Paramount Intelligence Analysis: The Teams

[Earthling]

I checked a bunch of demographics/other stats:

No religions have been founded, which means teams are doing who knows what techwise. This makes me a little more concerned about Stonehenge for those who are considering it (by the way, I think we'd have to switch techs this turn if we were going to, so we really need to decide). But I'd be happy to watch other teams fight each other other early wonders like Stonehenge if we kept on track. Down the line I'd expect a mad haul for the Colossus and maybe one team has a strategy planned out for the GLibrary or something, but we'll see.

-Some teams have gotten some techs though, and it looks like by the change in max military that somebody got Bronze Working? I'm not 100% sure on this.

-It's of course obvious that three times now have 2 population, and almost everyone is working pure food tiles to grow; people must have corn/rice/etc... The odd thing is the team at only 5 food, perhaps they had a commerce tile to work or something because they don't have any particular production either. Persia and Maya obviously at size 2 and I think we can figure out the other one; it's not Netherlands at least.

 

[MrBanana]

I thought you siad you weren't going to analyze the demo screen throughly?

 

[Earthling]

This isn't that thorough, at least to some folks' standards. Population/GNP/food/production is good; I'm not going to try to figure out when every team builds a warrior or something, every tile they're working etc... Keeping general track of these stats is useful though just for a sense of things, and some like land area/pop are easy enough to see when someone goes up.

One thing to point out in these last few rapid turns is that somebody must have mined a resource before continuing to farm; or they have seafood and only mines on land to mine perhaps. But that's obviously a gold/gems/silver up there at 33 gnp.

 

[MrBanana]

Probably gold, I can't see that massive boost coming from something else.

 

[galdarian]

Would that be India with it's fast worker pumping out the improvements?

 

[Earthling]

No, there's no way any team other than Maya could have had a worker out really that much sooner than we did. Or rather, I should say, I think what happened is some team, instead of building two farms/pastures/whatever, just built one farm and then a mine (or perhaps they had seafood and then built a mine). Though India could pull a little ahead in the coming turns though.

 

[cav scout]

Have you guys noticed how there are 6 teams and we have 6 wheats, 6 spices and 3 silvers? I wonder what the resource allocations are for the other teams. I bet one other team has silver while 2 teams have gold and 2 have gems. If this is true I hope the teams with gold have their food nerfed with rice or something.

 

[Earthling]

Definitely, which is why we're lucky at least to have a higher happy cap given trade may be a complicated thing in this game. See also our thoughts/discussion on "El Dorado" cities (an island with monopoly resources that would be a race to settle against other civs) which is another thing factoring into why I personally kinda want to expand overseas faster. But nice catch of course, and it is good for us all to keep an eye on the demographics.

It appears at least somebody has seafood, due to how they got 7 food on the demographic screen before anyone could have built a worker and actually farmed anything. So it's not two wheat/two rice/two corn at least - we may be the only ones with wheat in fact, and maybe there's a distribution of pigs/cows/seafood or something out there too.

 

[MrBanana]

Have you guys noticed how there are 6 teams and we have 6 wheats, 6 spices and 3 silvers? I wonder what the resource allocations are for the other teams. I bet one other team has silver while 2 teams have gold and 2 have gems. If this is true I hope the teams with gold have their food nerfed with rice or something.

To add on to this, maybe some people got iron and some got copper in that ph in the center.

 

[cav scout]

I'm sure strategic resources will be balanced for all the teams after the complaints from the previous game.

 

[peter grimes]

Would that be India with it's fast worker pumping out the improvements?

Let's not forget that the fast worker isn't actually any faster than our workers - he just gets an extra movement point. It's not as if he's building a mine in half the time... he's just starting the mine a turn sooner. True, he will end the mine a turn sooner, and start the next mine 2 turns sooner than us, ad seq., but it takes many turns for this effect to accumulate enough to be noticeable.

That having been said, I don't really know what turn we're on as I write this, so perhaps I'm full of bull.

Have you guys noticed how there are 6 teams and we have 6 wheats, 6 spices and 3 silvers? I wonder what the resource allocations are for the other teams. I bet one other team has silver while 2 teams have gold and 2 have gems. If this is true I hope the teams with gold have their food nerfed with rice or something.

VERY interesting! Let's not forget this as the game moves on!

 

[Earthling]

A bump for a couple of reasons. First, I honestly think we will make contact with some other team soon. Our workboats are rounding potential capes of this large continent and may find other islands another team is located on. I'd expect at least one of the workboats to find someone within 5-6 turns. (Another 10 tiles out for each, and they are already about that distance from our capital as the crow flies).

But the other thing is, I'm still really wondering if a couple of other teams have already made contact. This would basically be if two teams had sent workboats in the same direction towards each other - it's doable, given how long our workboats have been out, others could have done the same. This also ties in to the teams purposefully running out the timer - it's been India like 3-4 turns in a row, and this is what I'd expect of them if they had made contact - it's not like they don't have turnplayers around as several have been logging into the game. I'm not in a hurry as far as the timer is concerned and I think we Q have been wise not to get into the silly arguments other people were/still are having. But at the same time if somebody is "stalling" for some reason we could think about why that's so.

Further out - well demographics paint a really odd picture of what people could be doing. Maybe just a lot of settling/filling up their islands and nothing special. One team appears to be behind on all measures - population, production, food, and gnp - I'm guessing it's the same team lagging in last place on everything cause that makes the most sense.

