SGOTM 12 - Plastic Ducks

Civics
I don't think spreading Confu and getting an extra 25% hammers is worth it long term. Either FR or Pacifism.
Slavery is still required for some time.
Others are fine still.

Corps
The most important part is to spread it to our best cities - the ones with the most land tiles for production. Having a railroad network will fasten this process considerably.
I think we are close to the point where we need to start building wealth/research rather than anything else. A few CE, some basic infra and that's it.
Moscow: the OF is capped at (city production - 1). It will only get 72 OF next turn despite really having 111.

Techs
I don't really know, this needs to be tested.
What space tech will slow us down the most?
The 2 engines can be built rather quickly in capital and IW city (chop forests).
Refrigeration: yes, but the alternative is Computers which obsoletes some Wonders and costs more.
Astronomy: we need to keep gifting Churchill for him to research, but even then, is it the right choice? There are just so many techs we can get without Astro and we need to find out what slows us down the most now.

War
I find we are already sorely lacking hammers. Spending more on military is probably not the way to go, we already have to tackle Stalin. Furthermore, we have to start thinking about cleaning up all that fallout across the map. My feeling at this point is to abandon war after taking Mao's Hangzhou and Stalin.

I will update the test game, it will take a few days I think. I've already got the layout of our land done though (except Churchill/Gandhi/Stalin/islands).

GPP
We need 2 more GPs including the SP one. We get a free GS at Physics so Moscow is probably better to use another kind of specialist.
There's also the Fusion GE to consider but I guess he'll only be useful to settle.

kossin said:

Civics
I don't think spreading Confu and getting an extra 25% hammers is worth it long term. Either FR or Pacifism.
Slavery is still required for some time.
Others are fine still.

I think we still need to stay on Slavery and OR for at least 2 more turns since most of cities are still producing infras and are ready for whipping. After that CS plus FR for 5 turns to let cities grows. Spreading Confu is a gain atm, it will get paid back in at most 20 turns regardless of OR bonus. Therefore, try our best to spread it now.

Corps
The most important part is to spread it to our best cities - the ones with the most land tiles for production. Having a railroad network will fasten this process considerably.

This is not right. The most important thing is to spread Mine as fast as possible to cities with factory and CP. It does not matter whether that city is good or not, only the hammer multiplier matters. Every city needs Mine. That's why I mentioned about spreading route. However, Sushi is totally different, it's a burden for big cities with large food plus already, those food plus from Sushi will go to waste due to the health and happiness issue. Therefore, not every city needs Sushi. We need to list which cities need it and when to stop

I think we are close to the point where we need to start building wealth/research rather than anything else. A few CE, some basic infra and that's it.

The potential of our empire of 40 cities is far from saturate now. All cities do not have Obs and RI and many cities do not have Univs, BPT will be doubled ot even tripled when those are up. If we spend 20 turns to setup those infra at half research rate, we can research 2 or 3 time faster in the next 20 turns. As a result. 20*0.5 + 20*2 > 40.

Moscow: the OF is capped at (city production - 1). It will only get 72 OF next turn despite really having 111.

Then hire more scientists than working on hammer tiles.

Techs
I don't really know, this needs to be tested.
What space tech will slow us down the most?
The 2 engines can be built rather quickly in capital and IW city (chop forests).
Refrigeration: yes, but the alternative is Computers which obsoletes some Wonders and costs more.
Astronomy: we need to keep gifting Churchill for him to research, but even then, is it the right choice? There are just so many techs we can get without Astro and we need to find out what slows us down the most now.

The chance that we can get Astro from trade is very low now. The best moment is when I gifted him Corporation, however he researched Gunpowder next, therefore he is very likely beeline MS.

Computer also leads to Fiber.

However, my real question is what to research after Medicine, I don't think too far away now.

War
I find we are already sorely lacking hammers. Spending more on military is probably not the way to go, we already have to tackle Stalin. Furthermore, we have to start thinking about cleaning up all that fallout across the map. My feeling at this point is to abandon war after taking Mao's Hangzhou and Stalin.

I will update the test game, it will take a few days I think. I've already got the layout of our land done though (except Churchill/Gandhi/Stalin/islands).

We have a good number of elite units on hands and need to use somewhere. The war with Stalin needs bombers, then what to do before that? With ~ 10 cannons, we can easily punch Churchill. On the contrary, our production is very good atm.

GPP
We need 2 more GPs including the SP one. We get a free GS at Physics so Moscow is probably better to use another kind of specialist.
There's also the Fusion GE to consider but I guess he'll only be useful to settle.

Other cities can easily produce some GPs in the next 20 turns, so I'd like to burn 1 GS for Electricity, Sci in Moscow get the best return.

