Grand Strategy Thread

[AutomatedTeller]

Can someone sum up our thinking and maybe set up a clear poll or polls as to where we should go?

I can't figure out a consensus - the most I can find is that I think most people prefer we hold off on research, but beyond that, I really don't know what to build, where to move ships and how much to reinforce our new island.

We've been reacting to SABER for some time, which has restricted what we could do, but we have a lot of choices.

I think we figured something like 10-15 turns of cash buildup to get started, but the military builds we make will eat into that.

 

[donsig]

We still need the following techs in order to launch a space ship:

• Robotics (9600 beakers)
• Space flight (9000 b)
• Superconductor (9000 b)
• Satellites (7800 b)

We currently have 8 police and 14 taxmen working. If we switch the taxmen to scientists then here is our beaker output and impact on our treasury at the various levels of the research slider:

• 90%: 1818 bpt, -485 gpt
• 80%: 1619 bpt, -385 gpt
• 70%: 1426 bpt, -280 gpt
• 60%: 1221 bpt, -166 gpt
• 50%: 1039 bpt, -67 gpt
• 40%: 829 bpt, +51 gpt
• 30%: 631 bpt, +157 gpt
• 20%: 431 bpt, +269 gpt
• 10%: 241 bpt, +375 gpt
• 0%: 42 bpt, +487 bpt

Please note that we are currently running 10% lux and are making 515 gpt (with the 14 taxmen). Five cities (The Bayou, The Nursery, The Pier, The Marina, and The Phoenix) would have happiness problems at 0% lux and that is with ivory which is not dependable. Using the figures from above and assuming a max research or tax rate of 90% we get the following research times at max science:

• Robotics: 5 turns @ 90% and 1 turn @ 30%
• Space flight: 5 turns @ 90%
• Superconductor: 5 turns @ 90%
• Satellites: 4 turns @ 90% and 1 turn @ 30%

That totals to 19 turns @ 90% and 2 turns @ 30% for a total cost of 8901g. We currently have 1799 gold and can make 515 gpt at 90% tax with 14 taxmen. We need 14 turns to amass enough gold to research at maximum. This leaves 108 gold extra to spend in 35 turns. So if we must spend more than 108 gold (say in response to an invasion) we must delay research.

 

[Yilar]

Don't forget towards the end we can sell buildings

 

[tomasjj]

But will we be able to keep our paws away from that pile of gold until research is about to start.....

I wouldn't mind if we started researching now. I think we have been standing still for too long, and the closer we get the more pressure we put on the others.
Do we really think that the other teams will let us make a quick run for space after we have piled up the gold?

 

[donsig]

But will we be able to keep our paws away from that pile of gold until research is about to start.....

We are already considering rushing an airport on the one tile island. As long as we have to chase rubber we will spend gold. I'd rather research robotics at 40 or 50 per cent now.

 

[Yilar]

But will we be able to keep our paws away from that pile of gold until research is about to start.....

I wouldn't mind if we started researching now. I think we have been standing still for too long, and the closer we get the more pressure we put on the others.
Do we really think that the other teams will let us make a quick run for space after we have piled up the gold?

Do you really think that the other teams will let us live once they realize that we are only 3 techs from winning? In retrospect we should have piled up a lot of gold after we got nuclear power/synt fibers. The only reason I see for starting research now is that we are so increditable weak we are not able to manage our urges to spend, spend, spend (shop'o'holic alert! ). None of the remaining techs offer anything worthwhile (radars artis are beyond sucky, and so are Aegis cruisers). The only thing that is usefull is nukes, and if we go down that road we open pandoras box.

 

[tomasjj]

So...we are basically going to be reactive then and sit back doing nothing but wait, trying to save gold for research, which we end up spending on units?

If FREE does actually attack SABER now soon, which I am not too sure will happen, will that make it easier for us to go for space? Cause that is still our only chance, but I keep wondering when we are going to get closer to it.

I do not think that the others will let us do a quick 15 turn dash of full research. I think we should try and do one tech at a time, cause 15 turn plans will be the first thing that goes out the window at this stage of the game with powerful competition.

