[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Old Harry]

I love the bar graphs, please keep up the maths quota!

I'm curious though - if you've only played about 20 games how long have you had CIV? I've been playing for about five years and I wouldn't like to guess how many hours I've sunk into this game and FFH2...

[Fintourist]

I bought the game soon after it was published, but did not play much. I really got interested when I reinstalled the game about a year ago and googled something like "best civ 4 opening", found Sullla's site and then RB forums. I got extremely interested in multiplayer civ (single player has never been my thing) and have spent way too many hours reading stuff here. Meanwhile I played those ~20 games, got bored of AI and here we are..

My real life has been quite busy in the past and currently I have an unique situation that I have enough time for trying a PBEM myself. There is a significant chance that this will be my first and last game despite the fact that I'm having a lot of fun. After I finish my studies I will probably work long hours and can't play civ regularly enough so that I could participate

[retep]

I found your updates very interestig. I always read it in me breaks at work, so keep up!

[Fintourist]

Turn 22

First of all, thanks for Old Harry & retep for encouragement! So here is the latest situation:



My capital grew at the end of the last turn to size 3 and now my worker finished the sheep pasture just in time so that "Ace" can now work improved rice, sheep and unimproved fish lake. Being the first one at size 3 and having pretty nice tiles to work obviously catapulted me to a nice lead in the demos (1st in GNP & Food, 2nd in Production), but now I will stagnate here for a good while and I expect others to catch up quickly.

I started now building the second worker (6t) that will help my to chop out my first settler as soon as the build is completed. You can also see my warrior returning from his minor scouting trip, there is not much to do for him.

In my original plans, Worker A would move next turn one tile north and road the tile and then start roading towards the 2nd city. In that way there would be no wasted worker turns. However, I have to change my plans, because there are two issues that might cause me to need additional worker labor:
1) I have not secured the extra beaker required for earlier pottery.
2) If the copper is located on the bare grass hill NE of the fish, I will need to change my dot map
Therefore, my worker will move N-N next turn (and waste a worker turn) and start building the road connection between cities one turn sooner than planned and the road to southeast (which would at some point become handy) has to be built later.

I also changed the research to pottery for one turn. I can delay BW one turn without any effects and this will give me an additional turn time to find someone for getting a known-tech bonus. I did this change now, because at size 3 I create enough beakers for known tech bonus to matter and I consider it more probable that I will find someone with BW than Pottery. Basically I only increased the probability of getting one single extra beaker by changing it now. I am sure most people see this only as a waste of time and say that the risk of me calculating wrong or forgetting to change the tech back to BW next turn is bigger, but oh well..

Sareln researched a tech and it looks like to be... pottery. (If I had done C&D before I played my turn I might not have changed my research since now 2 civs have BW and 1 pottery.) I also assume that Viqsi completed a warrior.

Next turn I will write more about scouting, otherwise everything will move pretty slowly for a while..

[Old Harry]

I assume that the peninsula you've explored ended in the sea? Is it worth leaving your warrior where he can see the other bits of land? Other teams might happen to pass by...

Also how big will the known tech bonus be? Won't it get lost to rounding this early in the game?

[Fintourist]

I assume that the peninsula you've explored ended in the sea? Is it worth leaving your warrior where he can see the other bits of land? Other teams might happen to pass by...

The warrior only revealed one coast tile that my scout missed, no sea resources there..

You have a good point with leaving the warrior as "a sentry" somewhere. Unfortunately the only places where I believe I could meet someone are pretty far away in the south. It would take a long time for my warrior to reach a sensible spot and the chances are not so high that someone happens to wander through the jungle passage at that time. I am not sure when I'm going to need military police for the first time, but I believe I just leave my warrior waiting and hope that my scout does his job..

Also how big will the known tech bonus be? Won't it get lost to rounding this early in the game?

Typically known tech bonus would not matter so early, but this is a kind of an exception. It matters only because I have two tiles that trigger Financial bonus (Sheep & Fish, my rice is also riverside) and I manage to create exactly 17 base beakers:
7 beakers from fish+sheep+rice
1 from capital tile
8 from Palace
1 free beaker.

