RB25 - The Golden Five

[Strauss]

so what happened to the lost 4 turns?

Nothing. They weren't worth describing.

 

[Sullla]

So we DIDN'T adopt Emanicipation (double cottage growth!) but we DID adopt Universal Suffrage, losing our Representation science boost in the process?

Ummm....

Anyway, I've "got it." Seeing as how I have a Saturday morning free to play right now, expect the results to come back quickly.

 

[Strauss]

So we DIDN'T adopt Emanicipation (double cottage growth!) but we DID adopt Universal Suffrage, losing our Representation science boost in the process?

Ummm....

Well, even with all our specialists, this would only give us a boost of about 20 beakers. And this will be less when we will have to fire specialists to allow Straussburg to generate Great Prophets.

Re Emancipation, I may have brushed that one aside a little too quickly

 

[Gusto]

My IMO.

Caesar asks us for Nationalism. I refuse. I don’t know whether I’ve done good or bad, but we don’t have much to gain or fear from Julius anyway.

I would have given Caesar the tribute. Nationalism is an expensive tech however it's devalued since we built the Taj Mahal. A Nationalism tribute would have further improved relations with Caesar (+1 tribute bonus). We’re playing a peaceful builders game until we trigger our five GA so relations should be nurtured, afterward it’s whatever we want.

Caesar makes another demand, this time to stop trading with Mali. I refuse again and he becomes annoyed.

I would have canceled the deals. We can easily absorb a -1 relations penalty with Mansa and the deals can easily be renegotiated. I would say the big picture is to improve relations with the AIs until it’s time for . Us improving relations keeps the AIs in our favor until we decide to change relations. Actually there is something to gain and to loss. It's us dictating the tempo of the game.

I have hired two Priest specialists in Straussburg to start towards the two Great Prophets that we still need. We will need to fire most of our specialists in other cities, especially Cornelia and Venice, to prevent them swallowing up GPP.

I say fire the two priests in Straussburg and hire three priests in Cornelia. Straussburg is not a GP Farm and shouldn’t be treated as one. Cornelia is our Wonder City/GP Farm and we should work Cornelia to support our needs. Anyway Venice is lagging behind Cornelia in popping GP and Venice produces better GPPs than Straussburg.

 

[Sullla]

Umm - do NOT cancel deals with Mansa under any circumstances, Gusto. We're getting 4 different resources from him and a GIGANTIC amount of Malinese trade route income. I probably would have given Caesar Nationalism, but under no circumstances would I have stabbed our Malinese friend in favor of a dubious overseas civ. And we certainly should not fire the Priests at Straussburg; the big advantage of that city is that it's a pure Prophet pool. We have no clue what's going to pop out of Cornelia next. Post-Biology, we will easily be able to support 6 or 7 Priests at Straussburg for rapid Great Person production. Anyway, here's the turn report.

(0) 1600AD Alright, as far as our civics choices go, I definitely agree with T-Hawk that we should be in Emancipation. Faster cottage growth is a HUGE deal, and our cities are all so large now that we're NOT going to be whipping them any more. As far as Representation vs. Universal Suffrage, that's more of a tossup. However, since I DON'T see us rushing very much stuff with cash at the moment, and I DO see us running a lot of specialists, I think that Representation would still be the better choice for us right now. (Don't forget either - Statue of Liberty + Representation = good.) We would also get more science from adopting Free Speech, but I'll hold off on that because Cornelia can use the Bureaucracy boost while constructing Statue of Liberty. Can't swap civics for 3 more turns, so I'll come back to this later.

Cornelia has two grassland towns going unworked so it can run a Engineer and Priest specialist. I agree that we can use more Great Person points of those types, but... no, it's just too inefficient for my taste! I can't do it! They get fired and set to working the towns. Food surplus goes from +3 to +7, Cornelia will grow two population sizes on my turn and THEN can go back to running the specialists. Ditto at Venice; wave bye bye to the Merchants until we hit the happy cap there (which will happen very soon at +8 food/turn!) Why is there an Engineer specialist in Tuscany when we can work a grassland hill instead? This city is never going to produce a Great Person! I also cancel the pikeman build (?) in favor of a theatre, which will increase the happy cap. We're about to discover Rifling tech, so I don't see much sense in training more medieval units right now... Straussburg WILL produce a Great Prophet eventually, but it's going to take about 50 more turns to do so. Don't stay up late waiting on that one. Finally, at Lillehammer I definitely merge the Great Artist as per T-Hawk's suggestion:

That's the best payoff longterm for culture, plus we get 3 gold/turn, plus science too if we go the Representation route! I also plan to cut down the forests you see in the city's radius for cottages; this is a PURE commerce city. We can always cash-rush needed infrastructure with Universal Suffrage if need be - and Lillehammer will have decent production with the town shield boost too, should we decide to go the UniSuffrage route.

