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

[Commodore]

Pindicator covered the hammer/food efficiency aspect, but there is another, simpler reason 2-pop whips are preferred: Whips add +1 unhappy face (for 6 turns on quick). That's one unhappy face for a 1-pop, for a 2-pop, or for an 8-pop. So you want to get 40 hammers by whipping away people...by whipping 4->3, then 3->2, you've now got two unhappy faces instead of the one for 4->2.

It's really scary how efficient 2-pop whips are. Look in my thread for PB5, I was looking at a situation on normal speed, with RB-mod nerfed whips (less hammers for the second citizen)...and it was still more efficient to farm a tundra than to mine a hill.

[waterbat]

Thanks so much guys - this was such timely information! This turn, I noticed that I had 3 overflow and was producing 8hpt -- sounds like a 19 is in my future! i planned on using it to immediately whip a worker into my settler, but i noticed that this puts my research out of whack with my worker actions.

oh - speaking of research - i keep forgetting to check whether i am broke and running at a deficit - all of a sudden my slider adjusts itself and i miss the research by a beaker or two

[waterbat]

t24:

well last turn (t23 a lot went on - as noted). not so much this time. No score increases other than our own BW research.

I forgot to point out: we got us some shiny :



Also the demos from this turn point out that we went from last to first in soldiers!

Really? my 3 warriors and bronze working are leading the soldier count? that's just awesome. Actually is a little worrisome in that the other civs are working on income and ive wated a few turns in warriors.

Demos:


Land gained 13 squares , would would mean Azza popped 2nd borders with the suspected obelisk?

Speaking of Land - superjm's second city only had 6 land squares in first ring. That is odd - ill try to find possible settlements. We know he didnt settle in the fertile flood plain area!

At first I didn't get it at all. WTF, i couldnt find a 6-land city site that made any sense at all - then i realized - 6 new tiles - so it probably overlaps with his current city. Assuming he wouldnt settle on a sheep/deer/corn, there are 2 sites that seem to make good candidates:



ugh...pulled an all nighter by accident - catching up on pbems here, thinking about diplomacy 3 game, reading facebook (ugh), and also just trying to figure out some stuff chopping/whipping/etc. i had simmed out some games before to t40. Little did I know that I could chop out the pyramids in 9t after that?! just have to go Masonry/Writing/Math. maybe i should have went writing/math/masonry? nah - hooking up the stone was a limiting factor - as was the high cost of math.

I even 1-turned it and hit 335/335 beakers on the nose using a double whipped FW+5 chops I have no idea how to use the pyramids, but i simmed a little after that trying to build some libraries and hire some scientists.

i could easily get hanging gardens too - its 201 hammers - with IND+STONE, what is that for me? 67 ?? that can't be right. +plus the cost of an aqueduct.

also struggling when to make a third settler - seems like my econ was on some thin ice there when i settled 2 cities back-to-back.
any hints on this?

[pindicator]

i could easily get hanging gardens too - its 201 hammers - with IND+STONE, what is that for me? 67 ?? that can't be right. +plus the cost of an aqueduct.

81 hammers with IND and stone, actually, and assuming you don't lose any to truncated math. Plus another 67h for the aquaduct

[Sian]

building wonders just because you can aren't a good idea ... build them because you know why (could be as simple as generating a economy fueled on failgold, such as i did late stages of 29g), but as mentioned ... you have to be aware why your building them ... 'Because i can' is a bad answer to that why.

[waterbat]

Thanks pindicator + sian.

Sian - here's my thought about building pyramids (these are all assumptions, so please let me know if I am way off track) :

1) I;m IND, so i get cheap forges, I wanted to leverage them if possible
2) I found an area with tons of flood plains for lots of extra food, but very low production
3) Im not FIN, so i need someway to keep up economically and therefore technilogically
4) Im CRE, so half-price libraries seem like a good idea as well and they open up 2 slots.

I thought running a bunch of specialists in the flood plain area would be a way to do that. The extra beakers provided by REPRESENTATION powered specialists seem enticing. If I am going to run 2 scientists and an engineer, thats' 15 beakers, 2 hammers - is that good?

The problem i see is that im going to not be able to build much in that area without the whip. and if I am whipping, I'm probably not going to have the pop available for specialists.

If I'm going to run specialists - doesn't HG make sense too? a free specialist in every city sounds like something I'd want to do. Also - when I found a city, it will be size 2 right away? that sounds good for expansion.

Going pyramids might be a disaster diplomatically and i do fully expect to get run militarily - maybe i can put together an some semblance of a defense when the attacks come - another reason to get to Math - i already feel like i need a stack of cats playing defense.

[waterbat]

uuugh - just lost a post to chrome damn u sergey brin!!!

t25:



Unfortunately, I am cut off from advancing past superjm Intially his borders really confused me , but I realized that his second city popped borders this turn - meaning that he settled the site I outlined above (no red dot) SW of his capitol. It will get to share the corn and eventually pick up crabs (eventually = a long time from now as it isn't coastal). It will also get the copper - very odd - i dont think he has BW - he has a road on top of the tile, but no mine?

I dont like the presence of the road - he could be sending stuff up to check out his SE (the flood plain land bridge)

In any event- knowing how he started, i was hoping that superjm was up here. I still want to proceed with filling up the bridge to those 2 coastal hills on the mirror line.


I also think I found the mirror line on the other side - and what it tells me about my own land is quite intriguing. Here's what I think my southwest looks like:



Im still not sure - but if so - look at that city spot! 4 deer, 1 sheep, silver, wine ? also would seal off that border - im thinking maybe I should send my 4th settler that way.


