3920 - Kgb

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Aginor

I'm not advocating a total bailout on the religion strat, but we're in a position where any of 5 civs could outrace us to Meditation if they started Myst->Meditation. We've only got position on the Horde. Further, there's the strong possibility that both of our main competitors for a religion are going for it, given that they apparently moved specifically to get 12 commerce starts.

Does wanting/settling a Commerce-rich start necessarily imply going for a Religion?

We may need to consider more complex options than a pure Meditation rush given the circumstances. Since we're out of position on everyone, we're in a situation where we have to react to a blind guessing game as to whether or not Sara/Liz is gunning for Myst, and if so whether either/both are going to go for Meditation or Poly.

Picking up Hunting is clearly out, as our only hope IMO for Buddhism or Hinduism is to get lucky and pick the religion the other competitor(s) don't go for and get it before research can be swapped.

Let the guessing game begin: Meditation, or Polytheism?!

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Mudhut

At 3920, the rival dataset is [12,11,10,10,10,0]
(note that it can't be [12,12,10,10,10,0] because the rival average would then be 9)

That isn't consistent either. 12+11+10+10+10+10 = 63. 63/7 = 9. Yet even in that equation we show rival average = 8.

Yet we know for a fact that there are two civs out there with more than 10 commerce, and that at least one of them has 12.

Now I'm REALLY confused about the rival average figure in the demographics screen.

[vulture]

Going back to the land demographics, and sticking with the 1 tile = 1000 sq km assumption, the first two turns our competitors were working [9,9,8,0,0,0] tiles. One of them is on the coast, or next to a lake. (Civs that haven't founded count as 0).

But since the 3 teams that founded turn 1 seem to have jumped to 21 tiles this turn (so we should next turn, having founded on turn 2 - or maybe it happens at the end of the turn, but that seems unlikely), then we have [21,21,21,9,9,0] tiles used - a total of 81. Which, assuming water tiles aren't counted, mean that with 74 land tiles counted, there are 7 water tiles around. Which means someone has a coastal start. Possibly 2 teams - one before us in turn order and one after us. Only one before us has a coast start though (but one *has* to have a coast start).

Still raises the question of why borders are expanding so soon. If they really are (rather than just for demographics purposes) then it could also explain the switch in tiles - a better one became available with the expansion.

Has anyone checked the settings to make sure nothing screwy is going on with culture?

[Arrian]

One of them is on the coast, or next to a lake.

Or, in the worst-case scenario for us, an Oasis.

-Arrian

[vulture]

Originally posted by Aginor


That isn't consistent either. 12+11+10+10+10+10 = 63. 63/7 = 9. Yet even in that equation we show rival average = 8.

Yet we know for a fact that there are two civs out there with more than 10 commerce, and that at least one of them has 12.

Now I'm REALLY confused about the rival average figure in the demographics screen.

The *rival* average is divided by 6, not 7. So with average=8, there are 48-53 commerce points out there, and since one team has zero, and all other teams have at least 10, there has to be 52 or more points allocated. That only leaves 52 and 53 as options [12,11,10,10,10,0] and [12,10,10,10,10,0].

However, we know 2 teams are above 10, so it has to be 12,11,10...

[vulture]

Originally posted by Arrian


Or, in the worst-case scenario for us, an Oasis.

-Arrian

Wouldn't that count as land for demographic purposes?

[Aginor]

Originally posted by vulture
Still raises the question of why borders are expanding so soon. If they really are (rather than just for demographics purposes) then it could also explain the switch in tiles - a better one became available with the expansion.

That didn't occur to me since border expansion by 3960 is, of course, patently impossible. Yet the demographics screen seems to indicate the expansion (and I passed over it, simply relagating the impossible data in my mind to 'bug' status).

Edit: Figured it out, go further down in the thread. Cultural civs already register their border expansion b/c they've been founded for 3 turns already @ +4/turn by the time we play turn 3.

