Grand Strategy Thread
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General_W
Councilor & Merlot Noble
Paul#42 said:
If we can make The Chamber a 3 turn settler factory, that'd be awesome. We're behind in expansion and population, and need to do what we can to catch up. Now is the ideal time, imho.
AutomatedTeller
Frequent poster
Looking at the map, I don't see any chance to get a 3 turn factory. Just not enough shields.
the 10 FP turn would have 2 - one for the cow, one for the city, leaving 28 for the other two turns, or 14 a turn.
cow and city is 2. no way to get the rest of the shields needed.
the 10 FP turn would have 2 - one for the cow, one for the city, leaving 28 for the other two turns, or 14 a turn.
cow and city is 2. no way to get the rest of the shields needed.
We had another SGotm where you could do 2-turn-settlers recently (if you were allowed to build settlers at all). 
@AT: Well actually it IS possible - but the price is high.
I slightly overestimated The Chamber's production.
We can get 7 shields on turn 1 at size 5 if we irrigate a BG (see below).
We'd also have to mine another plains for the other turns.
Without a hill or mountain around, we won't be able to do the missing 23 shields in two turns at size 6 without using a fifth BG
We are one short, actually.
And even if we uncover a BG under forest or jungle, that would leave the FP unused and all BGs need to be taken from The Admirality and The Bayou. What a waste
We however could still short-rush to 10 shields (worker, for 12g) after turn 1 of the cycle and make 20 shields on turns 2 and 3 (9+9+2).
Oh, there might be other combinations. I'll try some later tonight (I hope) with a game, there might be things I'd overlooked easily if you calculate on spread sheets and screen shots... 
@AT: Well actually it IS possible - but the price is high.
I slightly overestimated The Chamber's production. We can get 7 shields on turn 1 at size 5 if we irrigate a BG (see below).
We'd also have to mine another plains for the other turns.
Without a hill or mountain around, we won't be able to do the missing 23 shields in two turns at size 6 without using a fifth BG
We are one short, actually.
And even if we uncover a BG under forest or jungle, that would leave the FP unused and all BGs need to be taken from The Admirality and The Bayou. What a waste
We however could still short-rush to 10 shields (worker, for 12g) after turn 1 of the cycle and make 20 shields on turns 2 and 3 (9+9+2).
Oh, there might be other combinations. I'll try some later tonight (I hope) with a game, there might be things I'd overlooked easily if you calculate on spread sheets and screen shots... Spoiler :
General_W
Councilor & Merlot Noble
Even without being able to do a 3-turn settler factory, I think the point remains about having the Chamber continue to produce settlers.
We need to fill up the rest of our continent asap. Personally, I'd like to see a minimum of 2-3 towns working on settlers until our continent is full and we have settled all the outlying islands that we can beat BABE to. Perhaps we could use our towns that will need aqueducts to build settlers, that way we don't delay getting the extra unit support from the towns that can get to size 7 without further help.
That leaves open The Admiralty, The Bayou, The Pier, The Meeting Room, and The Arboretum as decently non-corrupt towns that won't be growing without an aqueduct anyway.
The actual MMing of this isn't my strong suit, so I'll happily leave that to the very skilled players on this team. Just wanted to toss in my two cents I really think we should prioritize getting everything we can settled here. All the other civs have almost certainly filled up their land, and if we wait too long, BABE will settle all the islands near us.
We need to fill up the rest of our continent asap. Personally, I'd like to see a minimum of 2-3 towns working on settlers until our continent is full and we have settled all the outlying islands that we can beat BABE to. Perhaps we could use our towns that will need aqueducts to build settlers, that way we don't delay getting the extra unit support from the towns that can get to size 7 without further help.
That leaves open The Admiralty, The Bayou, The Pier, The Meeting Room, and The Arboretum as decently non-corrupt towns that won't be growing without an aqueduct anyway.
The actual MMing of this isn't my strong suit, so I'll happily leave that to the very skilled players on this team. Just wanted to toss in my two cents I really think we should prioritize getting everything we can settled here. All the other civs have almost certainly filled up their land, and if we wait too long, BABE will settle all the islands near us.
Spoiler zyxy's town analysis :
Ah, the memories. We were in exactly this situation with Smurkz and Washington in the Hydrophobic Americans game. And there is a solution for the 3-turn factory, I was quite happy when I found it back then, and no less happy now! 
I haven't yet decided if I like the idea of continuing the settler factory though. How many more do we need really? Then again, joining 3-turn settlers is a really fast way of increasing pop in towns that don't grow so fast, so it could be useful far beyond the point where we've settled all our available land.
Spoiler :
I haven't yet decided if I like the idea of continuing the settler factory though. How many more do we need really? Then again, joining 3-turn settlers is a really fast way of increasing pop in towns that don't grow so fast, so it could be useful far beyond the point where we've settled all our available land.
