Cookbook #1 (Sally, Immortal)

[Major Tom]

Settling the GSpy with rep gives +6 +12 per turn. However, infiltrating nets an instant +3000, so settling does feel a bit counter-intuitive.

You don't need 3000 instantly (and to whom?) so better settle it and have city view on both of them after a while. Full disclosure of their stacks. Now, that is what I call safety.

Edit: Further down the road you also see production and other goodies, on both.
Edit2: And yes @krikav .Finally spending them on blowing city walls trivial.

 

[krikav]

The problem is that these early wonders make the first 1-2 GPeople problematic.
When we are talking midgame with GLib and such things, these things become much less of an issue.

I usually want a few GScientists early for:
1) An academy, which is very much on the table in this game.
2) Bulb math if I'm in rush/warmode. (Not relevant here)
3) Bulb philo.
Philo bulb can afford at least one GPerson of the wrong kind, no biggie there.
The first GPerson cost 100points, next 200, third 300points. So if I'm unlucky and get two wrong GPersons, I have to dedicate a city with 2 library scientists for 50 turns to make sure I get my academy.
If I don't have an acedemy once I reach CS and have alot of gold in my coffer, foul language about prophet-wonders is not far away!
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that these kind of complications I rather want to avoid.


And yes, you can get your GScientists earlier if you speed up the GP-generation with other flavours, but how well is that working out in practice? Judging from my experience, not good at all!
You get the wrong person almost all the time, and when you do it hurts.
When you get the right GPerson, but earlier, the benefit isn't always that great.

 

[Major Tom]

The problem is that these early wonders make the first 1-2 GPeople problematic.


And yes, you can get your GScientists earlier if you speed up the GP-generation with other flavours, but how well is that working out in practice? Judging from my experience, not good at all!
You get the wrong person almost all the time, and when you do it hurts.
When you get the right GPerson, but earlier, the benefit isn't always that great.

That was quite a lot of feelings. Think we should stick to maths and probabilities.

 

[Fippy]

Bulbing Theology for the Reli might actually interest me in such games, not for AP cheese but gives some easy happy (cheap temples) and a good Civic, supported by free SPI switches.
No idea if timing would work thou.

 

[Gumbolt]

One issue this game could be Chinese. On my save they had iron hooked up and appeared to be the highest power AI in the game.
Having looked at another save it appears Shaka has iron. Unclear if there is 2 iron resources up north or if they both settled an iron resource. Guessing both. Which will mean Shaka will have axe and swords to attack with.
On Lain's save we can see the Ai are pleased with eachother. However Shaka can attack at pleased. If Shaka had to wait for IW then he is likely a while away from building a stack. Still unclear who he might attack. From first round we know Shaka and China are located very close together and may well share borders.

Not a fan of splitting GP pools. Not sure we really needed GW here. SH has it's uses. A great spy could be useful I guess. Not sure either Ai are that great science wise. Bulbing theology opens up paper. We would still need a lot of religious techs first. That being said it would make the save more interesting I guess. Would fail gold have been better?

 

[Major Tom]

Would fail gold have been better?

Good question, perhaps next turn set will show as there are several saves with failgolds in treasury (Sampsa, mine and others) so probably there are some save with failgolds moving along.

Btw, thanks for nice intelligence report about the northern front.

 

[sampsa]

Well, beakers are better than EP imho. (I'm rather clueless about espionage though.)

Debatable. Many steals are way cheaper in than in . But even if we say 1=1.5, it takes +140 turns to beat infiltrating. So it's pretty much the same as settling a GS vs bulbing.

But the most important thing is that settling allows us to change target and distribute the points as we please. The 3000 we get instantly and on one target.

Yes, it would be nice to distribute those points. However, if you play an espionage-strategy, there is a slider for you to use.

You don't need 3000 instantly (and to whom?) so better settle it and have city view on both of them after a while. Full disclosure of their stacks. Now, that is what I call safety.

A very bold statement that it's better to settle. It takes such an amount of turns to catch up in amount of that the game is already ended. I find that often in this game, more is simply more. Also, in this case it's not only that, it's more now than the other way will ever gain, speaking of raw yield. It's not hard to keep an eye of AI stacks IMO, so I think that point is completely moot (and you can run the slider, if you really want to).

