[SPOILER] Waterbat spends '104 Days of Summer Vacation'

[pindicator]

Hey waterbat! Good luck with the C&D! I'd happy to answer questions too but it really helps if you're tracking stuff every turn. That way you only need to think about what the changes were from the previous turn rather than trying to reconstruct everything twenty turns in. Which is why i do less and less C&D in every game i play - you put in time every turn and maybe get benefit of extra useful knowledge 1% of the time.

One thing i do like to try to track is the score breakdown: it's usually a simple way to tell who has how many total citizens (rather than figuring out pop based off the demographics), total techs, and how many wonders. It works pretty well, at least until land points mess the whole process up

Anyway, i'm happy to help with any questions you have!

[waterbat]

thanks pindicator - for that analysis, i went back and looked at the numbers turn-by-turn to simulate that approach. I agree that seemed to help a lot. I recorded the entire demo and score screens in the spreadsheet.

Yes, land points appear to be a serious problem does the game record a fractional part?

im guessing it is just total land tiles that we've held for over 20 turns, so instead of thinking of it as 12+17, our landpoints was probably adjusted from 8*1.5 to 19*1.5 which is 29.5 - and it does round down - so we got 17 the second time around. i expect then that we'll get 19 points next time (48-29).

[waterbat]

t21:

moved out explorers. Didnt meet anyone OR see borders in the northwest.

it occurred to me that given no early corn sharing - we might not need the farm directly south of the capitol. Unforuntaely, if I run right over to the west hill to mine it, i will run out of things to do since wheel/pottery won't be ready yet. So, I did put a turn into the farm, but cancelled mission. I think I might put one or two more turns into the farm and then run west.

Demos:


no increase in all of the demos - soliders , pop, land, life, approval, trades

what concerns me is that Azza researched his 4th 4 turn tech in a row.

Presumable, he started pottery, but then would he really fill in hunting/myst/fishing/mining? i think he did that, because going meditation isnt possible - no buddhism yet. i just screwed up the order - he probably got hunting a t15 instead of fishing and got fishing this time.

[waterbat]

t22:

[SIZE="4"]THE ERA OF THE WHIP HAS BEGUN[/SIZE]

Catwalk was first at it- he 2-pop whipped his capital.

I havent gotten the hang of 2-pop whipping. Lets say you are building a 40h worker. Is it the idea that you get like 19 hammers into it then you double whip for 40 hammers and get 19 overflow?

why wouldnt i build to 39/40 and single whip for 19 hammers overflow? just to be faster?

How do i determine how much population is "available for whip?"


Demos:



soldier points stayed the same, but in fact catwalk lost 1000 due to the whip and superjm picked it up.

-63 in total pop.
We know catwalk lost 69 hmmm...

[SIZE="4"]THE ERA OF EXPANSION HAS BEGUN[/SIZE]

superjm settled his second city! His cap also finally grew!

He also teched something with no soldier points - and given the probable size of his beaker rate, id think it would have to be mysticism ?? its the only one that would take 5 turns. <shrug>

speaking of jupersm:


[SIZE="4"]THE ERA OF DIPLOMACY HAS BEGUN[/SIZE]
ok - well the era of AI-with-limited-extensions diplomacy has begun


Im going to have to put in some time for that.


Question for the C&D guys (if you are still here) how do i find out the following:

1) what my real science rate is THIS turn? i know i get the beaker slider, +1 hidden secret one for my capital (do i get +1 for each city?)
2) using #1, i could just change between techs and find which ones i have known bonuses for, correct? Or do i actually ahve to work a tech and only determine if it was known after the fact?

[waterbat]

oh forgot that i put an X in that picture above....

Question for the learned RB members:

Because of the mirror, i am pretty sure that Superjm would NOT be able to see my from the green X. I didn't move to that square, because i knew that direction was blocked by culture, i want to move around his capital if possible.

But if I would have moved to the X, would i have been able to see the hill still? If so, I would meet superjm, but he wouldnt be able to see my unit - therefore wouldnt know from whence I arrived.

EDIT: looked at it again after posting this - i bet i would not get visibility to the hill.

[waterbat]

would really like an answer to the science question if lurkers have it.

in my sandbox, i am trying to squeeze pottery out.

if i go to each city, i have a total of 14 beakers showing up. the slider shows 14 beakers. plus i get 1 bonus for having a capitol (thanks for that earlier guys)

but the science progress shows i am 19 beakers away from the tech, but i can somehow research it. i know i have 1 prereq tech - so that should be 15*1.2 = 18

oh i found the formula! now it makes sense why i couldn't make it with 12 beakers in the slider, but i can with 14. I didnt realize i get a bonus for the MANDATORY tech required - that seems odd, but OK

so 14*1.4 = 19.6 - i make it. I thought I could also conclude that the guy that I met does not have this tech! BUT I CAN NOT

if he had the tech and i had 12 in my slider:

looks like the known multiplier stacks with the prereq stuff.

beakers: 13
known tech: 1+.30*1/6 = 1.05
13.65 (take 13)
13*1.4 = 18.6

looks like with 6 players, i need a bpt rate of >20 in order to be able to detect whether a neighbor has a tech or not.

But again my question is how do i get the end number? i.e. how did i know i was going to but 19 beakers into the tech BEFORE hitting end turn. obviously, i know how to get it after the turn.

