SGOTM 16 - Plastic Ducks

go for it and sail away these caravels!
Compass + Optics will take 3 turns only at 100%

Without looking at save, PPP looks fine.
Good luck!

Played 5 turns as Ram's tech speed is faster.

Turn Log is too long to post.

The war went pretty well, we captured Tolo and Bib without loss and CHs were kept in both cities. 2 stacks of catas are sieging Gerg and verl. All those cities have walls thanks to his stone. Brennus has also produced quite a few more units in these turns, not like 2~3 units spotted before war, but 5~6 units in every city now and he is capable of sending out forces as you can see what around Bib.



Launched our 1st GA on T160, converted to Christ and traded Phi from Ram. As you can see, he is building the Eng wonder now. The time of launching the GA is not perfect since the GP farms is still whipping infrastructures or awaiting for Christ missionary. However, we don't want to wait next turns to take the risk of declining the trade due to his very likely wonder attempt.



Again, some issues 1st

1. We are in short of MPs with the capture of more cities and more whips. As you can see, Dij and Aim grow into unhappiness already, I did not want to halt the growth since both cities needs more whips and I'd rather save the specialist turns during GA and Pacifism. These 2 cities will be back to normal in a couple of turns. Want to pillige the Irons (1 more in the new captured city) or produce archers instead?
2. The issue of happy cap remind me the pressing of Astro, which will likely bring us at least a couple of happiness resource = 4, so Astro or Edu next?
3. I'm undecided about war route of western stack. After capturing Gerg, do we want to go further west for Visig or turn south to capture the stone city.

Last, we are ~15 turns to be ready to DOW Ram, do we want to try another beg of cash soon?

1. Pillage. We only have 1 iron hooked up and it's not being used. However this means only Catapults can be produced if we need more troops (until the time where we decide to hook it back up).
2. I'm feeling uneasy about Liberalism. We'll have a better idea when we meet other continent (within 5 turns?). Edu>Lib is only 1000 less beakers than Astro itself.
3. I was looking at this earlier and couldn't make my mind either. I think securing East/South is more important, Brennus has more infra there. Also makes captured cities more productive earlier.
Vienne/Camu are his last 2 good cities, Visigoth is captured barb and probably low infrastructure. We also get Spices from Vienne...

The problem of pillage is that we need to pillage 2 Irons (1 in the new captured city south of Lyons) and a copper (after Bib pop border), so 6H/t loss vs the save of 10H per unit. Hmm, maybe we can just pillage 2 irons and produce warriors in 10 turns.

I'm not very worried about Liberalism race as the reason I mentioned that the global tech does not seem very fast from the religion dates and the fact that no AI from other continent reach us. Moreover, we are in the GA for 12 turns, besides the boosted commerce, there's also possibility of either GS or GM, any type will greatly speed up our pace to Liberalism, the Astro itself also greatly boost our economy and happy cap.

The good side of going for western city is that we could open the land routes to Ram so that he could send some missionaries. However, going south also let us speed up the current war and the western stack does not need to come back.

How long will it take to get Astro? Maybe we can go south first and attack the west city with galleon, so we don't lose much time on the way.

~6 turns to complete Astro.

Fair enough then. If we lose Liberalism (we won't ), then we can always say we gambled and lost

Offshore, we should expect to meet a Hindu block (most spread religion) and probably worst enemy combinations.

Impressive warring.

So my 5-8 turns estimation was right. Opportunity costs offset gains from later GA.

What concerns me is that we don't have our GP Farms prepared eventhough they could have been. Mars needs to whip Temple and then Market to get as many slots as possible, while not getting unhappiness and then work all those slots ASAP. Disjon and Amiens would be good too with some happiness. Chartres is too small but would be the best. We could send couple of warriors from Chartres to Dijon. OF in Amiens to Archer.

What we should research next is Astro. I'd like to get Taj Mahal too. So if we find out tech pace is slow and depending on GP we get, we could go Nationalism before Liberalism. If we get GS, we can put no more than one bulb in Education and Lib Nationalism.

