Information to be gained from the demographics screen

What early information can be gained from the demographics screen?

These are screenshots of the demographics screen taken from a custom game I am playing at the moment. Not coincidentally, the settings are the same as a current GOTM - bonus points for guessing which one. They are:
(To reiterate, this is from a custom game with the same settings - therefore no spoiler info)

I am Shaka (massive give away there!) = Expansive + Aggressive, starting techs Hunting and Agriculture.
Difficulty level is Emperor
Pangea map type
6 AI players
Normal game speed
Standard map size
Temperate Climate
Medium Sea Level

I have taken a screenshot of the demographics screen on turn 1 - after everyone including myself has founded their first (and only on this level) city.


What follows is a summary of the information I think you can find from this demographics screen. It can be especially useful to figure out in advance what AI leaders you might be sharing the world with - and if you are like me it can help you tailor your test games for GOTM and SGOTM games.

Please refer to Robi D's excellent War Academy article The Inner Workings of the Demographics Screen Explained for an explanation of each of the terms used in the demographics screen. Also, a lot of this information doesn't really apply to deity level, since the extra settler the AI starts with can really confuse things.

GNP (Gold)
This is all commerce, including espionage points and culture. I have a palace producing 4 , 2 and 8 and my city tile is producing 1 for a total of 15. (My 1 population is working a forested plains hill, so no commerce from that). The extra 1 commerce comes from the +1 modifier everyone gets for having 1 city, giving my total of 16 GNP.
Rival Worst of 17 - You might think that this AI is working a +1 tile, eg flooplain, but they aren't. This is the lowest possible GNP on this difficulty level. But the extra compared to the human player is that they effectively get a 1/0.85 research bonus on this difficulty level.
Rival Best of 20 - Your first guess would be that this is a financial AI working a normally 2 tile like seafood. BUT, creative leaders also get +2 GNP since culture is counted.
A financial leader would actually have total raw research of (8 (palace) + 1(city tile) + 3(seafood tile) + 1 (freebie)) = 13 raw commerce. 13/0.85 = 15 GNP for science. +2 from + 4 = 21! Therefore, this isn't a financial leader, it is either a creative leader or a non-financial leader working seafood. Most likely creative since the AI doesn't tend to work seafood tiles this early on.
The average is 18. The average is always rounded down to the nearest whole number. In this case I don't think it tells us much. There could be more than 1 creative leader and the rest are all 17 GNP, or there are some AI working floodplains which is quite common.

Mfg. Goods (Prod.)
This doesn't tell us a lot, just what kind of tiles the AI are working.
I'm working a forested plains hill, for total of 4 per turn. Nothing special.
Rival best is 2 - probably working a grassland forest.
Rival worst is 1 - working a 0 tile, eg floodplains.
Average is 1. Again doesn't tell us a lot, just that they are all between 1 and 2 which is exactly what rival best and worst is telling us.

Crop Yield (Food)
The same sort of information as Mfg. Goods but for food. The best rivals are working a 3 tile, ie, floodplains, the worst are working 2 tiles.

Soldiers
My value of 2000 is because I have knowledge of Hunting. If I didn't know Hunting, and knew Mining I would have 2000 for my warrior and +2000 for the mining tech = 4000. Any leader that starts with the wheel will have 6000 soliders (warrior or Hunting + the wheel tech (4000). Mansa Musa is a unique case, as then I would have 8000 to start from the free warrior, mining and the wheel.
The rival power can tell you a lot, but there is a lot to confuse the matter from the difficulty level. At emperor the AI gets 2 archers (2*3000) to start with, and the techs archery (6000) and hunting (2000). So the minimum for AIs who don't have mining or the wheel is 14000. If they have Mining they'll be up to 16000, with the Wheel they'll be at 18000. Hammurabi and Mansa Musa are both specials cases because their UUs are both worth 4000 not 3000. Hammurabi starts with the Wheel, so starting power is 20000. Mansa Musa has the wheel as well as mining so starts with 22000.
In this game neither of these two is present.
The average tells me that the total amongst the 6 AIs is 6*15333 = 92000. At least one of which is 18000 (knows the wheel), another is 14000, so divide the remaining 60000 amongst 4 players gives an average of 15000 each. Not every useful unfortunately - could still be another 18000 and some 14000s or 2x 16000s. But at least 2 of this group must also be a 14000.
So we do know there is at least 3 AIs who don't know the wheel or mining - this list isn't as long as you might think (less than half the civs: Greek, Holy Roman, Persian, Incan, Spanish, Aztec, Viking, American, Zulu, Native American, Japanese, Dutch, Celtic).

