SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

The Final Four

while doing a confident-but-steady push on Mehmed.

This approach should net us a Great General, as we'll aim to win fights while keeping our units alive.

15 offensive fights, 30 defensive fights, or 8 offensive fights plus 14 defensive fights will get us a Great General.


Another option is to trade for Gunpowder and Chemistry, once those techs become available for trade.

We'd need to slip into Slavery, but doing so could let us whip out a couple of Privateers.

Those Privateers could go and prey on the AIs' ships, for a few free points towards a Great General.

Probably you have missed that we lack a GPerson for the final 4. Next one is due in 2 turns, the 2nd next in 25.

Actually, we still have the one from Crabs that is scheduled to come on T284.

1 Great Scientist (we already have it)
1 Great Person from Delhi shortly
1 Great Person from Crabs on T284 (that's only 15 turns away from now)
1 Great General

Only if we can't get a Great General within 25 turns, do we have to use the backup option of our Great Person from Grt Person Farm, which, as you said, will come within 25 turns.


Trading

If we manage to trade for Banking (and i'm almost sure we can in 2 turns

Well, only Toku and Saladin know Banking, and Saladin is being pretty tight-fisted about giving away techs until at least 3 AIs know a tech. Toku won't give out a tech until just about everyone knows that tech.

So, we'd likely have to wait for Justinian to learn Banking before we could get Banking in trade.


Economics

we can then switch to economics to try to win the race

Even if we do manage to get Banking in trade, I would suggest that we stick to the Mass Media beeline path.

After we learn Mass Media, sure, let's go full-bore on learning Economics, should no one else have learned it by then.

Let's think about the math. At our current research rate, it will take us about 8 turns to learn Economics and 18 turns to learn Mass Media.

Let's say that we can learn Mass Media in as soon as 15 turns. It will take us at least 2 more turns to actually build The UN, another 1 to 2 turns to become the Secretary General, and then somewhere between 5 to 10 turns before we can propose a Diplo Victory vote, and then 1 turn to win the vote. After we win, we will also have "one free turn" of unit movement to get our Great People onto the Fur.

So, we're talking somewhere betwen 24 to 30 turns to win, with 1 free turn to move our last Great Person.

If it turns out that we'll absolutely need the Great Person that comes in 25 turns, we have options of getting him faster, such as waiting until he will be born within a few turns and then, each turn, hiring every citizen as a Specialist. We'll lose population poitns in that City and this technique is not sustaintable for a long period of time (which is why we'd only do it within a few turns of completion of that Great Person), but we should be able to shave off a couple of turns of generating that Great Person by starving the City in this way.

So, even if we don't get our Great General, we should be able to get that last Great Person 2 or more turns sooner than 25 turns from now, giving it to us, say, at the latest (possibly earlier) 23 turns from now.

With the ideal Galleon chain, we can get that Great Person from Grt Person Farm to the Fur within 2 turns of it being produced.

So, we should be able to pull things off, with a bit of proper planning and last-minute starving of Grt Person Farm, without needing to divert from our Mass Media beeline.

BAM! (can't remember where i've seen this )

Indeed, it is a good backup option, should Economics still be unlearned by an AI by the time that we learn Mass Media and should we have somehow lost a Great Person along the way, say, due to a misclick (it happens) or due to a Privateer sinking one of our Great People enroute.


Toku and Mercantilism

Then we'll wait for Toku asking to switch to Mercantilism.

I agree with this approach, to be used after we learn Banking, as switching into Mercantilism pre-maturely will seriously hamper our economy.

However, we do not need to research Economics for Mercantlism, nor do we "absolutely need Banking ASAP" to be able to switch into Mercantilism later.

However, what would you trade for Banking? We might get LUCKY if we trade with Justinian and he choses not to trade Printing Press away to Saladin, but if he trades that away to Saladin, we'll really be left out of the tech trading game.


We certainly want to avoid trading around Astronomy, to keep the AIs from grabbing land overseas and to keep them from building Privateers.


Would we give away Liberalism just to get Banking? It's an option, but trading around this tech has the danger of giving AIs the ABILITY to switch into Free Religion. Toku can pick Free Religion now and he hasn't done so, while most of the other AIs prefer Theocracy and thus have no real good reason to switch into Free Religion.

