SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[Mitchum]

@ mdy

I know that planning a turnset, especially one this complicated, can be very hard and very stressful. You get ideas and comments from everyone that are all over the map and it's hard to assimilate all of them into a cohesive plan. Please don't take any of our comments the wrong way (feel free to take offense to any of LC's posts though). Good luck!!

Now, hurry up, get that PPP in shape, answer all of our questions, and play your turnset already...

 

[Mitchum]

No Sushi w/o CH. Mining can actually build forge-CH rapidly in a new city, so that's less obvious.

I think Mining Inc in new cities is the bomb and should be done whenever possible. I like to have a Mining Inc executive escort the settler if possible... plus he can chat him up about economics during the voyage. With all of the Mining resources on this map, granary + ch + forge should take ~10 turns, but I'm too lazy to do the math right now.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I mainly want astronomy because it will open up physics after railroad, though they would be a pre requisite for any invasion of India as well.

Shouldn't we research Assembly LIne after RR?

 

[babybluepants]

Agree with AL.

 

[LowtherCastle]

feel free to take offense to any of LC's posts though

Btw, guys, Mitchum sent an email to AlanH, which he accidentally cc'ed to me and he said we're all WANKERS!

Spoiler :

 

[Mitchum]

T+6 London-anything except a merchant or an artist
T+11 Fish-merchant
T+12 pigs-artist

Thanks!!

It appears that you've thought out beyond the next 12 turns as well based on your specialist hiring. For example, you're hiring artists in The Crabbes. Can you extend your analysis out beyond the next 12 turns? If not, I think we should try to do that. I'd hate to be working artists in Crabbes if it never pops a great person...

Actually, extending our GP production out can be quite tricky. It all depends on when Sushi gets to the city, how quickly it grows, if hammer tiles will be worked, etc. Does anyone know how to plan this out to give us a rough idea of what to work where?

My original thought was to run mutts (i.e. spies, priests, engineers) in two or three cities that have a chance of getting a great person. We can speed these guys up by hiring merchants/scientists if/when needed to generate a great person. We should then have one Great Artist pump, 2 GM pumps and 2 GS pumps. The rest of the cities, those that will never generate a great person, should hire merchants first until we can cover our 100% science nut and then scientists for the rest. Of course, we should try to merchants in cities with wealth multipliers and scientists with science multipliers.

This is just a rough idea. I didn't do any in-depth analysis but just kind of eye-balled it.

It would be nice to at least know which cities will NEVER generate a great person so that we can hire merchants/scientists there at our whim, so to speak.

I fogot to mention that cities with multipliers should obviously hire spies until our tech stealing has run its course.

 

[Mitchum]

Btw, guys, Mitchum sent an email to AlanH, which is accidentally cc'ed to me and he said we're all WANKERS!

Liar!! The e-mail to AlanH part, at least... The last part sounds about right!

 

[mdy]

I think Mining Inc in new cities is the bomb and should be done whenever possible. I like to have a Mining Inc executive escort the settler if possible... plus he can chat him up about economics during the voyage. With all of the Mining resources on this map, granary + ch + forge should take ~10 turns, but I'm too lazy to do the math right now.

I agree spreading mining inc to new cities, but first we should spread it to a number of hub cities that can in turn build more executives for the small cities.

Shouldn't we research Assembly LIne after RR?

I was kind of hoping we could steal it from Rooservelt fairly soon, whilst we went down the lower branch of the tech tree. I think he is far more likely to research assembly line for us than he is astronomy, and that GS from physics will make the 4GP golden age significantly easier to get.


For future planning I think we do need to work out who we are going to attack after Churchill. I favour India. In terms of resources both India and America are roughly equivelent, however Gandhi is much weaker than America. If we went after America next we would probably have to build many units in cities other than London/upgrading which we don't really want to do when we have a lot of infrastructure+corps to spread. America can be crushed very easily once we have finished this phase.

More importantly this would allow us to steal more techs from America to boost our tech rate, and with the exception of astronomy I can't see us getting any other techs from him.

The plan has been updated again to reflect my latest thinking.

I won't have time to have another look at the forums until tomorrow morning now.

