SGOTM 09 - Xteam

[Frederiksberg]

I think the highest priority in the next set is to found the two corporations (Mining Inc. and Sushi) and to determine war plans (or settle cities) that will secure more Mining Inc and Standard Ethanol resources.

Placing Mining Inc HQ in Akkad seems obvious. Sushi HQ could go there as well. It's not unlikely that we will want more cities with Standard Ethanol than with Sushi, but given that Sushi comes earlier it's probably OK to found HQ in Akkad. Alternative would be to found Sushi in Babylon. That would have the added benefit that we get a Sushi branch there ASAP for some extra GPP. Drawback is that it will take some time to build the economic multiplier buildings there. On the other hand we will want economic multipliers there anyway because of the large number of merchant specialists working there soon.

First build in Akkad should probably be a Mining Inc executive destined for Athens so that we can pump out lot's of executives from there. Second build would need to be a Sushi executive if we found Sushi HQ in Akkad. If not we can finalize bank and start on Wall Street. - maybe it is a little better to found Sushi in Babylon after all.

 

[Grover22]

Here is the minimum set of techs (after Assembly Line) that we'll need to launch a spaceship:

Rocketry 5008 beakers
Satellites 6009 beakers
Composites 7512 beakers
Ecology 5508 beakers
Genetics 7011 beakers
Fiber Optics 7512 beakers
Fusion 8013 beakers

Radio 6009 beakers (for Satellites)
Fission 5508 beakers (for Fusion)
Plastics 7011 beakers (for Composites)
Combustion 6510 beakers (for Plastics)
Industrialism 6510 beakers (for Plastics)
Computers 6510 beakers OR Laser 7011 beakers (for Fiber Optics)

Assusming we go with Computers instead of Laser, that's a total of 84631 beakers before any discounts.

A detour to Refrigeration would cost us an extra 4006 beakers, which is a little less than 5% of the bare minimum.

Do we know what tech rate we'll be running at for the rest of the game? Will it be 100%? (Can it possibly be? How??) If it's not, then would the lower maintenance from Cereal Mills allow us to run at a higher tech rate than Sushi? It's a messy calculation if you factor in the specialists, but if we could run at 10% higher and without the extra culture, would the detour to Cereal Mills be worthwhile? I guess we'd also have to factor in the time to research Refrig--we could start Sushi right now...

G22

 

[ShannonCT]

I've read through three weeks of posts and looked at the save. Forgive me if this post contains ideas that have already been dismissed, or questions that have been answered.

1) Agree we should not found Sushi in Akkad, since we are founding Mining there. We can found Standard Ethanol in Akkad. With Mining Inc execs, bank, market, grocer, and Wall Street to be built in Akkad, we need more hammers there fast. Suggest we build mines/railroads over the two windmills and forested hill, and workshop on the remaining forest. Might as well cash in two forests now. Mining Inc will be bringing in a good number of hammers soon. And the following suggestion will bring in more hammers:

2) Start a golden age now with the new GS. We'll get another GS for Ethanol from Babylon soon. With Taj, it shouldn't be difficult to get 5 golden ages in a row, carrying us through the next 45 turns. We'll need one Spy/Engineer/Prophet for the 4GP golden age.

3) We can start factories and coal plants in two turns. Even if we are planning 3G Dam, our most productive cities probably want a power plant sooner. I'm thinking of Athens specifically. Athens with factory and coal plant would be a good place to build 3GD.

4) Ironworks is planned for Cuzco? I guess we want to airlift a Mining Inc exec and Jewish missionary there soon. Since forge + factory + coal plant gives 100% hammer bonus for cheaper than IW, I guess those buildings should come first. 3GD will only give power to the Americas.

5) Where to build Forbidden Palace and Versailles?

6) Should we start workboats in our HE city for the gold overflow? We need several workboats in the area anyway. We can throw in a factory there when 3GD gets close.

