SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Mitchum]

@ Dhoomstriker

Assuming that we're running a good number of scientists empire wide, about how many turns would it take to research all of Scientific Method (4 more turns?), Physics (assuming we bulb with 2 GSs), Electricity (assuming we bulb with 3 GSs) and finish Liberalism (1 turn?). I think that if this is in the neighborhood 10 to 15 turns AND our next two Great People are scientists, then Radio is a safe bet with Liberalism.

We'll have to decide if we want to push for Radio at the point where 2 GSs can bulb the rest of Physics. By this time, we should know if our great person from Delhi is a GS.

 

[Mitchum]

One more thing, in 17 turns, we could have yet another GS (4 more total -> 3 plus one from Phyiscs). If we want to waste the overflow beakers but guarantee Radio, we may want to bulb 4 GSs into Electricity (wasting 0.3 of a scientist bulb), learning it in 1 turn. This would be the safest way to ensure that we don't lose the Liberalism race but still get Radio.

Of course, we can make a "game time" decision once we know how close the other AI are to Liberalism, right?

 

[BLubmuz]

(...)
Of course, we can make a "game time" decision once we know how close the other AI are to Liberalism, right?

Of course.

I think that 3 GSs for Phy and 3 more for Elec are enough.
We're now 4 turns away from SM and according the the spreadsheet the GS (hopefully, it's not guaranteed) from GPF will arrive 2 turns later.

Next one will arrive from Dehli 6 turns later and we can't be sure he will be a GS.

So, the problem is that we can't have all the needed GSs (provided we can pop all GSs) in time for Elec, which should come before Dehli can generate its next GP.

To summarize, we can do anything, but we can't manage to have enough GSs for the bulbs when we need them. Accumulating too much money to run science @100% for MM is too risky, since the AI can ask for indecent sums and we must give in.

So, i propose to speed-up the GS in GPF, burn 3 on Physics, take Elec from Lib and research Radio > MM the hard way. This will lead to a smaller number of GP needed, unless we try to pop some artist for Radio or MM.

Also, we need time to improve our relations, to take some of Mehmed cities and to take both the barb cities, so no need to rush and risk.

We set a turn 330 finish date as a great target, we're now speaking of turn 300.

 

[Mitchum]

Also, we need time to improve our relations, to take some of Mehmed cities and to take both the barb cities, so no need to rush and risk.

We set a turn 330 finish date as a great target, we're now speaking of turn 300.

Turn 330 was an arbitrary date, set early on, right? If it is possible to finish 20 or 30 turns faster, isn’t it worth it to come up with a plan to do so, even if there are some risks involved? As long as our plan has ways to mitigate the risk, I think it’s a no brainer to shoot for an earlier finish date, right?

I think that 3 GSs for Phy and 3 more for Elec are enough.
We're now 4 turns away from SM and according the the spreadsheet the GS (hopefully, it's not guaranteed) from GPF will arrive 2 turns later.

Next one will arrive from Dehli 6 turns later and we can't be sure he will be a GS.

So, the problem is that we can't have all the needed GSs (provided we can pop all GSs) in time for Elec, which should come before Dehli can generate its next GP.

To summarize, we can do anything, but we can't manage to have enough GSs for the bulbs when we need them. Accumulating too much money to run science @100% for MM is too risky, since the AI can ask for indecent sums and we must give in.

So, i propose to speed-up the GS in GPF, burn 3 on Physics, take Elec from Lib and research Radio > MM the hard way. This will lead to a smaller number of GP needed, unless we try to pop some artist for Radio or MM.

As we've agreed, there is no reason to decide what to do right now. Let's wait and see when Saladin and the other AIs learn Education. However, why not have a plan in place to take Radio from Liberalism. If we can do this, magically, we've removed our current critical path (science) and created a new one: getting 4 great people to the fur.

Here is what I'm thinking would be the ideal scenario:

Note: we currently have 5 great people (2 GS, 2 GE, 1 GA)

1. Switch to Theocracy on the next turn and stay there for the rest of the game. This will greatly help our diplo situation with the Theocracy crowd.

