SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[RRRaskolnikov]

My take is that SP is more flexible, less regarding ressources wise, though corps are better if the map is generous. So usually there are some better map scripts for corps (terra comes to mind). Problem is that I am not aware of the resource repartition in the Erkon script map Ok now I let you with your game and go back to quiet lurking

edit: usually the engeener issue isn't one asa u plan the strat soon enough in the game.
edit2: the GM45 thread contains posts about the SP/corp debate

 

[LowtherCastle]

What I see in the discussion is that the domination limit is a barrier for Coproations because you want all the resources. Well, we don't have that problem. Another issue I can think of is that our workers already have a big job clearing fallout, so I wonder how much time they'll have to build workshops, but I guess a lot of the fallout could be scrubbed after the workshops are built.

What I'd really like to know is, which is better if we have the planet covered with our cities? Can we pay for all that maintenance with SP? Corporations?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

There is no maintenance in SP (well there is but you won't notice it ). I let you charge a corp with world wide resource income to see the maint. I fear it gets huge indeed. It will be manageble ( so yes, you will be able to pay) but the question is that if you are forced to switch too much cities to produce gold, you could end up with less science output that what u would get running SP. Can't remember of any game that extreme though. Good luck with testing that

 

[mdy]

The maintenance costs of corporations are easily met by a combination of courthouses, free market, and Wall Street, even when you have a huge number of resources. We probably can't tell whether they will be good enough to beat SP until we have done more exploration though.

In a corporation economy Sid Shushi's is normally by far the most important corporation which we can found using the economics GM. A late GE for one of the hammer producing corporations is sub-optimal but does not necessarily mean that a corporation economy can't outperform a state property economy.

On second thoughts we are probably better of leaving De Gaulle to develop the gems site for us. By time he gets it running we should be ready to take it from him.

Given our REX requirements I can't see us having the spare production capacity to build wonders in the capital for a while. In addition we will be more easily able to control the GP we get if we use the pigs site as our primary GP farm than we would if we used a wonder based capital. I therefore think the NE would be better in the pigs site.

 

[LowtherCastle]

All three gems tiles have radiation, so dG won't be developing them for a long while...plus, he can't settle on the tile we want the city settled on, because it has radiation too. He'll settle it on some idiotic tile instead.

 

[bcool]

By just building the Great Library and the NE in Moscow you get 20 gpp a turn starting about 20 turns from now. How long will it be before the the proposed Great Person Farm comes close to that?

We don't need to spam a huge number of wonders in Moscow to produce a very competitive GP farm. We can still rex to the limit of what seems reasonable. Some of the early wonders have significantly better long term pay backs than settling a 8th or 9th city would.

This weekend I hope to have a chance to play a test game or 2 to compare the outcomes of the two proposed NE sites.

 

[bcool]

This http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=372098&page=3 was my most recent experience where a corporation fueled space race finished before a SP fueled one. This was a special case perhaps, the renaissance start that I mentioned earlier.

 

[babybluepants]

The top guys (PK in particular), are more concerned with Mining Inc than Sushi. I remember PK saying that in his HOF games, he likes to have min. 40hpt from Mining (which is 40 sources of copper, iron, gold, silver or coal). When they play on Terra, they spread Mining to new world cities asa they are founded, allowing them to hammer out gran-lh-forge-ch rapidly and then start building wealth as needed. Super-science city and other science cities run 100% slider, while the rest hammer wealth - I'm pretty sure that's the deal. You build further science and prod infra in secondary cities once you have costs covered.

Corporate maintenance is part of city maintenance and it's game-settings and city-size dependent. From my limited experience with it, I would say that Wall Street HQ covers up to a size 10-15 city depending on game settings. Larger city would be a marginal loss, smaller a marginal gain. That still leaves the base maintenance, though.

Like most, I can't say I have much experience with fast space, though. Let's start doing some focused research. I'd stay away from marathon, Inca, etc. HOF games, and try to find comparable samples. Dynamic in BOTM 20, Rusten in BOTM 26, Dynamic in Challenger Series and several gauntlets come to mind... jesusin did a corp game in a recent BOTM where he won the gold medal. Gosha's game in BOTM 19 didn't go space, but he teched to Future Tech.

Edit: x-post w/ bcool.

 

[babybluepants]

This weekend I hope to have a chance to play a test game or 2 to compare the outcomes of the two proposed NE sites.

Yeah, I think we need to do some deeper testing now. I need to try and finish the BOTM this weekend , but I'll try to squeeze in some testing, too, if possible.

Edit: It's kinda fun to talk some actual strategy for a change, instead of endlessly debating worker moves. That said, I will figure out my worker moves and post a plan tonight or tmr morning. No worries.

