G-Major 137

[WastinTime]

But this is my conclusion from a recent game that reaching mining and AL faster can be better then just buying WS.

Planning to buy WS is a horrible idea. Note, I wrote 'planning'. Sure, if you screwed up and forgot to plan for WS, then buying it might be better than slow building, but even that is debatable...which is exactly what yyeah is debating. Can you afford an instant 6000+ hit to your gold not to mention dropping out of REP which both delay critical milestones, only to come out even after 30-40 turns? I'm not sure 'even' is the right way to characterize it either. As you say, WS is great. What good is it if you're only 'even'. I want 6000 extra gold!
Note: it's not likely 'less than 30T' to break even because when you start WS, sushi is only +4 gpt. (plus shrine gold) ofc, the payback turn is heavily dependent on whether you have a shrine(s).

After you get Corps, the game has less than 100 turns to go. Buying WS nullifies the effect for 1/3 to 1/2 of those turns.

Another way to look at it is you spent 6000 gold (at a critical time) to get ~1600 hammers. Meanwhile, your other cities are building wealth and likely converting 1600 hammers into only 2000 gold.

Also, your WS city has Sushi! and you have Kremlin! so you have the population to use huge whip OF.

So, Plan to start WS the turn to get Corporation and whip/rush banks if you have to, put whip overflows in WS, but don't buy WS outright. Certainly not in the first 10 turns where sushi is not spread yet. Even just setting up one more whip OF could save 500-1000 gold.

 

[Seraiel]

Staying ahead of time is one of the most valuable qualities of good players, and it's also why a 2nd attempt is so much easier / better than a 1st always.

I don't think your numbers are correct though, with Factories, 1600 should be 3200 , and with Exec-Failgold and Kremlin, those numbers get even better in favour of the . I don't object, that using whip-OF and chops for WS is good, but buying it is not as bad as you think imo. .

 

[WastinTime]

When you first get Corporation, you don't have factories/power. 2000 seems about right (not 3200)

 

[Seraiel]

When you first get Corporation, you don't have factories/power. 2000 seems about right (not 3200)

In my game, I got Corporation very late because I got it by trade iirc., and I had Assembly Line very early, because I used it to waste time waiting for Steel / Steam Power. My gam's probably not completely normal in the way, that I didn't follow the standard path of research, because I got so many techs from my (slow) Vassals.

 

[ZPV]

Planning to buy WS is a horrible idea. Note, I wrote 'planning'. Sure, if you screwed up and forgot to plan for WS, then buying it might be better than slow building, but even that is debatable...which is exactly what yyeah is debating. Can you afford an instant 6000+ hit to your gold not to mention dropping out of REP which both delay critical milestones, only to come out even after 30-40 turns? I'm not sure 'even' is the right way to characterize it either. As you say, WS is great. What good is it if you're only 'even'. I want 6000 extra gold!
Note: it's not likely 'less than 30T' to break even because when you start WS, sushi is only +4 gpt. (plus shrine gold) ofc, the payback turn is heavily dependent on whether you have a shrine(s).

After you get Corps, the game has less than 100 turns to go. Buying WS nullifies the effect for 1/3 to 1/2 of those turns.

Another way to look at it is you spent 6000 gold (at a critical time) to get ~1600 hammers. Meanwhile, your other cities are building wealth and likely converting 1600 hammers into only 2000 gold.

Also, your WS city has Sushi! and you have Kremlin! so you have the population to use huge whip OF.

So, Plan to start WS the turn to get Corporation and whip/rush banks if you have to, put whip overflows in WS, but don't buy WS outright. Certainly not in the first 10 turns where sushi is not spread yet. Even just setting up one more whip OF could save 500-1000 gold.

I agree wholeheartedly!
Whip hammers* and chops** are the only things that seem to appear out of nowhere, when you calculate economy/turn. Everything else is a direct tradeoff of hammers/beakers/gold, at a good rate or a bad rate.
So anything paid for by "everything else" needs to justify its cost against hitting Mining Inc 6000g sooner.

*Overwhip at your peril - the cost is in having lower population empire-wide, and is hard to calculate. Limited executive whipping seems profitable, but personally I don't think whipping for gold is worth it pre-Kremlin except in the most extreme milestone situations.
**Worker turns might be precious if you didn't build enough. Workers are pretty cheap by now, however.