2. Don’t burn our GArt on a Golden Age but save him for one of the Final Four.

3. Build the UN in Riverdale in 2 turns using 1 GE, so we’ll have 1 GE for the Final Four.

4. Finish Scientific Method in 4 turns

5. Research Physics until we are 2 GS bulbs away from learning it (we need an estimate of how many turns this will take)

6. Get our next two great people from GP Farm and Three Clams at high GS probabilities (i.e. > 92%) This could happen in 13 turns according to my version of the GPP spreadsheet which does not use the Pacifism bonus or a Golden Age. Current great people: 4 GS, 2 GE, GA.

7. Bulb 2 GSs into Physics, getting another free one on the next turn. Current great people: 3 GS, 2 GE, GA

8a. If an AI learns or is about to learn Education, finish Liberalism and take Electricity. Current great people: 3 GS, 2 GE, GA. Skip steps 8b and 9.
8b. If it will still be a number of turns before an AI learns Education, self-research Electricity until we are 3 GS bulbs away from learning it (we need an estimate of how many turns this will take)

9a. If the race to Liberalism is on, finish Liberalism and take Electricity, keeping our GSs (which would really be a waste) (low risk). Current great people: 3 GS, 2 GE, GA
9b. If the race to Liberalism is on AND we decide to burn 3 Great Scientists, bulb 3 GSs and take Radio from Liberalism. (low risk). Current great people: 2 GE, GA
9c. If the race to Liberalism is on and we want to save one GS for the Final Four, self-research Electricity until we are 2 GS bulbs away from learning it, bulb 2 GSs and take Radio from Liberalism (high risk). Current great people: 1 GS, 2 GE, GA
9d. If there is still some time before an AI learns Education, self-research Electricity until we are 2 GS bulbs away from learning it, bulb 2 GSs and take Radio from Liberalism (low risk). Current great people: 1 GS, 2 GE, GA
9e. If there is a lot of time before an AI learns Education, self-research Electricity until we are 1 GS bulb away from learning it, bulb 1 GS and take Radio from Liberalism. Current great people: 2 GS, 2 GE, GA​

Under options 8a and 9a, our finish date will probably be the latest since we’ll have to self-research Electricity, so we will have a lot of time to capture the fur, generate 4 great people (which we should have in abundance since we wouldn’t be using many of them to bulb techs), and ferry them to their final destination. This is the worst case scenario in my opinion because we wouldn’t be taking advantage of all of the GSs we will generate.

Under option 9b, we’ll have gotten Radio from Liberalism, which will greatly reduce our time to research Mass Media. However, we will have burned 3 great people on Electricity, so the critical path will shift to generating 4 great people and getting them to the fur. We’ll have the current GArt (assumed that we don’t run a Golden Age, remember?) and one GE (assumed we only burn 1 on the UN), so we’ll need to generate two more or 4 total (the first two GS plus a free one from Physics were used on Electricity, remember). Irgy’s version was able to generate 6, so this should be easy. I was able to get the 4th in 32 turns in Crabs without jumping through ANY hoops (the 3rd came from Delhi, of course). We could get the 4th in less than 30 turns if we starve Crabs. Again, this was done without Pacifism and without a Golden Age. Assuming it takes 10ish turns to get the great people to the fur (remember that they run across the Buddhist continent at 6 tiles/turn along roads), we could possibly win in about 40 turns from now (1390 AD = T298) if we can finish Mass Media, build the UN, win the Sec Gen vote and then get the diplo victory in this time. If not, then the 4 great people are no longer the critical path, right?

Under options 9c and 9d, we’ll have gotten Radio from Liberalism, which will greatly reduce our time to research Mass Media. Since we only burned 2 great people on Electricity, we will have 3 great people on hand and will only need to generate 1 more, which could be generated easily from Delhi in 19 turns. Or, we could use our two GEs on the UN in any city (which we could do if we wanted to go up against Mehmed instead), in which case we’d have to wait for the 4th great person to come from Crabs in around 30 turns.