So, if you want to trade Liberalism for Banking, I would support such a trade, even though there is a tiny element of risk involved with doing so.

In fact, we immediately gain +1 if we switch by ourselves, but a better +2 if we accept his FC and if we run it. We can compensate the lost of trade routes income with Merchants: 2C+3B each will do, mainly if we run @0 science.

While I agree with you about switching into Mercantilism, should we be asked by Toku do so, I would also say that we should switch out of it ASAP (5 turns later), unless we're less than 10 turns away from a Diplo Victory vote at the time of being asked to switch (5 turns to switch out of Mercantilism, but then 5 turns would be needed to switch back into Mercantilism, hence the 10 turn suggestion).

I do not agree that Mercantilism will pay for itself in our economy, as we have virtually no Gold multiplying buildings. The only one that we do have, a Market in Delhi, would not be used, as we have a greater-than-other-Cities' RELATIVE increased modifier for Flasks in Delhi than we for Gold there. Mercantilism will put us in the "red" (losing money per turn), which is why I suggest that we try and keep a 200 Gold minimum balance at all times, to deal with the possibility of having to switch into Mercantilism.

Therefore, if we have collected about 600 Gold, we can CAREFULLY (i.e. for one turn only and then remembering to switch back on the next turn) switch to a 100% Science Rate, switching back to a 0% Science Rate on the following turn, to maintain our 200+ Gold minimum balance while also not running too large of a Gold surplus.

Also, better find a way to speed our war, since a size 11 city will need some 8-9 turns to go out of revolt. We can hope that Mehmed will whip the hell, but we can't count on a size less than 8.

Slow but steady will win the race. We can move close to the City with our stack of 6 units and start bombarding it during UT's turnset.

Once we have our second stack of 4 units join the first stack, and once we have 2 Airships stations in Cordoba, then we can take the City.

We can even consider leaving the City with just 1 defender after the first round of attacking, instead of capturing it immediately, so that on the next turn, we'll have less units sitting around in the field that can be picked off by Mehmed's units.

If the City is large enough to require 9 turns of revolt, then we'll have to evaluate the situation at the start of Mitchum's turnset as to whether or not building The UN in Mehmed's area will still be a feasible plan.


Airships
The beauty of going after Mehmed's City to the north of Cordoba first is that we can use Airships to help us weaken the top defenders of the City, making the City fall to us that much more easily.

We can then use that City, based on where its Cultural Borders indicate the City Centre must be, to be within range of assaulting Chinook (the Silk City), allowing us to use Airships to more easily capture the Silk.

 

[Mitchum]

OK, I did some quick calculations and here are the population counts for each civ. These numbers should help in calculating which votes we need to win the Sec Gen and Diplo votes:

162 - Fifth Element
132 - Tokugawa
109 - Justinian
82 - Mehmed
77 - Saladin
38 - Isabella
33 - Zara

Of course, if we need extra pops to give us the edge, we can grow our cities or capture more of Mehmed's.

I think the absolute fastest way for us to win will be to only do the minimum needed to win the game. What still remains to be done is:

1. Camp the Fur
2. Tech Mass Media
3. Build the UN
4. Secure the Silk
5. Get 4 warriors on the Fur
6. Get 4 great people on the Fur
7. Win the vote for Sec Gen
8. Win the diplo vote

We have a good handle on the first two items.

We can build the UN in Riverdale in 2 turns with one GE or in one of Mehmed's cities in 1 turn with two GEs. The easier one to pull off logistically would be building it in Riverdale because we wouldn't have to worry about shuttling two GEs safely through a war zone. Plus, we'd use one less great person building it in Riverdale.

Securing the Silk should be easy, but if we get too distracted taking a lot of additional cities, this could easily get away from us. We need to be sure that all military paths quickly converge on Chinook and gaining the Silk resource.

Dhoomstriker made getting the 4 warriors on the Fur easy. This should be done as soon as Zhou comes out of revolt, the borders pop and the fur is camped.

