5CC Space Race interest thread

I think that puts me up. I'll try to play this weekend. Doesn't look like there's a whole lot to it at the moment.
 
There are some decisions required about what to do when we enter the industrial age, I am not sure wheter we should gift up with all these wars going on, a significant tech lead does help,

You need to make a decision whether you want a short war with ottomans for 2 workers as well, I think it should be ok

Another thing to look at is whether Isaac Newtons would be more suited to Moscow, than Novograd as the output in terms of commerce after corruption is possibly higher in Moscow despite colossus, we may even be able to time it that Isaac Newtons is built as we hit industrial age if we build in Moscow
 
I have played, I am stopping on our last turn before Metallurgy (and the medieval age) completes. A few minor details to discuss.

Spoiler :
5CC SG notes 450 AD:

Pre-turn-- some severe MMing to be looked at for future reference.

Novogrod is at +2 food, fully grown out. Meanwhile we have an unmined plains and a grassland that has just a road there. Forests, people, forests! We can chop them later. Meanwhile, it'll help us get to Newton's a couple of turns faster. Nearby workers have 1 turn left on a road, so I will let them complete.

Swap some tiles at Yekaterineburg so that it is zero growth but completes the cathedral in 7 turns instead of 10.

Swap Yaroslavl from a knight to a granary; I plan to use it to pump out a few workers in coming turns, both to fill Yekaterineburg to size 12 and also to get us ready for rails.

Swap some tiles at Rostov around.

I decide not to smite the Ottoman settler pair.

The Inca are rich! Filthy stinking rich. And they're our allies. Sell them Gunpowder for their total of 61 gpt and 185 gold. We are now +12 gpt.

IBT: FRANCE completes Sun Tzu's Art of War in Paris.

460 AD (1): Cap a Gepid barb encampment in the far southwest for 25 gold.

Get workers on forest duty at Novogrod, for right now they are foresting over a mined grassland. We'll work on changing that back, but it was important to start a forest now; these should shave a turn or two off Newton's.

Let our units near the chokepoint rest/heal a bit.

Move ship east, and move worker that was roading south of Moscow toward Yekaterineburg for a worker addin. I plan to use our real worker to colonize the saltpeter, saving us a few gold in upkeep cost.

IBT: Ottomans settle up north. I am for some reason pleased that they are on the outside of the coast and not on the bay.

470 (2): Rostov cathedral - Heroic Epic (sure, why not). Not much else of note.

480 (3): Our two northern cities expand culturally. Swap Rostov to a granary, just because we'll need it eventually. Epic can wait. I may change my mind about this next turn too.

Colonize saltpeter. Add in worker at Yekaterineburg.

A Babylonian galley is sailing towards us from the chokepoint area. Probably coming to colonize our south land.

490 (4): Yaroslavl granary - worker; maximize commerce there. Magnetism to 90% on its last turn.

A random Iberian horse was coming down past the Ottoman town (Salonika); I do them a favor and kill it.

Kill a Viking archer-settler pair at the chokepoint, though an elite ACav redlines in the process somehow. Still, free slaves!

Our army razed the Viking town of Hareld, for 1 gold (whee) and hopefully better peace terms later (yay!).

500 (5): Magnetism is, Metallurgy due in 5 at either 90% or 100%.

Rostov granary - bank. MM Rostov for commerce and 16 spt; bank due in 10.

I blow 120g upgrading our one spear to a musket. It may come in handy someday. Really. Honest.

IBT: Ottomans and Inca ally vs. Portugal. Hopefully the Inca gave them some nice cash. We'll find out soon!

Also IBT: Tours (France) completes Great Lighthouse.

Also also IBT: France tucks in the town of Dijon 2NW of our saltpeter, if Dijon ever grows culturally we'll lose it. Oh well.

510 (6): Our army razes the Viking town of Stavanger near the wines, netting two slaves. Our eACav zots a Viking berserk that was approaching the chokepoint.

Add worker that was made in Yaroslavy to Yekaterineburg. Our towns are now all size 12.

Second forest completes at Novogrod. Newton's University completes in 12 turns now, where it was 20 6 turns ago.

IBT: Babylon lands a settler pair in our southern tundra. I actually don't mind this too much, I've got a few ACavs in place to herd them somewhere harmless.

520 (7): Not much, units heal in the east. Box in the Babylonians.

IBT: The Hittites demand Education. I tell them to stuff it. We are at war with the Hittites. Happiness ensues.

