SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[Silu]

I don't like capturing Aksum. Unless we also take Gondar it will be useless, since Gondar at 60% culture will put it into constant revolt. If we take both, ZY will only have 1 city, which we in the worst (albeit improbable) case might flip with Delhi culture, either invalidating our game or forcing us to gift him a city, which we obviously don't want to do.

BTW, I think we could beg all of his visible 110 gold right away. Or just sell our map for that gold, but that has tiny diplo repercussions as he's a WE of Mehmed.

Agree with (IMO two) spies to scout the barb continent. Astro should be somewhat of a priority - we have no way of knowing what kind of gauntlet awaits there.

 

[babybluepants]

Like the spy idea. I think one would probably do - depends on production capacity, since we'd have room for two on the galley anyway.

Weakening Zara even further is a bit scary. Like Silu said, we could accidentally kill him with culture flips. He could also potentially be a war target for others (mainly Izzy). I'm a bit worried that we may have to burn a DOW on keeping him alive in that case or something...

 

[shyuhe]

Here's a chart of the GPP that I calculated using the city sizes bbp gave me and assuming half full bins for all cities. I have assumed no NE since I'm not sure when it will get completed, and I have assumed a granary + lighthouse for marble. Hope it helps - we're basically looking at (a conservative) estimate of 80 turns from the completion of Oxford right now till we can liberalism radio.

Note that we can push out a specialist in 2-fish before Delhi at 750 GPP if we want to. It will delay Delhi until 900 GPP. I think we want to do this since we're not in a hurry for the GE and it will increase the GE odds there even further.

 

[shyuhe]

Also, do we really want to complete Moai in ivory? If we do, we really can't use it to farm a GS since it'll have some pollution. On the other hand, it will make a good production city if we complete Moai... We also need to aggressively spread Buddhism, as we want pacifism to be active in at least Delhi and 2-fish, which means we need religion in both of those cities. I think we need to cancel Moai now as ivory has to build a library, monastery, and 3-4 missionaries.

 

[babybluepants]

I don't think we should use Ivory for gpp. We do need a production site somewhere. LC's suggested plan for Ivory was to pre-build a buddhist monastery and a galley to within 1h of a 1pop whip, while growing to 6. Then whip 4, with all overflow into Moai. That's what I'm going with for now.

 

[Mutineer]

I believe we need production city and ivory will do as one.

WE already agreed on what to do in ivory (read up)(Whip 1 missionary and Galley, trow overflow into Moa. That will finish moa and isory can spam missionaries for as. WE do need production.

 

[LowtherCastle]

WE already agreed on what to do in ivory (read up)(Whip 1 missionary and Galley, trow overflow into Moa. That will finish moa and isory can spam missionaries for as. WE do need production.

We didn't agree on whipping the missionary, btw, just to be clear. I made a case for whipping the monastery:
1. It can make more missionaries without OR.
2. If we whip a missionary and it fails in Bombay or wherever, then we're screwed because we already want to get out of OR/slavery but can't or we have to slow-build a monstery in Ivory.

Whipping the monastery makes the first Buddhist Missionary later, that's true, but then they come out steadily.

 

[shyuhe]

Ok, in that case we will basically be generating GPP from 3 cities.

 

[babybluepants]

@LC,
Yes. Monastery.

@shyuhe,
t0 in your spreadsheet is Oxford completion? Could you redo it with NE complete 10t after that? I think that would be more realistic.

Just wondering: how did you estimate the 80t from Oxford to Radio? (That's 1100 AD.) I figure it's approximately an average rate of 370 bpt, assuming direct beeline + Music, and 6 GS bulbs. If we also tech Banking/Economics, it would be about 440 bpt. Less with some trades. Reasonable? It would be great to have a good working estimate.

 

[shyuhe]

Sure I'll re-calculate with t+10 as NE completion. And yes, t0 is Oxford completion.

 

[shyuhe]

I need to re-calculate with Oxford's GPP in mind!

 

[shyuhe]

Here's an updated table. I think it's MUCH better to force Delhi to pop its great person at 750 GPP. 2-fish's 900 GPP only comes 2-3 turns after that (scary I know ) and the sooner we pop Delhi's GP, the more likely that it'll be a GE (since it'll be running mixed odds after completion of Oxford). We just have to run a few extra scientists on turn 19 in Delhi to beat out 2-fish, and then 2-fish will pop a merchant on turn 22.

Delhi's last GP will have decent odds of being an engineer, in which case we can substitute the physics GS for it. If we build the great library in Delhi (which we should if we get the 750 GPP GE), I'll re-do the numbers for Delhi since it alone adds (2+3+3)*3=24 GPP.

So two big things:

1. We NEED to spread Buddhism to Delhi and 2-fish, Delhi by the completion of Oxford and 2-fish by turn Oxford+5(ish) or so (we can grow first if it doesn't have Buddhism). Marble doesn't need Buddhism until Oxford+10(ish) if we prioritize growth over GPP. So we need to make sure ivory can build 3-4 missionaries before the completion of Oxford. I think this is a much higher priority than completing Moai.

