the CIV discussion was interesting, but again, not as interesting as CiV for obvious reasons)

I'm currently working my way backward through the list. It's funny because CiV has changed so much on release that the further back I go, the less the conversations have a direct impact on my playing because of changes and tweaks to the game. It's still funny to go back and hear about some of the headaches of the unpatched Vanilla - again, this just goes to the quality of the show.

I am eagerly awaiting each new episode for G&K themed content and strategies. Things like the discussion on Great People tile improvements are really helpful for bad players like myself and discussions on flaws in the game are always fun!

meteo63 said:

Okay, so I just listened to the "settling great person improvements" section again and I still don't really get it. What, exactly, was the conclusion reached in that discussion? All I got from it was that the best tiles for that are sheep, cows, and petra desert tiles. As for non-river grassland tiles, I heard conflicting reasoning on that: one person in the polycast said it isn't worth it, but someone else said it is okay to settle on those as long as you use the sheep and cows first? I'm about to start up a Babylon game and I still have no idea what tiles I should settle my scientists on (if I am unlucky and have no sheep or cows around).

1) Sheep and cows
2) Petra desert tile
3) Non-River Grassland?

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well the 'best' is what you've listed there, though wheat and deer are useful in certain circumstances (deer on a hill is similar to the sheep). You won't always have those tiles around, at least not for every settled GP you might want to drop, so alternatives are good to hear about.

the discussion on non-river grasslands might still be up in the air (though I think they make a decent 2nd/3rd choice option), but if you have run out of 'good' places to settle the GPs, then you might as well use them for GP tiles as you won't be able to get much out of them until a TP with Economics (or Commerce finisher)/farmed with Fertilizer comes around.

Effectively, the 'best location' for a settled GP is a tile that provides at least 1 food and 'other' stuff (hammers/gold). If that tile is a bonus resource (food) then there are buildings that will increase the tile yield without you having to farm/pasture the tile. That is why they are 'better' than base tiles.

Keep in mind that if you want that city to grow (so a babylon capital with tonnes of settled GSs) you must always put the GPs on tiles that give food. Otherwise, if say you put it on a hill, you would need a 2nd worker on a 4 food tile just to be able to work that Academy. Do this with enough Academies and you won't be able to work enough of them - or grow.

DanQ said:

I'm hoping to at long last have a work-around soon, but no guarantees.

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I'm pleased to say I was successful in this effort, and you can once again hear my microphone in the quality intended -- last heard on PolyCast in 2010 -- as of Episode 156.