another hof spacerace start

[Smilingrogue]

@ GKey

I am not a very good player and I have zero clue about HoF games. But if it were me, I would tear the cottages in Delhi down and workshop the place for Iron Works. It has fresh water, so it can eat a little more unhappiness and allow one more specialist, has riversides for levee and has a lot of food. Wall street can then go in there for quick executives.

But again, as I said, I have no clue about HoF and don't know how IW in Delhi would payoff for a quick Space Race game. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

And a special thanks to all the participants in the thread. Been a good read.

 

[GKey]

Thanks, Tachy! So it's AIs city count, not population, what's matter for emancipation penalty. Good to know although it looks counter intuitive to me. Lizzy does trade map at friendly, what you mean? Well here it can be assumed as never, since I will never be able to make her friendly.

@Kossin, thanks! I was thinking that production is indeed more important then commerce for Wall Street city.

I think watermilling, workshopping Delhi and get IW+WS there is brilliant idea, thanks Smilingrogue! With such setup Delhi will become a main production city.

 

[kossin]

Converting Delhi to production is great however only if you have the spare workers. They'll have a lot of jobs to do come Biology and corps a bit later. Having good food allows for more production obviously and rivers are a plus as well!

 

[GKey]

Converting Delhi to production is great however only if you have the spare workers. They'll have a lot of jobs to do come Biology and corps a bit later. Having good food allows for more production obviously and rivers are a plus as well!

What do you mean? converting cottages into farms/workshops? That's a great question for me, what to do with the land once corporations are in.

Also a big question how to proceed in terms of civics. We want run many specs with Sushi, but we will need to whip factories, coal plants and more at the same time too. Lots of headache.

What's the formula for Sushi on small map, 2 resources for 1 food increase?

 

[BornInCantaloup]

@GKey: Watermills/windmills would be my guess, rather than farms/workshops

EDIT: nevermind. Should read better before posting. Thought that referred to Delhi alone.

 

[klonoklown]

Thanks, Tachy! So it's AIs city count, not population, what's matter for emancipation penalty. Good to know although it looks counter intuitive to me. Lizzy does trade map at friendly, what you mean? Well here it can be assumed as never, since I will never be able to make her friendly.

Just a reference: Will trade map: Never

 

[GKey]

I could swear I had her trading maps at friendly in gauntlet lakes conquest games. Interesting.

 

[Manco Capac]

She only trades maps when she's your vassal. Toku is the other one behaving that way.

 

[kossin]

Liz only trade maps as part of peace deals.

Biology allows your cities to grow rapidly and gain the required population to reach the city's potential faster. Sushi can't spread fast enough throughout the empire (max. 5/turn) so you'll still be relying on farms to accomplish the early growth. In terms of optimized research, post-Electricity:

riverside: watermill
hill: windmill

Grow city to happy cap and workshop everything else you can. Also, keep in mind that scientists (Library+Uni+Obs 6*1.75 = 10.5b) can be better than grassland workshops (2*5 = 10b)... and are better than plains workshops without the GA. Even more so with Free Religion and possibility of Labs.

 

[Manco Capac]

They may be another reason to spread another religion over the original one: in the latest stage of a space game, happy cap problems return...another religion means possibility to build another temple.

 

[Snaaty]

@ doshin & gkey (and everybody else that want to play along):

next checkpoint is 500 AD. i will compare the games again, if you can provide a save around that turn. i´m already at it, reached 250 AD. i will post my next writeup once i find time...

...

@ all:

thanks for posting and providing feedback and/or infos. it´s always highly apreciated

 

[Doshin]

Looking very strong at 1AD snaaty. Stronger than my own game, that's for sure. I'll post a 500 AD comparison when I get a spare moment.

You (and GKey) are already taking steps to counter my big two regrets in this game, BTW:

1) I missed out on the circumnavigation bonus. This is massive, not just for settling cities, but for catching sushi resources in the second ring of culture on the turn a WB is built. This must have added up to a huge amount of lost food across the course of the game.

2) No Great Engineer until Fusion. Despite all my efforts, not one came through from the Hanging Gardens, Mids, Iron Works, Factories... argh. I should have known better than to leave this up to chance.

