[BTS] SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

[mabraham]

I don't think we can get a low-tech war going fast enough to do enough damage - especially when we will have no scouting until about 8 turns time.

Staying in Caste, switching to Taoism before the tech steal, and then switching to Pacifism + Bureaucracy when we get Civil Service and have built monastery and several missionaries in Stone City in order to tech fast to Education and Gunpowder seems to make sense to me. Hopefully we can trade/steal Machinery and Engineering and run a very efficient treb and musket war while continuing to tech. Stealing Guilds from the AI will further buff our Caste workshops.

Note for the unbelievers: slavery returns around 2 per once a granary is up. With Caste, a grassland workshop returns 2 per (one from another tile, one from itself) before Guilds. We have quite a few such grassland tiles around - four near Stone City, three near Gems City and two near Isengard. All have other plains tiles to use also. After Guilds, a plains workshop returns 4 per 2 and grassland tiles 3 for 1. As a side effect, we get to keep our population high to deter other AIs from war and help bolster our UN vote eventually.

We should make a very deliberate campaign to farm XP from that barb city near Elizabeth to get the Heroic Epic up at or before war time.

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by bcool

This is a very hard decision. I think option #1 expanding peacefully building the AP might be the best path.

Reasons
The early war path (2) is risky since if the AI get longbows then it will be a long dragged out war and will make it hard (due to excessive whipping of most of our cities) to peacefully produce the great people we need to get mass media quickly and spread our religion and build the AP.

I like the peace path because we can get the AP and spread begin spreading our religion to our potential friends. I think this is important because it will be difficult in this map to get missionaries quickly to the AI lands. So we need to start early if we are going to succeed in converting one or more teams to our religion.

I also like the peace path because I think a later war will let us get established (likely whipping or building lighthouses, courthouses, forges, and barracks before we go to war. The courthouses will allow us to maximize the espionage game and better deal with the rapid expansion of our empire. We have time to get a 8 xp unit on the barb city near Elizabeth, so we can likely build the HE and produce the more modern military units more efficiently.

In addition it will be easier to whip more advanced units efficiently with a forge and police state. For example it is easier to 2 pop whip with max overflow when you have a forge and or police state more expensive units like macemen and trebs.

Having the AI in our AP religion can really help us with the diplomacy. We can bring holy wars. If we build the AP ourselves, we can also avoid being manipulated by the AI who would build the AP instead of us.

The peace path might still allow us to do an opportunistic early war in the southern witches declare on the eastern witches. We might be able to grab workers and maybe a city or 2 on the edges.

I like these ideas a lot. Even better might be to watch for the Eastern witches building the AP, and to revolt them to Taoism the turn it would complete. Our miniscule Tao population will still be enough to dominate the voting.

Our hammers cities would be building (maybe) the AP, scouts, monasteries and missionaries while our tech cities do tech and our workers build plantations and workshops and roads across the hub.

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by shulec

I think we should consider Civil Service before Paper. With Theology and CS, this should decrease the cost of Paper. If Gandhi starts researching CS next, I am OK waiting to steal it.

Yes, we should consider this once we know what is happening.

Originally Posted by shulec

Once we get CS, get our irrigation chains set up especially for corn in the capitol.

That will happen as a side-effect of farms for Marble City, of course.

Originally Posted by shulec

I suggest the next city go on the sheep 3W of Gems City. It will pick up clams, can borrow crabs, it allows for a second city between Gems City and Isengard. With a city on the sheep, it will eventually allow irrigating to the other city site SW and to Isengard.

Such a city does get +1 for the grassland sheep central tile. However, I'm unconvinced that it is useful enough. Each new city costs us more gold in each existing city.

I don't think Isengard actually wants any farms. The resource and central tiles return 17, allowing for three more tiles to be worked. Two grassland workshops allow for a further two plains workshops - and that's the whole BFC worked.

Originally Posted by shulec

Your asked about our opinions about war. I will refrain from commenting. I tend to play a peaceful style and tend to push of war until I have stronger units. I think this approach is probably not good for this SGOTM.

Under the right circumstances, we could maybe get both North and West voting for us, and if we have an extremely high population, we might not need (much of) a war at all...

[shulec]

Originally Posted by mabraham

Under the right circumstances, we could maybe get both North and West voting for us, and if we have an extremely high population, we might not need (much of) a war at all...

