SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

A few more questions

Risaia
What's better... finishing off the Library that already has 31/135 Hammers invested into it for a bonus 6 Flasks per turn (at a 0% Science Rate) or forgetting about the Library and building a Courthouse there from scratch for 180 Hammers for 4 Gold saved per turn?


Monastaries?
Do you guys like the idea of building a couple more Monastaries so that we can have at least 1 City able to build Missionaries of each Religion that we own and so that we can have another "backup" Missionary-building City for Buddhism?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Forget the buildings and prepare for war?
You know, it's probably overkill to build the Divine Right Wonders.

We probably won't need to build any non-Buddhist Missionaries and non-Confucianist Missionaries, either.

Do we really need to spread Taoism, Judaism, and Christianity to a bunch of our Cities?


Do we REALLY need Versailles?


Even The Spiral Minaret probably won't help that much, since:
1. We won't get the benefit of Monastaries contributing their Gold per Turn values
AND
2. We'll soon have to switch into Buddhism. We have Confucian Temples in every City, but we only have 3 Buddhist Temples. Okay, maybe we'll build a few more, but really, is building The Spiral Minaret going to pay itself off? Probably not.


So, really, what we should be doing with this turnset is:
1. Stopping to build buildings that won't contribute to our empire that much. For example, no more Wonders, no more Monastaries (except maybe a Buddhist one so that we can make Buddhist Missionaries), no more Libraries (not even the one that we'd started a while ago in Risaia and have 31 Hammers invested in--it won't pay off in time), etc.
AND
2. Building buildings that WILL help us out: Forges (that have already been started--otherwise, it is too late for them to be useful), Courthouses (to prevent our economy from crashing once we grab a Barb City or two plus a City or a few Cities from Mehmed), and that's about it, really!
AND
3. Building Military units, where I will TRY to queue them up so that we can build them all at once later and get promotions on them from Theocracy while saving on Maintenance Costs in the meantime.
AND
4. Instead of buying Divine Right from Zara, we will instead buy him back into the war against Mehmed, so that he and Toku can build up a few Mutual Military Struggle points with each other. Toku is not going to vote for him if we make him our Voting Opponent, but it will be nice to have the option to "gift" a City to Zara when Toku does not treat Zara as his Worst Enemy.


What does this stuff do?
1. Well, for starters, it puts a focus on winning faster. The Spiral Minaret and Versailles are great for games where you don't go for Scientific Method or where you have a massive empire. They're just going to slow down our victory date here.
AND
2. We'll actually have a few Military units available to take on Mehmed. It doesn't really matter what units we build, as long as we have some kind of a stack of them.
AND
3. When we trade with Zara to get him to go to war with Mehmed, we might be able to pick up Horseback Riding, giving us a bit more flexibility in terms of the units that we can build (Horse Archers and War Elephants, for example).
AND
4. We will care even less about the "loss" of the benefits of our Confucian Temples by switching into Buddhism, since we won't have The Spiral Minaret's bonus that we'll be giving up by switching Religions. We can also say "forget it" to building Buddhist Temples for the University of Sankore's bonus Flasks--more Military Units will be better.
AND
5. We can continue to skip building Barracks, as it's too late in the game to do so. By focusing on building a lot of Military units everywhere, we will overwhelm at least one of Mehmed's Silk Cities with sheer numbers.
AND
6. We might even be able to build enough Galleons to get some sort of a Galleon chain going BEFORE the AIs can build Privateers, meaning that "waiting for the last Great Person" shouldn't be a major hold-up in terms of our victory date.
AND
7. We will actually have the opportunity of using 2 Great Engineers on The United Nations in one of Mehmed's Cities. I'm still not 100% convinced that it's the best idea to do so, but we will gain Zara's votes this way. I really do not think that Mehmed will be voted for over us by an AI in a Diplo Victory vote--if anything, we just won't get voted because we switched into Buddhism and Theocracy too late.

