The "Official" Diety Overflow Exploit Challenge

Cromagnus said:
GE can't bulb Pentagon, it's 1250 beakers and the GE only gives 660. Not sure what controls that number but it seemed unrelated to my hammers/turn. Changed it around, increased population, worked mines for a while... still 660. What gives? :(
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Had you been saving the GE? I think it gives enough hammers to build a Wonder from the era it was created.
 
pvtjava said:
Had you been saving the GE? I think it gives enough hammers to build a Wonder from the era it was created.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I'll have to check. That would make sense... if I saved the GE for the t152 Long Count, it might be perfect... atomic era GE probably DOES give more hammers.
 
At Standard speed, the hammer yield from a Great Engineer bulb is 300 + 30*city size. So, a GE bulged in a size 32 city will yield 1260 hammers, just enough to rush the Pentagon.
 
The formula stated above by Browd is correct:

300 + (30 * city pop)

The hammers do not scale with each era. For GE to be of any use for late wonders when exploiting overflow, early cargo ships are an absolute must.


The great person that benefits the most is the merchant:

350 gold + (50 gold * era number)

With Ancient Era = 0, Classical = 1 & so on. I suspect for the quickest SV you will want to faith buy a GB for Apollo & spam merchants to buy the parts (freedom lv 3). The other thing worth exploiting here is CS bonuses, as these scale up per era - you can therefore hit the top of freedom very quickly if you ally cultural CS's (especially if you have only completed 10 policies for full liberty/full trad)
 
Ah, for some reason I never realized GEs worked this way. It doesn't change my mind though... Waiting for Combined Arms to start upgrading units is too long. That's a *lot* of maintenance cost on all those units. And investing 4 policies in Honor only to wait until t150 to attack is... well counterproductive. Honor survives negative gpt with warfare.

So, I still favor Mercantilism/Big Ben/Mobilization, because I can get armories up in the t100-t130 range, bulb Big Ben by t135 and start rush-buying each unit type as I reach the tech: Artillery at Dynamite, Landships at Combustion. (Tanks are a cheap upgrade)

Furthermore, I can start building additional artillery/landships as soon as I hit the tech, and usually have a few more done by the time I finish the bulb.

That way if I mistime my bulb and don't hit Combined Arms, I can still go on the rampage with landships/artillery, and more importantly, I can move my units into position by the time I get Combined Arms, which shaves a few turns at least.

The alternative that might work well with mixed Liberty/Honor, IE poland or monte, is basically XB rush on steroids. It's actually pretty effective, I tried it last night with the Maya.

Start off with a traditional CB rush, leveling up your units with an early attack. Instead of going for Education, go Construction->Philosophy->Machinery, leaving as much of tree unresearched as possible... bronzeworking, trapping, sailing lines. Start your bulb as soon as you hit Machinery, which should preferably be no later than t100. You'll hit Industrialization 20 turns later.

You'll have Logistics + Range guaranteed (finally a use for Honor) by the time you upgrade to XBows, and by the time you upgrade to Gatlings, you'll have Cover and March. 30 strength units that heal 6 hp per turn and attack twice on t120 are basically unstoppable killing machines, especially if you pillage effectively.

This probably works even better if you forego Honor and stick with Liberty for the extra GS. You can definitely bulb Ballistics by t145. 60 strength Machine Guns, fully promoted by then even without Honor, should finish out a map even if you suck at Domination. ;)
 
From the other thread... my best effort so far (using reloads to optimize my strategy)

T129 Artillery! :D

Spoiler :
 
Cromagnus said:
T129 Artillery! :D
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With no gold and a 20 turn build time :p ('course, I know you can work past that too, wouldn't be surprised if you had a bunch already in that SS I couldn't see)

Was my issue when I powered up the exploit - it was fun starting to work on Future Tech at turn ~190ish, but then I had crappy cities that needed 40 turns to build a spaceship part :p I'm sure I could do that better (purposefully slow cities just to maximize the exploit itself isn't the way to go) but it was fun grabbing all of that off the back of one GS. Man, that guy was a genius.
 
ravenmagus said:
With no gold and a 20 turn build time :p ('course, I know you can work past that too, wouldn't be surprised if you had a bunch already in that SS I couldn't see)

Was my issue when I powered up the exploit - it was fun starting to work on Future Tech at turn ~190ish, but then I had crappy cities that needed 40 turns to build a spaceship part :p I'm sure I could do that better (purposefully slow cities just to maximize the exploit itself isn't the way to go) but it was fun grabbing all of that off the back of one GS. Man, that guy was a genius.
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Haha, yeah, that dude was SMRT smart. But no, I had catapults ready to upgrade, and the funds to do so. (Most were upgraded already, and I had some cash trades to make for the rest. I just pointed at the artillery because I forgot to SS the Dynamite completion tech icon.

