[PB60] Lurking the Final Frontier

[El Grillo]

Is he actually losing any beakers to rounding? That would be unfortunate.

On the other hand, when superdeath showed a screenshot with no WCs in play or in production, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to feel proud of disappointed.

[Charriu]

Most likely forgot to do binary research or he needs AH sooner.

[Krill]

If I was Jowy, Music, construction, and claim an entire nexus.

[Commodore]

So everyone is twitchy about Superdeath's war chariots, but this is a terrible WC rush map. GKC's C2 praetorians, now...

[Charriu]

This is the first game of CtH 2.0 for which we have data. So let's dive into this T50 report. As always all the data can be found here: PB60 Tracking

Before we start some notable observations:

• All except for Jowy and GKC opted to move their capitol to sugar spot. So there have an inland capitol, while the others have an coastal capitol with a lot of lakes
  
• Lazteuq managed to grab Stonehenge at T32
  
• Superdeath is spreading fear by reputation
  
• Jowy is playing a very unusual, but also entertaining, variant of an opening. Going for early Sailing and lighthouse instead of a worker.
  

I've added quite a lot more data for this and all the following PBs. Look forward to this new stuff, which you will find in the spreadsheet:

Wonders: When a wonder was built.
WW: Keeping track of the total war weariness a player currently has
Great Persons: Similar to wonders. When a great person is spawned. Useful to judge how good PHI players do.
Total espionage: Total espionage points collected across the whole game. Mainly useful for me, when I eventually do my espionag redesign.

General state of the game

First of all the city count

1. Mjmd (IMP) = 4
   
2. Lazteuq (IMP) = 4
   
3. Amicalola = 3
   
4. Superdeath (IMP) = 3
   
5. Jowy = 2
   
6. GKC = 2
   

And here are the current amount of pop across those empires at the T50 mark:

1. Jowy = 9
   
2. Mjmd = 8
   
3. Lazteuq = 8
   
4. Amicalola = 8
   
5. Superdeath = 8
   
6. GKC = 7
   

With this PB I'm also tracking gold at 100% and science at 100%, but for these early turns they are identical to the ones from Total Commerce. Mind you these are not reduced by the maintenance and science is actually 1 beaker higher then these numbers, which is the standard 1 beaker you always get even during anarchy. Keep in mind that these numbers are virtual as nobody can run 100% of gold or science for all the time. At this early stage of the game no modifiers are in play, so I only present you the gold numbers:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 37
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 27
   
3. GKC (AGG) = 25
   
4. Lazteuq = 23
   
5. Superdeath = 18
   
6. Mjmd = 18
   

We expected that Jowy is making more commer/gold/science with his lighthouse-start and this is reflected in the numbers. Amicalola is also carried a bit by his PRO trait. Other then that the field is fairly even with only Superdeath and Mjmd lagging behind a bit.
This is also a good time to remind you that these are these numbers include modifiers like from libraries or from scientist specialist. The only modifiers that I've excluded are the KTB and the multiple-pre-requiste tech bonus. I did this so that we have numbers that are better to compare between players especially on a per turn basis. Next let's see how the players do if we add up all the gold numbers.

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 922
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 684
   
3. GKC (AGG) = 651
   
4. Lazteuq = 632
   
5. Mjmd = 610
   
6. Superdeath = 555
   

Yes, that is a lead of ca. 250 points for Jowy. This already gave him an easy religion grab and should carry him further ahead in science for the near future. Also noteworthy is that Superdeath is lagging behind by at least 50 points.

Now we have to set everything in context of maintenance. Thankfully I am now tracking the full picture of maintenance across all relevant data (unit cost, unit supply, civic maintenance, city maintenance and inflation). Adding everything together we have the following current turn maintenance numbers:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 2
   
2. GKC (AGG) = 3
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 4
   
4. Superdeath = 8
   
5. Lazteuq = 11
   
6. Mjmd = 13
   

I figured it would be more appropiate to put the player with lowest maintenance on top here since this is better for a player. Keep in mind that Jowy and GKC have the same city count as well as Lazteuq and Mjmd. Of course this implies that Amicalola and Superdeath do have the same city count and with them we see a notable difference in maintenance. This is mainly due to civic maintenance. Amicalola is paying no civic maintenance right thanks to ORG, while Superdeath pays 3. We will see this later, but ORG comes into effect a lot sooner in a game with Emperor difficulty.
With this maintenance we can now get a clearer picture of the current gold and beaker rates, which present themselves this way (keep in mind to add the extra beaker for science)

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 35
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 23
   
3. GKC (AGG) = 15
   
4. Lazteuq = 12
   
5. Mjmd = 12
   
6. Superdeath = 10
   

This is why I say that Jowy will lead in science for the near future, but Amicalola is also doing well thanks to the combined power of his traits. But as we already know the current turn numbers are prone to fluctuation in these early turns. Luckily I can now calculate the cumulated gold - the cumulated maintenance.

