GOTM19 Reprise - Proposal

Thanks rabies! It sounds like you are doing well!

Re "In order to get a top score, do you need to get to the domination limit?" - yes it definitely helps score a lot to get close to domination. Score is improved by territory, number of happy people, and number of content/specialist people. So getting near domination as soon as possible is good, that handles the first part. And growing the cities in all that territory to increase happy/content/specialist people also helps.
 
Aeson, SirPleb (or anyone else), still pursuing my obsession with a frequent 4-turn tech rate, but not having PTW, I have a few questions. What do you see as the essential elements to a max tech rate? The total factors seem to be population, libraries and universities, enough gold to afford the maxed slider, and minimal corruption, achieved mainly by palace jumps to keep that large population within range of a capital or FP. I have little problem with the buildings and the gold. My population has been going up recently, thanks to workers mining, irrigating and mining the same tiles, as needed - but a better approach would seem to be earlier expansion, so that sheer number of cities makes their individual populations not as crucial. Finally, I almost always find a rationalization for not moving my palace.

Any advice? My present intent is to enter GOTM21 with an aggressive palace-jumping approach, to see if that makes the difference.
 
i finally finished...and boy did i mess up!

I decided to go with a no pollution game..so no hospitals and factories (although i did learn that research centers and commercial docks produce pollution later).

Where my game went wrong:

a. I have never 'milked' a game before..so i was treading uncharteted waters. I guessed the goal here was to get to domination limit, then grow the cities to 12 as fast as possible and keep them happy. this is what i tried, but I was not very good at it. In hindsight, I should have abandoned poor city sites and created new ones in more fertile lands.

b. unlike aeson, i could not get a civ to help me research. Rome elected to keep sneak attacking me...so in the end, I eliminated them all except carthage on the isle east of rome. therefore, all techs from military tradition on were researched by the mighty ottoman empire.

c. I still do not understand how to get a 4 turn tech rate. I had a handful of techs that took me 5 turns or so..or 4 turns at a huge deficit spend (-200gpt or more). Most of these were modern age techs or later industrial age techs. How Aeson got 4 turns each easy is beyond me. My entire core had libraries, universities...i even prebuilt research labs and had about 16 of them done the turn I got computers! I don't get what I am doing wrong in this department! I built next to no units other than the units sir pleb built for us.

d. Finally, my biggest mistake, and I blame it on playing it late nights until 2 am or so...I completely, utterly forgot to start pre-building spaceship parts prior to finishing apollo. Imagine my surprise when I realized that my best shield producing 12-pt city would take 30 turns or so to finish the Engine when I only had 3 or 4 techs left to research! There were two parts total that were going to run over my research rate. I ended up going to war with carthage and fishing for great leaders in an effort to avoid the delay. the game was kind enough to only generate 1 for me. The net result is the spaceship finished some 10 or so turns after I researched the last needed tech (laser).

Even with these huge screwups, I got a great score!

Bottom line, firaxis score of 9032, jason score of 10798 - spaceship launch in 1405. This would have been good enough for a top 5 finish..and i stink compared to the top players!

i would appreciate an answer to Txurce's question too....as I don't understand why my research rate was not superb. is building too many banks/stock exchanges/courthouses detrimental? i even sold off all the barracks early!

ps. is there a reference on the web somewhere that tells you how many shields is needed for each spaceship component?
 
Rabies, can you post your save so I can look at it? I take it we had the same Palace and FP locations (where SirPleb had set them), so it would be interesting to see where the differences are showing up.

Did you build Smith's? I was running into some trouble (deficit for 3 turns, then making it back on the 4th) until I finished Smiths, then it was pretty easy. Rome researching Economics may have been a bigger factor than I thought. That they were feeding me decent sums of gpt for most the game was a big help too.

As for building the Spaceship parts, I guess you didn't build any Factories? Pollution isn't much fun to clean up, but Factories + Hoover makes a huge difference in overall production, and setting cities on wealth pays pretty well too. I think the Engines took me 8 turns to build, and all the other parts were 6 or less (mostly prebuilt as a Solar Plant).
 