That was quite a lot of feelings. Think we should stick to maths and probabilities.

I will say that 100% is a nice probability. If your strategy is well-built, it should have a minimal amount of luck dependancy. 100% probability can easily be reached by not building wonders in cities that will be spawning the first say 3-4 GS. Later on random types of don't matter much anymore as they will be used as golden age fodder.

It should be able to prove or disprove this by the means of calculating probabilities.
You maybe even get your good GPs faster with them wonders with the cost of a certain probability for failure. 2 GS from madrassa, 2 from GLibrary and plenty more from running caste and/or pacifism from time to time when needed (SPI is very interesting and deserve more attention.)

OK. Some rather wild assumptions. I don't think we have marble here, so GLib is very expensive. Going philo might have some merit, but more often than not going for it slows down astro date (I'm assuming that astro date is important on a map that appears to have multiple continents). How quickly can you get a madrassa to a city that has just produced two wonders (so prob no forests anymore)? Takes a while, so the % of the first to be GS will be very low, maybe even 20% is unachievable. Certainly most need to come from other cities and not the ones with polluted pools, but like I said, they will be more expensive, unless you happen to get lucky.

In Olafeson's save, he does not have writing yet and is currently 28T away from popping a non-GS . Maybe it's possible to get a GS as a 2nd there, but the probability will be 50% at best. It is possible to get faster 3GS like this than using 100% pools, but the probability is very very low.

 

[krikav]

Bulbing Theology for the Reli might actually interest me in such games, not for AP cheese but gives some easy happy (cheap temples) and a good Civic, supported by free SPI switches.
No idea if timing would work thou.

Yes, bulbing theo is one saving grace for a GProphet, in this game it might be a good idea.

 

[Olafeson]

Wow. Great discussion about the benefit of the early wonders. Especially @krikav and @Undefeatable, also @sampsa stated a lot of vaild points about the downsides. GPP pollution, higher GPP threshold for the first Great Scientist, the missing failgold, around 1 settler and 1 worker less. Unfortunately this holds true , due to the fact a Great Scientist can bulb better techs and also delivers more Research around (1500- 1650 i think, based on your capital pop ? or overall population?). Forgot what it was tbh.

I think it is not as bad as you guys stated though. 4 GPP (Great Priest /Great Spy) in a single city will not completely ruin our astro or Philo bulb dates. I think the benefit of bulbing Theology here for Christianity might be pretty nice. We are SPI, so 40 hammer temples. Together with our own religion thats another +2 happy face, with Rep and jungle gems we already have +6 happy face (luxury) in the early game, this will allow our cities to grow a lot, even 2 more luxury resources at calendar. Dont like your first (free) GP? Mediocre old geezer of a Great Prophet? Or maybe a sneaky slithery Great Spy? Well lets just put him onto our sacrifical altar and start a golden age with caste system. Pop 7 - 10 cities can produce at least 2 Great scientists during a Caste System Golden Age already early in the game due to high Happy cap.

Our personal Civ 4 YT Star @Lain, already used the first Great Scientist several times for a Golden Age to get the next Great Scientists with caste System faster. Also i think a Great Spy could really be put to use to build Scotland Yard. It would be a great opportunity to learn a new strategy. I am not very familiar with using the Espionage slider myself, so i would maybe love to try it. Since Culture victory and AP cheese victory are out.

Surely Cuirassier rush or teching to fast canons are good strategies (maybe the best) and taking land via force, but i kind of played these strategies already very often. Basically learned them from Absolute Zero and @Lain. Thanks for your spicy YT videos guys.

 

[Olafeson]

Going to take a look at the other saves more in depth, and take some notes which ones i like the most. I saw some with a lot of failgold and completed madrassa in Capital already which i liked.

Also in my own opinion, i will value these saves higher, that will get the pyramids earlier. We really struggle for some Happy Faces. Representation will help us to grow our cities a lot more.

Also the saves with the fish city will get rated by me personally a bit lower. It is just such a big time sink to get a monument over there, then wait for border pop, and then you need a workboat just to finally get your food tile. This is like the exact opposite of what Seraiel stated in his Civ Illustrated city placement guide, in which he recommends to settle food in first ring. After that it only helps to grow some plains river tiles which could be worked from a helper city 3N of Mekka too.

