salty mud
Deity
If only WastinTime put this much effort into learning an instrument or language... still, appropriate username I suppose 
Let's Play: Deity BC Space: Strategies from a 10 year veteran
- Thread starter WastinTime
- Start date
Fish Man
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2010
- Messages
- 1,546
If only WastinTime put this much effort into learning an instrument or language... still, appropriate username I suppose
Or learning programming and game development so that he can gain enough credentials and experience to join Firaxis and convince them to turn around the mess that civ has become
...
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I just thought of something. I've always gotten sushi first. This is the first time ever doing mining first, and I realized that I can use railroads to break the <6 tile rule for spreading execs from city to city and for reaching the coast in 1 turn. I'll revisit my plans later since I'm actually playing T252 rt now.
Lennier
Emperor
Stupid railroads.
Makes it a 10-tile rule.
Makes it a 10-tile rule.
LowtherCastle
Deity
- Joined
- May 18, 2005
- Messages
- 23,644
Loooove me some railroads.
Oops (again) 
Cats will be obsolete soon with Steel (cannons). Right?
I hope longbows stay around until Rifling like I've been planning.
Cats will be obsolete soon with Steel (cannons). Right?
I hope longbows stay around until Rifling like I've been planning.
Beginning of the End
This post is a general strategy for the early End Game. Nothing specific about the current 'MarbleStart' game.
As I lay in bed this morning, slowly waking up (the best time to come up with new ideas), I completely re-designed the next 30 turns (again). I'm talking about 15 turns on either side of Mining Inc. As Mining, Inc approaches, my end game plans are still evolving. This the current official plan some of which I'm creating as I type. (could evolve again.)
Hot Tip: Let me just quickly spoil the new idea before I get into all the details involved in the early end game.
As I said, Mining approaches. Chichen, and mostly Taj, failgold is going to carry me to that milestone. My goal has always been to get the first corporation ASAP. Well, that means, no matter how much cash you have, you can spend it with build research instead of build wealth. This implies that to get Mining Inc several turns sooner, or even just 1 turn sooner, you're going to burn up all your cash reserves--otherwise, you're probably doing something wrong or you just received a huge cash bomb recently.
But then you realize: you're going to be out of cash and you need to spread corps, pay for mining corp expenses and, most importantly, research Assembly Line.
It's been a while since I played a game this late into the tech tree. When did Assembly Line become 27,300
? 
Sheesh, Even if I somehow could maintain ~2,700 bpt, it will still be 10 turns.
This tech is critical. I can't make my Mining hammers hugely profitable without power.
It also couldn't hurt if I could make it thru Medicine too.
Conclusion: Wonder Bread.
I can't abandon this strategy yet. I'll need to re-visit the whip plan (a 3rd? or 4th? time) to include overflows for WBE. I'll need a wonder. IronWorks would be perfect timing, but it doesn't have a resource associated with it. Why doesn't this wonder have double speed with Iron?
That leaves:
- Hermitage. It's a useless wonder, but at least it's only 900 wasted hammers. (aka ~330 base hammers) This is probably my pick. Could be worse, like...
- Notre Dame 1650h. Is this a useless wonder? will +2 happy be needed later?
but wait! there's....
- AnkorWat : if the AI builds it. Difficult timing tho.
So now my cities have to plan to support whip/chop failgold on AWat and still do exec spread using overflows and chops. No whipping execs directly.
should I do Hermitage in parallel? my head hurts.
Resource collection
Now it's less urgent that I capture all the AI islands with Mining resources.
Also less urgent that I settle the unclaimed resources.
Gives me time to settle somewhere that needs a mine/fort and road. In general, I intend to settle directly on the resource.
When to give away resources. When to take them back.
My first thought was to use my mining hammers for 2-3 turns so the HQ can put out 3 back to back execs. Expenses are low with only 1-4 cities having mining.
Give away resources on T+2
I was thinking I wouldn't switch to STRIKE until sushi which now seems like at least 20 turns after Mining (unless I come up with a way to make that 15...I'm trying).
But then I thought about how I'd have to go at least til T+12 to get my resources back. By then I'll have 50 corps. I certainly have to start strike the moment I take them back--not wait til sushi.
