SGOTM 12 - Fifth Element

Fluroscent · Nov 17, 2010

Aye, Captain. Best wishes. I'll make sure we keep moving until then.

unclethrill · Nov 17, 2010

Finished the TS.

Here are the highlights:

T161
Took out 5 units, Lost 1 elephant at 76%.
Attacked by remainder of force: Lost 1 Horse and 2 Axe. Took out 1 Cap.

T162
Finished off stack.
Rheims: Whip Granary for 1 pop

T163

Nuttin'

T164

Second stack turned and ran. He still won't talk

T165

Whipped rest of Universities

T166

Finished Quarry
Started Oxford
Whipped Courthouse in Yarslav

T167

Ghandi offered Feudalism for Philo and 15 Gold. I gently refused.
Mao asked for CS. Again, I gently refused
Whipped CH in Novo
Whipped Forge in Rostov
Whipped Oxford in Moscow

T168
Mao Offers 178 Gold for literature, I accepted.
Popped a GS.

Chose builds but they were just placeholders and moved slider to 100%. PP in 6 turns.

Session Log:

Spoiler :

Autolog:

Spoiler :

Fluroscent · Nov 18, 2010

Alright! Sounds good, I haven't looked at save yet. Decent outcome of the war. Good to see courthouses beginning to arrive.
Focus now should be on the steel beeline and REX. Now is the time to settle a lot of cities and build a LOT of workers.

Roster:

Beestar - UP
Havr
Pnp_Dredd
Fluroscent
Unclethrill - just played
Blubmuz - Away until mid December

Cas, Orb - Currently out of rotation

Havr or dredd may swap in for beestar now if they wish. I'd say 24H limit for this, or you will have to take the turnset beestar.

Fluroscent · Nov 18, 2010

Checking save:

Generally, we want to grow back most of our cities. Maybe whip courthouse in Paris(convert first)+Orleans when available, but I think we need more pop now. Building forges/courthouses are good while growing.
We need to run the engineer in Rostov continuously from now on.
Let's utilize the overflow in Moscow for a settler. Then let it grow while building a couple of galleys and a market.
StP should build a market for it's shrine. And as it is stagnant, we can benefit from spamming workers/settlers here afterwards.

I think an academy in Novogrod is the best use for the scientist. It has a tremendous long term benefit.

pnp_dredd · Nov 18, 2010

I can take a turnset over the next week or so if that works for the beaster.

beestar · Nov 18, 2010

Hey, that would be great, pnp_dredd. My home is still surrounded by boxes, and I'm supposed to write a client proposal for work ... um, right now actually.

pnp_dredd · Nov 19, 2010

draft PPP for comments over the next 48 hours.

General priorities:
Grow cities where required.
Get courthouses/markets up. Current sustainable science is at 20%.
Tech towards Steel (I don' think that Printing press is worth it, see reasons at the end of this post)

Tech:

Beeline steel: Engineering (1560) + Gunpowder (1872) + Chemistry (2808) + Liberalism/Steel (~1800)
100% research, then binary when we use our gold stock.

Cities:

Moscow: Focus on growing. Let StP work shared cottages until population can work them. Settler(2)->Market(5)->Schwegadon (to grow and to utilise bureaucracy bonus for nice fail gold)->Workers

StP: Work shared cottages. Settler(2)->Market(6)->Workers/Settlers

CI: Work Novo shared cottages and focus on commerce rather than hammers. We need a galley asap to get workers down to clear fallout for an island city. Galley(2)->Mace(1)->Courthouse(6)->workboats (don't really need any more military right now)

Novogorod: Slow build market while focussing on growth.

Orleans: Grow. Eventually should put FP here, so build forge(30ish)->courthouse->FP. Orleans will have 8 hammers (iron city tile(3), grass hill(3), grass gems(1) and plains cottage(1)) so a forge is worth 2 hammers/turn, and is possibly worth whipping to speed the FP.

