PolyCast Episode 211: "There's That Little Detail"

[img=right]http://civcomm.civfanatics.com/polycast/images/polycast_logo.jpg[/img] Just a bit of a one. The two-hundred-and-eleventh episode of PolyCast, "There's That Little Detail", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, "Makahlua" and Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew with first-time guest co-hosts Chris "Anzleon" and JM "Memoryjar" Bardet. Carrying a runtime of 59m59s, the summary of topics is as follows:

- 00m54s | News
More and more Civilization: Beyond Earth coverage emerges: the fifth livestream from developer Firaxis Games focuses on the game's Technology Web and mid-game choices is accompanied by two 100 turn playthroughs, the sixth livestream featuring a PolyCast regular co-host as special guest and what to find at the first ever Firaxicon event.
- 35m07s | Senate
Taking stock of the revised Arabian civilization in Civilization V brought about by its second expansion pack Brave New World.
- 45m28s | Miscellaneous
Rewinding more than two decades to find a "Let's Play" series for the original Civ, and then continuing the stroll down memory lane with a quiz covering a number of series highlights to date.

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
A joke not to be and all-in multiplay.

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.

I love your little podcast, I really do. BUT, you need to fix your delivery feed, PLEASE, please fix your feed! What am I to think when you put out episode 211 and label it 210 with almost the same length as episode 210? Your content is worth listening too but you keep screwing up this bad I am afraid no one will listen to it.

What is the status on getting back on iTunes? Have you tried to get on Sticher and other new podcast apps?

pben said:

I love your little podcast, I really do. BUT, you need to fix your delivery feed, PLEASE, please fix your feed! What am I to think when you put out episode 211 and label it 210 with almost the same length as episode 210?

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Apologies for the title error -- thank you for pointing it out. I have corrected it.

Your content is worth listening too but you keep screwing up this bad I am afraid no one will listen to it.

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With respect, I don't feel that errors such as the one question -- and rarely as they occur -- are as bad as you are framing them. On the odd occasion that they do happen and I miss seeing it myself, when they are brought to my attention I have and will continue to correct them as soon as possible.

What is the status on getting back on iTunes? Have you tried to get on Sticher and other new podcast apps?

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For more than two years I have been unsuccessful in getting any action or response otherwise from Apple. That said, your post prompted me to do something I know I should have done some time ago: eliminate the references to the other podcast aggregators that we had once used but are not updating, or are no longer active at all, from the show's website. This means all feeds other than the ones we host.

My hesitation to pursue putting PolyCast and its sibling shows on newer podcast apps, such as Sticher, has been influenced by this experience: handing off part of the management of feeds to a third-party that is ultimately not under my complete, direct control. However, I agree it is worthwhile to give least some of these other, larger services a try towards greater listener choice and increased audience numbers.

I knew I recognized a fellow french accent in there.

Haven't listened yet but I'm sure it's good as usual. Will catch it in the next couple of days. Thank's for the Civ I Let's play link....an awesome blast from the past. That game was the most fantastic thing I had even seen by far in my then 29 years on the planet at the time I bought it. I had been gaming on computers since 1982 at the time.

Acken said:

I knew I recognized a fellow french accent in there.

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Hope you enjoyed the show too.

rastak said:

Haven't listened yet but I'm sure it's good as usual. Will catch it in the next couple of days.

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Thank's for the Civ I Let's play link....an awesome blast from the past.

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Welcome... and agreed. I didn't say so on this episode, but did a number of episodes and years ago: I was a gamer before the first Civ was released, but it is what kept me as a gamer.

The singing was surprisingly entertaining

Leo Tang said:

The singing was surprisingly entertaining

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Ah, the clip that I included from one of the livestreams in the blooper reel yes?

DanQ said:

Ah, the clip that I included from one of the livestreams in the blooper reel yes?

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Yup

Was it you doing the singing

Leo Tang said:

Yup

Was it you doing the singing

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no, it wasn't me -- it was from the AMD livestream.