Getting 4 great people to the fur could be a challenge, depending on how many GEs we have to burn on the UN. I propose that we only use one GE if at all possible to remove great people generation from the critical path. The critical path should be Mass Media and building the UN. Anything other than this would be a sub-optimal game.

Securing the Sec Gen vote will be tough because we'll likely be going up against Tokugawa (unless we try to get Mehmed to capture the UN IBT). We need at least 40% of the vote and we have to beat Tokugawa. Some ways to make ths happen a bit better include:

1. Getting Tokugawa out of Theocracy.
2. Improving our relations with Sal and Justinian (some will happen automatically over time like shared religion and others we'll have to do actively like fair and forthright trading)
3. Increasing our population.

If we can get Zara, Isabella and either Justinian or Sal to vote for us, we should be able to beat him based on current populations (assumes Mehmed will abstain from the vote). This sound very doable to me!!

To win the UN Diplo victory, we'll need 62% of the vote (IIRC). So, if we go up against Zara, we would need Isabella and 2 of Tokugawa, Justinian and Sal to vote for us (if only Isabella, Justinian and Sal vote for us, we would need about 20 extra pops based on the current populations).

So, it is my opinion that we should focus on:

1. Teching to Mass Media as quickly as possible.
2. Bulding the UN in Riverdale with only 1 GE, making Zara our final opponent for the UN Diplo vote by gifting Riverdale to him (which loses us 13 pops, by the way).
3. Improving relations with Toku, Justinian, Isabella and Saladin.
4. Souring relations between Toku and Justinian and Toku and Saladin if possible.
5. Growing our population in all cities as much as possible without delaying MM or the generation of our final great person.
6. Taking Chinook and maybe one (or two?) other city (that we can hold) to boost our population even more.

Thoughts?

 

[BLubmuz]

1) We certainly want to avoid trading around Astronomy, to keep the AIs from grabbing land overseas and to keep them from building Privateers.

2) Would we give away Liberalism just to get Banking? It's an option, but trading around this tech has the danger of giving AIs the ABILITY to switch into Free Religion. Toku can pick Free Religion now and he hasn't done so, while most of the other AIs prefer Theocracy and thus have no real good reason to switch into Free Religion.

1) Sure like Hell!

2) Not only we must avoit to trade away Lib, but also Education. The risk can be low, since the AIs with Theo as FC won't switch until very late in the game, but the risk can be Toku. Surely not the backwards Mehmed.

 

[unclethrill]

T269

Move Galleon with GS towards Barb Island.
Chop both forests S of Mystic, 1 W of Copper
Load Buddhist Missionary into galleon and send it to Izzy
Move LB on Barb Island to Devils Gate, MM to Zhau, Worker to Zhau, Warriors to Zhau, rest of units to the coast to be picked up by GS Galleon
Move Stack of units to the Jungle N N N N E of Cordoba, Move stack of other 4 across the continent towards same spot.
Move rest of Galleons to the army rally point


T270

Move new units to closest Army rally point
Unload GS. Load MM and 2 Catapults on Galleon and send to Mehmed land drop off point NE of Cordoba
Load up warriors in Justinian's land and leave in city so that they canbe moved and dropped off next turn


T271

Gift Bud. Mission to Izzy. Switch to Bud Mission in Delhi
Move the rest of the workers to Delhi to wait for further orders
Drop off both warriors on the fort near Devils Gate
Load up troops and sent them to military drop point in Mehmed land
Protect warriors in fort with extra MM that couldn't fit on the galleon

T272

Send Airship to Cordoba
Load up Budh. Mission and send to Izzy
Move new units to rally point and begin new units. Elephants and 1 more Airship.
Begin moving troops (6) to attack (1NW)

T273

Move troops(6) to Forest 1N
Begin moving other troops to back up the first stack.
Keep moving towards City to attack.
Use Airship to soften city defenders
Gift Missionary to Izzy, Start a new one in Delhi

T274

Main troops - Begin knocking down walls
Backup troops move into position
Continue to produce units and transport to Mehmed coast
Send next missionary to Izzy
Rebase new Airship to cordoba. Use Other Airship to work on city under attack

