I've recently heard a couple of streamers I watch talk about an upcoming 'event' of sorts called Four Job Fiesta. It basically seems to be a yearly excuse for people to play Final Fantasy V with a bit of structure and some charity fundraising mixed in. They're donating towards Child's Play. Anyway, the idea is you sign up to play by tweeting a message at a specific account and then a bot generates four jobs (one from each crystal) for you. The goal is then to beat Final Fantasy V using only those jobs. There are some other modifiers you can throw in to make things harder like signing up to get a chance at being given extra copies of the berserker job instead of a random one. (Berserkers being annoying and bad!) One of the things they do to raise money is let people pay to assign out even more copies of berserker to people who take the berserker risk.
They're also going to be running a race of sorts between two streamers who will be playing the game using community voted jobs instead of random ones. And by voted I mean paid for through donations. It should be interesting to watch. 11am on June 14th!
I like the idea of using something like this to get more people to play an excellent game. I like that it only happens once a year so it keeps some mystique around it. I like that the guy who runs it crunches some numbers each time to make pretty infographics. Chemist is apparently the best job, berserker is the worst. I like that there's a whole community of people who play FFV each year with crazy jobs. I wish I was a part of such a community.
Maybe this year I will be, now that I know it exists. I'll need to figure out this newfangled Twitter thing, but how hard can that be?
Monday, June 02, 2014
Sunday, June 01, 2014
Bridge Match 2 - Board 57
Board 57 - Dealer North - EW Vul
Opponents convention card: Dutch Acol
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate
My hand: ♠ J 9 5 2 ♥ J 7 6 ♦ K Q 9 ♣ T 8 2
Partner opens 1 diamond in first chair. East passes. My hand is pretty bad, but I do have 7 points and a 4 card major so I have to bid a spade. West passes and partner bids 1NT, strong. Even opposite a strong NT opener my hand isn't very good. It isn't worth even an invite, so I pass.
East leads the 9 of hearts.
I have 3 diamonds off the top and that is it. I can almost certainly get a 4th diamond and might even get a 5th. I can brute force a club and might get a second one. I can eventually set up 2 spades after losing 2 tricks. And I have a heart for sure off the opening lead. As far as losers go I have stoppers all over the place but only one heart stopper. But the weird 9 of hearts lead makes me think they're probably split 4-3. So I probably only have 3 heart losers, a club, 2 spades, and a diamond. I need to find a way to not lose one of those.
Anyway, I think I need to cover the lead. 9-J-2-3. Well, that was unexpected. Now ideally I want to lose a trick to East if at all so I can't be finessed in hearts. But since I'm mostly losing aces I don't have much choice in the matter. I want to start by setting up spades and I can try finessing the Q into East. 2-4-T-8. Well, that makes setting up spades harder, actually. But I got a trick out of it, so that's fine. Let's see what's up in diamonds. 3-6-K-2. Good stuff. I have a 4th diamond for sure, but I might have to lose a diamond to get it. I do think it's time to establish a club trick. 2-3-Q-A. East fires back a club. 7-8-9-K.
Urg, I feel like I've probably played this badly and am mostly just setting up tricks for the opponents. Well. I get to make if diamonds are 3-2, so let's see if that's going to happen. 4-J-Q-7. Hurray! I cash out and they are up. Making 2.
Everyone was in 1NT. Someone made 3, 3 of us made 2, someone made 1, and 3 people went down 1. So we score up 10 more MPs. Woo!
Jack disagrees with my spade play. He wants to investigate diamonds first, which probably makes more sense. Even if they split badly you can force someone to make some pitches and maybe pull off an accidental squeeze of some kind. He then later disagrees with my playing a club. He still wants me to play diamonds, and he's still probably right. Oops.
Ranking after board 57/60: 1/16 with 63.16%
Opponents convention card: Dutch Acol
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate
My hand: ♠ J 9 5 2 ♥ J 7 6 ♦ K Q 9 ♣ T 8 2
Partner opens 1 diamond in first chair. East passes. My hand is pretty bad, but I do have 7 points and a 4 card major so I have to bid a spade. West passes and partner bids 1NT, strong. Even opposite a strong NT opener my hand isn't very good. It isn't worth even an invite, so I pass.
East leads the 9 of hearts.
| NORTH ♠ K T ♥ K 8 3 ♦ A 8 5 4 3 ♣ K Q 5 | ||
| EAST ♥ 9 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ J 9 5 2 ♥ J 7 6 ♦ K Q 9 ♣ T 8 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1♦ | Pass | 1♠ | |
| Pass | 1NT | Pass | Pass |
| Pass |
I have 3 diamonds off the top and that is it. I can almost certainly get a 4th diamond and might even get a 5th. I can brute force a club and might get a second one. I can eventually set up 2 spades after losing 2 tricks. And I have a heart for sure off the opening lead. As far as losers go I have stoppers all over the place but only one heart stopper. But the weird 9 of hearts lead makes me think they're probably split 4-3. So I probably only have 3 heart losers, a club, 2 spades, and a diamond. I need to find a way to not lose one of those.
Anyway, I think I need to cover the lead. 9-J-2-3. Well, that was unexpected. Now ideally I want to lose a trick to East if at all so I can't be finessed in hearts. But since I'm mostly losing aces I don't have much choice in the matter. I want to start by setting up spades and I can try finessing the Q into East. 2-4-T-8. Well, that makes setting up spades harder, actually. But I got a trick out of it, so that's fine. Let's see what's up in diamonds. 3-6-K-2. Good stuff. I have a 4th diamond for sure, but I might have to lose a diamond to get it. I do think it's time to establish a club trick. 2-3-Q-A. East fires back a club. 7-8-9-K.
Urg, I feel like I've probably played this badly and am mostly just setting up tricks for the opponents. Well. I get to make if diamonds are 3-2, so let's see if that's going to happen. 4-J-Q-7. Hurray! I cash out and they are up. Making 2.
| NORTH ♠ K T ♥ K 8 3 ♦ A 8 5 4 3 ♣ K Q 5 | ||
| WEST ♠ A Q 4 ♥ 5 4 2 ♦ T 7 2 ♣ J 9 6 3 | EAST ♠ 8 7 6 3 ♥ A Q T 9 ♦ J 6 ♣ A 7 4 | |
| SOUTH ♠ J 9 5 2 ♥ J 7 6 ♦ K Q 9 ♣ T 8 2 |
Jack disagrees with my spade play. He wants to investigate diamonds first, which probably makes more sense. Even if they split badly you can force someone to make some pitches and maybe pull off an accidental squeeze of some kind. He then later disagrees with my playing a club. He still wants me to play diamonds, and he's still probably right. Oops.
Ranking after board 57/60: 1/16 with 63.16%
Friday, May 30, 2014
Civ V: Dangerous Bug Abuse
I decided to see if I could pull off the research bug I talked about yesterday in an actual game. So I started up a 12 player highest difficulty game as Venice with the goal of just sitting around setting up the bug and hope I was ignored until I had infinite tech. I wasn't sure how I was eventually going to win but I wanted to see if I could make it happen.
It turns out that yes, I can totally make it happen. I may have gotten lucky (I got to make a proposal at the first council meeting and was able to get scholars in residence through) but no one even looked at me funny the entire time. There's just so much space on a pangaea that it seems like if you never expand you don't get anyone's attention. My capital was truly terrible though, and I couldn't even increase my hammer production because I was skipping mining, but I got it it work.
