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[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

lol

Maybe someone should kindly ask Kuro in his thread how the search for a teammate is going?

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Played T11 and sent on the save.

Hunting came in, started on Archery so we never have to build anymore nasty warriors. Moved our two exploring units, will post updated maps next turn. Capital grew to size 2 after I ended turn so I'll change from the barracks build onto a worker next turn:

[Image: T11-NewtGingrich.JPG]

Demographics for this turn:

[Image: T11-F9.JPG]

I forgot to grab the scores but it looks like Sian finished another tech as his score was up to 52.

I'm about to hit the road to drive home, so no more turns for me for the next five hours or so.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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spacetyrantxenu Wrote:Hunting came in, started on Archery so we never have to build anymore nasty warriors.

Warriors have an important part to play. They're cheap MPs for happiness and expendable scouts. Later on, attach generals to them for a free mace/rifle.
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Those are all good uses for warriors, but since bowmen only cost 6 hammers more than warriors on quick speed I'd rather build them instead and have the option to wreck something, if needed.

I played turn 12 and sent it on, hopefully this is the last one I have to play on the laptop before I get back to my real Civ box. It's a pain doing screenshots on the laptop so I just grabbed F9 again.

[Image: T12-F9.JPG]

I'll do a proper update tomorrow when I have a few minutes.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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spacetyrantxenu Wrote:Looks like no changes from last turn. One of these days I need to put together a tech spreadsheet with the beaker counts for each technology. That is, unless someone has already done that work on quick speed? huh

I'm trying to catch up on my pbem reading after the holidays, and found nobody had answered this question yet. Tech cost depends on three factors: game speed, world size (as in small, large, huge, etc; not as in # of tiles), and game difficulty. The formula is:

FLOOR( FLOOR( FLOOR(Tech Base Cost * Difficulty Modifier) * Map Modifier) * Speed Modifier)

All the modifiers can be found in the XML files. I was able to find a screenshot of the game settings in one of the vet threads, so for this game we've got:

Small World Size = 1.2 modifier
Prince Difficulty = 1.1 modifier
Quick Speed = 0.67 modifier

As an example, to calculate the tech cost for writing, you'd start with looking up the base cost for Writing. It's 120 beakers. 120 * difficulty modifier (1.1) = 132. 132 * map modifier (1.2) = 158. 158 * speed modifier (0.67) = 106. So if you open up the F6 screen, writing should have a cost of 106 beakers to research.
Suffer Game Sicko
Dodo Tier Player
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Thanks for the information. I hadn't planned to be quite so ambitious in making a spreadsheet as to use formulas, but that looks like a simple enough formula that I could probably manage it. Of course as primary turn player I feel it is my duty to offer this kind of grunt work to my ded-lurker, so Number One, do your homework! lol

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Blaargh, so if I want to make a full blown spreadsheet to accurately represent research costs it would apparently take into consideration a lot of factors, seen here:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...search.php

Maybe what I should do is input the base beaker cost for each technology and use the spreadsheet as a reference point rather than try to make it 100% accurate. Even the variation in the values from a roughly correct spreadsheet versus what I see in tech costs in game should provide some limited information, like how many civs already have the tech, etc. (not that there aren't better ways to do that after Alphabet). Anyway, it's a homework project in case I don't get a save to play tonight.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Having tried a couple times to come up with a useful sheet for tech costs & multipliers, i look forward to seeing what you come up with.
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I'll work on the spreadsheet when I get a chance. I'm suddenly daunted by the task I face. alright

On the other hand, I hope to have a turn to play sometime before 2012. Currently,

[Image: T13-KuroHoldsTheSaveForever.JPG]

banghead Is it too soon for another -1 diplo? We're going to be at furious before we even make contact.

Edit: If I were Kuro I'd be paranoid about players' thread post count increasing while I continued to sit on the save.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Short chat with Catwalk, we exchanged screen shots since he knows where copper is and I know where horses are. Here are the pictures he sent us:

[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0042.JPG]
[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0043.JPG]

The resource lowdown is that it appears copper is going to be in our FP area SE of Newt and holy crap look at all those floodplains! Can you imagine a bureaucracy powered capital working gobs of cottages on those tiles? More realistically that will probably be broken up into two cities but still...whoa. Our horses, and Catwalk's, are located in the connecting tundra zone, so we'll have to prioritize getting a blocking city up there to claim ours.

