SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

We already have 16 trebuchets so I think we can probably afford to allow the capital to build something else for a few turns. An intelligence agency would be most useful in the capital before we use the slider to put espionage on America, additionally if we left it till later we would be building it in place of the more powerful cannons instead of trebs.

We're tied up in China for a while, and will likely lose quite a few of the 16 there. I'd prefer to do that - wait for Steel before building further siege, but I don't see when we can have a stack capable of actually going into England that way. A bit unclear on how fast we can even finish Steel.

Yes, I'd build a IA while waiting for Steel as an alternative. Another option might be wealth-buildage to speed up Steel, or maybe some Kremlin fail-cash, but that seems like a weak move.

There should be no need to whip the bank, and I'm not sure we really want to revolt to slavery.

There was talk of switching to Slavery temporarily later, and Fish can have some pop to spare without giving up the base hammers. No, we don't need it, ofc. Whip OF with Kremlin is pretty awesome, though. The main issue with Fish is being able to unlock Grocer-Bank-WS on a convenient schedule. Completing the builds isn't much of a problem.

I think that drafting in pigs would be a mistake as it would reduce our chances of getting a GM. If we draft a unit/turn, whilst continuing to build other units there we should have no need to build any non siege unit in any other city.

No, I wouldn't really draft in Pigs... Thought it might be an option if we really need an extra unit down there after DOW-ing Churchill.

 

[bcool]

Research Steel - Medicine - Corporation

I would interrupt Medicine to finish Corporation (if we can't steal it from Rosey)

Kamchatka: finish CH - Forge
Siberia: fire spy? - settler (Troy) - grow in 3t, building missionary & spy - settler (Vladivostok) - spy

Kamchatka can build 2 settlers I think. More important than forge. Probably can finish the CH. Kamchatka will be getting some more workshops soon. Kamchatka needs to build a spy too for Trojan city. Probably has time to do 2 settlers and spy after CH but maybe not.

Siberia can start to build the Nat. Park after a spy and confu missionary. (I would immediately forest preserve the Western Fur and Deer. I got 2 forest growths in the test game in less than 20 turns. Also I really would blow up the 1N workshop. (once you replace it if you have the pop to work it at all)

Cuba: hold Theatre - Harbor

might be able to build a chariot for MP (might run into happiness issues in French cities and you might not be able to build MP elsewhere) Cuba could also build a spy (we are going to want 6-7 spies on Trojan Horse)

GP Farm: finish GT asap; convert grass shops and one sugar into farms on growth schedule; no barracks, I think (?); draft every turn for the remainder of TS (Taj GA over ca. T196, we may wanna switch back to Bureau then). Builds - maybe IntelAgency?

I'm not sure if by finish GT asap you mean convert more of the farms into workshops (because I think you have the worker turns to do this) And then prepare the workshops by prebuilding farms. I think you could build a barracks here and then an aqueduct (even with drafting, you will be able to maintain 15/16 pop) So you will have some mines to build a barracks and aqueduct. And after that you could run specialists.
By the time it could build an intel agency I don't think we will need it any more. I guess it depends on how much Gandhi and Rosey can tech for us later.

Rheims: Harbor or Uni?

I would build a market since you have the potential to draft here and will quickly get happiness issues if you do.

Is Paris missing? I would build a barracks in Paris (helps with happiness and it could build a cannon perhaps in time to help especially if Lyons falls and we improve the other tiles)

Bcool Island: (Caravel?) - WB for Crabbes - infrastructure

I wouldn't build a caravel here and it is my island

Pigs: finish Market, get started on another Uni? Hire only merchants.

I think a harbor will be needed before a university especially since you will probably have limited hammers with specialists.

 

[babybluepants]

I would interrupt Medicine to finish Corporation (if we can't steal it from Rosey)

Yes, I meant to say that.

Kamchatka can build 2 settlers I think. More important than forge. Probably can finish the CH. Kamchatka will be getting some more workshops soon. Kamchatka needs to build a spy too for Trojan city. Probably has time to do 2 settlers and spy after CH but maybe not.

Siberia can start to build the Nat. Park after a spy and confu missionary. (I would immediately forest preserve the Western Fur and Deer. I got 2 forest growths in the test game in less than 20 turns. Also I really would blow up the 1N workshop. (once you replace it if you have the pop to work it at all)

Ok, I'll do something like that.

might be able to build a chariot for MP (might run into happiness issues in French cities and you might not be able to build MP elsewhere) Cuba could also build a spy (we are going to want 6-7 spies on Trojan Horse)

Ok, that's better. Why cha and not archer? For 2-move shuffling?

