Cloak & Dagger

[Sullla]

Update on the demographics bar graphs from the past few turns. (I'm leaving the other teams on the other continent to mostly_harmless for now!)



Here's the Power graph. The food and production ones were not interesting, merely showing our nosedive in shields and huge increase in food as we shifted focus at the capital. During the last five turns, here's the changes:

Realms Beyond
+1000 (total city population increase from 3 to 4, with Pink Dot added) on T44

Imperio
+4000 on T41. As mostly_harmless explained earlier, this can only come from discovering The Wheel tech
+2000 on T44. Since they could not have researched another tech so quickly, we can conclude that Imperio built a second warrior.

Templars
+2000 on T40. We are pretty sure that this came from learning a tech, either Mining or Hunting likely.

Total Power Scores:

Realms Beyond: 32k
2k population
6k military (3 warriors at 2k each)
24k techs (BW - 8k, Archery 6k, Wheel - 4k, Hunt/Mine/AH - 2k each)
0k buildings

Imperio: 22k
1k population
3k military (1 warrior at 1k, 1 warrior at 2k)
18k techs (BW - 8k, Wheel - 4k, Hunt/Mine/AH - 2k each)
0k buildings

Templars: 10k
1k population
5k military (1 warrior at 2k, 3 warriors at 1k each)
4k techs (AH and either Hunt OR Mine - 2k each)
0k buildings

The Templars have the strongest military on the continent despite the lowest Soldier score by far! But four quechua aren't really all that dangerous, especially not when they're spread out all over the continent.

I will try to keep this updated as much as possible, although it's going to be tough the longer we go. The Power graph is really helpful - with some work, you can figure out exactly what the other teams are doing!

[mostly-harmless]

Originally posted by Sullla

Imperio
+2000 on T44. Since they could not have researched another tech so quickly, we can conclude that Imperio built a second warrior.

That is not correct. They got a score increase by 6 that turn, which implies a tech.
Must be a cheap one, they could do with overflow and 3 turns research. Maybe they even invested beakers into it earlier.
So, still only the initial warrior for Imperio it seems.

mh

[Sullla]

Are you sure they didn't get points for some other reason? Or perhaps Imperio built a second warrior earlier, and we mistakenly identified it as a tech? Only Mining, AH, Hunting, and Sailing confer 2000 soldier points. Since we already pegged them as having the first three, that would mean that Imperio just researched Sailing, which doesn't appear to make any sense.

Given the game situation, it seems a lot more likely that Imperio has Mining/AH/Hunting + 2 warriors than Mining/AH/Hunting/Sailing + 1 warrior. Can we confirm this one way or another using CivStats?

[mostly-harmless]

There is of course the possibility that they did not get the 2000 soldier points from the tech, but from producing another warrior. However, the are several points suggesting otherwise:
- they received 6 points increase for the ingame score, implying the researched a tech 3 turns after they researched the last one.
I don't see any other way they could have received those 6 points (no population, no land, no wonders).
- we derived that they are currently building a settler, as Mutal has not grown in a long time. So why switch to a warrior.
- Sailing does make some sense, if you look at Imperios land in the north east. If they plan on settling there, camping all the beavers and deers, there are plenty of seafood resources around.

Of course there is always a degree of uncertainty involved.

mh

[Sullla]

More number-crunching... let's look at the GNP stat and try to make sense of these stats. The current numbers are:

Realms Beyond: 22
Templars: 28
Imperio: 27

What does this mean? The GNP calculation adds up the beakers, gold, culture, and espionage produced by all cities, after modifiers have taken place. This gets really complicated later on, but we can work it out fairly simply at the moment. I'll start by breaking down our own figure for an example.

Realms Beyond
Beakers: 11 (capital) + 1 (Pink) = 12
Gold: 0
Culture: 4 (capital) + 2 (Pink) = 6
Espionage: 4 (capital) = 4
12 + 6 + 4 = 22

Based on what we know about the other teams, we can work out their beaker counts at the moment!

