SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[bcool]

Just tested the OF mechanics and yes OF is maxed by production or base hammers of the building so an Observatory is going to give Siberia more OF than the Hospital (and arguably is better)

So Observatory / wealth / SoL

 

[babybluepants]

Re: electricity

I would just look to see if we are coming close. and bump up the slider/wealth building if we are. No need to radically change. i think the boost is very small.

Didn't answer my question - are you talking about bumping it to 4t? Yes, that's what I'm doing. If you're talking about 3t - not gonna happen.

Ok on holding WBs.

 

[Mitchum]

Siberia will never generate a great person unless there is an emergency. Why don’t you just work 4 GEs starting now so that you can work the deer and grow sooner?

I don’t think Cuba needs a factory. With Mining Inc. it will have a max of 24 hammers. I’m not sure it will ever pay off the 250 hammers it takes to build it...

I’d build a coal plant before an aqueduct in Bermuda. It will pay for itself very quickly.

Rheims should build a factory/coal plant after the executive.

Where is the Bananas settler going? Why build a partial factory and then galleon/settler? It seems to make more sense to either finish the factory or just skip it for now.

If we don’t need the forts near Paris, we could workshop them.

Orleans should stop working the bananas and farms to avoid more . A fort could be changed into a workshop as well.

Guangzhou may as well build a coal plant after the factory, but this will be after your next 4-5 turns.

Build a coal plant after the factory before wealth. A quick library would be good. It could also build an MIE for Nanjing. Since this is hammer city, I’d change that windmill to a mine, steal the workshop from Nanjing and convert the plains farm to a workshop.

In cities like Haiti, I’d run merchants rather than scientists. It only has a library, so the science multipliers are small. Running merchants just about everywhere we are not trying for a great person will allow us to inch up the slider, which converts more commerce to beakers in our developed cities that do have all of the science multipliers.

Should Hastings at least finish the forge first? It should pay for itself quickly since it is nearly done.

 

[Mitchum]

Do we really need railroads to cities like Oxford? We'll spend 9 more worker turns to save 1 turn on executive walking? Doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me.

Like bbp did previously, we need to figure out how many workers we need to scrub the fallout and make the improvements we still need. I don't want to overbuild workers, but we need to be sure that we have enough.

 

[babybluepants]

Siberia will never generate a great person unless there is an emergency. Why don’t you just work 4 GEs starting now so that you can work the deer and grow sooner?

Because I mistakenly thought that we lose OF on hospital, which bcool showed we don't.

I don’t think Cuba needs a factory.

Ok.

Rheims should build a factory/coal plant after the executive.

Ok, I'm too lazy to calculate. Don't lose many hammers Uni first...

Where is the Bananas settler going? Why build a partial factory and then galleon/settler? It seems to make more sense to either finish the factory or just skip it for now.

It's going to the 2-seafood site next to Stalin. The galleon will pick up a Mining Exec from GP Farm. 1t Factory is to not build 2 units before we need them.

If we don’t need the forts near Paris, we could workshop them.

Orleans should stop working the bananas and farms to avoid more . A fort could be changed into a workshop as well.

Need workers for that.

Build a coal plant after the factory before wealth.

Not if we need the wealth that turn.

Should Hastings at least finish the forge first? It should pay for itself quickly since it is nearly done.

No. It already has 50hpt - 2t execs. The only reason I started it is because I had reached the 5-exec limit on an earlier turn.

In cities like Haiti, I’d run merchants rather than scientists. It only has a library, so the science multipliers are small. Running merchants just about everywhere we are not trying for a great person will allow us to inch up the slider, which converts more commerce to beakers in our developed cities that do have all of the science multipliers.

Ok, but meh... With our current economy, a merchant is worth only marginally more than a Sci (approx. 1.5x multiplier on the 3c when running slider, which we likely won't even be running - so 0.75b total). It was much worse prior to the GA, btw.

 

[babybluepants]

I'm gonna play in about an hour.

 

[babybluepants]

I just wanna try to explain my position one more time:

So beeline superconductors gets us research institutes only about 8 turns earlier based on your estimates

Electricity-refrigeration-Superconductors 23400b (done in ~10 turns) (this is before the prerequisite discount)

Which is only 8 turns earlier than your estimate.

So would refrigeration 6240b pay itself back by beelining superconductors?