And then disaster struck. I don't know the exact value but one turn I was carrying more than 200000 beakers over between turns and the next turn it wrapped around into the negatives. Not only was I not learning a tech per turn anymore, I'd broken poor chemistry. Even if my position was otherwise playable I'd never be able to progress beyond chemistry. (Actually I may have been able to build the national university wonder for a free tech to fix it, but stalling out with less tech than everyone else was not playable.)
What I needed to do was force a path to new techs. I'd picked up all of the cheap stuff but since the bug only applies on techs with a discount if I could have opened up a 'new to me' tech then I could have started actually spending science when I had 100k or so. Or maybe I just didn't need scholars in residence at all. Or maybe I could have started earlier with a smaller start-up value from my great scientist.
I'm going to give it some more thought about how to transition from infinite tech into a victory and how much set-up I actually need. Maybe I can just use the sailing side of the tree and can afford to at least get mining and masonry to build up my capital. Maybe I can even afford to expand a little bit? And I can probably find a better civ to play... I'm actually think Mayans for the early great prophet (I couldn't see any other way to get a religion in this game unless you can get a huge faith pantheon) and the also free great scientist which might let me get started without waiting for the university workers to generate one for me.
I did learn that I don't need to waste time using scouts to find all the other civs. As long as someone else does it the council will introduce me to everyone else and unlock all my discounts.
It turns out that yes, I can totally make it happen. I may have gotten lucky (I got to make a proposal at the first council meeting and was able to get scholars in residence through) but no one even looked at me funny the entire time. There's just so much space on a pangaea that it seems like if you never expand you don't get anyone's attention. My capital was truly terrible though, and I couldn't even increase my hammer production because I was skipping mining, but I got it it work.
 |
| Oops. |
What I needed to do was force a path to new techs. I'd picked up all of the cheap stuff but since the bug only applies on techs with a discount if I could have opened up a 'new to me' tech then I could have started actually spending science when I had 100k or so. Or maybe I just didn't need scholars in residence at all. Or maybe I could have started earlier with a smaller start-up value from my great scientist.
I'm going to give it some more thought about how to transition from infinite tech into a victory and how much set-up I actually need. Maybe I can just use the sailing side of the tree and can afford to at least get mining and masonry to build up my capital. Maybe I can even afford to expand a little bit? And I can probably find a better civ to play... I'm actually think Mayans for the early great prophet (I couldn't see any other way to get a religion in this game unless you can get a huge faith pantheon) and the also free great scientist which might let me get started without waiting for the university workers to generate one for me.
I did learn that I don't need to waste time using scouts to find all the other civs. As long as someone else does it the council will introduce me to everyone else and unlock all my discounts.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Civ V: Research Catch-Ups
I was annoyed at the last Civ V video I watched because the guy playing didn't talk at all to explain anything so I went searching for someone who does. Yoruus is a pretty cool dude who clearly doesn't speak English as his first language (he sometimes has to stop and think to find the right word) but he does a really good job of explaining what he's thinking. And he even uses the crazy opening I used to use way back when I first started playing where you open up both tradition and liberty to get the early culture bonuses! The more I think about it the more I actually like it, since the tradition opener pretty much pays for itself over the whole game and gives you faster border expansions. I really wish I had it in my Dutch multiplayer game since my cities refuse to border expand any of the hills near them! How am I supposed to stop growing the cities and work all the hammers without hills? I've mostly been watching his 2 player real time games so there's actually not much to learn from them but they're entertaining and that's good enough for me!
Anyway, he has some videos tagged as being important or something and they talk about a science bug in the game that can essentially grant all of the techs one turn at a time starting at the middle of the game. His test run took a civ that almost had architecture and was able to learn the entire tree except lasers, stealth, and future tech. You get knights and pikemen along the way so it's not even a super vulnerable strategy! I decided I wanted to know more about it, but rather than try to find a post about it on the internet I decided to rig up a test game of my own to see if I could figure out what was going on.
The crux of the matter has to deal with a catch-up mechanic I didn't even know existed in the game. Basically the idea is techs get cheaper the more other civs you know that have learned the tech. It makes some amount of sense. It's easier for me to figure out a book when I see that Dave has a big stack of them over there. I wrote down a bunch of numbers from my test game and it looks like there's not an exact discount but it's in the area of 6.5% cheaper per player. Or maybe it's just rounding screwing things up? I learned that the game only displays whole numbers in the tech tree but it definitely keeps track of the decimal points so it may well actually be 6.5% per player. It may also vary based on number of players or difficulty or game speed or map size. The precise amount doesn't really matter though, the important thing to know is that techs get cheaper as other people learn them and that you need to actually meet the other civs before you get the discount.
I was lamenting on Facebook that I didn't see how I could keep up with Dave in tech since he's making approximately three times as many beakers as I am. I still need to build a national college and universities and such to close the gap but it felt like I was going to be stuck way behind for the whole game. But if it turns out I only have to pay 87% of the cost of the techs that he had to pay I don't need to pass him in beakers to catch up. I just need to get close and the discounts should be a boost. There's also apparently a premium for researching the first medieval era tech where that person needs to pay like 4% more. Couple that with the other catch-up mechanic (spying) and things only look bad, not impossible. That is, if I'd met Dave. As things currently stand I couldn't spy on him even if we had spies and I'm stuck paying full price for my techs because I'm stuck on an island on my own. My worry is the first time I meet Dave it'll be an entire army landing on my little island and starting to catch-up at that point won't be worth anything. Of course he could just stay away and deny the discounts as long as possible while building up a powerful position to win the game any of the other ways. Bleh.
Anyway... Catching up is fine and all but what about that bug? It turns out the game is set up such that you can only learn one tech at the start of each turn. You can learn more than one in a turn if you learn free techs or earn science in the middle of your turn (like by popping a great scientist) but otherwise it just carries any excess science forward to the next turn. Even if that excess science would be enough to learn multiple techs at once. Like if you saved up a bunch of great scientists and used them all in one turn, for example...
Here's the state of affairs in my test game after I'd played around a bit with abusing the bug. You'll notice I'm working on learning sailing which costs a mere 36 science. I have 4159 science sitting around waiting to be spent. On this turn I legitimately earned 87 science from my city. So if everything was working properly I'd expect to add 87 to my 4159 to get 4246 and then pay out 36 science to learn sailing. I should be left with 4210 or so, with weird rounding maybe shifting things by a couple. Instead...
That's not 4210! That's 292 bigger than it should be! Which is in the neighbourhood of the ~6.5% discount for someone else knowing the tech. I made notes of every tech I picked up during this overflow streak and the pattern holds up. Tech known by 3 other civs gave a boost of around 19% to the science on hand. At least when the cost of the tech was small compared to the overflow. There was still a gain even when I was working on techs that cost over a thousand each but it slowed down and petered out. Part of that problem is I was getting techs known by only one other civ, not three. And I didn't manipulate the start very well I don't think. I certainly only got almost to the modern era before I ran out of science, but it was still a big gain.
So how did I set up my test? I made a hotseat game with 4 civs. It was a quick game. I wandered them around until they all met each other. Then I settled down and set them down different paths. One civ was going to be a scumbag cheater. His goal was to get all the research buildings in order to have as big a burst as possible when I used great scientists, and then was to pick up said great scientists. One civ just went down the bottom of the tree, taking mining and going as far as they could. The third civ followed the second civ but first it detoured up to get a national college. The last civ was designed to research all the things so it beelined straight to universities and also picked up the great library along the way. All of the civs built a worker and then tried to get as high a population as possible to max out the science gain.