Imperio
Gold: 0 (likely)
Culture: 2 (palace) + 8 (Stonehenge) + 1 (monument) = 11
Espionage: 4
Beakers must therefore be 27 - (11 + 4) = 12/turn

8 commerce comes from the palace, plus 1 commerce from the center tile, so Imperio is pulling in three additional commerce. Now, Imperio's pulling 9 food and 7 shields per turn. Without the center tile, that's 7 and 6, respectively, from three worked tiles. They are assuredly working the plains cattle, a 3/3/0 tile. For the other four food and three shields, the most likely configuration is a floodplains tile (3/0/1) and a grassland hill (1/3/0). I believe that Imperio is working a cottage on that floodplains, which is where the extra two commerce comes in. That would mean they are building a settler right now, working these three tiles:

Plains cattle (3/3/0)
Floodplains cottage (3/0/3)
Mined grassland hill (1/3/0)
Total: 7/6/3, adding up perfectly

Templars
Gold: 0 (likely)
Culture: 2 (palace) + 5 (Buddhism) + 5 (Christianity) = 12
Espionage: 4
Beakers must therefore be 28 - (12 + 4) = 12/turn

Templars are producing 9 food and 5 shields at the moment (so 7 and 4 after removing the center tile again). Obviously one of their three worked tiles is the 4/2/0 grassland cattle. That means we have to come up with 3 food and 2 shields from the other two tiles. The only thing I can think of is a grassland forest (2/1/0) and one of those unimproved plains river tiles (1/1/1), although I find it hard to believe that even the Templars would screw up that badly. I also can't get the commerce to add up correctly, so I've made some kind of mistake here. If someone wants to play with the numbers and try to get them to work out, be my guest.

The good news? We are producing the same number of beakers as the other two teams on our continent, and will leap past them as soon as we connect a road to Pink for our first trade route.

[T-hawk]

I also can't get the commerce to add up correctly, so I've made some kind of mistake here.(

The GNP number for commerce includes the beaker bonuses applied for devaluation and optional prerequisites known. So if Templars are researching anything other than a first-level tech, there's at least a 20% bonus applied. That apparent 12 beakers is most likely either 10 or 9 from the land and palace; 9 if they're researching a devalued tech.

That goes for Imperio too, meaning that if they're researching anything other than a first-level tech, they don't have a cottage on their flood plain.

[Sullla]

Thanks, T-Hawk. Although why in the world the designers thought to program GNP in such a bizarre and obtuse way is beyond me...

[Zeviz]

We've found Imperio's second warrior and their Settler 2 tiles from their capital (check the screenshot in turnplayer thread), so that should help figure out what they've been working on.

In unrelated news, I noticed a couple turns ago that 5th city on the "top cities" list was size 2, but it's back up to size 3 now. So at least 2 civs are whipping their capital.

[mostly-harmless]

So looks like Imperio got themselves a warrior the same turn they researched a tech. That was always a possibility.
That means they researched one of the following techs later than we thought: AH & Hunting.

No big deal really. Glad our guys in field helped us out here.

EDIT: re. whipping.
PAL & Banana are whipping their capital. PAL goes whip happy, really. They have whipped again this turn. Altogether PAL has whipped 5 pop points so far.

mh

[Sullla]

Very minor update for T46: Templars food dropped by one, and their production increased by two (GNP also went up by one). This is a clear indication that they swapped from a grassland forest (2/1/0) to a mined grassland hill on the river (1/3/1). My current best guess is that they are working the following three tiles:

Grassland cattle (4/2/0)
Grassland hill mine (1/3/1)
Plains tile??? (1/1/1)
Center tile (2/1/1)

Total: 8 food/7 shields - which is what the Demographics read. I can't understand why they would be working the river plains tile, but the Demographics seem to indicate that they are. Templars are definitely getting 8 food and not 9. Whatever. Their settler should finish in the next few turns (I expect we'll see a rearrangement of tiles when that happens).

[mostly-harmless]

Ok, here is what we saw in the last turns from Turn 44 to Turn 47.

PAL:
T46 - Learned a tech (nothing military relevant) and surprise, surprise they whipped their city again.
T47 - One of their cities, probably capital "The Warning" has grown back to size 2. More importantly the settled their 3rd city on a nice coastal spot with only 5 tiles in the initial 3x3 ring. So plenty of water. Which makes sense as they know Fishing and have plenty of seafood resources around. I would not be surprised to find their city on that southerly cluster of 3 fish, which we barely see.

Rabbits:
T45 - Their second city grows to size 2.

Templars:
Sullla provides deep insight into their city management.
I can add that they on
T47 - researched a tech. Now soldier points have gone up by 5000 that turn. However tech worth 5000 points are not researchable at the moment (Composites & Stealth) so it is a 4000 points tech, which makes it The Wheel.
Also 1000 soldier points are accounted for by PALs third city bringing their pop count back to 4.