7) It looks like we will have enough Sushi resources soon to serve our needs. But we can never have enough Mining Inc resources. I'll try to trade for as many of those as possible and hook more. My reference sheet says Stalin and Shaka need to be Pleased to trade strategic resources. How can we improve relations if needed? More shared war? Do we need to settle any more cities besides triple gold city near Korea?

8) Are we all set for Banks when the current ones complete?

9) We need to calculate when to switch to Free Market. With perpetual golden age, we can make the switch at any time. The only other civic switch to consider is Pacifism, but not until we finish more infrastructure.

10) How much of Korea should we capture and will it pay off to attack Stalin or Shaka?

 

[PaulisKhan]

My very rough plan for the remaining civs. (assuming hamm and joao are wiped out completey)

capture Wangs key cities for ourselves in the next few turns and vassalise him to demand his remaining metals.
move quickly on stalin and force his capitulation, demanding his widely spread metals, we can gift his captured cities back or give them to Justin if they costing us too much).
capture Shakas cities with metals, they are mostly on the outskirts of his empire and culture shouldn't be a major problem.

potential issues: stalin may not capitulate if HC is still alive and weak, this may require declaring war on shaka first to wipe out HC however I'm not an expert on capitulation.

 

[Grover22]

Agree we should not found Sushi in Akkad, since we are founding Mining there.

Approximately how much gpt would we be losing by not having the Sushi HQ in the Wall St city?
Akkad only needs to produce one Mining Inc exec by itself, then it can get back to work on infra. Some other city or cities can take care of spamming execs. (Same deal with Sushi execs--just need to make one.)

 

[PaulisKhan]

Approximately how much gpt would we be losing by not having the Sushi HQ in the Wall St city?

4*number of corp cities per turn

In relation to the maintenance cost of the corp this is fairly insignificant. I have been convincing myself otherwise for the last 6 months but I was happy to be shown wrong in this case =)

 

[Frederiksberg]

1) Agree we should not found Sushi in Akkad, since we are founding Mining there. We can found Standard Ethanol in Akkad. With Mining Inc execs, bank, market, grocer, and Wall Street to be built in Akkad, we need more hammers there fast. Suggest we build mines/railroads over the two windmills and forested hill, and workshop on the remaining forest. Might as well cash in two forests now. Mining Inc will be bringing in a good number of hammers soon. And the following suggestion will bring in more hammers:

We badly need the hammers in Akkad, so do whatever can be done.

2) Start a golden age now with the new GS. We'll get another GS for Ethanol from Babylon soon. With Taj, it shouldn't be difficult to get 5 golden ages in a row, carrying us through the next 45 turns. We'll need one Spy/Engineer/Prophet for the 4GP golden age.

Golden age now sounds right. How do we get a GProphet or GEngineer. Fusion?

3) We can start factories and coal plants in two turns. Even if we are planning 3G Dam, our most productive cities probably want a power plant sooner. I'm thinking of Athens specifically. Athens with factory and coal plant would be a good place to build 3GD.

No doubt that Athens should have factory and power plant ASAP.

4) Ironworks is planned for Cuzco? I guess we want to airlift a Mining Inc exec and Jewish missionary there soon. Since forge + factory + coal plant gives 100% hammer bonus for cheaper than IW, I guess those buildings should come first. 3GD will only give power to the Americas.

5) Where to build Forbidden Palace and Versailles?

IW in Cuzco was the original thought, but I have been thinking if it might be better to take the immediate benefit of Forbidden Palace in Cuzco and chop some forests to get it quickly. Maintenance is pretty ugly in Asia and if we are to keep the Korean cities we capture we badly need the FP. IW could then go to Seul with the intention of chopping the last or 2nd to last spaceship part there. Perhaps we should postpone the decision on where (and if) to build Versailles until we have a more clear picture of how many cities in Eurasia and Africa we intend to keep.

6) Should we start workboats in our HE city for the gold overflow? We need several workboats in the area anyway. We can throw in a factory there when 3GD gets close.