T275

Gift 3rd Missionary to Izzy and start a new one in GPF
continue assualt

T276

Continue attack
Continue to produce units
Continue to transport units

Save game
Submit save

Other Notes

Once Saladin is willing to trade us Divine Right, we can execute the following trades:
1. Trade Education and Printing Press to Justinian for Nationalism, Guilds, and whatever Gold that he will give to us (which he'll currently trade but it would be too soon to do as then he might just trade Printing Press to Saladin--wait until we can get Divine Right out of Saladin)
2. Printing Press to Saladin for Divine Right and whatever Gold that he will give to us (which is a trade that Saladin would likely be willing to make, due to the high value of the trade for him)


Refuse to switch out of Buddhism

Refuse other trade offers

Keep research at 0%

Keep researching Mass Media



I would like to play tomorrow night but I can hold till Tuesday night if there is a major problem or further discussion needed.

 

[Mitchum]

Actually, we still have the one from Crabs that is scheduled to come on T284.

1 Great Scientist (we already have it)
1 Great Person from Delhi shortly
1 Great Person from Crabs on T284 (that's only 15 turns away from now)
1 Great General

This is too long and should be a fallback position. Ideally, the great person from Crabs will be our final great person needed if we build the UN in Riverdale in 2 turns using only 1 GE. If this is the case, we could possibly have our Sec Gen vote in 15 (learn Mass Media) + 2 (build the UN) = 17 turns. The Diplo vote will come up about 5 turns later (needs to be verified), which should give us plenty of time to get Crabs great person to the Fur.

So, for planning purposes, we should push to win the game in 22 turns from now.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Sec Gen vote:

162 - Fifth Element = ours
132 - Tokugawa = Toku's
109 - Justinian = could be either, but let's say Toku's
82 - Mehmed = neither if we keep the Toku and Mehmed at war
77 - Saladin = should be ours with a tech gift just before the vote giving us +4
38 - Isabella = could be either, but let's say Toku's
33 - Zara = ours

Our votes = 162 + 77 + 33 = 272
Toku's votes = 132 + 109 + 38 = 279

That's what I see being the worst case. We might still get either Isabella's or Justinian's vote.

A little bit of growth plus capturing one of Mehmed's Cities should push us over the top in a worst case scenario.


EDIT: Note that Isabella can get +3 with us for a tech gift, so we can probably win her vote, too, but even if not, I think that we'll be fine for beating Toku just by playing how we've been planning to play.

 

[Mitchum]

162 - Fifth Element = ours
132 - Tokugawa = Toku's
109 - Justinian = could be either, but let's say Toku's
82 - Mehmed = neither if we keep the Toku and Mehmed at war
77 - Saladin = should be ours with a tech gift just before the vote giving us +4
38 - Isabella = could be either, but let's say Toku's
33 - Zara = ours

Our votes = 162 + 77 + 33 = 272
Toku's votes = 132 + 109 + 38 = 279

That's what I see being the worst case. We might still get eitiher Isabella's or Justinian's vote.

A little bit of growth plus capturing one of Mehmed's Cities should push us over the top in a worst case scenario.

Agreed. Let's build the UN in Riverdale then and plan accordingly. This will give us the fastest possible victory date from now as research will be our critical path as it should in a good diplo game.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

2) Not only we must avoit to trade away Lib, but also Education. The risk can be low, since the AIs with Theo as FC won't switch until very late in the game, but the risk can be Toku. Surely not the backwards Mehmed.

It's too late.

Saladin has Education and he trades everything to his blood brother, Justinian.


Either we will trade Education to Justinian or Saladin will. It would be better for us to get that trade, but like I said, we don't want to create a tech inequality between those two by only giving Printing Press to Justinian, so we'll have to wait until we can also get a tech (Divine Right) from Saladin for Printing Press, within the same turn.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

1. Getting Tokugawa out of Theocracy.
2. Improving our relations with Sal and Justinian (some will happen automatically over time like shared religion and others we'll have to do actively like fair and forthright trading)
3. Increasing our population.

4. Bribe Toku out of war with Mehmed and back into war with Mehmed shortly before the Secretary General vote, causing least Justinian and possibly Saladin to get angry at Toku, for declaring war on the AI's friend.