From my secret tables, I predict that their settler finishes on turn 49.

Imperio:
T44 - Researched a tech. From a few posts earlier we know it was a military relevant tech worth 2000 but was not Sailing but rather AH or Hunting.

Banana:
T44 - Researched a tech. From the soldier points it is most likely a 2000 point tech, so either AH or Hunting or Sailing. With only 10 workable land tiles out of 28 workable tiles altogether I would not be surprised if they researched themselves Sailing. Just a feeling.
Their second city has grown to size 2.
T46 - Their capital has grown back to size 3.
T47 - And their capital was whipped one pop point down to size 2 again.

Realms Beyond:
T46 - we got a massive ingame score increase by 21 due to owning our third ring (16 tiles) for 20 turns.


A few thoughts on civ power and how to judge it.
One could judge the power of civ by the number of tiles it is able to work, at least in the early days.
On top of that the availability of workers should be noted as improved tiles are even better.
Also the number of whipped pop points can be listed as it is a conversion of food to hammers.

So here is the list:
(note that I include the city tiles in here as well.)
I will also assume we grow next turn to size 4 and Imperio settles their second city.

PAL: 7 tiles & 5 whips
RB: 7 tiles (worker bonus) & 0 whips
Banana: 6 tiles & 3 whips
Imperio: 6 tiles (worker bonus) & 0 whips
Rabbits: 7 tiles
Templars: 4 tiles (worker bonus)

Hope that makes some sense.

mh

[Sullla]

More nice work. I've been putting some tables together with Demographics info, and all the Food indicators are suggesting that PAL is off to a monster start. Their score only looks bad because they have been whipping nonstop... but it's extremely likely that most of those whips have been for work boats, only exploding their grwoth curve further ahead. I am very, very worried about them longterm. Banana also has a seafood start and is doing decently, although not in the same league. The only good news is that both of the civs on our continent are far behind the pace set by these teams. I'll have some more Demographics stuff to post when we hit the T50 landmark.

Now, the fairness of giving one team a triple-fish coastal start is another issue entirely...

[mostly-harmless]

I am not sure PAL got a triple fish start? Do you get this from your food tables?
I would guess they got one seafood resource at their capital (maybe two?). Their second city is land locked, so not seafood.
Their third city, as I said is a coastal city again.
If you need my history of world cities and growths and whips and border pops let me know and I email it to you.

mh

[ruff_hi]

recent email from PAL
Feel free to propose something else; we have all the base technologies (hunting in 4) plus bronze working, masonry, pottery and AH. If you agree to such a deal we could start be-lining alphabet.

They just gave us their current techs!

[Sullla]

Not a full update, more like a summary of what we've found so far. As always, many thanks to mostly_harmless for compiling much of this info. We can be nearly certain that the Templars and Imperio started out the game thusly:

Templars

T1 Building quechua
T7 Quechua -> quechua
T17 Quechua -> quechua
T24 Quechua -> worker
T36 Worker -> settler
T48 Settler should be due this turn

Begin with Mysticism and Agriculture
T1 Researching Meditation
T11 Meditation -> Masonry (?) [this is a guess, but the cost in beakers had to be around 110 and NOT one that gives Soldier points; Masonry is the only one that fits these criteria]
T21 Pop AH from hut, Masonry -> Polytheism
T34 Polytheism -> Mining
T40 Mining -> Wheel
T47 Wheel discovered

The only thing we might have gotten backwards is the double techs on T21. It would seem more logical to assume that Templars researched AH and popped Masonry from a hut. Still, with them you never know.

Imperio

T1 Building worker
T15 Worker -> warrior
T22 Warrior -> Stonehenge
T36 Stonehenge complete (61 shields production + 3 forest chops) -> settler
T45 Settler (~80 shields + 1 forest chop) done

Begin with Mysticism and Mining
T1 Researching BW
T16 BW -> Agriculture (?) [not certain, but this is the only possible logical choice]
T23 Agriculture -> AH
T34 AH -> Wheel
T41 Wheel -> Hunting
T45 Hunting discovered

I have edited this info into the first post of each team's thread. Not sure how long we can keep doing this as the other teams settle more cities, but for now it's proving pretty entertaining.