Might be a good idea. Not sure that we need more military except MP's. Building chariot MP's with overflow is also an option. Building a courthouse there and spreading Mining Inc should also be on the agenda.

7) It looks like we will have enough Sushi resources soon to serve our needs. But we can never have enough Mining Inc resources. I'll try to trade for as many of those as possible and hook more. My reference sheet says Stalin and Shaka need to be Pleased to trade strategic resources. How can we improve relations if needed? More shared war? Do we need to settle any more cities besides triple gold city near Korea?

There is a place in the middle east where we can get two metal resources with one city and also a coal + iron city site north of the sugar city we gave to Justinian. We should also look out for opportunities to acquire Standard Ethanol resources (corn, rice, sugar)

8) Are we all set for Banks when the current ones complete?

I believe so - Thebes is probably the bottleneck.

9) We need to calculate when to switch to Free Market. With perpetual golden age, we can make the switch at any time. The only other civic switch to consider is Pacifism, but not until we finish more infrastructure.

Or Free Religion for the 10% extra beakers. Agree that we should stay in OR for a while. We need courthouses almost everywhere and, of course, forges and factories in our Mining Inc cities.

10) How much of Korea should we capture and will it pay off to attack Stalin or Shaka?

We have already invested a lot of hammers in our army so it's important that we keep it working earning gold from capturing cities and collecting resources. We have 35 paratroopers and that should be enough to go after both Shaka and Stalin. In Korea we should capture the large cites in the east. I hope that maintenance is reasonable with the FP in Cuzco.

capture Wangs key cities for ourselves in the next few turns and vassalise him to demand his remaining metals.
move quickly on stalin and force his capitulation, demanding his widely spread metals, we can gift his captured cities back or give them to Justin if they costing us too much).
capture Shakas cities with metals, they are mostly on the outskirts of his empire and culture shouldn't be a major problem.

If you look at the save (I suppose you have time now - did your PhD defense go well?) Wang doesn't have many resources so I don't see the point in vassalizing when we can easily capture all the cities we need. And ending the wars fast by accepting capitulation may not in general be in our interest because it means that our large army will have nothing to do. Capturing cities earns us a lot of gold so it's probably in our interest to keep waging wars for the remainder of the game unless WW becomes prohibitive.

Approximately how much gpt would we be losing by not having the Sushi HQ in the Wall St city?

It's not necessarily a loss. The plan would be to found Standard Ethanol in Akkad later. Since it's competing with Sushi we can't have the HQ of both in Akkad. So either way we need to put one the HQ's in another city.

 

[ShannonCT]

We can hire a spy and engineer in Babs right now and have a very good chance of a GE or GSpy within 36 turns. Factory and Industrial Park will open more engineer slots.

Agree Seoul is the best place for IW from a SS perspective. Capturing Seoul should be of highest priority. Can I start marching the nearby paratroopers toward it right away or wait for reinforcements?

Cuzco should build courthouse-FP-forge then?

I see your point about keeping our army busy. After we capture Wang's best cities, we still might want to vassalize him so we can move on to Stalin and get +1 happiness for having another vassal, especially if Stalin won't trade surplus metal.

 

[Frederiksberg]

We can hire a spy and engineer in Babs right now and have a very good chance of a GE or GSpy within 36 turns. Factory and Industrial Park will open more engineer slots.

Let's do whatever we can. Is the engineer from Fusion coming too late?

Cuzco should build courthouse-FP-forge then?

Yes, and perhaps we should also plan for a missionary + Mining Inc executive quite fast to speed up things. And of course workers for chopping.

I see your point about keeping our army busy. After we capture Wang's best cities, we still might want to vassalize him so we can move on to Stalin and get +1 happiness for having another vassal, especially if Stalin won't trade surplus metal.

I don't quite follow. Is it only the extra happy face you are after? We can make an ordinary peace with Wang instead of accepting capitulation. What I'm worried about is the dom limit - not now but later. Wangs plains cities may be small but their culture do control a lot of land tiles...