 

[BLubmuz]

Fisrt off, some answers to your questions:

Wonders:
I agree that it's not worth the effort.
If need to save on maintenance costs for, say, Ottoman cities, we can build the Forbidden Palace there, once we have enough CHs.
And this bring me to next point,

Courthouses:
They MUST be a priority, even before Forges, provided we do not have Happiness problems. It was a mistake not whippig them when we was in Slavery. We know CoL from the early BCs and we barely built 1 or 2.

Military:
Absolutely, Mehmed is a good warmonger, we need many units - and good units - to counter him. There's also the chance that he can be our opponent instead of Zara, provided we can unleash all the AIs in war with him and that we can convert Zara to Buddhism.
But this won't matter.

Our of topic, The Road to War:
It's a Mod which comes with BtS, but the best version is the UE (Ultimate Edition).
I like Command & Conquer, it's the only other game i play and that is a good way to get the feeling of CIV and C&C together.
I mod-modded it slightly, just to improve some minor thing (to my taste, at least).

Tomorrow morning i'll try to post that darn report. It's just a summary, 'cause everything is already in this thread, but i know it can help.

Next save should be posted in 2 days. We're in August, now!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Courthouses:
They MUST be a priority, even before Forges, provided we do not have Happiness problems. It was a mistake not whippig them when we was in Slavery. We know CoL from the early BCs and we barely built 1 or 2.

Well, we have several Forges half-completed at the moment. I can certainly kill the Monastaries from the build plans and put Courthouses in their places, but now that we're at least half-done the Forges in several spots, it would seem to make sense to finish the Forges before working on the Courthouses, agreed?

Military:
Absolutely, Mehmed is a good warmonger, we need many units - and good units - to counter him. There's also the chance that he can be our opponent instead of Zara, provided we can unleash all the AIs in war with him and that we can convert Zara to Buddhism.
But this won't matter.

I think that Mehmed could work as our opponent even if we do not manage to get the other AIs to go to war with him.

We're beating him in Diplo Relations when compared to every other AI, with the exception of Saladin, who has yet to meet Mehmed, so we don't know how we relatively rate with Saladin. And that's without counting in the Shared Religion bonus from Buddhism or the Shared Favour Civic bonus from Theocracy.

Probably the biggest advantage to making Mehmed our opponent, instead of Zara, even if we can't get Zara's vote, is the ability to keep Riverdale's population points on our side of the vote. That point is relatively minor in terms of pure numbers--a few more or less votes won't make a difference at the end. What might matter, though, is having enough population points to be the largest Civ population-wise in the world.

We're still behind Toku by 2 pecentage points, but many of our Cities will soon be growing some more. So, we shouldn't really need Riverdale's population points, but they might play a factor if our populations are close to each other.

So, as to whom we make our Diplo opponent out of Zara or Mehmed likely won't matter one bit, as long as we make it one of them and not one of the western AIs.

The toughest challenge will actually be winning the Secretary General vote, since we'll likely be up against Toku for that vote.

Our of topic, The Road to War:
It's a Mod which comes with BtS, but the best version is the UE (Ultimate Edition).

Weird, I can't see it... oh wait... you have to exit out of the Hall of Fame Mod, and then you can access it via: Advanced -> Load a Mod, in the game's main menu.

Hmmm, no wonder you like it. Italy appears to have a TON of unique units, while many Civs don't get any unique units.

In fact, it looks like a ton of Civs don't even have traits?!?!

It's kind of weird that you appear to start with the World Map unfogged, too.

Next save should be posted in 2 days. We're in August, now!

There's no need to get all jumpy. 2 more days will actually put us back on schedule, instead of being 1 day behind schedule.

Tomorrow morning i'll try to post that darn report.

Thank you.

I guess it is too much to hope for an updated test saved game?

 

[havr]

A few more questions

Risaia
What's better... finishing off the Library that already has 31/135 Hammers invested into it for a bonus 6 Flasks per turn (at a 0% Science Rate) or forgetting about the Library and building a Courthouse there from scratch for 180 Hammers for 4 Gold saved per turn?

6 > 4 and 31 > 0.
What is the question?

