SGOTM 03 - Geezers

DynamicSpirit · Jan 8, 2007

I imagine once we have liberalism we'll be able to pick up civil service in trades. Do we want to do anything with it? ISTM Moscow's a bit mediocre techwise for the 50% capital boost, though it might help production-wise, eg. for building the UN? St. Petersburg would be good and centrally located and already has an academy, but it'd take forever to build a palace there. Rostov is a bit out of the way, but has loads of commerce and more production, so it could possibly become our capital (slightly dependant on whether we put an academy there; also good for if we end up at war with Toku again and taking any of his cities later on), with the Forbidden Palace as Mark suggested earlier in Beijing or somewhere near there for balance (Sparta might be better in that scenario).

End-game, if we don't have a great engineer, it may be worth checking numbers to see if, running civil service, we could save turns by building a palace in Coppertownski before it builds the UN? (Off the top of my head, I don't know if that would save or lose turns, would need calculation)

Dagnabit · Jan 8, 2007

Printing Press is also required for Mass Media. But Banking/Econ would give a boost to the $. We are going to need some sort of $ or tech advantage when we get close to Mass Media in order for us to bribe the uncommitted AI. I think anytime we are first to a tech and can get a free GP or tech we should consider it. Printing Press does give us +1 :commerce:

in our towns and villages also

Sam_Yeager · Jan 8, 2007

DynamicSpirit said:
A couple of things that may be worth discussion:

1. What do we do with Charles Darwin? (my inclination is to found an academy in Rostov - I didn't because it only delayed 1 turn and I didn't want to make that decision without consulting).

Personally I would prefer settling him in SP as he, and the two scientists currently hired, would give us 15 beakers instead of our current 10. An academy in Rostov is of less use if we can't afford to hire scientists there. However see below for a more likely use this time.

DynamicSpirit said:
2. Tech to research. I think it's very likely Sam will discover liberalism and get the free tech in his turnset (especially with an academy), so we'll need to figure TWO techs to research next. I don't have the open game in front of me, so can't see what the options are or how much they'd cost, but I'm inclined to guess astronomy would be most useful as the free tech. If we are to continue beelining towards mass media, the one after that is scientific method, which by itself confers no benefits (other than revealing oil, which probably isn't much benefit at all for us) and is pretty expensive to research, so I'm wondering whether it'd be worth a short break to try and go for banking/economics, see if we can get the great merchant?

Note: The scientist is currently offering to lightbulb towards printing press. If we get astronomy, that'll change to scientific method, and after that, to physics. Hence he or more scientists could be very useful. If we are still continuing a straight beeline for mass media, then I think holding Darwin off so he can lightbulb scientific method will be most useful; if OTOH we go for banking/economics, or for something else first, then an academy might be more useful. Lightbulbing printing press seems to me of marginal benefit as yet, especially as he'll only partially discover it (not sure how many turns would be left?).

Scientific Method has Printing Press as a requirement and as such is part of the straight beeline to mass media. Printing Press also increases the value of our villages and towns which may be of more than passing interest to us.

Sooo I think there may well be value in light bulbing towards printing press. At the moment Liberalism is 7 turns @ 100% although that virtually exhausts the treasury as it stands. Obviously I anticipate some additions from captured cities to improve matters in not too distant future. :hammer:

Sam_Yeager · Jan 8, 2007

DynamicSpirit said:
3. The war is too easy. Other than catapults, we almost have too many units; Mao is putting up very little fight.

Ummm. Nanjing has a LB with CG2 and another with CG1 & Shock. Both of which are protected by a wall which adds +50%. That looks like a good 3 to 4 cats needed to take that city and some of our cats are already injured. ISTM that we'll need a decent pause after Nanjing to heal units and build more cats etc. before we can go after Guangzhou or Hangzhou or am I missing something?.

DynamicSpirit · Jan 8, 2007

Sam_Yeager said:
Ummm. Nanjing has a LB with CG2 and another with CG1 & Shock. Both of which are protected by a wall which adds +50%. That looks like a good 3 to 4 cats needed to take that city and some of our cats are already injured. ISTM that we'll need a decent pause after Nanjing to heal units and build more cats etc. before we can go after Guangzhou or Hangzhou or am I missing something?.

