End game plan

[donsig]

Big snow storm here today so I decided to stay in and work on the MTDG. I've make some posts today in various threads and a plan is starting to gel. Thought it would be good to put this into a new thread so we can tie it all together and then work from there. First a summary of the major ideas.
Goals:

1. Research all the required spaceship techs in one big sprint.
2. Time our Apollo build for the same turn we get the last tech.
3. Launch our ship the following turn.

I've focused today on our first goal, which requires us to have enough gold to fund deficit research. Various Council members have put forth ideas to accomplish this goal, including:

• Researching economics and building wealth
• Selling buildings we don't need to raise cash and lower maintenance costs.
• Lowering the luxury rate to zero.

We can sell 8 temples right away and still lower our lux rate to zero (assuming we have no war weariness issues!). We can research econ in 4 turns. If we build wealth in all cities with empty bins (so as not to waste shields) we can begin our research sprint as soon as we get economics, have all the required techs by turn 268 and launch on turn 269 (assuming we can get a prebuild plan in place). Here is a table of pertinent information:

Turn	research      sci rate	surplus	specialists  from spec  wealth  treasury
245	Econ (4)	 20	  361	  Tax men        60       139     2316
246	Econ (3)	 20	  361	  Tax men	 60	  139     2876
247	Econ (2)	 20	  361	  Tax men        60	  145     3436
248	Econ (1)	 20	  361	  Tax men	 60	  153     4002
249	Robotics (5)    100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  329     4576
250	Robotics (4)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  341     4428
251	Robotics (3)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  342     4292
252	Robotics (2)  	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     4157
253	Robotics (1)	 90	 -378	  Tax men	 60	  346     4026
254	Space (5)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     4054
255	Space (4)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3923
256	Space (3)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3792
257	Space (2)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3661
258	Space (1)	 60	  -59	  Tax men	 60	  346     3530
258	Super. (5)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3877
260	Super. (4)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3746
261	Super. (3)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3615
262	Super. (2)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3484
263	Super. (1)	 60	  -59	  Tax men	 60	  346     3353
264	Sat. (4)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3700
265	Sat. (3)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3569
266	Sat. (2)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3438
267	Sat. (1)	100	 -478	 scientists	  0	  346     3307
268    -------           0      +574      Taxmen        60       346     4287

We would sell 8 temples on turn 245. (Maybe also the barracks in The Admiralty.) We could sell other buildings as the turns progress. We would be running 20 specialists (18 after we lose ACI). They will all have to be tax men or scientists according to the schedule. The table assumes we will be building wealth in all cities as current builds finish. This is not practical since we will need prebuilds but we end with a surplus of over 4200 gold. Our spaceship and Apollo will require 3700 shields which cannot be converted to wealth so we can subtract 1850 gold from our surplus. That still leaves a margin of over 2400 gold that we can either spend or just not generate in the first place (and therefore build units or whatever).

Rather than spending more than 10 more turns piling gold we just research econ in 4 and build wealth. Rather than researching the remaining techs in 21 turns we can do them in 19.

Still to be done is a comprehensive plan for prebuilding Apollo and ten spaceship parts - with maybe some extra prebuilds to guard against sabotage. We also need to do what we can to secure rubber until the end of the game - OR revise our plan so that we research space flight after economics so we can get the casing started. This requires holding rubber for a shorter time but also means we'd have to withstand 14 turns of deficit research (for satellites, robotics and the superconductor) with a big target painted on our backs.

 

[General_W]

This looks great Donsig!

Thanks for your awesome work on this.


Only thing I see missing off the top of my head is that there's no accounting for the necessity of double-pre-building key items to safegaurd against sabotage.
But as you say - we've got 2400 gold leftover still to work on that.

The main problems with this plan are things that are beyond our control.
Namely: Getting nuked, Getting double-team invaded, Having Saber or FREE lose badly in the war and needing our help to survive, being unable to acquire rubber.

None of that means we shouldn't at least TRY to follow the plan you've outlined. It just means we're going to need to be thinking about (and ready for, as much as possible) these things that might go wrong.

 

[dl123654]

Great start

Remember for goal 2 we need to make peace with someone before that happens. If we are not building more military units I think that can be done as soon as possible to make sure our "allies" don't cause us the game.

I rather see satalites followed by superconductors because superconductors is a dead tech that is just needed for space victory, where as satalites gives us world map, enables ICBMs for a great prebuilds.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

We (should) be able to get peace from Whomp whenever. that's pretty much why he's still alive, at least in our eyes

 

[peter grimes]

If someone's bored it may be helpful to come up with a plan for backup rubber sources. Some resources (like in the center of home continents) will be off-limits to us, so I suppose we don't need to waste electrons writing about them.

The other sources should be 'easier' to get at, given enough preparation.

In fact, it might be smart to assume that we're going to lose our rubber, count backwards from the turn on which we'll need it (267, right?), 1 turn to found a city & rush a harbor (266), travel turns to target (???).

There should be at least 2 teams, and at least 2 targets. We can't afford to let all this planning go down the tubes for want of rubber

 

[Niklas]

I haven't had time to check in any real detail, but I like the overall plan.

One minor nitpick though, we should try to run scientists as little as possible. We get more out of our specialists as taxmen since we have a gold-to-beakers conversion rate of ~2 at this point. Obviously we should run scientists if it speeds us up, like with getting Satellites in 4. But better to run at 100% research for 5 turns and use more taxmen, than to use scientists and turn down the slider on the 5th turn.