SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[mdy]

That said, I tend to believe what you say in that I, personally, have seen anecdotal evidence that Opening Borders tends to increase the chance of Religious spread.

If I remember rightly opening borders doubles the chance of religion spread. Given that it would set us back a lot if her religion spread to more than one GP farm I think this is worth it.

Regardless, I would also prefer it if one of our Cities got her Religion. Yes, yes, it may cost us, say, 120 additional Hammers for 2 Missionaries to spread our State Religion to the City that gets her Religion (2 times 60 Hammers... one Missionary failing and then another one succeeding).

There's also the cost of the monastry because we are unlikely to be able to trade for monotheism soon enough, and we are extremely hammer poor.

I think that this small cost is well worth even being able to bribe a single AI into a war... wouldn't it be reasonable to pay a cost cheaper than 2 Axemen in order to make an AI bribeable against another AI? Chances are that we'll have the tech lead with which to bribe AIs into war with each other; our tricky point will getting them Pleased or Friendly enough to want to take our techs in exchange for a war delcaration.

I don't think so given that we don't have much production. If the AI's go to war it may also lead to 1 AI becoming much stronger, or give us 2 AI's which would have more units than usual, there is no guarantee that it wouldn't hinder us more than help us. This is especially important as the delayed COL means her religion will have longer to spread to us first.

6. Delaying the Gold library jeopardizes our CoL run. It's not just the GS-born-on date.

Getting our seafood pillaged would also delay it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

The thing to do is play out a test save and see how a galley attack compares to a galleon attack. Speculation, in my experience, is very deceptive.

We should just play and upload. DOn't worry about other teams and info. It's more fun to know what other teams are doing. Let them know what we're doing too. All good.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Anyone thought about how the barbs got Sailing so fast? I assume this means that all teams will have this problem. If that's the case, then I think our only real concern is the CoL date. If we have to delay the Pyramids a bit, along with our general empire expansion, that's no different than anyone else.

I'm pretty sure Willem didn't have polytheism for most of my turnset, if he has it now. We can hope that he'd be going for monotheism and with us getting the Oracle next turn, he'll lose interest in Priesthood. Personally, I think we should still go for AH before CoL, as long as our research doesn't get sabotaged too much by the barbs.

I agree with Mitchum that this is a good time to take a fresh look at the galley versus galleon plans. Galleons will clearly start warring later. Which will finish first?

 

[babybluepants]

I was wondering about the barb Sailing date, as well. I thought you and I figured out 1000 BC at the earliest, so I put it to the back of my mind (also considering Oracle MC). I guess it's really not that much faster. The AI's just all researched it quickly, which makes sense on this map.

If we didn't go for Astro, Colossus would be right back on the table, btw. That would potentially mean settling on copper quickly and maybe foregoing Mids so Paris can build it.

The Pyramids are quite cool for PS. With stone, it's the equivalent of getting a forge in every city for the cost of 375h (or 2.1 forges) - when building units, that is. Actually, come to think of it, does PS even apply to ships? No? On the other hand, it's a pretty major investment at an early date that we could turn into some quicker settlers and galleys. I'm not 100% sold on it, but happy to go along with the current plan should that be near consensus.

I was thinking of studying the map a bit more carefully today or tmr, to see if we can start to deduce the domination limit requirement. Settler-spamming on 3-tile islands is as much of a logistical PITA as chasing down all AI cities perhaps, but it still might help if we can avoid troop transport in one direction altogether (such as to England maybe).

My general feel from playing fast domination is that the sooner you start capturing cities, the sooner you win. It does seem about that simple, and has to do with how many cities you can take down before they get exponentially tougher (with culture bonuses, then LB's, etc.) Why I've been sorta against Astro all along. This map doesn't actually strike me as very difficult to navigate. The problem is only getting enough of a production base to crank out maces, cats and ships in a large enough volume. That speaks to a focus on expansion and city development in the late BC's, ahead of any tech or wonder chasing. I wouldn't pretend to know the right way to go, however. Maybe playing out the test map would help, as LC suggested.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If I remember rightly opening borders doubles the chance of religion spread. Given that it would set us back a lot if her religion spread to more than one GP farm I think this is worth it.

There's also the cost of the monastry because we are unlikely to be able to trade for monotheism soon enough, and we are extremely hammer poor.

I don't think so given that we don't have much production. If the AI's go to war it may also lead to 1 AI becoming much stronger, or give us 2 AI's which would have more units than usual, there is no guarantee that it wouldn't hinder us more than help us. This is especially important as the delayed COL means her religion will have longer to spread to us first.