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 886
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 650
   
3. GKC (AGG) = 618
   
4. Lazteuq = 557
   
5. Mjmd = 490
   
6. Superdeath = 472
   

Jowy's lead is a bit smaller, if we factor in maintenance. Still it's a lead of more then 200 points. Also notable how far behind the 3 IMP leaders (Lazteuq, Mjmd and Superdeath) are. I haven't mentioned this in last statistics, but GKC is in a constant 3rd place, mainly due to his coastal start I guess.

Financial Bonus

As a disclaimer just as last time, here I collected all the extra commerce a player (would) have gained if he was working Financial tiles. For example if you worked a river hamlet tile you normally gain 3 commerce and 4 commerce with FIN. In this case my tool notes down 1 extra commerce. You will also find that I am tracking the CtH implemenation of Financial as well as the normal BtS implemenation for comparison. Keep in mind that this is the first time we are playing with the newest FIN nerf, which was that water tiles only give extra commerce with a lighthouse present.

Looking at the current turn numbers first:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 8
   
2. Mjmd = 1
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 0
   
4. GKC (AGG) = 0
   
5. Lazteuq = 0
   
6. Superdeath = 0
   

This is to be expected since most players do not usual build a lighthouse in the first 50 turns. Obviously Jowy isn't "most players".

Here the cumulated numbers:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 139
   
2. Mjmd = 6
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 0
   
4. GKC (AGG) = 0
   
5. Lazteuq = 0
   
6. Superdeath = 0
   

Here we see one factor for Jowys tech lead.

But how much would the players have made without the lighthouse-FIN-nerf. For this it is worth looking at the numbers from the previous FIN version, which did apply extra commerce for land tiles at 3 and water tiles at 2. Here the cumulated numbers:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 171
   
2. GKC (AGG) = 73
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 66
   
4. Lazteuq = 46
   
5. Mjmd = 38
   
6. Superdeath = 1
   

Quiete a difference. It's worth pointing out that even though Jowy went for lighthouses early, he still was affected by the nerf earning 36 commerce less, which is roughly 20% less compared to the previous FIN implementation. By the way we also see why Superdeath is doing worse in all the previous numbers, because he clearly hates commerce tiles that generate 3 commerce on land or 2 on water.

Protective Bonus

This is the first time we are playing with the 100% trade PRO bonus, but I'm spoiling you right away. There is no difference between this and the previous version this early in the game. I'm skipping the current turn numbers because they are boring. So here are the cumulative numbers:

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 43
   
2. Lazteuq = 41
   
3. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 36
   
4. GKC (AGG) = 22
   
5. Superdeath = 14
   
6. Mjmd = 8
   

As mentioned above, Amicalola is helped by PRO a bit at this stage. So far everybody made sure to connect their cities except for Mjmd and Superdeath. Lazteuq is the only IMP player who made sure to connect all his cities and it will be interesting to see how the IMP player numbers will look at T100.

Organized

Usually I wouldn't talk about Organized this early in the game. But since this is the first game on Emperor for which we have numbers it's worth mentioning. First here are the cumulative numbers:

1. Mjmd = 43
   
2. Superdeath = 32
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 28
   
4. Lazteuq = 25
   
5. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 18
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 11
   

First you will notice that there are three distinct player groups, which nicely fit the three groups we know already, when it comes to city count. This of course is expected as city count and pop count is part of the civic maintenance calculation and therefore the bonus you get from ORG. We can see that the ORG numbers are on a similar level to those of PRO. In contrast to previous games, where the first players get a bonus of 1 at some late 40s turn numbers, here we see players benefitting from it as soon as they switch into slavery in the 30s. The main factor for this is diffculty level, here Emperor. With Emperor civic maintenance for slavery (Medium cost) is increased and we also see a civic cost of 1 for running Paganism (Low cost) early on. For those who don't know the more a civic column is on the right the higher the cost. This is why religion civics are more costly then government civics.

