SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[bcool]

espionage missions we might want in the coming turn set
1) steal steam power
2) steal astronomy?
3) steal military science
4) steal riflery
5) flip Gandhi into FM
6) flip Roosy into FM when he switches back to Mercantilism
7) counter espionage on Roosy
8) set up for potential steal of Democracy
9) set up to flip Roosy/Gandhi out of emancipation if they switch into it, if and when they research Democracy
10) counter espionage on Gandhi?

I think we might need more spies

 

[LowtherCastle]

If we want to get really detailed, we can watch Galley City and see what he builds. If he completes something of about 28h and nothng appears, we konw it was a spy. The spy he used to pillage our Moscow farm teleported back to his island, thankfully.

Otherwise, I'm not sure a counter-espionage is needed against him.

We should also wacth for his galleys entering our cities at MaoLand.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I was waiting to establish a consensus on who we attack next before planning the war in detail. If we go Gandhi-Rooservelt, them by the time Rooservelts cities come out of revolt I doubt they would be able to contribute enough to justify the cost of taking them before we research our last tech. I am therefore inclined to leave him alive to the end of the game when we can crush him at virtually no cost, and we are not trying to spread corporations everywhere and build up our infrastructure.

That's the thing. Roosy has some pretty awesome cities, but when would they become useful to us? If we knew what he was researching, we could work with him. I have a hunch that between capturing and coming out of resistance, we might benefit more from him researching for us. If we can watch what he researches and keep gifting him up, maybe he'll even do some serious teching for us.

 

[bcool]

Rosey techs for, heck even scrubs for us if we decide to gift him ecology, then we clean up any remaining tiles in a quick (just clean war with Rosey at the end, so unload workers and defenders to clean up fallout that he didn't clean up.

This might mean we have to take a closer look at any actions that further piss him off. Since he is likely to go to war with us on his own. Maybe we bribe him war with Mao again so he doesn't DoW us? He doesn't like us enough to bribe him into war.

edit: add flip Roosy to Confu to the list of espionage missions

And can anyone think of other ways to improve relations with him?

 

[babybluepants]

Too busy to really comment this weekend.
PPP looks good.
I'd attack Roosevelt first, so as to avoid dealing with a pile of infantry or worse. Oh, well... We can probably get tech value to make up for it.

 

[bcool]

We can attack Rosey after the spaceship launches as long as we can avoid having him declare on us.

 

[mdy]

If you need more workers on the mainland then I think you should steal them rather than move these workers home. These workers have a lot of stuff to do. srubbing and putting down tile improvements, getting that iron scrubbed and mined, and that copper West of Crabbes will be in our culture soon too.

And they will be needed on islands East. We will just end up moving them back here. Why waste the trip?

I wasn't planning to do this immediately, just once the immediately critical improvements are built. The remaining 3 should be able to scrub the remaining tiles before the end of the game.

Next turn it will have 4 pop and with Kremlin and OR each pop produces ~56 hammers. It will put 18 into the forge this turn with GA and so it will have 102 hammers left on the build so it will be able to pop the forge. And with Sushi will grow like mad so that levee will pay off big time. Hammer city just will not have the production early on to build Sushi executives fast enough. It will tie up one of the 5 Sushi executive slots I think if you try to build them before the levee.

O.K. I'll do this.

1) steal steam power
2) steal astronomy?
3) steal military science
4) steal riflery
5) flip Gandhi into FM
6) flip Roosy into FM when he switches back to Mercantilism
7) counter espionage on Roosy
8) set up for potential steal of Democracy
9) set up to flip Roosy/Gandhi out of emancipation if they switch into it, if and when they research Democracy
10) counter espionage on Gandhi?

If we go to war with Gandhi, then by the time we can switch him to free market we will probably be on the brink of war. With only 1 very poor city to build spies on our continent a counter espionage mission on Gandhi is a waste of espionage, especially as we can take it in the first few turns of the war. Emancipation is not an immediate problem. Yes we will need more spies at some point, but they aren't immediately required. When we need more depends on what losses we take in our missions. If we are unlucky we can easily build another spy or two in bananas

I'll update the plan to include the Gandhi war.

