G-Major 144

Down to 2 weeks and 2 days now.
Here's a quick update on my game.

2 Billion souls. ^_^

Decided my colonies could receive open borders to help boost how much gold they have for me to steal.
As long as they don't tech Democracy before the game ends, I don't care.
The 3000 I spread around to them before STRIKE started should be enough to pay for all my Sushi spreads, but more money never hurts.
Each Sushi spread costs 57

T415 I missed another Great Merchant chance and got Great Scientist instead.
Still no Cereal Mills.
Ended up bulbing Flight with the Great Scientist.

The border pressure as cities reached 15,000 continued to cause me to give away mega cities.
(Giza popped borders the following turn and retook the Rice and both seafood.)

My Quechuas obsoleted on T418 after teching Rifling
This caused the Quechuas I whipped on T417 to not turn into gold on T418.
That means I whipped Quechuas T408 to T416 to make Sushi during STRIKE, and I'll be relying on a horde of 60ish spies spread over 16 colonies to steal to spread Sushi from T418 to T436.
Any leftover gold gets gifted back to the colonies to keep safe from STRIKE so my Spies can steal it again.

Used my Great Engineer to bulb Industrialism instead of rush the Cristo wonder complete.
Starting to regret it now.
No city has the production to make Cristo Redentor before the game ends, and I could really use flipping my Gilgamesh into Caste right now.
Still, I'll get to Future tech that much faster now after bulbling an expensive tech like Industrialism.

My plan to force Open Borders onto Gilgamesh fizzled once the vote came up and it was a useless election.

Remembered I didn't need Artillery to get to Future Tech which is nice.
My Gilgamesh is too advanced and is teching too fast for me to give Gunpowder + Chemistry + Sci. Method + Biology.
He is making lots of Knights and might tech Rifling.
So I took a -2500 reduction and started production on 80 Tanks and 50 Bombers.
The end of the game war will now be fun!!!

The STRIKE monster finally ate one of the Quechuas sitting in the colonies, easing my concerns.
My army should be safe until T455ish.

Here is the center of the map and my latest progress on T422.
34 Sushi spreads left to go.

I'm currently debating teching Fascism to build Rushmore to combat War Weariness at the end of the game since Gilgamesh will have the Statue of Zeus in one of my gifted mega cities.
Probably won't do it.
Will add in some Gunship builds once I tech Advanced Flight.

**Edit**
Oh ya, merchant specialists are useless during STRIKE.
Best to work Citizens.
Use the left and right -> arrow keys on the keyboard to quickly switch through 100's of cities and fire them all every 10 turns or so.

I see you now believe me that futuretech is going to happen and could be quite useful.

....deleted....

WastinTime said:

I see you now believe me that futuretech is going to happen and could be quite useful.

Click to expand...

Yup.

It will have a bit of effect on my game, but not a lot.
If I was playing this game again, I'd try much harder to reach it earlier.

Kaitzilla said:

If I was playing this game again, I'd try much harder to reach it earlier.

Click to expand...

would you ignore most harbors, grocers, aqueducts, etc.

This is getting crazier and crazier...2 billion souls? Teching to Future tech while in permanent strike? Using colonies as a safe deposit? Like I said, a totally different game.

Question to Kaitzilla: At what point do you decide to win the game? Do you use T-Hawk's score calculator, or do you just end it shortly after spreading Sushi everywhere? And why are you concerned about unhappiness - after all, at this point in the game the losses from not working a tile or having one less specialist seem to be very small anyway when compared to the massive food gain from sushi...

WastinTime said:

would you ignore most harbors, grocers, aqueducts, etc.

Click to expand...

To get to Future Tech faster?

That is a really hard question!

All new cities have 14 if you count Hanging Gardens. (Or +2 more if you got the Event157 Healing Plant random event at the start of the game)
Granary gets them to 17, Environmentalism gets them to 23, and Genetics gets them to 26
Future tech would only benefit Size 27 or higher cities.

I built a fair amount of Libraries and Observatories in my mainland cities while I had Organized Religion and they were low pop. (less food whipped away)
Grocers and Harbors are almost too good to pass up to delay STRIKE until a reasonable time.

My cities didn't start reaching Size 17 until uhh Turn 370ish (80 turns before the end of game) because they were so busy whipping economy buildings, settlers, Galleons, etc. etc., so STRIKE + Environmentalism wasn't needed right away.


I like your idea of getting Sushi resources faster and flirting with STRIKE earlier.
There were many turns were +33 was possible, but I was running 23 for economic reasons.
Had to gift sushi resources away to avoid STRIKE while other civs had sushi resources for trade.

Cristo Redentor could be used to run all science specialists (Caste) every other turn while whipping sushi execs every turn.
The 50% boost to the tech rate in this manner would cause insanity however. (3 hours per turn?)
Emphasize Food button + Emphasize Science button + Emphasize Great People button does not cause max food tiles + max scientists when switching to Caste in every city unfortunately.

