[BTS] Several miscellaneous questions

4: When bombing a target that has SAM/fighters/whatever, can each sam/fighter have a chance of intercepting or is it just one unit per bomber? If an ai has like 5 fighters in a city is there any point in trying to use bombers?

The strongest anti-air defender (usually a fighter plane) will defend. Only one defender per attacking bomber. Land-based anti-air units can only defend once per turn, but fighter planes can and will defend multiple times, until they're damaged past the point where they are the top defender.

So, yes, sending lots of bombers against same-era fighters is usually going to result in a lot of destroyed bombers. Sending fighters on bombing missions, with the aim of the defending fighters battling your fighters on equal terms can work. Some mods add a "fighter engage" command for fighter planes which allows you to take out AI fighters before you send in the Lancasters/B-17s.
 
Couple more questions :)

1: What's the failgold :hammers:->:gold: rate? If you aren't industrious/running organized religion/etc is it ever worth it to build wonders over wealth?

2: Playing an immortal iso game where I fogbusted my whole island, I had 8 cities and wanted to settle 5-6 more. When you have lots of land you can settle safely, is it better to settle all cities at once or one at a time? Usually I go for all cities at once since I get to start growing cottages asap
Spoiler :



3: I captured a barb city and got "We yearn to join the motherland", does this ever go away?

4: How often does ai trade amongst themselves? I've sometimes heard to not trade away good techs since ai could trade it to all other ais, is that something you really need to worry about?
 
1) For a non ind leader with no resources, it's 1:1. It's basically equivalent to running wealth, except you get it later. It's still often worth it because overflow can't be turned into :gold: by building wealth, and you often don't have currency for quite some time. assuming my math is correct(quite tired here), ind leaders should get 1.5 to 1, having the resource would be 2 to 1, and ind + resource 2.5 to 1.

2) settling cities will drag you down before they develop and start contributing. they're a bit of an investment. for that reason a lot of people wait until astro to mass settle while isolated, as the traderoutes offset that burden on your economy a little bit. sticking to 4-5 good cities pre-astro is a common theme, but more can be possible if the land is quite good and you have the workers to develop them.

3) kaitzilla says no

4) it depends on which AI and what relations they have with each other. some won't trade away techs until a certain % of people they know have it, while others will trade anything and everything the first chance they get. this thread can tell you what each individuals leader's threshold is, but a more immersive way to find out is just look at what they're offering. If they're willing to trade you a tech that no one else knows, you probably don't want to trade them your monopoly tech. note that if they're friendly with someone, they will trade any tech.

edit: to clarify on "they will trade any tech", they won't trade away a tech that enables a wonder they're building, and they won't trade the human a spaceship tech.
 
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2: Playing an immortal iso game where I fogbusted my whole island, I had 8 cities and wanted to settle 5-6 more. When you have lots of land you can settle safely, is it better to settle all cities at once or one at a time? Usually I go for all cities at once since I get to start growing cottages asap
For that situation, settling (otherwise totally crap) islands to south might make sense. One tiny city there will give 2 commerce trade route to each of mainland cities (+8 commerce to mainland + city itself gets +1 from center and +2 from trade route). If have Currency (oh, it is there - building Wealth), 2nd city will do the same for 2nd trade route of mainland cities (again +8 commerce + 1 from center + 2 from trade routes). And there is forest for ORG (it is Hammy, right) lighthouse chop to each of 2 spots if want. So gain can be 11-13 commerce for each city :) Math about if it is good or bad move (city mainten; investing in 2 settlers + galley relative to Wealth) - well, not me to judge that. Just my 5 cents as I *love* islands :D
 
Yep, should settle at least one island city asap if possible. Otherwise, expansion might have to wait until post-astro when you gain huge trade routes. Usually you won't have currency in isolation, because having currency means you are not going for astro asap. As some kind of rule of thumb, 7th city costs 7:gold: in maintenance (this is split between all cities btw), 8th 8:gold: but I think from there it goes up more rapidly.

I don't think faster astro is the only important thing, but in general it's the most important thing in isolation.
 