If I'm not mistaken, every known opponent with the tech in question is worth 0,06 (0,3*1/5) points for the multipler. Meaning if I meet one civ with BW I get a multiplier of 1,06.

17 * 1,06 = 18,02

As you can see, one opponent and my tech rate are just enough to bring me one additional base beaker. I would not talk about this that much unless I were not just one beaker short of finishing pottery EOT31. If I do not finish it, I cannot put a turn into cottage. I need those cottages asap otherwise my capital might end up working forest tiles at size 4 & 5. I can speed up cottages a bit by not building the road SE of the capital as I wrote in my previous report, but if the copper placement screws me over and I don't get my cottages up early enough, that one little beaker becomes more of a loss than just one beaker..

[Fintourist]

Turn 23

Sareln finally played his turn. (We are only at Turn 23 and he has already 5 times needed 30-48 hours for moving his two units ) But nevermind, this turn brought quite interesting and good news!

Immediately when I opened the game I saw that I had met Sareln & Viqsi and when I moved my scout I met TheHumanHydra too



Sareln & Viqsi both have their scouts W of my scout.

Just based on the scout positions, here is my initial guess regarding the placement of the teams:



Now in hindsight, my research swap from the last turn did not bring any real benefits, because I met Sareln, who gives me extra beakers towards pottery, but this turn was definitely great news for my tech rate. Hydra just finished BW as well, so now I am getting two extra beakers towards BW (from Viqsi & Hydra) and I will easily finish Pottery before my workers have time to start cottaging. It is also great that no other civ benefits currently from known tech bonuses so these beakers are for now my priviledge and boost my chances of getting an early religion (still somewhat improbable).

There were quite a few score & power increases this time, but they were pretty easy to figure out:
- Viqsi was the first to receive land points of his BFC since she has creative trait.
- Hydra teched BW
- Sareln grew to size 3 (It looks still like he is going the same route as I am except he settled next to the fish and is that's why currently 2 turns behind)
- Azza teched the Wheel

That's all for now, scouting of the centre will continue and I hope to meet Azza for the last couple of extra beakers..

EDIT: Other teams benefit from known tech bonuses too, but they need to have two opponents with the tech in question in order to get one extra beaker.

[Fintourist]

Turn 24

There were no big domestic news this turn. The scout revealed more of the centre. Next he will start heading towards SE in order to make circumnavigation easier. I believe my opponents are doing the same thing.



Before my movement I saw that both Sareln & Viqsi seem to head towards NW. My civ placement from previous report is probably wrong, but hey, that's just the first guess.

Hydra grew to size 3 and rival best GNP rose to 33. That's enormous! I thought that I would be the clear tech leader at this point with my FIN bonus, but I can only get to 30 points if I select Pottery, which has two pre-reqs and extrabeaker from Sareln. At the moment I can't really explain how Sareln or Hydra get the GNP of 33. Last turn rival best was 23.

No wonders or religions have fallen yet. Maybe Sareln moved his capital (he settled T1) and was lucky, found gold and is working it now. That would be annoying. With my start that should not be really possible, but oh well. I simply can't explain that figure yet.

[Old Harry]

What traits do the other players have and how many citizens?

[Fintourist]

What traits do the other players have and how many citizens?

Size 3: Sareln (Exp/Ind), Hydra (Spi/Org)
Size 2: Viqsi (Exp/Cre), Azza (Fin/Imp)

I have constructed different scenarios and my conclusion is that whoever has the monster (33) GNP, he needs to produce at least 8-9 base beakers outside his capital. My most realistic bet is Sareln researching BW (no real 40 % possibilities if I am correct)

Example:
8 from palace
1 from city tile
10 from tiles (6 from gold, 4 from rest)
1 free beaker
20 % pre-req bonus
3 opponents know the tech
=
27 beakers for research
+
2 culture from Palace
4 espionage points
=
33 GNP

But yeah, I still have no real idea where does this GNP come from. I will monitor its changes during the coming turns and hopefully identify, who has it and for what it is used.