I totalled up a few numbers for each civ at various points of the game. My bug ran out on turn 147 after settling so that's going to be the end point. I'm also going to look at the numbers after 50 and 100 turns. The numbers are total beakers earned (by science per turn or by burning a great scientist), total base value of techs learned, and 'free' beakers earned either by a catch-up mechanic, the bug, or rounding issues.
Now, the city spots weren't all equivalent. Russia got to settle near Lake Victoria which was huge for early pop growth. They were also beside a mountain. One interesting thing is despite growing at the same rate and being later in turn order Assyria actually got writing a turn before Babylon did. Because they had to pay 2 less science for pottery as a result of Babylon learning it first. Russia's early beaker bonus was almost entirely the free tech out of the great library which I didn't count as science accumulated. They also accumulated significantly more science than the other players thanks to the +3 from the great library. They were slower to national college because the other two civs got to build the cheaper library and then start in on it right away. But once they got them both up they were making double what the other science civs were making. And more than 5 times as much as the poor mining civ! The university really put things over the top with the science per turn sitting at 36-13-40-145 at turn 90.
I didn't do a good job abusing the bug but even still look at the end result! Babylon ended up with more tech value learned on turn 147 than Russia did despite Russia actually being such a dominating science force. Some of the 10000 free science was the legitimate catch-up mechanic but the vast majority of it was the bug coming home. And at the end, after rush buying the public school for Babylon, the science per turn ended up at 182-20-59-272. Babylon still had the oxford university to build, too, which was where 550 of Russia's bonus came from.
I actually ended up abusing the bug a little bit with Russia without meaning to. They probably only got 300 or 400 free science out of it, but when you're researching techs that cost 80 or 100 that's a pretty huge boost. (Also, Austria only got 2023 total value in techs all game... So 300 free science is really big relative to them!) They didn't even have to pop a great scientist or anything... They just plowed straight up to universities without getting any of the side techs. They researched masonry (which cost 33 beakers) while they were generating 119 per turn! And that was with only 2 civs knowing masonry... If Babylon wasn't also being cheesy and had also picked it up the cost would have been lower and the carry-over multiplier would have been higher.
There's one thing I didn't do in my test, and that's grab the 'scholars in residence' diplomatic boost. If that boost gets voted in the cost of all techs is lowered by 20% if any other civ knows it. Given what seems to be the case with the carry-over multiplier having this in play would stack up the science lying around by an absurd amount.
I also suspect you could set up the bug even when you don't have a lot of low cost techs lying around. You could, for example, research most of a tech and then switch to something else right before it finished. This should manufacture a fake low cost tech. Prep up several of these and then pop your great scientist and go to town. I suspect this is what the guy was doing in the first game I watched since he switched off of a tech and I didn't understand why but he eventually popped several great scientist at the same time to burst his way to artillery. I thought maybe he did that as a surprise move to jump up in the literacy number but he could have also done it to steal some extra beakers to get there a little faster.
Ok, so this bug exists... What should be done about it? There are people who would say anything in the game is fair to use. I feel like this bug is outside the realm of what's acceptable but I hate enforcing outside rules on a game. Even my civ that was trying to play fair ended up using the bug incidentally! Anyone that rushes national college into university while mostly ignoring the other junk is going to get extra free science for doing so. I actually wouldn't be surprised to find out that Dave unintentionally got some science out of the bug in our faster asynch game. He was making more than 50 beakers per turn before I was even close to researching writing. The writing tier of techs cost 36 with someone knowing them, the first tier only costs 23! So if he'd met Robb by that point in time and if he researched any early tech that Robb knew (mining/masonry/bronze working?) he could have triggered the bug. It probably wouldn't be for very much, but when I'm only making 11 per turn him getting 8 for free is a big deal.
How could you even fix it? You could research all the 'cheap' stuff before you power up that many beakers? You could only select a 'cheap' tech after barely finishing a previous tech so you're not carrying over more science than the cheap tech costs. Or you could just accept that sometimes it will happen.
The big thing is to not pop a great scientist for a huge amount of science and then research a cheap tech. Pop the scientist to get an expensive tech, and use it early on in the tech?
Some people have suggested banning great scientists entirely. Use them just for the improvement, never for the one shot. Which sucks, but if the alternative is making them absurdly powerful? I donno. Also you could ban scholars in residence since that's what really gives you the huge overflows. But even without it I was able to more than double my science!
Or you could just play with it as a potential strategy. I don't know how a real game would actually go if I wasn't allowed to research anything from mining forward and if I was forced to generate 3 great people without using them for 125 turns. I feel like someone should have killed me by then...
But then I think about my Dutch game... I'd need to take sailing in order to go meet up with Dave but it would have been a strong strategy to build up just science and ignore the bottom half of the tech tree. Meet Dave and then more than double my science? Seems strong. As it is I have several techs that will only take 3 turns to finish and I don't have universities yet. Even without the bug existing it's definitely right to rush to universities and eventually I will meet Dave. All those cheap techs may well become cheaper than one turn. I could probably alternate picking them up to not get extra science, but if I don't want those techs yet it seems bad for me.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Anyway, he has some videos tagged as being important or something and they talk about a science bug in the game that can essentially grant all of the techs one turn at a time starting at the middle of the game. His test run took a civ that almost had architecture and was able to learn the entire tree except lasers, stealth, and future tech. You get knights and pikemen along the way so it's not even a super vulnerable strategy! I decided I wanted to know more about it, but rather than try to find a post about it on the internet I decided to rig up a test game of my own to see if I could figure out what was going on.
The crux of the matter has to deal with a catch-up mechanic I didn't even know existed in the game. Basically the idea is techs get cheaper the more other civs you know that have learned the tech. It makes some amount of sense. It's easier for me to figure out a book when I see that Dave has a big stack of them over there. I wrote down a bunch of numbers from my test game and it looks like there's not an exact discount but it's in the area of 6.5% cheaper per player. Or maybe it's just rounding screwing things up? I learned that the game only displays whole numbers in the tech tree but it definitely keeps track of the decimal points so it may well actually be 6.5% per player. It may also vary based on number of players or difficulty or game speed or map size. The precise amount doesn't really matter though, the important thing to know is that techs get cheaper as other people learn them and that you need to actually meet the other civs before you get the discount.
I was lamenting on Facebook that I didn't see how I could keep up with Dave in tech since he's making approximately three times as many beakers as I am. I still need to build a national college and universities and such to close the gap but it felt like I was going to be stuck way behind for the whole game. But if it turns out I only have to pay 87% of the cost of the techs that he had to pay I don't need to pass him in beakers to catch up. I just need to get close and the discounts should be a boost. There's also apparently a premium for researching the first medieval era tech where that person needs to pay like 4% more. Couple that with the other catch-up mechanic (spying) and things only look bad, not impossible. That is, if I'd met Dave. As things currently stand I couldn't spy on him even if we had spies and I'm stuck paying full price for my techs because I'm stuck on an island on my own. My worry is the first time I meet Dave it'll be an entire army landing on my little island and starting to catch-up at that point won't be worth anything. Of course he could just stay away and deny the discounts as long as possible while building up a powerful position to win the game any of the other ways. Bleh.