I agree that we may be looking to the West and North witches for UN votes. For this reason, we need to prioritize their lands for exploration. If the wizard is one of their units, we will have to declare war and retool our diplomacy in a hurry. I agree that our great spy needs to see Monty's lands while we still have vision.

[shulec]

Originally Posted by mabraham

Under the right circumstances, we could maybe get both North and West voting for us, and if we have an extremely high population, we might not need (much of) a war at all...

I agree that we may be looking to the West and North witches for UN votes. For this reason, we need to prioritize their lands for exploration. If the wizard is one of their units, we will have to declare war and retool our diplomacy in a hurry. I agree that our great spy needs to see Monty's lands while we still have vision.

Originally Posted by mabraham

We should make a very deliberate campaign to farm XP from that barb city near Elizabeth to get the Heroic Epic up at or before war time.

I agree that this is a good idea, but I am afraid the barb city by Elizabeth is our wrong target. She has a Barrage I catapult that appears to be headed that direction. I suspect that city will not stand more than a few turns. We will definitely need to find a good target. There is one south of Isengard on Ragnar's spoke.

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by shulec

I agree that this is a good idea, but I am afraid the barb city by Elizabeth is our wrong target. She has a Barrage I catapult that appears to be headed that direction. I suspect that city will not stand more than a few turns. We will definitely need to find a good target. There is one south of Isengard on Ragnar's spoke.

Frogdude and I were looking at power and score graphs a few days ago. It seems Elizabeth recently whipped and lost a force that I estimate was about a single swordsman.

Do we want our galley to ferry a spy to Asoka first, before any convoy to the barb city (if it is still standing)?

[bcool]

Originally Posted by mabraham

I don't think we can get a low-tech war going fast enough to do enough damage - especially when we will have no scouting until about 8 turns time.

Staying in Caste, switching to Taoism before the tech steal, and then switching to Pacifism + Bureaucracy when we get Civil Service and have built monastery and several missionaries in Stone City in order to tech fast to Education and Gunpowder seems to make sense to me. Hopefully we can trade/steal Machinery and Engineering and run a very efficient treb and musket war while continuing to tech. Stealing Guilds from the AI will further buff our Caste workshops.

Note for the unbelievers: slavery returns around 2 per once a granary is up. With Caste, a grassland workshop returns 2 per (one from another tile, one from itself) before Guilds. We have quite a few such grassland tiles around - four near Stone City, three near Gems City and two near Isengard. All have other plains tiles to use also. After Guilds, a plains workshop returns 4 per 2 and grassland tiles 3 for 1. As a side effect, we get to keep our population high to deter other AIs from war and help bolster our UN vote eventually.

We should make a very deliberate campaign to farm XP from that barb city near Elizabeth to get the Heroic Epic up at or before war time.

I am an unbeliever still.

Whips under slavery return much closer to 3 hammers for every food and give us the benefits of the buildings that much earlier. I would imagine if we whip the forges we would want to whip other buildings as well.

With organized religion and the anticipation of getting the AP there are several buildings that will return hammers and other benefits that will help us long term much better than growing and using caste enhanced workshops.

For example,
A monastery 2 pop whipped under organized religion with a forge gives us +2 hammers until scientific method (at least 30-40 turns from now), +10% research (which even for the smallest commerce poor cities is about 2 average research), and it gives us another city that can produce missionaries under pacifism (not insignificant given our desire to convert one or more teams to our religion)

The food necessary to 2 pop the monastery for 6 pop city (with a 32 size food bin) is... 1/2 of 28 + 1/2 of 30 or 29 food. The 2 pop whip gives us 90 modifier hammers and the benefits of the monastery for 30-40 turns. The monastery under the AP returns at least as much as 1 population higher city would. Plus the whip gives us at least 30 modified hammers to partially build a courthouse.
In addition the whip reduces maintenance of the city a little bit.

Building the courthouse with a whip also returns the benefits of the courthouse much faster. A 3 gold reduction in maintenance and 2 espionage and the ability to run a spy is worth at least (3 gold + 2 espionage * 3 science assuming there are techs to steal from either the west or the northern witches) = 9 commerce

Getting 9 commerce earlier instead of the production of 2-3 population while the city regrows is pretty good. Plus the earlier courthouse unlock the Forbidden Palace which won't be a bad build if we expand aggressively into the hub.

These whips yes reduce our population but we are going to have a lot of time to grow back to fighting shape before the UN vote.