Option 9e makes no sense since we’d have more great people than we’d ever need.

So, I suggest that we follow steps 1 through 6, which should get us through Dhoomstriker’s turnset. Then, we can look at the situation and decide which option makes the most sense.

Comments?

I’ve attached my updated spreadsheet, which includes EVERY scenario from Dhoomstriker’s analysis of the situation. For each city, there are between 3 and 5 different scenarios. Also in this spreadsheet is a tab with my chosen scenario which was used for the example above (no GA, no Pacifism) as well as Irgy’s 6 GP scenario.

 

[BLubmuz]

Turn 330 was an arbitrary date, set early on, right? If it is possible to finish 20 or 30 turns faster, isn’t it worth it to come up with a plan to do so, even if there are some risks involved? As long as our plan has ways to mitigate the risk, I think it’s a no brainer to shoot for an earlier finish date, right?

Sure i'm not complaing for an earlier finish date.

BTW, turn 330 was not completely arbitrary, it was from the best HoF finish date at the time.
I just checked the HoF and now the best finish date with BtS is finally a good date: turn 292 (1360 AD).

At the time, i've said that the game in the HoF was a poor game, now the record is by a strong player, cas. So i think this can be a good target even if we know that with the constraints of this game it will be very difficult to reach it.

Let's see how we're shaped after Dhoom's TS, then we'll decide.

Anyway, my comment about GSs arriving too late is still valid. It was the key of my previous post, perhaps you missed this.

I think i agree with the rest of your post, need to think about it some.

 

[BLubmuz]

And don't forget that if we wage a real war with Mehmed, we can gain a GG.
And a GG not attached to a unit is considered a GPeople for the F4.

 

[BLubmuz]

I've seen your spreadsheet, particularly the "yellow tab" and 2 GPeople for turn 271 can maybe let us reach Radio. (Counting the GS from Phy)

Can you please try a scenario with a GAge in to see if we can speed this GP generation enough to anticipate that turn and to replace the burnt one?

 

[unclethrill]

I'm here just trying to get up to speed for my TS.

 

[Mitchum]

I've seen your spreadsheet, particularly the "yellow tab" and 2 GPeople for turn 271 can maybe let us reach Radio. (Counting the GS from Phy)

Can you please try a scenario with a GAge in to see if we can speed this GP generation enough to anticipate that turn and to replace the burnt one?

Here are a few options. The combinations are limitless...

In the no Golden Age, no Pacifism scenario (the one from my original post):

GP #1 in GP Farm (~ 93% GS) in 5 turns from now
GP #2 in 3 Clams (~ 97% GS) in 13 turns from now
GP #3 in Delhi in 18 turns from now
GP #4 in Crabs in 33 turns from now
GP #5 in GP Farm in 41 turns from now​

In the yes Golden Age (triggered on this turn), no Pacifism scenario:

GP #1 in GP Farm (~93% GS) in 4 turns from now
GP #2 in 3 Clams (~97% GS) in 9 turns from now
GP #3 in Delhi in 12 turns from now
GP #4 in Crabs in 26 turns from now
GP #5 in GP Farm in 38 turns from now​

In the yes Golden Age (triggered on this turn), Pacifism for 4 more turns scenario:

GP #1 in GP Farm (~93% GS) in 3 turns from now
GP #2 in 3 Clams (~97% GS) in 7 turns from now
GP #3 in Delhi in 10 turns from now
GP #4 in Crabs in 23 turns from now
GP #5 in GP Farm in 37 turns from now​

I've attached these combinations as well.

If we want to bulb Radio, the limiting factor will be researching SM (4 turns), part of Physics (to within 2 GS bulbs) and part of Electricity, not the generation of the great people themselves. So I still think the first option is the best and does not require us to burn a GArt on a Golden Age. We could also skip the Golden Age but run Pacifism for a few turns longer (i.e. as long as a Golden Age) if we really want to speed up the first 2 or 3 great people.

