[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[Coeurva]

You could look at the source (which is contained in your [...]/Beyond the Sword/CvGameCoreDLL folder) -- in Civ4's case, it's often readable even if you're blessed not to speak Computer on the regular (or so I think because I'm not):

Code:

pPlot = GC.getMapINLINE().syncRandPlot((RANDPLOT_NOT_VISIBLE_TO_CIV | RANDPLOT_ADJACENT_LAND | RANDPLOT_PASSIBLE), pLoopArea->getID(), GC.getDefineINT("MIN_BARBARIAN_STARTING_DISTANCE"));

(line 6261 in void CvGame::createBarbarianUnits(), which afaik is only called at end-of-turn)
The | means bitwise logical OR.

If the last parameter of CvPlot* CvMap::syncRandPlot() (which basically picks a random plot from a given area and returns a pointer to it) is not -1, it performs a search within a square of that size and chooses a different plot if the previously-chosen one is already occupied by a unit. (see CvMap.cpp, l. 593 - 610)

MIN_BARBARIAN_STARTING_DISTANCE is defined in some XML file in the GameInfo folder iirc. By default, Civ4 defines this as 2. If you want to make a mod where barbs can spawn on top of each other, I think you could simply make a copy of this file, create a mod folder, and change the value to -1, for instance.

Man, fish, etc.

[naufragar]

Man, fish, etc.

Thanks very much! I'll never have to take up fishing at this rate!   I may have left one tile open this turn on which a barb could spawn and beat my warrior back. It's the tile 1E of the further peak. It would be quite unlucky (that is to say, absolutely disastrous), but I'm going to play the odds. The warrior found seafood. He'll start heading back to act as MP or fogbust.



There is a lion already in that patch of fog. C'mon guys. No need to overpopulate.   It also looks like the continent goes on for a bit more.

Want to see an interesting picture?


Lot going on in that huh? I suspect the barbs will move towards Rick, who will then move out of their vision to the forest 1E of the worker. If I were dotmapping that, I'd place a city on that plains hill. The timing could be dangerous for Aretas if that worker wants to road the hill.    (Worker finishes road. Barbs move to my scout. Worker moves to hill, spots angry barbs.) That blind worker move would be so dangerous there's just no way Aretas makes it. More likely, he moves an archer to the hill first.

I'm not unhappy that Aretas is settling towards me, I think.

Hmm. I've been thinking more about your post Coeurva, and if I combine what you've said about CvGame::createBarbarianUnits() getting called at the end of turn and what Ref has said about barbs moving at the start of a turn.... Well, just need to get through this next turn. (Absolute worst case we dry whip a warrior. Actually...Whips complete at end of turn, right? And then barbs move? Fort Survivalist can put out 6hpt, so if we spot a barb two tiles away, we can put a turn into an axe and whip it out without penalty. (Beside the penalty of whipping out an axe at a time we didn't want.))

[naufragar]

Nothing interesting happening on my end this turn (41). (The barbs moved away.) But I did catch this on civ stats:



Not all of those say score increased....

     

Looks like Dark Savant and Donovan Zoi have disagreements they couldn't settle peacefully.

[naufragar]

Come on, man! You went archery first! Where's the escort?



I doubt he'll get punished for this, but boy. Aretas has much more guts than me.

We catch a little glimpse of one of Rusten's colonies.



You can see borders just barely visible 2SE of the scout. (I assume colony, because otherwise Aretas and Rusten's capitols would be very close.)

[naufragar]

I misread Aretas' plans. He wasn't going for the cow/corn site. He wanted the gems.



I wonder if there's a food resource adjacent to the cow. That would explain not founding for the gems/marble first ring. And that desert is almost certainly a floodplains. This denies marble to Rusten, someone who has an interest in going down the religion line. So that's nice. Plus, despite not being on a hill, it's decently defensible because of the visibility it'll have.

There's a bear and a warrior wandering around in that SW fog, so I'll probably heal up Rick and pray they aren't around when I move back south. Once the barbs start getting warriors but before players have expanded enough to tangle with them is a scary time for scouts. (Rick should have odd on bears and warriors if he's in a forest, but it'll be little better than a coinflip.)

I'm consistently lagging behind in every metric but city count. My tech pace has been especially abysmal, hence my permanent residence at the bottom of the scoreboard. I tell myself that this is a gambit. We'll see. I aim to have 5 cities by turn 50.

[naufragar]

Still thinking about this game. Still thinking about Aretas' second city. I was wondering why he made his roads where he did. For example, why is there a road segment on the grassland 1SW of the city instead of 1W. I guess it could be to speed up future travel south. I would've moved both those roads up 1N. It makes travel a bit shorter (ignoring that rivers slow you down pre-construction).

Latest theory? He has Animal Husbandry, and that grassland 1SW is where his horses are. We'll see if I'm right. (Mind reading is not my calling.)

[naufragar]

The bear followed me. Hopefully he doesn’t move to the wheat. I shouldn’t get cornered because in the worst case I could just declare war on Rusten and pass on through, but that is a very last resort.



The wheels are finally coming off the micro bus. Last turn, with one player yet to play, I logged back in frantically because for some reason my capitol had started a granary. I had thought in my plans this worked out. It does not. Instead, it needs to 1-pop whip three different units over the course of ten turns, stacking up three if not four whip unhappy. The wheels are coming off. Take a look.




My Quality Assurance intern, Bonaventura, asked me a few questions.

B: “Wow. You really like keeping your cities as size one, huh?”

