Gator02 - Learning to Walk

[DJMGator13]

We're earning 31 of our 42bpt from Cuzco, so if we don't whip there then the impact on our bpt would be limited. While whipping in the other cities could increase their commerce/beakers faster.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

In this case using slavery to poprush will cost us beakers. But if we let the city grow to size 6, I assume that will create a situation were the number of unhappy people is greater than the happy. Does that unhappy person refuse to work or can he be turned into a specialist? If he refuse to work then rushing 1 pop point would not hurt, but if we can make another specialist it would reduce our research.

He would refuse to work, but pop rushing would still hurt us because it would drop the happiness limit to 4 for 10 turns (giving us another unhappy person). I agree with Bez: I don't see how we can use pop rushing in the capitol, as each citizen is just too valuable.

As soon as you can get religion into the capitol, we will be able to have another happy citizen. And another once we get a temple built. Those new citizens should not become specialists though. They should work cottages built on the river.

I would go ahead and play. I am excited about testing out slavery, but if you want to play it safe and go the CS route I will be happy with that too.

You will have to make a difficult choice regarding the missionary: Fish Fry needs one, the capitol needs one, and Machu needs one because he can build missionaries fast once you get Mono/Org. Religion. I'll leave that to you though. I'll try to check back in this afternoon to see how you did.

I gotta go, and right when things were getting interesting too.

 

[Bezhukov]

We can play OCC as Brad suggests with CS support and revisit civics later. Revolt to CS when we pick up HR with Monarchy or with OR at Monotheism?

 

[DJMGator13]

With 2 Revolts and 1 Conversion I spent 3 turns in anarchy. I think I made a mistake when I built a cottage by the Fish/Clam city, I’ve blocked off the river for irrigation purpose but once the city expands it can build a lighthouse and pull the food from the water. I used the missionary in Fish/Clam city since religion spread to our capital on its own.

1160BC learned COL, found religion, Oracle completes, get Civil Service free, then revolt to Slavery and Bureaucracy
1120BC convert to Conf
1080BC Conf spread to Cuzco on its own, Anarchy ends, I leave both scientist in Cuzco after having to lower the slider to 80% (we were at –1gpt with only 3 in the bank)
1040 worker1 running irrigation towards Tiwanka
1000BC quiet
975BC learn Monotheism, revolt to Organized Religion, use the missionary in Fish/Clam
950BC quiet
925BC Cuzco now size 6 with 6 happy and 6 unhappy – set city to no growth and start a Temple
900BC quiet

Only barb action was on the IBT from the preturn – no other appeared

Here’s a look at Cuzco and the Save

 

[Bede]

Looks like it is over to me. So got it. Play it tomorrow. If we are building buidlings in the capital, looks like a monastery would be a better choice at the moment as it will add some beakers to the count, oops, looks like we don't have the knowledge for it....sorry

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Bad News
I had written a long post about where we might want to go next, and how I felt things were going with slavery vs. CS, and then at the end of my post I decided to do a little test in order to answer my own question from earlier about forges increasing the power of slavery. In the process of that test, I uncovered an exploit. And it is a pretty powerful one. This may have been reported on elsewhere, but if so, I haven't seen it.

Basically, forges do increase the power of slavery. So does Org. Rel. and Bureaucracy. The problem is that it doesn't work like it should. For example, if we were to rush our temple, under normal circumstances, we should get 30 hammers for 1 population. If we were to rush it while having organized religion and bureaucracy, then we should either get 30 hammers (no bonus) or 52 hammers (a 75% bonus). That isn't what happens.

If we rush a temple when we need 1-29 shields, then we get 30 shields for the rush and lose 1 pop: that is fine. Unfortunately, if we rush when we need 31-52 hammers, we get 60 hammers, but we still only lose 1 pop. So we just doubled our hammer return.

The same bug applies to cities that are just running org. rel. For example, if we rush a temple in Tiwanaku when it needs 1-29 hammers, we will lose 1 pop and get 30 hammers. If we rush a temple when we need 31-37 hammers, we lose 1 pop and get 60.

