Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

I don't know about you, but poor income and poor research tend to imply bad scales and no awake research pretender to me. Which means one of two things: (1) Strong Bless, or (2) expensive awake SC. Now, with so many cheap awake SC options, its hard to understand what would motivate someone to tank their scales for it. Also, they'd probably have a turn 1 research boost if they invested a lot of magic in an awake SC, which is the only way it'd be expensive. (I didn't notice anyone take a province turn 1, did you?)

You can come to your own conclusions about who's being crazy by playing a strong bless. However, one turn's worth of observation may be insufficient to ID some of them (or cause false IDs) - and the signal's getting weaker now that people are on different expansion trajectories.

Our seat cushions can be used as flotation devices in the event of a water landing!

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

I think you're reading too much into the graphs for such an early point of the game. It's only turn 5 after all and everyone is still busy gobbling up the indy provinces. Priorities shift and in a game like this long term goals are just as important as short term, don't judge the artist until they're finished the piece.

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

So in other words- "Yes, I did not take a bless strat, I'm playing for the long term."

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

No, early is the best time to read a lot into the graphs because there's very little noise in the signal. Absolutely zero at the end of turn 1 unless someone felt risky and took a province successfully right away (which also says something about what they did...).

In a 100% gold game everyone starts with 400 income in their capitol. As upkeep isn't deducted from the 'income' score graph that is indeed an absolute number. Anyone with income significantly less than 400 has chosen negative scales in excess of positive, which means they're spending points elsewhere - ie, pretender chassis and/or magic. Truly low early income means they've really sacked their scales and almost certainly have a strong bless or an awake and expensive pretender (ie, rainbow SC).

This is absolutely guaranteed unless your opponent is a moron. They had to spend those points somewhere, and there's only so many places you can spend points. (I mean, we can imagine someone sacked their scales and then *didn't* spend those points on anything, but then we're assuming that person is stupid.)

Basically, deduction and the process of elimination can use the graph reports (especially llamaservers nice numerical rundown) to conclude quite a bit about pretender design for each player. I've only talked about scales thus far - other ratings can easily give away choices made in pretender design. I leave that as an exercise to the reader, but I would bet off the llamaserver rundown after turns 1 and 2 I could tell you the quality of your scales, what type of pretender you're playing, and ballpark your dominion rating without too much difficulty. Add some knowledge of your unit set and I might even be able to make specific guesses at magic paths and scale choices.

If you wait to read anything into the score graph then the noise starts swamping the signal and you lose a lot of information. (What quality provinces do you control? How many turns did you hire mages, and how many of them are doing research? Etc...).

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

Thank you, it was a friend who had far too much to drink then was good for him. Think 'stomach pump'... All good now though.

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

To Squirrelloid> You still consider yourself a n00b? ;) Btw. I was supprised how much players are willing to pay for mercs.. since I bid quite alot and I still didn't get any. hmmm

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

I hve a big impression with some nation who has a large power in the research I don't understand how, but there is incredible.

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

How does the ability to use logic effect how skilled I am at the game? Seriously, I don't even need to have ever played the game to guess pretender builds based on turns 2+3 graphs. Its just pure logic. (Ok, it does require looking at the pretender building mechanics - which doesn't actually require playing the game).

Rules mastery =/= play skill.

(This is my 5th MP game, 3 others of which are still going, and thus not ended, and Nox ended rather suddenly in the early game for silly reasons - a game in which I made a mistake *turn 1*. I have yet to even make it to an endgame, much less play one).

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

Thanks for opening up the discussion about gleaning info from the score graphs. I wanted to earlier, but I didn't quite dare.

So... I find it surprising that I'm the only one who took 2 provinces on turn 2, and no-one took any provinces on turn 1. Is that normal? I mean, surely if you have an awake SC pretender you would expect them to be able to take any indy province single-handed, right? So you should send them out "blind" on turn 1.

Re: Vicious Circle2 Upload pretenders
 

Well there are a few indy that you do not wish to meet wih your SC pretender early: the lizard shaman can ruin your day with a single curse, horde of berserker barbarians or undead will just ignore your awe and may inflict you some early unwanted affliction. And lastly, I never feel comfortable when I have to face a full charge of knights when I am naked ;)