SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

Gee, I miss two days because of a stomach virus and return to about 15 doctoral disserations!

Niklas said:

WarDance, CommandoBob, what are your opinions on all this?

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I think this plan is fine if the tech elevator does not work like we wish or has some hidden limitation in it. (I have started a test game but I am not out of the Middle Ages yet.)

zyxy mentioned the Golden Age. I like the idea of a GA rather soon and using it to help build up infrastructure for our third core.

Still trying to digest the rest.

CommandoBob said:

Gee, I miss two days because of a stomach virus and return to about 15 doctoral disserations!

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I only have a Masters Degree.

I assume you mean the GA to give us enough cash to rush improvements in the third core. The GA will do nothing for Tadpole production as corruption is bad until the FP moves. While it would be nice to have the FP moved before our GA, it's just not feasable. We need more time to get enough cities established on Tadpole before we move the FP, and we need the GA soon to get us ready for IA research.

EDIT: Just for giggles, I checked CAII to see what moving the FP from HotB to San Francisco (we don't own Chicago yet) would do.
At 70% Science
FP in HotB: 477bpt, +24gpt
FP in San Fran: 294bpt, -37gpt
FP in San Fran in GA: 404bpt, 8gpt.

I'm working towards that dissertation, but I'm not even half-way yet. I'll be sure to send it to you when I'm done though.

@CF: The "best ball" sounds fun, I'd certainly join in if you organize it.

• I want to see Magnetism asap for the ocean trade.
• The harbor in Sages is a definite for me, it means we can work both oysters and mine lots of plains. Once we have Copernicus, Sages is going to start making lots of bpt per invested commerce, and not working such commerce-rich tiles is a real waste.
• Do what you wish with Bursa, I don't care.
• I vote capture American towns just to keep the road network from the Spanish, until we can possibly raze and replace them.
• I'm not sure about the dotmap. I'd really like to see Entremont in the first ring, it is making ridiculous amounts of both spt and commerce and it would be a shame to lose that to corruption. On the other hand, moving the center the needed step W would take 3 existing towns in the E off the ring. Hmm, maybe we could raze Entremont and resettle 1E. We'd lose the coastal access, so no harbor, but that might be worth it anyway...

zyxy, do you plan to play tonight? We need to get this baby rolling again...

Some of my answer to the dotmap depends on whether we want the land-based prisons I highlighted earlier. If we do want them, then Buffalo will be razed to make that happen. Also that prevents moving Entremont off the coast.

Once Buffalo is razed, then both the original FP plan and Chicago have 4 existing towns in their disk. The original FP plan has cities closer to it so they would have less corruption but would crowd it more.

Lugdunum is on a Floodplain but the area is so food rich, that's probably fine.

The original FP plan doesn't have any food bonus so that would be a drawback to that area. But since Lugdunum is going to be way over fooded, worker joins to FP would be easy.

The FP Plan cite has 1 more river tile and gains three wool and a horse to the disk while losing 4 coastal tiles. I think that gives the FP a slight edge but I may be thinking wrong. I didn't do my proper doctoral research.

Niklas said:

zyxy, do you plan to play tonight? We need to get this baby rolling again...

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I'm halfway, and I'll finish tomorrow. America is nearly done for, we now hold Boston, Washington, Chicago and New York, and I abandoned SF. MDI against spears isn't really fair. I only need to get Buffalo and Lugdunum which is a bit of a walk. Lugdunum is now the American capital btw, and at size 12, so yes, enough food there. We are suffering level 1 WW, but only for a few more turns. No GL yet.

Ottomans are sending 1 archer per 3-4 turns from Bursa, so we are not likely to get a GL there any time soon. Sofar I killed 2 archers, and lost 1 spear. I'm rather indifferent to the fate of Bursa, we can probably let it be Ottoman for now.

I'm halfway researching Physics, working towards Magnetism. I "decreased" the treasury a bit by rushing infra, but hopefully it will pay off. We have too many towns stuck for lack of aqueducts. Our worker total is slowly increasing as well.

That sounds like great progress...and I'm really happy to have the game moving again.

