SGOTM 13 - Gypsy Kings

For active players I think we have Ron, bc and I left. We haven't heard from Griff for several weeks now.

We're down to our last month. We simply do not have the time to take a week to play every 10-turn set. I think we need to discipline ourselves into something like

  1. post "got it"
  2. post draft ppp within 48 hours
  3. get commentary for 24 hours
  4. post final ppp after that
  5. play 24 hours after that

In theory, that's 4-5 days per turn set. We probably won't achieve a rate that is that fast. Real life and game events will dictate against that. If we were able to achieve that, then that gives us 7 turn sets to finish the game. That might be possible, but won't be if we take the calendar time to MM every galley chain. We spent some time to get our opening war optimal, and we did a good job, but the timing of our subsequent warring is less critical because of our planned tech advantages. We're also not running slavery, so the city MM becomes much simpler.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that we can't afford people to post a "got it" on Tuesday and prepare their PPP on the weekend. I also think we need to consider 15-turn sets for the next two while we're mostly building and positioning units (and perhaps attacking Joao).

If any of the active players can't approach that kind of turn-around because they've got too much else on that week, please say so and you can take the turn set after that. Throughput is more important than rotation with the deadline looming.

In extremis, we set up a collaborative Skype/IM session on one of the final weekends to play out the last parts of the game.
 
Yes the time pressure is on. Since our overall war strategy is basically in place, the decisions we make now do make a difference but clearly not as much as the early decision to go for wonders and a high tech war has. Let's implement our overall plan to the best of our ability given the time constraints.

I agree with much of mabraham's feedback to aj. I think attacking joao is on the near term agenda. Willem is beyond our abilities at the moment unless we switch back to slavery which just seems wasteful at this point. We can do better with our bulbing plan to get muskets and possibly cannons.

For Joao, we do need a few more catapults to make an attempt at a finishing blow however. I think we can take a few cities as it is now, but with just the few swords and axes we have it will be hard to take all of his cities. But as mabraham said, PC will build us a few catapults.

Re: barracks
Good point about the +2 :) during nationalism. We should look at a barracks or 2 this upcoming turnset.
 
For those who might be unaware, each time we draft there's 15 turns of 3:mad:. We get to use the unit and add the unhappiness immediately that turn, so (unlike whipping) if you wish to avoid stacking unhappiness, you want to draft the turn after the 3:mad: expire. So, the barracks +2:) makes the first draft feel like a whip. After that, we'll want resources and slider.

We'll be sustainably drafting London about twice every three turns, and are capped at three drafting events per turn. So in a 15-turn cycle we can draft up to 45 times, of which only about 10 will be from London. Others can only come from cities of size 6 or more that have at least 10% of our culture. We don't have enough cities to draft once per city per :mad: cycle. So we should look seriously at drafting again from high-population high-growth places.

The empire does not have to look pretty at the end of the game, it just has to produce enough :gold: to pay for itself. Burn it hard and fast!

Availability of sea transport may be a serious limitation here. Hence wanting galleons. I'm definitely keen on building roads across the island east of England, once we're done with England. Our 2-move UU moves faster on roads than on a galleon, and we don't need as many galleons as we otherwise would. This will accelerate the wars on the Cathy/WvO land mass - we have a galleon or two between England and the land east of it, and another galleon or two east of that land. Six units/turn delivery capacity will be higher than England will produce.

Similarly, about two galleons wandering around the home islands delivering units to the horse tile, and another one or two delivering units from SR to Ragnar's land will take care of him.

Alternatively, a galleon chain out of SR could head NW to WvO.

So we can definitely put most of eight galleons to good use. We'll want a couple of frigates for each front to bomb down coastal city defenses, and some more galleons for rapid coastal conquest will not go astray.

Izzy TBD.
 
It looks like the cities are set to allow start of Globe T220. After that those cities will build units or barracks next.