It seems other continent is slow, especially since it is 1000AD and there is no Islam. They have Colossus on the other continent but civ that got it has wonderspammed so much it is likely it has underexpanded and has no real use of it.

Therefore, I think we could even go Nationalism before Lib and Lib something bigger.

1. We are in short of MPs with the capture of more cities and more whips. As you can see, Dij and Aim grow into unhappiness already, I did not want to halt the growth since both cities needs more whips and I'd rather save the specialist turns during GA and Pacifism. These 2 cities will be back to normal in a couple of turns. Want to pillige the Irons (1 more in the new captured city) or produce archers instead?
2. The issue of happy cap remind me the pressing of Astro, which will likely bring us at least a couple of happiness resource = 4, so Astro or Edu next?
3. I'm undecided about war route of western stack. After capturing Gerg, do we want to go further west for Visig or turn south to capture the stone city.

Last, we are ~15 turns to be ready to DOW Ram, do we want to try another beg of cash soon?

Click to expand...

1. Pillage
2. Astro, as said.
3. South, to consolidate the territory so we could focus our forces. Visigoth is young city, as kossin mentioned.

Beg? Why not.

Another thing is that there's another fish tile west of Dij, do we want to settle it now?

@shakabrade

Yes, some GP farms are not entirely ready as I said the time for GA is not perfect since I was afraid of losing the opportunity of getting Phi. However, The maximum specialist slots for all the cities is 5~6, so even Mars and Rh are partially ready to run 4 specialists, just not in full potential. The reason that Mars have not whipped those buildings is because that I wanted to wait for the OR bonus. You forgot our best GP farm -- Orleans, which is completely ready.

Quite busy today, will post plan tonight and maybe play tomorrow.

If there's another resource, sure, why not.
There won't be any culture flipping though because culture can't cross 2 tiles of water.

Duckweed said:

Another thing is that there's another fish tile west of Dij, do we want to settle it now?

And flip Humbaba like kossin proposed? Of course! Too bad mountains can't be chopped . Were there not 4 Barb Archers in Humbaba's Haven before? Now there are 2 and a galley.

@shakabrade

Yes, some GP farms are not entirely ready as I said the time for GA is not perfect since I was afraid of losing the opportunity of getting Phi. However, The maximum specialist slots for all the cities is 5~6, so even Mars and Rh are partially ready to run 4 specialists, just not in full potential. The reason that Mars have not whipped those buildings is because that I wanted to wait for the OR bonus. You forgot our best GP farm -- Orleans, which is completely ready.

What I am concerned is that Orleans will set the GP threshold too high for other cities to produce GP ever. We might even want to nerf Orleans in this GA so other cities get their GP or two in the future. This has to be considered, maybe calculated. If we let Orleans take care of our GPeople alone, they'll come slower.

Quite busy today, will post plan tonight and maybe play tomorrow.

Click to expand...

I raised some other issues like Nationalism and ferrying warriors to Dijon. Would like some feedback on those. Not just from you, from everyone.


Take your time. You definitely deserve a day off.

Humbaba can't be flipped anymore I fear, culture influence can only cross 2 tiles in the direction of water. (even if there's land after the first water tile)
The city itself is now at 60% culture, it'd use a lot more area than it currently is.

Distributing warriors left and right is certainly viable, especially in production poor cities to avoid the whip.

Nationalism: yea, I'm for it. If:
- we can delay Liberalism
- we get Marble from new continent (Taj is pretty expensive even if reward is great).

With more than 20 25 cities and MoM, one doesn't have to worry about return rate of Taj Mahal. We also have +100% modifiers and 3 forests in Paris. It is so good I wouldn't cry over lost Lib. If we can lose Lib, then we can't Lib anything great anyway. Therefore Lib isn't as worthy in that case. We'll find our answers soon when we meet rest of the crowd. BTW, I think Lib is safer since we built UoS. AI favors techs which enable buildings so Paper should be really low on their list of priorities.

