SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

[namliaM]

A guestimation of research time to Optics is about 55-60 turns IF we bulb Metal casting,
Compass + Machinery + Optics = 1569 + 1345 + 897 = 3811.
Currently we produce 56 beakers. Come currency in 9 we add 5*2 = 10 beakers to it.
Finish a Library in St.Petes and run 2 scientists = 15 more beakers. That is 81 beakers.
Assuming we can keep researching at 100% due to the selling of techs offcourse.
3811 / 80 (on average per turn) = 47.6... => 48 turns. + 9 for currency = 57

If we dont bulb Metal Casting.... we add about 1008 / 80 = 12.6 => 13 turns, making it total in the 70-75 turns range

[edit Dec 18, 2006 at 06:48 AM GMT +1. ]
I forgot to correct the beakers for the 20% research bonus you get with researching a tech that has a prereq. In above I was working with raw beakers. 20% * 80 = 16 beakers.
so the turns go down to 3811 / 96 = 39.7 => 40 + 9 (currency) = 49 turns when burning the Merchant
adding 1008 / 96 = 10.5 => 60 turns for self research.

Altho this does not take into account the settling of "E" it does "demand" the running 2 scientists and representation.
Not running representation but adding the scientists, will lower the 15 beakers to 7. But then settling "E" will add 9 commerce bringing the total back to 16. Hopefully we can keep our economy afloat from War cash and Selling techs (look for wonders finishing!)
[/edit]

We will need 2 scientists to (completly) bulb Astronomy, so the above creation of Great persons and this research path do not co-inside....

We have some important issues to get out of the way in the next few turns/sets. And we need to all agree on where we are going.

Do we want to burn the merchant on Metal casting? Or keep him for CS?

Friends:
1) Gandhi
By Extension, due to religion
2) Vicky
3) Toku???

Enemies:
1) Mao
If we do want a specialist economy, we want/need the Pyramids. Tho we have no clue where he is hiding....
2) Alex
By extension of Mao and Who can trust this guy?
3) JC
Allready have -4 with this guy due to trading with Gandhi?

Offcourse Mao and Alex just happen to be the most powerfull AI we know

 

[Cosmichail]

Thanks for the return welcome guys and glad to be back. A lot to read and see we have progressed quite far already. A shame about the Mids but I like the idea of taking it from Mao. When I read namliaM's report I am thinking it may be tricky to take on AI if we go a path that bypasses chemistry. We probably could do it with maces but also CS has to be left out if we want to lightbulb astronomy. I like the idea of lightbulbing some important techs and organizing our specialist as such.

Bobrath great turnset there and bonus on the horses and iron/copper. Geez why can't I lately get iron in my SP games. Always have to go hunting for it.

On the beeline to UN we are passing up Riffling which obsoleets the castles so we may have a long lasting benifit from the castles.

It's economics that obsoletes castles not rifling.

Do we want to burn the merchant on Metal casting? Or keep him for CS?

I'd say we burn him for Metal Casting as it will give us quite a boost. (colossus might be nice since we missed out on the Mids)

If we want to burn Scientists on Astronomy we cannot research either CoL => CS or Theocracy.

mmmmm no maces then which if we want Mao will need.

Information overload but indeed well laid out planning namliaM. Of course even the best of plans can be altered by unforeseen circumstances.

I agree with Bob and most likely others have the same opinion "we need a religion". Lacking that Drama can be a real boost as theatres are easy to build. Getting some culture happening will "smother" our island and allow us to settle at a later time when our finances can handle it. Our finances look good but if anything I noticed we need a sh*tload of workers to work that land. So far we have two that I seen in the save. I am concerned if we settle more we might find our finances getting adversely affected. This new patch does a real number I find if you expand too fast.

As to Colossus again it does have a short span especially if we need to get to astronomy fast. So is it worth it? Probably not. The sistine chapel on the other hand is great with a specialist economy with that +2 culture it gives per specialist and has a long life.

My question is this if we want Mids we need to plan for war. If we want to lightbulb certain techs as outlined by namliaM then it may be difficult to war. Having low production overall is a problem and we need to spend our hammers wisely of course. Without the Mids we cannot really have the SE so we might have to plan for war which means having to get CS/Machinery fairly soon. Also will need lots of galleys too for mobilization.

Looking forward to Scowlers turnset and of course you can put me back in the roster.