 

[Seraiel]

I agree wholeheartedly!
Whip hammers* and chops** are the only things that seem to appear out of nowhere, when you calculate economy/turn. Everything else is a direct tradeoff of hammers/beakers/gold, at a good rate or a bad rate.
So anything paid for by "everything else" needs to justify its cost against hitting Mining Inc 6000g sooner.

Not necessarily. There are also situations, in which you'd simply hit Mining Inc. at the same time, but with a little more population or with a little more in the bank, like when your vassals do most of the research. I never wrote "delay Mining Inc. for to get the WS earlier" , that would indeed be stupid.

*Overwhip at your peril - the cost is in having lower population empire-wide, and is hard to calculate. Limited executive whipping seems profitable, but personally I don't think whipping for gold is worth it pre-Kremlin except in the most extreme milestone situations.
**Worker turns might be precious if you didn't build enough. Workers are pretty cheap by now, however.

I had the Kremlin in that situation, and Mining is the milestone after Sushi.

 

[yyeah]

I agree wholeheartedly!
Limited executive whipping seems profitable, but personally I don't think whipping for gold is worth it pre-Kremlin except in the most extreme milestone situations.

Yea i agree with that, i wanted to talk about this too becouse i had feeling like whipping for gold is questionable, dont get me wrong its a great mechanics, but BPT drops so fast when you whippping and and theres so many things to whip ... whip sword whip cats, whip trebs, whip grenary whip lib whip this whip that and on top of it whip something for failed gold.
And lets say that we whipping missionaries 2pop gives ~200 and iam loosing ~250 /turn at 100% so its not even 1 turn of reserch...

If there was something to 2 pop whip with bonus from reseources so we could choop then whip like walls witch you mentioned be4 taht this doesnt works.

 

[Seraiel]

You get more than 200 out of an Exec, if you don't cold-whip him. You can also whip the Hermitage for 4-pop easily, and have very good conversion-ratios even with the malus for whipping a Wonder. You also don't whip 1 Exec but like 20 or 30 if you do this intendedly, so you get thousands of via that way.

 

[yyeah]

You get more than 200 out of an Exec, if you don't cold-whip it. You can also whip the Hermitage for 4-pop easily, and have very good conversion-ratios even with the malus for whipping a Wonder. You also don't whip 1 Exec but like 20 or 30 if you do this intendedly, so you get thousands of via that way.

Yea but i was saying pre Kremlin, whip ex is ok.
Hermitage thing is preeety good too becouse timeing of this faild gold comes with sushi more or less.

 

[Seraiel]

ZPV and yyeah: You need avatars!

 

[shulec]

I just stick myself with environmentalism accidentally for 5 turns with fully spammed corps at extra 50% maintenance (losing 25% discount from free market). OUCH!!!

 

[Seraiel]

I just stick myself with environmentalism accidentally for 5 turns with fully spammed corps at extra 50% maintenance (losing 25% discount from free market). OUCH!!!

Lol. I once switched to Enviromentalism in Replay #4, but after I had submitted the round. I would have gone totally broke if I ever had made that switch while the game was still in progress. Sitting Bull would be proud of you because of such self-forgetting self-ownage shulec. I hope you didn't have a GA at hand and needed to switch back with xx T of anarchy .

 

[Seraiel]

I hope you land on the last place because of this shulec .

 

[shulec]

I hope you land on the last place because of this shulec .

So that's how it is? How sporting will you be when WastinTime submits his game?

You still have two weeks two improve your score!!!

 

[Seraiel]

So that's how it is? How sporting will you be when WastinTime submits his game?

You still have two weeks two improve your score!!!

I need 2 weeks to generate a map, I don't even need to think about making a 2nd try at this .

When WastinTime submits, I'll be very sporting, I always am when someone lands behind me . Now don't disturb the voodoo-ceremony I'm just holding against him anymore, will ya?

 

[ZPV]

Not necessarily. There are also situations, in which you'd simply hit Mining Inc. at the same time, but with a little more population or with a little more in the bank, like when your vassals do most of the research. I never wrote "delay Mining Inc. for to get the WS earlier" , that would indeed be stupid.

