The Dark arts - C&D Master Thread

[fluffyflyingpig]

I'm mostly surprised that Apolyton only drafted two cities. Janissaries are certainly not as good as rifles, but I expect them to have rifles at around T166-Y167 at the earliest. Having 15 janissaries and 15 rifles on T170 would be far superior than having 15 rifles and little else. Especially since we won't have many gunpowder units ourselves by that time, and janissaries do quite well against everything else.

I'm not sure if Apolyton are planning to declare, or simply use the threat of declaring as a way to slow us down. But if they continue with this half-assed approach to military buildup, I'm not worried at all.

I'm not surprised at all. I know everyone wants to think right on T170 a big stack is coming in, but I'm telling you I will legitimately be surprised if that happens. Apolyton explained very clearly in the chat I had with them that they just wanted flexibility, and they didn't have specific intentions to move in right away. Why would they lie about that? It's a 0-gain lie, especially since I told him we'll garrison the borders anyway.

Apolyton still wants to win even if they know their chances aren't great. I am 100% unconvinced that they have sufficient motivation to draft/whip themselves silly to attack us, because the gains (or lack of them) would not justify it. I expect them to do some mild drafting now, and then when Rifling comes in we'll see a brief burst of heavy drafting - just enough to ensure they are totally safe from us and could be opportunistic about 1-2 cities if we let our guard down. But I don't expect to see them double or triple drafting their cities at all.

Emphasizing the bolded part. Apolyton would create a mess out of their border to gain a few crappy ex-german cities that are hard to defend. They don't gain anything from an all-out invasion unless there is a dogpile with CP and CFC.

[kjn]

While doing some preliminary C&D for this turn, I found out that I missed to note that Univers picked up Construction last turn (ie T160). This means they have most pieces they need for a successful defense against CFC now.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Looks like Germans did a 4pt whip. And also looks like Germans kept Huron River.

[kjn]

Yeah, the Germans whipped Wesselburen, so it's size 2 now.

Only new tech this turn was Guilds for CivPlayers. I'm going to have to cut back on C&D over the weekend, and from Monday I'm going to be away from Civ, so will need help with screen shots if I'm going to do analysis (I can still get APTmod and Civstats, though I will be on the road at times).

[kjn]

CFC fired off a golden age, but didn't revolt from what I could see. I also think they whipped out a barracks in KwaDukuza, so it might be that they're going to use the GA for a military buildup. Or they whipped something else, and I missed to note down the barracks in the first round - there are lots of buildings to keep track of right now.

Mostly domestic builds otherwise. Apolyton built a forge, CivFr 3 libraries (in backline cities) and 2 buddhist temples, CivPlayers has engaged in build swappings, CFC built a bank in their capital, and Univers also built a barracks.

[WarriorKnight]

CFC fired off a golden age, but didn't revolt from what I could see.

Aren't they SPI?

[kjn]

Aren't they SPI?

Yes, they are, but I'd expect them to be in Caste, and likely Pacifism, to take advantage of the GPP bonus. They're still in Rep/Bur/Slavery/OR. Perhaps they're discussing a switch to mercantilism? Mercantilism/Caste is really strong, especially tied with Rep and Pacifism.

But they still have a few hours to revolt.

[kjn]

When filling in the demos for this turn, I noted that we had had an in-turn power increase this turn of the rival best from 621 to 633k, and so took a closer look:



(Right now WPC and the Germans are both quite close to rival worst in power.)

So now I have two questions: which is the mystery civ which has overtaken both CivFr and CFC to become rival best, and how did they increase their power in-turn? The second question would normally be answered through drafting, but we haven't had any 1-pop score decreases since after we could log into the game this turn. So that's out.

That leaves gold upgrades, and I noted the following gold changes since we could first log into the game this turn:

Apolyton: +80 (49 -> 129)
CivFr: -500 (591 -> 91)
CivPlayers: -80 (466 -> 386)

So I think CivFr is the new rival best in power, after some upgrading of units with gold (unclear which types of units), and that the APTmod graph is simply unable to follow along in this case. This also fits with that the rival average in power is just around 400k, and that fits poorly with the two rival worst teams being at 250k, and then having three teams at 600k+ power - the average would likely be higher.

We also finally have good evidence that CivPlayers are funding Apolyton with gold right now.

[NobleHelium]

So I guess Apolyton only has ~129g of total maintenance costs?

[kjn]

They had a net loss of -267g (316 to 49g) between T160 and T161, so we have the following possibilities:

* They only need 129g to finish Rifling this turn (which I judge exceedingly unlikely)
* CivPlayers are sending them 80gpt per an earlier agreement
* CivPlayers are only sending 80g for some other reason

If Scooter can use this to get some more info out of CivPlayers and Apolyton, then it's great, but beyond that and that CivPlayers are providing limited funding to Apolyton, I can't say much more.