Cloak & Dagger

[mostly-harmless]

Turn 34

Both our neighbors research a tech.
Imperio's ingame score goes up by 6 to 85.
Templar's ingame score goes up by 6 to 86.

From the demoscreen we can see an increase in overall soldier points by 2000, suggesting Imperio researched either Hunting or Animal Husbandry. Since I wrote the same conclusions about Imperio already a while back, we can now we sure they have both Hunting & AH. (Unless they went for Fishing with their land start, which would be weird.)



Why I am so sure it was Imperio that got the military relevant tech???
Because Templars researched Polytheism and founded Christianity! (religion choosing is on)

So we have three civs in the game that start with Mysticism and Templars got both early techs. Nice for them.

That means Jerusalem gets quite a chunk of early culture.
But it also means it is unlikely that Templars pose a threat to us at the moment.

Furthermore I noticed that Imperio did not log in once for turn 33, so they definitely suffer from lack of organization.

mh

[darrelljs]

Nice of them to found two religions, build Stonehenge, and use the resulting Great Prophets to build a pair of shrines for us .

Darrell

[Sullla]

More nice work, mostly_harmless. Are we able to conclude from the Demographics that the Templars are building Stonehenge? (I'm pretty confident that they're doing so, but it would be nice to confirm it somehow.)

So are the Templars actually trying to win the game, or just goofing around? I think we're quite lucky to have them as our close neighbors. If their religions spread to us, we could be well positioned later on for a Cultural victory.

[mostly-harmless]

Originally posted by Sullla
More nice work, mostly_harmless. Are we able to conclude from the Demographics that the Templars are building Stonehenge? (I'm pretty confident that they're doing so, but it would be nice to confirm it somehow.)

It is hard to say.
Will the industrious bonus show up in the demographics screen? I have to check.
We will soon see whether they are going for a worker or settler.
If they are not, then I guess it is hard to predict whether they are building stonehenge or barracks or something else just from the demographics.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

Turn 35
Unfortunately the civstat uploader is down.
From logging in I could see that Team Banana got a huge ingame points increase.
From 61 to 76!
Now lets look at the demo screen:



The following changes can be seen.
+6000 land
+1000 soldier
+16000 population

All three are consistent with Bananas capital growing from 2 to 3 (confirmed by the Top 5 cities screen) and with Banana settling their second city on the coast (6 landtiles out of 9 tiles in the first ring).

I also think they got 6 points for learning a tech.
The two pop points increase (growth & new city) got them 4+5 points. (I tested earlier that pop increase can vary between 4 & 5 points, at least after the new patch).
Once the uploader is back online, I can doublecheck.

Furthermore, I noticed that the Rabbits capital has not grown from size 2 to 3 in 18 turns. Assuming they get say 5 hammers + excess food they are now at 90hammers for a settler. Or have finished a worker earlier and will grow to size 3 any time soon. My money is on settler.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

Turn 36 has begun.

And big surprise:
Imperio completed Stonehenge!!!
That surely comes unexpected.
So maybe their strategy was not early rush at all, but early chopped Stonehenge?

Anyway, the Templars were not building Stonehenge in parallel, because in that case we would have seen Jerusalem grow to size 4 this turn.
That means they are either building a worker (finished this turn) or a settler (finished in turn 44)!

The effects on our immediate game play is that Imperios borders pop to the 3rd ring on turn 39. That could potentially prevent our scout from circling their territory if the 3rd ring touches the sea in the east, so better hurry.

Furthermore Imperio will get a Great Prophet eventually.

We can also claim to be the most cultured continent by far with:
RB 4cpt
Imperio 11cpt
Templars 12cpt

The demoscreen for the records:


mh

[Zeviz]

It's good to hear that we are in less danger than expected from Imperio. Sounds like another argument for early cottages.

[mostly-harmless]

Turn 37
Luckily civstat got reconnected.

So lets start:
PAL got an increase by 4 to 86 at the beginning of the turn.
This means a city has grown a pop point.
PAL had both their cities at size 1 the previous turn.
"The Warning" was whipped down to size 1 on turn 30 and has a netted fish resource. Their second city just got founded on turn 33.
So it is save to assume their capital has regrown.
Now, PAL seems rather keen on using the whip, as I spotted a ingame score decrease once they logged in back to 82. And also the demographics reveal that they whipped their second pop point again!

Rabbits are also listed with getting an ingame score increase from 84 to 88 once they logged in. This means that they settled their second city. The stalled growth of Rabbits capital since ages was hinting on that already.
(From the next turns demographics we will see, that it is also a coastal city with 6 land tiles out of 9 inner ring tiles.)

