KGB Update and Discussion

[Blake]

However as a checked map, we have to be wary of what OTHER teams may have got. Presuming that the starts are approximately "equal", they might have things like goldmine on river, or great seafood.

It's more than probable, given the abundance of 5-1/2-10 starts, that there will some grains on river, and they are extremely good. And of course one of our fin rivals having a couple of grassland gems on a river...

[Mudhut]

Yeah, the grassland gems have always been a personal favourite. Most of the time they are slowed down by jungle though.

Of course, nobody can be surrounded by jungle here, or they would have an unhealthiness penalty that show up as a reduction in their life expectancy.

[Blake]

The game always eliminates all jungle from around the start (including clearing it from bananas and gems). It's possible to be literally in a pocket of grassland in jungle, but as long as they don't move the settler towards the jungle they won't get a unhealthy hit.

[Mudhut]

Wow - I never knew that. It's really useful to know. Tell me, when the algorithm calculates where to place the starting location, does it consider the "base" value of the land, or the "improved" value once you have cleared jungle/improved specials etc? Have always wondered how it goes about working that out.

[Blake]

I'm not really sure. I know it dramatically improves the terrain if it happens ot be bad. For example it's possible for a civ to start literally in solid ice, but the ice will be converted to plains and grassland and there will be lots of resources like seafood.

Also I believe it always creates a minimum of 2 forests, possibly 4.

Oh something else we know everyone is on fresh water. It'd be extremely odd for someone not to be tho... I think continents nearly always provides fresh water.

edit: Fer completeness sake I should mention that only SOME scripts do this. The main normal "green" maps... Continents, Arcipelago, Pangea, Custom Continents etc will all do it I believe. More customized scripts like Great Plains and Highland will not and they can give utterly useless starts like all ice and tundra or pure plains.

[Hot Mustard]

Demographics shot available in the 3800BC turn thread. The only difference post-hut-popping is that is our land area grew to 21000.

[Blake]

Okay here's a load of drivel () applicable to 3760BC:

Two teams, Vox and Banana have increased in score by 6.

Average soldiers score has gone up by 333... a total of 2000.

A reminder of the soldier score factors...

A warrior is worth 1K.
Mining = 2K, Hunting = 2K, The Wheel = 4K
Animal Husbandry = 2K, Sailing = 2K, Archery = 6K
Bronze Working = 8K

So um.. that could be Mining, or Hunting, or AH, or Sailing, or 2 warriors.... 2 warriors is improbable tho.

Vox are hunting/mining so they could have popped AH.

The Bunch are Wheel/agriculture so they could have popped hunting, mining or AH.

What probably happened is Banana popped a military tech and Vox popped a civvy tech. I don't think either could have researched one yet.

Here are some tech costs..
Fishing (1) and Hunting (3) are 57
Mining (5) and Mysticism are 71
Agriculture (2), The Wheel (3) and Archery are 85
Pottery and Masonary are 114
Animal Husbandry and Sailing are 143
Bronze Working is 171

The number in brackets is the number of civs that know the tech and this will give a discount, up to somewhere around +25% a turn. (ie researching mining with 10 beakers will actually give 12 beakers/turn)

Techs we know our opponents have:
China (AC) - Agriculture and Mining - popped one, probably hunting, maybe AH? (do they result in different score?)
English (Sara) - Fishing and Mining
French (Banana) - The Wheel and Agriculture - popped/researched one.
Mali (Us) - The Wheel and Mining
Mongol (Horde) - The Wheel and Hunting
German (Merc) - Hunting and Mining
Russia (Vox) - Hunting and Mining - popped/researched one.

Research done:
So far we have completed 44 beakers of Mysticism. We should be able to calculate where everyone elses beakers counts are at.
First turn founders (they are all 10/turn correct?), should be at 55 beakers now. 60 is the maximum I think for a really discounted tech, but only mining is so discounted and that costs 71.


