SGOTM 21 - Jag älskar er

[ChrisShaffer]

I realize that I am old fashioned, but some of those city names make me uncomfortable. Thank you Chris, for picking the appropriate ones.

I have no idea what this is about, but I guess I'm glad I randomly picked the right names!

I love spreadsheets. I removed about 30,000 of the blank cells, as google sheets will load better on some devices without all the extra space, and, while high, there is a quota on cells you can have in your drive. And I am a bit anal retentive.

Weird, that's just the cells it starts with when you create a new blank sheet. I have several thousand Google Drive spreadsheets and have never had a problem. Anyway, it's fine that you deleted the extra cells. Everyone should feel welcome to use and edit the spreadsheet.

Can we get EP points totals for all three known relationships, top 5 cities, and religion screen, please?

Sure. You can look at these yourself, of course, in the current save. And I'll manually save a file every turn that we can reference.

In regard to scouting, I am about to test other things and will check to see what the limits of our scouting are. I think our best options will be either A) fur island or B) west of Sötnos (aka city 3 aka cow city). Going toward the fish and plains island takes too much time and doesn't reveal much. Our warrior will be scouting that area from the coast anyway.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Espionage, Top 5 Cities, and Religion screens.

Spoiler :

 

[ChrisShaffer]

OK, testing has revealed that the capital needs deer/crab/mine followed by deer/crab/fur for maximum hammers and growth on turn 32.

Also, having the workboat explore Sötnos (aka cow city) is preferable. We get more territory revealed, but more importantly we get more fogbusting of our city site. Circling fur island actually reveals very few tiles, and we will easily be able to do it later.

Two turns of 0% research is enough for animal husbandry (plus archery if needed).

About to play in perhaps 15 minutes. Rebooting computer and hooking up to the big monitor.

Edit - craziness has ensued in the house, and then I have to take my daughter to a Doubleclicks concert, back this evening to play. The plan is updated in the spreadsheet and I'm ready to go.

 

[ecawilson]

when there are no random events, what sort of emergencies can be solved by gold at this time? I just can't think of anything. The other reasons for binary make sense, and are good enough for me. I will try to implement that in my own games.

I wasn't sure on downloading the game, I don't know the rules: obviously I won't play ahead, but I didn't know if anything else were restricted if it weren't my turn. Thank you.

And yes, the quota is insanely large, like nothing a normal person would ever reach... but in my past life I was project manager for a team that created billions of fields a day, so I am overly sensitive (anal retentive) on table sizes.

I agree with the scouting strategies put forth. I think that scouting west is necessary, but I don't think we uncover more than 2 land tiles and we will get that with our fog busting warrior soon anyway.

 

[ecawilson]

I had to google doubleclicks. Sounds like a very niche demographic.

I am not following how the workboat actually uncovers more tiles, as the furthest it can get is just 2S2W of Soetnos, right? But that isn't that important, go with your gut there.

I was unclear with what I was asking with EP, but now I know I can get it myself, I will grab it in about 6 hours.

 

[ecawilson]

The maintenance thread 'suggests' that 'maybe' you can achieve goals before meeting the ladies. Just wanted to point that out, in case that made a difference to anyone. It doesn't make any difference in my mind, I still don't imagine fulfilling a goal without having met the lady, but all data is important.

 

[elitetroops]

The maintenance thread 'suggests' that 'maybe' you can achieve goals before meeting the ladies. Just wanted to point that out, in case that made a difference to anyone. It doesn't make any difference in my mind, I still don't imagine fulfilling a goal without having met the lady, but all data is important.

That was discussed in the pregame discussion thread also. BSP said "hint: There might be a reason why we don't think this will happen". Apparently most tasks cannot be completed without knowing the lady. Possibly a lot of them will be about giving them stuff, techs, religion, corp spread or whatever. Or then they just come so late that we will meet everyone before being able to complete all tasks in any case.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I have a sixteen year old daughter, and we're nerds/geeks, so we like the Doubleclicks.

Back now.

In regard to completing early, it's my memory that if you complete before you know the condition, it doesn't count. Might not matter anyway.

The real save files are paused. Just make sure you don't unpause them.

The red squares in this image show how far the workboat could get - depends on what is in the black area which way it would work. This screenshot is from the test game, and the terrain in that area doesn't match the real game exactly.

Spoiler :

In any case, the workboat won't reveal a lot no matter which way we send it. Better to have the fogbusting on the city site.

 

[ecawilson]

We have spent 0 EP on Shaka.
We have spent 108 EP on Willem.
Willem has spent 80 EP on us.
Willem has spent 32 EP on Shaka.
Shaka has spent 6 EP on us.
Shaka has spent 42 EP on Willem.

We don't know when Shaka met his first rival, but we can make guesses. We know when Willem met his first rival (turn 0), and we can be reasonably certain that he has had exactly the same amount of EP so far as we have had (no anarchy, little chance of courthouse tech, EP buildings already built in his capital don't fit the plot). Therefore, we can safely assume that Willem's EP that we can see are his total (112 is 4 points more than ours, which is the same as 1 turn, meaning in turn order he is first). Without more data points, we can do little more than guess, but I hypothesize that Willem has only met two other civs, and Shaka only more recently. Did anyone notice if we had EP parity with Willem in the beginning turns? Now, we can also go back and look at GNP jumps, and see if we can parse out when Willem met Shaka (unlikely, too few data points). What we need to watch going forward is how Shaka and Willem spend their points: for Shaka to only spend 1 point/turn on the player tells us he is either plotting against Willem (possible), or he knows more civs. If Willem did indeed switch all his EP spending to Shaka, we can extrapolate when they met, and there is a 50/50 chance (whose scout met whom?) that Willem is that many turns away from us to the NW. More likely, Shaka didn't know anyone (can only confirm with more data points, and demo screens, and it maybe already too late for that) until 12 turns ago, and it took 7 more turns for him to meet us.