[nbarclay]

Working a seafood tile without a work boat only makes sense if you're in a really huge hurry to get a tech, which in turn would imply a probable attempt at a religion beeline. From a food+production perspective, it's a whole lot better to work a forest (of whatever sort) while building the work boat and use earlier completion of fishing boats to make up for the lost food.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by vulture


Wouldn't that count as land for demographic purposes?

Doh, yes, I'd think so.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

What about the possibility that one of those two civs could run into problems with neighbors, such as the Horde?

[Dominae]

Speaking of which, what are the Horde doing? Is going nomad a strategy on their part, or do they really dislike some aspect of the start they were given (i.e. made a mistake and moved the Warrior second)?

Great analysis, btw!

[Blake]

ON RESEARCH:

Go to https://the thread where I outline a... that happens.

By not going for Meditation, about the only real benefit is we get to train a scout 5 turns earlier, at present those turns are allocated to pre-building a worker.

Otherwise, all techs are completed "Just in time".

Worker:
We start with Mining, so our worker can mine the sheep the moment he pops out.
Agriculture completes the turn that the worker finishes his mine, he can immediately start a farm.
Pottery completes a turn after he finishes his farm, he spends a single turn idleing (pre-building a road) before moving onto cottages.

Production:
The early years are taken up training the Warrior, Scout and Worker. This can not be optimally accelerated (ie we could work forests in favor of floodplains, but this means less growth and less commerce).
After the worker, at present 2 skirmishers are allocated, or we could go with 1 scout and 1 skirmisher, depending on what it looks like we need. I don't know, maybe you could argue we don't need skirmishers so early. Personally though, I think nothing says "f*** off" like a scout/warrior running into a skirmisher. It sends a message to the savages - you aren't going to catch us with our pants down, so don't bother. The best war is one we don't have to fight. If they want to fight anyway? We have skirmishers!
Right after the skirmishers, a Granary gets built.
Once the granary is complete, we've just hit size 6. We've just completed Bronze Working. Everything is ready to make out first whip, a lovely settler! And we have a skirmisher waiting at the city site.
After that we're pretty much flat out, research has surpassed production.


So here's the thing. Even with going to Meditation, I'm still confident proceeding with Hunting and Archery, we just don't urgently need any worker techs. We may as well get meditation at the start, otherwise our scientists will be twiddling their thumbs. And we do need the Priesthood path regardless, for Monarchy and CoL.

Also, I'm nearly completely confident that the Creative leaders wont be going for religion except maybe Banana (they might want a rel tech for the wonder), in those teams anyone who suggests religion will be shouted down and the voice of reason will be victorious.
And then on the most part, I think Polytheism is the more attractive tech. It has a wonder, it leads to Juadism.
Meditation is only the most attractive for us and Sara, and that alone should deter any other religion-inclined from trying for it.

Also, we are the only Spiritual and there are no Organized, these are the traits that IMO benefit most from religion. In a game where religion wont have much impact there's precious little incentive left to get it. Granted, religion is just shiny enough to be attractive in spite of reason, but hey, they're probably hurting their game .

Anyway... it's a risk, but it's a safe gamble, we don't lose much by trying. Full steam ahead to Meditation!

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Dominae
Does wanting/settling a Commerce-rich start necessarily imply going for a Religion?

Of course not - the point of my thinking here was to try to ascertain:

1) Who's got the hot start(s)?
2) If I were those teams, and I knew I had the commerce lead, what would I do with it?

Having read mudhut's response to my above question, I see that it's 12,11,10,10,10,10,0 on commerce. So that means that one of the civs above 10 is non-Financial (and is therefore Creative. Proof: 4 teams are Creative, only one is Financial. Four teams are Financial; only one team is Creative. Therefore, all civs for whom 11 is a possible commerce value are Creative.) For the one civ that IS Financial - I can't see any realistic way that they benefit more from a high commerce start than from racing to a religion.

