SGOTM 10 - Smurkz

Backwards Logic · Oct 31, 2009

Good thing you stopped - Churchill has a Galleon just north of Broberg, and he's in WHEOOHRN. His worst enemy is Mao still, but the military adviser has the threat index of Churchill attacking us set to high...

Just as a precaution, I'd move longbow 47 (on the hill south of the grassland mined hill) 1 N in preparation to move him into the city next turn if war is declared. I'd also move longbow 27 (on the grassland hill) into the city - if he attacks amphibiously that's two units to his likely three and I think we'd stand a good chance of surviving. If he unloads, we'd have three in the city the following turn. We run the risk of Gandhi's longbow attacking the now non-fortified longbow on the mined grassland hill, but he didn't do it before when we first moved there and I don't think he'll do it now. All of this is precautionary of course as war has not been declared, but I'm wary at best here. It's either a scout or it's got military troops on it heading for us - if it was going to Mao 1) he'd attack on land and 2) the boat would have sailed through the city located on the plains hill. We'll find out next turn. And there's no way we can position the caravel to block him if he does declare, we'll just have to cross our fingers on this. Question: When we first met Churchill was he already in WHEOOHRN? Or did that happen afterward?

We can bait Gandhi's longbow this turn as well. The thought came when I was wondering what the worker inside of Broberg should do with the possible threat of war with Churchill looming. He can be the decoy this turn (move him south of the threatening longbow), then next turn our mace can attack him and (hopefully) kill him. This should also prevent Gandhi from trying to attack the hill the fortified longbow just vacated.

The longbow east of Bombay is no threat - the crossbow will complete before Gandhi attacks if in fact that's what he's doing. No worries there. As for the settler disappearing... the only logical explanation is he's on the galley. I don't think AI's disband units and if they do I don't think they're stupid enough to whack their own settler. Good move with the southern caravel to block him - if he escapes there would be no way to catch it with his circumnavigation bonus.

Everything else though looks great. The galley move if you aren't 100% sure should be 2 SW then unload the missionary wherever on the island. I see we're playing chicken with the barb galley with our caravel - as long as we keep blocking him we'll be fine. Next move for it would be 1 NW, 1 N. Depending on if the AI is actually smart enough to get the galley around us we may or may not need another caravel down south to contain the barbs a bit better, though the galley we have once the settler is escorted over can help. Another question: What happened to the longbow that escaped Delhi? Did he attack our longbow fortified in the forest to Delhi's south?

Niklas · Oct 31, 2009

Backwards Logic said:
GP speed up - Unless our fearless leader (*cough* Niklas *cough*) knows anything about which city would pop first in the advent of a GP tie, when the city is two turns away from popping run one extra scientist.

Cities are "evaluated" in the order that you cycle through them with the arrow keys. Typically that's the same order that they were founded in (there are exceptions to this).

Xcalibrator · Oct 31, 2009

Where does the WHEOOHRN warning show up? I don't know what Churchill's status was when we met him, but you noted WH.. in post 333. Why would his threat index be high? Cuz he (and all the rest) are on aggressive setting and our power is low?

OK on the land moves--very clever. What should I do with our 2 western caravels? Together they might be able to take out a galleon, but then we'd leave Gandhi's galley free.

The free-running Lbow ran back to Delhi.

Although it's looking rather far away right now, shall we trust BUFFY and just keep running St Pete with the single engineer until it pops?

I'll make the recommended moves, hit enter, and report back. Not sure exactly when that'll be, but perhaps soon.

[Edit: Hmm, guess I won't play now--western caravels haven't moved this turn so I'll await discussion. Leave as is, put both on the clams, or move north for Churchill?

Or... move the two caravels to block in Delhi by sitting on the two relevant tiles. If the galley attacked and won on the clams it could then escape and unload where we can't currently reach with our knight (I think--don't have save open to look). To give us some more reach we could have the northern worker over there do some more roading.]

Backwards Logic · Oct 31, 2009

Like I said earlier, we can't do squat about the Galleon (I'd rather not suicide our boats into it when we need them for Gandhi), so sticking around to block Gandhi (ie, the clams) should be our number 1 priority for this turn. We'll have a better idea for next turn, maybe our priorities change with another war, maybe not. If you play with the score pop-up activated, you'll see a fist next to Churchill's name. That indicates he's in WHEOOHRN. No idea why the threat index is high. I think it's a function of attitude towards us, power, and other factors, but I could be mistaken.

I guess leave the Engineer in St. Pete. Between what you said and Niklas said it appears we'll be alright on that front.

Xcalibrator · Oct 31, 2009

Played most of one more turn and we have more decisions. We are not at war with Churchill (yet?).

End turn 88/1710--move units as agreed.

89/1712--Our mace (promoted to whatever that 25% anti-archery thing is) attacks Gandhi's Lbow, which did capture our sacrificial worker from Broberg. Odds are 95.1% in our favor. We lose. :mad:

Gee, that's really really frustrating. Gandhi Lbow at 3.0/6. I attack with one of Broberg's Lbows at 97.3% odds. How nice, that worked (4.9/6). I move our other worker to the now vacant grass hill to mine it for Broberg. Eastern caravel moves 1 space to find barb galley (who again retreated). We can attack at 79.3% odds but our galley is now too far away to clean up if needed. Our caravel can not block the barb from reaching Silver Island. No boat action in Delhi but he now has 2 Lbows and 1 cat roaming around. Oh fudge, he now has a caravel in addition to the galley.

Oh yeah, by the way, Churchill's galleon disappeared north. At least something favorable happened.

I think we should move the Broberg mine Lbow 1S to the forest hill to keep the cat from taking it. Our wounded Lbow can move to the mine next turn. I guess leave the western caravels as is, and move the eastern one 2 more S, like last time, hoping that the barb galley will again move north and we can play this game until somewhere spits out another caravel. Continue moving our galley into position to carry the settler (which will complete next turn).

Broberg mace completes in 3. Moscow is slated for another Xbow for Seaside after completing the settler next turn. St Pete will finish its Xbow, intended for Copperville, but maybe it's needed for St Pete defense. We could really use some more units unless Gandhi suicides himself against us and we get lucky with the RNG for a change. Barbs are a threat to Silverton and our eastern coast, we don't know who Churchill intends to attack, two AI already have Gunpowder..... I think St Pete should build a mace after the Xbow finishes. Is that enough? I know we'll have traded for Gunpowder in 5 or so turns but we need to get to that point without losing a city.