Actually, a third regret. I took on three vassals. One of those was useful, but the others not so much. Mistakes mistakes...

A word of advice: if you plan to take out Mansa AND Elizabeth, you will be very, very close to the Domination limit. I am no expert, but at a certain point I suspect it is more beneficial to have multiple one-tile island cities replete with sushi resources than land heavy mainland cities (a 1-tile island city occupies 1 land square. A city on the mainland might occupy 21. Which is going to bring you closer to Domination? One English city with, e.g. 18 tiles, or 8 one to two tile island cities? How many specialists can that one English city run? How many can the islands?).

Looking forward to the next update(s).

 

[GKey]

...but at a certain point I suspect it is more beneficial to have multiple one-tile island cities replete with sushi resources than land heavy mainland cities (a 1-tile island city occupies 1 land square. A city on the mainland might occupy 21. Which is going to bring you closer to Domination? One English city with, e.g. 18 tiles, or 8 one to two tile island cities? How many specialists can that one English city run? How many can the islands?).
...

Agreed completely. Science output from 1 tile island city with Sushi is going to be almost the same as from 18 tiles mainland city. OTOH production will not be the same . Also emancipation pressure from AI with many small cities is stronger then that from AI with few cities on mainland.

After all spaceship means fast research for 95% of the game and strong production for some 10-15 turns in the end.

And this brings the question: How many production cities do we need for fastest Space Ship build? My assumption 6-8 cities. Right?

Another question: How many food does Sushi brings in from 1 resource (on small map)? This is crucial for islands settling plan.

 

[GKey]

500 AD. Slow on expansion, Snaat might have some 30 cities already.

Spoiler :

Not much to tell. Warring with Mansa and developing land. GM's from GA fueling research. AI's seem to go Lib route, so I can not afford Democracy detour. Need to settle these islands more aggressively.

 

[Snaaty]

@ gkey:

just from looking at the pic:

your game looks great (and no, i havent managed to expand more, i even guess you settled more islands then i did). i have reached more or less the same standing as you do, but your research is stronger then mine (1 have 1200 beakers at 400 AD, still not reached 500 AD, and i dont think i can manage to raise research by 400 beakers in 4 turns). you seem to have played a bit more focussed then i did it looks (i wanted everything at once, and it seems it slowed me down)

...

i will have a detailed look at your save one i get home tonight, to se how you did it...

 

[GKey]

Do we get 0.3 food per resource with Sushi on small map? 0.3 production with Mining?

This is very important question to make settling plan. Can anyone confirm?

Doshin, Snaaty and everyone else- what corp to go for first? I guess decision point is when you reach Chemistry.

Ideally I would love to tech Nationalism-Constitution-Democracy (start SoL) -Economics-Corporations and only then proceed to Medicine or Railroad from Liberalism.

Unfortunately all three AIs in my game seem to beeline Liberalism, so I need to go Lib Medicine or Railroad ASAP and only then tech to Corporations.
So i need to decide which would be better before corporations

• Sci Meth kills monasteries and GLib
  
• Steel needed for Ironworks in Corp Headquarter (and cannons)
  
• Levees and railroads over mines will give us significant boost
  
• Biology gives a huge free bonus
  
• Sushi is stronger the Mining and we have more seafood then metals on the map
  
• Medicine by itself does not give anything, while Railroad allows me build improvements.

Need advice here.

 

[Snaaty]

@ gkey:

i´m still at 400 AD (had no time yesterday night), but i have been asking myself the same questions:

1. if you open the corporation page, you should see how much a corporation should bring. by checking then the trade screen you should see how much ressources you have and it should be possible to calculate. i havent calculated, only checked and mining seems to be better to start with, at least in my opinion, for 3 reasons:

- more prod early for execs.
- brings more return (i´m getting more hammers then food, compared to sushi)
- monastries obsolete a bit later

2. i did tech demo already, now on the way to chem. seemed best choice to me.