Land Area
I have 1 ocean/sea tile in my starting 9 tiles giving me 8000. Some poor AI has 4 sea/ocean tiles and the rest range up to 9000 = no sea/ocean tiles. Not much information yet.
But in a few turns time, the creative leaders will expand their borders before everyone else. So if you check the demographics the turn before your own borders expand you'll know for sure if there are creative leaders out there. I did so and can tell you than on turn 4 the line read: best = 21000, average = 9333, worst = 5000.
In this game there is one AI with 21000 land on turn 4. Obviously creative. The total amongst them is 9333 * 6 = 56000. Take out the 21000 and 5000 leaves 30000 spread amongst the other 4 AI, or on average 7500 each. It would be very unlikely for there to be a second creative leader (unless they had a lot of sea/ocean (>7) in their 21 tiles and the others also had lots of sea/ocean - but this is Pangea after all)

Population
Nothing to be learnt here. Everyone starts with 1000 = 1 population. If you kept checking back you'll get an idea when the AIs have grown to size 2 (6000 pop) and I guess whether or not they're building a worker rather than growing.

Approval Rate
This determines the ratio of /)+). For non-charismatic leaders on emperor level it is 5/6 = 83%. Charistmatic leaders enjoy +1 , boosting their approval rate to 6/7 = 85%.
In this game there are no charismatic AI leaders.

Life Expectancy
Basically the same formula as approval rate but for health, and drop the % sign. Except that things get confused because there's no way of knowing an expansive leader is surrounded by jungle/floodplains or a non-expansive leader has founded next to a river and lots of forest. The most you could realistically get from forests/fresh water is 9, which on this difficulty level would give Life Expectancy of 91 for a non-expansive leader. 92 or higher must be an expansive leader. It just so happens that there is one in this game.

Exports-Imports
This is a measure of trade routes with other AI. Until there are open borders agreements in place, it will always be 0.

Summary
So what do we know about the other AIs of this game?
1. Obvsiously no second Shaka (52 possible leaders left)
2. Hammurabi and Mansa Musa are not present (50)
3. No charismatic leaders (41)
4. 3 leaders don't have mining or the wheel (12 possible for those 3 spots)
5. Only 1 is creative. (9 for that spot, 32 for the other 5 spots)
6. At least 1 is expansive and not Washington (cha) or Shaka (me) (8 for that spot)

So it obviously isn't an exact science. (It's starting to feel like one of those logic puzzles - neighbour A has a red car and a pet that eats lettuce... neighbour B lives at an address less than neighbour C and has a pet mouse...). But I feel that in some situations there is a lot to be learned.

Can anyone think of anything else useful to be learned this early on?

How might it affect your strategy? (Eg, you know for certain that Mansa Musa is in the game)

The demo screen is averaged over too many civs, which makes it complicated to get anything useful.

I find a better way is to watch for jumps in score.
~3 points for land (delayed 20 turns )
~4 points for population
~7 points for ancient tech
~14 points for classical tech
~20 points for wonder

All these numbers are variable by map and subject to rounding error. But in a multiplayer game you can see everyone's score without contacting them.

You can modify your crop yeild / gnp / mfg to check how many leader are at the various tiers(4/5 crop yeild) this might be able to tell you if any ai's are on plains hills. It is useful in single player, but it doesn't come anywhere close to the usefulness in sequential pitboss (if you put in the time that is). As the game progresses, switching around the tiles to find exact yeilds of all opponents become more viable (that is as long as you can get the yeilds high enough to check out at least a couple opponents). There you can learn the exact techs and exact tiles worked from the demo screen alone.