Backwards Logic · Nov 1, 2009

Hmmm... Maybe you shouldn't attack any more units - maybe you should hand off for turns that require attacking things :lol:

Seriously though, that's frustrating, especially since I keep harping no more units. The game apparently disagrees with me.

As for the moves, I agree with them, except I might move the other western caravel on top of the other caravel on the clams to prevent the tile from being taken. Even if the caravel moves around our two boats to escort the galley, we'd still be able to attack them if they chose to escape. There's actually two catapults on the tile 1N of Gandhi, so I'd love if we could get them both to crash a single unit of ours.

Few things: St. Pete is going to need a tile to work in 5 turns when it grows, so I'm thinking the workers should mine the desert windmill so St. Pete can take the grassland mine from Horsetropolis. I thought we'd decided to mine both tiles? Why is there a windmill here anyway? And I'd say longbow or mace - longbow if you wanted to protect St. Pete better, mace if you wanted to harass Gandhi a bit more. Either is fine to me.

Switch Silverton off of working the silver mine - work the coastal tile.

Moscow could probably build a longbow instead of the crossbow for Seaside. It's cheaper (thus higher overflow for next build) and will have more base defensive bonuses (+20% city defense and another +25% hills defense before promo). After the longbow I'm giving some thought to Islamic Monastery -> Islamic missionaries. Why Islamic Missionaries? Well, we have to flip to a religion, why get the whole world ticked at us when we could appease one of them, namely Churchill in this case. We'd need three missionaries minimum (Horse, Silverton, and Broberg for the GP bonuses) and four max (for St. Pete happiness boost for 10 turns). It looks close, but Moscow could probably make them in one turn, so that's six turns of building. We want Islam spread anyway for Free Religion which we should be getting towards the end of the GA with Liberalism from Churchill (assuming of course he'll trade it). Sharing a religion with him can only help that possibility. The downside is we won't be able to get the max bonus out of the Confucian temples we've started/built, but in Seaside we'll have some extra build time. Depending on what it's rate of growth is, we may want an Islamic temple next instead of a harbor. We'll look at that in four turns when the Confucian temple finishes.

So we'd have to stall (yet again) the GA until the missionaries spread the religion. The first one would have to be sent to Broberg because it's so far away, the second to Silverton for the same reason, then the third to Horse then onto St. Pete. St Pete doesn't need it for the GA since it won't be running specs so it isn't crucial here. During this stall phase we run 0% and build the treasury which we need to do anyway. The Engineer still pops in St. Pete on time, and it'll also give us a few extra turns to get Seaside totally ready for the GA. Broberg gets a few extra turns with some extra hammers (since we won't be working the mines during the GA either). We don't have to worry about people begging for Nationalism since we won't have it done yet.

Run one more turn of 100% then we have to turn the slider off for 100% for the entirety of the GA. I know you already knew this, but we definitely run out of money in the GA as it stands right now.

After the library is finished in Horsetropolis I'd start a theatre for culture reasons and to get another step closer to Globe.

So what do you think, especially with regards to Islam versus Confucianism swap?

Xcalibrator · Nov 1, 2009

Agree with Lbows in Moscow and St Pete. I windmilled the 2nd desert hill by Horsey to give us a choice of what to work in case we wanted more food for growth. I was planning to send 2 more workers out west to hook up the furs and copper faster; if I do that I'd probably want to take the worker off Silver Island to help with mining, etc. in the east.

I'd thought about the Islam switch, too, but it'll take a fair number of hammers and I'm more worried about barbs on our east. I expect that the RNG will eventually have them land on Silver Island so we'll have to build units to defend there--maybe they'll just settle (not great either). I was thinking about a caravel in Moscow after the Lbow to really take care of the barb threat. Not pissing off Churchill would be really nice, but I hate to delay things even more. Can we live with not having Islam spread everywhere we want right at the start of the GA? There's also a significant chance that a missionary will fail where Confu is already established (Broberg and St Pete). I'd say do Horse and Silverton first (guaranteed success) and once they're ready, launch the GA. Do Broberg 3rd, then St Pete since it doesn't matter. Maybe taking the missionary travel time and GA timing into account it would be OK to try Broberg first--I'll have to look.

In the west, how about stacking our 2 caravels a bit west of Delhi? If we sit on the clams them his caravel could kill one of ours and safely heal in Delhi but if he has to come out and get us and can't get back home in the same turn, we could have our healthy caravel kill it if our first loses to his. I think it would also increase the odds of the galley coming out so we could kill it, or have our knight attack the units it lands. We have quite a few units tied up out there trying to keep the settler boxed in--I'd really like to have the knight available a little to the east to take out some of those Lbows Gandhi is amassing.

Silverton must have just grown--I'll take off the silver mine.

Plan for next couple turns:
Change Silverton mine worker to coast--grow grow grow.
Stack our caravels and dare Gandhi to come out ~~(tentative--will wait for OK before playing)~~ on clams
Build mine on 2nd Horsey desert hill.
Bring Silverton worker back to mainland (if it won't slow the galley).
Shuffle the Lbows by Broberg.
Play footsie with barb galley, hope he doesn't land troops.
Run 100% research until 1 turn from finishing Nat'lism, then 0%.
Carry settler on galley to found Copperville, camp furs ASAP, pop borders ASAP. Defend with St Pete Xbow when we can spare it.

Builds
Moscow: settler(1), Lbow for Seaside, Islamic monastery, Islamic missionaries (first to Broberg)
St Pete: Xbow for Copperville, Lbow
Seaside*: Confu temple, Islamic temple or harbor
Broberg: Mace
Horsetropolis: library, theatre
Silverton: theatre

Backwards Logic · Nov 1, 2009

No, we want whatever religion we are spread everywhere for the extra 100% GPP. Broberg would have to be first for the timing reason - he'd get there just as the last missionary is built. I think the pros outweigh the cons here. We have to stall anyway for 100% money for the GA - at least three turns then we're only waiting three more for the rest of the missionaries to spread. We make Churchill happy who may decide he's now willing to trade Astronomy (and perhaps Liberalism too - we won't know until we trade for Education). From a few old threads I looked at it looks like the probability of the missionary failing is around 9% - 14% per religion in each city, and if pop has anything to do with it (I'm not sure but one would think it does) the cities have grown enough to allow a second religion in the city.