Before the forge whips of buildings under organized relgion at size 6 return hammers at
74 hammers for 29 food. With a forge you get 90 hammers foe 29 food. This is better than a grass land workshop under caste and guilds. Plus we get this without waiting for the hammers, so we get the building benefits earlier. Plus it lessens our need for workers since we don't need to feel pressed to get workshops built.

Our cities are going to grow much faster than our workers can handle if we don't whip...

If we delay the switch to pacifism GPFarm is a pretty fine hammer city too... It could slow build us at least a galley after the NE.

[bcool]

We might have to whip a galley out of GPFarm if we are going to realistically get a sword and catapult to the barbarian city on Elizabeth's lands. The galley can explore and probably assess if Elizabeth is getting to the city faster than we could organize an assault. At the very least Elizabeth might prevent us from milking out the xp like we would want to...

I think shulec is right we need a better barbarian city to milk out the xp.

There is always a lull in barbarian spawning when barbarian cities start appearing.

[bcool]

I think we have four types of city at the moment. The capital, the GPfarm, three hammers-focussed cities (Stone, Gems, Isengard), and a handful of low-hammers medium-to-high food cities (CB, Silver, Marble, Ivory). These last four do not want forges or Taoism - their job will be to run Caste merchants to float the economy. I don't see the value in spending hammers on missionaries for Isengard and Gems just so that they can save 25% whipping a forge. So I think we want our existing missionary to spread in TH, and two more, one for the capital and one for GPfarm.

I think we are going to want to whip at least a lighthouse and a courthouse in most of the high food low hammer cities.
If we whip them it makes decent sense to spread our religion to them. A missionary gives us in 2-pop 3-pop whip scenario effectively ~35 hammers. The missionary basically pays for itself (and this doesn't include the benefits of producing the buildings earlier). Plus it gives us the option of building a monastery in some of these cities to facilitate the spread of the religion to our own cities and later to the other AI.

Some of these cities could likely produce a great person for us if we have the religion there as well. And the religion gives +1 pop and gives us more voting power in the AP votes. I think spreading the religion to most if not all of these cities is worth it...

[bcool]

I think a marketplace is wrong. I do not think our gold should not be coming from the slider, but rather the up to 15 or so merchants we will run in those smaller cities. If we were to put an academy and/or uni and/or Oxford in the capital this case would be even more compelling. We want the slider at 100%, so we want merchants for the gold.

While I think a marketplace is not a bad idea since I want to stay in slavery longer than mabraham envisions. I'm not so sure a monastery wouldn't be better first.

Perhaps it is best to build the AP in Gems and let the capital build a monastery and marketplace. We probably don't want to whip both... And overflow whip of a monastery might go a long enough way to produce the marketplace in a reasonable amount of time.

Long term we might want to stay in organized religion until we can whip out universities... And set up an oxford build in the capital. If we research paper and partially bulb education by the end of Kaitzilla's turn set we are going to be very close to getting universities.

If we do build universites and oxford it is probably going to make sense to turn off the research slider for 10 turns or so (while we build universities and then Oxford) If this is in the long term plan a market for the capital makes a lot of sense.

[bcool]

While the rest of the empire waits for the Taoism/Forges wave, they build lighthouses, settlers, and scout chariots. I want 2 more cities in our empire. One a few tiles north of our capital, and Whale City who can steal Gem Citie's Seafood. Gems City will have plenty of food resources, and Whale City can be a good whipping post later on with Sheep and Seafood.

Why do we want one north of our capital? It has no food of its own. Also, whale city cannot have sheep and seafood unless we steal from Gems, who might as well have kept the seafood now that it has built a lighthouse, and run Caste workshops with the food...

The whale/sheep city isn't a bad city and if we spend more time in organized religion we can get this city going reasonably quickly. (It can build culture after we get music finished to quickly get the sheep and whale in its borders.) I think it is a decent play to steal the seafood from gems, since if we spend a decent time in organized religion and slavery, the food will be much more effectively for the whale sheep city. Since gems will not have the option to run specialists for some time.

I would rather not settle north of the capital any time soon. I would rather settle near our archer. That has sheep, seafood and fur and silver and marble. Or somewhere else interesting in the Hub. We want developed cities closer to the AI so we can send missionaries to them faster.

And if we spend some time in organized religion we can whip important buildings before we switch back to pacifism.

[bcool]

James Bond will scout south to explore the bottom-left of the map where Montezuma resides.