 

[GreyFox]

Cosmic, good to have you back. At least namliaM will have someone to conduct his dialogue with

I noticed a few times namliaM mentioned "beeline to UN" which I find uncomfortable with. Yes, we have consensus to win by Diplo, as we think it is the fastest. But the consensus was backdoor diplomatic win, keyword here being being "backdoor". I think we should focus on that first rather than worrying abt UN.

The new Roster, I slotted Cosmic back:

Roster
namliaM
Dot
Greyfox
Furrie
Bobrath
Scowler == Got It and hopefully playing
Cosmic == On Deck

Robo Kai == autoskip by his own request ... because CFC is slow for him?

--

 

[FuRRie]

I still haven't been able to fix my CIV4.
Please put me on auto-skip untill I report my CIV4 working again !

 

[GreyFox]

Appreciate the heads up, Furrie! Let us know when you are ready to be slotted back!

Roster
namliaM
Dot
GreyFox
Bobrath
Scowler == Got It and hopefully playing NOW
Cosmic == On Deck

Robo Kai == autoskip by his own request ... because CFC is slow for him?
Furrie == autoskip until Civ4 is fixed

 

[bobrath]

It does seem to me that if we're going backdoor Dip - on a crowded map, then beelining makes less sense. The only reason to head there quickly is to make sure it gets built so that we can "win" the vote in a quick time. That does however clash with the need for military units advanced "enough" to give us wins and "enough" growth/culture to give us the pop lead.

 

[namliaM]

I am actually having more or less the same problems with CFC as Robo. It seems to have to do with some of the advertisements. I will post a screeny next time I get the warning...

mmmmm no maces then which if we want Mao will need.

Well we can get CS => Macemen no problem, only "problem" we have is we cannot burn on astronomy anymore untill we get all of Philo (blocked if we dont get Mediation), Paper, PP (tradable for Education?) and Education out of the way.
Early astronomy is nice not only for the Galleons but also for the Observatories, +1 Scientist support and +25% science. Tho we have cheap Universities these dont give +1 Scientist.
Like with Caste, I think this only comes down to 2 cities in MR (Mother russia, our homeland?). These 2 beeing Yaroslavl and St. Petersberg, which can also run an Engineer as the third specialist. Yes less beakers, but more GPP and a 1 in 3 shot at a GE for the UN?

Religion will potentially hurt us I think. Yes it will add the 1 happy, but we get "you are a heathen" with quite a few AI. We want to keep our traderoutes maxed to exploit TGL, so I think we have to atleast be carefull. Maybe we can join the (allready considerable block) of Hinduism? We should check the city counts and see how much thing will hurt MR without traderoutes to "heathen AI".
Having a religion in place to switch to it and Pacifism has nice synergy in running a SE.

Culture, once we have those Monuments/Libs in place we will have more than enough culture to "smother" all of our lands soon enough.

IF we indeed go capture the Mids and run Representation, our science slider should/could be set to 0% devoting all our income to support. That is the point of a SE, you get your science from the Scientists. With a lib and 2 scientists (atleast 3 cities in MR) we get 15 beakers per city (45 total) and (currently) have something like a 50 GPT surplus with the slider set to 0%. We can use this money for more research or for selected upgrades.

The beeline to Mass Media (UN), I am not proposing to do this. I just wanted us all to see the quickest way to it and see the "problems" we could have along the way and plan ahead.
One of the problems beeing the missing of Chemistry, MT and Rifling.
Another is the bulbing of Electricity vs Biology.

The best combination for Sistine Chappel is with Caste, I dont know if we want to give up Slavery tho...

I wholesomely agree that we need
1) a strong enough military
2) Enough pop (or allies?, possibly PA, Vassal (early vassal for + may well be smart!))

If we run 2 scientists in Petes before Moscow gets to 200 GPP (45-50 tuns from now), it will take St.Petes (300+450=750/12) 62.5 turns total to generate 2 Scientists and do so before Moscow gets to the Merchant.
If we go Optics => trade for CoL in this process => CS it will be close to generate them in time from St. Petes. But it may suit our (military) goals better to forgo bulbing Astronomy for now and emphasize Military power first.
Which means: Machinery => CS ASAP.
This means, NOT burning the merchant on Metal casting (1008) but rather on CS (1794). As we max beakers from the Merchant. So this would be MC => CS => Machinery to get Buro ASAP as well.
After researching Metal Casting, the Merchant will opt for CS to burn on. Not sure on the beaker count we get, but surely more than 1008.