Misc

I'm tracking a lot more but there is not enough information there to justify an own paragraph. Therefore a little summary here:

• AGG isn't generating anything so far
  
• No great persons so far to know ones surprise.
  
• Stonehenge for Lazteuq on T32
  

I'm also tracking the labor civics and therefore can determine, when everybody switched to slavery. These are the times they did.

1. Lazteuq = T23
   
2. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = T27
   
3. Mjmd = T30
   
4. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = T32
   
5. Superdeath = T37
   
6. GKC (AGG) = T39
   

Comparing traits

The main goal of all this tracking of course is to compare the economic traits related around commerce income or maintenance reduction. So let's do this:




Regular readers will notice that I changed the layout for these:

• I removed the PRO1.3 version as it no longer provides information that we don't already know. e.g. it was too good.
  
• I track which traits every player has via colors on their names at the top and the trait on the left
  
• Reason for that was so that I color-code the cumulated numbers for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (gold, silver, bronze)
  
• I also moved the cumulated numbers to the right for easier comparison between turn numbers and cumulated numbers.
  

We see some notable changes in the trait evaluation compared to previous games:

1. FIN is no longer the best economic trait in the first 50 turns due to the introduces nerf
   
2. PRO and ORG are fairly even as best trait in the early turns. This of course mainly because of the Emperor difficulty.
   
3. This all does not apply if your name is Jowy.
   

Right now I'm pondering about the FIN nerf I introduced especially on the relationship between FIN and ORG. On the one hand Jowy showed me why I introduced that nerf as even with it he managed to achieve insane commerce numbers early on. On the other hand I see that ORG is doing a lot better in the early turns as expected. I think it's too soon to make a final judgement on the nerf as more data will come in with the big PB59 game.

Stay tuned for the T100 report.

[Tarkeel]

We're starting to see divergence in expansion now:

Lazteuq is leveraging IMP into an impressive 8 cities, and seems to not have crashed the economy yet. The two other IMP players (Mjmd and Superdeath) are at 6, which is barely ahead of the others at 5. Jowy is still at 4, but have a higher quality to his cities. Nobody has started settling the jungle areas yet, and only a few players have island cities.

Speaking of islands, that's a very interesting spot for SD's 6th city!

Dropping off the axe next turn. Writing-IW-Currency beeline.

Mjmd will be livid when he spots those borders:

Anyways, founded Sand my future Maoi city.


(...)That means the inland sea SD can place cities and jump the lines of ocean to attack me, but it will be hard for me to do vice versa (although I think with early Maoi I can hold that ocean line as I don't think he will settle that fast out there).

[Commodore]

I don't think they're realizing how intentional the cross-sea access is; 1E of the whales is always going to be north's and 2W of whales is always south's.

[Charriu]

After a very long last turn I can finally present you with the T100 report. As always all the data can be found here: PB60 Tracking

Before we start some notable observations:

• No major invasion occured so far.
  
• Superdeath is spreading love and respect all around the world
  
• Jowy is playing a farmers gambit
  
• GKC is looking for a target
  
• Mjmd's plans a foiled time and time again by the other players, but even though he managed to land Oracle, Colossus and ToA
  
• Amicalola landed the Great Lighthouse in T72
  
• Lazteuq landed pyramids shortly before the T100 mark
  

General state of the game

First of all the city count

1. Lazteuq (IMP) = 13
   
2. Amicalola = 12
   
3. Superdeath (IMP) = 12
   
4. Jowy = 12
   
5. Mjmd (IMP) = 11
   
6. GKC = 10
   

And here are the current amount of pop across those empires at the T50 mark:

1. Lazteuq (IMP) = 55
   
2. Superdeath (IMP) = 44
   
3. Amicalola = 43
   
4. GKC = 38
   
5. Mjmd (IMP) = 36
   
6. Jowy = 34
   

These numbers are hiding a little fact that you can only see if you look at the numbers for each turn. Lazteuq is actually the only IMP leader that had a consistent head start in city count. The other two IMP leaders (Superdeath and Mjmd) were running almost equal to the other players for most of the time.