Seems like Lugdunum would be hit by the reinforcements coming on boats?

Good luck with the forestry operations around Sages, Cops is coming soon!

Summary:

• America is OCC and we are at peace. Our forces are nearly in place to tackle Spain (on Tadpole), should we wish to do so. Spain has learned Invention. India did not learn any new tech IIRC.
• Copernicus is done. A few turns to go on the wonder in Missi. Another wonder started in Zentral (can become a bank, if we prefer).
• Sustainable science rate up to 600 bpt, Magnetism in 1. Treasury is largely depleted, though.
• Gained quite some workers. They are busy opening up the jungle.
• No GL, despite many elite victories.

Turn 0, 450AD: Go through the city list. Zentral switches to Sistine's. We can use another wonder, Smith or Sistine probably, and Zentral has nothing to do for a while. It can also become a bank later on. With apologies to the previous player, I switch a lot of builds. We need more infrastructure, in particular aqueducts and harbors. I also rush some, food is a terrible thing to waste .

IT: American archer from Boston dies against our MDI. Ottomans show with an archer from Bursa. Build 1 market, 1 horse, 1 worker, 1 court.

Turn 1, 460AD: We have reached first level of WW. lux tax would be crippling, so I hire some clowns. Boston: kill spear, lose 2 horses, retreat 1 vs killer spear . Fortunately Wardance left me some backups on a boat - how nice. Misclick at Washington will delay our attack by one turn . A good start indeed. Kill Ottoman archer, and a cat disconnects their horse resource.

IT: Build 1 market, 1 settler, 2 aqueduct, 1 harbor, 1 worker. Palace expands, I build 4 parts.

Turn 2, 470AD: MDI kills spear and we take Boston. Lamb on Broadway founded. sci 50%.

IT: Chemistry -> Physics. Build 1 harbor, 1 worker.

Turn 3, 480AD: sci 70%, just making surplus. Washington: lost 1 horse, 1 horse retreats, killed 4 spears + 1 archer, and Washington is ours: 3 resisters, 1 worker. American capital moves to Lugdunum .

IT: Our galley sinks a barbarian. Resistance in Washington and Boston ends. Build 1 harbor, 1 MDI.

Turn 4, 490AD: Smurkzville founded. Rush settler in SF, worker in Boston. sci 60%.

IT: Ottoman archer kills our spear. Build 2 workers, settler, disbanding SF:


Turn 5, 500AD: MDI kills spear and New York is ours. I'm one horse too short to take Buffalo, a redlined spear is still standing. Take Chicago at the loss of 1 horse (killed 2 spears, 1 archer). Marching on Lugdunum, attack in 3 turns. Disband two regular warriors - why do we still have them? - to speed up a lib. Our military adviser is earning his paycheck:


IT: Build 2 libs, 1 aqueduct, 1 harbor, 1 worker.

Of course we rebuff the rebels.

Turn 6, 510AD: Take Buffalo with one elite horse. SF Rises Again founded. sci 50%.

IT: Physics -> Magnetism. Build 1 MDI, 1 lib, 1 worker.

Turn 7, 520AD: sci 60%. Slightly too low, but we'll get Cop's next turn. Doublecheck that we have no Militaristic wonders.

IT: Build 4 workers, 1 aqueduct, and


Turn 8, 530AD: Take Lugdunum at the cost of 1 horse, 1 sword and 1 MDI. All targets reached, so we make peace with America for Detroit, 7 gold and their WM (all they have).

IT: Spanish withdraw. Resistance in Lugdunum ends. Build 2 harbors, 2 aqueducts, 1 market, 1 worker. Spanish learn Invention and start Leo's in Madrid.

Turn 9, 540AD: Spain will give 28 gpt for Mono, they have 31 gpt total. I'll wait a turn, so that next player can decide. Smurknes founded. Shortrush uni in Sages for another chunck out of the treasury.

IT: Build 4 workers, 1 harbor, 1 market, 1 aqueduct.

