Need Geek Lessons

[gmaharriet]

Ok, I didn't want to clutter up the Department of Geeks and Numbers with a lot of detailed questions, so I'm starting a new thread.

How in the world do some of you come up with conclusions based on seeing only our City Profile when you can't see that of the other teams? How do you know if we're 1st or 4th, especially when our numbers may not even change in a particular line from one turn to the next?

I'm sure this is more complex than anyone has time to answer all in a single gulp (or for me to understand), but maybe one item at a time, starting with approval ratings. Here's a copy of the last pic and given a name that won't tempt anyone to read if they can intercept the upload:

 

[Rik Meleet]

Very easy; Tubby uses the F11 key every turn and just writes down the list. He then analyses the information he gets from every turn and formulates theories on why the changes occur.

 

[Tubby Rower]

Here is a list of what all of the things mean (taken from Bamspeedy's article in the War Academy)

Approval rating: This one's easy. The percentage of your people that are happy. If every single person is happy, you have 100%. If everyone is content it is 50%. Edit: This can be misleading when you get specialists, because the specialists count as only content people. So even if everyone is happy or an entertainer, you won't have 100% approval rating if you have any specialists.

Population: Add up all the population you get from the city view from all your cities. Not population points, like size 1, 2 or 3, etc. but the 10,000 or 100,000 you see under the city name.

GNP: Total gold in all your cities before corruption takes a bite out of it.
1 gold= 1 million

Mfg. Goods: Total unwasted shields in all your cities.
1 shield = 1 megaton.

Land Area: # of tiles in your territory * 100.
1 Tile =100 square miles
Sea is included in this, but does not help in the territory part of your game score.

Literacy: % of your citizens who live in a city with a library, university, AND research lab. If every city has just a library you will have 33%, because they are missing the other 2 science buildings.

Edit: Or live in a city with 1 or more scientific Great Wonders (Great Library, Newtons, SETI, Theory of Evolution, Cure for Cancer, and Internet) Copernicus's does not count because despite it helps science, it isn't given the scientific flag. Having 1 of those wonders counts the same as if they had all the other improvements in the city. Two small wonders (apollo and Intelligence Agency) give you credit for having 50% science in that city. You also get 3% added to your literacy rate when you get the literature tech. No bonus when you get education. Great Library still helps your literacy rate even after it is obsolete.

Disease: % of the tiles in your territory that is floodplains or jungle.

Pollution: # of tiles that are currently polluted.

Life expectancy: % of your citizens who live in a city with a granary, aqueduct, AND hospital. Minimum is 20, maximum is 99.

Family Size: The average amount of excess food that each city is producing/2. If you have 1 city that is producing 4 extra food, that 4 food would feed 2 people, so your family size would be 2 children. Minimum is 1, hard to say exactly what the max would be. In most cases you won't see this above 2, maybe 3 or 4 if all your cities are extremely rich in food, experiencing a very fast growth period or just put down a alot of railroads on irrigated tiles.

Military Service: 10 years * # of military units / # of citizens. Military units are units with an attack and defense value, so workers, scouts and princesses don't count. Kings do. So at the start of a mass regicide game you will have a military service of 70 years because of the 7 military units *10 years divided by just your 1 citizen. 0 years if you have no army or you have just a few units, but thousands of population points.

Annual Income: The number of connected strategic/luxury resource types in your territory. The minimum value is 1 and you get a +1 bonus for your first trade route with another civ. Thanks DaveMcW

Productivity: The total amount of uncorrupted gold, unwasted shields, and excess food you are producing in all your cities.

The rest of it comes out of my head because God wired me up that way. My mind will try to fit data into patterns and then interprets those. That's the best way I know to explain it.

The data that we are getting is from the beginning of our turn to keep things consistent. The data is also after all of the other teams have made their turn. Using those 2 facts along with what I know is going on in our team and the information quoted above, I extrapolate what is going on.

