BOTM 97 - Frederick - Final Spoiler

[nocho]

Impressive game, Jastrow!

Do you usually go Mining before Sushi? I should try that one day.

Cuirrassiers and Cavalries are very expensive units, I wonder how you were able to reach Sushi so much faster than me with whipping 3-pop units. I'd be interested in the 500 AD and 1000 AD BPT values and an explanation how they are reached. You can take the same info out of my writeup, if you need any additional screens, just say, I got a savegame of every turn .

I found a 800AD save, there I'm at 752 bpt bleeding 157 gpt, but with 2000+ in the bank. I actually just finished Oxford at 780AD, quite a bit later than you guys. That's at least partly why I had the cash there, think I might have had a GM mission too. Self teched gunpowder in 820AD and MT in 880AD. I don't think I whipped my cuirs very heavily, didn't want to kill the population over it yet.

Curiously, I see in your screenshot at 1100AD that you pull quite a bit less bpt than me at 780AD while you're even in a GA while I wasn't... What happened there? Just too busy warring? Maybe that explains why especially Jastrow pulled ahead around that time (libbing railroad and finish corporation mid 12th century)?

 

[Jastrow]

It depends of course, but yes, mining first is typical for me. I have several reasons for this.

1. Building the executives can be reasonably done without whipping.
2. MinInc gives an IMMEDIATE bump, which accelerates Sushi.
3. MinInc first also gives IronWorks earlier
4. I was delaying corporations to save my GLH, and thus had to found the corps without WS. MinInc is cheaper to operate.

 

[Seraiel]

GG Jastrow. I couldn't find the finish-date though, I guess it's a secret?

I think Mining first can compare better to Sushi first than on the Marathon settings I'm used to. On Normal speed, the Execs cost 50% more and can be produed in 1-2 turns, on Marathon, whipping 5 Execs for 200 each is completely OP.

Btw, I also got 3 additional Great Artists and 2 Great Spies which I couldn't use for my 5-GP-GA and therefore had to wait until I got the GE from Fusion. So you're not the only one who had bad luck with GPs .

I btw. saw, that you built the Spaceship in minimum time, so 10 or 11T when that was exactly how long you needed for research. I know that that is a lot of work, though 11T is still different than 7T, but 35 cities are also different to 20. I already had problems finding suitable hammer-cities with 35 cities. You 1-turning Life-Support without chops astonishes me.

Btw nocho : 750 BPT at 800 AD is insane. I just had a terrible early and mid game with weak decisions from T0 onwards that multiplied terribly, but tech-trades and GA-chains kept or brought me in play again I guess. You know, sometimes when you're slower, you get an additioinal tech and are faster. If I win this game, than purely because of my late mid and endgame.

 

[ikotomi]

That overflow chain into Life Support is amazing!

 

[Jastrow]

@Seraiel

The date is not a secret, and is actually contained in the report, though I forgot to put it in explicitly ... I said I started my 3*12 turn GA in 199, and add to trow in one extra turn, which means I launched at T236. I built all the parts, to that means I landed 10 turns later: T246, which I believe should be 1680AD.

I am not sure why you were running spies at all. Were you using the spy points for war (city revolt to reduce culture defense, for example)? The AI were much to slow for tech stealing to be relevant. I tried hard to keep my pool as pure as possible. My two GA were at really low odds from wonder contamination.

I could have done the build time in 8T instead if I wanted to. (It involves overflowing on something other than a Thruster in the first step; for example an industrial park.) Indeed, in retrospect, that is what I should have done (burning a spare GE on the park). It shifts a few other things around, but would have been slightly more efficient for research (only because it makes better use of the spare engineer by about 60 beakers; otherwise it would be worse). It would not have changed the finish date, but would have made the last couple of turns less tricky on research. (I literally had to starve people on the last turn to get the last 50 beakers.)

I unfortunately do not have any save near 800 AD. From my two closest dsaves: I was at 540 at 520 AD and in 1150 AD I am making 993 bpp. I do have the following research dates:

Economy - 740
Constitution - 820
Chemistry - 880

So from 760 to 880, I generated 5250 hammers.5250/7 turns = 750 bpt (including the 20% prerequisite bonus). So, I was at about 625 bpt during 850. (I started a GA from Taj in 860 as I was completing chemistry)

From 900 to 960 (4 turns) I researched printpress + replaceable parts = 975 bpt, so my science took of just a bit after 850 AD.

The one-turn-life-support is inspired from a trick I learned from Wastintime in a SGOTM, maybe a year ago, where he used a similar technique (in that case combined with chops) to complete the GLH in amazing time (dont remember for sure if it was 1T, but I think it was.) About 3 months ago, I came to the realization that the same trick can be used to 1T life support, and this is the first time I manage to execute it in a forum game.