Turn 10, 550AD: Rush harbor in Atlanta. sci 50%.

notes:

• When Magnetism comes in, the harbor in Atlanta will give access to two more luxes.
• Stein is on 2-turn worker duty. I would keep it that way. Lugdunum can rush workers for a while to get rid of the foreign pop - the workers will be upkeep free. Carthage will get a chop soon.
• Our military is mainly near the Spanish border on Tadpole, with some troops near Bursa, Theveste, Oea, Delhi and in Victoria Viking. There are fortified ships between V.Viking and Entremont.
• We should be ready to attack Spain on Tadpole in 2 turns, when our deal runs out. Alternatively, we can sell Monotheism to Spain for about 28 gpt. I haven't seen any pikes or longbows on Tadpole.
• Beard is training a Berserk as an alternative GA starter. I still believe Leo's is not so useful for us, and starts the GA too soon. We can now do about 600 bpt sustained science (800 max) and quite a few uni's and other improvements will finish within the 13 turns we'll be spending in the Middle Ages. We can easily maintain 4 turn research in the MA, and probably grow back the treasury a bit for some deficit research if needed.
• Ways to generate shields on Tadpole: forestry and disbanding. Of course we will first need our workers for RR on Main Continent, but after that they can chop/plant on Tadpole. Mainland will have very few build projects after uni's and possibly factories in the south. So the north can train units, we ship them across and disband. Improvements on Tadpole will cost money while the FP is not there (except markets and harbors if we have Smith's).
• A lot of corrupt towns are on arbitrary builds, mostly caravels, settlers, harbors, libs. Didn't know what to do with them.

The save

EDIT: Very random thoughts:

Overall it looks very good. I am concerned that we brought Sages down to 10spt and plan on building a uni for five more turns. That's not what we had planned for. With the workers helping Vlad, we could have had at least some of these plains mined in Sages.

Our Peace ends with Celts in 1, we should get a small task force up there to kill them. That will be well positioned to take out the iron supply of spain on Tadpole. The problem is we have no reserves so I'm not sure we have the troops to deal with the counter from Spain. If we do, I would work from Mohacs Clockwise so that we can fight them on land using terrain advantage as much as possible. I don't want them dropping units off by boat where we have no units to defend.

I think the plan is to leave spain on Ostrich but we should hit Spain on Tadpole soon so we can really start preparing for the new FP. I think if we rush all the libraries on Tad at 300g each, we going to be very poor. But I think that's the only way to get teh FP moved early enough to matter.

The FP move is unnecessary if we take the Elevator ride to the top. So we need to figure that out now.

If we don't need to develop the new FP core, then I agree with zyxy that we need to postpone the GA, if only for 10 turns.

If we do need to develop the new FP core, the GA comes with Leos so we have enough cash to rush all those libraries/markets.

Lamb on Broadway is a decent FP cite as it has lots of river/coastal tiles and Entremont is in the first disk.

I'm also a little sad that no one has discussed the land prisons I proposed. Do we want them or not? If we do, I don't want to waste money on Buffalo's library when we're going to need to abandon that town.

More later

Great, feels good to be underway again. Good job with the Americans!
Roster:

• CommandoBob - On Deck!
• ControlFreak
• WarDance
• zyxy - Just Played
• Niklas - UP!
• Methos - ghosting

So "got it", will look at it later today and plan to play my 10 during the weekend. We need to pick up wome speed again after the holidays, and the massive discussions.

Niklas said:

We need to pick up wome speed again after the holidays, and the massive discussions.

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I agree, we just need to decide if we're going for the third core, letting India off the elevator before Robots or take the elevator to the top and then retreat to an OCC.

If we want to let India off the elevator earlier then:

• Our GA starts soon
• We use the extra sheilds/cash to rush markets and libraries in the third core.
• We hit Spain and really leaderfish. If we get the upper hand, we start hitting Ostrich but it's not a priority.
• We hedge our bets with a prebuild for the FP in {Vladivosmurkz or Cabana} and plan to jump the palace to {Chicago or Lamb on Broadway}.
• We gift India Indianaposmurkz at 750AD and let them take the south western quadrant including the Atoll region.
• We work the Gift and Gaff technique.
• Civs should be prisoned closer to the Main Continent so the gifted cities mean more to them.