Option 1 is pretty unlikely, unless we can get Toku up to being Friendly with us and bribe him.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

[5.]Growing our population in all cities as much as possible without delaying MM or the generation of our final great person.
Thoughts?

I disagree with the part about "in all Cities as much as possible," as doing so would mean firing Scientists. We have to keep our focus on running the Scientists that we currently have hired.

Getting a few extra population points is not worth delaying Mass Media due to firing some Scientists.


So, the only population growth that we are likely to see is in Cities that are already set to grow their populations, such as the following Cities:
1. Silverado
2. Riverdale
3. Bedrock (but in 5 turns' time, we should probably stagnate growth since we'll be at our Healthiness cap)
4. Wheaties
5. Risaia will get 1 more population point in 13 turns and then will automatically become stagnant
6. Ivory Towers is proably our fastest-growing City
7. Mystic is probably our second-fastest-growing City

That's still a lot of growth, but I think that we should stick with mostly the current allocation of Scientists, instead of using the approach of "growing as much as possible everywhere." Perhaps you didn't mean to fire Scientists, but I just wanted things to be clear.

 

[Mitchum]

I disagree with the part about "in all Cities as much as possible," as doing so would mean firing Scientists. We have to keep our focus on running the Scientists that we currently have hired.

Getting a few extra population points is not worth delaying Mass Media due to firing some Scientists.


So, the only population growth that we are likely to see is in Cities that are already set to grow their populations, such as the following Cities:
1. Silverado
2. Riverdale
3. Bedrock (but in 5 turns' time, we should probably stagnate growth since we'll be at our Healthiness cap)
4. Wheaties
5. Risaia will get 1 more population point in 13 turns and then will automatically become stagnant
6. Ivory Towers is proably our fastest-growing City
7. Mystic is probably our second-fastest-growing City

That's still a lot of growth, but I think that we should stick with mostly the current allocation of Scientists, instead of using the approach of "growing as much as possible everywhere." Perhaps you didn't mean to fire Scientists, but I just wanted things to be clear.

I agree. When I said "...without delaying MM or the generation of our final great person." I thought it was clear that we would not do anything that would delay MM, like firing too many scientists. Thanks for being "crystal" clear.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

T270
Unload GS. Load MM and 2 Catapults on Galleon and send to Mehmed land drop off point NE of Cordoba

On T271, you could feasibly load Maceman 1 onto Galleon 1 if you move Galleon 1 to the Coast N + N + N of DevilsGate.

That way, we'd get to use the Maceman with the City Raider 3 promotion (Maceman 1 is currently on the GIron square near Zhou).

Also, I suggest one of two options:
a) Unload these troops in Madrid and have Galleon 1 return to get the other two Macemen from the Barb area. The unloaded troops can march to the west coast of Isabella's lands, where a different Galleon can pick them up and take them to Chinook.
b) Send Galleon 1 to Chinook.

Unloading the troops at Cordoba is going to make it take too long to get the other Macemen from the Barb Area to Mehmed, while it's "not quite far enough" to send the units in order to be able to capture Chinook for the Silk.


One further thought: all Cities must be connected via Trade Routes. So, if we plan to build The UN in Riverdale, we may have to gift the City to the north of Cordoba to Isabella, should it end up not being connected to our Trade Route Network. That's not a bad thing, but just something for us to remember.


More comments to come later, for now I need some supper.

 

[Mitchum]

Keep research at 0%

Now that researching Mass Media is our critical path again, the only way to speed up our victory date is to speed up Mass Media. I think we should put some effort into learning Mass Media as quickly as possible. This would include running research at 100%, getting gold in trades or via begging to allow more turns at 100% and running merchants if our gold per turn goes negative at 0% science.

We are now at a point of optimization, right? The only way to get a faster victory is to speed up research of Mass Media. Let's do it. Shaving off a few turns of MM could be the difference between a podium finish or not.

On other issues, what do you plan to do with our caravel and our trieme?

Now, I don't think we'll be able to get Riverdale up to 16 pops fast enough, so we'll have to jump through a few hoops to build the UN in 2 turns (e.g. turn cottages into workshops and/or windmills into mines on the turn we learn Mass Media, work all food tiles which could include tundra, etc.). I'll run a test game tonight or tomorrow to figure out how we'll be able to complete the UN in 2 turns. Please don't play until I've run this test as it could involve you doing some things during your turnset.

