ALC Game #24: Hammurabi/Babylon

[Sisiutil]

Let's not forget that CS also allows unlimited merchant specialists, who can also be handy for a (temporarily, one would hope) moribund economy.

 

[Validator]

Eventually, but right now it does very little to stop the slide. Adding unit upkeep to an already fragile economy is not the immediate solution. If you buiold one unit to support an extra citizen to work a cottage you are losing gold for the first 15 turns of that citizens in the game. The cottage provides 1 commerce for the first 15 turns. At 0% science that is exactly the 1 gold the unit costs in support. Add in the increased city maintainence due to a higher population and you are losing gold AND you have to drop the slider to pay for the unit.

I think you've mistaken a couple of points related to the cost of using HR. First, each new unit costs less than 1 in support. It's difficulty dependent, and I'm not sure how high it is for Immortal, but it won't be 1 . More importantly, Sisiutil needs to keep building military anyway or his power rating will plummet relative to his neighbors. Without positive diplo modifiers that could be very dangerous. Why not use the military that's needed anyway to provide extra in the cities?

I also think you've over-estimated the effect of increasing population on city maintenance and civic upkeep. It's only a marginal increase, which can easily be overcome by the economic output of the additional citizens. Otherwise there would never be any reason to increase the size of cities.

It's true that cottages start out as rather poor improvements, but working them is necessary if they're ever going to mature into towns. The sooner Sisiutil starts working them the sooner they'll mature. Even relatively early in the maturation process they can have a significant economic impact if they're worked in large enough numbers. HR can allow that.


There's no doubt that there are several potential target techs that will provide some degree of economic benefit. Sisiutil will need to decide which has the best payoff, taking into account how long each will take to research. It's important to remember that the current treasury will only support about 20 turns of 100% research. If the key tech isn't finished (or close to finished) by then it won't be available for a long time. Med->Priest->Monarchy can be finished. Med->Priest->CoL can't, although it won't be too far away. Math->Currency can't be even close to finished, and of course CoL won't even be started if that path is chosen.

Sis can only run 2 scientists per city and does not need to raise the happy cap to run them.

IMO it's better for raise the happy cap so that Sisiutil can run 2 scientists and multiple cottages.

Let's not forget that CS also allows unlimited merchant specialists, who can also be handy for a (temporarily, one would hope) moribund economy.

True, but a low happy cap in your cities definitely will limit the number of merchants.

 

[Sisiutil]

Well, at the very least, it sounds like Meditation and then Priesthood is in order, followed by either Monarchy or CoL--and whichever one is chosen, the other should soon follow. And we'll have to see if anyone researches Alphabet in the meantime and see how that may affect things.

 

[slobberinbear]

My vote would be for Monarchy first, simply because it's a stronger move to vertically grow and power-up your economy with 3-5 more tiles per city than it is to reduce maintenance by 2-5 gpt per city. Obviously, your courthouses will be cheap, and CoL is very nice, but I think bigger happy caps are more important, especially since you have primo cottage land, especially for Tectonics.

 

[Polobo]

I think you should toss in sailing there as well and get a couple of galleys out of Babylon to send north. Once you capture the barb city you are going to want them anyway for resource defense.

Now, for a selfish moment, with all the land available growing out is a possibility as well (mentioned about 4 pages back probably). With cheap courthouses this is even easier to accomplish and with CS you wouldn't even have to build libraries (or culture since you can run an artist for a few turns to get the border pops). Meanwhile you can be improving your land with cottages and slowly wean cities off of scientists and onto cottages.

I can imagine a gameplan where you drop to 90% gold then, once you can run a surplus with 70% gold remove half of the scientists . Get up to 50% gold and remove the other half and now you are running a full CE (keeping some scientists if desired for GPP or in cottage poor areas). Remove the scientists first and then see if 50/70% gold is maintainable.

I have never tried this specific strategy so I would welcome comments as to why it would or wouldn't work (both at immortal and lower levels).

 

[CivCorpse]

I think you've mistaken a couple of points related to the cost of using HR. First, each new unit costs less than 1 in support. It's difficulty dependent, and I'm not sure how high it is for Immortal, but it won't be 1 . More importantly, Sisiutil needs to keep building military anyway or his power rating will plummet relative to his neighbors. Without positive diplo modifiers that could be very dangerous. Why not use the military that's needed anyway to provide extra in the cities?

