SGOTM 13 - Gypsy Kings

Is there any way to avoid the 1 pop whips, they are really inefficient if we can 2 pop whip.

I did look at it previously, and thought I'd done it best.

However, this morning I've found a way to 2-whip a sword in BF, and then do two 2-whips on catapults. This whips away one more population than the previous plan, while retaining full working of the three good tiles - so more efficient conversion of :food: to :hammers:.

In PC, we're trapped into a 1-whip by the fact that we have too many hammers on our existing swordsman in production, and our base :hammers: are so large we can't 2-whip an axeman.
 
What do people think about putting Moai in Marbled Clams? I think it is a reasonable site and it can get started on it immediately. We have 2 forests to chop that are just outside the BFC to speed it up and make it useful sooner.

I'm good with this. We need to build Moai someplace and it is nice to have a forest or 2 to chop into it. I fear that if we build it too late (like in an captured English City) its won't have much time to pay off.

The other option that I see is to put it in Golden Hills, with so much excess food GH could do several Max OF whips into it.
 
However, this morning I've found a way to 2-whip a sword in BF, and then do two 2-whips on catapults. This whips away one more population than the previous plan, while retaining full working of the three good tiles - so more efficient conversion of :food: to :hammers:.

No, I cheated. You can't switch off the first sword or cat to start another of the same type, and the timing of Construction and the needs of boat movement are severe. It can be done only by switching off the copper mine for a turn during the catapult builds

The problem is that a 90:hammers: 2-whip of a 60:hammers: swordsman while working the copper mine produces 19-49:hammers: overflow, and that means the second swordsman cannot be 2-whipped. There's only one turn in which a swordsman can be 2-whipped in order to satisfy the movement constraints, and that means no overflow onto the catapult.

Then, a 75:hammers: catapult can be 2-whipped after a turn, but that produces 5+5+90=100:hammers:, which is 25:hammers: overflow. Now 25+5 takes the second cat to 30, which blocks a 2-whip. However, switching off the copper mine for this turn allows a 2-whip. I suppose that is best...
 
I'm good with this. We need to build Moai someplace and it is nice to have a forest or 2 to chop into it. I fear that if we build it too late (like in an captured English City) its won't have much time to pay off.

The other option that I see is to put it in Golden Hills, with so much excess food GH could do several Max OF whips into it.

I like GH better - we should have time to put out two 3-whip settler Duckweeds, and we still want settlers. I'll put that in the PPP
 
Hmm, I was cheating with PC too. You can't switch off a cat to start another one...

Recovering from that requires finishing chopping the silk. So be it.
 
Hmm, I was cheating with PC too. You can't switch off a cat to start another one...

Recovering from that requires finishing chopping the silk. So be it.

Ah so that was what you were trying to do. I was confused by the spreadsheet.
 
Before play
Check autosave frequency in the .ini file is still 1
Turn on logging in game (Alt-E)

Tech Path
Construction at 100% if we have enough :gold: for this turn, 0% if not. This best allows us to assess how many turns at what size are relevant. Then, try for Music at 0%:science:.

Civic Changes
None planned

Religion Changes
None planned.

Tech Trading
Check every turn for new tech trading opportunities.
Check Research Screen each turn to see if AI Civs have completed any techs.
Sell PH to Joao and Ragnar immediately - that gets us two turns at 100%. Hopefully the cash piles for Literature have gone up. I think we should get Maths out of Vicky first, however (she seems to have a single worker, and is never really going to get Construction in time to do any damage). Get cash for Literature out of Izzy, Cathy and
WvO (in that order) only as much as we need for the next turn at 100% :science: (I evaluate the risk of AIs on-trading Literature as negligible).

Other Trade Opportunities and Diplomacy
  • Cancel fish deals with WvO and Izzy and get their spare :gold: income.
  • Do copper for wine+1:gold: with Vicky.
  • Maintain current trades
  • Check each turn whether we'd rather have fur or sheep, or there's a better deal available (e.g. for more :health:)
  • Reject "Stop Trade" demands
  • If we have an excess resource, unload it if we can get some cash
  • If we have an expired deal for :gold: (easiest to check on the F4-"Active" screen by mousing over deals) and they have more :gold: income, cancel and try to get more. AIs will normally trade all their excess :gold: income for a resource up to about 10 (or more)
  • Do not trade Happiness for Health and vice versa, unless we have an excess.
  • Check if there are other deals that can be canceled/reevaluated.
  • Accept research demands of low cost (<300 ) techs from others
  • Reject other research demands (but will check with the team if at all possible before doing so)
  • Reject War demands (but will check with the team if at all possible before doing so)