 

[Irgy]

Ok, back in action. Looks like everything's well on track for the finish line, which is quite exciting really. Congratulations on getting Radio!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Caravel and Trireme

On other issues, what do you plan to do with our caravel and our trieme?

Well, we're unlikely to get into any war besides with Mehmed.

We're also unlikely to settle that Barb Island to the north of Toku (if we want to settle a Size 1 City, it is best to do so 3 squares away from our capital, keep maintenance costs down). We also unlikely to bother capturing Cities there, as capturing Barb Cities isn't as good as capturing Mehmed's Cities, since by capturing Mehmed's Cities, we reduce the number of UN votes that cannot be used to vote us as the Leader of the World, but by capturing the Barb Cities, we only increase our percentage of the overall votes by a smaller fraction.

So... I'm going to suggest that we immediately send the Caravel to the EAST, away from the Barb Island and back towards Mehmed's area.

The Trireme can sail up the west Coast of Isabella's lands, preferably waiting for the Caravel to catch up. Then, the two of them can "stand" (sail?) on the same square as each other, slowly working their way clockwise around Mehmed's coastline. That way, if Mehmed has boats, our boats might get attacked, giving us a few extra points towards getting a Great General.

Otherwise, those boats will just sit around being useless, so we might as well leverage them in this way--great thinking, Mitchum!


Research Rate

Now that researching Mass Media is our critical path again, the only way to speed up our victory date is to speed up Mass Media. I think we should put some effort into learning Mass Media as quickly as possible. This would include running research at 100%, getting gold in trades or via begging to allow more turns at 100% and running merchants if our gold per turn goes negative at 0% science.

We're not likely to get much from begging anymore. We've already mostly exhausted this avenue of getting Gold. However, I did lay out some suggestions for how to go about trading techs, and UT has captured that info in his PPP. As a part of those trades, we'll get some Gold.

For some reason, he did not mention the third trade, that of:

3. On the next turn, Trade Divine Right to Toku for Music and whatever Gold that he will give to us (Music is a tech that he'll currently trade and would probably give to us for a high-valued tech like Divine Right)

Perhaps he has a reason not to make this trade (I don't see anyone having complained in the thread yet about it, though) or perhaps he forgot to include it in his PPP, but if we do make this trade, we'll get some of Toku's Gold, too.


So, yes, as I mentioned:

Therefore, if we have collected about 600 Gold, we can CAREFULLY (i.e. for one turn only and then remembering to switch back on the next turn) switch to a 100% Science Rate, switching back to a 0% Science Rate on the following turn, to maintain our 200+ Gold minimum balance while also not running too large of a Gold surplus.

if we manage to collect around 600 Gold or more, we can spend a turn at a 100% Science Rate, as long as we remember to switch back to a 0% Science Rate on the following turn.


Riverdale

Now, I don't think we'll be able to get Riverdale up to 16 pops fast enough

So, once Riverdale grows in 2 turns, we should work the Tundra Forest square with the new citizen, just to be at +3 Food per turn, giving us the best chance of at least growing to Size 15, right? That should happen automatically without UT needing to do anything.

so we'll have to jump through a few hoops to build the UN in 2 turns (e.g. turn cottages into workshops and/or windmills into mines on the turn we learn Mass Media, work all food tiles which could include tundra, etc.).

I've already pre-Workshopped 4 squares to within 1 turn of completing the Workshops. We should NOT complete these Workshops during UT's turnset--they will likely be completed near the end of Mitchum's turnset or just after then, depending upon how long he plays and when we can obtain Mass Media relative to that time.

As Mitchum says, perhaps UT will have to pre-Workshop some additional GRiv Irr squares around Riverdale, which simply means having a Worker Worshop/Stop for 5 turns, never putting that 6th turn of work into a square.