Sis is already over the free unit limit. Just to be sure, I opened the save and started deleting units one at a time. Every unit I deleted saved exactly one gpt. So the opposite is probably true that every additional unit will cost 1gpt.

I also think you've over-estimated the effect of increasing population on city maintenance and civic upkeep. It's only a marginal increase, which can easily be overcome by the economic output of the additional citizens. Otherwise there would never be any reason to increase the size of cities.

When you're bleeding gold at 0% research, then even marginal amounts have a big impact. If as I believe and the cost is going to be 1gpt for each unit, then the added small city upkeep per citizen will out weigh the commerce from a cottage for the first 15 turns. By the time sis researchs monarchy he will have exhausted his gold reserves. So he will be in danger of losing units to strike.

It's true that cottages start out as rather poor improvements, but working them is necessary if they're ever going to mature into towns. The sooner Sisiutil starts working them the sooner they'll mature. Even relatively early in the maturation process they can have a significant economic impact if they're worked in large enough numbers. HR can allow that.

As a confirmed CE player I heartily agree on the cottages. And even with CoL and an SE sis will need the added happiness to fully maximize specialists in Babylon. But for the moment he needs to atleast stop the bleeding. With priesthood he gets temples for +1 happiness and if he ever decides to connect that one road needed to open trade with sal and raggy then he can probably trade for some gold from sal. The resource not the currency sort. He will be two pop whipping courthouses everywhere. While the population regrows he can research Monarchy.

There's no doubt that there are several potential target techs that will provide some degree of economic benefit. Sisiutil will need to decide which has the best payoff, taking into account how long each will take to research. It's important to remember that the current treasury will only support about 20 turns of 100% research. If the key tech isn't finished (or close to finished) by then it won't be available for a long time. Med->Priest->Monarchy can be finished. Med->Priest->CoL can't, although it won't be too far away. Math->Currency can't be even close to finished, and of course CoL won't even be started if that path is chosen.

Med->priesthood->monarchy takes 24 turns total. Med->priesthood->CoL takes 29. Neither can be finished in the twenty turns until bankruptcy. Though Sis can rearrange the tiles in babylon to give extra commerce and delay the workboat he really doesn't need right this second. A lot depends on how much gold he gets from pilliaging the barb city. CoL gives instant relief of the cash drain through running merchant specialists. And the reduce maint from whipped courthouses means researching Monarchy will be much faster. Longterm HR gives the most return. however the clock is ticking and if Sis doesn't turn around the economy quickly, there might not be a long term.
As you rightly pointed out, math-> currency is definately not the answer. Too little too late. Getting the trade network to Sal is top priority. Especially if a trade can be made for his gold resources. If so, then that plus the temples can provide a little temporary happiness until Monarchy. By the time the cities regrow from temple and courthouse whipping he should be able to have Monarchy for HR.

On the subject of the approaching GS, I think settling him might be the best bet. The extra 7.5 bpt will really boost the race for CoL and Monarchy. once you are in CS and HR, you can run a buttload of scientists in babylon to quickly get a new GS. This one for an academy. Bulbing Math at this point is probably not that great since either everyone will have it by the time you get CoL and monarchy, so it's trade value is minimal. Though if you use him for an academy in Babylon it will give you more beakers during the deficit research. 15bpt. With the pilliage gold from the barb city you might get an extra 2 turns @100%. That means a total of 5 turns or 75 beakers. Nothing to sneeze at when every beaker is hard to get.

 

[BlueSoxSWJ]

CivCorpse: You're neglecting the fact that all existing units will also provide . While additional units may be a net loss until a new cottage matures, the instant boost from shifting into HR would be "free," and would also help relations with Ragnar.

If there are still incomplete libraries, the deficit researching should probably hold off (a few turns, not 25) to get the maximum multipliers available. Is a monastery worth building in any city? 10% research isn't much short term, but the added culture may be a boon in pressured cities, plus missionaries (for Ragnar?) would be available without needing OR.

How much benefit will trade routes provide? When decisions like these come down to a single turn one way or the other, it can be nice to know ... they might just give the extra boost needed to fully reach a tech that's currently out of reach.

