Nobles' Club 246: Isabella of Spain

[ZPV]

@Pangaea

Spoiler :

Looking at your screenshot - 4500bpt seems low for a game where you have 48 cities.
But I notice that most of the cities you can see are around size 10 or so.

That's kind of the problem with the corporations route - Cereal Mills starting now is probably too late to matter because you'll be at the end of the game before your cities are up to size; IMHO the food corp needs to come first (i.e. before Assembly Line or Railroad) if you're trying to outrace State Property in ideal circumstances, but that requires a really strong pre-Industrial economy (say 2000+bpt).

There are two other circumstances I'd recommend corporations, for other reasons:
1) If your empire is small (Say 25 cities + vassals instead of 35) then State Property tends to fizzle out a bit in the Modern Era and the extra boost from Mining Inc is welcome.
2) If the AIs are actually still in the game, and you might need to insert 100 tanks into your build queues, then that is easier to do in a Mining Inc game than State Property.

Also FYI:
The queued up techs add up to 34 turns or so - although that's probably more like 28 when you add in the 20% bonus, but will stretch a little due to building space parts and non-GA turns in the middle.
So maybe you can aim for 4 or 5 turns' gap in golden age (or less if you can tell that your science is really going to be higher than this).
Having a target date should also tell you whether science multipliers you haven't built yet will pay off before launch, on a city by city basis.

 

[Pangaea]

Thank you @ZPV

Spoiler :

Those seem like fair comments, and you may well be right that Cereal comes a little late to really matter (it's only +12 food after all, and was +10 until recently when Victoria died her cities came out of resistance). Just closed down the game now because I'm at the last turn of the GA, and need to think things over when I'm less tired. Doubt it's enough for all techs, but I do have a slight hope for a 5GP one too, but we need the right great person each time (plus the free GE from Fusion). Only one city has a totally clean pool, so there are no guarantees. But I kinda want to gamble instead of a gap between golden ages for ~5 turns and see the research plummet.

This happens to be a Lakes map, so Sid's Sushi isn't an option. Cereal comes kinda late and isn't all that powerful really, but it's the best I got. I tend to prefer to go Mining Inc first, but it may not be the best option. You seem to think otherwise at least, and @WastinTime too from what I recall. It's just that I've had horrible problems in the past to keep the economy somewhat afloat when going Sid's Sushi first, The advantage with Mining Inc first is that building Wealth is a lot more powerful, so it's usually pretty easy to keep teching at 100%. I should probably try out a Sushi first game again, though. One that isn't on Big & Small, because Sushi there is nuts (and the map and micro 1000 times "worse" than normal maps). Maybe I'm able to handle it better now, despite not resorting to stuff like strike economy and things like that (feels too cheesy in my mind, although there are ofc downsides too).

For Cereal Mills, would you still do that first, instead of Mining Inc? It felt kinda wrong to me to go that deep in the tech tree and bypass Railroads (plus I needed Steel for killing two more AIs, so it's just one more tech).

Generally the game has gone well, and think the finish date will be decent, although way behind the incredible games by @Anysense. But two things did not go well, and they're kinda big:
1) Elizabeth and then another AI went for a very early Lib. I had to abort the trip down Chemistry et al and take only Nationalism. Disappointing, because I was hoping for Steel or Biology.
2) Elizabeth then gets a lucky (or unlucky for me) GE, and pops Taj Mahal. I gifted her Divine Right and crossed my fingers, but it wasn't to be. In hindsight, I miscalculated and tried to chop it out in a city that simply wasn't ready early enough. Not enough forests (but the most on the map) and it couldn't handle the rest of the hammers. Should have tried to build in the capital instead. May have made it then (or maybe the capital was busy with Oxford or something, which is why I looked elsewhere)

Do you (or anybody else) know if there are any solid fairly direct comparisons between State Property and Corporations, or between going Mining or Sushi/Cereal first?

If I get another space game going, I may try out food first, especially if it happens to be a more fitting map for Sushi, or SP. Being on epic speed, though, I think corporations are relatively strong compared with SP. It has been a struggle to not crash the economy, but perhaps I ought to take another stab at it.