Nanjing won't have any defensive bonus right now - I've just bombarded that down to nothing

I agree we will lose a couple of units against those longbows, but I think we have plenty to spare, including sufficient undamaged cats/swords next to the city, especially as Mao isn't in any position to organize much of a counterattack on Beijing from the west (He may attempt one, but I've been using boats to monitor all his cities and he doesn't currently have any more catapults so it won't be effective). Our horse archer in Shanghai is medic 1 (I deliberately used him to attack the city so I could give him that promotion) which should heal injured units reasonably fast.

Sam_Yeager · Jan 8, 2007

DynamicSpirit said:
Nanjing won't have any defensive bonus right now - I've just bombarded that down to nothing

I thought the wall +50% defence wasn't affected by bombardment i.e. ~~more like promotions~~ intrinsic to the wall. Am I wrong?

DynamicSpirit · Jan 8, 2007

Sam_Yeager said:
Personally I would prefer settling him in SP as he, and the two scientists currently hired, would give us 15 beakers instead of our current 10. An academy in Rostov is of less use if we can't afford to hire scientists there. However see below for a more likely use this time.

Yeah, there is that. I guess to some extent it's also a question of how many beakers Rostov will be producing in, say, 50 turns time (which'll be a *lot*) and I think 50% of those will be worth a lot more than the extra 5(?)-+bonuses beakers a superspecialist in St. P will be producing at that time. What we do with the scientist is also fairly deeply tied up with what if anything we will be doing about civil service.

Sam_Yeager said:
Scientific Method has Printing Press as a requirement and as such is part of the straight beeline to mass media. Printing Press also increases the value of our villages and towns which may be of more than passing interest to us. Sooo I think there may well be value in light bulbing towards printing press. At the moment Liberalism is 7 turns @ 100% although that virtually exhausts the treasury as it stands. Obviously I anticipate some additions from captured cities to improve matters in not too distant future.

Good point about printing press being in line, I missed that. I'm not sure of its immediate value as I don't think we have many towns and villages yet? Certainly in 50-ish turns it'll be adding a lot of commerce. I'd be reluctant to do anything to delay liberalism right now because of the associated free tech.

DynamicSpirit · Jan 8, 2007

Sam_Yeager said:
I thought the wall +50% defence wasn't affected by bombardment i.e. more like promotions. Am I wrong?

I'm pretty sure the wall gets killed by the bombardment as well. If you've got the game open, check what defensive bonus the city says next to the city name (before I started bombarding, it was 50%, which must've have been because of the wall, since culture goes 40%-60%). Or you can hit G with a unit selected and hover the mouse to see what factors the game says contribute to the attack odds.

Sam_Yeager · Jan 8, 2007

DynamicSpirit said:
I'd be reluctant to do anything to delay liberalism right now because of the associated free tech.

The GS as it stands (unused) does nothing to delay liberalism. An academy in Rostov gives an additional 12 beakers in Rostov at 100% and ,settled, an additional 6 beakers in SP at 100%. Of course Rostov gives nil beakers at 0% atm. All this assuming my arithmetic, and calculator, is correct.

However printing press, partly light bulbed, would be greater than that in the short term. Horses for courses.

Sam_Yeager · Jan 8, 2007

DynamicSpirit said:
Or you can hit G with a unit selected and hover the mouse to see what factors the game says contribute to the attack odds.

Ask and ye shall receive.

This was with the uninjured CR2 sword.

DynamicSpirit · Jan 8, 2007

Sam_Yeager said:
Ask and ye shall receive.

This was with the uninjured CR2 sword.

Cool, thanks Sam!

The longbow's defence: The 25% comes because he's been fortified there >= 5 turns. The 70% comes from 20% CG1 promotion, 25% CG2 promotion, and 25% because longbows have an innate 25% city defence ability. There's nothing we can do now to reduce any of those.

Personally if it was me I'd probably attack immediately and lose a few units (most likely, we'll lose two cats and one sword), because every turn we wait Mao will be building up more forces. The counter-argument you might have for waiting is that we have a CR3 sword still healing in Shanghai (fully healed and without collateral damage to the longbow, he'd have combat odds I think of 6.00 vs 6.60, against 6.00 vs 8.40 for the CR2 sword). But he is but one unit.