 

[Seraiel]

TY for that post Jastrow and then extra big congratiulations from me .

Seriously, I wouldn't have thought that my research was so bad, but nocho showed me differently. It's still a little hard to grasp it for me, because I had earlier Oxford and burned more GAs than any of you, but your better settling early resulting in more cities snowballed to such a big advantage in midgame, that winning wasn't possible, even with an excellent endgame and a lot of effort.
But it's really ok. Would have been nice to win a GOTM in 1st try, but beating nocho must be enough this time ^^ .

Regarding your question with the Spies:

1. I heavily feeded techs to the AIs, so two of them reached Democracy, creating the need for me to switch them to Caste via Espionage, because Emancipation is not even remotely competetive. This got me Combustion as a last tech via trade.

2. I used Spies to generate OF. Spies are basically the cheapest possible build, so imagine, you build a Spy, costing 40 with 80 in that turn. 40 OF and can build the Spy on the next turn fully. Now produce as many in that city as possible, and you'll get the amount of base-hammers as OF, so i. e. you get 120 OF, when the city makes 120 base-hammers.
Like this I gained 1T additional production and I timed the cities similar to you, so 7T for the Thrusters, T -6 Fission T -5 Fiber Optics, 4T for the Engines, 3T for the Docking bay, 2T for the Stasis Chamber (built that one in the IW-city) and as written a chopped out Life-support.

OF-chains or "whip-stacking" as we call it I also learned from WastinTime in SGOTM 18, when he planned how to 1T-build Oxford. I didn't think of that method for SpaceShip parts. I used it to get Oxford in like 2 or 3T.

 

[Jastrow]

Actually, if I have the dates right, my Oxford was 4 turns earlier than yours.

For the spies, I meant to ask why you were running spy SPECIALISTS (which lead to spy gpp in the gene pool)

 

[Seraiel]

Actually, if I have the dates right, my Oxford was 4 turns earlier than yours.

For the spies, I meant to ask why you were running spy SPECIALISTS (which lead to spy gpp in the gene pool)

Pardon me, I don't know about turn-times but only remember dates, and remembering any dates except the finish already took me 4y+ of playing. I guess this is, because I simply try to give my maximum from turn to turn and don't ask myself how good the result actually objectively is, it's just my personal maximum, so turntimes don't matter to me. I also know, that it's better to directly learn the turntimes instead of the dates, because turntimes i. e. differ between the different versions of CIV, but remembering something like 1AD I just find a lot easier. I'll pay attention to that, it's really difficult for me though, as I play all 4 speeds regularly, and dates are just easier to compare than turns under those circumstances, so I guess I need to learn both.

And the Spy-Specialists I ran because I ran Emancipation for about 10T. It was a stupid reaction of switching into Emancipation, I think with the last turns of my 2nd last GA, and then I needed to wait until Christo Redentor to be able to switch again. I also needed to remember first, that switching civs via Spies is atually possible, which is a sign that I really lost some of my knowledge during my 3 months long hiatus.

 

[greatbeyond]

Launched to AC at a late date or 2007AD. Not a very good start, but the last half Germany became very strong. Unfortunately not strong enough to get a good date. At the end Berlin was making almost 200 hpt, despite the lack of production tiles.

I never quite figured out how to maximize such a poor starting area.

Two crashes, both requiring loading the last turn autosave.

 

[Seraiel]

I never quite figured out how to maximize such a poor starting area.

Two crashes, both requiring loading the last turn autosave.

1. Take the whip and go for Mining Inc.

2. Idk if this helps, but I also had cases of my game crashing various times from the same save, so in exactly the same situation. For me it turned out, that turning off particle effects (options) solves the problem, maybe this will help you too.

 

[lymond]

turn off PLE

 

[marbe166]

I ended with a Spaceship loss to Joao in 2001. Roosevelt intruded on my island and settled Chicago next to my iron. For that he had to pay, eventually. I managed to break him down to one remaining city (Portland) on the one-tile isle north of me. Then I decided to spare him and he became my vassal. However, all the others were ahead of me in tech and not very friendly, the only friendly guy was Lincoln, but he wasn't friendly enough to help me out in war. Isabella (and her pet Churchill), Cathy and Napoleon were the most unfriendly ones, they all declared on me at some point. Willem had managed to gather a lot of culture and shiny wonders right on my doorstep in Amsterdam, but a bad move on my part when I declared and started the invasion meant that Amsterdam was never liberated from the Orange guy with the funny moustache. He didn't really strike back much except fending off the invasion and then we made quite a cheap peace agreement.