It appears that you've thought out beyond the next 12 turns as well based on your specialist hiring. For example, you're hiring artists in The Crabbes. Can you extend your analysis out beyond the next 12 turns? If not, I think we should try to do that. I'd hate to be working artists in Crabbes if it never pops a great person...

yes I did factor the need for getting the 4GP and 5GP golden age (though it is necessarily more approximate)-I'll post an outline tomorrow, I need to get to bed now.

 

[LowtherCastle]

My original thought was to run mutts (i.e. spies, priests, engineers) in two or three cities that have a chance of getting a great person. We can speed these guys up by hiring merchants/scientists if/when needed to generate a great person. We should then have one Great Artist pump, 2 GM pumps and 2 GS pumps. The rest of the cities, those that will never generate a great person, should hire merchants first until we can cover our 100% science nut and then scientists for the rest. Of course, we should try to merchants in cities with wealth multipliers and scientists with science multipliers.

There's the obvious principle of running scientists in cities with the most reserach multipliers, running mutts in cities with neither research nor gold multipliers.

Cities that have reached their happiness level would be another choice, instead of building happiness buildings there. Cuba might be an example, when it gets to ~pop17.

It's hard to figure out what the optimum is between growing more pop and working specs. Gnejs was really good at optimizing.

 

[Mitchum]

Something like this for each city would be useful (at least for me):

Moscow
Target Population: 25 (currently 21 w/+7 and -1)
Primary function(s): Production, Military, Science, mutt GPs
Corporations: Already has Sushi. Needs Mining ASAP.
Great People this city will generate a great person on T211 and again for the 5 person GA.
Infrastructure: all science multipliers, all hammer multipliers (including levee), all health buildings, we should never reach the happy cap unless WW gets really bad
General: work all improved tiles but make sure not to get too much OF, hire spies/engineers then fill in with scientists as long as the city can still produce a future great person, after that, just run scientists

I don't know if the above is true, but having something like this would make all of our planning much easier. Maybe this is too much to ask...

I'll work on it, but it won't be until Monday in all likelyhood. Would this help you guys too or should I just shelf it?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Makes sense to me.

 

[bcool]

Ok I'm rested and I think I up to date on the plan. mdy, thanks for all the work so far I really appreciate the effort it takes to combine all the advice and work out the details of city production, gpp production.

I took a close look at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10022056&postcount=3348
the updated PPP and I think I have a few suggestions that might help.

From the top to the bottom of the PPP, if I don't say anything about something I skipped means I can't see a way to improve upon it.

Fish--> If we are going 0% research Fish could work the Gold mine with better wealth multipliers than Moscow (this will change with the plan to switch to Bureaucracy T+1, but for T+0 helps slightly)

GP Farm can build the Sushi executive this turn if you work an engineer and a citizen instead of 2 Farms (no whip)

Kamachka
I highly suggest whipping the executive here. Kamachka will grow the next turn with whip and OF and max hammers can get another executive T+1, then it can build 2 settlers
---The extra executive can galley chain down to Orleans (as a small city it will benefit a lot from this at not as much expense and it will help offset my plan for it)

BCool:
I suggest putting OF of university whip into a Worker. With Sushi coming to this island soon I think we want those tiles improved as soon as possible and it will overwhelm the 3 workers there now. The workers are also closer to future islands we will have to clean so producing a worker here avoids some transportation costs

Cuba,
perhaps a grocer instead of a market after university. Since health limits might be reached before happiness

Orleans
settler, whip next turn (takes load off Kamchatka and Kamchatka extra executive can spread Sushi here), finish University, then executives
I think we will have a lot of spare muskets for military police after the wars, so longbows probably are not necessary

Hammer city
whip forge T+1, then start levee

Tours
With GA this turn and working the plains farm you can whip the courthouse next turn (more important then even a granary in my opinion, plus a courthouse is harder to sabotage than a granary)

Steam:
Can run a citizen instead of 4 food farm (this turn before gifting away to Churchill next turn)

Shanghai,
Why not hiring scientists since it has university already

Haiti:
If it works a workshop this turn it can 1 pop whip the courthouse next turn.

Other city build notes:
After steal of astronomy, switch any planned universities that aren't close to finishing to Observatories.