Anyway... Catching up is fine and all but what about that bug? It turns out the game is set up such that you can only learn one tech at the start of each turn. You can learn more than one in a turn if you learn free techs or earn science in the middle of your turn (like by popping a great scientist) but otherwise it just carries any excess science forward to the next turn. Even if that excess science would be enough to learn multiple techs at once. Like if you saved up a bunch of great scientists and used them all in one turn, for example...
So how did I set up my test? I made a hotseat game with 4 civs. It was a quick game. I wandered them around until they all met each other. Then I settled down and set them down different paths. One civ was going to be a scumbag cheater. His goal was to get all the research buildings in order to have as big a burst as possible when I used great scientists, and then was to pick up said great scientists. One civ just went down the bottom of the tree, taking mining and going as far as they could. The third civ followed the second civ but first it detoured up to get a national college. The last civ was designed to research all the things so it beelined straight to universities and also picked up the great library along the way. All of the civs built a worker and then tried to get as high a population as possible to max out the science gain.
I totalled up a few numbers for each civ at various points of the game. My bug ran out on turn 147 after settling so that's going to be the end point. I'm also going to look at the numbers after 50 and 100 turns. The numbers are total beakers earned (by science per turn or by burning a great scientist), total base value of techs learned, and 'free' beakers earned either by a catch-up mechanic, the bug, or rounding issues.
| 50 turns | Babylon | Austria | Assyria | Russia |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science Accumulated | 518 | 350 | 527 | 720 |
| Total Tech Value | 568 | 364 | 585 | 868 |
| Bonus Beakers | 50 | 14 | 58 | 148 |
| 100 | Babylon | Austria | Assyria | Russia |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science Accumulated | 2147 | 948 | 2357 | 5296 |
| Total Tech Value | 2392 | 999 | 2441 | 6338 |
| Bonus Beakers | 245 | 51 | 84 | 1042 |
| 147 | Babylon | Austria | Assyria | Russia |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science Accumulated | 7159 | 1778 | 4560 | 15572 |
| Total Tech Value | 17256 | 2023 | 4638 | 16753 |
| Bonus Beakers | 10097 | 245 | 78 | 1181 |
Now, the city spots weren't all equivalent. Russia got to settle near Lake Victoria which was huge for early pop growth. They were also beside a mountain. One interesting thing is despite growing at the same rate and being later in turn order Assyria actually got writing a turn before Babylon did. Because they had to pay 2 less science for pottery as a result of Babylon learning it first. Russia's early beaker bonus was almost entirely the free tech out of the great library which I didn't count as science accumulated. They also accumulated significantly more science than the other players thanks to the +3 from the great library. They were slower to national college because the other two civs got to build the cheaper library and then start in on it right away. But once they got them both up they were making double what the other science civs were making. And more than 5 times as much as the poor mining civ! The university really put things over the top with the science per turn sitting at 36-13-40-145 at turn 90.
I didn't do a good job abusing the bug but even still look at the end result! Babylon ended up with more tech value learned on turn 147 than Russia did despite Russia actually being such a dominating science force. Some of the 10000 free science was the legitimate catch-up mechanic but the vast majority of it was the bug coming home. And at the end, after rush buying the public school for Babylon, the science per turn ended up at 182-20-59-272. Babylon still had the oxford university to build, too, which was where 550 of Russia's bonus came from.
I actually ended up abusing the bug a little bit with Russia without meaning to. They probably only got 300 or 400 free science out of it, but when you're researching techs that cost 80 or 100 that's a pretty huge boost. (Also, Austria only got 2023 total value in techs all game... So 300 free science is really big relative to them!) They didn't even have to pop a great scientist or anything... They just plowed straight up to universities without getting any of the side techs. They researched masonry (which cost 33 beakers) while they were generating 119 per turn! And that was with only 2 civs knowing masonry... If Babylon wasn't also being cheesy and had also picked it up the cost would have been lower and the carry-over multiplier would have been higher.
There's one thing I didn't do in my test, and that's grab the 'scholars in residence' diplomatic boost. If that boost gets voted in the cost of all techs is lowered by 20% if any other civ knows it. Given what seems to be the case with the carry-over multiplier having this in play would stack up the science lying around by an absurd amount.
I also suspect you could set up the bug even when you don't have a lot of low cost techs lying around. You could, for example, research most of a tech and then switch to something else right before it finished. This should manufacture a fake low cost tech. Prep up several of these and then pop your great scientist and go to town. I suspect this is what the guy was doing in the first game I watched since he switched off of a tech and I didn't understand why but he eventually popped several great scientist at the same time to burst his way to artillery. I thought maybe he did that as a surprise move to jump up in the literacy number but he could have also done it to steal some extra beakers to get there a little faster.
Ok, so this bug exists... What should be done about it? There are people who would say anything in the game is fair to use. I feel like this bug is outside the realm of what's acceptable but I hate enforcing outside rules on a game. Even my civ that was trying to play fair ended up using the bug incidentally! Anyone that rushes national college into university while mostly ignoring the other junk is going to get extra free science for doing so. I actually wouldn't be surprised to find out that Dave unintentionally got some science out of the bug in our faster asynch game. He was making more than 50 beakers per turn before I was even close to researching writing. The writing tier of techs cost 36 with someone knowing them, the first tier only costs 23! So if he'd met Robb by that point in time and if he researched any early tech that Robb knew (mining/masonry/bronze working?) he could have triggered the bug. It probably wouldn't be for very much, but when I'm only making 11 per turn him getting 8 for free is a big deal.
How could you even fix it? You could research all the 'cheap' stuff before you power up that many beakers? You could only select a 'cheap' tech after barely finishing a previous tech so you're not carrying over more science than the cheap tech costs. Or you could just accept that sometimes it will happen.
The big thing is to not pop a great scientist for a huge amount of science and then research a cheap tech. Pop the scientist to get an expensive tech, and use it early on in the tech?
Some people have suggested banning great scientists entirely. Use them just for the improvement, never for the one shot. Which sucks, but if the alternative is making them absurdly powerful? I donno. Also you could ban scholars in residence since that's what really gives you the huge overflows. But even without it I was able to more than double my science!
Or you could just play with it as a potential strategy. I don't know how a real game would actually go if I wasn't allowed to research anything from mining forward and if I was forced to generate 3 great people without using them for 125 turns. I feel like someone should have killed me by then...
But then I think about my Dutch game... I'd need to take sailing in order to go meet up with Dave but it would have been a strong strategy to build up just science and ignore the bottom half of the tech tree. Meet Dave and then more than double my science? Seems strong. As it is I have several techs that will only take 3 turns to finish and I don't have universities yet. Even without the bug existing it's definitely right to rush to universities and eventually I will meet Dave. All those cheap techs may well become cheaper than one turn. I could probably alternate picking them up to not get extra science, but if I don't want those techs yet it seems bad for me.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Browser Click Games
It's been about 6 months since I started playing the Sandcastle Builder game. I've been playing it every day since, though many of those days by 'playing' I mean 'left open in one of my browser tabs'. It has a mechanic that can't be accelerated through good play or frequent play. All you can do is have hours pass to advance time forward. There are almost 3100 time frames in the game and for the most part you get one new frame every hour. So you really have to leave things up for almost 4 months straight to get to the end. I suppose you could cheat by manipulating your system clock or something but otherwise if you want to get to the end of the story you need to just have the game running.