Also - how to see the overflow in there? that doesnt seem to be present anywhere.

Thanks!

This also explains how some people were able to get techs out - they got the mandatory 1.2 research bonus!

[pindicator]

t22:

I havent gotten the hang of 2-pop whipping. Lets say you are building a 40h worker. Is it the idea that you get like 19 hammers into it then you double whip for 40 hammers and get 19 overflow?

why wouldnt i build to 39/40 and single whip for 19 hammers overflow? just to be faster?

How do i determine how much population is "available for whip?"

The key thing with whipping is that you're converting food into hammers. So don't think of those 40 hammers you get from a 2-pop whip like you would 10 turns of working a plains mine. They are XX food converted into 40 hammers. If you're whipping 2 population from size 4 to size 2, then you're whipping away 33 food that you've accumulated (16 food to grow from 2 -> 3; 17 food to grow from 3 -> 4).

This is why people also say you should get your granary up before whipping a city in earnest: now instead of 33f :: 40h you have a conversion rate of 17f :: 40h, or every food is being converted into ~2.35 hammers. As your city gets larger and costs more food to grow, the conversion rate gets worse, and at a certain threshold it is worth more to work the tiles than to whip them. But that depends on how much food it costs to grow, and what kind of yield the citizens you are whipping away are giving you.

Then specifically with workers, you're also forgetting that after you whip the remaining citizens still add their yield to the build.

So as an example: you have a size 4 coastal city that makes 8 fpt, 1 hpt, , has a granary & lighthouse, and you want to build Moai there. You could just put 2hpt into it forever and one day build the wonder, or you can build workers and whip them, using the overflow to get the wonder faster.

Code:

Turn#    Pop    Food    Hammers
1    4    8/18    9/40
2    4    8/18    18/40

On turn 3 we whip: this adds 40h to the worker build, and then we get to add another round of 9f+h (we'll pretend the two citizens we whipped were working plain coast tiles) to get us to 67/40, or 27h of overflow. So instead of 3h over 3 turns, you end up sacrificing 2 population for 27h over 3 turns.

That's why people talk about putting workers at 19/40 - it's to get the overflow. You don't even need to use it for a big project - that could be the axe you need for defense, or the missionary that goes to your next city to spread a religion. Or anything else you need.

Early on axes and spears are popular 2-whip candidates because their total cost is 23h in quick speed. Put 2h into it on the first turn, 2-pop whip on the second, and then you can usually build 2 straight units in a city that otherwise makes 2hpt

I hope that makes sense but let me know if you have questions over any part of it!

[pindicator]

How do i determine how much population is "available for whip?"

You can whip away at max half the number of citizens in your city, rounded down. So at size 4 you can whip away 2 citizens; at size 5 you can still only whip 2 citizens; and at size 6 you can whip at most 3 citizens at a time.

[waterbat]

Thank makes great sense! Thanks much!

How about the question about the science? is it possible to know how how much you are putting into a tech so that you can work out the known tech modifier?

I assume then i could go through each of the tech options - put them on research and tell if my neighbor has them. Or do i actually have to research the tech for 1 turn and then figure out whether i got an extra beaker(s).

[pindicator]

Question for the C&D guys (if you are still here) how do i find out the following:

1) what my real science rate is THIS turn? i know i get the beaker slider, +1 hidden secret one for my capital (do i get +1 for each city?)

1. To get your "real" science rate start with the number of beakers you see in the upper-left hand corner, by the slider. (BTW, can you show that?) It goes through this formula:

Code:

REAL SCIENCE = (BEAKERS + 1) * (1 + 0.2 * PRE-REQS KNOWN TO TECH + 0.3 * KNOWN CIVS WITH TECH / TOTAL CIVS)

Notes:
- The + 1 to your beakers is a standard 1 beaker you get no matter what. Even if you're in anarchy you get this 1 beaker towards the tech you have selected (I didn't realize this until PB7 when I found it happened to me and it ended up saving me a turn on my research!)
- Pre-Reqs are the technologies that actually have an arrow pointing towards the tech. So Mining has 0 pre-reqs, obviously, but so does Astronomy because on the tech screen there are no techs pointing to it.
- I'm not sure if Known Civs with Tech is divided by Total Civs or Total Opponents. I need to look at old C&D spreadsheets to know for certain but I'm going to operate with Total Civs because that's more likely correct.

So let's assume you are researching Pottery, you make 20 bpt, you know Wheel and Agriculture but not Fishing, and 1 of your 4 opponents knows Pottery already. You get

Code:

REAL SCIENCE = (20 + 1) * (1 + (0.2 * 1) + (0.3 * 1 / 4))

= 21 * (1 + 0.2 + 0.075)

= 21 * 1.275

= 26.775

So you get 26 "true beakers" per turn into Pottery with this example. (Civ4 truncates the number down to an integer here.)

2) using #1, i could just change between techs and find which ones i have known bonuses for, correct? Or do i actually ahve to work a tech and only determine if it was known after the fact?

Yes you can do this! It gets easier later in the game when your base beakers are higher, but you do not need to put the turn of research in to have the GNP reflect the Known Civs with Tech modifier. So you can swap techs and record your GNP with each tech and then use the formula above to determine how many people know each technology. Just be careful to switch back to what you want to tech! Otherwise you'll end up like Rego in pbem26 and research Iron Working before you intend to