SGOTM 12 - Spooks

[WackenOpenAir]

If you guys feel uneasy about leaving Paris empty, we could keep a warrior and spear there. These could then be upgraded when needed. But that only works with money available.

On another note:
lets assume we have sanitation in 16 turns from now.
After that, we need to research for 60,800 more beakers.
If soon after sanitation, we can run 100% again and we have paris size 21+ with Newtons as well as some other cities over size 12, we should be at some 750 bpt or so. If we gradually grow this to 1250 for an average of 1000 bpt troughout the IA, we could finish the game in 61 turns after sanitation for 77 turns total from now.

For that to happen, we should reach the following milestones:
T16: Sanitation
T20: 750 bpt
T50: 1000 bpt
T75: 1250 bpt

Just a long term idea to keep in mind. We are currently investing a lot in the upkeep we pay. We should not keep investing for too long. It is useless to capture cities that we can't develop into good farms before the game is almost over. I don't think we should conquer more than Spain, Iroqs and Greece. That is however all in the future of course. This turnset will be to conquer these Spain and Iroqs.

Stopping conquest would allow us to cut the unit support, and we could maybe have some cities run wealth to pay for our infrastructure upkeep. After hospitals, i don't think we need to build anything but ToE and the UN. No hoover, no factories, no units. Nothing of that is needed.

 

[Paul#42]

good Job, Wacken, to provide us with a long term strategy again

I agree on the limited value of further expansion as you pointed out, especially in connection with the cost of a science farm you had outlined earlier.

I'm convinced our prospering rivals will allow us to keep our army at nearly the current size, we should of course replace MDI with tanks one day when our metropolis' engineers (and the warmongers among us) finally are getting bored...

One incredible small point about metropolis' size: Size 20 is sufficient to work all 21 tiles of a fat cross.
Not that we end up with a surplus of workers...

 

[killercane]

Building the UN will be tricky. Have we decided on using ToE for AT and Electronics and hoping for the free tech or doing it the safe way?

Of course we can have a second prebuild ready if things dont go our way, but Fission's cost is 11,200. This would be 9 turns to research @ expected capacity, probably 8 with a Paris UN prebuild switched over to the Computers science wonder. Since AT (8000) will take 7 or 8 turns I think it is just about a wash, and we only stand to benefit from hoping for the free tech.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Size 20 to work all tiles, and then 10-20 more citizens to be scientist

We should build no more mines around Paris. Just start irrigating the unworked tiles and for Orleans. We may get the hospital and / or newtons one turn earlier, but the cost will probably be bigger than the reward.
Orleans and Trontheim may not end up fully corrupt if we stop conquest as suggested. I think these towns can build some infrastructure, but keep them <7.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Building the UN will be tricky. Have we decided on using ToE for AT and Electronics and hoping for the free tech or doing it the safe way?

Of course we can have a second prebuild ready if things dont go our way, but Fission's cost is 11,200. This would be 9 turns to research @ expected capacity, probably 8 with a Paris UN prebuild switched over to the Computers science wonder. Since AT (8000) will take 7 or 8 turns I think it is just about a wash, and we only stand to benefit from hoping for the free tech.

I think we should just take AT and Elec. with ToE.
We don't need 2 prebuilds do we ?
If We don't get Fission, we can swich Paris to hoover dam for 800 shields, wasting its exces 200 shields, then move back to palace and have it build UN 9 turns later.

Electricity then RP should be our first goal in IA to double our worker speed. After that, we could do sci meth and ToE.
Sanitation - Electricity - Rep Parts - Sci Meth.
It does not really matter a lot when the ToE is ready, but the earlier we finish it, the earlier we have Paris ready for UN prebuilds. The earlier the prebuilds can start, the less production is needed, allowing for more irrigation.

Paris will have it's hospital ready in about T16. It will then have 60 turns to build both ToE and UN. that is 1600 shields total. We want a little reserve production in case we end up researching faster, so Paris should certainly have 30 spt for the rest of the game. Balance the worker jobs to have Paris produce around 30 spt.