The game itself is pretty cool. I really like how your focus ends up changing wildly as you move through different stages of progression. Sometimes you want to be clicking the picture like in Cookie Clicker. Sometimes all that really matters is how many of a given production building you have. Sometimes you just need to be solving rudimentary logic puzzles. And then things shift around and you start caring about old stuff again for a period of time. It feels really well done, though it also doesn't seem to have any actual end. They keep adding more ways to make use of older things again and again!
One thing that has bothered me about the game is the periods of time when the only thing that matters is clicking the picture. Not when clicking the picture accelerates you but you could just spend time... No, there have been times when the only thing that matters, at all, is clicking. I hate this, because I can't stop myself from clicking a lot. And then my wrist starts hurting and my hand goes numb.
But is there a way to make a browser game without a lot of mandatory clicking? Is there a way to make a good racing game? I've watched a few Cookie Clicker races where they play a full reset game to the neverclick achievement. But that just boils down entirely to getting lucky with the golden cookie spawns to get the good abilities. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the game itself was set up to let people race within its framework instead of people needing to use SRL to coordinate it. Maybe? I don't know, but it's something I try to devote thinking cycles to every now and then.
The game itself is pretty cool. I really like how your focus ends up changing wildly as you move through different stages of progression. Sometimes you want to be clicking the picture like in Cookie Clicker. Sometimes all that really matters is how many of a given production building you have. Sometimes you just need to be solving rudimentary logic puzzles. And then things shift around and you start caring about old stuff again for a period of time. It feels really well done, though it also doesn't seem to have any actual end. They keep adding more ways to make use of older things again and again!
One thing that has bothered me about the game is the periods of time when the only thing that matters is clicking the picture. Not when clicking the picture accelerates you but you could just spend time... No, there have been times when the only thing that matters, at all, is clicking. I hate this, because I can't stop myself from clicking a lot. And then my wrist starts hurting and my hand goes numb.
But is there a way to make a browser game without a lot of mandatory clicking? Is there a way to make a good racing game? I've watched a few Cookie Clicker races where they play a full reset game to the neverclick achievement. But that just boils down entirely to getting lucky with the golden cookie spawns to get the good abilities. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the game itself was set up to let people race within its framework instead of people needing to use SRL to coordinate it. Maybe? I don't know, but it's something I try to devote thinking cycles to every now and then.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Civ V: Tourism
Matt made a comment on my post yesterday about how tourism isn't just used for a cultural victory but has some other useless, particularly defensively against ideology unhappiness. And then it just so happens that in my current single player game I'd started off ignoring tourism completely and I'm now suffering 18 unhappiness because my people want to autocracy instead of order. But what's really weird is England is unhappy with their autocracy and wish they were freedom because of Brazil. Brazil is unhappy with freedom and wish they were order because of Poland. And if Brazil was actually order then I would be happy because Brazil influences me! (I'm actually influenced by Brazil, Poland, and the Huns who are all different ideologies and I guess the autocracy one is winning the tiebreaker, whatever it is.) 6 civs are content with where they are, 3 haven't yet chosen an ideology. Something seems wrong when 3 civs cover all 3 ideologies and all are unhappy with their choices. If only Brazil would make the switch, then I'd be happy! But even if they made that switch if a world ideology was ever created I feel like I'd be unhappy unless I was that one regardless.
The really annoying thing is there are 5 order civs who are all happy. Two of them have a lot of tourism and are influencing the rest. Except me, because I have a mediocre amount of tourism now. (I built the Eiffel Tower which comes with 12 tourism and I've been making works out of my musicians because there's nothing else to do with them.) It feels like if I'd continued to ignore tourism (not build the musician's guild or the Eiffel Tower) I'd be content. I have happy faces to burn so my empire isn't actually unhappy but I'm going to be getting golden ages less frequently as I result.
But seeing how things play out in one game is one thing... I want to actually know how this stuff works. Internet, hook me up!
Tourism is a number you generate each turn, mostly based on great works you have lying around. Each turn that number is applied to every other civ in the game that you've met. Each civ has a multiplier applied to your number individually and that multiplier is based on having open borders, a trade route, a shared religion, a different ideology, and a diplomat when you have a different ideology. That number is stored individually for each other civ and is added up over the course of the game. At the same time their total amount of culture generated over the entire game is also added up. Then each turn you compare those two numbers to see what your influence level is with that civ. The actual numbers don't seem to matter at all; what matters is what influence band you're currently in. The bands are {0-10%, 10-30%, 30-50%, 50-100%, 100-200%, even more}. They will also have generated a tourism number against you, and you will have generated a culture number, so you will also be in an influence band the other way as well.
Influence bands actually matter for a lot of different reasons, many of which were added in the last big patch so they didn't exist back when I played a bunch with the 'new' expansion. The biggest one is the cultural victory which is achieved when you've managed to get every other civ into your 100-200% or higher influence band. In order to make this happen you need a lot of tourism and they need not much culture. Your culture and their tourism are irrelevant. That's why you'll often read about how culture is the defensive stat and tourism is the offensive stat. It's totally true when you're talking about the victory condition! And most of the other things too, but there's one where it's not quite the case...
First, the other things that only care about where you've put the other civs into influence bands. If you get another civ into the 30-50% band then your trade routes to that civ generate an extra science per turn. Getting them into higher bands raises that bonus. Spying works in a similar way, with a bonus that applies at the 30-50% band (only 1 turn to establish a spy in a city) and spy level up bonuses as you get into higher bands. Conquest has the same sort of deal going on with the 30-50% band granting a 25% reduction in population loss and civil disorder period when you conquer a city. You get another 25% reduction for each escalating band. So even if you don't intend to win with tourism getting a lot of it can still generate minor bonuses along the way. They seem really minor to me though, and I can't really see getting tourism in the hopes of having faster spies or anything like that. Especially since the 30% band is pretty hard to get into in my experience, at least with harder AI levels. Maybe against humans it'll be easier?
There's one other spot tourism matters and it's the ideology unhappiness thing I mentioned at the start of the post. It turns out that when you're doing ideology comparisons what you're comparing against each civ is not tourism values or culture values. It's the difference between your respective influence bands. So if someone is at 10.1% of your culture but you're only at 9.9% of their culture you're still a full influence band apart. When looking at your own potential unhappiness all you care about is influence band comparisons where you're lagging behind. Comparisons where you're tied or are beating them are completely irrelevant. All that matters is the ones where you're losing. Now compare the number of times you lose to civs matching your ideology to the number of times you lose to civs of different ideologies (with a multiple band gab counting multiple times and with civs without ideologies being completely ignored). If there are more different ones than same ones you're going to be unhappy. This is the case even if the different ones are split between the different options. In my example above I had one loss to each of the 3 ideologies and assumed there was some sort of tiebreaker. No, it turns out the two opponents get added together and 2 is bigger than 1. Note that in this case it actually doesn't matter what ideology I'd pick. I'll still be dominated by the same three civs and they all picked different ideologies from each other. I have no course of action that doesn't result in getting an unhappiness penalty.
I actually went and played a few more turns and I ended up knocking one of the opponents into the 10-30% band. That's where he had me, which meant he no longer had any influence on me. This brought things into a 1-1 tie which means I get to be happy. Hurray! Unfortunately I'm also about to bump the influence of the other order civ into the 10-30% band so my stay in happy land will be short lived. I do expect to also knock the last guy into the 10-30% band as well soon though which will remove all influence.
