Cloak & Dagger

[T-hawk]

Kylearan - I think we're too late for that. Feudalism is already a really expensive/powerful tech to slingshot. And remember that Imperio went for Priesthood early and has had it for some time. Look for longbows on our northeastern border within a handful of turns...

[Sullla]

I've been worried about a late Oracle scenario for ages now. Based on our starting situation, we never had ANY chance of getting it. My hope was that one of the "losing" teams (like Banana or Rabbits) would use it on an unimportant tech, like Metal Casting. Imperio or PAL slingshotting something nasty is a worst-case scenario.

What can we do about it though? We needed to go for Iron Working because we lacked copper/horses. We needed to go for Monarchy because we lacked happiness resources. We had to settle aggressively because our land was subpar. There was no room anywhere in there for an Oracle build. In this case, geography was destiny. Since Imperio got a fabulous start, they can build wonders AND expand AND research all at the same time. We can't. That's why it sucks to be in a Demogame where the starts are drastically uneven.

Still hoping that maybe we'll avoid the worst-case scenario...

[Kylearan]

Hi,

worst-case scenario is that Imperio slingshots Feudalism and then trades or gives it to Templars if war breaks out (or even before). I'd rather have PAL build the Oracle than that...

But yeah, nothing we can/could have done about it.

-Kylearan

[mostly-harmless]

Just a quick update.
Imperios massive increase in points is entirely down to land increase 20 turns back.

mh

[T-hawk]

For C&D archival, here is the formula to determine a city's current hammer production count. The required pieces of information are these:

TheirEP = Their Espionage Point count against us
SabotageCost = Cost shown for the Sabotage Production mission
InvestigateCost = Cost shown for the Investigate City mission

Basic equations:

BaseInvCost = 2 * (TheirEP + 100)
Multiplier = InvestigateCost / BaseInvCost
SabotageCost = 6 * Hammers * Multiplier

Derivation:

Hammers = SabotageCost / (6 * Multiplier)
Hammers = SabotageCost / (6 * InvestigateCost / BaseInvCost)
Hammers = SabotageCost * BaseInvCost / (6 * InvestigateCost)
Hammers = SabotageCost * (2 * (TheirEP + 100)) / (6 * InvestigateCost)

Hammers = (SabotageCost * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * InvestigateCost)

For Mutal at the moment, (556 * (112 + 100)) / (3 * 491) = 80.

[Zeviz]

Great work! I am constantly surprised how much information can be guessed from carefully reading screens.

[sooooo]

Very good, T-Hawk.

[mostly-harmless]

Great Work T-Hawk!
Your analysis for Mutal is from T89.
In T90 the situation is as follows:
Mutal (723 * (114 + 100)) / (3 * 496) = 104
24 hpt for Mutal.
That only works if they get the Marble bonus.
So we are looking at the Oracle in Mutal in T92.
No chance we can outrun them.
Might as well go back to the Great Lib plan.


For Lakhama (642 * (114 + 100)) / (3 * 509) = 90.
Probably a library.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

T-Hawk, I assume you looked into the code to figure out the formula. Can you do likewise regarding the "Steal Treasury" option? Could we derive how much cash they have from that?

mh

[T-hawk]

For Lakamha, 90 can't be a library. Library costs exactly 90 and would be completed now. Also Lakamha jumped by a lot, going from 54 hammers to 90. +36 is too much for a doubled wonder but too little for a doubled wonder with a forest chop. I'm guessing settler with a chop. (Actually it could be a library if they produced +6H, then whipped for +30 to exactly 90 on this turn.)


I inspected some test cases in a single-player savegame and the formula worked out there. I didn't actually go code-diving. I used these CFC threads:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252496

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6081100&postcount=33

For Steal Treasury, the additional information needed is the population of both the target city and the entire civ. The amount available to steal in a city is Treasury * CityPop / TotalPop, and the base cost of doing so is 3 EP per gold available.

BaseInvCost = 2 * (TheirEP + 100)
Multiplier = InvestigateCost / BaseInvCost
StealCost = Multiplier * 3 * Treasury * CityPop / TotalPop

Derivation:

Treasury = StealCost * TotalPop / (3 * CityPop * Multiplier)
Treasury = StealCost * TotalPop / (3 * CityPop * InvestigateCost / BaseInvCost)
Treasury = StealCost * TotalPop * BaseInvCost / (3 * CityPop * InvestigateCost)
Treasury = (StealCost * TotalPop * 2 * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * CityPop * InvestigateCost)

Do we know the total population figure for any civs at the moment?

