Grand Strategy Thread

[dl123654]

I still think we should get Robotics first as a hiding tool and my belief that someone else will research Space Flight for nukes (I think FREE but wouldn't be surprised about SABER either).

If someone else gets Space Flight I think we should steal it. IIRC stealing nets a better gain then researching in modern era however with our research potential that might not be correct. The other advantage of stealing is we could save 1 turn building Apollo assuming we have a prebuild ready. However this also assumes the RNG is nice to us which it hasn't been in this game .

After that 9 turns of research at a cost of about 4000 gold and we launch.

That said I think we should research or almost finish researching Robotics now so that we are in position to complete this should this opertunity arrise.

 

[General_W]

Getting economics at a really low % of science while we're stockpiling cash is a really interesting idea.

I still can't make CivAssist work with our save. So that really limits my ability to comment even semi-intelligently about the cost-benefit analysis of getting Economics.

Economics is 1,680 beakers. How many cities would we have building wealth, and what kind of gpt could we expect with (and without) the Econ bonus?

Should be a pretty straightforward calculation. But since CAII doesn't work on the save and I don't have the game at work, I can't do the math myself.

If we're out of mobilization, it might even be worth considering Smith's... how many markets, harbors, banks, and airports do we have?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Smith's is owned, isn't it? I think FREE has it.

If it is out there, we should definitely build it, but I'm pretty sure it was built a long time ago.

 

[dl123654]

Smith's is owned, isn't it? I think FREE has it.

If it is out there, we should definitely build it, but I'm pretty sure it was built a long time ago.

I think it was SABER that acutally built Smith.

 

[Niklas]

Yep, SABER built Smith quite a long time ago.

 

[General_W]

poo - well, scratch that then.

Anyone working on the building wealth at +50% vs. the beaker cost? (which is now reduced, since Saber obviously has economics)

 

[donsig]

Remember way back when we were trying to beat FREE to TOE and Hoover? Smith's was SABER's consolation prize.

We can do economics in 8 turns @10% science and still make about 400gpt. Or we could do it in 4 turns @20% and make almost 300gpt. We make 515gpt with science off.

I changed over the seven cities in the turn 244 save with no shields in the box and we gained 81gpt. 75gpt is from The Chamber, The Treasury and The Gulag. Economics would double the amount made by wealth, right? That makes it worth at least 75gpt if we want to stop building one turn armors. (Not a thing to do right this moment but if we lose rubber then wealth is more attractive.) Doing econ in four turns would cost us 218gpt for 4 turns at most - maybe less if we use scientists and can lower the science rate on the last turn. That's 872g. We could recoup that in 13 turns by setting The Chamber, The Treasury and The Gulag to wealth. We could recoup the expense faster by putting more cities on wealth. Our cash position would also improve since building wealth means not building units and therefore not increasing our support costs.

EDIT: I calculated earlier that we need 14 turns at max tax rate (90%) to get the gold we need to research the final techs. It looks like a 4 turn 800g detour for economics is marginal. Not even sure we could get the gold a turn faster by having economics.

I do like the idea of setting some cities to wealth if we lose our source of rubber. By using wealth and selling some buildings we can get the ~9000g faster. We'd have to do some calculating to see how fast we can get there. We also need to get a plan in place for pre-building Apollo and all the spaceship parts. The idea is to get the techs researched, build Apollo the turn we get the final tech and all the parts the turn after that.

 

[General_W]

I changed over the seven cities in the turn 244 save with no shields in the box and we gained 81gpt. 75gpt is from The Chamber, The Treasury and The Gulag.

Thanks for getting this started Donsig, but wouldn't our high SPT cities likely stay on production duty?

My understanding is that we'd use the mid-to-lower production cities to build wealth.

And in any case, it's not just the 14 turns of wealth stockpiling where economics would be useful. Assuming we are able to devote a fair number of cities to building wealth pretty much continuously till the end of the game, that reduces our need for gold for the whole run to space.
Or, put another way, we'll have less deficit each turn that we'll have to cover and therefore won't need a full 14 turns to build up a stockpile to cover 90% research.

 

[donsig]

Thanks for getting this started Donsig, but wouldn't our high SPT cities likely stay on production duty?

