SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[shyuhe]

Invested too many hammers in forge, went over from 3pop to 2pop Uni.

I doubt I would have caught something like that either.

IIRC, Two Fish is currently size 7 and growing. We need Caste for merchants. Are you suggesting we just switch to Caste and wait 5t for Pacifism? I guess that may be ok.

We should just grow 2-fish at max speed for now, not running any specialists. If you look at my table, I had it start hiring specs at size 11 or 12 (can't recall exactly), and it was just a hair behind Delhi for the 750 GPP. So not having the NE sooner will not hurt much, as this will ensure that the Delhi 750 GPP comes before the 2-fish 750 GPP. I'll re-calculate to see when we need the NE by to make the 2-fish 900 GPP come a turn or two after the Delhi GE.

I don't know how much more whipping we're doing in the near-term but if we're not going to whip, I'd prefer to be in caste just in case we have some spare citizens working unimproved tiles.

 

[babybluepants]

I think we should be adopting Caste asap. Delhi has two upcoming chops in the next 2t, which should get the OR bonus (after that we can complete Oxford without OR easily). Not sure we wanna whip anything anymore. We could, I guess, but I think growth is better now in the majority of cities.

Edit: If we wanted to wait 5t between Caste and Pac switches, we could maybe squeeze in a quick missionary build in Delhi? That may be a good option, but we're actually not building any buildings in the cities with Confu right now. Ivory doesn't have Confu, and it would be most useful there right now.

 

[babybluepants]

National Epic

Unless we can somehow pull off an Aesthetics trade, we're looking at something like 8t to Literature from now, roughly (4t Oxford + research).

I think we need to chop 4 forests for NE. That's substantial worker turns.

From memory:

Worker (Bombay SSW): cancel farm - 6t to pre-chop NEE > 5t to chop EE
Worker (Rice): finish farm in 4-5t (?); 6t to chop 2NW
New Worker: 4t production? (forget now) + 6t to chop hill > 1t to chop NEE

That should complete NE in T+11, with Lit in T+8, I think...

 

[shyuhe]

We can use those turns to grow 2-fish to size 13 or 14 I think (I don't remember where our happy cap is right now). So I don't think NE will be significantly delayed so as to affect our GPP generation. Plus, there's nothing wrong with running a few merchants without all the multipliers - we're philosophical and (hopefully) in pacifism so the NE doesn't add a huge amount, relatively speaking.

It sounds like research will be aesthetics--literature--music though?

 

[babybluepants]

Two Fish is currently size 8 with +4 I don't think we want size 14, do we?

I just checked and one whip anger runs off on turn 179 (we can grow to size 13 then). I think we can grow to 13 in 9t (T181) with near max food. We should be able to spare 5t of 1 Eng running. That may be worth it, but I wouldn't do it until we adopt Pacifism - depending what we decide with the civic switch.

Once it's at size 13, it can run 24gpp base. That means NE contributes 28gpp a.s.a. built. Since our ultimate rate is 100gpp, we shave 1t off the last GP generated by getting it built on T+11. I think we should definitely rush it as much as possible.

Marble
Currently +4 = Size 8
Up to +5 T179 (whip anger)
Hits size-9 happy cap on T181 at max food.
Another option: 3pop whip forge in 3t - gives 2 extra (Note: we were gonna switch to Caste in 2t) Results in re-growth to 9 on T187 at max food, and up to 10 on T189. This also lets us give up the MP warrior there (send to Rice) until T187 (not 100% on the math - rushed it). I think this is better.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Well-played, bbp! (not that I can see anything...)


Is there a reason to give into any of Sal's demands?

Seems like we should work max specs while growing in Two Fish, like before, and not worry so much about the Delhi GE, but if not, then consider doing the Two Fish chops under OR, which is, btw, a really good reason to send four workers to Two Fish now.

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Other teams should know exactly what our score graph drop means. Xteam's similar drop may mean the same thing, in which case they're about 10t behind us on that, I don't see any increase in cpt for them.

 

[babybluepants]

Other teams should know exactly what our score graph drop means. Xteam's similar drop may mean the same thing, in which case they're about 10t behind us on that, I don't see any increase in cpt for them.

That would be great, except I think you're looking at the Phoenix graph.

How the is GK so far ahead in score? They must have bulbed Philo, since I can't think of another way to spike 30+ mid-turn.

Seems like we should work max specs while growing in Two Fish, like before, and not worry so much about the Delhi GE, but if not, then consider doing the Two Fish chops under OR, which is, btw, a really good reason to send four workers to Two Fish now.

I think we should just max out food and grow to 13. We'll have Pac/NE soon, which will make the specialist turns more valuable later. I agree with shyuhe on popping GE next, but I guess we don't have consensus on that yet.

 

[Mutineer]

a few notes. I would favor building 2 triremes and send exploring as one stack.

If number of barbarian galley is any indicator, it is possible that barbarian continent connected to Main system. That would make cultural win more competitive.

