Music race

I thought it might be better to start a new thread to deal with the music race. First, CDZ has responded to our music announcement:

That sounds good. CDZ has already begun Music however so it would be advisable that you switch following Drama to avoid wasting beakers.

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We need to decide how to best respond.

Also, have they given us literature? if so, we could consider going straight for music.

Music costs 600 beakers, and we are currently making 109 beakers, so that's 6 turns on full research, plus 2 for drama, so 8 turns to music. We have 128 gold and a 16gpt deficit, 128/16=8, so that's theoretically a perfect amount of gold to get us through. That deficit will be more since founding Cygnus, but we can counter that by building wealth for a few turns in Quatron. (Better than building research, I believe, since that will allow us to maintain 100% research). This means a) NOT upgrading the trireme, b) not whipping Quatron and c) not settling immediately with the next settler (though the built wealth might make up for the maintenance).

So, I've shown that it is possible for music in 8 turns (or 6 if we have literature), now we must ask, is it necessary? CDZ researched aesthetics (300 beakers) in 6 turns and literature (200 beakers) in 3 turns. This indicates a beaker per turn output of 50 or 66, if we don't take into account overflow. The output could be as high as 99, giving them massive overflow into music if that is true, this however I doubt. We can estimate where they are based on graphs which I do not have. If we take their beaker output to be 75, a reasonable but liberal estimate (again, we don't know what the overflow looks like), than that's 8 turns to music. Not counting overflow from literature, which is unknown. Mainly, we need to look at the graphs and estimate their GDP (though they are not running 100% science, we have more culture).

We also have to try not to tick off Sirius and Amazon.

I still say go for it. We "called" it first, did we not?

We just got Lit from CDZ.

And I got this PM from Sommerswerd to all the teams:

Sommerswerd said:

The AMAZON will complete Construction next turn. We will be teching Feudalism next. We agree with Sirius plan to tech Astronomy.

On the war front... We currently have several Pyrgomache destroying improvements near the coastal Merlot City, "the circus".

Peace and long life friends,

Sommerswerd, Zenobian Captain

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To which I replied back to all teams:

cav scout said:

Sommerswerd,

You guys will be teching Feudalism? I remember that CDZ said they would be teching Feudalism after Machinery. But then instead of doing that they seem to have gone Aesthetics-> Literature. Could all the teams clarify their tech plans so we are all on the same page?

Here is my understanding so far:

Quatronia: Drama (2 turns)-> Music (6 Turns)
Sirius: Astronomy
Amazons: Construction-> ?
CDZ: ?

-Cav

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Hopefully this will stir things up a bit. There is still time on the clock so we can switch directly to Music. If we complete Drama first it does shave 10% of the time off Music though. And we did publicly declare Drama...

Looks like things might start to get a little tense with CDZ...

Looks good to me. Time to stir the pot...

Well it looks like it's game on... I went ahead and switched us to Music which we will get in 7 turns. We can shave a turn off of this if we run research in Quatron starting next turn.

It would be better to move a tile or two in random cities to coast rather than to build research, I think, if we could still shave off a turn like that. I know not having a lighthouse isn't great but still, 3 commerce per tile, and then we don't squander the rest of the city's production. But same principle.

Anyway I'm ok with just going for this, we can switch to music by me. Though I wish we'd gotten a message out a little earlier and at the very start suggested the bulbing idea (mentioning economics and physics too to be thinking ahead) so it wouldn't boil down into a conflict between us and CDZ.

I don't know how AMAZON or Sirius view this anyway though, but it's unfortunate we've gotten into so much trouble with CDZ over settling this whole time, could have been prevented in many ways (as in luck, like coincidence of being next to another non-Rexing team, or having the desert peninsula between us instead which has certainly worked for Sirius and AMAZON or something)

Exactly. I'm getting a little irritated with CDZ; our attempts to actually co-ordinate things with them have gone to deaf ears.

Really, the best option would have been for Sirius or Amazon to get music, but again, this was hampered by lack of co-ordination within the alliance.

Yeah I think we could've talked to Sirius 2-3 turns ago and just gone for Astro ourselves though, that's maybe partially our own decision working against us there. I still think it's been bad luck in general with CDZ as neighbors though, nothing to do about that.

If Amazon and Sirius get annoyed, then we can make it up to them by bulbing instead. Otherwise, we'll get to culture bomb. As long as we have the alliance to back us up to prevent CDZ from declaring war.

How is it 7 turns to music? I thought it was 600 beakers. Building research in Quatron should bring that down, and we probably don't have to do that the whole time, once we can build something else withough losing time, do it.

Didn't we publicly declare that we planned to work the top of the tech tree after completing optics?
If so then we have an excellent case to throw doubt onto CDZ as they are NOT co-operating under the terms of the ETTT i.e. open and forthright to avoid beaker duplication

Let's keep in mind that the ETTT isn't supposed to last forever. It's original goal was to get us quickly to Astro in order to take out the two weakest links. After that all bets are off. We should be considering how The Continuum sees that next phase panning out.