Note that there's a mechanic for voting in a world ideology and that is worth 2 influence points for that ideology. Once I reach the point where no civ is influencing me I will be forced to synch up with the world ideology or be unhappy. Meanwhile the no-tourism civs will be able to sit around influenced by me and another order person and will be able to stay happy!
As such it seems like if you ignore tourism then you get to follow the crowd and be happy. If you have a lot of tourism you get to be what you want unless there's a world ideology and then you have to follow it or be unhappy.
It does mean tourism has some value in a game when you aren't just trying to win by tourism though. Maybe that's good enough to justify making great musicians? Maybe I even want to use some great writers for works instead of the one shot ability? It's at least a choice at any rate. It could certainly be pretty powerful in a multiplayer game to have the other people in the 10-30% band if they all have everyone in the 0-10% band. Then everyone has to follow your ideology or eat a ton of unhappiness. So it may end up in a situation where it's 'right' to ignore tourism as long as we all collude to do so, but if someone breaks rank the other people may or may not get burned. Very interesting...
The really annoying thing is there are 5 order civs who are all happy. Two of them have a lot of tourism and are influencing the rest. Except me, because I have a mediocre amount of tourism now. (I built the Eiffel Tower which comes with 12 tourism and I've been making works out of my musicians because there's nothing else to do with them.) It feels like if I'd continued to ignore tourism (not build the musician's guild or the Eiffel Tower) I'd be content. I have happy faces to burn so my empire isn't actually unhappy but I'm going to be getting golden ages less frequently as I result.
But seeing how things play out in one game is one thing... I want to actually know how this stuff works. Internet, hook me up!
Tourism is a number you generate each turn, mostly based on great works you have lying around. Each turn that number is applied to every other civ in the game that you've met. Each civ has a multiplier applied to your number individually and that multiplier is based on having open borders, a trade route, a shared religion, a different ideology, and a diplomat when you have a different ideology. That number is stored individually for each other civ and is added up over the course of the game. At the same time their total amount of culture generated over the entire game is also added up. Then each turn you compare those two numbers to see what your influence level is with that civ. The actual numbers don't seem to matter at all; what matters is what influence band you're currently in. The bands are {0-10%, 10-30%, 30-50%, 50-100%, 100-200%, even more}. They will also have generated a tourism number against you, and you will have generated a culture number, so you will also be in an influence band the other way as well.
Influence bands actually matter for a lot of different reasons, many of which were added in the last big patch so they didn't exist back when I played a bunch with the 'new' expansion. The biggest one is the cultural victory which is achieved when you've managed to get every other civ into your 100-200% or higher influence band. In order to make this happen you need a lot of tourism and they need not much culture. Your culture and their tourism are irrelevant. That's why you'll often read about how culture is the defensive stat and tourism is the offensive stat. It's totally true when you're talking about the victory condition! And most of the other things too, but there's one where it's not quite the case...
First, the other things that only care about where you've put the other civs into influence bands. If you get another civ into the 30-50% band then your trade routes to that civ generate an extra science per turn. Getting them into higher bands raises that bonus. Spying works in a similar way, with a bonus that applies at the 30-50% band (only 1 turn to establish a spy in a city) and spy level up bonuses as you get into higher bands. Conquest has the same sort of deal going on with the 30-50% band granting a 25% reduction in population loss and civil disorder period when you conquer a city. You get another 25% reduction for each escalating band. So even if you don't intend to win with tourism getting a lot of it can still generate minor bonuses along the way. They seem really minor to me though, and I can't really see getting tourism in the hopes of having faster spies or anything like that. Especially since the 30% band is pretty hard to get into in my experience, at least with harder AI levels. Maybe against humans it'll be easier?
There's one other spot tourism matters and it's the ideology unhappiness thing I mentioned at the start of the post. It turns out that when you're doing ideology comparisons what you're comparing against each civ is not tourism values or culture values. It's the difference between your respective influence bands. So if someone is at 10.1% of your culture but you're only at 9.9% of their culture you're still a full influence band apart. When looking at your own potential unhappiness all you care about is influence band comparisons where you're lagging behind. Comparisons where you're tied or are beating them are completely irrelevant. All that matters is the ones where you're losing. Now compare the number of times you lose to civs matching your ideology to the number of times you lose to civs of different ideologies (with a multiple band gab counting multiple times and with civs without ideologies being completely ignored). If there are more different ones than same ones you're going to be unhappy. This is the case even if the different ones are split between the different options. In my example above I had one loss to each of the 3 ideologies and assumed there was some sort of tiebreaker. No, it turns out the two opponents get added together and 2 is bigger than 1. Note that in this case it actually doesn't matter what ideology I'd pick. I'll still be dominated by the same three civs and they all picked different ideologies from each other. I have no course of action that doesn't result in getting an unhappiness penalty.
I actually went and played a few more turns and I ended up knocking one of the opponents into the 10-30% band. That's where he had me, which meant he no longer had any influence on me. This brought things into a 1-1 tie which means I get to be happy. Hurray! Unfortunately I'm also about to bump the influence of the other order civ into the 10-30% band so my stay in happy land will be short lived. I do expect to also knock the last guy into the 10-30% band as well soon though which will remove all influence.
Note that there's a mechanic for voting in a world ideology and that is worth 2 influence points for that ideology. Once I reach the point where no civ is influencing me I will be forced to synch up with the world ideology or be unhappy. Meanwhile the no-tourism civs will be able to sit around influenced by me and another order person and will be able to stay happy!
As such it seems like if you ignore tourism then you get to follow the crowd and be happy. If you have a lot of tourism you get to be what you want unless there's a world ideology and then you have to follow it or be unhappy.
It does mean tourism has some value in a game when you aren't just trying to win by tourism though. Maybe that's good enough to justify making great musicians? Maybe I even want to use some great writers for works instead of the one shot ability? It's at least a choice at any rate. It could certainly be pretty powerful in a multiplayer game to have the other people in the 10-30% band if they all have everyone in the 0-10% band. Then everyone has to follow your ideology or eat a ton of unhappiness. So it may end up in a situation where it's 'right' to ignore tourism as long as we all collude to do so, but if someone breaks rank the other people may or may not get burned. Very interesting...
Monday, May 26, 2014
Civ V Great Leaders: Plant, Pop, or Save?
Historically I have always taken my great leaders in Civ V and planted them in the ground. Give me good tile improvements! Why would I want to get a one shot boost when I can set up an ongoing boost that keeps on giving turn after turn? I've never actually cared to look at the numbers, I've just always been glad to get a good square to work. Well, the video I watched had the guy save up his great scientists. I've had people tell me recently that capping the liberty policy tree was good because it would build you a free wonder when you took a great engineer. Build a wonder? But I want more production! And in the comment thread on Facebook for a post last week a small discussion broke out on if popping a great scientist early was cost effective or not... This calls for some research and math!
Let's start with the great scientist. Consuming him for the one shot effect gives you an amount of beakers which are immediately applied to your current research task. If this amount takes you over the amount needed to research it you learn the tech right away and the excess gets applied to the next tech. The amount of beakers is dependent on the speed of the game and your current research per turn. In a standard speed game this amount is equal to 8 turns worth of research. Planted in the ground the scientist will build an academy which gives 8 research per turn. If you're only making 34 beakers per turn like I am in a current game then the academy will surpass the scientist in 34 turns. If you're making 800 beakers per turn then it'll take 800 turns to break even... A game is going to last a couple hundred turns so the first option the long term plan seems reasonable. The second one is abysmally bad.