I really think we need more navy, we are stretched really thin!:(

City gifting plan
Island identified in screenshot. Plant Spy there ASAP, land settler and plant city. Work city 1 turn using artist specialist and building culture, then gift to WvO. Use spy to switch WvO back to Toaism, OUT of Free Religion civic. Trade for Optics using Engineering.

Tech Path…Binary research
Engineering > Guilds > Compass > Optics(trade)

Civic changes
None planned

Religion Changes
None planned

Tech Trading

Other Trade Opportunities and Diplomacy

Maintain current trades

Reject "Stop Trade" demands, particularly with Cathy, Ragnar and WvO who make up our 14 overseas trade routes.
If we have an excess resource, unload it if we can get some cash
If we have an expired deal for (easiest to check on the F4-"Active" screen by mousing over deals) and they have more income, cancel and try to get more. AIs will normally trade all their excess income for a resource up to about 10 (or more)
Check if there are other deals that can be canceled/reevaluated.
Reject Accept research demands of low cost (<300 ) techs from others - we want their cash, not their liking, but for the next ~30 turns we don't want extra wars, either. Consult the AI attributes and judge on the size of the tech, erring on the side of avoiding wars.
Reject other research demands (but will check with the team if at all possible before doing so)
I'm thinking we accept a demand to go to war with Izzy (but probably AI won't ask since we are at war?) Will reject other war demands
Renegotiate with Willem right now for 1 more gold on fish trade.

Espionage
Adjust allocation to maintain a view of WvO research, but put any excess towards Cathy.100% to WvO until after mission is complete, then split to see research of both WvO and Cathy.

Great People
One in 5 turns. Save him for bulbing

Workboats
1 headed to Canterbury, nets in 2 turns
2 headed to Silver Lode
Going to need to insert more WB builds somewhere. Hittite will need 2 fairly soon.


City Builds

CC... Courthouse
FH... Theatre > Galley
SM... Theatre > Barracks&#8230;.continue WS production here
PC... Cat > Treb > Treb&#8230;.want to get the WS built here
MC... Spy > Barracks > Spear(Pike)
BF... Theatre > Barracks > &#8230;continue WS production here
FC... Galley&#8230;how are we planning on finishing it? I think we need to build a WS or 2, up there so we can get a bit of basic production.
Sorry, missed the worker in the west.
Switch to spear build, we will lose those hammers if we don't finish the spear first, then work on galley, while growing to 7-8 and start working workshops as they are built as mabraham suggested.
Noted...Spear > Galley

GH... Settler > Galley
SR... Granary > Barracks
London... Theatre > GT&#8230;.we can complete the Theatre here on schedule without chopping. I want to save the chops for the GT. We still grow in 2 turns, but our next growth will be slowed a bit
Nottingham... Theatre > CHBarracks > Axe
York... Courthouse > Forbidden Palace
Hastings... don&#8217;t we want a Forge here???&#8230;all future hammers improved, we want this in our HE city don&#8217;t we?... so we might as well do it first.Barracks > HE...growing mostly ASAP...tiles added in order quarry > grass farm > WS or GMine
Silver Lode... Lighthouse > ???....without being able to whip, is LH 1st still better that Granary 1st? Run an artist here sometime to pop borders.

Workers

Strauss - Finish WS, road through dye to horse pasture, chop dye jungle
Eiffel - WS duty @ SM
Stevenson - WS duty @ FC
Yeltsin - WS duty @ BF
Nottingham worker - rename something, chop, chop, WS, WS
Hoover - Hastings Quarry, WS, WS
Worker5 - Hastings, mine GH, head for Canterbury
Worker - Hastings, chop Spice forest, plantation, road, GHMine
Worker - Hastings(cows), GMine, farm between Hast and London, move towards SL Silver or Iron
Goethals - London, move to GHF and Mine, chop forest, chop last forest
Worker - London, move to GFH and mine, chop forest, chop for SL


War Plans
Capture Hittite with units on site and on Kon-Tiki
Hittite > assemble for move on southern barb city > Joao