Also, if we have a jungle area like Catwalk does, that will be nice with all the Calendar resources. I imagine that must be designed to be a contested zone, so settling races will probably ensue for happiness resources.

In the image of Kuro's land, it looks very similar to our land. I really think Commodore used Novice's map balancing tool to take a small map and do a CW wrap to copy the tiles, then hand edits to vary the landscape. There are a few areas that look very similar, just rotated over and edited.

From the amount of scouting Catwalk has done it seems clear that he vacated his capital in the early going, so he was less risk averse than I was. I wonder if that's his personality or if he just assumed the map was large enough that someone's warrior wouldn't find his capital in the early turns.

These images looks like they are from last turn. Slowcheetah left his UI up so we know he's researching Meditation. Maybe we can get a missionary from them later on since I have no plans to go for an early religion. Also, I think the espionage indicator in the score panel indicates they are spending their EPs on Sian. I think I'm spending mine on Slowwalk, so I should get demographics info soon. I think my last count was that I'd get it by T15 or so. We haven't discussed EP allocation but I'm sure I'll start spending on either Sian or Kuro, if I've met him by then. Probably Kuro because I think he'll be the closer neighbor.

Here's the chat with Catwalk for the interested: (Edit: Spoilered the section about PBEM25, sorry about that. PBEM25 players leave it!)
Catwalk: Greetings
Mao: Hello, fellow dictator.
Catwalk: Flattery will get you everywhere
<snip>
PBEM25 Spoiler info follows
[SPOILER]
Catwalk: So, on to diplo stuff
I just declared war
Mao: on whom?
Catwalk: Pegasus
PBEM25
Mao: oh. Ha, I thought it was a bit early for war in PBEM 29. Sorry to say I haven't made it to PBEM 25 yet. Casus belli, or did you just want to spice things up?
Catwalk: Cold war for quite a while now
I settled on him aggressively earlier on, and he didn't want to extend our NAP
Mao: I can't imagine why.
Catwalk: He's probably getting ready to attack, may as well beat him to it
Mao: who is ahead in turn order?
Catwalk: What do you mean?
Mao: which one of you plays the turn first on a given turn?
Catwalk: Hmm, I think I'm ahead of him
Mao: doesn't matter outside a NAP but it has ramifications on who gets to attack first on the first turn of a NAP expiration.
Catwalk: Yeah, I know about the NAP thing
Saw lots of whining about that in various threads
Make sure to drop by PBEM25g sometime, we're having a blast
Mao: yeah, probably mostly in any thread in PB4 where they got NAP-sniped by Rego
I'm slowly making my way through as many of the PBEM games as I can, there are a lot of good ones. PBEM17 is just fascinating.
Catwalk: It's my first MP game, making PBEM29 my second one
Mao: yeah, PBEM29 is my first real MP game anywhere. I've MP'ed a bit via LAN with RL friends, but that's different. We usually comp stomp
I just hope I don't embarrass myself.
Catwalk: I'm sure you'll do fine
Cull did embarrass himself in 25, though
He's been mostly dead since t40
Mao: whoa, oops!
that will whack the balance of power in a small game like a PBEM for sure. someone is going to get extra land and roll ahead.
Catwalk: Didn't settle his strategic resources, got attacked with chariots while he only had warriors
On that note
Mao: now I'm curious, who was the attacker?
Catwalk: Ceil and Ad Hoc teamed up against him
I was invited to join in, but decided to keep building
Mao: I couldn't remember if that was the PBEM that TMIT was playing in or not. I figured he'd chariot or HA rush someone.
I'll have to check with my research bureaucrats, but I believe we can find horse meat if you need it.
Catwalk: Do you have knowledge of horses or copper yet? We know where copper is
Sent at 10:48 AM on Friday
Mao: Perhaps a screen exchange, my horse flesh for your copper bits?
Catwalk: We'd be happy to do such an exchange
Sent at 10:50 AM on Friday
Catwalk: Where have you explored so far? We've gone up our arm away from the tundra, and are also checking out Kuro's lands at the moment
Mao: i have a shot with one horse close to you, hang on a sec:
