QSC-c1 "Irritated Mao" game progress.

[LKendter]

Well I didn't research Chivalry.
I got it from England for 2 luxuries. I needed more then 20 turns to build a few riders. I then proceded to take out England in just 12 turns with a rider stack, enjoying a nice GA.

Let's just say my empire has been improved.


I know someone asked if 4 turn rate was possible -
<year deleted> Thanks to FP and the new English possessions - 4 turn research rate for steel [dance]

 

[hotrod0823]

Here are a couple of spreadsheet images that try to capture the barb activity over the first 90 turns:

This data was compiled based on the reports and tabulated to the best of my ability to capture what happend with barbs during the last 3 round.

The following chart is a quick "quantitative" evaluation of the barb attivity and the overall effect on the QSC score. This is solely based on the hard cost for units, gold and population.

It is interesting to note that the cost of barbs can go either direction. They can be a cheap source of cash or a source of nonstop misery . This chart is only a guide but gives a snapshot of how different approaches to barb activity can effect this stage of the game. How a player treats barbs, plans for barb attacks or uses existing forces to parole for barbs can have an immediate effect on the QSC score. How this "cost or benefit" plays our remains to be seen.

Hotrod

 

[hotrod0823]

Here is some information on how the barbs were handled by individual players:

Stwils: got ransacked and pillage multiple times.

SJF: Lost a settler. Had iron pillaged.

Cracker: Pulled military back to protect the frontier from barb camps.
Shut research down because there were many barb camps ready to explode at
the era change. The barbs go for Lizzy and Shaka instead

Lee: lost population again, delayed contact with other continent
because of barb galleys.

Swift: Either very luck or very good, no barb activity reported

charis: Galley was ambushed, zone defense worked sort of, lost 85 gold
to
ransacking barbs. With more uprising on the way.

Jaxom: Spends his gold on embassies rather than lose it to barbs. No
barb killings, pop loses or lost gold! He was at zero before the uprisings
began and moved all MPs out of the cities. Interesting choices, any
comments?? Began Theo at min science to generate cash for many many cash only rushes.

Hotrod: Got Hut barbs, pillaging 62 gold during the uprising. Lost another
11 gold to barbs, should've bought embassies, next turn formed 4. .
Lost an full health elite warrior to conscript warrior on a camp .

Borealis: Lost worker improvements, she survived the barb attacks with
some help of a nearby English city .

Zenga: started building archer just for barb hunting and a marketed
shift toward military in prep for inevitable uprising, various upgrades and
baracks built. Lost galley to barbs.

Steve: Moved worker away from barbs. Barb pillage iron. Shifted production to warrior in Canton because of barbs.


Hotrod

 

[JaxomCA]

Hotrod, I forgot to note in my report that I later dispersed both camps responsible for the uprising. One of them was halfway between an English town and one of mine, all 16 horses came to my town, which was defended by a single regular warrior. I lost 5 shields worth of production on that attack. The other city was also facing 16 horses, had just built a worker and was size 1 with no shields accumulated. It was defended by a single regular spear that I couldn't replace soon, hence the reason of the strategic pull back.

Some people are getting awfully rich on the poor barbs back, maybe they should start a business? Rent-a-Merc to solve all your pesky barbaric troubles.

 

[hotrod0823]

Just looking at the overall effect of the barbs on QSC score it appears that Crackers method of "partroling for barbs" was the most effective. By dedicating fast moving horses to barb detail cracker was able to effectively utilize barb huts for treasury generation and subsequently kill the barb threat on the local cities very quickly thus reducing the possibilty of barb attack on population, garrissoned units or city improvements.

Getting 25 gold by killing a poorly defended barb camp is a like a 10-20% bonus of gold. It allows rapid growth in city improvements (through rush builds) or a quickened tech pace allowing research to be increased due to the extra gold available. As shown above Cracker and SJF were the best at using the barbs to there advantage.