2 triremes should get try 1-2 barb galleys at time.

we should grow 2 fish to max health/happiness, we can build farms there for even more specialists support.

 

[Silu]

Can we be certain that Sally is our UN opponent?

 

[Mutineer]

Not really, depends on Toky success in war he could be, he already has biggest score.

About election, we need to have our election opponent in different religion from everyone else.

Because all AI have theocracy as favorite civic and if our opponent is one of them they are more likely to vote for him, not to as. It would be embracing to loose.

So we will need to spread Conf to our opponent and Buddhism to every one else.

But it is a bit to early to decide right now who will be opponent.

 

[shyuhe]

I think we need to start figuring out who the likely candidate is. For now, it looks like Toku. As long as he stops warring before he gets theocracy, he'll be hated.

I don't think we have spare hammers for a trireme right now. Marble is tied up, as is 2-fish. Rice has no hammers, which leaves Oasis and ivory. Ivory needs to build a missionary or two as well, so that just leaves Oasis to build boats in the interim? At that point, I think I'd rather wait until optics or buy Justinian's map and hope he maps that small island for us.

The reason why I'm pushing for 750 GPP in Delhi is because popping the 750 in 2-fish really slows down our overall GPP generation rate (as backwards as that sounds). It has to do with the timing of Delhi's second GPP, and if we wait till 900 for Delhi, it slows down the second one so much that it interferes with 2-fish's later generated GP. My calculations showed it pushing 2-fish's 4GP down by about almost 15-20 turns (something from like T+84 till T+100).

 

[Mutineer]

It is not nessesary true, when you do calculations, include option to put in some golden age or 2.

That will change thinks a bit. GA from Music could be used for that, if we set up all our cities right.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Circumnavigation

All we need is 2 more longitudinal tiles for circumnavigation. All we need it for our galley to get there and survive that turn. The next turn we've done it. Two solutions:
1) Send the chariot/other land unit to reconnoiter ahead, so galley knows when it safe to move forward. Send our 1/2XP galley after building a replacement.
2) Instead of 2 triremes, we could just build galley+tri, keep the new galley for transport and send the 1/2XP with the tri. That should be plenty safe because the land scout could guarantee that two barb galleys aren't waiting in ambush.

 

[LowtherCastle]

It is not nessesary true, when you do calculations, include option to put in some golden age or 2.

That will change thinks a bit. GA from Music could be used for that, if we set up all our cities right.

THis is precisely what I was thinking but never got around to doing any calculations. Thinking in terms of a GA or 2 also brings Rice into the package, because I assume it would be able to produce at least one GP also.

It also brings Aksum into the picture after we capture it.

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Clarification
Unless noted specifically, my comments do NOT constitute a vote in favor of anything. My comments are merely seeds for discussion.

 

[LowtherCastle]

THe UN Opponent
No one has responded to this, though I've mentioned it several times: Can we not gift the UN city to a chosen AI to artificially create our UN opponent? Of course, we'd have to have the most pop otherwise.

This has been my assumption from the beginning. THis is how we guarantee that Sal (or Zara) is our opponent.

 

[Silu]

Hmh, I thought I counted it was 4 tiles needed, so the western isle wouldn't even necessarily enable circumnavigation... I could be wrong, though.

About candidates - We likely do not need EVERYONE to vote for us. Hence, it could be enough to be fairly certain that one of two AIs (say, Sally/Toku) is our opponent and plan for that.

 

[babybluepants]

UN opponent: currently it's Toku, which would be great. Mehmed and Justinian both have a lot of land, unfortunately. I was thinking that, if the Buddhist block works out, we may need to help Toku capture some Sal cities (and get some ourselves).

Justinian's map seems like potentially the easiest way to achieve circumnavigation. Sending one galley doesn't seem safe, and we are too production poor right now to build a trireme pair. Maybe one trireme somehow, to pair with a spy galley?

GP: shyuhe's plan seems right to me, but we should evaluate the golden age plan, too. My feeling is that pushing multiple GP's during a golden age seems more effective in a regular game, when we don't run Pacifism for the most part and aren't SPI. Are we planning to run Theocracy late or not? Be better not to, if we can ensure the votes in other ways.

 

[babybluepants]

@Silu,

How do AI's value world maps in trade? In my experience, 5g (Justinian right now) is a base price that means no significant info to be gained.

btw, I count 83 tiles wide revealed, and I counted 84 wide in a test.

 

[Silu]

Map value for non-vassal deals is 0.1 per new water tile plus 0.5 per new land tile. 10 is the minimum value and the value can only go up in increments of 10. So for AIs not in financial trouble (the by far most usual situation) the map will cost 5g unless it reveals more than 40 new land tiles or 200 new water tiles (or a combination) - no way to know whether it will reveal 39 or 0 new land tiles if it costs 5g.

 

[shyuhe]

Hmm, haven't heard from mysty and it looks like mdy is still out of town so I'll take the next turn set. I'll post a big picture plan tomorrow.