SGOTM 16 - Plastic Ducks

@ Kossin: I am not sure about Paris Factory + CP. What do we need to build in 7 turns?

In my plan, Paris completes Brodway (and has nothing else to build) on T225.

+ health will hurt the GA generation a lot!

Don't like Bab and Paris as the GP farm for GAs, choose other cities with more pure pool. Why not Rh? or even city like Gre is a better choice.

Moreover, Please don't produce factories and plants in GP farms (Thebes and Orleans are exception) and most island cities except Chartes, in the meantime, these cities has the lower priority getting MIEs.

Paris should whip factory and then finish plant naturally. The base hammer in Paris is big, it will finish all the religious buildings and then build a culture wonder.

@ Duckweed, it's impossible as Paris and Orleans will be farming artists in any case. Cities like Rheims can never catch up.

edit: I am looking at Durno case atm.

soundjata said:

@ Duckweed, it's impossible as Paris and Orleans will be farming artists in any case. Cities like Rheims can never catch up.

edit: I am looking at Durno case atm.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that Rh WILL out produce Paris. As I said, Rh does not need to whip any more building and could easily hire 15+ specialists. I did NOT deny Orleans.

Maybe I missed, When and what are you going to do with civic switch?

I'm not convinced either about GPP plan: 2,600 seems pretty thin. Sorry it's a very difficult task
I have not yet looked into it, but I understand how complicated it is.

About Facotory+CP:
Ok for island cities, skip them if you can't spread Mining Inc within 6 turns to said city.

@ Duckweed

Yes correct about rheims (100% artist love)

I read your blue comment above

@ Kossin don't worry I love the exercice

Duckweed said:

Maybe I missed, When and what are you going to do with civic switch?

Click to expand...

Have you read this?

Civic switch is dependent on GPP plan AFAIK. Given that we won't whip next turn (no Kremlin), we might want to stick to Caste+Pac until t216?

Not sure if Pacifism is really needed for the next 5 turns but if not, OR would be best.

I have noticed that important issues like this have not been clearly mentioned in soundjata's PPP. Maybe he have put too much effort on GPP plan.

Really not that difficult. Orleans is unavoidable. Thebes is good to produce a GP for last GA, Dij, Ami, Rh, Mars, and then choose a couple more island or coastal cities with Sushi and size of 10+ should do the job. Hire maximum of artists in the next 2 turns and then grow in 5 turns when in slavery + OR. Leave the rest plan to kossin.

Moreover, Cities like Lyons is hiring artists if it is not going to pop a GP. switch to scientists

Duckweed I said the artists are placeholders only.

Civic switch.

Indeed we can't whip next turn as Kremlin isn't ready. so the earliest is in 2 turns.

Pacifism is mandatory or we fail at GP farming.

So the plan would be: switch to slavery T216
Switch back to caste T221

Another possibility is to not switch to slavery at all:

Most of the cities will produce factories in 4 or 5 turns anyways.
Whipping factories in 2 turns speeds them by 1~2 turn.

Benefits:
- Bibracte does not need to Build Kremlin, builds factory and plant 2 turns earlier. (+400 beakers+no waste in Kremlin)
- Great Artists arrive earlier, allowing a better forecast on the last 10 turns.
- We don't lose caste hammers (~25 WS exist) for 5 turns 5x25=125 (notwithstanding prod. modifiers)
- GP farming much much more easy. Less pollution.
- Every GP farm, including Paris and Orleans become productive again much earlier. (Every turn on Paris tiles is 600 beakers!)
- Much less waste due to artists assigned for nothing.
- No turn wasted on theatre in 2 cities

Drawbacks:
- Loss of failgold ~ 450 beakers
- Loss of beakers for factories/plant during 2.5 turns in ~ 12 cities x 50 hammers x 0.75 bonus = 450 beakers
Above point is mitigated by the loss of 2 pop in the cities
- Research is delayed in the next few turns. But no technology is urgent at this point.
- Gold loss by not whipping CH : ~430 gold after careful examination. Mitigated by the specialists whipped.
- Delay in Corporation spreading: This is the main point. I estimate the loss around 2000~3000 beakers.


This summarize as potentially 1t later FT1 but much better control on the end game plan overall.

I advocate this option
Please consider.


Note on Courthouses:

Spoiler :

Most problematic are
- Opis, but it gets culture OF next turn (don't know how much hammers that'll be.
- Sippar, I recommend starving (from food tiles) and assigning 3 artists

Now the last version of the GP and culture plan.
Considering we stay in Caste and Pacifism.



8 potential great artists by turn 238.

We need 5 to complete the culture VC by T242 and 4 by T243.

I bet FT1 in 243 is a piece of cake.

Off to the beach

You underestimated the loss of delaying factories+plants, you are not only delaying factories, but plants as well and the following other buildings.

Tile management also need serious adjustment, you can consider 1F=1H=1C now, so that a grassland farm is the weakest tile since it does not get boost from GA. Moreover, specialists are better than water tiles. In cities with bank or without any science buildings, hire merchants, otherwise hire scientists.

Whether to OR, I'm not sure since I don't know how does it affect the GPPs, I'll let others decided it.

It seems like too much wasted gpp in Orleans. Either Thebes or Babylon could be used to get an extra GP, even at low odds.

