11-02-2005 08:06									#1
	Euphorica TEST SP stuff Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Heya, i set up a test game. Basically I chose the first random map I got, and modded it to be a near perfect fit in terms of the 4000 bc screenie.

Here's a screenie of it.

Attachment: test screenie 4000.jpg
This has been downloaded 11 time(s).

	11-02-2005 08:07									#2
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And here's the 4000 bc save, for any of you who are curious.

Attachment: euphorica test 4000 bc.sav
This has been downloaded 3 time(s).

	11-02-2005 08:18									#3
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3600 screenie. The rest of the world is just how the randomizer left it - exactly - with only visible or partly-visible squares corrected to RL.

Only issues I have so far are that 1) too many shields are wasted by the first chop - the barracks is less that 10 shields away when it completes - so we may want to consider postponing that chop; and 2) at least one worker might consider working with the other 2 cities to get them some trade. Don't forget that trade counts from all 3 cities And they don't exactly have much corruption at this point ...

	11-02-2005 08:19									#4
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Oops, forgot screenie.

Attachment: test screenie 3600.jpg
This has been downloaded 13 time(s).

	11-02-2005 09:49									#5
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I continued using McM's spreadsheet indicators until they ran out, then went on a similar path. Egypt is to the SW and Persia to the SE, both very near (capitals w/in 11 and 13 moves respectively from ours). Persia was to be our enemy first, but Egypt managed to settle in some inconvenient areas, so they instead were the first victim. I conquered Thebes in 1990 bc (the 3rd conquered city, first captured, although the 2nd was originally size 2 but built a worker down to 1 *while* under siege... actually thebes was size 1 as well but you get to capture an enemy's capital apparently). I forced a brutal peace (ATH, basically, 150 gp and wheel, mysticism, writing, bringing us up to tech level of the AI).

Persia will be next.

I suspect the most serious lack in my play style was building a settler. I dunno. I didn't build a new city until about 2030 or something like that - Nanking is about 2 turns old in this screenie. OTOH I captured one AI city, and have a pretty good area to build cities in. And will be able to capture some persian territory too, soon ...

Attachment: test screenie 1950bc.jpg
This has been downloaded 13 time(s).

	11-02-2005 21:55									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

As to the forest chop, I had mentioned that in the 3950bc thread. It would be better to use that worked to finish whatever the other worker is working on, and then move him to chop so the shields go to the first unit.

	12-02-2005 01:40									#7
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Hey just thought of something...did you work through this as a PBEM or a regular SP game? If you worked through it as an SP game then you'll have some skewed completion times because of the worker difference in PBEM (i.e. finishing a turn before it's nominally "supposed" to finish).

I think we need another turn or two to explore before doing a full work-up of what is available to each city (and how best to micromanage it) since some of the tiles that will be available to us are beyond our area of visibility right now.

	12-02-2005 02:00									#8
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I haven't had a chance to work up a sim file yet (no time), but I should have a chance next week to do so.

How I usually go about it is similar to what snoop did above. But I usually don't take a random map. I will start with an all-water map (this helps to avoid mistakes between the actual game map and the sim...so we don't accidentally put a tile in the sim that was supposed to be a grassland but a bonus grassland was part of the random map in that location and accidentally gets left in) and try to get the start location as close to the in-game location as possible. Next I'll add one (and only one) 1-tile island in a corner and place one opponent's starting city on it. Remove all barbarians since their movements will be different in-game and it would be useless to move our units around based on something that won't happen in-game.

When the map .biq file is done then load it up as a PBEM file with two people. One will be our nation and the other will be the one tile island. Go through the moves for our nation, and then save it and open it up again with the other nation. Set to build wealth and 0% science (this just saves time clicking through) and then save it to go back to ours. Rinse, repeat, etc. to figure out our optimal moves.

Why is this necessary...otherwise the worker-turns will be off from what will happen in-game and all the effort is wasted to figure out the best way of doing something since it would change in-game. The rest of the changes (having only one opponent, removing barbs) just speeds it up and makes sure we don't have to react to something that won't happen in-game. Obviously we'll run into things in-game that we'll have to adjust to, but that is why I suggest we only do 20-30 turns of simming to start and then take it in 10 turn increments for awhile.

	12-02-2005 09:59									#9
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Hmmm. I think one problem with this is it doesn't take into account other civs. You're right that they won't be in the right places etc., but enough different sims will give us a good idea of what *might* happen. That, and I think our strategy in this game is organized enough around what other civs do that i think it would harm our strategy to not take it into account... (Remember, in my first sim I met the enemy after something like 8 turns, and had an enemy city built fairly early on within 7 spaces of the capital!)

OTOH you're right that the worker issues will be off a bit, since obviously we don't really want to do a real pbem, and couldn't really play it properly anyway, to anticipate moves without knowledge of the other civs. One thing we can do is make sure to not double-use a worker (ie if it is going to lose its turn, then spacebar it)...

Or just do both kinds of sims.

	12-02-2005 23:11									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by Rhothaerill Hey just thought of something...did you work through this as a PBEM or a regular SP game? If you worked through it as an SP game then you'll have some skewed completion times because of the worker difference in PBEM (i.e. finishing a turn before it's nominally "supposed" to finish). I think we need another turn or two to explore before doing a full work-up of what is available to each city (and how best to micromanage it) since some of the tiles that will be available to us are beyond our area of visibility right now.

Definitely another turn or two are needed... And do you mind doing the PBEM sim of this while I do the SP sims? I'll do sims every so often, each time with a different made map. At least until the map gets too big to make each time.

	17-02-2005 00:29									#11
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

No I don't mind. I hope to have some time this week to catch up on this since I've been gone since last Friday. I'll try and get a PBEM style sim going by the weekend.