The Babs settle where they landed, which is an OK spot for us.

530 (8): Disband Scout 2, which was in Hittite no-mans-land and was about to die anyway.

Drop science to 80%, Metallurgy still due in 2.

IBT: Apologize to the Babs for tresspassing in their newly founded land. Er, no, we moved those, it's our exploring caravel. Whatever, dude.

There's an Ottoman settler pair moseying down that will eventually settle in the desert land to the east of Rostov.

540 (9): The Statue of Zeus spits out our final ACav.

I get to ping an already injured (barbs) Hittite galley with our trebuchet. This gives me an unnatural amount of satisfaction.

Our army yum-yums another Viking settler pair.

I am going to stop here one turn early so that we can discuss a few things.
 

Attachments

Discussion 1: trade. We have the following trades available for technology:

Inca = 45 gpt + 181g for Chemistry.
Babylon = 16 gpt + 51g for Chemistry.
Ottomans = 14g for Gunpowder or whatever tech.
France = Dyes + 43g for whatever tech we want.
Vikings = 18 gpt + 149g for peace.
Hittites = war, won't talk.
Portugal = war, bad idea to make peace.

I think we should clean out all of the above, including the Vikings. That is a total of 79 gpt + 424 gold that we can easily use. Don't be afraid to make a deal with the Ottomans even for that meager gold; we'll be gifting them up next turn anyway.

2. Gifting up. Overseer, you're up; I presume you can handle the technical details, right?

Keep in mind that we have no optional techs to trade, so you will need to maximize our gpt for trade most likely.

I'd make our priorities for research Steam (for coal) - Medicine - Sanitation (for hospitals) - Electricity - RP (faster workers) - Industrialization and then probably Sci Method somewhere around here. I could be wrong though. If we can luckbox Industrialization or Sanitation as a free tech, that would be great. You probably know this but if either AI gets Nationalism, don't even bother. That's three bad techs we could get for free if we have it.

3. Wars. Hittites just declared; their galley near Yaroslavl should be no threat. If you want to kill it, you can bring our caravel (about five turns east) home to finish it off.

Portugal has shown nothing at all during my turns.

Builds: I'd lay off the military for a while. Look to spit out a worker when you are able in any of our towns. We need them to rail/irrigate everything.

4. MM: I just noticed this after I saved, but you can move a forest from Moscow (the one S-SW of the capital) onto a mined grassland. Picks up food, leaves Leo's at same time frame. I also have most towns maximized for commerce (mostly); probably worth a look-see to go through those.

At Novogrod, use the workers to mine and then road the plains; we are 156 shields shy of Newtons. If you mine first, in 2 turns we should have 156 - 18 - 18 shields to go, or 120 shields. Then six turns of using the mined plains instead of the fish will result in a fairly brutal food deficit which will be made back up later, but will let us run 20 spt there I believe and complete Newton's faster. May want to also forest the spot where the four slaves stand; that should cover us in case of corruption. We can chop these forests later and then irrigate the land, which is what we'll ultimately want there regardless.
 
Looks like an extremely busy next few turns, we are going to need some serious luck to get 2nd level techs. The trades make sense to get the maximum value for our next era. I wonder if we should get a pre-build going for ToE now or wait? More after I see the save.
 
From my experience on monarch the AI tend to go nationalism then communism and fascism, so we nay be able to delay theory of evolution for the turn we reach the modern age, I have done this on a monarch game before

I think our biggest danger is that the Incans become to powerful, it may be advisable to get them to fight the hittites as well just to keep them under control, have they taken any portugese cities
 
We also need to be careful we do not lose Newtons in a wonder cascade from Leos, which may be a good reason to build it in Moscow instead, this would trigger a golden age at start of industrial age, probably a good time, and from what I can remember that after corruption we get as much commerce in Moscow as Novograd
 
I would wait on ToE as long as possible to get other techs.

I wouldn't worry about losing Newton's, nobody else is close to Theory of Gravity. Though I do see the point that if we sell ToG around... hmm. Probably worth spending a few bucks to investigate cities.
 
It would be good if whoever is up next does investigate the Babylonian and Ottoman Leonardo Workship cities to take some screen shots so we can have a look at them. This information is always interesting.

DWetzel -> Are you planning to play your final turn, or will it be Overseer
 
I figured it'd be easier for me to hand it off and Overseer can play 11 to make it up.
 