James Bond isn't the great spy he is the spy that sits in Trojan Horse I believe.

[Kaitzilla]

Originally Posted by bcool

James Bond isn't the great spy he is the spy that sits in Trojan Horse I believe.

Oops! Sorry, just James Bond was the greatest spy ever and I got confused!

[Kaitzilla]

Originally Posted by bcool

The whale/sheep city isn't a bad city and if we spend more time in organized religion we can get this city going reasonably quickly. (It can build culture after we get music finished to quickly get the sheep and whale in its borders.) I think it is a decent play to steal the seafood from gems, since if we spend a decent time in organized religion and slavery, the food will be much more effectively for the whale sheep city. Since gems will not have the option to run specialists for some time.

I would rather not settle north of the capital any time soon. I would rather settle near our archer. That has sheep, seafood and fur and silver and marble. Or somewhere else interesting in the Hub. We want developed cities closer to the AI so we can send missionaries to them faster.

And if we spend some time in organized religion we can whip important buildings before we switch back to pacifism.

Hub City is probably better than Tiny City ya. I would love to produce a settler for Hub City and Whale City in my turnset, since we now have the economy to support more cities.

Tiny City still has merits later on. It can run a few tiles from surrounding cities and help Stone City grow on sea tiles instead of gold. It really doesn't add much to maintenance I don't think.

[Kaitzilla]

Originally Posted by bcool

...

These whips yes reduce our population but we are going to have a lot of time to grow back to fighting shape before the UN vote.

Before the forge whips of buildings under organized relgion at size 6 return hammers at
74 hammers for 29 food. With a forge you get 90 hammers foe 29 food. This is better than a grass land workshop under caste and guilds. Plus we get this without waiting for the hammers, so we get the building benefits earlier. Plus it lessens our need for workers since we don't need to feel pressed to get workshops built.

Our cities are going to grow much faster than our workers can handle if we don't whip...

Ya, I'd really like to see forges in every city
Don't forget they add +3Happy also.

[bcool]

comments in blue

Originally Posted by shulec

Nice looking plan Kaitzilla.

My thoughts:

• I am undecided on how to best proceed in Washington.
• I think farming the marble city is better than cottages.
• I agree with bcool on his espionage point assignment.
• I think we should consider Civil Service before Paper. With Theology and CS, this should decrease the cost of Paper. If Gandhi starts researching CS next, I am OK waiting to steal it.
  I think we are much more likely to steal civil service than we are paper. Plus we can get paper faster than we can get civil service and this times well with bulbing education. Getting universities faster is a very good thing I think.
• Once we get CS, get our irrigation chains set up especially for corn in the capitol.
• I suggest the next city go on the sheep 3W of Gems City. It will pick up clams, can borrow crabs, it allows for a second city between Gems City and Isengard. With a city on the sheep, it will eventually allow irrigating to the other city site SW and to Isengard.
  This isn't a bad idea. It also saves a forest compared to Kaitzilla site. It gives up on the whales, I doubt we will need that happiness though so that is no big loss. With a lighthouse this city has a 5 food tile and 3 food center tile. And it has the option to steal the sugar and the seafood from gems. (and the mines if gems switches over to max specialists)
  
  The whale city Kaitzilla suggests would have 5 food sheep, and a 3 food whale tile eventually. It couldn't steal the sugar but it could steal the seafood from gems.
  If we wanted to farm down the spoke we would have to farm the sheep tile reducing it to a 4 food tile.
  
  I think I favor settling on the sheep.
  
  In either case
  I agree with mabraham we probably don't have to farm out to isengard. It is happy enough with work shops I imagine after it slowly recovers from being heavily whipped. Unless we want to make it into a HE/Moai city. Then maybe we would want it to grow faster.
  
  
• Get some workshops up in Stone City.
  I'd rather have farms near stone city so it can grow back faster from planned whips
• Cancel resources trades to east witches. One now and one in 7 turns.
  I think we take the gold from the east witches. The slight benefit of giving the a resource is minor compared to benefit to us. How likely it is that they really are running into health issues? I don't think they are, so the resource doesn't benefit them at all and gives us some gold.

I agree with the other items in the list.

[Kaitzilla]

I was considering Paper over Civil Service because the map maker gave us enough lakes and rivers not to really need farm chains this early. Also, the capital isn't all that sexy just yet.

