SGOTM 12 - Plastic Ducks

Plan to AL

Tech path -- Cons (twist this tech from Roosevelt is not practical in short time)->SP->Corp->Lib->AL, I'd like to get it as soon as possible, so will use partial slider plus building wealth.

Military -- New York -> Seattle -> Everything to Washington

Diplomacy -- demand cash from Churchill 2 turns later

Religion -- switch to Confu

Civic -- Repre + Serf + Merc + FR Pacifism for the 1st 5 turns then to Slavery + OR

Worker actions -- Watermills>Windmills>workshops (will gradually change non riverside and then riverside farms to workshops)

City build -- mostly will continue on original build, except

Guangzhou -- Forge

Moscow -- Units/CM/Levee

SP -- Grocer

CM to Tours -- CMs

Issues need careful thinking after AL

Tech path

City build -- Especially for island cities with few land tiles, do we want Factories and coal plants in them?

Victory -- which turn? and this will determine many other things.

Corporation -- How many turns will Sushi and mine pay back? and this will determine which cities need them.

Probably more later, and your thoughts?

Tech path:
Ok so twisting Constitution would mean we can't make progress on the war... makes sense let's finish it ourselves.

Military: agree, makes the most sense.

Diplo: 1 turn or 2 turns... whatever makes most sense.

Religion: yup

Civic: sounds good.

Worker actions: good as well. I had a workboat skip its turn in Beijing... no point putting it in range of that Trireme again.

City builds: ok. You may want to re-switch Oren to a Bank, dunno what I thought there.

Otherwise: what about Levees? Is that the next build for next cities that can get them (except when it's marginal ex. Chita)?

post-AL: All these answers depend on how many turns are left in the game. I think we can agree it's less than 100 but more than 50.

Factory+CP is 400 H, divide by 1.5 thanks to Forge+OR = 267H. Therefore to be a good investment, a city must produce at minimum 3~6 hammers.

1-tile islands and low production cities: imo we can rule out all cities with a prospect of fewer than 6 hammers/turn base. Even then, the lost pop = lost research power so we need to draw the line somewhere... imo 10~12H.

Victory:

1)
2)
3)
Corporations:
Sushi: cost per city is between 1.5:1 and 2:1 gold/food... a pretty solid investment. Cities to get it: as long as we can spread it early enough, this allows us to use mostly hammer tiles and keep growing. Minus 4 gold*3 in Corporation HQ, very viable option just about everywhere that can get it soon enough.

Mining: the bigger question is are we going to get a GE.
Otherwise it's 1.3g:1H which is pretty amazing atm. Add in the 100% multiplier and it's almost instant payback despite the spread cost... maybe ~5 turns?
Any city building wealth/research will profit from it if it has Factory+CP.

Otherwise: what about Levees? Is that the next build for next cities that can get them (except when it's marginal ex. Chita)?

Click to expand...

Levee costs 180H, for ~50 turns, cities need 4 river tiles to make it profitable, will check which cities are worthy.

I agree we need more than 50 turns to launch, but not many more, with GAs and building wealth and science, the research will be incredibly fast.

When considering the cost and benefit of corporation, we also need to consider the hammer and cash needed to spread them, so the cost is higher than your count. Another factor needs to be considered when spreading Sushi is the happiness cap, so high food plus and high whipping anger cities get lower priority.

Another cost of factories and CP in island cities is the pollution since they can't get the 3GD effect.

Good point for levees.

Corporations will also accelerate building of spaceship parts. Agree that not everywhere will get them but a lot of places will get a good benefit off them.

We definitely want Corporations in keys cities, but we need to figure out when to stop producing CEs.

One question, our research is fast now, We will have AL 4 turns later, tech path next? Optics is needed for Medicine, what if no one else research it 10 turns?

I can play tonight if you have no other issues.

1 issue:

You say 180H for levee for 50 turns so minimum 4 river tiles... however we will be in GA most of that time so those tiles are worth more than 1H each... basically I think all eligible cities should get a levee as GA will make it profitable with the exception of Chita and maybe Novogorod who will be a pretty marginal city.

But you probably already figured that out.

Optics: yes research it... it's our best bet to beat Gandhi to circumnavigation (and even then it'll be tight unless we whip a Caravel)

Other than that... go ahead when you can!

All right, if that the levee in that city adds more than 4H, will build it.

Played and saved uploaded. However I made a mistake that I forgot to save the file, so there's only autosave file to continue. I'll PM AlanH about that.

Game Log

Again too long because of battles.

Game report

T203 -- New York was fallen with merely 4 cats and a mace, battles in the hill city IS terrible, fortunately half of the units went for Chengdu and Seattle.

T204 -- Explain this, could you?



T 205 -- Gandhi's demand, I grand this time, he does not have horse.



T206 -- I changed my mind and sent the SOD in Boston to Chicago since I killed several American units on the way to Washington and the loss in New York were not very heavy. With the reinforcements, the SOD in New York should be able to take Washington.





Also, we produce another GS in Moscow, NOT a GE. And how to use the GG?

Wow, that's a major bummer :S I guess you'll have to go back to t205 to get Liberalism.

I'm off for a bit but things look pretty good.

@ Churchill!

In fact I have the autosave of T206, but I did move the stack toward Chicago and change most city build to Factory.

kossin said:

Wow, that's a major bummer :S I guess you'll have to go back to t205 to get Liberalism.

Click to expand...

This reminds me something really bad, the game has a bug -- when you continue from autosave, the liberalism has no effect.

@ AlanH and Erkon

T205 and T206 autosaves attached for your reference.