I would also like to get some Hindu missionaries going to Caesar too - except we have no caravels! Guess what Straussburg is going to build next?

(1) 1605AD Lillehammer's borders expand, Caesar builds the Confucian shrine. I discover we DO have a caravel, only it's down exploring the south pole. Oops. I'll get some more use out of that unit before the turn is done. Otherwise, a pretty quiet turn.

(2) 1610AD Tuscany finishes its theatre, goes back to work on Hindu missionaries for the "convert a Roman" campaign.

(3) 1615AD Replaceable Parts -> Astronomy. Yes, it will obsolete our Colossus, but we'll need to go there anyway and I think we should get started on observatories. Military Tradition and Theology both won't do much good, and we can trade for both Gunpowder and Corporation with Mansa. Revolt to Emancipation/Representation as mentioned earlier. (We'll want to go to UniSuffrage permanently at some point, but I feel the time is not right yet. Let's grow some more cottages grown into towns first!)

(4) 1620AD

(5) 1625AD Build a Hindu missionary in Tuscany, queue another. These be quiet turns.

(6) 1630AD More miscellaneous movement. I decided to end our barb problems, so I have instituted Barb Patrol (TM) in the north:

We won't have any more issues up there.

 

[Sullla]

(7) 1635AD Mansa demands Democracy:

We're at +15 relations with him, and this is an important monopoly tech. NO. Go cry about it to your money, dude. Straussburg is out of useful things to build right now, so I stick it on a barracks (never know when that might come in handy). We'll have Astronomy in a couple more turns, and then there will be something else good to work on.

(8) 1640AD Mansa wants to exchange world maps. Umm, ok. Lillehammer completes Hermitage:

We'll have complete cultural control there in no time.

(9) 1645AD We get our expected Great Merchant in Venice:

Now we just need one more Prophet and one more Engineer to complete the set (or two more Prophets). Obviously I'm not going to trigger any golden ages until we see what shows up next!

(10) 1650AD Astronomy researched, Scientific Method tentatively selected as the next tech. (This is subject to discussion and change.) Missionary at Cumae finds a rather large garrison:

Conversion is successful! I guess they were tired of hearing about the endless moral platitudes of Confucianism and wanted to party with our crazy Hindu gods instead. There's another missionary heading on a caravel to the eastern side of Roman island, and a third missionary en route to the western caravel. I have the western missionary and caravel set up on a goto order which will synch them to arrive on the coast at the same time for an easy pickup. You can cancel these orders if you want, but I'd suggest just leaving it alone.

Astronomy opened up trade with Caesar, so I sent him cows for wine. I also sent him clams for 6gpt just to improve relations; feel free to cancel that deal if need dictates. Caesar doesn't like us mutch, but hopefully we can keep him at Cautious instead of Annoyed. (He's Annoyed right now, but the resource supply bonus will turn him around in time. Also, his favorite civic is Representation, which we're running!)

I decided to keep the two remaining forests at Lillehammer for lumbermills. That will still leave us with 9-10 cottages eventually, which should be more than enough for whatever purpose we have in mind. Straussburg is going to need some more irrigation eventually to work additional Priest specialists; I'd suggest cutting the two plains forests on the east side of the river and replacing them with farms. (We may be able to get away with just chopping one of them post-Biology, so play it by ear.) Venice has grown up to a very nice size 19, so feel free to assign some of its population as specialists as appropriate (it was only size 16 on the start of my turn, and growing it was one of my goals). Cornelia is suffering on health, but that will improve once it gets its grocer built down the road. We're going to need to do some reconfiguring there once Statue of Liberty gets built! (As soon as we have the Statue, it will be time to swap to Free Speech permanently.)

 

[Sullla]

So here's what our neck of the woods looks like:

Sullla
mucco <<< UP NOW
T-Hawk <<< on deck
Gusto
Strauss

Have fun on the next turns.