Triremes

La Couronne - Play defense with the barb galley then continues scouting counter clockwise around Joao.
Paralus - escort duty K-T
Salaminia II - Early warning duty in the west
New Jersey - Newly named, escort duty Nautilus


Galleys
Kon-Tiki - offloads units @ Hittite and then grabs units near Canterbury for trip to southern barb city.
Nautilus - offloads axe in Lagos and heads back north for
Beta - Fogbusting gift city site, then probably worker duty
New Galley - Spy > Settler duty, then moving eastwards
Ferry - PC unit duty


Stopping/Pausing Conditions
A barbarian spawns in an awkward position that I can't immediately deal with
AI declares war on us
Timing of something goes badly awry


Checklist every turn before hitting end turn
double check MM and whip timing for each city
check tech trades available
check if and what AI have researched from F4 screen
check for new/better resource trades
check espionage screen for large sabotage production values in all visible AI cities
check if any AI went into war prep mode
check for any barbarians
turn off spy specialistskeep all spies until mission complete, then adjust to tiles
save the game

While scouting
will put a note that notes the most recent location of barbarians
will put a note that notes the most recent location of all AI units
 
Concur with gift city site and plan.

We are not switching WvO to Taoism, we are switching him away from Free Religion. He still has his state religion, it's just suppressed by FR. (Test it on us in the test game if you don't believe me! :)) So we want him in one of the other religious civics... Paganism or Pacifism are probably least useful to him.

Espionage needs to be full on WvO for the time being. We have already judged that this will be enough at the right time for the civic switch. Then we probably want to share across Cathy and WvO to see both research, then excess on whichever of them we're going to DOW next.

I'm happy to build multiple barracks in the home islands, so long as we're committing to over-drafting. I think most cities should be being drafted such that they're still :) at about size 5-6, producing some :hammers: stuff while slowly re-growing for the next draft. Possible exemptions for cities that need their people to work :hammers: tiles for navy or the Heroic Epic.

FC has a WS being built. I was getting FC up to about drafting size before starting production. FC has enough food to work two workshops sustainably, and to switch on and off a third one. I think this will yield higher long term productivity (2*5 workshops, half of another workshop, plus central tile, is 13-14:hammers:/turn) once happiness will not sustain more drafting (120:hammers: per draft about three times, working coasts we re-grow to size six in just under six turns gives about 360:hammers: in the opening 18 turns of drafting until the happiness runs out, i.e. 20:hammers:/turn). However, we do need some boats from somewhere, and FC does make sense building boats rather than drafting units that need to be picked up. Perhaps one draft and then successive boats makes the most sense.

London does indeed want to slow-build its theatre. We have about five forests around for chopping. The forge makes that 44*5*1.25=275 of the necessary 450 GT hammers. We want the NW Gmine completed near to the first turn of the GT build, so that the chop goes to the GT, and the hammers tile is available for it to work. So send the two workers there in time to achieve that (i.e. build the mine straight, not chop-then-mine). We can work the cows from York and three Gmines for 17 post-forge :hammers:/turn, which will build the rest of the GT in 10-11 turns after it starts on about T220. I'm not sure that we'll have Nationalism finished by then. There's time to build the barracks after GT, perhaps while doing the opening rounds of drafting, before switching to max food.

Hastings forge... I don't like it. We'll have 30+ base hammers here eventually, so the forge will earn 7-8 hammers per turn, taking about 22 turns to pay off, after maybe 15 turns to build. Obviously the forge and HE bonuses are additive, not multiplicative. If the game might last 70 more turns, we're not showing a profit until the last 30 turns (or less). We're also delaying the impact of the HE by the length of time it takes to build the forge, less about two turns for faster building of the HE. For fast conquest in our situation, I think the earlier production of trebs and cannons will outweigh building them at a faster rate in the long term. If we had a decent standing army, it might be different.