As I understand, Slavery speeds up research but slows down culture.
OTOH
Caste speeds up culture, but slows down research.

So we're deciding on which is more limiting: culture or research. I *feel* culture is the problem but no slavery is kind of a big deal on Fact+CP production for several cities. I'll have a look how OSS managed this part on SGOTM12 to help me decide. As I recall, they already had several large cities by this point.

Anyway, can you still play or should I take over?

~~~

EDIT:
Progress of OSS from SGOTM12 (they skipped Slavery)

PD, SGOTM16

We can conclude that our current pace is comparable to OSS' t221 save (but in better shape actually). In terms of tech, we'd compare to their t224.

So 249-224 = ~25 turns until we finish the tech tree (there was quite a bit of optimization to be done in the saves I looked at, however we'll lose the G.A. for some ~5 turns as well)

214+~25 = ~239

~~~

EDIT2: looking at soundjata's culture plan, t239 coincides with 6 GA bombs.
t238 with 7 GA bombs
t235 with 8 GA bombs

Would it even be possible to complete research in 21 turns?

Adding up all techs remaining and reducing by the tech multipliers, we get a total of 132,972.

I remove 3 GS bulbs so we're left with 123,558 base beakers to research.


We're currently pulling in 4,475 bpt/turn with 0 deficit (no optimization)... So, no slavery. Research will not be limiting us as much as culture.

We could already consider skipping a lot of buildings and building wealth + raising slider.

EDIT3: with some minimal end-game micro, I've raised bpt to 5,000 stable. I expect it will go up after factories+CP come online so that 25t is more than reasonable.

For Humbaba city, all we need to defend for now is a boat... if AI is dumb enough to load up the MA, we get an easy kill

EDIT: btw, culture via espionage might still be an option if we can work on SB quickly enough. It's really not that expensive.
By t235, Orleans already has ~35,000 culture, we only require 3,000~4,000 EP on SB to make it legendary. This way we can save all bombs for Paris...

AND, it allows us to go to Slavery+OR !
Jail+IA is 300H, gives 24 EPP. 1 spy will then give 8EPP, so we're looking at:
(2+4+8+4*5)*2 = 68 EPP/turn for an investment of 300H.
59 turns of this set up give 4,000 EPP, so 6 cities for 10 turns are enough.
3,000H + 8 spies ~ 3,500H

What we'd need is:
-bring SB down to 3 cities
-make cease fire
-give Orleans
-perform ~8 missions
-DoW
-re-take Orleans

However, I'm not too clear on how we trigger land domination at the moment... still thinking.

EDIT2: it might be better to move Palace and gift Paris instead, culture:esp translates better. We'd need even less GAs.

If the espionage plan works, why not gifting both?

Instead of hiring artists, why not hiring spies? 1 Great spy=3,000 EPP=12,000 culture points. Right?

If so, all we need to do is to maximize the beaker output to get FT1 as early as possible.

Maximum of 5 spies to be hired makes it kinda difficult to rely upon GSpy spawn. To get 7, we'd need to detour via Democracy (or steal from Qin.)
Maybe we can rely on something else than the communism GSpy for the next GA?

Besides, Orleans will want to run as many artists as possible, in this city's case, artists far outweigh spies.

~8 spy missions are quite promising to go.

How much effort do we need if we want to create the 3rd legendary cities? for instance, Mars, it will have 5000+ culture.

We could achieve domination by taking Saladin's border cities

Espionage culture is too cool too miss + we can whip factories and plants then and marry culture with research. Without EP to Culture, we're just copying SGOTM 12. Time to add some flavour.

Regarding SB, I think we need to reduce him to 2 cities for him to accept any city. Plus, I experienced SB wanting to capitulate when he was reduced to 2 cities from original 10 in deity isolation game and I had Arty + infantry + airships against rifles, so my odds were great and losses few. However, this is Emperor, so he'd have to bend a bit easier.

Edit: If SB has about 15% of land, we could achieve unintentional domination if he resisted for too long. Our war has to be without losses. So, we need more than 1-2 airships.

Duckweed said:

~8 spy missions are quite promising to go.

How much effort do we need if we want to create the 3rd legendary cities? for instance, Mars, it will have 5000+ culture.

We could achieve domination by taking Saladin's border cities

Click to expand...

I was thinking about this. 5,000 is quite low unfortunately, we'd need a lot more EPP and 40+ spies. Even at 20,000 culture the cost is pretty large.


I see t239 with AP victory as quite easy for now:
25 turns to finish research
25 turns to finish culture preparation in Orleans (2 GAs)
24 turns to finish culture preparation in Paris (~5,000 EPP, 12 spy missions)
25 turns to set up Domination and kill Humbaba

18 turns is our ultimate earliest winning date, but it isn't feasible.
(3 Legendaries + 1t/tech until the end).

I can see 21 turns happen if we really do well. (t235) If we combine a GA bomb or 2 for Paris, we can lower the EPP cost there. At that point, using espionage for both cities becomes much more easy and we can use other GPs for trade missions/bulbs. (maybe a bit unrealistic as we'd need U.N., 22t --> 236?)

In this direction, research becomes the limiting factor!

If the team doesn't mind delaying for a few more days, I'll bring up the test game to more current state and from there it'll be more easy to predict how research will go. And then we can try to coordinate everything to end up together.