I calculate 1 turn of delay to Mining Inc as costing about 8-10k

Did waiting for vassals to research for you, to the point of having enough gold to spend on Wall Street, really come out ahead? I assume without seeing your game that Mining could be brought forward by self-teching Steel.

I had the Kremlin in that situation, and Mining is the milestone after Sushi.

Yes - in this case it possibly makes some sense - provided you can fit it around your Sushi spreading and Caste System requirements.

It's the other cases - missionaries early in the game (except possibly on the run to Currency?) - and execs after Mining in cities you expect to keep - that I was mainly casting doubt on.

 

[Seraiel]

I calculate 1 turn of delay to Mining Inc as costing about 8-10k

Did waiting for vassals to research for you, to the point of having enough gold to spend on Wall Street, really come out ahead? I assume without seeing your game that Mining could be brought forward by self-teching Steel.

I'd check that calculation, 8-10k of seem way to high for me as an estimate. When founding Mining, one has about as many resources as needed to get between 20 and 30 , and with having about 60 cities at that time, that'd be somewhere between 3 and 4k of .

I delayed Steel by about 7-8T to get it for free, which sounds a lot, but I researched Assembly Line in that time, so I had Factories and PP when I reached Mining, which is a massive advantage. I can't tell exactly, if this was the fastest way, but WastinTime talked of the "Sushi + Mining + AL-triassic" at that time, so I simply followed the signs.

I make such decisions by intuition. I could decide whether the three Vassals I took would be completely useless, or if I would shift around the techs me and they research. Making at least some use of them simply seemed to be the better choice.

Yes - in this case it possibly makes some sense - provided you can fit it around your Sushi spreading and Caste System requirements.

It's the other cases - missionaries early in the game (except possibly on the run to Currency?) - and execs after Mining in cities you expect to keep - that I was mainly casting doubt on.

Whipping Missionaries at the time of Currency would never occur to me, that's somewhere near 2000 BC, resources at that time go to Granaries, Immortals and Libraries, and it's not even garantueed to have a well enough spread Religion at that time. Way easier to use whip- and chop-OF if Oracle fails.

Execs after Mining in cities one wants to keep also wouldn't occur to me, as that's the time when Sushi already let the cities grow that big, that Workers can't keep up with improving them, so there's no way around Specialists at that time, not to mention that one also needs to generate the GPs for the GAs.

Exec Failgold only seems logical at the time when Sushi is spread but Mining isn't, because then, one can use the Sushi Execs for Failgold while not delaying the spread of Mining. As that's also the time at which the WS gets very attractive, buying it with Exec-Failgold harmonizes very well with the game.

 

[yyeah]

Whipping Missionaries at the time of Currency would never occur to me, that's somewhere near 2000 BC, resources at that time go to Granaries, Immortals and Libraries, and it's not even garantueed to have a well enough spread Religion at that time.

Yea

It's the other cases - missionaries early in the game (except possibly on the run to Currency?)

Whipping missionaries is possibly to reach earlier Edu but i think it is not worth it as Darius.
When i was thinking about it a bit more, for Liz is a diferent story. Becouse we can bulb Edu with Liz. So even if we loose overall, i dont know how much 500,700,400 ? (doesnt matter) becouse of whippng missionaries we will be ahead for another milestone witch is sushi. ( we can count that from GS like a bonus i think )
Becouse of cheep universities witch meens a lot faster Oxford.

Looks to me like whipping "anything" for failed gold to reach Edu asap as Liz is v efficied way to play.

But WT knows that allrady

 

[Qactus]

In my game noone built the Oracle, so I gave it a shot and now I find myself in a position to 6->3 pop whip it in BC 1740 after having adopted organized religion.
I never really believed in it, so I already teched half of Currency myself. So what tech should I choose instead?
Metal Casting would be a good choice since I'm IND, but Theology is considerably more expensive and maybe the better trade-bait? Code of Laws is out of the question, because Mansa will have that within 2 turns.

Tech situation:

Spoiler :

 

[Seraiel]

Take Metalcasting. IND Forges are way better than anything Theology could offer, you need a GE, and you don't need any more Trade-bait, as you're technologically leading.