I saw some saves that did build the monument for fish city with help of a grassland hill mine. I do not think this is very efficient at all. I think the city would have been way better a bit later. Wait for Caste Sytem and run an artist for 3 turns. Workboat already in place. Bam, there you have your fish city. Later but more efficient.

@Undefeatable as much as you love your fish, i guess i really do not like fish and coastal cities too much.

 

[lymond]

I just saw that fish anime from UD, and I'm still laughing

 

[Olafeson]

You all mentioned either to use a Great Spy either for a Espionage mission to get +3000 or to settle him for some extra with Rep and 12.
correct me if i am wrong here, but i thought espionage economy works via building Scotland yard in capital. Using your espionage slider at 100 %, building spies and steal techs the whole game. Together with a nice Bureaucracy capital with cottages and the 100% from Scotland yard (essentially same convertion rate as Oxford, pretty insane when i think about it). Other neat stuff like putting them into anarchy or switch their religions.

!!!!!!!! Or very evil, lets poison their water. PAYBACK TIME you PUNKS. You deserved it.

Of course we do not have Mansa Musa or Justinian as our neighbours. Just a lousy shaka and QIn.

 

[krikav]

@Olafeson
I built the Fish-city and it's probably my task to say a few arguments in favour.
First a small disclaimer... My hand was abit forced since fishing was already teched in SnBs save. I would have prefered to postpone fishing and settle cities in a different pattern, stone-wheat being #4.

Ok. No question about it, coastal cities does require more investment to get productive.
They do however often require less workerturns.
It was settled T57, worked a 1F2H tile for 4 turns and got a chop into a monument.
A workboat was built in crabcity. Not really problematic because cities do need to build something while they grow. (In my save, I did this also in pigcity where a wb is soon reasy to scout the eastern shore.
So the fish city (with careful micro) takes 14 turns before it can work the 5F tile. (15 if we count settler transit).
Now at T70, fish city has it's juicy 5F surplus and will be able to develop 3-4 cottages for the capital.

I settled this city before wheat/stone-city because I made the call that I would be too thin when it comes to workers if I settled stonecity first. It is further away, takes more time in transit for both settler and worker, and it has higher maintenence.
To make sound judgements of what is more beneficial compared to something else, we have to look at alot of things.
Mindlessly sending a worker from capital up to improve the wheat would cost 3 workerturns, which I value at 5hammers each. So thats 15 hammers or half a monument in upfront investment for stone-city.
The cost of a settler in transit is abit more tricky to evaluate. Since it's more an opportunity cost. The city which built the settler could have spent a few more turns growing or building something else before starting the settler, not easily quantifiable.


I argued against fish-city last turnset, but that was because it was settled before pig city with it's floodplains.
In my normal games I do wait for alot of marginal cities with their food in the second ring until after caste, but here I think it would be a lost opportunity not to get fishcity going much earlier than that.
Happines is always a bigger issue for empires with few cities with high population, so one cure to counter this is to simply settle more cities.

And lastly, a counter-question. Why are you teching sailing if you are not going to get some coastal cities?

 

[Olafeson]

And lastly, a counter-question. Why are you teching sailing if you are not going to get some coastal cities?

Oh that is quite easy. Couple of reasons for that. My capital builds Pyramids and therefor can not build a madrassa yet. My SH and TGW city has no forests left and i want to produce my 6th settler from there. I don t want to build more than 2 libraries for now. I want one in my capital (for extra commerce) and one at clam city (Medina?) to run 2 scientists to get the GPP for Great scientists going. Maybe a bit later one more in SH/TGW city for more GPP. Since capital will work pyramids and needs corn to grow after pyramids, i want to work the coast + a few grassland cottages for capital and get +1 more from clam tile with a lighthouse. So medina can grow and work scientists.

I am just not quite ready to build madrassas in my save due to the huge investment into early wonders and the balancing to also get 5 cities and a lot of tiles to work.

Another main reason would be that i want to get a trade connection to shaka via coast and see if i can grab maybe a gold/silver/fur or just to start trading for relations (gifting the clam or smth). If i finish writing after sailing i can also open borders and get foreign traderoutes to shaka or Qin since i explored the coast to his culture.

here i am not 100% sure, i just scouted until i saw his border, not the city itself. Will i still get traderoutes? I think so, but not 100% sure.