The defensive bonus in Nanjing will start recovering if we don't attack next turn, but that's not significant as one cat will be able to bombard it back to zero again.

Bear in mind btw there's probably still a longbow fortified on the iron.

DynamicSpirit · Jan 8, 2007

Sam_Yeager said:
The GS as it stands (unused) does nothing to delay liberalism.

Agreed. Sorry, I wrote that because I thought you were suggesting switching to printing press now. I think I misunderstood you. :crazyeye:

Sam_Yeager said:
An academy in Rostov gives an additional 12 beakers in Rostov at 100% and ,settled, an additional 6 beakers in SP at 100%. Of course Rostov gives nil beakers at 0% atm. All this assuming my arithmetic, and calculator, is correct.

However printing press, partly light bulbed, would be greater than that in the short term. Horses for courses.

Yep. +6 beakers (and a hammer!) for the scientist in St P. I'm fairly sure the academy and library increase it, so that'll be +10 now in St P, +12 with a university.

Academy in Rostov: Rostov is currently giving 21 commerce + 4 gold from trade route. The academy, with 100% science, will add +10. Very rough extrapolation of town/cottage growth: I would guess in 25 turns time Rostov will be generating 25 base commerce (academy:+12) and in 50 turns, 35 commerce (academy: +17). Obviously, multiply those by whatever % our average science rate actually is (currently I guess about 50% though that should rise over time). That does make your suggestion of the scientist in St P look more favourable. This still depends a bit on civil service/palace.

I've just counted and we have more villages/towns than I thought. I make it 7, with another 6 hamlets due to grow within 25 turns. Capturing Guangzhou and Hangzhou will add at least two villages and a hamlet. So printing press will give us +7gpt now, potentially +16gpt soonish. That makes lightbulbing printing press look much more favourable (2623 hammers now, about 3-4 turns at 100% science to get the remaining 950-odd hammers followed by 16gpt-ish, about 10-20 turns sooner than we'd otherwise have got it).

Sam_Yeager · Jan 8, 2007

Ok, objectives for my turnset as I see it are:

Take Nanjing and pillage iron to stop Mao using it. (?)
Complete Liberalism and take Astronomy (if we're first).
Partially light bulb Printing Press and research the rest.
Heal units and bring cat reinforcements across.
Start attack on Guangzhou.

Anything I missed or got wrong? I'll play tomorrow so there's time for everyone to comment.

DynamicSpirit · Jan 8, 2007

That sounds good to me. And deal with that escaping elephant near Sparta

Once we have Nanjing the iron will be ours, so you might prefer not to pillage it then

btw I pillaged the ivory when it was in Mao's radius so that'll need to be rebuilt.

Dagnabit · Jan 8, 2007

There is a MAO galley SE of Lodestone. I know there is a healing Caravel in Lodestone but the seafood is at risk without moving a galley to lodestone

There is no route on the cow nnoverguard so we are not getting the benefit .

Other than the Caravel searching for our last AI is there any reason not to send our ships towards home? If we aren't going to fight them we don't need to scout them.

Dagnabit · Jan 8, 2007

Rostov has a galley build in the que with 20 /70 :hammers:

Thrallia · Jan 8, 2007

The research looks good, and the war seems to be proceeding well. The only things I have to add is that trading maps whenever possible is good as it'll help us find America easier. Also, we should sneak in Engineering after we get Liberalism/Astro/Printing Press so that we have a good shot at building the Hagia Sophia. If we build it in Ctown, then we'll have high chances of getting at least 1 GE(we would need 2 to completely build the UN with them). Finally, Simon, Cyrus IS in our current friends bloc

markh · Jan 9, 2007

Your plan looks good to me, too, Sam. :thumbsup:

Sam_Yeager · Jan 9, 2007

I've played but I don't have time to finish the write up tonight. I'll post it tomorrow. I've uploaded the save so you can have a look. The log is below.

Spoiler :

Dagnabit · Jan 10, 2007

Good job Sam. Looks like you left me some "varmits" to play with.

The RNG was'nt particularly kind to you in a few battles. I have looked at the save and will post my thoughts after your comments on your turns.

SGOTM 03 - Geezers

Fear him of the pink tie

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Fear him of the pink tie

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Another Original Geezer

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Fear him of the pink tie

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Another Original Geezer

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