Rostov: 1 Engineer at all times. Grow. Build some farms here. Lighthouse(9)->courthouse(19)

Rheims: is tiny (size 2). Build courthouse. Have workers build 2 farms to irrigate the corn, to assist growth (these can be cottaged over eventually).

Yarslav: Grow and work cottages while slow building Market

Paris : Is decent size. Switch from courthouse to library, so that we can run specialists rather than working coast. Library (2pop whip in 3 turns)->courthouse. Hm actually need to spread Confucianism here before whipping, so continue on courthouse until I move the confused missionary from Rhiems to Paris. How long should I leave the missionary sitting in Paris before converting?

Settlers:
StP: Establish iceball city as suggested by Fluro in this screenshot

Moscow: Settler the best island city, fish+clam+copper+corn on the only fogged tile. This site is superior to the sheep site, and we don't have any cities running anywhere near the health cap at the moment (minimum +6 health, except StP which is stagnant anyway). Galley from CI will take 2 workers from Novogorad to clear the fogged tile. The settler from Moscow will walk down to near Rostov to be picked up.

Workers:
2 cottaging Yaroslavl
3 cottaging Novogorad / improving furs
2 from Novo to island
1 from Novo head to Rheims
2 stay at Rhiems chaining irrigation to the corn
2 from Rheims improve gems/mine hill/cottage near Orleans
2 near Rostov camp elephants then build farms (GP city)

Great scientist:
options:
bulb for PP (1647 :science:

)
settle in Moscow (+19.2 :science:

/turn)
Academy in Novogorad (9 :science:

/turn now, eventually 30 :science:

/turn)

Bulbing is not a bad option actually (it leaves just 2 turns to complete Printing Press). We won't break even on an Academy in Novogorad for around 70 turns.

War:

Settle iceball in around 10 turns time. Gift to France. Declare and raze Lyons after reducing cultural defences to 0%.

Trades:

Not much going on here.

Civics:

No Changes

Questions:

Is there any military that we don't need, which can be disbanded? We're currently paying 24 gold/turn in military expenses.

Is PP first worth it?

Our standing army is costing us 24 gold/turn. We need cannons asap so that we can put those units to work capturing tasty AI cities. On the other hand, PP first will save a few turns of teching.

I don't think that printing press is worth it before we beeline Steel. Printing Press (2200) costs ~30% as much as the entire pathway to Steel (8040). We have around 12 tiles which will benefit once we have completed PP. So perhaps PP gives us an extra 20 :science:

/turn, given multipliers.

We have a nice gold stockpile, so we can spend 15 turns at 100% science (320/turn), after that our sustainable science rate will be around 120/turn (140/turn with PP).

Beelining steel (8040 beakers via Liberalism) will take ~40 turns (15*320 :science:

/turn+25*120 :science:

/turn) Then 18 turns tech tech PP.
PP then beeline (10240 beakers) will take ~55 turns (15*320 :science:

/turn+40*140 :science:

/turn)

So diverting through PP will delay cannons by 15 turns, and reduce the total time teching by around 3 turns.

Two confounding factors:
1) Could bulb the Great Scientist, then complete PP in 2 turns.
2) Roosy has Engineering. However he currently won't talk to us and we don't know how long that will last for.

I feel that getting cannons (and therefore AI cities) 15 turns earlier is a bigger advantage than gaining 3 turns along the tech tree. What do others think?

beestar · Nov 19, 2010

Quick point, I would grow Rostov instead of working the engineer - we can multiply those GPPs a lot more when we have National Epic and are running Pacifism. Right now it's not a very efficient way of accumulating GE points. If you have nothing to do I suppose you could pre-build National Epic.

If we're ever in a position where we want to build Wealth, we could instead consider starting National Epic in a different city for fail-gold.

Fluroscent · Nov 19, 2010

Good plan overall. I got one major issue though, and that is building markets.