I'm not sure if by finish GT asap you mean convert more of the farms into workshops (because I think you have the worker turns to do this) And then prepare the workshops by prebuilding farms. I think you could build a barracks here and then an aqueduct (even with drafting, you will be able to maintain 15/16 pop) So you will have some mines to build a barracks and aqueduct. And after that you could run specialists.

Ok, let's build a barracks. Don't think it's super important with drafted cannon-trailers, but it's cheap.

Is Paris missing? I would build a barracks in Paris (helps with happiness and it could build a cannon perhaps in time to help especially if Lyons falls and we improve the other tiles)

Yeah, I guess I missed it. It should get a barracks, yes. I think it could really use a forge, though.

I think a harbor will be needed before a university especially since you will probably have limited hammers with specialists.

Well, I don't know how much we'll get built there pre-Mining. Market happens to coincide a bit with the merchant spam, which is nice. A Uni would be worth a lot for us, since I imagine running a lot of sci after the GM. We should maybe line up 2-3 whips for a Kremlin/Slavery dip, if we're doing that.

 

[mdy]

Pigs: finish Market, get started on another Uni? Hire only merchants.

As we have the national epic in that city we are not guaranteed a GM. In order to minimise this I think we should hire the maximum number of merchants. If we don't work any hammer tiles there we won't be building anything other than a market there for a while.

 

[bcool]

played a bit of the test game out. Ran into some trouble with war weariness. Even with Cannons versus Churchill, I lost a lot of them. Going in with Treb. will make it worse I think. I think we want to avoid sacrificing a ton of treb against churchill.

Spreading the corporations takes quite a bit of time. I should have stayed in slavery longer. (Took a dip in my 3rd GA with Kremlin. Just ready to take my 4th GA. It will be hard to get enough GA for 5th GA, and very hard to get enough for a 6th. I guess I could wait on the 4th GA but I wanted another dip into slavery.

Got tired with this test game (and so I'm not really gearing up or setting up for the war with Gandhi and for the final finishing blows on Rosey and Churchill--war weariness will make taking them both hard. War weariness might have been slightly exaggerated in my test game since Churchilll had the statue of zeus. I took it out after a few turns of the war, but maybe the damage had been done.

War weariness will come back to us too unless we finish these guys completely off. We will have to clear their fallout. War Weariness doesn't dissipate very fast I don't think. Would be interesting to know more about how it dissipates. Maybe one of you has the code or more experience measuring that?

Anyways I'm going to sleep. If there is any value you can find from looking at the test game here it is...

(It might, might give us a slightly better idea of how long the game will be.)

edit: Oh, and I don't think we are going to reduce Churchill to 3 or fewer cities anywhere close to when we want to steal steampower. So we might want to think of another place to put another Trojan city or keep Marseilles (spreading confu there before the war).

 

[bcool]

Anyone want to play out the test game using state propery all the way?

I just wondering if Communism might be the way to go. Instead of courthouses, and corp executives, build settlers/ Under state property every city we settle is almost immediately profitable.

Also we save 2 great people who might trigger the 6th golden age. (Yes with Sushi we will run more specialists, but will that translate into 3 more Great People than we would produce under communism?)

I know it might be too late to change course, I was just curious whether or not it would be better since the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 AD and I don't see us getting the full use out of the corporations on that timeline.

I guess I might have implemented the corporations poorly. I did waste a lot of ep stealing steampower from a distant non-confu city in the test game. And I probably am building too much infrastructure rather than wealth? And maybe I wasn't aggressive enough spread the corporations or I didn't spread them to the right cities.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Well, I got over my mid-game depression. Don't know if any of you ever get that, but the complexity, tedium, etc., of the game sometimes overwhelms me and sends me down the tubes. So I've done some new analysis and have plenty to report.

AI espionage missions against us
I've figured out how to determine how much EPPs each AI has against us. You just look at the passive mission costs and divide by the appropriate factor. Unfortunately, for some reason that gives us two alternative answers, so it's one or the other. Anyway, mdy was right--Mao killed our university. Cost him about 1200EPs. Churchill killed our granary during my turnset. No data on who killed it before. More important, this is what the AIs currently have against us:

          this or this
de Gaulle  595	   492
Mao        170	   234	
Gandhi     534	   404
Roosy     1829    1545
CHurchill  398	   364	
Stalin    1009	   781

So Roosy is definitely a threat to sock it to us when our cities are close enough, and it looks like his game is to take our the most expensive building he can...

