Acronym's Bucket List Succession Game - sign-ups open!

choxorn · Nov 4, 2014

I absolutely am obliging Tokugawa's decision to commit seppuku. I could ask the Indians to do it- or we could just get the Furs ourselves. No need to trade for them that way.

I'm 6 turns in, got the Japanese city on our continent and the one on the Bath island, and a few in their homeland. I shouldn't have much trouble dealing with those, but the one city he has on formerly-Chinese island to our Northeast... might be a bit of a pain to get transports to take some units to that island to deal with that. Probably can't get it done in my set, even if I can manage to take everything on their continent.

choxorn · Nov 4, 2014

Spoiler :

Hand-off notes:

-As mentioned above, India and Mongolia are both willing to give up quite a bit of gold for Scientific Method. I didn't check what they'd give for Combustion- I'd much rather trade them Sci Meth than Combustion right now.
-If we want to finish off Japan, we should probably rush a Transport in some Northern city right about now- the cities on Japan's mainland should fall in one, two turns tops.
-The Internet is close to completion. Is it about time we start pre-building for the Apollo Program and for SS parts?
-Trondheim is one turn away from re-building the FP. Not sure if we should re-build the Military Academy there or elsewhere, or if we should build the Intelligence Agency.
-I accidentally moved the Cruiser more than it had movement points for, so don't be alarmed if it moves on its own next turn.

On another note, we're almost to the end of this. After Rocketry, we need 8 more techs for Space Ship parts (Ecology, Synthetic Fibers, Space Flight, Nuclear Power, The Laser, Robotics, Superconductor, and Satellites). That's a minimum of 32 turns, but 4-turn research seems doubtful at the moment. Still, if we can manage a 5-6 turn research rate, 40-50 turns seems doable. Let's make that our goal: Launch into space by 1700 AD (48 turns from now) at the latest. I don't know if we can do that, but it sure would be nice.

If we do, this might very well be my last turnset. If so, it was fun playing with you guys for the past few months. I learned a lot, and had fun spending virtually all of 4 out of 5 of my turnsets fighting the English, Vikings, or Japanese. :lol:

Lanzelot · Nov 5, 2014

Wow, I expected the lone Indian War Elephant to do such kind of damage (that's why I blocked his access to our rail network with a Cav), but never expected the Japanese to run amok?!
Do we need Navigation or Economics? We could extort one of them from the Japanese, before we extinguish them... If not, I would say: don't bother...

There's at least one good thing in the Japanese sneak attack: our happiness problems should be over now. Furs and gems are now securely in our hands, and we can even think about keeping the Japanese alive as an OCC on that island for the rest of the game and enjoy eternal war happiness. (I hope, flipped cities don't count as lost cities in terms of war weariness?! Did you notice any drop in happiness, when Kyoto flipped repeatedly?)

(Hey, and leave some for me!! Looks like I'm the only one in this SG, who doesn't get to ride in a Panzer... :gripe:

)

Don't worry: we'll get to 4-turn research soon. When Trondheim gets back its FP, library, university and research lab, it'll contribute quite a bit, and the Internet should also make itself felt. The only field that still needs a bit improvement: our science farms. (Which up to now are still "non-existing". What happened? I think with enough scientists we could have gotten Rocketry in 5?!) The next player should make a concentrated effort to get our farm land irrigated and settled asap, and then join a worker/slave or two, to get the growth started. We are quite late in that regard.

I don't think, we need that many Airports. What for? Our bombers will never meet any significant number of enemy fighters or flaks in this game, so veteran bombers are not needed. (Regular do just as much damage...) And for teleporting units, it is much cheaper to use a worker for 10 shields than an Airport for 160 shields plus maintenance. (Ok, we are militaristic, so it's half-priced, but anyway...) Basically in my games I never build airports (only in multi-player, when real airfights can be expected, so that veteran air units make sense.)

choxorn · Nov 5, 2014

I didn't immediately notice any flip-related unhappiness, but there might have been some that I didn't see.

Who is up next, anyway?

Lanzelot · Nov 5, 2014

1. Lanzelot
2. Elephantium
3. Choxorn --> just played
4. MrRandomGuy --> up
5. tjs281 --> on deck
6. CommandoBob (MIA?)

tjs282 · Nov 8, 2014

Where is everyone? All busy getting their teeth into C:BE, or what? (Not me, because my laptop can't take the heat)

I suppose I could take the next set if MRG doesn't show up, but we already skipped CommandoBob and Elephantium recently, so if either of them want to jump back in, I would have no objection to waiting a little longer...

Besides, I'm currently busy ensuring the world domination of the ... umm .. weather-wise and green-fingered Dutch...

