SGOTM 12 - Spooks

[WackenOpenAir]

Could you please wait some more time ?

We should also properly find out when to start all the hospitals.

We should fight either greece or iroqs, both offer gpt.
We have 10 turns of gpt to go from greece.
If we only receive gpt, we can still go to war without problems right ?

Libs only indeed, I somehow thought they both cost 2 to whip.
The towns should only be smaller than 6 temporarilly, they should end up as big as possible. So courthouses are ok indeed. However, they are not worth whipping, so we can only have them in cities that can build them.
Also, workers have priority.

We will have a gold deficit for a while to come. Therefore, it has no use sacrificing anything to gain a turn on a tech. Whatever you gain or lose on one tech will be made equal later. To avoid overrun in the GA end turn, we could even turn down science and build gold so that after the uncertain turn, we can spend that gold running 100% science for a while. This allows us to finetune the last turn of banking and not have any overrun.

 

[Paul#42]

Get the money while you can. We could trade for luxes which would make him less likely to want to back out.

Okay.

Any city making ten commerce (maybe less, I'm not sure of the exact line) will generate two beakers outright and the lib will add a third. If it's making less than that it is probably best kept small for unit support. In this case, it doesn't need border expansion.

correct. 10 was the magic number for both shields and commerce.

I musta missed Andro's post. I really don't see the point in giving up a productive city, though.

I'd also rather give another unproductive city (Lisbon?)... I liked the idea to keep Alex as a poor friend while taking his fertile lands...
Maybe a spanish town? He would also be safer there from American imperialism...

Take out Isa and Hia. K. My thought is to gift all the scientifics except Cathy into the next age and get their techs by whatever means possible. Agreed on that?

Not necessarily all SCI civs, in the right order only till they got all techs and we can buy them. Start with Sumeria (still lacking Monarchy and Chivalry) and the other starting with the backward who at least miss some optional techs and ending up with Babs and Russia.

We should fight either greece or iroqs, both offer gpt.
We have 10 turns of gpt to go from greece.
If we only receive gpt, we can still go to war without problems right ?

right. Greece are more powerful economically than Iros.

 

[Abegweit]

I'd also rather give another unproductive city (Lisbon?)... I liked the idea to keep Alex as a poor friend while taking his fertile lands...
Maybe a spanish town? He would also be safer there from American imperialism...

This is a good idea but not now. As for Spanish towns? No. They will be very good after electricity.

Not necessarily all SCI civs, in the right order only till they got all techs and we can buy them. Start with Sumeria (still lacking Monarchy and Chivalry) and the other starting with the backward who at least miss some optional techs and ending up with Babs and Russia.

True except that we can't do anything with the Russians. We should be at war with them at the Age change.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

And please don't wait too much for the greeks to be captured. It sounds like a nice plan, but don't be too sure the greeks are gonna be ran over anytime soon. Don't go waiting for that to happen. If it happens, thats nice, if it doesn't, just capture them.

 

[killercane]

We will have a gold deficit for a while to come. Therefore, it has no use sacrificing anything to gain a turn on a tech. Whatever you gain or lose on one tech will be made equal later. To avoid overrun in the GA end turn, we could even turn down science and build gold so that after the uncertain turn, we can spend that gold running 100% science for a while. This allows us to finetune the last turn of banking and not have any overrun.

We have 997 beakers remaining on Banking at 589 per. After golden age ends next turn we will be at about 450. So we should still get it in 4 unless the Golden Age bug thing gets us. Are there any civs that can logistically do a handy golden age? Sumeria? Inca and Maya?

How is our rep for the age change?

 

[Abegweit]

Back to the question of hospitals.

I would guess that we are doing roughly 400 bpt ATM. That would mean 2 turns for banking, 6 for metallurgy and 9 for sanitation. Seventeen total.

Our workers will be busy railroading and irrigating (particularly true if we draw Electricity) and will not be ready to be merged anytime soon. I don't think that Hospitals are a high priority.

The one exception is Paris. After Newtons is finished, this city will be generating over half of our science. It needs to grow up to the full 21 tiles ASAP. Every tile needs a road. That's actually more important than mines or irrigation. As an illustration, switching currently from the forest to the IP gives us six more beakers and a coin.

 

[Abegweit]

How is our rep for the age change?