But really, I'm inclined to think that using the next Long Count on a GE and picking up Big Ben from Industrialization, (I had beakers to spare) is the way to go... Liberty & Mercantilism by t120 is no problem. I think that's a better plan in terms of cash expenditure. Might even be able to get Armories up by then, although that's trickier, since you've only had Steel for 8 turns. Still, doable I think.

So, yeah, that'd be my approach, if I were to try for fast artillery again. But I'd like to explore the double bulb trick... Bronzeworking to Printing Press, then finish the tree with Scholars and Sailing. And I want to see how early I can get Plastics. And I want to try to see how early I can get Machinery with this approach, although I suspect the answer is: Not much earlier than you could just get by bulbing it. 2 GS from the Maya could get you Machinery on like t85 anyway... so it's hard to imagine beating that by a significant margin. /shrug
 
Go for those stealth bombers. Even with poor production or funds a couple stealth bombers can easily wipe the map when everyone else is still rocking muskets.
 
Cromagnus said:
I love that the man for whom the Peace Prize is named... invented a WMD. :lol:
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A mine engineering tech... Cause his brother died manipulating Nitro in a mine. His intention was to save lives.
Become rich, he let his fortune to award research who confer «greatest benefit on mankind».
Money awards now are still based on the fortune he let when he died in 1896.

Nobel is like Hoppenheimer, an amazing man who let a wonderful legacy. But because it's an human invention there are never one side of the tech, neither full good either full bad. Scientists use to think they can control how their research are used. They use to be wrong.
 
It doesn't sound like this would work very well for Venice, which is too bad. Venice is my favorite civilization to play.
 
Venice has limited options. They are not, how you say... adaptable. You can get two Great Merchants fairly early to get 3 cities up, but of course your science output is nerfed and CS cities are usually in terrible spots. Plus you'd be losing out on the early GS. Furthermore, those Great Merchants count against your GS points... a huge oversight with Venice's implementation IMHO.

However, if you get those 2 CS up early and invest in 2 triremes for protection, you can use cargo ships to grow your capital like mad. This will get you fairly early Education with a strong capital site. Garden + National Epic + Early Education will get you a GS early enough for the Scholars in Residence proposal. The hard part is ensuring that the proposal passes early. This is quite challenging. Printing Press is the most expensive way (beakers-wise) to enter the Renaissance. So AIs are slow to do it, and you'll be even slower to do it as Venice with puppet beaker reduction.

But in general, this exploit is counterproductive, because Venice wants early Compass. /shrug
 
By the way, if you're curious, I've so far been unable to use this exploit to get "early" Printing Press so far. My best effort has only been t114, mostly because I have to leave the sailing line untouched and only go through bronzeworking. There's a minimum threshold for a GS bulb before it can get you that far. On top of that, your beakers/turn determines bulb strength. Bulb strength needs to exceed the cost of bronze-working by a significant margin. Without Education, it's hard to hit that number. If you beeline Theology instead of say, Currency, you're too far from completing Printing Press, so that makes it tough for the Maya. Going for Civil Service instead makes all the difference. I'm going to try Babylon instead, but without the Mayan pyramids to assist and with only one trade route, it's hard to achieve the necessary bpt without Education. I'm going to try Philosophy->Engineering, to secure a second beakers trade route, but that doesn't make up for losing 8bpt from pyramids. You definitely need 2 GS, so my conclusion is that it has to be Babylon w/ early Liberty closer.

I'll give it one more shot, then call it.