EDIT:
Since half our team appears to have gone AWOL, I have DL'd the savegame -- will post a plan shortly, once I've had a look at it. Not that there's really much left to plan at this stage -- build our ResLabs, Offshore Rigs, Wonders, and Farms, and beeline to all the Spaceship techs while prebuilding Ship-parts. And if anyone tries to stop us, discourage them with a good kick in the nadgers so they don't try it again.

(Found a good Douglas Adams line in Wikiquote today: "A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'")

Lanzelot · Nov 11, 2014

Well, I guess we consider it to be:

1. Lanzelot --> on deck
2. Elephantium
3. Choxorn --> just played
4. MrRandomGuy (MIA)
5. tjs281 --> up
6. CommandoBob (MIA)

choxorn · Nov 11, 2014

Looking at their profiles, C-Bob hasn't been online in 3 weeks and hasn't posted in 2 months, MrRandomGuy hasn't been online in one week and hasn't posted in 1 month.

Hey, Elephantium, you said to skip you before my set, will you be available again soon?

Elephantium · Nov 11, 2014

I'm pretty much actively lurking at this point.

MrRandomGuy · Nov 12, 2014

Oh wow.

I thought that my prior play was going to be my last one. I have no idea why I'm up now and am quite confused with the turn order.

I'm using a different computer at the moment - my other one is out of commission - and don't quite have the time to hunt for where I went to install the game. Like Elph I'm also lurking at this point. I'll let you guys know when I've got the game up and running if I manage to do so before the SG is over.

tjs282 · Nov 12, 2014

Sorry I've left it a couple of days. I had a look at the savegame in CivAssist (on Monday) and then Conquests itself (today), and my plan basically stands, apart from building ResLabs, which we've already done.

Regarding the Japs:

Since Choxorn has done such a sterling job of grabbing most of their mainland cities in Mongindapan, and since our armies are poised to take the last 3 within the next 1-2T, I'm inclined to simply finish the job -- but to leave them with Matsuyama, and not bother signing a PT with them. Since they were the ones who DoW'd us, keeping a phony war going for as long as possible should also keep our WH going (right?), possibly for the remainder of the game (unless the Indians kill them)...

I would suggest garrisoning our Japanese conquests with minimal troops: maybe 1 (Mech?)Inf in the town, with the rest of our guys fortified just outside, and/or on high-def.-bonus tiles (e.g. that nice mountain range north of Satsuma), and/or chokepoints (e.g. by Kagoshima). Don't want to lose Armies to flips, do we, especially since we lost our MilAc...?

(BTW: shall I rebuild the MilAc in Trondheim -- once the FP is done -- or somewhere else? Neu-Osloh could build it -- and Armies -- in 6T...)

Regarding Science:

Rocketry is due in 1T (with Sci% dropped to 40%), so I'll go for Ecology next. It's the last 1st-tier Mod-age tech, we'll need it anyway to get to SynFib, and it's cheaper than both SpaceFlight and Nuke-Power (the other two possibilities). Plus it will get us SolPlants to use as Ship-part prebuilds~~, and also allow us to build MassTransit. (In solo games, I usually build MassTransits in my major polluters -- OK to do that here?)~~ Space-Flight will be the next target after that. By the time we've got Ecology (5T, I hope?), Internet will be online (due in 4T -- barring pollution!), so that should then make Space (and later Nuke etc.) a little easier. I don't expect to be able to start research on more than two techs during my set.

EDIT:
Just read an old thread with lots of argument (tRicky vs. Cyc) about global warming/ pollution, and it reminded me that MassTrans doesn't affect city-improvement-pollution-points, it only reduces Pop-pollution-points. Our cities are limited to Pop12, so that's irrelevant, making MassTrans also irrelevant.
(I was actually looking for a thread/post listing the individual Ship-part costs [Search string: "Civ3, spaceship, costs"], because I don't have that info listed in any of my cheat-sheets, but no luck there [half of the front-page hits were actually for C-IV and C-V] -- can anyone point me in the right direction, or list the costs here?)

Regarding Town management:

What will also help to speed up research will be optimising the farms -- Choxorn, I guess you were having too much fun Samurai-smashing :ar15:

to worry about what was going on in the meantime, back at the ranch...?

I only looked closely at a relatively small number of farms, but nearly all of those seemed to be running out of control, either working useless shield-tiles, or producing useless food excesses (e.g. 20+FPT in Pop6ers!) with no Specialists in evidence. My first job before hitting Enter will therefore be to look at each farm in detail, massage it to ~12 or ~24 FPT, turn any excess Pop into Scientists (or CivEngs if it needs a 'Duct or Harbour), and set them (all?) building Settlers/Workers rather than wealth or mil-units.

