Delayed bronze working #2: Deity isolated

[admtanaka]

I don't think this map proves delaying BW to be viable on anything besides this specific iteration of the map settings. In the OP, Brennus already concedes he had played the map before. The founding Buddhism opening (as China!) and building the oracle in your only city is certainly clever (and undeniably worked, supporting the plan of avoiding BW and bulbing lib), but there is absolutely no way you are going to convince anyone reasonable that it is likely to work on any other map (even with these settings, which no one plays anyway). In fact, founding Buddhism when you know you are isolated actually sounds like terrible advice, unless you are as lucky as you seem to have been here - the last thing you want is a hindu lovefest when you are isolated!

Instead, you seem to have found a scenario where every AI civ wound up in a different religion, traded less, but didn't steamroll each other until the late 1800s. Sounds lucky to me. I still don't know how you bribed Giggles off after 6 (I counted in the replay) turns, but that seems rather lucky to me also. I understand you turned the slide to 100% gold, but you must have had a big stockpile to start with, no?

A viable strategy can be used without advanced knowledge of the map (besides the settings, of course). You showed before avoiding BW can work on immortal, but I don't think that this thread really proves anything.

As an aside, this whole argument as to events is silly. Does turning on events weaken BW? Yes. Negligibly. But no one turns off events because they are subconsciously trying to reinforce their own prejudice that slavery is "the superior." We're just tired of the Vedic Aryans razing our capital.

To say that events are how the game is meant to be played, or that we should just prepare better for events (keeping some gold in treasury, whatever) is all fine and good, but doesn't address the real complaints about events. Were you prepared for 5 AI_LEMMING barb archers while you were founding Buddhism and building the Oracle?

I'm going to re-read the amphibious elephants and ice archers articles now.

 

[Mylene]

To be fair, i think knowing this map made no difference for BW.
Now if Brennus wants to be fair, he would admit that trading for MC would have been no biggie, and that his bulb advantage narrows down to Compass. Maybe, i sometimes traded for that too, and if not Compass usually pays back quick.

 

[admtanaka]

I agree it makes no difference in terms of winning the lib race, but I think it does in terms of winning the game. We've been oscillating between the two as the overall goal of the strategy, so I suppose speaking strictly of the former, my post isn't very relevant.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I agree it makes no difference in terms of winning the lib race, but I think it does in terms of winning the game. We've been oscillating between the two as the overall goal of the strategy, so I suppose speaking strictly of the former, my post isn't very relevant.

Winning the race to Liberalism can never be considered more than a benchmark turn # (date). Clearly one can win the race to Liberalism and still lose the game. To be clear, one can sacrifise everything else to have the best possible research rate and be 1st to Liberalism. However, one must also develop infrastructure and/or units in a sufficient number of cities appropriate for the selected Victory Condition to leverage being 1st to Liberalism into an actual victory (the whole point of having a viable strategy). Note that the target number of Cities and infrastructure or units built can vary greatly depending on the Victory Condition selected.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[admtanaka]

@STW

I suppose I misspoke, because really any "strategy" is useless if it doesn't actually make you win the game. I suppose using the word "we've" applies ownership to those who have posted in the thread when I'm not sure exactly who said it.

In any event, my point was that there's too much weirdness going on with the opening moves (before we even get to avoiding BW and bulbing lib) for me to consider this a viable enough strategy that it could be applied to other starts. There's no doubt that OP's game is a very clever solution to a very strange map, but I think it's fair to question both whether such a technique would work on another, random map or if you could realistically apply this method without substantial foreknowledge of the map.

Some of the conflicts here don't surprise me. I would expect HOF players to find the alternatives opened by avoiding BW to be intriguing the same way someone playing Rhye's might - a creative solution might end up optimal for one particular map. In the general S&T forum, however, don't expect people to be impressed if avoiding BW (or any other niche approach) works on one map if it isn't viable (and comparably efficient) on most.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Delayed Bronze Working isn't a single map/start strategy. The strategy applies to a small though significant number maps/starts. I suggested that this set could be objectively defined by the HOF MapFinder via an appropriate choice of a rule file. Once the set of maps/starts is defined by a rule file, one simply needs to run MapFinder for a while (at least an hour) and observe how many maps it found versus total maps checked, take the ratio and turn that into a percentage for those player that care to know the strategy's applicability. Note that this technique can be used for any strategy with map dependencies. (Unfortunately, the OP is not able to use MapFinder; perhaps another reader of this thread can help in this regard.)