I feel like I'm wasting the power I could have up until T+12. I'm thinking have to take the risk and start strike as soon as I have enough Mining power to exceed my research rate, or very soon after. Let's estimate when that will be....
Assuming I'm out of spare cash and just need ~300gpt for exec spread.
I can maintain at most 2000 final-bpt while spreading mining. It may be only 1600-1800bpt after all the whipping I have to do. Failgold around T275 would help boost this, but it would be like a one-time injection of about 3000 beakers. Best case, AssemblyLine at T+12. It could take 15 turns just for this--no Medicine. That's not acceptable.
I could probably crank this up to 2500bpt if I do a full empire wide growth halt or even a slow starvedown. Growth can come after sushi.
At T+12, what would my bpt jump to by turning on Mining?
5000 bpt. 2400 from mining alone. 900 from regular hammers and 1700 from scientists. This comes with a complete food/growth shut off.
Conclusion: I should have switched a while ago.
In fact, from my estimates, it appears that I can do 2600 final-bpt from the get-go, implying I should strike ASAP. Well, not right now. I think the answer is as soon as I can comfortably generate exec spread gold. Which could be as soon as T+4.From then on, is when I can start getting continuous explorer gold overflow from the HQ. Is the gold from one explorer enough to pay for 5 execs? (edit: No, I don't have factory/Power yet) Anyone know the formula for the cost to spread? I'm seeing 53 and 54
in my 10M score game.
Each turn after T+3, mining adds 300bpt. My current thinking is that I should pull the trigger around T+5. That's a long strike. Should I be considering the cost of sacrificial units?
-----------------------------------------
I idea of gifting away my metals is not lost though. I could still benefit from the quechua building. And those first 5 turns of mining spread wouldn't cost so much. T+0 is only 80, but on T+4, I have 13 corps already and they'd cost me 1,000 gpt with no Free Market and no courthouses.
I was about to build my last knight in about 3 turns anyway, so the metal gift fits with that. Maybe time then for one additional knight.
I also don't necessarily have to wait 10 turns to get my metals back. I just have to DoW the AI that are holding them. Not sure I want to be at war with the whole world tho. It takes a while for them to want to talk if you don't get any war success.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Today, my thoughts turn back to the reason I had once decided to wait and start strike after about 15 turns of mining. I'm currently considering ~5 turns.
I'm stressed about creating the corp spread gold. Stealing every turn would take a lot more spies than I have. My explorer idea doesn't work well until I have factories/power. And even then, it works best if the city wasn't whipped down 6 pop, but slow building fact/power would take 8 turns in the capital.
I may have come full circle and I'm back to gifting away resources after mining is founded. At least until I find a way to reliably generate gold during early strike.
This post is a general strategy for the early End Game. Nothing specific about the current 'MarbleStart' game.
As I lay in bed this morning, slowly waking up (the best time to come up with new ideas), I completely re-designed the next 30 turns (again). I'm talking about 15 turns on either side of Mining Inc. As Mining, Inc approaches, my end game plans are still evolving. This the current official plan some of which I'm creating as I type. (could evolve again.)
Hot Tip: Let me just quickly spoil the new idea before I get into all the details involved in the early end game. Spoiler :
As I said, Mining approaches. Chichen, and mostly Taj, failgold is going to carry me to that milestone. My goal has always been to get the first corporation ASAP. Well, that means, no matter how much cash you have, you can spend it with build research instead of build wealth. This implies that to get Mining Inc several turns sooner, or even just 1 turn sooner, you're going to burn up all your cash reserves--otherwise, you're probably doing something wrong or you just received a huge cash bomb recently.
But then you realize: you're going to be out of cash and you need to spread corps, pay for mining corp expenses and, most importantly, research Assembly Line.
It's been a while since I played a game this late into the tech tree. When did Assembly Line become 27,300
? Sheesh, Even if I somehow could maintain ~2,700 bpt, it will still be 10 turns.This tech is critical. I can't make my Mining hammers hugely profitable without power.
It also couldn't hurt if I could make it thru Medicine too.
Conclusion: Wonder Bread.
I can't abandon this strategy yet. I'll need to re-visit the whip plan (a 3rd? or 4th? time) to include overflows for WBE. I'll need a wonder. IronWorks would be perfect timing, but it doesn't have a resource associated with it. Why doesn't this wonder have double speed with Iron?