N: “Yup. One pop whips are the most efficient. Besides, those tiles we could be working, like improved grass hill pigs, floodplains cottage, and forested ivory suck!”

B: “Then why didn’t you whip out the settler in Fort Survivalist? You’re Imperialistic, and whipping settlers accelerates the snowball.”

N:

B: “Ok. Will you whip out the granary it’s going to make next, thus accelerating the city’s growth curve?”

N:

B: “Alright. We have the third smallest pop out of the entire field. Let’s not talk anymore about the cities. What about workers? Why did that northeast worker make a road segment outside our borders in the middle of nowhere? You know that roads only work if there’s more than one road tile connected?”

N:

B: “Fine. What’re those two workers doing near Thorny Vineyard?”

N: “They’ve just finished a cottage! On a floodplains! The extra food of the floodplains will help the capitol grow, and the longer it works the cottage, the more valuable the cottage becomes! Plus the cottage can be shared by the cap and Plex Anthill! This was such a high priority for our empire I doubled up workers and used a total of 5 worker turns!”

B: “Great! That’s great! When are we going to start working that cottage?”

N:

B: “I don’t understand. We aren’t going to work the cottage? We went Pottery before Animal Husbandry…”

N: “Eh. Plex Anthill has two improved pigs, and for the next three pop growths at the cap, we immediately whip into a unit. By the game’s dating system, Thorny Vineyard will remember my cruel oppression for literally a thousand years. So we really don’t have time to work the cottage. And when we do, we’d rather have the hammers from the ivory.”

B: “Ok. Our worker micro is depressing. At least the workers are protected. We have two warriors in the area. But the warriors are on tiles where they don’t grant any new vision to fogbust and they aren’t acting as police. Why is that?”

N:

B: “I see.”


(Our Quality Assurance intern can’t see the future, so he doesn’t know that Plex Anthill will soon suffer two whole turns of unhappy because of stacked whip anger. My ability to take a not-bad position and play it in the most inelegant way possible has a sort of elegance all of its own.)

[naufragar]

Good game, Dark Savant. You must've been excited to combine the awesome early game of Joao with the late game staying power of a Buddhist shrine in a 25 player game. I'm sorry we both didn't get to see it happen.

The killer was Donovan Zoi, who is now very scary indeed. He gained two cities, one of which is a holy city and now has an entire side free into which he can expand with impunity. (Oh, and he's Pacal (Exp/Fin).)

Last turn (44), I was trying to figure out how in the world Rusten's borders have the shape they did. For reference:



I'm not super quick on the uptake. Luckily, Rick was on the case. Below the fold is the solution. (I think I've illustrated it semi-accurately. (Freehand, because I can't be bothered right now...))

I wasn't taking into account that Rusten has had two border pops because he founded Hinduism.

For the record, this puts his capitol 12 tiles from mine. (I think.)

[naufragar]

We had a bit of server overload today as the entire playing field tried to log in at once (alright, 4 people), so I got to use the in-game chat feature for the first time. That was fun. I check civstats all the time, but never thought to make sure I wasn't logging in when the server was under heavy load. Lesson learned. Actually have some stuff left to move, so I'll get to apply the lesson this turn.

As for the actual turn, well, Rusten is now on four cities.  



Let me put how bad this is in perspective. I started with Imp and the perfect techs. I chopped out four of my capitol's forests and have been whipping my cap to size one constantly. And with all that I beat Rusten to four cities by only one turn. (I realize I hadn't shown the fourth. Oops.) Rusten, on the other hand, started with Mysticism and picked up a religion in a field of 25 and has had a super capitol for most of the game. I kept telling myself I was running a gambit, but Rusten was able to do it all. Make no mistake, this is a race, and Rusten is kicking my ass. Add insult to injury with this shit:



I was going to patrol those forests with the warrior, but obviously I have pulled him back into the city. If the nearer warrior runs straight to me, I have to with a battle at better than 90% odds. Otherwise I lose the city. I've played enough civ to have lost 99.9% battles, so nothing is certain. I've whipped the cap earlier than I wanted to, but this way reinforcements can arrive before before Rusten's second warrior, so he can't double up. Now, do I think this is an intentional push? No. I founded the city just the turn prior. ("Water Garden," maybe a little too on-the-nose with that lighthouse-able lake. Stop me if I try and name my iron city "Fort Ironholm.") If he knew where the city was, he could've stayed in the fog a turn longer and attacked from the forest near the wheat. It's possible he was just fogbusting, or maybe this is a recon in force. That said, maybe he feels like he should give me a friendly poke to keep me honest. You know, move into the forest next to my city to make sure I'm running a military. He's seen the warrior and he should be able to fog-gaze the city tile to see it's a hill, so he'd have to move in both warriors to have a reasonable shot. We'll see what he does. We live in interesting times. For the record, here's his power graph.




That looks like what? Three warriors max? Maybe a fourth if graphs are delayed enough? But I doubt it. If I had an axe on hand, right this very minute... But I don't. Beggars, horses. I'll see if I can find a way to give him a playful poke back. Unfortunately, in the words of the AI, we have enough on our hands right now. Oh, and a wolf is going to attack a warrior of mine who's trying to clear the way for my next settler. Blech.

Edit: I think I can guess at an elegance that Rusten used for his fourth city. See how it just abuts the capitol's culture? I wonder if founding Hinduism and getting the extra border pop enabled him to plant his fourth city and extra ring out and still pick up a resource. Clever if so.

[naufragar]

Hey Rusten, buddy, you seem real attentive. Congrats on founding your fourth city! Anything else that's got your interest currently?