The greatest strategists almost always used terrain and other map features to their advantage, thus one can fairly conclude that a process of validating only map tolerant strategies as some have suggested is exclusively done in the "Strategy and Tips" forum is extremely short sighted. It doesn't really matter how small a percentage of maps a strategy applies to, if it matches the one being played/revealed.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Delayed Bronze Working isn't a single map/start strategy. The strategy applies to a small though significant number maps/starts. I suggested that this set could be objectively defined by the HOF MapFinder via an appropriate choice of a rule file. Once the set of maps/starts is defined by a rule file, one simply needs to run MapFinder for a while (at least an hour) and observe how many maps it found versus total maps checked, take the ratio and turn that into a percentage for those player that care to know the strategy's applicability. Note that this technique can be used for any strategy with map dependencies. (Unfortunately, the OP is not able to use MapFinder; perhaps another reader of this thread can help in this regard.)

The greatest strategists almost always used terrain and other map features to their advantage, thus one can fairly conclude that a process of validating only map tolerant strategies as some have suggested is exclusively done in the "Strategy and Tips" forum is extremely short sighted. It doesn't really matter how small a percentage of maps a strategy applies to, if it matches the one being played/revealed.

Sun Tzu Wu

The problem Sun is that for awhile now BQ has been saying that is was better on ALL maps. Not just a small amount. If he presented it as a strategy that is good for a one or two types of starts I don't think any of this would have happened. But because he is very inconsistent on how many maps he thinks it is OPTIMAL on it has progressed into you protecting him which saddens me.

 

[Mylene]

Should be a HoF section thread in this case, cos we all know that HoF games are nothing like real games.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

All HoF games are required to be real games. Neither World Builder modified nor reloaded games can accepted by the HoF, unlike most games in the Strategy and Tactics forum which can be reloaded and modified by WB as the player deems reasonable.

The HoF MapFinder can more precisely define catagories of real games (starts) than any player using a fuzzy definition of a category of game types. It is hard to beleive that no one has yet applied it to any strategy threads in the "Strategies and Tips" forum.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

The problem Sun is that for awhile now BQ has been saying that is was better on ALL maps. Not just a small amount. If he presented it as a strategy that is good for a one or two types of starts I don't think any of this would have happened. But because he is very inconsistent on how many maps he thinks it is OPTIMAL on it has progressed into you protecting him which saddens me.

Where did Brennus.Quigley ever say that his Delayed Bronze Working strategy applies to ALL maps? He actually says in his introduction of his article that most maps are better played with Bronze Working early. He did make a guess of 30% of maps would benefit from his Delayed Bronze Working strategy, but he carefully qualified that it was just a guess. It remains to be seen what the actual percentage is.

Brennus did carefully define that starts which may benefit from his delayed Bronze Working strategy have low food and low forests, thus nerfing both Slavery and Forest Chopping which are the primary reasons for researching Bronze Working early (other than to find out where Copper is located).

Finally, I'm not defending anyone. I'm just setting the record straight. I'm more interested in truth than anything else. We should all think about the truth and its pursuit when we post and try our best to have not a hint of personal attack when presenting our arguments.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Where did Brennus.Quigley ever say that his Delayed Bronze Working strategy applies to ALL maps? He actually says in his introduction of his article that most maps are better played with Bronze Working early. He did make a guess of 30% of maps would benefit from his Delayed Bronze Working strategy, but he carefully qualified that it was just a guess. It remains to be seen what the actual percentage is.

Brennus did carefully define that starts which may benefit from his delayed Bronze Working strategy have low food and low forests, thus nerfing both Slavery and Forest Chopping which are the primary reasons for researching Bronze Working early (other than to find out where Copper is located).

Finally, I'm not defending anyone. I'm just setting the record straight. I'm more interested in truth than anything else. We should all think about the truth and its pursuit when we post and try our best to have not a hint of personal attack when presenting our arguments.

Sun Tzu Wu

In his article he said 30%, but later in his second thread he said all, and in this one he has said all. I am just trying to point out that he is inconsistent due to him trying to seem like he is the top dog.

Sorry it just seems to me that you are coming in to save him in every thread. I think all of us who are against him understand that there is a small small percent of maps where this would work, and have stated this. But due to this he has changed his mind, and posted that it is good always. I will look for his posts, there are like 6 or 7 of them, where he changes his mind out of the blue some time if you really want.

