G-Minor 31

I hate this game!
Well, that's not true, I love it, but I hate the time constraints of gauntlets, GOTMs ...and specially RL.

So here I am, playing the only try I will have time to play, when I find HC is my neighbour. Well, it is too good a start to pass up, let's continue. 200BC, I have 3 really nice cities and a couple of wonders I really wanted, HC dows. I should have tried another game, but I am not one to resign to Prince AI... I rush units all around hurting severely the happiness of my 3 legendaries... I don't build monasteries or missionaries, but units... I bring 2 allays to war...I force HC to accept peace (and pay for it)... only to find that he won't open borders after the war. My empire is cut in 2 by HC cities, my missionaries of the 3-temples-built-religion can't reach my capital, my GA can't reach the third Legendary city... I don't dare to dow again, now he is really strong... So I build a useless city that drains my economy and a galley in it... send my ship out... and HC borders expand into the sea, no way to pass... turn back and go the whole world around the inland sea... when I get there, my allays from the other ide of the world get to raze one city and I can pass by land.

As a result by 1000AD I had 1 single cathedral. This one could have been a 11xxAD game.

Vanilla, Eliz, inland sea, low waters, Corn-Banana-gems-Marble start.
Research: farm-wheel-pott-mason-PH-CoL-CS free(t41)-Music-Liber(t92)-Natio free.
WW: Orac+Parthe. Later TajMaj in auxiliary city.
Revolted to slave+OR once, got some nice missionaries and granaries up.
1000BC: 70bpt, 10GPPpt, Acad, 2cott, 2religions; experiment: only capital will be cottaged.
1AD: 150bpt, Music, Philo and half of Educ, 3rel, 4 cottages, 59GPP. 5cities.
1000AD: 700-150-100cpt, 300GPPpt, 1 cath only, 10cott.
WON1310AD(t134) 4 caths, 16GP(1GS), bombed 1-7-7, 900-150-150cpt at the end.
GPFarms were able to sustain 8-8-4-4 artists.

Analysis:
1.- Acad gave 1050b and 650c through the game. It was much better than lighbulbing. It was only to be expected, since Prince AI doesn't trade interesting techs, so you have to research them yourself.
2.- Only cottages in capital experiment: I was doing 150bpt in 1AD instead of the expected 200bpt in Deity games with no Academy and 2 cottage cities. The war made it impossible to have cathedrals in the second city, so its cottages would have been useless in this game. It was the right decision for this game, then, but I don't know about a peaceful game...
3.- Would a second GS had been better than a GA? A GS would have saved 7 turns of Education. By turn 92 I was doing 200-100-100cpt, 1 third of the 1200cpt of the final turn. So 2.33 turns saved and Hermitage 7 turns sooner. The last GA saved only 1t... but that's anecdotic. As a mean, a GA saved 2680/1200=2.23 turns. So the answer is yes, I should have popped 3GS instead of 1 for Academy, Philo and Educ.
Comments and rebuttals are welcome.

12 tries, 7 DoWs later, scooped up a 1445 AD victory, 12 turns out from WT's 1325. Nothing special, but I figured I'd post details anyway.

Capital settled one turn later to run up on a mable plains hill and cottage 4 flood plains quickly. Capital had Parthenon early and Taj, and of course the Herm. My second city is usually the main GP farm, but went for a nice production spot instead, had Oracle up 525 BC and three cathedrals built fast, heavily cottaged, too, with grasslands corn supporting growth and mining. If I had built the GP farm first, I may have shaved off some time, but I may also have lost Oracle on this particular map. Third city, the GP farm, had pigs, wheat, and fish, running 8-9ish specialists at the end, was a bit late building in the National Epic. Fourth city had deer and sheep, contributing at least 3 GAs and punched out a slew of longbowmen to up power rating some or fend off any DoW, which never came. Found Hindu, Confu, Tao, and I did get copper. 14 GAs (another one spawned on victory turn, so 15 really) including the one from Music, 1 GS for Edu. I bombed 3-4-7. 440 AD Liberalism... a bit late but not too bad.

So I shaved off 14 turns from my first success in this gauntlet over 12 games this past week. I think the 4th city helped my game, but I'm not certain if building another two cities and adding a cathedral or two to the capital would make a difference. What really made a difference was building the Oracle to get CS quick. It's possible to drown any chance of a GP from spawning if you're careful. I hadn't tried the Oracle in cultural games before, and I like how it overcame the hurdle of researching CS; getting Buero quick is a real asset.

Last game in this gauntlet for me Good luck everyone!

@Jesusin - How did you manage your gpp? I assume you did not build both oracle and parth in cap? I can never do that and stop it from popping one I can't control - usually the 3rd one. Or did you pop one from Oracle city and get lucky?

