SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[Mutineer]

I am sorry, but 8% chance of delaying academy does not worth 1% chance of loosing Mids.

 

[babybluepants]

If there's even a 1% chance of losing them then it's better to lose, say, 80 beakers now than have a 1% risk of losing 10k.

I am sorry, but 8% chance of delaying academy does not worth 1% chance of loosing Mids.

And, how exactly do you guys calculate that 1% risk factor? We could actually lose the Pyramids next turn for all we know. It's not really an exact science.
I think we have really good reasons to think it's safe for a while.

Typically I would be strongly agreeing with mdy on the academy, as Delhi is a strong bureau capital with silver and cottages, and will be pulling most of our research for a while.
Random thought: What's our plan for getting a UN GE? If it really is a slow grind with 'Mids, forge Eng and possibly HG, I'm not sure I like that either. It means no Rep scientists in our acad capital for a long time, probably no option on TGL, either. Maybe an early low odds GE pop isn't so bad? It's unfortunate we can't just dedicate another city to GE wonders.

 

[Silu]

Well I wasn't expecting someone to take my "math" literally The science loss is just conjured from my stetson as well, and comparing a science loss to scouting opportunity loss etc is very hard. I just meant "the risk is very very low" doesn't equal "the cost is very low" as the cost of the loss is huge.

I didn't think of the potential big delay in the Academy in that of course - that's one of the few things that matter a lot here, as opposed to stuff like "3t later scout WB" or "pasture 2t later". I think we shouldn't risk getting a GE here. The situation is very similar to the calculated risk of delaying Oracle but getting it under favorable circumstances. I'll check all the test circumstances a tad later but 1175BC->1050-1000BC 'Mids is very acceptable if it gets us a guaranteed GS instead of 8% pollution.

 

[babybluepants]

I wasn't taking it literally, ofc. Just a bit annoying to have mdy running 10 actual tests, to go with extensive arguments, ignored...

To clarify: I'm for 100% GS odds. The post above was totally random...

 

[LowtherCastle]

And, how exactly do you guys calculate that 1% risk factor? We could actually lose the Pyramids next turn for all we know. It's not really an exact science.
I think we have really good reasons to think it's safe for a while.

The problem is, AIs are like stupid poker players--they usually lose all their money but occasionally win big. As I understand it, the reason is this: they'll just start building the Pyramids in any old city. Our risk is if SH and GW were built in podunk hamlets with no stone, whereas another AI might be building the Pyramids in his hammer-rich capital with newly connected stone. There's really no way of knowing, reasoning, or rationalizing our situation because we haven't met all the AIs and seen all their land. The only rational thing we can do is identify any risks and decide how much we want to take those risks. Edit: that is, analyze what we can control and what we can't.

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

Risks:
1. Pyramids--the risk is not having them until we capture them, if owned by a civ we want to DoW, which is also questionable. In terms of beakers, for 10 more GPs, that might be 11,700gpps/2.5gpp/b=4700b. That's assuming we'll be in pacifism part of the time. We'll also build NE eventually and even run a GA or two, but I also think we'll make more than 10 more GPs. There's also the loss of 3 happies, which will limit our GP production severely, especially till we meet other AIs and trade for happies. Since we are depending on specialists for our upcomng research, that potentially even more problematic than the loss of the +3/spec.

2. Delaying the academy--the risk is lost beakers in our capital. The next GS might come from 2-Fish. 450gpps/12ggps/2sci=38turns after starting to run 2sci (pop3) or 19t with 4sci (pop7). I estimate we could be at pop7 about 12t after popping the GE, that's a total of 31t without the academy. That's maybe 20t at 100% research, max. That's minimum of about 20bpt, plus any specs, growth in cottages and working more cottages. A minimum 400b, let's say, probably more.

