High Score - 15M+ : Pre-game Discussion

[nocho]

So, no surprise, it's all about finishing fast and with max population.
Since we're thinking about picking leader right now, which one can get that extra population without losing too many turns?

If it's about (partly) peaceful REX, then funny imp/exp Joao has the traits that most directly positively affect pop. Carracks might be useful to settle islands quicker. Then again, would be surprised if he'd be the best choice.

 

[Mitchum]

Don't you have a space game to finish first?

 

[Swordnboard]

I was doing some tests on quick/standard, and found that it might be possible to grow a city up to about 20% higher than its actual population cap because you can grow even while starving if you have enough food overflow. Furthermore, a city with sushi corporation can build theoretically infinite overflow by whipping itself down, meaning that the 20% increase can be exceeded quite a bit. This means that, with the proper timing, one's entire empire could be operating at something like double its natural population cap or more!

Basic gameplan:

• Generate infinite overflow by growing more than an entire population (half a population with granary) per turn
• Stack this overflow up by whipping down to (at minimum) the point where all citizens are working 2 food or better tiles. Smaller is better!
• Each city should strive to maintain similar amounts of overflow and population, so that they all reach their "peak" at the same time
• When the time is right, stop whipping and allow cities to grow way past their pop cap
• End the game at this artificial peak, yielding massive score (???)

Caveats:

• Quick Speed sucks -- Is it possible to have enough food for 1-turn growths + overflow on Marathon/huge?
• Timing of granary, lighthouse, sushi execs, etc. is difficult to get right so that all cities reach peak at the same time
  • If you mess up, the cities starve back down basically 1 pop / turn. After half your cities have peaked, you gain no score by waiting longer.
• What would we whip when building up overflow? Unfortunately workers aren't an option as they halt growth.
• This strategy takes up lots of time, pushing back the finish date quite far.

I'd love for someone with more experience on score mechanics to weigh in on whether this is feasible here.

 

[WastinTime]

Don't you have a space game to finish first?

Have you been under a rock? It's done. Don't you have an SGotM to finish?

 

[WastinTime]

15m

Looking forward to this!

Just waiting on you to finish BUFFY 005

 

[Mitchum]

Have you been under a rock? It's done. Don't you have an SGotM to finish?

You know I've been under a rock... and I was expecting that comeback from you. haha

I was not aware that you finished your space game. Don't spoil it for me. I'll catch up on the thread in 2024 when I have some spare time...

 

[WastinTime]

Basic gameplan:

• Generate infinite overflow by growing more than an entire population (half a population with granary) per turn

Ok, you may have just blown my mind. I'm not sure I fully understand your plan yet. I'm pretty sure 'infinite' is an exaggeration, but that doesn't mean there isn't a useful tactic here. The biggest problem is probably that marathon needs, for example, 150 food just to grow around the size 40 mark.

Spoiler Failed 'avoid growth' idea :

I'm also wondering if the 'avoid growth' button assists your idea. I've used that button (very rarely) for single turns to optimize a granary or manage maintenance. Does it store food? (update: no, food is capped)

I have to explore this more, but if anything can take the game from 15M to 20M, it would be an idea like this one.

 

[Swordnboard]

Had a bit of time to do some more analysis:

On quick, the cost of growing a population is 14 for the first, then 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22...
This means that, with a granary, some populations aren't even more expensive to grow than the previous! So growing to use all of your tiles with at least 3 is optimal for food-banking speed.

On normal, the cost always increases by 2 (1 with a granary), so growing to use 4 tiles is good, and growing to use 3 tiles is neutral for overflow banking. We still want to grow into 3 tiles though, since our maximum population depends on both the banked food and the starting population point

On marathon, though, things start to get hairy. Even with a granary, the cost of growing a new population increases by 3 for every population you grow! This means that, even if your city could work 4 tiles all the way up until size 20, this would grind our overflow banking to a halt (3 more to grow + 2 eaten by the citizen is less than 4 more worked). Of course in reality our cities will look even worse! So this brings us to the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea of banking food at 1 population. Heck, we don't even have to work a tile (which is good since we will be whipping this hypothetical city literally every turn ).