It's not a bug, it's a feature to prevent the infinite techs bug.

And yes, that's why I said t205.

AlanH replied my 1st pm, but have not responded on my 2nd pm, where I asked whether to continue from T205 autosave.

Any suggestion for the next set? Tech path, city build, war, GG usage?

I'd like to stop at the time when we are ready to switch the civic 3rd time and we can think carefully about it. Civics have significant effect than other things now.

Right after I demanded cash from Churchill, he gave up war attempt, have you seen any info about this in the forum?

No, I don't ever recall seeing a post about this... however I had this exact thing happen to me.
In one one of my DR (the Maya one), Catherine was about to DoW me so I begged Archery and she went and switched targets instead.

My guess is it's due to the AI not being able to DoW soon enough and then has to cancel the military buildup or something like that. Just watch for his SoD to make sure he doesn't decide to backstab us on the first turn it ends. I'll try to look over again.

Give some time to AlanH, he probably has to check quite a few things before allowing to continue from a previous turn. (I mean, unless they have some pretty incredible software they can't access WB and give us AL from t206).

Techs: I'd say straight to Medicine and spread Sushi. Cancel the seafood/rice we're giving away and acquire extra resources (like the clams next to Moscow).
Run extra Engineers so we get a better chance of getting an Engineer after Factories are in.

After that, the logical destination is Superconductors to raise our tech even higher. But this can be discussed later, we will need to determine whether science or hammers will be limiting factor for end game.

Builds
Finish spreading Confu to cities that need to whip stuff or that will run mass specs... worthless to other cities. Also the Industrial Parks would be nice to get for a boost towards GEs. You may need to build a few Recycling Plants where unhealth is too high.
We can probably raise our chances in Moscow to 40~50% for this GP, 60%+ for the next. Or 100% from another city if we can run 6 Engineers (counting the free one)... 72 gpp/turn with Pacifism+GA.

War
To go after Churchill, we will need bigger guns. That means Infantry likely... or Cannons and/or Airships... we may require Rifling in that case.
Keep pounding on Roosevelt, take his remaining good cities - the ones that will be a strict positive to our economy (I guess at this point, that's every city since they are pretty full of buildings).

I'm not sure we will have time to go after Gandhi (and if it will be cost effective as we would need a fleet additionally) so sending some workers to his land to start cleaning up may be in order (we can gift him up and remaining AIs to Ecology so they help us later on).
Actually, I'm not even sure it's cost effective to go after Churchill but probably yes.

Trojan city:
When we take it, let the spies sit in the city for 5 turns and allow the city to gain some of our culture before gifting to Mao. That way, we can get full discount culture+stationary+closeness+spending for a very cheap Communism and also spread Confu over there. The final cost could be as low as 630~714 EP. (15~17%)

EDIT: extra GG: we can make a nice Mace CR buster with it to upgrade to Infantry cheapo. Or settle in capital for Rep bonus (should be worth about 500 beakers from here to end).

My consideration of the tech path is whether we go for other techs before finishing SM.

Regarding GE, yes after we build factory, the chance to get it will be much higher, or in the worst case, there's a free GE from Fusion.

I am not very sure about war target next, Gandhi has wonder like HG, which is good, however we need 5 galleons.

Regarding the Trojan city near capital, you might notice that DG is not working the water tile, so it won't grow. Either we raze it and settle a new one or send spies to the northern city, what's your choice?

Also choice of the GG?

GG: I edited my post while you were posting CR macemen->infantry or settle for beakers.

Raze and resettle trojan city. We probably have enough EP as is to steal Communism and build Kremlin... would be nice to get it before whipping Factories etc.

GG -- I know the choice, but unsure. and your preference?

Then the question is which cities need to be whipped before Kremlin? 5 turns until settle the new city and gift and probably ~4 turns to complete Kremlin. Things are getting more complicated now, I start to be unsure.

Duckweed said:

AlanH replied my 1st pm, but have not responded on my 2nd pm, where I asked whether to continue from T205 autosave.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay. I've consulted with Erkon, and we have agreed that it's safest for you to replay from the Turn 205 autosave. Please do so as accurately as you can.

Settle GG. Never know when that extra 500 beakers could mean 1t faster research of a key tech.

Infantry should be good enough to clean up regardless.

Kremlin: let's see...
research SM - 3~4 turns (from now, SM after Optics)
raze city - we just need a unit nearby. 1 turn
settle city+spread confu - we just need a settler+CM nearby and wait 1 turn. 2 turn
spies having enough discount to steal Communism - Anywhere from 2 to 5 turns.
Build Kremlin - 4~5 turns after getting Communism.

My estimate is therefore about 8~10 turns to complete Kremlin. Let's say 10.
OR+Forge whips are normally 45H, they'd be 67H with Kremlin.

We can roughly say that each pop will lose 22H (it's actually higher when you add in the Factory) if whipped before Communism but gain the extra production faster.

No Factories can be whipped this turn.
Means 9 turns of extra production vs 22H/pop.
It will be 4~5 pop whips for factories (250/45) so that's 88~110H lost but +25%H for 8 turns.
Coal plant will be (150/52) 2~3 pop whips so another 44~66H lost but +50%H for 6 turns.

Best case scenario 132H lost but overall 62.5% more hammers over 8 turns... meaning a city has to produce more than 26H base to come out ahead.

Worst case scenario... 35H base.

There are more implications of course here, like earlier wealth built, lost commerce, less pop lost, etc. but my analysis tends to say wait for Kremlin and try to get Kremlin ASAP... that means get the spies ready and time some OF.