Lighthouse vs granary in SL is independent of whether we're whipping or not. It depends on how long the game will be and what contribution SR can make (i.e. drafting). The lighthouse will still arrive something like 10 turns before a granary would have if we'd started that originally - assuming we've found the time to mine the iron and start working it at size 4. At 3-4:food:/turn, that's a whole growth, which sounds like an extra early draft at a relevant time. If the game had 150 turns to run, then "granary first" would likely be right. SL probably does need a turn on an artist to pop borders when the workboats look like they're arriving. Meantime, the science+hammer from the citizen is better than the commerce+food from a coast.

I want to keep Hittite. It's close to York. It'll be draftable when we give it some workboats from Canterbury. It has some forests to chop into granary and barracks. It might be suppressing Cathy from settling another city site. With our ability to run artists at will, we shouldn't lose the clams tile.
 
comments in blue
Are we planning on razing Hittite? With Cathy's settler right there, if we keep it, how much territory do we lose to her culture immediately? Do we lose the clam? Is it worth keeping with only 1 food resource?
Agree with mabraham we keep hittite

As far as moving our units on a target, we are really pretty weak at the moment. We need the siege and the other units mab already noted. After theatre production, we can get back to some unit building.

It looks like the cities are set to allow start of Globe T220. After that those cities will build units or barracks next.

City gifting plan
Island identified in screenshot. Plant Spy there ASAP, land settler and plant city. Work city 1 turn using artist specialist and building culture, then gift to WvO. Use spy to switch WvO back to Toaism.

Tech Path&#8230;Binary research
Engineering > Compass > Optics(trade) > Guilds

Civic changes
None planned

Religion Changes
None planned

Tech Trading

Other Trade Opportunities and Diplomacy

Maintain current trades

Reject "Stop Trade" demands, particularly with Cathy, Ragnar and WvO who make up our 14 overseas trade routes.
If we have an excess resource, unload it if we can get some cash
If we have an expired deal for (easiest to check on the F4-"Active" screen by mousing over deals) and they have more income, cancel and try to get more. AIs will normally trade all their excess income for a resource up to about 10 (or more)
Check if there are other deals that can be canceled/reevaluated.
Reject Accept research demands of low cost (<300 ) techs from others - we want their cash, not their liking, but for the next ~30 turns we don't want extra wars, either. Consult the AI attributes and judge on the size of the tech, erring on the side of avoiding wars.
Reject other research demands (but will check with the team if at all possible before doing so)
I'm thinking we accept a demand to go to war with Izzy (but probably AI won't ask since we are at war?) Will reject other war demands

I think we can renegotiate with Willem right now for 1 more gold on fish trade


Espionage
Adjust allocation to maintain a view of WvO research, but put any excess towards Cathy.
yes all goes on Willem for now, as mabraham suggested

Great People
One in 5 turns. Save him for bulbing

Workboats
1 headed to Canterbury, nets in 2 turns
2 headed to Silver Lode

City Builds

CC... Courthouse
FH... Theatre > Galley
SM... Theatre > Barracks&#8230;.continue WS production here
PC... Cat > Treb > Treb&#8230;.want to get the WS built here
MC... Spy > Barracks > Spear(Pike)
BF... Theatre > Barracks > &#8230;continue WS production here
FC... Galley&#8230;how are we planning on finishing it? I think we need to build a WS or 2
up there so we can get a bit of basic production.

Switch to spear build, we will lose those hammers if we don't finish the spear first, then work on galley, while growing to 7-8 and start working workshops as they are built as mabraham suggested.
GH... Settler > Galley
Wants to grow and work seafood, gold, and 5 merchants once it is at 9 pop
SR... Granary > Barracks
London... Theatre > GT&#8230;.we can complete the Theatre here on schedule without chopping. I want to save the chops for the GT. We still grow in 2 turns, but our next growth will be slowed a bit
Nottingham... Theatre > CH
We might want to delay the courthouse here, we could build an axe to get some barbarian protection near hastings, instead of that nice CR swordsman. The courthouse won't be as critical with the Forbidden palace in york.
York... Courthouse > Forbidden Palace
Hastings... don&#8217;t we want a Forge here???&#8230;all future hammers improved, we want this in our HE city don&#8217;t we?... so we might as well do it first.
agree with mabraham we don't have time for a forge to pay off, would rather have the HE and units first
Silver Lode... Lighthouse > ???....without being able to whip, is LH 1st still better that Granary 1st? Run an artist here sometime to pop borders.
agree that the lighthouse first is probably better