A note to the BOTM designers: Including two incarnations of the same Civ made it a bit problematic, in this case with the two Americas. Napoleon: "We demand that you cancel your deals with the vile American!" Well Nappy, which one do you mean? One is my friend, one is my foe... Next time you want to have two leaders from the same Civ, please change the name and adjective of one of the Civs.

 

[lymond]

@marb I agree that multiple leaders of same civ can be a bit confusing, but note that an AI will only make that demand of their worst enemy, so it is good to keep track of WEs. Check your diplo situation often.

Good game..head over to Strategy & Tips if you want to improve your game, and you will kill these AIs in no time.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I ran out of time 780 AD. 16 cities after wars against America, France and Spain.

It was bcool who once wrote "Sushi is so effective, because every point of population costs 2GPT but can be a Specialist" .

I'm surprised by this statement. In SGOTM9 I did some calculations and arrived at the conclusion that Sushi was not helping research much while Mining Inc makes a big difference. I think Mining before Sushi must be the better strategy.

Cold whipping execs is an interesting strategy but have you calculated if the hammers lost by cold whipping are regained by faster spread? Maybe cold whipping is only good in the beginning? Another (but tedious) option is to use whip-stacking to get 1-turn execs.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm surprised by this statement. In SGOTM9 I did some calculations and arrived at the conclusion that Sushi was not helping research much while Mining Inc makes a big difference. I think Mining before Sushi must be the better strategy.
Cold whipping execs is an interesting strategy but have you calculated if the hammers lost by cold whipping are regained by faster spread? Maybe cold whipping is only good in the beginning? Another (but tedious) option is to use whip-stacking to get 1-turn execs.

The statement about Sushi fits mostly. I had about 35 cities on the map, when i added a new resource my GPT sank by about 30-35, so 1 is really 1GPT. The point of population ofc. also raises maintenance, so it's not completely 2GPT for 1pop, but I'd doubt that Sushi wouldn't be the more effective Corp at least on Marathon, because numerous world-class HoF players calculated that over and over again, and Sushi first has become the absolute standard strategy for most.
Mining first may still be better on normal settings, because then, whipping the Executives may not be necessary because cities got relatively more production and 1T is 1T, but already the difference between 1 and 2T Execs is massive. This is also why I (or we) cold-whip them. Cold-whipping costs an extra 30 , but in the end, a large number of cities will have the Corp earlier, and as Mining was about 40 , even only 1 city having Mining earlier would have made the cold-whip worth it, it are more though, because cold-whipping doubles the spread.

Regarding whip-stacking: With what would you want to whip-stack? There are basically no buildings with which this could be done at that time, and whip-stacking with something useless or only partly useful would still be a disadvantage. I know, sometimes it is possible, like with an AP-Temple i. e., sometimes one even has a Forest or two to help, but just normally, with Kremlin you don't have to fear cold-whipping Execs, because Corps are just insanely powerful and Kremlin is aswell. Without Kremlin, the Execs would be 5-pop-whips, then nobody would think about them, but with Kremlin and on Marathon, they're 2-pop with Kremlin and 2-pop with Kremlin but a little higher OF when not cold-whipped ^^ . 3-pop with OF is also still not that much of a problem, that's 3T of growth with Sushi.

 

[Frederiksberg]

SGOTM9 was a quick speed game and my analysis was done for this only. And the point is exactly as you mention the increased maintenance of a larger city. In order to gain any extra beakers from Sushi you must grow your city and that adds maintenance. And this is not a small amount in particular if you have two corps in the city because of corporate maintenance. If you have calculations showing the contrary I would like to see them.
I agree that whip-stacking is impractical in most cases. You can debate if 30 hammers is the real loss of cold-whipping because 1 pop is worth more with Kremlin. And 40 Mining inc resources is quite high in GOTM where you don't get to pick a favorable map. On the other hand if you have Sushi you have more hammers than you need in some cases. But the answer to this could be to limit Sushi spread to cities designated as space part builders.

 

[Seraiel]

