[BTS] SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by bcool

If shulec can digest the all of the recent posts and put up another PPP I would be okay if he wanted to play tonight.

Sure.

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by bcool

Gems will produce a great person for us if we try, and for that reason I think it should run scientists.

OK - but that will probably compromise its ability to build missionaries, so Stone City will have to help out there.

Originally Posted by bcool

I think we are going to be able to pick up significant gold from the AI from trades, so the need to have a net zero gold cost doesn't exist.

The need is still there. We want 100% slider to maximize the multiplicative throughput of Bureaucracy+Oxford. It doesn't matter whether the source of gold is begs, trades, steals, trade missions or merchants in side cities. Scientists in side cities shouldn't be run unless the slider is sustainably at 100%, or we need the in that city.

Anyway, I agree that a monastery in Gems makes sense for either relevant purpose (missionary building, or synergy with creating Gscientist). I don't think more farms are required, however. I'd like to see workers building Gworkshops for Gems City, not Gfarms. We need to start catering to our long term Caste scenario. AIs are not far away from starting Guilds.

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by Sun Tzu Wu

Why not use our spies to steal Wealth from our opponents? We don't need to to trade for Wealth, if we can beg and steal enough of it. We do seem to have an excess of Espionage against the western witches and little chance of detection, unless we stack spies and even then the detection risk is still rather low.

Sun Tzu Wu

Tough one. What's the conversion ratio of EPs to gold via stealing? How does that compare to EPs to beakers via stealing (assuming that we will eventually use all the EPs)?

[bcool]

stealing gold is almost never useful especially if we are running the espionage in tiny cities (since the amount of gold you can steal is limited by the size of the city). Sometimes late game when we know that we have espionage that will not be used for any other purpose, sending spies to their large cities might make sense.

If you get an AI the turn after they run a Great Merchant Trade mission, sometimes it is nice, but you need a boat load of espionage.

As long as we have techs to steal I would rather save the espionage to steal techs. If no tech present themselves I would spread culture so that our later espionage missions cost a bit less.

I definitely wouldn't risk stacking spies just so we can steal wealth.

[shulec]

Originally Posted by bcool

If shulec can digest the all of the recent posts and put up another PPP I would be okay if he wanted to play tonight.

Not gonna happen. I will play tomorrow, probably about 24 hours from now.

[shulec]

Here are the screenshots for GP farm.
The first is with no whip, working all coast tiles, then Gmines. Pop 17
The second is with early courthouse whip, working all coast tiles then Gmines. Pop 14, to grow in one turn.
The third is with a harbor whip instead of a courthouse whip.

Spoiler:

Looking closer, whipping a harbor for +3 would be a better play than the courthouse.

Edit: I was basing my argument on flawed information as mabraham pointed out below.

[shulec]

Comments in blue.

Originally Posted by bcool

Also we need to be specific about great people. It is important to run as many scientists as possible in GPFarm once we are sure GPFarm will not bet Washington to the next great person. In fact you want to run the scientists in GPFarm so that a great person will be produced in Washington and GPFarm the same turn. A city founded earlier will always produce the great person in a tie. So if washington and GPFarm pass 500 gp the same turn Washington will produce the great engineer. If GPFarm produces more than 100 gp then it can produce the 600 gp great person the same turn Washington produces the Great Engineer.

GPFarm will be two turns from a GS on T144 from the GLib only. Washington is one turn from the GE at 100% chance. T144 is the first turn that GPfarm can run Great Scientist.

I did not include any GP data because I am only intermittantly running a GE in gems for a turn or two and a GE in Washinton every turn. I am coming off whips in Gems City, Silver City and several others. There are no other GP to run. If you guys want me to run GSs before T144, let me know what you have in mind.

Silver and Gems will also produce great scientists for us, so they want to run max scientists once they regrow a little bit. Stone City will not produce a great person for us very easily, plus its pool is contaminated. So Stone City can run a spy specialist and merchants if it doesn't have decent tiles to work.

I don't think most cities have the population to start running scientists yet due to whips. Marble city is the only one that can possibly run Scientist specialists. I have to redo the micro on that one per your recommendations.

[shulec]

Originally Posted by bcool

I'm pretty sure the diplo bonuses for voting for someone only applies to the election of the AP resident.