Catwalk: The copper is in the middle of the FP bonanza region
On a desert hill
Will fetch it in a few
Mao: That image shows the extent of what our scout Steve Inskeep has managed
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44346970/RB/PBEM...hLands.JPG
Catwalk: Hmm, tundra horses
Mao: yeah, gross
Catwalk: I assume your horses are in a similar location?
Mao: you could say that.
one sec, boss key
Catwalk: That kind of ruins our dotmap so far, that's great info to have
Now, on to copper
Mao: just a minute, at work, diplo chat shouldn't be on the screen right now
Catwalk:
Sent at 10:56 AM on Friday
Catwalk: fetches the microscope to figure out what xenu is researching!
Hmm
Kind of early for Currency, isn't it?
Sent at 11:01 AM on Friday
Catwalk: rereads
Ohhh....
Sent at 11:02 AM on Friday
Catwalk: Well, fair is fair
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51943589/Civ4ScreenShot0042.JPG
I didn't edit out our research on this one either
Sent at 11:05 AM on Friday
Catwalk: Erm
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51943589/Civ4ScreenShot0043.JPG
This one!
Mao: sorry, back now
oh, sorry. that research said Superconductor, sorry to make it hard to read.
I'm going to take Fusion with Liberalism (shh!)
Catwalk: zips lips
<snip>
Mao: so you've made contact with Kuro, it looks like.
That would give you a reason to ask him what takes so long to play the turns!
Catwalk: Yeah, we have contact with all 3 now
Mao: going for a religion, huh? that wasn't in my immediate plans, maybe we can setup a deal later for missionaries.
Catwalk: Oh, we should go post a public thread!
Mao: oh, good. you can setup the UN / trash talking thread!
Catwalk: In PBEM25g I named it "The Catnip Cottage"
Mao: ha. well it is up to you what to name it. I'd probably make it something like the Great Dictators' Club, but I'm also enjoying playing as Mao a bit too much.
Catwalk: Not bad at all, we might go with that
I was discussing a bit with slowcheetah about your principles against NAPs
My take on it was that you cannot be trusted and should be killed swiftly
His take on it was that you have bowmen, so my plan was stupid
Mao: Ha. We'd prefer to not war early. As Locke says, early war stupid, but we Republicans do have that war hawk reputation...so good luck!
I'd like to think trust is more a function of building a relationship and less upon gamey agreements that are often violated anyway, if not in letter than in spirit.
Catwalk: I agree with that principle
However, I think the main consequence of that principle is not to sign long NAPs
As long NAPs do get in the way
Short NAPs are quite different
PBEM25g saw plenty long NAPs, for example
And some of them were used to settle aggressively
Mao: I think you'll find Mao a fair (enough) trade partner and if I were to attack you I'd do nothing at this stage but create a game-long enemy. No use in that.
Catwalk: I would very much like that
So you're saying that at this moment in time you have no plans to start building archers against us next turn?
Mao: I agree with what you're saying, long NAPs make the game boring (see PB4), short NAPs are very useful and don't tie your hands so much that you can't work around them. But I don't think I've seen a game where someone just didn't want to do them, so I thought I'd give it a try.
Catwalk: PBEM28 seems to turn out that way, actually
Sent at 11:17 AM on Friday
<snip>
Mao: Well, I don't want to make any promises that may not be kept so I'll say this. We will be building military for defensive purposes, which would be very foolish to not do since we're not NAPping up. We'll probably explore with some of those units since map knowledge is important. And if someone were foolish enough to not guard their territory and we thought we could gain advantage by, you know, guarding their cities for them, we might be inclined to do that at some point, theoretically. But we're not going to be roaming the map with a stack of bows looking for someone's head to crush. Not that I mind doing that, but I think the unit upkeep would kill us.
[/SPOILER]

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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