Of course that's not the whole picture. The academy planted in the ground can be augmented by buildings, tech, and policies. You're apt to plant it in your best city, so it's entirely possible to be looking at having a university, a national college, a research lab and an observatory. You may have the rationalism opener, and you may have researched things that give it +2, +2, and +4, and you'll have a multiplier of 311%. So you could actually be looking at getting 50 science per turn from the academy. It also replaces a different improvement, so it costs you something like 2 food per turn. And you get to make immediate use of the technology right away when you use the one shot. It may take 34 turns to break even but that means your Civ was weaker for those 34 turns because you were behind on tech that whole time (not to mention being behind on the food too).
How about holding on to the scientist for later? Well, if you've decided not to plant him and you're in the process of drastically increasing your science output you definitely want to hold off on it. But if you're going to be waiting a long time you probably want to plant it because you lose all of the benefits by waiting close to the hypothetical 34 turns before popping it.
Looking at it, I think planting an early scientist is going to make sense most of the time. Unless there's some tech you really want to get right away (maybe you're racing for a wonder or you have a timing attack set up with artillery or something), anyway. Later on you might as well hold on to them until you really want a specific tech right now. If you're trying for a science victory then you only really care about getting the very last tech and you get the most from your scientist by waiting for all the pop growth before using them.
How about the great merchant? His one shot gives 350 gold plus an extra 50 per era. You also get 30 influence with a city state! The downside being you need to walk the merchant over to the city state before you can use the ability. Planting him builds a customs house worth 4 gold, 5 with a relatively early tech. Just like with the scientist there are building to amplify the return from the improvement so you're probably looking at getting 8 gold per turn (with market and bank) at the cost of 2 food per turn versus scoring up 550 gold. So it would pay off in ~70 turns. 70 turns is a long time to be down money. You're also down whatever goodies the city state would have given you as a result of being friends/allies with the extra influence. The great merchant one shot seems to give a bigger return early on than the scientist and the improvement is worse. So it feels like planting them is almost always wrong. Only if there are no city states to run to? Or maybe if you have a game plan that revolves around your cash on hand solely at the end of the game? So if you're going for a big surprise diplomatic victory play and want to just horde cash all game? Ok, I can see that as being a real thing. Holding onto them seems just wrong, since the gain from waiting (50 gold per era) feels like it's probably not worth delaying the city state influence. Unless you're about to tech up into a new era, anyway. (Merchants of Venice actually give double the one shot bonus but the same planting bonus, so it _really_ seems like cashing them in with the one shot has to be right.)
The great engineer apparently doesn't automatically rush a given item. Instead he grants 300 + 30 per citizen in the city. In practice that might as well be an instant buy if the city is of reasonable size. You don't get the building/wonder/nuke until the next turn though. The planting ability is an improvement worth 4 or 5 hammers. There aren't nearly as many things that multiply hammers as there are light bulbs which makes this compare unfavourably to the scientist already. And then there's the downside of building a wonder slowly... You don't get it at all! Wonders are unique and if you're not first you're out. That said, hammers over time are also very powerful and if you're planning on pumping out a lot of units then maybe you really want 4 hammers over 2 food? I donno, I now feel like rushing a wonder that's potentially under contention is just awesome.
Great writer is one that I've been looking at closer and decided in my game today to use the one shot over the 'plant' for the first time. Like the great scientist he gives 8 times your culture per turn as his one shot ability. If you plant him you don't get an improvement, instead you get a great work that needs to go in an appropriate slot in your city and is worth 2 culture and 2 tourism per turn. It turns out 8 times your culture per turn is a pretty big number and is just going to dwarf 2 per turn for anything resembling a reasonably amount of time. If you're trying for a cultural victory then you probably need the tourism (it's not like you have many other sources of it) but otherwise using the one shot here seems like it has to be right. And you should probably save it up until it will give you a new policy? Or maybe if you're planning on rushing a specific policy that's deep in a tree you should wait? Or if you haven't unlocked the tree at all? Some of the ideology stuff is pretty great, maybe there's a good plan around saving up a bunch of great writers and blowing them all after building your 3 factories.
Great musician has the same plant ability but the work goes into a different building. It wasn't clear but it sounds like the one shot is 10 times your tourism to the targeted Civ. If you're trying for a cultural victory and one Civ has a significantly higher culture threshold to break through then I'm sure using the one shots here makes sense. Otherwise I guess you might as well plant them for the 2 culture? Frankly I'm not sure getting a great musician is even worth doing unless you want the cultural victory.
Great artist has the same plant ability with the work again going in a different building. The one shot is to start a golden age. Golden ages are awesome and unless you want the tourism for a cultural victory it feels like the golden age has to be good? It's 20% culture and production with a gold bonus of some kind for 8 turns I think? So it's actually only 1.6 times your culture per turn as a one shot which is a lot worse than the 8 times of the great writer. But it also gives gold and production so that's really good. So again, if you don't want tourism... And even if you do, you can use archaeologists to fill the same slots.
Let's start with the great scientist. Consuming him for the one shot effect gives you an amount of beakers which are immediately applied to your current research task. If this amount takes you over the amount needed to research it you learn the tech right away and the excess gets applied to the next tech. The amount of beakers is dependent on the speed of the game and your current research per turn. In a standard speed game this amount is equal to 8 turns worth of research. Planted in the ground the scientist will build an academy which gives 8 research per turn. If you're only making 34 beakers per turn like I am in a current game then the academy will surpass the scientist in 34 turns. If you're making 800 beakers per turn then it'll take 800 turns to break even... A game is going to last a couple hundred turns so the first option the long term plan seems reasonable. The second one is abysmally bad.
Of course that's not the whole picture. The academy planted in the ground can be augmented by buildings, tech, and policies. You're apt to plant it in your best city, so it's entirely possible to be looking at having a university, a national college, a research lab and an observatory. You may have the rationalism opener, and you may have researched things that give it +2, +2, and +4, and you'll have a multiplier of 311%. So you could actually be looking at getting 50 science per turn from the academy. It also replaces a different improvement, so it costs you something like 2 food per turn. And you get to make immediate use of the technology right away when you use the one shot. It may take 34 turns to break even but that means your Civ was weaker for those 34 turns because you were behind on tech that whole time (not to mention being behind on the food too).
How about holding on to the scientist for later? Well, if you've decided not to plant him and you're in the process of drastically increasing your science output you definitely want to hold off on it. But if you're going to be waiting a long time you probably want to plant it because you lose all of the benefits by waiting close to the hypothetical 34 turns before popping it.
Looking at it, I think planting an early scientist is going to make sense most of the time. Unless there's some tech you really want to get right away (maybe you're racing for a wonder or you have a timing attack set up with artillery or something), anyway. Later on you might as well hold on to them until you really want a specific tech right now. If you're trying for a science victory then you only really care about getting the very last tech and you get the most from your scientist by waiting for all the pop growth before using them.