 

[mdy]

If we DOW Mao this turn how long will it be before we can sign a cease fire with him?

 

[babybluepants]

I imagine almost immediate, with city capture and huge power discrepancy. No?
Edit: there is a period of refusal to talk (I seem to remember LC saying either 6 or 8t for Mao), but in my experience it's faster in this situation.

 

[babybluepants]

The Great People we Run and Golden Ages 4 and 5:

Golden Age 4:

1 Free GS from physics (we should be able to get this in 24 turns even if we delay astro)
1 GM from Rheims
1GA from pigs

We need one other mongrel. Any city will need to run some other types of GP in order to generate one in time, so it is important that we have some backups.

GP farm can easily generate one which was why I suggested building the appropriate specialist buildings in there.

Siberia can also generate one, though we may prefer to work the workshops instead.

Other possibilities include Bermuda, and Beijing.

The artists being run in Bermuda are a partial backup to not getting one in pigs. The merchants in GP farm are a partial backup to Rheims

Golden Age 5:

1GM from fish
1 GS probably from Moscow
1 GA from pigs
1 GP from London
1GE from fusion-if we can get there within 36 turns, if not we can try to force a spy/engineer from one of our other cities( including GP farm, and whichever of Bermuda, Bahamas, Beijing, and Siberia, and on this time scale Paris).

Paris can potentially generate a prophet if London fails. The bermuda/crabbes artist also provide backup for not getting an artist.

GP farm should be able to push out a scientist(and merchant) as well via starvation to back up Moscow. Depending on circumstances we can also back up a mongel GP here.

Shanghai is another alternative for backing up a merchant.

The artist is backed up by Bermuda/Crabbes.

Other cities not mentioned will probably never generate a GP and should run only merchants and or scientists(and possibly an engineer to help with production, and a spy for espionage). Right now each gold gets us more than 1 beaker as it allows us to run the slider merchants seem like the best choice for now, except where we have more beaker than gold multiplying buildings.

The above is necessarily a rough outline as we can't plan that far ahead in detail, but it does show that with these GP assignments we can get 4 golden ages in a row.

Rheims has a lot invested in a spy, and our top choices for mongrel do, as well. Perhaps GP Farm GM is better next? I don't really like mongrel in GP Farm - GS for 5GP (purer than Moscow and could be the last 3000-3200gpp) or GM now seems better.

I think Bermuda might be a good option for the 4GP mongrel. It can currently run 5spy+1eng, and we could maybe build a quick Confu Temple after Verseilles. That would give it 72gpp, so it would probably only need 1 Caste spec.

There really is no very high odds option, unfortunately.

Also, I think we have more than enough here. Perhaps we could relegate Bahamas off the list, esp. as it doesn't have Confu? So, run sci-mer there.

 

[Mitchum]

No, I never saw a single English ship in the Indian Ocean. I also never saw that English chain gang of slaves again, which I assumed would come back to plantate the sugar...

On Marseilles, we have lots of possibilities. In any case, on T+1 we can talk to CHurchill and see if capturing Marseilles will put him down to 3 cities, including his capital.

Just a small time saver, but you can always see how many cities an AI has on the scoreboard. It's the number on the far right.

 

[mdy]

there is a period of refusal to talk (I seem to remember LC saying either 6 or 8t for Mao), but in my experience it's faster in this situation.

That's bad. If it's that long it will significantly delay the arrival of some of our galleys for the Gandhi war. If this is correct I would be tempted to delay this until with have got all our galleys in position.

Rheims has a lot invested in a spy, and our top choices for mongrel do, as well. Perhaps GP Farm GM is better next? I don't really like mongrel in GP Farm - GS for 5GP (purer than Moscow and could be the last 3000-3200gpp) or GM now seems better.

I think Bermuda might be a good option for the 4GP mongrel. It can currently run 5spy+1eng, and we could maybe build a quick Confu Temple after Verseilles. That would give it 72gpp, so it would probably only need 1 Caste spec.

True there is some pollution there, but that is true of everywhere, including GP farm. I was planning on running merchants there anyway, so these cities can in effect as back ups for one another. I figure we will try and push out more than one mongrel GP as insurance against the RNG. This should be easily possible for the 4 GP golden age.