The squares which already have pre-Workshops on them (you can tell which squares I already pre-Workshopped using the hover text, which will say "Build a Workshop: 1 Turn) are as follows:
- all 3 GRiv Cottages around Riverdale, plus the GRiv Irr 1NW of Riverdale where a lot of our Workers are currently standing


So, if Mitchum does ask you to pre-Workshop any squares, it will be other GRiv Irr squares and not any of the 4 squares that I have already mentioned, since those ones are already as close to complete as possible.


Just a tip for Mitchum's turnset: If you do end up making Workshops, remember that Caste System = +1 Hammer per Workshop. So, we'd only want to switch from Caste System to Slavery on a turn where we have enough Hammers from Forest chops and previous turns' worth of working Workshops, not before then, otherwise we'll miss out on the +1 Hammer bonus per Workshop that Caste System provides.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

More PPP Comments

Worker Actions

T269
Chop both forests S of Mystic, 1 W of Copper...
Move the rest of the workers to Delhi to wait for further orders

Presumably, since you did not mention any other Worker actions, you might want to partially-Workshop some GRiv Irr squares around Riverdale that aren't the 1NW GRiv Irr square, based on Mitchum's recommendations after he runs his test. Of course, we want to keep the Farms and Cottages around Riverdale during your turnset, so partially-Workshopping is a manual-intensive process of starting and stopping a Worker action each time, just to avoid accidentally completing said action, while never performing said action on a square that already says "Build a Workshop: 1 turn" in the hover text.


Whoever thought to include the "chop Forests to within 1 turn of being chopped" functionality of BUFFY isn't a player who plays Space Race games, or else they would have thought to include the same functionality for ALL Worker actions, not just for Forest chopping.


Wouldn't Space Race games so much easier with that functionality? Does anyone know how to make feature requests for BUFFY, because I wouldn't mind having that idea being passed along.


If Mitchum doesn't give you a lot of squares to partially-Workshop, then I would think that putting Forest Preserves on the Forests to the east of Delhi (NE + E + E + E, SE + E, and SE + SE + E + E) would be the next most important thing that you could have our Workers doing.


Also, please assign 1 Worker to build a Road between Silverado and Grt Person Farm, starting from the GIrr square 1W of Silverado, then heading NW then W. The idea is that we will build our last Great Person in either Crabs or Grt Person Farm. If we are short on Galleons, then the Great Person may have to walk for a turn or two, so giving them a "direct access highway" would help out, perhaps saving us a turn or two at the end of the game.

Also, please assign 1 Worker to build a Fort SE + S of Silverado. The Road there is optional, but the Fort could potentially be used by a Galleon chain that stretches from the waters near Crabs to the Fort that we are going to build near DevilsGate.

So, also, be sure to build a Fort overtop of the GCot NW + W of DevilsGate, again for the purposes of saving us a turn at the end of the game.


Maceman 1

Move LB on Barb Island to Devils Gate, MM to Zhou

As I mentioned earlier, we can instead send Maceman 1 to Galleon 1, since it's our most heavily-decorated unit (our only Level 4 unit--if we were playing a longer game, this unit would have been the one to have unlocked The Heroic Epic for us, but it's too late to build that Wonder).


Learning a bit of Chinese

Zhau

FYI, in Chinese, there is a Zhou and there is a Zhao, but no Zhau. The "zh" is pronounced like the letter "j," while the "ou" sounds like the letter "o" and the "ao" sounds like the noise that you make when you hit your thumb with a hammer. In this case, it's Zhou.


Other Macemen

T271
Protect warriors in fort with extra MM that couldn't fit on the galleon

Preferably, we'll come back for these two Macemen with Galleon 1, after dropping off the 2 Cats and Maceman 1 in Madrid. With a unit on the Fur, the entire Barb Island looks like it will be spawn-busted and thus the Warriors will not need "protecting."


Airship

T273
Use Airship to soften city defenders

The good part about being able to do so, thanks to having land units next to Mehmed's City, is that you will get a "recon mission" for "free" as part of the Airship's attack.


Other Units

T276
Continue to produce units

In most cases, we'll probably just be able to produce cheap units at this point, if we want to have any chance of getting them to the front lines in time. That pretty much means Cats (75 Hammers) or Longbowmen (75 Hammers) in Cities other than Wheaties or Silverado, unless you think that the City in question can somehow complete the other kind of unit in time.