The Silverton worker can probably board the galley this turn, so along with the settler it could transport them both over to start on Copperville.

I don't want his galley to come out of port. If it does it'll probably have the caravel guarding in it coastal waters. Which means we'd have to kill the caravel at around 50% odds or damage it enough so the the galley comes up as the best defender for the second attack for a chance to even kill it. I don't like those odds. What you say has merit with regards to the caravel crashing us, but I really don't want to see the galley escape period.

I'm not worried about the barbs to our east since there's only one galley involved right now. He'll likely keep flipping back and forth between going north and going south as long as we keep moving in the same order. If he doesn't attacking the galley is always an option to eliminate it completely. If he lands on Silverton he'd have to do it pretty far away from the city itself, so we'd have some warning to run a longbow over from Horstropolis if necessary.

Xcalibrator · Nov 1, 2009

Played 3 more turns to 92 (1718 AD--we got the Great Eng this turn) and uploaded save. Here's the turn log from the upload page:

Spoiler :

Finishing 89/473/1712 AD: Parthian has 3 maces, 1 warrior, 3 workers in the environs.

90/1714: Gandhi withdraws both cats and 1 Lbow. His carvel kills one of ours (naturally), down to 1.2/3. Our other caravel is now at full strength but Gandhi's has Combat1. I think my plan was better.

Research set to 0% after we were 1 turn from completing Nat'lism--now 14. BTW, I pulled Moscow's 2 scientists and put them on workshops to speed up Lbow, etc. builds. When/if it's clear that's not necessary I'll put them back, but we want those missionaries ASAP. Moscow finishes settler, starts Lbow (just over 1 turn). St Pete finishes Xbow for Copperville, starts Lbow(4). GP progress bar says St Pete in 2 turns. Barb galley heads back north (yay!). Our galley is ready for the settler and is carrying a worker, too.

91/1716: Horsey finishes library, starts theatre (22), now working tiles for max food. Settler boards galley. Still playing games with the barb galley. St Pete GP in 1 turn. Nobody else has Nat'lism (I've checked every turn). Silverton grows to 8, I reassign silver to coast again. Gandhi now has 2 cats + Lbow 1E of Delhi, next to our forest hill Wood1 pike.

92/1718: Our pike kills one cat, the other withdraws after combat (0.5/5); no Lbow attack. We're down to 1.8/6. Oooh, settler is off the galley (or is it a new one?) and 1S of Delhi with a Lbow. Delhi now has 2 caravels. I think we should valiantly withdraw. Moscow completes Lbow (sent to Seaside), starts Islamic monastery(1). Broberg finishes mace, tenatively starts caravel(5). Great Eng born in St Pete!!! Workboat nets Seaside clams. Settler and worker unload from galley, which heads back east. Eastern caravel moves back north to block barb galley. (BTW, I've been moving to the offshore fish to "block" the barb galley from continuing south.)

Seaside is at 2 unhappy but will finish temple and get another Lbow next turn. Growth in 3 (likely 1 after next turn). What's the point in growing past the happy cap? We get no extra specialists. How about getting back to that settler (7 turns to finish--can't we at least work on the settler for a few turns since we're at max pop)? An Islamic temple would also take 7 also if we keep all those hammer tiles in use, which we won't. Reassigning the engineer will help a little, but if we're going to run the max number of specs during the GA the temple will not be completed in time so it would be better to do the settler. Think about it? Moscow is going to be tied up with a bank, SoL, and lots of other good stuff it needs. We need to settle more land ASAP--can't hold Gandhi forever, and he may have 2 settlers now--well, we could, but it would be too costly right now.

I have not redone specialist assignments, which we can do now that St Pete has popped. Chopping the forest where Copperville will be founded next turn will not give us any hammers, for the record. We need to decide what to build in Broberg (caravel? Too late?), where to move our sole surviving western caravel (run away!), and where to move our wounded pike.

Backwards Logic · Nov 2, 2009

Xcalibrator said:
Seaside is at 2 unhappy but will finish temple and get another Lbow next turn. Growth in 3 (likely 1 after next turn). What's the point in growing past the happy cap? We get no extra specialists.

You're looking at it very simplistically which is okay, since I haven't totally filled you in on how it works. The bold is not true, and I'll prove it to you.

Basically we're abusing the starving mechanics. Once the food bin is empty, cities will starve at the rate of one pop per turn regardless of how much the city is starving. The underlined is the key part, so I'll try to make this pretty clear.

S + U >/= 10

Huh?

We have 10 turns of GA where we want to run as many specialists as possible. Therefore, Seaside will end up starving to squeak out as many specs as possible. Depending on the rate of starving, the food bin will empty from full to zero in "S" time (represented as turns). When "S" reaches zero, we begin to lose 1 pop per turn while the city continues to starve.

"U" is the number of unhappy people present in the city. When S reaches zero, since the bin is empty the city starts to lose pop at the rate of one per turn. Naturally, we wouldn't want to lose any specialists as we starve, so they'd starve away instead. Now once S = 0 and we start digging into the population, here's where the abuse comes into play.

Since the city will lose one pop while it's starving regardless of the food income (ie, if it's still starving, it doesn't matter how much food is coming in anyway), why work any tiles? When S > 0, we'd naturally we working a few seafood tiles to slow the rate at which S depletes, which in turn delays when the city starts losing pop. Remember the equation I made up earlier? Since U is likely a fixed number when the GA starts, we'll want to make S the number to make the equation true (ie, adjust the rate of starving by working X number of Seafood tiles). Since the city we'll be starving and losing a pop, why continue to work the Seafood tiles? Let's say X = 4, that's four extra specialists while U > 0. If we have 5 unhappy people, that's five turns of 4 extra specialists! See what I'm getting at? I hope all of this jargon makes sense.

So basically, the higher number of unhappy people we have, the less tiles we'd need to work during the food bin emptying stage to satisfy S and keep the equation true.