Paper on the other hand might let us trade maps
Also, it opens the way for Education faster, and we get a very substantial bonus building universities since we are Philosophical. We also have stone for Oxford.


I'll concede we don't really need whales being charismatic and having every happy resource in the game within easy reach.

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by bcool

I am an unbeliever still.

Whips under slavery return much closer to 3 hammers for every food

Take Isengard as an example. We will wish for it to work those 5 resource tiles throughout, and are probably not interested in whipping any unit for less than two population per cycle. The 6th and 7th population take 32 and 34 food to grow, with 15 and 16 saved by the granary, so 35 food to grow back from 60 base hammers whipped. A smaller city like Culture Bridge whipping from size 4 to 2 requires only 26 and 28 food, less 13 and 14 from the granary, so 27 food required for 60 hammers. The ratio cannot be anything like 3 hammers for a food.

Originally Posted by bcool

and give us the benefits of the buildings that much earlier. I would imagine if we whip the forges we would want to whip other buildings as well.

An earlier forge does give access to the 25% forge bonus faster. So there is a window when Slavery outperforms Caste when slavery has a forge and Caste does not, if the city has a meaningful hammer output during that time. Isengard, Gems, Stone and Washington would/could have such a hammer output. Other cities won't.

Originally Posted by bcool

With organized religion and the anticipation of getting the AP there are several buildings that will return hammers and other benefits that will help us long term much better than growing and using caste enhanced workshops.

Organized religion helps with the first few missionaries not needing a monastery. Then it helps in cities that have had the religion spread that are still building a building. The missionary cost 40 hammers to build, so we must build around 160 hammers worth of buildings in each city to which we spread, in order to get value for those hammers. A forge or university are respectively 120 and 100 hammers (considering that we are Philosophical and get half-price universities). Given that any strategy will need missionaries for GPfarm and Washington for the eventual benefits, those missionaries are accepted costs. However, a strategy that spreads Taoism further in the short term has to consider the opportunity cost of building those missionaries. Those could be other useful units. Also, the forges might get built before Taoism spreads, which might make it hard to show a profit.

Originally Posted by bcool

For example,
A monastery 2 pop whipped under organized religion with a forge gives us +2 hammers until scientific method (at least 30-40 turns from now), +10% research (which even for the smallest commerce poor cities is about 2 average research), and it gives us another city that can produce missionaries under pacifism (not insignificant given our desire to convert one or more teams to our religion)

We don't need to convert them unless we think we need the shared-religion diplo bonus for the victory vote, and don't think successive espionage conversions late in the game will do the job. Religious shared-war could well be a better approach. The AP votes are binding whether or not you have adopted the state religion. Dominating the AP vote against pairs of AIs is easier if we're the only civ using the religion - but we'll probably be on top regardless.

Also, the first city conversion from the first whipped missionary could be about 4 non-anarchy turns from now, and many of our converted cities will be substantially later than that. Monasteries cost 60 hammers, so we do want 20+ post-AP pre-Scientific Method turns of 2 hammers and 2 beakers to show a profit.

With a cap of three missionaries on the whole map, we are not going to be able to mass-convert anybody for a long long time. We're talking serious galleon chains here... Late-game Universal Suffrage rush-buying from hub cities might be the only way to do this fast enough...

Originally Posted by bcool

The food necessary to 2 pop the monastery for 6 pop city (with a 32 size food bin) is... 1/2 of 28 + 1/2 of 30 or 29 food. The 2 pop whip gives us 90 modifier hammers and the benefits of the monastery for 30-40 turns. The monastery under the AP returns at least as much as 1 population higher city would. Plus the whip gives us at least 30 modified hammers to partially build a courthouse.
In addition the whip reduces maintenance of the city a little bit.

Your calculations are assuming a forge, which only about half our cities will actually have. A 40-hammers monastery seems likely to be a single-population 45-hammers whip with a forge and OR acting together.

Originally Posted by bcool

Building the courthouse with a whip also returns the benefits of the courthouse much faster. A 3 gold reduction in maintenance and 2 espionage and the ability to run a spy is worth at least (3 gold + 2 espionage * 3 science assuming there are techs to steal from either the west or the northern witches) = 9 commerce

Courthouses are a long way away. We have lighthouses in most cities, forges, monasteries and missionaries to build, more scouts, perhaps replacement spies, and sooner or later universities. I agree that courthouses are nice, but so are lots of other things we want to be doing.