3. dont forget about wallstreet (and courthouses) before corps or you will run into heavy money problems, so corps after demo or steampower seems ideal

4. i plan to do the following: beeline steamp. and get it with lib. it is weaker on beakers then railroad, but in my game 2 ai´s also are very close to lib (i can see their research), AND, more important, i want levees ASAP. if i calculated right, with levees + mining i will have Delhi to get 1 exec per turn.

5. libbing steamp., then eco-corps times nicely with getting levees and wallstreet up right before reaching corps. and without leeves, no 1 exec/turn and without wallstreet no money, so i figured it better to waist 2000 beakers (aprox. 1,3 turns of research) for better corps setup

6. right now, i would put hammers > food, because 1 exec. / turn will help a lot spreading both corps in a timely manner. and getting the iw up in a settlerpump city seems great to me right now for settling the islands. besides, research should stabilize around 2000 beakers soon, so the second corp shouldnt be less then 10-15 turns after the first one...

7. i havent settled enough islands to make the most out of sushi, so better mining now and sushi with more islands settled (1 growth / turn later equals 1 /growth / 1.5 turns now i guess, or am i missing something???)

 

[Doshin]

A bit pressed for time here, so I can't give my full thoughts, sorry. GKey, your game has already outpaced my own by quite some way. Take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

I Lib.'d Medicine in my game and I am glad that I did (ok... I didn't save a saved Great Engineer, but would pick this route again regardless). I was also one tech away from Corporation.

Here's my suggestion: Scientific Method opens up Medicine, but it also opens up Communism, which I assume you will tech for the free GSpy. The Biology/Sushi/Kremlin combo is ridiculously powerful on this map. 2 execs can be whipped/OF'd/built in 3 turns per city. It sucks to lose Monasteries, but that's life. The Parthenon and Great Library will produce fewer GPPs and science than Sushi, so forget about that.

Presumably you will be reluctant to spread a corporation to a city that lacks a Courthouse. How are your island cities going to build Courthouses? Either you have to suck it up, spread Mining for a few turns, and deal with the massive costs, or you can whip at a discount with the Kremlin. Use Biology farms or seafood resources to grow the cities, and then whip as soon as you can.

You might want to give some thought to build order in the islands (Granary ---> Forge ---> Courthouse? Or Granary ---> Courthouse?) Lighthouses are nice, but I realize with retrospect that they can and probably should wait until Sushi has spread. Maybe you'll think differently.

In fact, make sure that all of your mainland cities have or are building Courthouses now. For example, I forgot to build one in my capital, which is fine until you start to spread the corps...

Try and have mainland cities build Work Boats for the islands. I didn't do this effectively, but the 3-movement points will speed things dramatically. As island cities get set up, they can take on some of the burden of producing WBs/Settlers/Execs.

Wall Street is important, snaaty is right. It might be worth while whipping execs, overflowing into Wall Street, then switching back to Execs to repeat. You can judge what works best. Also, I feel I switched out of Mercantilism into Free Market way too late. Keep a close eye on this.

I think Versailles is probably worth building too.

I didn't set up Galleon chains. If you want to get a phenomenal victory date, I would suggest that you get started on this (Missionaries, Execs, Settlers, Workers... more needed to be transported than I realized).

 

[Snaaty]

@ doshin:

not 100% sure, but i think last time i checked the corps advisor, sushi was close to 10 food, but mining already close to 20 hammers

so mining must be more like 1,5 - 2 hammers per mining ressource (while sushi should be around 1 food per sushi ressource) and that was even before coal is visible... ...getting up to 30 hammers or more should be no problem with all the islands and some ai´s left to conquer... ...so whipping isnt really important when even some 1 tile island cities get asap 30+ hammers (forge in 2 turns, courthouse after that 3 turns)

-> i would go mining first (but the above mentioned isnt confirmed via code nor checking it in the game right now... ...so if anybody could confirm or deny the ammount of hammers and food sushi and mining really bring on that maptype and size would be really, really great)

 

[Snaaty]

i dont have much time right now, but i also have reached 500 AD. save attached. i will post the writeup once i have a bit more time...

@ gkey:

same goes for your save. i will also have a look at it, once i have a bit more time