Okay, you have presented some convincing arguments. So, sure, we can Close Borders with Isabella when the timing is right.


Of course, Closing Borders shuts down some of our Foreign Trade Routes, so the timing of when we do so needs to co-incide with Opening Borders with another AI. I understood that, at least for now, our plan is to keep Borders Closed with Cathy (The Great Lighthouse owner) and Willem (aka Joao in our test game, due to his potential competition for being the first to Code of Laws). So, I'm not sure if we can Clsoe Borders with Isabella until we meet another AI (Ragnar? Mystery AI?). By the way, are we sure that it's Ragnar? From the screenshot that showed the pinkish/purplish Cultural colouring, it looked to me at first like India, but I admit that I didn't open the real game to check for this detail.


If we miss founding Confucianism, though, maybe it will be worthwhile to re-open Open Borders with Isabella, so that we can hope to at least get SOME SORT of Religion.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Anyone thought about how the barbs got Sailing so fast? I assume this means that all teams will have this problem.

If so, then it at least makes up a bit for any team that got an early Sailing and settled Gold City, as they then gave the Barbs a bit of a boost on Sailing.

I'm pretty sure Willem didn't have polytheism for most of my turnset, if he has it now.

Well, it could be that our strong Work Boat exploration led to the AIs piggy-backing off of our research, meaning that because we knew Sailing and because we met them, we encouraged more AIs to research Sailing.

So, I suppose that it's possible that Willem had recently learned Sailing instead of Polytheism (or had learned Sailing as a prior tech).


If we Open Borders with an AI that does not have Sailing but to whom we have a line-of-sight path, we will get their Foreign Trade Routes but I think that they will not get ours. Would it be possible to examine the Demographic screenshots combined with the dates that we Opened Borders in order to guess if an AI got Foreign Trade Routes from us and thereby must know Sailing?

Actually, I have no idea what happens if the AI has Sailing but does not "see" the Coast to our Cities while we see the Coast to theirs. Perhaps some World Buildering in a test game is in order, where we use Great Spies to see into the AIs' Cities and then selectively give them visibility/take it away in a Coastal path between our Cities and theirs.

We can hope that he'd be going for monotheism and with us getting the Oracle next turn, he'll lose interest in Priesthood. Personally, I think we should still go for AH before CoL, as long as our research doesn't get sabotaged too much by the barbs.

Having a Pig to Pasture will help to keep our Workers productive and gives us a nice square to use (the Pig) for whipping purposes. It would also be nice to know if Chariots are still an option... we believe that the 'Ducks learned Animal Husbandry relatively early, so it would be nice to know if it's possible for them to have spammed some Chariots.

I agree with Mitchum that this is a good time to take a fresh look at the galley versus galleon plans. Galleons will clearly start warring later. Which will finish first?

Sure, whoever is good at and enjoys macro-level testing can step in and give us a feel for how quickly we could raise an army to be shipped via Galleys. Would the assumption be that we could World Build ourselves a Horse Resource? Would we instead assume that we'd have to settle on top of the Copper in order to make it work?

 

[LowtherCastle]

So now both Berlin's plot and Moscow's plot are part of my home plotgroup -- I have established a trade network connection Berlin --> Moscow traderoute: in the scoreboard). This connection is unidirectional, since Peter hasn't sent a Workboat yet, so his home plotgroup only comprises his gray patch and the adjacent tiles he has revealed, but not Berlin's tile. This means that we can both trade resources, but only I can benefit from a trade route Berlin --> Moscow.

They can have Sailing but still not a trade network.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Pyramids are quite cool for PS. With stone, it's the equivalent of getting a forge in every city for the cost of 375h (or 2.1 forges) - when building units, that is. Actually, come to think of it, does PS even apply to ships?

Police State, as well as The Heroic Epic and Military Academies, treats boats as "Military Units" and thus the bonus Hammers do apply. This fact even extends to giving us bonus Hammers on Work Boats, whether by design or due to programmer oversight.

On the other hand, it's a pretty major investment at an early date that we could turn into some quicker settlers and galleys. I'm not 100% sold on it, but happy to go along with the current plan should that be near consensus.

My understanding was that:
1. If we expand too much, then we'll risk collapsing our economy; the pace that we have chosen to expand at seems to be a good pace
AND
2. We want to run 4+ Specialists in a couple of Cities, which is going to require an extra source of Happiness. Enter: Monarchy? Hmmm, maybe, as we could then skip The Pyramids but would need to spam Military Units and pay upkeep costs for them. Or, easier, and without requiring us to build units too soon, enter: Representation, giving us +3 Happiness in up to 5 Cities. "Easier" meaning at the cost of expanding a bit more slowly, which helps us from crashing our economy.