Knowing that mansa is in the game makes it soo much easier to whore techs. If you are going for a fast finish (in sgotm/gtom). This allows you to tradewhore with just one AI without getting him to friendly for a long time (though he is easy to get to friendly either through religion or you shared your technological discoveries with us).

Both hammurabi and mansa are harder to rush than normal, so if you were planning on rushing having either of these in the game will make that harder (though you can still chariot rush hammurabi and praets would handle both if they have to). They are also both peaceful so with them there it is less chance to get decleared upon (though there your closest neighbours matters most). Mansa likes to take religions, though not the very early ones, so going for those might be harder. Hammu likes to build wonders, so getting any of the early wonders migth be harder.

oyzar said:

You can modify your crop yeild / gnp / mfg to check how many leader are at the various tiers(4/5 crop yeild) this might be able to tell you if any ai's are on plains hills. It is useful in single player, but it doesn't come anywhere close to the usefulness in sequential pitboss (if you put in the time that is). As the game progresses, switching around the tiles to find exact yeilds of all opponents become more viable (that is as long as you can get the yeilds high enough to check out at least a couple opponents). There you can learn the exact techs and exact tiles worked from the demo screen alone.

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It was my understanding that Rival Average is only affected by your rival's tiles. So switching your own tiles around has no effect. This seems to be the case in my test game. I even worldbuildered some extra units for myself to increase my power significantly = no change in rival average.

Knowing that mansa is in the game makes it soo much easier to whore techs. If you are going for a fast finish (in sgotm/gtom). This allows you to tradewhore with just one AI without getting him to friendly for a long time (though he is easy to get to friendly either through religion or you shared your technological discoveries with us).

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I agree. How might it affect your early game? Prioritise alphabet a bit more perhaps. Be more aggressive with your scouting if you haven't met him yet. If he's on the other continent is it a reason to beeline Optics before Liberalism?

Hmm, this could certainly be useful if if you're playing a duel map with just 1 other civ. If you can be sure that they started with hunting, you can warrior rush the capital. If it's an AI that likes to expand really fast (like Joao) or build lots of wonders with no defense (Hatshepsut) than an axe-rush might be in order. On the other hand, if you think the AI is protective, than just expand a lot yourself and skimp on the military.

But yeah, I have a hard time seeing how this could be useful in a game with a lot of civs, barring some really exceptional circumstances.

The analysis you just did would probably have taken me a hour to perform. I just don't have the patience for that; I'd rather be playing.

royal62184 said:

The analysis you just did would probably have taken me a hour to perform. I just don't have the patience for that; I'd rather be playing.

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Yes, but some sgotm teams did this stuff in the last game...

But the extra compared to the human player is that they effectively get a 1/0.85 research bonus on this difficulty level.

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Adrianj, do you know maybe which XML value regulates this? What's the research bonus for other levels?

royal62184 said:

The analysis you just did would probably have taken me a hour to perform. I just don't have the patience for that; I'd rather be playing.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it only really has it's place in the competition games - GOTM and if you were quite serious about a HoF game. As Yamps pointed out - it can be useful in SGOTM, where you often have many days to weeks in between turns/turn sets.

Yamps said:

Adrianj, do you know maybe which XML value regulates this? What's the research bonus for other levels?

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<Civ Folder>\Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4HandicapInfo.xml has all of the info for the various difficulty levels.
There are a number of iAIXXXPercent entries. But I'm unsure exactly which one pertains to the tech research modifier, perhaps iAICreatePercent, iAIConstructPercent or iAIUnitCostPercent - all of which are 85.
Anyone else out there know exactly how to answer Yamps' question?

Anion's BtS Reference has a summary for the difficulty levels, and there the AI costs are specified as 0.85 for emperor level. Although I'm not sure it has been updated for version 3.17 or 3.19. It's a great reference for pretty much anything in fact.