My understanding is that we'd use the mid-to-lower production cities to build wealth.

Wealth turns shields into gold at a rate of 4 shields to one gold (or 2 shields to one gold with economics). It seems this is rounded down but always gives at least 1 gpt. The lower the production from a city the lower the gold returned from wealth. The need for eleven prebuilds in 28 cities (or 25 cities once we lose ACI) for the spaceship reduces the long term benefits of wealth.

Here is what I can determine from the turn 244 save regarding production and wealth.

City            mob spt  reg spt  reg gpt  econ gpt
The Gulag        122        87       21       43
The Chamber      122        90       22       45 
The Treasury     120        88       22       44
The Silo          86        60       15       30
The Institute     80        60       15       30
The Admiralty     64        44       11       22
The Aerie         62        42       10       21
The Igloo         62        42       10       21
The Arboretum     58        38        9       19
The Meeting Room  36        24        6       12
The Bayou         33        20        5       10
The Pier          29        17        4        8
The Red Tape      28        19        4        9
The Phoenix       23        16        4        8
The New Yard      21        15        3        7
The Ways          16        12        3        6
The Marina        13         9        2        4
Chamsuri's Cove   13         8        2        4
The Nusery        12         8        2        4
The Squeeze        5         3        1        1
The Shallows       5         4        1        2
The Dislodged      4         3        1        1
The Beach          2         1        1        1
The Greenhouse     2         1        1        1
Caunagawaga        1         1        1        1
The Hideaway       1         1        1        1
Cattaraugus        1         1        1        1
The Bangles        1         1        1        1

Summary:
We have 12 low production cities (making less than 10 spt without the mobilization bonus). They would make 15 gpt on wealth now or 22 gpt on wealth with economics.
We have 8 mid-level production cities (making 10-39 spt without the bonus). They would make 38 gpt now or 77 gpt with econ.
We have 8 high production cities (at least 40 spt without the bonus). They would make 126 gpt now or 256 gpt with econ.

Getting econ would cost us 800 gold - or even more if we go to zero lux and 100% tax now.

 

[Paul#42]

Looks like researching Economics will pay off quickly - if we stay at peace and keep our army basically constant so our core cities have nothing to build for some 20 turns.

If we get attacked within 10 turns (or attack anyone outside our continent or heavily reinforce ACI or rubber-island) it won't pay off.

If we research it, we should do it in four turns, by then we might have enough forces for now and might cancel mobilization mode.
This might relax or alert our opponents...

 

[donsig]

Economics would only pay off quickly only if we use all or most of our cities to produce wealth. Switching them all over to wealth gets us an extra 179gpt now and an extra 355gpt after econ. But just switching over to wealth now gets us the required gold on the same turn.

Econ should be about 1500 beakers. At 20% and with 14 scientists for three turns and 10% with 3 scientists we get econ in 4 turns. By switching over all cities with empty bins to wealth (so as not to waste shields) and not spending any gold here is the impact on our treasury:

Turn  Treasury  tax (slider)  taxmen  wealth
244     1799        475         42       0
245     2316        271          0     139
246     2726        271          0     139
247     3136        271          0     145
248     3552        377         33     153
249     4130        475         42     329
250     4961        475         42     341
251     5804        475         42     342
252     6636        475         42     346
253     7471        475         42     346
254     8306        475         42     346
255     9141        475         42     346

By just staying at zero research and switching over the same cities to wealth and not spending any gold we get:

Turn  Treasury  tax (slider)  taxmen  wealth
244     1799        475         42       0
245     2316        475         42     139
246     2972        475         42     139
247     3628        475         42     145
248     4290        475         42     153
249     4960        475         42     162
250     5645        475         42     168
251     6331        475         42     169
252     7019        475         42     171
253     7707        475         42     171
254     8395        475         42     171
255     9083        475         42     171

We don't even save a turn.

Selling ten temples on turn 245 gives us an extra 150g and adds 10gpt to our income from saved maintenance - about 300g shy of saving us a turn.

