Pirates counting things other than Treasure?!? - C&D Thread

[WarriorKnight]

Alright here's the C&D thread. (obviously)

Nothing here for now, but I am considering writing a C&D tutorial in this post so everyone can follow along (and I know I for one could use a refresher on C&D mechanics). Is there much interest in that?

[WarriorKnight]

Here's a basic start on all things C&D. I'll go through a list of things that we are expected to keep track of:

[SIZE="4"]Score[/SIZE]

Score is composed of 4 parts. It's generally pretty easy to calculate, even later on when multiple things happen at once due to civstats. These are:

[SIZE="3"]Tech:[/SIZE]
Each ancient tech is worth 6 points, each classical tech is worth 12, medieval 18 and so on... Fairly simple.

[SIZE="3"]Pop:[/SIZE]
Pop is strange, since 1 pop is worth a different amount of points depending on the map size. In a small game, I believe each pop is worth 7-8 points? It won't be that hard to confirm once we get started.

[SIZE="3"]Land:[/SIZE]
I don't know how many points land is worth, because it's affected the same way as pop. However land is only calculated 20 turns after settling the land, and land points calculation only happens when the game turn rolls over, not when each individual civ ends turn. Since this is a sequential game, it should be very easy to determine what points are land points.

[SIZE="3"]Wonders:[/SIZE]
Every wonder (National or World) is worth 16 points. Simple.

[SIZE="4"]Espionage:[/SIZE]

Even though spies are off, the espionage screen still provides 2 useful C&D tools. The first has been posted already, the ability to track how many hammers are in a cities build queue. This requires vision on the city tile in question, and the more cities we have vision on, the more cities we can track production of:

Hammers = (SabotageCost * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * InvestigateCost)

The other useful espionage tool is finding out a civ's treasury. We only need vision on one city to figure this out, but we also need the total population of a civ to calculate this:

Treasury = (StealCost * TotalPop * 2 * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * CityPop * InvestigateCost)

[SIZE="4"]Power/Soldiers:[/SIZE]

This particular demographics category has a lot of info in it. This link does a good job of explaining it:

http://fastmoves.wordpress.com/2009/11/2...ographics/

The power graph can give a very accurate history of each civ. However it's important to note that graphs are a turn behind and are taken at the start of each turn (so any changes to power mid-turn don't get recorded until 2 turns afterwards). Also later on it becomes much more difficult since 1000 soldiers become much less distinct and therefore harder to trace.


[SIZE="4"]

Population:

[/SIZE]

The population mechanic in the demographics screen simply takes how many pop you have in each city, changes it into citizens and then adds them together. 1 pop is worth 1000 citizens, 2 pop is worth 6000, 3 pop is 21000 and so on... (they don't increase linearly, if you want to find out the entire list of numbers then look at the population tab of spulla's PB2 spreadsheet).

[SIZE="4"]Ways to use these:[/SIZE]

When everyone only has one city, we can track what tiles they are working through the food/prod/gnp stats. Once people start settling 2nd cities it becomes impossible.

Tracking techs is a combination of score, soldiers, pre-req bonus and common sense. Tracking population is a combination of score, population and soldiers. These 2 will likely be what we will be figuring out early game.

Mid-game we can add tracking production, if we get visibility we can try to track what each city is building with the help of looking for infrastructure in the city. Late-game is where C&D isn't as important, there's way too much going on to track and everyone generally knows the general picture as to what's going on.

[kp]

I would certainly appreciate the tutorial.

[Jkaen]

Yes, great idea if you want much help on this I would say

[xanes]

tut would be great

[Mardoc]

Although I think I know what I'm doing, it would certainly be useful to ensure we're on the same page.

Also, your first post would be a good spot to link resources, like soldier points for various units/techs/buildings (I know someone posted that in the main thread).

[WarriorKnight]

Although I think I know what I'm doing, it would certainly be useful to ensure we're on the same page.

Also, your first post would be a good spot to link resources, like soldier points for various units/techs/buildings (I know someone posted that in the main thread).

Indeed. Perhaps tutorial isn't the right word, a library or collection of resources/techniques may be better.

Anyway, since everyone likes the idea I'll get to work on it shortly, although I'm not exactly sure when that will be. Given that we're still picking though, I doubt it'll matter much if it's delayed.

