[SPOILERS] - PBEM26 Lurker thread

[NobleHelium]

pindicator really needs to stop building trading posts before granaries.

Oh wait, he's not EXP. Well I'm not sure then. Shows how much EXP is cheap granaries and cheap granaries...

[Ceiliazul]

they would stand a much better chance of pulling something off if they had an ally.

I can't speak for Gaspar, but it seems to me that Commodore often underestimates his military opponents... they may make inroads against Sian, but he ain't going to roll over.

[timski]

Gaspar/Commodore's strength in this war isn't so much in army as navy: Sian appears to have stacked troops in a city which is isolated from the rest by water. With 3-move Galleys, Gaspar/Commodore should be able to out-move Sian's stack, especially if they attack at the rear. That said, Sian likely has a significant advantage in being able to get newly trained reinforcements into battle much faster. Gaspar/Commodore have skimped on boats.

I doubt this war will be half as easy as Gaspar/Commodore seems to be expecting. More likely it will ensure both Gaspar/Commodore and Sian remain at the bottom of the points table. Interesting to watch...

[SevenSpirits]

Well like I posted in Yuris' thread I accidentally spoiled myself so I'm not dedlurking him anymore. No big deal I think since I didn't give any meaningful help since the very start.

A few comments:

1) I found Gaspar's "Civilization IV: We're Doing it Wrong" to be hilarious and all too true. They really botched the opening.

2) Yuris didn't make any fixable mistakes that I caught from his thread updates (though his screenshots are mostly overview shots with the data cropped out). But I've been getting his saves too (just ignoring them mostly) and so I looked at a recent turn just now. He is definitely not microing his cities well - worse than the governor. And he's slow-building workers/settlers with food in a few places while other cities grow glacially (2fpt) on other builds. I think it speaks for his strategic priorities of heavy expansion that he's doing as well as he is considering that. I think he also could have prioritized resource-grabbing more.

3) The map is great as always Plako. Obviously I called you a bastard for it but you should take that as a compliment - it was a hard start to figure out. I don't share the opinion that a weak start is bad or less fun. Nor do I believe at all that it's less skill-testing. The way one rewards understanding of the game and micro/planning skills is by not making things the same as they usually are. You can see what happened with Gaspadore - they blindly went ahead as if they had a massive food surplus in their capital (like most RB games) and ended up with four improved tiles at size one.

The other reason you are a bastard is you gave us a start where the best move (I think) is to settle on a FP in a food-poor capital. That just feels so wrong.

4) EXP is really good, guys. Pick it.

[plako]

2nd post of this updated and WB save attached there.

[Ceiliazul]

Sian is 'calling bullshit" at GasComm's battle odds... what is he implying they did exactly, and how would one prove it?

changing the order of attacks would not change the outcomes in any major way, would it?

Oh, and, Rego's thread is now the most outdated?? truly the end is upon us!

[oledavy]

Oh, and, Rego's thread is now the most outdated?? truly the end is upon us!

It truly is shocking I wonder what's come over him.

Sian is 'calling bullshit" at GasComm's battle odds... what is he implying they did exactly, and how would one prove it?

Changing the order of attacks would not change the outcomes in any major way, would it?

I'm not sure if this game has 'new random seed' on (at least I think that is what it's called). In any event, without this checked, the random number generator can give you different results on every playthrough. I believe he is accusing Commodore of loading the save multiple times and playing through it until he got the result he wanted.

While team Gaspadore did get ridiculously lucky, but I seriously doubt this is the case. Both of them strike me as pretty honorable players from their conduct in previous games.

[SevenSpirits]

changing the order of attacks would not change the outcomes in any major way, would it?

It certainly could. Imagine a simpler battle system where both sides roll a die and add it to their strength, higher strength wins, lower strength loses half their hp. And the roll sequence is:

6 2
3 3
3 2
1 4
3 5

So first you attack with a unit that can just barely win with the random 4-point boost. Then you throw in your crappiest unit to get past the bad luck. Then you attack with your best unit which just barely wins due to the slight random boost. Then you throw away another unit. And another. etc. The outcome is VERY different than if you just threw your units in from best to worst and four of your 5 best units die.

Civ combat is more complicated but in principle there might be a sequence of attacks which randomly has much better results than a different sequence, even though the random seed is the same.

[Or you can just attack, and if the result doesn't suit you, roll it back and decide not to attack. The only way to tell someone doesn't do this is to note that they sometimes do make attacks that turn out poorly.]

I don't think anyone here does that though. And certainly if you look at Gaspar's attack order that he posted, it makes complete sense, there's nothing weird about it.

Er, wait, he said it might not be totally accurate, and it isn't. Sian posted screens.

[COLOR="Red"]Land Num vs Spear 1.2%
Num vs Arch 4.6%[/COLOR]
Num vs Arch 9.0%
[COLOR="Red"]Num vs Axe 9.1%
Num vs Spear 17.7%[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Lime"]Num vs Spear 21.3%
Land Axe vs Archer 70.0%
Axe vs Axe 42.8%[/COLOR]

Looking at Gaspar's report he had 8 units in range. So this attack was pretty much doomed to fail; I mean there's a 75% he doesn't win any of the first four battles which means he has to win all of the last four, which is essentially the same as failing. Plus even if you win one of the first four, you have to win 3 of the last 3-4, which again has some problems in the area of likelihood. I don't see how anyone could think attacking there is a good idea.

So my conclusion is that Gaspar is probably bad at simming. But this might be worth looking into, if only for Sian's sanity.

[T-hawk]

There also exists the possibility that Gaspar might have reloaded if the attack went badly, but decided to keep the results after it went well. That's not exactly cheating if no reload actually took place, but it's not exactly honest either.

BTW, the other big swing that comes out of changing your attack order is retreats by mounted units. This requires only a single random result rather than a sequence of five to ten, so you can usually find an attack order that gets some retreats pretty easily by trial and error. An absence of any retreats is a bit of evidence that no manipulation took place (or else Gaspar didn't think of it.)

BTW2, Sian's odds for the later four battles aren't constant, they depend on how much damage was dealt to the defenders during the first four. It's possible Gaspar's sims had more damage dealt on average and had higher odds than shown here.

[plako]

I've not simmed or calculated this out, but with 1st glimpse it seems to me that failure was a bit more probable than success in that attack. However I also think they're in position where they need to take risks and this seemed like a spot I could have potentially taken a shot. Losing here doesn't change their position much although they should probably start peace talks, but win did give a quite big reward.