EDIT: It turns out my little theory is only that, a theory. The practical application just didn't pan out, so remember that while you read it. I've left the article up, however, for anyone interested in such reading, even if false.
Introduction
Standard milking theory within the Hall of Fame holds that you should expand to within one tile of the territory domination limit, grabbing the 66% of the map with the most food and then ramping up your population as high as possible while keeping one AI city quarantined in order to hold off on actually triggering any win condiditons. This strategy has been employed for years, as conventional wisdom dictated this was the best way to ensure the most points scored.
Ive recently discovered this may not be entirely true.
Based on another thread, I began to wonder what would happen if the human player stayed under the population limit instead of the territory limit. Instead of having as much population as possible, you could then grab as much territory as you wanted. In order to avoid the population domination, the player would have to ensure that the quarantined AI stayed at 34% of the maps total population.
HOF Milking Application
It was time to do some number crunching from Huge maps, where serious milking is done. Specifically, I wanted to look at an archipelago, and for sake of thorough calculations, the game in question needed to have been milked to the best possible degree.
That of course left only once choice: Moonsingers Sid #1, the highest scored game in HOF history.
A CRpMapStat scan of her final.sav shows that Moonsinger had a domination limit of 4562 tiles, 4561 tiles within her territory, 4626 happy citizens and 3347 specialists (with no content citizens). Per the score formula of one basepoint per turn for each tile and specialist, and two basepoints per turn for happy citizens, Moonsinger was gaining 17160 basepoints per turn during the post-growth milkphase.
Now, assuming full irrigation, rails, harbors, ag civ, etc, 100% city coverage and cultural borders covering two tiles of water (all coast and sea), the total map's available food is approximately 20800. 34% of this is 7072. Divide that by 4 (railed irrigated grassland) and you can get 34% of the total map food with 1768 grassland tiles. That would be given (via fully improved and grown cities) to the quarantine AI. The player would then take the other 66% of the food and all the territory you want.
In the case of Moonsingers map, that would be 13728 food over 6970 tiles.
Since that's barely under 2 food per tile, we can assume no content citizens, nor specialists. Since happy citizens require 2 food and give 2 basepoints, the player would get 13728 basepoints per turn from citizens. Add the 6970 basepoints from tiles within borders, and the player would accumulate 20698 basepoints per turn.
20698/17160=20% more score during growth-cap milk phase!!!
100,000?
Some weeks back in the HOF forum, I made the claim that 100,000 points was possible in an HOF legal game of Civilization III. At the time, I didnt back up the statement. Now, perhaps I can.
As a general rule of thumb, 60% of a milked games points come from the milking. This means that 53131 of Moonsingers 88553 final points were from the milk phase. Boosting that by 20%, the map would have been theoretically capable of 63757 milk points, putting the final score at 99179 points.
Whats the catch?
The proposed milk method isnt without complications:
20%? Are you sure?
Er, almost. I did make a few approximations:
A Funny Consequence
Since territorial domination is irrelevant under the theory, you'd want to push all your coastal city borders out two tiles to grab as much food as possible. Actually, my equations assumed that. That means The Internet might actually have a practical use.
Conclusion
Even if the differential isnt fully 20% on a huge archipelago, its obvious from both the numbers and the test map that staying under the population domination limit can yield more points than staying under the territorial limit. However, it does carry the burden of complex AI/map manipulation, and does result in even more micromanagement than the traditional method.
Then again, true milkers wont mind that much. A point is a point.
Introduction
Standard milking theory within the Hall of Fame holds that you should expand to within one tile of the territory domination limit, grabbing the 66% of the map with the most food and then ramping up your population as high as possible while keeping one AI city quarantined in order to hold off on actually triggering any win condiditons. This strategy has been employed for years, as conventional wisdom dictated this was the best way to ensure the most points scored.
Ive recently discovered this may not be entirely true.
Based on another thread, I began to wonder what would happen if the human player stayed under the population limit instead of the territory limit. Instead of having as much population as possible, you could then grab as much territory as you wanted. In order to avoid the population domination, the player would have to ensure that the quarantined AI stayed at 34% of the maps total population.
HOF Milking Application
It was time to do some number crunching from Huge maps, where serious milking is done. Specifically, I wanted to look at an archipelago, and for sake of thorough calculations, the game in question needed to have been milked to the best possible degree.