Workers:
I would keep the workers on BCool island since this will cut down transport time to islands to the East that need scrubbing eventually. And I think those workers have plenty to improve around Bcool Island, Crabs, and other cities in that general area

Sushi spreading:
I agree with LC that we should send a Sushi executive to Rosey asap, perhaps the extra I suggested building in Kamchatka can spread to Rosey instead of Orleans.

 

[mdy]

Fish--> If we are going 0% research Fish could work the Gold mine with better wealth multipliers than Moscow (this will change with the plan to switch to Bureaucracy T+1, but for T+0 helps slightly)

O.K. I'll do this or 1T instead of working the watermill.

GP Farm can build the Sushi executive this turn if you work an engineer and a citizen instead of 2 Farms (no whip)

The production boost from the golden age means we can build it in one turn without this.

I highly suggest whipping the executive here. Kamachka will grow the next turn with whip and OF and max hammers can get another executive T+1, then it can build 2 settlers

settler, whip next turn (takes load off Kamchatka and Kamchatka extra executive can spread Sushi here), finish University, then executives
I think we will have a lot of spare muskets for military police after the wars, so longbows probably are not necessary

I guess this depends on our future war plans, we really need to get this settler.

whip forge T+1, then start levee

I don't think that we will have enough population to whip the forge on T+1.

I agree with LC that we should send a Sushi executive to Rosey asap, perhaps the extra I suggested building in Kamchatka can spread to Rosey instead of Orleans.

I think it will be slightly more efficient to send it from Rheims.



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.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I think the PPP is looking excellent!

I don't see any Churchill seafood pillagers in the Indian Ocean (caravels can't pillage), so I think we should immediately build the 3 wbs for Oxford/Mitchum's Oasis. @Mitchum: DId you see any Churchill galleys or triremes in the Indian Ocean?

If you can find a spy for Galley City soon, we should flip Gandhi from Mercantilism to FM asap. His cities are overseas and would be a huge boost in commerce. I'd even do it at 10% stationary, I think. (Not at 0% stationary because the failure risk goes up 15% or more.)

The iron tile near Kamchatka can be mined starting T+2. We also need to scrub/mine two Mining resources on Bcool Island in time for Mining Inc, if possible.

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

In general, I think our fastest research depends almost entirely on how fast we explode our population. So in general it is preferable to:
1) spread 5 execs at all times (create hub first)
2) spread Sushi to the smallest courthouse cities asap (cheaper and they grow faster)
3) get as many Sushi resources as possible (spam wbs, settlers, as necessary)
4) all new cities need ch+granary, not sure which is better. Maybe we'll need a poprush phase after AL for both factories in mature cities and chs+granaries in new cities, this is complicated to figure out right, when to put in sushi if there's no ch...

So, I agree with mdy's original push to spread Sushi as fast as possible, even if it requires Bermuda to build an exec or two after Versailles. We also need to ensure we don't drastically slow down getting RR by spamming to too many big cities fast.

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

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. This would allow us to avoid the WW if we want a couple of turns to heal and re-group before going on Nottingham and Warwick...

Or we can CF, gift Steam, steal Steam Power, re-DoW, then capture Marseilles, if we're immediatley ready to go on his other cities.

Or we can capture Marseilles even if it doesn't put him down to 3 cities, CF, gift him Marseilles, then Steam, steal tech...

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

Do we need to build more spies?

We also need to have a galley + 2 wbs in place for the Stalin clam island.

 

[mdy]

In general, I think our fastest research depends almost entirely on how fast we explode our population. So in general it is preferable to:
1) spread 5 execs at all times (create hub first)
2) spread Sushi to the smallest courthouse cities asap (cheaper and they grow faster)
3) get as many Sushi resources as possible (spam wbs, settlers, as necessary)
4) all new cities need ch+granary, not sure which is better. Maybe we'll need a poprush phase after AL for both factories in mature cities and chs+granaries in new cities, this is complicated to figure out right, when to put in sushi if there's no ch...

So, I agree with mdy's original push to spread Sushi as fast as possible, even if it requires Bermuda to build an exec or two after Versailles. We also need to ensure we don't drastically slow down getting RR by spamming to too many big cities fast.