Markets look good with more commerce becoming gold right now. BUT, long term (not that long really) we will be at constant 100% science from wealth building with mining.inc., and markets will be utterly wasted. They are also expensive and the happiness is not needed at all.
For now, the only places I can see markets beating wealth building is in Moscow and StP. For the bureau bonus and gold city respectively.
For gold, we obviously want those courthouses, since they are needed in every city anyway when running corps. Failure gold is a good plan too. And we really should consider just building wealth right now. It will speed us on to steel, and later mining.inc. faster than anyhting.

So to more specifics:

beestar said:
Quick point, I would grow Rostov instead of working the engineer - we can multiply those GPs a lot more when we have National Epic and are running Pacifism. Right now it's not a very efficient way of accumulating GE points. If you have nothing to do I suppose you could pre-build National Epic.

I disagree, the engineer, while not being as good a provider of GPP right now as when we have NEpic, will still accumulate a fair bit of points while we wait for IW. It will also be accumulating without GA contamination, that we still cannot be sure we want to risk.
The city is food rich, so running one specialist instead of a mine is not going to be a problem at all.

Builds:
As I said, markets should not be common builds, but rather wealth. There are also some superfluous builds we can build anywhere instead of wealth and still grow. Those are workboats and confu missonaries to power up the new cities. Also, I don't recall where forges are available yet, but obviously we want those everywhere too.

pnp_dredd said:
Moscow: Focus on growing. Let StP work shared cottages until population can work them. Settler(2)->Market(5)->Schwegadon (to grow and to utilise bureaucracy bonus for nice fail gold)->Workers
Agree on this. Just that I don't think we should stunt growth until we are working all available land tiles+all coast tiles (not ocean tiles obviously). I like Schwedagon, and we can build till near completion, then switch to wealth till final size is reached, then workers.

StP: Work shared cottages. Settler(2)->Market(6)->Workers/Settlers

CI: Work Novo shared cottages and focus on commerce rather than hammers. We need a galley asap to get workers down to clear fallout for an island city. Galley(2)->Mace(1)->Courthouse(6)->workboats/wealth/missonaries (don't really need any more military right now)
Agree with this. Maybe a second galley though (after courthouse).

Novogorod: Slow build market while focussing on growth.
Wealth/missionaries instead of market

Orleans: Grow. Eventually should put FP here, so build forge(30ish)->courthouse->FP. Orleans will have 8 hammers (iron city tile(3), grass hill(3), grass gems(1) and plains cottage(1)) so a forge is worth 2 hammers/turn, and is possibly worth whipping to speed the FP.
I'd rather whip the courthouse, then build the forge, then whip FP.

Rostov: 1 Engineer at all times. Grow. Build some farms here. Lighthouse(9)->courthouse(19)
Maybe better to just work the specials+hammer tiles and grow on coast rather than build more farms now. What we could hope is that if we just clear the tiles around the forests, they might spread so we can chop the IW or something later.

Rheims: is tiny (size 2). Build courthouse. Have workers build 2 farms to irrigate the corn, to assist growth (these can be cottaged over eventually).

Yarslav: Grow and work cottages while slow building Market
Again, wealth instead of market.

Paris : Is decent size. Switch from courthouse to library, so that we can run specialists rather than working coast. Library (2pop whip in 3 turns)->courthouse. Hm actually need to spread Confucianism here before whipping, so continue on courthouse until I move the confused missionary from Rhiems to Paris. How long should I leave the missionary sitting in Paris before converting?
5 turns? Not sure here. Also, there is a fallouted grass tile to cottage. Paris has an academy, so growing cottages here is better than most. And the hills to work once we get rid of Lyons

StP: Establish iceball city as suggested by Fluro in this screenshot

Moscow: Settler the best island city, fish+clam+copper+corn on the only fogged tile. This site is superior to the sheep site, and we don't have any cities running anywhere near the health cap at the moment (minimum +6 health, except StP which is stagnant anyway). Galley from CI will take 2 workers from Novogorad to clear the fogged tile. The settler from Moscow will walk down to near Rostov to be picked up.