We were bad to the Russians. See Post 997 for more details.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

KC, 5 turns for banking should be considered to reduce overflow. Of course we can get it in 4, i don't doubt that at all. It will however cause overflow, so 5 turns may be better.

The hospitals i am willing to calculate some. They do not all have the same priority. I would calculate it all, but that would be tomorrow. I can then calculate the priority of railroads in different areas and the value of worker joining and see what we should do and when.

 

[killercane]

We were bad to the Russians. See Post 997 for more details.

I know. I wanted to know if it had spread elsewhere yet. Your post clears that up, thanks. Dont know how I missed that .

KC, 5 turns for banking should be considered to reduce overflow. Of course we can get it in 4, i don't doubt that at all. It will however cause overflow, so 5 turns may be better.

Certainly. But the consideration is gold so if we need it so badly, we should consider starting any golden ages we can. Sumeria and Inca I dont think have had theirs and maybe others?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Good plan, you guys make plans for AI golden ages, i'll think about the hospitals tomorrow

 

[Paul#42]

CA2 should help to calculate our economy at the end of our GA quite exactly if you use the "Golden Age" switch and the lux slider on the economy tab. I wont trust it to the last beaker (I suspect it to have a rounding error) though and it does not calculate the unit costs at all...

If we do the three deals Abegweit suggested for combined 22gpt we could do 90% in this turn @-41gpt. 662 + 9 beakers. Leaves 326 for the 1st post-GA-turn, at 60% CA2 counts 336 beakers at 60% at +149 gpt (ignoring ~120gpt for unit upkeep). So I'd suggest to go for 90% and 60% on the next two turns to get banking in two.

If we could spare that turn on banking and quickly spread it to the "G8", we would both give them something useful to build and later get more gpt from them...

 

[killercane]

Yes I think definitely we should get it in 4. Our horrendous unit costs are short term anyway and we never know when we can scrounge more gold.

We have quite a few units in Portugal-Spainland. Should we DOW on them and ally the Koreans? Or just DOW on them straight up since Korea is down to one city? I assume the latter but I am worried about the landing.

And starting the Inca golden age leaves our capital a bit unprotected. If we could get a few troops there before to handle landings it would be great.

Can some cities disband units for improvements like Kyoto?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I don't think we should use units for defence yet. That costs us more than the gpt we will get from the AI in GA. If we cannot make safe wars, we should not make wars at all.

I am very sure that doing banking in 5 will not cost us anything. If you want use CA2 to do it in 4 and you are sure we won't get a significant overshoot, go ahead.

Disbanding units is also not yet on our agenda i think.

In the next few hours, i will be doing some more calculations on hospitals.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Sanitation: 3600
Metallurgy: 2560
Banking: 997
Total: 7157
That should take about 16 turns.

Adding them to cities, they are worth (bpt):
Paris: 12
Const, Teoti, Osaka: 4
Kyoto, Teno, Thebes, Delhi, Bombay: 3
A railroaded farm: 1.5

Railroading and irrigating 1 grassland tile makes possible 1 scientist.
It takes 10 turns to do this work and a bunch of turns (40) to grow the needed population for the scientist.

The cost of using a worker do this is 10 turns of upkeep (30g = ~50b) After the 40 turns to grow the population, it will take about 16 turns to pay back the investment. The worker not being inside a city adds another 40 beakers maximum to the investment cost. This would bring the payback time to about 70 turns total. This is quite a long while. The game is gonna last that long though, so it is worthy to railroad, but it doesn't look very good.

Using slaves instead of normal workers, we can remove the upkeep cost (~50b), but the cost of not being in a city (max 40b) is doubled. This makes slaves slightly better for railroading than normal workers, and normal workers should be joined in the cities first.

Paris, Const, Teoti, Osaka should have their hospitals ready when they can.
Kyoto, Teno, Thebes, Delhi, Bombay could have their hospitals a little later.
Bank prebuilds can be used.

Hospitals in Teoti and Osaka should be started asap.
Hospitals in Paris and Const have to be started in the next tunset.
Hospitals in all other core towns can be started after their current build, but delaying some a bit is not a big problem. It is however certainly not a goal. If we have many tiles irrigated by then, they can start growing right away even without workers to join.
Kyoto and Teno need a harbor.

Our workers should start irrigating tiles so that they can concentrate on railroading when that is available. Core towns should be irrigated first since commerce is more important than scientists.
-We must first irrigate in our core where it does not hurt production (kyoto swamps, new bombay tiles)
-Then in our core where the production is least needed. (some Teno tiles)
We should certainly not be irrigating any plains.
Meanwhile of course we make more workers trough forest plant and chops.