Can someone clarify for me?
1) The discount factor works regardless of whether the civs are known or not, correct? (I believed this was changed in a patch)
2) How much score is a tech worth? SDK skim suggests a tech's score is based on era.
3) Just where is our extra +1 beaker/turn on mysticism coming from? It's just one of those quirky "from the ether" things right?

[Arrian]

My understanding is that tech devaluation works regardless of contact. But I've never tested it.

I dunno about tech score.

We're getting extra beakers? You sure?

-Arrian

[Aginor]

Having taken a look at the save:

1) At 3760, the teams with first mover advantage on us have 7 turns on the books. We know that the game calculates stuff this way from when the border pops were showing already when we got 3920. A team founding in 4000 without Mining could conceivably have researched it if it had 11/12 after border expansion; Hunting and Fishing are also, I believe, in the ballgame for researchable techs.

2) Remember that someone should have grown. Since there are no changes to the demographics whatsoever, clearly they did not, which means that they went Worker first. Which should give us a research advantage on that civ in the pursuit of Meditation.

3) Someone has tied us at 7k on soldiers. Recall Blake's earlier math on the matter from the 3920 KGB thread:

So we are 7K.
The Horde are 6K.
Banana are 5K.
Vox and merc are 4K
Sara and AC are 3K.

Given this, there are only three possible ways in which this can happen from a single change in a turn at this point, as no one has had time to build out a Warrior yet:

a) Banana researched/popped Mining
b) Banana popped Sailing
c) Horde popped a Warrior, and someone else popped a Warrior.

All other possibilities can be discounted since the shift in average indicates that the total shift was 2k. Testing on score changes below falsifies b), as Banana didn't have Fishing at the start and their score would be higher if they researched Fishing and popped Sailing.

Blake, are you deducing who has what from starting techs, or is there a way to determine who has researched techs pre-Alphabet? F6 does not contain this information. If you are certain of these numbers, a) would be falsified and I would have to reverse the following conclusion.

I'm inclined to conclude that a) is the answer, and that Banana is the 11. Option c) is pretty low probability. Can't be totally sure, of course.

Blake, your 'different score' proposition for different techs is easily testable. I fired up a game, moved it to 3760 BC, and fiddled with tech possession. The progression I located for Ancient era techs' impact on score (at pop 1) looked like this: 6,7,7,6,7. It did not vary with the tech selected for addition. It appears that the game then multiplies this impact by the era in order to determine the actual tech value (so Alphabet/Iron Working are 13, Rocketry is 40, etc.)

So the conclusion is that each Ancient tech is worth precisely the same thing, no matter who has already researched what.

4) OK, here's the tricky part - what in the world could AC and Vox have gotten that wouldn't bump military?

Fishing, Agriculture, Mysticism from the first level of Ancient. Meditation, Poly, Pottery from the second level. Unsure on whether or not Masonry impacts military score.

OK, AC has Ag and Mining. So they could have popped only Fishing or Myst. And they popped SOMETHING.

Vox could have researched Fishing. Vox also could have researched Myst if they're the 12. They could have popped either, or they could have popped Ag. They could not have researched Ag.

Vox is probably an easily solvable riddle: If they popped a tech, they should finish research in a turn or two and jump in score again. If not, they popped what they were researching. researched a low level tech, or were working on something like Bronze and popped something.

I really, really would like to know if Vox is the 12, and if Vox is/was working on Myst...

5) Border pops: AC and Sara popped borders but did not work any different tiles. This may be ominous, and it may not. It looks like we have to wait 2 more turns to get much of an idea as to what is going on with who is producing what commerce, hammers and food.

I will not update the top post on the thread until we thrash this out a bit further; I will also be updating each turn with a new post going forward so that those who surf to the end of the thread can see the new numbers without having to move up to post #1.

[Blake]

We're getting extra beakers? You sure?

Absolutely. Progress into Mysticism is 44, and we don't produce 11 beakers/turn.

1) At 3760, the teams with first mover advantage on us have 7 turns on the books. We know that the game calculates stuff this way from when the border pops were showing already when we got 3920. A team founding in 4000 without Mining could conceivably have researched it if it had 11/12 after border expansion; Hunting and Fishing are also, I believe, in the ballgame for researchable techs.

