what do you use the Oracle for?

[slnz]

??? Building wealth and research doesn't go through the respective % modifiers. How powerful can that be ? I'm puzzled

In the start and for the most part of the game you will have a lot more research modifiers than gold modifiers. So building wealth enables you to run a higher slider, which in turn puts more commerce through favorable modifiers (only build research if you don't know Currency or already have 100% and still need more - like if the Lib race goes down to the wire). It can be a good choice of build in all parts of the game, but especially at the early game to not fall off the tech-sled. If you'd build marginal stuff like / modifiers in production cities, always consider if building Wealth would be more beneficial for your current situation.

I have an Immortal game with random start where I'll be able to survive (though I'll probably finish first before last at best). Now in this game I managed to climb back somewhat and overtake, tech-wise, the two most backwards Civs, Justinian and Gilgamesh. This happened at a stage where the map was covered, so nobody was expanding anymore. There weren't border-moving wars either (Justinian was weak militarily, Gilgamesh had lots of military but was backward in tech). Pure city development within almost fixed borders, the part I'm strongest at. So it made sense to me : everybody's borders are fixed so the tech rate depends on how well each civ is developing its territory and cities. I'm good at it, hence I'm catching up on the slowest Civs in terms of tech ...

Then I noticed something strange : these guys do not have money and have nothing to trade with the other AIs for their tech. Given the conditions, my tech advantage over them, once they were overtaken, should have kept growing. Yet instead of this happening, they somehow staged a come back. It was the first game I've seen something like this happening (and at the time my first game at Immortal where I managed to stay in the game so late). I look at their cities and they didn't seem to have blossomed in the meanwhile. I was developing as fast as I could. Yet they claimed back the lost terrain (tech wise). I have no idea how that is at all possible (apart from cheating) and I'll probably have to open the WorldBuilder to understand. has anyone seen this phenomenon before ? An AI that, during complete peacetime, manages to come back from behind after being overtaken ?

Remember that the era bonuses stack up to a lot on high levels. On Immortal the AI hammer costs (including wonders) are reduced 4% per era, up to 28% in the Future era (21% on Emperor). This on top of the other AI bonuses is the usual reason for later game AI comebacks - they can produce everything insanely fast (as hammer reduction is multiplicative with hammer bonuses, not additive like almost all other bonuses). The AIs will gain on your lead late game if you just let them be on Imm+.

Them teching techs not many AIs have can cascade to a lot with tech brokering enabled, too. Both Gilga and Justinian's personalities (likeliness to trade, favored improvements etc) make them decent techers.

Well, we were talking about 1000 bpt capitals and these both provide beakers ... I do not usually build either but since I'm playing now on Earth and have an easy time, I did found St. Eth. I didn't know what else to do with the GS ... his 2 - 3 000 beakers are less than I'm producing per turn and late techs cost in the 15 000 so it seemed useless to bulb ... I already built Academies where it was worth doing so ... settling when there are probably less than 100 turns left didn't seem wise either and I needed 3 other great persons for a Golden Age ... So ... a huge waste of WHAT exactly ??? As Standard Ethanol, the GS is bringing 14 base beakers per city per turn (28 beakers with modifiers). Aluminium Inc would have brought even more. As it happens my army is big enough and my cities are fully developed, so the hammers "wasted" on building St. Eth. reps. wouldn't have served a more interesting purpose IMO ... Once I expand St. Eth. to my current 35 cities I'll get 980 beakers per turn, which is 25 - 30 % of my current, pre- St. Eth. science output. I have a hard time seeing how that can be qualified as wasteful ...

Well obviously if you don't have a better use, it's not a waste. Neither did it do that much good for you since you were already winning. I mostly meant they're useless (in the grand scheme of things) for the research bonus since they come so late.

I've never had such a favorable start on Immortal ... Marble in my BFC ??? Only on the Earth map I've seen this. Even on Emperor I NEVER got marble nor stone in my capital BFC and only seldom had it in my expansion radius. And I played about 20 emperor games in BtS. 5 resources plus horses nearby ??? What MOD is this that you are playing ? Anyway, with such lucky starts it's no wonder it's going well for you

How is Marble in BFC a "favorable start"? The only wonders Marble is really useful for don't come until later (TGL, MoM, Taj etc), so it's irrelevant if the Marble is in your capital BFC or in the far reaches of your empire (ToA goes insanely early so it's not usually worth it, and Oracle is much easier to get without straying to Masonry). Even its tile yield sucks. Stone is much more favorable near the capital, especially when going WE/SSE, since so many of the Marble wonders generate GAs which you want to avoid like the plague. That start is about average on Fractal maps. I play without gameplay altering mods on normal map scripts. Oh, the difficulty level does not affect map generation btw.