Xcalibrator said:
Moscow is going to be tied up with a bank, SoL, and lots of other good stuff it needs. We need to settle more land ASAP--can't hold Gandhi forever, and he may have 2 settlers now--well, we could, but it would be too costly right now.

He's only got one settler - last save I saw he only had one caravel, he now has two, so there's no way he built both a settler and a caravel in three turns. Moscow is three techs away from SoL build and copper needs to be hooked up to the city, and even with tech trades for Education there's not a whole lot Moscow needs infrastructure-wise. University and Bank for sure, but we'll have both done long before SoL comes into play. We only need one more settler to settle the entirety of the continent, so Moscow can certainly find time to build one while we wait for SoL.

Good job playing, though it would have been nice if the RNG didn't continue to screw us over. That catapult withdrew at 15.8% odds, his caravel won at 34.5% odds, we lost a two maces at what, 96% odds... With that in mind Broberg will need another Caravel, so building it makes sense. St. Pete after the longbow could build yet another mace.

Money-wise we need a bunch of turns of 0%, enough to build it up comfortably so there's no fear of going broke during the GA. Running 0% will also allow the missionaries to spread Islam around while also allowing Seaside to keep on growing. I think it's in our best interests to try and trade for Astronomy from Churchill. When oceanic trade routes open up we'll be able to connect both furs and copper with Moscow and the other cities. Appeasing Churchill (who right now won't trade it to us) to try an make him like us enough so he'll trade it (and/or Liberalism with maybe Nationalism and Gunpowder) should be on our radar and thus we do everything we can to make it happen. So spreading Islam to our other cities (6 turns) while building the treasury up is what I'd recommend. GA in 7 once the religion is spread and Taj is rushed, then flip to CS/Pac/Islam 1st turn of the GA. Seaside will have grown and finished either a harbor or temple (I'm leaning toward temple - the health won't be added in time during the growth phase but the two extra happy cap from the temple would be huge).

As for the remaining moves: Retreat the caravel back towards Broberg (nowhere it can be completely safe from Gandhi though), injured pike moves 1 NE away from the catapult and longbow. We'll use him to escort the missionary over to Broberg assuming he's healthy enough for such activity.

Another thing: De Gaulle has entered WHEOOHRN. We're probably not going to be the target - No Astro, and of the 5 leaders he likes us the second-most behind Mao, who's he's pleased with.

Xcalibrator · Nov 2, 2009

I understand the excess pop/starving concept, but it's not clear to me that it's optimized. How about spamming some more units in Moscow (after the missionaries, and probably we'll have traded for Gunpowder) and sending them to Seaside for more HR happiness? We could really use some more units to keep a lid on Gandhi (may be too late), keep our power rating up, and otherwise make it harder for anyone to attack us. Also, although it would take more analysis, can we optimize where/when the GP pops occur? Seaside is going to dominate, thus raising the GP-popping threshold for all other cities. Ideally we'd pop in Broberg before Seaside so that Broberg can start accumulating GP points for its next pop. Likewise, if we can tweak things so that pops occur in other cities just before Seaside pops that would help, too. [Edit: Bah, that's probably not worthwhile/feasible. But just in case two cities are very close, let's at least look at the possibility as we play.]

Yes, retreat our caravel to Broberg. In fact, how about using him to carry an Islamic missionary to Broberg? I suspect we could speed up the proselytizing by a turn if the order were Silverton, Broberg, Horsey. We'd have another caravel (or close to it) by the time the caravel got back to Broberg 4 turns from now, which could then be used to bother Delhi.

Let's talk about techs; I'm worried about delaying Nat'lism. What happens if someone beats us to it? Here's some info from anion's Reference Guide:

Code:

Trading behavior: very averse, averse, moderate, willing
Precentages refer to known techs that the AI would want to trade (ave)

Churchill       averse, 30%
DeGaulle        moderate, 40%
Gandhi          averse, 20%
Mao             willing, 50%
Roosevelt       averse, 30%

We want to trade Nat'lism for Education, and then that opens up Liberalism (which we need for Free Religion before the end of the GA) and Economics. We'd also like to trade for Astronomy and Gunpowder, and we'll need Printing Press (not yet discovered by anybody) to open up Democracy after Consitution. Churchill has Astro and he and Mao have Gunpowder (correct?). Who has Liberalism other than Churchill? I seem to recall that just about everybody has it. Mao might have used his recent Great Eng to bulb Gunpowder or he might have teched it himself. Can we tell which? Given the diplo situation and AI tech trading behavior, what is our plan assuming we get Nat'lism first? And keep in mind that it's very likely that at least 1 AI is actively teching it right now so that they will give us less in exchange for it.

I won't speculate on trading strategy without knowing who has what (I can't look at the save now). BL, you've already thought about this some--what's your plan? And what would we do if Nat'lism is devalued by the time we get it? What I'm getting at is that I don't want to delay more than a couple/few more turns before we finish off Nat'lism and build the Taj. Yes, we would have to run a turn or two without Islam (and the Pacifism +100 GP bonus) in a couple cities, but weigh that against the danger of missing out on a tech or two or three that we might have to research ourselves if Nat'lism is too devalued. We're also in danger of squandering the advantage of our Gandhi containment strategy. He's basically busted out in the west (OK, that's not a foregone conclusion but we're pretty thin on units out there and have lost control of the sea again) and things could get ugly quickly in the east. Including Copperville we'll have 6 mainland cities, but we have decent sites for 2 more if we can get to them before barbs or AIs. It may be too late for the western cows. We want those sites to keep Gandhi small and to make our civ stronger. Yes, those 2 sites are worthwhile, particularly with the SoL free specialist. We need to get our power up, not just to dissuade attacks but more importantly to defend ourselves if attacked, and the odds of that happening rise with every turn. We'd be in s*** shape if someone attacked us in the next few turns. We need to trim that window of vulnerability, get Gunpowder, and build a bunch of units, including another caravel or two out east to beat back the barbs. Once we get rolling we'll quickly get Chemistry for frigates, etc. but we need to survive to that point in decent shape. Right now we are extremely vulnerable. We won't have horses (i.e., knights) for many more turns, even though we're now gaining on culture there. Without 10-strength units we need a decent number of weaker units and we don't have them now.

