SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

I don't see how we'll get Econ near fast enough. We're razing all Delhi cottages and running right out of cash when we get to MM.

The best I can get is T+19 for another Marble GP, with a golden age and full starvation. That's not fast enough. Unless I'm missing something...

 

[babybluepants]

We should give Zara Machinery, on the off chance he goes Guilds after.

We could also do Music to Justinian and Isabella, Drama to Mehmed for cash.

Tech rate:
We can actually do 12t research with just 792bpt, like mdy said (I miscalculated the bulb). We can also do 11t with 863bpt, and I just managed 872bpt with more extreme scientist hiring. It gives up quite a bit of production, and I'm not sure how much of it we need.

 

[babybluepants]

Just had a thought: what if switch to FR right now? We could gain about 40-50bpt. No time to recalculate gpp now, but I'm thinking we may be ok.

 

[shyuhe]

We only need production in Delhi and ivory for missionaries, and we're actually somewhat capped by the 3 missionary rule so I think we have hammers to burn.

If we adopt FR, do we reset the shared faith bonus? I don't remember if it just hibernates (to resume when we adopt theocracy) or if it resets to 0. Obviously if it resets to 0, FR is out of the question.

I think T+19 marble might make it to the fur in time for the victory but I have to count the logistics...

@mdy - do you want to take the save? It seems mutineer is still busy.

 

[babybluepants]

The diplo bonus doesn't get reset. It slowly decays. Silu posted the equation at some point, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Doubt 10t would matter.

The Marble GP would be a replacement for the golden age one, so it only makes sense if we can use the golden age to speed up research or UN build by 1t. I'm already talking 11t research. We could go down to 10t with golden age and FR (or possibly even without FR), but that would make victory T+22, giving us only 3t to transport the GP. Doesn't seem to work.

 

[shyuhe]

The only kink about switching to FR is that it will significantly slow the GPP coming from rice - it may be difficult to make sure rice beats out 2-fish without seriously impeding our bpt.

I think we can have 4 galleons available by T+22 in a chain. Each galleon travels 5 tiles so we can chain 20 tiles straight across and do that in one turn. It might be possible to move from marble to fur in 3 turns if we add another galleon and have engineering....

 

[babybluepants]

Ok. I'm stretching it now, but I think it's possible to do 9t research with maxing specialists, running a golden age and switching to FR. That's T+21 win, but the Marble GP is the bottleneck then, for sure.

 

[shyuhe]

@bbp - what turn is the marble GP born with that plan?

 

[babybluepants]

Edit:
It's actually 20+ turns - the GA timing required is different and we lose Pacifism for a while. Not gonna happen. I think we may have to settle for 11t research at best, unless I'm not thinking of something.

 

[mdy]

I can't see how we can generate another GP either. The communism spy would probably be the quickest to get, but even if we could get the gold for 100% research, the schedule for getting it to the fur in time is extremely tight, so I think we should abandon plans for the golden age.

With free religion we could generate the rice GP on T+5, and the 2 fish on T+11, quick enough to get it the the fur. Maybe we can cut our research time down to 10T if we tried this?

@mdy - do you want to take the save? It seems mutineer is still busy.

I can take it as long as we can agree on a plan by thursday afternoon, after that I will be too busy for a couple of days.

 

[mystyfly]

Good discussion guys

Squeezing in a GA won't work. FR is a good idea bbp. The only risk I see is that we lose our friendship (temporarily) with the buddhists which might lead to demands or so... Let's hope for the best though.

If I remember correctly, the GPs and warriors must be on the fur tile in the end of the winning turn... so we can use the winning turn too to get our units there.

@shyuhe: I like this summary. Good base for a PPP

 

[shyuhe]

It might be better to just go with 11 turns of research. We still have a number of cities that we need to spread Buddhism too, so we will want some leeway on that. We can't set up the galleon chain if we haven't fully spread Buddhism and that introduces an unnecessary luck factor into our plans at this late stage.

 

[mdy]

I'd be inclined to go for the earliest possible mass media date in the hope that everything turns out O.K. if we do run into problems spreading buddishm we could always delay the U.N. build by a couple of turns.

 

[babybluepants]

@mdy,
I'd look into 10t research. Not sure it's doable, but I think we should consider it.
Edit: x-post

If we go into OR and US after the research phase, we can also rush-buy missionaries in an emergency. Should be able to do one per turn if we dedicate our cash to that. Edit: I'd also rather gift Gold to Saladin or something, then delay the win because of missionaries.

@Silu,
Could you confirm this:

The diplo bonus doesn't get reset. It slowly decays.

I'm 99% positive, but kinda paranoid.

 

[mystyfly]

bbp, I'm quite sure that it is like you're saying with the +ves decaying slowly when switching out of the religion.

I agree with mdy, let's go for the earliest MM date, we can always delay the UN.

 

[Silu]

@Silu,
Could you confirm this:

I'm 99% positive, but kinda paranoid.

Well I'm actually 99.98% sure, but I'm paranoid too Here's the counter stuff. I can't see how it would null if you change away (outside this bit of code) and that doesn't correspond with my play experience either. Sorry, I'm too lazy to actually test in game.

Spoiler :

if ((getStateReligion() != NO_RELIGION) &&
						  (getStateReligion() == GET_PLAYER((PlayerTypes)iI).getStateReligion()))
					{
						AI_changeSameReligionCounter(((PlayerTypes)iI), 1);
					}
					else
					{
						if (AI_getSameReligionCounter((PlayerTypes)iI) > 0)
						{
							AI_changeSameReligionCounter(((PlayerTypes)iI), -1);
						}
					}

 

[shyuhe]

I'll try to test in a real game just to make sure. I'm pretty confident too but paranoid about this one...

The only problem with going for earliest MM date is that it requires a golden age, which means we NEED to wait until marble pops a GP to win.

I agree with bbp - gifting gold city to avoid missionary problems is fine - we shouldn't need its pop to win.

 

[babybluepants]

The only problem with going for earliest MM date is that it requires a golden age, which means we NEED to wait until marble pops a GP to win.

The golden age is out. I was talking about maxing specialists, potentially building research and running FR. Not sure it can quite result in 10t research... Buddhist spread to our cities for FR benefit may bottleneck it, as well.

I'm liking the missionary rush-buy idea even more now. If we can complete research in 10t, we could have approximately 600g left over from: current cash + Zhou capture + currently available cash trades. That doesn't even account for further cash trades we may get. After the research is done, we could set all cities to build wealth and probably achieve something like 150-180gpt for the remainder. That gives us somewhere around 12-15 missionary rushes by the turn before victory. The logistics get simpler, as we could just buy them next to the target city. If we gift Gold, then the only ferrying required is one for Devil's Gate and one for Sugar. Devil's Gate could have 2-3 attempts at Zhou in case of failure, and we could do the same in Marble for Sugar with a dedicated galley.

This might let us just build research for 10t everywhere, after sending the missionary to barb land and spreading the upcoming Delhi one to Bombay.

 

[mystyfly]

I thought spreading a religion to a city without any religion present is guaranteed success. I can't check right now but there may be no chance involved at all over there.

 

[babybluepants]

Yeah, I know you brought that up before. Be good to know...

After the research is done, we could set all cities to build wealth and probably achieve something like 150-180gpt for the remainder

Actually more like 250+, since we can re-assign all specialists as merchants then. Gives us 18+ missionaries by the turn before win.