 

[Mitchum]

I was playing around with the UN Gifting trick and I was not able to make it work. If I build the UN in Riverdale, the election for Secretary General comes up right away, before I can give the city to Zara. This would have us going up against Tokugawa as it currently stands. This is not good. We would much rather go up against Zara for the Sec Gen vote so that we have a better chance of winning it.

Another idea would be to complete the UN and IBT (i.e. the UN completes at the end of OUR turn but before the other AI play their turns), let Zara (or more likely Mehmed) capture the UN city. Then, at the end of the turn, after all civs have played, Zara (or Mehmed) would be the owner of the UN and would go up against the largest civ (us) in the Sec Gen vote. This could be tough since we can't be sure that an AI will capture a city, even if it is unprotected or lightly protected.

Or, is there an easier way? Has anyone actually pulled this trick off in a real game?

 

[Irgy]

So I think if there's one thing the spreadsheet tells us, it's that delaying Dehli to the 2100gpp great person (the third-next one) loses us the chance to generate a second in Dehli. Although generating a second in Dehli also still involves a fair bit of effort either way.

As it stands, it looks like the final four will contain at least
* The crabs GP
* The second GPF GP.

On top of those two, we have
1. A second engineer that we probably don't need.
2. A great artist.
3. The potential for a second dehli GP
4. The potential for leftover scientists who fail to bulb Electricity because we're forced to take it from Liberalism and our scientists won't bulb Radio.
5. Whatever random GP comes out of Dehli next.
6. The potential for a Great General.

We only need two of those five for the final four. As far as what else we can do with those great people goes:
(1) can be used for a golden age via the Taj Mahal, or to build the UN somewhere other than Riverdale.
(2) can be used for a golden age now, or to bulb some of Mass Media later.
(3) we can avoid needing to generate in the first place
(4) really seem to be just wasted. Maybe we could build some academies to speed up the direct research of Radio and Mass Media, or just settle them, or burn one on a golden age if we haven't got one already.
(5) could be used for all manner of things, depending on what it is. The sooner we find out the better in that sense.
(6) has plenty of other military uses.

Basically the pile of scientists for Electricity is our biggest "risk" at the moment. If we have to take Electricity from Liberalism, then they're wasted. One option to avoid this risk is:
Irgy's Low Risk Option: Slam three scientists into Physics straight away, take Electricity from Liberalism, pop a golden age with the Physics Scientist, save the Artist for Mass Media. That leaves us with an easy four great people from the end (Crabs, Three Clams, Dehli, GPF#2), and the second Engineer free to either build the UN somewhere strange or build the Taj Mahal. With two golden ages we'll have a backup great person nearly ready in Dehli as well.

The alternative is something like Mitchum's line, where we do our best to try and bulb our way through Electricity to take Radio.

In both cases, we want to save the GArtist, so I'd say the next four turns are fixed:
* Switch to Theocracy
* Grow the cities I marked as growing in the spreadsheets (Dehli, GPF, Risaia I think)
* Don't take a golden age just yet
* Finish off Scientific Method.
* Next great person from GPFarm, hopefully a scientist.

After that:
* Work out how many turns it will take to self-research the required parts of Physics and Electricity to bulb the rest.
* Work out whether Saldin has started Education, and where he's up to with it.
* Compare the two and see if we have time to get Radio from Liberalism or not.
* If we can't, just slam out Physics as soon as possible, and grab Electricity. This is still pretty darn good.
* If we're going to take the risk of going for Radio, work out whether we can afford to get the next GP from Dehli or should hold Dehli back to get the more-likely GS from Three Clams sooner. Basically if we can afford to wait for Three Clams to get the 2100gpp great person because we'll need that long to self-research the required parts of Physics and Electricity anyway, then hold Three Clams back a tiny bit and wait. If we'll want a scientist sooner and can't risk it from Dehli then get the 1800gpp GP from Three Clams.