I think that the current lack of a Strategic Military Resource is what makes an early rush an unpleasant endeavour (which was clearly planned by DynamicSpirit, what with putting Jungle on our source of Copper).

The Barbs having Galleys also makes rushing an AI a greater challenge, since, if I understand things correctly, we basically have to keep "swatting away Barb Galleys," and that as soon as one dies, another one will crop up somewhere else.

I think that we'd have more of an issue with "not Axe rushing" if we were going to wait for Cavalry or Riflemen before attacking... but, instead, it sounds like we're going to wait for Galleons and Catapults... with the possibility of using Axes, Swords, or Maces (or a combination thereof if it takes us a few turns to research Civil Service).


Also, having a weak capital for Bureaucracy (no Rivers, no worked Cottages) makes a Civil Service beeline a less attractive option in my mind.

Even a Catapult beeline, which isn't totally out of the cards if we really want to slightly switch gears and try it (i.e. shipping over Catapults and support units via Galleys), would duplicate AI research on Math.

Still, given our lack of Strategic Resources, if we really want an early rush, then heading towards Construction (hopefully, immediately after getting Math in trade, but possibly self-teching Math after Code of Laws since we will need it for a Philosophy Lightbulb anyway) is not a bad approach.

Even just building 1 single Catapult can make an early rush far more successful, since Cultural defences are usually what make Archers good at fending off Axemen and Swordsmen attackers, although having additional Catapults in order to inflict Collateral damage is of course "better." But, if we're talking about a relatively early rush, you can't necessarily have "better" but instead need to "make do with a smaller amount of high-quality units."

We should just play and upload. DOn't worry about other teams and info. It's more fun to know what other teams are doing. Let them know what we're doing too. All good.

Okay, yes, that perspective is a good one to take. Sure, we can upload the game whenever, then. Besides, it makes it easier if we can take advantage of the server resources available to us, instead of trying to pass the saved game back and forth via attachments, which could also lead to confusion (although the confusion would be harder to come by with all of the "REAL GAME" and "TEST GAME" signs that we have spammed! ).

 

[babybluepants]

Sure, whoever is good at and enjoys macro-level testing can step in and give us a feel for how quickly we could raise an army to be shipped via Galleys. Would the assumption be that we could World Build ourselves a Horse Resource? Would we instead assume that we'd have to settle on top of the Copper in order to make it work?

I'd like to do some macro-testing, but we'll have to see how much time I have this week. Good questions on resources... Axes are better than chariots here anyway, but I wonder about iron. What should we assume for that?

There's a bit of problem with the level of AI development in our test game, too... Whatever, doesn't matter...

Edit: xpost

 

[Dhoomstriker]

but I wonder about iron. What should we assume for that?

Given that we require Iron Working in order to access our Copper (without settling on the Copper), I would imagine that Iron would pop up somewhere within our Cultural Borders upon learning Iron Working.

If I were the map designer, that's probably how I'd do it... "I have made you wait and EARN your Copper, so, now, here's Iron for free, hahahahaha! " Okay, maybe it wouldn't be so malicious... it would be more like "good work, you have earned the use of Copper, so I'll be nice an let you build Swordsmen, if you'd like to do so, too!"

There's a bit of problem with the level of AI development in our test game, too...

Feel free to edit the test game and upload a newer copy with the same date that has lesser-advanced AIs (i.e. AI Cities burned and the corresponding improvements razed).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

They can have Sailing but still not a trade network.

Well, we know that Vicky and Cathy have mapped-out Coastal access paths to us, as we saw their Work Boats show up next to our Cultural borders.

Perhaps Opening Borders with Willem isn't such a bad thing if his Work Boat has yet to appear near our Cultural borders?

Opening Borders with Willem would allow us to Close Borders with Isabella as soon as our Work Boat no longer needs access to her territory, should he be unable to benefit from Foreign Trade Routes. She'll likely cancel the Open Borders' deal soon after we convert to a different Religion, anyway.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Religion Basics

Spreading the Word

After a religion has been founded, there are too vectors by which it may spread to another city.

Spontaneous Conversion

At the end of each player's turn, each of his cities is checked against each religion to see if the city will spontaneously convert to that religion. To be eligible, the city must be free of religions, and must be Trade Network Connected to the holy city.