Workers

Tired going to bed now&#8230;&#8230;

Strauss
Eiffel
Stevenson
Yeltsin


War Plans
Hittite > assemble for move on Joao
I think we were going to capture the other barbarian city on the way to Joao

Triremes

La Couronne
Paralus
Salaminia II
New Jersey


Galleys
Kon-Tiki
Nautilus &#8230;offloads axe in Lagos and heads back north
Beta
New Galley
Ferry


Stopping/Pausing Conditions
A barbarian spawns in an awkward position that I can't immediately deal with
AI declares war on us
Timing of something goes badly awry


Checklist every turn before hitting end turn
double check MM and whip timing for each city
check tech trades available
check if and what AI have researched from F4 screen
check for new/better resource trades
check espionage screen for large sabotage production values in all visible AI cities
check if any AI went into war prep mode
check for any barbarians
turn off spy specialists
you don't want to turn off spy specialists, we are using the espionage for willem
save the game

While scouting
will put a note that notes the most recent location of barbarians
will put a note that notes the most recent location of all AI units
 
Engineering > Compass > Optics(trade) > Guilds

We probably won't be in a position to trade for optics in the 4-6 turns it would take to finish engineeering and compass. You may want to go straight for Guilds after Engineering and only switch back to compass when we are in a diplomatic position to trade for optics.

I think there is a reasonable chance we can finish Guilds before we need to tech compass, and thus we would get the workshop hammer bonus a turn or 2 earlier.
 
PPP Updated, I should be able to play in about 12 hours if there are no objections.
 
looks good

Salaminia II - Early warning duty in the west

Having found little evidence of a stack from Cathy, I suggest we bring this guy back to the homeland and towards the Vikings (who could be targeting us they went into war prep 4-5 turns ago?)

Nottingham... Theatre > CHBarracks > Axe
depending on the need to get the sword protecting Hastings to the front against Joao, you may want to consider building the axe without the barracks.

Engineering > Guilds > Compass > Optics(trade)
dipping back into compass before finishing guilds if the city gift and espionage switch of willem is ready before we can finish Guilds.
 
WvO Espionage/Civics
Just a quick note - if we plan on keeping WvO in Taoism, we can probably expect we will need to keep repeating the espionage mission, as it is highly likely he will switch back to his favourite civic soon after the 5 turns has expired. (Recall our efforts vs I think Saladin in SGOTM11)

Alternatively, keep checking WvO for trade opportunities - if an option to change his civic diplomatically presents itself we should seriously consider bribing him to change. By simply changing one of his civics it will reset his 5 turn timer. But perhaps this strategy will only increase his desire to change back... I don't know...

In Any event, if this is our strategy, then we might need to keep :espionage: devoted to WvO for the foreseeable future.

City Gift
I assume the city gifting plan has been well tested. I'm unsure of the specifics, but is running an artist specialist necessary? Is he more or les likely to accept the city with our culture in it?

Espionage Missions and Missionaries
Running the artist specialist WILL give us a saving on the espionage cost at least.
Another thing that can give us a saving (~20% IIRC) is having a trade route to the city. I think this will happen automatically as it will replace one of our domestic trade routes, which I assume we have plenty of.
If the city also has Taoism then we would get more savings - since the city will have our state religion, and WvO won't be running that religion. If he were, then we wouldn't be doing the mission right? So, is there scope to produce and send a missionary to the new city?