General_W
Councilor & Merlot Noble
Nice work Niklas! 
Wow
a 3-turn settler factory! As stated, I think it's worthwhile to pour a lot of effort into settling everything we can, as I see that as our biggest priority right now. But beyond that, the idea of using the Chamber to rapidly bulk up our other cities is very exciting, I think. Not only does every town we bump into a City save us 2gpt, we also dramatically improve the growth rate/tile usage of the whole empire, as The Chamber could never sustain growing every 3 turns if it weren't for working as a settler factory.
I think this is a very very good and exciting idea.
Wow
a 3-turn settler factory! As stated, I think it's worthwhile to pour a lot of effort into settling everything we can, as I see that as our biggest priority right now. But beyond that, the idea of using the Chamber to rapidly bulk up our other cities is very exciting, I think. Not only does every town we bump into a City save us 2gpt, we also dramatically improve the growth rate/tile usage of the whole empire, as The Chamber could never sustain growing every 3 turns if it weren't for working as a settler factory. I think this is a very very good and exciting idea.
donsig
Low level intermediary
I think we've planned to make 9 more cities (this includes the three islands we can safely reach but not any islands that would require ship chaining). Any settlers for boosting population would be above these nine. But I do like the idea of doing that.
AutomatedTeller
Frequent poster
I would even be ok with spending cash to get 3 turn settlers.
Can we safely chain to any islands? I think that even with chaining, we end up leaving a galley on sea, no? That might be a lot of risk.
Can we safely chain to any islands? I think that even with chaining, we end up leaving a galley on sea, no? That might be a lot of risk.
zyxy
Warmongering Fool
Good idea!
But a few drawbacks:
- we'll need to build some military somewhere else, or gamble we won't be anyone's target anytime soon. Each military town needs a rax first, which adds to the production cost (and which is why building military from TC would be rather efficient).
- we are giving up a lot of commerce and production in The Chamber by keeping it small.
- size 7 towns need to be kept happy. This is quite doable with the lux tax for noncorrupt towns, but the corrupt ones will probably need to hire specialists (hence will need extra food, and thus worker actions).
All in all, I think this is a very good idea, and i would do it. But it needs some work to compensate the downsides.
We'll see about the northern island in 1-2 turns. But I think we should give them up - no chance we'll be able to get there before BABE.
But a few drawbacks:
- we'll need to build some military somewhere else, or gamble we won't be anyone's target anytime soon. Each military town needs a rax first, which adds to the production cost (and which is why building military from TC would be rather efficient).
- we are giving up a lot of commerce and production in The Chamber by keeping it small.
- size 7 towns need to be kept happy. This is quite doable with the lux tax for noncorrupt towns, but the corrupt ones will probably need to hire specialists (hence will need extra food, and thus worker actions).
All in all, I think this is a very good idea, and i would do it. But it needs some work to compensate the downsides.
We'll see about the northern island in 1-2 turns. But I think we should give them up - no chance we'll be able to get there before BABE.
nice idea Niklas. I was so focussed on equally shared food surplus for turns 2&3
If the turn at size seven requires to work the luxury slider, we could still look for other combinations like +6fpt and +4fpt and alike for the turns 2 and 3.
I'd like to think about building trebs for some time now. Won't need barracks and show some strength on the power graph, too.
I think right now we became the least likely victim for some time and arties fit our long term strategy.
Too bad we're missing the single shield for a one-turn-settler-factory
(edit: I meant workers of course
)
General_W
Councilor & Merlot Noble
True – but we need to weigh this gamble against the gamble of weakening our chances for a Space Race win.zyxy said:
The question is… which is more likely?
I'd assert that if we're going to win, it will be through Space, not conquest. Or in any case, will flow from being so far ahead in tech, that we can invade with dramatic superiority. Either way requires incredibly robust peacetime growth between now and marines/bombers.
Every military build now has a 100% chance of setting us back (albeit very slightly) on developing that crushing peacetime advantage.
Of course, that peacetime advantage is no good if war comes to our shores and we're not ready. What are the odds of that? Once we hear back from BABE (and assuming that they sign the treaty and that all indicators continue to point toward an invasion of Saber or else no invasion at all) then I'd say the odds of us being attacked before we Hwach'a and/or Cavalry and/or rails is VERY low.
I'd rather gamble on delaying our military builds till an invasion is more likely rather than gamble on delaying our domestic builds.
But maybe I'm overly optimistic?