You're right!
Accounting for "beakers from the ether" / discount beakers teams who founded 1st turn and moved before us should be at:
Normal tech: 66 (10 beakers/turn + 1 from ether)
Mining: 72 (assuming discount brings beakers to at least 12/turn) - mining is 71 beakers, so it's done!
Absolute max: At 13/turn a team could be at 78, which is still not enough for any but the 4 cheapest. (13 is 12 + 1 from ether)

With 12/turn for some of those turns? Mysticism would be doable!

So in fact I think this is what has happened:
Banana has researched mining, bringing them to first equal with us. Hunting is also possible. Popping one of those is possible, but given starting techs it's more likely they've researched it. (no scout = less pop chance, and mining is an obvious choice for them)
Vox have researched Fishing or Mysticism, that or they've popped a civvy tech.

Are Vox a water candidate? If they are, then fishing is quite possible.

Earlier AC popped a tech which was matched by an increase in soldiers. Most likely they got Hunting but Animal Husbandry is also possible since they do start with Agriculture.

I'm almost certain that Banana just researched Mining. Vox is far harder to figure out.
But they're Creative/Financial! Why would they possibly want a religion? I guess the shiny factor might be enough though... or just to mess with others. Or they know it's a gimmie with their start.

[Blake]

Blake, are you deducing who has what from starting techs, or is there a way to determine who has researched techs pre-Alphabet? F6 does not contain this information. If you are certain of these numbers, a) would be falsified and I would have to reverse the following conclusion.

This is based on starting techs and AFAIK it should be rock solid since we do know what civ everyone is.

I believe this is as definite as we can be about the techs belonging to others:
China (AC) - Agriculture and Mining - POPPED one, either Hunting or Animal Husbandry.
English (Sara) - Fishing and Mining
French (Banana) - The Wheel and Agriculture - popped/researched one which is either mining or hunting.
Mali (Us) - The Wheel and Mining
Mongol (Horde) - The Wheel and Hunting
German (Merc) - Hunting and Mining
Russia (Vox) - Hunting and Mining - researched/popped Fishing or Mysticism, or popped any civilian tech.


It is slightly possible that AC popped a civvy tech and 2 teams popped warriors that turn.

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Blake

China (AC) - Agriculture and Mining - POPPED one, either Hunting or Animal Husbandry.
French (Banana) - The Wheel and Agriculture - popped/researched one which is either mining or hunting.
Russia (Vox) - Hunting and Mining - researched/popped Fishing or Mysticism, or popped any civilian tech.

It is slightly possible that AC popped a civvy tech and 2 teams popped warriors that turn.

China can't have Hunting/AH at the same time as Banana has Hunting or Mining - the total shift is 2000 across soldiers for all teams, correct?

Therefore one of them has to have a civilian tech. My best guess here is that AC popped Myst/Fishing and that Banana researched Mining. The converse (AH/Hunting pop for AC with a Fishing start) is possible; however, with all of the 5 food starts running around my best guess is that Banana (particularly our hypothetical 11 Commerce Banana) decided they needed to mine right off the bat.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Blake 2) How much score is a tech worth? SDK skim suggests a tech's score is based on era.

Seems right.

Ancient techs are 6.x no matter what order they are discovered in.

Classical are 13.

Confirm this by going into world builder with the sim, take all techs away.

Tech score =0

Add any ancient tech, tech score = 6

Add any second ancient tech, tech score = 13

The ancient techs add to score 6,7,6,7,7,6,6,7,6,7,7,6,7,7,6,7

[Blake]

Originally posted by Aginor


China can't have Hunting/AH at the same time as Banana has Hunting or Mining - the total shift is 2000 across soldiers for all teams, correct?

AC got their free tech a couple of turns ago, this was accompanied by an increase in soldiers.

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Blake


AC got their free tech a couple of turns ago, this was accompanied by an increase in soldiers.

Ah, must have been asleep at the switch then.