 

[havr]

A few more questions

Risaia
What's better... finishing off the Library that already has 31/135 Hammers invested into it for a bonus 6 Flasks per turn (at a 0% Science Rate) or forgetting about the Library and building a Courthouse there from scratch for 180 Hammers for 4 Gold saved per turn?

6 > 4 and 31 > 0.
What is the question?

OK, forgot that 4 will become larger once we capture cities. But still a library allows us to hire scientists, right?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

A few more questions

Risaia
What's better... finishing off the Library that already has 31/135 Hammers invested into it for a bonus 6 Flasks per turn (at a 0% Science Rate) or forgetting about the Library and building a Courthouse there from scratch for 180 Hammers for 4 Gold saved per turn?

6 > 4 and 31 > 0.
What is the question?

And that math sounds pretty straight-forward. What I do NOT know is whether or not other costs on the F2 Financial Advisor screen also get affected by Courthouses.

For example, I wonder if Civic Upkeep costs go down.

Also, it would seem that Inflation costs might go down, too.

BLubz referred to the fact that we should have built Courthouses, but due to our empire's slow start from being forced to settle Silverado and work the Silver plus working Flood Plains Cottages instead of Flood Plains Farms in Bedrock, just to meet all of our tech and Wonder goals, we really didn't have room in our build queues for Courthouses.

Instead, we mostly build Libraries and Universities. Yet, he is now claiming that Courthouses would have been better. So, I have to wonder if there is deeper math than that which meets the eye.

A test game using the World Builder where one checks the F2 Financial Advisor screen before and after World-buildering in a Courthouse might help to solve some of these questions, but not tonight for me--I must get to bed.


Finally, we have to weigh in the fact that the game is coming to a close and it might be better just to make 2 Catapults in the City instead of building either building...

 

[havr]

5. We can continue to skip building Barracks, as it's too late in the game to do so. By focusing on building a lot of Military units everywhere, we will overwhelm at least one of Mehmed's Silk Cities with sheer numbers.

Those number will have to be really overwhelming. We may be able to conquer one city easily, but keeping it might be hard. It is his continent and he will send waves of troops.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

OK, forgot that 4 will become larger once we capture cities.

Indeed, that is another very important factor. It is harder to calculate, but one could, say, use the World Builder to destroy the northern Barb City and put a City of ours in its place of approximately the same size, checking the F2 screen in these cases:
1. Before getting the Barb City without a Courthouse in a City like Risaia
2. Before getting the Barb City with a World-built Courthouse in a City like Risaia
3. After World-buildering us a City in the Barb's location of about the same City size, without a Courthouse in a City like Risaia
4. After World-buildering us a City in the Barb's location of about the same City size, with a World-built Courthouse in a City like Risaia

One could either do a detailed analysis and see which values on the F2 screen are affected or just a simple analysis of the totals.

But still a library allows us to hire scientists, right?

Indeed, although we'll probably stay in Caste System, as Slavery will just tempt us to throw away our Diplo Votes (population points).

Still, as Risaia grows, we'll hire even more Scientists, so the bonus Flasks will also grow. Then again, as the City grows, its Maintenance grows, too.

It is potentially a lot more complicated of a question than the way that I initially presented it with simplistic-looking numbers.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Those number will have to be really overwhelming. We may be able to conquer one city easily, but keeping it might be hard. It is his continent and he will send waves of troops.

Indeed, but at least he is far from researching Gunpowder. If he gets that, we're in trouble, but until then, we'll have a slight tech advantage if we can get Horseback Riding from Zara for War Elephants and can keep our Civil Service advantage for Macemen. The odd Pikeman or Trebuchet, from Engineering, would also be units that he would not be able to put in the field.

Also, we have the advantage of Isabella "absorbing" a lot of his excess military attacks, so he hopefully doesn't have large stacks "just sitting around."


In the worst case, we'll have to blitz a Silk City and make peace with him, so that we can control the Silk Resource as of the end of the game. The downside is that we probably wouldn't be able to declare war on him again, as the Buddhists would likely disapprove. It would also be pretty tough to give him The UN if we get peace with him (it's best to let him recapture the City in which we build it).


