ALC Game #7: Frederick/Germany

[Eqqman]

I understand the theory of conquest funded warfare and it will work nicely for a Conquest victory, but can't work for a Domination victory until a sufficient economic base has been built up. The city maintenance and civic cost grow enormously with extra cities and population unless a proper infrastructure is installed. The game has been designed to limit expansion in this way as otherwise it would be too easy and a single strategy of all out warfare would be all that is needed to win every game.

Well I think this is really the most important issue that is also the most difficult to explain regarding actual practice. Especially if you're going a combo scientist/merchant route you should in theory be able to stockpile enough loot from captures + pillage that you can constantly run a deficit at 0% and still be teching every 5-10 turns. You're using the whip to build both extra units and infrastucture to keep the deficit from spiraling out of control. A danger point comes when you're close to continental domination since you'll have a gap in the conquest that is difficult to avoid. This is where Mao should have some advantage with the easily whipped courthouses. I'm not convinced that the comparisons to be examined are how much beakers and gold you're producing, but how much beakers + gold + expansion you are producing. I haven't looked at your save file yet, but if you haven't turned your advantage into a significantly faster domination of the starting continent by the equivalent date of 1530 then I'm certainly less impressed (but not unimpressed) with just saying you made more beakers & hammers. Caste system has some advantage here since you have the ability to try and fix a dire emergency with all the merchants you need.

I believe the beaker and gold comparisons are entirely valid as I only used the same traded techs and lightbulbed Philosophy to found Taoism (which Sisiutil also did). In no way was I competing with Sisiutil on a personal level and I never did anything to artifically boost my score / research over what is proper for playing out the game according to my own advice to him.

I was starting to theorize in general there and not commenting on your game specifically, although that's not clear from what I wrote. I didn't know if you'd thought of these issues while you were playing the game but apparently you did.

EDIT: I'm also becoming far more enamored of Ankgor Wat than I used to be. Even if all your production bonus in hammers only comes from bureaucracy you're still effectively seeing 3 hammers per priest, not too shabby in my book especially when you start piling on additional bonuses.

 

[Gazurtoid]

I had six turns after the Oracle completed to get the Forge built in Hamburg, otherwise my first Great Person would be a Great Prophet from Berlin, not a Great Engineer from Hamburg. Three chops weren't going to do the job, and because I had not done enough pre-chopping and road-building to Hamburg's forests, I didn't have time to do a fourth chop. Frankly, I didn't want to--I wanted to keep two forests for their health bonus, what with all those floodplains.

Ugg I'm totally lost here. How are you getting the GE and not a GP instead? Sorry for being obtuse here but I'm still learning this game.

 

[Eqqman]

Ugg I'm totally lost here. How are you getting the GE and not a GP instead? Sorry for being obtuse here but I'm still learning this game.

At this stage, there are only two sources of GPP in all of his cities. Berlin is getting 4 GPP/turn from Phil + Oracle while Hamburg produces 6 GPP/turn from Phil + Engineer specialist. The concern is that the specialist has to start running early enough that the GE points will surpass the GP points before the first Great Person of any type is produced. We need the GE produced to crank out the Pyramids, and we want to make him while the first Great Person only costs 100 GPP since it is very difficult to keep boosting GE points if you are trying to make only GEs.