 

[Revent]

There is a lack of consistency in this strategy. In a search for the truth Sun Tzu Wu, you have to realise that this game is completely luck dependant. If Brennus was to play this map on his first attempt, it would have taken him some time before he realised he was isolated. He would not have known whether or not to skip BW before hand. He is relying on RNG to favour him: For example, he is relying on the RNG to not give him bronze working if he pops a hut. He is relying on RNG to get him to Buddhism. I repeated what he did, went beelined Buddhism working the same tiles he did, but did not get it. This is not strategy, it is luck.

His answer to get rid of this RNG is to have enough games played to cancel out the effect of extremes since results would be normally distributed. Problems with that are that to get a number of plays of this specific map to a high enough level that we get our bell shaped curve is too high even without random huts and events. Assuming a game lasts 350 turns; for simplicity sake, you can get an event or not an event. There are 153 events meaning 154 different possibilities every turn. Obviously, there are certain thresholds for the chance of an even to pop up so we can drop that down to a mere 50 possibilities every turn (reduction of ~67%). So excluding other RNG factors, of which there are hundreds and thousands probably, and assuming the game is played the same exact every single turn, there are over 50^350 different combinations that we can get in a single game. This doesn't even take into account a snowball effect; one turn faster on tech X speeds up your whole game by one turn, a slave revolt slows down by many turns, etc... I haven't even looked at quests which can be game breaking in instances.

I do agree with your idea on the truth and applaud his innovation, but for it to be accepted in a strategy forum, the effects of RNG should be minimised for repeatability and consistency. Secondly, there needs to be a requirement of some solid data. A theory is good, but in the field of Physics for example, when I was at CERN earlier this year, I heard of a ridiculous number of theories, but so many of them fall apart when it comes to experimental play. (A lot of my references here will be academics because Brennus has used those as his form of logic). As for his guide, it has been subject to peer review and has not been accepted. The underlying reason is that he has failed to show us an instance in which skipping bronze working is more optimal than researching it. He has only shown us that he managed to win a cultural victory (not exactly a difficult feat on isolated deity to be honest) by skipping bronze working. There is no control game in which bronze working is researched. There have been no repeats for reliability and even if there were, they would be subject to bias due to previous map knowledge (if Brennus replayed the map) or a different level of skill if other players played it.

If someone neutral to this conversation made a map in which the player starts on an isolated island similar in shape, size and terrain to this map, gave it to Brennus and one person of a similar skill level to him and had them both play the map out using BUFFY (to check for no reloads), with huts and events off, preventing them from seeing each others progress or getting help from others, and compared the results at the end; then we can say that there has been a reasonable comparison. Even that will be subject to large amount of uncertainty but will be the best that is reasonably possible.

 

[Mylene]

All HoF games are required to be real games. Neither World Builder modified nor reloaded games can accepted by the HoF, unlike most games in the Strategy and Tactics forum which can be reloaded and modified by WB as the player deems reasonable.

Sun Tzu Wu

Yep and for HoF games you modify before you start, nobody in serious games here would open the WB either if he plays said map. Another low punch towards the fairness of players, getting pretty old.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Yep and for HoF games you modify before you start, nobody in serious games here would open the WB either if he plays said map. Another low punch towards the fairness of players, getting pretty old.

HoF games are impossible to modify, if the Locked Modified Assests option is not checked, and games without that option summarily rejected. All HoF game starts must be generated by a Civ IV game system that is validated by the HoF module. The possibility of cheating is prevented by technological means.

The HoF also has standalone applications that can be run on your Civ IV system to verify that it is not modified; the vast majority of modifications are the result of corrupt installations and incomplete installations; rarely it is the result of intentional cheating, but that possibility must also be acknowledged.

If we could depend on the honesty of fellow human beings, we would not lock our doors at nights, need security guards, police, coast guard, armies, navies, air forces and ICBMs. It is naive to assume you can trust anyone, except possibly your closest friends, to play without cheating. Yes, it is noble to think that everyone that posts to the "Strategy and Tips" forum always plays without cheating; it is also very naive.

Just to be clear, I'm not accusing anyone of cheating. It is simply inexplicable how any honest person could object to a technical means of ensuring honesty.

BTW, the HoF module is also required to play xOTM games too, so this means of technologically ensuring honest play is not exclusive to the Hall of Fame.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

In his article he said 30%, but later in his second thread he said all, and in this one he has said all. I am just trying to point out that he is inconsistent due to him trying to seem like he is the top dog.

Sorry it just seems to me that you are coming in to save him in every thread. I think all of us who are against him understand that there is a small small percent of maps where this would work, and have stated this. But due to this he has changed his mind, and posted that it is good always. I will look for his posts, there are like 6 or 7 of them, where he changes his mind out of the blue some time if you really want.