Remember i also played rom mscalleneous save so i had the clam city but no pig city yet. I would have prefered the pig city over clam and skipped fishing quite a while. Then i probably would build madrassas already.

 

[krikav]

I'm quite sure that you get traderoutes if you see the culture (no city visiblity needed) and you have scouted the the entire coastline (gray is ok, black is not) AND no barb cities have spawned.
In your game I'm not 100% sure, since the coastal tile with shakas culture is black, you only scouted the land tile, that could be an issue?
That or shaka doesn't have sailing yet (he probably has, they love that tech).
Or a barb city has spawned for you.

 

[Fish Man]

I'm quite sure that you get traderoutes if you see the culture (no city visiblity needed) and you have scouted the the entire coastline (gray is ok, black is not) AND no barb cities have spawned.
In your game I'm not 100% sure, since the coastal tile with shakas culture is black, you only scouted the land tile, that could be an issue?
That or shaka doesn't have sailing yet (he probably has, they love that tech).
Or a barb city has spawned for you.

If Shaka has sailing, HE gets traderoutes outside of culture borders, but YOU don't. The player needs sailing for that. Though both can trade resources if either has sailing.

 

[krikav]

Yes, clumsy use of terminology.
What I mean is "Connection to trade network".

Another possible explanation for Olafesons situation:
To trade resources you need to have trade network connection capital <-> capital too, so if shaka has a coastal city that isn't connected to his capital, that could also explain why you can't trade resources with him.

 

[Olafeson]

Yes, clumsy use of terminology.
What I mean is "Connection to trade network".

Another possible explanation for Olafesons situation:
To trade resources you need to have trade network connection capital <-> capital too, so if shaka has a coastal city that isn't connected to his capital, that could also explain why you can't trade resources with him.

I still need 1 turn before i finish sailing. Then we can trade resources.

 

[krikav]

I still need 1 turn before i finish sailing. Then we can trade resources.

Yes you will, if these conditions apply:
* The scouting to shakas city is sufficient.
* Shakas city is connected to his capital.
* No barb cities have spawned on the coast.

This is the question that I'm trying to shed light upon:
"here i am not 100% sure, i just scouted until i saw his border, not the city itself. Will i still get traderoutes? I think so, but not 100% sure."

 

[krikav]

That was quite a lot of feelings. Think we should stick to maths and probabilities.

I'm really trying to present reasoned arguments.
I'm abit annoyed that what I reason is overlooked, just because I try to spice up my post with some humanity.
No problem though, and I'll try to restate my post again, but with more formal language.


It is possible to get GPeople faster with the aid of early wonders. Other means are also possible, the madrassa is a obvious example of this close at hand. A similar example is with egypt and their UB monument with two priest slots.


The two scenarios that has to be weighted against each other is:
Scenario 1 - Standard library powered 2 scientists generated GScientist.
We know for sure we will get a GScientist at turn X.


Scenario 2 - An accelerated generation of GPerson, assisted with aid of wonders and/or other specialists.
We know you will get a GPerson of unknown kind at turn X-Y.
2a. We get a GScientist, Y turns earlier than in scenario 1.
2b. We get a GPhropet.
2c. We get a GSpy.

In scenario 1, we can tailor our entire strategy around the fact that we will get a GSci at turn X.
In scenario 2, we first need contingency plans for 2b and 2c and for scenario 2 to be considered superior to scenario 1 we also need to somehow see how reap any benefit of 2a compared to scenario 1, how can we benefit from the earlier GSci?

I reason that 2b and 2c is often strictly worse than 1.
Furthermore, I have a hard time seeing how 2a would be superior to 1. Getting your first GScientist a few turns earlier is nice, but how to leverage on this?
The best comparable case I know of, is that with PHI-leaders where the possibility for a fast library to bulb maths is nice.

If we do agree that 2b and 2c are worse than 1.
And that you somehow convince me that 2a is better than 1
Then we can start to compare the "worseness" of 2b&c with the "betterness" of 2a, and then take the relative probabilities of 2a, 2b and 2c into account.
Only then we can make an assessment if 2 as a total can be considered superior to 1.