SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

As we get closer to the end (w/i 10 turns) maybe we can gift him up to ecology or not depending on if he stays our friend or not

Looks like, unless he does us a favour and drops Varanasi units to Madras, I'll be short on galleys for the second Gandhi war, so it might last 3t instead of 2t. Anyone have suggestions?

I'd kill that lone LB pre-CF, btw.

Edit: also, would you guys expect him to move the workers into Lahore for the attack turn? Maybe I should have a knight @ Lahore-2N1W in case?

A spy built in Canterbury this turn can get to either Varanasi or Lahore and could do a city revolt in 5 better odds in 6 turns (but odds should be good since we have very good espionage ratio)

I don't think the spy in Beijing can get there in time to help.

I would take Bangalore to if at all possible (only has a knight for protection and has several sushi resources there.

A 5 or 6 turn delay in the next war is fine I think. If it reduces the war to 2 turns rather than 3.

Edit: Also
3 knights you have in the area could also attack either Varanasi or Lahore the same turn units dropped off by galley could attack.
same turn of DoW you cut through Gandhi's land to either Varansi hill or towards Lahore.

Ok, I'll see what I can do with a longer delay - this is why I suggested DoP, we'd clear the WW. Bangalore is extra turn(s) at war, which is why I'd skip it.

I think many of our cities are going to be capped by happiness soon so unhealthiness will not be an issue in most of our cities. Heck, it'll probably curb growth so that it'll save city maintenance overall. I would go ahead and hook-up oil. If we can conquer some of Roos's cities earlier, we can set them to wealth/research and have them break even before the end of the game.

With the extra delay you might be able to get a lone galley over there.

I think many of our cities are going to be capped by happiness soon so unhealthiness will not be an issue in most of our cities. Heck, it'll probably curb growth so that it'll save city maintenance overall. I would go ahead and hook-up oil. If we can conquer some of Roos's cities earlier, we can set them to wealth/research and have them break even before the end of the game.
I think roosy is best left for the end since it will cost more to take him now than any benefit we would get from it.

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shyuhe I copied any earlier post about the war with Roosy decision below. I think one of the reasons we don't want a war with Roosy is because of our low happiness caps. WW with him will be significant even with tanks. The from oil is basically equal to 4 sushi resources which we are paying at least 2-3 gold per city for in maintenance. If we do hook up up oil why would we want it hooked up more than 1 or 2 turns (since we could build 15 tanks in 15 cities over those 2 turns) would save us lots of food that we are paying for anyways. Why not take the food if we can? Why throw it away?

If we attack Roosy before the spaceship
1) we lose trade routes with him (which isn't that significant)
2) we lose trades with him (for some reason he isn't canceling the seafood trades)
3) we lose the benefits of the builds that we would do instead of a modern military. We can't take roosy's rifles/cavalry/cannons with our current army without a lot of losses. (we need wealth builds now along with observatories and other useful buildings in most of our cities)
4) we suffer more war weariness that we can't easily deal with, without taking a significant research rate hit.
5) it would not be wise to gift him any more techs (if he gets artillery we definitely want to wait to attack him for example--or it just becomes even more expensive to attack him)
6) each addition military units costs us at least 3 gold per turn in addition to its actual cost. Just 1 tank is 180 gold up front and then 3 gold per turn that could otherwise keep our research going...
7) We do get the production of his cities that we capture. But realistically we start the war in 10 turns? Then revolt for 6-10 turns which gives us 10 productive turns?

editted:
If we attack after the spaceship launch
1) We only have 10 turns, but every city can be devoted to his destruction without slowing down our victory date.
2) We might be able to steal artillery from him (by gifting him some techs) (edit: less likely now, but still a possibility
edit: 3) leaves open the possibility of gifting him ecology if he remains our friend so he cleans up some fallout for us.

bcool said:

small cities with crappy tiles around them and no infrastructure do not need sushi in my opinion (haven't done the numbers but I think it wouldn't pay off)

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This isn't quite true. We get 25 food from sushi at a cost of roughly -60 without a courthouse. If we use those crappy cities to build workers, that's something in the vicinity of 20 hammers for 60 gold. That's the same ratio as non-Kremlin rush buying. So we can use those satellite cities to beef up our worker force for fallout scrubbing (and making conquered cities more hammer heavy).

Ok, I thought about it a bit more. How about we plan for a boat + marine campaign against Roos in 15-20ish turns? We will need the boats to send workers everywhere anyways so we'll have to build some. Plus, we can build transports using fission + uranium instead of oil if we're concerned about health (and don't want to use wooden boats).

So tech path would be something like industrialism (set 2-3 good hammer cities on marines)--combustion--plastics (dam), then fission (can push back later if we're ok with wooden boats) --radio (R&R) --computers--superconductors--artillery--rocketry--fiber optics--fusion--satellites--composites--genetics--ecology?