From the data above the pack(ie the rest of us) used the barb camps to maintain the status quo. Most of the cash generated through camp dispersal was either lost in the form of killed units or actually taken back by pillaging barbs.

Possibly of more importance are the other costs associated with the barb activity. Theos move toward military units and barracks: Did this shift slow the push for libraries and new technology?

Lee lost population and at this stage the cost of 2 citizens quite possibly be more than just the 40 points. What about the lost shields and commerce from that worker? Not to mention the delayed contact because of barb galleys.

Many had iron pillaged. Even with industrious workers getting new roads will take many worker turns costing the civ the ability to build advanced units such as swordsmen or riders, not to mention the extra shields if it was mined or the extra commerce.

Here are some important things I noticed in reading all about the barbs:

* Barbs must be prepared for and dealt with or they can be very costly, not just in lost gold or units.

* Don't just wait for barbs to come. Be proactive, use horses with 2 attack and 2 movement to disperse camps quickly and efficiently. By allowing camps to form then seeking them out barb camps can be a very effective tool to increase cash flow.

* Use the tech pacing to allow the player to prepare for massive uprisings. It seems to me a few players knew extactly when the uprisings were coming and were ready, they depleated gold, moved units effectively to minimize the uprising effect.

Hotrod

I am sure there are more issues that can be discussed.

 

[cracker]

Hotrod,

You just officially graduated to the next level. No longer will we be spotting you a unit or two or a short stack of gold to compensate for the fact you do not know about the barb cash cow.

barb farming is a specialty that takes a little practice but can really help things out in the intermediate period before expansion fully fills the world.

If you look at my net available income per turn in Jaxom's table you can see that the number was 93gpt. The 275 gold from 11 barb camps during the previous 10 turn period was like giving my civ almost a 30% increase in commerce for each turn (actually I had just comp out of despotism and anarchy so the percent impact was even greater).

Also the total gold earned at 275 was equivalently equal to 3 full turns of the total available commerce from my Chinese empire. At least 3 more turns of margin for higher tech research expenses at a higher than normal rate that would drive a deficit in our economy.

Great work on the analysis and data

(my pieces will be available shortly. )

 

[Charis]

Hotrod, thanks for the effort in producing that nice table. (Kudos to all doing similar tables or graphs - interesting stuff!)

cracker - I look forward to your post and to the next set. I certainly hope you're planning to go forward to launch! Speaking of which... (and speaking of fast tech pace)... how often do you get to use Manhattan as a placeholder for the last component?? (Almost got to use Suffrage for that ) My game completion was quite interesting, and I'm dying to see how a few key issues played out in other games. (For example, did the treehuggers have to contend with large swarms of irritators?) Others have expressed definite interest in seeing this to completion - any thoughts on how to do this? Set a date for folks to post summaries of action from last QSC turn to their launch?

If so, I would suggest/ask that such summaries include the following:
- Year of... FP, GA, entering Industrial Era, entering Modern, launch
- When you reached 'consistent' 4-turn research (year and tech),
and how many non-optional techs you got from AI's in Industrial and Modern Era (total)
- Final treasury and income
- Final number of cities and foreign workers
- What optional techs did you research yourself?
- What tech you're researching at last QSC report and how long til it's complete?
If folks provide this, I would volunteer to tabulate!

Charis

 

[cracker]

My apologies again for having my time schedule get in the way of getting these support graphics up for your to use.

Here is the power progression graph for all players through 775bc

Note that stwils has cloned herself and appears as stwils++ for the turns continued from Lee's 1526bc save. (Apologies for the pink to gray color contrast but we are pushing the available color differences for highly compressed images).

theos has also reappeared as the red line of date since I asked zenga to fill in and pick up from the theos save file for turn 30. The data for the intermediate turns for theos (40,50,60) is interpolated from his actual scores for turns 30 and turns 70. All theos data for turns 70, 80, 90 reflects actual values extracted from the uploaded save files.

 

[cracker]

Here is the data table to reflect all game positions current as of 775bc: (note that this table is getting large at 63kb since we are keeping the tech data fully exposed to display how the techs are acquired by different players).