Cities around paris will not be our core, they dont have any priority on worker tasks, but they can build courthouses that will make them produce some extra science later.

All farms should have a library, market and aquaduct and hospitals where possible. If anywhere we can build at least part of these, we should so. If not, we need to pop rush these. We should not be pop rushing anything else. We need all the happiness for poprushing these needed things.

Sorry, i would have liked to come with more impressive things, but this is all i can produce now

 

[killercane]

Well there are 3 ACs there at Kyoto who are playing defense now. We dont quite have the ships to move them unless we take them south with that one transport. Or they can be disbanded into the courthouse or go play defense at the capital for a war involving Inca. There are 2 MDI @ Thebes and the one AC at Tenoch that can be disbanded unless we want that extra protection from a sneak attack which would be disastrous.

I guess the library @ Medina can be poprushed next turn.

 

[Abegweit]

It seems that we are approaching a plan. Deals with Greeks and Babs. War with Spain. I agree with Wacken's build suggestions. Also with KC's comments above re: troops and Medina.

Outstanding questions:

1) do we take the Iro deal or attack them? I am for war. They need to die.
2) do we bring the Koreans into the Spanish war? I don't see much reason and would hate to see them take a town.
3) do we bring the Babs into war with the Ruskies in prep for the Age Change? I'm for this but there are obvious downsides.
4) assuming war vs iros, do we bring anyone in? I would vote for Greeks.
5) should we spread banking? I would say it can't hurt although I have doubts about how much it will help. So do it.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

1) do we take the Iro deal or attack them? I am for war. They need to die.
2) do we bring the Koreans into the Spanish war? I don't see much reason and would hate to see them take a town.
3) do we bring the Babs into war with the Ruskies in prep for the Age Change? I'm for this but there are obvious downsides.
4) assuming war vs iros, do we bring anyone in? I would vote for Greeks.
5) should we spread banking? I would say it can't hurt although I have doubts about how much it will help. So do it.

1: Attack
2: I think not.
3: why not do that last turn before the age change. Lets play till there and decide then.
4: Greeks yes. Hope greeks lose. If they don't lose, they are next.
5: sure why not.


The goal we are working for is many size 21+ cities and science farms. This needs population and worker jobs. These are the limiting factor in the game. Workers are being very expensive, costing upkeep and, in the future missing their potential inside cities. Wasting as little worker turns as possible is very important. No more mines should be build anywhere, only roading, irrigating and forest shopping.

Troops can be brought to the front. There are boats available. The southern island could sure use some backup from our core. If anything is to be disbanded, its the warriors and spear in France.

 

[Abegweit]

OK. Then we are agreed. I should have mentioned the point about not bringing in the Babs until the last minute. This is especially true because the AI loves to break deals. Same thing goes for everyone who doesn't know Cathy. Decide at the last minute.

Also agreed that saving money is more important than getting banking in 2 turns.

I would like to play my turns tomorrow. I will certainly stop at the Age Change, especially if Cathy meets new people. If something significant happens before that, I will stop sooner.

If there are no objections between now and then, I will start tomorrow aft EDT.

Edit: I plan to disband the useless troops in France. Be aware.

 

[Paul#42]

If anything is to be disbanded, its the warriors and spear in France.

I'd like to keep the spear. Not sure if a completely empty wonder-stuffed metropolis is too attracting to enivious bored neighbours.

1) yes.
2) no, I'd hate to see OCC Korea going down against Spain.
3) Discuss in the final turn of this age.
4) yes, Greeks have to suffer.
5) defintely spread it, I'd even gift it to the rich...

Also agreed that saving money is more important than getting banking in 2 turns.

Why not try to get it in two (without wasting >10g)? I'd like to waste a turn on research as late as possible, you never know what deals open up the next turn. Especially if banking is spread to the economically strong civs.

Edit: I plan to disband the useless troops in France. Be aware.

You mean, if Abe attacks, those two warriors won't help us? Guess you are right. No chance to upgrade them soon - but could we need them to quell resistance somewhere?
I think you are right to disband them.

 

[killercane]

I agree with Paul on Banking. There is no reason to delay the research when we can calculate the wastage to a low number. Better to do that and turn research off for a turn in a pinch.