 

[ZPV]

@Pangaea

Spoiler :

Hey! Your date is a good one!

Just to play devil's advocate, how much of a research drop would losing golden age actually be? 1000-1500 bpt for 5 turns?
You can make that up easily with a couple of lightbulbs if you can get high% GSes.

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Sushi or Cereal first? Yes, it's really hard to pay for - but what I'm saying is that if you can't afford to pay for it while still keeping the research up (which is an awful lot of games) then State Property + Biology is probably the better way to grow your cities.
I also don't think the ridiculous levels of Sushi are necessary - you just want it small and early so that your cities are growing quickly towards size 15-20 (depending on happiness etc) instead of size 10.

Corps make the basic hammer economy idea more complicated. In SP, grass workshops are set-and-forget since they're food neutral whereas food gets a lot more precious without it.

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The test for Mining Inc is that it has to more than pay for its maintenance cost. It also has to pay back courthouses, executives, spread costs, 6 banks, Wall St and researching the useless tech Railroad early. That just doesn't come out ahead until you have factories and probably power.

Cereal Mills is a long way away, so in your position where you already have Steel, I might end up on some sort of weird compromise tech path, like Biology->AL->Railroad->Physics/Electricity/Refrigeration->Superconductors. I wish I had the guts to go all the way to Refrigeration first (which requires that the empire can research without AL - probably working all the wind and watermills, plus scientists and villages etc), but I probably don't.

I don't think I've seen a through analysis of what circumstances make which route better - but in theory corps put more pressure on your economy in the industrial age, in exchange for hopefully less pressure in the future era. My feeling is that usually the industrial age is the one that can't take the extra pressure - there are already loads of useful techs and buildings you want all at once even without adding Railroad and Medicine/Refrigeration and all the executives and courthouses.

 

[Pangaea]

Hey! Your date is a good one!

Spoiler :

Haha, thanks. Been hoping for a maybe T290 launch, but that probably won't work out.

Spoiler :

Doing almost 7000 now (a few cities have blank queues right now), but there are 10 more techs (plus free Medicine). If I launch the GA right now, which I may well do, but don't get the right GPs for a new one, we may end up short. Doubt I can do 10 more techs in only 15-16 turns, as some of them are very expensive (15-18k). Currently both the capital and Ironworks city are building wonders, but research will likely still go down when more cities get out labs and then space parts, despite growth elsewhere.

Currently Mining Inc is +35 so I'm pleased about that, but Cereal at +12 is helpful, but not great. Mining is good for the space parts, though, due to high base hammers almost everywhere. Only a few cities over 100 base hammers in fairness, but a bunch in the 70-90 region. Overlap/desert/lakes means there aren't many super-power cities, but I can probably change some cities around for space parts later (swap tiles between cities, and build more farms>workshops). Hard to get many SP cities to over 100 base hammers too, though.

More generally and for the future, I'd like to try out a food first corps game, but I do know it is very hard to pay for it without the benefit of 30-40 hammers from Mining Inc, and it being much easier to get out execs without too much cold-whipping. Getting out factories+power in decent time is also fairly easy with Mining first, even without much whipping (but then this is Germany, with UB factory that builds even faster than normal). Benefit with food first is that cities grow large earlier (but you also need to whip more, and probably can't go back to caste early-ish like I did here). Hard to pay for, but once the cities are large with a billion Rep specialists, research will bomb up. In this game I've ran at 100% science since the turn Oxford was done (the turn before actually, because I had to race to Lib).

These games take a TON of time (at least for me and my slow habits), but are a lot of fun too. Typically the biggest danger is the domination limit, and I'll likely have to gift away at least one city here. Nice to actually experience the end of the tech tree, though, and to have a different goal than just killing everything in sight.

In this game it felt natural to go for Mining first (interesting and untraditional tech path you suggested btw), but I always find it hard to decide on this, and whether it's better to go Sushi first. Or SP for that matter. SP is much easier micro-wise, and you make a good point about banks and wall street too. Don't need that in a SP game at all. ORG helps a lot for courthouses in this game, and you need some of those in SP too, but once you get to Communism there is no need any more. Certainly has a lot going for it, though I do still think that corporations is stronger than SP on the slower game speeds. On normal speed it is much closer, and pretty hard to tell.