Mining Inc. could be used to blast to Future Tech much faster, but it requires -5 Factory + Coal Plant whips which aren't attractive in a non-industrious civ to make shine.
Maybe use Mining Inc. + Forges to make 5000 Quechua?
(Can't benefit from Iron or Bronze since you can't build Q's with it, but Coal + Gold + Silver still work)
Start the STRIKE + Environmentalism 20 turns after Sushi + Mining Inc. and let it run 120 turns
**Edit**

Kaitzilla 3 weeks later..

Noes! This is a bad idea.
Railroad obsoletes Quechuas, so you can't make Quechuas with Mining Inc.
Also, Factories and Coal Plants create Global Warming.

Click to expand...

I'm also convinced now that Sushi during STRIKE can be generate purely through Spy stealing from Colonies.
No need to 1-pop whip Quechuas for gold.
Give a few 1000 gold spread to every colony before permanent STRIKE starts to get started.
Further thefts can fund Sushi spreads through 100 turns of STRIKE or more so long as Hermitage fail gold is created every turn, cashed in every 20 turns or so, and given to colonies before STRIKE takes it away.

georgjorge said:

This is getting crazier and crazier...2 billion souls? Teching to Future tech while in permanent strike? Using colonies as a safe deposit? Like I said, a totally different game.

Question to Kaitzilla: At what point do you decide to win the game? Do you use T-Hawk's score calculator, or do you just end it shortly after spreading Sushi everywhere? And why are you concerned about unhappiness - after all, at this point in the game the losses from not working a tile or having one less specialist seem to be very small anyway when compared to the massive food gain from sushi...

Click to expand...

Ya, I use T-Hawk's score calculator to pick the win date.
About 15 turns after Sushi spreading stops is my old rule of thumb, but with 55 and 387 Sushi cities it might be longer.

Mainly I use it to calculate, "I need to add 50 population between Turn 425 and Turn 426 for my score to stay the same"
Then I use the domestic screen advisor to see how many pop I'll gain the next turn and the turn after that.
If two turns into the future is less than T-Hawk's pop needed to maintain score, I'll usually end it, unless I have a huge surge in pop in 4 or 5 turns coming.



Why care about unhappiness at the end of the game?
Well, war weariness hurts more the larger your cities are.
And mine will be HUGE.
They have a fixed number of happiness resources, plus +16 from my 16 colonies which is amazingly helpful.
They are also cooling off from -7 whip anger from all the whipping on the mainland.
If my War Weariness climbs too high from winning battles, losing battles, and capturing cities, then I'll gain enough angry citizens that I can't work all my food tiles.
One of the mega cities I gave away has Statues of Zeus which never obsoletes, so I'll be facing double war weariness.

So yes, I teched Fascism and am building Mount Rushmore.
Currently, one of my Size 30 cities will experience uhh...

Pollina said:

I did look into this during SGOTM22. The post you quoted has a couple errors.

The numbers shown in the scoreboard already include all modifiers.

You can get a city's unhappiness with:

unhappiness = WW_scoreboard * pop / 1000 * city_mods

(city_mods is the sum of all mods from buildings and civics. 1000 is the PERCENT_ANGER_DIVISOR from GlobalDefines.xml)


The map size mod on this giant map is 30%
Difficulty and per era mods are only applied for the AI, not the human player.
The base mod is 2.

That means the number shown in the scoreboard is calculated by:

WW_scoreboard = 2 * 0.3 * active_WW

Pretty sure that a SoZ mod would be applied here as well.


The correct WW values for attacking/defending are:
Your unit attacks their unit=+3 if you lose, +2 if you win
Their unit attacks your unit =+2 if you lose, +1 if you win

Click to expand...

Got 72 War Weariness with Gilgamesh currently, if I DOW'd him right this second.

Don't have Police State, Jail, or Rushmore modifier in most of the Size 30 cities.
So average 30 pop city would have unhappiness = WW_scoreboard * pop / 1000
Or 72 * 30 / 1000 = 2
Every time I kill an enemy unit, War Weariness on the scoreboard will go up.
Every time I lost a unit, it will go up more.
Every time I capture a city, it will go up too.

How much anger until I start losing the ability to work food tiles? (need 20 happy citizens to work every tile)
Hmm, not sure.

I'll try to avoid the orgy of killing and capturing cities until the very last turn.
Bombers can keep everyone at half hp and not moving around very much.

Thanks for the thorough explanations! I didn't even know war weariness was dependent on city size.

Regarding happiness, unless I calculated wrong war weariness still shouldn't be such a big issue in your game. If you attacked 50 times (winning most of these battles) you would add only 6-7 unhappiness with Statue of Zeus, so 8-9 total. This would still allow you to work all tiles in a population 30 city (and I take it 2 or 4 food more or less in a city isn't going to make much difference with Sushi).