 

[Irgy]

I was playing around with the UN Gifting trick and I was not able to make it work. If I build the UN in Riverdale, the election for Secretary General comes up right away, before I can give the city to Zara. This would have us going up against Tokugawa as it currently stands. This is not good. We would much rather go up against Zara for the Sec Gen vote so that we have a better chance of winning it.

Another idea would be to complete the UN and IBT (i.e. the UN completes at the end of OUR turn but before the other AI play their turns), let Zara (or more likely Mehmed) capture the UN city. Then, at the end of the turn, after all civs have played, Zara (or Mehmed) would be the owner of the UN and would go up against the largest civ (us) in the Sec Gen vote. This could be tough since we can't be sure that an AI will capture a city, even if it is unprotected or lightly protected.

Or, is there an easier way? Has anyone actually pulled this trick off in a real game?

From what Dhoomstriker said earlier, this is indeed correct, that we need to compete with Toku for the Secretary General vote. The benefit of gifting is just that we can compete with someone easier for the much more difficult vote of Diplo Win. We only need more votes than Toku for the first, while we need a high %age of the votes for the second, and abstentions are as good as voting against us for that one.

We have two big advantages over Toku for the Secretary General:
* Theocracy, which he hopefully won't be running (and if he is, we can try and bribe him out of it).
* Our other diplo bonuses for resources and open borders. Not sure whether Toku has these or not.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm still trying to take in all of this wealth of info, but here's a tiny random comment:

Taj Mahal

(1) can be used for a golden age via the Taj Mahal, or to build the UN somewhere other than Riverdale.

We could even build The Taj Mahal in Riverdale, if we wanted to do so, as its bonus only applies on the turn that it is created and we won't "give up" our Golden Age by losing the Wonder.

However, presumably, we'd build it in a City that is still going to generate a Great Person, to potentially get that Great Person a tiny bit faster.

However, I believe that getting the Taj Mahal is very unlikely, unless you guys authorize me to trade Education + Printing Press for Nationalism, which I don't see anyone in their right minds authorizing.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Apostolic Palace: Holy War
There is one way that an AI will not vote for a player to win a Diplo Victory, no matter how much they like that player, and that is to be at war with that player.

To that end, we can still potentially focus on:
1. Capturing all of Mehmed's Confucian Cities
AND
2. Capturing and maintaining control of a Silk City
AND
3. Capturing a City in which to build The UN using 2 Great Engineers, only to "lose" that City to Mehmed shortly thereafter


The trickiest part about point 3 is that we will have to wait for a City to come out of Revolt before we can use our Great Engineers to create The UN.

The best part is that we won't care if we make the whole world Buddhist, as long as we can get everyone but Mehmed to have a bit of Confucianism in their Cities and can prevent the AIs from Denying a war declaration.

Of course, we need SOMEONE to be running Confucianism as a State Religion at the time of the Apostolic Palace "pile up war" vote and for that player to be at war with Mehmed.

So, it's not a fool-proof plan at this stage and is just one of the possibilities available to us.

 

[Irgy]

I'm still trying to take in all of this wealth of info

\o/

We've done it! We've turned the tables on Dhoomstriker so that he's taking a while to catch up on all the stuff we've written! Take that Dhoomstriker!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Irgy, in terms of your spreadsheets... let's say that, for example, we chose the "GPP-modified-6 GP" option. In that case, would it still work if we ran the turns of Pacifism at the START, instead of switching into Theocracy and then back into Pacifism?

It LOOKS like we don't run any additional Specialists while under Pacifism in any City other than Risaia, and Risaia doesn't generate a Great Person in this scenario...

But maybe you were using that "non-Pacifism period" for one City to catch up on another City? I don't want to make any assumptions here, but I will tell you that I'd prefer to have the chosen scenario be one where we run all of our turns of Pacifism up-front and then once we switch to Theocracy, we stay in Theocracy for the rest of the game.

 

[Irgy]

Apostolic Palace: Holy War
There is one way that an AI will not vote for a player to win a Diplo Victory, no matter how much they like that player, and that is to be at war with that player.