Moscow completes its Islamic monastery next turn and can then spit out missionaries one per turn. They can get to, or get close to, the 3 desired cites 4 turns from now. I really really don't want to wait more than 2 or possibly 3 more turns before we get Nat'lism/Taj/GA. By delaying to speed up GP pops by 1 or 2 turns I think we're putting ourselves in great danger and losing opportunities to enhance our position versus the AIs.

[Edit: 2 AIs are now in WHEOOHRN. Even if we're not the target of either (and that's far from certain), war is imminent and there will be more worst enemies, which means that trading opportunities will either be restricted or may carry heavy diplo penalties. It would be best to trade before war starts.]

Backwards Logic · Nov 2, 2009

Xcalibrator said:
I understand the excess pop/starving concept, but it's not clear to me that it's optimized. How about spamming some more units in Moscow (after the missionaries, and probably we'll have traded for Gunpowder) and sending them to Seaside for more HR happiness? We could really use some more units to keep a lid on Gandhi (may be too late), keep our power rating up, and otherwise make it harder for anyone to attack us.

Well, I wouldn't stick anymore defensive units in Seaside - once the longbow is in we'll be at +3 happy there and flipping to Representation would make it even then. I'd agree with sticking offensive units in there for the temporary bump in happy cap during the GA, but then again I'd rather have them in Gandhi-land.

Xcalibrator said:
Also, although it would take more analysis, can we optimize where/when the GP pops occur? Seaside is going to dominate, thus raising the GP-popping threshold for all other cities. Ideally we'd pop in Broberg before Seaside so that Broberg can start accumulating GP points for its next pop. Likewise, if we can tweak things so that pops occur in other cities just before Seaside pops that would help, too.

I don't think this is realistically possible, especially with your point about not wanting to stall Nationalism and the GA much longer. The current GP bin reads at 240 for Broberg and 270 for Seaside with GP threshold at 405. Broberg right now brings in 9 / turn, so if the GA happens in 3 turns that's 27 more points pushing it to 267. Seaside gets another three from NE and is at 273 (also assuming we run a citizen). Then the GA hits, Seaside can run 11, maybe 12 specs and that point and gets another 200% from Pac and NE while Broberg can run 7 with only the 100% bump from the GA. Seaside blows past Broberg. Even if we wait 7 turns to run the GA, Broberg is at 303 in the bin, Seaside at 277. Broberg runs seven specs which is 42 GP's a turn, thus popping in 3 turns. Seaside runs 12 specs which comes out to 108 / turn and it pops in 2 turns.

Xcalibrator said:
Yes, retreat our caravel to Broberg. In fact, how about using him to carry an Islamic missionary to Broberg? I suspect we could speed up the proselytizing by a turn if the order were Silverton, Broberg, Horsey. We'd have another caravel (or close to it) by the time the caravel got back to Broberg 4 turns from now, which could then be used to bother Delhi.

Good idea, assuming the RNG gods don't kill it next turn. Shaves a few turns off of Broberg, though swapping Silverton with Broberg doesn't help Silverton since the galley isn't in position.

Xcalibrator said:
Let's talk about techs; I'm worried about delaying Nat'lism. What happens if someone beats us to it? Here's some info from anion's Reference Guide:

Code:

Trading behavior: very averse, averse, moderate, willing Precentages refer to known techs that the AI would want to trade (ave) Churchill averse, 30% DeGaulle moderate, 40% Gandhi averse, 20% Mao willing, 50% Roosevelt averse, 30%

We want to trade Nat'lism for Education, and then that opens up Liberalism (which we need for Free Religion before the end of the GA) and Economics. We'd also like to trade for Astronomy and Gunpowder, and we'll need Printing Press (not yet discovered by anybody) to open up Democracy after Consitution. Churchill has Astro and he and Mao have Gunpowder (correct?). Who has Liberalism other than Churchill?

Roosevelt is the only other one.

Xcalibrator said:
Mao might have used his recent Great Eng to bulb Gunpowder or he might have teched it himself. Can we tell which?

I'm not 100% sure here. Mao engineer popped 9 turns ago, but I think he's had gunpowder for longer.

Xcalibrator said:
Given the diplo situation and AI tech trading behavior, what is our plan assuming we get Nat'lism first? And keep in mind that it's very likely that at least 1 AI is actively teching it right now so that they will give us less in exchange for it.

Well, the turn we get it we can only do one trade: Nationalism -> either DeGaulle or Mao for Education. After that we have to wait a turn to open up the other trades. The ultimate goal would be to swing Nationalism + something to Churchill (probably gunpowder) for Lib and Astro (Roosevelt being the fallback option for Lib). I'm leaning towards bulbing PP with the first GS to open this possibility further, though doing so would mean we'd have to delay trading Nationalism period until PP was in. Otherwise if we trade around Nationalism early, we run the risk of the other AI's brokering it to each other while we wait for PP to finish. Things are likely to change though - something may present itself in a few turns which will make all of this moot. Once Nationalism is in hand, then we'll start seriously planning it out. But I hear you on the devaluing of the tech aspect - we do want it sooner rather than later for many reasons.

Xcalibrator said:
What I'm getting at is that I don't want to delay more than a couple/few more turns before we finish off Nat'lism and build the Taj.

And I agree, but...

Xcalibrator said:
Yes, we would have to run a turn or two without Islam (and the Pacifism +100 GP bonus) in a couple cities, but weigh that against the danger of missing out on a tech or two or three that we might have to research ourselves if Nat'lism is too devalued.

We're not talking running one or two specs in the cities that don't have Islam. Broberg will run 6 minimum, which without Islam is another 18 GPP / turn we're losing. Silverton can run 8, probably nine which is another 27 GPP / turn we lose. Horsetropolis is looking like it can run 8 or so which is another 24 GPP / turn. You said it yourself - Seaside is going to blow the other cities away. It's imperative the other cities stay relatively close with their GPP production so we're not relying 100% on Seaside for all of our near-term GP pops.

Xcalibrator said:
We're also in danger of squandering the advantage of our Gandhi containment strategy. He's basically busted out in the west (OK, that's not a foregone conclusion but we're pretty thin on units out there and have lost control of the sea again) and things could get ugly quickly in the east.