 

[donsig]

I think we should begin researching robotics at 40 or 50 per cent - high enough so that we still have a gold surplus. We can turn off research before completing the tech. As long as we don't finish researching the tech we shouldn't raise any red flags with our opponents. Once we think we have enough gold to run the research table we can finish off robotics in one turn and then research the rest. This may not get us the techs any faster but at least it would be a psychological boost for us.

 

[General_W]

gaah. Those are horrible numbers Donsig!

I had no idea we were going to be 35 turns away from Space.

This is a serious, serious, serious problem.
Even if we manage to stockpile gold and hang on to it for 15 turns without spending any, we'll start setting alarm bells off in Saber and FREEland when we start the push. And 20 turns is a LONG time for them to put together a "response."

Selling buildings is a good idea.
Any estimates on how much gold we can get from doing that? If we could shave a few turns off stockpiling that way it'd be awesome.

I think we just really need to learn some self-control on the gold thing. If we keep spending here and there we'll NEVER even get our already slim shot at winning.

That said - what are we going to do if FREE start to lose really badly to Saber (or the other way around)... gold payments is the easiest way to help since we don't have a navy to speak of?
We can't very well just let them die, because we'll lose that way even faster than if we don't get our gold spending habits under control.

I DO think it's very likely a FREE-Saber war is about to break out. We're just not the biggest threat atm.

Thoughts?

 

[Paul#42]

What buildings would you like to sell?

If we are going to make cash for some more turns, banks and stock exchanges and even Wall Street would be worth while.
And we could sell all of them again once we got "enough" money and can live from the interest...

I'm pretty sure, SABER and FREE will try to make sure that we lose our rubber sources again. But they are facing some kind of the prisoners' dilemma and none of them wants to be the one to invest more in us staying earthbound...
That might prevent them from attacking each other.

 

[Niklas]

We can't build Wall Street since we don't have Economy. And I doubt you meant we should invest our money in that.

So should we completely rethink this? We're not really that much weaker than anyone else. How about we go conquer someone instead?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I think it's the only way we can build the space ship, is if we cripple our opponents.

Ironically, doing so will make it easier for us to research, as our costs will go down and research will go up as we have more cities

 

[General_W]

I've been a long time opponent of going on the attack.
However, looking down the barrel of Donsig's 35 turns is making me re-think things.

Perhaps our best strategy is to start building transports, wait for the FREE-Saber war to break out, then attack the secondary continent of whoever looks like they're winning.

I'd posit that we're in more on a Mexican Standoff than a Prisoner's dilemma... if you want to get into Game Theory. Though, I suppose, you could argue that FREE and Saber are facing something of a Prisoner's dilemma.

Whoever acts first (with a real full-fledged attack, or with rapidly accumulating Space Flight techs) is likely going to be at a serious disadvantage as they'll immediately be subject to a 2v1 war.

I only know 3 ways out of a mexican standoff... since we can't get Chuck Norris or John Wayne on our team, that just leaves us with option #3... patience and luck. We play it cool, wait for someone else to succumb to the pressure to act, and hope that we're lucky enough to not be their target and that their target IS sufficiently strong to buy us time to go to space.

If we stockpile gold and start building transports, we at least increase our ability to potentially act if/when a Saber-FREE war breaks out.
Transports won't help us defend our land, but if we end up the target of a real invasion, I'm not sure we can win anyway... can we?

I'm not offering a lot of solutions here, just thinking out-loud and hoping we can eventually craft a strategy.

 

[Yilar]

You can pretty much throw out all your teories about how this game is gonna go, once one of the teams build Manhatten. Which one of the other teams should do, they can't sit back and wait for the game to end, like we can Our 3 tech lead should be enough to beat FREE in the long run, seeing as there are only 4 techs left for us.

 

[Yilar]

I did some checking and here were the buildings I guess we could go without. I included factories aswell, as these can be sold without influence on research, but we would be at some risk doing so, as we lose a lot of shields being produced.

