Tech host advantage: Nice tip at the start.

[CapTVK]

Here's a nice little tip right at the start if you want to know if a host or another player with free techs got the alphabet.

Right at the start of the game go to demographics and look at the literacy rate. If your not nr.1 with 4% but nr.2 or lower means that at least one player got alphabet as a free tech. If you have alphabet your literacy rate will start at 8%.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by CapTVK (edited May 25, 2000).]</font>

[Ming]

Never thought of that one...
Nice tip!
Granted, it only works with alpha and not any science, but it's just another way to keep the host honest

it also works with the bonus settler problem too. you should be first in population with 10,000....

[cavebear]

It occurs to me to ask what *should* you be "tied for 1st at" in a fair start...

Population and literacy so far, but what of other demographics? Production, per capita income, manufactured goods, and GNP are all subject to initial positions and resources, I guess (though perhaps not until a city is built).

What about disease? I can't think of an early tech that would show that, but not sure. Would land area after the very first move indicate a second settler? If both were moved, I think it would. I'm sure that a city *plus* an increase in land area would have to indicate a second settler.

Are there others?

[suas333]

Land area is not a sure thing because:

1) Huts can give mercenaries

2) Can start on a river

Disease i believe will always be ties because that has to do with aqueducts, sewersystems, which can't have been build, and Medicine, which is not possible to get in the beginning.

Suas of the O.W.L.