[Spoilers] Victoria of Korea - Mardoc and SevenSpirits

[SevenSpirits]

Quickly played t25 before going to bed. We found some more flood plains in the northwest (the river turns west) and otherwise did some predictable moves. I wasn't sure where the scout was going but I figured unfogging our east would be a reasonable use, so I queued up some moves to that effect.

I told GES about the flood plains, and Amelia that she can stop spending EP on us (she has 45 now).

Pictures to be posted next turn when we found our second city!

(Note: check the event log to be absolutely sure Hinduism isn't founded yet before founding. Otherwise we need to move 1N I think.)

[Hesmyrr]

#213, #214: Thank you for the recommendations! I am pleasantly surprised you guys checked my introduction post, though I guess it couldn't have been that hard with me only having about 2 posts? Unfortunately I've mercilessly spoilt myself on all FFH PBEM games going on this site, so I won't be able to add much if any input there. Pocketbeetle's thread definitely stands out from the rest though.

Never had played bridge before so I had to google it. Maybe it is typical wikipedia article thing going on but wow the game looks extremely complex. Don't really have anything to add at this junction but I am curious how long it will take for you guys to defog your entire land? Kind of difficult to guess from the partial mini-map on the screenshots.

[SevenSpirits]

T26:



Now that's a turn.

Got the first second () city of the game and got a religion in it immediately? Awesome!

I called it Blackwood, which I think is a good name for these reasons:
1) It has a certain mystique, befitting of a holy city.
2) It's the second thing you do (after determining the suit) with awesome hands.
3) We can go alphabetically from Alert!

What do you think? Obviously we can change it, I just had to name it something. Lurker opinions are welcome too.

One thing: I had to set the slider down some, so I put it at 50%. We'll want to do 0% or 100% next turn. I'm thinking we probably want Writing next, but maybe Hunting can be slipped in and that would be better? It would only be for the deer for quite a while (and we can mine that instead), so maybe not.

[SevenSpirits]

Never had played bridge before so I had to google it. Maybe it is typical wikipedia article thing going on but wow the game looks extremely complex. Don't really have anything to add at this junction but I am curious how long it will take for you guys to defog your entire land? Kind of difficult to guess from the partial mini-map on the screenshots.

Bridge is... not THAT complicated, at least in terms of rules. I mean, it's a serious strategy game, but given that fact it's relatively simple I think. But the thing is that people have, over time, piled up a whole bunch of strategy for communicating with your partner (conventions) on top of it. It's pretty absurd.

I am guessing it will take 13 or so turns to reveal our land. We've got two warriors sweeping across the top half from west to east, and our scout will be coming up the east edge from the bottom.

Diplo with GES:

[Pic]

And that's where the crabs are, too!

(Also as you can see we founded our somewhat early second city (imperialistic) and got Hinduism in it this turn, yay! Now to take a breather and improve the cities we already have...)

Seven

M7,

I'm sending my scout out to go make some contacts.

I am three turns away from my first Settler, but I will have 3 workers to improve things before then.

Trying decide when to swap to Slavery.

I got writing this turn. Not sure where I am going now tech-wise. I've considered going towards Monotheism since you are the only person with Hinduism.

Good luck on the Hinduism placement. I have strongly considered the same spot for my second city.

GES

Nice! You should probably swap to slavery right after the settler pops.

If you like, I can try to feel out if anyone else is looking to get Monotheism. I know Amelia and Luddite had both wanted Buddhism; not sure if they will try for Mono now that the early two are gone. I can at least say for sure that we would not compete with you for it.

Seven

Also he caught me on chat. The main thing: he's pondering how to get his border pops. Libraries? (I told him a couple times that these are freaking expensive.) Stonehenge (or to a lesser extent Oracle)? (I think these are best... though I suspect he's too late for Stonehenge. I said I could try to discover if anyone else is making them, but he did not seem interested yet.) Monotheism? I may have convinced him that getting some priest gpp is not actually bad (which is absolutely true!), I'm not sure.

[novice]

I called it Blackwood, which I think is a good name for these reasons:
1) It has a certain mystique, befitting of a holy city.
2) It's the second thing you do (after determining the suit) with awesome hands.
3) We can go alphabetically from Alert!

What do you think? Obviously we can change it, I just had to name it something. Lurker opinions are welcome too.

I love it. Third city could be called Crossruff, which could be read as
1) A pun on the map maker
2) A nice way to make the best of mediocre hands
8) Lose this smiley, already.

[Mardoc]

Excellent! And all because we're talking to people - that's how we got both the city site and confidence in Hinduism, after all!

I like Blackwood, mostly because of the alphabetical effect; I hadn't considered that, but I like it. Plus, the 'second thing you do with an awesome hand' definitely fits our situation, with this lush platform and probably no rushes to worry about.

I vote for Writing; we'd probably have to come back eventually and turn the mine into a camp for accessing the deer as a resource, but right now it's not urgent, and other things are. Libraries are definitely worth having in themselves, not just as a hammer sink while our cities grow. We'll want Hunting by the time we have connected copper and furs, but I figure it can wait, and what can wait, should wait.

The only question is whether one of the two gives us a much better 'other civs researched it' bonus - that seems likely to be Hunting if it's there. But I think getting Libraries up earlier would make up for the saved beakers.