 

[Abegweit]

Just a long term idea to keep in mind. We are currently investing a lot in the upkeep we pay. We should not keep investing for too long. It is useless to capture cities that we can't develop into good farms before the game is almost over.

Each captured town pays for the upkeep of five units. That's 15 bpt. We will have lots of workers. I don't think that we should stop until the army is pared down to size.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

It is still an investment, but we will see. It doesn't matter this turnset yet. I posted it to make clear that conquering until we have every non scientific AI is not the obvious path. Maybe we will conquer a little more, maybe not. If we disband our millitary units, that would help our science farms to get online faster, and we would have all our unit support just for workers.

 

[Abegweit]

OK. I've played halfway through my turns. Things are going well. We took Mecca without loss and got another army in the process. I doubt that either the Spanish or the Iros will be finished during my set but I expect to reduce them to OCCs. Next better player can take them out.

I stopped because I got a question. We are currently running 135 gpt in unit costs. The workers in Indugal are rapidly running out of things to do. Some, obviously, can move on to Spain but most will have nothing to do. It will soon be the same story in France. Paris is fully mined and irrigation is starting to spread to Orleans.

I would be favour of switching some builds to infra. In particular Orleans, Trondheim and Lisbon.

Spoiler :

Pre-turn 350 AD
1.9.0
Disband the warriors in Paris and Orleans
Chemistry to Hammy for 5gpt + 9g. He won’t take luxes.
Engineering to Hiawatha for 4gpt + 19g (why not?)
Switch Osaka to a Knight. There is no point to a court here.

[inter-turn]
Lots of American troop movement. I’m sending reinforcements.

Turn 1 360 AD
Cancel deals with Iros and declare war.
Chemistry to Alex for Alliance vs Iros, 12 gpt + 57g
Eng to English for Dyes
I can’t make much sense of CAII and science. It disagrees with the game.
Anyway… 4.6.0 on the slider

[inter-turn]
Banking does indeed come in. Metallurgy due in six or seven.
Bombay knight -> bank
Switch Thebes to bank
Turn 2 370 AD
Ten troops land on a hill north of Barcelona
Gift banking to pretty much everyone

[inter-turn]
Osman Ivory for 2gpt
Alex Ivory for 2gpt
Kyoto court -> harbour
Isabella demands we get off the hill (her territory; did Barcelona’s border expand or did I miss that ) We agree.
Because of gifts, the whole world starts the Sistine Chapel

Turn 3 380 AD
Isabella declares war on us Seems one of her spearmen somehow got trapped in our territory
4/4 MDI vs 4/4 spear -> 2/5 MDI
Form army and move back to hill

Battle for Mecca
Dromons take a HP off a pike
13/13 vs 4/4 pike -> 10/13 army
10/13 army vs 4/4 pike -> 5/14 army
5/5 MDI vs 3/4 pike -> 3/5 MDI and a leader! City is taken.

[inter-turn]
Gems to Osman for 4 gpt
Get the Pentagon message
Delhi knight -> bank
Teo Court -> bank

Turn 4 390 AD
Troops in Spain move towards Barcelona

Turn 5 400 AD
Troops continue to advance on Barcelona. More land. Bombardment reveals that there are at least 4 vet pikes in the city

 

[WackenOpenAir]

OK. I've played halfway through my turns. Things are going well. We took Mecca without loss and got another army in the process. I doubt that either the Spanish or the Iros will be finished during my set but I expect to reduce them to OCCs. Next better player can take them out.

I stopped because I got a question. We are currently running 135 gpt in unit costs. The workers in Indugal are rapidly running out of things to do. Some, obviously, can move on to Spain but most will have nothing to do. It will soon be the same story in France. Paris is fully mined and irrigation is starting to spread to Orleans.

I would be favour of switching some builds to infra. In particular Orleans, Trondheim and Lisbon.

Trontheim and Orleans should build infra. That was mentioned already, just keep them <7 while doing so.

There is still 3 totally unworked tiles in Paris' radius.

Lisbon is making slaves, that is good. Both Lisbon, Oporto, Mecca and Medina should keep building workers. Try to keep the worker building farms at a size where they get 5fpt.