 

[mucco]

Got It

Better to trade Democracy or Astronomy to Mansa for gunpowder? I guess democracy, but it never hurts to ask.

 

[mucco]

(0) What can I say? Everything looks good to me. Playing after Sullla surely is a good thing .

(1) The turn doesn't start well:

Even though he's cautious... probably he decided to stop the deal when he was still annoyed, in the IT. Nothing bad, he'll be more than happy to renew the deal in some turns. The only downside is, we cannot bring missionaries into Roman territory anymore. The caravel near the "purple island" is then redirected to northern Mali, where there are a couple junk cities unconverted.

Straussburg on an observatory, the workers go building lumbermills around.

(2) Corn to JC for sheep. He actually wanted the silk, but I guessed health is more important than luxury for the Roman citizens .

(3) Zzz.

(4) Tuscany finishes the missionary, it goes for the observatory too, as we already have three of them around. Venice again on max growth (it put one more specialist when it reached size 20), the cap is at 21, which I want to reach. THEN we'll talk about specialists. It's my city, it must be big and mighty!

(5) Scientific method comes in, and I don't have the democracy/astronomy problem of which I spoke in the post above. Mansa has researched Democracy! Corporation would get me one less trade route, and he'd get the ability to build observatories. Umm, no. Corporation is the next research, 4 turns needed to do that.

Hinduism spreads on its own in Zaragoza (size 2 junk tundra city).

(6) Nothing at all.

(7) And the next Great Person is...
...
...
A scientist Oh well, time for an Academy! Which goes to Venice. Our best science city is Cornelia, but it's so good only thanks to the bureaucracy bonus. Venice has almost the same commerce, so... The trade routes to Mali are really why don't we have more coastal cities!

(8) Venice reached the pop cap, and is converted into specialist city. Workers start to farm over some plains forest in Straussburg.

(9) Corporation comes in, Together with the Oxford university in Venice. All the specialists can be scientists now! Look at the city:

246 bpt. Not bad, huh? We lose one trade route, but gain the ability to build Wall Street. It's a very important National Wonder, in Straussburg it will produce about 20 coins per turn.

For the research, I beeline biology. This requires gunpowder and chemistry first, which can be completed in 6 turns.

(10) Straussburg completes another missionary. Two of them spread the religion in northern Mali (one had failed before), Now only JC is missing. T-hawk, the logistic path set up by Sullla made the missionaries walk through Mali to get their caravel in Walata (SW Mali), now there should be time to bring the two caravels to the other side of the ocean, making the route (hopefully) shorter. Also upgrading the navy to galleons could be an idea.

Missionaries taking the ferry at the gems south of Cornelia would have a really short trip.

The SoL is due in 4, I don't think Mansa can steal it. Your city, lillehammer, is on an acqueduct to raise the health, but a temple is nice for the culture, too.

GP situation: now Venice is producing almost as many GPP as Cornelia, and if we keep the current setting, another scientist is a sure thing, and I don't know if we want this...

Oh, send some workers to connect the corn north of Corn-elia, when they have some free time

Welcome to the 18th century!

 

[Kodii]

GP situation: now Venice is producing almost as many GPP as Venice

Its good to know that a city is producing as many GPP as itself

 

[mucco]

Whoops! Fixed.

 

[Gusto]

Umm - do NOT cancel deals with Mansa under any circumstances, Gusto. We're getting 4 different resources from him and a GIGANTIC amount of Malinese trade route income.

First these are our active trades from Strauss saved.

I canceled all active trades and renegotiated these trades with Mansa.

I did this to simulate what would happened if Caeser's demand was accepted. We lost out on Pigs and 7 GPT. It&#8217;s not a catastrophic lost in keeping Cautious relations with Caesar and absorbing a -1 penalty with Mansa. Our relations with Mansa will still be Friendly at +13. Losing Pigs and 7 GPT is the price of maintaining the status quo in Diplomacy and the -1 health would not have affected our cities.

I probably would have given Caesar Nationalism, but under no circumstances would I have stabbed our Malinese friend in favor of a dubious overseas civ.