 

[Pangaea]

Just to play devil's advocate, how much of a research drop would losing golden age actually be? 1000-1500 bpt for 5 turns?
You can make that up easily with a couple of lightbulbs if you can get high% GSes.

Hit next turn to see what it would actually be. Lost about 500 , but in reality it's more like 800 per turn due to a couple of cities going directly onto Research that turn from other builds. A bulb would be about ~5200 (less than one turn of research). But I only have 1 GS and won't get another one for a long time. Would also need him for the GA since right now I only have one extra GP, which is a duplicate GSpy (bad luck).

There is definitely a chance I won't get the right people for a 5GP GA, but how much would it really hurt to lack a GA for the last turns of spacepart building? Probably a lot in fairness, but a bunch of hammers also comes from Mining. Anyway, I still hold out hope for:
* GMerchant (95% chance, may drop a little because the NE city must come last)
* GArtist (82% chance, but should rise to 85-90% by the time it hopefully comes out)
* GScientist (100% chance from National Park city)
Then plop them off with the Fusion GE and the extra GSpy. Would last way after launch if successful, but I kinda want to try. Otherwise I'd have a bunch of GPeople I can't really use, and settling them this late sucks.

Will see if I can prepare overflows in the production cities, especially for the Genetics and Ecology parts. Those are usually the toughest. Once Redento is up, I can go into Slavery for one turn and Kremlin-whip. How do those whips work now again? Is it 45 * 50% for Kremlin -> then the other multipliers on top of that? Or is everything additive?

 

[Pangaea]

Kremlin gives you a base whip of 45H per pop.

(Reduced cost of whipping ; not a multiplier.)

Thanks. So in this case on epic speed, a base of 67 hammers (67.5 rounded down). Then toss in all the other multipliers so a single pop could be 201 (100% on hammers, plus 100% for space part resource).

This Kremlin thing always confuses me, because sometimes it works differently than you expect. I've seen cases where something that should be 2-pops become 1 without overflow for some reason.

 

[Pangaea]

Calling on @Fish Man and @ZPV. Writing a small update here since we've had a little back and forth.

Spoiler :

Been wracking my brain trying to squeeze out one more turn at the end, but don't think I can. The timing isn't good enough, and even with building Research/Wealth everywhere (except the capital which needs all its turn on the second engine), I can't get out Composites in 1 turn. Was fun to get Fusion in one turn though. Some of the composites cities need 4 turns, despite some pretty good OF. May be possible to get out Genetics in one turn due to overflow, but not a sure thing. Ecology should be in one turn though. Relatively cheap, and +40% from multipliers.

Spoiler :

Can squeeze out Docking Bay in 4 turns here, by an absolute hair by workshopping the sheep+spice and everything else marked up - just in case I need research that last turn. Probably pointless really, given the other timing is off, but kinda want to just because I can and have prepped all those tiles.

Life support can be chopped+OF-ed out in 1 turn in two cities, so that should be fine. Stasis as usual is the colossal headache, but I should be able to get it out in 3 turns. Would therefore be great to be able to one-turn Genetics after, but we'll see. May not be possible because more cities will be buildings parts (-> lower research). The whole thing also depends on getting the right GPs over the next few turns to prolong the Golden Age, because this won't be quite enough. Life support may be fine without the GA-hammers, but probably not Stasis. That thing is crazy expensive, and without bonuses. Not quite as bad as the engines, but not far off, and relatively worse really, since you have less time and most likely the two best cities, the capital + Ironworks, are busy with the engines.

All in all, it therefore looks like it should be possible to be done with all the techings and parts in T291, and launch in T292.Or at least T293 if I mess something up.

Broke 10,000 when we were only building the engines, but now it's down to 8,200 . Shows the power of Mining and corporations really, and this is without the often über-powerful Sushi with tons of 20+ size cities as a result. Should be a pretty good date nevertheless, despite lacking Taj and only Nationalism from Lib.