The best way to view this table is actually to right click on the image file and save it to your harddrive and then open it in a seperate window that will let you page back to view turns reports and other data while the table can be toggled into your view.

Several highlights to note in the table:

1) yellow boxes in the units area are intended to highlight casualties that I think occured.
2) orange boxes for galleys indicate areas that are having a negative impact on the progress of the games of these players at this point in time. We shall see if these shortcomings heal themselves.
3) the light blue boxes in the tech areas are techs that the player has but that I did not pick up a method for classifying how the tech was acquired.
4) the green boxes in theos's column are techs he got out of the Great Library gambit.

---------

Ghengis "we don't need no stinkin' embassies and workers are for wimps" Charis is definately robbing all the credit unions to build a stash of cash since he is running out of victims to whack. We can also see evidence that his Chinese people may be elitest slackers who do not know how to work industriously, preferring instead to rely on the poor unfortunate slave/immigrants from the oppressed neighbors of the Chinese hordes.

I did not pull graphics to display this comparison but found it interesting to look at the population distributions in the towns in some players games. Hotrod's game in 1275bc is almost perfectly balanced with most towns oscillating to 2-3-4 pop range and other players have a few big cities while most towns languish in the 1-2 range.

Jaxom's version of the Chinese Civilization earns the distinction of being the second China to begin to appreciate the value of learning and enhance commerce for the civilian population.

theos earns the honor of being the first Dynasty to build a great wonder. The question remains to be seen if this wonder will prove to offer a net positive strategic value.

--------
I again must apologize for having heavy time commitments at this point in time because I noted a number of interesting features that could be compared and discussed. Just extracting minimaps from the military advisor inset screen provides some interesting perspective of the current status of civ development in each game plus a better perspective of the physical appearance of teh empires as detailed in the text of the turns reports. (an example of this sort of comparison was posted late in the handyandy game thread.)

 

[cracker]

I prepared one additional specialized graph from the data to facilitate further discussion.

This graph displays the power progressions for the two sets of players who have played from common intermediate save for timepoints after the initail start and includes the cracker line form reference.

A particularly interesting comparison in this graph can be drawn between the zenga and theos data since the share a common timeline point for turn 30. theos has pursued the Great Library gambit of pouring sheilds into the wonder will amassing cash and this compares to zenga's approach that is more like the other players in that it relies on agressive trading, contacts, and parallel research to climb through the tech tree quickly. It will remain to be seen if the approach used by theos will results in regaining parity with zenga in subsequent rounds.

Stwils is hanging close to Lee, but the graph combines with the 775bc data table to show an almost immediate down trend due to the slightly different choices in the build queue. Some discussion of these specific choices would be beneficial if adjustments might be warranted at this early stage.

 

[cracker]

Charis,

I applaud and appreciate your efforts to facilitate conclusion of this game beyond the turn 120 save point. Please feel free to proceed with that effort and I encourage all players to participate.

It might be logistically better to plan on opening a separate but similarly named discussion thread specifically for that purpose so that the concluding progression can be addressed separately. There is considerable value in providing a slight break between these two piecse of the game because the late game play will include opportunities to discuss the 4 non-standard unit play issues and to share screen shots of the multicolored "irritators if they appear.

Playing out the finish of the game might include a deliberate shift to a non-space race track once the basic conclusions of this early exercise may become obvious.

My increased admin tasks will probably combine with the severely wounded .sav game file status to push me into the background as play progresses. The exploded condition of the save files for my game due to that compression bug are now taking and extra 4 to 5 minutes to transition between turns even on a lightning fast CPU.

I will try to keep pace for as long as life support holds out. It will be interesting if players find any value in the "irritators", "migrants", and/or "helicopters that might have a use."

 

[LKendter]

@cracker - I know picking up GOTM has killed your time for other stuff


Is this the LAST graph for the game?
If so - OUCH - my next 30 got contact and a slew of techs.