Click to expand...

Comments.

OR
Yes, every new spread for at least 20 turns is worth it, however every additional turn in OR is a lot of gold, making those extra cities not really worth it. We need to decide if the extra hammers gained are worth the difference - this I will evaluate.

Corps
Mining - ok, the cities that get the larger benefit are Fact+CP so that other cities can concentrate on finishing their base infra.
Sushi - yes we need a list.

Workers
I'd like to turn a bunch of farms into workshops and more but we have to check how long it will take to clear all that stupid fallout. We should probably start to SF the faraway islands first and leave the close jobs for last (after we launch we can go into Serfdom and spam more workers).

Techs
Will need to be tested... Astronomy obsoletes Colossus and we are still working quite a few water tiles. As long as we're not on 100% slider those water tiles generate extra gpt.

OF in Moscow
That won't solve it, it's just too good at making hammers
We'd need to dump the hammers in a big project (like Apollo) or we will start losing them soon regardless. This may solve our tech question in part... Rifling+Combustion then Astronomy>Physics.
Moscow can be reaffected to building wealth at some point to stop losing OF hammers.

War
Churchill is 3 techs away from Redcoats. What's his research power like? We'll need Bombers and Infantry if he gets those. Cost goes up.
This is another question answered by how long before we can launch.

GPP
Makes sense.... yet another question based on how many turns left.

Civic -- On a 2nd thought, it's probably worthy to stays on OR + slavery for another 5 turns or more. Let's do some math. We have ~30 cities building infras or are ready to whipping now. If the average hammers from those cities are ~16H, we gain 30* 16 * 0.25 = 120 H (should be more since many cities are whipping) at the cost of ~40g more than FR and ~100g more than Pacifism, FR adds ~100B at ~60% science slider and mainly only Moscow takes the benefit of Pacifism.

Workers -- Yes, watermills and workshops > farm, We can start sending workers to Gandhi land ~20 turns before launch and to Churchill's land 10~15 turns before launch.

Moscow -- yes switch to wealth when OF is too high.

War and Tech path-- I'm fine to skip the war with Gandhi and Churchill, then the GG should be settled. Can try to take Hangzhou as soon as possible at some cost. Therefore Rifling can be delayed. Save cash at Astro when we are able to complete Electricity at 100% science slider.

GPP -- Every city getting Sushi will be a GP farm, that's the priority list of Sushi. i.e. Cities with good health and happiness. That's the time when we want Pacifism.

I started going over the save to try and decide which cities would get Sushi - dang, a lot of them could use it! I think this will come down to testing to see how much we can afford and which cities will benefit the most from it.

As for Mining...
Smolensk (so it can help with the spread)
Rostov (IW)
Path to the west:
~Khabarovsk (as far as possible with railroads)
~Tours
~Shanghai+Beijing

Meanwhile, 2 will be sent overseas. 1 for Kras (Moai) and 1 for Yek.
Also spread as much as possible around the cities once the CE heading west is done, favoring cities with Fact+CP already done.

5 turns will be up by then.

Anyway, busy weekend as I said, hopefully I can find some time here and there and finish to update the test game (I'll probably just worlbuilder most of the stuff as I don't see the point in playing from 1100AD to 1540AD).

Sushi -- I'm pretty clear the top list would be -- Moscow (CE from SP)-> Ros and Chita (CEs from SP and Mos) -> Nov and an island city (Sam is probably better than Yek) (CEs from Ros and Mos).

Mine -- Agree with the order mostly, if Kha is your next target, then it's better to save the OF now. Planning and saving OF in the next target so that it can pump one CE in 1 turn immediately is critical for spreading. For the oversea cities, Kras is on the lower list, at least later than Yaro. The thing which make some cities getting higher priority is that they have high production and good location (like Ros, Yek (the CE produce by Mos next turn should go there) and SH) to make them the spreading center. Other cities should be spread on route (like Kha, Tours) and in the order of distance to those center. Workers' current major job is to connecting the railroad network from east to west to at least Washington.

Build and OF in Moscow -- I think hiring specialists is still the best solution. Let Smo take another watermill. Moscow can hire 5 scientists plus 4 merchants without working the iron, copper, horse and the plain hill tiles, so that the OF is minimized. Let Moscow keep pumping CEs, the lost OF should be paid back by faster corporation spreading.

Regarding the test map, I guess it's no need to update the land controlled by Gandhi and Churchill. Through the discussion, I am getting clear on many issues, which makes the test game not that important, how's your thought?

Haven't thought about issues (just got home from work and leaving in 30 minutes for more work) so I'll skip to the test game part:

No I have not updated Churchill/Gandhi lands. Only the land that affects us.