Originally Posted by bcool

Getting 9 commerce earlier instead of the production of 2-3 population while the city regrows is pretty good. Plus the earlier courthouse unlock the Forbidden Palace which won't be a bad build if we expand aggressively into the hub.

These whips yes reduce our population but we are going to have a lot of time to grow back to fighting shape before the UN vote.

Before the forge whips of buildings under organized relgion at size 6 return hammers at
74 hammers for 29 food. With a forge you get 90 hammers foe 29 food. This is better than a grass land workshop under caste and guilds. Plus we get this without waiting for the hammers, so we get the building benefits earlier. Plus it lessens our need for workers since we don't need to feel pressed to get workshops built.

A grassland workshop under caste with Guilds returns 3 hammers per food. Assuming we're working several of them per city so that forge rounding effects can be more or less ignored, that's 3.75 hammers per food - or 108.75 hammers for 29 food. If we're not building a building (e.g. all those missionaries, spies and army we might be building), Caste still returns at this rate, whereas whipping reverts to 74 hammers.

One hidden cost is needing to wait until the AIs tech Guilds for us to steal. Before then, Caste workshops are not great.

Originally Posted by bcool

Our cities are going to grow much faster than our workers can handle if we don't whip...

Cottages are more than half complete. Plantations are underway. We're going to be looking for jobs to do if we don't build workshops...

Originally Posted by bcool

If we delay the switch to pacifism GPFarm is a pretty fine hammer city too... It could slow build us at least a galley after the NE.

That sounds like a gamble. This is a race we're in here... We're still in the dark about what tech we need to kill the wizard, but the sooner we get cranking the better...

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by Kaitzilla

I was considering Paper over Civil Service because the map maker gave us enough lakes and rivers not to really need farm chains this early. Also, the capital isn't all that sexy just yet.

Paper on the other hand might let us trade maps
Also, it opens the way for Education faster, and we get a very substantial bonus building universities since we are Philosophical. We also have stone for Oxford.


I'll concede we don't really need whales being charismatic and having every happy resource in the game within easy reach.

I like these ideas.

[bcool]

Originally Posted by mabraham

Take Isengard as an example. We will wish for it to work those 5 resource tiles throughout, and are probably not interested in whipping any unit for less than two population per cycle. The 6th and 7th population take 32 and 34 food to grow, with 15 and 16 saved by the granary, so 35 food to grow back from 60 base hammers whipped. A smaller city like Culture Bridge whipping from size 4 to 2 requires only 26 and 28 food, less 13 and 14 from the granary, so 27 food required for 60 hammers. The ratio cannot be anything like 3 hammers for a food.

I agree that the raw ratio is 2 to 1, however as you say later the organized and forge bonus changes this.

An earlier forge does give access to the 25% forge bonus faster. So there is a window when Slavery outperforms Caste when slavery has a forge and Caste does not, if the city has a meaningful hammer output during that time. Isengard, Gems, Stone and Washington would/could have such a hammer output. Other cities won't.

The earlier forge still helps the other cities with whips, so we need at least 6 cities, the cities were we plan to build universities or whip multiple military units out

Organized religion helps with the first few missionaries not needing a monastery. Then it helps in cities that have had the religion spread that are still building a building. The missionary cost 40 hammers to build, so we must build around 160 hammers worth of buildings in each city to which we spread, in order to get value for those hammers. A forge or university are respectively 120 and 100 hammers (considering that we are Philosophical and get half-price universities). Given that any strategy will need missionaries for GPfarm and Washington for the eventual benefits, those missionaries are accepted costs. However, a strategy that spreads Taoism further in the short term has to consider the opportunity cost of building those missionaries. Those could be other useful units. Also, the forges might get built before Taoism spreads, which might make it hard to show a profit.
You prove my point. Any city we expect to build a forge and university will pay for the missionary in the hammer savings under organized religion. If we don't go to war what is more important than getting forges and universities in our key cities?

We don't need to convert them unless we think we need the shared-religion diplo bonus for the victory vote, and don't think successive espionage conversions late in the game will do the job. Religious shared-war could well be a better approach. The AP votes are binding whether or not you have adopted the state religion. Dominating the AP vote against pairs of AIs is easier if we're the only civ using the religion - but we'll probably be on top regardless.
Mass converting an AI to the AP religion has a lot of benefits. We can get them to friendly and trade monopoly techs with them for example. And I have proven that you can convert an AI using successive espionage. Plus if you convert the AI to another religion using espionage, it will not (in my experience in a recent 10-game challenge game) switch away even with a small number of cities in that religion if it is at war.