An attempt at Missionary justification:
Spoiler :

Espionage mission cost formula. (not including culture bonus...)
T = 20 for trade route.
R = 15 if our state religion != their state religion && !founded by us, 25 if our religion == their religion && founded by us, 40 if our religion != their religion && founded by us.
D = Distance modifier (complicated...)
S = stationary spy. min(50,10 * turns)
P = spending. (%given in espionage screen)
BASE = base cost. For a tech it is 1.5*cost of tech shown in civopedia.
MT = 100-T
MR = (MT*(100-R))/100
MD = floor(MR*(100+D)/100)
MS = floor(MD*(100-S)/100)
MP = floor(MS*P/100)
COST = floor(BASE*MP/100)
Base cost of a civic change is 500:espionage:IIRC.
If I dream up some numbers, like D = 15 and P = 100, S = 50, then with R = 0 the final modifier would be (1-0.2)*(1+0.15)*(1-0.5) = 46%. Mission cost = 230.
With R = 15 it becomes (1-0.2)*(1-0.15)*(1+0.15)*(1-0.5) = 39%. Mission cost = 195..

I'd expect we might save 7%, or 35:espionage: per civic change mission, more or less, depending on the distance, culture and spending modifiers. Meh... not as attractive as I first thought to be honest.

However - if we were targetting big ticket items like techs it could be well worth it, eg, for Engineering we'd save something like 245:espionage:.
 
I don't think we plan to keep switching Willem back into non-free religion civic. It is conceivable in the future we will get friendly without the shared religion (would probably need a shared war or something similar), but it is unlikely.

Although we could consider bribing him into war while we do have him friendly and possibly accrue more diplo bonuses.

I think we have a plan to bulb all the techs we need for the high tech war plan on a pace that Willem is unlikely to have the ability to help us with. Perhaps if he starts to tech astronomy next we can consider another ramp up of espionage to switch him again in the hopes of trading for all or part of astronomy.

As the high tech war begins we might keep an eye on what Willem techs. He might tech something that would be useful and at that time we adapt to assign him more espionage.

For future espionage missions, we might get lucky and Taoism spreads to the city for us, or in time Willem might spread it himself with a missionary especially if he switches back to free religion. The AI really does spread its religions aggressively when it is in Free Religion.

I assume the city gifting plan has been well tested. I'm unsure of the specifics, but is running an artist specialist necessary? Is he more or les likely to accept the city with our culture in it?

In the last sgotm OSS did this extensively. Cathy was creative and produced culture automatically so in our city gifts to the AI in the last sgotm, we had 100% of the culture on the turn the city was gifted IF we first kept the city 1 turn before we gifted it. I assume you must produce culture in the city in order for this to work, hence the need for us (being non-creative) to run an artist.

Our cultural bonus will rapidly go away since the cultural bonus to espionage missions goes down as the AI replaces our culture. And since Willem is creative, our cultural percentage will be 66% after 1 turn 2 vs. our 4 then 50% then 40% etc. At 100% culture we get a 50% espionage discount, but at 66% I believe it would reduce our espionage discount to 33%.

I tried to figure out the base cost of the switching civic mission, but I wasn't sure I was right. I thought it was 600 * 1.5 (epic speed) so 900 base cost. Not sure though.
 
Does the stationary spy bonus accrue before we gift the city? Would be awesome if it does.

Easiest way to check mission base cost is to open up a worldbuildered game and add a spy to an AI city. Base Cost is printed plain as day.

I think there are some missions that are unaffected by game settings like speed, and Civic/Religion switching is one of them. I'm pretty sure there is an .XML file that lists them all exactly if you wanted to predict it without using a test game.

Here's another bogus idea... after we build the Courthouse in our capital we could run a spy specialist there as well. A Great Spy (albeit low odds) would be worth more in stolen techs than a Great Scientist is in bulbs. Forgive me if this is exactly why the courthouse is being built :D
 
Does the stationary spy bonus accrue before we gift the city? Would be awesome if it does.
yes, that was a happy surprise discovery from the last sgotm in OSS. It accrues even before the city exists.

I'll test the mission cost when I get home.
 
yes, that was a happy surprise discovery from the last sgotm in OSS. It accrues even before the city exists.

I'll test the mission cost when I get home.
Seriously??

