SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

Market + Grocer + Bank + WS = 1100h WS itself is 600h, so it's end-heavy. That makes me think we'll probably wanna research Corporation ahead of Medicine. We need some stealing first, but we can put partial beakers into Medicine.

Hard to do without Slavery anywhere but Moscow. Fish could do it in circa 25t slow build. I know you guys are more than happy with our troop situation, but I'm really not crazy about giving up our settled-GG spot right now.

Do like the shrine-WS plan, but Prophets are quite rare, and I'd hate to have one less GA in the end because of it. Agree with bcool that it would be nice to estimate our total GP production, but I don't even know how to roughly estimate the end date here. Maybe someone else does? Also, I suspect our GP production may be end-heavy, so saving a GP right now may help us with the 3GP timing.

Bahamas or Bermuda could do WS relatively easily, but it's a shame to give up a shrine (even though I'm completely against trying to manually spread Buddhism). They could just run a pile of merchants, though.

Paris would really need the two hills next to Lyons if we're trying to build WS there. I'd probably try to work out some plan with lining up 3 whips with OF. We also need to raze Lyons for the chain-gift. If we lose Lyons to Churchill, we'd need to DOW him soon, and the logistics of dealing with all his troops between Lyons and Tours are kinda nightmarish, esp. as we need to commit most (all) of the main stack to China (where we need to raze Hang asap). This may require drafting hard in France and nearby, I think, over the next few turns.

Need to capture Nanjing to settle the IW city, as well. And, wanna capture Chengdu...

In short, I wanna build a lot of troops asap.

NP:
There's a 5 forest city west of Stalin with seafood (unlike the southern one). Otherwise, Siberia.

 

[bcool]

settled-GG spot right now.

Paris has one too doesn't it?

but Prophets are quite rare

With 2 shrines maybe Paris or Fish conceivably pops another GPro.

 

[LowtherCastle]

• Do we need more theaters? Are we intending to run culture slider?
• Harbors? Cuba could probably use one more than a theater, for instance.
• How does the worker force feel, LC? Should we up the number anytime soon?
• Caravel: Bermuda could be a turn ahead of Bcool Island, I think.
• Philosophy to Roosevelt for 340g
• When do we wanna finish Taj? I think we should go all out until it's 1t away, then think about the timing.
• China: capture Guangzhou @ T+3? Then CF, gift St Nick and steal. We should try to steal Changdu if possible - it's a good city.

* The extraneous theatres getting built are an artifact of lack of planning on my part. Do whatever makes most sense to you.
* The workforce is starting to feel a bit strained, but workable, I think. I started moving a couple workers from up north down toward GP Farm. They could work there or even continue on to the Mao area. More will be able to move down gradually, I think. We might have too many workers at bcool Island, not sure. In any case, I don't think we have spare production for workers right now.
* I'm thinking Bermuda might be right for some of the settlers we need. If you chop the far NW forest where we'll eventually settle a 2-seafood city, that will give bcool Island +13h and it will only be 1t behind Bermuda.
* I'd prefer to NOT trade Roosy Philo, so we can build the Angkor Wat in London and work 9 priests for a Great Prophet later on. We can trade him Optics without endangering circumnavigation. I'm not worried about his caravels stopping our war plans. It'll be a ground war except maybe the first strike.
* Taj can be finished on T184. The sooner the better, imo.
* Guangzhou is Chinese for dead meat...

Outstanding Questions

• Great Prophet usage / Golden Age plan
  I really need a consensus of some sort here. It has to do with Taj fail-cash, research and production speed over the next 5-6t, etc.
• Somewhat related: are we building WS in Fish. In that case, I'd look to slow down unit production for gold multipliers. Maybe need siege elsewhere then.
• No one really stated a strong opinion on IW. I'm not so sure I buy the Hammer City at this point. It'll take quite some time to set up.
• National Park in Siberia? bcool likes it, no one else seems to have an opinion. I'm cool with it, since it's the only mature city with any forests left. We could probably use Siberia to build some of the requisite settlers, but if we're building NP there, I'd wanna get going on it soon.

