Experiment: The duel of the Spy Twins

[Frozen]

immer diese map Ersteller

[Zulan]

you cant mine a deerhill when there is a forest on it, at least not without BW

concerning the rest:
yeah, i plan to do the same. once i have finished bronze working, i will research masonry-medi-priest and chop both, the wall and oracle... ...while chopping, i will research writing to get CoL

Ok, I didn't notice that there is wood on the hill. Then the camp is better - its really a nice tile! 1 3 right from the start!

[Frozen]

One of the best fields, if not the best at the beginning

I wanna see Obs WonderMM

[KingK]

ihr wolltet ja, dass es schnell geht abe das umland von snaaty/auron is ja schon echt fast ne glanzleistung
ganz großes tennis

[Frozen]

wenn ich auch nicht drüberschaue

[KingK]

als ob das dann besser gewesen wär...

[Zulan]

KingK, mach dir keine Sorgen, um die Karte. Ich denke im großen und ganzen passt das schon. Snaaty und Auron brauchen einfach ein Handycap um zu ihren Höchstleistungen aufzutrumpfen

[Snaaty]

KingK, mach dir keine Sorgen, um die Karte. Ich denke im großen und ganzen passt das schon. Snaaty und Auron brauchen einfach ein Handycap um zu ihren Höchstleistungen aufzutrumpfen

@ KingK:
jup, kein stress... ...die karte passt schon danke für erstellen erstmal... ...auron und ich haben schon längst beschlossen, in diesem spiel GEMEINSAM mit Zulan und Obs zu beweisen, wie toll ne spy-eco funktionieren kann... ...dieses konkurrenz-dingens ist eh total überbewertet

[Der Kantelberg]

abe das umland von snaaty/auron is ja schon echt fast ne glanzleistung
ganz großes tennis

The map:
Thanks to KingK for making a map for us with the following requirements:
....
- Somehow balanced starting positions
....

[Neburu]

Wie oft im Leben, der Fehler liegt im detail. Er hat bestimmt ne gleichwertige Startposition für Snaaty/Auon gebastelt - aber vergessen die beiden von den automatischen auf diese handgreiflich erstellten umzusetzen

[Zulan]

I need to talk a little more about the bonus, i hope its not too boring for the readers. This time its the espionage spending multiplier.

First of all espionage spending refers to the total amount of -Points ever generated by a player. It does not care how the points are distributed or if they have been used.

The formula for the multiplier is:

(their points * 2 + your points) / (their points + your points * 2)

For equal points this value is 1. It can approach 0.5 if your points are higher than their points or 2.0 vice versa. Using the ratio between your and their points you get the following graph:



As for generating there always is the base 4 from the palace, the host can not avoid this. The easiest way to boost this multiplier is an early Great Spy. The great spy does not only create 3000 - but also a bonus of about -40% cost (equals to + 67% output) when used around R 100. Hopefully we can demonstrate later on how strong the Great Spy from the wall is in the game itsself.

The modifier applies to every espionage mission, including passive missions against anyone else. So it is easier for a spy to reveal demography data from anyone while the spy is somehow protected by the opposite effect.

[Frozen]

Theory

[Axtkämpfer]

No, it's not boring, really...I didn't know about the way the bonus for the amount of spy points and the comparison and all that is created. So thanks for that!

[Zulan]

One last theory session for now: The culture bonus!

First of all you need to know that there are two different culture values in a city:
1) The culture of the plot the citiy is placed on. This is usually displayed in the game.
2) The culture of the city itsself. It counts the overall generated culture by the city itsself associated to the owner over time.

The culture bonus for espionage mission is based on the second value. The maximum value is -50% if the spy does have culture in the city and the host does not. It scales linear with the portion of culture between spy and host. Third party culture has no effect.

So how can this happen:

a) The city changes its owner after culture is generated. To generate the bonus the spy can found the city and:
i) Spreads his religion generating culture. If the host has a different state religion it will not generate culture for the host. So one turn with the religion is actually enough for the rest of the game!
ii) Using artists in caste system to generate culture of the spy.
Both do involve gifting the city afterwards. As I said earlier we want to avoid this because it seems to get regulated in pitboss games.

It is helpful to know in war, that this effect often occurs when you capture enemy cities giving the opponent good spots to do missions with the -50% bonus.

but there is another way:

b) The "insert culture" mission. This mission that spreads culture of the spy in the city (2). It spreads 10% of the total generated culture of the city but at least 1 . The requirement for this mission is that there is spy culture on the plot of the city (1)! The cost depends on the amount of generated culture.