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

My next report is much significant, imo. I have a novel idea (to me anyway) for the National Park. Rather than use the free-specialist feature, since this map is basically forest-free, we use the no--for-population feature. We combine it with the GLobe Theatre in GP Farm, convert all grass tiles to farms for max food, add Sushi, and at ~50fpt we can grow the Fat Momma up to pop50, 1 pop per turn, while running specs with the extra fpt. Then we can run 25 specs per turn. Later, at precisely the right turn, we start running 50-49-48-47-46-... specialists to acquire our last few specialists for our 6th or 7th GA, depending on how our research goes. Let's say that GP Farm is at pop20 and gets Sushi on T195 and starts growing 1 pop per turn. My calcs show that starting T225, pop50, in 35 turns, GP Farm can produce more than 11,000 GPPs!

Other cities, in 35 turns, can use the max-spec-starvedown to produce:
pop20: 3600gpps
pop25: 4000gpps
pop30: 5000gpps

For our 6th GA, we need 2800-3600gpps.
For our 7th GA, we need 3800-4800gpps.

In other words, depeding on how long our game lasts, there's absolutely no doubt we can keep producing GAs. The only question is what's been mentioned, getting the GPs for the earlier GAs. Especially if GP Farm is focusing on drafting rather than GP Farming for next 20t.

 

[LowtherCastle]

the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 AD

How did you determine that?

 

[babybluepants]

I have a novel idea (to me anyway) for the National Park. Rather than use the free-specialist feature, since this map is basically forest-free, we use the no--for-population feature. We combine it with the GLobe Theatre in GP Farm

Great. I don't see a particularly good NP site, so I'd be happy to use it like this.

 

[babybluepants]

I know it might be too late to change course, I was just curious whether or not it would be better since the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 AD and I don't see us getting the full use out of the corporations on that timeline.

I doubt they've finished. And if they have, there's nothing we can do about it, except play our game out as well as possible. I was the biggest supporter of State Prop here, but I don't doubt Corps at all now. Erkon loaded the map for Sushi - you can't have more resources than this.

 

[babybluepants]

          this or this
de Gaulle  595	   492
Mao        170	   234	
Gandhi     534	   404
Roosy     1829    1545
CHurchill  398	   364	
Stalin    1009	   781

.

I don't understand. Can't you simply mouse over them on the score board for this? That gives:
Roosevelt 1319
Churchill 454
Gandhi 582
Mao 211
De Gaulle 640
Stalin 1093

 

[bcool]

the Ducks seem to have finished ~1600 AD
How did you determine that?

Just a random guess since they haven't played a turn set in a while. No other evidence. And bbp is right of course we play our game.

 

[bcool]

I have a novel idea (to me anyway) for the National Park. Rather than use the free-specialist feature, since this map is basically forest-free, we use the no--for-population feature. We combine it with the GLobe Theatre in GP Farm
Great. I don't see a particularly good NP site, so I'd be happy to use it like this.

That is a good idea. We just need to make sure to get another priest/spy...

Just a bit sad to see my poor forest preserves go away We need to atone for destroying the world and now we aren't going to try and regrow the forests
Of course your plan is better game wise.

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

This also lets us build the Ironworks in Siberia (which I think is better than hammer city, at least because we will have it so much sooner). Hammer city will take a while to grow based on my test game. Admittedly I was slow to settle hammer city in the test game.

Maybe it still makes sense to forest preserve one forest for Siberia if it does become the Ironworks city (nice to have at least 1 city with a few chops available for a space part)

 

[mdy]

My calcs show that starting T225, pop50, in 35 turns, GP Farm can produce more than 11,000 GPPs!

Other cities, in 35 turns, can use the max-spec-starvedown to produce:
pop20: 3600gpps
pop25: 4000gpps
pop30: 5000gpps

For our 6th GA, we need 2800-3600gpps.
For our 7th GA, we need 3800-4800gpps.

In other words, depeding on how long our game lasts, there's absolutely no doubt we can keep producing GAs. The only question is what's been mentioned, getting the GPs for the earlier GAs. Especially if GP Farm is focusing on drafting rather than GP Farming for next 20t.