If we choose to go to war then I'll update the relevant areas.

Otherwise, I should be done with updating it tonight or tomorrow evening.

Main reason for doing an update to the test game is to find out how many turns we have left to decide what we need/want.

I am almost done updating the test game... unfortunately I was more busy than expected so it will be completed tomorrow.

It's not like we're in a hurry to finish, we have like 50 more days before the deadline in any case

Plus it will play some psychological games

kossin said:

Plus it will play some psychological games

Click to expand...

I'll leave that part to you, you can even upload the save 1 turn before victory.

The only team seems to be competitive is OSS, their recent culture catching up was impressive. Those culture might be from wonders, science building, and new cities. Which one do you think is the major source? However, unless they also got GLH, we will lead more in 1500AD.

I'd say they went with earlier libraries than us mostly. Wonder-wise, that would represent later wonders which is not GLH. Also I'd bet they went early Oxford as well.

We should know in their next 10 turns if they will be competitive or start falling back with their power graph.

That's my thought too. If they lightbulbed Edu and saved pops, they could have OU ~1000AD. Wonder wise, UoS was worthy at that time if they have a number of religious buildings.

Sounds about right, they have a power stagnation going from 600~1000AD.

I also wonder if they got more lucky than us with HG, that would explain a good part of culture and score (although I suspect part of their score being higher is earlier techs).

"updated" test game.

Ok, so I didn't try that hard to update it.

Major differences:

1 less turn of GA remaining.
1 turn behind on research. (I added spare gold to make up for this)
Some cities are not under revolt but should be.
GPP is out of sync obviously.
Inflation isn't comparable as this is on t170.
City food/hammers/whips out of sync. For some buildings that were completing, I just added it to the city.
Units not comparable... workers are in the same amount but I just dumped them around.

Don't have time to run any simulations right now, Wednesday at earliest probably.

kossin said:

I also wonder if they got more lucky than us with HG, that would explain a good part of culture and score (although I suspect part of their score being higher is earlier techs).

Click to expand...

Right, HG was also a possibility.

If they did active trade in early stage, they will probably feel regretful when they are forced to finish liberalism by someone like Gandhi earlier than planned. Is there anything better than AL from Lib? Hehe, who could imagine that we did not have IW until 1000AD.

1010AD IW iIrc.

Anyway, sorry for the silence in the past days... been pretty busy.

I've just completed my first run to launch date on the test game. I did little micro because it takes too much time.

Turns to launch from now : 38
Built a complete spaceship.
Research: I did cross the 10,000 beakers mark! (This meant techs start coming at 1/turn for virtually all techs).
GP: I got up to the 1600 gpp GP, however, I did not micromanage this.
Research Institutes: they give about 40 beakers a piece!
Workers: we're going to need more! Not only do we have to clear out all fallout, but we will need more to modify some improvements in our land to save 1/2 turns on launch.

With better micromanagement (I ended up with some 3,000 gold), we can lower this to 35 turns or a few less even. This means we can probably keep running GAs until the end of the game.

Mining: indeed goes everywhere
Sushi: I did not spread it very much, but we should spread it to every city that will be building spaceship parts. This means all improvements can be changed to Workshops = more production etc.

Anyway, I will formulate a plan for the next ~5 turns in the next couple of days.

Ok, here is my analysis assuming there are 35 turns left in the game. I will try to answer what buildings will be useful for how many turns based on 1H = 1b = 1g


Disclaimer: I am not taking in account the cost reduction of OR. I assume we won't be using it for very long anyway, Pacifism or Free Religion would serve better.

Regardless...

Hammer buildings

Factory+CP
Cost = 400H, boost of 75% production (and provides Engineer slots)
35t->16 base hammers req for gain
30t->18
25t->22
20t->27
15t->36
10t->40
Conclusion: With Mining Inc coming almost everywhere shortly, every city will have ~20+ H base so we will want Factory+CP within 10 turns, otherwise their usefulness becomes questionable.

Forge
Cost = 120H, boost of 25% production (and 3 )
35t-> 14 base hammers req for gain
30t-> 16
25t-> 20
20t-> 24
15t-> 32
10t-> 48
Conclusion: With Mining Inc coming soon, we'll want Forge within 15 turns. Exception can be made for happy needs as it provides 3 per 40H.

Levee
Cost = 180H, boost of 2H per river tile (1 for city tile), multiplied by 1.25 or 2.
25%/100% boost in target city
35t-> 5/3
30t-> 5/3
25t-> 6/4
20t-> 8/5
15t-> 10/6
10t-> 15/9
Conclusion: check the numbers, build if it's over the threshold.