So all three rivals on the other continent have their second city up and running. PAL on turn 33, Banana on turn 35 and finally the Rabbits on turn 37.

We will settle around turn 42 I guess.
We know that Templars are going for either worker or settler currently. Worker would have been completed on turn 36, the settler will complete on turn 44.
Imperio has just finished Stonehenge, so they are currently furthest away from settling a second city, but have the ability to chop and also know BW to switch to slavery for whips.

Apart from that there are no major changes.
Soldier points went up by 2000 indicating another warrior was built somewhere.

Here are the demographics from the middle of turn 37 (before Rabbits settled their second city):



mh

[mostly-harmless]

Turn 38

Rabbits got another score increase by 5 indicating that their capital has grown to size 3.
So excluding PAL, all capitals are at size 3 now.



Soldier points are up by 1000 accounted for by Rabbits capital growing to size 3.
Population increase, the same (plus the 1000 for Rabbits second city)
The increase in land area also comes from Rabbits second city, which is a another coastal city with 6 land tiles out of the inner 9.

In other news, Imperio and Templars have still not met PAL.

mh

[Sullla]

Here's an updated version of the Demographics charts to reflect our new knowledge of Imperio, and include the changes to the Templars over the past 15 turns. Many thanks to mostly_harmless for compiling so much of this data!



GNP: Imperio starts at 18, indicating that they began working a tile that was not on a river. (By looking at the other graphs, we can deduce that we started with an initial worker, and worked a 0/3/0 forested plains hill tile.) Templars shoot up 5 points on turn 11, when they found their first religion, then again on turn 34 when they found their second. Imperio receives a huge GNP boost of 10 from building Stonehenge on turn 36 - but of course, eight of those ten points are just culture from the wonder. They picked up two actual points of commerce from swapping to some river tiles (production falls from 7 to 4, food rises from 6 to 9; likely a plains hill swapped to a floodplains tile).

Although the Templars and Imperio look superior at the moment due to their high culture ratings, all three teams are actually producing nearly the same amount of beakers, within one or two points of one another. Nothing noteworthy yet; we'll be able to see when Imperio starts working their gold resource.





Production/Food: Imperio begins the game working the aforementioned forested plains hill tile, for 4 shields/turn (building a worker). With their Expansive bonus, it takes them 12 turns to build the worker, then they switch to a floodplains tile (3/0/1) to grow their capital. Imperio works this tile for 8 turns (T14 to T22) which, not coincidentally, is exactly how long it takes to grow the capital to size 2. At the new size, Imperio's capital produces 5 food and 4 shields; the most likely outcome (after subtracting out the 2 food/1 shield from the center tile) is one floodplains tile and one forested plains hill tile. They could also be working a 2/1 forested grassland and a 1/2 forested plains tile, of course... but the team would get less commerce that way, and we know that they have lots of floodplains. Imperio runs this configuration for four turns (to T26), then food rises to 8/turn for three turns while production drops to 1 - clearly working two floodplains tiles. Turn 30 sees food drop back to 6 (now break-even at size 3), while production rises to six, then seven shields. After Stonehenge completes (T36), they go back to a more food-heavy configuration, and production drops again.

In short, a team that swaps tiles frequently to meet their changing goals. The comparison to Templars' static bar graphs are striking. This is a group that we need to be wary of.

The Templars begin the game working a 1/1/1 tile for the first ten turns (?!) I'm not making that up! Apparently they went with a river plains tile to get the extra commerce to found their religion sooner... which is even dumber considering that no one else was making any attempt to found religions at all. It really makes you wonder what kind of weed they were smoking over there... On T12 they go to a 3/0/0 tile, obviously their unimproved grassland cow. They finally hit size 2 on T15, and their city's output now reads 7 food/2 shields; we can deduce easily that they are working the 3/0/0 cows and a 2/1/0 forested grassland tile. Templars remain in this configuration until T23, when they reach size 3. The capital picks up 2 food/1 shield at size 3, so another forested grassland tile.

Now Templars LOOK good on paper here, but they still have no workers and no improved tiles at this juncture. They now finally begin the belated worker, and there is thus no change in the Demographics for many, many turns on end. If they began on T24 (after finishing a quecha - see military details below), the worker would take ten turns and finish on T34 (six food + shields/turn, workers costing 60 shields). The worker goes and builds a pasture on their cows, so we should observe an increase of 1 food and 2 shields/turn - and we do, on T39! Excellent! We can also state this definitive rule: if Jerusalem doesn't grow to size 4 in the next turn or two, the Templars are working on a settler. If they did start a new settler immediately after the worker (which seems likely), it will complete in about six more turns, sometime around T46. (I'm not exactly sure I have all the numbers right.) There is no possible way that the Templars can beat us to Pink Dot.