 

[ShannonCT]

I don't have the game in front of me, but I remember we were at ~25% land right now, and have a 64% domination limit. Considering cities we want to take from Wang, Stalin, and Shaka, would vassalizing Wang and Stalin put us close to 60% land? I don't see Australia worth settling and we can leave Shaka most of Africa.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Like what I'm reading. Would point out that, during my turn at least, it was possible to gift any city we owned to HC. (Would be very interested if anyone knows why?) If this remains true, then any junk (not useful either to us or Justinian) Korean or Russian cities can be disposed of readily by that means and our army can keep rolling.

 

[ShannonCT]

Here is the minimum set of techs (after Assembly Line) that we'll need to launch a spaceship:

Thanks for the calculation. This should at least give us an idea of how long it will take to get to the last tech.

Do we know what tech rate we'll be running at for the rest of the game? Will it be 100%? (Can it possibly be? How??) If it's not, then would the lower maintenance from Cereal Mills allow us to run at a higher tech rate than Sushi? It's a messy calculation if you factor in the specialists, but if we could run at 10% higher and without the extra culture, would the detour to Cereal Mills be worthwhile? I guess we'd also have to factor in the time to research Refrig--we could start Sushi right now...

After we get forge-factory-plant-courthouse in a city, we can build wealth. With Mining Inc hammers and golden age hammers and 100% hammer bonus, cash will start pouring in. From my Space experience, near the end of the space race, about 40% of our cities will need to build wealth to run at 100% research. The other cities can build research until they're needed to build SS parts (which should be delayed as long as possible). Our cash flow may look bleak now, but a golden age and wealth building will turn that around dramatically.

Either way, Cereal Mills would allow us to spend less on maintenance and more on research. But as you say, we can start Sushi now, and it doesn't make much sense to found Cereal Mills if we've already spent a GM on Sushi. There is certainly some benefit to founding Sushi now: Babylon can hire more specialists sooner, our plains cities can grow to work more workshops sooner. The extra culture doesn't hurt us much on our home continent - we're going to get almost every tile there anyway. We would have to be judicious about spreading it in Eurasia. How long would it take the for the maintenance savings from Cereal instead of Sushi to pay for the cost of Refrigeration? We'll soon have 24 Sushi resources, for 12 food per turn. Cereal would only require 16 resources for 12 food per turn. What is the extra maintenance from 8 extra corporation resources in a city of, say, size 15?

 

[ShannonCT]

To aid in the discussion of domination limit, my count puts about 20.5% of the world's land in Africa and 5.5% in Australia. The tiles in the Americas that we don't own yet are about 7% of the world.

 

[leif erikson]

Spent some time staring at the map...

Cities and resources (looking for Mining Inc., Sid Sushi and Std. Ethanol) follow:
Seoul - Corn
P'yongyang - Iron
P'yonsong - Iron (outside of bfc, but within next expansion)
Rostov - Copper
Yakutsk - Iron
Moscow - Corn
Yekaterinburg - Fish
Yaroslavl - Iron and Coal
Vladevostok - Corn
South of Krasnoyarsk - 2 Gold and an Iron
Vandal - Corn and Crab (Christianity founded there - no shrine)
Babanango - Copper and Fish
uMgungundlova - Corn and Coal
kwaHlomendlini - Rice
Ondini - Corn
kwaDukuza - Iron
Nongome - Corn
EDIT - Vilcas - Iron

Unclear on how many cities we want to have Corporations in? Spent some time looking at which would benefit. The list:
Athens - Mining Inc and Std Ethanol.
Babylon - Sid Sushi HQ
Akkad - Mining Inc. HQ and Std Ethanol HQ
Cuzco - Mining Inc. and Std Ethanol
Argos - Mining Inc.
Delphi - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi
Corinth - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi
Lisbon - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi
Ephesus - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi
Mycenae - Mining Inc
Thebes - Mining Inc
Seoul - Mining Inc.