That leaves:
- Hermitage. It's a useless wonder, but at least it's only 900 wasted hammers. (aka ~330 base hammers) This is probably my pick. Could be worse, like...
- Notre Dame 1650h. Is this a useless wonder? will +2 happy be needed later?
but wait! there's....
- AnkorWat : if the AI builds it. Difficult timing tho.
Spoiler In the current game: :
should I do Hermitage in parallel? my head hurts.Resource collection
Now it's less urgent that I capture all the AI islands with Mining resources.
Also less urgent that I settle the unclaimed resources.
Gives me time to settle somewhere that needs a mine/fort and road. In general, I intend to settle directly on the resource.
When to give away resources. When to take them back.
My first thought was to use my mining hammers for 2-3 turns so the HQ can put out 3 back to back execs. Expenses are low with only 1-4 cities having mining.
Give away resources on T+2
I was thinking I wouldn't switch to STRIKE until sushi which now seems like at least 20 turns after Mining (unless I come up with a way to make that 15...I'm trying).
But then I thought about how I'd have to go at least til T+12 to get my resources back. By then I'll have 50 corps. I certainly have to start strike the moment I take them back--not wait til sushi.
I feel like I'm wasting the power I could have up until T+12. I'm thinking have to take the risk and start strike as soon as I have enough Mining power to exceed my research rate, or very soon after. Let's estimate when that will be....
Assuming I'm out of spare cash and just need ~300gpt for exec spread.
I can maintain at most 2000 final-bpt while spreading mining. It may be only 1600-1800bpt after all the whipping I have to do. Failgold around T275 would help boost this, but it would be like a one-time injection of about 3000 beakers. Best case, AssemblyLine at T+12. It could take 15 turns just for this--no Medicine. That's not acceptable.
I could probably crank this up to 2500bpt if I do a full empire wide growth halt or even a slow starvedown. Growth can come after sushi.
At T+12, what would my bpt jump to by turning on Mining?
5000 bpt.
2400 from mining alone. 900 from regular hammers and 1700 from scientists. This comes with a complete food/growth shut off.Conclusion: I should have switched a while ago.
In fact, from my estimates, it appears that I can do 2600 final-bpt from the get-go, implying I should strike ASAP. Well, not right now. I think the answer is as soon as I can comfortably generate exec spread gold. Which could be as soon as T+4.
in my 10M score game.Each turn after T+3, mining adds 300bpt. My current thinking is that I should pull the trigger around T+5. That's a long strike. Should I be considering the cost of sacrificial units?
-----------------------------------------
I idea of gifting away my metals is not lost though. I could still benefit from the quechua building. And those first 5 turns of mining spread wouldn't cost so much. T+0 is only 80
, but on T+4, I have 13 corps already and they'd cost me 1,000 gpt with no Free Market and no courthouses.I was about to build my last knight in about 3 turns anyway, so the metal gift fits with that. Maybe time then for one additional knight.
I also don't necessarily have to wait 10 turns to get my metals back. I just have to DoW the AI that are holding them. Not sure I want to be at war with the whole world tho. It takes a while for them to want to talk if you don't get any war success.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Today, my thoughts turn back to the reason I had once decided to wait and start strike after about 15 turns of mining. I'm currently considering ~5 turns.
I'm stressed about creating the corp spread gold. Stealing every turn would take a lot more spies than I have. My explorer idea doesn't work well until I have factories/power. And even then, it works best if the city wasn't whipped down 6 pop, but slow building fact/power would take 8 turns in the capital.
I may have come full circle and I'm back to gifting away resources after mining is founded. At least until I find a way to reliably generate gold during early strike.
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Imploding
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2015
- Messages
- 220
Really nice thinking there! I Love the "what is truly the goal in this time-period/with this tech approach". Great solutions comes with hat mindset.. because you don't have to rely on "traditional" approaches.. Kudos! Your solution also gives a really nice way to cut mining cost spread to a bear minimum! 
One thing tho.. How will less cities from not capturing every resource affect teching? Do you have a metric.. for min-maxing your situation? Or do you just make decisions on the fly.. when a opportunity presents itself?
One thing tho.. How will less cities from not capturing every resource affect teching? Do you have a metric.. for min-maxing your situation? Or do you just make decisions on the fly.. when a opportunity presents itself?