I will check on the likely cascade suspects, as we will be gfting ToG around for end of era freebies. The extra turn should not be a problem.

Edit: Houston, we have a problem. We will be causing a Cascade which will cause us to lose Newtons if we do the end of era stuff next IBT. There are 2 possible solutions, but they both have risks and will possibly lengthen the game.
5CCRussiaBabylon540AD-1.jpg


Solution 1: Delay finish of Metallurgy by 5 turns to finish Leo's in Moscow, killing the cascade, finish Newton's at our leisure after everyone loses accumulated shields. Least risky, delays game 5 turns,
Solution 2: Change Moscow to Newton's, losing 102 shields and changing Novgorod to Leo's, do end of era trading on IBT. Likely we also may lose Leo's to France, Vikes, Portugal or Incas and accumulated shields in Novgorod not used for HE.

This must be a full team decision, I won't proceed until we get a consensus. It is very close, but I like Solution 2 better.
 
Option 3. Delay the build in Moscow so it finishes after Newton's finishes.

The only problem with any option but 2 comes as that you have a war with the Hittites going on and consequently can't investigate their city. They could finish Leo's and cause someone else to cascade before the 9 turns (Babylon WILL as the screenshot shows) needed for Novgorod to finish Newton's.

Actually come to think of it, I don't see how option 1 would work, unless you delayed the learning of Metallurgy until ALL tribes have stopped on Leo's (one can always hit F7 to check what wonder builds the AIs currently have going on). That's at least one turn after the wonder finishes usually.
 
Wouldn't it be easier just to not gift people up to try to get their free techs? We'd be giving up 5 techs (chemistry, metallurgy, physics, ToG, magnetism) to get at most 3 techs (steam, medicine, 2nd level tech or nationalism). And that's assuming we don't get Nationalism which you seem to get for free the majority of the time. And the AI doesn't get Nationalism which would be too expensive. And we'd be forced to use GPT since we have no optional techs researched. By not gifting up, we might lose the shields from Leonardo's but we would be almost guaranteed Newton's.
 
You guys could just hope not to draw Nationalism, and gift up after Newton's finishes, researching either Sanitation or Industrialization accordingly.
 
You guys could just hope not to draw Nationalism, and gift up after Newton's finishes, researching either Sanitation or Industrialization accordingly.

I actually think this is the best plan. We're 2/3 to not get Nationalism (and if we DO, we can still research Steam Power and hope one of the other two AI get Medicine, or vice versa).

This just reduces the far-from-a-lock chance that we would get a second level useful tech to zero. I can live with that.
 
True enough, gifting is a crapshoot. With no optionals, we may not be able to purchase their techs. Maybe another solution be research toward our goals while Newton's finishes, then do some gifting afterward. With only 2 other Sci civs, our odds of getting a 2nd level tech is remote. Gifting depends on several things...without a road to everyones capital, can we do gpt? Is our rep clean?
 
Gifting depends on several things...without a road to everyones capital, can we do gpt? Is our rep clean?

We have a harbor, and thus I think a sea route, so that should be okay. And our rep sure ought to be clean.
 
As far as 2/3 chance to not get Nationalism, I don't know if that's true. I'm not sure but I don't think the chances of getting each tech it 1/3. I remember a thread where people agreed that you seemed to get Monotheism as your free tech at a greater chance than Feudalism or Engineering but that could've been bias. I think we have a large enough tech lead that we wouldn't benefit that much from gifting up.
 
True enough, gifting is a crapshoot. With no optionals, we may not be able to purchase their techs. Maybe another solution be research toward our goals while Newton's finishes, then do some gifting afterward. With only 2 other Sci civs, our odds of getting a 2nd level tech is remote. Gifting depends on several things...without a road to everyones capital, can we do gpt? Is our rep clean?

And yes, this is clearly our best plan. I'd still clean up the outstanding gold and gpt for Chemistry or whatever you need to use though; no way the AI gets to ToG in nine turns or whatever it is.
 
As far as 2/3 chance to not get Nationalism, I don't know if that's true. I'm not sure but I don't think the chances of getting each tech it 1/3. I remember a thread where people agreed that you seemed to get Monotheism as your free tech at a greater chance than Feudalism or Engineering but that could've been bias. I think we have a large enough tech lead that we wouldn't benefit that much from gifting up.

If we get one free tech, that's a useful benefit. It's not like they will suddenly vault ahead of us in research speed or anything.
 
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