Trade Network connected means almost what it sounds like; there must be a connection between the converted city and the holy city - that is, the cities must be part of the same plot group. Plot groups are determined by explicit routes (roads, railroads), and terrain routes (oceans, rivers, coastline). These latter types depend on which technologies have been discovered by the owner(s) of the cities. Why almost? Because cities can connect through a closed border.

Two factors determine the probability that the city will convert, given that it is connected to the holy city.

The first factor is plot distance, expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible plot distance on the map.

Two different distance terms are used in CIV. Step distance treats diagonals as one unit of distance. Plot distance treats them as roughly 1.5. When you watch a city expand its cultural borders, you are seeing it expand using plot distance​

In an unmodded game, you'll observe about 10% per turn if you are in the immediate neighborhood of the holy city, falling off to 0.1% at the furthest corners of the map.

The second factor is the amount of influence the holy city has - the only building which affects the influence is the shrine, which doubles the probability that the religion will spread.

Although all of the religions are checked each turn, the test is interrupted if the city converts, so you will only see one spontaneous conversion in a city. The religions are checked in order, so there's a probably-not-perceptible bias in favor of Judaism.

OBs borders has no effect on religion spread. We are trade network connected to Izzy and each of our cities can get (one of) her religion(s) each turn.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Willem's wb has been to Paris and is now visible to the S of Marble.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

OBs borders has no effect on religion spread. We are trade network connected to Izzy and each of our cities can get (one of) her religion(s) each turn.

While I agree that a Trade Network connection is necessary for Religion to auto-spread (having Open Borders without a Trade Network connection will not auto-spread a Religion), I am relatively convinced that having a Trade Route from a particular City will give your City a GREATER chance to receive a Religion which the Trade-Route-connected City has (say, an extra dice roll is thrown in the code somewhere).

I am also relatively convinced that building a Temple or a Monastery gives a one-time extra dice roll's chance of spreading the related Religion on the following turn.


Just because one part of the code mainly deals with Trade Networks does not mean that another part of the code doesn't also factor in Trade Routes and the construction of the relevant Temples/Monasteries.

Now, I admit that I haven't seen evidence of such in the code, but that's because I haven't looked for it. That said, I played almost purely Cultural Victories for years, so I've focused a lot on Religion-spreading. I may be wrong, but those are my beliefs based on anecdotal evidence.

Willem's wb has been to Paris and is now visible to the S of Marble.

Still, if that's the case, then we don't really want to Open Borders with him and we're stuck with Isabella for now anyway.

 

[shyuhe]

I took a look at the save and have a few thoughts.

1. The AI's land looks gorgeous. It looks like the map is designed so that we get all the crummy islands near us while the AI gets lush grassland without jungle cover. How else does Cathy get two free grassland gems!!

2. The AI are far from us. By my count, it's about a 7 turn sail to Vicky and about 9 turns to Willem. With galleons, we're looking about half that cost -- actually a bit less since we don't have to hug the coastline.

3. The purple is Ragnar.

4. Are the Pyramids really necessary to crank up our research rate?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Dhoom: CvCity::doReligion(). Check it out. Forget your wive's tales... THink about it, Dhoom, why would there be two methods for autospreading religion?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Shyuhe, here's a link that probalby ought to be added to the first page:

I searched for this, but couldn't find it, so took a code dive to post it here. Here is the formula for turns of anarchy length when changing civics. The code is at getCivicAnarchyLength in CvPlayer.cpp. [] means round down to integer. This assumes anarchy is actually occurring, of course; no Spiritual trait or Golden Age or Cristo Redentor.

[([(1* + CivicsChanged** + [Cities × MapFactor / 100]) × SpeedFactor / 100]) × StartingEraFactor / 100]

* This is BASE_CIVIC_ANARCHY_LENGTH from GlobalDefines.xml. It is 1 in the standard unmodded game.

** This is defined per each civic in CIV4CivicInfos.xml. Every civic is 1 in the standard game.

MapFactor is from iNumCitiesAnarchyPercent in CIV4WorldInfo.xml.
11 Duel
10 Tiny
9 Small
8 Standard
7 Large
6 Huge

SpeedFactor is iAnarchyPercent in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml.
67 Quick
100 Normal
150 Epic
200 Marathon (yes another factor that favors Marathon for HOF type score play)

StartingEraFactor is iAnarchyPercent in CIV4EraInfos.xml
50 Ancient
50 Classical
40 Medieval
40 Renaissance
34 Industrial
34 Future
34 Modern

The function also multiplies the anarchy time by 1 + m_iAnarchyModifier (by calling getAnarchyModifier()) but it seems that this is always zero in the unmodded game. So here is a short version omitting some of the rounding and divisions by 100 and assuming an ancient start:

(1 + Civics + [Cities × MapFactor / 100]) × SpeedFactor × 0.5

I'll elaborate a little more on that one factor of [Cities × Map factor / 100]. This is what makes civic changes take longer later. It is not due to the game date or to any previous civic changes; it is driven only by your number of cities. Every N cities counts as one additional "ghost" civic change. On a normal map, it's every 100 / 8 = 12.5 cities. So your 13th city, 25th, 38th, 50th, and so on each cause extra anarchy.