How about the great merchant? His one shot gives 350 gold plus an extra 50 per era. You also get 30 influence with a city state! The downside being you need to walk the merchant over to the city state before you can use the ability. Planting him builds a customs house worth 4 gold, 5 with a relatively early tech. Just like with the scientist there are building to amplify the return from the improvement so you're probably looking at getting 8 gold per turn (with market and bank) at the cost of 2 food per turn versus scoring up 550 gold. So it would pay off in ~70 turns. 70 turns is a long time to be down money. You're also down whatever goodies the city state would have given you as a result of being friends/allies with the extra influence. The great merchant one shot seems to give a bigger return early on than the scientist and the improvement is worse. So it feels like planting them is almost always wrong. Only if there are no city states to run to? Or maybe if you have a game plan that revolves around your cash on hand solely at the end of the game? So if you're going for a big surprise diplomatic victory play and want to just horde cash all game? Ok, I can see that as being a real thing. Holding onto them seems just wrong, since the gain from waiting (50 gold per era) feels like it's probably not worth delaying the city state influence. Unless you're about to tech up into a new era, anyway. (Merchants of Venice actually give double the one shot bonus but the same planting bonus, so it _really_ seems like cashing them in with the one shot has to be right.)
The great engineer apparently doesn't automatically rush a given item. Instead he grants 300 + 30 per citizen in the city. In practice that might as well be an instant buy if the city is of reasonable size. You don't get the building/wonder/nuke until the next turn though. The planting ability is an improvement worth 4 or 5 hammers. There aren't nearly as many things that multiply hammers as there are light bulbs which makes this compare unfavourably to the scientist already. And then there's the downside of building a wonder slowly... You don't get it at all! Wonders are unique and if you're not first you're out. That said, hammers over time are also very powerful and if you're planning on pumping out a lot of units then maybe you really want 4 hammers over 2 food? I donno, I now feel like rushing a wonder that's potentially under contention is just awesome.
Great writer is one that I've been looking at closer and decided in my game today to use the one shot over the 'plant' for the first time. Like the great scientist he gives 8 times your culture per turn as his one shot ability. If you plant him you don't get an improvement, instead you get a great work that needs to go in an appropriate slot in your city and is worth 2 culture and 2 tourism per turn. It turns out 8 times your culture per turn is a pretty big number and is just going to dwarf 2 per turn for anything resembling a reasonably amount of time. If you're trying for a cultural victory then you probably need the tourism (it's not like you have many other sources of it) but otherwise using the one shot here seems like it has to be right. And you should probably save it up until it will give you a new policy? Or maybe if you're planning on rushing a specific policy that's deep in a tree you should wait? Or if you haven't unlocked the tree at all? Some of the ideology stuff is pretty great, maybe there's a good plan around saving up a bunch of great writers and blowing them all after building your 3 factories.
Great musician has the same plant ability but the work goes into a different building. It wasn't clear but it sounds like the one shot is 10 times your tourism to the targeted Civ. If you're trying for a cultural victory and one Civ has a significantly higher culture threshold to break through then I'm sure using the one shots here makes sense. Otherwise I guess you might as well plant them for the 2 culture? Frankly I'm not sure getting a great musician is even worth doing unless you want the cultural victory.
Great artist has the same plant ability with the work again going in a different building. The one shot is to start a golden age. Golden ages are awesome and unless you want the tourism for a cultural victory it feels like the golden age has to be good? It's 20% culture and production with a gold bonus of some kind for 8 turns I think? So it's actually only 1.6 times your culture per turn as a one shot which is a lot worse than the 8 times of the great writer. But it also gives gold and production so that's really good. So again, if you don't want tourism... And even if you do, you can use archaeologists to fill the same slots.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Bridge Match 2 - Board 56
Board 56 - Dealer West - None Vul
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Fair
My hand: ♠ K T ♥ A Q J 9 ♦ J 4 ♣ T 7 6 3 2
East opens a strong 1NT in 3rd chair. I guess I have a pretty decent hand to interfere a little bit, especially black on black. We're playing Cappelletti and I think I have a pretty typical 2 hearts bid. I'd rather my black king was in clubs but you can't have everything. West jumps to 4 spades which gets passed out.
Partner leads the 2 of hearts.
Hmm. The 1NT opener had 5 cards in my suit. They cap out at the 7 though! I was hoping that a heart lead would be great because dummy was going to have the missing hearts and I'd be able to finesse them but that doesn't look to be the case. 2-3-A-T. Well, either declarer has the K or he's out. But leading any other suit seems pretty sketchy too, so I fire back a heart. Q-3 of spades-8-4. Declarer draws trump. 4-2-J-K.
Do I have a good aggressive play? At this point I don't see one, so I just make declarer ruff another heart. J-8 of spades-K-5. Declarer draws my last trump with partner showing out. So he has 4 more trump tricks to go with his 3 taken tricks and 2 aces on board. And he can establish his 5th heart with another ruff, which he does. Then he pitches it away because he's got all the high diamonds too. Making 5.
All 8 tables played 4 spades. 7 of them made 5, the other made 6. So we eek out 8 MPs by virtue of one table giving away a trick.
Jack disagrees with my Capp bid because he says my suit is just too bad. He may be right. And then he also disagrees with the way I signalled once I knew declarer had all the tricks. Sorry Jack. Maybe if your AI could claim that wouldn't have happened.
Ranking after board 56/60: 1/16 with 63.01%
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Fair
My hand: ♠ K T ♥ A Q J 9 ♦ J 4 ♣ T 7 6 3 2
East opens a strong 1NT in 3rd chair. I guess I have a pretty decent hand to interfere a little bit, especially black on black. We're playing Cappelletti and I think I have a pretty typical 2 hearts bid. I'd rather my black king was in clubs but you can't have everything. West jumps to 4 spades which gets passed out.
Partner leads the 2 of hearts.
| NORTH ♥ 2 | ||
| EAST ♠ A J ♥ 7 6 5 4 3 ♦ A Q T ♣ A J 9 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ K T ♥ A Q J 9 ♦ J 4 ♣ T 7 6 3 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | 1NT | 2♥1 |
| 4♠ | Pass | Pass | Pass |
| 1Cappelletti | |||
Hmm. The 1NT opener had 5 cards in my suit. They cap out at the 7 though! I was hoping that a heart lead would be great because dummy was going to have the missing hearts and I'd be able to finesse them but that doesn't look to be the case. 2-3-A-T. Well, either declarer has the K or he's out. But leading any other suit seems pretty sketchy too, so I fire back a heart. Q-3 of spades-8-4. Declarer draws trump. 4-2-J-K.
Do I have a good aggressive play? At this point I don't see one, so I just make declarer ruff another heart. J-8 of spades-K-5. Declarer draws my last trump with partner showing out. So he has 4 more trump tricks to go with his 3 taken tricks and 2 aces on board. And he can establish his 5th heart with another ruff, which he does. Then he pitches it away because he's got all the high diamonds too. Making 5.
| NORTH ♠ 2 ♥ K 8 2 ♦ 9 8 6 3 2 ♣ K Q 8 5 | ||
| WEST ♠ Q 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 ♥ T ♦ K 7 5 ♣ 4 | EAST ♠ A J ♥ 7 6 5 4 3 ♦ A Q T ♣ A J 9 | |
| SOUTH ♠ K T ♥ A Q J 9 ♦ J 4 ♣ T 7 6 3 2 |
Jack disagrees with my Capp bid because he says my suit is just too bad. He may be right. And then he also disagrees with the way I signalled once I knew declarer had all the tricks. Sorry Jack. Maybe if your AI could claim that wouldn't have happened.
Ranking after board 56/60: 1/16 with 63.01%
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