Even with Scholars, this may not work simply due to not giving the AI enough time to research techs. By t130, there may not be enough techs the AI knows that you don't to trigger a big enough snowball to hit Future Tech. Especially with only the Sailing line. The theoretical limit on this may be such that you can't actually beat a normal science victory time.
 
Cromagnus, yep the exploit looks good on paper... but fails to actually work in practice. With out scholars in residence, there is not that much overflow, and it runs out quickly. And to get the world congress up, and wait the the 30 turns for it it pass, you have eliminated the bronze working line, and only have the sailing line.

Even with 5 GS's at 1200 beakers each I topped out at 62,000 and then was into the atomic era and Researching the total value of the tech. I only got growth for 6 turns, before it started dropping. Did get artillery, and tanks, but fell short on biology, so used oxford to get biology to dominate the world.
 
Maybe it's just used as an assistance to a normal science plan. Pass scholars, tech plastics, and bulb your 6 GS or whatever 8 turns after plastics, pumping them into Sailing instead of the high end techs. Getting a huge return there is probably just as game breaking.

Still, you can get Future Tech by t200 without even doing WC yourself, as long as the AI finds everyone (pangaea) - this can make it so you can get fast science wins even on poor dirt.
 
Cromagnus said:
By the way, if you're curious, I've so far been unable to use this exploit to get "early" Printing Press so far. My best effort has only been t114, mostly because I have to leave the sailing line untouched and only go through bronzeworking. There's a minimum threshold for a GS bulb before it can get you that far. On top of that, your beakers/turn determines bulb strength. Bulb strength needs to exceed the cost of bronze-working by a significant margin. Without Education, it's hard to hit that number. If you beeline Theology instead of say, Currency, you're too far from completing Printing Press, so that makes it tough for the Maya. Going for Civil Service instead makes all the difference. I'm going to try Babylon instead, but without the Mayan pyramids to assist and with only one trade route, it's hard to achieve the necessary bpt without Education. I'm going to try Philosophy->Engineering, to secure a second beakers trade route, but that doesn't make up for losing 8bpt from pyramids. You definitely need 2 GS, so my conclusion is that it has to be Babylon w/ early Liberty closer.

I'll give it one more shot, then call it.

Even with Scholars, this may not work simply due to not giving the AI enough time to research techs. By t130, there may not be enough techs the AI knows that you don't to trigger a big enough snowball to hit Future Tech. Especially with only the Sailing line. The theoretical limit on this may be such that you can't actually beat a normal science victory time.
Click to expand...

It doesn't quite work so well at lower difficulty levels I presume (AI is still too backwards with tech - for enough of a benefit to occur from bulb overflow due to known techs)

At deity, I trust that it would work better with deity bonuses to AI, but then again the original poster of this beaker overflow mentioned that you need "raw beakers" over 100, rather than research agreement or trade routes?

At normal difficulties, you get the catch22 scenario definitely. If you have over 100 raw beakers recommended, plus 2x GS for bulbs, you will not be so backwards compared to AI. Thus the AI doesn't know enough techs itself, for significant overflow increases. I.e. the Ai doesn't know, enough techs- the techs which you also do not know. (choose to allow to leave in the reserve for bulbing overflow)

Thus the overflow doesn't multiply so many times (as it would normally, with each single known old tech?)

On deity I suspect trade route beakers and research agreement would infact help the AI itself, which would later on help you (because of more known techs by AI). On deity, this together with the inherent deity AI bonuses could prove to be the practical clinch which allows the overflow to occur in-game.
 
Summary from what I understood about the science overflow tactic:

-try to have raw beakers over 100 (RAs don't count, presumably trade routes don't either? What about patronage CS ally science beakers?)

-bulb 1-2 GS (harder said than done without education tech path presumably?)

-win the vote for scholars in residence world congress (try to guarantee vote win - patronage policy and forbidden palace helps, also it helps to bribe voters and found world congress yourself

-specify the tech path so that you have the greatest possible number of early techs unresearched (I suspect that this is of importance, to maximize the multiplicative benefit of overflow - the number of unresearched techs by the player, but that the same unresearched techs are actually already known by the AI)

-espionage (presumably it benefits overflow if you LET AI steal your techs)
catch22 is that AI doesn't need to spend beaker maintenance on actual research purposes so the techadvantage, is not further widened against the hardest teching AIs
 
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