Espionage
All on Willem to keep track of his tech path. At some point in the future, we may want all on Cathy for a revolt in Moscow, but for now we need intelligence.
Great People
None

City Builds
CC... per PDF grow on the GLib, switch to worker T174, whip T175, forest chop T176 to finish the GLib (note that the crab next turn, the wine trade and the whip-:mad: decay work out well for us here). Continue with Nat Epic. Name worker "Yeltsin" - apparently he was a civil engineer. Edit: details changed here

FH... per PDF, switch to galley, and then another galley build axeman to send to the war, then workboat (whip-:mad: decays well for the first growth, the incoming wine accommodates another)

SM... switch to granary for a turn, 1-whip the lighthouse immediately after growth, resume building granary

PC... per updated PDF - chops both forests, 2-whips sword, finishes archer and axe, does a turn of wealth and gets both cats done by T179 so they can head off early to scout better

MC... 2-whip Granary immediately, then start Moai

BF... per updated PDF, swordsman 2-whipped T172, swordsman, cat 2-whipped T177, switch off copper mine T178 on new cat, 2-whip T179

FC... finish lighthouse, plant crab workboat next turn, grow onto coast tiles building granary (a 2-whip comes faster than building it with forest-:hammers:)

GH... per PDF, 2-whip Granary ASAP, finish lighthouse the turn after that (per option 4 discussed above) and then build workboat (we need to plan for several new ones by the time we might switch to CoL, meantime one can fogbust SE of MC)

SR... switch to lighthouse and 1-whip that ASAP

Tile use
Per PDF, but repeated here...

CC
T170 3N,CF,PM,GM
T171 3N,CF,PM,GM,GF
T176 3N,CF,PM,GM,GF,coast
T177 3N,CF,GM
T180 3N,CF,PM,GM

FH
T170 B,GM
T172 B,GM,coast
T173 B,GM
T179 B,PM,GM


Other cities are obvious or discussed above

Work Boats
“Magellan” spies on Vicky. Explore the rest of the current lake, taking special note of any settlers or workers, but noting all units regardless. Check iron is still clean on the way back to have another peek at London. Shuttle back and forth between iron and London.

FC workboat plants on crab

Workers
Strauss and Eiffel chop the rice jungle, farm the rice and road the rice. First one done moves to the jungle hill to road it, second one puts a road on the grassland. Using the roads, they then put a Gmine on the jungle hill. (Because we're not in a hurry for the Gmine, and we want both the roads eventually, this saves a worker turn because only one consumes a whole turn moving onto the hill.)

Stevenson is stranded for 12+ turns while the galleys are busy, so it does four turns' pre-chopping, two turns pre-workshopping, and times the finish of the chop on T176, after the Duckweed, to finish the GLib. Note that this costs no worker turns - the workshop is in place at the same time regardless. Finish workshop

Hoover has done pre-chopping the silk, and needs to chop it soon to help PC get the army ready - may as well chop it now. Then road, move to the other forest and pre-chop to finish this turn set. so chop that, move to the other forest and fully chop that. Then road on the tile between silk and our culture. That should take us to about the time we might be joining a galley to head to Vicky's land.

Yeltsin builds workshop on the mainland

Navy
Trireme "La Couronne"
Moves SW until we can see a Ragnar city to hopefully get more trade routes, then scampers back to defend.

Trireme "Paralus"
Escort Argo

Trireme "Salaminia"
Escort Nautilus

Galleys “Ferry”, "Argo" and "Nautilus" follow the previous updated plan for galley movement, except that Argo (green on the plan) will have to delay for a turn at T175 to accommodate the changes to PC producing units later - this does not delay the catapult voyage but I do not have time to write a new map.

New Galley "Kon-Tiki"
Per plan (this galley is already built!)

Stopping/Pausing Conditions
  • A barbarian spawns in an awkward position (eg, unit on land we wish to settle, or galley nearby)
  • I reach T179 (10 turns total)
  • Espionage indicates an AI build is over 500 hammers (AI get a discount on buildings so I think this means they are starting a wonder)
  • Vicky has access to horses
  • Representation only applies to five cities, and it's possible that I run into a problem if the "wrong" city has captured the +3:). I don't think this will be a problem this turn set, with wine coming in and fur able to be re-acquired, but if I have a serious problem, I'll stop

Checklist every turn before hitting end turn
  • double check MM and whip timing for each city
  • check tech trades available (including if the value of our techs have gone down)
  • 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
  • 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 of Vicky's units
 

Attachments

  • T170-T179 PPP first draft.pdf
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  • T170-T179 PPP second draft.pdf
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  • preparation part.JPG
    preparation part.JPG
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  • invasion part.JPG
    invasion part.JPG
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I'll plan to play the test game about 10 hours from now, and could be available to play the real game 21 or 30-35 hours from now, if we get agreement.
 
