Breaking the Monarch Barrier

[lymond]

PS - I'm aware that in addition to giving you advice, I've sort of hijacked this thread for my own playthrough. If you all find this entertaining or informative, then I'll continue to post, but if you want me to move it to another thread, by all means ask, and I'll be happy to do so.

It's welcome...Artisan can learn from you when you reviews your work later.

 

[krikav]

I feel bad for the poor AIs.

Nice writeup @Fish Man !

 

[Artisan]

But...

Spoiler :

View attachment 584131

I would think you'd lost your double-production-speed-for-the-Oracle resources. But I've heard of the infamous BC Deity launch, so I guess it's not as impossible as I would think.

PS - I'm aware that in addition to giving you advice, I've sort of hijacked this thread for my own playthrough. If you all find this entertaining or informative, then I'll continue to post, but if you want me to move it to another thread, by all means ask, and I'll be happy to do so.

It's fine, I'm happy to read your write-up here, I'll keep playing through my own game though. Maybe after I finish I'll replay it and see if I can pull off what you're attempting currently.

 

[Fish Man]

I would think you'd lost your double-production-speed-for-the-Oracle resources. But I've heard of the infamous BC Deity launch, so I guess it's not as impossible as I would think.


It's fine, I'm happy to read your write-up here, I'll keep playing through my own game though. Maybe after I finish I'll replay it and see if I can pull off what you're attempting currently.

Thank you - that's high praise! Same appreciation to @krikav and @lymond .

First, a bit more explanation for teching/civics choice. And then a summary of my play to communism.

Spoiler :

The goal in any regular space game is to get to communism as fast as possible. Communism unlocks state property, which is life-changing for two reasons: OPtiles and maintenance savings.

With SP, you get +1 food on workshops and watermills, which is a HUGE bonus. Grassland workshops are food-neutral, meaning with stuff like a single wet corn you can spam the BFC with them and grow to work the majority of your tiles as workshops. This production bonus cannot be overstated. As an example - until biology, each grassland farm provides +1 food, so without SP, assuming all your tiles are grassland, you would have to normally alternate 1 farm with 1 workshop to balance out the food deficit. But SP eliminates that need, meaning that now you can cover almost EVERY tile with a workshop and reap the hammer bonuses accordingly. Even plains workshops are affected, becoming only half of a food-drain as usual. So, yes, you read that right - the effect of state property on workshops alone is to DOUBLE your hammer output in a theoretical ideal situation. Of course this ideal is often never fully reached, but coming anywhere close to it is far more powerful than any of the other economic civics have to offer in a standard game.

But we're not done with the benefits. State property also gives +1 food on watermills, as stated. The synergy of this is that watermills get progressively more powerful as the game goes on, until at electricity + RP they're +2 hammers and +3 commerce (with financial). If you slap a +1 food on that, they become the single most powerful non-resource improvement in the game, bar none - if you thinking about it, that becomes a farm, a mine, and a hamlet all on the same tile. So you spam riverside tiles with these, and not only do your cities grow, but they also output tremendous hammers and commerce in the process. Additionally, the +10% hammers in all cities is very welcome too, and in a game where things come down to the wire, can make a difference between winning under 250 turns and failing to do so.

However, we have yet to cover perhaps the most important aspect of SP, which is the maintenance cost reduction. Removing distance maintenance outright is EXTREMELY powerful in large empires because, besides the obvious, from what I've observed it does two funky things. First, it makes it so that costs don't balloon progressively as a result of population. Normally, as a city grows bigger, it costs more, meaning faraway big cities will cost 20 or more gpt by the late stages of the game. Second, it caps maintenance maximum at a fixed value, which is 6gpt on monarch for however many cities you have - a paltry amount that's basically broken even by working a single 2f4h workshop by the lategame! Don't forget that colonial expenses are cancelled too.

With that in mind, our path here is clear; since we need astro anyways, we're going to reach scientific method through that, and then lib communism (lib is required for that). How do we reach SM in a timely manner, though?

Well, luckily, the paths to libbing communism are pretty bulbable by great scientists. In this particular case, I generated, which I used to knock out almost all of education and a big chunk of scientific method. That left me to self-tech just astro, philo, and lib for the most part...even with that many expenses, three techs was not a lot to get through, especially with cities coming online now and working the full extent of their riverside cottages or coastal tiles or specialists.

Only 5 turns after t150, our max beakers/turn had increased by 150:

Spoiler :

In fact, with 25 or so cities steadily growing, AND the financial trait in play, my beakers/turn are increasing by some 20/30 every turn!

Spoiler :

As expected, all the other AIs were cavemen (no priesthood and it's almost 1000AD, nice ). But I do manage to trade for feudalism somewhere down the line, the last thing I'll ever be able to trade for before I completely shoot ahead of everyone on research.

Spoiler :

This looks like a pretty epic national epic spot, don't you think ?

Spoiler :

So all of the above amounted to me reaching communism by t177. Btw, you can see in the top left/middle of the screen what improvements to make/work before state property...maximize commerce, cottage everything riverside, and especially for financial, coasts are decent.