Actually, since both settlers are due in 2 turns, it would make more sense to send the Moscow one north, and the StP one south

Agree 100% otherwise. Make sure to bring the scouting workboat to the fish tile when needed.
Also, if you can ship a missonary to the city as well it would be great. It will add gold to our shrine, speed up granary from the start and maybe shave a turn or two on popping borders for fish.

Scientist:
Still think academy in Novo. As I see it, it comes out to more than 30 :science:

/turn long term, and this is surely not going to be over by the 18th century like a normal fast SS on these settings.
However, bulbing PP might be good for a different reason.

Printing press or not:
I think the critical issue is whether or not we can trade for Engineering. No chance with Roosy (not only will he not talk to us, we are at war!). But him having it means we can trade with Gandhi once he has it. It is likely what he is researching right now. Courthouses might give us intel on that soon, but generally the AI will follow Machinery with Engineering shortly.

So it would suck to research it ourselves, only to see it tradable.
But what to trade for it? PP of course. But PP IS expensive, I agree. So bulbing might be proper still. And to keep running 0% :science:

for a little while longer, since we still do not have enough gold to reach steel at 100% :science:

anyway.

Other:

Is there any military that we don't need, which can be disbanded? We're currently paying 24 gold/turn in military expenses.

Since we are at war with Roosevelt, the two others are WHEOOHRN, and we want to kill Lyons, I think we should keep our standing army. After razing Lyons, we can probably afford to disband the catapults, and some of the axes. Although they could just be sent to new cities as MPs instead.

I feel that getting cannons (and therefore AI cities) 15 turns earlier is a bigger advantage than gaining 3 turns along the tech tree. What do others think?

Agree, but it is a puzzle of sorts. Bulb PP, don't bulb PP, trade or not for Engineering. Etc.

One option, while risky might be worth it: Don't bulb PP, put current beakers into Liberalism (until complete within 1 turn) and wait for engineering to come up in trade, and trade Education for Engineering+(feud/compass whatever). Then race towards steel and beat him to lib. This relies on the courthouses being enough to get us intel on Gandhi's research, so he doesn't snatch liberalism first. Risk having to take a cheaper tech than steel.

havr · Nov 19, 2010

pnp_dredd said:
I can take a turnset over the next week or so if that works for the beaster.

Ooops... saw the opportunity to take the TS now too late... pnp already got it.
If this one is quick enough I hopefully will be able to take the next one. After that I am not sure what I will able to do. My wife is 9 month pregnant...

BTW, I am following the thread. The fact that I am not saying much is because I don't have anything to add.

havr · Nov 19, 2010

pnp_dredd said:
We have a nice gold stockpile, so we can spend 15 turns at 100% science (320/turn), after that our sustainable science rate will be around 120/turn (140/turn with PP).

Beelining steel (8040 beakers via Liberalism) will take ~40 turns (15*320/turn+25*120/turn) Then 18 turns tech tech PP.
PP then beeline (10240 beakers) will take ~55 turns (15*320/turn+40*140/turn)

Did you factor in the gold from capturing & razing Lyons?

pnp_dredd · Nov 19, 2010

havr said:
Did you factor in the gold from capturing & razing Lyons?

No, it's very approximate. I also didn't factor in city growth and courthouses, and these will also make a big difference over a 30-40 turn timeframe.

havr said:
My wife is 9 month pregnant...

Congrats, is this your first? We'll know what's up when you just disappear off the net for a while.

pnp_dredd · Nov 19, 2010

Fluroscent said:
Good plan overall. I got one major issue though, and that is building markets.

OK, no markets except in Moscow and StP. Is it better to pre-build wonders which will obsolete quickly (like Schwegadon) or to build wealth? I'll adjust the city builds later on today.

Fluroscent said:
send the Moscow one north, and the StP one south...bring the scouting workboat ...ship a missonary to the city

yep

Fluroscent said:
Scientist:
Still think academy in Novo. As I see it, it comes out to more than 30/turn long term, and this is surely not going to be over by the 18th century like a normal fast SS on these settings.
However, bulbing PP might be good for a different reason.