So, why do we care? Well, no way for sure to know where Shaka is yet, but if Willem is indeed 7 turns away (or closer with a direct route) land grabbing becomes more important. I don't think we can afford to go below +1 with Willem, and we also can't afford to allow ourselves to be boxed in by him. Also workers become more valuable.

Edit: I was wrong about why Willem has 4 more: he settled on turn 0, we didn't. We are still first in turn order.

 

[ecawilson]

yeah, the test game you are working with isn't accurate enough. We already have all those tiles explored you colored red. I have the real save opened right now. We can fogbust the hills south of the city, but no more. Again, go with your gut, but keep in mind that the test save isn't accurate enough yet.

 

[ecawilson]

Interesting to me that the water to the NW of our explored area is salt. Without much experience in world builder, I am not sure, but doesn't the game decide what is salt/fresh based upon how many contiguous water tiles there are? We may be in an isthmus of sorts. Or just close to the edge of the continent.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

OK, I hit a stopping condition. A barbarian archer is stopping further progress of warrior 2. Should I retreat to defend? Or something else? I marked the location of our two warriors with red dots. Neither has moved yet this turn. Everything else is going exactly to plan.

Spoiler :

I'm tempted to move NE and hope he follows the warrior.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Just realized you're right about the workboat, wish the test file had been better about that. Oh well. The workboat has moved one turn south. It could still move E E NE and then return and make it to cow city site in time. What do people think? Explore fur island, or fogbust for the new city?

Spoiler :

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Interesting to me that the water to the NW of our explored area is salt. Without much experience in world builder, I am not sure, but doesn't the game decide what is salt/fresh based upon how many contiguous water tiles there are? We may be in an isthmus of sorts. Or just close to the edge of the continent.

Yes, it must be 11 (or 10?) water tiles.

 

[ecawilson]

Religion screen tells us that both Hinduism and Buddhism are 8%. Our capital is 10+%, and we are 4th in population. I forgot the conversions from pop points to demographic population so I looked up and found the formula floor(PoP^2.8)*1000 for a single city at http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/demographics.php, hope that is right.
As long as I am correct that any additional 5 pop city would show up on the top 5 city report, there is only one possible combination of cities in the world today. The results and my logic are included.

Spoiler :

size 6
2 size 4
size 5
US at size 5
size 4 size 3
size 4 size 1 size 1
size 4 - Willem
size 3 size 1
size 3 size 1
size 2 size 1

From the Resolutions screen, we know there are 47 population in the world, and from the demo screen we learn that our 9 rivals total 554K population. We know that 1 city is at 6, 2 total are at 5, and Willem's capital is at 8% (4). We are 4th in population, and 1st has only 1 city. Last has the only size 2 city, together with one of the size 1 cities. No one can be tied for first or last. Third must also be a single size 5, and second must be 2 cities of each size 4. They may also have a third city, or maybe fifth or sixth have the third city (size 1). I decided to put the third city on rival 6 instead of 3 or 5, just because.

Shaka's largest city can be either 3 or 2, knowing that he is equal to or less than Willem's population. With religion, it tells us that the two religions are in three possible civs, and may or may not be founded in the same city or civ.

You will have to tell me if this is worthwhile information. It does tell me that we aren't expanding as fast as the AI, but you guys are more accustomed to Immortal AI than I.

 

[ecawilson]

I'm tempted to move NE and hope he follows the warrior.

I think we have warrior 4 being completed the turn before the archer would get to the city, right? Do we think 1 warrior on a hill with only 50% bonus (hill+city defend) is enough against the archer? It would be 50% odds, right? so, maybe one of the warriors should hang back. I guess the options are warrior 2 to fall back, or warrior 3 to stay put. No need for both to do so, though. Both are on important missions, so we can't really decide that way. So, I am inclined to agree with you: send warrior 2 on, have 3 stay put, and cross our fingers. How much will that delay founding city3?

 

[ecawilson]

If warrior 3 stays back to defend, then fogbust with workboat becomes more valuable, even if it is only a few tiles.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

It's interesting. I have to figure the civs with two size 3+ cities started with an extra settler.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I think we have warrior 4 being completed the turn before the archer would get to the city, right? Do we think 1 warrior on a hill with only 50% bonus (hill+city defend) is enough against the archer? It would be 50% odds, right? so, maybe one of the warriors should hang back. I guess the options are warrior 2 to fall back, or warrior 3 to stay put. No need for both to do so, though. Both are on important missions, so we can't really decide that way. So, I am inclined to agree with you: send warrior 2 on, have 3 stay put, and cross our fingers. How much will that delay founding city3?

My question is "on what turn will the AI enter our borders?" I'm less worried about the defence of the city than I am the defence of our worker, who will be on that side chopping and mining gems.

I suspect the archer would chase our warrior if we move NE...

 

[ChrisShaffer]

The archer could attack our city at the end of turn 37. Warrior 4 is scheduled to be built at the end of turn 35. We could speed it up several turns by working a forest instead of a farm.

I'm leaning more and more toward continuing scouting and hoping to lure the archer away. Definitely need other team members' feedback.