There are quite a few lesser cities that would benefit form Mining Inc, depending upon how we plan to set up our sities for producing Wealth? Not sure of maintenance costs...

Trying to make a list because each city that gets a Corp needs a some infrastructure built. Depending upon what role we assign a city, will that not determine the infrastructure needed?

Tiwanaku's maintenance is 40 gpt.
If we have a number of improvements to get up and running in Cuzco, perhaps a FP could be built in Tiwanaku or Machu Picchu, if we place Mining Inc in the city? They are not exactly hammer rich.

 

[ShannonCT]

Spent some time staring at the map...

I have been doing the same. Cities that I think would benefit from Sushi are Babylon, Sippar, Corinth, Delphi, and Coimbra on our continent, and Wonsan, Pyongsong, and Inchon in Asia if we plan to keep those cities. My main focus for Sushi would be to allow food poor cities to work more mines/workshops/mills without building farms. A city like Lisbon doesn't seem to need Sushi.

We can build levees now in riverside cities. Best candidates are Sippar, Sparta, Athens, Pharsalos, and Argos. Those cities would add at least 5 base hammers with a levee.

If we have a number of improvements to get up and running in Cuzco, perhaps a FP could be built in Tiwanaku or Machu Picchu, if we place Mining Inc in the city? They are not exactly hammer rich.

I guess it's fastest to build FP in Cuzco because to get a Mining Inc exec over there we will first need to build a Mining rep in Akkad, spread it to Athens, and then airlift a rep overseas.

 

[leif erikson]

A city like Lisbon doesn't seem to need Sushi.

I considered Lisbon because we can build Lumbermills with Railroads to replace the forest preserves, mine the Grass Hills and Wine Hill with Railroad and then, perhaps, build a couple of workshops to replace some of the farms. The extra food would allow us to work more hammer rich tiles and less farms.

We can build levees now in riverside cities. Best candidates are Sippar, Sparta, Athens, Pharsalos, and Argos. Those cities would add at least 5 base hammers with a levee.

Good idea.

I guess it's fastest to build FP in Cuzco because to get a Mining Inc exec over there we will first need to build a Mining rep in Akkad, spread it to Athens, and then airlift a rep overseas.

I'm coming ot this conclusion a swell. I was trying to find a way to save timeand get the hammer enriching improvements first, but maintenance is killing us atm, distance maintenance is 226 gpt, -56 number of cities maintenance (never saw that before) and 95 gpt for colony maintenance. Inflation is at 38%. OH MY!! We've got to get our currency under control...

EDIT - Sparta could use a Lighthouse after Taj as well.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Unclear on how many cities we want to have Corporations in?

Mining Inc and Standard Ethanol can basically go in any city. They can coexist - only drawback here is that they require different multiplier buildings. Best places for SE are cities that already have these buildings. In general the best places are the small cities, because coporate maintenance is minimum there while the yield of the corporation is exactly the same as for a big city.

Best places for Sushi are cities that have many land tiles they can't work without also working farmed plains or grassland.

Spent some time looking at which would benefit. The list:
Athens - Mining Inc and Std Ethanol.
Babylon - Sid Sushi HQ
Akkad - Mining Inc. HQ and Std Ethanol HQ
Cuzco - Mining Inc. and Std Ethanol
Argos - Mining Inc.
Delphi - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi Standar Ethanol instead of Sushi. Not enough workable tiles to justify Sushi. And we have 50% multiplier on beakers already
Corinth - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi
Lisbon - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi Sushi is not needed here to work all tiles even when we workshop the grassland
Ephesus - Mining Inc and Sid Sushi This is a good example of a city that has little or no benefit from Sushi - see the calculation example I made of a city using Sushi food for merchants. Standard Ethanol is obviously the choice here with that many beaker multipliers. Note that the city is poorly MM'ed right now - it can easily grow and still work all valuable tiles
Mycenae - Mining Inc
Thebes - Mining Inc, Standard Ethanol
Seoul - Mining Inc.
Pharsalos - Standard Ethanol
Nippur - Standard EThanol, Mining Inc
Piraeus - Standard Ethanol
Sparta - Standard Ethanol, (Mining Inc.)
Knossos - Standard Ethanol

There are quite a few lesser cities that would benefit form Mining Inc, depending upon how we plan to set up our sities for producing Wealth? Not sure of maintenance costs...