We could whip a missionary in Cuba for Bahamas? I think for now we should keep our options open for future golden ages. We may as well run scientists as our caste system specialists though.

 

[Mitchum]

In any case, when we redo the trades, we should probably make only a series of one-for-one trades, just in case he doesn't cancel them all first chance he gets.

Actually, all of our trades are currently like this. Well, it's more like 2-for-1. I gave him one resource, he gave me two seafood. The AI must value giving you a second copy of a resouce as worth less (not worthless ).

 

[mdy]

Pre Play Plan:


Cities:

Moscow:
hires engineer,spy and on T+4 a scientist.
generates GP on T+6, then hires only scientists with the intention of providing a scientists for the 5 GP golden age.
Builds units(mainly cannons) - but interrupt for an observatory when necessary. Will need to temporarily stop working some mines to prevent some overflow being converted to gold. Work scientists instead.

Fish:

Fish: works fish, all land tiles except watermill(1T), then works watermill instead of gold.
T+0 Hires 2 merchants
T+1: grow and work lake
T+2: Hire an extra merchant and stop working the lake
T+4: Grows, Wall Street finished. Hire 14 merchants. Build wealth to preserve overflow.
Once mining corp founded fire 7 merchants for 1T to build the executive in 1T, then rehire them. Start workboats for eastern islands.
T+11: GP generated


Pigs:
T+0: Hire 2 artists only
T+1: Hire 9 artists (total)
T+2: Hire another artist
T+10: Hire max artists without starving
Whip university immediately, then build wealth.
Spread Sushi with the executive built in GP farm next term
This city can produce a GP for the 4 person golden age.

GP FARM:

works all hammer tiles, and however many farms are needed to ensure we grow at one pop a turn. After finishing the executive builds building allowing us to run specialists and spies. Specialists assigned in order - prophets-engineers-spies-merchants
This city can produce a GP in time for the 4GP golden age.

Siberia:

Immediately hire a spy and engineer, and then 3 more engineers once we have the ironworks, this should put this city in a position to generate a GP for our 4 GP golden age.Hire no more GP's here for now to work workshops.
T+2 Spread Shushi with executive from
T+3 Shushi executive for Beijing
T+4 Shushi executive for Paris
T+5 Build Levee
T+6 Shushi executive for Orleans
T+7 Mining corps executive
Continuously build mining corps executives.


Kamachka:
T+0 whip Sushi executive
T+1 Build Sushi executive for Siberia
T+2 Build Sushi executive for Orleans
Hire a spy, and then scientists as the city grows.
Build 3 settlers, 1 for the copper site in the south 1, 1 for the iceball iron city, and 1 for the 2 clam island. Then build a couple of spies. Then start university.

1 galley in this area permanently assigned to transporting executives


Bananas:
Whip university, workboat for clams near Moscow, workboat for the copper sites fish, build wealth, hire spy other than that hire only scientists
Builds any extra spies we might need.

Bermuda:
Spread Sushi using executive built in Bahamas next turn
Finishes Versailles, builds 3 settlers/jail/market/university/temple
Hires, engineer, spys, prophet, then artists as it grows
Should generate a GP in time for fourth GP golden age

Bahamas:
Builds executives.
Keeps the current 5 spys. Slot in happy buildings in any gaps.
Hire scientists as additional specialists.

BCool:
whips university, spreads Sushi using executive currently in Bahamas. Builds workboats for island cities, and later executives/harbour.

Haiti:
T+0: Borrows BCool workshop
T+1: whip courthouse.
Hire merchants as specialists as it grows.

The Crabbes:
Whip library then builds university, hire spy, engineer and then scientists as specialists

Iron Spice:
Continues with granary(chopped), then start courthouse

Cuba:
Whip university, start grocer start market hire spy and engineer specialist only.

Steam;
Continue building wealth.
Hire citizen instead of working farm.
Only use it to steal steam power from Churchill.

Rheims:
Hires merchants once it has run out of land tiles.

T+0 Shushi spread by executive in steam
T+1 Shushi executive built, send to hammer city
Builds more executives. When numbers limit interferes build
caravel- university-temple-jail-colloseum
Order:
London
Shanghai
Other executives go to the China/England area.
Can generate a GP in time for 4 GP golden age.