What is religion for Qin or Liz? It's a free cultural gift for having a high commerce start, basically. Religion as a pursuit for the civ with the Creative civ with the 11 seems less likely. With the possible exception of Banana, from whom I'm not inclined to assume rationality ex ante.

Long story short, both AC and Sara are going to need border expansion in cities #2 and 3, and wiring them up to a religious capital seems to be the most efficient way of doing it. I suppose that Liz could conceivably want to get Sailing ASAP with a commerce bonus, but a Lighthouse would take quite a while to go up since she does not have a civ production bonus on it. Otherwise the other early options are tech to Bronze and tech to Pottery, as I see them.

Another thought - if I had a hot commerce start, would I not want to get to Writing ASAP? ESPECIALLY if I am Liz, and I am Philo, and I can spit out a GS from a nice fat commerce start on the coast. Fastest beeline is Myst->Mediation->Priesthood->Writing. It's a gamble, but it would pretty much guarantee them tech dominance, might get them an early religion, and would almost certainly get them Taoism from lightbulbing Philo later. Not a bad state of affairs if you decide to go vertical out of a strong start (suppose, for instance, that Liz is coastal with gold/silver/gems handy *shudder*).

Blake, I'm not advocating abandoning religion entirely; I don't think doing that helps us. What I'm concerned about is that we're going to have one or two competitors for Meditation, and that we're going to lose that race. My objective in all of this is to try to get inside the adversary's/adversaries' heads and figure out what they're going to do. My conclusion is that Qin could be acting rationally here by working an Oasis/commerce special tile on a river and not necessarily be going for a religion, but that Liz *probably* is not acting rationally (if it's Liz) in the absence of a religion race and is working a lake/coastal Fish. I'm deriving this from the fact that we have two competitors over 11 and that it seems unlikely that both of them caught commerce special on river/Oasis tiles.

All supposition, of course, based on off-the-cuff probabilistic estimates of resource distributions and who did what. Could be (and quite possibly am) way off base on some of the postulates from which I derive the conclusions.

However, to my mind one result from all this speculation is very likely - we've got a religion competitor, they've got better commerce than we do, and if it's a '12' start they're almost certainly going Meditation.

Quickly, to summarize the possible scenarios:

1) No religion competitors right off the bat: Myst->Meditation is viable, we get what we want.

2) One religion competitor off the bat, outtechs us: Myst->Meditation is iffy. If we can burn 2-3 extra turns on Poly and still get a religion out of the deal, why not do it? Here it makes more sense to go with a modified Blake gambit of Myst->Hunting->Meditation and take advantage of signaling to switch to Poly if need be. (Assuming the competitor in question doesn't try to snag Poly and monopolize - which seems a dubious, improbable move and so can be safely discounted).

I don't buy the 'we'll want Meditation eventually' argument at all - I would much rather pay my beakers for that tech when it's cheaper if I'm not going to get Buddhism out of it. Any beakers spent on being the second to that tech as opposed to the third, fourth, fifth or sixth are wasted beakers that I don't want to pay if I can possibly help it. The tech does us no good whatsoever if we don't get the associated religion until much later in the game, so why spend the beakers if we don't have to? Further, we have no plans to go up to Priesthood or Writing any time soon, so we're giving up turn advantage on Pottery, a Granary, and Bronze besides. We can spend our beakers now on things like Ag that we know several civs already have, rather than pouring ten turns into a useless tech that grants us nothing and that will be cheaper later.

3) Two religion competitors off the bat, one outtechs us and one does not - a generally bad scene. If we go Myst->Hunting we get caught and can't get to Poly if the second player chooses that path. There's not much we can do about this one except go Myst->Poly in the event that we have one competitor already at Myst when we get there, which is a big gamble (since that competitor might be Qin, and might be going Poly for the Wonder, particularly if he sees Marble).