With the delay of Astro, this makes Colossus longer live... Tho it still eats up hammers which we (may) need for the war with MAO.
Yes this delays the Forge(s) in Moscow and Novgorod, but Moscow can use a Library (and a Harbor?? => Compass) and Novgorod is still early goings with low-ish hammers.
Then picking up Optics => Paper => Education => Trade for PP => Burn 2 scientists on Astronomy => Liberalism => Sci meth freebee?

So the question is:
Can we wait say 1008/80 = 13-15 turns for Metal casting? And speed up CS ultimately by 500 (guestimation) / 80 = 7 turns?
Even more ultimately this could mean something like a 10 turns earlier Machinery => Macemen.
*****
Below mathmatics is not taking the current build of a barracks in moscow into account and assumes we start a lib now, which I think we should do as we cannot build any real units for a while anyway
*****
I guess it would depend on if we want a Forge first or Library first in Moscow.
With 11 hammers/turn (@size5) (Fish+Clams+Stone+1 mined Hills+plains Forrest or Forrest hill)
a Lib takes 135/11 = 13 turns
a Forge takes 180/12 = 15 turns (by now that Hill hopefully is mined)
Taking into account that we have 9 turns left on currency and need 1 turn to burn the Merchant, this would leave 3 turns left on the Library. So finish the Lib & start the Forge.

Self researching MC takes something like 10-15 turns. So that would leave a gap of ~10 turns for Moscow to do something else (finish barracks/worker(3-4 turn build)/Settler(7)/Axe(5-6)/Cata(5-6)?).
This 10 turn delay on the Forge costs us 3 hammers/turn = 30 hammers.

If indeed we get CS 7 turns earlier due to the merchant burn on it instead of MC. We have Bureaucracy sooner, at a rate of (50% of 12) 6 hammers and (50%*20*1.25(Lib)) 12 beakers per turn. 7*6 = 43 hammers gain plus 7*12 = 84 beakers.
And because we now have more hammers in Moscow the build of the Forge goes faster. The full build would only take 10 instead of 15 turns. Assuming we need 300 beakers on CS, that is (300/80) 4 turns.
180-(4*12)= 132/18=8. Total build time not 15 but 12 turns.

The three turns left on the library disappear if we take into account a chop that will need to be done on that Hill. This chopping tho takes atleast 12 turns (1 turn move + 11 to mine) or shorter if we chop first and mine later. This would make the delay of the Forge a few turns biger, 45/12 = 4 turns. This however is "undone" by the bonus on buildtime of the forge by 3 turns. This makes the total cost in hammers 33 or 36 hammers for delaying the forge, while gaining 43 hammers and 84 beakers from the earlier Bureacracy.

*Disclaimer*
The 7 turns is a guestimation as I dont know the going rate for beaker count on Merchants. Scientists give 2600 I think. So counting on a Merchant giving 1500 is that overdoing it?
Anyone have a more exact figure?
*/Disclaimer*

Technology that will block us from bulbing Astronomy:
Philosophy (blocked by not having Meditation)
Chemistry (no Gunpowder OR Engineering)
Education
Printing Press
Paper
I would rather not burn a Scientist on Paper, as it is relatively cheap, same with Philosophy. Burning "surplus" Scientists on Education, PP or even Chemistry is not a bad thing... As long as we spawn/reserve 2 Great Scientists before the research of Liberalism.

Just now notice that Chemistry opens up Scientific Method too. So we dont have to get Astronomy to get Sci Meth from Liberalism!!
We could skip Optics => Astronomy and pick up Gunpowder => Chemistry tho this is not logical. The prereqs Optics is cheaper than Gunpowder (need to research more ourselves), while the bulbing techs Astronomy is more expensive than Chemistry (get less gain from the Scientist).

For easy reference I will post links to these posts of mine every once in a while:
Long term goals
Cities
Techtree/beeline/GPs
Wonders
Research times (edited per this post)

 

[Cosmichail]

The argument for getting CS first has me convinced. Since the capitol will benefit more by getting that first. Hopefully Mao hasn't got the greatest production and we won't need a lot of military to deal with him.

As to specialists if we do utilize the caste system then we won't have to worry about observatories for the extra scientist. I just wondering are we food rich enough for caste system. St. Pete's has lots of potential but Moscow probably can just handle a few.

The city in the north with clams/rice might prove to be a good GP farm if we farm it up there and with CS we can do some chain irrigation to get our cities more food rich. I am beginning to realize the new patch that food now is one of the most important factors to winning this game.