With this PB I'm also tracking gold at 100% and science at 100%, but for these early turns they are identical to the ones from Total Commerce. Mind you these are not reduced by the maintenance and science is actually 1 beaker higher then these numbers, which is the standard 1 beaker you always get even during anarchy. Keep in mind that these numbers are virtual as nobody can run 100% of gold or science for all the time. Here you will see the gold numbers with the science numbers in parenthesis.

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 154 (154)
   
2. Lazteuq = 148 (158)
   
3. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 144 (153)
   
4. Superdeath = 128 (157)
   
5. Mjmd = 111 (111)
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 92 (93)
   

Now one thing we can see here is three players (Superdeath, Lazteuq and Jowy) already have modifiers and/or specialists in place namely libraries I would guess. It's notable that Superdeath science numbers earned him the second place even though he has lower gold overall. By the way no gold modifers or specialists are in play yet. Mjmd should get better in the next turns thanks to wonders, but GKC has to find a way to increase his research rate if he doesn't want to get left behind.
Next let's see how the players do if we add up all the gold numbers (and science in parenthesis).

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 4544 (4719)
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 4253 (4338)
   
3. Lazteuq = 4190 (4316)
   
4. Superdeath = 3790 (4306)
   
5. Mjmd = 3531 (3628)
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 3341 (3442)
   

Jowy is still in the lead even though his lead shrinks a little bit in terms of gold). Just like with the current numbers we see that Superdeath's libraries keep him up in science. Also noteworthy is that the players with two direct-commerce-bonus-traits are on top of the list.
Now we have to set everything in context of maintenance. Thankfully I am now tracking the full picture of maintenance across all relevant data (unit cost, unit supply, civic maintenance, city maintenance and inflation). Adding everything together we have the following current turn maintenance numbers:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 79
   
2. GKC (AGG) = 83
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 95
   
4. Mjmd = 104
   
5. Superdeath = 111
   
6. Lazteuq = 139
   

Lazteuq is paying quiete a lot more thanks to his expansion to 13 cities. Of course the two ORG leaders pay less then everybody else. For good comparison Superdeath has almost the same city count and pop count then those two. Don't make the mistake of attributing GKCs low maintenance cost to his AGG trait. This is mainly because he only has 10 cities.
With this maintenance we can now get a clearer picture of the current gold rates, which present themselves this way

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 65
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 58
   
3. Superdeath = 17
   
4. GKC (AGG) = 9
   
5. Lazteuq = 9
   
6. Mjmd = 6
   

Two leaders emerge clearly from the field of players. But don't neglect Superdeath who is doing the best of the other 4 and has more science modifiers in play.
Will we see a similar picture with the accumulated numbers of accumulated gold - the accumulated maintenance.

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 3218
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 2591
   
3. GKC (AGG) = 1680
   
4. Mjmd = 1474
   
5. Lazteuq = 1360
   
6. Superdeath = 1213
   

More or less yes. The important differences are that Jowy already has a head start towards Amicalola and Superdeath really needs the science modifiers to get even. Just like with the T50 numbers the 3 IMP leaders (Lazteuq, Mjmd and Superdeath) are behind.

Financial Bonus

As a disclaimer just as last time, here I collected all the extra commerce a player (would) have gained if he was working Financial tiles. For example if you worked a river hamlet tile you normally gain 3 commerce and 4 commerce with FIN. In this case my tool notes down 1 extra commerce. You will also find that I am tracking the CtH implemenation of Financial as well as the normal BtS implementation for comparison. Keep in mind that this is the first time we are playing with the newest FIN nerf, which was that water tiles only give extra commerce with a lighthouse present.

Looking at the current turn numbers first:

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 28
   
2. Superdeath = 26
   
3. Lazteuq = 25
   
4. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 19
   
5. Mjmd = 14
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 13
   

From the other numbers at hand I can see that Mjmd and Lazteuq are running more water tiles without a lighthouse. Overall we can see that 3 players (Amicalola, Superdeath and Lazteuq invested heavily in cottages. But is that actually true or only a snapshot of this particular turn.

Here the accumulated numbers:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 759
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 411
   
3. Lazteuq = 367
   
4. Superdeath = 358
   
5. GKC (AGG) = 348
   
6. Mjmd = 247
   

Now this is a good example of why I do not trust the current turn numbers alone. GKC is low on this list too, but he's actually doing better then Mjmd. Most likely he isn't working all cottages right now. We can also see that due to his lighthouse start Jowy is still leading in this category.