Well
each research institute gives 26 research minimum (but doesn't include research from specialists) We have at least an average of 10 specialists in our cities plus the commerce we are getting, if we include this into the calculations

26 (trade routes and 2 free scientists) + [10 specialists * 3 (minimum research) + 20 average commerce per city that we would build a research institute]*.25 =
38.5 research from each research institute we build

I think 20 research institute is a reasonable estimate

so 8 turns * 38.5 science from each research institute * 20 cities = 6160 extra research
pays extra cost of refrigeration.

While it isn't quite as good as I estimated earlier. I still think beelining superconductors and getting research institutes as early as possible makes sense. Coal plants will pay off earlier than we can get the 3 gorges dam built. Just getting ~10 coal plants built in 8 turns earlier than we could finish 3 gorges dam will beat the savings of 3 gorges dam (if we ignore the health cost

If we do beeline superconductors we extend the time we benefit from ivory (which could translate into about 10 cities getting an extra population to work for about 5 turns or 10% on cultural slider) Which is another 500 research approximately.

Build executives, factories, coal power plants (almost everywhere)

edit: I ignored the "benefit" of the gpp that the 2 free scientists would also produce. "Benefit" because it means I have to redo the spreadsheet.

My research estimates assumed that we build wealth pretty much everywhere right after factories, foregoing other infrastructure - really this is what I was proposing, rather than a specific tech path. If we are building infra (coal plant, health, obs, etc) everywhere, as you guys propose, we're barely breaking 0% slider and there's not much research done in the next 15t. Basically, the issue I am proposing we deal with sooner, rather than later, is that all of our commerce is passing through the tax slider.

This proposal has good synergy with a Plastics beeline for several reasons:

• We get to build slider wealth everywhere while Siberia builds 3GD. We then build further essential infrastructure on a staggered schedule, but with free power plant boost. This is important, because I don't think that many of our continental cities even have the ability to finish coal plants much faster than a few turns before a potential 3GD.
• I don't believe that we can actually even build RIs as quickly as proposed. 20 coal plants are the equivalent of almost 5000 base beakers via slider wealth, in addition to lost health potential. By building them, we'll trick ourselves into then spamming hospitals and supermarkets right away. The build schedule not only takes wealth away, but actually takes quite some time to execute in most cities.
• Moscow will be done its GP in 7-8t. Industrialism+Combustion gives us access to tanks (only Industrialism would had I not lost the stupid offshore platform). If we get these techs by about T+10, we can hammer them out at 1/turn in Moscow and probably 1/2t in another city - this will give us the stack to just blast right through America. Combustion also gives us transports and destroyers. I think Bananas and either Bermuda or Bahamas should be spamming ships as soon as they finish with expansion + factories. We should load a stack and go kill Stalin with enough time to have that stack heal and, rejoined by some more, hit western America by the end of research + 1-2t.

TBH, the math involved is very complex, and I'm not sure I'm right at all. But, it seems to me like I am. The critical issue is that we are effectively in the research end game already. While you can make a calculation that shows a specific building "paying off" in X number of turns, the longer we wait on upping the slider - the higher the research rate that we actually need to plow through the remaining 112k base beakers (117k with Arty, 122k with also Refri). Realistically, if we stand any chance of finishing all this on a sub-30t timeline (not sure we even do), we need to knock off about 50k minimum by T+18 or so, without adding unnecessary research.

 

[bcool]

Let's just go to the end of electricity. That's still the plan right?

 

[bcool]

And will you build an airship or 2 and a few more workers?

 

[babybluepants]

Nothing changes thru elec. I think we need more workers, but really unsure how many and where. Execs and factories are more important, though, and will occupy most cities these 4t. We should do some sort of worker analysis right after, I think.

Edit: since we don't have a very clear plan for it, I'll invest some worker turns in clearing random fallout tiles throughout.

 

[babybluepants]

@bcool,
Just to confirm - we know that if a city shows up first in F1, it will get precedence on popping GP's, right?

 

[bcool]

Yes that is confirmed. I have to go for an hour. Please stop after electricity.

And I'm on the fence with research path...

Will discuss when I get back.

 

[babybluepants]

Moscow-GP-Pigs doesn't seem to work - that's why I'm asking. I can fix it by just slowing down Pigs by a turn.