4) Two religion competitors off the bat, both of whom outtech us: the only way to get a religion here is to guess what the other two don't and beat the other two to it. Best guess is they both go for Meditation and someone gets burned because either a) Liz suicides it with another coastal tile or b) one player is on a river with a tile to work for an extra point of commerce at size 2 and the other does not have an extra commerce square (doubtful scenario)

If we think that #3 is the likely scenario we're facing, we probably need to start on Poly *immediately* after Myst or give up the ghost on the first two religions altogether. Otherwise we're going to give away turn advantage and research by chasing a worthless tech (Meditation) that will become devalued with time.

All of this boils down to: let's keep an eye on how many civs have Mysticism, and make our next research choice on the basis of how many players are in the race by the time we get there. If there's more than one, we probably need to switch *immediately* to Poly if we want any chance of founding a religion. If there's one, we're best off with the Hunting gambit. If none, our original plans are probably safe.

Or, to put it another way, I apologize to all for wanting a Financial civ over Sally, as with Saladin we wouldn't have to suffer through this sort of thinking on this decision!

(edited regarding mudhut post above demonstrating proof for [12,11,10,10,10,10,0], didn't catch it in first trip back through the thread)

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Dominae
Speaking of which, what are the Horde doing? Is going nomad a strategy on their part, or do they really dislike some aspect of the start they were given (i.e. made a mistake and moved the Warrior second)?

I have no idea. Considered the following scenario:

1) Warrior pops hut and gets experience, apply double Forest promo
2) Horde decides to try to catch someone napping, given all the high food starts
3) Horde decides to go nomad with the Settler and use it as a Scout and try to cap undefended capital, eliminate a rival and perhaps even get a size 1 city for its own use

However, since they've got Hunting and therefore a Scout and not a Warrior, I'm at a loss. Started at the extreme North/South pole on a glacier? Trying to find a non-creative civ, found right next to it, border push its developed tiles away? Your guess is as good as mine, but I'd say it's out of what they perceive to be necessity and NOT a strat.

Fully prepared to eat my words if they still haven't founded by next turn, though.

[Blake]

I don't buy the 'we'll want Meditation eventually' argument at all - I would much rather pay my beakers for that tech when it's cheaper if I'm not going to get Buddhism out of it.

Hmmmm. As a rule people either research meditation extremely early, or rather late. Maybe near the end of time if they got Poly instead. It's not going to get discounted like AH or BW does.

Now wait a sec... how does a fin leader get a +11 comm... the only way, is to found on a comm special on a river. And work a 0 commerce tile.
A non-fin civ can get it by working a +2 comm tile, or founding on a river comm special + working a 1 comm tile.

A non-fin civ can get +12 by founding on a comm-river and working a +2 comm tile. This is quite unlikely tho, altough I have had river-wines + oasis starts before.

Arrrgh Aginor I don't get your logic for why the 11 comm one must be creative. Any leader can get any commerce start within the realm of probability (ie from 9 to 12). Do you have it right or did you not account for city tile commerce variance?

If 11 is a fin leader, they don't have a wonderful comm start (because they are working a 0 comm tile), or they aren't maximizing for comm (yet). If they aren't a fin leader, they have a good comm start, but it may just be coincidental-to-religion that they founded on the river-comm - like "Yay, free commerce" rather than "We need high commerce for religion".

And on the topic of med/poly; I think it's also likely that any other team who decides to go religion, but don't have a great comm start, will go for Poly instead. If we try to race the slow guys, we lose because of player order and stuff.

And I think the question is: What is it worth to get our scout out 5 turns earlier? It's obviously worth something.

While I'm willing to wait and see I really don't think we have a whole lot to lose by dedicating ourselves fully to the religion race.

Then again... the logic that we're either going to lose outright, or get it regardless even with researching hunting first... is looking extremely solid.

Anyone care to do sims to figure out how combination of found turn + comm start + growth rates effect the turn that meditation is founded? Like is a +11, turn 1 player faster than a +10, turn 0 player?