That of course left only once choice: Moonsingers Sid #1, the highest scored game in HOF history.
A CRpMapStat scan of her final.sav shows that Moonsinger had a domination limit of 4562 tiles, 4561 tiles within her territory, 4626 happy citizens and 3347 specialists (with no content citizens). Per the score formula of one basepoint per turn for each tile and specialist, and two basepoints per turn for happy citizens, Moonsinger was gaining 17160 basepoints per turn during the post-growth milkphase.
Now, assuming full irrigation, rails, harbors, ag civ, etc, 100% city coverage and cultural borders covering two tiles of water (all coast and sea), the total map's available food is approximately 20800. 34% of this is 7072. Divide that by 4 (railed irrigated grassland) and you can get 34% of the total map food with 1768 grassland tiles. That would be given (via fully improved and grown cities) to the quarantine AI. The player would then take the other 66% of the food and all the territory you want.
In the case of Moonsingers map, that would be 13728 food over 6970 tiles.
Since that's barely under 2 food per tile, we can assume no content citizens, nor specialists. Since happy citizens require 2 food and give 2 basepoints, the player would get 13728 basepoints per turn from citizens. Add the 6970 basepoints from tiles within borders, and the player would accumulate 20698 basepoints per turn.
20698/17160=20% more score during growth-cap milk phase!!!
100,000?
Some weeks back in the HOF forum, I made the claim that 100,000 points was possible in an HOF legal game of Civilization III. At the time, I didnt back up the statement. Now, perhaps I can.
As a general rule of thumb, 60% of a milked games points come from the milking. This means that 53131 of Moonsingers 88553 final points were from the milk phase. Boosting that by 20%, the map would have been theoretically capable of 63757 milk points, putting the final score at 99179 points.
Whats the catch?
The proposed milk method isnt without complications:
- The quarantined AI should remain quarantined, eight units surrounding each city. If so much as a single worker gets out of their cities and mines a tile, they drop their food and you have to drop yours. To make matters worse, it means cleaning up their pollution for them.
- That obviously means that you should be in good enough standing with the last AI that you can have a constant right-of-passage.
- It also means keeping military units around, more than the usual milkphase. While unit support isnt an issue, there would be a slight loss of disbandable shields for milk improvements in your own towns.
- An Ag civ is best for the AI in question. They should also have a preferred government that doesnt offer poprushing.
- The territory domination warning bell on CRpMapStat will go off everyturn. Disabling it is tempting, but for other games, perhaps a bad idea.
- Theres not a true population domination warning in CRpMapStat, so I had to rely on the Victory Status Screen. 65% was rarely safe, but 64% was. This meant constant trimming of my own population.
- Said trimming has to be done carefully. Cash rushing workers/settlers might be best, as poprushing and drafting done too much could hurt happiness. I did use Communism for my editor test though, and by rotating the drafting through all the cities I never saw unhappy citizens.
- Keeping multiple AI cities around might mean some cultural border pushing. Its okay to push back, as youll already be over the territorial domination limit. Just remember not to step into their 34% of the food.
20%? Are you sure?
Er, almost. I did make a few approximations:
- I rounded the theoretical food per tile to 2, it was actually 1.97~.
- 60% of scores being milk points is a rule of thumb. For Moonsinger, I wouldnt be shocked to determine its higher.
- For the equations, I assumed that the AI would be on all irrigated grassland, and theres enough on that map to do it. However, their cities would only produce 3 food per tile, not 4 as the equations assume. On the other hand, that could possibly be compensated for with bonus foods.
- Speaking of bonus foods, I didnt factor that in.
- Setting up a map for milking via the traditional method takes time. Its possible that setting up the AI for this new method would take longer, thus shortening the milk phase.
- I assumed a 1:1 ratio of coast:sea tiles.
A Funny Consequence
Since territorial domination is irrelevant under the theory, you'd want to push all your coastal city borders out two tiles to grab as much food as possible. Actually, my equations assumed that. That means The Internet might actually have a practical use.
Conclusion
Even if the differential isnt fully 20% on a huge archipelago, its obvious from both the numbers and the test map that staying under the population domination limit can yield more points than staying under the territorial limit. However, it does carry the burden of complex AI/map manipulation, and does result in even more micromanagement than the traditional method.
Then again, true milkers wont mind that much. A point is a point.