Here are the buildings I estimate we could go without:
Greenhouse Harbor (15g)
The Marina Harbor (15g)
The Marina Market (25g)
The Hideaway Libary (10g)
The Hideaway Harbor (15g)
The Shallows Harbor (15g)
The Shallows Libary (10g)
The Phoenix Harbor (15g)
The Red Tape Factory (60g)
The Red Tape Market (25g)
The Red Tape Harbor (15g)
The Chamber Barracks (10g)
The Chamber Temple (15g)
The Chamber Catheral (40g)
The Chamber Bank (40g)
The Chamber Factory (60g)***
The Chamber Coal plant (40g)***
The Admiralty Barracks (10g)
The Admiralty Temple (15g)
The Admiralty Catheral (40g)
The Admiralty Factory (60g)***
The Admiralty Coal plant (40g)***
The Treasury Barracks (10g)
The Treasury Temple (15g)
The Treasury Catheral (40g)
The Treasury Factory (60g)***
The Treasury Coal plant (40g)***
The Gulag Barracks (10g)
The Gulag Granary (15g)
The Gulag Temple (15g)
The Gulag Catheral (40g)
The Gulag Factory (60g)***
The Gulag Nuclear plant (60g)***
The Igloo Temple (15g)
The Igloo Catheral (40g)
The Igloo Factory (60g)***
The Igloo Coal plant (40g)***
The Igloo Airport (40g)
The Silo Barracks (10g)
The Silo Temple (15g)
The Silo Catheral (40g)
The Silo Factory (60g)***
The Silo Coal plant (40g)***
The Institute barracks (10g)
The Institute temple (15g)
The Institute catheral (40g)
The Institute factory (60g)***
The Institute Nuclear plant (60g)***
The Institute Airport (40g)
The Bayou Granary (15g)
The Bayou Offshore platform(60g)***
The Aerie Temple (15g)
The Aerie Factory (60g)***
The Aerie nuclear plant (60g)***
Chamsuri's Cove Granary (15g)
The Arboretum temple (15g)
The Arboretum catheral (40g)
The Arboretum factory (60g)***
The Arboretum coal plant (40g)***
The Arboretum Airport (40g)
The Meeting Room temple (15g)
The Meeting Room Harbor (15g)
The Meeting Room Factory (60g)***
The Nursery Sam missle battery (20g)
The Pier offshore platform(60g)***

If we include everything, then we sell buildings for 2130g, if we don't sell factories/plants/platforms and 1 airport we will have 890g from sold buildings.

 

[Niklas]

Interesting list Yilar. Not only do we get cash up front, we also pay a lot less maintenance on buildings.

 

[Yilar]

The question still remains how we are going to build our spaceship.

Once you have a spy you can tell how the other teams are doing with their spaceship in the "view space race" button in F10. That means the other teams are gonna be able to tell when we are building the parts and how many parts we have completed. This raises a problem, because if they can tell how close we are to launching they can use their spies to sabotage our production (though I think it is rather expensive). The good thing is that they cannot tell wether we have built Apollo or not, unless they start browsering through our cities manually

 

[General_W]

<feels a surge of optimism>

Thanks Yilar!

At the least, we could start selling Factories when we start research on our last tech (if not sooner, in many cases). With ~5 turns to go, we won't have much time for those cities to build anything anyway.

Also, as Niklas noted, we'll get a synergistic effect from selling buildings as we get gold in the bank and save money on gpt upkeep.

Now we just need to factor this into our plan. Looks like selling all those buildings should save us at least 2 turn on the plan?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

There's a couple of worries about selling buildings:

1) Happiness - we have some large cities getting 6 happy faces from cathedrals - obviously, we can offset that with the slider some, but that will cut into our research
2) Military - I'd assume that we would get a response from our opponents when we are close to winning and not having factories/etc will make it tough for us to respond.

What we could do is:

1) Drop out of mobilization
2) Build banks & stock exchanges in our best cities, set everything to taxmen/wealth elsewhere, research economics to help us get better results from wealth (we should be able to get that in 4 turns at 10 or maybe 20%, I'd think)
3) Build wealth until we can do our run.
4) Sell off buildings and run to space, flip out apollo and go back into mobilization so we can build units.

 

[Paul#42]

good list.
Most temples and all granaries we could sell right away as well as barracks in coastal towns (TA). Libraries, courts if they gain just 1-2bpt.

It would be great to have the benefit of any of those buildings in the list as well .
Things are tough to check these days since CA2 does not work with our saves anymore (or does it?)...

I wonder if this game will be won by histograph victory - in 2011...