Game Analytics

I ran three more games today, testing the fragility of the Roman Boom.

I’m a big fan of the 3 warrior start - with the Roman Boom, I only do 2.

I send one warrior afar, scouring for barbarians and goodie huts. I keep one closer to my capital, scouring for the local discoveries and the best place for my second city.

The subsequent 10 turns in the capital are spent producing a settler.

By the 15th turn, a Roman should have a one or two settlers, two warriors, and perhaps, between 80 and 120 gold.

You can send your 15th turn, ‘organic’ settler out 3 or 4 tiles - in the direction of your second warrior, and settle them. (2 turns will pass). It’s at this point that you get that second city, put it on 2 ocean tiles, and research bronze working in 5 turns. It’s turn 23, and you’re just getting bronze.

By turn 23, you should also have your 100 gold, and thus, your second settler. (though, not always).

You have 3 cities by turn 23-25, and 100 gold, bronze, and 2 warriors. That’s it.

—–

What does a standard Rusher hope for?

Bronze is important because you can get archers. Archers have a defense of 2, higher when fortified. Warriors have an attack of 1. If you stack 3 warriors, you can take out a single archer Legions have an attack of 2. Stack 3 for an attack of 6. You don’t want to go after a Roman with stacks of Warriors, though, I suppose you could try. It makes more sense to go for Legions or Horses.

Legions cost 10 hammers, and have an attack of 2. They require Iron (30 beakers, need Bronze first)

Horseback riding take 20 beakers (5 turns at 2 ocean tiles) to research. Horses move faster than Legions.

Assume that a rusher produces the requisite two warriors to go out and look for gold and goodie huts. Five turns pass.

Assume at this point that the rusher, rushes horseback riding - 4 beakers for 5 turns gets you there.

They then switch to 2 on wood - 4 hammers for 5 turns gets you a horse.

We’re now at turn 15.

Assume they got 100 gold at turn 15. Sometimes 100 gold is found by turn 13, sometimes as late as 17. (Sometimes later). The rusher would have to decide? Wait for 100 gold and get a settler, OR, wait for later.

Assume the best. Assume they get 100 gold by turn 15. Great news, settler accomplished.

And, now they can rush 2 more horses in 2 or 3 turns.

That’s now a stack of 3 horses, at 6.

Assume they know where to go, exactly where the enemy cap is.

It’s now turn 17.

8 critical turns now lie between the Roman and the Rusher.

—————————————

Bad news for the Roman if the Rusher makes it over by 23.

The Roman, with 100 gold, at most, at Turn 23, could rush 2 archers out. Not enough for a stack.

The Roman can chose to build their cities on hills, for additional high ground protection, but that option is map dependent, and not applicable in most situations.

The Roman can also chose to expand AWAY from the rusher. But, which way is ‘away’? We don’t all have the luxury of 100% foresight.

IF the rusher targets the Roman capital, and gets there by turn 23 - then the Roman capital is captured.

IF the rusher targets one of the new Roman cities, is it game over?

The Roman second city could be rallied to produce that third and fourth archer. The Roman would be severely wounded…could be out.

—–

Suppose the Roman could survive the onslaught, is it game over for the Rusher?

Possibly. The Roman would have have a population of 6 or 7 in total by turn 25, versus just 2 for the Rusher. In a game where population means power - that’s a big problem. The smart Roman would turn around and research Iron - and produce legion stacks to aggressively take out the Rusher. Or, in a free for all (FFA) game, count those lucky stars and boom on.

——–

Zulu Twist?

Zulus are amazing because their warriors move fast (as fast as horses) and gain experience very rapidly. You can build a stacked Zulu army in 9 turns. If you a lot 8 turns to movement, that’s a reach of 16 tiles. The odds of taking that capital are nearly even, but higher if you’re up on a hill.

Getting a stacked army out by the 9th turn allows for 5 turns for concentrated food growth - which literally puts you on even keel with most other civ starts.

It’s essentially a shot at an enemy capital, all that gold, and possibly a free tech, all by turn 15.

The downside? If you go down a dead end peninsula, you’d be be incredibly delayed.

The strategy is intensely volatile.

I spent a nice portion of the day sampling two very different strategies.

The first was a series of Aztec rushes. If the goal is to take out an opponent as quickly as possible, then it makes sense to spam warriors and horses with any gold that’s earned from barbarian huts and goldies.

The idea is that an Aztec can spam units faster than a target can produce counters, especially if the target is playing traditionally - going out to get 100 gold for a free settler, and leaving the home base vulnerable.

At the other extreme is the Roman strategy. When you produce a settler as a Roman in ancient, it costs you a single pop. Once that settler settles, you get a population of 2. If it’s medieval age (after 5 techs), you get 3. That’s quite a boom.

In effect, if you have 1 tile on hammers and 1 tile on grass, you can produce a settler in 10 turns. That 1 settler in turn becomes 2 (or 3) when you settle a new city. If you spend gold instead of waiting 10 turns, you can really boom outwards. (In one trial, I got 6 cities in 22 turns).

The Romans not only buy distance and population. They buy the ability to produce large armies, quickly.

If you have 6 cities, you can rush 6 units, provided that you have the gold. If you have roads (cost half price!) connecting all those cities, ideally through the capital in a kind of a spider configuration.

What’s appealing about the Roman Boom is that population is power, and if you’re willing to defer an attack to post Turn 35, then you got something there.

However - there’s a danger.

You might get rushed.

If an Aztec finds you, the Roman is highly vulnerable. However, in 5 Aztec trials, I found that sometimes I was very far away from any enemy capital, and by the time I made it there, no dice.

This is where the Zulu +1 mobility advantage comes in, however, sometimes you’re quite far away from an opponent. Distance, it would seem, is the Rushers enemy and the Boomers delight.

Where’s the balance?

Back in the day, we used to write a lot about the science of games. There was always an ongoing struggle to calculate the optimal course of actions that would result in the highest probability of victory.

We produced awesome content and influenced game development going forward.

We used statistics, game theory, game economics and graph theory to derive strategies, and changed a lot.

Enough time has passed on this site. It’s time to move forward with some solid analytics fun and to push forward in the era of the console game.

Game analytics is about the science of making the best decisions possible in a game.

Enjoy the reads.