Printing press or not:
I think the critical issue is whether or not we can trade for Engineering. No chance with Roosy (not only will he not talk to us, we are at war!). But him having it means we can trade with Gandhi once he has it. It is likely what he is researching right now. Courthouses might give us intel on that soon, but generally the AI will follow Machinery with Engineering shortly.

So it would suck to research it ourselves, only to see it tradable.
But what to trade for it? PP of course. But PP IS expensive, I agree. So bulbing might be proper still. And to keep running 0% for a little while longer, since we still do not have enough gold to reach steel at 100% anyway.

Fluroscent said:
Agree, but it is a puzzle of sorts. Bulb PP, don't bulb PP, trade or not for Engineering. Etc.

One option, while risky might be worth it: Don't bulb PP, put current beakers into Liberalism (until complete within 1 turn) and wait for engineering to come up in trade, and trade Education for Engineering+(feud/compass whatever). Then race towards steel and beat him to lib. This relies on the courthouses being enough to get us intel on Gandhi's research, so he doesn't snatch liberalism first. Risk having to take a cheaper tech than steel.

Lots of options. Now I'm actually leaning towards bulbing PP, then PP at 0% science while we wait to trade Engineering. What do others think?

Fluroscent · Nov 19, 2010

Is it better to pre-build wonders which will obsolete quickly (like Schwegadon) or to build wealth? I'll adjust the city builds later on today.

Definitely if we have multipliers. Wealth is only better if we need the gold here and now.

Lots of options. Now I'm actually leaning towards bulbing PP, then PP at 0% science while we wait to trade Engineering. What do others think?

I'll agree to this on short term power. It is probably the fastest route to steel, and to mining.inc.
I would complete PP at 100% though, to get the bonus. And then run 0% on Liberalism instead until Engineering is tradable (or Gandhi is seen to go in a completely different direction).

By the way, Gandhi is going to be a huge asset for a while. It seems too hard to extract nationalism/constitution by war, but them having the techs means Gandhi will trade them when he gets that far (and he prioritizes that line, so it should not be too long).

havr said:
If this one is quick enough I hopefully will be able to take the next one. After that I am not sure what I will able to do. My wife is 9 month pregnant...

How about that

. Well, we can always be flexible. Maybe a shorter set if it is needed.

BLubmuz · Nov 19, 2010

I'm here.

Still with my problems, but nothing to worry about, thank you all for the support.

Well, aside UT's half-bad luck in wiping Roos' stack, it seems everything is goin well.
I like your plans, maybe some change here and there, but of course not sure without see the save.

I agree on the 2 markets only and obviously every city needs a CH and a forge. And, why not? a library too. After Astro we can build some observatory. Cheaper than unis and with a sci slot.

About the GS:
I don't like academies so late in the game. GSs are best used for bulbing until Physics or for GAges later. In SG9 we made an accurate comparison between bulbing and a GAge and the GAge won by far (we owned the MoM, but Mao was so gentle to build it for us, IIRC).

But i think that bulbing PP NOW is a mistake. We just whipped the hell for Unis, OU and other useful stuff, so we're low in pop.
In addition, we're settling new cities, food rich, so they can grow quickly.
So, if we research PP the hard way and use the GS for Chem we can have a better ROI, since we'll have a lot more population.

Once we have PP, the GS will bulb Optics/Astro if we lack GP, but Chem if we have it, even if we have Optics. We're not interested on the circum bonus and Astro is not so useful, despite this is a mix of a Pangea and an Archipelago map.

I got more than a doubt in trade PP to G. Sure, it would be a waste to research Eng if this is on the trade table, but i fear he can beeline to Democracy. I know he likes that path.

We have another task to accomplish: locate more iceballs sites.

Mao is our next target and Roos/Chur will shortly follow. Gandhi is the last and Stalin MUST be wiped, so we need 4 more iceballs or 1-tile-islands.