I am pretty sure that you do get a positive diplo "you voted for us" for a city vote. Can someone test this? I can test it after my turnset, but don't have time now.

[shulec]

Things to change in PPP:

GPFarm: No whip after University.
Marble City: Whip courthouse without overflow, then grow while building wealth.
Culture Bridge: Whip courthouse without overflow, the grow while building wealth.
Gems City: Build monestary after courthouse and missionary.
Fur City: Chop some forests from outside culture to get Lighthouse before CS/Pac.
Gaul: Possibly chop caravel after spy, start trireme after spy.

All barracks builds are put on hold except for in GPfarm.

Adjust worker actions as per mabraham's suggestions.

Renegotiate with Mansa Musa on T 136.

Get some specialist up in Marble city and Cultural Bridge city on T 143.

Am I missing anything?

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by shulec

Here are the screenshots for GP farm.
The first is with no whip, working all coast tiles, then Gmines. Pop 17
The second is with early courthouse whip, working all coast tiles then Gmines. Pop 16, to grow in one turn.

Spoiler:

Looking closer, whipping a harbor for +3 would be a better play.

I don't see a courthouse in either screenshot.

We certainly want about 14-16 population at the Caste+Paci switch, because that's how much population works max food, plus maybe silk, plus max scientists with no unhealthiness. Spare population could be put to some reasonable use - I'd rather a courthouse than a harbour. I don't see we need more health, or the commerce boost.

[bcool]

Originally Posted by shulec

Things to change in PPP:

GPFarm: No whip after University.
Marble City: Whip courthouse without overflow, then grow while building wealth.
Culture Bridge: Whip courthouse without overflow, the grow while building wealth.
Gems City: Build monestary after courthouse and missionary.
Fur City: Chop some forests from outside culture to get Lighthouse before CS/Pac.
Gaul: Possibly chop caravel after spy, start trireme after spy.

All barracks builds are put on hold except for in GPfarm.

Adjust worker actions as per mabraham's suggestions.

Renegotiate with Mansa Musa on T 136.

Get some specialist up in Marble city and Cultural Bridge city on T 143.

Am I missing anything?

GPFarm
I think GPFarm should build a missionary before the courthouse if we don't whip the courthouse.

Great People
I have updated the great person spreadsheet with T134 real numbers and more realistic specialist numbers and I would like to see you run 4 scientists in GPFarm on T143, and if you are ending T144 I want 8 scientists in GPFarm. This allows us to have great engineer born in washington end of T144 and a great scientist born in GPFarm at the end of T144.

Also if gems and silver are going to have a chance at beating GPFarm then Gems should run at least 1 scientist on T143, and Silver should run 3 scientists.

see the spreadsheet for more details...
Gaul
I want a courthouse in Gaul after the spy. (with chops we can build it in a reasonable amount of time)

espionage
I would like you to steal drama once the spy in boston gets to 50% stationary discount. Then look to trade drama for a large lump of gold.
I also want you to return a spy to Boston so we can steal engineering if we somehow get the espionage. I think we want to look into running 100% espionage slider near the end of your turn set if we don't plan to infiltrate the northern witches. An extra movement on roads really is nice for the workers if nothing else, and we want Isengard to start cranking out trebs asap.

Also you will send a spy into Trojan Horse after stealing compass, so we can steal Optics asap as well.
renegotiate trades every turn
I'd like you to check resource screen at the end of every one of your turns and renegotiate trades for more gold if at all possible. I passed on 1 gold resource trades, but anything better I would juggle resources around to get the extra gold. (so not just renegotiating with Mansa on T136). I would be generous with the resources we give to the north and west witches since we want the "you shared resources with us bonuses". The more resources and the more turns we supply them the better.

Try to sell maps every turn we explore new land?
Try to sell maps for 5-10 gold to each AI as we explore new land in the south witches area or with spies in the east.

Buy maps?
We also might want to buy maps from the western witches for 5-10 gold to see if they have explore more around the various mountains regions or explored more of the south than we have. After the music trade we probably still won't be able to trade for southern witches maps, but if we get them both to pleased via resource trade bonuses perhaps, then look for map trading or buying with them.

return spies
mabraham would like the spies in Eastern witches lands returned to us. I'm okay with that as well.

Max OF of a courthouse in CB for Caravel?
I would like to maximize the OF of the courthouse whip in CB (then build wealth to preserve it) so that we can quickly build a caravel in CB once we have optics.

