Interturn Mechanics

[pol1]

double post...

 

[PaperBeetle]

I'm not at all convinced that completing techs will make any difference, as like Spoonwood, my military victories involve heavy use of build-phase upgrades. But we'll be doing plenty of disconnect/reconnect in the Asterix game I think, so I suggest we watch out for opportunities to double-check.

 

[PaperBeetle]

I guess for upper level ones it might help when going for fast domination/conquest. If you don't mind me asking this here, for a fast spaceship game, do you think overall it would work better to use some sort of disconnect-reconnect to help take more territory faster and using cash that way, or have those workers out developing land elsewhere and using cash for other things? I'm assuming the AIs have gotten you Chialry/Military Tradition, of course.

One can always spare 3 or 6 workers, but upgrading is expensive. Since Emsworth Agreements were banned in GOTM, I don't have the cash spare to upgrade units while keeping research at max speed.

 

[Spoonwood]

One can always spare 3 or 6 workers, but upgrading is expensive. Since Emsworth Agreements were banned in GOTM, I don't have the cash spare to upgrade units while keeping research at max speed.

On Deity and Demi-God, you can get a fair amount of cash from sometime in the middle ages on just from selling techs without using any sort of breaking of trade routes (note, I'm not sure if what I referenced exactly uses an "Emsworth Agreement", as it doesn't add any free money into the economy... though you can get a lot of money, techs, and military alliances for free this way... that said, maybe it does qualify as one). You can especially get more money by selling techs on larger map sizes.

 

[Aabraxan]

I had a situation today that might also prove enlightening for this thread. I built the SoZ, then a rax. The rax completed on the same turn that an AC was produced. The AC was a regular, not a vet.

 

[pol1]

If so, should the effect of the wonder (i.e. only SoZ and KT) be added after shields and project completion?

Then gp from tourist attraction would still be added in commerce phase?

It seems then, that with different effects affecting one city or all on the continent, calculation/check is made in different times during interturn. Sometimes with surprising, or maybe just not expected results.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Then gp from tourist attraction would still be added in commerce phase?

Yes, this is regular commerce, just like the stuff that comes from your tiles. I think it even gets corrupted doesn't it?

 

[CKS]

Tourist income is, indeed, corrupted.

 

[justanick]

Afterwards the next phase starts, and the following steps are performed for one city at a time, starting with your capital and then moving through the list of cities in the order they were founded.

That is not exactly true. Every city has an intern 9 bit number, the well known 512 possible cities. When a city is founded the lowest free number is assigned. So you might have three cities with numbers 1, 5, and 9. Then the capital of a another Civ is razed by a third Civ. This capital had the number 3, which is now free. So you found a new city with the intern number 3. And then your fourth city is proceeded before your second city.

So a city that grows this turn, keeps half of its food, if another city further up in the list has completed the Pyramids this turn, a city that has one too many unhappy citizens, does not riot, if another city further up the list has just completed Artemis, etc. For some strange reason this does not work for wonders with a "general" effect, like Hanging Gardens, Bach's Cathedral etc! So an unhappy city still riots, even if a previous city has completed the Hanging Gardens. If you then select "Zoom to XXX" on the riot pop-up and enter city screen, you see that the people are already happy, but the city nevertheless riots!? Looks like a programming error to me.

I guess this is the lack of refreshment. If you use a method to get IBT into the city zoom you might switch to every city, take a citizen from its tile and immediatly relocate him to it. So you manually refresh the happyness state and might profit from the wonder immediatly. This might be banned by some rulesets.

Wow, that's powerful -- thanks for the tip! So the discovery of a new tech really does mess things up quite strangely. As the commerce phase happens before the production phase, you would expect that if you upgrade during commerce phase and the unit is not ready to go, it should even less be ready to go when upgrading during the production phase...
Got to try this in my next GOTM...

And so might this.

 

[del62]

Does any one know how golden ages work with interturn mechanics, say the trigger wonder completes in the 7th city in the queue.

 

[justanick]

Does any one know how golden ages work with interturn mechanics, say the trigger wonder completes in the 7th city in the queue.

All cities after that will profit from the higher production and in terms of happiness/lux spending even from higher commerce. This mean that starting a GA with wonders mean less than 19.5 turns of GA. Only using the unique unit will allow you a full scale GA of 20 turns.

 

[Lanzelot]

Some interesting info here, justanick, thanks a lot!

So if the AI triggers your GA by loosing against your UU, you also get the full 20 turns, because the AI movement phase is before your build-phase. Or does the AI attack still count for the previous turn, where you already had your production phase the turn before, and consequently you loose a full turn of GA?