Fluroscent · Nov 20, 2010

Great point blubs. I forgot that chemistry had a high bulb priority. Also, GS bulbs are apparantly 1500 :science:

+3

/population point. So it is indeed going to be better to save the GS to bulb chemistry when we have (much) higher pop.

BLubmuz said:
I got more than a doubt in trade PP to G. Sure, it would be a waste to research Eng if this is on the trade table, but i fear he can beeline to Democracy. I know he likes that path.

Why would we fear that? It would mean we could trade for nationalism+constitution earlier, which are techs on the mining.inc. path (prereqs to corporation), and one AI with emancipation will only create a small amount of unhappiness, and our happy caps are very high right now. Plus we want democracy ourselves, and it will make it cheaper if he has it.

Agree on libraries too. They are cheap as dirt with the CRE trait and will pay for themselves by only trade route commerce quickly. But just maybe it is better to build wealth in the short run (=until steel).

Iceballs: There is enough room up north for all of them. It is surely a part of the map design to give us a fallout free region like that for this purpose.

pnp_dredd · Nov 20, 2010

OK seems like we are agreed to bulb the GS, but that it's better to wait.

The question then is whether we tech PP or beeline Steel.

It will be around 10 turns till we can see Ghandi's research, so we need to make a decision based on the info that we currently have.

My feeling is that Cannons 15 turns faster is better than saving 3 turns of teching. Of course, we save an additional 4 turns teching if we are lucky and can trade for Engineering, and I do like to gamble...

pnp_dredd · Nov 20, 2010

Revised city builds, and a question: do we want to convert our iceball before gifting it to France?

Cities:

Moscow: Focus on growing. Let StP work shared cottages until population can work them. Settler(2)->Market(5)->Schwegadon (Fail gold) -> National Epic (fail gold) -> wealth

StP: Work shared cottages. Settler(2)->Market(6)->Workers/Settlers

CI: Work Novo shared cottages and focus on commerce rather than hammers. We need a galley asap to get workers down to clear fallout for an island city. Galley(2)->Missionary->Mace(1)->Courthouse(6)->->workboat->galley->Missionary->wealth (don't really need any more military right now)

Novogorod: National Epic / Schwegadon / Wealth while focussing on growth.

Orleans: Grow. Eventually should put FP here, so build forge(30ish)->courthouse->FP. Orleans will have 8 hammers (iron city tile(3), grass hill(3), grass gems(1) and plains cottage(1)) so a forge is worth 2 hammers/turn, and is possibly worth whipping to speed the FP.
[Fluro prefers whipping courthouse and building forge but I prefer whipping forge. Any other opinions?]

Rostov: 1 Engineer at all times. Grow. Clear fallout from around forests. Build 1 farm here. Lighthouse(9)->courthouse(19)

Rheims: is tiny (size 2). Build courthouse. Have workers build 2 farms to irrigate the corn, to assist growth (these can be cottaged over eventually).

Yarslav: Grow and work cottages while building Forge

Paris : Is decent size. Continue to build courthouse and grow as there will be more tiles to work once we get rid of Lyons.

Island city: granary

Fluroscent · Nov 20, 2010

The question then is whether we tech PP or beeline Steel.

We will need to tech PP in order to bulb chemistry since PP is higher in the priority list.

Revised city builds, and a question: do we want to convert our iceball before gifting it to France?

Why not? If a missionary can be up there in time.

Not sure I like Nat Epic for fail gold this early, since we might not cash in on it before much later. In that case, we can build wealth now, and build it for fail gold later.

pnp_dredd · Nov 21, 2010

OK then. PP then beeline steel. Trade for Engineering if at all possible.

I still like whipping forge first in Orleans - this will give a faster FP.

I'll play in around 24 hours unless there's serious disagreement.

SGOTM 12 - Fifth Element

Emperor

Why am I up right now?

Emperor

Emperor

civ junkie

subdeity

civ junkie

subdeity

Emperor

Warlord

Warlord

civ junkie

civ junkie

Emperor

HoF Quattromaster

Emperor

civ junkie

civ junkie

Emperor

civ junkie

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