SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

Just make a medic. It's 10x more useful long-term than a few 5xp cats.

Treb wouldn't be too far behind if he does research feudalism. With upgraded macemen and treb, even longbow might fall. Even if we don't push it with macemen and treb, those veterans from a war with DeG wouldn't necessarily become obsolete.

Macemen with city raider promotions can be upgraded to Riflemen with city raider promotions eventually (and firearm units with city raider promotions are worth the upgrade cost in my experience).

I'm not objecting to your claim that we can take down Mao with mace/cat/treb or not. Ofc we can. It's about incurring the opportunity costs, before our empire is properly set up to absorb them.

My thinking:
We could easily have 15-20 cities before Communism, without having to attack Mao and support that kind of army. That's even more than we'd need or necessarily want. We're beelining Chem, for Communism and Bio. That puts us one tech away from cannons, which is also on the Mining Inc. beeline. It also gives us time to set up our cities for a quick and easy unit spam, with easy switching in and out of research mode.

There is absolutely no need for Rifles in this game, btw. We should easily be able to run over everyone with cannons supported by mace/musket/WE/whatever, and will barely even need promos for the non-siege units.

 

[babybluepants]

My only issue with the PPP is still the courthouse. Don't get it, esp. ahead of forge. It's minor, though, you can go ahead and play.

 

[Mitchum]

I forgot to mention earlier (I've been thinking about this) that LC accidentally giving away Galley City has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Our intent of this city was to steal workers early on and to use as a jumping off point for our invastion later in the game. It turns out that we've found a very profitable and most likely much safer alternative to steal all of those workers.

Also, we are still essentially using Galley City as a passage into the sea to capture Paris with less risk of De Gaulle attacking a city of ours on the sea coast.

Finally, having Galley City has allowed us to steal Theology (and hopefully building the HS, leading to a very high-odd GE -> Mining Inc. -> winning strategy) and hopefully many other useful techs along the way. This turns out to be a nice way to actually use our espionage points rather than having them just sit there doing nothing other than giving us some insight into research, demographics, etc.

Although, giving away a few techs along with Galley City is another matter...

I hope all of our "mistakes" turn out this good...

 

[mdy]

The plan looks good to me. If we attach a GG to a unit I think Medic 3 is the way to go. The other promotions almost never pay off.

 

[bcool]

Just make a medic. It's 10x more useful long-term than a few 5xp cats.

I think is a reasonable use of a GG for an imperialistic leader. We will get another GG pretty soon, and the 5xp catapults really do make a significant difference. Taking Paris down in 3 turns with little to no losses vs. a ~2-3 turn delay that DeG can use to reinforce the city. And those catapults will likely be useful for the rest of the game.

We could easily have 15-20 cities before Communism, without having to attack Mao and support that kind of army. That's even more than we'd need or necessarily want. We're beelining Chem, for Communism and Bio. That puts us one tech away from cannons, which is also on the Mining Inc. beeline. It also gives us time to set up our cities for a quick and easy unit spam, with easy switching in and out of research mode.

Capturing an AI developed cities and land is so much more efficient than building our own cities isn't it? I mean the gold from capturing the cities, the worker turns we get from taking developed land, the libraries, courthouses, forges that have already been built for us, etc.
If we are going to have a significant empire we must start growing it by war and by colonization. With the Pyramids the captured cities will easily pay for themselves (running merchants or whipping courthouse out)

 

[LowtherCastle]

Does Siberia really need a forge so bad? We should be building settlers and workers, IMHO.

My only issue with the PPP is still the courthouse. Don't get it, esp. ahead of forge. It's minor, though, you can go ahead and play.

Tech stealing
I've done some more research and I believe I fully understand the mechanics of this now. I also tested some bright ideas. We should plan to steal every tech the AIs have and any new ones they research. That means before we get to Communism we should plan to steal both Philosophy (~550epps) and Communism (~1200 or less for a 4368 tech ). Then we can slingshot Biology or something else. It also means we need to have Mao down to 3 cities by then.

Testing from bright ideas:

Spoiler :

Get this, guys. A city settled at Moscow2S1SE will give us this:
1. -50% for culture (Galley City is giving us -15% and this will decrease to about -5%, depending on when we steal Philo). That is almost half again cheaper!
2. Here's the fun one. In my tests I was able to fortify the spy in the city for 5t before gifting/trading the city to Mao. Bingo! He's already been stationary for 5t! This is important for 2 reasons. 1) Mao could switch to our religion, costing us 15%. (Actually Mao already is running Confu, but hopefully we can manipulate that.) 2) The culture -50% will immediately start to decrease each turn that Mao own it.

Imo, we want epps asap for:
1. Philo ~500
2. Communism ~1150
That's like in 50t or whatever. That's a lot of epp/turn. Like 35epp/turn or something. We need a lot of courthouses. Of course, the chs also help with maintenance, but we also want them for all our cities with corporate offices. They're an important part of this game, so the sooner we build them, the better, with reason of course.

Originally I wanted the forge in Siberia, but then I thought I got talked out of it. Btw, I don't consider Siberia "close" to Moscow. We only have two cities that are close to MOscow, in my books.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, other than ch or forge in SIberia, it seems that the discussion now looks beyond my turnset, so I'll do a dry run, check back here, and probably go ahead and play. If I happen to make a GG, I plan to let the next turnset owner (mdy, right?) decide on that.