The plan looks really good, I think I would have to play the test game following your plan to find anything productive to say.

A quick look and checks didn't reveal any obvious improvements or mistakes.

I hope to do a play through tomorrow ~24 hours from now, but if you want to play I'm good. I expect the best I possibly could do would be maybe get something a turn earlier or something similarly minor.

I'm happy with Moai in Golden Hills. I am a bit curious if you modeled having the 2nd clams though in your earlier comparison with the granary whip. I have no problems with whipping the granary asap regardless and the lighthouse with the OF.

I'm not sure we are going to get a border pop anytime soon. Although as I type this I realized that with music we could build culture. Hmm...

I also noticed you made no mention of espionage. I'm happy to leave it on Willem. I don't imagine we would be able to steal philosophy anytime soon. Willem does seem to be teching faster than Catherine though, so he is a reasonable person to leave it on.

In regards to ceasefires each AI has a base number of turns that they will not speak to you. The time is reduced if you have a lopsided war success against them. I don't imagine we will get London without some losses so I doubt a timely ceasefire is possible. In the last SG, OSS took advantage of ceasefires to steal a ton of workers, but that was only possible since we had war success by capturing the workers and no losses. I'd have to look up the base number of turns Vicky won't speak to someone. I don't really know where to look precisely so if someone knows what I'm talking about I would appreciate some help here. I should be able to figure it out tomorrow if no one can help and people are interested in learning more.

Really wacky thought. Gift Vicky a city somewhere close by (since I think AI with less than 3 cities will take any city) And then steal theology from her at our leisure (with big cultural bonuses to the espionage -- if you found a city and put some culture into it, you have have a big cultural advantage on any AI you gift the city to for quite a while).

Probably not worth the settler, but it is a way to get theology if we are really interested. It also opens up the possibly of getting theology in a peace with Vicky without having to leave her with a nice city somewhere. Although getting techs in peace is really hard in BtS.
 
The plan looks really good, I think I would have to play the test game following your plan to find anything productive to say.

A quick look and checks didn't reveal any obvious improvements or mistakes.

I hope to do a play through tomorrow ~24 hours from now, but if you want to play I'm good. I expect the best I possibly could do would be maybe get something a turn earlier or something similarly minor.

I'm happy with Moai in Golden Hills. I am a bit curious if you modeled having the 2nd clams though in your earlier comparison with the granary whip. I have no problems with whipping the granary asap regardless and the lighthouse with the OF.

No second clams were modelled.

I'm not sure we are going to get a border pop anytime soon. Although as I type this I realized that with music we could build culture. Hmm...

True, but that's 20ish turns away.

I also noticed you made no mention of espionage. I'm happy to leave it on Willem. I don't imagine we would be able to steal philosophy anytime soon. Willem does seem to be teching faster than Catherine though, so he is a reasonable person to leave it on.

Thanks, updated.

In regards to ceasefires each AI has a base number of turns that they will not speak to you. The time is reduced if you have a lopsided war success against them. I don't imagine we will get London without some losses so I doubt a timely ceasefire is possible. In the last SG, OSS took advantage of ceasefires to steal a ton of workers, but that was only possible since we had war success by capturing the workers and no losses. I'd have to look up the base number of turns Vicky won't speak to someone. I don't really know where to look precisely so if someone knows what I'm talking about I would appreciate some help here. I should be able to figure it out tomorrow if no one can help and people are interested in learning more.

OK. Probably academic until our first two cats live, some time mid-next-turn-set.

Really wacky thought. Gift Vicky a city somewhere close by (since I think AI with less than 3 cities will take any city) And then steal theology from her at our leisure (with big cultural bonuses to the espionage -- if you found a city and put some culture into it, you have have a big cultural advantage on any AI you gift the city to for quite a while).

Probably not worth the settler, but it is a way to get theology if we are really interested. It also opens up the possibly of getting theology in a peace with Vicky without having to leave her with a nice city somewhere. Although getting techs in peace is really hard in BtS.