Nice analysis Adrianj, but you got the GNP part for research a bit wrong.

adrianj said:

Anion's BtS Reference has a summary for the difficulty levels, and there the AI costs are specified as 0.85 for emperor level.

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The GNPs have nothing to do with the difficulty level. The handicap only affects tech costs, but not the modified beakers accumulated each turn; AIPerEraModifier has also no effect here.
These modified beakers (which together with espionage, gold, and culture make up the number for GNP in the demographics info screen) are what your true tech progress amounts to. Thus they are subject to the +20% modifier that you get for each known prerequisite tech. The other modifier for researching a tech known by rivals that you have already met typically shouldn't apply on game turn 1.

Example:
Leader Darius (financial, starts with Hunting and Agriculture) settles on river Wine working an Oasis and researches Animal Husbandry (both prerequisites known -> + 40%).
Palace 8 commerce + 3 commerce from city tile + 3 commerce from worked Oasis = 14 commerce
Slider @ 100% research --> 14 beakers + 1 freebee beaker = 15 raw beakers
Modifier *1.4 --> 21 modified beakers
add 4 espionage and 2 culture and you get his GNP of 27
switch research to mining (no modifier) and the GNP changes to 21.



Repercussions: If you start with Mysticism and you find the (rather rare) situation that the best rival has a GNP of just <=17, you are more or less guaranteed to get a religion, since everybody is going for a 1st tier tech.

I also like to check my rivals' land areas to assess my chances for getting the Great Lighthouse.

royal62184 said:

The analysis you just did would probably have taken me a hour to perform. I just don't have the patience for that; I'd rather be playing.

Click to expand...

adrianj said:

Yeah, it only really has it's place in the competition games - GOTM and if you were quite serious about a HoF game. As Yamps pointed out - it can be useful in SGOTM, where you often have many days to weeks in between turns/turn sets.

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You know, there is people that do even more crazy stuff in the SGOTM, like using flying camera to map hills, mountains and forests in the dark fog Compared with that, doing this demo analysis is a rather sane and sensible thing

Thanks Dan! I did wonder about my GNP calculation...

I'm not sure I fully understand the prerequisite tech modifier - I thought it was only for additional 'optional' prerequisites, eg your example with Animal Husbandry. But for Meditation, it has only 1 'required' prerequisite which is Mysticism.

So I've set up the same situation as you have with the modification that I gave Darius Mysticism through World Builder. Raw = 15.
Researching AH, GNP = (15*1.4) + 6 = 27
Researching Mining, GNP = 15 + 6 = 21.
Researching Meditation, GNP = (15*1.2)+6 = 24.
So every single non-first-tier tech you research will ALWAYS have this +20% bonus to your research since you will always have at least the minimum prerequisites.

Also, I should point out that all this information isn't quite as useful for a HoF game - since chances are you already know which other AI are present since you put them there in the game setup screen!

Flight, Astronomy and divine rights don't have prereq mods, which makes them actually more expensive than their cost. But those that don't have any arrows pointing to them are the only ones(other than the basic tire techs) that doesn't get prereqmods.

Due to prereqmods, everyone who are researching a second tier tech gets at least 2 extra gnp.

It was my understanding that Rival Average is only affected by your rival's tiles. So switching your own tiles around has no effect. This seems to be the case in my test game. I even worldbuildered some extra units for myself to increase my power significantly = no change in rival average.

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You don't modify rival average, you modify your rank... That tells you how many are above or below you and as such you can figure out how many have different yeilds (though you have to ask dan what happens when there are several with the same yeild, they used to give all the highest rank but now i think everyone get a seperate number). As I said it is more useful as the game progresses. At "lower" levels you can even see when they get up various improvements as that would change their tile yeilds (together with population to eliminate pop growth, of course you can also see what sort of tiles they grow onto this way).

r_rolo1 said:

You know, there is people that do even more crazy stuff in the SGOTM, like using flying camera to map hills, mountains and forests in the dark fog Compared with that, doing this demo analysis is a rather sane and sensible thing

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Yup, fog ain't what it used to be.... mighty arrows