Edit: Looking at religion percentages, I think 2 AIs are Hindu and 2 Confu. That makes slow research too... Hindu founder and wonder owner could be HC.

Edit2: GA gets us now (with 22 cities 2 of which in revolt and are not counted):

Base Commerce: 124
Base Hammers: 49

If we mistakenly assume nothing will change (although we'll have more and bigger cities later) 12 turns GA gets us 1488 base commerce, 588 base hammers and +100% GP points for the cost of 350 base hammers.
Losing Taj Mahal is a tragedy in my book.

Edit 3: And Taj Mahal grants 10 base culture for our legendary city and 2 GArtist points.

We already lost Colossus which would have returned its value many times by now (but it had some opportunity costs at least).

^We don't need to pop a GP from each GP farms during the GA, they can continue to hire specialists after the GA and there are more GAs come later, so those GPPs won't be wasted. The goal of this 1st GA is to accumulate the most GPPs so that we will be ready to launch 2nd GA any time soon. So Orleans pops the 1st GP during this GA is good.

Yes, I will pillage the iron and produce some more warriors and rearrange them, the problem of last set was the short of galleys, which were busy on shipping missionaries.

Regarding Nat, yes Taj is good, I agree with kossin, if the Liberalism is safe, no problem. When you consider the cost of a wonder, you have to consider the cost of the associated tech as well, especially if we can trade for it, even not, you also have to consider the cost of delaying other techs, For the current situation, it's Education, earlier univs and OU also gives big advantage since it leads to faster other techs. As I mentioned already, whoever found the Sushi the earliest has huge advantage over other teams.

I don't think losing Colossus is that big, we try it in the best time without delaying the expansion. If we research MC before CS, we might gain average of ~20C/t for ~40 turns (from T125~T165), while the loss of delaying Bureo + OR and slower expansion of several cities and hammer cost of the wonder won't be much less. Therefore, consider the risk of losing it which will give us much harm than the gain, we made the right decision.

BTW, the only 2 wonders matters in this game are ... you know

shakabrade said:

With more than 20 25 cities and MoM, one doesn't have to worry about return rate of Taj Mahal. We also have +100% modifiers and 3 forests in Paris. It is so good I wouldn't cry over lost Lib. If we can lose Lib, then we can't Lib anything great anyway. Therefore Lib isn't as worthy in that case. We'll find our answers soon when we meet rest of the crowd. BTW, I think Lib is safer since we built UoS. AI favors techs which enable buildings so Paper should be really low on their list of priorities.

Edit: Looking at religion percentages, I think 2 AIs are Hindu and 2 Confu. That makes slow research too... Hindu founder and wonder owner could be HC.

Edit2: GA gets us now (with 22 cities 2 of which in revolt and are not counted):

Base Commerce: 124
Base Hammers: 49

If we mistakenly assume nothing will change (although we'll have more and bigger cities later) 12 turns GA gets us 1488 base commerce, 588 base hammers and +100% GP points for the cost of 350 base hammers.
Losing Taj Mahal is a tragedy in my book.

Edit 3: And Taj Mahal grants 10 base culture for our legendary city and 2 GArtist points.

We already lost Colossus which would have returned its value many times by now (but it had some opportunity costs at least).

Click to expand...

I assumed these forests would go to Oxford. Certainly, the benefit is great, I agree. Let's see how the remaining AIs are doing and decide from there.

Nationalism could be used as a trade bait too while it also opens path for Constitution for AIs to research. You are right. Nationalism's worth is determined by other AIs and their techs and tech potential. We'll have our answers soon. We do have 6 turns to Astro first.

Orleans can pop 2 GPs in this GA if we aren't careful. It is much easier to control minor GP farms if you let them produce GPs during GA. But no biggie. As I have understood, we'll save GPs after next GA for fully developed empire and chase of FT1. So, we'll have time to get GPs from all cities (we still need to be careful, though. If Orleans produces in 5T and Dijon in 6T we starve Dijon (better) or lose turns in Orl).

What's the problem of popping 2 GPs from Orleans? Any type of GPs are good and the more, the better.