3. Never popping a GE. This will cost us 750 + 30*pop_of_city_where_built, for example, 1230 in a pop16 city. Delhi at pop16 could produce ~62hpt. 1230/62=20 turns of production lost if we don't have a GE. We could also poprush, but we might not want to if we need votes for the election.

Edit: 4. Popping 2 or more GEs. This could conceiveably slow down our research. Not sure how to calculate it, but personally, I wouldn't have a problem with this. We could build Taj with it, if we get Nationalism. We could use it for a GA. We could use it as one of our 4 GPs at teh end of the game.

Any risks I've missed?

There's really no point in assessing the percentages of these risks. With the Pyramids, all we can control is how fast we build it. With the GS, we either decide to guarantee the first or the second. With the GE, we'll never guarantee it, because that would slow our research too much. FOr example, to guarantee one at 450 GPP, we'd need 113t - turns for building HG - turns for building a forge. Forget it.

Thoughts?

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

(Personally, I'd take the GE any time it's offered.)

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

 

[babybluepants]

In terms of beakers, for 10 more GPs, that might be 11,700gpps/2.5gpp/b=4700b.

Can you explain this?

Delaying the academy--the risk is lost beakers in our capital. The next GS might come from 2-Fish. 450gpps/12ggps/2sci=38turns after starting to run 2sci (pop3) or 19t with 4sci (pop7). I estimate we could be at pop7 about 12t after popping the GE, that's a total of 31t without the academy. That's maybe 20t at 100% research, max. That's minimum of about 20bpt, plus any specs, growth in cottages and working more cottages. A minimum 400b, let's say, probably more.

I think the bigger issue here is the proportion of those beakers to total research and quality of the beakers lost. The upcoming period is when we can get ahead through focussed research and trade.

Never popping a GE. This will cost us 750 + 30*pop_of_city_where_built, for example, 1230 in a pop16 city. Delhi at pop16 could produce ~62hpt. 1230/62=20 turns of production lost if we don't have a GE. We could also poprush, but we might not want to if we need votes for the election.

That's a 20t delay in the finish date, basically, since we ideally have the game wrapped up by then. Pretty significant. Given the variant, though, we might still need a lot of play after MM... Impossible to say.

FOr example, to guarantee one at 450 GPP, we'd need 113t - turns for building HG - turns for building a forge.

With 'Mids, HG and forge it's 32t, even without a potential Pac boost at some point. Obviously longer in real time. I think it's quite doable, but I'd usually commit a secondary city to it instead of a good capital... We don't have the ability to build 'Mids in Bombay until t125 probably (can't do a precise calc right now)? So, that's not really for consideration.

 

[mdy]

If we want a 100% guarantee of getting a Great Engineer the only way to do it is to go with the Pyramids+forfe/engineer+Hanging Gardens in the capital. It would be impossible (and very inefficient) to get it as our 3rd or 4th GP, but if we wait long enough the GP production in the capital should outway that of the GP farms to give us an engineer in the late game, which is when we want it. There would be 0 risk of getting 2 engineers this way.

If we were willing to accept less than a 100% chance of an engineer there are a number of ways we could go:

1) Whip a forge in one or both of our GP farms and hope the RNG is on our side

2) Possibly add the Great Library to the capital together with forge/H.G. and hope the RNG is on our side.

3) Use the capital as a major GP farm running scientist as well as an engineer, trading the reduced chances of a GP being an engineer for generating more GP's. Though this would significantly reduce the benefits of bureaucracy.

4) We could build the Globe theatre in the capital which would allow us to run max grass cottages to take account of bureaucracy, as well as using it as a GP farm, thought this would have substantially higher setup costs than 3)

5) A combination of 1) and either 2,3, or 4 to increase the chances of an engineer, at the expense of the extra cost and risking getting 2 engineers.

edit: Due to the massive 20T delay we get if we fail to get the engineer I am in favour of using the capital as a pure GE farm and generating a late game engineer.