I can see 2GS for more sci, academy and popping philo for early pacifism. I will try this tonight. Before your post I'd already decided on academy, now if there can be a case for 3GS outperforming 3GA I see no harm in getting 2 but will let the gameplay determine what the 3rd one is - I'm not convinced the 3rd will always be better than a GA.

I forgot the free Music GA, so I had 17GP and bombed 1-7-8.

FiveAces said:

@Jesusin - How did you manage your gpp? I assume you did not build both oracle and parth in cap? I can never do that and stop it from popping one I can't control - usually the 3rd one. Or did you pop one from Oracle city and get lucky?

I can see 2GS for more sci, academy and popping philo for early pacifism. I will try this tonight. Before your post I'd already decided on academy, now if there can be a case for 3GS outperforming 3GA I see no harm in getting 2 but will let the gameplay determine what the 3rd one is - I'm not convinced the 3rd will always be better than a GA.

Click to expand...

Waw! Were you looking from behind my back while I played?

Oracle and Parth both in the capital, I saw the capital was going to win the 2nd GP race, so I delayed Parth 1 turn to give the second city the edge... then allowed the capital to pop the third one. Had it been a GP, it would have given me Christianity, which looked like a good idea since I didn't know about the incoming war and I had only 2 religions at the time.
But I got lucky and it was a GA.

After more thought, the 3rd GS is not a good idea if you don't run 2 cottage cities. You need all those GA to get two cities from nothing to Legendary, so only 1 GA is free to be turned into another GS.

Jesusin, I can't believe you managed to overcome those drama to post a very respectable result. That would have finished me for sure!

Last attempt - 2 moves to the plains hill - skip early rels to find hindu not founded until turn 27! Capital went legendary in 1265 with only 2 cathedrals, hermitage, oracle and parth. That was the good news. Bad news - no marble (again), the capital's great person was a GP who couldn't even found christianity (that was Liz, 1 turn earlier), and when I discovered philo was now only 4 turns research I was already halfway to its GS, switched to artists but still popped the GS (bombed into edu saving 7 turns, but not worth it as I ran beauro longer to get herm up).

So in 1365, I'm 4 turns from legendary in both 2nd and 3rd cities, and down 2 GA's - marble and a bit of popping luck was all I needed for 12xx.

FiveAces said:

Last attempt - 2 moves to the plains hill - skip early rels to find hindu not founded until turn 27! Capital went legendary in 1265 with only 2 cathedrals, hermitage, oracle and parth. That was the good news. Bad news - no marble (again), the capital's great person was a GP who couldn't even found christianity (that was Liz, 1 turn earlier), and when I discovered philo was now only 4 turns research I was already halfway to its GS, switched to artists but still popped the GS (bombed into edu saving 7 turns, but not worth it as I ran beauro longer to get herm up).

So in 1365, I'm 4 turns from legendary in both 2nd and 3rd cities, and down 2 GA's - marble and a bit of popping luck was all I needed for 12xx.

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Oh, at first I though you said you had finished 1265AD!

Would you like to help one of us to improve his gameplay? One of us is very wrong when he stays/doesn't stay in Bureaucracy while building the Hermitage. Can you look at the numbers? X, Y, Z are the cpt your cities are doing when you get Liberalism. You stay in Bureau A turns and that way you save B turns out the Hermitage. If B*X+some free hammers is better than A*(X+Y+Z) you are right. If it is worst, I am right. If you don't agree with the formula then I am very wrong.

Would you like to help one of us to improve his gameplay? One of us is very wrong when he stays/doesn't stay in Bureaucracy while building the Hermitage.

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From what I've seen, it saves a turn, sometimes two. I would say your capital's cottages should be fully developed by then, so you'd want to switch to gain the culture out of them.

Without doing any math crunching, instinctually, I'd say switch right away.

Kanidyen said:

From what I've seen, it saves a turn, sometimes two. I would say your capital's cottages should be fully developed by then, so you'd want to switch to gain the culture out of them.

Without doing any math crunching, instinctually, I'd say switch right away.

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Well, my question is a bit tricky
A is always >B
X+Y+Z is always > X
So if my formula is right, then it doesn't matter what the particular numbers are, not waiting is always better.

By the way, the formula is wrong since I forgot the 50% increase in commerce, that factor is always smaller than X/2.

So A(X+Y+Z) compared to A*f*X+B*X+1monastery worth in hammers.
Where f is 0 if the capital has 0 commerce and a lot of culture or 0.5 if it has a lot of commerce and no culture.