I don't agree with this assessment. Our saving grace here is he's only using one longbow to escort his settler outside his territory, and he's done this multiple times. We leave the longbow and knight where they are and we have nothing to worry about. The stack in Bombay is a concern, but St. Pete on unit duty will take care of that. The barbs are showing their ineptitude out east - you've proven it yourself by finding a pattern which causes the barb galley basically sail around in circles.

Xcalibrator said:
Including Copperville we'll have 6 mainland cities, but we have decent sites for 2 more if we can get to them before barbs or AIs. It may be too late for the western cows.

Hardly. We can have the site settled in under 15 turns if we go settler after the missionaries complete. Once St. Pete grows to pop 11 in two turns, the city can crank out as many land units as you want at a pretty good clip - it'll be working 2 mines and an ivory tile and because it's not running specs can continue to build units during the GA.

Xcalibrator said:
We want those sites to keep Gandhi small and to make our civ stronger. Yes, those 2 sites are worthwhile, particularly with the SoL free specialist. We need to get our power up, not just to dissuade attacks but more importantly to defend ourselves if attacked, and the odds of that happening rise with every turn.

I don't particularly agree with this either. The sites are okay, but are going to be a killer in maintenance short-term. The spec from SoL by itself won't be enough to make up for this, but I'll concede I'd much rather have them then Gandhi or anyone else. As zyxy pointed out a while ago (though I'm still not convinced here this is case...), power by itself does nothing to dissuade attacks - it only helps if we are attacked. And I strongly disagree the potential to get attack rises with every turn. 1) With the exception of Roosevelt, no one like Gandhi. Not even a little bit. So the odds of anyone joining Gandhi via him asking or bribing them against us are extremely low. 2) There's the whole diplomatic mess up to our north. DeGaulle is annoyed with everyone except us and Mao. Churchill is annoyed with Mao and he's his worst enemy. Also one of Mao's spies got caught in Churchill's territory to fuel the fire. Roosevelt is pleased or friendly with everyone except Mao. So you know what I see happening? DeGaulle and Mao vs Churchill. Everyone with the exception of Gandhi (who cares) and Roosevelt is cautious with us, and Roosevelt is still pleased with us. As of this moment, they're way more likely to kill each other then sail on over here and bother us, even after we flip to Islam/Confucianism for 9 turns (last turn used for FR revolt)

Xcalibrator said:
We'd be in s*** shape if someone attacked us in the next few turns.

As I said above I think the chances for this are lower than you think. Besides, when wouldn't we be in s$#% shape if someone attacked us? If it helps any, remember the AI suck at amphibious assaults and we got enough units in the northern cities to I think comfortably handle it.

Xcalibrator said:
We need to trim that window of vulnerability, get Gunpowder, and build a bunch of units, including another caravel or two out east to beat back the barbs. Once we get rolling we'll quickly get Chemistry for frigates, etc. but we need to survive to that point in decent shape. Right now we are extremely vulnerable. We won't have horses (i.e., knights) for many more turns, even though we're now gaining on culture there. Without 10-strength units we need a decent number of weaker units and we don't have them now.

My main gripe is spamming a crapton of weaker units shoots the economy. See Genghis Khan in offline games as exhibit "A." We're hovering at 30% (if we ran no deficit), and when Copperville is settled we're looking at 20%. I will say this though, I am okay with St. Pete building land units. As for Broberg making caravels continually - Gandhi settled his GG in Delhi, so his new units will all come out with a promotion right off the bat - his caravels are going to have combat one. Couple that advantage with his extra movement from circumnavigation makes holding the sea a losing cause until Astronomy/Chemistry. We could send the caravel from Broberg when it completes in five turns out east though on barb duty - that I wouldn't take issue with.

Xcalibrator said:
Moscow completes its Islamic monastery next turn and can then spit out missionaries one per turn. They can get to, or get close to, the 3 desired cites 4 turns from now. I really really don't want to wait more than 2 or possibly 3 more turns before we get Nat'lism/Taj/GA. By delaying to speed up GP pops by 1 or 2 turns I think we're putting ourselves in great danger and losing opportunities to enhance our position versus the AIs.

Well, we're going to have stall a little bit anyway to run 100% during the GA. We're going to have to take this on a turn by turn basis. The other option is to go back with the original plan and flip to Confucianism, though we may lose Churchill as a trading partner further than he already is. I doubt Astronomy opens up as a result of being different religions. I think what we'll need to do to keep trade opportunities open is to tech off Nationalism then trade it around before the GA and our religion swap. This way civs are less likely to get the "we just don't like you enough" status when it comes to trading away their techs. What we could do is finish off Nationalism now, trade it around, but wait on the GA. We're gambling (and it's a huge gamble...) the Engineer from De Gaulle was used to build Versailles and the Engineer from Mao was used to bulb gunpowder or was settled. However, we keep Nationalism from devaluing further which I think is your main concern (am I right?) and we could then run the GA at our leisure. We'll get a slight head start on Constitution, be able to run 0% until Islam is spread around, and start playing catch-up that much sooner. But it's a huge risk though...

Xcalibrator · Nov 2, 2009

Backwards Logic said:
Well, I wouldn't stick anymore defensive units in Seaside - once the longbow is in we'll be at +3 happy there and flipping to Representation would make it even then. I'd agree with sticking offensive units in there for the temporary bump in happy cap during the GA, but then again I'd rather have them in Gandhi-land.

Of course, I meant only keep the extra units in Seaside for the GA, then distribute them where more needed (Silverton, Copperville, or against Gandhi, etc.). Since a missionary can reach Horsey the same turn it's built, we could slot in a longbow before the last missionary to get it up to Seaside 1 turn faster.

Yeah, the GP-popping tweaks aren't feasible unless we get lucky on some of the later GP timing.

We're not talking running one or two specs in the cities that don't have Islam. Broberg will run 6 minimum, which without Islam is another 18 GPP / turn we're losing. Silverton can run 8, probably nine which is another 27 GPP / turn we lose. Horsetropolis is looking like it can run 8 or so which is another 24 GPP / turn. You said it yourself - Seaside is going to blow the other cities away. It's imperative the other cities stay relatively close with their GPP production so we're not relying 100% on Seaside for all of our near-term GP pops.