Orleans:
T+0: Whip conufunican missionary for London
Build longbows for military garrisons, and later executives

Paris:
start temple, whip T+1, overflow into knight, then build 2 more temples-Buddhist missionary for London-library-university-buddist
Immediately hire 3 prophets, and build temples to allow us to hire 2 more. Hire 4th prophet on T+2, 5th when second temple built.

Hammer City:
Build forge
Sushi spread on T+1 with executive from Rheims.
Whip forge nest turn, build leveee
Build executives for other cities.
Build market in any gaps, we will need the happiness here at some point.

Tours:
T+1 whip courthouse
Build granary-forge


Hastings:
T+0:whip courthouse
whip Jewish missionary for Paris
T+1:Build Jewish missionary
T+2:Build Courthouse
Continue with granary

Nanjing:
T+0: Whip courthouse, start granary
T+1: Whip granary
T+2: Finish Courthouse
T+3: Finish Granary
Build Forge

Shanghai:
switch to caravel, whip next turn, build grocer-wealth, hire merchants as specialists

Beijing:
whip university, temple then 3 workboats. Hire only prophet and engineer in addition to the spies.This city can produce a GP for our 4 GP golden age.

Guangzhou:
lighthouse-library-university

Chengdu:
whips library, starts university

Catured cities from Churchill:
build replace courthouse/granary/lighthouse, then build library/university.




New Cities:

We have 6 sites we would like to settle for there resources fairly soon:
1) A city to grab the fish and copper SW of crabs
2) 4E 1N of Bermuda
3) 3N of Bermuda
4) 3S 2E of pig
5) The clam island near Stalin
6) Iceball iron city south of Curchill


Sites 4, 5 and 6 can be founded with settlers from Kamchtka

Bahamas can build the other 3 by T+8 .

There are some other islands we can settle, but they will have to wait till astronomy.

Build courthouse-granary in all new cities

Workers:

BCool island currently has 4 workers. Leave 3 to improve/scrub that island, move one back in time to railroad mines on Bahamas island. The worker currently scrubbing the island to the north will join them, then more those 2 workers back to the mainland.

9 worker in Tours-Hammer City area scrub the surrounding area then 3 build railroad into England and Gandhi. 2 remain to workshop around hammer city. 4 workers move to immediately build a fort by Hastings on T+2, then continue building railroads.

3 workers in France area scrub then build railroad extension into America area.

4 workers in Moscow area scrub, farm, and then railroad towards Rheims.

3 workers to the north scrub, then railroad Siberia-Troy-Moscow.

Once this hub is set up railroad over mines and to link other key cities up.

Improvements to be built by workers: any corporation resource-workshop-other improvements-scrubbing.





Churchill War:

Cease fire next turn after capturing Canterbury/Newcastle/Marseilles. Canterbury attack starts this turn. Gift steam and steal steam power. Redeclare next turn.

Units in rear move towards India/America.

London stack moves on Nottingham-Coventry

Canterbury stack moves on Warick

This will leave Churchill stuck in steam

cease fire with Churchill.gift him an iceball city and then take steam with units left over from the Churchill stack. OR just leave him stuck in steam for now.


This war should be finished by T+6


Mao War/Stalin War

Gift China iceball to China declare war on him, then use knight in capital and cannon to capture St Nick. Send 1 spy to north into it. When they have 50% stationary discount gift to Stalin. and steal militray science. Galley in area goes to move settler from Karamchka to Northern islands.

I'd get at least the China part of the war out of the way now, whilst we can without his Caravels near Beijing causing us trouble.

Scout to north of Stalin with caravel.

The Stalin gift will occur on T+6 (T211) provided our scouts shows Stalin isn't going to settle another city.

Gandhi War

Send the 3 triemes to Newcastle and upgrade them to frigates. The galleys 2S of Shanghai will head there as well, as will the 2 in Beijing after the cease fire with Mao(provided Churchill does not have any caravels blocking the way). Three more galleys will arrive from the north a few turns later.

The survivors of the London/Canterbury/Marseilles stacks head towards Newcastle.