My head can't stop...
If we forget rounding, then when you don't have marble B=A/2, when you do have marble B=A/4.

So the comparison is reduced X*1+Y+Z compared to X*(f+(1/2or1/4) and some hammers... so waiting never pays off.

I'd better stop it here and wait for FiveAces answer.

jesusin said:

My head can't stop...
If we forget rounding, then when you don't have marble B=A/2, when you do have marble B=A/4.

So the comparison is reduced X*1+Y+Z compared to X*(f+(1/2or1/4) and some hammers... so waiting never pays off.

I'd better stop it here and wait for FiveAces answer.

Click to expand...

the answer mostly depends on which city is needing direct culture vs bombing.

Small spreadsheet using those hypothesis :
- normal speed
- 15 base hammers in the capital
- no forge in the capital, no marble, running pacifism (= not running orgrel), not industrious
- running 100% culture, with base commerce of the capital of 100, and 60 in each secondary city, for a total base culture of 150, 100, 100 (no in game values available right now).
- no cathedrals, nowhere
Shows the following result : in the capital you lose 500 culture if you run bureaucracy, in the other cities you lose 1400 for each city.
The 500 culture lost in the capital can be lowered by building culture for 6 turns (which would lead to 90 culture be it in vanilla or warlords, after the hermitage)

Let's do the maths :
- Let there be F, number of turns required to build the hermitage in the capital without bureaucracy
- A the number of turns to build the hermitage there with bureaucracy
- B = F-A
- X = cpt in the capital running bureaucracy without the hermitage
- Y = cpt in city 2 without FS
- Z = cpt in city 3 without FS

You have a few other variables you cannot get away without :
P = base production in the capital
Pb = probuction bonus in the capital (forge? orgrel, marble?) except
Xg = base commerce in the capital
Xc = culture without commerce in the capital
Xb = culture bonus before hermitage and without FS
Yg = base commerce in the second city
Yc = culture without commerce in the second city
Yb = culture bonus before hermitage and without FS
Zg = base commerce in the third city
Zc = culture without commerce in the third city
Zb = culture bonus before hermitage and without FS
Cs = culture slider



So F = 300 /(P*Pb) and A = 300 / (P *(Pb+0,5)).
Pb is somewhere between 1 and 2,5.
So B is somewhere between (for Pb = 1)
100/P and 20/P
(for Pb =2,5).

With Pb=1, F=300/P.
With Pb = 2,5, F = 120/P.
For Pb = 1, A = 200/P.
For Pb = 2,5, A= 100/P.
I assume you are running bureaucracy before lib.
X= (Xg*1,5+Xc) * Xb
Y = (Yg+Yc)*Yb
Z= (Zg+Zc)*Zb

Solution 1 you run FS right away :
After F turns, you have generated X1, Y1, Z1 culture in your 3 cities
X1 = (Xg+Xc)*(Xb+1)*F
Y1 = (Yg+Yc)*(Yb+1)*F
Z1 = (Zg+Zc)*(Zb+1)*F

Solution 2 : you run bureaucracy for A turns, then FS for B turns.
After F turns, you have generated X2, Y2, Z2 culture in your 3 cities.
X2 = (Xg*1,5+Xc) * Xb * A + (Xg+Xc)*(Xb+2)*B + P*B (or P*Pb*B in warlords)
Y2 = (Yg+Yc)*Yb * A + (Yg+Yc)*(Yb+1) *B
Z2 = (Zg+Zc)*Zb + (Zg+Zc)*(Zb+1)*B

Difference?
X1 -X2 = A * (Xg*(Xb-0,5) + Xc*Xb) - P*B.
Y1 - Y2 = A * ((Yg+Yc)*(Yb+1) - (Yg+Yc)*Yb ) = A * (Yg+Yc)
Z1-Z2 = A * (Zg+Zc)

So the only way that waiting can be useful is if P is really huge, Xc is near to 0, and you don't need the culture in the other 2 cities too badly. In other words switch right away

cabert said:

So the only way that waiting can be useful is if P is really huge, Xc is near to 0, and you don't need the culture in the other 2 cities too badly. In other words switch right away

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Wow that was a heck of an analysis in a short period of time. I haven't been able to go through it fully. Looks very good at first glance. Some additional variables to consider: forest chop bonus under beauro the +2c from towns (and only towns) under FS.

With marble or a forge it is never better to wait.
With a second cottage city it is never better to wait.
You can alter Xc and P in favor of waiting by moving citizens from new cottages to mines.