Here's the fallout count:

Island NE of Seattle: 3 tiles, 2 on tundra.
Near Chicago: 8 tiles, 5 on tundra
Near Boston: 8 tiles
Near Washington: 2 tiles
Near Philadelphia: 2 tiles
Near US-Russia border: 7 tiles
Near Hangzhou: 4 tiles
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Near Delhi: 11 tiles
Near Varanasi: 12 tiles (3 in Indian territory), 4 on desert
Near Lahore: 13 tiles, 6 on tundra
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Island east of London: 3 tiles, all tundra
Near Stalingrad: 1 tundra
Southern Stalin island: 4 tiles
Uranium island SE of Stalin: 6 tiles
Two islands east of Iron Spice: 3 tiles, 2 tundra
Fog island: 4 tundra tiles
Island north of Yaroslav: 3 tiles, 1 tundra
Island east of Siberia: 6 tiles, 5 tundra

There's more fallout near Kamchatka and Coventry but I haven't counted them since it looks like we have enough workers to clean them up already. Let me know if I need to count them.

Ok, so for immediate concerns, it sounds like:
- No Physics / Steel gift to Roosevelt
- No peace with Gandhi - CF for 5-ish turns and set up for a rapid conquest of Varanasi, Lahore and Bangalore.

@shy,
I was wondering about Coventry. If we chose to build some of our units in London (2GG settled), we could probably run through there on the way to America. We could also give Churchill Ecology later via Fission, so he can help us a bit.

Roosevelt war: we'll slow down our research pace if we go early, ofc. I am concerned about leaving it for the last 10t, though. I think we need to decide which units we're building and how many we'll need. Then we start on them in due time and see what the build-up looks like for an earlier strike (perhaps taking 4-5 cities right away and CF-ing 'till after launch to avoid further WW). Ships: I was thinking that Bananas and Bermuda would be on it. Iron Spice can also build some Galleons for worker hopping in the islands. Do we need transports all that bad? Do we wanna upgrade galleys to galleons (cash is at a premium, ofc)?

Edit: we won't be building any units during the next 5t, which is how far I intend to play. Nor would we hook up oil by then. So, we can still keep the discussion open for now.

If we leave roosy for the end all we really need to do is clean up the fallout, not conquer all his cities. So if he stays friends and we can gift him ecology ~10 turns before launch then we would only have to clean up the fallout he doesn't get to.

Is there an attitude threshold for a tech gift?! As long as he's not refusing to talk, we should be able to gift at Annoyed, no?

How much of a PPP do you guys need?

I intend to have 5 Mining execs at all times, and keep Sushi going as CHs complete. We'll have a Mining bottleneck with the one on the Galleon and two I intend to send to India via galley shortly (I'll use one of the galleys in Vija starting this turn).

Research will go: Industrialism / Combustion, with the intent to set up for a 8t Plastics.

Gandhi: I won't be doing more warring in the next 5t.

Builds as per posted plan. Cities not listed will build basic infra in the obvious order.

No culture slider for now.

I don't need too detailed of a PPP for this stage of the game with this many units - city builds is enough for me. Can we squeeze Broadway in somewhere? The will help, especially as we start to obsolete some luxuries.

Does anybody have an estimate as to how large Roos's stack is right now? If it's in the 10-20 unit range, I'd be comfortable attacking him with 20 marines with air support. I don't think gifting him ecology is very wise as it seems a bit luck dependent and we'll need shinier troops to conquer him. Namely, it gives him infantry which are significantly better than rifles against our units (we'll need tanks).

bbp, no theaters? I think happiness will be an issue with all the resources going obsolete and the rapid growth. Theaters will pay off very quickly even if we don't use the cultural slider.

no Gandhi war in next 5 turns but it is important to get it set up. Will you send the spy from Beijing or build one in Canterbury?

Does anybody have an estimate as to how large Roos's stack is right now? If it's in the 10-20 unit range, I'd be comfortable attacking him with 20 marines with air support. I don't think gifting him ecology is very wise as it seems a bit luck dependent and we'll need shinier troops to conquer him. Namely, it gives him infantry which are significantly better than rifles against our units (we'll need tanks).

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we can gift him ecology through the fission path rather than the plastics path, so we wouldn't gift him assembly line. We would have to gift him physics, biology, electricity, fission and ecology.

@bbp
we can gift him techs at annoyed. I'm just saying that if he decides to declare war on us we would probably not bother to gift him anything. with aggressive AI it is still possible he declares on us I think. Our power would have to be more than twice his.

Ok, I'm fine on the gifting Roos ecology strategy. I would still like to start building marines though, as we can use them on Stalin instead. And I think it's pretty obvious but no need to gift any techs to Roos until we tech fission ourselves. We would still have to settle the island near Seattle to scrub that fallout (or gift workers to Roos if those tiles fall under his culture). How efficient is the AI about scrubbing fallout with ecology anyways?

@shy,
Broadway's going into Hammer City, to finish in 5t - it's in my plan from this morning.

@bcool,
Out of primary cities, I think only Moscow and Beijing are missing theatres. Moscow could build one, I guess, though it has +5 atm.
Spies: I'll have to look at the logistics - yes, I'll try to get one. What is the actual cost of city revolt with different stationary discounts?

Edit: xpost - we can scrub outside of borders, btw.

As long as you set me up to take Gandhi in 2 turns , I'm fine with you playing any time. When do you plan to play, bbp?