Originally posted by rabies
ps. is there a reference on the web somewhere that tells you how many shields is needed for each spaceship component?
  • SS Engine 640
  • SS Docking Bay 160
  • SS Cockpit 320
  • SS Stasis Chamber 320
  • SS Storage/Supply 160
  • SS Exterior Casing 640
  • SS Thrusters 320
  • SS Fuel Cells 160
  • SS Life Support System 320
  • SS Planetary Party Lounge 160
PS: is there an easy way to format data as table?
 
Thanks guys, it was those 2 640 shield components that killed me.

Here is the save

I did NOT build smiths. Nobody ever helped me researched, so i never bothered with optional techs. several times through the game I thought about taking a 4 turn detour for econ, but never bothered. This was probably a big difference.

I also should have built factories. I ended up having to clean pollution thanks to the research labs anyway.

I'm gonna open your save and take a look now.
 
Well, I compared the games. To my eye, it was the fact that Rome was supplying you with 246gpt that allowed you to research at max while still maintaining positive cash flow. After my golden age, i researched at max for several techs, but ultimately, I ran out of cash in the bank, so I was stuck with running 80% research...which yielded the 5 turns per tech.

At the end, my maint cost was 402 to your 340, so it seems smiths only saved you 60 gpt there. looks like you also did a better job making your citizens happy..thanks to the temples/cathedrals you made. I never bothered..couldn't afford them. =(
 
Nice going rabies! I think you did quite well for never having milked before.

Did you have Wall Street? That can help income of course.
 
Looks like having a friendly (emperor) AI can make a pretty big difference overall. Too bad that ends up being rather random. I wonder what exactly triggers an AI to sneak attack? I can't imagine we were at too much of a difference militarily or overall power wise.
 
Like you, I built few if any troops past Sir Pleb. Unlike your game, he attacked me not more than 4 turns after I took over Sir Pleb's game. I was about 1/3 the way through carthage at that point. Perhaps i should started making trades with him and giving him techs right away?

Sir pleb..yes..I built wall street. Even had a pre-build going for that. No way was I going to pass up 50gpt! ;)
 
Looking at the saves, there was 90 commerce and 99 corruption difference between the two games, which translates into 232 beakers per turn at 100%. If I subtract the income from Rome, I can still run 90% research rate, and still break about even with the 4th turn at as low as possible.

The main differences I see that would account for the base commerce discrepancy are that I built Commercial Docks just about everywhere I could, built a couple more cities in the FP area (basically amounts to using more coasts in low corruption areas), and that Rome had researched Communism so I could build Police stations.

Comparison of the two games:

Commerce: 4112 4022
Corruption: 1908 2009
Maintainence: 360 402
Unit Cost: 32 28
100% Res: 2228 1996

The Police Stations would account for most of the 99 corruption difference. The Commercial Docks, and extra coast tiles being used in the FP area, would account for most of the base commerce difference.

You did better than me as far as specialists, mainly due to using size 12 'corrupt' cities everywhere, instead of my many size 6 cities. The commercial bonuses meant you were getting 3 commerce from the size 12's, and I was only getting 1 from the size 6's, and the specialist to laborer ratio was higher in your game than mine. You were getting more commerce out of those corrupt areas, and I was getting more score. Some of that difference would have diminished if I had continued rushing Aquaducts/Marketplaces, but even then I think you had a better city placement in 'corrupt' areas from a commerce standpoint.

Smith's seems to have made more difference in the number of improvements I felt comfortable building. Since I wasn't paying for the Markets, Banks, and Stock Exchanges, I instead was able to afford to build Factories. So the difference in commerce wasn't huge, but the difference did show up in production quite a bit.

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Being attacked by Rome sounds like one of those random things that just happens from time to time. There couldn't have been much difference in our games by that point.
 
Thanks for the better analysis Aeson. I did not even realize you built police stations. I never knew they had that much of an impact on corruption.

You say you were getting more score out of the corrupt areas, and I was getting more commerce...is this because you packed in more 6 point cities for a greater population?

I learned a lot from this exercise. Now I just need to learn how to play the early game as well as Sir Pleb.
 
Until everything is maxed out, 2 size 6 cities will almost always score more than 1 size 12 city. The reason is that 2 cities will grow faster than 1 and that Luxuries are being used twice. The tradeoff is that more cities use up more tiles that end up not being worked by laborers.
 
Thanks for the tips and experience guys. I think I am going to apply all that I learned here for GOTM21...I understand completely now why my previous GOTM games did not score higher.
 
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