Yes, but we're hopefully more than making that up in commerce, support savings, and production in all the other towns we create/enhance from The Chamber. Once we've settled even two towns from The Chamber, we've broken even on the support benefits of having let The Chamber get to size 7, for example.zyxy said:
Again, a good point and something we need to be mindful of… but this is something we'd need to do anyway… and the sooner we can do it, the better. Ideally, we want to have all our improvements done by the end of the MA, so that when we get rails, the whole workforce can immediately lay rails everywhere.zyxy said:
1-turn??Too bad we're missing the single shield for a one-turn-settler-factory
Seriously though, running a turn at size 7 won't be a problem since we're aiming at getting a bunch of other towns up to that size and will thus need the lux slider anyway.
1-turn??
I meant workers... 
No need to laugh at me that violently 
What do you guys think about my suggestion to build some trebs in the non-rax-towns?
The Admirality and maybe one more town could do some horses casually, but only whenever we fall back in military power relations (which will soon happen - at least in relation to BABE).
That would spare us rax and provide some military strength for the power graphs. Nobody would see that it's just H'Watcha prebuilds
cubsfan6506
Got u
Sounds good.
General_W
Councilor & Merlot Noble
I like it! I think we need to keep our military at a bare minimum, but catapults would certainly be appealing. As you mentioned, no need to invest shields in a rax, they're low cost, and we're going to want Hwach'a at some point anyway.Paul#42 said:
zyxy
Warmongering Fool
I would like to plan from the objectives that we want to reach rather than the other way around. I think we first need to decide what level of military we want, and when we want it. Then how many towns to found, and where. That will tell us how much we can spend on other things.
We have peace with BABE now, but it only lasts for 30 turns. In those 30 turns, they will discover they are far behind, and they will probably try to do something about it. We cannot expect that the other teams will allow us to run to space unhindered.
Now, ideally BABE will invade SABER and get stuck. But less ideally they will build up for 30 turns and invade us then. If we then have just a handful of troops, we're in big trouble.
One idea, which has to be fleshed out to see if it's feasible, would be to focus on infra for 10-15 turns, and then re-assess based on what happens with BABE and SABER. If there's no attack by then, we can do a buildup to have a decent force by turn 129. But I think BABE will need some time to build up against SABER as well, so I don't really expect an attack on anyone before turn 120 or so. And training military takes time! Just a rax will take 4-5 turns in almost all our towns.
In the ideal case it takes 32 worker turns to get 4 roaded, irrigated grass. It takes 12 turns to produce the 4 settlers needed to make a size 7 town, or 9 turns if we assume that, say, the first 2 pop will be grown by the town itself. So in the ideal case we need 3-4 workers full time employed to keep up with growth. In the worst case it takes 24 worker turns per tile more (to chop a jungle), and we need about a dozen workers to keep up.
Then, some of these towns will need aqueducts, which take a lot of time to build and require our workers to build some mines... in short, it is quite some effort to get reasonable estimates on the feasibility of this.
I prefer a horse over a treb anytime, especially if we want to run a minimal military. Trebs are slow and don't kill a thing. They need to be protected. Hwacha's might kill but they are still slow and vulnerable. (Though it would be nice to see if fast units can retreat from a Hwacha
.)
The response time of our army is very important IMO. Trebs, pikes and other grunts are nice, but only if you know where the attack will land several (3,4?) turns in advance.
We have peace with BABE now, but it only lasts for 30 turns. In those 30 turns, they will discover they are far behind, and they will probably try to do something about it. We cannot expect that the other teams will allow us to run to space unhindered.
Now, ideally BABE will invade SABER and get stuck. But less ideally they will build up for 30 turns and invade us then. If we then have just a handful of troops, we're in big trouble.
One idea, which has to be fleshed out to see if it's feasible, would be to focus on infra for 10-15 turns, and then re-assess based on what happens with BABE and SABER. If there's no attack by then, we can do a buildup to have a decent force by turn 129. But I think BABE will need some time to build up against SABER as well, so I don't really expect an attack on anyone before turn 120 or so. And training military takes time! Just a rax will take 4-5 turns in almost all our towns.
We're already far ahead techwise of others except FREE, and have by far the highest lib count. Military builds are like an insurance. Lost investment, until you need it.
In case of invasion of SABER I agree with you. Otherwise, I think we are gambling.
I was not talking about support cost alone, but also about income. Each citizen in TC brings in 1-2 gpt or 2-4 bpt (counting a lib, no market, and 1 gpt for entertainment). Niklas' settler factory has TC produce 10 spt, my plan gets it to 15 spt.
Growing corrupt towns is also a matter of timing. Our workers need to be able to keep up with town growth. For example, a size 7 city could have 4 citizens working irrigated grass and 3 scientists (at 0 food surplus). It will need 1 happy face from the lux tax. If there's no river or other commerce bonus around, then the town will produce 12 raw gold per turn I think. If it is 50% corrupt, then a 10% - 20% lux tax would be enough. So happiness-wise it seems doable, but we need 4 irrigated & roaded grass to make this work.