Awesome! I definitely think that we should do this.

Pigs will generate 1 GP on T+1 and another on T+13 (without a boost from the Taj) if we hire max specialists without straving the city immediately. If we run max specs in Siberia after it builds 2 settlers it will generate a GP on T+16, so I don't think we have to worry about GP production for golden ages in the short term.

 

[babybluepants]

I'd propose something like this:
Make a deal for a peace treaty b/w DG and Churchill; spy from Orleans peeks into Lyons on T+1; if garrison isn't too big:
4 Trebs (galley + Fish), 2 maces (new from Fish and Moscow), musket+axe (Orleans), chariot (Rheims) attack Lyons in T+4-5. We can bombard with 2 forward trebs 1t early, with musket/axe cover.

Do we want IW in Siberia then? I could start building it slowly, while working towards that next GP.

 

[babybluepants]

Just a random guess since they haven't played a turn set in a while. No other evidence.

Just played another set.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I don't understand. Can't you simply mouse over them on the score board for this? That gives:
Roosevelt 1319
Churchill 454
Gandhi 582
Mao 211
De Gaulle 640
Stalin 1093

Now you tell me...

 

[bcool]

Make a deal for a peace treaty b/w DG and Churchill; spy from Orleans peeks into Lyons on T+1; if garrison isn't too big:
4 Trebs (galley + Fish), 2 maces (new from Fish and Moscow), musket+axe (Orleans), chariot (Rheims) attack Lyons in T+4-5. We can bombard with 2 forward trebs 1t early, with musket/axe cover.

Why? Are we doing this for the ~200 gold capturing Lyons will give us? Just to avoid killing Churchill here? To avoid declaring on him earlier than we are ready? Since we need to raze Lyons for the chain gifting?
If we let him try to take it, he will lose units & DeG will lose units. We won't suffer war weariness and (which is worse in Paris and other former French cities).
Why declare war at all?

It wasn't too big of a problem in the test game to leave it for later...when the chain gift was all set up.

 

[babybluepants]

Why? Are we doing this for the ~200 gold capturing Lyons will give us? Just to avoid killing Churchill here? To avoid declaring on him earlier than we are ready? Since we need to raze Lyons for the chain gifting?

All of the above. Just avoiding an extra headache. I don't see why we'd have any further WW from a France war. We'll just make our permanent deal with DG after capturing this.

Don't understand what we gain by letting Churchill capture cities in our territory. Just complicates military logistics. Him losing 5 ancient-era units is completely insignificant, esp. as he'll build 5 better units in the extra turns we have at war later by having to run units around former France covering.

We won't have many troops at all in France by about T+10-15 or so (GP will barely get started drafting, we're thinking about delaying further siege builds in Moscow for IAgency), so setting up the chain would require some gymnastics if Churchill has Lyons. Unless I'm really missing something...

Maybe we don't need to negotiate a deal asap, though. I could just see what their stacks look like next turn. If it looks like I can just let Churchill blast him and steal with the musket and axe, that's obviously better.

Edit: Also, I'd really like access to those two hills with Paris.

 

[bcool]

There will be unhappy citizens in Paris and maybe Orleans from another war with DeG. If you think the benefits outweigh the negatives I'm ok.

One thing I learned by playing out the test game is that we need to gift a city to Churchill to steal Steam Power when we want it. (We won't be able to reduce him to 3 cities by the time we want to gift him St Nick and steal Steam Power) We should find a place for this and spread confu to it sooner rather than later.

Letting him take Lyons might make this easier, but I'm not sure.
Edit just spreading confu to Marseilles might be the easiest solution (but certainly not the cheapest in terms of ep)
Edit #4: If we let him take Lyons I think we could gift him a city 1N of the deer to the East of the Silver perhaps? (The island to the East of the deer would be better it is just difficult to get a worker, settler, boat, confu missionary, by the time we want to go to war with him maybe)

Edit#2: I wouldn't build a intel agency in Moscow. We are actually going to overproduce epp before too long. Moscow is much more useful building units as you want for the next 20 turns. (Until it switches over to producing corp executives probably)
Edit#5: Moscow will need a courthouse though.

Edit#3: I against negotiating a deal with Churchill because we want to kill him as easily as possible. And it will be difficult as it is.