[mostly-harmless]

Yes we do know the pop number.
I will get them together a bit later.

Definitely no whip for Imperio.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

T90:

Templars:
Treasury = (34 * 11 * 2 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 5* 575) = 21.5 gold

Imperio:
Treasury = (149 * 14 * 2 * (114 + 100)) / (3 * 6* 496) = 100 gold

Edit: Furthermore PAL founded yet another city. They also got their religion (Confuz) in one of their smaller cities.

mh

[Sullla]

Wow, this is really cool stuff. I'll start editing the current builds and treasuries of the other teams into the Current Actions sticky (and including them in the turn reports). It looks like the numbers should be easy to calculate and update each turn.

[mostly-harmless]

I was trying to get my stats together for the last 20 turns, but I had to give up when encountering that dreadful disputed turn94/95.
I am missing screenshots and data from civstat (which was down).

I might get back to it tomorrow when I feel fresh again, but for now I am close to throw in the towel on accurately tracking what happened in the world. I can say I have a very good idea up to turn 94.

I will try to at least follow the tech development.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

Ok, a fresh day and too much time on my hands.
I will change the format slightly and give people only the interesting facts.

So what happened in the last 20 turns:
PAL
PAL whipped like crazy, as usual. Among those whips some War Chariots. Although we feel like we were screwed over with gifting them our horses, PAL connected their own source of horses as well.

PAL has recently sworn off slavery and managed to get hold of 2-3 happy resources, plus they are in Hereditary Rule. So we can expect some rapid growth throughout their land. They are already pulling ahead with The Warning at size 8 and Memphis (or Thebes) at size 6.

The recent completion of The Great Lighthouse gives their 4 coastal cities additional foreign & intercontinental trade routes.

Rabbits:
Well, their are a lost case. Rabbits are awfully behind in tech for some reason. They only manged to spread out to 4 cities altogether and used whipping just before the PAL/Rabbits conflict.
Rabbits lost first their 4th city (Watership Down) which only made it to size 1. A few turns later they lost Valley Hutch to PAL. EDIT: C&D now believes that this was their 3rd city, looking at the ruins (land tiles owned by Valley Hutch).
Fact is they are down to a couple of cities, size 2 & 3 due to emergency whips.

Banana:
With proper continued management Banana would be quite a force by now. Unfortunately they had extended periods with no activity.
Nevertheless, Banana managed to make huge leaps in population. They were the first to have size 8 city (capital) which got whipped down again, but also have a size 7 city at the same time.
Banana has only 4 cities now, but with room to expand they might still be competitive.

Imperio:
As we know, they are doing fairly well. With access to three happy resources and Hereditary Rule they can allow to grow their cities. Size 7 & 6 are their current stats for Mutal & Lakamha. With the abundant seafood at Uxmal and Mayapan (one connected already for each city) we will see some steep growth curves for those coastal cities. Their recent switch to Serfdom but not Vassalage indicates that Imperio is not a real threat to us at the moment.

Templars:
These guys are really screwed happy-wise. They don't even have the prospect of getting a pre-Calendar resource like our Wines. Therefore they have to stall their cities growth like we do. Unfortunately (for them) they lost out on the land grab phase and are now falling behind even Banana.
Their only way out would be a bold attack against one of their neighbours. Although it might be too late for that already. We outproduce them, Imperio outtechs them on the battle field.

Summary:
We are doing not too shabby, but are starting to fall behind PAL, Imperio and even Banana due to our lack of happy resources. It is therefore of importance that we pursue Monarchy.


Some further infos:

I looked into the composition of ingame points to get a better feeling of who is really powerful.
Here is the situation at Turn100:


Imperios and RBs stats are distorted by the points gained by land, while PAL can be seen to really dominate through their population.

And here an estimate of the GNP composition from Turn 97:


Again Imperios stats are distorted by their huge amount of culture. They are not that far off with actual beakers.

For Sulla, here is the current pop count for our rivals:

PAL: 28
Imperio: 18
Banana: 18
Templars: 13
Rabbits: 5
RB: 19


mh