My game (from memory): 45 base commerce, 16 base hammers, 3 towns, no marble or forge. No other cottage cities.Chopped 6 forests. I think 4 were in BFC. Not sure how many bonus hammers that was, but it was close to the required amount.

will give it some more thought when have more time

This gauntlet is now complete. jesusin won with a date of 1310 AD, shyuhe was 2nd with 1355 AD (34027 pts) and FiveAces 3rd with 1355 AD (27391 pts). Congratulations!

Congrats jesusin! The culture master is still at his best.

Close game!

Well done you guys, and all who joined in.

Thanks again Denniz

Great work Jesusin.

jesusin said:

My head can't stop...
If we forget rounding, then when you don't have marble B=A/2, when you do have marble B=A/4.

So the comparison is reduced X*1+Y+Z compared to X*(f+(1/2or1/4) and some hammers... so waiting never pays off.

I'd better stop it here and wait for FiveAces answer.

Click to expand...

Ok after much effort and hypothetical scenarios built off of cabert's excellent analysis, plus effect of forest chops, etc., I have concluded there is only 1 realistic situation where waiting could be beneficial:

If the difference between your capital's cpt under FS with the hermitage and the cpt under FS is greater than the difference in cpt under FS without the hermitage and the cpt under beauro, then it is better to wait to chop forests, but only for the number of FS turns (i.e. no beauro hammer bonus) that you will save due to the beauro bonus on the chops.

For example if your base production is 10 and you are chopping 2 forests (say 20+10 each), then you are theoretically justified in waiting 2 turns to finish chopping them. In reality you have to calculate how many turns of FS (w/o herm) you will actually save. You also have to figure out if you will miss the FS culture in your other 2 cities.

Note a stored worker turn is not used until the end of the first unit movement cycle, so you can benefit from +50% on the chops and FS in the same turn if you wait to convert.

The likelihood of the FS/herm vs FS cpt being greater than the FS vs beauro cpt is much greater if have low (<50) base commerce and few towns (i.e. early lib) and do not have many wonders - like on deity.

shyuhe said:

Congrats jesusin! The culture master is still at his best.

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Thank you.

Culture master? Still? I would like to be known as "the culture master", but I am far from there yet. This is only the first time I win a Gauntlet and I don't have a single spot on the HOF.

My game was hardly an example of how a cultural game should be played... now, it is a good example of perseverance: even if you have little time, even if you have MF and dozens of good starts available, even if your neighbour DOWs at the most inappropiate moment... just keep on playing, this could be a winning game anyway.

Thanks to the staff and to the participants, I think it has been a very productive Gauntlet, we have all learnt a lot (or should I say "are still learning a lot" since FiveAces has just replied?).

FiveAces said:

Ok after much effort and hypothetical scenarios built off of cabert's excellent analysis, plus effect of forest chops, etc., I have concluded there is only 1 realistic situation where waiting could be beneficial:

If the difference between your capital's cpt under FS with the hermitage and the cpt under FS is greater than the difference in cpt under FS without the hermitage and the cpt under beauro, then it is better to wait to chop forests, but only for the number of FS turns (i.e. no beauro hammer bonus) that you will save due to the beauro bonus on the chops.

For example if your base production is 10 and you are chopping 2 forests (say 20+10 each), then you are theoretically justified in waiting 2 turns to finish chopping them. In reality you have to calculate how many turns of FS (w/o herm) you will actually save. You also have to figure out if you will miss the FS culture in your other 2 cities.

Note a stored worker turn is not used until the end of the first unit movement cycle, so you can benefit from +50% on the chops and FS in the same turn if you wait to convert.

The likelihood of the FS/herm vs FS cpt being greater than the FS vs beauro cpt is much greater if have low (<50) base commerce and few towns (i.e. early lib) and do not have many wonders - like on deity.

Click to expand...

Ok, I think I have finally come to understand all the ideas in your post (not easy subject, we are getting into a high level of detail here).

One question: you are assuming that the culture bar is the same under Bureau and under FS, aren’t you?

We have all come to agree that if there are not imminent forest chops in the capital it is better not to wait and revolt to FS asap.

I think I can assume that we all agree that when 8 chops are going to happen the next turn, and your capital only gets 10hpt, it is good to wait 1 turn, receive all that lumber under Bureaucracy and revolt once the chops are done.

And it is not a good idea to wait if it is a single chop due in 2 turns in a 100hpt capital.

You have calculated the threshold of chops versus hpt, were it is indifferent to wait or to revolt. In this calculation, did you only take into account the capital culture? I guess the answer is yes, the culture in the other two cities does not enter in the equation. So even in the 8 chops 10hpt example, if the other two cities have 20 mature towns and a dozen of wonders each, then it is probably wise to revolt immediately anyway.

Did I get it all right?

jesusin said:

Did I get it all right?

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yes, you did