Also, the first city conversion from the first whipped missionary could be about 4 non-anarchy turns from now, and many of our converted cities will be substantially later than that. Monasteries cost 60 hammers, so we do want 20+ post-AP pre-Scientific Method turns of 2 hammers and 2 beakers to show a profit.

We need some monasteries, no not all cities will build them but the benefits are very close to matching their cost. Especially in cities that will produce significant research (by running multiple specialists during the caste phase of the game)

With a cap of three missionaries on the whole map, we are not going to be able to mass-convert anybody for a long long time. We're talking serious galleon chains here... Late-game Universal Suffrage rush-buying from hub cities might be the only way to do this fast enough...

I just played a challenge #1 game and I mass converted 4 AI on an oasis map before the UN was built.
Your calculations are assuming a forge, which only about half our cities will actually have. A 40-hammers monastery seems likely to be a single-population 45-hammers whip with a forge and OR acting together.

Monasteries are 60 hammers

Courthouses are a long way away. We have lighthouses in most cities, forges, monasteries and missionaries to build, more scouts, perhaps replacement spies, and sooner or later universities. I agree that courthouses are nice, but so are lots of other things we want to be doing.

Courthouses do not have to be a long way off! If we don't go to war then we definitely want to whip courthouses.

A grassland workshop under caste with Guilds returns 3 hammers per food. Assuming we're working several of them per city so that forge rounding effects can be more or less ignored, that's 3.75 hammers per food - or 108.75 hammers for 29 food. If we're not building a building (e.g. all those missionaries, spies and army we might be building), Caste still returns at this rate, whereas whipping reverts to 74 hammers.

One hidden cost is needing to wait until the AIs tech Guilds for us to steal. Before then, Caste workshops are not great.

Cottages are more than half complete. Plantations are underway. We're going to be looking for jobs to do if we don't build workshops...

Sure build workshops, but without a switch soon to caste system there is no urgency to build them. If we do switch to caste system without significant whips then we will out grow our workers' ability to build the workshops. So the hammer production of those cities will be limited. Plus if we are in caste system it will be hard to justify working a workshop when instead we could run a specialist. So maybe you are right that we could build workshops for the few key cities that we don't plan to run specialists. But still the whips produce the buildings faster. And this frees the workers up to helping improve more cities...

That sounds like a gamble. This is a race we're in here... We're still in the dark about what tech we need to kill the wizard, but the sooner we get cranking the better...

What I'm suggesting is that staying in organized religion and slavery will let us tech faster. There is a short term cost in our research rate while we whip lighthouses, forges and courthouses, but long term these buildings will return more benefits than an early switch to caste system and slow building them using workshops.

A vast majority of our great people will come from GPFarm, and yes we lose 10-15 turns where we could be running an addition 4-5 scientists by staying in organized religion and slavery 25 turns instead of the 10-15 you seem to be suggesting.
But we can do significantly more research with the slider if we have a significant number of courthouses and the passive espionage will let us steal more.


Re: slavery ratio
Yes the raw ratio is about 2 hammers for 1 food, however we will not have workshops instantly. And it could easily be 20 turns before an AI techs guilds. The time I'm talking about in the next 20 turns. With organized religion and a forge the raw hammers from whips do return more after modifier hammers than 2 to 1. We can wait to whip the forges until we get the religion in the city.

Upon reflect I think we want to use the free missionary to spread the religion to gems, so that we can spread the religion faster.

The total output from workshop in caste with guilds is higher than slavery, however the buildings that they build have real benefits! Slavery gets those buildings faster. We unlock Oxford earlier. We unlock Forbidden Palace earlier. We multiply all of the commerce produced by the capital by 2.5 instead of 1.25 at least 10 turns earlier with a whipping phase of universities. This goes a long way to make up for the lost scientists in GPFarm. Add that to the additional +25% in the cities that built the univerisity and the maintenance savings and passive espionage benefits of earlier courthouses... And the hammer benefits (and perhaps the happiness benefits) of forges and long term the research rate of this plan catches up and surpasses the early switch to caste system and slow building of these buildings.

And the deeper we have to go into the tech path the better for this type of plan. So if we have to get paratroopers or something like that to kill the wizzard then we are better off.