Outstanding questions, bbp!

* As I said, I'm okay on building the Shrine.
* Yes on WS in Fish, etc.
* My main issue with National Park in Siberia is can we spare the production now, instead of Confu Misses and settlers?

One other point: I mentioned moving the musket back to Shangai--No can do! He has to protect the workers after they road...so I suppose you could stick the 5.0/6HP pike in Shanghai. He should be safe, with a catapult or whatever.

xpost

 

[LowtherCastle]

@LC

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but in the test game, I had 5 spies stationary for 5 turns in Galley City. I gifted the city to Roosy. The chance of success for each spy was 78%, whether there were 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1 spies in the city on the turn I tried to steal the tech. In addition, a failure did nothing to our diplo situation with Roosy for having a spy caught. Why is my testing not matching the expected increased failure rate?

The distance factors for each city are:

Trojan City: 1.12
Kamchatka 2S: 1.22
Hangzhou 2W: 1.34

Even if the failure rate does go up with more spies (which I couldn't prove with my testing), who cares? We just build 10 spies and have them all in Trojan City. Failure causes no negative consequences that I could see. We steal all techs at the reduced distance factor. If one fails, we still have 9 more ready to go. We also have fewer Confucian missionaries to build and easier logistics in getting our spies in place.

BTW, stealing techs is not like tech trading. We can steal a pre-requisite and then the following techs down the line on the same turn. I did not know this before the test, although it sounds like most of you already did.

Could you upload your save, please?

YOu make some good points. I guess we could compare the various costs. Considering the logistics, it surely would be a lot easier to just stack spies in Trojan City.

 

[babybluepants]

The extraneous theatres getting built are an artifact of lack of planning on my part. Do whatever makes most sense to you.

Sucks to cancel something that's done in 1t... Still, I would.

The workforce is starting to feel a bit strained, but workable, I think. I started moving a couple workers from up north down toward GP Farm. They could work there or even continue on to the Mao area. More will be able to move down gradually, I think. We might have too many workers at bcool Island, not sure. In any case, I don't think we have spare production for workers right now.

No, we can't really spare production, but it seems a bit stretched... Maybe next TS we can reevaluate, what with more new cities and all.

I'd prefer to NOT trade Roosy Philo, so we can build the Angkor Wat in London and work 9 priests for a Great Prophet later on. We can trade him Optics without endangering circumnavigation. I'm not worried about his caravels stopping our war plans. It'll be a ground war except maybe the first strike.

I believe I said this in my original post - I couldn't care less if it's Philo or Optics. You guys can arm-wrestle or something.

Outstanding questions, bbp!

 

[babybluepants]

Paris has one too doesn't it?

Yeah, but Paris is quite sucky. Tarnishes the good name...

Looks like the shrine-WS in Fish and waiting for Taj for GA is consensus. Ok, I'll think about what this means in terms of builds.

 

[mdy]

Market + Grocer + Bank + WS = 1100h WS itself is 600h, so it's end-heavy. That makes me think we'll probably wanna research Corporation ahead of Medicine. We need some stealing first, but we can put partial beakers into Medicine.

We will want to revolt to free market as soon as we found our first corporation. This suggests that this will be a good time to start or second or third golden age. With Suhi + workshopping every tile that is not a hill/resourcet tile we would be able to build wall street in fish in 10T, not too bad.

Corporation is essential for founding corporation so we would ideally want corporation before medicine, but this will really depend on how long it takes to steal the required techs.

There is no point building units in a city just because it has a GG there if we don't need it. GP farm can handle the non siege production, and Moscow(and maybe 1-2 from other cities) can easily handle the siege . Getting a market/grocer/bank/Wall Street built in fish will be more helpful than a couple more CR2 trebuchets.

Do like the shrine-WS plan, but Prophets are quite rare, and I'd hate to have one less GA in the end because of it. Agree with bcool that it would be nice to estimate our total GP production, but I don't even know how to roughly estimate the end date here. Maybe someone else does? Also, I suspect our GP production may be end-heavy, so saving a GP right now may help us with the 3GP timing.