Another Settler?
I don't think anyone has mentioned this on the forum, but maybe we want to whip a settler perhaps in Marble City so that we can settle on Asoka's spoke. Settling on Asoka's spoke would allow us to build a canal through both Asoka's and Ragnar's spoke. This might be very useful, and worth the sacrifice to Marble City's contributions as a merchant city for some time.

escorted missionary to south witches? and missionary to Genghis?
there was some discussion about getting a missionary to the south witches asap, since that would give us more AP options (allow us to bring the south in on a holy war for example)
Also a missionary to genghis is nice so that we can switch him into that religion. I'm not sure how important it is for AP options since we will hopefully get Boston to Taoism so that 1 north witch will have the AP religion.

[bcool]

AP Testing

Wow-- bringing up a vote to assign boston to us and then voting against it did give us a +2 diplo bonus haha! good call Kaitzilla! We need to spread taoism to Boston for this to work, so if the missionary in Cultural Bridge or Boston fails, I would build another missionary somewhere to compensate (perhaps instead of a monastery somewhere).

Also if only one of the team AI has taoism the holy war still works (the team is drawn into the war).

[shulec]

Originally Posted by bcool

AP Testing

Wow-- bringing up a vote to assign boston to us and then voting against it did give us a +2 diplo bonus haha! good call Kaitzilla! We need to spread taoism to Boston for this to work, so if the missionary in Cultural Bridge or Boston fails, I would build another missionary somewhere to compensate (perhaps instead of a monastery somewhere).

Also if only one of the team AI has taoism the holy war still works (the team is drawn into the war).

Unfortunately,iirc, this diplo bonus seems to decay quickly, possibly at the next vote. It can help in the short term to get an AI to friendly for tech trades, def pacts, war declarations and such.

[shulec]

Fur City Micro
T 135 Chop one forest into granary
T 136 Whip granary, chop into overflow
T 137 Lighthouse from chop/overflow
T 138-141 Courthouse with 1 chop.
T 142 Courthouse whip/Anarchy
T 143 Courthouse last turn
T 144 Monestary

[shulec]

Marble city:
Whip courthouse, 2 pop whip on T 137 for 1 Hammer over flow at pop 5. This gets us to population 6 one turn faster that whipping at T 136. The game crashes when I try take it out to population ten as mabraham suggested.

I will whip on T137.

[Walter_Wolf]

Originally Posted by bcool

Great People
I have updated the great person spreadsheet with T134 real numbers and more realistic specialist numbers and I would like to see you run 4 scientists in GPFarm on T143, and if you are ending T144 I want 8 scientists in GPFarm. This allows us to have great engineer born in washington end of T144 and a great scientist born in GPFarm at the end of T144.

Also if gems and silver are going to have a chance at beating GPFarm then Gems should run at least 1 scientist on T143, and Silver should run 3 scientists.

see the spreadsheet for more details...

How can you be sure we will get the 500 points GP in Washington, and the 600 GP in GP farm on the same turn?

The other way I see it coming out is we get the 500 GP - a scientist in GP farm, and Washington accumulating the 600 points GP, which never comes into existance, 'cause other cities beat it.
I don't recall receving two GP in the same turn, except a regular, and a free one from a tech maybe.

How are the odds distributed?
If you get two cities on two different GPP levels at the same turn, which city gets the cheapest one (500 GPP in our case), is it RNG determined, or you get the two GP's for sure?

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by Walter_Wolf

How can you be sure we will get the 500 points GP in Washington, and the 600 GP in GP farm on the same turn?

The other way I see it coming out is we get the 500 GP - a scientist in GP farm, and Washington accumulating the 600 points GP, which never comes into existance, 'cause other cities beat it.
I don't recall receving two GP in the same turn, except a regular, and a free one from a tech maybe.

How are the odds distributed?
If you get two cities on two different GPP levels at the same turn, which city gets the cheapest one (500 GPP in our case), is it RNG determined, or you get the two GP's for sure?

Cities are processed in the code in the order of their founding. So all of Washington's are accumulated first. See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...postcount=2493

Of course, getting two GPeople in one turn is not of itself desirable. Getting the last Gperson out of GPfarm fast is desirable, and that means pushing the first one out ASAP.