Yes, but ... GPPs are only worth something when they reach a GP-popping threshold, and for all the cities other than Seaside we're only looking at a few pops over the course of the game. Whether those pops occur on turn 245 or 248 or even 267 isn't going to matter much. Seaside's GP production will be at full power during the entire GA, whenever it starts, because it already has Islam. It's not nearly as important for the other cities. See what I mean? This makes it much less attractive to delay the GA. In fact, the only reason for a delay is to increase the population in our cities so they can run more specs. That's not a trivial reason, but again the benefit (in terms of how many GPs we get and when) is marginal, and the potential costs (losing trading opportunities, delayed GA production bonuses, etc.) can be quite large.

You're probably right about Gandhi having only the one settler, and continuing to dither with it. But if he gets his act together and puts it on the galley then there's little to nothing we can do about him escaping and settling a new city. It's not a huge deal, but it leaves less room for us, and we may miss out on a good site. As for the barb galley, I'd like to believe that if we keep doing the same dance with our caravel we'll keep him tied up, but eventually something will change. We need another caravel over there ASAP, whether built in Moscow or sent over from Broberg.

Regarding city maintenance costs, yeah, they're pretty significant to start, but we're basically going to be running a specialist economy for quite awhile. We can afford it, and the gain in hammers and "loss" in land that we don't have to conquer later on will be worth it. I'm not sure what zyxy said, but power does matter in dissuading attacks. I think his point (or that made by someone else in the previous SGOTM) was that the threshold for dissuasion was pretty high, and not likely to be met by us. In any case, more units would very likely be a good idea. We don't need that many, just so we have 2 or 3 in all our coastal cities, with a few more in spots where they could respond to trouble quickly--boy it sure would be nice to get those horses back for knights. They're insurance--probably won't need 'em, but if we lose a city it's pretty well gone for good in this game. It would be great if the AI messed each other up, but even then it's likely we'll get dragged into something or have to worry about getting somebody annoyed at us.

Yeah, agreed about the turn-by-turn business. Geez, when are things going to get to the point where we can just play and not sweat every move? Yeah, yeah, soon after the GA.

It can't come soon enough.

No, I don't like the idea of trading around Nat'lism before we build the Taj. :eek:

Huge risk, indeed. The stress and time commitment are killing me right now so I'd really like to hand off, which was my intention with the upload. CB, you're free after Tuesday? BL, you're free now? Can someone play a turn or two soon? We need to put that Seaside citizen back as an engineer, build and transport those missionaries, get that Islamic temple in Seaside, grow grow grow, keep the barb galley busy with our secret dance moves...

Backwards Logic · Nov 3, 2009

I'm trying to figure out many specs we can run during the GA, but without knowing each city's pop at that ever-changing point, it's a bit difficult. I've figured out if we still flip to Islam, we only have to run 3 turns of 0% to get it to spread everywhere which also is enough (I think...) to run 100% for the duration. The good news is if Islam fails anywhere, Confucianism is still a fallback option - we're not stuck revolting to Islam. So let me ask you this: Barring anything catastrophic or out of the ordinary, is 3 turns of 0% acceptable? If so I can play the three turns out which has already been planned out (missionaries in Moscow, units in St. Pete, everywhere else grows).

Xcalibrator · Nov 3, 2009

I can live with 3 turns. But I'd go with Islam even if a conversion fails--just have another missionary ready to go, which can be used for St Pete if all goes well. Good luck!

Backwards Logic · Nov 3, 2009

Alright, am playing the three turns of 0% now. Will edit post when I'm finished. One thing I've figured out that needs to be done now: Broberg has to remove one spec to get the food bin full - I'd like to run 8 specs out of the city if possible - it causes a huge difference in GP pops assuming Islam spreads.

EDIT: 1715 - ran caravel away, swapped out spec in Broberg, double-checked other cities, moved new mace from Broberg into Gandhi land.

IBT - Our caravel puts up a valiant fight, taking his combat 2 caravel with him but loses (just barely) to Gandhi's second caravel.

1720 - Settler disappears again, likely loaded in galley. Longbow remains 1 S of Delhi. Longbow from Bombay moves 1 S. Monastery in Moscow done, missionary started. Seaside temple done, start temple. Seaside also back to happy cap. Copperville settled, culture starts to be built (3 turns). Barb swordsman looks extremely frustrated as a giant mountain blocks his way. Our eastern caravel continues to play chicken with the barbs. Tech situation the same.

IBT - Stack in Bombay whittled by a catapult and a longbow as our cover promoted pike wipes them both out, but loses to the third longbow. Bombay down to 3 longbows with 2 in the field.

1722 - Furs hooked in Copperville; as expected furs not present in core cities. Longbow finishes in St. Pete and has grown to pop 11. Tiles shifted, mace started, completes in 5. City stagnant. First missionary done in Moscow, since the caravel sunk he'll have to walk on over but I'd already planned for this eventuality. No change with regards to our spread rate. Seaside up to pop 15, unhappy at one. Silverton grows to pop 9, growth to 10 in three. Barb galley continues to move in circles. The only issue here is the longbow that moved 1 S from Bombay is now in position to attack our crossbow. I've stuck the crossbow on the hill and given him Guerilla I to be on the safe side. The promo does nothing for us later, but he's no good dead... Tech situation static. This is our last turn of 0%.

IBT - Another caravel finishes in Delhi - he's got two now... Longbow that threatened our crossbow and has moved within range of our Knight. Odds are at 99.12% in our favor. I'll leave the decision to attack up for discussion.

1724 - Most of the moves have already been made. Galley is position to pick up the missionary next turn. Missionary for Broberg has a mace escort and could have an injured pike help out too. There's two longbows to the mace's SW that could threaten him, but they are protecting a worker which has put a road down. Question becomes what promo to give the mace, cover or Woody I. Crossbow for Copperville hasn't moved yet, pending outcome of possible battle between our knight and his longbow. Copperville builds need to be discussed too - borders pop in one turn. A worker has started chopping a forest for a possible work boat should the border pop reveal a way around the barb peninsula. If not possible builds would be a courthouse or library. Worker moves need to also be discussed - since the site is relatively food poor, even after the crabs are hooked, I'm leaning towards windmills on the hills for a little bit of everything.