So, all in all, having a sizeable military to throw at him will help us out a lot.

 

[havr]

And that math sounds pretty straight-forward. What I do NOT know is whether or not other costs on the F2 Financial Advisor screen also get affected by Courthouses.

For example, I wonder if Civic Upkeep costs go down.

Also, it would seem that Inflation costs might go down, too.

BLubz referred to the fact that we should have built Courthouses, but due to our empire's slow start from being forced to settle Silverado and work the Silver plus working Flood Plains Cottages instead of Flood Plains Farms in Bedrock, just to meet all of our tech and Wonder goals, we really didn't have room in our build queues for Courthouses.

Instead, we mostly build Libraries and Universities. Yet, he is now claiming that Courthouses would have been better. So, I have to wonder if there is deeper math than that which meets the eye.

A test game using the World Builder where one checks the F2 Financial Advisor screen before and after World-buildering in a Courthouse might help to solve some of these questions, but not tonight for me--I must get to bed.

Well, the fact that we are running a SE means that we don't really need courthouses that much. As long as our budget is balanced at 0% science (and it is hard not to have it balanced at 0%) then we are OK. A library will be more useful. Under CE corruption directly affects your science output and sometimes courthouses are more useful than libraries.

Finally, we have to weigh in the fact that the game is coming to a close and it might be better just to make 2 Catapults in the City instead of building either building...

There is something bad in the design of Civ4 if you can build the UN and win a game without catapult has your best military unit. Just not realistic given human nature.

 

[havr]

Do we have our 4 GP welcome party ready?

What about getting our historical warrior units to the barbarian continent? One of them is even protecting a city!

 

[Mitchum]

OK. I'm back from vacation and I'm finally caught up on reading the thread. Good job, BLubmuz!! It appears that you had quite a few diplomacy-related things to take care of during your turnset. Not an easy task in a game like this. I typically ignore diplomacy in my normal games... execept for the pointy-stick kind of diplomacy!

A few comments, without having opened the save:

The best way to secure a source of silk is to own it. Since it appears from reading the thread that Mehmed has the only known source and we happen to be at war with him already, it makes sense to build up our military and take it from him.

It sounds like we're starting to see the power of the SE and how quickly we can self-research techs at 0% science slider. We need to focus on running scientists everywhere while working food-positive tiles to continue growing our population. I'm not convinced of the benefit of getting a Great Artist. Getting one may shave 1 or 2 turns off of MM or Radio (assuming we're maxing out on scientists in all cities at this point in the game). Sure an extra GArt is better than an extra GSci at the end of the game because he can at least be put to some use. But I don't like the idea of running artistists and if we do so, it should only be in a city that will generate a late-game great person.

I will open the save and provide more comments later.

@havr

It doesn't sound like we have the welcoming party yet. We're still saving up our Great Scientists so that we can get the most expensive tech possible with Liberalism. The last of the 4 great people will likely come with about 20 turns left in the game. This should be plenty of time to shuttle them (and our warriors) to their final destination.

 

[Irgy]

Temporary City Growth--Delaying Scientific Method on purpose
What do you think of the idea to temporarily put a bit more emphasis on City Growth for the next few turns?

That seems sensible to me. Just a point to make though, we're not really getting much more out of our monastary beaker multipliers if we have some extra turns with them in which we don't produce beakers anyway. It's only TGLib and the Parthenon where this helps (and some confucian monastery hammers). Still worth delaying a little I'd expect though.

Great Artists?
I'm even considering switching from Scientists to Artists in a City or two--maybe Grt Person Farm would be a good candidate, since it already gets some Great Artist production from having the National Epic. This way, we could plan on having a couple of Great Artists (possibly, one from Riverdale) to help us Lightbulb Radio or Mass Media.