Micromanagement, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways- OK done... :mischief:

And rather than waste turns building the Airport in Bath, I'd rather just build an Airfield using one of those Slaves.

Regarding Trade/ Treasury:

We have >1800g in the bank.

The dropped Sci% on this last turn to Rockets will bring in 400+GPT, and I would like to use some of that windfall to immediately rush some Settlers in the Pop2-3 cities to be abandoned (e.g. Cambridge, Ipswich, Berwick, Bristol). Do I have team-approval to do that?

AND if I can get that deficit closer to zero, or even back in the black (after fiddling with the farms, and/or after Internet increases our BPT-output across the board), can I rush some more later? I'd use those Settlers to carry on filling in the holes in the (mainland) farm dotmap, and also on Badinsel (= Bath-island!).

Or would you all rather use extra cash to upgrade Inf --> MechInf (30g per unit)?

Or rather hold onto it to fund deficit-spending on more expensive techs? Ecology (~7800b) can only be researched in 5-6T if I use 100% Sci, at -140 GPT. Even if fiddling with the farms gets us to 0 income, 0 expense, we will not be able to acquire significantly more gold soon, unless we sell something (Oil and/or SciMeth to India? Gandhi currently has >400g in the bank, Temujin is broke -- again). I've no major objection to selling off obsolete (Wonder-)techs for GPT -- how about the rest of you?

Prebuilds:

I need to choose a place to (pre)build Apollo (probably using UN or Manhattan) -- at 500s, any of our high-shield core cities will be able to do it in 10T or less, so I'll need to start soon, to finish simultaneously with the acquisition of SpaceFlight. I'll also start some prebuilds for the SpaceFlight-enabled ship parts -- Engines now, Cockpit and DockingBay when Ecology comes in -- ready to be switched when we get Space.

I'll start playing tomorrow evening.

choxorn · Nov 12, 2014

tjs282 said:
Regarding Town management:

What will also help to speed up research will be optimising the farms -- Choxorn, I guess you were having too much fun Samurai-smashing to worry about what was going on in the meantime, back at the ranch...?

It's less "I wasn't worrying about making specialist farms" and more "I have no idea how"

Lanzelot · Nov 13, 2014

Can you try to get Ecology down to 4 by running food deficit in some of the farms? We can then later join workers into the farms, once we are done irrigating and railing everything. BTW, please check whether all our coastal towns with a significant number of water tiles (3-4 and higher?!) already have a commercial dock.

MilAc is always nice to have, just in case, and we don't even lose a pre-build opportunity, as the city can then afterwards use Armies as pre-builds. But Trondheim still has other stuff to catch up with, like lib&uni, so Neu-Osloh is ok, or any other city that can build 400s without too much overrun.

Why do you want harbours in farm towns? Harbours only provifde 2-food tiles, but a farm should never work a 2-food tile. Only 3+ and the rest of the citizens work as scientists.

Some moderate rushing of settlers is ok for me. Unit upgrades are probably not necessary. Our military should be sufficient by now, and we can always produce a few fresh units in cities that are not working on the space ship. We can keep the units and upgrade later, in case another major war with the Mongols breaks out. But I guess the probability for that is pretty low.

Yes, sell anything except our silverware...

We need lots of cash now, if we want to keep up the science rate. BTW: always go 100%, even if it looks like we can't do a tech in 4 turns, and 90% would be sufficient for 5 turns. It can be that during the next 3-4 turns our farms grow, another university gets finished here or there and in the end we will still be able to cut the time down to 4 turns. But we won't be able to do this anymore, if we started with only 90% in the first 1-2 turns! If we can't get it done in 4 turns, we can still drop science to 10-20% in the last turn and refill our pockets that way.

tjs282 · Nov 13, 2014

Lanzelot said:
Can you try to get Ecology down to 4 by running food deficit in some of the farms?

I'll see what I can do. Depending on how many farms need MM (all of them? :cry:

), I may not get to play more than a couple of turns tonight...

... please check whether all our coastal towns with a significant number of water tiles (3-4 and higher?!) already have a commercial dock.

Will do -- thanks for reminding me.

MilAc is always nice to have, just in case

I'd like to have it back for the improved Army A/D-bonus, even if for no other reason

But Trondheim still has other stuff to catch up with, like lib&uni

Damn, of course, it had slipped my mind that all the culture-buildings in T'heim got bombed, not just the FP/MilAc. OK, yes, Lib+Uni = much more important, but once the FP is back up, we should be able to do those in about 3T (T'heim is already knocking out >25 SPT). On a related note -- losing the FP would have halved our OCN, so getting it back up should also seriously improve the income/ BPT/ SPT from our 2nd- and 3rd-ring cities again.