Our war will commence by landing our invasion force on the hill next to Varnarsi. Newcastle can be used as the jumping of point. After dropping off some more defensive units the galley stack will reload, and split in 2. One heading north to Vijianger, the other south to Agra. I think it might be worthwhile to upgrade some of our galleys to galleons, it would allow the war to proceed quicker and ease the logistics situation.


Leave Gandhi in Galley city, but keep knight/cannon in the area just in case he sends a unit out.

As Astronomy is essential to the Gandhi campaign, but rifling is irrelevant I propose to put all our espionage on gandhi so we can steal it if we can't trade it. This will also allow us city visibility on his cities which will speed up the war.



Espionage: Steal military tradition from Stalin (Just needs 1T more of espionage on him, do after we have enough for astronomy on Gandhi), astronomy from Gandhi, then rifling from Rooservelt.

Send both spies north of St Nick in there as soon as we capture it from Mao. Send the one near, Troy and 1 spy from steam (after the steal has been concluded) to galley city. All remaining survivors head towards Troy in preparation for rifling steal. If we lose more than 1 spy I will build another one in Bananas.

Misc:

Trade Gandhi dye for fish.

Revolt to caste system/pacifism/civil service.

Settle next GG in Moscow

If we can't be sure that Mao will sign a cease fire in a turn or two delay the Mao war and military tradition steal.


I propose to pause once we have steam power on T+5 so we can plan the Gandhi war in more detail and finalise our next tech to research.

 

[Mitchum]

IIRC, bcool said that the AI will scub tiles within a BFC and leave the others alone. I just did a quick count and it looks like Roosevelt has 9 tiles that have radiation that are outside city BFCs. Some of them are close together, some are just over our border in Chengdu and may be ours soon. Others are spread out.

I think we would need 4 landing parties w/4 workers and a huge stack of defenders each if we wanted to clean these up ourselves at the end of the game. Sounds pretty tough when Roosevelt will have modern units (e.g. bombers, fighters, artillery, etc.).

I think we should leave Churchill alone in his 3 cities plus Steam (those cities are pretty lame anyway) - this also means we don't need an iceball settler for Churchill.

We should go down on Gandhi ASAP. It should be a quick war if we do it right. He only has 2 cities on hills. He hasn't fought any wars, so all of his units will be green and we'll be bringing experienced troops. We take all of his cities and leave him in Galley City since he's already there and not causing any harm. We can raze any cities that we don't think will pay for themselves in the next 45 turns.

Then I think we can go after Roosevelt. By this point in the game, we should be building wealth with Mining Inc. We'll have the slider at 100% and a lot of gold. Our upgraded CRIII grens will tear through his riflemen with no problems.

I like the idea of leaving Roosy until the end so that he can tech for us, but I'm not excited about gifting him techs and then having to fight a modern war. Sure, we can outproduce him, but I'd prefer to build wealth than units.

This isn't an easy decision, but waiting until the last 10 turns to clean up all of the fallout in his lands sounds risky. If we lose one of our worker/defending stacks, game over!

 

[LowtherCastle]

If we DOW Mao this turn how long will it be before we can sign a cease fire with him?

It depends on whether attacking with a cannon counts for Mao as WAR_SUCCESS_DEFENDING: 3. If so, then 5 turns, I think. If not, then 2t.

Someone could test it. EDIT: Tested. As long as our cannon doesn't die we should be able to CF on T+2.

Here's my original post on it.

 

[bcool]

Looking over the new plan just a few more concerns.

You can 1 pop whip the courthouse in Haiti next turn if you work the workshop this turn.

No more confu missionaries in the plan?

No whip of settler in Orleans? (switch to settler and whip it next turn-- you were concerned about this I thought with the plan to build more executives in Kamchatka) And since you plan to spread Sushi here pretty soon, why not whip out that settler?

Tours would be better off whipping the courthouse instead of a granary in my opinon.

Any chance we can build the frigates somewhere instead of upgrading the triremes for Gandhi war? Hastings perhaps?