Mining Executive
Cost = 100H, boost to base H of 16+H
25% boost/100% boost
5t->16/10
Conclusion: spread to every last city with a CH within 30 turns

Priority: Mining exec>Levee(if boost is large enough)>Forge>Factory>CP
If happiness is required, Theatre>Colosseum=Forge>Market>Temple

Science buildings

Library
Cost = 45H (Creative)
25% boost to science
35t-> 6 base science req for gain
30t-> 6
25t-> 8
20t-> 9
15t-> 12
10t-> 18
5t-> 36
Conclusion: we want these everywhere we don't already have them ASAP.

University
Cost = 200H
25% boost to science
35t-> 23
30t-> 27
25t-> 32
20t-> 40
15t-> 54
10t-> 80
Conclusion: If base science is high enough, build, otherwise skip.

Observatory
Cost = 150H
25% boost to science+Sci slot, opens up Research Institute
35t-> 18
30t-> 20
25t-> 24
20t-> 30
15t-> 40
10t-> 60
Conclusion: better than University. Research Institute needs to be taken in account so they are actually better.

Research Institute
Cost = 250H
25% boost to science, 25H to hammers for SS, +12b from 2 free scientists (means at least 21 science)
35t-> 8
30t-> 13
25t-> 19
20t-> 29
15t-> 46
10t-> 79
Conclusion: these are awesome. We should beeline Superconductors ASAP like dingding suggested before the game was up.

Priority: Library>Observatory>Research Institute>University

Happiness, health, etc.

These should be considered carefully. 1 food/turn for 35 turns is 1 or 2 populations. If those pops become a scientist (let's say +9~12 = 10b) then divide the hammer cost by 10, if it's greater than then number of turns remaining, ignore problem and build wealth/science.

What do you think?
5~10 turns max under OR and then Caste System+Free Market(?)+Pacifism/Free Religion as you suggested earlier seems about right.

We need to terraform around 8~10 cities for SS production. These should be grown as large as possible to work all their hammer tiles... whipping non-hammer infra would be counterproductive these.

Your analysis is good, however, you did not consider the effect of whipping powered by the wonder of CR. The cost of factory + CP gets paid back by merely whipping of 8 pops, which can be done in 3 turns.

The priority of build in my mind is:

#1 CM -- Our luck of automatic spreading was not good (only 4 cities), and ourselves also did not do very well. The benefit is big.

A. The cost gets paid back almost instantly by 6 pop whipping of factory and CP, Many captured cities are waiting for religion and there are more infras to be build and whipped. In the rest of turns, you gain 2~3 gpt from Shrine for free.
B. One extra happiness, in another word, it worth a theater.

So we should try our best to spread it to every city of our empire.

#2 CE -- The tricky part is how to plan and save the OF in the cities on route to spread it in the fast way.

I'd like to see your detailed plan of how to spread religion and Mine and Sushi. I posted some suggestions on post #806.

#3 -- Hammer multipliers -- Forge>Factory>CP -- Almost every city needs them, except the future new captured cities like Hangzhou and Stalin's cities. Regarding Levee, most of them were completed or started already, except Beijing, which was heavily whipped and can only build slowly.

#4 & 5 & 6 -- They are not fixed, mostly depends on the health and happiness requirement. Science buildings come ahead when health and happiness allow. However, in most cities, after CPs are online, health buildings are needed immediately, so Harbor>Grocer. We should let cities grow as large as possible since large cities also increase the trade route income, which are not small, 8~10g per domestic route is achievable.

5~10 turns max under OR and then Caste System+Free Market(?)+Pacifism/Free Religion as you suggested earlier seems about right.

Click to expand...

To make the FM profitable than Merc, we need to have ~30 Mines or 20 Mines plus 5 Sushi, so yes, 10 turns is about the time. Also it's the time that cities getting Sushi grow big enough to run specialists. Chita can take the Rice to allow fast growth.

We need to terraform around 8~10 cities for SS production. These should be grown as large as possible to work all their hammer tiles... whipping non-hammer infra would be counterproductive these.

Click to expand...

If we choose Fusion as the last space tech, then 2 strong productive cities (to finish SS Engines in 3 turns) are enough, and we do have them ready -- Moscow and Ros. The other way is to complete composite last, then we need another 5 strong cities. Do we have them?

Wow, sorry Duckweed, I've been completely overwhelmed this week.
I'm afraid I don't have much time for a few more days still.

If you don't mind waiting then I'll try to pick up the pace in a little bit but be warned that my next 2 weeks are pretty full!

If not, then I don't mind if you prefer to play ahead now.

All right, allow me take it in the next two weeks and you are responsible for the rest. Do you have time then?