This explains why you can change 2 civics in 1 turn on normal speed, but not epic speed (assuming no city count penalty.) On normal speed, the anarchy length comes out to (1 + 2 + 0) × 1 × 0.5, which is 1.5 rounded down to 1. On epic speed, the same operation comes to (1 + 2 + 0) × 1.5 × 0.5 = 2.25 rounded down to 2.

Bottom line is, revolting to Rep+CS+Pacifism+Confu = 4t anarchy, which is confirmed by my testing. Just thought I'd let you guys know, since I've seem some posts that indicated otherwise. I still think the Pyramids pay off.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

THink about it, Dhoom, why would there be two methods for autospreading religion?

I could probably think up countless reasons if I set my mind to the task, but a simple one comes to mind: two different programmers working on two different parts of the code.

As much as you'd like to believe that most software is object-oriented and has good code-reuse, rarely are those things true in practice. I've seen many times software developers who sit right next to each other rewriting nearly identical methods, with the "nearly" part causing unexpected or unpredictable behaviour depending upon which of their methods gets called.


To prove me wrong, you'd pretty much have to look through all of the rest of the code OUTSIDE of CvCity::doReligion().

So, where is it that you are looking for the code, anyway? Is it just in the "{CIV4--or whatever you called it}\Beyond the Sword\CvGameCoreDLL\" directory?


A simple possibility is that different parts of the code call doReligion(), such as whenever a Temple is constructed. Another possibility is that a different method entirely (which would be hard to search for) can also cause Religion to be spread.



As for Anarchy, it sounds like we'd need to switch 4 Civics at once in order to "save a turn," but we won't have any Legal or Economy Civics that we can switch to, so I guess that you are right: 1 turn of Anarchy per Civic swap.

I don't see how we'd get a Golden Age in time to help us with the switching, unless you seriously think that manually-researching Philosophy (only if we found Confucianism) is worth 4 turns of saved Anarchy (i.e. using the Great Scientist on a Golden Age instead of on Lightbulbing Philosophy). It might only be 3 turns' worth of saved Anarchy if we end up converting to Confucianism for Happiness purposes.

Then again, we might not convert to Confucianism early on if it means getting things like a Gem Resource from Cathy early on in trade, should she happen to be running a conflicting Religion when she has these 2 Gems of hers connected.


Also, given that we see Barb Galleys and that we'd like a Forge in Paris, I don't see us switching gears and using The Oracle on Code of Laws. Metal Casting it is.

 

[babybluepants]

Ok, I just did a really quick run to 425 BC. Went Alpha-Currency-Machinery. The idea is to trade for Math and COL by the time we need them. Math looks likely, but COL is only had by one AI so far. GS made an academy.

Impression: where are the damn axes? Can't see them. Can't see any ships, either. Not even forges and barracks. Nada.

Production will be a problem here. Seems like forge+barracks x 7-8 will take us close to 1 AD, and that with some whip anger stacked.

I'll be playing around tmr and this weekend, I think...

 

[LowtherCastle]

Dhoom: Programs\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\CvGameCoreDLL\CvCity.cpp is where it's located for me. Separate from the saves branch, which falls under My Documents.

I hear what you're saying about programming, but Sid doesn't seem to command his flotilla that way. CIV is pretty tightly programmed. Sure, some areas are more complex, like warfare, but most things are pretty simple.

But if you want to test it, then do it right: Worldbuild the Holy City in a city in the middle of an all-1tile-islands map and build cities every 2 tiles in every direction. Run, say, 4 (or 8) civs, each having the same city pattern. GIve half OBs, half not. THen just start hitting <enter> and after 50 or 100 turns run your statistics. YOu'll see that some OB civs have a religion spread or two more, some one or two less than the non-OB civs.

I did exaclty this with forest spread once, except it was all land. I came up with the exact % of spread, then the next day Gyathaar came out with the actual code and my results were confirmed.