OP's motive for this thread is to validate his strategy and allow others to either constructively support or constructively invalidate his strategy. Anything beyond that must expressed by the OP himself.

I just want to see a fair exchange ideas and validation of a promising (and clearly unpopular) strategy. So far, I've been disappointed by the strategy validation process on the "Strategy and Tips" forum; too many posts with vague and dismissive ideas without any data to back them up.

Yes, please provide links to Brennus.Quigley's post where he says his Delayed Bronze Worker applies to all maps. Also, be sure there is no qualifer such as all "low food and low forest" maps. That is very differ than all maps.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

I am sorry Sun I swear I saw him post it but I looked at all of them in this thread, and it wasn't here. I will look some other team, but I was probably wrong. I still don't feel that this is optimal in any setting. In HoF there is not a chance in hell that anyone would ever accept a start where this tactic becomes viable.

 

[coanda]

The HoF MapFinder can more precisely define catagories of real games (starts) than any player using a fuzzy definition of a category of game types. It is hard to beleive that no one has yet applied it to any strategy threads in the "Strategies and Tips" forum.

That's an interesting thought, although you could only use it for analysis of strategies which do not depend on early scouting... which severely constricts the number of strategies it would apply to.

In this particular case, for example... knowing that your capital and a handful of surrounding tiles have few-to-no forests and little food surplus can reliably tell you that you don't need BW very early in the game. But it may turn out to be a start where taking a stab at finding copper would be worthwhile because it'd be a game-changer. It may be a start that absolutely requires early jungle chops off IW for a second city, or a start that actually has natural second/third city sites that are extremely high-food-surplus, or a start with an extremely forested stone city site you take second that is a natural for chopping out some wonders... I don't see how the mapfinder as it currently stands could pass any sort of reliable judgment on those. It might be possible to find a set of rules that defines the "delayed BW start," but that set of rules would have to consider more information than the mapfinder has available, and include more nuanced features than the current mapfinders ruleset allows.

In practice, I think you'd be fast approaching the level of an honest-to-goodness Civ4 AI instead of just a map sorter, because it would have to be considering things like second city placements and their impact on priorities, neighboring AI geography and personalities... stuff for which, incidentally, it would be hard to write an AI that evaluates anywhere near as reliably as a human expert.

 

[vranasm]

I know I wrote I won't respond here more, I decided I will describe my latest experience with delaying BW somewhat (it should be non-controversial stuff).

In last couple days I was trying to play the Challenger IX game 02. It's a great plains map on Prince with Always War On and raging barbarians with Ghengis Khan (all of that is very important to my strategy)

As you can see from the settings of the game it clearly shows that
1) you need horses
2) you need HBR
3) you need Great Wall (AI's on prince just can't battle barbs and raging ones are total troll)

I rolled tons of great plains maps searching for pigs start (thought that horses should be near) after disbanding cca 12 games after researching AH, I just rolled couple games without buffy to see the horses pattern.
What I found is that horses on great plains maps are a bit scarce and are placed in the middle of the map (cca)

After the realization I went (kind of) back to the board and regenerated couple of maps until I found map which was clearly in the middle, but close to west (tundra forests, silver ~5 tiles from settler) starting on PH with plains cows and cow on a grassland hill as food (yeah total crap)

obviously I delayed BW until at least writing and I am sure if I would delay it longer it would not be bad .

The bulb strategy here would be of no use though (no food to run specs and your first spec is Great Spy anyway), what I found hilarious is how much scouting my first Great Spy did I hold him alive for whole game after getting him and used him as great scout for enemy cities.

So in this scenario delaying/abandoning BW would be superior since I didn't use it ...well basically for nothing except maybe around 500 AD where I whipped couple of keshiks in new AI cities since my basic cities just basically suck for whipping.

Beat Lymond by 10 turns :-D so I guess it wasn't that bad of strategy.

Another thing is that I kind of can't imagine how this would work on some serious level... but there is great plains on Immortal challenge game (which luckily isn't always war though ).
I suppose starting in an area close horses should be important too. They looked like the rarest resource.

 

[UnforcedError]

^^ Thanks very much for the write-up, Vranasm So I guess the strategy is viable with some Great Plains starts, even though -- as you said -- the bulbing strategy cannot be explored with challenge 2, when all you care about are HAs

 

[Mylene]

HoF games are cheating, and before you get upset..not from players and inside your system, but towards AIs or game balance. In all write ups so far i saw super starts, weakest AIs, best leaders and cheesy UUs..
how you can compare this with regular games..beyond me.
HoF players usually think they are angels, and forget that they are the ones who never play a fair game.