Yes, refuse two-sided trade offers, but also be willing to accept most Demands or Requests for Help

Refuse other trade offers

You should probably add that we'll accept all Demands or Requests for Help that involve an AI asking for a Tech, a sum of Gold, or our World Map, when they offer nothing in return as part of the deal.

 

[Mitchum]

So, once Riverdale grows in 2 turns, we should work the Tundra Forest square with the new citizen, just to be at +3 Food per turn, giving us the best chance of at least growing to Size 15, right? That should happen automatically without UT needing to do anything.

I'll have to see how long it would take to grow to 15. We may have to actually start working the tundra square now...

Just a tip for Mitchum's turnset: If you do end up making Workshops, remember that Caste System = +1 Hammer per Workshop. So, we'd only want to switch from Caste System to Slavery on a turn where we have enough Hammers from Forest chops and previous turns' worth of working Workshops, not before then, otherwise we'll miss out on the +1 Hammer bonus per Workshop that Caste System provides.

Good point. You may have to remind me again...

 

[Mitchum]

Other Units

In most cases, we'll probably just be able to produce cheap units at this point, if we want to have any chance of getting them to the front lines in time. That pretty much means Cats (75 Hammers) or Longbowmen (75 Hammers) in Cities other than Wheaties or Silverado, unless you think that the City in question can somehow complete the other kind of unit in time.

Should we really build more units after those in the queue? Will they ever see action? If so, will it really matter if we only have 22 turns left? Will the increased maintenance cost be worth it?

I think we should put a stake in the ground. Any units that would be completed after turn TXXX should not be built (this could include some units in our city queues right now...). We may be able to build airships a bit later since they can get into the action faster and serve a very good purpose. I think turn TXXX is some time during UT's turnset, so I should not be building any units. We can build either science or gold instead, right?

 

[Mitchum]

Ivory Towers' Galley

The Galley by Ivory Towers was being used to shuttle units between Ivory Towers and Isabella's lands.

Since we'd had Closed Borders with Zara, it was trapped and was unable to do anything else.

I suppose now that we recently Opened Borders with Zara, it could be used to shuttle troops from our mainland to Isabella's lands, but it would take a really long time to do so.

I think that it's best just used to shuttle the troops that get built in Ivory Towers to Isabella's area, so that we do not need to divert any Galleons towards Ivory Towers jut to pick up a unit every 6 or so turns.


The idea is that once a unit is built in Ivory Towers, it can move 1NE onto the Galley there and then that Galley will be automatically woken up. The Galley can then move into Seville and can unload the Military Unit in Seville on the next turn, giving that Military Unit its full movement points.

Thanks for bringing this point up, so that I could explain how I'd been using the Galley.


Do you have a different opinion on how we should be leveraging that Galley or does that approach work for you?

No other city gets its own galley. Why should Ivory Towers get its own galley? It's not fair (famous words of my five-year old daughter)!

Can this galley be used specifically to shuttle missionaries to Izzy, freeing up space on our galleons to get our last few units to the war front first? Could it be better used as part of a galley chain to get our great people to the Fur? Can we afford to upgrade it (I think not since I'd rather spend our gold on science, but it's worth asking)?

In any event, a personal yacht for the duchess of Ivory Towers should not be in our plans...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Don't forget about these points for your PPP, in regards to the Confucian Missionaries:

There are 2 Confucian Missionaries on the western continent.

One is near Trebizond and should probably Fortify in Trebizond. There's no way that we'll benefit from building a Confucian Temple in our Barb Cities at this stage of the game--better to build a military unit after a Courthouse is complete, either a land unit if we have a Galleon that can transport it or an Airship if we think that there will be time to use it. Failing both ideas, then Wealth is going to be the best build item in these isolated Cities, after Courthouses are complete.

The other Confucian Missionary is near the Saladin + Toku border. We should probably just turn that Missionary around (it is currently on an "automove" path to Trebizond--I forgot to cancel automoves before submitting the save, sorry--most of the auto-moving units are just on the western continent, but a few are on our continent, moving units to 1NE of Wheaties). We could park this Confucian Missionary in Goldfish, again saving it in case we feel the need to gift it to Saladin.