Thanks a ton for the shout out guys, I'm sorry I didn't catch this earlier. That Civ 1 game ended up being quite insane by the end of it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3Hfqo2_KOlcxDxyljLv3CwKfEy67IcTe

NeptunesNook said:

Thanks a ton for the shout out guys, I'm sorry I didn't catch this earlier.

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You're welcome and no apologies necessary!

How did you come across this episode and PolyCast in general, out of curiosity?

DanQ said:

How did you come across this episode and PolyCast in general, out of curiosity?

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A subscriber said he found me through this podcast in a YouTube comment.

Catching up on my Polycast episodes from last year, and listening to the commentary on my BNW Arabia strategy post. There were a couple points of disagreement that I would like to address:

1.) Spreading religion being weak:
I think the panel was talking about using internal trade routes to spread religion into your own cities being weak. While I don't necessarily disagree, there are some instances in which it is useful. For instance, it's probably going to be most commonly-used for cities that were recently founded in mid-game expansion. You're going to be sending trade routes to these cities anyway in order to get bonus food and production, so not having to waste a missionary is helpful (save the faith for a faith building or prophet or something).

The power is also helpful if you're deliberatey trying to spread foreign religions to your cities (like, say, to take advantage of the Religious Tolerance policy in Piety). If one of your cities converts to a foreign religion, you can use trade routes from that city to add a few followers to your other cities. This is a great way to get a second or third faith building into all your cities!

2.) Trading away oil to an opponent:
Another point of disagreement was about my warning not to trade your excess oil to a potential opponent who may use it against you. True, trading oil and then being DoWed will end the trade deal and result in a combat penalty for your opponent. But that's assuming that they don't have a backup source.

If you start trading oil to, say, America immediately after researching biology, and they start using it to build Triplanes, Biplanes and Landships, they will have a greater capacity for constructing units that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to build during the duration of the deal. It doesn't matter as much for Tanks and Battleships, since you can still build the oil-less predecessors and upgrade when oil becomes available. But it does put a hold on building planes!

As the game progresses, it's generally much easier to procure oil. So if they find another source of oil (from a CS ally, another civ that teched up to Biology in the meantime, or conquering a civ using the air units that you supplied them), they can end the deal with you and DoW and already have a stockpile of veteran planes (which may include B-17s) that they wouldn't even have had (because they couldn't build them to begin with) if you hadn't sold them oil.

So you should still be wary of selling your surplus oil to someone who you don't trust.


*Also, I don't have resource deficits very often. Is the resource penalty a flat -50%? Or does it scale based on the deficit (i.e. -1 iron = -10% penalty, -5 iron = -50% penalty)?

*Also, I don't have resource deficits very often. Is the resource penalty a flat -50%? Or does it scale based on the deficit (i.e. -1 iron = -10% penalty, -5 iron = -50% penalty)?

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98% sure it's flat -50% once you go negative and independent of how negative you are exactly.

I think it's no longer the case

Acken said:

I think it's no longer the case

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Yeah, I'm pretty sure the combat penalty rule has changed at least once, and I don't remember if it's currently the flat penalty or the scaling penalty. I think it's the scaling penalty (like 5 or 10 % per resource unit below 0). But I could be wrong. I could be confusing it with the happiness penalty, which is (I think) -2% penalty per unit of happiness below 0.

In any case, it doesn't change the fact that trading away oil to a competitor allows them to build (and promote) dvanced units like planes (that they couldn't otherwise build), and have those units available for immediate military action when they procure their own source(s) of oil. I've done this to A.I. civs before (buy oil from Civ X in order to build planes to use in capturing Civ Y's oil, then declare war on Civ X after Civ Y is defeated).

If they didn't change it with the Winter patch then it's a flat -50% combat penalty if you've got negative resources for the type of Resource that unit requires. No penalty for buildings.