SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[Mutineer]

Because of very low chances of getting GE we need to run Engineer always, even if some other think not optimal.

I do not see why we need to raise any barb cities, we will have time and FORT can connect to trade NW.

 

[LowtherCastle]

With a 7 pop whip and the mass conversion of the cottages into workshops immediately after mass media, then provided we can trade for guilds by this point I figure we should be able to get the U.N. in 12 turns without State Property, and 10 turns with it.

Seems to me we could build the UN in 8t or less without SP and without the GE. With the GE 2t. I forget how many workable tiles Delhi has, but we should be able to have about 120hpt at least, right? How many hpt were you figuring in Delhi? What pop in Delhi? With Guilds? With Chemistry?

Hagia Sophia might be a good idea after all, not just for the extra GE points, but also for the 1.5X worker turns for the furs, fort, and workshops.

 

[babybluepants]

@Mutineer,
Another GM would save us 10-12t in research, based on my (very, very) rough calculation. That's probably more than a GE would do. We have another 50-ish% shot from Delhi anyway, whereas we won't have another reasonable GM shot on our schedule. I thought you were all for merchants, btw.

So, who's playing the next set?

 

[mdy]

Seems to me we could build the UN in 8t or less without SP and without the GE. With the GE 2t. I forget how many workable tiles Delhi has, but we should be able to have about 120hpt at least, right?

I think I was assuming a size 15 capital working 2 corn, silver, 2 grass mines, 7 grass workshops, 3 plains workshops with guilds, and caste system, but no chemistry. With a forge+CS+Organised Religion this gives us 88 hammers a turn. I think I was assuming a 100% rush penalty, instead of a 300% whip penalty when I made this estimate.

 

[Mutineer]

Well i am all for merchants, but you did not listen to me and hire scientists. If previous player listen then we would not had to compromise. I always sad that after education 2 fish need to run only merchants + engineer.

 

[mystyfly]

I think it's my turn to play... my last set was ages ago.

Regarding GPs I thought we were going to run engineer + merchants everywhere (where we're getting GPs) except Delhi where we're running scientists to make full use of oxford + academy. That right?

I'll have another close look on our situation with the fur. I think settling a city to ensure we get furs ASAP is best but still keep zhou, for the extra pop. I'm not sure whether the settler in production will arrive in time, otherwise we could use the incense settler but I think the new settler should be fast enough. Are we agreed on using 6 maces or are we extra-careful? I do think it is enough. As for workers, we must first see how many we can capture and then send a few more if we're short... remember we have fast workers... and we could rush 1-2 from zhou if need be (depends on how long it takes to capture it).

 

[babybluepants]

As for barb teching, they do tech normally as well but without a Palace that's pretty harsh going. As for their freeload teching: Each turn, they receive 3% * (CIVS_KNOWING_TECH / CIVS_ALIVE) of each techs beakers. So, for them to get Feudalism, in a 7 player game, they need about 230 turns with 1 player knowing Feuda, 77 turns with 3 players knowing it, or 33 turns with all Civs knowing it. This is completely deterministic (contrary to what I've heard multiple times on these forums).

I haven't scrutinized the tech pace in this game, but from what I've seen we should have enough time to reach the barbs before they can up LBs based on this? Not sure when Feuda was researched by the ones that have it.

Justinian on T197
Saladin between T180 & T194 (maybe mdy has intermediate saves).
That seems pretty safe. Worst case scenario it's 21/230 turns. So, even if all AI got it next turn, we'd have 35t left.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Who owns MoM? Does Delhi have a BUddhist temple? (+2) COuld I have a city screenshot of Delhi please? Edit: Plus a screenshot of the Diplomatic attitude points for all AIs and us.

 

[babybluepants]

If I'm not mistaken, MoM is still available. Don't have access to the game atm.
Yes, Delhi has a 2h temple.
If no one else does, I'll post some screenies after work. Sorry, I've been too lazy to.

@mysty,
This is the latest GP plan we had (I just changed the dates to reflect my TS):

T-2: First GP generated in 2 fish. If it is a merchant fire merchants in favour of scientists. If it is anything else fire engineer and hire merchants.

T+6: Second GP in marble

T+12: Third GP in 2 fish . If the first GP was an enginner hire 8 scientists. Otherwise 7 scientists and one engineer.

T+23: Fourth GP generated in the capital. If we get a GE and are still running an engineer in 2 fish hire another scientist there instead. We may need to delay the GP in rice city to generate the 4th GP here depending when we spread Budhism there.

around T29: Fifth GP in rice city (may need to delay 2 fish slightly depending on when buddishm spreads.)

around T33: sixth GP generated in 2 fish.

We already have an artist, scientist, and will get another scientist with physics for 9 in total. The last will probably be too late to do anything except to start a golden age or to build the U.N. if it is an engineer. 4 GP's will go on the fur, and there type is irrelevant. Of the remaining 4, 1 should be an engineer, 1 should be a merchant for deficit research, and the other 2 would ideally be scientists for bulbing. As we already have 1, and will get another with physics this is guaranteed. 1 Can bulb astronomy, the other electricity. We will then need around 40T to do the remainder of our research.