We're going to stab Mansa in the back when we go for our conquest victory. We already stabbed a pleased religious brother, Cyrus, in the back to get his territory. It's not like we're playing by honorable rules. Actually I have no favoritism for any of the AIs because they all are future enemies in a conquest victory. I simply prefer to keep Caesar at Cautious or better relations until it's time to take the hammer to him.

And we certainly should not fire the Priests at Straussburg; the big advantage of that city is that it's a pure Prophet pool. We have no clue what's going to pop out of Cornelia next. Post-Biology, we will easily be able to support 6 or 7 Priests at Straussburg for rapid Great Person production.

I appreciate the fact that Straussburg is a pure GProphet pool. Perhaps I should illustrate an example on using Cornelia. Please bear with me. Cornelia is currently producing 94 GPP/Turn. We can currently hire 3 priests in Cornelia. We build the Jewish Temple in Cornelia (takes 3 turns) to hire a fourth priest. 4 priests add 56 GPP/Turn to Cornelia total GPeople pool for a total of 148 GPP/Turn. GProphet probability is 64% (or just say two/thirds probability to pop a GProphet). Next let&#8217;s look at the next 3 GPeople to pop: next is 1600 GPP, later is 1800 GPP, and last is 2000 GPP. It&#8217;s a total of 5400 GPP. Subtracting 3 turns from 50 turns to build the Jewish Temple, Cornelia will produce a total of 6956 GPP over the next 47 turns. Well greater than the required 5400 GPP to produce the next three GPeople. At two/thirds odds, we&#8217;ll pop at least one GProphet if the next three GPeople come from Cornelia. We'll pop a GProphet so much sooner in Cornelia than we'll ever see one pop in Straussburg especially if we're going to wait until post-Biology to pop the GProphet in Straussburg. The great thing is we can apply this technique in Cornelia now. Just permanently hire the 4 priests in Cornelia until it pops a GProphet. One last thing, the current GPP is 344/1600 so we can still manipulate it by hiring 3 priests now and than hire the fourth priest after the Jewish Temple is built. MM will determine if we can hire 4 priests in Cornelia as developed or if one or two cottages will need to be bulldozed for a farm to hire the fourth priest.

 

[T-hawk]

Got it, will play soon. Saturdays make for fast SG turnarounds.

We still need one Prophet plus one either Prophet or Engineer. Why not just push _both_ Straussburg and Cornelia? Hire max engineers and priests in Cornelia. If Cornelia gets lucky twice and completes our requirements, great. If it gets lucky only once with a P or E, then Straussburg will reliably provide the last Prophet.

By the way, Straussburg needs food; unless anyone strenously objects, I'll farm over its two grassland forests. It's not a shield powerhouse city (no Heroic Epic or Iron Works) and it's got plenty of health. Also BTW, Cornelia is over the health cap so should not be growing. If we added a laborer to Cornelia right now, all he would do is work a farmed grassland to support himself (he costs 3 food to support with the health penalty) and provide NOTHING productive. In fact, his productivity would be negative since the larger city size means fractionally more civic upkeep.

Juicy as the scientists in Venice are, I think we need to turn them off for now, so it doesn't raise the GP bar higher than Straussburg can keep up.

What's our research plan after Gunpowder? Chemistry - Steel to get the Iron Works up and go towards railroads?

 

[mucco]

I appreciate the fact that Straussburg is a pure GProphet pool. Perhaps I should illustrate an example using Cornelia. Please bear with me. Cornelia is currently producing 94 GPP/Turn. We can currently hire 3 priests in Cornelia. We build the Jewish Temple in Cornelia (takes 3 turns) to hire a fourth priest. 4 priests add 56 GPP/Turn to Cornelia total GPeople pool for a total of 148 GPP/Turn. GProphet probability is 64% (or just say two/thirds probability to pop a GProphet). Next let&#8217;s look at the next 3 GPeople to pop: next is 1600 GPP, later is 1800 GPP, and last is 2000 GPP. It&#8217;s a total of 5400 GPP. Subtracting 3 turns from 50 turns to build the Jewish Temple, Cornelia will produce a total of 6956 GPP over the next 47 turns. Well greater than the required 5400 GPP to produce the next three GPeople. At two/thirds odds, we&#8217;ll pop at least one GProphet if the next three GPeople come from Cornelia. Cornelia GProphet is much sooner than any GProphet we&#8217;ll see from Straussburg. The great news about this technique is we don&#8217;t have to wait until post-Biology to get our GProphet as long as we permanently hire 4 priests in Cornelia to pop a GProphet. One last thing, the current GPP is 344/1600 so we can still manipulate it by hiring 3 priests now and than hire the fourth priest after the Jewish Temple is built. MM will determine if we can hire 4 priests as Cornelia is developed or if one or two cottages will need to be bulldozed for a farm to hire the fourth priest.