That was just an example from a recent game for the subject matter of the discussion. For a WE/SSE you need a good food/production capital so shots of those obviously have at least okayish capitals. If the capital would have sucked I would have gone some other strategy route. A strength of this strategy is that the other cities can pretty much totally suck if the capital is very good. Still need a minimum of 6 (on Standard) cities for a fast Oxford, though.

Frankly, I have a hard time believing this is an Immortal game, given the way you talk about emphasizing expansion - how can a non-Industrious leader without stone get both the Great Wall and the Pyramids on Immortal while expanding fast, it's beyond me.

Frankly I don't care if you believe it or not In that game I just wanted a laid-back wonder game so I didn't actually expand very fast, only 6 cities at 1AD IIRC. This was made possible by not having neighbors very close and the land being quite crappy. And I would NEVER have built 'Mids without Stone or IND. I was playing Bismarck (newsflash - Germany has 2 leaders).

I'll try that next, but my past attempts were unsuccessful. What MOD is it that you are playing ? Because on standard BtS I usually get 3 lousy resources in my capital BFC (typically a combination of clam, cow, maize and / or rice ...)

Eh... Tell me, would you rather have "7 resources in the capital" if those are stuff like plains silk and unirrigated rice, or "2 resources in the capital" being irrigated corn and a grass flatland Copper? I play on standard map scripts, usually Fractal, sometimes Pangaea/Hemispheres/Continents.

How the hell can you call cow and corn "lousy" btw? Top5 start resources of the game...

[sorinache]

In the start and for the most part of the game you will have a lot more research modifiers than gold modifiers. So building wealth enables you to run a higher slider, which in turn puts more commerce through favorable modifiers (only build research if you don't know Currency or already have 100% and still need more - like if the Lib race goes down to the wire). It can be a good choice of build in all parts of the game, but especially at the early game to not fall off the tech-sled. If you'd build marginal stuff like / modifiers in production cities, always consider if building Wealth would be more beneficial for your current situation.

Good point, I'll consider that. Coming to think of it, I'm probably not specializing my cities enough ... I try to maximize commerce and food in all of them and leave the one that's less well situated to be the "production city"

Remember that the era bonuses stack up to a lot on high levels. On Immortal the AI hammer costs (including wonders) are reduced 4% per era, up to 28% in the Future era (21% on Emperor). This on top of the other AI bonuses is the usual reason for later game AI comebacks - they can produce everything insanely fast (as hammer reduction is multiplicative with hammer bonuses, not additive like almost all other bonuses). The AIs will gain on your lead late game if you just let them be on Imm+.

Wow, I didn't know that. I assumed their bonus ("noble" level costs) was fixed at the beginning of the game and would not change

Now speaking about "letting them be" - I've tried to tickle Gilgamesh taking advantage of a slight advantage in military techs and invaded his landmass from loaded transports. But the guy is ruthless : he didn't hesitate a second and nuked my troops right next to one of his big cities. Now that was probably the right thing to do and I might have done the same in his stead, but still I was thrown back, I din't expect the AI to nuke his own territory ... This is when I let _the game_ be and started my current earth map ...

Well obviously if you don't have a better use, it's not a waste. Neither did it do that much good for you since you were already winning. I mostly meant they're useless (in the grand scheme of things) for the research bonus since they come so late.

I don't know ... I remember having played very close games on Emperor (before learning the right tricks) where I only won by a couple of turns and I might as well have lost by a couple of turns ... In these close call games having a little boost from Standard Eth or Aluminium Inc could make the difference between winning and losing. And besides, it's just plain satisfying to expand such a corp and watch your beakers per turn rate soar ... even if you're already in the lead ...

How is Marble in BFC a "favorable start"? The only wonders Marble is really useful for don't come until later (TGL, MoM, Taj etc), so it's irrelevant if the Marble is in your capital BFC or in the far reaches of your empire (ToA goes insanely early so it's not usually worth it, and Oracle is much easier to get without straying to Masonry). Even its tile yield sucks. Stone is much more favorable near the capital, especially when going WE/SSE, since so many of the Marble wonders generate GAs which you want to avoid like the plague. That start is about average on Fractal maps. I play without gameplay altering mods on normal map scripts. Oh, the difficulty level does not affect map generation btw.