The 1GPT / is the cost because of the city-maintenance Frederiksberg! Sushi doesn't has any cost except city-maintenance, if one adds 1 resource and that subtracts n (number of cities) from the GPT, that means, that that 1 extra in all cities costs 1 from each of them. This is why bcool wrote that 1 citizen (= 2 ) only costs 2 GPT but can be much more BPT (like i. e. 10.5 as a Scientist with 75% modifiers) . bcool's statement is not completely correct, because ofc., the city first needs to grow, and before it does that, one already pays for the full amount of resources, but if making another very simple calculation that is only ment to be used to imagine this issue: A city with Sushi and +30 food has about 30 maintenance with a Courthouse. Without a Courthouse, those would be 5 maintenance, so Sushi causes 25 maintenance (50 initially -50% from the CH) . This city grows every turn with so much , so after 3 turns, the additionally hired Specialists in it already exceed the cost that Sushi creates. This is also why my empire recovered at such an insane speed going from 1k BPT to 8k BPT in only 10T. Ofc., Mining helped with that too, but Mining (with Factories) is about 1 GPT net for every it creates, because the gives 2 (1 + 100% from the Factory + Forge + PP) but costs roughly 1 GPT. This helps imagine, why Sushi is regarded that much stronger than Mining, with Sushi, 1 GPT can be 5 BPT easily, with Mining, it can only be 2. For Sushi, cities need to grow however, with Mining they don't, which is why Mining is slightly better, while Sushi is worse, but the difference is great enough imo., so that it can be quite safely assumed, that Sushi still will be the stronger Corp unless the from Sushi and the speed is so high, that most gets wasted (which partly already was the case I saw in this round, some of my cities had something like 120/40 in the Granary at the end) .

 

[Pangaea]

I've done Mining first before, and it's pretty good too, and it's much easier to get out executives without (cold) whipping them. With so many hammers and modifiers, you can usually 1-turn them outright, or at least with some overflow or at worst chops. But the advantage with Sushi first is that the cities will keep growing for longer, meaning you can hire a surreal amount of specialists, and under Representation, the beaker count will go through the roof, like it did in Seraiel's game.

Make no mistake, though: Bridging the gap from Sushi to Mining can be very brutal indeed. The costs are obscene, and not easy to bear. Spreading corps cost money too, so you have spread cost + much higher maintenance -- but without the many hammers to counterbalance it with building wealth. But once you get Mining too and hammer multipliers, the economy and research will really go off the chart, and soon enough you can start building research (or other stuff of course) instead of wealth.

State Property isn't bad either. Can't quite compete with a well-played corps game I think, but the benefit is instant, and you don't need to spam executives. It's "easier", but maybe not with the same kind of benefit, especially at the end of the game, and when building space parts.

 

[Seraiel]

Mentioning the cost for the spread is actually a good point, because it needs to be considered aswell. 10 Execs in 1T are 700 , that's not an easy amount to get before being able to build Wealth in many cities.

The interesting point imo. is though, how competetive the several approaches are, and I'm not as sure as you are, that Corporations really are the best way, imo., every way has it's strength with different settings. kovacsflo i. e. played some incredible Spaceraces with using Free Speech, Emancipation and Cottage spam. He played on huge maps, where Corps are simply weak, because it's usually not possible to get the mass of the resources, unless playing Incans, Persians or Romans and Marathon. bcool had an incredible success with Libbing Democracy and running superearly Emancipation, his date in GM-137 was only a handful of turns after my 695 AD date with Corporations. Idk. how competetive State Property actually is, but nothing seems to speak against Cottage-Spam, Free Speech + Emancipation early, while building Workshops in a few Hammer-cities for big parts like the Engine, the Docking Bay or the Stasis Chamber and State Property also lowers the maintenance by more than Free Market gives extra usually.
I actually wouldn't be too surprised, if Libbing Emancipation and spamming Cottages actually would be the strongest approaches of all on land-based maps. On maps like this one with little land and almost no production, there's basically no way around Mining Inc. because the production of the Spaceship is a bigger problem then the research.

I btw. don't understand, how a city getting 40 from Mining shall be able to 1T Execs costing 100 . A strong city maybe makes 30 , 30 + 40 * 1.25 for the Forge are still not enough, so OF would be needed aswell, but 30 + 40 already is an extreme scenario in favour of Mining Inc.. In the usual scenario, it's beneficial to spread from one city towards the next to be able to spread onto the same turn and having 20 through Mines / Workshops and 30 from Mining already is a lot, then however, almost full OF would be needed for a 1T Exec... So possible, but very difficult and not sure if it's really worth it. The faster the speed, the better Mining Inc. however gets, on Marathon, one doesn't has to think about Sushi first or not.

 

[Pangaea]

kovacsflo i. e. played some incredible Spaceraces with using Free Speech, Emancipation and Cottage spam.

bcool had an incredible success with Libbing Democracy and running superearly Emancipation, his date in GM-137 was only a handful of turns after my 695 AD date with Corporations.

It would actually be interesting to run a game like this, just to experience it personally, how it may compare to a more traditional Sushi-Mining-AL space game.

Not sure how well SP compares with Corps for space either, but I remember people saying it's sort of equal, and there are some good SP games in the HoF from what I recall, so maybe it's doable and competitive. Played a SP space game before, but it was on Rainforest, which lends itself to that kind of approach, given all the rivers and lack of seafood (naturally, Seraiel Mills can be good too )