Is Darius actually getting TRs from Babylon? I can't tell if Saladin might be blocking the coast. Since he doesn't have OB with Darius, wouldn't that block TRs? If not, cancel OB immediately - you're giving the probable long-term tech leader free gold.

Perhaps instead of a round lasting until the economy is salvaged, you could play until Med or Med+Priest is researched and post, even though it will be a really short round. There seems to be general consensus that this is the only plausible tech path atm, so why not play up to the disagreement (monarchy vs. CoL) and see if anything new comes up that might favor one option? (i.e. other civ(s) get alphabet, religion spread, random event drains your gold early / gives extra to you, war declared, etc.) In particular, a random event right now could quite drastically change the game.

 

[Polobo]

How much benefit will trade routes provide? When decisions like these come down to a single turn one way or the other, it can be nice to know ... they might just give the extra boost needed to fully reach a tech that's currently out of reach.

Is Darius actually getting TRs from Babylon? I can't tell if Saladin might be blocking the coast. Since he doesn't have OB with Darius, wouldn't that block TRs? If not, cancel OB immediately - you're giving the probable long-term tech leader free gold.

Figure 1-2 additional raw commerce per city x 4 cities plus (2 or 3 for the revolting city) gives a range of:
+6 to +11 raw commerce. Current commerce input appears to be 28 (+7 scientist beakers and 4 palace EP - 1 city in revolt) - so maybe a 30% boost to commerce intake.

To establish a TR with Darius we must have open borders with both Saladin and Darius and/or clear out the barbarian city and hope there is no Saladin culture blocking the path to Darius (in which case we would not require OB with Saladin). If Darius does not have OB with Saladin then, because of the barb city, he would not have any TRs with us.

 

[Polobo]

Apparently I've missed the fact we are already at 100% gold (and in deficit - though with a city in revolt). Still, horizontal expansion after CoL will still be quite doable if we are able to focus on trade routes and food improvements. Losing slavery means we'll have to keep military up throughout by using hammers (unless we take the risk that Sal will not declare war and, should he, revolt to slavery). Maybe we'll get a little lucky and Sal and/or Darius will already have currency and thus we can get gold for some of our health resources. Unfortunately begging will probably not be a viable option. The downside to courthouses is that right now they will only save us about 6 gpt.

The other consideration is whether we expect to be in a war with Sal sooner rather than later. Vertical expansion is less difficult if we can delay war (though Sal will expand into those eastern city spots, including the gold) but if we feel we will want to press out aggressive advantage (and early war) against sal then going full-out SE until we take care of him seems more reliable.

Additional scouting is necessary and I agree with the idea to run a short run in which as much scouting is done as possible as well as researching Sail-Medi-Priest. We'll have another library in 8 turns and can get chopping on the other 2 so getting some/most of those out should be quite doable without dipping too far into the reserves.

There is also a border pop in Akkad in 8 turns which should net us an additional elephant that can be used as trade-bait with Darius (maybe Ragnar if we can get him hooked up as well...)

 

[patagonia]

Sis is already over the free unit limit. Just to be sure, I opened the save and started deleting units one at a time. Every unit I deleted saved exactly one gpt. So the opposite is probably true that every additional unit will cost 1gpt.

When you're bleeding gold at 0% research, then even marginal amounts have a big impact. If as I believe and the cost is going to be 1gpt for each unit, then the added small city upkeep per citizen will out weigh the commerce from a cottage for the first 15 turns. By the time sis researchs monarchy he will have exhausted his gold reserves. So he will be in danger of losing units to strike.

The one saving grace to boosting population is that the number of free units you get increases, so HR will offset some of the unit cost indirectly.

Pillage gold from capturing the barb city should be enough to get there before the coffers run dry.

 

[semirami]

Sis is already over the free unit limit. Just to be sure, I opened the save and started deleting units one at a time. Every unit I deleted saved exactly one gpt. So the opposite is probably true that every additional unit will cost 1gpt.

But higher population means free upkeep for more units and the existing units will provide happy faces. So if he does not build more units he will reduce unit maintenance cost and will be able to work more tiles. I vote for Monarchy.