 

[bcool]

If you are looking at the moscow coal plant version
T230 Moscow pops 2000 gpp GP, Pigs will not produce a GP even though it has more than 2000 since moscow popped it, GP Farm has more than 2200 so will produce a GP same turn as Moscow.

It looks good to me as is on spreadsheet.

 

[babybluepants]

You can produce two on the same turn?!

 

[bcool]

I'm looking at the numbers for 3 gorges dam more closely. will discuss it in more detail in a bit.

It might make sense to actually time the factory builds to finish simultaneously for 3 gorges dam too in some cities, since the factory has a relatively poor pay back for some and health costs.

 

[bcool]

Yes I did it during my turn set, producing 2 in one turn.

 

[bcool]

I took existing base hammers and estimate time to build a factory and coal plant in each main land city.

Spoiler :

base hammers / factory? / turns away from coal plant
moscow ~60 for the next 8 turns then ~90 / factory yes / 1
Fish 44 / 51/250 / 6 turns
Pigs 28 / 0/250 / 12+
GP farm 42 / 0/250 / ~7
Rheims 63 / 0/250 / ~6
Bananas 37 / 0/250 / ~9
Paris 40 / 0/250 / ~8
Kamchatka 40 / 0/250 / ~8
Orleans 41 / 0/250 / ~8
Chengdu 20 (36) / 0/250 / ~12
Shanghai 35 / 0/250 / ~12
Beijing 47 / 0/250 / ~6
Guangzhou 31 (47) / ~8
Hammer city 92 / 181/250 / 2
Tours 12 (28)
Hastings 50 / 0/250 / ~8
York 11 (27)
Oxford 16 (32)
Newcastle 14 (30)

assuming we are 18 turns away from 3 gorges dam

Moscow's coal plant produces ~645 hammers at cost of 150 hammers and 36+ food

Fish's coal plant procudes ~264 hammers at cost of 150 hammers and 24+ food

Pigs coal plant doesn't pay back ( and probably wouldn't be built anyways)

GP Farm can't build a coal plant (no access to coal) would have to build a Nuclear power plant if it wanted power without 3 gorges dam

Rheims coal plant 378 hammers (12 turns)

Bananas barely pays back (and is building ships?)

Paris coal plant 200 hammers (10 turns)

Kamchatka 200 hammers

Orleans 200 hammers

Chengdu doesn't pay back

Shanghai doesn't pay back

Beijing 282 hammers

Guangzhou 235 hammers

Hammer city 736 hammers

Hastings 250 hammers

beelining superconductors through refrigeration and building coal power plants instead of 3 gorges dam 3390 hammers at cost of 1350 hammers ~210 food
best case saves 2240 hammers in the short term but many coal plants still need to be built. Some cities it is questionable that a factory/power plant would pay off in time to be useful. GP Farm for example will be without power for some time since it needs a nuclear plant without 3 gorges dam.

delays research since building coal plants instead of wealth.
3 gorges dam costs 1750 hammers

And this is the best case where we don't build coal plants in Moscow and Hammer city anyways.

If we build coal plants in Moscow and Hammer city the "cost of 3 gorges dam route" goes up to 2050 hammers but we get the power benefit in Moscow and Hammer city which equals about 1300 hammers at cost of about 70 food

Conclusion
In the vast majority of the other cities, coal plants barely pay off in the time that we could build the 3 gorges dam.

So while plastics beeline obsoletes ivory and delays Research institutes, plastic beeline and 3 gorges dam build with coal in Moscow and Hammer city is probably better than a Superconductor beeline.

The superconductor beeline by my numbers only basically pays for the extra research of refrigeration. Now Supermarkets probably pay off too but there are happiness limits and lots of extra food from Sushi that makes health less of a benefit than it can be in some games.

There is also some debate that we could build as many research institutes as I estimated since we would still be building powerplants in many cities without 3 gorges dam and many city would need to build wealth to maintain a reasonable research rate.

 

[babybluepants]

I'm on T223. Not much of interest to report so far.

We had a MIE fail in Nanjing, and a spy fail in Troy. The Vlad spy got it. Lost one cannon in the siege of Pataliputra. This took an extra turn to capture (still has granary/bank/ch/jail). How does bombardment actually work? I could only take 12% with Accuracy, and 7% with others.

 

[bcool]

We obviously still build coal plants in cities like Bermuda and Bahamas.