Is there anymore official QSC turns?

 

[JaxomCA]

Charis, I'll definitely want to see this to completion. The QSC scoring doesn't come close to reflect the power of my game (or so I think). I have completed my game and will upload the key events whenever it is agreed to do so. I can't wait to see how badly the warmongers were hurt be the global impoverishment of the world.

 

[hotrod0823]

I too intent to play to completion without changing games. I think it would be interesting to see if the QSC is a true correlation to when the lauch will take place. I think "officially" 3 more 10 turn rounds remain, but I believe that a majority of the players would like to see the game complete.

Hotrod

 

[Charis]

Excellent, glad to see many are going to finish it.

cracker - as yes, congrats on the double-edged sword of GOTM leadership, they couldn't pick a better guy for it!
ouch on the save files - on the plus side, knowing how your game is going so far, you'll reach many of those timepoints earlier than we will, and some useful extrapolation might be possible, even if you can't make it to launch.

I think we have one more set of 30 turns as the final 'planned' set of results. Actually, you see that big treasury I have? The sound of impending hoofbeats do a real number on me. I actually was planning for the invasion and thought I was ready, then realized... my one 'beachhead' city was totally indefensible. And did you guys know you can't form embassies in Anarchy?! (sobs)
It'll be good to see where Lee stands now that quantum leap of contacts registers.

I'm happy with the 'uptick' in the Genghis line, I was wondering if or when it would come - although next round might see it tail off again Like Jaxom though, I feel the QSC isn't catching full appreciation of the players "power" in game - I look forward to seeing how he does, and actually... how detrimental to game pace was the slaughtering of countless thousands on the picturesque chinese landscape??

Charis

PS in Edit

cracker...

- Have you ever plotted those graphs with a log y-axis? The slope of the line at any point then is the "growth coefficient" for an exponential formula, and would more clearly show how growth changes as a function of time. With a regular plot there's emphasis just on the 'latest' turns

- What's next after you get settled in with GOTM and after this one has run its course? Emperor or Deity QSC?!

- Any interest in a succession game?

 

[cracker]

- there will be one more QSC graph set for the 100,110,120 round.

After that I will make the spreadsheet available for download and use by all players.

.. more later,

 

[LKendter]

@Charis -
FYI How close I was for contacts in this round.

690 BC - Well the other continent is known, but I didn’t find it
We begin a massive trading session that starts by giving India feudalism.
When it is all done we net 6 contacts, $183, Monotheism, Engineering, Monarchy, and a complete wm of the other side of the world. I think that qualifies as a huge jump in power


The tech pace of this game is still insane. I finished the fp in xxxxxx and was building rails to speed up productions. This was a realitvely early fp

I am thinking of running a QSC myself *AFTER* the holidays. What I can't figure out is how to easily count all the builds, slaves, etc.

 

[LKendter]

@Cracker -

I thought you already mentioned it, but I can't find it.
Where is the thread that talks about how to run a QSC.

 

[cracker]

Lee,

I openned that discussion thread here on 11/21:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37218

but that was the day before I was visited in my sleep by the "three ghosts of GOTM" and you can see how much I have gotten back to that topic since then.

I still have this on my to do list and think it is a high priorty. If you can give me a week, then we can use that discussion thread to develop/cover/share the things that I think see to work so far.

I have existing spreadsheets plus we are developing an external scoring utility that will ease the process.

Within the Games of the Month Arena we will continue to support open QSC games for all players but the progression game format for a registered group of players will be a format that continues to hold alot of value due to the 10 turn snapshots that faciltate broader data analysis and comparison. I personally learn new things every time I particpate in one of these games regardless of what difficulty and conditions may apply.

Let's pick up this discussion in that other thread sometime next week and invite anyone else who may care to participate to do so in the other thread so that we do not clutter up the flow of this game too much. (It's such a pretty thread )

 

[LKendter]

Sounds good -
Among other, I will want the spread sheets, etc to run one.


Let everyone know when to post the next 3 rounds - I have them done