In the ideal case it takes 32 worker turns to get 4 roaded, irrigated grass. It takes 12 turns to produce the 4 settlers needed to make a size 7 town, or 9 turns if we assume that, say, the first 2 pop will be grown by the town itself. So in the ideal case we need 3-4 workers full time employed to keep up with growth. In the worst case it takes 24 worker turns per tile more (to chop a jungle), and we need about a dozen workers to keep up.
Then, some of these towns will need aqueducts, which take a lot of time to build and require our workers to build some mines... in short, it is quite some effort to get reasonable estimates on the feasibility of this.
I prefer a horse over a treb anytime, especially if we want to run a minimal military. Trebs are slow and don't kill a thing. They need to be protected. Hwacha's might kill but they are still slow and vulnerable. (Though it would be nice to see if fast units can retreat from a Hwacha
.)The response time of our army is very important IMO. Trebs, pikes and other grunts are nice, but only if you know where the attack will land several (3,4?) turns in advance.
AutomatedTeller
Frequent poster
I think we cannot let our military slide.
We have to build everything.
What I would suggest is something along the lines of:
1) Have at least 1 city building military at all times.
2) Don't worry too much about multiple barracks - we need veterans when we go on the offense, but I'd rather have 2 regular horse then 1 vet if BABE lands MW.
3) Some combination of libs, markets, courts and temples/caths as infrastructure in most of our towns.
A barracks everywhere is a bad idea. most of the cities we start putting out now can benefit from courthouses and those should probably start being a priority, as building a courthouse makes everything else easier to build.
The cities that build infrastructure can always switch to military if we want. 1 Lib = 1 MDI and 1 temple or galley = a pike or a horse. a court is expensive to waste, though we could probably convert courts to harbors if we get attacked and don't want to waste the shields.
a BABE invasion in 30 turns will net them a couple of coastal towns, but they won't get into the core if we defend a couple of choke points with pikes/muskets and attack stacks with AC, horse and MDI.
We have to build everything.
What I would suggest is something along the lines of:
1) Have at least 1 city building military at all times.
2) Don't worry too much about multiple barracks - we need veterans when we go on the offense, but I'd rather have 2 regular horse then 1 vet if BABE lands MW.
3) Some combination of libs, markets, courts and temples/caths as infrastructure in most of our towns.
A barracks everywhere is a bad idea. most of the cities we start putting out now can benefit from courthouses and those should probably start being a priority, as building a courthouse makes everything else easier to build.
The cities that build infrastructure can always switch to military if we want. 1 Lib = 1 MDI and 1 temple or galley = a pike or a horse. a court is expensive to waste, though we could probably convert courts to harbors if we get attacked and don't want to waste the shields.
a BABE invasion in 30 turns will net them a couple of coastal towns, but they won't get into the core if we defend a couple of choke points with pikes/muskets and attack stacks with AC, horse and MDI.
donsig
Low level intermediary
I also think we should limit our barracks building. We have one in The Admiralty for our 5 hp ACs and to do any upgrades we need. zyxy has a very good point - we need to figure out what we need and then figure out how to get there.
As for the size of our forces, I think we need 4 galleys and 21 horse (three groups of 7 units) plus 1.5 workers per city. I'd build regular horse and disband warriors as our horsemen are built (then disband horseys as ancient cavalry are produced). While the mobile force is being built we can use our warriors to block vulnerable coastal locations. If we want to keep the warriors to continue blocking the coastal high ground then we'd need to add that to the 21 horse rather than reduce the mobile force.
To sum up, that a 4 unit navy, a 21 to 31 unit land force with 27 (for our current 18 cities) to 40 (for our estimated 27 cities) workers, or 52 to 75 units. If we get, say, 12 of 27 cities up to size 7 then we could support 15+(3*12)=15+36=51 units. At the maximum suggested force that's a support cost of 2*24=48gpt. Of course we are far from having all those cities and all those units - but this is my attempt to decide what size military we need.
As for the size of our forces, I think we need 4 galleys and 21 horse (three groups of 7 units) plus 1.5 workers per city. I'd build regular horse and disband warriors as our horsemen are built (then disband horseys as ancient cavalry are produced). While the mobile force is being built we can use our warriors to block vulnerable coastal locations. If we want to keep the warriors to continue blocking the coastal high ground then we'd need to add that to the 21 horse rather than reduce the mobile force.
To sum up, that a 4 unit navy, a 21 to 31 unit land force with 27 (for our current 18 cities) to 40 (for our estimated 27 cities) workers, or 52 to 75 units. If we get, say, 12 of 27 cities up to size 7 then we could support 15+(3*12)=15+36=51 units. At the maximum suggested force that's a support cost of 2*24=48gpt.
Of course we are far from having all those cities and all those units - but this is my attempt to decide what size military we need.Similar threads