So this is like a one-off event where we could have a potentially massive spy discount? Not to mention no fear of the spy/spies being caught during the preceding 5 turns.

Could we crank out another couple of spies and nab techs like Compass or maybe even Feudalism at the same time? Edit: Clearly I am well behind with the play - we already have Feudalism! Does Willem have Engineering or some other useful tech we could trade. For that matter, couldnt' we just bulb Engineering?

I would be VERY interested in finding out what the actual discount will amount to. We might find that putting our slider at 100% :espionage: (or whatever the treasury allows) is a more efficient way to learn Compass than old fashioned research.
 
I don't think we plan to keep switching Willem back into non-free religion civic. It is conceivable in the future we will get friendly without the shared religion (would probably need a shared war or something similar), but it is unlikely.

Agree - I think this switch is likely to be a one-shot exercise to save a couple of tech turns.

Although we could consider bribing him into war while we do have him friendly and possibly accrue more diplo bonuses.

Yeah, but we'd have to use Guilds for it, and I'm not sure that we want to get a million knights built.

I think we have a plan to bulb all the techs we need for the high tech war plan on a pace that Willem is unlikely to have the ability to help us with. Perhaps if he starts to tech astronomy next we can consider another ramp up of espionage to switch him again in the hopes of trading for all or part of astronomy.

Yes, that's plausible. Saving a bulb for a GAge instead is all to the good for us.

As the high tech war begins we might keep an eye on what Willem techs. He might tech something that would be useful and at that time we adapt to assign him more espionage.

For future espionage missions, we might get lucky and Taoism spreads to the city for us, or in time Willem might spread it himself with a missionary especially if he switches back to free religion. The AI really does spread its religions aggressively when it is in Free Religion.

I think the religion effect is too small to bother with. We'd also have no to forego a granary to get one out of SR in time (which has our only Tao monastery).

In the last sgotm OSS did this extensively. Cathy was creative and produced culture automatically so in our city gifts to the AI in the last sgotm, we had 100% of the culture on the turn the city was gifted IF we first kept the city 1 turn before we gifted it. I assume you must produce culture in the city in order for this to work, hence the need for us (being non-creative) to run an artist.

If one culture is enough, we can rely on Stonehenge monument and run a merchant to get ourselves something useful from the turn...

Our cultural bonus will rapidly go away since the cultural bonus to espionage missions goes down as the AI replaces our culture. And since Willem is creative, our cultural percentage will be 66% after 1 turn 2 vs. our 4 then 50% then 40% etc. At 100% culture we get a 50% espionage discount, but at 66% I believe it would reduce our espionage discount to 33%.

I tried to figure out the base cost of the switching civic mission, but I wasn't sure I was right. I thought it was 600 * 1.5 (epic speed) so 900 base cost. Not sure though.
 
If one culture is enough, we can rely on Stonehenge monument and run a merchant to get ourselves something useful from the turn...

I assume it is, I had forgotten about stonehenge. Could test to be sure, but I assume this is enough.
 
I would be VERY interested in finding out what the actual discount will amount to. We might find that putting our slider at 100% (or whatever the treasury allows) is a more efficient way to learn Feudalism than old fashioned research.

It isn't impossible to consider stealing astronomy instead if he techs it after theology. Although I don't know if he will tech it in a reasonable amount of time. I'll do a bit of testing to figure out the discount, and what we would need to do. Obviously it means teching optics ourselves and doing several 100% espionage turns, and assumes he techs astronomy next.
 
My understanding of the GScientist bulbing preferences from here are:

Compass -> Optics -> Astro -> Engineering -> Gunpowder (assuming Guilds) -> Chemistry.

Here is a long series of IFs:
IF we can tech/trade/steal for Compass+Optics
IF we can twice bulb Astro
IF we can do the above while teching Guilds
IF we are producing GScientists at a very fast rate

THEN we could bulb Engineering without slowing ourselves down. And proceed to bulb Gunpowder and Chemistry whilst teching/bankrolling down Civil Service -> Nationalism.
 
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