[Walter_Wolf]

Originally Posted by mabraham

Cities are processed in the code in the order of their founding. So all of Washington's are accumulated first.

I've read bcool's post, but I seem to have skipped or forgot that part.

Thanks for the clarification.

btw, I'll probably be in bed when shulec starts to play, so I wish you the best luck .

[bcool]

Originally Posted by shulec

Fur City Micro
T 135 Chop one forest into granary
T 136 Whip granary, chop into overflow
T 137 Lighthouse from chop/overflow
T 138-141 Courthouse with 1 chop.
T 142 Courthouse whip/Anarchy
T 143 Courthouse last turn
T 144 Monestary

this is good, better than the original plan I proposed. I think we probably can give up on the monastery build though. Just make this into a wealth building merchant/spy factory as well.

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Originally Posted by mabraham

Yes, but to get decent chances of success to get another such promotion requires significant use of siege weapons, and once you have done that, the type and promotions on the attacking unit become fairly moot. I expect that Combat 1 musket gets 50% odds against a fortified longbow at a slightly higher longbow health (i.e. lower use of siege units after airship strikes) than a CR1 maceman (the value of whose promotion depends on the defender's health - see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137615). Or pick your own relevant probability level.

This is less true when we have two promotions (CR2 is -25%; C2 is +10% Edit but Cover is +25%) but I expect the bulk of our army will not have been around long enough to get combat promotions, so there's only a small contribution from this effect.

Only combat promotions are applied to the unit possessing them as a % strength improvement. All other promotions, including Cover are applied to the opposing unit as a % strength reduction. As a consequence of how combat (really any) ratios work, the negative % adjustments have less impact then the +10 % Combat promotions. As a result, CR1 + CR2 (-20% + -25% = -45%) is about as effective as Combat 1 + 2 + 3 (+10% + +10% + +10% = +30%), but the former requires two promotions whereas the latter requires three promotions.

You are wrong about Cover being +25%; it is -25% and is applied to the defending Archery unit when the attacking unit has Cover.

Originally Posted by mabraham

Yes, but drafting Rifles requires Banking, RP and Rifling extra, and I think we would not be competitive in the SGOTM after waiting for that.

My point was Rifleman is a more economical use of drafting 1 Population than either a Maceman or a Musketman. I was not implying that we should divert our research from our Mass Media "lazy" bee-line to get these technologies, but if some AI Team complete them, we could possibly steal them and draft Riflemen instead (assuming the timing is right and frankly it probably will not be).

Originally Posted by mabraham

Muskets vs maces depends on many factors. With many defenders in the city, heavy siege plus any old follow-up unit is the most efficient. With walls or castles, siege plus gunpowder units is desirable. With very few defenders, heavy CR promotions are desirable because the siege collateral damage is negligible, so siege units are inefficient. Since muskets have no direct counter, the need for shock/cover/pinch promotions in musket-based stacks is negligible, which enhances their value by allowing lower unit specialization. Formation should never be used by either muskets or maces, because pikemen should do the job.

Only when there are few defenders in a city, no walls/castle, and time has elapsed to permit multiple CR upgrades is there a clear advantage to catering to CR-upgradeable drafted units. Since we are after blitzkrieg in this game, it is hard to see the conditions suiting mass macemen rather than mass muskets.

You do bring up valid considerations, but the timing of when a war is desirable and when a new technology unlocks a new main line unit for drafting, determines whether we can draft Macemen or Musketmen. We might find it reasonable to draft a few Macemen prior to completing Gunpowder, but after Gunpowder we will have no choice but to draft Musketmen unless by some odd circumstances (possession of Banking, Replaceable Parts and Rifling), we end up drafting Riflemen instead.

I believe your "siege" arguments would have greater merit with Canon units (strength 12) rather than Trebuchets (strength 4). It can be somewhat strange to have pre-Gunpowder siege units in a stack with Gunpowder non-siege units.

A digression into an effective use of non-combat promotions:

The Quechua (based on the Warrior, strength 2) is great example of how a low strength attacker can use Cover and City Raider promotions versus Archers with lethal results that surpasses what a slightly less well promoted Axeman can do versus an Archer. Of course siege units usually aren't involved in early Quechua rushes. BTW, I believe that the Quechua should be totally banned, but that issue for another thread.

Sun Tzu Wu