It seems a bit odd to me. We lose beakers doing it at the gain of useless culture, it only pays off for the bulbs you suggest. It's a risk then in that it's hard to make sure we get an artist anyway, if we don't then it's just beakers lost for nothing. I still don't see how we'll have great people to spare one for bulbing Mass Media as well as bulbing our scientists into Physics (or something pre-Physics) and using our engineer on the UN.

So, I'd have to look in more detail to really decide, but my intuition leans towards sticking with scientists.

Forget the buildings and prepare for war?...

I think I agree with this plan.

What's better... finishing off the Library that already has 31/135 Hammers invested into it for a bonus 6 Flasks per turn (at a 0% Science Rate) or forgetting about the Library and building a Courthouse there from scratch for 180 Hammers for 4 Gold saved per turn?

I'd have said the library provided a greater benefit just by being cheaper. It depends basically though on what our beaker/gold commerce exchange rate is. Easy enough to find out, it's just (100% science - 0% science) / (100% gold - 0% gold). 2-gold:3-beakers is break-even point where the library being cheaper makes it better.

That said I think you've decided to just build military anyway, which sounds good to me.

Monastaries?
Do you guys like the idea of building a couple more Monastaries so that we can have at least 1 City able to build Missionaries of each Religion that we own and so that we can have another "backup" Missionary-building City for Buddhism?

Again I think this question was depricated by the military plan, but to answer it anyway: I think the chance that we'll want to spread another religion is low enough that we can just take the hit of having to run OR for 5 turns in the rare case that it's required. The only one I would consider is a Buddhist one to make it our spread-to-every-city religion, as we may need to convert a few captured cities (including the barb city with the fur).

Well, we have several Forges half-completed at the moment. I can certainly kill the Monastaries from the build plans and put Courthouses in their places, but now that we're at least half-done the Forges in several spots, it would seem to make sense to finish the Forges before working on the Courthouses, agreed?

That sounds like about the right balance to me.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Great People to the Fur

Do we have our 4 GP welcome party ready?

We have 4 Great People, but none of them are scheduled to be used for our welcoming party.

In particular, we have 2 Great Engineers (which will likely be both used on The United Nations, but maybe we'll just use 1 of them will be, giving us the CHANCE of using one on The Taj Mahal but more likely using 1 of them for the welcoming party).

We also have 2 Great Scientists, which will be used for Lightbulbing.

Besides, El Dino would probably prefer to be welcomed by Prophets and Entertainers than by geeky Engineers and lecturing Scientists.


Warriors to the Fur

What about getting our historical warrior units to the barbarian continent? One of them is even protecting a city!

Well, we still aren't certain that it's where the Fur is located, but we could hedge our bets and send 1 to 2 Warriors in that direction.

Actually, all but 1 of our Warriors are currently acting as Military Police. We really are running a very lean military in this game!

Since we can't build more Warriors in our current Cities but we could in a captured inland Barb City, I am also tempted to build most of the Warriors there, before connecting the Fort to give us a trade route connection with the rest of the world.

The downside could be that we might not have enough Happiness in the captured Barb City without the Trade Route connection, so the City might just starve itself down.

The downside with sending 4 Warriors west means that we will have to "stock" our mainland Cities with freshly-built Military units, such as Chariots, for Military Police, meaning that we'll spend more Hammers to defend our Cities. Actually, that means we should probably build a couple of Chariots soon, before we learn Horseback Riding and obsolete them.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Delaying Scientific Method just a bit

That seems sensible to me. Just a point to make though, we're not really getting much more out of our monastary beaker multipliers if we have some extra turns with them in which we don't produce beakers anyway. It's only TGLib and the Parthenon where this helps (and some confucian monastery hammers). Still worth delaying a little I'd expect though.

Perhaps less out of our Monastary Flask multiplier but we'll still get 2 raw Flasks per Confucian Monastary thanks to the University of Sankore. We have Confucian Monastaries in every City, so it is a noticeable difference.

Not noticeable enough to research a tech off of our beeline path, but noticeable enough to slow down the pace of Scientific Method by a bit.