Can't wait to see the end result!

Kaitzilla said:

Ya, I use T-Hawk's score calculator to pick the win date.
About 15 turns after Sushi spreading stops is my old rule of thumb, but with 55 and 387 Sushi cities it might be longer.

Click to expand...

pregame, I was also planning for about the usual 20 turns + 5 for Huge. Didn't really think about it or care too much. So 25 turns after the last spread. Warning: we are both wrong. Prepare yourself for 40+ turns of score growth. Your workers will probably be lost to strike eventually unless you have way more Q's than me.

WastinTime said:

pregame, I was also planning for about the usual 20 turns + 5 for Huge. Didn't really think about it or care too much. So 25 turns after the last spread. Warning: we are both wrong. Prepare yourself for 40+ turns of score growth. Your workers will probably be lost to strike eventually unless you have way more Q's than me.

Click to expand...

40+ turns Ugh?!
I'm currently adding 140 pop each turn and I need 50 to maintain score, but I just assumed the 1st would fall off a cliff and the 2nd would go up really slow once Sushi spread stopped.

I didn't really think through 400 cities growing insanely fast with 55 and no health problems.

Thanks for the heads up WastinTime!
I see immediately that you are right.

Currently on the 18th turn of STRIKE (T426) and have lost 4 boats and 77 Quechuas.
Sushi spreading is done T436.
828 Quechuas are in position to be shredded by STRIKE. (built a bunch extra before I got to Rifling )
That gets me until T468 before I start losing my army.

Could move my 240 Workers and 99 Galleons into colony territory and neutral territory.
Maybe kill all enemy units, even in their cities, with Gunships before T469 hits.
Perhaps give away oil + Iron + bronze again in 25 turns and see if I can start up Chariot production or somesuch.

After 3 failures to get a Great Merchant, my 4th and final attempt at 34% odds was a success!

Cereal Mills now giving +17 with no culture.

Since it took 130 turns for me to spread Sushi to 400 cities (counting the one I gave away), I wonder if it would be profitable to spread both Sushi + Cereal Mills as fast as possible (like Iggymnrr), and then overwrite Cereal Mills with the stronger Sushi when there are no longer corp-free cities?
Does it cost more to spread to a city that removes a competing corporation?

WastinTime said:

...Prepare yourself for 40+ turns of score growth...

Click to expand...

I think I almost have to get Cristo Redentor now.
35 turns in Caste + Free Religion(+10%) would be a major tech rate boost once I am no longer whipping anymore.
Plus, flipping Gilgamesh into Caste from Slavery is looking better and better.
He has 400 pop (~400,000) score waiting for me to conquer, and moving armies into his lands towards the hard-to-reach cities would cause a lot of whipping.

Will 20 pop-ish whip Cristo in my largest city once the last Granaries + Lighthouses are whipped.
The giant city is struggling to grow and suffering unhealthiness anyway.

Kaitzilla said:

Does it cost more to spread to a city that removes a competing corporation?

Click to expand...

I'm sure someone else has the precise maths but yes it does.

Yeah I paid like 165

Kaitzilla said:

Could move my ... 99 Galleons ...

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fyi...Always the minimalist, I used only 37 galleons to spread settlers/sushi and I didn't find myself wanting more. It did require some strict planning a couple turns ahead, but no grand plans were needed. I could always get boats in place for the next turn's spreads.

My Cereal is 18-19. There are several unclaimed resources since cereal wasn't my focus.

Kaitzilla said:

+65, I've never encountered such in a Score game.
Has your mapfinder found one on a Huge map?

Click to expand...

before this gauntlet, I looked at only about 3 or 4 arid maps with Future start. 266 was the highest I found in that very small dataset. That's 66 food (probably only 65 with some un-reachable seafood).

Arid seemed to usually give more than temperate, but not always. I guess I should have played Arid.

WastinTime said:

before this gauntlet, I looked at only about 3 or 4 arid maps with Future start. 266 was the highest I found in that very small dataset. That's 66 food (probably only 65 with some un-reachable seafood).

Arid seemed to usually give more than temperate, but not always. I guess I should have played Arid.

Click to expand...

Ya, the mapfinder trick with the Future start and the 999 range thingy to automatically count resources is great.
66 is a lot of Sushi resources!

Would be interested to see which of Tropical vs. Temperate vs. Arid is best.
Also wish there was a way before starting the map to know if you got the 66 one or a dud.

Kaitzilla said:

Also wish there was a way before starting the map to know if you got the 66 one or a dud.

Click to expand...

Amen, brother! I don't think the population base number is a trustworthy indicator, but maybe. My map is 3007 base pop. Did I read yours is 3499? or was that elitetroops test game?

I only have 180 resources.