The setup: a city with a granary and sid's sushi co. It doesn't even need any workable tiles!
Each turn, the city grows from size 1 to size 2. It gains food from the city center (2) and sushi co (variable, note this was 42 at the end of the previous space game). The single population point eats 2 food, and growing to size 2 eats 66 food. The granary then refunds us 33. This means that the total change in food banked is (2 + 42 - 2 - 33) = 9. Whip down to size 1 and repeat as long as you are willing... voila! Lots of food in the bank!

EDIT: This provides an interesting argument for the Khmer. +1 food from the baray doesn't seem like much, but when coupled with a supermarket these two lowly buildings could give a 20% increase in overflow banking per turn. This also means every food from sushi counts.

But how far will this food get us? In order to grow in starvation mode, we must have enough food in the bank to grow in a single turn. No problem, right? We've been doing that every turn so far.
Our first population grown adds to our bank, same as before (bank gains 9)
Our second population grown requires 5 more food (bank gains 4)
And our third 5 more than that (bank loses 1)

Anyways, we can calculate out how far we can go with this before expending the bank, and it looks really bad. In fact, to grow n population consecutively we need on the magnitude of n^2 stored food in the bank! And the result is not even good until we can reach significantly higher than the old population cap (including worked tiles), which might be something like 40 or more! So to double our population, we might need about 80^2 = 6400 food banked, which at our rate of 9 a turn would take a whopping 700 turns to achieve .


Conclusions / tl;dr

• Banking sizeable amounts of food is orders of magnitude harder on marathon than it is on quick, normal, or epic
• Because the strategy requires whipping down to size 1 (on marathon, at least), we can't work tiles since there is too much unhappiness
• Due to how long this whole process takes, it likely won't improve score on marathon. Still need to analyze more, but I believe the strategy could be instrumental for a score game played on quick or normal speed.
• One side effect of the strategy (insane gold generation via Q-whipping) could be part of a ludicrous new late-game economy, which might remove the need for STRIKE entirely. The downside would be the loss of caste system, but with cristo redentor we could stay in caste half the time.

 

[WastinTime]

great analysis. In the future, if anyone wants to do something like this, it might be better to use at least 60 for sushi. Last game was not a good example of seafood gathering. It might make your idea feel better on marathon.

I don't think it's feasible to do the massive whipping and have all that anger. You wouldn't be able to work any food tiles, and you can't erase the anger cus if you did, you'd erase the banked food. However, if you had FutureTech 100...

I think the takeaway lesson on this is similar to one of my basic strategies I was going to introduce: Try not to let your citizens (specialists) eat into your excess food and avoid unhealthiness which is also draining your city's fpt. For this reason, I was going to suggest that I might build something other than a granary for a change: Aqueducts, Grocers and maybe supermarkets could all keep the food from being wasted.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Had a bit of time to do some more analysis:

On quick, the cost of growing a population is 14 for the first, then 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22...
This means that, with a granary, some populations aren't even more expensive to grow than the previous! So growing to use all of your tiles with at least 3 is optimal for food-banking speed.

On normal, the cost always increases by 2 (1 with a granary), so growing to use 4 tiles is good, and growing to use 3 tiles is neutral for overflow banking. We still want to grow into 3 tiles though, since our maximum population depends on both the banked food and the starting population point

On marathon, though, things start to get hairy. Even with a granary, the cost of growing a new population increases by 3 for every population you grow! This means that, even if your city could work 4 tiles all the way up until size 20, this would grind our overflow banking to a halt (3 more to grow + 2 eaten by the citizen is less than 4 more worked). Of course in reality our cities will look even worse! So this brings us to the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea of banking food at 1 population. Heck, we don't even have to work a tile (which is good since we will be whipping this hypothetical city literally every turn ).

The setup: a city with a granary and sid's sushi co. It doesn't even need any workable tiles!
Each turn, the city grows from size 1 to size 2. It gains food from the city center (2) and sushi co (variable, note this was 42 at the end of the previous space game). The single population point eats 2 food, and growing to size 2 eats 66 food. The granary then refunds us 33. This means that the total change in food banked is (2 + 42 - 2 - 33) = 9. Whip down to size 1 and repeat as long as you are willing... voila! Lots of food in the bank!