If we want to take India to the top in the elevator then:

• We wait on our GA until Steam Power. If we can do that in 4 turns then we wait longer. (There's an archer in Lamb that can be upgraded in Entremont so no need to build more.)
• We gift Spain up to par and let them reasearch optionals for us. (We can leave them on Tadpole or get rid of them.)
• We use the extra sheilds/cash to help with factories in the south, banks and maybe stockexchanges everywhere/researching at 4-turn rate.
• We set up Tadpole as a science farm, irrigating everything.
• We gift India one of the towns on the Atoll region at 750 just so they can build some units for capturing undefended towns. They will be easy to control with cannons stationed at the end of the Mountain range. They get nothing else from us until the GL, then they get anything they can take.
• Civs should all have land based prisons on Tadpole as that area will stay corrupt to us.

I'm my (possibly very small and limited) mind, these are our two directions and we need to pick one or the other before Niklas plays. I think I slightly favor the first method just because India is going to be inept at conquering our core and using it to build space ship parts. It will take them a long time after we've researched robots.

If they get the western/atoll core developed, preferably with 8 cities, they will build the FP before we give them our fully developed cities making their new core much more productive. They will also have had a chance to indulge their ridiculous need for units so that they should be able to capture quickly and start building spaceship parts instead of infantry.

Note that the first method will take a lot more work on our part to defend the lower core, time the FP moves, get the third core developed, keep Spain knocked down and away from building the wonders that we want.... That's also why I partly favor this approach. Otherwise, it's just simple building/researching and waiting.

Long term

If India is let off the elevator early, then a lot will depend on the timing. If this happens near the end of the Modern Age, then things play out almost as in the second scenario, and the GA can be delayed quite a while. We could probably even do a bit of construction on Tadpole with chops.
If it happens much earlier, then how is India going to get all those techs? I don't know how peace payments are calculated, and whether the distance of the capital to captured cities plays a role, but a Modern Tech is very expensive. I doubt that they will get much.

It is not so clear to me that we'll need a new FP core at all. Once India is off the elevator, our research speed doesn't need to be faster than India's tech acquisition speed, which is probably lower than 4 turns.

If we let India ride to the top, then we could still gift them Indianaposmurkz, and let them take some small cities in the SW. It will give them a larger production base to build units. We can easily control how much cities they get, and when they get them, so that their research doesn't go too fast.

Btw, from comments in the maintenance thread I get the impression that several teams (maybe all) have some trouble getting India to space at all...

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For next Turnset

We leave the MA in 13 turns (or 17 if we research Economics), at which point we will want to gift the Ottomans up. So we need to decide what to do with Bursa and perhaps prepare in the next set. I would take/raze it.

Yes, my fear about Indianapolis is their research rate. We need them to stay away from Education while we go through the MA. If you think getting towns won't speed that up then I'm fine taking the middle road and giving them towns while we still plan to get most of the Modern techs.

Take Bursa.

Lets hold off on Economics until we can't 4-turn any required techs, then us it's four turns too get a berserk in place to GA. That means we get sistines in 5 turns and we should take advantage soon with temples and caths after the unis.

BTW, Great job with America. I didn't notice the big stack of Medi by Mohacs but they will do the job on Spain if we go soon. Taking their wine town on Tadpole will shutdown their military production on Tadpole.

The trouble with letting India ride all the way to the top is the time it will take her to first conquer the rest of our southern core, then build up infrastructure in it, and finally start building those SS parts. I think those things taken together will take far more than 40 turns, so it's clear to me that no matter what it will be a good idea to let the elevator run its course at least before Robotics. On the other hand, I don't think we should let it run before we've reached the Modern Times at the earliest, that would be too much for Gandhi to catch up.

We could really use a good assesment of just how long it will take India to build up in the south. If the estimate comes up at some 200 turns, then we need to let them start early...

I'm more and more inclined to agree that we really don't need the third core at all. It would be nice to have as a backup, but it is not crucial. If we let India up in the MT, our one core should be enough to let us sustain at least <10-turn research, which should let us stay ahead of India's space ship building.
(And according to the Maintenance thread, the tie breaker is the number of SS parts on India's ship, and the earlier they have access to the first part... but I doubt anyone could tell this early if they have troubles or not, only Bede have <200 turns to go.)