I bulbed Astro and ran one trade mission. We currently still have the recent GS in Two Fish and the Music Artist. 5 more should be generated on this schedule, as well as the Physics GS. That gives us 8 total: 4 variant-fur, 1 GM mission, 1 GS bulb (Physics or Elec), ideally 1 GE + 1 more. We can actually bulb MM with the GA, if we only get our hands on Drama first (I think). Edit: Obviously better to bulb with GS, I'm just suggesting this in case we are running out of GS research by the time we make a decision. We'll need to check this schedule more carefully, though. mdy's plan calls for sailing with last GP's on t+40, which may be just doable with the last Rice GP, but it would suck to lose a turn or two in transport there.

 

[mystyfly]

Here you go:

Spoiler :

edit: x-post. bbp: Yes, MoM is still available, no, delhi has no buddhist temple

 

[babybluepants]

Oops, I guess I confused it with the monastery.

 

[mystyfly]

Well too bad we missed the temple. The mostly useless marked has some 20-30h invested IIRC, those would've been better put in the temple. But what about that market now, we aren't going to let those hammers decay I guess; finish it after the temple?

 

[babybluepants]

I cancelled the market, because it seems useless now. It was started a very long time ago, and bumped for other stuff. mdy suggested building an observatory asap (see his plan two pages back), and I tend to agree. Probably shouldn't let the mace hammers decay and the temple would be nice, so I'm not sure what build order's the best. Probably obs > temple > finish mace?
Edit: mdy's plan also calls for missionaries from Delhi, so we should confirm we have enough production for everything, I guess.

 

[shyuhe]

Ok, finally had a chance to look through all those posts I missed Some thoughts:

Our biggest risk factor right now are (1) we fail to spread Buddhism to all of our cities before triggering victory (small risk); (2) we lose our trade for dye/silk on our turn of victory (small risk); and (3) we fail to win on the first UN vote (biggest risk).

I think the most important thing right now, other than obtaining the fur, is to make sure Toku is our UN opponent. If Mehmed is our opponent, we can't win unless we declare war on him to shrink him in size (we can take the -1 diplo hit and still win) or give Toku cities to make him the #2. So I see two options to consider, either hire a GE in all cities that will pop a GP in time (for our Saladin UN gift plan) or build more maces in anticipation of a war. Either way, I think getting a GE is MORE critical than getting a GM that slows our research by 10 turns. If Mehmed grows too large, we won't win without a prolonged war which will cost more than 10 turns.

As for the turn estimations on building the UN, we need to remember that we will require worker turns to build the workshops. So unless a worker is building a farm, I'd start sending them to Delhi and start building watermills/workshops in preparation for the UN. We should bulldoze any non-village non-town tile.

As for risk factor (1), we just have to send enough missionaries. For (2), we can re-negotiate our deals for dye and silk in anticipation of our UN vote to make sure the vote falls in the 10 turn window.

 

[mdy]

Either way, I think getting a GE is MORE critical than getting a GM that slows our research by 10 turns. If Mehmed grows too large, we won't win without a prolonged war which will cost more than 10 turns.

If the gift CS to Japan and hope he can take enough cities plan fails, we can always invade Saladin and gift any captured cities to Japan. It would be far easier to defeat him than Mehemed. If we focus on maceman production instead of wealth/research in our cities our victory date should still be limited by the time needed to build the U.N., not the time needed to win the war. The only delay would be that it would take a turn or two longer to reach mass media as we would not be building research. A GM would be much more useful than this.

The mostly useless marked has some 20-30h invested IIRC, those would've been better put in the temple. But what about that market now, we aren't going to let those hammers decay I guess; finish it after the temple?

I don't think we have the spare production in the capital to put hammers into something which will be useless for a long time. I will have to check, but I don't think that we can easily build enough missionaries in time without using the capital.

One thing which would ease the build queue in the capital would be to send our current missionary to Bombay, and build a monastry there. Scientific Method could be delayed by researching liberalism for a few turns. This would delay the GP in rice, but we would want to do that anyway in order to maximise the chances of an engineer in the capital.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm fine gifting CS to Japan in hopes that he wars more competently. I would still like to run the extra engineer in 2-fish though, since getting the GE will minimize our biggest risk factor right now. Mehmed has the land available to become very large, so we need to make sure we win before that happens.

 

[mystyfly]

I agree with shyuhe, running the GE and gifting CS. As to the Delhi build order, I think skipping the market completely and build temple > mace > missionaries is the best order for our current to midterm needs.

 

[Mutineer]

Just do not forget, Using Whales WB will give as +1 happy instantly.

It is still unclear to me who is on?

 

[mystyfly]

Thanks for the reminder mutineer. I am up.

 

[mdy]

I would still like to run the extra engineer in 2-fish though, since getting the GE will minimize our biggest risk factor right now. Mehmed has the land available to become very large, so we need to make sure we win before that happens.

The GE is not our biggest risk factor, not getting the GM as the next GP in 2 fish is.

If we want to increase our chances of getting an engineer, without costing us something more valuable than an engineer there are only three things we can do (all of which are pretty small)

1) We can fire the scientists in marble, hire merchants. If we got a merchant there we would then be free to hire an engineer and scientists in 2 fish.

2) Put the Hagia Sophia in the capital

3) If we micromanage carefully we could fire the scientists in the capital for the last couple of turns, (and maybe do the same for the final GP in 2 fish)

On the current plan we have a 59% chance of an engineer. Even with all of these it will not rise to more than 62-63%.