Well, we have a settler that can get picked up around T182 that we could dump on the second crab site with workboat from MC ready to plant. We gift that to Vicky on start T185, then DOW. Whenever we clean out Vicky's homeland, we home she'll take peace for whatever tech she has. Later, we recapture the city, and the food access will mean it doesn't auto-raze.

However Theology really doesn't do much for us. We're not going to build the AP. Theocracy isn't worth the effort to spread around a religion. We can sell it for cash, I guess.
 
Is GH really better than MC for Moai? I think MC has more coast tiles and the forests to chop get doubled with stone. If we are starting on our capture phase, do we really need more settlers in the short run?

The rest of the PPP seems very solid!

Not sure about the city gifting idea....is there anything that we could NOT get from 10 turns of peace and a re-DoW?
 
Is GH really better than MC for Moai? I think MC has more coast tiles and the forests to chop get doubled with stone.

Stone doesn't matter... all the hammers get doubled.

MC does have more coast tiles, however it is moot until the Moai city runs out of coast tiles plus good other tiles. GH has 3 seafood, gold, and (IIRC) 9 coast. MC has 1 seafood, marble, horses and about 15 coast. So it's not until size 4+9+1=15 that the issue of running out of coast even matters, and then it's one :commerce: per tile. We'll be at war and drafting long before we get to size 15, so I think the number of coast tiles is rather moot.

More relevant is the speed with which Moai can get built, to start earning its benefit sooner. IIRC those forests are about as far from MC as the silk forest is from PC, and we're getting 20 measly hammers from that. So those two forests are worth something like the same number of :hammers: as a single max-overflow Duckweed - and take 12 worker turns to move onto and chop. The advantage of GH with 2-3 seafood resources is that getting 2 or 3 max-overflow Duckweeds is easier than getting two chops and 1 or 2 Duckweeds on MC. The speed with which each site has got its granary and lighthouse since getting its :hammers: tile improved is a telling fact here, I think.

If we are starting on our capture phase, do we really need more settlers in the short run?

I don't really see this beginning a massive capture phase. Our plans go as far as T185 and we have very limited capacity to reinforce, with PC and BF having just been whipped harshly. My best-case hope is that we lose so little on London that we can take York and sue for peace. We'll then want to think about settling those sites N of London and S and E of York, (lest Vicky or bloody carrack-Joao come and settle them later), and also go get CGT. These are all good drafting sites, and the more of them we have, the more army we get later. Meanwhile there's still Piggery, the crab, and furs-fish-deer WNW of Furry Crabs to settle back at home. So I'm keen for settling until we can actually put an ETA on Nationalism. Good sites near AIs are worth getting - they'll be more useful settled now than having to be captured later.

Not sure about the city gifting idea....is there anything that we could NOT get from 10 turns of peace and a re-DoW?

I'm skeptical too, and it sounded as though bc was. Still, we've run with more than one of his "out there" ideas :) I rather suspect that we'll have a chance to get Theology for peace once we capture York.
 
I don't really see this beginning a massive capture phase. Our plans go as far as T185 and we have very limited capacity to reinforce, with PC and BF having just been whipped harshly. My best-case hope is that we lose so little on London that we can take York and sue for peace. We'll then want to think about settling those sites N of London and S and E of York, (lest Vicky or bloody carrack-Joao come and settle them later), and also go get CGT. These are all good drafting sites, and the more of them we have, the more army we get later. Meanwhile there's still Piggery, the crab, and furs-fish-deer WNW of Furry Crabs to settle back at home. So I'm keen for settling until we can actually put an ETA on Nationalism. Good sites near AIs are worth getting - they'll be more useful settled now than having to be captured later.

Also, settling plausible sites on Vicky's and CGT's land mass will enable our 2-move drafted Musketeers to move along road networks, reducing our need for naval transport.
 
Okay, overnight I had a thought about CC. Why not Duckweed a worker in CC instead of a settler? The stranded worker at least has something to do (workshop) and it leaves CC with another pop to get NE built that much faster. It would be in a reasonable position to duckweed out a settler close to T182 if we think another settler from CC is a good idea.
 
Hmm, one piece of good news, one medium and one bad. The bad news first: I was modelling the swordsman in PC with 30 extra hammers already, because my paper transcription of the game status had 30 extra hammers, for reasons I cannot explain :( The medium news is that we can now use two 2-whips in PC for more efficiency :lol:, though not as efficient as 30 free hammers :p. So far I haven't been able to find a combination of whips and chop that works properly.

The good news is that we already have a fourth newly-built galley hiding in Fish Hills. So I am tempted to use those hammers that I was using to build another galley in FH to get out another axeman, but I'll have to revisit how all the navy moves.