That also gives us more time to decide if we'll have to take Physics with Liberalism or if we'll by that point in time have generated enough GPP to have a good shot at getting enough Great Scientists and manual research to complete Physics on our own.



Running Artists vs Scientists

It seems a bit odd to me. We lose beakers doing it at the gain of useless culture, it only pays off for the bulbs you suggest. It's a risk then in that it's hard to make sure we get an artist anyway, if we don't then it's just beakers lost for nothing. I still don't see how we'll have great people to spare one for bulbing Mass Media as well as bulbing our scientists into Physics (or something pre-Physics) and using our engineer on the UN.

So, I'd have to look in more detail to really decide, but my intuition leans towards sticking with scientists.

Okay, that's fair, I can stick with Scientists, except for in Riverdale, which is a City that will actually benefit from the extra Cultural output, if not gaining any territory from Zara, at least not losing any (like the GCow), as well.

Chances are that the random number generator will give us a Great Artist in Grt Person Farm no matter which Specialists we run. Given that perspective, we might as well run the Specialists that will maximize our Flask output, as we'll likely eventually get a Great Artist no matter what we do.


Monastaries

Again I think this question was depricated by the military plan, but to answer it anyway: I think the chance that we'll want to spread another religion is low enough that we can just take the hit of having to run OR for 5 turns in the rare case that it's required. The only one I would consider is a Buddhist one to make it our spread-to-every-city religion, as we may need to convert a few captured cities (including the barb city with the fur).

Sounds fair to me. It does kind of suck to build the Monastaries, only to have them become obsolete a turn or two later, even if they do act as "enablers" for building Missionaries.

It should be noted that by NOT building Versailles in Wheaties, we can actually pump Buddhist Missionaries out of Wheaties at will, not to mention field a much larger army, so we shouldn't need to build any new Monastaries at all.


Making Isabella Confucian
I haven't heard any objections to the plan to spread Confucianism to Isabella, but now is your last chance to object.

By doing so, we stand a very good chance of being able to stop wars against her, such as the Justinian + Isabella war. Not only do we not want Justinian to vassalize her, but we also don't want to be dragged into their war by either side.

We can still easily convert her to Buddhism before the end of the game.


The alternative is to make her become Buddhist next, but the danger there is that then she and her aggressors (Mehmed and Justinian) would like each other a whole lot more and a vassalization would be far more likely. AIs are far less likely to take a hated opponent as a vassal than they are a well-loved opponent, and vice versa for agreeing to be someone's Master.

 

[Mitchum]

I've taken a look at the save and agree with Dhoomstriker's ideas of:

1. Growing our cities by working all food-positive tiles, which includes all of the grassland farms we are currently not working. This will allow our cities to grow much faster so that we can hire even more scientists. It will also allow us to slightly delay learning Scientific Method. Of course, we should also work many of the better food-neutral and food-negative tiles as well (e.g. Delhi's copper, Silverado's silver and coast tiles, etc.).
   
2. Building military units (but not completing them) until we can run Theocracy for five turns.
   
3. Only building partial forges and courthouses in our cities (plus an Observatory in Delhi). As Dhoomstriker said, any other buildings will not pay for themselves.
   
4. Converting Isabella to Confucianism.

Other random comments:

1. We are currently working on our 9th great person. After our 10th great person, each additional great person will take 300 more GPP (it is currently 150 more GPP). This means that our ability to generate great people will slow down a bit very soon.
   
2. Riverdale needs 2 plains farms and a windmill. We have 2 GEs, but if we stick with our original plan of gifting Riverdale to Zara, we can use one of these GEs for another purpose. So, we should do what we can to get Riverdale up to 16 pops (currently at 11) so that we can complete the UN in 2 turns with one GE.
   
3. The forests in Risaia and Crabs can be chopped. They are no longer supporting forest regrowth. If we have them both go to Crabs, we can quickly finish the forge, which will allow Crabs to grow by 3 additional pops.
   
4. Mystic can use 2 more grassland farms. There are a few workers building mines that we’ll never work in this immediate area, so we should be able to get this done soon.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Military Units

[*]Building military units (but not completing them) until we can run Theocracy for five turns.