EDIT: This provides an interesting argument for the Khmer. +1 food from the baray doesn't seem like much, but when coupled with a supermarket these two lowly buildings could give a 20% increase in overflow banking per turn. This also means every food from sushi counts.

But how far will this food get us? In order to grow in starvation mode, we must have enough food in the bank to grow in a single turn. No problem, right? We've been doing that every turn so far.
Our first population grown adds to our bank, same as before (bank gains 9)
Our second population grown requires 5 more food (bank gains 4)
And our third 5 more than that (bank loses 1)

Anyways, we can calculate out how far we can go with this before expending the bank, and it looks really bad. In fact, to grow n population consecutively we need on the magnitude of n^2 stored food in the bank! And the result is not even good until we can reach significantly higher than the old population cap (including worked tiles), which might be something like 40 or more! So to double our population, we might need about 80^2 = 6400 food banked, which at our rate of 9 a turn would take a whopping 700 turns to achieve .


Conclusions / tl;dr

• Banking sizeable amounts of food is orders of magnitude harder on marathon than it is on quick, normal, or epic
• Because the strategy requires whipping down to size 1 (on marathon, at least), we can't work tiles since there is too much unhappiness
• Due to how long this whole process takes, it likely won't improve score on marathon. Still need to analyze more, but I believe the strategy could be instrumental for a score game played on quick or normal speed.
• One side effect of the strategy (insane gold generation via Q-whipping) could be part of a ludicrous new late-game economy, which might remove the need for STRIKE entirely. The downside would be the loss of caste system, but with cristo redentor we could stay in caste half the time.

Conclusion: Big joke on WT if someone can do 15M on quick...

 

[LowtherCastle]

...and I was expecting that comeback from you. haha

I would have said, "Yes, Mum."

 

[LowtherCastle]

I was doing some tests on quick/standard, and found that it might be possible to grow a city up to about 20% higher than its actual population cap because you can grow even while starving if you have enough food overflow. Furthermore, a city with sushi corporation can build theoretically infinite overflow by whipping itself down, meaning that the 20% increase can be exceeded quite a bit. This means that, with the proper timing, one's entire empire could be operating at something like double its natural population cap or more!

Basic gameplan:

• Generate infinite overflow by growing more than an entire population (half a population with granary) per turn
• Stack this overflow up by whipping down to (at minimum) the point where all citizens are working 2 food or better tiles. Smaller is better!
• Each city should strive to maintain similar amounts of overflow and population, so that they all reach their "peak" at the same time
• When the time is right, stop whipping and allow cities to grow way past their pop cap
• End the game at this artificial peak, yielding massive score (???)

Caveats:

• Quick Speed sucks -- Is it possible to have enough food for 1-turn growths + overflow on Marathon/huge?
• Timing of granary, lighthouse, sushi execs, etc. is difficult to get right so that all cities reach peak at the same time
  • If you mess up, the cities starve back down basically 1 pop / turn. After half your cities have peaked, you gain no score by waiting longer.
• What would we whip when building up overflow? Unfortunately workers aren't an option as they halt growth.
• This strategy takes up lots of time, pushing back the finish date quite far.

I'd love for someone with more experience on score mechanics to weigh in on whether this is feasible here.

Some questions:
1. What exactly is the mechanic of accumulating food overflow?
2. Why do you have to whip for the food overflow?
3. Is this a technique that could be used simply to get a few % more than usual?

 

[Swordnboard]

Some questions:
1. What exactly is the mechanic of accumulating food overflow?
2. Why do you have to whip for the food overflow?
3. Is this a technique that could be used simply to get a few % more than usual?

1. Every turn, our food bank increases by our food surplus. If we grow, our food bank is decreased by the amount needed for growth (then we are refunded by half of that, if we have a granary built). So, on marathon for example, if we have a surplus food of 33 or greater with a granary, the process of growing from size 1 to size 2 will actually increase the amount of food we have in the bank. We can repeat this process for lots of turns and generate tons of overflow.