A similar thing probably happens in multiplayer, if an enemy, who comes after you in the turn order, triggers your GA? You already had your turn in that turn, so you get only 19 turns GA?

 

[justanick]

The way i see it you always get a full GA if triggered by the unique unit. The disadvantage in GA by being attacked is that you can hardly adjust your economy to the new boost properly.

 

[albutrosv13]

''Afterwards the next phase starts, and the following steps are performed for one city at a time, starting with your capital and then moving through the list of cities in the order they were founded. All these steps are completed for one city and then the algorithm moves on to the next city on the list, performing the same steps for that city, etc. ''

This is so important, actually. Some of this stuff should be in bold(like the example above).
Anyways, there are so many variations to use the interturn for our own gain, i may end up doing a summary/guide of that(including cheaty ones).
One op example is to use specialists for the commerce/science phase in almost all cities, when for example the capital should produce something the next turn. Then after capital builds something, zoom into the city and then readjust all cities to normal production(only food and shield is important, except when there is luxury tax involved, which is another trick to use; hint - expenditure is at commerce phase while the effect of luxury tax(also entertainers) comes in the production phase).

 

[Civinator]

Lanzelot, thank you very much for your summary about the interturn mechanics in C3C.
Besides saying thank you, the reason for my post is the following:

The mod CCM and many other mods of the epic C3C game are haunted by the so called 'Houseboat Bug'.
When the last city of a civ is conquered, the game is not finished if that civ has a settler on a boat. In the interturn phase of the game the game is freezing when the AI of that civ moves its units.

Until now, nobody has found a way to stop that bug. May be in this forum there is a civer, who has an idea how this bug can be fixed.

For Civ 3 Vanilla there is a note about the fix of a similar bug.

 

[Spoonwood]

In any case, I have never yet seen it, that I lose the Philosophy race, if F1 tells me "1 turn to go" and no AI had it yet at this point. So the human player seems to get his new techs before the AI does.

It's simple to discern that the human player moves first. Found a city in 4000 BC. Click next turn. Retire using ctrl + q. And every time, I predict since I've seen it every time I've done so, you'll find that you founded your city before the AIs. Thus, you take your turn before the AIs. It's also consistent with Soren Johnson saying that they tried to make the game such that the human player would/could win every game that they played, or at least understood why they lost, since in turn based games, the first mover, ceteris paribus, has the advantage. The human player's commerce, and production getting calculated first, and the effects of such happening first seems consistent with that, along with the player winning tech races always with 1 turn left on a tech and all contacts known on a map, and the player winning wonder races.

This also means, if the current city completes a wonder that adds a building to all other cities (like Temple of Artemis or Pyramids), then all following cities in the list already get the benefit of that building during this interturn sequence!

For The Internet, you won't get the research benefits of extra research labs from The Internet, since commerce was already calculated before completion of it. Smith's Trading Company, though it doesn't add a building to all other cities, would also not have any effect until the next turn, since commerce already got calculated. I think this also means that if you complete Battlefield Medicine on a turn, then the healing of say an army in the field just weakened by say artillery bombardment would take effect immediately on that turn.

For some strange reason this does not work for wonders with a "general" effect, like Hanging Gardens, Bach's Cathedral etc!

You had talked about happiness calculations happening before the collection of food and shields. Hanging Gardens and Bach's involve happiness calculations, and thus happiness such calculations can't get applied once the wonders have gotten completed, because the happiness calculation phase has already completed. Does this make sense now?

Lanzelot, were you sure about building The Pyramids enabling the effect of a granary to work upon growth?

There's also more here. The AIs have a move order. What is their move order?

After watching AIs play each other at Sid level, I guessed that the spaceship launch screen might have a pattern corresponding to their move order. I think I remember someone saying a while back that looking at such was "cheating" or some sort of similar nonsense. When I looked at that screen, I found a pattern. The AIs apparently move in reverse order of the list on the spaceship launch screen from top to bottom. In other words, from top to bottom, the last AI moves first, and the first AI moves last. In other words, they move in order from bottom to top of the spaceship launch screen. The bottom most AI moves first and the topmost AI moves last.

How do I know? I made a list of the AIs on that screen in order from top to bottom with numerals. Then I checked the city founding order in the retirement/replay screen, and found that order in the cases that I've seen. No exceptions, though admittedly, not that many tests. It would be better to have more tests on this matter.

It would make sense that the AIs have their production, commerce, and food happen in a similar manner to the human player. That the bottom most AI has the favored position in tech races and wonder races would follow from that.

 

[CKS]

The AI turn order is also the order on the victory screen graphs. Farthest right goes first.

 

[Spoonwood]

I played some and found that wonder cascades might not follow turn order, or production order isn't what I thought.