Being the instigator of the culture bomb brigade I support the decision to get the GA. The way I see it playing out is once we have the Mavs under control we would be considering a war with CDZ hopefully whilst they still have troops committed to a war with Merlot.

galdarian said:

Let's keep in mind that the ETTT isn't supposed to last forever. It's original goal was to get us quickly to Astro in order to take out the two weakest links. After that all bets are off. We should be considering how The Continuum sees that next phase panning out.

Being the instigator of the culture bomb brigade I support the decision to get the GA. The way I see it playing out is once we have the Mavs under control we would be considering a war with CDZ hopefully whilst they still have troops committed to a war with Merlot.

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As it is pertinent to debate and does get across what folks are thinking: I too am strongly thinking this is the long-term scenario for us, it's going to be against Mavs and then against CDZ as far as conflict goes.

However I am worried that MERLOT will simply fight AMAZON, so we might be in for a tough fight against CDZ, but I do see that as a likely outcome and am willing to take steps we decide may be necessarily to do that.

So again, I'm ok at least going for Music (and if things pan out you could even convince me to be on the cruel/Machiavellian bandwagon and sign onto culture-bombing as well )

Got this back from BCLG:

BCLG100 said:

Can you give me a timestamp or something so I can search our email if we responded?

No-one seemed too keen to have feudalism iirc and we felt it was fine to choose the tech provided no-one else was researching it. We felt that researching Literature was a fairly good indication that we weren't researching Feudalism. Perhaps CDZ has been a bit lax on the communicating side and for that we apologise but we have (as a team) been universally busy in real life but we did research Machinery as indicated.

Finally, you are indeed mistaken, we have been researching it for 2 or 3 turns (perhaps even 4, i've been moving house/holiday so have only recently begun logging into the game again) now and expect completion in 5 turns. This seems to be quicker than your projected finish and would be a waste of beakers to switch otherwise, perhaps you should research feudalism or you could finish HBR?

Regards
BCLG100

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And got this from Sommerswerd of the Amazons. I guess they are a tad bit annoyed:

Sommerswerd said:

We are teching Feudalism next. Our understanding is that CDZ and the Continuum are racing to get the Great Artist via Music. Why you are racing is unclear, but what is clear is that Sirius is teching Navigation and The AMAZON are teching Feudalism

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Hmm looks like we have lost the music race, supposing they are telling the truth.

Although I thought we were checking and they just got literature this turn?

I think he is exaggerating since as far as I can tell they just got Literature on turn 91. I think they are very worried we will attempt Music so they want to make it seem like they are too far to be caught. So with that in mind I think we should go for it

Can someone do the research to bolster our diplomatic case? We need to answer BCLG's question about the date/time stamp on their Machinery statement. And we want to show how we have been forthright and following our declare path (did we publicly indicate we would work the top of the tree after Optics?).

I will also help look into this.

AMAZONs are smart guys obviously, they figured out what is up, we should perhaps have mentioned just lightbulbing the artist sooner but that's the way things go.

I too think they are lying and trying to discourage us from taking Music, but we'll double check just to be sure, don't think they are as far as they say. Continuing to go as fast as we can sounds like a good idea.

cav scout said:

I think he is exaggerating since as far as I can tell they just got Literature on turn 91. I think they are very worried we will attempt Music so they want to make it seem like they are too far to be caught. So with that in mind I think we should go for it

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I agree. Full steam ahead!

cav scout said:

Can someone do the research to bolster our diplomatic case? We need to answer BCLG's question about the date/time stamp on their Machinery statement.

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Here is a message from CDZ stating they're going MC (July 7).
Here is a message from CDZ stating they're going for Machinery (July 25).
Here is a message from CDZ stating they might go Feud (August 20).
Here is a message from Sirius to the ETTT with the assumed techline for each team (August 23).

cav scout said:

And we want to show how we have been forthright and following our declare path (did we publicly indicate we would work the top of the tree after Optics?).

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I could not find such a declaration from the ETTT, embassy, and strategy threads.

Yeah I couldn't find us publicly saying we'd go after the top of the tech tree, but then again, I don't think AMAZONs or Sirius really care either.

It seems confirmed CDZ couldn't have had Literature before turns 90-91, thus at most like 2 turns ahead of us and we definitely have better tech to go get Music first still.

I think someone (Galdarian) might have said we're going for the top of the tree on the team forum as we were planning out research when we first adopted the ETTT. Even if we did declare it, it would be of little use, as teams can't seem to remember what they've said they would research.

It seems the Amazon's don't care if we bomb CDZ, they just dont want us to bomb their new city near the core (see the Amazon embassy thread for their most recent message).

So I say we bomb CDZ!

Interesting. Now we wait for Sirius and CDZ to reply. I agree with bombing, unless Sirius and Amazon sympathize with any CDZ complaint.