But how much would the players have made without the lighthouse-FIN-nerf. For this it is worth looking at the numbers from the previous FIN version, which did apply extra commerce for land tiles at 3 and water tiles at 2. Here the accumulated numbers:

1. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 823
   
2. Lazteuq = 804
   
3. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 618
   
4. Mjmd = 507
   
5. GKC (AGG) = 502
   
6. Superdeath = 431
   

Quite a different list.

Lastly how sever is the recent nerf at the moment. Here the comparison for this lighthouse implementation compared to BtS (delta, reduction in percent):

1. Lazteuq = 688 (-65.21%)
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 413 (-50.12%)
   
3. Mjmd = 342 (-58.06%)
   
4. Superdeath = 341 (-58.06%)
   
5. GKC (AGG) = 287 (-45.20%)
   
6. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 161 (-17.50%)
   

Now if we ignore Jowy, because he found a way around my nerf ) we see that the nerf is actually between 45%-65%. This is overall a higher reduction compared to the last PB58. But keep in mind that this map tends more towards the water side then PB58s map. It's also good to know what the reduction would be without the lighthouse-nerf:

1. Lazteuq = 251 (-23.79%)
   
2. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 206 (-25.00%)
   
3. Mjmd = 82 (-13.92%)
   
4. Superdeath = 268 (-38.34%)
   
5. GKC (AGG) = 133 (-20.94%)
   
6. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 97 (-10.54%)
   

It's clear that the lighthouse nerf has a higher impact in the first 100 turns, but we already could know that from the numbers of previous PBs.

Protective Bonus

This is the first time we are playing with the 100% trade PRO bonus, but I'm spoiling you right away. There is no difference between this and the previous version this early in the game. I'm skipping the current turn numbers because they are boring. So here are the cumulative numbers:

1. Amicalola (PRO,ORG) = 451
   
2. Lazteuq = 345
   
3. Jowy (FIN,ORG) = 320
   
4. Mjmd = 281
   
5. Superdeath = 245
   
6. GKC (AGG) = 227
   

This is why Amicalola is in second place right now. What's only clear from the current turn numbers is that Jowy is also getting almost the same amount of trade commerce as Amicalola even though Amicalola has the Great Lighthouse. This is mainly because he researched Currency at T87.

Misc

I'm tracking a lot more but there is not enough information there to justify an own paragraph. Therefore a little summary here:

• AGG exists.
  
• Jowy has no army (only 28 unit maintenance with the next player at 80)
  
• Only Lazteuq generated a great person so far (Great Prophet)
  
• Only slavery civic is in play so far.
  

Comparing traits

The main goal of all this tracking of course is to compare the economic traits related around commerce income or maintenance reduction. So let's do this:




Regular readers will notice that I changed the layout for these:

We see some notable changes in the trait evaluation compared to previous games:

1. ORG reigns supreme here on Emperor difficulty.
   
2. Except if your name is Amicalola and you own the Great Lighthouse
   
3. And except if you are Jowy and refuse to accept the lighthouse-nerf.
   
4. Without the lighthouse-nerf FIN would still be the best pure commerce trait.
   
5. PRO is doing it's thing even outshining FIN for some players (Mjmd and Amicalola and almost Lazteuq)
   
6. AGG really needed the additional benefits.
   

Just like with the last report I'm still thinking about the FIN-ORG relationship in numbers. I'm eager to see the PB59 numbers for those. But I think one thing is clear so far and that is that FIN does not need any further nerfs or else I would need to nerf ORG too.

Stay tuned for the T150 report.

[Miguelito]

We could go for make a GM with caste system for a trade mission. This would require some way to get it to a capital though.

I think this isn't how trade missions work. Afaik you want a city that would have a maximal trade yield from a route to your own capital. The caps are all on the same landmass, and small yet, so worth 2c a route, same asany other mainland city (500+2*200 goldtrade mission?). Instead they should try for somebody's island - but of course with GKC there's that difficult bit of shared history regarding islands, and apparently them and Amica haven't claimed the little islands in their inner sea yet. And Pro Amica could close borders without a loss.

[Tarkeel]

I'm pretty sure that mission gold is based on the target city's trade route to your capital.