Quite a bit is on the fly lately.
For capturing cities, I'm still going all out to capture the entire map ASAP. It's just that I don't need to focus on the little Iron Islands, etc. Those cities aren't going to give as much capture gold anyway. And for some of them, they need to grow to size 2 or else they'll auto-raze. Most of those islands also won't get mining inc for 20+ turns after it's founded, if ever. They'll probably end up being vassals.
You probably discarded it long ago with good reason, but I still wonder about a small detour to communism. It gives you the Kremlin which is great for wonder bread and extremely useful for exec/levee/factory/plant whipping. The Gspy is a bonus that I'm sure you'll put to good use. Can't you do something like steam, steel, lib RR, then go communism and be in state property while you do econ/constitution/corp, that should save you temporarily a lot of cash on maintenance, paying (at least partly) for the detour. A temporary boost on your workshops might not be that bad either.
That's sounds good the way you say it, and that's what I used to do, but it's a 15,000 beaker detour.
- I'm pretty sure I don't want the detour before Mining Inc. Especially if I'm that close. I'm bulbing most Econ and Corp so we're talking about 5 turns for those 3 techs.
- I can't even build execs in SP, so there's no way to use it during the rush to AssemblyLine
fyi, at T258, my distance maint. is 445
I maybe could have tried Communism much earlier for super early Kremlin (that's for another game)
- running state prop means I lose the +1 specialist. My GP plan was pretty tight, so I'd find it hard to switch out of Merc.
- I suppose with an early Kremlin, I'd just skip Banking/Merc and plan the GP farms without that booster.
- I guess the real problem with early Kremlin is you'd probably Lib->Communism (and not Railroad) because Lib is a prerequisite. So you actually need to make up the extra 24,000 beakers for Railroad, not the 15,000 for Comm.
- distance maintenance savings in StateProp, the extra food for workshops, 10% hammers seems like it wouldn't come close to making up for 15,000
- Then there's the cost of Kremlin and what city could possibly build it in just a couple turns. I'd have to mow down all the forests in one of my big lumbermill cities that I'm currently saving for a final space part.
Exploring the early Kremlin idea for future games.
Best case, bulb Edu and then research Liberalism->Comm ~T230. Kremlin built in time for the 1st slavery window. Maybe with laser focus on this I could get it T220, but let's go with T230. (Distance maint is -250 at this moment)
Now I'm 24,000 beakers behind (to manually research Railroad), so I need to make that up in 40 turns.
I'd run StateProp for 40 turns. (must turn it off T270 for Mining Inc)
At an average of -400 distance maint, I'd save 16,000 over those 40 turns. That's a good start.
+10% hammers is fairly negligible, and the effect on whip calculations makes my head hurt. 1 pop is 99 instead of 90. 121 with forge.
Let's say, on average +40hpt -- empire wide. So let's call it 1,600 over 40 turns.
All that gold savings translates into beakers at a rate of about 1:1.25, right? (the 20% prereq bonus and some libraries)
That's 22,000
In some games, I could get free Banking from the AI. Mansa loves to get it and he's researching it now (far too late for me this game)
But you could consider this a savings of 3,800.
Idea: I could even skip Feudal, Machinery? and Guilds if I didn't love Knights so much. Maybe if I conquer faster (catch everyone pre-longbow) and somehow manage to conquer with Trebs and Horse Archers.
Then there's the value the Kremlin provides for 40 turns and the value of owning it for beyond that. This is potentially huge. I don't feel like putting a number on it.
Yea, it's probably a good strategy. You'd want to make extra effort to whip more with Kremlin. The real painful part for me is no Merc, but maybe I just need to grow my GP farms bigger, sooner and make up for that. You do get to keep foreign TRs and most of the big AI are alive T230-250. Not so much after T250
Thanks nocho, if I ever finish this and ever play space again, I might do this plan.
P.S. then you have to ask yourself: Stay in SP and skip Corps all together? Some other time.
P.P.S. I do have that abandoned 'StoneStart' game.
Best case, bulb Edu and then research Liberalism->Comm ~T230. Kremlin built in time for the 1st slavery window. Maybe with laser focus on this I could get it T220, but let's go with T230. (Distance maint is -250
at this moment)Now I'm 24,000 beakers behind (to manually research Railroad), so I need to make that up in 40 turns.