Getting out a fifth galley doesn't really help the war, because the galley chain needs an even number of boats. If I can't organize another axe into the war party, a fifth galley can be used to move around the new settler from CC sooner.
 
Okay, overnight I had a thought about CC. Why not Duckweed a worker in CC instead of a settler? The stranded worker at least has something to do (workshop) and it leaves CC with another pop to get NE built that much faster. It would be in a reasonable position to duckweed out a settler close to T182 if we think another settler from CC is a good idea.

Seems sound. Depends on the fallout from my post just now. Bedtime here now, however.
 
The fallout from the recent post.

I tried a quick play thru this morning. And few things came up...

It would be nice to have the test game updated to include Vicky's lands (does anyone has time for this today? I think this would help mabraham with his planning -- or at least help me "see" how everything works) I won't have time for this until tonight.

And a few potential solutions to the hammer shortage in PC
-We chop the other forest next to the silk. (This might work as it could be done before T180)
-? delaying the 2 pop whip of the sword with a wealth building? So we get max OF into a catapult then with another chop might finish a catapult without the whip?

With the 4th galley in play it looked like we could get 3 axe and 3-4 swords to Vicky's lands before T177? I was just loosely playing the test game but this seemed possible. We can kill both iron now I think.
 
Stone doesn't matter... all the hammers get doubled.
Stone does matter, it is WHY the hammers get doubled. Maybe you meant to say the forest chops don't matter in relation/opposition to duckweeding settlers.

I believe that Moai needs to have at least 2 hammer sources in addition to the water tiles so it can easily get to 12 or 16 hammers to make a forge more effective. This is why I like MC over GH, or BF over GH for that matter. Even SM has more hammer potential but lacks food of course. This is why I liked bc's proposed city east of York.

GH has 3 seafood,
This actually works against GH IMO....this is a much better whipping/drafting city because of the excess food. You don't really want to whip/draft the Moai city because the value comes from being a large city working all those tiles.

IIRC those forests are about as far from MC as the silk forest is from PC, and we're getting 20 measly hammers from that.
1 forest is 3 tiles and 1 forest is 2 tiles. If we happen to catch a religion in MC and pop the border they are actually both just out of the BFC. We can also use the overflow from the 2 pop granary whip that is happening soon to get ~90:hammers: jump start on it right away. Each forest contributes 16 base :hammers:, so 64 total. Moai is 375 total :hammers: required, given ~90 + 64, that leaves 221/8 per turn = Moai produced in 28 turns with no further whips or chops.

GH may be able to build it just as fast using overflow from whips, but that does not address the fact that we may not want to whip/draft the Moai city in the future and GH is a great city for doing either/both of those things.

It would be nice to have the test game updated to include Vicky's lands (does anyone has time for this today? I think this would help mabraham with his planning -- or at least help me "see" how everything works) I won't have time for this until tonight.
Maybe, I have some commitments today, but I will try.
 
1 forest is 3 tiles and 1 forest is 2 tiles. If we happen to catch a religion in MC and pop the border they are actually both just out of the BFC. We can also use the overflow from the 2 pop granary whip that is happening soon to get ~90 jump start on it right away. Each forest contributes 16 base , so 64 total. Moai is 375 total required, given ~90 + 64, that leaves 221/8 per turn = Moai produced in 28 turns with no further whips or chops.

When I did my play thru I did note this too. The granary whip gives us a nice head start on Moai. We should look at this more closely, when could Golden Hills really finish Moai? When could MC? Getting the workers to the forest will be a bit of an issue, and they might have better things to do than chop, but if MC can finish Moai significantly ahead of Golden Hills then it might be better in the long run.

Regardless of what we decide...I don't think we should spare any city from drafting even the Moai city. The happiness limits will limit the drafting more than the food production I think will. I'm imagining we draft 1 musket out of every city (2 per + globe every turn?) and then rotate through them again. Getting an extra 1 hammer out of the water tile isn't a good enough reason not to draft (and instantly produce) a 120 hammer musketeer.

Ron's point of the forge in the Moai city... I'm not sure we will have time to build a forge in the Moai city. Even if we got 16 hammers in Moai eventually and thus 4 bonus hammers from the forge. This pays off the forge in 45 turns? Maybe this makes sense if we need the happiness from the forge but this doesn't seem likely since we will get spices, silk?, fur back, wine and probably silver if we settle near london. (Did you guys see the 2 fish and crab? near the 2 silver?) plus other traded for happiness if needed and then the cultural slider when necessary.
 
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