1: What's the failgold :hammers:->:gold: rate? If you aren't industrious/running organized religion/etc is it ever worth it to build wonders over wealth?
Always 1H = 1G. Any modifiers to hammers will in effect increase the amount of gold you get for a set of amount of raw hammers....but fail gold is only EVER based on invested hammers. This means you don't really get more fail-gold because of these modifiers, but you simply invest more hammers more quickly in terms of turns elapsed. Does that make sense? So it's definitely a good thing to use those modifiers for fail-gold purposes, especially as the difficulty level ramps up and you have relatively less opportunity to put lots of hammers in a target wonder. This gets to be really relevant when passing a wonder around from city to city to avoid completion as you stack more and more fail-gold into it, hammer modifiers can really improve your total yield.

Second part of the question: depends on the wonder. I would only really draw a hard line on the Great Lighthouse: you always want it if you plan to build it, because it's one of the best wonders (depends on map type), nothing speeds it up except IND, and in the window you have to build it (can go by T60 or so, or earlier, if you are unlucky!) Sailing + Masonry can be a significant detour. It's a very good wonder with a fair amount of opportunity-cost, so you should aim to complete it IF you ever try to build it IMO and is poor for fail-gold purposes. I'd much sooner use Stonehenge, ToA, Oracle, Great Wall, or even Mids (if it's not realistic to get them) for early fail-gold targets.

Other wonders that are consistently good to complete are Mids and Taj.

Arguably Oracle, Kremlin, even Sistine (especially if you win Music anyway) just to keep it away from AIs and to avoid needing Caste/CRE/Monuments in new cities for border pops. Colossus can be good depending on the map but often isn't worth the detour into MC so early required to beat an AI to it (sometimes can be built by T80 on Immortal).

2: Playing an immortal iso game where I fogbusted my whole island, I had 8 cities and wanted to settle 5-6 more. When you have lots of land you can settle safely, is it better to settle all cities at once or one at a time? Usually I go for all cities at once since I get to start growing cottages asap
When still isolated and on one landmass, there's definitely a soft limit to how much you want to expand which is generally dictated by the number of cities you have as there is a sharp drop off in gain vs. upkeep cost once you start piling on # of cities costs...which go up for all cities with each additional city, as well as being applied to each new city itself. Without GLH, island cities, or trade routes to another civ (which in true iso require Astronomy) you probably want to wait lest you see a sharp drop in your economy. You can get away with a little more if ORG or FIN, but on Immortal 7-8 cities is where I usually start to "feel" the expansion without one of these elements to help out.

4: How often does ai trade amongst themselves?
Technically, they always trade as soon as they *can* according to their limitations. The only hard rule is that they can't trade a tech on the same turn they acquire it. It can get very complex. Attitudes, specific AI's monopoly thresholds, preferences for specific techs (based on which tech it is), whether they start to build the unlocked wonder, etc.

Some more insight though:

Attitude - many AIs trade readily at Pleased. All AIs trade at Friendly barring the monopoly rule, 1 turn limit, and if they are building a wonder. Only who has the tech has to meet the threshold, not the recipient. AIs never trade to their worst enemy regardless of their attitude level, even Mansa.

Monopoly threshold - different for every AI, check the Know Your Enemy thread. Ranges from extremes like Toku (never trades to a recipient unless all other players know his tech) to Mansa (always trades all tech unless to Worst Enemy). Also, I'm not sure this even applies to AI>AI trading in the first place.

Tech preference - certain techs are barred from trade because an AI values it more highly, which can modify the exchange (beaker) value. This is affected by AI flavors and simply weighting on the specfic tech i.e. a tech like HBR is valued much more highly than its actual beaker amount. Warmonger values military tech more, Zealots religious techs, etc.

Wonder rule - An AI never trades a tech if they have begun to build the associated wonder unlocked by it, until a certain amount of progress is put in it or one of the other thresholds supercedes it (I'm actually not sure which). I can not actually remember whether Friendly AIs trade wonder techs during construction off the top of my head, as it's a rare situation in most of my games.


In practice, by far the most influential effects are rooted in Attitude and relations the AIs have with each other. Which leads to certain conclusions you can draw by looking at the fields like:
-Similar Peaceweight leaders are more likely to like each other, and thus trade
-AIs in the same religion like each more, and are more likely to trade. Effect is compounded if they also like each other via Peaceweight.
-AIs with differing preferences value certain flavor tech differently, and are less likely to trade with each other

So you can at a glance look at a field and determine the relative likelihood a tech will get traded around. If your field contains a lot of peaceniks like Freddy, Liz, Gandhi (same religion) and Hammi (own 2nd religion) with a Ragnar and Shaka (same, third religion), you can assume that anything you trade to Freddy likely goes to Liz and Gandhi, Freddy/Liz/Gandhi are more likely to trade with Hammi than Ragnar/Shaka, and Hammi may choose to not trade with either group but is less likely to with Ragnar/Shaka. Ragnar and Shaka are likely to trade with each other, especially military techs. Etc Etc.