 

[Niklas]

donsig, you're missing that we can keep building wealth while we do the research sprint and thus would need less money (since we'd have less negative). So the "required amount" that we need to gather in the two scenarios would be less if we researched Economics than if we didn't. And in both scenarios it would be less than what you're counting with.

 

[donsig]

Well, yeah Niklas, but I'm not sure how to calculate that. There's also the fact that we can sell buildings and maybe even go to zero lux. These also have a bearing on our income and required gold reserves. The point I was trying to make above is that we only benefit from having economics by switching cities over to wealth. We can save some turns by doing this but at the cost of building more units. Also, we'll reach a point where we will need 11 prebuilds, taking away from the amount we can generate through wealth. The bottom line is economics will cost us 800g which we can only recoup through building wealth, and then only half the wealth we generate can be attributed to economics. Another way to say this is we'll need to 'build' at least 1600g in wealth (after getting econ) just to break even on researching the tech.

Researching economics and building wealth has no impact on how fast we can research the techs needed for launching our ship. We still need 19 turns at 90% and 2 turns at 30% science. (If we can go to zero lux we can do 100% science but the feasibility of that I'm leaving for later.) Without wealth we lose 485gpt at 90% science and gain 157gpt at 30% science giving us the required 8901 gold.

Let's say (for the sake of argument) that we build only wealth in all our cities after getting econ and during our research sprint. We would gain 355gpt from wealth over 21 turns. That's a whopping 7455g meaning we'd need a reserve of only 1446g. We have that much already but we don't have econ. Still researching that in 4 turns and then doing our sprint means we'd have all the techs in 25 turns. Of course we wouldn't have built Apollo or any spaceship parts.

If we built wealth in all our cities without getting econ then we'd make 179gpt for the 21 turns we research. That's 3759g which means we'd need 5142g in reserve for our sprint. We could have that by turn 249 if we began switching over cities to wealth now, sold ten temples and did not research econ. That's the same turn we'd get economics in the scenario above.

We wouldn't save any turns by having econ but admittedly we'd have some gold to spend (over 2500g). But it isn't realistic to have all our cities producing wealth for the rest of the game. We must build Apollo (500 shields) and ten spaceship parts (3200 shields) for a total of 3700 shields. Since shields are converted to gold at 2 to 1 with economics those 3700 shields translate to 1850g. Still a margin of 650g. Not bad.

Actually it sounds rather good. We could research econ in 4 turns then start our 21 turn sprint immediately with a target launch on turn 26. Using that time frame we could calculate our prebuilds, etc.

EDIT: Before calculating prebuilds we should determine if going to zero lux is worthwhile as that changes the rate we can research and the amount of gold needed in reserve.

THEN we need to decide what we'd research after econ. The options are robotics (to try to hide our research efforts) or space flight (so we could build Apollo and begin the casing rather than trying to prebuild everything at once).

 

[Niklas]

One other thing is that having Economics makes us more flexible, in case something happens that forces us to revise our strategy. The longer the game drags on, the bigger the benefit of having Economics will be.

 

[General_W]

Great analysis Donsig! I had to read it twice to get it, but I think we're finally all on the same page.

Let's get started on Economics with the next save, and start selling buildings and building wealth!

26 turns to Space sounds dramatically better than 35 turns.

I'm leaning towards Robotics next, we want to give Saber and FREE the maximum amount of time possible to commit to war with eachother. The longer we can appear far away from Space, the better, imo.

We've already got very solid ground forces, what do people think of trying to build a pile of Nuke Subs that must only stay in port to help reduce our risk from a joint naval invasion when we near the end of our 26 turn sprint to space?

 

[Niklas]

Yes, definitely build Nuke Subs!

 

[AutomatedTeller]

What I'd like to see is that the nuke subs stay near our core, to reduce the risk of landings on our mountains - I'd hate for them to land on the west coast, but we can even abandon cities there if we need. A set of nuke subs on the east coast, though, is more dangerous to the landing force.

 

[Paul#42]

Yep. Any two digit number of subs will cause our enemies to be careful near our coasts or at least invest large amounts into recon missions

Most should be near our core but some should be on the other coasts as well. And all should frequently change their base.

They should only end a turn outside a harbor if our EWS proved that they are out of range of any navy.