 

[babybluepants]

PRE-PLAY PLAN

Turn 77 - 950 BC

Inherited turn...
Revolt to Slavery and Bureaucracy
North warrior just explores
South warrior heads south-west and hugs coast
NWkr1 skips to Silver city site
SWkr1 starts roading sugar
What do we do with the missionary?
Offer peace to Roosevelt and Churchill (every turn - especially if tech situation changes)
Screenshots...

Turn 78 - 925 BC

Research slider to 100% on Currency
Missionary spreads in Galley City ?
NWkr1 scrub city site
NWkr2 move to deer 1W of city site
SWkr2 skips to 1NE of rice
Give Sailing to De Gaulle How much gifting can we afford without incurring a WE penalty with Gandhi?
Screenshots...

Turn 79 - 900 BC

NWkr2 scrubs deer
SWkr2 roads 1NE of rice
SWkr1 move 1N and scrub for 1t

Turn 80 - 875 BC

Moscow completes worker; start another worker
New worker moves 1E
SWkr1 skips to 2E of rice

Turn 81 - 850 BC

MWkr roads 1E of Moscow
SWkr1 roads 2E of rice
SWkr2 moves to rice

Turn 82 - 825 BC

Moscow completes worker; start settler
MWkr2 roads horse
SWkr2 roads rice

Turn 83 - 800 BC

MWkr1 moves to rice
SWkr1 moves to city site

Turn 84 - 775 BC

MWkr1 scrubs rice
MWkr2 scrubs 1E of Moscow
NWkr1 moves to 1NE of city site
SWkr1 scrubs city site
SWkr2 scrubs rice

Turn 85 - 750 BC

Fish completes WB. What do we do next? Another explorer WB? Lighthouse? Maybe slowly build a chariot here, so as not to waste hammers in Moscow - it would be quite slow, with scientists running (10t).
NWkr1 roads 1NE of city site
WB circles the peninsula and heads south...

Turn 86 - 725 BC

Currency done.
Moscow completes settler; starts chariot or another settler or granary. Leave this for next TS.
End TS.

I can play in 24 hrs.

 

[bcool]

Played out a test game to 250 AD (NE in capital, Great Library, Hagia Sophia) and rex and prepping to take out De Gaulle.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Strategy you prefer? muuaahhhhh.... The key, imo, is sorting out all the ideas and applying them appropriately to our scenario. Here are some observations I've come up with on the corporation versus state property question:

0. Scenario constraints.
- Our map looks bad for cottages, because cold climate probably has less rivers, grassland, and fallout has probalby killed most floodplains.
- Clearing fallout in AI territory is problematic
- AIs start out with -5 attitude points against us
- Some AIs will gain common war pluspoints, making them even more friendly to each other, threatening to give us negmods for DoW against their friends (occurs at Pleased or Friendly)
- We need a ton of workers to clear fallout and build workshops, causing high unit costs (AIs probably won't clear a tile of fallout for us)
- rising seas???

00. Scenario opportunities
- AIs somewhat limited by fallout
- AIs possess knowledge of certain advanced techs
- We have met all AIs at the beginning
- Unlimited expansion (no domination limit, no flipping from culture)
- lower overseas maintenance costs (no vassal states)

1. Pyramids/Representation. We see stone and we're planning to create a ton of GPs, no matter what. We may be too late, especially since I think Gandhi's had stone since he teched Masonry. We should probably go for it in a secondary city, like Pigs, when it's a bit more mature. Otherwise, we capture the Mids asap.

2. Wall street. Costs a fortune, including banks (600h + 6*200h = 1800h). Makes sense if we have 6 cities that are either running lots of merchants, have a Shine, have the National Park, or will have a corporation or two. This should work well with infinite city expansion.

3. Emancipation. The curse of running caste systems, and Gandhi loves to beeline Democracy. We either shut Gandhi down before he gets there or plan to run a steady supply of spies through him switching him out of emancipation every 5t.

4. FP/Versailles. State property has 3 benefits: +1f for wkshps/wtrmills, +10%h in all cities, no distance maintenance. Mining+Sushi more than replace the hammers and food, but not the distance. We appear to have three main regions: 1) OSS+dG; 2) G+Mao+Roosy; and 3) Churchill. CHurchill is swallowing up religions and Region 2 has none, so there's a good chance Churchill will bulb Divine Right and build Versailles, though maybe too slowly. Anyway, we could eventually counter distance costs somewhat with Palace/FP/Versailles in the three regions.

5. Oxford. Not especially powerful for our current capital site. We might have a few towns. We also don't have especially nice university sites. But we have half-price libraries and Oxford, so we might as well build it somewhere. Maybe we'll find an AI with floodplains and well-developed cottages and relocate our capital. (FP would be nicely centered in Paris.)