I've sometimes heard to not trade away good techs since ai could trade it to all other ais, is that something you really need to worry about?
Depending on your goal, yes definitely.

Example: Rifling. Rifling is a highly valued tech and AIs will trade it readily, even if they don't tech toward it that fast due to flavor. Militant AIs *will* tech toward it faster. Once one AI techs Rifling they tend to trade it around quickly, and the jump up from pre-Rifling to Rifles is a huge leap in AIs' defensiveness in cities. It's like a time-bomb waiting to go off. So if you were to run to Rifling for Cavs or mass draft, it would be very prudent of you to not trade it around to anybody until somebody self-teching it is eminent, as it will likely go everywhere. This includes your own vassals, who will merrily trade away key military tech to pick up crap they can't get from you.

Another less sharp example would be holding off on trading something like Nationalism until you have a commanding effort put into the Taj and can't be beaten to it, avoiding trading techs on the Lib path to slow the AI's shot at it, etc.

There's a lot of nuance to trading in general, but a very broad rule would be to not trade anything that grants a key advantage for the player (usually military tech) in order to slow the rest of the field's ability to proliferate it, and thus ride your advantage in war as long as you can. But you should readily trade other things that could speed you up in getting there, or to play catch up (which is the whole essence of a lot of bulbing gambits).
 
Couple more Q's
1) State property - should you be keeping your cottages or should you replace most/all of them with workshops->build wealth?
If you want to make production cities with SP, what should you be building in the city, what improvements and what tiles should be surrounding it?

2) How does ai being bribed into war by another ai work? Does the briber ai have to be the same relation you'd have to be to bribe an ai to war?

3) Does an ai need to be running their favorite civic for you to get the relation bonus for running it yourself?

4) When founding a new city, is it better to improve food first or chop into granary first?
 
1. Cottages should go the way of the dodo, but Villages close to being Towns and Towns themselves can be worth keeping in some instances. Beyond that a SP workshop economy is not complicated: Flood the world with workshops, watermills, windmills, and whatever farms you need to quickly grow population/maintain population once industrialization :yuck: kicks in, build Factories/Coal Plants, and have fun.

2. I believe AI bribes do respect relationship requirements, yes. This is why Catherine is such a dangerous AI, in fact: She cannot start plotting war at Friendly any more than Gandhi can, but at Friendly she can be bribed to go to war against someone she's Friendly with, which even Monty wouldn't accept.

3. Yes.

4. Depends on the situation, but I don't think you can really go wrong with improving food first. Say, a coastal city would ideally start with a Granary while another city supplies the Workboat ahead of time rather than the new city building a workboat at size 1, but overall you can't go wrong with food first.
 
Re cottages and State Property: I tend to stop building cottages about the time I get to Guilds. Usually my Workers are busy fixing the stupid stuff the AI built around my new cities at that time, anyway. Post Electricity I will definitely watermill over all the the riverside cottages/hamlets/villages I can. Workshops I'm more selective with; +4 :hammers: vs +7 :commerce: is a bit tougher call to make, particularly in core cities that have Libraries, Universities, and Banks.

In the very late game (especially Space Race), at least a dozen cities get the full Watermill/Workshop makeover to build stuff faster.
 
Re cottages and State Property: I tend to stop building cottages about the time I get to Guilds. Usually my Workers are busy fixing the stupid stuff the AI built around my new cities at that time, anyway. Post Electricity I will definitely watermill over all the the riverside cottages/hamlets/villages I can. Workshops I'm more selective with; +4 :hammers: vs +7 :commerce: is a bit tougher call to make, particularly in core cities that have Libraries, Universities, and Banks.

In the very late game (especially Space Race), at least a dozen cities get the full Watermill/Workshop makeover to build stuff faster.

Yeah, after about 1AD its probably about time to stop cottaging everything except a beauro science capital, but you should have most or all of the cottages there built already and being worked.

I start placing workshops as early as metal casting on those yucky plains tiles if there's nothing more important for my workers to do.

Watermills I start doing when I feel I'll get a reasonably early replaceable parts then they suddenly become really good, even better if you are going towards communism obviously. Some games like my last deity Suleiman game are finished before I even get to communism but the workshops and watermills are still worth it in the renaissence era imo.
 