2. By Oxford +84, we will have 4 shots at a GS from 2-fish (5:1 odds for the first then 6:1 for the rest), 2 GS from marble, and one shot at a GS from Delhi (currently 1:1 odds for GE vs. GS without GL). We can afford one miss on the GS because we'll get the physics GS. If we are going to bulb PP, then we'll need another great person - 2-fish will pop its 5th person on T+94. Don't ask me why, but I think I forgot about PP earlier

 

[babybluepants]

I was thinking we'd want the 900 gpp from Delhi, so we can use the GM asap. I guess we may as well just pop the GE right away... Beyond Music, we're not in a huge rush to tech in the short term. Could we not just slow down Two Fish by 1-2t? I'd rather have the highest possible GE odds.

 

[shyuhe]

Also under this plan, we will NEVER be in theocracy until the end, so we shouldn't expect to get more than +1 favorite civic from that. So we may have to butter people up via missionaries instead.

So tentatively:
+4 fair trade
+2 resources
+2 peace
+1 OB (or was it +2 OB and +1 peace?)
and +X shared religion should do it for us.

Oh and a total random thought - given our high reliance on bulbing, do we want to consider mercantilism? I can't tell if our base research will be the limiting factor right now or if it'll be our GPP production.

 

[shyuhe]

I was thinking we'd want the 900 gpp from Delhi, so we can use the GM asap. I guess we may as well just pop the GE right away... Beyond Music, we're not in a huge rush to tech in the short term. Could we not just slow down Two Fish by 1-2t? I'd rather have the highest possible GE odds.

Yes we can slow down 2-fish. We just have to work some coastal tiles in the interim. So are people ok with 750 GPP being the GE? And do we want to bulb PP? If so, we get:

750 GPP - Delhi (GE)
900 GPP - 2-fish (GM)
1050 GPP - 2-fish (GS) -- PP
1300 GPP - marble (GS) --astro (self-tech rest)
1500 GPP - 2-fish (GS) -- SM (self-tech rest)
1800 GPP - 2-fish (GS) -- physics
2100 GPP - Delhi (GE/GS) -- expect to use him as the VC GPP
2400 GPP - marble (GS) -- physics
2700 GPP - 2-fish (GS) -- electricity (and use physics GS as well); born T+94 or so.

 

[Mutineer]

It would be nice to bulb PP because it is tech we can immediately benefit from.
But we will need more GM's, other tech do not have to be instant, we need to run deficit research, it is more optimum.

 

[shyuhe]

Ok, I modified it a bit to slow down 2-fish at the start. We still get the 6th GP from 2-fish/marble on turn 94. It also eases our need for missionaries since 2-fish and marble now do not start producing GPP until T+12 and T+16 respectively.

So here's our timeline:

T22: 750 GPP (GE from Delhi)
T24: 900 GPP (GM from 2-fish)
T34: 1050 GPP (GS from 2-fish for PP)
T41: 1300 GPP (GS from marble for astro)
T49: 1500 GPP (GS from 2-fish for SM)
T67: 1800 GPP (GS from 2-fish for physics)
T75: 2100 GPP (GE/GS from Delhi for VC)
T85: 2400 GPP (GS from marble for physics)
T94: 2700 GPP (GS from 2-fish for electricity + physics GS)

@mutineer - I'm not fully convinced that a later GM will be worth more than a GS. The earliest we can swap out is the 1500 GPP, as we want the 1300 GPP for astro ASAP.

 

[babybluepants]

What do we wanna build in Bombay? Is there a reason for the chariot? I would rather work on a forge - could potentially complete turn after University.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Ivory

Slightly different solution. Pre-builds same as before: galley (28/75h), monastery (40/90h), other hammers into Moai. 2pop galley, work max food (no hills--too much overflow). Very next turn 2pop monastery. Very next turn build Buddhist missionary. Oveflow into Moai. Moai gets finished by hand while Ivory grows (Moai is only effective with lots of coastal tiles anyway).

FIrst Buddh miss goes to other missionary spammer: Bombay or Delhi. Delhi would spam the first few Misses faster but needs to finish Oxford. Not sure which is better for first Miss. Also not sure if the Miss is less likely to work in Bombay because of founding a religion there (=Silu? ).

If first Budhh Miss fails, then interrupt Moai to build another asap.

 

[LowtherCastle]

What do we wanna build in Bombay? Is there a reason for the chariot? I would rather work on a forge - could potentially complete turn after University.

Interesting idea. If I'm not mistaken, if you start the forge now, you'll be able to 2pop the forge w/OR, then put the chop plus oveflow into the uni. Then if you don't have pop4 for another 2pop, you can still 1pop the uni a couple turns later, MMing to make sure you've got 188/300h.