To use this, the host founds the spy-city near a city of the spy that will soon get its second (or third) culture expansion. The host never generates any culture in the city. After the culture expansion spreads spy-culture on the plot of the city the spy does a single "insert culture" mission. From now on he gets the full -50% bonus.

There are a few pitfalls to this:
- Creative leaders
- Autospread of the wrong religion
- Any building that generates culture...

I do not konw yet if it might be profitable to spread culture even if the host does generate culture on his own. Maybe this can be explored during the game.

[Obsolete]

Hmm, decided to throw up a shot of the capital. Originally I started 2 tiles to the West, IIRC. Since I like to try to use an early advantage to spiral away into a huge one early, I decided to trade off a few things like the river, etc. for the plains-hill powers. Unfortunately I feel this was a big mistake now for reasons that came up shortly after.

My plan was going to beeline the Wall, but then me and Zulan had a dispute, where we finally agreed that he would build it instead. So that plan was scratched for me, and most my beakers on that tech (masonry) had already been spent. Hmmm! This was costing me to ignore both my traits, which is rather foolish.

I decided to then use my ind/production advantage for the Oracle. But then me and Zulan had another despite, lol. So then I agreed to let him get that as well (he wanted a religion badly). Well, I had already poured many beakers into Poly to get to priest after that, so there is another huge amount of wasted beakers on my part.

Actually, I usually like to get Poly early not just because of priesthood, but because it is also needed to unlock TGL and other wonders. I almost always ignore meditation in the early game.

Well, looks like I will have no luck there either, since Auron mentioned he was wanting to get the great library. Well, argggggh. I can try to be NICE GUY and let them have this one, but with losing those extra future academies, and while Zulan gets those extra, I don’t see how I can possibly keep up tech-wise, without some AI intervention in the future.

Since it would be silly for both of us to go up the Aesthetics route, I will have to think on what else to go to. But I’m not happy since I’m basically playing in a trait-less leader position now.

One wonder I DID get, was the Stonehenge, which at first I was tempted on ignoring since my UB already takes care of culture, but it was so cheap and available I decided what the hell. Unfortunately this seems to be a mistake as well, since a few turns later Zulan mentioned that culture will make it harder for him to steal techs from my city(s). So……….. Seems every wonder I was planning to get, I didn’t/wont for one reason or another, and the one wonder I did get, is just the one that is supposed to be avoided in this sort of spy-co-op economy. Arggggh.

Even more upsetting, is for some reason I have not ONE, but TWO marble patches near my capital. Haha, which of all games, is totally useless to me in this set-up. How ironic is that?

What I DON’T have, is any badly needed gold, or gems, or silver. No luck there, but from what I heared from our discussions, everyone else seems to have got something! On the other hand, I did spot numerous calendar resources spread around. Well, that is nice but…. Calendar doesn’t give me any commerce now, nor will it increase my happy cap. So…. Who the hell edited this weird map anyway?

Hmmm!

I have not fog-busted EVERY tile around so maybe I will get a bit more lucky, we will see. Another thing that just pains me is that of all the coast I have, there was only one tile that had a sea-food. In fact, that’s the one where I planted my last city down. It is far off to the West. And of course my economy is suffering now, but it is going to suffer even worse a few turns from now when I get another city down to get some horses. (My silly UU doesn’t seem to be helping me with barbs right now)

So, summing things up, I feel I am going to be quite an underdog for a long time in this game. However, assuming no AI starts spiraling out of control by vassaling all the other AI’s I think I can eventually pull ahead of those AI’s at least. We will have to see what happens, I’m of course open to suggestions here.

Now, enough complaining! As for great news, I am just starting to get interested into experimenting with pit-boss games. So I’m looking forward to that. I simply can’t get any motivation anymore to play single-player games. Though, since Zulan mentioned he didn’t want to hear much about pitboss games, I’ll stop talking about it for now

The only other Civ issue I’m debating on at now is to put in a Pre-Order for Civ5 on Amazon. I was going to do this a few nights ago, but decided against it. I’m a bit worried this package may come with DRM, or another terrible protection scheme. I’ve had enough problems with DRM in the past, and I wouldn’t want to wish that upon my worst enemy (well, maybe Montezuma!). I’ll probably wait till I hear more from others who test it first.