If you upgrade a boat, it can transport full armies.

I think we should either kill the spanish units in the open field first, or gift the cities we conquer to a 3th party again. Gifting sounds painfull when we really need the unit support.

I see the iroqs are doing a good job.

Medina could pop rush 6 population into a Colosseum and then change the build into a bank. It would then have to wait a boring 20 turns after wich it can pop rush a last citizen for a hospital. This would provide extra unit support. The other option would be to build workers for the comming 20 turns, but it doesn't have any production and no workers are nearby to do forest plant+chops.

If the workers have nothing to do, they will soon have new jobs in spain.
Keep Lisbon and Oporto size 3-4 where they can have 5fpt and provide them a forest chop every 4 turns for a worker.

4 turns from now, we can make railroads and our workers have plenty work to do everywhere.

You could also swich the knight build in Teoti to a Bank and start irrigating there to slow down the bank build enough to be ready when we need it.

 

[Abegweit]

@Wacken Thank you for the comments. I had not really understood how close we are to rails. Paris has been optimised to get Newtons ASAP. After that it needs it needs to be completely irrigated and railed and to Grow! Grow! Grow! Therefore Trondheim and Orleans need to continue to pump out workers.

 

[Andronicus]

Good progress

There is a small amount of money avail from the AI at present
Ottomen will give 18gpt + 11g for chem
Carthage will give 103g for Astro
Incans will give 2gpt +2g for 2 lux

This may allow us to research metallurgy in 3 more turns with some MM
eg
Con can work 2 coast in place of mgrass and mBG, shields on growth give 1 turn workers. By irrigating a couple of ivory tiles these can be worked for even more commerce.
We could get some cash and save expenses selling a number of raxes where we dont expect to building military for a while (eg Bombay, Oporto, Delhi, ? others) also ? sell market in Lisbon.
Killing off some of our troops taking Spanish and Iroquois cities should also help costs. Perhaps 10 of the 25 units in Oporto and outside Barcelona could be "sacrificed" saving another 30gpt in unit costs (the army and 8 other units outside Barcelona still have 1 movement - perhaps an attempt on Barcelona this turn - if succeeds -> more unit support, if not, less support costs).

We already have 9 workers in ex Paris (plus slaves) so will be ready to immed add in when Paris builds its hospital. Orleans needs a lib to expand to use its other tiles. ? lib in Lisbon so it can use all the grass tiles (wont need till later admittedly, but if we want to take a break from workers there..)

One final thought
Greece is down to 1 city with Russia retaking St P and Iroquois capturing Athens. If we wish to donate them a safe haven my suggestion would be Oporto
pros
- keeps Greece in game for their scientific freebie (and UN vote)
- reduces corruption in Orleans, Trondheim (although these will soon get worse with Spanish aquisitions)
cons
- lose the unit support from Oporto
- lose the 6 scientists per turn after rail and irr grass (req lib)

 

[Paul#42]

Spoiler :

Pre-turn 350 AD
1.9.0
[inter-turn]
Lots of American troop movement. I&#8217;m sending reinforcements.

Spoiler :

Now this scares my a bit. I don't like bored expansionists on my island with a total of one spear and one MDI around...

Turn 1 360 AD
I can&#8217;t make much sense of CAII and science. It disagrees with the game.
Anyway&#8230; 4.6.0 on the slider

It does not calculate the unit support properly this game (different settings?) and it has some small rounding errors (<10bpt). That's why I stayed on the save side with 10 beakers overrun in my calculation.

Turn 2 370 AD
Gift banking to pretty much everyone

You're so kind
edit: Should we gift currency to Celts and Romans to encourage them to build markets to milk them for some gpt or would they only abuse it for unit upkeep to finally invade us?

Isabella demands we get off the hill (her territory; did Barcelona&#8217;s border expand or did I miss that ) We agree.

Turn 3 380 AD
Isabella declares war on us Seems one of her spearmen somehow got trapped in our territory

tit for tat - don't mess with human players...