I'd run StateProp for 40 turns. (must turn it off T270 for Mining Inc)
At an average of -400 distance maint, I'd save 16,000
over those 40 turns. That's a good start.+10% hammers is fairly negligible, and the effect on whip calculations makes my head hurt. 1 pop is 99 instead of 90. 121 with forge.
Let's say, on average +40hpt -- empire wide. So let's call it 1,600
over 40 turns.All that gold savings translates into beakers at a rate of about 1:1.25, right? (the 20% prereq bonus and some libraries)
That's 22,000
In some games, I could get free Banking from the AI. Mansa loves to get it and he's researching it now (far too late for me this game)
But you could consider this a savings of 3,800
.Idea: I could even skip Feudal, Machinery? and Guilds if I didn't love Knights so much. Maybe if I conquer faster (catch everyone pre-longbow) and somehow manage to conquer with Trebs and Horse Archers.
Then there's the value the Kremlin provides for 40 turns and the value of owning it for beyond that. This is potentially huge. I don't feel like putting a number on it.
Yea, it's probably a good strategy. You'd want to make extra effort to whip more with Kremlin. The real painful part for me is no Merc, but maybe I just need to grow my GP farms bigger, sooner and make up for that. You do get to keep foreign TRs and most of the big AI are alive T230-250. Not so much after T250
Thanks nocho, if I ever finish this and ever play space again, I might do this plan.
P.S. then you have to ask yourself: Stay in SP and skip Corps all together? Some other time.
P.P.S. I do have that abandoned 'StoneStart' game.
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I added quite a bit of brainstorming to my End Game post above. Possibly not gifting metals after all. Possibly starting STRIKE early. Like ~T275. Up to 75 turns of strike? Oh boy.
You seem to forget the extra food from running state property.
Also you would not wait for 40 turns to build the kremlin. How much hammer does it give for whips 45 base? That would be 182 hammers a pop for whips with forge. I think 280 hpt is a better number to use.
Also you would not wait for 40 turns to build the kremlin. How much hammer does it give for whips 45 base? That would be 182 hammers a pop for whips with forge. I think 280 hpt is a better number to use.
Thanks to you WastinTime for your detailed response and your mind-boggling game!
Btw, I also asked as you seemed to imply your AL date was more crucial than the exact Mining date, which obviously would get postponed a bit. I figured maybe with wonder bread cash from Kremlin and added whip power you might get your empire powered up sooner (with levees, factories etc in place), even with the detour, but surely you're right that in that case it'd be better to go communism much sooner to leverage it more fully.
My current thinking is that AL is a big boost, but nothing is more important than Mining Inc date. Even if you've turned off mining by giving away resources, the powerful part about it is the earlier corp spread. Getting the first 50 mainland corps. Every turn delay is 5 less corps.
I always assumed that mining was the thing that would get AL even faster.
I could revisit my obsession with the mining Inc date. Maybe AL is a better target.
Or, more precisely Power is the target--meaning you need a way to build 1200h worth of buildings in each city. Kremlin makes a 750h factory more whippable.
4 pop for factory, 2 pop for power would take only 4 turns. But do I want to lose 6 pop per city at this time of no growth?
it's 6 pop and 3 pop without Kremlin. Most cities can't do a 6 pop whip, so I'd have to slow-build the factory some.
If I leave my obsession with mining as-is...
At T+12, I said I could be doing 5,000 bpt in strike. That means doing Communism immediately after mining (15,000
) only delays AL by just 3 turns.more thinking needed.
Crazy though, but just throwing this out there: How much money could you make in a single turn, setting all cities to wealth, specialists to merchants, whip overflows, espionage and so on? Could you end the strike for a single turn, to then go back right into strike the next turn. As I understand it, this enormously reduces the number of disbanded units. It does cost a turn of research, but if this trick allows you to enter strike mode a turn earlier, it could work out.
civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
I just found this thread so sorry for lateness if this has been covered. But what about overflow gold doesn't work without buffy? I guess I don't know what overflow gold is.
I didn't know this either cus I've always played HoF, but someone explained that if you whip and would put 100h into a 30h warrior, you only get 30h overflow and not the 40
too.
The disbanded units per turn counter does not reset to zero, so you'd only pause the bloodbath, not significantly reduce losses.
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