I see that the 34 gpt deal with Spain is running out in 1 turn. Seems like great timing to start a war if we want to.

However, if we are decided to keep Spain around for a while on Ostrich, we should consider gifting Isa up to Edu to give her a chance to go for some of the optionals. This could be done right before starting the war, it won't help her any. If we want to delay the war a few turns we could even sell Mono, Theo and Edu for gpt, ~65 gpt for even a few turns would be nice.
(It will bring her closer to Astro though...)

But another however, if we agree that the third core is not crucial, why war on Spain at all? If we want help with research, we could simply give Isa a break (until she starts building SS that is). Getting gpt from her will give us more than filling the northern half of Tadpole with specialists would. And we can fill the southern parts anyway...

Regarding the prison sites, they are an interesting option, but if I have to choose now I'd say let's not bother. We can keep the AIs on prison islands just fine, I'm fairly sure they won't pose any problems.

OK, Niklas and zyxy's last posts convinced me.

Abandon the 3rd core idea, let india out around the early Modern Age.

Leave Spain alone until she cuts her own throat. Gift her up and have her help with research (both hers and ours woth gpt sales.)

Rock on!

zyxy said:

The save

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I thought we were playing from save '02' not '01'.

'02' contains an AlanH edit about allowing India to mobilize and build the Apollo Program at the same time.

CommandoBob said:

I thought we were playing from save '02' not '01'.

'02' contains an AlanH edit about allowing India to mobilize and build the Apollo Program at the same time.

Click to expand...

No.. when there is a 02 in the savename it just means that there are 2 saves from the same year

The testing of the Tech Elevator is complete.

Game Stats:
Chieftain
Tiny Map
Pangea
No Barbs
Played as America
Other civs:
Carthage
India
Ottomans

Carthage was the closest civ, so it became the test civ. Soon it was surrounded by American cities and had no contact with the other two civs. India and Ottomans were kept small and backward. Carthage stayed an OCC.

By 1834 AD America had researched all the Space Race techs and Recycling in Modern Times. Along the way Lincoln had learned only four optional techs: Literacy, Republic, Economics and Military Tradition. Sixty (60) total techs were gotten; 55 were needed.

The game save at 1834 AD is attached for the curious, but it was not a pretty game.

The Test
In 1836 India was gifted with everything that America had learned, including Recycling and the optional techs.
Then Carthage was given Communication with the Indians and a new city, Great Library City.

Hannibal's needs 1836 AD


And the next turn:
Hannibal's needs 1838 AD


For some reason, Recycling is not on the Tech Elevator. In a second test, no optional techs were passed to India (in case there might be a numeric limit to how many techs could be learned). Again India knew Recycling, but not Carthage.

Playing from 1834 to about 1900 and learning more techs (Computers, Stealth, Miniaturization, Genetics and Nuclear Power) and giving all to India, Carthage still did not learn Recycling.

Conclusion:
The Tech Elevator works. There appears to be no limit to the number of techs that can be learned from the Great Library, when it is properly used. In this case, about 40 techs were learned by Carthage in one turn. The 'Age' of the tech is not important.

Gyathaar said:

No.. when there is a 02 in the savename it just means that there are 2 saves from the same year

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uh, yeah, right...Iknewthat

CommandoBob said:

I thought we were playing from save '02' not '01'.

'02' contains an AlanH edit about allowing India to mobilize and build the Apollo Program at the same time.

Click to expand...

I hope you *did* play from the 02 save on the turn when I edited your save. After that it should revert to 01. It's just a number I insert into the file name at upload time to ensure that all file names are unique.

Nice test CB.

I don't understand why the Elevator doesn't give recycling. A bug? But it's good to know for sure it will give every tech needed for space race.

AlanH said:

I hope you *did* play from the 02 save on the turn when I edited your save. After that it should revert to 01. It's just a number I insert into the file name at upload time to ensure that all file names are unique.

Click to expand...

I did.