Basically, we can double the power of slavery with this bug.

I guess we now need to decide all over again whether or not we want to go the slavery route. Personally, I don't. I don't enjoy playing "exploit" games, and I don't enjoy wasting my time trying to avoid exploits either, which we would have to do a lot of with this "slavery experiment" we were going to try. I would like to go back to using the CS route. It is all Very Annoying.

I'll wait to hear what you guys think about this, then maybe we can go back to playing/enjoying the game.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

One other thing, could one of you test this to see if you get the same results as me? If you do, then I guess I need to report this in the bug forum and notify the GOTM staff.

And if you don't get the same results, then either my cIV has gone screwy, or we need to do a recall on this last batch of "Cottage Wine."

 

[Methos]

lurker's comment: This has been mentioned before, and as I recall DaveMC did a spreadsheet on how many hammers you get. I'll try and locate it for you. One thing, Dave wasn't the one who started the thread, just did the write-up.

 

[Methos]

lurker's comment: Found it, it's titled The fact about hurry production cost (a bug?). If you scroll down towards the bottom of the page you'll find DaveMcW's post. It's #12.

BTW, it starts off discussing the possible bug associated with gold rushing, but discusses them both.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

lurker's comment: Found it, it's titled The fact about hurry production cost (a bug?). If you scroll down towards the bottom of the page you'll find DaveMcW's post. It's #12.

BTW, it starts off discussing the possible bug associated with gold rushing, but discusses them both.

I am actually quite familiar with the thread, but thanks for posting the link. I reread it. Somehow I missed this subtle application of the bug. If one looks at Dave's post, for instance, it doesn't indicate that this aspect of the bug exists (it looks like pop rushing can only be exploited on Epic and Marathon speed, not Normal). But now I see that near the end of the thread (when they are talking about cash rushing/production multipliers), this application of pop-rushing is mentioned briefly. Ah well.

@Bez: Would you care to redo your 3:1 hammers for food analysis? Methinks it just became a tiny bit more favorable.

I feel less upset about the Slavery bug than I did last night, so we can keep going that direction if you guys want. If the next GoTM is normal level, I expect this exploit is going to be used rather extensively anyway, unless we get a patch.

 

[DJMGator13]

Is this likely to be fixed with an upcoming patch or ruled a disallowed exploit for GOTM? If either apply I'd rather not learn a technique that is exploitive.

I'm off work today for President's Day, if you want I could replay my set and go with CS? Nothing else happened during my set other than the civic/religion changes

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Is this likely to be fixed with an upcoming patch or ruled a disallowed exploit for GOTM? If either apply I'd rather not learn a technique that is exploitive.

I'm off work today for President's Day, if you want I could replay my set and go with CS? Nothing else happened during my set other than the civic/religion changes

This is currently listed as not an exploit in the GoTM exploits list here. As I recall, AlanH explained that this bug is one of those things that is just too difficult to define, and the best that can be done is to make all players aware of it so that everyone gets the same advantage.

I assume this will be fixed in an upcoming patch, but you never know. We had to live with RCP for a few years before Firaxis did anything about that. I'll leave the choice of whether to replay using CS or to continue with Slavery up to you and the other team members.

I thought your turns were very good BTW. I'll post more thoughts when we have decided on the Slavery/CS thing--again. Last night I worked out how long it will probably take us to get Optics (in response to Bez's question regarding that), but then I got caught up with this bug. It is going to take us around 37 turns to get to Optics if we head straight there immediately. That leaves us with some rather difficult tech decisions.

 

[=|VA|=Lawman]

Good job getting the oracle, civil service and confusionism!

 

[Bede]

I am not sure I find an exploit here, though there is a bug. If I read the calculations right the hammers from a citizen receive any multipliers present. In this case 30*1.75 for civics which equals 52 If you then add the 12 from city production you net 64 hammers.