You have enough gold to research Monarchy, just capture the barbarian city, 3 turns before Monarchy. I'd go for Polytheism, instead of Meditation. It's only 1 turn more and will enable Temple of Aretemis, still avaliable. You can start it in Akkad, once the library is done, not to build it, but for gold.

 

[csarmi]

Yea any marble-based wonder gives you nice gold if you manage to lose it (2 for 1 hammer each). Quite uncertain, however - I mean we may never know when an AI will finish it.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

go col; hr is already known by darius, probably by ragnar soon(it's his fav. civ. afterall) and don't know about saladin(didn't open the save, but if darius has feudalism, then obviously he has hr)

so hr will probably be 0 trade value; worse, hr won't be traded from the batch on alpha. Leaving aside that when on immortal they don't have alphabet for long time, they usually get hr pretty soon.

plus 2 ppl. whip courthouses are just that sexy

and go via poly; med. is needed for philo bulb, true, but with that capitol and marble, gl really should be great; and since you deviate via col and then go through aesthetics... window will be narrow, so probably med. can wait.

 

[kazapp]

Isn't it time to ask all participants to abstain from using home-made abbreviations?

The discussion is dangerously close to looking like leetspeak if you ask me...

 

[SnowlyWhite]

leetspeak is for explaining other ppl. how smart you are; abbreviations are just so you type less.

that being said, when the current wallet allows for tops 10 techs to be valid options and given 90%+ of the accepted abbreviations are just the initials of the words in the name of that tech I really don't think it's hard to figure what's what...

even if accepting these threads have some educational purpose beside entertainment value, someone trying to improve should still know the tech tree, because without knowing that you won't go far... and what's needed to bulb key techs if you ask me, but that might be debatable

 

[Artichoker]

Code of Laws is definitely a better choice than Monarchy in this game. You're trying to decrease maintenance, not increase it. This is especially true because of the expansion resulting from the recent war.

If you weren't Organized, I would probably go Currency before Code of Laws, to cut research costs of Code of Laws. But being Organized is definitely an exception because it gives you half-price courthouses. Take advantage of that bonus!

 

[Stuck in Pi]

looking forwards to the next segment, especially since i have a game in which I rushed 3 close neighbors (small map), and completely put my economy in the red.

 

[azzaman333]

Org just screams out CoL for the courthouses.

 

[CivCorpse]

CoL means sis can whip courthouses in every city almost instantly. All of his cities should be pop4 by that time. This reduces costs by roughly 8gpt. Which means he is no longer negative gpt at 0 research. The unlimited scientists provide the beakers to research Monarchy. Since the courthouses will cut costs enough that all commerce can be directed towards research. HR won't be that much of a boon because the populations will have been whipped below the happy cap.
@Bluesox. Yes the monasteries are worth building. Even in nonscience cities. They give sis something to build that does not cost extra gpt. One of the things that kills me when I have battered my economy with an early rush is the fact that I must build something every turn. And if the only thing I can build is units then the gold loss gets worse. And 10% is 10%. I would spread Christianity to saladin first. He is most likely headed for theocracy at this point and will stay there forever. If we want shrine gold from arabia then we need to get it in there soon.

 

[BlueSoxSWJ]

CoL means sis can whip courthouses in every city almost instantly. All of his cities should be pop4 by that time. This reduces costs by roughly 8gpt. Which means he is no longer negative gpt at 0 research. The unlimited scientists provide the beakers to research Monarchy. Since the courthouses will cut costs enough that all commerce can be directed towards research. HR won't be that much of a boon because the populations will have been whipped below the happy cap.
@Bluesox. Yes the monasteries are worth building. Even in nonscience cities. They give sis something to build that does not cost extra gpt. One of the things that kills me when I have battered my economy with an early rush is the fact that I must build something every turn. And if the only thing I can build is units then the gold loss gets worse. And 10% is 10%. I would spread Christianity to saladin first. He is most likely headed for theocracy at this point and will stay there forever. If we want shrine gold from arabia then we need to get it in there soon.

You could always delete a unit the turn before you finish a unit; that or build a unit to within one turn of completion, then switch to another. Sis may actually want to consider something like this - don't let units finish now (to save on maintenance), but have a lot ready in case of emergency or to pop out once HR makes them worth having. He's already good at it since he likes to queue up units like that before switching to vassalage/theo anyways.