Sure, for most units, we can delay completing them until Theocracy is being run. I might complete 3 Chariots for Military Police now, though, as they won't be seeing any action in a war (unless things get really desperate).


Further Buildings

[*]Only building partial forges and courthouses in our cities (plus an Observatory in Delhi). As Dhoomstriker said, any other buildings will not pay for themselves.

A couple of Cities that are low on Health, like Bedrock, could actually use Harbours, as well.
EDIT: Forget the Harbours--we'll just get some of our Health Resources back from the AIs by using the Wheat from the Barb City in place of our of our Health Resource trades and by using Cultural pressure to steal one of Saladin's Gold Resources, so that we can get our Crab back from him.


Riverdale's Improvements

[*]Riverdale needs 2 plains farms and a windmill. We have 2 GEs, but if we stick with our original plan of gifting Riverdale to Zara, we can use one of these GEs for another purpose. So, we should do what we can to get Riverdale up to 16 pops (currently at 11) so that we can complete the UN in 2 turns with one GE.

I see no harm in throwing down a PRiv Irr and a GH Windmill, but I may delay that last PRiv Irr until we're ready to use it, as there is a chance of getting a Forest growing there, which could give us the Hammers that we need if we can't grow the City large enough in time.


Forest Chopping

[*]The forests in Risaia and Crabs can be chopped. They are no longer supporting forest regrowth. If we have them both go to Crabs, we can quickly finish the forge, which will allow Crabs to grow by 3 additional pops.

Any Forest-chopping that we do has to be carefully weighed against the loss of +1 Health benefits from pairs of Forests. For example, we SHOULD NOT chop the 2 Forests that are in Delhi's fat cross, as then we'll lose the ability to grow effectively 1 more population point.


Choppping the Forests in Crabs will take us from a 5 Health surplus to a 3 Health surplus (the Forge counts as -1 Health, remember), so by chopping those Forests to speed up a Forge, we'll need to build a Harbour here, to balance the effects. It should be worth doing so, as our current limitation in this City is Happiness before Healthiness, but both will become a limit if we don't build that Harbour after the Forge.

Technically, I could chop Grt Person Farm's PFor square, if we don't ever plan to work that square for additional Hammers. Since it IS our Great Person Farm, we probably don't need that Forest and I might as well chop it now (to help finish off the Courthouse) instead of later for a build item that we might not even need.

Delhi's Forests look like the only ones that ABSOLUTELY HAVE to remain unchopped, but most of the Forests outside of big fat crosses should probably still stay, to see what kind of regrowth we can potentially get while not completely abusing our planet's resources.


Irrigating Grasslands

[*]Mystic can use 2 more grassland farms. There are a few workers building mines that we’ll never work in this immediate area, so we should be able to get this done soon.

Indeed, that's the top priority that I have listed for the Workers in my PPP.

I'll have to write a new PPP, given the changes to our build priorities, but that part is at least already accounted for.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Whales
Let's NOT settle Whales. Whales is a loss-leading City: it's only going to be useful for "attracting business" to our Resource Store, but it will cost us money no matter what we do with the City.

"Couldn't we use the extra Resources, though?"

Well, the Barb City has a Wheat Resource. Actually, there are 2 Wheat Resources visible, one per City that we know about (who knows, there might be 3 Barb Cities even). If we're lucky, the area also has a Fur and maybe more Reources, too. BAM, right there, we've "made up" for the 3 Resources that Whales could have given us.

In fact, we will probably only settle Whales on one of the last turns of the game, for 1 extra vote.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Forges, Courthouses, and Military Units

Forges--Stopping to build some of them
It is unfortunate, but some Cities will not see a benefit from completing their Forges.

Let's take Three Clams as an example.

We currently have 65 Hammers invested in the Forge there. It takes 180 Hammers to complete a Forge.

That means that it will cost us 180 - 65 = 115 Hammers to complete the Forge.