More questions :)

1) I've never really done a cuirraser rush that's worked, usually I'm too late. What's the timeframe I have for a successful push? What are the key techs to get? If I'm getting the music GA, are there any techs I need to avoid to get a good bulb?

2) Does "You've traded with our worst enemies" only keep track of techs or resources/gpt too?

3) Is ai more likely to plot/dow you if you've captured one of their cities
3.1) Are they more likely to plot if they started the war (so there's no dow penalty)

4) Anyway to fight protective ai early game or just forget about it?

5) Is flanking of any use in a HA rush? Could maybe lead to 1 or 2 more HA surviving for later
 
1)
Depends, if your natural BPT is high you can more or less just get everything. Education is still highest on the list and you can sink 1 or 2 bulbs into that.
But if your GPGeneration is good and you want to save commerce for other uses you want to bulb 4 things, philosophy, 2xeducation and one into lib.
I have heard people talk about bulbing paper too, but in practice I have never gotten that to work.
The only thing to watch out for is the lib-bulb, where you have to have MC+Calendar+Aestetics+Compass to be able to bulb liberalism.
You also need to avoid machinery, as that opens up the path to printing press.
Not sure what you mean with "too late"? Rifles showing up? That does indeed complicate things quite alot.

2) I think so but don't know. For symmetry it should be. You get fair trade if you gift alot of resources for a long time so that should count the same way. But if it does, it's rather marginal.

3) Only in a roundabout way, if the capture made you a land target (7 bordering tiles) where you where not prior to the capture.
3.1) Only in a roundabout way, since if you DoW, your diplo runs lower. The AIs are more likely to attack you, the less they like you.
I like to check this chart to see how hotheaded they are. An annoyed Gandhi seems to be more likely to start plotting, than an annoyed Lincoln or Justinian.
It also shows how important it is to get the warmongerers to pleased, even though it's not a guaranteed safety the relative safety is much much higher.
Spoiler :

Attitude declarations.png





4) Other factors play a larger role imho.
Do they build alot of units? Sitting Bull tend to build a ton, while Qin mainly builds wonders for the taking.
Did they get metal early? Are their cities on hills?
But for sure protective is a strike against them, when evaluating the best target.
Creative is almost the same though as it adds protective bonuses to their cities fast.


5) Flanking... In most situations no. There have been countless debates around this throughout the years.
I think the main problem is that after a successfull withdrawal, the unit is down at 0.1hp and is for all intents and purposes already dead. It won't contribute for a long long time.

There are circumstances where I think it's still worth it though. I remember in the recent NC-Peter game I did promote quite alot of cuirs/cavallery to flank1+flank2.
I did this with units that where at 9/10 xp, to damage rifles in cities. 9/10 xp being key here (Or 7/8 for a cha-leader), as even a withdraw gives them 1xp and that essensial promotion-heal.
Flank is better on cavallery than cuirs/ha's, as cavallery, war elephants and chariots lack the natural immunity to first strikes, which flank2 does provide.
But even under those circumstances, which I think must be ideal, I was abit dissapointed.
I did try out flank2 war elephants against longbows in another recent game, and that was somewhat sweet as it removed the longbows first strikes and made the elephant much more likely to severely damage the longbow (or at least it felt that way).
 
Krikav covered everything already (and really good :)), about Flanking..
on Cuirs it's imo never a good option.
For 30% added withdraw chance we give up S1 + counter promo (shock or pinch) which roughly adds 35%.
If you are so stretched that 3/10 more Cuirs surviving (at no health as Krikav wrote) matter, you should either not fight with them or not use them right now (aka getting more or teching up towards Cavs instead, or completely change plans).

Same for HAs, they are basically small Cuirs (both for purpose and strength).
Cavs..a bit better, FS immunity was already mentioned but they also cost more :hammers: so keeping them has more value.
And they are the highest mounted units, so no teching up anymore (just adding cannons left as option).
+ at this stage super medics should be plenty if needed, retreating Cavs can be healed up fast.

However counter units with first strikes are rare (longbows are well beatable by Cuirs and ofc Cavs).
I would say flanking only comes into play against protective AIs, and even then we have to see first how they are promoted.
 
More questions :)

1) I've never really done a cuirraser rush that's worked, usually I'm too late. What's the timeframe I have for a successful push? What are the key techs to get? If I'm getting the music GA, are there any techs I need to avoid to get a good bulb?