On deck and reporting for duty.

 

[namliaM]

Cosmic, you just touched on another point we need to talk about.
The city you are talking about (Rostov) however cannot be farmed. Neither can City "E" or Novgorod due to the position of the hills of Rostov.

For more details on ways we can use our cities I am simply going to point you back to my earlier post on cities....

IMHO there are 4 cities that have fixed destinations due to their unique attributes.
Production:
Moscow: With a small commerce kick
Novgorod: Military only!

Commerce:
Rostov: not great but still decent 2 gems, 2 cottages
City "E": 2 gems + 5 cottages + some coast, but (near) no Food surplus!

TBD:
St. Petersburg
Yaroslavl

Have a read of the linked post and let us know what you think.

Oh I would like to add:
@Scowler, please MM Yaroslavl to work the Jungle rice! that is 2 food instead of the 1 food on the coast. This help to whip the Monument faster.

 

[namliaM]

I was thinking if we are going to be running a Specialist economy, we will want to flood both Yaroslavl and St. Petes...

We will probably find ourselves with enough cottages in AI lands...

To that same fact we should have gone with the Passage on the Gems as this would enable us to jump the irrigation over the hill .... Ah well bygones...

 

[bobrath]

oh sure, now you tell me that your first idea was actually better then your reconsidered second idea so in fact now your third idea is different then your first idea, but the reason you reached that conclusion changed... wait..... ummm



Oh bollocks - time to go play a single player game at warlord level where I don't have to think so much!!! muah ha ha

 

[dot]

Never mind bob. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have worked! But Cosmichail, namliaM, Scowler and I will work that out.

So go and play a SP game!

 

[bobrath]

Its quiet.... too quiet.

 

[dot]

Is that any better?

------------------

That's . grinning and ducking and running and grinning still ...
​

 

[Scowler]

Don't worry, Bob, we're just trying not to wake up the neighbours.

(we're still working on the next turnsets)

 

[namliaM]

Well its fairly quiet ... IF you are not on Skype

 

[Cosmichail]

Just some notes made during our conversation:

6 cities planned for, four cities that have designation and two that are to be decided.

Two yaroslavl and st. Petersburg tba.

Cottage them, yaroslavl workshops St. Petes commerce/specialist

St. petes run three specialist without additional and still grow

Spices/plantation keep cottage on FP

Specialist economy no slavery and caste system.

Recapture mids : half and half economy

Cottage economy until we get mids

St.Peters grows to size 4, 5 (cost two turns) work the settler for two turns)

Switch Forrest => Clams, 1 turn left on the Granary

Grow in 4

Workboat for 3 turns @ 3 hammers/turn = 9

And grow to size 4

@ size 4 we have 4 turns working Plains/Spice/Forrest

4*4 hammers added to the workboat

total 25

Work settler 2 turns, to get 18 production in. 6 surplus food + 3 hammers

= 9 production on a settler * 2 turns = 18 "production", making it whippable for 3 pop.

150-18 = 132 left, 3 pop whip = 135

Whipping it for 3 will generate 5 food + 3 hammers(that turns production) + another 3 (135-132) = 11 overflow.

Try to time a chop to be chopped the turn we grow to 6
work the settler 1 turn
[4:38:46 PM] namliam_eht says: + chop = 45 + some produciton = 55

[4:39:19 PM] namliam_eht says: 150 - 55 = 95, whip for 3 = 135 production = overflow 40


Atleast if we produce the first workboat right after the Granary *I think* we said yesterday it would get to Novgorod right on time

Then try to add a chop of a forrest

To put 1 turn production + chop into the Settler at size 6 and whip it for 3 population.

Overflow into the 2nd workboat for Yaroslavl (will probably finish early)

Simon got it down pat now.........

EDIT: more notes:

- Currency (9 turns) -> MC -> [CoL (via trading if poss.)] -> CS (via Merchant) -> Machinery (maces) -> Compass -> Optics -> Paper (unavoidable due to CS; needed to clear GS path) -> Education (unavoidable due to Paper; needed to clear GS path) -> Printing Press (unavoidable due to Machinery/Paper - get from trading Education if poss?) -> [Calendar via trading if poss.] -> Astro (via GS

 

[dot]

But the above post is NOT the conclusio. We're still at it!

 

[Cosmichail]

the jury is out on deliberation

 

[Scowler]

And some of us are drunker than others...