What is happening at Cuzco is that with only 20 hammers accumulated you don't receive any multiplier so it takes 2 citizens to finish the temple. If you wait a turn and whip with 32 in the bin, you get the multiplier and it only takes one citizen.

So yes, you get an advantage by micromanaging the whip, but since it does require timing I have a hard time viewing it as an exploit.

 

[Bezhukov]

The application of the bug is relatively narrow, but I thought we were going with CS anyway until I read the report.

Whatever the team decides is fine with me.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Wow. I'm surprised you guys think this bug is narrow in application and not an exploit. Cuzco isn't the best city to use as an example for this, but rather every other city in our empire, assuming they will be Confucian. We aren't just going to recieve our 25% bonus for running Org. Religion in those cities when we pop rush, the production bonus will be exactly 100%. And we can use it every single time we pop rush a building.

Say city X is size 2 and making 1 hammer per turn. It is Confucian and building a granary. If we pop rush when the Granary needs 37 hammers to complete it (ie, when we have 23 hammers in the box), we will instantly receive 60 hammers, for a total of 84 at the beginning of the next turn. That gives us the granary plus an overflow of 24 hammers into our next project. All for the cost of 1 person.

Edited to make the example more clear (I hope).

 

[Bezhukov]

The 92 is double-counting. What we're getting is 60 instead of 37, I believe, but only in that "narrow" window of needing 31-37 hammers. I usually try to whip for at least two pop, to give time to grow back without exceeding the happy limit, so this would come into play sometimes, but not that often.

 

[leif erikson]

Brad is correct, it is a pretty good advantage when one knows how to use it. I checked out his link to the GOTM site where Ainwood provides a link to a longer discussion. I think the key is this post by Qitai:

Did some test and would rather have a formula the other way around due to some micro-management so as not to waste hammers.

I am more interested in pop-rush, so here it is for hammer per pop.

Hammers per pop = speed base hammer * Kremlin bonus * Zero Penalty * National Wonder Penalty * World Wonder Penalty * (1 + Sum of all production bonuses as appear on the screen)

Speed Base hammer = 20, 30, 45, 90
Kremlin Bonus = 2
Zero Penalty = 2/3
National Wonder Penalty = 2/3
World Wonder Penalty = 1/2
Production bonuses includes resource, civ traits, forge, factory etc.

E.g. Epic game with Kremlin Bonus building a National World with the required resource and only a forge would give you

45*2*2/3*(1+0.25+1) = 135 hammers per pop

The total hammers generated is always remaining hammer required round up to the nearest 30 hammers. So, it is always more profitable to have the remaining hammers as just a little above a multiple of 30 so you get the extra overflow hammers. So, in the above case, it would be optimal to hurry at say when there is 121-134 hammers remaining in order to get 150 hammers out of one pop.

It is all in the timing.

It seems that GOTM Staff feels there is little that can be done about banning it and has decided to level the playing field by telling us all about it.

Pop-Rushing bug: ALLOWED: You can get extra shields over what you 'should' by timing your pop-rushes. At this stage, it is considered a game mechanic 'bug', but its very difficult (and somewhat pointless) to try and ban / work-around it. Instead, its better to simply make all people aware of it to level the playing field. Read more here.

While I hope it gets fixed in a later patch, the only reason I don't really want to learn it is that I don't wish my game play to become reliant on something that shouldn't be. It is almost like a crutch that I, hopefully, shouldn't need. However, I will also go along with the consensus of the team.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

The 92 is double-counting. What we're getting is 60 instead of 37, I believe, but only in that "narrow" window of needing 31-37 hammers. I usually try to whip for at least two pop, to give time to grow back without exceeding the happy limit, so this would come into play sometimes, but not that often.

There is no 37 (although there should be). We will either get 60 or we will get 30. The exploit can also be used in other shield ranges than 31-37. We can use the exploit when rushing 2 pop points to get 90 hammers instead of 60, or 3 pop points to get 120 hammers instead 90, etc, etc.

I also edited my earlier example to hopefully make it more clear.

 

[DJMGator13]

Does the AI benefit from the same bonus?