Summary - the Templars screwed up the opening, just as we suspected. We'll have a second city founded and a second worker produced in the capital before they even get their first settler finished, much less have it move and found a city. The Demographics have confirmed the poor play that we suspected all along.



Power: Now this is where it really gets fun. With all the information at our disposal, we can figure out what each civ has produced so far, and take a good guess at what they've researched! (I am heavily relying on mostly_harmless' excellent work here, as always.) I'll start with the Templars; here's what we already know:

T1: Initial Quecha = 1000
T8: Quecha built -> +1000 = 2000
T15: Jerusalem (capital) grows to size 2 -> +1000 = 3000
T17: Quecha built -> +1000 = 4000
T22: military relevant tech popped from a hut -> +2000 = 6000
T24: Quecha built -> +2000 (post patch) = 8000

Over the past 15 turns, there has been no movement in the Templars' power rating whatsoever. We know that they spent much of that time building a worker (finished T34) and founding their second religion (also T34). The only new change is an increase of 2000 points on T39. Since the Templars' score also increased by six points that turn, we know that they researched another military-relevant tech. They two that they have are AH and either Mining or Hunting (Sailing the only other option - not very likely). So add on to the above table:

T1: Initial Quecha = 1000
T8: Quecha built -> +1000 = 2000
T15: Jerusalem (capital) grows to size 2 -> +1000 = 3000
T17: Quecha built -> +1000 = 4000
T22: AH tech popped from a hut -> +2000 = 6000
T24: Quecha built -> +2000 (post patch) = 8000
T39: military relevant tech researched (Mining or Hunting) -> +2000 = 10k

The Templars have four total quechuas; they do not have Archery, and they do not have Bronze Working. I cannot possibly see this team as any kind of a threat in the near future. 40 turns into the game and no BW is almost criminal stupidity...

Now for Imperio. They start at 3000 points with their initial warrior (1000 points pre-patch) and initial Mining tech (2000 points). Imperio's first increase comes on T15, when they leap up 8000 points after finishing Bronze Working research. Next increase is 1000 points for capital growing to size 2 on T21. Imperio's power rating goes up another 2000 points on T23 from researching a tech; it is either Hunting or Animal Husbandry. It really doesn't matter which one Imperio grabbed first, because they researched the other 2000 point tech later on (T34). This second boost of 2000 points has to be from a tech, since their capital was in the process of finishing Stonehenge. CivStats confirms a six point increase on this turn, so definitely a tech learned. The table therefore reads:

T1: Initial warrior and Mining tech = 3000
T15: Research Bronze Working -> +8000 = 11k
T21: Capital grows to size 2 -> +1000 = 12k
T23: Research AH -> +2000 = 14k
T34: Research Hunting -> +2000 = 16k

Note that Imperio still only has one warrior built, the Woodsman II unit we saw scouting earlier. Of course, they could always whip defenders if needed in the capital, so they're actually less vulnerable than the Templars. When our scout moved past their capital on T38, their cows were only just getting a pasture; we can conclude from this that the early worker spent its turns chopping out Stonehenge instead of mining/pasturizing. Not a terrible strategy I guess, but probably not what I would have done. If Imperio is working on a settler now (likely), it will be finished in about 7 more turns, around T47. They might want another military unit to defend it though; one unit's not going to cut it for two cities!

So there you go; that should give us all a pretty good idea of what the other two teams are up to. We should probably edit this info into the relevant team threads for easy reference. This was a fun way to pass a lazy evening while listening to baseball on the radio. Enjoy!

[Zeviz]

:applause:

Your picture of our neighbors' history is probably more complete than what their leaders know of their own civilizations.

[T-hawk]

Imperio receives a huge GNP boost of 10 from building Stonehenge on turn 36 - but of course, eight of those ten points are just culture from the wonder. They picked up two actual points of commerce from swapping to some river tiles (production falls from 7 to 4, food rises from 6 to 9; likely a plains hill swapped to a floodplains tile).

Off by one - by providing the free monument, Stonehenge is worth +9 culture total. That means they only picked up one real commerce. Your conclusion is probably right; they swapped to one river floodplains tile.

T1: Initial Quecha = 1000
T8: Quecha built -> +1000 = 2000
T15: Jerusalem (capital) grows to size 2 -> +1000 = 3000
T17: Quecha built -> +1000 = 4000
T22: AH tech popped from a hut -> +2000 = 6000
T24: Quecha built -> +2000 (post patch) = 8000
T39: military relevant tech researched (Mining or Hunting) -> +2000 = 10k

Apologies if this was covered already, but is that right on how the patch behaves? It changes the power value only for newly produced units (meaning the game only calculates additions and subtractions to the power graph, it doesn't total up a civ's power from zero)?