2. Whipping lets us grow our bank more efficiently. If we grow to size 2, we need a surplus food of 36 or greater to add to the bank. This means our additional population needs to work a five-food tile to maintain our food-banking rate (Note that this requirement is only a 3-food tile on normal or quick speed). After a while, our banking rate gets slower and slower with increasing population (whenever we run out of 5-food tiles), but we can keep ourselves at the best rate by whipping down. After repeated whipping, we can't work any tiles at all (too much unhappy), so we might as well be at size 1 for most of the process.

3. Probably not. Since the trick relies on growing during starvation (which requires you to grow in one turn for many consecutive turns) we have to build up a huge bank to get any benefit at all. At that point, it's likely better to spend more turns banking for a bigger payout.

 

[LowtherCastle]

If Sushi is putting out 60f and we put sushi in a new cit y with granary at pop1, won't its food bank have a ton of overflow by the time it's at pop30 or whatever?

Also, with Kremlin, it's relatively cheap to whip the food and health bonus buildings while storing extra food in the food bank.

Just seems like this technique can be leveraged to improve the score, even if it's not on the order of 20%.

 

[Swordnboard]

Nah, we wouldn't have anything banked by the time we reach size 30, since growing above about size 20 will definitely subtract from the bank, even if we get to work tiles (try to find 90 surplus food for a junky city!). That's the kind of thing that would work on quick speed but not marathon .

I like the idea of whipping buildings though. Maybe we could even do wonderbread? More to think about. Plus, not having to whip 2-1 all the time gives us more production since we wouldn't have to cold-whip then.

 

[WastinTime]

PHI trait

My concern with this trait is that it does nothing for me during the final ~200 turns and the only effect on score is if it can get me to sushi several turns faster than a non-PHI leader. But, PHI leaders might be the only non-Inca leaders that can get to sushi at the same time (or earlier.) It'd be nice to know.

Use the WonderBread Economy to get Kremlin ~T225, Sushi ~T260

225 might be unattainable, or if I go all out for it, it could make the sushi path longer (see below).
Early Kremlin also requires SciMethod, so we lose GreatLibrary and Parthenon very early (if we build them at all). Another reason PHI can shine.

Let's just assume that the Wonder Bread Economy (WBE) can handle relatively small amt. of manual tech for Sushi (compared to Mining Inc) and the only thing holding us back is GP bulbs. This is one reason why the IND trait is not as important here--manual research should not be the critical path.
Remember : although I call one goal: Kremlin, that also means StateProperty for a big savings on expenses--again helping manual research.

First question: how many GP need to be farmed?

tl;dr; 10-14 total GP. 5-7 of those are needed pre-Kremlin

Option #1: Super fast Kremlin shortcut
- we go thru Astronomy (obsoleting Colossus, but giving us galleons).
Manual: Calendar, Compass, Optics, Machinery, CS, Paper, some Edu, Liberalism. (free Astronomy from a hut or research it manually)
Optional/heavily desirable: *guilds for knights, *banking for Merc

Bulbs: Philo(1), Edu(1), PPress(1), SciMeth(2)
Sometimes Philo is free from Mansa, so best case scenario, we need 4 GS plus the one to start the 1st GAge. That's less than I thought.
We don't need an extra GP for GAge#2 because we can use Music's GArt + free GSpy

Drawback: you need to bulb Physics(2) before Chem and Biology. It takes 3 bulbs, but you get one GS back free.
Chem (1), Biology(3), ?GM for Econ(1), ?GM for Corp(1)

Conclusion: 4-5 GS during GAge#1, Kremlin & give up Merc for StateProp, also lose GreatLib & Parthenon, then 6-8 GP

Option #2: Kremlin thru Guilds/GunP/Chem
We don't need compass, optics, or Astronomy. Even in the case above, we may want guilds for knights and banking for Merc, here, we at least must have
Guilds, GunPowder, Constr, Engineering

Bulbs: Philo(1), Edu(1), PPress(1), chem(1), SciMeth(2)

We don't have to bulb Physics, the next 3 GS's after Kremlin can go to earlier Biology.