To that end, we can still potentially focus on:
1. Capturing all of Mehmed's Confucian Cities
AND
2. Capturing and maintaining control of a Silk City
AND
3. Capturing a City in which to build The UN using 2 Great Engineers, only to "lose" that City to Mehmed shortly thereafter

I'd hope to avoid this option, it just seems to have too much that could go wrong. Of course you probably know that, and I agree it's still good to have a backup plan.

The trickiest part about point 3 is that we will have to wait for a City to come out of Revolt before we can use our Great Engineers to create The UN.

If we still have the GArtist (or another somehow) then it can help with that. We'd need to know to save it from bulbuing, but we don't need to spend it until the turn before we get Mass Media as it is so we'd know if we needed it.

 

[Irgy]

Irgy, in terms of your spreadsheets... let's say that, for example, we chose the "GPP-modified-6 GP" option. In that case, would it still work if we ran the turns of Pacifism at the START, instead of switching into Theocracy and then back into Pacifism?

It LOOKS like we don't run any additional Specialists while under Pacifism in any City other than Risaia, and Risaia doesn't generate a Great Person in this scenario...

But maybe you were using that "non-Pacifism period" for one City to catch up on another City? I don't want to make any assumptions here, but I will tell you that I'd prefer to have the chosen scenario be one where we run all of our turns of Pacifism up-front and then once we switch to Theocracy, we stay in Theocracy for the rest of the game.

Dehli and GPFarm are growing at the start, so it's a bad time for Pacifism. I should have '5' marked on Dehli for four turns (which is 3 + 2 from the GLib), and 3 on GPFarm the first five turns.

In general, if we assume we can write off the 7GP plan as silly (which I think is a fair call, particularly since we have no use for the extra GP anyway as it comes late), then the only bit of timing that isn't nigh-on inevitable anyway is the race between Dehli and Three Clams. Everything else is highly robust to changing things around*.

That's why my later posts just talk about this race. Basically if we want a second from Dehli, we want Dehli to win the race. Otherwise it doesn't matter, and we might prefer to get the Three Clams scientist first (which will happen anyway if we leave things be). Although we might prefer Dehli to win just so that we know what we're getting from Dehli sooner, to let us plan around it.

EDIT - I should also point out that Pacifism and Golden ages won't affect this race particularly either. The only significant impact they have on timing is with GPFarm.


* We also need to make sure GPFarm gets the next (the 1500gpp) great person in all cases, but that should happen on its own unless we go out of our way to avoid it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Mehmed and The UN

If we still have the GArtist (or another somehow) then it can help with that. We'd need to know to save it from bulbuing, but we don't need to spend it until the turn before we get Mass Media as it is so we'd know if we needed it.

While it is true that using up a Great Artist on one of Mehmed's captured Cities would allow us to use 2 Great Engineers immediately, the downside is that we'd create cultural borders for ourselves.

Mehmed might take a few turns to march through them before capturing the City or else he might decide to Bombard the City instead of attacking it (I've seen an AI Bombard a City defended only by a Warrior while they had a stack of units next to the City, for example).

Plus, now you're talking about using up 3 Great People just to build The UN. Will we have enough to do so?

 

[BLubmuz]

I think i'm for "Irgy low risk option". Why?
Beacuse it's a low risk and we depend less on our luck and this will save some headache.

Speaking of which, the trickiest part will be the SG election. Unless the city where we build the UN will be gifted (Zara) or evacuated for a capture (Mehmed) we'll compete against Toku and i don't like this. Or we can be lucky enough to have Toku SG, gift/left the UN city and so the competitors would be us and the UN owner? If Toku smokes something he can propose the Diplo Victory resolution, but i doubt so.
Our strategist, aka Dhoomstriker, can provide some answer?

Also, see how bad the AI is in war, we cannot count on a quick capture unless Mehmed has a good stack of troops already sieging that city... more headaches.

Why have we chosen Diplo?