In the short to mid term we probably only want 1-2 more golden ages, the rest will probably be more valuable if we wait till our empire is it's maximum size, and we are building space parts. With one of those golden ages coming from the Taj I don't think we have to worry about not havin enough GP's. Once we have Sids we will start popping GP's very quickly. We should need no more than one prophet, and with 2 shrine cities and maybe a couple of temples in other cities we should be able to get another one fairly easily.

If we lose Lyons to Churchill, we'd need to DOW him soon, and the logistics of dealing with all his troops between Lyons and Tours are kinda nightmarish, esp. as we need to commit most (all) of the main stack to China (where we need to raze Hang asap). This may require drafting hard in France and nearby, I think, over the next few turns.

Churchill will make peace with De Gaulle and give us 40 gold in exchange for Civil Service. As he is very backwards and he will die soon CS won't do him much good so I think we should make this deal.

Need to capture Nanjing to settle the IW city, as well. And, wanna capture Chengdu...

I think we can leave Chengdu to Rooservelt. We don't have any immediate need for it and it will delay the Churchill war. My by estimate if we workshop everywhere except the rice, hill and forest we will produce 76 base hammers, excluding golden ages, and any engineers we run, I think this is more than hammer city will produce, furtheremore there are 3 forests there we can chop for our final part, and that is the one we really need to be quick on producing as it will limit our victory date.

 

[babybluepants]

Churchill will make peace with De Gaulle and give us 40 gold in exchange for Civil Service. As he is very backwards and he will die soon CS won't do him much good so I think we should make this deal.

Well, I would do that, but I thought the previous consensus was against. One thing is that Churchill could redeclare immediately next turn if we get peace via bribe. I could send the Orleans spy in to peek at Lyons, and figure out what we'd need to raze in terms of units.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We need multiple hammers cities for space parts:
1. Hammer City
2. Moscow
3. GP Farm
4. Siberia.
My plan is to finish all of the final space parts in 1t each (engines, etc.). I just need to test a few things, but I'm saving that for later.

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Another idea for Lyons is if Churchill takes it, we'll also be at war with dG. We ask Churchill to attack Glace de Gaulle next and wait forhim to move his SoD out of Lyons. He did this with Marseilles, leaving only two units. There's no cultural pressure on Lyons, so he has no reason to leave his SoD there. After his SoD gets beyond our Paris-Orleans area, we close borders with CHurchill. We'll be able to do that safely after we capture Guanzhou, because then we'll have a direct land trade route to Roosy.

That leaves Lyons even easier to capture than it is now, because it will have no defenses and our culture will border the city center. This also gives Paris those valuable plains/incense tiles sooner.

And it also gives us the chance to capture/raze it ourselves, if we're lucky

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I don't like giving Churchill any tech, especially not Bureau in his UBER beyond UBER capital city. That would give him 8-10 turns spam defenders while we make our way down there.

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We absolutely want Chengdu. It makes our war against Roosy 1000000000000000000000 times easier, as I've said several times. Plus, we have a 66% chance of getting a intel agency for free.

 

[babybluepants]

Another idea for Lyons is if Churchill takes it, we'll also be at war with dG. We ask Churchill to attack Glace de Gaulle next and wait forhim to move his SoD out of Lyons.

Would he? Considering it's so far from his empire.

I don't like giving Churchill any tech, especially not Bureau in his UBER beyond UBER capital city. That would give him 8-10 turns spam defenders while we make our way down there.

I thought about what Bureau would do for London. He may also start spamming some C1 Maces instead of CG2-Drill LB's? Probably not, though, as he'd want defenders when under attack, don't know how that works.

We absolutely want Chengdu. It makes our war against Roosy 1000000000000000000000 times easier, as I've said several times.

Agree.

 

[Mitchum]

Could you upload your save, please?

YOu make some good points. I guess we could compare the various costs. Considering the logistics, it surely would be a lot easier to just stack spies in Trojan City.