 

[mdy]

Originally Posted by LowtherCastle
FOr example, to guarantee one at 450 GPP, we'd need 113t - turns for building HG - turns for building a forge.

The problem with this is that Bombay will generate a prophet in 75T, we will need to generate a GS in the 2 fish city before then. Bombay would then generate a GP on T112 if nothing else was done, then T150 etc. This means that only a late game engineer is possible if we use the capital as an engineer farm.

 

[babybluepants]

Oh, yeah. I forgot all about the Oracle gpp briefly. I guess that settles the issue, we'll have to just depend on capital getting one at low odds later. Since our GP farm will be absolutely racing my mid-game, we might have a hard time generating more than a couple from the capital, though. Maybe GLib (your suggestion (2)) is good option then?

Edit:
BTW, on quick calc, I think 70-75-ish turns is possible for a 100% GE, assuming we get MC on time. That takes us to almost 1AD without running scientists in our academy city or generating any GS's elsewhere, though - so not a good option.

Edit2:
You sure it's 75t for Bombay to get a GP @ 450gpp? Should be 112t minus the 7t already played, I think.

 

[mdy]

You sure it's 75t for Bombay to get a GP @ 450gpp? Should be 112t minus the 7t already played, I think.

Yes - we have been running some scientists there to speed up CS.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Originally Posted by LowtherCastle
In terms of beakers, for 10 more GPs, that might be 11,700gpps/2.5gpp/b=4700b.

Can you explain this?

300+450+...+2100=11.700gpps for 10 GPs.

But we don't get 1b/gpp because we get bonuses on our gpp, starting with being philosophical--100%. With that alone our beakers would be 11,700/2=5850. Figuring we'd run Pacifism quite a bit, I conseratively estimated 2.5 as the factor. In fact, it will be more most likely, because of NE and GAs, so the factor should be larger, meaning we'll gain fewer beakers from Representation while making 10 GPs. Or lose fewer w/o Rep.

 

[babybluepants]

Oh, yeah, ofc... Doesn't matter much anyway. After your summary above, I don't think the 100% GE will happen regardless. It's just too much of a mid-term constraint on Delhi.

 

[mdy]

I've got some figure on the option of using the capital as a pure GE farm:

Assumptions:
GP's 4,5,6 are scientists generated in the 2 coastal GP farms for philosophy/education. Once these are generated they whip any necessary remaining infastruture and grow to what will be there maximum size without running specialists. The National Epic is in the 2 fish city and we are in pacifism the entire time. We don't have the parthenon and all prior GP points (e.g. from the National Epic or all the engineer points in the capital) are neglected. I also assume we don't run any golden ages, and that the 2 GP farms rehire there specialists at the same point.

With 9 specialists and the National Epic the 2 fish produces +112 GPP/T, the clams has 6 specialists and +54GPP/T

Turn after 2 fish GP Points Clam GP Points Capital GP points
specialists hired

T10 GP7 +70GPP +540GPP +210GPP
T21 GP8 +102GPP +1134GPP +441GPP
T25 +550GPP GP9 +0 GPP +525GPP
T34 GP10 +58GPP +486GPP +714GPP
T50 GP11 +50GPP +1350GPP +1050GPP
T64 +1618GPP GP12 +6GPP +1344GPP
T71 GP13 +2GPP +384GPP +1491GPP
T96 GP14 +102GPP +1734GPP +2016GPP
T120 +2790GPP GP15 +30GPP +2520GPP
T125 GP16 +50GPP +300GPP +2625GPP
T157 GP17 +34GPP +2028GPP +3297GPP
T186 +3434GPP +3594GPP GP18 +6GPP

We would get the engineer 186T after we started running maximum specialist in this scheme. This is probably longer than we might like. However I did neglect preexisting GPP points if we had 480 GPP at this point then we could generate the engineer by T119 or earlier (This would be T94 or earlier if we had at least 684GPP). Building the Parthenon and running 1-2 golden ages would speed things up and might make it possible to generate the Engineer with an earlier GP as it would help the capital more than the 2 fish (due to the National Epic).

