The Dark arts - C&D Master Thread

[kjn]

Do we have any other demographics screen shots than the ones Sullla has posted? I tried to URL-strip his dropbox links, but dropbox didn't cooperate.

[mostly_harmless]

What other screens would you need?

mh

[kjn]

Another few interesting tidbits of demo data, this time from T2:

GNP has fallen since T0. Average 16 would give a total GNP of 128 to 135. If we assume 135 total, the three first civs kept their GNP at 19, 19, and 18 that would give 79 over 5 civs or 15.8 per civ - which isn't possible. I guess at least one of the civs settling on T0 has done tile-swapping and lowered their GNP, or switched research to a non-bonus tech since Sullla took the T0 screen shot.

Only one other civ reaches 4hpt. I guess it's one of our fellow EXP civs (Univers or the Germans). Total production is between 16 and 23. If we assume 23 total, that would give 18 over 6 civs, or every other civ gets 3hpt, which seems awfully high. Do we have any tile-swapping data?

Total food production is between 32 and 39. With 39, it gives a perfect 5fpt over six civs.

Land area (66k total) tells us that two civs have fully land starts, while six have a single sea tile like us. This implies that every civ that moved got coast or a single lake in their early land.

Life expectancy is interesting, for once. 66 means one civ moved southwards and settled the floodplains area.

(FWIW, I'm traveling right now, and won't be able to access the game until tomorrow afternoon GMT. So I'm dependant on data that other people can tell me.)

[mostly_harmless]

Health numbers are a bit more tricky.

We get 8 health currently:
+2 from expansive
+2 from fresh water
+2 from diff level
+2 from having 4 forests (0.5 each) in our BFC (interesting that they count although the border has not popped yet)
And we have one unhealthy face from size 1

So that accounts for our 88%

The rivals best has 90% so that must be 9 health.
Pretty save to say that this is one of the two other expansive civs with a couple more forest than we have and also on fresh water.

Rivals worst is only 66%. Now that could be only 2 health from the diff level and no fresh water and not even two forest tiles in the BFC. Given the balanced starts that we are playing according to plako, I would dismiss that possibility.

The next best match for 66% is a 4 health and 2 unhealth pairing.
2 unhealthy faces means 3-4 flood plains (0.4 each) in the BFC, thats entirely possible. However on the healthy side it would mean only 4 health faces coming from +2 diff level and then what? +2 from fresh water (supposedly you settle on the river giving you these floodplains in the first place) and less than 2 forests in the BFC? Possible but unlikely I feel. Alternatively the +2 could come from 4-5 forests in the BFC but then they settled away from the river. Odd, but then that's what they did.

Of course there is a third option to get to 66% which is a 6health - 3unhealth pairing.
Here you would get +2 from diff level, +2 from fresh water (settling on a river) and +2 from say 4 forests or expansive to arrive at 6 healthy faces. Fine and realistic so far. On the unhealthy side we would need to at least 5 flood plains to account for -2. Just looking at our starting position we could have moved 1SW to settle for exactly those number of flood plains. My money is therefore on that third option.


mh

[kjn]

What other screens would you need?

In a perfect world, we'd have demo screen shots before and after every other civ settled, and tile- and research-swapped so we would know our rank for every GNP value 16-19, food value 3-6, and production value 1-4. :neenernee

But I can settle for less. 8-)

[kjn]

Thinking some more about life expectancy. The T0 data is 27 over eight civs, implying 216 to 223 total for our three settling rivals, and with rival best of 85.

With 131-138 on two civs, that easily maps to 66 life expectancy for two civs.

SIP for us but assuming non-EXP would give:

+2 (difficulty)
+2 (fresh water)

-1 (pop)
-1 (4 flood plains)

So the 66 is probably the two civs that settled in place, and everyone else probably moved northwards.

[mostly_harmless]

Entirely possible. That would pretty much imply mirrored starts. Just one forest more and those numbers would not work out.

mh

[Sullla]

Thanks for your thoughts. This is more of what I was hoping our team would be doing.

[kjn]

Well, the starts aren't completely mirrored. Univers apparently could do a T1 PH settling where they could work the deer without a border expansion, per Sullla's tile swapping check.

But I think all the teams faced roughly the same set of tiles, with a similar set of choices, but with slightly different layouts. There might also be minor differences (wet wheat/corn, swap deer/cow, banana/sugar) in resources - we will have to check once we meet our first civs.

Anyway, if the Spanish team started researching Archery on T0, then I imagine they switched to say Mining after Sullla took the screen shots, which also would lower the average GNP.

[waterbat]

Average rival score doesn't round up, so 16 avg rival GNP = 128 to 143 total, right?