Analysis: Although compass, optics was not needed before Kremlin, we still need them for sushi/medicine, if Astronomy is free, the only thing Option #1 does is add Physics (cost = 2GS).

How many GP can I realistically get in one Golden Age?

Not sure how I can get MoM, Paya, Parthenon, Merc, religion spread, and GP farm growth in time, but let's assume it's all in place by T200.
GPP multiplier = 4.5
Starting the GAge so early will likely mean my smallest GPfarms will be at 6 specialists = 18gpp * 4.5 = 81
I'll probably have a 7 and 8, and let's say I have 1 killer city doing 9 (or more with GLib). That's 24 * 4.5 = 121.

300gpp was obtained early to start the GAge

600gpp from the killer city
T11: 900gpp from wimpiest GPfarm
T14: 1200gpp
T17: 1600 gpp
T21: 1800 gpp
T24: 2100 gpp from killer again (so it does 2700 total)

So 5 farms can do 6 GS's (not using NationalEpic)

Thoughts

I feel like non-PHI could get by and make 5GS's with a little more attention to population or maybe GreatLib.
either get free Philo, or research it manually.
The only other advantage PHI has is getting GP #1, but again, non-PHI just needs to plan for it.

There is still the 2nd golden age which could be as little as 3 GSs for Biology and as much as 8! from option #1.
I'm leaning towards Option #2, no physics, no astronomy.
8 GS's total and doing it with a non-PHI leader is back as an option. Not the conclusion I expected. I was on board with PHI.

 

[WastinTime]

At this point, I've already talked myself out of PHI. Even before I announced that Peter was my leading candidate. I was waiting for someone else to drop his name first (Fippy did.) Now I'll talk myself out of EXP and I'll be back to looking at IND leaders again

 

[WastinTime]

Before I give up on PHI, here's a new twist I thought of a couple days ago.
To get the best score ever, I need mining Inc too
Just 100 or so execs, not 500. 5 per turn for ~20 turns. done.

Tech counts for score too and techs like Genetics and FutureTech give me +health, so I need to keep researching. Mining does that.
Also, how am I going to get 1000's of workboats to feed to the strike monster? I can't let it eat my execs for 150 turns of spreading corps.
I will already have collected most of the mining resources. If I spend 20,000h and 5000g on 100 execs, that's way cheaper than building 300 grocers + 300 aqueducts, etc. I won't need those buildings if I get 20 FutureTech.
And then there is the task of generating gold to pay for exec spread. Mining helps again.

That means I have the horrible task of getting a GE. I don't think it can wait until Fusion.
It's even harder because I don't want to build more than 1 forge so a random, low-odds GE can't just pop out. And I hate gambling like that.
A PHI leader could probably pop a 100% GE at 300gpp and then a random GP for the GAge by T200. Non-PHI can't do that.

 

[Swordnboard]

A smattering some of my more half-baked ideas to consider (not all at once):
-Play on Tiny islands (can cram in more cities in less land since there is no mainland)
-Step 1: Create many tiny AI. Step 2: Gift them each a city with granary + globe theatre + national park (we could rush-buy the wonders every turn to gift 1 city per 2 turns? That's a lot of money...). Step 3: Allow them to grow using deity bonuses. Keep AI out of slavery with spies. Step 4: Recapture before ending the game and profit
-Play Justinian, build hippodromes, run culture slider, use massive happiness for something
-Find a way to cause newly-created AI to produce a rapid great merchant and join it to a city you can later recapture. Possibly in conjunction with the aforementioned globe + national park strategy. I noticed that the city governor tends to prefer merchants when you hang out in caste system, so maybe the AI have this preference as well.
-Selectively Avoid growth by alternating turns with all and none of your sushi resources online (we can spread sushi to an AI so they can grow their cities on the off turns)

 

[WastinTime]

A smattering some of my more half-baked ideas to consider (not all at once):
-Play on Tiny islands (can cram in more cities in less land since there is no mainland)

Creative stuff, Some of those have not been in the oven at all yet, much less half baked
Tiny Islands has issues with early AI conquest and lack of forests, but I've thought about it. What would help is if someone would load up a sample, future map and count the sushi.