I agree with this. Once we start spreading mining corps to cities they can build courthouse+granary quickly before spreading Shushi, as we won't be growing much before we spread Shushi I think courthouse-granary will probably be best.

I don't see any Churchill seafood pillagers in the Indian Ocean (caravels can't pillage), so I think we should immediately build the 3 wbs for Oxford/Mitchum's Oasis.

We also need to have a galley + 2 wbs in place for the Stalin clam island.

The workboats for the England area are coming from beijing, the workboats for the clam island from fish, and we can use the galley near Moscow to move the settler there.

Unless Churchill builds another city, or he gets really lucky in the upcoming battles taking Marseilles will take him down to 3 cities, so I'd be inclined to get this battle out of the way so the units are freed up for other duties ASAP.

I've added a couple of missionary whips, as otherwise it looks like it will be difficult to get a missionary to London in time otherwise.

Do we need to build more spies?

Unless we are very unlucky the spy situation looks adequate for now.

 

[LowtherCastle]

One more thing. We're currently getting 8 sushi resources from Roosy. I see three choices, but I"m not sure which is smarter.

1) We don't spread Sushi to him, so we keep his resources till we DoW him.
2) We spread Sushi to him on T+4, just after renewing all the seafood trades, so ha can't cancel them for 10t.
3) We figure out approximately when we're going to DoW him and 10t before that redo our seafood trades and spread Sushi to him.

We'll get 4gpt*3 = 12gpt in Fish for each corporate office he has, with no maintenance to us, only the initial cost to spread one exec. Is that worth more than the 4fpt in all our sushi cites?

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.

Any idea when we're going to DoW Roosy, if we go down on Gandhi first?

 

[bcool]

Hammer city
whip forge T+1, then start levee

I don't think that we will have enough population to whip the forge on T+1.

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.

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.

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?

 

[bcool]

We'll get 4gpt*3 = 12gpt in Fish for each corporate office he has, with no maintenance to us, only the initial cost to spread one exec. Is that worth more than the 4fpt in all our sushi cites?

I think we spread it to him the turn after we renew the trades.

He will effectively produce for us 12 gold per city as you suggested, and he will save us the trouble of spreading it to him ourselves. That is 100 hammers and ~70 gold per executive. It will speed up his research which will let us steal more or trade more techs with him.

and losing 4 food from Sushi isn't the end of the world since we will be getting more resources ourselves and getting a little break on the maintenance costs isn't a horrible thing. We will likely be overflowing our granaries as it is.

 

[mdy]

We'll get 4gpt*3 = 12gpt in Fish for each corporate office he has, with no maintenance to us, only the initial cost to spread one exec. Is that worth more than the 4fpt in all our sushi cites?

Good point. I cannot remember a single time when an AI with a corporation has been willing to trade resources to us. I don't know if it is any different if the AI does not have the headquarters (in the past if I wanted a corporation I always made sure to found it myself), can someone else with a better understanding of the code clear this up?

If we have to between the two I would not spread it to him. 4 food is worth 9 beakers and 12 gold in a city with library/university/market/bank/grocer if we hire merchants. So even if we had exactly the same number of cities with Sushi as Rooservelt we would still be better off. Given that we will shortly have Sushi in more cities than Sushi can ever we must be better off trading for the food.

Any idea when we're going to DoW Roosy, if we go down on Gandhi first?

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.

 

[bcool]

Edit: my post was cut off
Edit#2: retyping now

I agree that we should attack Rosey at the end.
this also makes spreading Sushi to him more attractive.

When he gets Sushi he will cancel our trades as soon as he can and yes we will loss 4 food, which is why we should renew the trades on the same turn we spread it to him. (renew trades then spread the corporation on the same turn)
However
That 4 food will not translate into advantages for us that easily. Since many of our cities will run into health and happiness limits making extra food not that useful for them potentially.
And many of our cities will already be growing at 1 pop per turn so the extra food won't help them grow faster.
And while that 4 food might help us in some of our cities it raises the maintenance in all of them.

vs.
an immediate benefit of the 12 gold per city Rosey spreads Sushi to. That gold is immediate and doesn't require health/happiness limits to be higher. And Rosey pays the expansion costs for us.

and Rosey gets a little tech boost and we might be able to trade/steal more from him.