6. Courthouses. Corporate offices "require" courthouses. 100 cities with chs is 200 per turn. That could add up to a modern tech or two, especially if we pop a GSpy.

7. REX. This game has two limits to infinite expansion: 1) all AIs but Stalin must survive, and 2) city maintenance and civic costs. Infinite expansion maximizes our gross research output--we just need enough cash to runn 100% science.

8. Cheap settlers. We're imperialistic.

9. Great Merchants. Great Merchants can pay for costs. We want some faraway AI overseas to build The Temple of Artemis.

10. Dynamic seems to run State Property till he gets Sushi and/or Mining (don't know the sequence of those two).

11. A standard SV strategy is to run multiple GAs from some point to the end of the game. We want MoM.

12. Paper. Map trading will probably tell us all about the G-Mao-Roosy landmass, but not about Churchill (Pleased for maps), if he's separated.

-------------------------

Synergy

I still see infinite rapid expansion as our best solution. The key is paying for it. I don't think we're in any hurry to pop GPs, but we should focus on popping GMs. This will be hard till we have markets or caste systems. We can pop GPs later after we have Representation. Infinite REX has synergy with these points:
- scrubbing fallout
- high research potential
- max Sushi+Mining resources
- State Property
- capturing GLH, Mids
- capturing a Shrine for Wall Street
- acquiring premium production sites for space parts
- preventing AIs researching Democracy
- accumulating EEPs from chs for stealing a modern tech or two
- hopefully finding a National Park site
- paying for a massive work force
- paying for a reasonable army
- spawning GPs fast with Sushi
- save GPs for GAs instead of bulbing early techs
- use colossus till Sushi+Mining+Assembly line

Overall
In this plan, I think the only early wonder we still consider focusing on is the Pyramids. Later, MoM. Maybe Hagia Sophia somehow. This plan doesn't really commit us to anything long term before we get Paper and see much of the world. Depending on how fast we're expanding, we might want to beeline Communism/State Property after Paper.

 

[Soirana]

The top guys (PK in particular), are more concerned with Mining Inc than Sushi. I remember PK saying that in his HOF games, he likes to have min. 40hpt from Mining (which is 40 sources of copper, iron, gold, silver or coal). When they play on Terra, they spread Mining to new world cities asa they are founded, allowing them to hammer out gran-lh-forge-ch rapidly and then start building wealth as needed. Super-science city and other science cities run 100% slider, while the rest hammer wealth - I'm pretty sure that's the deal. You build further science and prod infra in secondary cities once you have costs covered.

Corporate maintenance is part of city maintenance and it's game-settings and city-size dependent. From my limited experience with it, I would say that Wall Street HQ covers up to a size 10-15 city depending on game settings. Larger city would be a marginal loss, smaller a marginal gain. That still leaves the base maintenance, though.

Like most, I can't say I have much experience with fast space, though. Let's start doing some focused research. I'd stay away from marathon, Inca, etc. HOF games, and try to find comparable samples. Dynamic in BOTM 20, Rusten in BOTM 26, Dynamic in Challenger Series and several gauntlets come to mind... jesusin did a corp game in a recent BOTM where he won the gold medal. Gosha's game in BOTM 19 didn't go space, but he teched to Future Tech.

Edit: x-post w/ bcool.

in games of month sushi is usually used to milk score, iirc.

From general point of view it depends on how big empire is. Although i am pretty bad at both fast space and dealing with corps.

 

[bcool]

Just a few quick comments before I go to work

It sounds like there are a lot of unanswered questions about the long term strategy. Even though the actual game map will be different, I think playing the test game out to close to finishing might be very useful. We can try out corporations vs. Communism for example. Long term consequences of NE location, etc.

I'm thinking corporations is probably better in this game (no domination limits (lots of resources), the requirement that we will likely go to war with most of the AI, no vassal states -no overseas maintenance).

From what I understand from Dynamic's game, Rainforest maps are better for communism since there is so many grasslands and rivers. In our map were there is lots of fallout and not an unusual amount of grasslands / rivers, I think using a corporation to grow our population might be significantly faster.

It doesn't sound like we will be able to easily answer this question unless we try to finish the test game both ways, and learn about each strategy.

--what wonders to build
Why do we need to build MoM ourselves if we only plan on using golden ages near the end? Won't it be relatively easy to capture it?

I'm ok with the pyramids, but certainly short term I don't see us running a bunch of specialists. Long term, yes we will.

Right now I would like to try out building Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, and NE, and maybe the Hagia Sophia so we can get a great engineer. Then maybe going for the Great Library if we get the great engineer.

--LC strategy guide (sorry don't have time to address everything)

- rising seas???