Here is the test save. I bombed a few GSpies, which is why the epp differential is so high. Maybe that is why the success ratio is so high?

Also, for some reason the spies no longer have the 50% stationary bonus for some reason...

In any event, all units are asleep and all cities are building wealth, so it should be quite easy to run any testing you want. You can raze the gift cities and start over if needed.

 

[Mitchum]

BTW, I'm okay with the shrine, WS in Fish and Taj GA.

A theater is a very cheap +1 for creative leaders (25 hammers). We may not need the happeness right now, but we will during the Churchill campaign and as our cities grow. No need to finish the theaters right now, but at least leave them in the build queues so that we don't forget about them and lose the hammers completely.

 

[bcool]

Here is the test save. I bombed a few GSpies, which is why the epp differential is so high. Maybe that is why the success ratio is so high?

That is why the success rate is so high. The chance of success is partly a function of the epp differential.

 

[Mitchum]

That is why the success rate is so high. The chance of success is partly a function of the epp differential.

OK, that makes sense. But I still didn't see a difference with 1 vs. 2 or more spies in a city.

Regardless of all of this, I still think it makes sense to steal all of our techs from Trojan City. Even if the odds of success are only 50%, the savings in epp cost is pretty big. 1.12 vs. 1.22/1.34 distance factors can save us 100s of epp with all of the techs we plan to steal.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Test save. The cities are mostly right. I didn't get around to checking all the worker actions, so lots of tiles are probably incomplete.

Enjoy, sadists.

 

[Mitchum]

Test save. The cities are mostly right. I didn't get around to checking all the worker actions, so lots of tiles are probably incomplete.

Enjoy, sadists.

Thanks!!

 

[babybluepants]

PRE-PLAY PLAN Draft

Civics
Nothing for now.

Tech Stealing
Chain: Chengdu (requires capture) - Hangzhou2W (requires Hangzhou razing) - Kamchatka3S (requires Lyons razing) - Trojan (requires border pop, Confu and stationary spy)
If Gandhi discovered Guilds, would it be tradable?
Timing: dependant on pace of conquest and pace to Steel / ep. Would you guys go for Hangzhou right after Guangzhou, or Chengdu first? I'd probably do Hangzhou and peel off a few units towards Chengdu, hoping to steal it.
LC or Mitchum, could you give me an idiot's guide summary of missionaries, spies, etc. needed? Since you've been figuring it out already...

Tech
Research Steel - Medicine - Corporation
Steal Communism - Guilds - Banking - Economics - Constitution
I think priorities are: Communism - Steel (cannons) - Guilds (workshops) - Banking (so we can work towards WS as needed) - Constitution/Economics - Corporation (WS) - Medicine
I.E. Focus on beakers towards Steel, then ep towards Roosevelt.How much do we need against him, for Guilds-Bank-Econ-Const? After that we should be working on Steam, right? No idea if this is even my TS scope, probably not.

Warring
Move on Guangzhou right away, capture in T+3 or T+4.
We'll need defensive units for the two cities, and two sets of workers, I think. Musket stays with workers; Pike temporarily into Shanghai, maybe hit the Nanjing HA in 1-2t if possible at full health; combat cover Mace stays with Beijing workers; medic Mace stays in Beijing and waits for GG.
Send 7 maces, 11 trebs and a cat to Guangzhou this turn. Or, send 6 maces, so one can cover trailing siege.

Musket and axe from Orleans go to Lyons-1SE right away - try to steal city next turn. If Churchill captures,

Trading / Diplomacy
Roosevelt: Philosophy or Optics for 340g?
Churchill: Rice for 1gpt
Look for resource trades/renogotiations and tech-cash every turn.
Demands: I think we may as well refuse everything now.

