Apolytonia Defense Review (580 AD - Vol. I)

[Reddawg]

Haha, okay adamada

[Meshelic]

Realpolitic you made my day.

I think I'm seeing both sides to the issue, and since I really have no jurispudence over this kind of matter I can't really say much....except my opinion

I think that what what you are saying Reddawg makes a lot of sense. And I agree wholeheartedly that without this calculator we would not be able see the figures in these charts. BUT

PTW comes out very soon. I'm sure a a great many of us are going to play the demo game for THAT when it all gets organized. Well, after saying that what's to stop any other civ from employing a similar strategy, and the whole time not tell us about it?

Great job on making the calculator Orange. I'm very impressed. But I suppose we'll have to take through the 'process' before it can be widely accepted.

not to diss on your statements reddawg, you present a fair case. I'm just find myself agreeing with both. tough call.

[Mr. Orange]

I go to work and my RP life falls to hell. How ridiculously ironic.

Am I cheating? Those are extremely harsh accusations. Just like anyone else, I extract all data from the screens I have access to without spying or playing ahead. And to prove it, I disclosed the calculators for everyone to see how I got my data. To my knowledge, no one else ever has done this. Second, I have a Mac, no editor and no PTW. If there was a problem accessing the calculators, I checked the links at Lucky Orange: http://www.luckyorange.com

There should be no problem.

To the accusations about MilCalcB.xls -- The Rival Calculator:

Finding a rival city’s actual population

In one of my own games, I watched a city grow to figure out how population works. I wrote down the population growth for a city up to 45 (and eventually had to load ten workers into a city to get it). So if I see a city number on screen, I know its population. If all the cities are added together, you know the population for the rival. To me this information is no different then researching a tech to get Marines if you are in the Stone Age. In RL, how would you know about Amphibious War if you did not know Map Making? From playing the game!

Finding a rival’s estimated GNP or MFG

As adaMada stated, GNP and MFG numbers are speculative conjectures based on calculations. And so are Reddawg’s stats unless he is cheating. Before I joined Apolyton, I played a game to discover how Friaxsis calculated Demographics. I discovered GNP and MFG equal the number of trade (GNP) and shields (MFG) produced minus the center tile a city rests on. So I added all the possible combination of tiles together, without Strat or Lux tiles, to create an average tile. So (Population in City Units) x (Average Tile) can give you an estimate on values for GNP and MFG for a rival. I also included a timeline chage to add in Market/Banks and Factories/Mfg. Plant, becasue of the production increase.

Finding a rival’s estimated Military

If there is one number you cannot find any data before Espionage, it is actual military units. So I speculated from my own Civ gaming numbers. I produce roughly three units in every city Pre-Espionage. Hence the calculation (3) x (Cities) for an estimate on how many units the enemy would have. I then broke the totals as such, which seems to be a good balanced estimate.

OFF - 0.400
DEF - 0.425
BMB - 0.100
SEA - 0.075

For ADM-BRF values, if our Foreign Advisor Screen says we know about a rival’s Knights, so do we! 4-3-2! We also know they would have Pikemen, because it is a prerequisite tech! This is how we can make an estimated military index!

Speculative Number of Military Units: (3) x (Cities)
Speculative Number of Units per Category: (Units) / (Category numbers).
Speculative ADM-BRF Number per Category: (ADM-BRF) x (Units per Category).

To know how much a rival is spending on their military in Republic, we take (speculative number of units) * (1 gold). If not in Republic, we cannot know and calculator cannot compute this. To know how much a rival is using to build their military, we take (speculative number of units) * (the average unit in shields) / (speculative number of MFG).

To explain myself like this is frustrating and having been accused of cheating is wrong. Slander is inappropriate. From the beginning, I have been open with how I performed my work and from my end looks like jealously. I've had full disclosure about what I am doing and would like an apology. What have I done to marr the "spirit" of the game? I have done nothing that would alter the random seed or how the game is played.

Needless to say this has negatively affected my feeling for this game and our community.

[Mr. Orange]

BTW: In the spirit of full disclosure, the "tweaks" I was talking about eariler in the thread.

I did not know the effect of production on "Emperor" level for a rival Civ, so I placed each rival "ahead" of us on Time in the MilCalc to make up production bonus, but seeing the 640 AD save, saw we were #1 in production, so for 640 AD, I reversed the Civ's back to "0" on the time line.