Why do you want harbours in farm towns? Harbours only provide 2-food tiles, but a farm should never work a 2-food tile. Only 3+ and the rest of the citizens work as scientists.

Not in every coastal farm*, but certainly in those that have a workable fish, which will then give us 4FPT -- especially any on Tundra, because then instead of a Pop1 town with 1 Scientist, we can have a Pop3 town with 2 Scientists. I realise that this would also cost us 1GPT per Harbour, but if we get 3 more BPT, is that not worth it? (And if we can still build Smiths, all Harbours, Markets and Banks -- and CommDocks? -- would become maintenance-free anyway. Need to check that.)
*

Spoiler :

Some moderate rushing of settlers is ok for me. Unit upgrades are probably not necessary.

Okey-doke

We can keep the units and upgrade later, in case another major war with the Mongols breaks out. But I guess the probability for that is pretty low.

It would be even lower if we upgraded our Infs (A=6) to MechInfs (A=12)...

But yeah, we should still be able to kick butt with our MilAc-boosted Cav- and Panzer-Armies for now, at least until Temujin (or Gandhi, you never know) gets Tanks in large numbers.

Yes, sell anything except our silverware... We need lots of cash now, if we want to keep up the science rate.

Right now I can sell Oil to Gandhi, which I'm inclined to do because his Badinsel-town (can't remember the name) only needs 1 border-pop to get some in his borders. As far as techs go, I can sell SciMeth or Combustion -- there's no point selling both, since only Gandhi's in a position to buy, but even selling only one of them will still leave the Indians+Mongols 6 techs from MotorTransp on the beeline, and 7-8 if either of them go for Flight/AmphibWar on the way. We should be on our way to AC by then...

BTW: always go 100%, even if it looks like we can't do a tech in 4 turns *snip*

Good tip, thanks.

tjs282 · Nov 13, 2014

choxorn said:
It's less "I wasn't worrying about making specialist farms" and more "I have no idea how"

Easy-peasy:

Plant a city (ideally on a 0-1f tile, such as Hills, Desert or Tundra)
Clear, road/rail and irrigate all the surrounding flatland tiles that can give >2f once improved
Max. out the population ASAP
Convert as much excess FPT into Specialists as possible

That's about all there is to it. Even without food-bonuses, a Pop6 town working 3 r+iGrass (= 3*4 + 2 = 14FPT) can support 3 Specialists, and a Pop12er working 6 r+iGrass (= 6*4 +2 = 26FPT) can support 6 Specialists -- while still making +2FPT for filling an empty food-box, and/or spinning out more Workers and Settlers, and/or regrowth after whipping/ conscription. Or you can halt growth at Pop5 or Pop11 for the same no. of Specialists per town/city and 0FPT (to reduce MM, but also gold/beakers), and just churn out (Reg) mil-units, or arty.

For a Monarchical/Republican Conq./Dom., especially if you've already got all the techs you need to win, you might choose to use Taxmen to raise cash (2GPT per Taxman) for rushing units/ city-improvements, or paying for MAs -- but for our game, we want Scientists (BPT). And right now, Lanzelot is advising me to use a Sci:Citizen ratio of 2:1 or 7:5 (or more) instead of ~1:1, for negative FPT, but more BPT per town (presumably temporarily). I'll need to remember to reset those towns back to positive FPT on the turn(s) before they starve, but CivAssist will help with that...

Re. city-improvements in 1s-farms. Obviously, these will take a long time to build, at least until you get RepParts and can convert excess FPT --> 2SPT per CivEng. Also, at low Tax% (0-20%), science/ gold multiplier-effects of the relevant buildings are nearly always ineffective, so they're not usually worth the time/cost, unless for their Culture/ Happiness effects (depends on difficulty/ gov-type/ VC-aim). Lastly, any maintenance-requiring building in a 90% corrupt farm will almost always be a net drain on treasury, so especially in a high-Sci% game, it's usually not worth building more than one cheap (<100s, 1GPT) improvement per farm at most -- and if no suchimprovements would be useful, don't build any. Here are some examples of when farm-improvements might be useful:

Walls in small border towns (<Pop6), to improve garrison D-values (10-20s, 0 GPT)
Libs for cheap, fast Cultural expansion of a Sci-Civ (40s, 1 GPT)
Markets in Pop7+ farms if low on Luxes (e.g. 3-4 instead of 5-6) (100s, 1GPT -- or 0GPT with Smiths)
Harbours in (Tundra-)farms that can work a Fish for 4FPT instead of 3FPT, supporting another Specialist (20-40s, 1 GPT)
Under Republic, a 'Duct will get a dry farm to Pop7-12 => 1.5x free-unit support, compared to having those citizens divided between two smaller (<Pop6) towns (2*1 vs. 3 free units) (50-100s, 1GPT)

Lanzelot · Nov 13, 2014

tjs282 said:
Lastly, any maintenance-requiring building in a 90% corrupt farm will almost always be a net drain on treasury, so especially in a high-Sci% game, it's usually not worth building more than one cheap (<100s, 1GPT) improvement per farm at most -- and if no suchimprovements would be useful, don't build any.

In a current spaceship game of mine, I'm simply setting all the farm towns/cities to Wealth. The towns don't need any buildings, and I don't need any more military, workers or settlers as I already own almost 66% of the world and don't have any significant opponent anymore. So Wealth is the best they can do, as it helps with covering the deficit. (I have some 70-80 farm towns, so that's an extra 70-80 gold per turn, nothing to be sneezed at...) I think the situation is quite similar in our game here.

Edit: except that we do need a few more settlers here, for which I would use those towns with a food bonus so that they can grow back quickly.

Elephantium · Nov 13, 2014

Lanzelot said:
Why do you want harbours in farm towns? Harbours only provifde 2-food tiles, but a farm should never work a 2-food tile. Only 3+ and the rest of the citizens work as scientists.

What do you think about making harbors in coastal farms with fish or whales in the radius?

Lanzelot · Nov 14, 2014

In these cases they may be worthwhile! The extra food can be enough to support an extra specialist. However, if we need to use a civil engineer for a long time in order to get the harbour, then the food lost by the CivEng will probably be more than the food gained by the harbour...

I would construct the harbour (or any building a farm town may need, for that matter) by disbanding obsolete units. Otherwise the break-even-point will come long after the game ended... Farm towns need to grow quickly and then be operable for a long time in order to really make a difference. This can be seen very well in the current game: we are in the modern age and still struggling with 4-turn research. Usually in a science game I reach 4-turn research somewhere in the middle of the middle age and then never let go of it again for the rest of the game. (Ok, in my current game on Monarch I needed 5 turns for Atomic Theory, because I did it before some cheaper ones (as I wanted the Hoover Dam) and had a luxury shortage at that time caused by wars and disrupted trade routes.)

choxorn · Nov 15, 2014

Hey, tjs, how's the turnset coming along?

tjs282 · Nov 16, 2014

Sorry guys, taking a bit longer than I expected -- I didn't get to play when I thought I would, and I'm still only about half-way through.

The good news is that I've got us back into positive GPT at 100% Sci by selling SciMeth and later AtomicTheory to the Indians, in exchange for (in total) Navi, Economics, their entire treasury (about 600g altogether), >100GPT per tech, Ivory and Incense (Gandhi cancelled an existing Lux-deal, but he didn't want our Oil, so I sold AtomThe instead). The Indians then sold/gifted those techs on to the Mongols, but I'm not sure what they got in exchange, since the Mongols were and still are broke (maybe Temujin threatened them?).

I ran all the farms that had food stored at negative FPT, and the others at 0FPT, and have just this turn (with the building of Internet last IBT -- yay!) managed to get Ecol down to 4T (will complete this next IBT, although our windfall will be quite small -- only ~200g). Hopefully I will now be able to (re)fill the farm food-boxes and grow the farms to their maximum beaker-potential (I'm assuming it's generally better to grow farms at slightly positive FPT and lots of Scientists/BPT, rather than putting all citizens to work, and 0BPT?)

I've founded 10 or 12 new farms so far on our home continent, but there are still plenty of tiles that need clearing/ roading/ irrigation, so at this stage large numbers of Slaves are still needed for terrain-improvements (rather than farm-joins). I also noticed that some of the ex-English cities still had >1 English inhabitant, so those towns are currently building Settlers and/or Slaves to found/improve/expand more farms. I would like to rush-build lots more Settlers using forest-chops followed by a cash-rush (our treasury is currrently around 3000g). But some of the terrain-clearance chops will need to be well-timed to avoid wasting forest-shields.

There are also lots of potential farm-sites on Bad-Insel and ex-Japan, but the larger captured cities there are still partly in resistance (it's nearly over, but not quite), so I'm not yet able to rush Settlers in them (and there aren't really enough Workers over there for forest-chopping anyway). And I can't airlift Settlers, so I'll need to ship them over instead -- which means I need to clear out the (Mongol?) Privateers...

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