This means it may be worth considering researching metal casting after sailing in order to get an early forge in the capital to start building GE points. If so we may want to save 1-2 forests in the capital in order to get the engineer.

The downside of this is that in the short term at least currency would be more useful for our economy.

EDIT: On second thoughts there should be no need for a super early forge provided we build the hanging gardens shortly after the Pyramids,as we should easily be able to get 700GPP points in the capital before the GP farms reach maximum potential, so the GE farm in the capital will work without an early metal casting.

EDIT2: It has just occurred to me that if we want the capital to have a pure GE pool in the capital we can't build Oxford there, so on second thoughts if we wanted 100% chance of an engineer perhaps we should go for a very early forge/Hanging Gardens in order to generate the engineer as our 5th/6th GP?

 

[shyuhe]

I'm more comfortable taking two shots at a GE using less than 100% odds. Similar to our plan of taking some calculated risk, I think we need to take a calculated risk about the GE as well, since otherwise it cramps our capital development too much. We can also eventually build a forge in our GP farm to increase the odds of a GE as well. If we get a second GE, we can just save it for the final 4 people that we need.

 

[Mutineer]

Common folk, there no guaranty in life, but probability of as not getting 1 GE in a course of the game is small. I would not be bothered with attempts to guaranty GE.

Stick forge in every city that run specialists or wanders (our capital run wanders, minimum 2 other cities run max specialists. even 10% * 14 chances give very good odd for 1 Ge.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We would get the engineer 186T after we started running maximum specialist in this scheme. This is probably longer than we might like.

I kinda like it. We could use it to rush-build a Great Wonder on T356, like The Wooden Spoon...

Good analysis, mdy.

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

I think we're at an impasse. I know of four ways to resolve it:
1. Captain unilaterally decides.
2. The turnset player decides.
3. We vote and democracy rules.
4. The biggest temper tantrum wins.

Any preferences?

 

[mdy]

Stick forge in every city that run specialists or wanders (our capital run wanders, minimum 2 other cities run max specialists. even 10% * 14 chances give very good odd for 1 Ge.

This would give us a 77.2% chance of a GE, but this would need us to generate 20GP, which is probably excessive. I think our best bet is to use the capital as an Engineer farm, put Oxford there (but nothing else) and hope for the best. This should give us around 90% chance of an engineer. If it fails we can also resort to going to 100% gold, selling backwards techs to AI's and using Universal Suffrage to speed things up.

 

[Mutineer]

yes, but 10% is absolute minimum.
run forge + 5 specialists total is 20%
(1-.2)*10 ~.1

so 10 specialist in this condition give 90% chance for 1 gE, In reallity with capital having Mis+HG+forge specialists + GL (3 source) capital will have 50% chance on generating GE. In short, I do not believe it will be a problem.

I really do not see the point, it is like let s screw our general game just soo after we screw up we can reduce chance to delay Wander for 10 turns or so.

Bottom line, even if by some bad luck we will not get GE it would delay as for about 10 turns max.
It is in same ballpark like delaying settling or giving barbs chance to spawn so they treated our settler just to try to get 10 exp unit. We do not really need HE, not now anyway.

We should concentrating on what is critical Now then wander aimlessly about with wish list.

And Now any chance to loose Mids hurt as more then anything else.

 

[Mutineer]

Double post

 

[LowtherCastle]

If it fails we can also resort to going to 100% gold, selling backwards techs to AI's and using Universal Suffrage to speed things up.

If we get the Pyramids...

I think our best bet is to use the capital as an Engineer farm, put Oxford there (but nothing else) and hope for the best. This should give us around 90% chance of an engineer.

I agree. This dovetails with spamming cottages in Delhi, which I think is very important. We ought to have at least one decent source of coins. Our landmass isn't very rich in hammers for building commerce.