Umm, let's see if your idea applies to the game AFTER my turnset.

***WARNING*** If you don't like math, go directly to the bold paragraph

We need three GPs, and precisely two prophets and one engineer. The amount of GPP is 2000+2200+2400=6600 GPP.

Actual Cornelia GPP situation:

308/2000
(roughly)
34 Scientist GPP + 9/turn
68 Engineer GPP + 18/turn
68 Prophet GPP + 18/turn
138 Artist GPP + 36/turn TOTAL=81 GPP/t

In four turns it will be:

632/2000
70 Scientist GPP + 9/turn
140 Engineer GPP + 18/turn
140 Prophet GPP + 18/turn
282 Artist GPP + 36/turn
0 Merchant GPP + 9/turn TOTAL=90 GPP/t

Cornelia can afford only 5 between engineers (1) and priests (4 after temple), if it hires the first four for three turns, the situation will be:

(roughly)
1022/2000
100 Scientist GPP + 10/turn
200 Engineer GPP + 20/turn
290 Prophet GPP + 50/turn
402 Artist GPP + 40/turn
30 Merchant GPP + 10/turn TOTAL=130 GPP/t

Now one more priest comes into action:

(very roughly)
1022/2000
100 Scientist GPP + 10,28/turn (1/14)
200 Engineer GPP + 20,56/turn (2/14)
290 Prophet GPP + 61,71/turn (6/14)
402 Artist GPP + 41,14/turn (4/14)
30 Merchant GPP + 10,28/turn (1/14) TOTAL=144 GPP/t

At this point, the situation is stable. The next GP will pop out in 7 turns (2030 GPP). In this time, the points of engineer and prophet are, respectively, 344 and 722. The odds are then about 17% and 35%.

The second GP will be produced in 16 turns (30+144*16=2334). The odds will be 14% and 42%. The third one will also pop in 16 turns, with the same odds, for a total of 46 turns.

The odds of us getting two prophets and one engineer, or vice versa, in Cornelia, are 9,8%.

If the results are correct (I hope someone looks at this and tells me any mistakes), we need a pure prophet pool. And possibly a pure engineer pool, too! What was the IW choice again?

Maybe saving some production in Straussburg and putting there the IW would be the best thing to do.

 

[T-hawk]

Pre-turn:

As I mentioned, change Cornelia to no growth, 1 engineer, and 3 priests. I even come off the gems mine to hire a priest. For the variant, the Great People are everything, and little bits of commerce can wait. Statue still due in 4.

Venice fires enough scientists to work all its land tiles. It can keep the rest of the scientists. It's allowed to generate another GSci later; it just needs to make sure not to do that before Straussburg gives us a Prophet. Also now Venice will grow over its happy cap, so it slots in a Jewish Temple before the observatory.

Tuscany's engineer gets fired (yes, this city will never produce a GP) in favor of working a forest.

By the way, Straussburg can hire up to 6 priests thanks to the Hindu shrine, so it really doesn't need any more religious stuff. It will build a Galleon to simplify the missionary shipping, then continue building Hindu Missionaries.

Lillehammer looks good. It should get control of its full 21 pretty soon; it already got one of the squares we were missing on mucco's turn, and the last two are at 53% and 54% Spanish. I agree the city should run an artist until that happens.

BTW, here's a cute little detail:

Mansa picked Madrid as his Forbidden Palace. The city owns six of its fat cross tiles and has exactly one other city closer to it than to Timbuktu.

==========

Between turns, Mansa wants to cancel his Pig + 9gpt for our Ivory. He'll restart it as Pig + 4gpt for our Ivory which is fine by me.

BTW, Mansa has Rifling


1705 AD: Nothing happens. Tuscany observatory -> bank (prepping for Wall Street).

1710 AD: Hrm.

Not sure what to make of that. Rome's city won't ever actually take any tiles from Cornelia, but we have no pressure to flip the city until Cornelia expands to Legendary culture at 50,000.