Also will units, initially I put the ratio at 3.5 units per city, because of my fear of Civ-Abilities to the numbers, Emperor level and that I usually produced less units then the AI. however looking at the Forgien Advisor screen, IIRC, there is only one Civ who military is average to ours in 640 AD. The rest are weaker, so I reflect this change by going back to a 3:1 ration. Those tweaks to the Calcs will be up this weekend, but anyone with Excel can make those changes at the current Calc. One is part of the caluclator's function, the other is in a formula.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I was shocked to read the accusation this morning.

I am also continuously surprised at just how much information is attainable through the different screens. I would have sworn neither of you had any idea of these numbers till we started seeing the posts. Much as someone predicted Russia was the closest to finishing the Sistine before we researched, what happens, as soon as we rush it, Russia finishes a different wonder...they WERE in the lead...I would have sworn all this was impossible to know.

Mr. Orange

AFIAK the Computer doesnt get a bonus to production per se, but things don't cost as many shields, so it is a relative bonus. We could be #1 in production, and still outproduced due to a reduced cost...

It is amazing to me.

[Shiber]

AI civs get a 20% reduction in the cost of improvements and units (and possibly tech too, I'm not sure about this) in Emperor to the best of my understanding.

[Reddawg]

Mr. Orange, I am sorry that you have taken offense to what I have said regarding your stats, and I honestly hope in now way that I put you off from the C3DG or this community.

That said, your explanations do not hold water with me. I see now that you calculate population as I do, by adding up the number of cities times the average population amount for a city of that size, which is readily available from the map; so I do agree with this.

But let's look at the rest. You said GNP/MFG come from basically a calculation centered around the number of shields and commerce produced. Well you cannot possibly know, in a foreign city, how much commerce and shields they are producing without using an embassy, and we are not allowed to do this without authorizing and spending the money for it during a turnchat. So you said you use an average of all the possible, but this would give a very very rough estimate that could be quite a bit off the total; you also do not know their luxury rates, corruption, or number of specialists, which makes the estimate even further off.

As for the military stats, I don't understand this very well. You assume a base of 3 units per city; I'm not sure how sound that estimate is, but I claim no expertise in this field. But then you assign values based on the distribution of Types of units (again, I don't know how sound that is) and then multiply the offense, defense, mobility values etc. to give a total, and calculate a military index. But it seems to me that if you are basing this on units/per city, where every civ has the same amount, and we are not technologically behind... well, we have more cities than anyone, thus we should be the most powerful. I don't see how your calculations avoid a direct corrolation between number of cities and size of military, other than technology, which is equal at this time. But you also do not know how many of the other civ's units are up-to-date.

~Reddawg

[Mr. Orange]

I appreciate the sentiment, but I feel much differently. First, I was cheating to get the estimates. Now it is a question of what a good estimate is. To disagree with what my estimates show is one thing, to say I cheat to get them is another.

To my understanding an estimate is an approximation of a specific number (calculation or total) based on available information. What bothers me, is I do not know how accurate anyone else's estimates are without seeing all the calculations they have presented. Because of that, I let everyone see how I was performing my calculations.

So what information is available? Tile production, both in game via the Civilopedia and in the Manual. By creating an average tile (which does not include Strat or Lux titles because they are minority tiles and would skew the average) and multipling it by a rival's total City Population minus total Cities, I get an *estimate* about production. The same goes for GNP. I never said it included corruption and such, because it would be cheating and the only way I'd know is through spying.

For military units, my base number is 3 units per city. Sure, some Civs might have 6, but many in my encounters it seems a rival holds around 3 or 4 units per city. 3 multiplied by total Cities gives an estimated number of units a rival *might* have.

I take that number of units and divide it by each category:
Offenisve Units: 0.400
Defensive Units: 0.425
Bombard Units: 0.100
Sea Units: 0.075

This is how I get an *estimate* on how the units are divided. I then go to the Forgien Advisor screen, where that little guy says, "The best Greek unit we know of -- is X". Then I know the Greeks have X!

If there is no embassy with a Civ, the little guy say "We have no knowledge of the Greek military." If this is the case, I have to make an educated guess. Right now, we are behind on techs, so every Civ has at least the technolgy for Swordsmen and Pikemen, Galleys and Catapults, because we have them. And until the FA guy reports something different, those are the base units I've been using.