Erkon said this isn't working in the game. So we don't need to worry about it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

bcool, maybe I didn't make this clear: I think we can also consider starting with State Property, then later switching to Corporations. Communism comes quite a bit before Sushi or Mining, so State Propoerty would allow us to continue expanding as we reserach forward. The GAs toward the end also allow for switching back and forth, if we need to for some reason.

The major drawback to an early Communism is not using the Libralism slingshot for a more expensive tech.

I agree on the test games. Imo, the most important datum we have yet is your discovery about the difficulty of scrubbing AI tiles.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A note on your test games, bcool. You might want to test settling on the marble and next to the gems (so you get 2 gems, dyes, corn, and stone). I think those two sites are more powerful, long term, because they give us more tiles we can workshop. The marble site gives us an astounding 20h from the levee!!!

 

[mdy]

I also think that we will be better off if we capture the MOM instead of building it ourselves. The Pyramids would be useful, however the date at which the AI builds it is highly variable and I don't think we have the spare production capacity to go after a wonder we may not get. The stone site will be rubbish for a long time, so we probably can't settle that to help either.

If we want a late game engineer maybe we should consider building the Hanging Gardens in fish city after we have got our GS and built 1-2 galleys for exploraton? The Hagia Sophia could also potentially go there.

I agree that we will want mainly merchants as GP's for a while, and that we can afford to delay Oxford for longer than usual due to the lack of a brilliant site.

 

[LowtherCastle]

@bbp: Looks good. Responses to your questions and a couple questions of my own.
1. I guess we settle the missionary. Buddhism spreads to Galley in my tests.
2. Let's not worry about any gifting penalty. We want to gift Sailing+ maybe Masonry. If we get a short-term penalty, no probs, it will go away, meanwhile, dG will be G's WE for a long while.
3. I'm thinking we should build a granary in Fish City. That will enable poprushing. Granaries should be the first build in all our important cities, probably, (maybe wb in Pigs).

---------

1. On the southern workers, what is your plan for the worker scrubbing the rice? What about the pigs?
2. Not sure what you mean by "hugging" the coast, but I think the warrior should go inland if possible (the usual southward zigzag), just as long as he's defogging enough coastal tiles for trade routes.
3. What about checking Paris' production using the espionage screen? I think it's important to monitor what's going on there. We want to figure out what he's building now and what he builds next:

T78 gift dG Sailing. Critical: Monitor the Paris espionage screen each turn to see what he starts building after the current build (wkr or settler). Hopefully lighthouse at ~7hpt...If dG is building the lh, we need to seriously consider researching Masonry ourselves to gift to him before he completes the lh.

We'll know he's probably building the lh if it's ~7hpt and the total goes past 17 for archers, as long as he still threatens us with archers. He could be building a religious building too, but I don't see that in any of my tests.

----------

In this test save, I thin I forgot to switch the citizen to Ivory in Fish for a turn, but so what, the test save is for testing worker actions and such mostly.

 

[babybluepants]

Not sure what you mean by "hugging" the coast, but I think the warrior should go inland if possible (the usual southward zigzag), just as long as he's defogging enough coastal tiles for trade routes.

Yes, that's what I meant - keep a naval TR going.

On the southern workers, what is your plan for the worker scrubbing the rice? What about the pigs?

It's not exactly ideal. I get the rice scrubbed, then the pig roaded and scrubbed on the turn the city is settled.

I'm thinking we should build a granary in Fish City. That will enable poprushing. Granaries should be the first build in all our important cities, probably, (maybe wb in Pigs).

Yes, we'll obviously 2pop whip a granary 2-3t after the GS is born (whatever is needed to get 12f in the bin). There's some turns of production to spare, though, and we might wanna work the gold for 4t while Moscow grows to 7. This is beyond the scope of my set, though.

Let's not worry about any gifting penalty. We want to gift Sailing+ maybe Masonry. If we get a short-term penalty, no probs, it will go away, meanwhile, dG will be G's WE for a long while.

We have to worry about it, as we have trading to do with Gandhi in the short term (Poly, Maso, IW, Mono...) and our +3 for trade will run off at some point soon. I don't think Sailing alone could possibly incur a WE penalty, given how long we've known them, but it would be nice to know what would.

 

[bcool]

I agree we should use the confu missionary on Galley city, so as to not risk buddhism spreading there.

Seems like gifting de Gaulle sailing and then teching masonry if he starts a lighthouse makes good sense to me too.

What about another workboat in Fish to either explore or net the clams?
And we are running 2 scientists in Fish until we get a great scientist I assume.

Have we settled on the order in which we are going to settle cities? The gems/stone site is more important if we go for pyramids/hanging gardens. And the Marble site is more important if we go for the GL and NE first. I don't think the silver site needs to be settled any time soon.