Ruff_Hi's Antics

All Happiness is the Release of Internal Pressure

Game Report: Adventure 11 - Divided We Fall (1/3)

The full game details can be found here at Realms Beyond. Basically, there are three land masses and the aim of the game is to try and pair up with one of the AIs on your land mass. Check the variant rules:

Variant Rules:
- You may not sign Permanent Alliance with anybody who starts on another landmass.
- You may not capture or raze any city belonging to a civ who started on your landmass
 

Part I - The Start.

My prior reports have changed in character over time. My last report (Epic 7 - Mano v Mano) was a fairly high level run through my game that didn't give enough details about my opening moves or my tactics. Unfortunately, while this report is written post Epic 7, the game was played prior and thus the screenshots and (some of) my thinking during the game are not available (or, and this refers to mainly my thinking, not even present ).

My general aim is to befriend the AIs on my continent and, eventually sign a permanent alliance with one, then go conquest against the others. I checked the initial settings and saw that I only have 4 opponents - well, this wouldn't be too difficult with only 4 other AIs to kill off, 3 if you exclude my future partner. I don't have a shot of the initial starting position or of my early few turns. However, I do have this screen shot ...

One thing that is shown is that I started a worker. This is not typical for me. Normally, I wait until I am size 2 before starting a worker. However, I did some testing a few weeks back with the same starting position forests, hills, wheat, etc) ...

Option 1: build worker straight out, tech agriculture, build barracks after worker completes, farm wheat
Option 2: build barracks until size 2, swap to worker, tech agriculture, resume barracks, farm wheat

I don't have the exact results but the result was barracks finished at turn 23 (normal speed), farm finished before turn 23, city size the same but Option 1 was a good 5 or so food ahead of Option 2. Now, every game starts with a worker as my default start.

Prior to the above screenshot, I had met Alexander (darn, I hate this guy ... you cannot trust him) and Catherine (wow, I love this girl, hair toss and all ... in fact, people playing or reading the first Chaos succession game blame me for our loss ... I gave Strassburg to Catherine for peace ... I have always claimed, and will always claim, that it was totally in character - I was playing the pushover - and who can actually resist Catherine when she tosses her hair like that? And now I have written a whole bunch of lines just about Catherine ... must stop before everyone notices that I am still writing about her ... [Ed: for the sake of the reader, I've clipped the following 3 pages of junk]).

I am teching Polytheism for Hinduism - I aim to spread this religion to my future partners to lock up our relationship.

By 2000BC ...

I have marked my next city site (2 tiles East of the pigs, West of Mecca) with the settler in production, I have at least 1 warrior, at least 2 workers and I have quarried the stone. However, I also learn that I am not even listed on the top 8 'Most Advanced' civilizations! What? How can I not be in the top 10 when there are only 4 opponents. I go back and (re)read Sirian's description of the game and find that AIs starting on other continents are already in teams. That must mean that there are 2 other teams (4 opponents, less Alex and Cathy), so there are 2 other continents, one with a team of 4 and the other with a team of 3. Oh dear! This isn't noble, this is ... errr ... I have no idea what it is. Hopefully, the team penalty for tech research is really, really high and these guys will actually tech slower than normal (not true, but you can hope ... the actually team penalty is roughly 1 + 50% times [number in team minus 1]. So a team of 3 will tech 3 / (1 + 50% * 2) or 1.5 times as fast as an individual. A team of 4 will tech 4 / (1 + 50% * 3) or 1.6 times faster than normal.

I looked up the post at civfanatics and here is the correct formula ...

The final formula is the following:
Technology Cost = FLOOR (FLOOR (FLOOR (Base Cost * Difficulty Modifier) * Map Modifier) * Speed Modifier)
    + Base Cost * 0.5 * (Number of Player + 1) * Speed Modifier

So, without getting into the various modifiers, the cost of the tech goes up 50% of the base for each team mate (or number in team less 1). So, for a team of two, they generate two times the beakers in research but only need 1.5 times the beakers to research the tech. Thus they tech 2/1.5 or 1.33% times faster. For a team of three ... 1.5 times faster, for 4 ... 1.6 times faster. These are right for noble but a little off for monarch due to the difficulty modifiers.