Also I wouldn't mind if people could chip in, as I don't know everything about C&D techniques. For instance, I know it's possible to determine how many other civs know a particular tech from the pre-req bonus, but I'm not sure exactly sure how to deduce that.

[thestick]

Sure, I'd like a C&D Library/whatever. This seems like a good time to finally learn.

[Shoot the Moon]

Also I wouldn't mind if people could chip in, as I don't know everything about C&D techniques. For instance, I know it's possible to determine how many other civs know a particular tech from the pre-req bonus, but I'm not sure exactly sure how to deduce that.

I believe there was a detailed discussion of that in my PBEM 8 thread if that helps. I can try to find that (and post some links I have) later tonight.

[waterbat]

I believe there was a detailed discussion of that in my PBEM 8 thread if that helps. I can try to find that (and post some links I have) later tonight.

The definitive link on this particular thing seems to be at CFC: "Technology Research Explained"

I've put together the start of a C&D workbook if you guys want to use it.

RBDEMO1 C&D Spreadsheet

You have full edit permissions if you have the link.

Tabs:
Starting info
Score - tracking score increases
Tech - tracking tech advances
Demos - capturing the demo screen -
It is setup for 1 time per turn (PBEM), but we may want to try to do this 1 time after each team has played and end turned
GNP - track others tech advances via GNP (known tech bonus)
F8 screen - tracking victory stats
Start Micro - not really C&D related

I do need some help with GNP as my formula doesnt seem to work properly.

The technology cost formula is integrated into the Tech tab and works well.

Code:

Technology Cost = FLOOR (FLOOR (FLOOR (Base Cost * (Difficulty Modifier + 0.5 * # of teammates)) * Map Modifier) * Speed Modifier)

The production formula is listed as:

Code:

Beakers applied to Technology = FLOOR (FLOOR ((Total Base Beakers + 1) * KCwT modifier) * Prerequisites modifier)

with sub formula KCwT (Known Civilizations with Tech):

Code:

Tech Known by Civilizations modifier = 1 + RDDW (0.30 * # known Civs who have the tech / # of Civs who started the game

and with sub formula Prerequisite Modifier:

Code:

Requirements modifier = 1 + (0.2 * MINIMUM Req. met) + (0.2 * # of Optional Prereq. met)

So - I've converted this to the following google spreadsheet formulas

Code:

Total Research  =int( int ( (D+E)* (1+round(0.30*O/P,2)) )*(1+M*0.2+N*0.2)  )
Calculated GNP = Total Research (J) + F + G + H + I - K

D = Slider Research (base beakers)
E = 1 (if we have a capitol city)
O = Living Known Civilizations who have the tech!
P = # of Civilizations who started the game (5)
M = Mandatory Tech Bonus (0 or 1 - its always 1 for anything past the starting techs)
N = Optional Prerequisite Bonuses (0-2 additional prerequisites researched)

F - city culture
G - slider espionage
H - slider gold ( instead i am using surplus or debit gold that is going into treasury)
I - slider culture # (once we get this value, it will include F i think)
K - expenses

We know all the inputs except for O. Also I think a couple are superfluous (i.e. slider culture is probably going to be included in our culture number, expenses don't matter as we are already taking that into account if just use excess gold as the "slider gold" value.)

So we go in game and put research on each tech and record in game GNP. Then we just plug in different values of O until Calc GNP = Game GNP.

Ok all makes sense in theory, but i think there might be something wrong with my formula. It doesnt always work quite right. For an example, look at line 100 in the spreadsheet above.

i have 16 base beakers + 1 extra beaker, 8 culture and 4 espionage. My total GNP would be 29 without researching anything. When I research writing, my GNP shoots to 36. Unfortunately no integer value of O results in a 36 calc GNP. 1 other civ with the tech calculates to 35. 2 other civs with the tech calculates to 37. So my conversion of the formula is broken or the article quoted above is incorrect. Or I missed something simple

In the sheet there are a couple of variations of the formula - one without the extra int() function because that seemed to work in one case, but turned out broken in others.

The data set arround line 100 has the formula above. Anyone see what I am doing wrong? or does anyone know that website's formula to be incorrect?