Since we will stop working the PMarble, it will take us 15 turns to complete the Forge. However, we can "pretend" that we will work the PMarble until the Forge is complete, just to see the best case. It would still take us 11 turns to complete that Forge.

The maximum bonus that we can get from the Forge is +2 Hammers per turn, and we can only get that bonus by either:
a) Continuing to keep the City small by working the PMarble square
OR
b) Hiring an Engineer Specialist

Otherwise, we'll only make +1 Hammer per turn.

So, let's assume a best case here of +2 Hammers per turn.

In order for us to "break even," we will have to build items using the Forge for 115 Hammers = 2 Hammers per turn = 57.5 turns.

Adding in our best-case scenario of 11 turns to complete that Forge, at it will take us AT LEAST 11 + 57 = 68 turns just to break even on that Forge.

If we haven't won the game by then, the Victory date will not be that far off.


So, even though we have invested some Hammers into the Forge here, they are a sunk cost. They still got used in the calculation, but they are also disposable, in that the fact that we started to build a building should not be sufficient reason to complete said building if the numbers do not support completing that building.

In this case, the numbers clearly do NOT support completing the Forge.



Courthouses vs Military Units
Yes, Courthouses will be nice. But, are they more important than Military Units?

Let's think deeply about this question.

15 turns from victory, a Military unit that gets produced will be relatively useless to us. It won't be able to make it to the front lines without a massive chain of boats that are somehow invinsible to Privateers.

Assuming that we have such a boat chain, the war will likely be inland at that point, isntead of against a Coastal City.

The time that it takes to transfer the unit from a City to a Galleon (say, 2 to 3 turns) and from Galleon to Galleon (1 turn assuming the perfect amount of Galleons that we do not even own right now) and then to the front lines (another 8 turns or so) and it might or might not see 1 fight. Whoopdie doo.


Now, on the other hand, a Military unit that is built 40 turns from our Victory date can actually help out in a few battles. It may die in its first battle, but that death will allow another unit to win a fight, promote, and survive more battles than it would have. So, the sacrifice pays for itself and more of our units will live on.


Now, let's consider a Courthouse. If we build a few Military Units and then build a Courthouse, we might have use of the Courthouse for 40 less turns. Can we afford that cost? Yes, we can.

Will that Courthouse speed up our victory date more than a Military unit will? Maybe not.


We're going to want a lot of land units and naval units, both to capture at least one and preferably more than one of Mehmed's Cities. We're going to need boats to transfer our troops to Mehmed's lands and we're going to need boats to transfer our Great People to the Fur. We'll also need some war-like boats (Frigates or Privateers) to defend our Galleons.


If we skimp on military units, we could easily lose ALL of the Hammers that we invested into Military units, by losing our stack of units to a counter-attack. In that case, the Courthouses would be suicidal, as our Victory date would be extremely delayed by the lack of ability to capture and hold onto a Silk Resource.


As we capture a City or two (including the Barb Cities), we'll get Gold to continue funding our empire. After we learn Liberalism, we can afford to sell a few techs to the AIs, since we aren't planning wars with them, again to fund our empire.

As the game is coming to a close, such that new Military units won't help us in our battles, that will be the time to pump out our Courthouses, to help sustain our empire, perhaps once we've already begun to run Mercantilism.


I understand the value of Courthouses, but the Forbidden Palace is a total pie-in-the-sky pipe dream, so there is no "minimum number" of Courthouses that we need to build.


I don't mind finishing off Courthouses that we have started to build.


But, Military Units should take our focus everywhere else. Otherwise, there becomes a huge disconnect between what we WANT to do and what we are CAPABLE of doing, military-wise.


Finally, once building Military units becomes useless (the last 15 turns or so of the game), it will be nice to have some buildings to build that are useful (Courthouses), after which we can build Wealth to be able to sustain our empire that has HOPEFULLY spread far and wide across Mehmed's lands, thanks to all of the Military Units that we are going to start building now.



Note that it is HARD for me to give up my Builder-like tendencies, but if I can do it, then so can the team, right?