Settlers
Troy (Siberia 3S) - settler from Siberia in T+2
Vladivostok (Kamchatka 3S) - settler from Siberia in T+8 - need to raze Lyons by then
Sledgehammer - settler from ?
Hangzhou-2W - settler from Beijing in ca. T+10 - need to raze Hangzhou by then
Mao iceball - settler from Siberia
Island cities - settlers from Bahamas

Cities

Moscow: I think we should just be building siege non-stop this TS. It's probably ok to do something like CH-IA or even fail-cash prior to Steel, but I'd vote against it. I'd rather build up siege for England in advance.

Fish: finish mace - treb - market (part) - grocer (part) - bank (part) - finish market - finish grocer - bank (3pop whip w Kremlin) - WS. We need Guilds on T190 and Banking on T193 with this.

GP Farm: finish GT asap; convert grass shops and one sugar into farms on growth schedule; no barracks, I think (?); draft every turn for the remainder of TS (Taj GA over ca. T196, we may wanna switch back to Bureau then). Builds - maybe IntelAgency?

Siberia: fire spy? - settler (Troy) - grow in 3t, building missionary & spy - settler (Vladivostok) - spy

Pigs: finish Market, get started on another Uni? Hire only merchants.

Cuba: hold Theatre - Harbor

Bahamas: finish Taj - settlers (for the islands)

Bermuda: finish Harbor - Caravel - Kremlin - IntelAgency

Rheims: Harbor or Uni?

Bananas: Forge - LH/Library

Kamchatka: finish CH - Forge

Bcool Island: (Caravel?) - WB for Crabbes - infrastructure

The Crabbes: WB - infrastructure

Orleans: finish galley - infra

Shanghai: Granary - infrastructure (maybe theatre-lib first, since they're cheap and we might want an option on a fast 500c border pop for that extra fish?)

Beijing: comes out of revolt in T+4 - pop borders and starve 1 - settler (Hangzhou-2W) - Library

St Nick: wealth

Troy: spy (I wanna immediately mine a hill for it, since we have about 10t at least to chain-gifting.)

Hangz/Vladivostok: nada

Drafting: GP every turn; unfortunately, can't do from most cities in France and China. Bananas, Rheims on 10t delay, Maybe Pigs once? Cuba, Bermuda, Bahamas, but without delaying wonder builds.

 

[babybluepants]

Churchill would also take Philosophy for peace with DG + 70g. Are we sure we don't want that?

Edit: he might build your AW instead of units, LC.

 

[babybluepants]

General note: I wish we could just spam a lot of units and them all right now... I think we're heading for some protracted warfare, lots of planning headaches and losses to WW/supply/maintenance by limiting troop numbers.

Edit: that said, we have plenty of other things to balance with tech-stealing/Corps/wonders/sushi-expansion. It's tricky.

 

[mdy]

Churchill would also take Philosophy for peace with DG + 70g. Are we sure we don't want that?

Gandhi has had philosophy for a while, so our chances of building the Angor Wat in London are fairly remote. If we really want the Angor Wat in London our best bet is probably to make this deal with Churchill and hope he builds it. It will also mean that he is likely to build fewer units prior to our invasion.

Moscow: I think we should just be building siege non-stop this TS. It's probably ok to do something like CH-IA or even fail-cash prior to Steel, but I'd vote against it. I'd rather build up siege for England in advance.

We already have 16 trebuchets so I think we can probably afford to allow the capital to build something else for a few turns. An intelligence agency would be most useful in the capital before we use the slider to put espionage on America, additionally if we left it till later we would be building it in place of the more powerful cannons instead of trebs.

Finish mace - treb - market (part) - grocer (part) - bank (part) - finish market - finish grocer - bank (3pop whip w Kremlin) - WS. We need Guilds on T190 and Banking on T193 with this.

There should be no need to whip the bank, and I'm not sure we really want to revolt to slavery.

GP every turn; unfortunately, can't do from most cities in France and China. Bananas, Rheims on 10t delay, Maybe Pigs once? Cuba, Bermuda, Bahamas, but without delaying wonder builds.

I think that drafting in pigs would be a mistake as it would reduce our chances of getting a GM. If we draft a unit/turn, whilst continuing to build other units there we should have no need to build any non siege unit in any other city.