I use the music GA for a Golden Age, to generate the Great Scientists for education bulb while teching Nationalism. If you have a religion in GP farms, Philosophy should be in before this.

As for the time frame, at small/standard pangea maps on Monarch I aim for an attack date before/around 1000 AD, and usually kill them all well before 1500 AD. Most cities only have a granary and are building wealth to keep the tech slider at 100%. Some barracks may be needed if you can't run theocracy, but with a pre-1000 AD attack many AIs will not even have macemen or pikeman, so you could attack those first and gain some exp.
 
More Q's :)

1) I think I read that the bonus you get from gifting ai stuff is the value of your gift divided by the # of turns you know them or something, are hammers/beakers/gold all valued the same here?
1.1) I understand you can gift cities for this as well but I've never done it so how does that work?
1.2) This does not apply to gifting units right?


2) Is the # of beakers you get from bulbing dependent on the tech you get?
For example if you bulb philosophy you get ~1300 beakers (do these beakers roll-over into the next tech you research?), if you say bulb meditation instead, can you still get those 1300 beakers, use ~100 for meditation, then have 1200 left over to research something else?

Also, do bulbs get tech discounts? (like getting both drama+col before bulbing philo)


3) What's the key units/techs/buildings I want for fighting wars in the modern era? I find I struggle a lot once ai have tanks/gunships even if I have my own.


4) Is there a general rule when generating GM's are better than GS?
For example taking a random point from my current game...
At 0% I was +8:science:pt and +115:gold:pt
At 100% I was +228:science:pt and -66:gold:pt

If I were to bulb with a GS I'd get ~1300:science:, but if I were to do a trade mission for ~1100:gold: it would let me run slider at 100% much longer and give me ~1900:science:.
You'd also possibly get a discount from other ai's learning the tech while you are still teching it, but you also lose the trade value by slow-teching it.
 
1) Have no clue how they are valued, but they are all valued.
The fair trade you get from 100hammers in a settler seems to be way higher than thousands of beakers though.
I'm almost certain that unit gifts doesn't count, and if they do count the value of them is abyssmal.
To gift a city you just open the dialogue and give them a city they are willing to take. If the gifted city is closer to their capital than yours you can also get a liberation diplo bonus (1.5 diplo points per city, rounded down).

2) For scientist bulbs you get 1500 + 3*Total_Empire_Pop in beakers, they are not rolled over but simply lost.

3) Depends alot both on the AI and your current situation, but there are a bunch of sweet combos.
Tanks+bombers can work nice, but if they have too much fighters you just lose bombers. Tanks+spies for city revolt can be an option.
Carriers+fighters+battleships+marines can get amost any coastal city. Bombard to 0%, soften the city up with fighters then go in for the kill with marines.
Nukes+paratroopers is another option, nuke cities empty and jump in there and just walk into cities.
But really, most of the time just a massive doomstack of infantry+artillery tend to be quite hard for the AI to deal with, and it's also the easiest one to reach with tech (only AL+Artillery).

Regarding buildigns you don't need any of those, factories+coalplants is very good to crank out enough units though, but sometimes they are not worth it, and it's never a good idea to just build those everywhere. Have to do some quick back of the envelope calculation to see if it's worth it. Generally, the higher the base hammers in a city, the better a factory is.
Sometimes you get kremlin and can just continue to whip (or in some cases rushbuy).
Police state+state property +forge is already 160%, so adding up 75% more is a less relative gain than it might seem.
I kind of like drafting infantry too, not nearly as hammer efficient as drafting rifles but still good imho.

4)
GMerchants are almost always better once you have bulbed the key techs you wanted to bulb.
Bulbs are instant which is nice. With a merchant you need to get to the city and then run deficit research for some time.
 
2) For scientist bulbs you get 1500 + 3*Total_Empire_Pop in beakers, they are not rolled over but simply lost.

I think I just learned something new from your post Krikav. So if this is correct, then for example you could build HG right before doing a GS bulb and get significantly more beakers from the bulb. If that is correct, then I never knew that and will start implementing that new knowledge in my games immediately. Thank you sir!
 
Key point is that they do not roll over; krikav’s formula is a maximum number of beakers. Unless you have a very small empire, you’ll probably be able to one-GS bulb a tech until Education or Astronomy. Note that GP/ GE/ GA/ GM bulbs have maximum beakers half that of GSs.
 
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