[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[Sandover]

Our current best bet for a second city is definitly to make use of the pigs and surrounding hills. Though I'll happily found one at the wheat location instead if it turns out there's copper up there.

[scooter]

Ruff growing to size 2 makes sense... He's a hunting civ so going warrior-first would be the safe bet, which I'm guessing he did.

That land down there isn't so bad after all...

Any ideas on the map we're on? Are there any hints in the demographics of some people having a coastal start or does it look like everyone is landlocked like us?

[Sandover]

Turn 12:

Demographics coming up below, but first the regular exploration update. Discovered corn next to the silk tile!



And here's the demographics:



As you can see there actually isn't a single civ out there with less land than we got. And here I was saying Kalin/Nakor researched fishing. They must have gone warrior first simply for the matter of security then - sending their starting one off to explore. There is of course a small chance of them having a water resource on the diagonal as their only water tile, though.

I intend to make some sort of more detailed guesstimates regarding what the other teams are up to. Just haven't gotten to it yet.

[Sandover]

Oh right, about the map.

Settings say Huge/Temperate/Low Sea Level. If I were to wager a guess at this early stage I'd say it's a Hempispheres map, just because it makes sense. This map type generates 2-6 continents, very often with water passages in between (and if not, that kind of passages would be easy to edit in), which pretty much matches what was generally requested in the planning thread.

[Sandover]

Btw, is it just me or do the communication in the IT-thread suggest that Team DIM and Krill have made contact with each other?

[scooter]

Well I had a big response written this morning, but the forum ate it and I was too frustrated to write it out again so that got put off for a few hours . Great news about the corn!

Get ready, wild speculation based on weak evidence that is only happening because there's not much else to talk about is about to occur

Actually funny you brought that up about DIM and Krill, because I was thinking that yesterday for a different reason - thread view counts. Sunrise's team was far and ahead the view count leader for awhile, which made sense with 4 members, tons of posts, and the most "name recognition" of any team. Krill was second which also made sense as he's a very skilled player and his posts are almost always interesting to read.

The last few days though Krill suddenly caught up to sunrise's team and even passed them, which I thought was interesting... Then on top of that, team DIM was easily 3rd in views which surprised me, as some teams below him (Whosit's, Cyneheard's, and Ruff's team) have more name recognition and would've made more sense to be above them. I mean it's very possible they really have that fascinating of a thread, but I think you get my point. Combine that with what's going on in the IT thread and I think you can make some pretty interesting conclusions.

Also, from past PB games I remember that a lot of IT thread posts at this point in the game tended to give away more than the writer realized. By that I mean players were just kind of bored, so they weren't very careful with what they wrote. Other players probably didn't know/think to read into their posts, but from watching both of them and knowing everything, it seemed to me like players gave more away than it seemed at first, and I'm wondering if that's also the case here by reading between the lines a bit. And on top of that, in past PB games, views tended to jump on individual threads when the teams made contact, and they would skyrocket when they made contact AND it was a dicey situation. When the Krill/Sunrise episode went down early on in PB1, the views on Krill's thread in particular went through the roof. The IKZ/Mortius situation from PB2 is another exmaple. So here's what we have:

1. Krill's views suddenly catch up to AND pass sunrise's team, a big feat for many reasons.
2. Team DIM has been increasing their lead as the 3rd most in views.
3. Krill apparently was waiting to play last. The ONLY reason to do that at this point in the game is if you have contact and a potentially dicey situation... Right? Tell me if I'm missing a reason.
4. Team DIM was waiting on an "important decision," and on top of that acting odd in the IT thread. What other "important decision" could there be? Kinda seems to hint at a tight warrior situation... right?

So what if we've got a situation where Krill and DIM met, and one of the capitals are empty or something like that. I'll laugh if after I can read the threads I find out that Krill had some genius reason for waiting that I can't think of and DIM was just arguing over scouting plans, but it all seems to connect. Although all this speculation is fun, I'm making tons of assumptions obviously. I do think though at the very least there is some signifance to all this. I'd say we learned this much:

-The odds that Krill met someone has to be extremely high - I'll say 90%. Too much of it fits to discount it. The 10% chance is only there because Krill might just be playing mind games with people like us
-The odds that DIM met someone also has to be relatively high, I'll say probably 70%
-There's a slight chance that Krill and DIM actually met each other, but given how many players are in this game, probably only like 30% odds.
-We speculated the other day that sunrise's team might have met someone, maybe like 30-40% chance.

Given all of those things that are "possible" I think we can definitely conclude that contact has already been made in-game and probably more than once. So we should realize that we could potentially get contact any turn now... Doesn't mean we WILL, but it's definitely something to keep in the back of our head.

Edit: question for lurkers - do you find this kind of metagaming acceptable? Mostly using the viewcount thing. I just sorta figured it's freely available info, so using it is akin to using demographic info. Do you agree?

[Sandover]

You definitly make a valid point scooter.

From the IT-thread:

hi guys, sorry for the delay. we're aware that we've put off ending our turn (although as i write this we're still not the last to end turn). we have an important decision to make and are missing input from a member of our team which we thought we'd have by now.

I'm hoping to end turn as soon as you guys do. I shouldn't be more than 30 seconds.

Krill is clearly waiting for Team DIM to finish their turn before he finishes his. My take on it is that Krill's capital is being threatened by Team DIM in some way. It could also be that war has been declared, and that Krill therefore is required to move after they do due to turn order. But I doubt that's the case since there was only some 5hrs left on the turn timer.

I think it might be time for our warrior to return home for garrison duty.

[scooter]

I'm tempted to start "charting" the viewcounts on the threads in Excel or something to see where spikes come from different threads.

On the map thing, Hemispheres does make a lot of sense, my only thing is it just seems a tad bizarre that no one ended up on the coast. I think I'm going to roll a few Huge 17 civs Hemispheres games later today and see how many civs end up on the coast. I mean obviously it wouldn't be that hard to just take them off the coast (for balance purposes) but if like 13/17 or so start on the coast, that just seems like too much work... What all land maps are there? I don't think we could be looking at a Highlands map (no evidence of it), and no way they'd stick us on Great Plains because of balance problems. Isn't Oasis all land? Or at least really close? I can't remember... I'll mess with some map scripts today and see what we can narrow down.

[Square Leg]

Be interesting to see the demographic of the spoiler threads! I'd recomment running the numbers at the same time each day so as not to play th time zones.

Do we have a name for our warrior? Any naming convention?

[scooter]

Yeah I think I'm going to do that, pick a specific time each day and plot the numbers in Excel. I just have to figure out what time that I know I can do every day (or even every other day) and then we'll be set.