EDIT: Okay, I guess there's also the question of Paper or Engineering next. I think we need to finally beeline Oxford. Furthermore, I'd like to get maps for cash and for possibly circumnavigation. Trebs and +1 movement are also beneficial, but I'm not sure they outweigh research at this point.
.

 

[babybluepants]

Paper first is obviously better. I was just suggesting Eng as an option, if we're not ready for Uni spam otherwise due to war effort, etc.

I was disagreeing with forge-ch in the first quote, but thought that I was outvoted. Forge first made more sense to me in that case. Build the CH, sure.

 

[mdy]

I also agree with paper/education next.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Forgot one question. ANy chance we want to steal the Mao worker west of the chariot?

 

[bcool]

We might want to plan to build up population for university whips in our less developed cities, since I think we will not have the time to build all of the infrastructure if we go directly for education. Especially if we plan to use the GS to bulb education.

 

[bcool]

no one is pleased with Mao, (only cautious) so we won't get diplo penalties from declaring war right?

If that is true why not grab the worker. Unless you don't think it would be safe taking the worker back thru DeG lands.

 

[Mitchum]

Forgot one question. ANy chance we want to steal the Mao worker west of the chariot?

How long before Mao will talk to us if we do DoW and have one successful battle(capturing the worker)?

 

[babybluepants]

I'd only steal from Mao if we know we won't get hit by negmods. Pretty sure you can get -1 when they're Cautious. Isn't that what happens in a typical game with early worker steals?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Turnset Report T125-T135

Extended turnset, but everything worked out fine. Captured Rheims 1t later than planned because I messed up the MM for the mace in Pigs. Things are looking good except for one hitch--Roosy won't trade Construction.

T125
Trade CoL to Roosy, Mao, dG, and CHurchill for 140g
Trade 4 resources to Roosy, 1 at a time(!), to get +1 in 9t

T126
Bermuda has coastal fish!
Mao demands aesthetics to no avail
Literature to Roosy for 200g (failed from ToA?)
fish to dG for 1gpt
dG offers worker but not safe, he's headed to ivory
Revolt to Representation

T127
aesthetics to Mao for 70g
2nd dG worker headed for ivory, I move axe and chariot onto fallout for capture next turn

T128
Machinery done, Paper next
Pigs borders expand, revealing Marseilles city center
furs to Roosy, gives us +1 a turn sooner
capture 2 more wkrs
Gandhi finally can trade during wartime: fish for 2gpt

T129
forgot to make notes

T130
2 wkrs home safely
capture two more workers dG kind of hates us now

T131
Trade Gandhi calendar for Monarchy
Moscow market done, HS next
Spot a dG axe headed for Rheims. Overlook an opportunity to ambush with 2 chariots, so I'm forced to put a chariot on the hill as bait for the axe. Either he captures the chariot then dies to another next turn, or he dies to one next turn, his choice.
Also 2 archers headed from Lyons toward Rheims. Our axe will attack them next turn.

T132
chariot dies, other kills the axe
axe kills one archer, other skidaddles back to Lyons
we're collecting GGpts
Paper done
set out 2 wkrs as bait for the 4 archers in Rheims
Mao has Feudalism
Churchill is WHEOOHRN. Bring it on!

T133
Settle Bermuda
Gandhi sells his maps for 55g (forgot last turn) Circumnavigation will require caravels
Gandhi's maps also contain a surprise bonus from Monsieur Erkon:

Spoiler :

Roosy appreciates the years we've given him a smorgasboard of resources.
Theology for free = +4 fair trade, Cautious

T134
OBs with Roosy
25g for his maps, we see all of Churchill and Roosy.
Trade silk for wheat

T135
Capture Rheims without a loss.
Great General born in Moscow!

Save uploaded. Onward, Gentlemen!

 

[Mitchum]

To say that your turnset greatly exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. Great job!!

 

[bcool]

very nice!

 

[Mitchum]

I just opened the save and things seem to be in order. I guess we already knew this from the trading window, but by looking at the map (and then confirming in the trading window), Mao has no metal!!

Also, this map has Sid''s Sushi written all over it. I've never seen so much sea food. With tons of workshops in all of our cities supported by sushi, the end game is going to fly!

The question is, do we iceball De Gaulle now or wait. He has the Buddhist shrine in Paris, which could net a tidy profit if we spread Buddhism a bit. If we plan to iceball him, we need to prepare a site and a settler for it. Or, we could just leave him with Lyons for a bit until we're ready. It may steal a mine from Paris, but that should be acceptable for a short while. Or let him keep Tours for a while as originally planned.

Those 20 workers are killing our economy via unit cost. LC was a bit too successful with the worker stealing... On that note, we should never have to build another worker with the 20 that we currently have plus the Hagia Sophia plus whatever we capture as we go along.

EIDT: The AI appear to be farily hamstrung with all of the fallout and no way to clean it up. There is going to come a time when we really start pulling away from them. At that point, conquest is going to be very easy.

 

[babybluepants]

Brilliant, LC!

Looks like we're still more than 10 tiles E-W from circumnavigation.

Gandhi TR's will be across water.

Education is only about 4t of 100% research away. I think it's time to plan that out now.

Mining Inc. should be in the 15-18hpt range? That should be quite good, with an awesome 45-reso Sid's Sushi to boot.

mdy, are you taking it now?

 

[babybluepants]

One nagging question for me:
I don't usually put espionage to such good use, so I wonder how we measure the cost of tech stealing relative to beaker research? Investment in epp costs us beakers, I just don't know how many relatively speaking.