1715 AD: Nothing happens. Chemistry comes in, research set to Biology -- more food is the best way to help our specialist situation.

And:

Nice. Cornelia starts a Jewish Temple so it can hire one more priest, then the Observatory.

1720 AD: Nothing happens besides rearranging all the Statue specialists. Spain wants us to sell her Banking for 160 gold. I renegotiate to sell our World Map for the 160 gold instead. Free money, since we know Rome and Mansa already have our maps.

1725 AD: This is gettin' embarrassing.

Appropriately enough, we now have FIVE gems!

With a Galleon ferrying missionaries now, I disband our two Galleys. They are military units so count double for unit support under Pacifism.

1730 AD: Nothing happens. Lillehammer aqueduct -> bank.

1735 AD: Our Galleon with missionaries reaches Rome, and then I realize we haven't got Open Borders. Straussburg Hindu Missionary -> Jewish Temple.

1740 AD: Nothing happens.

1745 AD: I notice Madrid is in resistance -- it must have had a Spanish revolt. (If I'd noticed sooner, we could've pillaged a town and pasture that temporarily went into our territory.)

Biology comes in, Steel ordered up but next leader can feel free to change it.

1750 AD: Lots more nothing. A barb archer appeared up north of Straussburg.

I did not do any civics revolting, as I don't think it's worth the turn of anarchy to go from Bureaucracy to Free Speech. When we get done with the Great People, we can double-up on a swap to either Univ Suffrage or some other religious civic.

Keep both Cornelia and Straussburg working max specialists until we finish our Great People needs. City growth is less important in both cities, especially Cornelia which is over the health cap. Cornelia should build a bank after the observatory, to qualify us for Wall Street.

Cornelia has a 53% chance (and rising slightly) of providing us with one of the GP types we need.

Straussburg has a 99% chance of the same. Once the banks finish, I think it's OK to build Wall Street here and take the percent or two of Merchant GP pollution. Just make sure that Straussburg puts out its Prophet before Venice produces another GP to raise the points requirement.

Things look essentially the same as in Sulla's overview shot so no real need for an update.

 

[Gusto]

I realized my 64% probability math was incorrect because I calculated 98 GPP / 148 GPP = 64% probability. It doesn't reflect the probability from 4 priests. Obviously it's a 34% probability or a one in three chance to pop a GProphet. I&#8217;m suggesting we do not hire any other specialists while hiring priests because hiring different specialists in conjunction to hiring priests only dilutes the GProphet probability. The whole idea in effectively using Cornelia is only to hire the same specialists and no other ones. Hiring other ones will only dilute the city&#8217;s GPeople pool and the wonders are already doing a fine job at that. If we want a GProphet than we hire only priests. If we want a GE than we hire only engineers. So on. I hope this point is clear because it&#8217;s the foundation of my technique.

Per T-Hawk reply we only need 2 GPeople: 1 GProphet and either a GProphet or GE.

The max specialists we can hire in Cornelia are 6 priests and 6 engineers. The 6 priests come from Hindu Temple (1), Hindu Mandir (2), Jewish Temple (1), and Jewish Synagogue (2). The 6 engineers come from Forge (1), Factory (2), and Ironworks (3). I&#8217;ve noticed the specialist GPP value is not a clean 14 GPP per specialist. It&#8217;s 14 GPP for the first hired specialist, 13 GPP for the second hired specialist, and cycles so on. Simplified its 27 GPP per every two specialists hired in the same city. So hiring 6 specialists in Cornelia actually equals 81 GPP/Turn and not 84 GPP/Turn. Anyway I see from your saved that Cornelia is producing 67 GPP/Turn. The 67 GPP/Turn only reflects the GPP/Turn from the city wonders and multipliers. I use this factor as my base GPP value. Side note: I see we lost GPP from wonders becoming obsolete.

Yucky Math
67 GPP - Base GPP Factor from all Cornelia wonders and multipliers.
+ 81 GPP - Supplement GPP Factor from hiring 6 specialists and multipliers.
---------
148 GPP - Cornelia Total GPP/Turn

Yucky Probability Math
81 GPP / 148 GPP = 0.54729729&#8230; Equivalent to 55% probability to pop the GPeople we want (or a one in two pops from the city).