 

[bcool]

I think we would need 4 landing parties w/4 workers and a huge stack of defenders each if we wanted to clean these up ourselves at the end of the game. Sounds pretty tough when Roosevelt will have modern units (e.g. bombers, fighters, artillery, etc.).
I like the idea of leaving Roosy until the end so that he can tech for us, but I'm not excited about gifting him techs and then having to fight a modern war. Sure, we can outproduce him, but I'd prefer to build wealth than units.

After the spaceship is launched we will have 10 turns? to clean the remaining fallout in Rosey's lands. Not too hard I don't think. (He might colonize other sites though making it a bit harder.)

 

[LowtherCastle]

You can 1 pop whip the courthouse in Haiti next turn if you work the workshop this turn.

Tours would be better off whipping the courthouse instead of a granary in my opinon.

I agree with this. We should be able to poprush this or next turn chs in:

Nanjing
Tours
Haiti
Hastings

All are of the utmost importance.

 

[Mitchum]

@ mdy The PPP is really starting to look good. I have a few comments:

General note: you haven't talked about what improvements you're building in each city, but I assume the priority would be to improve resources -> work shops -> mines -> scrub. We shouldn't need any farms except those on farming resources and possible one to spread irrigation. Is this the plan?

BTW, do we want to spread irrigation to Nanjing's rice? My initial thought is no. Workshops on those two tiles are better than farms.

Where were you building the missionary for London?

T0 Reminders - You'll likely do this, but having it written down will ensure that you don't pull a Mitchum and forget. Don't forget to give Bing-Mao away. Don't forget to fire of the GA.

T1 Reminder - Switch EPP toward Roosevelt (Rifling) or Gandhi (Astronomy). Oh, I just read that you plan to get enough for Astronomy first. Do you know how much that will take? I haven't figured it out yet, but it should be simple enough... it should be ~600 depending on the culture factor (I assumed -40%). BTW, why not just leave Gandhi in Galley City? It's not causing us issues and it is a convenient location if we need to perform an espionage mission on him later.

T1 Reminder - Revolt to Pac/Castes/Civil Service. I see you already have this as I read further.

GP Farm: This city is going to be able to hire TON of specialists with no health/happy. We should be able to get two great people out of this city (your current plan only shows us getting one there). If you do go for a mongrel, I say make it as quick as possible. Although, since there aren't that many mongrel gpp points there at the moment, I'd be more inclided to go all scientists there starting now. We need the beakers and it's going to add up quickly. It already has library/university and can build observatory/laboratory with the mines and Mining Inc.

Bananas: I assume that this city will hire scientists as it grows?

Bermuda: You have it getting Sushi next turn, but you don't have any executives in the build queue... This city does NOT need the food from Sushi, so if you don't plan to build executives here, I suggest spreading Sushi to it later.

Crabbes: This city will never generate a great person. Can we hire merchants/scientists here? I don't even think we'll need a spy or engineer first. We definitely don't need artists here.

Cuba: I think merchants or scientists are more important than spies or engineers. Maybe an engieer will pay off, but spies, in general, really only pay off in cities with epp multipliers at this point of the game, I think.

Rheims: This city will never generate a great person. This may be better as a secondary production city. Once Sushi gets here, should we start converting some of those farms to workshops? Especially if this is going to be a central executive pump. I like building a quick caravel here. I tried to explore the island to the south but but killed by Churchill's stack of caravels.

Orleans: I think it's been discussed, but do we really need a bunch of LBs? We may need one or two for cities that need garrisons and are close to their happy cap. Maybe we could build a missionary here, but it would need to be whipped on T0, otherwise it won't be built on T+1 after we switch out of OR. Or, with a GA, maybe all hammer tiles will finish the missionary in one turn...

Churchill: Do we want to tie up our units until T+6 on another war here? Churchill is done for the most part. We can raze his cities later with ease! I'd rather turn our attention toward Gandhi on T+1. Maybe the limiting factor is getting our galleys over there... Can you take Churchill's last three cities (leave him parked in Steam?) and still get the troops over to India in time to board galleys? If so, maybe we should clean up this area while the troops are there.

Stalin: You only have 1 spy going into St Nick. Should we have a backup spy? Oh wait, at first it says send one spy in and then later it says to send both there. I assume you're sending both there, right?