Any other questions, fire away... I love explaining stuff to people. And if it doesn't make sense question me because this is the first time I've done such an analysis. Mainly because in a normal game (SP or a SG) up to now would have been an hour and a half in real world time. This thing has stretched out over at least 2 weeks so far and I started this to keep from getting bored.

 

[gmaharriet]

Any other questions, fire away...

OK, here goes. In the 5 turns shown in the above pic, our approval rating is 50% each time (all content), but 2nd place, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, and 1st. Since you can't see the degree of happiness (or contentedness) of the other civs, how do you know our rating compared to the others?

I think what you do is absolutely amazing!!! Like magic!

 

[Rik Meleet]

Gma: In the F11 screen you see both your score and your ranking. You score (50% for approval rating) can be the same, but if other civs have a higher rating; you drop down in the rank.

Perhaps it is best shown with an actual F11 screen.

 

[gmaharriet]

The color represents the number in the right-hand column? Now I feel silly, but if I hadn't asked, I still wouldn't know, I guess. Thank you!

I'd read the article in the War Academy, oh, maybe 8 months ago when I'd been playing Civ for about a month, and I didn't see it being useful in-game at that time, so I never look. I've never seen discussions about it in the general strategy forums, and so I wonder if the better players use it regularly to assess the AIs. If so, maybe I should start paying attention to it.

 

[gmaharriet]

Ok, I've swallowed my embarrassment enough to ask another one.

We are in 2nd place with 9% pollution (or FP/jungle tiles). Does that mean we have the 2nd most FP/jungle tiles and are less healthy than 2 others, or that we are the 2nd most healthy with fewer FP/jungle tiles than 2 other civs? and does it make any difference if our citizens are actually working them or not?

 

[Bede]

Can't answer the first but have one for the second.

Tubby knows the exact probabiities (why aren't you surprised?) but as long as there are FP, jungle, or marsh, mosquitoes will breed and your citizens will get malaria whether they actually work those fields or not. It has been my experience that you will get one or two rounds of sickness in the AA, then it is over with. Each time you will lose 2 pop points a turn apart.

 

[gmaharriet]

Can't answer the first but have one for the second.

Tubby knows the exact probabiities (why aren't you surprised?) but as long as there are FP, jungle, or marsh, mosquitoes will breed and your citizens will get malaria whether they actually work those fields or not. It has been my experience that you will get one or two rounds of sickness in the AA, then it is over with. Each time you will lose 2 pop points a turn apart.

I've lost pop to sickness, but haven't paid close attention to how many citizens I had before it happened. Does it ever happen when you have only pop 2 and, if so, can you lose your town completely? I've never had that happen.

Yes, Tubby is very good! I work with numbers (money) all day at work, but I'm not good at connecting the dots except on financial statements...can't seem to transfer that knowledge to other areas. I wish my mind worked like his.

Thank you for the help.

 

[Tubby Rower]

Ok RIk Already answered the 1st question about the rankings.

On to the 2nd....
the disease statistic is basically
(total # of jungle tiles in boundry + total # of FP tiles in boundry) / total # of tiles in boundry

Since 2/21 = ~9.5% that is our statistic. Since we are second that means that someone else has more than us. What it doesn't mean is that the other two teams only have one. In ties, all teams are given the same ranking. Which is why we've been 1st in total land area until D'Nut settled Shelbyville.

I'm pretty sure that disease can hit at pop 2 but it wouldn't destroy a town. And it can happen more than once. It caught me twice in the AA in a COTM once when I was working up to 3 FP the entire game.

 

[gmaharriet]

So, ideally, we would want to be #1 in everything except disease and pollution, in which we would want to be #7,356,948th place?

 

[Tubby Rower]

As long as all of our BG's have a cow on them then sure being last in pollution would be good. Pollution is never good. The approval rating is not always good to be in 1st.

If you are > 50% then theoretically you are wasting money. If you have 8 luxes and only 4 pop then you should be able to sell off the extra luxes even if they are your only source. But that's really nit-picking. One caveat though, WLTKD will increase production. But you need at least 5 pop in a city in order to get that which most games get that fairly quickly.