Looking for some opinions - would you settle the flat tundra in the middle of all that goodness? or sit on one of the hills (sheep or silver) ..... hmm maybe sitting the silver hill isnt a bad idea.



Demos:




tech score: gave catwalk wheel as he had min solders (19000) and rival min and total soldiers went up 4000 - wow we really are on the same path! We are 4t behind - but that is explainable because of Fishing. He didnt settle this turn though - which is troubling - if he settles next turn, so will we - possibly in the same spot!


land went up a whopping 32 tiles, which i breakdown like this:
max also went up 6 to 44
min also went up 13 to 32

+6 superjm popped (as mentioned above for 6 more tiles)
+13 catwalk expanded to third ring
+13 xenon expanded to third ring
Azza expanded to third ring a turn earlier when total land went up 13. which means I may have been correct - he researched Mysticism to get an obelisk up and did so 2-3 turns ago.

Now - the % in the victory screen doesnt make sense to me.

Code:

    Land        Game Total:    1302            
Population        Game Total:    1254

superjm has 3.00% land
superjm has 14.00% pop
we have 2.46% land
we have 19.05% pop

Land:
well, we know 32/1302 = 2.46% so that is easy.
If i use the ration of our % to total, superjm should have 39 land tiles, but we know he has 44. If we use 1302*3.00% - its 39 land tiles as well. WTF? We know he has to be the one with 44. his turn is after us - so if this is some kind of EoT calculation, it still should be 44 - not 39. last turn it should have been 38. Let me check the save from last turn: 2.00% of land area?? so he had 26 land tiles according to the calculation and he should have had 38. another WTF? Looking for lurker help to shed some light on this.

Also from that save - you can tell from the edge tile bleed that his borders on the second city didn't pop yet - so that backs up my guess above on its location.

POopulation:

almost makes sense.
It doesnt look like it uses the POP = int (size of city ^ 2.8) * 1000 number as the % of population. Instead it would seem to use the simple count of all the pops.

We know that the world current has 7 cities:
5 (azza)
4 (us)
3 (catwalk)
3 (xenon)
3 (thearchduke)
2 (superjm)
1 (superjm)

so we have 4/21 = 19.05 sweet!
superjm has 3/21 = 14.28% why does the screen show 14.00?????? it has 4 digits of significance, no?

maybe that answers the WTF from above perhaps we only know that superjm has 3.00 - 3.99 % of the land (or 3.00->3.49 if there is some kind of rounding).


Anyway- that's the extent of the C&D.

[waterbat]

Pindicator covered the hammer/food efficiency aspect, but there is another, simpler reason 2-pop whips are preferred: Whips add +1 unhappy face (for 6 turns on quick). That's one unhappy face for a 1-pop, for a 2-pop, or for an 8-pop. So you want to get 40 hammers by whipping away people...by whipping 4->3, then 3->2, you've now got two unhappy faces instead of the one for 4->2.

It's really scary how efficient 2-pop whips are. Look in my thread for PB5, I was looking at a situation on normal speed, with RB-mod nerfed whips (less hammers for the second citizen)...and it was still more efficient to farm a tundra than to mine a hill.

Thanks Commo! Can't look at PB5 - im ded-lurking team Prego.
Farming a tundra!

Speaking of tundra,
Question - im curious as to what to do with the marginal tiles (plains flatland, non-riverside grass, tundra, etc)

What should i be improving after the obvious ones are gone? if im running specialists (without caste) i understand that i want a few farms in there to get those citizens up. If im running caste - i guess i want ALL farms? and what then should i cottage? i was planning on cottaging all those flood plains... or should i farm them all ?

For floodplains:
Is it just going to be a function of the happy cap? if the happy cap is huge, farm them, if not, cottage them?

For marginal tiles:
should i forget about them? avoid working them and keep whipping the city down instead?

i'm going to have 5-6 workers thanks to you guys pointing out the goodness of the double whip on them - now im going to struggle with giving them orders besides roading and pre-chopping.

[mackoti]

For floodplains:
Is it just going to be a function of the happy cap? if the happy cap is huge, farm them, if not, cottage them?

Even you run specealits economy , cotage your floodplains, you need money and usualy specelists worth even with mids if are sustained by a great food tile(1,5 specelist or more) than to be sustained by gras riverside farms(those are better to be cotaged).

When you start runnig speaclist you have to think post them too, if not you'll find yourself behind after Education, liberalism stuff.

[waterbat]

found this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218764 at CFC that indicates the HG only applies to current cities. so I am going to want to get some cities up before going that route (if at all).

also checked pbem33 save and found that those numbers in the F8 screen are also rounded off. so that explains that nonsense as well.



On the Diplo Front - i find it hard to see how people aren't going to be playing with different Diplo rules.

For example, it says we can send border dot maps to each other.

I can follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit by sending something like this to superjm:

Prop 1: Declare war on Superjm on t27
DotMap for Border Settling Plan:


I didn't break the rules, I don't think. Obviously - his acceptance means i can pass through his land. His denial means I can't.

Do you think I *should* do this? i.e. will other teams go to this level of rule gamesmanship? I think i *can* do it - it seems allowable under the rules as stated.

what about the following?

Greetings Willem of China!


In-game proposals:
none


Diplomatic Extensions:

Declare war on Superjm on turn 27
Close borders with Superjm on turn 31

That seems to be less of a degree of bending the rules.... is it still counter to the intent?

I'll send this. If he accepts, I will assume he knows what i mean to do (declare war, cross his territory in 4 turn)