I'm almost sure the opposite is true - I remember I read this here on Apolyton : the quality of your starting point depends on the diff. level : you'll have on average more resources in your BFC on lower diff levels than on higher. It also corroborates my experience.

And I consider marble one of the most valuable resources in the game because the most important wonders need it : Oracle, ToA (although I seldom manage this one), GL, MoM, Taj, SC (if attempting a cultural victory). Playing the religious path requires masonry (for mono) hence marble brings a good boost when building Oracle. But indeed my stress was on having Marble AT ALL - as I said, this happened very, very seldom to me (maybe 2 games out of 20 on emperor, none out of 4 or 5 attempts on Immortal, except for the Earth map)

That was just an example from a recent game for the subject matter of the discussion. For a WE/SSE you need a good food/production capital so shots of those obviously have at least okayish capitals. If the capital would have sucked I would have gone some other strategy route. A strength of this strategy is that the other cities can pretty much totally suck if the capital is very good. Still need a minimum of 6 (on Standard) cities for a fast Oxford, though.

Frankly I don't care if you believe it or not In that game I just wanted a laid-back wonder game so I didn't actually expand very fast, only 6 cities at 1AD IIRC. This was made possible by not having neighbors very close and the land being quite crappy. And I would NEVER have built 'Mids without Stone or IND. I was playing Bismarck (newsflash - Germany has 2 leaders).

I thought you were Fred on account of all those settled GS/GE and what not in your capital

Eh... Tell me, would you rather have "7 resources in the capital" if those are stuff like plains silk and unirrigated rice, or "2 resources in the capital" being irrigated corn and a grass flatland Copper? I play on standard map scripts, usually Fractal, sometimes Pangaea/Hemispheres/Continents.

I believe I would still rather take the 7 resources - I'm pretty confident I could benefit from trading the excess silk. Unirrigated rice dies indeed suck though

How the hell can you call cow and corn "lousy" btw? Top5 start resources of the game...

It was an exaggeration on my part, Cow is a wonderful resource and corn is pretty good as well (I prefer wheat to corn though and I'd rather have 2 cows than cow and corn), but best of all I'd like something like cow (or corn) and grassland hill gold ....

[slnz]

I'm almost sure the opposite is true - I remember I read this here on Apolyton : the quality of your starting point depends on the diff. level : you'll have on average more resources in your BFC on lower diff levels than on higher. It also corroborates my experience.

Cognitive bias. Easy to see with your own eyes by glancing over the map generation code (CvGameCoreDLL/CvMapGenerator.cpp is the jist of it on top of the Python files in PublicMaps).

It was an exaggeration on my part, Cow is a wonderful resource and corn is pretty good as well (I prefer wheat to corn though and I'd rather have 2 cows than cow and corn), but best of all I'd like something like cow (or corn) and grassland hill gold ....

Okay, what nonstandard maps do you play Grass hill Gold does not happen in any of the standard map scripts, only plains/desert hills. Maybe you were thinking about Gems? Corn >>> Wheat btw (though a bit more common I think so the health aspect can be a valid point), especially when irrigated. In tile yields specialization is the key as for cities.


And yeah, lategame high level AIs with nukes are really annoying. If you have to invade them your best bet is using a lot of nukes yourself and use _very_ small stacks (5-10 units each) so as to not get nuked, and capture multiple coastal cities on turn1 with Marines. I've had an AI drop a nuke on his own city tile to get to one of my stacks. Did a double take there... Apparently this wasn't possible until BtS but got changed.

[Blaupanzer]

Nukes are very late game. But I did not know BTS let me and the AI nuke the cities we own. That would be a great way to take out those 6 to 8 unit stacks the AI sends at me when I have nukes. Hit the city, get 'em all.

[rah]

I've never dropped a nuke, but I hear the graphic is kinda kewl.

[Garth Vader]

Remember that the era bonuses stack up to a lot on high levels. On Immortal the AI hammer costs (including wonders) are reduced 4% per era, up to 28% in the Future era (21% on Emperor). This on top of the other AI bonuses is the usual reason for later game AI comebacks - they can produce everything insanely fast (as hammer reduction is multiplicative with hammer bonuses, not additive like almost all other bonuses). The AIs will gain on your lead late game if you just let them be on Imm+.

I didn't even know there were era bonuses.

This is kind of off the topic, but is there a way to mod it so you can get higher era bonuses on lower levels? I play on monarch or lower so that I can survive the early game, but if I do then the AI is always left in the dust.

[rah]

Or you can just modify it so the AI get's less of a starting advantage at the higher level.
The result should be the same.