Spoiler :

And here, even BEFORE any of the workshop/watermill-improving techs, you can begin to see the power of state property. Notice how high my expenses are before, and after:

Spoiler :

I used a great artist to start a golden age. The first image is costs and bpt before the golden age and civic switches. The second is after golden age but before civic switches...and the third is after the golden age AND switching to state property/caste system/free religion. Our base bpt already well above 1100, doubling from just 25 or so turns ago - owing to me cottagespamming riversides and cities still growing. But we also have a golden age to boot, increasing that by 40% or more for the next 12 turns at least...and the civic switch immediately saves us 250 gold per turn, not to mention boosting our actual research to over 1500 bpt. Suddenly we are casually 1-turning medieval and soon Renaissance era techs, with barely a fraction of the previous eras' expenses at 100% research. Sub-t250 space seems a lot more possible now, doesn't it ?

And, again, this is before workshops and watermills become absolutely insane. Or Oxford, or factories/power, or most cities growing to their full potential (in fact, as you can see by the city count increasing, I haven't even finished founding cities yet - looking to settle the islands next). You haven't seen anything yet .

A direct before/after image of the finances, just to hammer home merely the initial cost savings:

Spoiler :

But hey, sit tight - the best is yet to come .

 

[Artisan]

What should I be teching after Math? I would normally go to Currency to get the trade routes.

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

@Artisan
Can't see your tech tree, just deselecting currency up there in the screenshot is enough to know how the tree looks.
Crab city should almost certainly do a 1pop whip of that granary.

 

[SittinDown]

Crab city should almost certainly do a 1pop whip of that granary.

I'm curious about the micro on that.
If it's 5 turns to grow, and 6 turns to finish the granary, and the city is working 3 power tiles, my instinct is that it's better to delay the whip until you're at a point where it would insta-grow-back to pop 3 the next turn?
Is the benefit that you start putting food into the granary sooner, so when you get to size 3 it's faster to get to 4?

 

[krikav]

@SittinDown I have not done the math and my math is abit rusty with regards to granary too, it was just my instinct! Lets check.

Food bar looks like it's either 2/26 or 3/26 and growth in 5 turns means it's working crab+cow+grass cottage, netting 5 food per turn.
If whipped down to pop2, it would still net 5 food per turn.

The granary starts to collect food on the turn after it's built, so if it's whipped now at 2/26 granary would be finished with a 7/24 food bar. Then continuing to work crab+cow it would take 4 turns to reach pop3. 12, 17, 22, 3. And 4*5= 20 food would have been harvestable for the granary which at pop2 have a capacity of 12.
Conclusion: Whip of granary now is premature and loses some turn working a decent or good tile.
It's probably next turn that it should be whipped.

What essential is that the granary have to harvest food to half of what the current food bar is, for it to conjure that food up again at next pop after growth.
If you do, you start pop3 at 12/26 instead of 0/26, in essence getting 12 food for free.

 

[krikav]

Is the benefit that you start putting food into the granary sooner, so when you get to size 3 it's faster to get to 4?

Yes, thats correct!

 

[lymond]

Grass cottage is not a "power tile". IMO..I agree with krik's initial assessment of whipping Pusan now. Finished before food bar is half food and at a smaller size means faster growth. Possible 1t of hold growth before size 3..maybe.

Also, I'd say all worker should be chopping around Wonson right now...not sure why, unless waiting for Maths, but assume you have that already.

I will once again recommend that you post saves.

 

[SittinDown]

Grass cottage is not a "power tile"

I thought he was working the crab, cow, and iron. Agree cottage is not a power tile.

 

[SittinDown]

in essence getting 12 food for free

that's a bigger difference than I would have expected.

 

[Artisan]

I'll get a post of my tech options soon, forgot to deselect.

The granary is honestly a big mystery to me, all I know is that it tends to magic up a lot of food that usually is about half of the food bin.

@lymond I have a Worker up there chopping, as well as another one finishing off the Wheat farm, who'll help chopping when he's done.

 

[Artisan]

Tech choices

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

@Artisan Knowing that the granary is good and that huge emphasis should be placed on it is at least 75% of the value.
If you know that the granary should be completed at the turn that cities have about a half bin full, then thats another 15% of the value or so.

Knowing all the math, and paying attention to the miniscule details, well... thats the last 10% of the benefits.

 

[krikav]

Currency might be good now, yes. But to reap the full benefit from it, you need to uncover the coast to the AIs that you have open borders with. If not, it's just 1 extra coin per city, which isn't that much to get excited about.

Regarding the chopping, there are 5 forests in that screenshot, each take 4 turns to get down, thats 5*4 = 20 workersturns. If you have two workers then that will take 10 turns.
If you are fine with T90 pyramids then thats no big deal, but if it where me, it would be all hands on deck to get that stone tetrahedron done in a hurry!
Maybe there where too few workers abit earlier? Maybe workerturns have been squandered? Hard to tell when the details are abit obscured.

 

[Artisan]

Sorry it's been a few days, it'll probably have to be a few more. I've got a lot of stuff going on at the moment, this'll end up on the back burner for now. I still intend to play further though.