For the next city, I'd lean toward the fish/pigs/stone/copper site, honestly, as long as we can get a missionary to go along with the settler. That would be a very strong site, plus I'm a little bit nervous about playing too long without copper. The downside to that spot is of course that none of those four are in the first ring, so we'd pretty much have to have a missionary, not rely on natural spread. I'm not sure how soon we'll be ready for a missionary, though, especially if we're aiming to let someone else grab Judaism, and honestly, 4 resources for a city might be actually a tad much.

And Hesmyrr, I have to agree with SevenSpirits on Bridge - the game itself isn't much more complicated than Spades or Euchre - it's a partners, trump based card game in which you want to take all the tricks. The complication is definitely in the bidding, where you're trying to communicate as much as possible while only being allowed to actually say your bid. Plus a lot of the clever moves are given names, like Ruffing.

[SevenSpirits]

Played t27. I set research to writing, though only at 40% for the moment. Next turn we will switch to 100%.

Usually, you lose a tiny bit of efficiency for setting an amount other than 0% or 100%, due to rounding. However, we are producing exactly 20 commerce, and because it's a multiple of 10, there are no losses from rounding, no matter what multiple of 10% we set the slider to.

The only thing to optimize for, then, is rounding losses from our percent bonuses. Those are a 20% bonus for knowing Pottery, and a 4% bonus because exactly one opponent (GES) knows Writing already. As it turns out, setting the slider to 40% this turn gets us enough gold to finish writing at 100%, while not increasing the number of turns it will take, and being fairly efficient in terms of rounding. It will let us run at 100% for the rest of the research time, which is (it turns out) the most efficient of all.

No, I am certainly not going to do this ridiculous optimization all the time. I just wanted to confirm my understanding the mechanics, and try it out in practice.


On a whim, I had a chat with plako. Nothing substantive was said, but in general he thinks this will be a builder's game for a long time, and he is somewhat bored by this fact combined with the slow pace of play.

[Mardoc]

Usually, you lose a tiny bit of efficiency for setting an amount other than 0% or 100%, due to rounding. However, we are producing exactly 20 commerce, and because it's a multiple of 10, there are no losses from rounding, no matter what multiple of 10% we set the slider to.

As I understand it, the loss is always due to multipliers like the tech bonus, libraries, and the like; the multiple of 10 in base commerce is irrelevant. The base commerce is never lost; the gold production is total commerce - science - culture - espionage, pre multipliers. It's just the fractional beakers or gold due to multipliers that we'd miss out on. Of course, you almost never run into a situation without some form of multiplier, so the difference between always losing efficiency and almost always is rather negligible

On a whim, I had a chat with plako. Nothing substantive was said, but in general he thinks this will be a builder's game for a long time, and he is somewhat bored by this fact combined with the slow pace of play.

Ah, that explains why he's been the driving force in the tech thread to try to get the game moving faster. Personally, I'm less bothered by the pace, but I'm willing to try to speed it to keep him happy. Apparently the real trick to speed, though, is to pick the right players - FFH2 PBEM3 is flying along, mostly because just about everyone in the game is a few time zones apart.

I'm glad to hear it, too, cause I have no desire to face War Chariots before they're obsolete. But with plako thinking pacifically, and GES not rushing, that only leaves Adlain as a potential rusher; I'm not really worried about him either. So it's just a question of growing fast enough that we've got the edge by the time war's feasible.

[SevenSpirits]

As I understand it, the loss is always due to multipliers like the tech bonus, libraries, and the like; the multiple of 10 in base commerce is irrelevant. The base commerce is never lost; the gold production is total commerce - science - culture - espionage, pre multipliers. It's just the fractional beakers or gold due to multipliers that we'd miss out on. Of course, you almost never run into a situation without some form of multiplier, so the difference between always losing efficiency and almost always is rather negligible

So here's how it works: say you have just a capital, with a palace (8 commerce) and a center tile (1 commerce).

That is 9. If you run 100% science, this 9c is converted to 9 beakers and 0 gold. Then, 1 free beaker is added - that just always happens. Nothing is lost to rounding.

Now say you set the slider to 50%. Your 9c is now 4.5 beakers and 4.5 gold. Both of these get rounded down! You lost 1c. If you were producing a multiple of 10c, there would be no problem. (And if you're producing a multiple of 2c, 50% slider has no rounding error, and if you're producing a multiple of 5c, 20/40/60/80% have no rounding error.)

Things only get a bit more complicated if you have more cities. This is because all your gold from cities is added together before being rounded down, and similarly with your beakers. Thus all that really matters is the total commerce, because rounding occurs after you merge all the cities' outputs together. And you can only ever lose 1c.

However, multiplier buildings do mess with this. For example, if you have a library in your capital but not your second city, then the breakpoints are different. Still, you can never lose 2 (beakers + gold) or more. You lose at most .99 of each.


That's the first opportunity for rounding error. The second comes from research multipliers. After you've determined your total beakers (+1), that number gets multiplied by a % too. Namely, 100% + (20% per arrow prereq tech) + (30% * (number of opponents that you've met who know it) / (number of players)). Then, the result gets rounded down. In our case, our beakers (9) get multiplied by 1.24, yielding 11.16, which is then rounded down to 11. Yay! We are only losing a sixth of a beaker.

[Hesmyrr]

So that is why people say tiered research(?) is superior. Hadn't really understood that before. Actually comforted to know such optimization scheme would be somewhat difficult to follow except in PBEM games.

Agree with plako's position. Considering the map, chances of domination or conquest victory condition just seem to be minimal at the moment. To get 70% of the land you would need to have complete ownership of five squares, which is insane in my opinion. There are obviously going to be some wars against the leading players but even those I believe would only end with razing of few critical cities?