Another important fact in using Cornelia is frequency. We need to generate a lot of GPeople out of Cornelia to make this technique work. Obviously we&#8217;re dealing with probability and it doesn&#8217;t guarantee a one in two chance.

Summarization of my Cornelia technique.
1) Build as many wonders as possible in the city to create a base pool of mixed GPeople values.
2) Build as many specialist buildings and wonders in the city to max the number of specialists we can hire
3) Hire the max of a single specialist category, and only that single specialist category, to increase probability of popping the desired GPeople.
4) Support production of wonders and hiring of specialists by focusing on production and food improvements of the city tiles.

You really need to understand all four of these points to understand my perceptive.

Anyway Mucco where did you get your 9% and 8% odds? You buying from too?

[EDIT] Wow! I post another reply and find another turn set report. I guess that means I'm up. Geez I have to read the last few turn set reports to see what happened and where were going? Consider this I have the saved and I'll try to post a turn set report, well, soon.

 

[Sullla]

I canceled all active trades and renegotiated these trades with Mansa.

I did this to simulate what would happened if Caeser's demand was accepted. We lost out on Pigs and 7 GPT. It’s not a catastrophic lost in keeping Cautious relations with Caesar and absorbing a -1 penalty with Mansa. Our relations with Mansa will still be Friendly at +13. Losing Pigs and 7 GPT is the price of maintaining the status quo in Diplomacy and the -1 health would not have affected our cities.

I take it you don't have as much experience with canceling AI deals as I do. When you agree to cancel ongoing deals with an AI civ, they refuse to talk to you for quite some time. I don't know the exact amount, but I believe it's roughly 20 or so turns. So your experiment here frankly isn't the way that things would have played out in practice; it's not as simple as just re-negotiating all our deals over again. If we had agreed to Caesar's request, Mansa would have refused to talk to us PERIOD for roughly 20 or so turn - that means no resources (which we kinda need), no Open Borders, the whole works. I've been burned by this feature before, so please take my word for it that it's NOT in your best interest to blow off "Friendly" civs for a trivial benefit with an "Annoyed" civ!

We're going to stab Mansa in the back when we go for our conquest victory. We already stabbed a pleased religious brother, Cyrus, in the back to get his territory. It's not like we're playing by honorable rules. Actually I have no favoritism for any of the AIs because they all are future enemies in a conquest victory. I simply prefer to keep Caesar at Cautious or better relations until it's time to take the hammer to him.

Who said we were going for Conquest? I threw that out there as one possibility, but we haven't committed to any particular path yet. Sure, maybe we'll decide to head down the pointy stick track, but I wouldn't go assuming that at this point!

 

[mucco]

Anyway Mucco where did you get your 9% and 8% odds? You buying from too?

1st GP: GE 0.17, GP 0.35
2nd GP: GE 0.14, GP 0.42
3rd GP: GE 0.14, GP 0.42

I just calculated all possible combinations... 0.17*0.14*0.42+0.17*0.42*0.17... total 0.098. I guess I should have put the . and not the , the use of those two signs is inverted where I live.

 

[T-hawk]

I&#8217;ve noticed the specialist GPP value is not a clean 14 GPP per specialist. It&#8217;s 14 GPP for the first hired specialist, 13 GPP for the second hired specialist

That's an artifact of the Parthenon which is now expired. It's a plain 12 GPP per specialist in Cornelia and 9 per specialist anywhere else now.

But I think there's way too many numbers on this page, and I'm usually a numbers guy. Just run Cornelia at max engineers and priests, Straussburg at max priests, and Venice for fewer GPP than Straussburg, and all will be fine eventually.

 

[Gusto]

Thanks Sullla for the explanation. I was trying to see the holes in my swiss cheese thinking however I didn't see any. Now I see it thanks to your explanation. I usually look for an explanation on why something is being done if I’m at opposites to what’s being proposed, and when an explanation is not provided than I see no validity in altering my opinion especially when I can’t see anything wrong with my rationalization. I do question myself when people offer counter-discussions to what I’m saying. Anyway thanks for the explanation.

I dislike getting in to nasty details however I felt I wasn't being understood on a macro level so I dived in to the details to state my case. I've learned a long time ago that highly detailed discussions are only for a select few. I'm one who falls asleep reading a highly detailed report. It's the opposite of my explanation above in regards to my need to explain to others if I feel I'm not being understood.