This was a fun way to pass a lazy evening while listening to baseball on the radio. Enjoy!

Hey, I do that too! Most evenings when I'm playing Civ or other games, I have the Mets on the radio. Baseball isn't exciting enough for one's full attention on TV, but works great as background entertainment.

[Zeviz]

Here is demographics screen from the time we finished turn 41.

Does the fact that we have lowest approval rate mean that nobody else has left their capital ungarrisoned?

PS ImageShack is acting up for me. Are there any better free image hosts?

[mostly-harmless]

I go off to a long weekend and all of the sudden the C&D thread gets lively!

Excellent analysis Sullla.

Sullla: We can also state this definitive rule: if Jerusalem doesn't grow to size 4 in the next turn or two, the Templars are working on a settler. If they did start a new settler immediately after the worker (which seems likely), it will complete in about six more turns, sometime around T46. (I'm not exactly sure I have all the numbers right.) There is no possible way that the Templars can beat us to Pink Dot.

Here my numbers and charts read the situation even better for us.
Templars started their worker with only 3food in food pile from the growth to size 3.
All the food for the next turns goes into the worker.
Then on turn 36 the worker finishes with no overflow and Templars either went for a settler, which should finish on turn 50 in the current tile configuration (improved cows) or went for something else and we will see growth to size 4 (26 food required) on turn 45.
I guess Sullla assumed a granary present when stating that rule (?).

Sullla: The only new change is an increase of 2000 points on T39. Since the Templars' score also increased by six points that turn, we know that they researched another military-relevant tech.

Minor point: The tech was researched on turn 40 if I read my civstat records correctly.

T-Hawk: Apologies if this was covered already, but is that right on how the patch behaves? It changes the power value only for newly produced units (meaning the game only calculates additions and subtractions to the power graph, it doesn't total up a civ's power from zero)?

Yes, that seems to be the way it works.

Zeviz: Does the fact that we have lowest approval rate mean that nobody else has left their capital ungarrisoned?

Our 55% are calculated by INT( 5 / (5 + 4 ) *100)
There are two ways the worst rival's 60% could be calculated:
1. INT( 6 / (6 + 4 ) *100)
Which implies a single city, that somehow gets 6 happy faces (can't be Templars as they have not yet chosen a state religion I believe, so it must be someone acquiring a luxury resource. Only Imperio could do that, and they don't have their capital roaded up to a gold hill yet, I am sure.) So this is unlikely but even so, the 4 indicate at least one missing protection unhappiness as both Imperio and Templars have not yet whipped.

or
2. INT( 9 / (9 + 6 ) *100)
Which implies two cities (capital 5 + 2nd city 4) and then already picking up 6 unhappy faces. None of the 2nd cities (there are three currently) has grown to size 2 yet. Two of the capitals (of the two cities civs) have size 3 (Banana & Rabbits). So we could get 4 from crowded and 2 from missing protection & whipping. I think recently founded cities do not get the missing protection malus that early. So we can say one of the other continents civs (probably Banana with their peninsula spot) has left their capital undefended.
Hope that makes sense.

So much for now.
I will update the missing turns soon.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

Summary of the developments from Turn 39 - Turn 43

PAL:
T39 - learned a tech (nothing military relevant though). That's 6 techs learned + initial 2 techs.

T43 - Either their capital or their second city has grown to size 2. My money is on their capital and we will probably see their second city grown in the next couple of turns.

Rabbits:
T40 - learned a tech (nothing military relevant though, the soldier point increase is due to the Templars tech). That's 6 techs learned + initial 2 techs.

Templars:
T40 - learned a tech (either Mining or Hunting). That's 5 techs learned + initial 2 techs.

T43 - 18 points awarded for owning Jerusalems (capital) 13 tiles in the 3rd ring for 20 turns.

Imperio:
T39 - Stonehenge & Monument boosted 3rd ring pop at Mutal (capital)

T41 - learned a tech (worth max. 4000 soldier points =The Wheel, which would make sense as they have a worker ready and plenty of resources to connect, cows for health for example as they suffer from flood plains). That's 4 techs learned + initial 2 techs.

Banana:
EDIT: T43 - Apparently Banana hipped their capital down to size 2.

Other things:
Both Imperio and Templars have still not made contact with PAL
We will make quite a jump score wise by getting 22points awarded for our 3rd ring at Airstrip One on turn 46.

Unless people demand it, I won't show the demoscreens regularly. Only if they are important.

mh