Some team recently founded Hinduism and we haven't seen who that is yet afaik but they might be the ones now on path for more religious tech, the Oracle, or something like that. We should be good as soon as Stonehenge is in, an achievement to be happy about, and down the line we'll maybe even get our shrine.

Meanwhile, it's probably time to consider some ideas on how we'd want to tech trade (or just trade in general of course). If we tech Mathematics and Calendar, then the obvious techs we'd want to pick up would be Alphabet, maybe Iron Working if anyone went that route. So I think if we do make contact soon, particularly with a team that hasn't done their exploring right/doesn't have other contact, we might want to set something up like Math + ? for Alphabet if they'd have it. Anyway, the goal is to cultivate relations but get as much as we can out of things too, so we'll have to see. If we make contact with 2 (or more to come) teams then we have even more options, if we're devious enough to scam somebody out of tech and development and willing to pay diplomatic consequences for that. Regardless, as with previous games, I fully expect that some teams will be locking themselves in to massive tech trading/cooperative researching and we have to find some alliance to do so to in order to be competitive in the end; we want to be the winners and not the teams locked out with no allies.

 

[TyBoy]

Based on what we know about them personality-wise, what teams would we consider to be more desirable to ally with? If our workboats are as effective as we hope they are we may be able to meet all or nearly all of them in a small enough time frame to choose something other than the first one we meet.

 

[cav scout]

I can see us forming alliances with any of the teams, based more on position and first contact than personality. If we are on a hub map than it might make sense to want our two closest neighbors as allies. But i really see teams scrambling to form alliances immediately (to avoid being left out). So whoever we meet first should be strongly considered for an initial alliance. As the diplo situation shakes out we can always choose to discard them later.

Personality wise i know i can communicate effectively with Amazons for sure and also Merlot to to a lesser extent. Sirius and Mavericks seem like pretty conventional teams that we could realpolitik with as well. CDZs are a wild card for me, I barely know any of those guys.

 

[Earthling]

I really can't say are teams are managing internally. CDZ seem competent and if anything we go in on an even footing. Amazon I agree seems like a really fun team - I'm glad I'm a Q of course, but I can't see them not being a good call to work with. The others could have issues or not - I'm still waiting to see when the first "regicide" or whatever on MERLOT happens if they have major problems. Sirius and Mavericks I think will be aiming for optimal arrangements/basically just straight out trying to win the game, it's what they said from the start, so we'd just have to be careful of balance and possible backstabs and all.

But really, I agree it's important to get allies early, fast, and in a strong position to avoid being cornered, dogpiled in war, etc... so we'll see what the map gives us. Another day of workboats moving, we'll see if anything interesting comes up yet but I'm off to do that soon.

 

[Provolution]

I think I will hold my breath, till each workboat met a civilization each. These two particular meetings will dictate all further dialogue on this. It will be a rock, scissors and paper game with the traits, the uus and the ubs as well as geographical distance and contested resources.


I will wait 10 turns, then come with a few words.

 

[Earthling]

The Indian civilization has two cities, it seems they founded their second on turn 36 (score went up in the middle of the turn). Not sure who we're about to have contact with still, and also our second workboat heading NorthEast may find somebody in the near future too. We also should consider how we distribute espionage points and what we will tell civs about what we have explored. It's really feasible to tell either civ we "only sent out one workboat" and also tell them whatever we want about how far away our city is, since they have not sent explorers our way and it would take them a long time to really get to us. This is balanced by trust and trying to build up a good relationship, and then again it's easy to just say we can't really divulge what we've explored yet.

 

[cav scout]

I think we should avoid lying about things like "we only sent out one workboat" unless the short-terms gains look to be really really beneficial. You are right on the money Earthling when you say we don't have to divulge everything.

I think our default pattern of behavior with new teams should be warm and welcoming. We don't want to be over-the-top with a best friends forever attitude that would ring insincere. But we also don't want to be too guarded and off-putting. The image we want to project to other teams is friendly, confident, reasonable and relaxed.

A good way to get a healthy dialouge going and to build trust is to do a back and forth with information. For example, we can volunteer the first 3 techs we researched and ask them to respond in kind. We shouldn't be afraid to make a few information concessions early on in the spirit of goodwill.

 

[Provolution]

Well, we are not going to state we sent out more than one workboat. Plausible deniability. We will communicate to Mavericks as if they were the only one, but dont tell of others. At least we are not lying, just not telling all. Of course warm and heartfelt.

 

[Earthling]

Well, when we make contact with Mavericks at this point, we really don't know a thing about who we will meet next, and they will be the only contact for a few turns. So really, I don't expect them to tell us exactly what they built in their cities or their exact land- telling them we built two workboats and then Stonehenge is kinda compromising. They know we have contact with them and one workboat, that is a start, and of course I agree we do want a good relationship and should be welcoming. We can even share the kinda obvious stuff - like they might have six corn resources or something and when we say we have six wheat it's not a surprise on either side, and we'll perhaps want to trade anyway.

It's just with Mavericks and several of their players, plus their stated intentions, I fully don't expect them to be anything but hyper-analyzing. But they will be in a race to settle part of that continent and if we don't get together for a solid plan (agreement on techs and trading) don't want them getting too much ahead of us.

Lastly, I should say right now - I don't intend to log in and make any in-game moves with workboats right now, if we need a day or so to draft up potential messages to them and other diplomatic plans, I agree we should keep brainstorming here. Now maybe their culture stays just over the seas right now but there's a good chance the workboat pops it up this turn and we're not in a hurry.