Then I go through the Civilopedia, where you can find the production and strenghts of every unit and put that in the calculator. This gives totals for each category, such as A(ttack) D(efense) and so on. This is how I get an *estimate* of total ADM-BRF.

Then I take the average of unit production, multiply it by the number of *estimated* units, to get a total. I divide this *estimated* number by the *estimated* total MFG.

And to my *estimate*, based on our real numbers and the rival estimate numbers, since we have many cities, but a lack of units per city, we are not as strong militarily. Take a look at the calculators themselves. Everything I have written is in there.

[Reddawg]

I had assumed on reading the stats that you were working off real data and not conjectures or estimates. It certainly is a clever and inventive way to go about it, but I do not feel it gives an accurate estimate, so much so that it could be highly misleading. So while it's well done, interesting, and clever, and I apologize for thinking you were cheating when you were in fact guestimating, it's certainly inaccurate and misleading.

[Mr. Orange]

You paraphrazed:

So while it's well done... it's certainly inaccurate and misleading.

Nice try. From my first post:

[q] These statisitcs were created using the Mil-Calc (see link at bottom), to estimate the relative strengths of our neighbors. [q]

I can undestand *your* oppinon that you feel it does not give an accurate estimate. But I never said "exact". I said it was an estimate. Another barb on your part.

But instead of going around the mulberry bush, why don't I make it easy. I came here to have a little fun and bring something to the community. After this, it's not worth it. Why spend my time fustrated?

So good luck. Have fun. And watch for the Romans.

[Meshelic]

I think we should use the calculator for our game. I don't believe it's cheating; think of it as a citizen of our community donating his time to a marvelous new invention and it being so good that we just don't know what to do! So what if the other civz don't have this ability, THEY WILL when we PTW.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Mr. Orange.

Please do not take that attitude. Allow me to tell of a story.

A few weeks after I had started, I decided to have some fun. I wrote a short little letter from the editor about the discovery of Bronze Working. I titled the thread simply 'letter from the editor'

I was met with some of the most attacking, and personally insulting comments I could have ever thought possible. All comming form the mouth of one individual. NO other comments were made from anyone.

I was extremely pissed. I spent several days not responding or even looking at this website, considered leaving, and nearly a month before I ever posted anything of that sort again.

Now, I run the only paper around, and am having all kinds of fun with it. Truth told, not everyone enjoys, or even reads that paper, but I find it fun, and some here find it enjoyable.

I personally find your tables informative, and am sure there are many others who do so as well, though I doubt many will say so openly. You aparantly find them fun and enjoyable to create too. Do not leave over what is merely a difference in opinion. One that could have probably been dealt with in a different manner, but that is what it amounts to in the end.

[Jaybe]

I support Mr. Orange!!
His estimates of military strengths are VERY realistic, and are similar to how it was done in RL during the cold war.* That is to say, pure speculation based on some observations. My only disappointment is that now I know that it is only speculation and it spoils the illusion.

Please, once you have spies in place, correlate the information so you (Mr. Orange, sir), can "speculate" as to how your estimates were (in)correct, and do an expose on your own previous estimates. Should be great fun!

Reddawg, I can understand your shock regarding discovering that "solid" information is anything but solid. See what you get when you probe too far? (Yes, I understand it may be better than "cheating").

* Example: Soviets putting on an army exercise with special, elite "show" units that were not representative at all of their army, along with using the same vehicles over and over but with different paint jobs (organization emblems/numbers, etc.). They were also deceptive about ICBM strength by having more launch sites than missiles, and simulated their loading.

[Hot Mustard]

Mr. Orange:

I would hope that along with the zest for the game and intelligence you have already demonstrated, comes wisdom enough to realize that the attitudes of one person do not necessarily reflect those of the community.

I will not apologize for Reddawg's accusations - in fact, I think his concerns were warranted. I also think your explanations were sufficient and that the discussion, while a little tense, was productive - providing us with more information than we would have had otherwise.

I realize that it was unpleasant to be challenged so soon after joining, but any community such as this will always have opinions and methods challenged.

I will not beg you to stay. However I will say that it would be a pity to lose a member so obviously full of energy and enthusiam for the game.

Best wishes, whatever you decide.

[Jaybe]

BTW, the graphic info (i.e., the meat of) Mr. Orange's original post are "x'd" out on my Mac, and has been since last night. Is there a solution on your end?