We go 100% this turn. Money is going to be (as I predicted) damn close - at current numbers we're going to be 8 (8!) gold short, though the GA should change this. It looks like Broberg can run the 8 specs like I was hoping, but it'll be close and I'm leaning towards removing the two mines for a turn to get the bin as close to full as possible. I'll run some numbers and see how long I need these 8 specs for. Everywhere else though looks pretty good. Horsetropolis grows to pop 9 next turn, Silverton grows to 10 in 2 and Broberg with some tile finagling can get its bin almost full. Churchill has also come out of WHEOOHRN. And I thought this was pretty funny the barbs just spent a bunch of turns building a cottage on a river grassland tile, now they're tearing it down and replacing it with a workshop. Make up your mind, you mindless barbarians!

EDIT #2: I'm thinking about going 100% next turn to finish Nationalism (actually go whatever % it takes to finish the tech in one turn), 0% for the next turn (the Taj rush turn) then go 100% for the GA. There should be enough money then to get all 10 turns of 100% in.

Save:

Xcalibrator · Nov 3, 2009

It would take awhile, but the Copperville workers could build a fort W of the city to get a workboat across if necessary. I can't open the save now and will be busy for several more hours but I'd say have the knight attack unless you think he'll be in danger of getting killed while wounded the next turn. I don't recall if he's close to 10 XPs but if we could give him a medic promo that would be very handy for healing our other units (and himself).

Yes, please finish off Nat'lism and trade it around ASAP, and build the Taj. If we get Nat'lism, rush the Taj that same turn, and then trade the same turn there's no way anyone will beat us to the Taj--we confirmed this before, yes? Sounds like that's what you're planning to do. Go for it!

Xcalibrator · Nov 3, 2009

Looked at the save. I guess move our Copperville Xbow into the forest so Gandhi's Lbow can't. Leave the knight unmoved for now so he could maybe attack a settler landing party, or attack the Lbow if he moves closer (so the knight could get back into position). Maybe shuffle our units around Broberg and near Delhi to keep Gandhi's worker off our nice defensive forest hills. That's not all bad if he chops the flatland forests--it leaves him with no defensive bonuses so we can kill his units more easily if they venture out in the future, particularly once we muskets and more knights.

St Pete should pop borders in 6 turns, helped a bit by the Taj. That will give us the coastal grass back and speed up recovery of the horses and another tile or two. Boy, it would be sweet to get somebody else to take Bombay! Dream....

What is the plan with the three (?) cities very close to increasing population? Wouldn't it be better to top them off with food before running food deficits in the GA? Maybe that's what you're planning. Just keep in mind that we will likely want to get citizens lost to starvation back after the GA, which means running fewer specs for awhile to get a food excess. I haven't run the numbers but it may be best in the middle-run to keep starvation to a minimum, maybe none. Can you comment, BL? Generally, things look very good. Feel free to play more tonight (please!

), but please take my thoughts about food/specs into consideration.

Backwards Logic · Nov 3, 2009

The three cities (Broberg, Horse, and Silver) and their subsequent pop is at the forefront of the GP planning. I need to figure out three things: one, how many specs can each city run comfortably, two, if the city is starving how many turns can I get out of the extra specialists before they start starving away and three, timing our GP pops so that Broberg, Silverton, and Horsetropolis all can pop one GP either in or slightly after the GA. The wildcard in all this is is a successful Islam spread to each of the cities. Don't worry, it's all being taken into account.

EDIT: I'll probably play up until the start of the GA, which is 2 more turns or so. I'll have the most up to date and accurate numbers to use for the specialist and GP calculations and then from there I'll be able to plan the GP pops a bit better.

Backwards Logic · Nov 3, 2009

1724 - Mace promoted to woody I for defense. Other tiles rearranged accordingly. I am SO glad we chose not to attack the longbow. A little voice in my head was telling me not to, and you came forth and backed it up.

IBT: Gandhi unloads his settler RIGHT NEXT TO OUT KNIGHT AND LONGBOW. 98.68% odds with our Knight to kill one longbow. We take no damage, and our Knight is now at 11/10 xp. Not to mention we replace one of our sacrificed workers. Nationalism is finished, Constitution started.

1726 - De Gaulle offers up Education, World Map, and 90 Gold for it. Mao, the worst enemy of Churchill does not offer any gold for it. Deal to De Gaulle made, but that wasn't the only trade of the round. Mao hooked up incense and we traded one of our excess clams for it. Islam is successful in Horsetropolis. Taj rushed in St. Pete. Due to an error on my part Broberg will miss a turn of Pac, assuming Islam is successful there. Oh well, I wasn't stalling the GA anymore anyway... Borders pop in Copperville and reveal a passage to the crabs, work boat chopped out and completed. The merchant in Bombay has disappeared.

I'm stopping here because we go GA next turn and I gotta figure out what our cities are going to do.

EDIT: There's A LOT of variables with this. I'm going to take a day to figure this out. I can get Broberg and Silverton to pop during/around the GA, but Horsetropolis doesn't make it. I'd like to change that so like you say the GP points aren't 'wasted' for a while. The good news (besides Gandhi's settler joining our ranks)? It looks like Constitution will be done before the GA is over. If we ran 100% now, it'd finish in 12 turns. During the GA we'll be getting more beakers and running somewhere around 35 scientist specialists total, so it's well within reach. My question to you is if we were to pop an engineer, and it looks pretty likely our first one will be an engineer, what would you rather use him for: increase the length of the GA (which should get Horsetropolis to produce a GP) or save him for either SoL or Mining Inc? If we pop an artist I think using him as GA fodder is a no-brainer.

Speaking of SoL, I've been thinking. If we build it, that's good for 10 specialists max. If we let another AI build it, once we capture it that's a free specialist per city we capture on the other continent. Wonders don't get lost due to nukes, there's no city razing on so we'd have to keep every city over there anyway, and let's face it, there's a ton of cities over there where SoL would really be a benefit. We wouldn't have to research Democracy since we're not going Emancipation anyway so we'd save 4233 beakers. Long-term I'd research it for Universal Suffrage (and Emancipation) since rush buying is incredibly powerful and to really leverage it we'll need all of the help we can get transferring from an SE to a CE to rush buy. But the more I think about it, the less I think the hammer investment and smaller payout than what it can/would be is worth it.

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