Contraintuitively Mining Inc is best placed in the small cities where maintenance is low. This means that we can place it in many more cities than those listed so far. The important principle is that small cities should get the corporation first.

Trying to make a list because each city that gets a Corp needs a some infrastructure built. Depending upon what role we assign a city, will that not determine the infrastructure needed?

Absolutely. Hammer multipliers in Mining Inc cities and beaker multipliers in Standard Ethanol cities. Sushi cities need no special buildings.

Tiwanaku's maintenance is 40 gpt.
If we have a number of improvements to get up and running in Cuzco, perhaps a FP could be built in Tiwanaku or Machu Picchu, if we place Mining Inc in the city? They are not exactly hammer rich.

I think we need to go for the fast solution and chop courthouse + FP in Cuzco.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I have been doing the same. Cities that I think would benefit from Sushi are Babylon, Sippar, Corinth, Delphi, and Coimbra on our continent, and Wonsan, Pyongsong, and Inchon in Asia if we plan to keep those cities. My main focus for Sushi would be to allow food poor cities to work more mines/workshops/mills without building farms. A city like Lisbon doesn't seem to need Sushi.

Delphi should have Standard Ethanol - see my post above.

I don't think we can keep Incho and Pyongsong. Cost a lot of maintenance and have no resources. Perhaps we should liberate Inchon to Justinian and gift Pyongsong to Stalin.

 

[leif erikson]

Mining Inc and Standard Ethanol can basically go in any city. They can coexist - only drawback here is that they require different multiplier buildings. Best places for SE are cities that already have these buildings. In general the best places are the small cities, because corporate maintenance is minimum there while the yield of the corporation is exactly the same as for a big city.

Is there a need to build Courthouses in all the small Mining Inc. cities? Is there a break even point where we may not need a courthouse?

Also, all these executives will require time and hammers to build and deploy. There is also a cost in both time and hammers to building multiplier building to support the various corporations. At what point in time does building Executives break even or stop paying off? I would think that the Std Ethanol Execs, coming later, may have less of an impact in smaller cities, particularly if Libraries, Universities and Observatories are not yet constructed? Or the total boost in beakers over a large number of cities is enough?

Best places for Sushi are cities that have many land tiles they can't work without also working farmed plains or grassland.

Does this depend upon whether we use the city as a wealth city or not? Would the additional food, used as Merchant Specialists, be a better payoff?

Contraintuitively Mining Inc is best placed in the small cities where maintenance is low. This means that we can place it in many more cities than those listed so far. The important principle is that small cities should get the corporation first.

And then these smaller cities are assigned to Wealth? How about Forges, Factories and Power Plants? Aren't those multiplier buildings the driver of the hammer economy?

I think we need to go for the fast solution and chop courthouse + FP in Cuzco.

Yes, chop, chop, chop! Then mine and railroad...

 

[ShannonCT]

Leif, good questions about whether certain builds will pay off.

I think we should assume we'll need about 40 more turns for the last needed tech. So if a build will pay off by T170, we should probably go for it. Courthouses are easy to calculate and should pay off quickly in cities with corps. Forge and factory will probably pay off everywhere on our continent with free power plants from 3GD. I can't look at the game right now but I guess we'll have around 20 Mining resources before too long, so forge-factory-plant would be worth 20 hammers per turn from those hammers alone.

Besides Plastics (for Ethanol and 3GD), is there any tech that we are in a hurry to get to? Are there any techs that will help us tech faster besides Plastics?