I think we should either kill the spanish units in the open field first, or gift the cities we conquer to a 3th party again. Gifting sounds painfull when we really need the unit support.

I see the iroqs are doing a good job.

I'd love to gift P'yongang to Alex but I'm not sure he'll live long enough...

Medina could pop rush 6 population into a Colosseum and then change the build into a bank. It would then have to wait a boring 20 turns after wich it can pop rush a last citizen for a hospital. This would provide extra unit support.

We could still agree on sacrificing another pop to get it quicker.

If the workers have nothing to do, they will soon have new jobs in spain.
Keep Lisbon and Oporto size 3-4 where they can have 5fpt and provide them a forest chop every 4 turns for a worker.

We should first squeeze out the one slave each of them still bears.

You could also swich the knight build in Teoti to a Bank and start irrigating there to slow down the bank build enough to be ready when we need it.

Yep, no more knights.

We could get some cash and save expenses selling a number of raxes where we dont expect to building military for a while (eg Bombay, Oporto, Delhi, ? others) also ?

Next units we should build are tanks and they might well be regular.

sell market in Lisbon.

Lisbon will be a metropolis one day...

Killing off some of our troops taking Spanish and Iroquois cities should also help costs. Perhaps 10 of the 25 units in Oporto and outside Barcelona could be "sacrificed" saving another 30gpt in unit costs (the army and 8 other units outside Barcelona still have 1 movement - perhaps an attempt on Barcelona this turn - if succeeds -> more unit support, if not, less support costs).

You're so cynical...

One final thought
Greece is down to 1 city with Russia retaking St P and Iroquois capturing Athens. If we wish to donate them a safe haven my suggestion would be Oporto

Oporto or rather Barcelona - or we gamble and wait for P'yonyang?

 

[killercane]

If we gift the Greeks some city that is reachable by others, they will tell of our Russian misdeeds, so we may want to keep them down south until after the age change. Lets squeeze out every bit of gold and get metals in asap. It will be interesting to see if we can parlay another free tech at the age change.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Would the Iroqs need another oponent ?

Maybe ally america against someone. Doesn't matter who, but i guess it would reduce the chance of being attacked by them.

 

[Paul#42]

Good points about Greeks and Americans.

I can't wait to reach the IA and see what techs we can get

Three turns to ToG Andro calculated?

 

[Abegweit]

OK. We&#8217;ve reached the Age Change and it&#8217;s time to discuss it. All the scientifics will take our money except Babylon and, of course, Russia. Should we start a war with Russia and drag in the Babs or should we not? I find this to be a close question. For the record, there are six other scientifics.

I&#8217;d also like to propose gifting Barcelona to Alex. I can&#8217;t see how we can hold it with 15 Spanish troops at the door. Will they meet the Koreans then? I think not. I'm thinking we may want to repeat this with Madrid and then sweep back over Alex once Izzy is gone.

Finally, I think that one of the caravels in France should be disbanded (one just arrived with reinforcements from Kyoto).

Spoiler :

Turn 5 400 AD
Lotsa good suggestions on the thread
Chem -> Osman for 18 gpt + 11g
Eng -> Carthage for 103g
Invention -> Incas for 2gpt + 2g
Whip Medina for a Court then a Coliseum and switch to a Bank
Osaka -> Bank
Sell several barracks
After some thought, I decide to ally Americans against Mongols

[inter-turn]
Kyoto harbour -> bank
Teno court -> harbour

Turn 6 410 AD
Sell Medina&#8217;s barracks. Aside from the free ones, only Kyoto has one now.

Battle for Barcelona
Dromons take three HP
12/12 Army vs 4/4 pike -> 12/12 army
12/12 Army vs 4/4 pike -> 12/13 Army
4/4 Knight vs 3/4 pike -> 3/4 pike and retreat
4/4 Knight vs 3/4 pike -> 2/4 Knight
4/4 Knight vs 3/4 pike -> 1/4 Pike
5/5* MDI vs 3/4 pike -> 2/4 Pike
5/5 MDI vs 2/4 pike -> 2/5 MDI
5/5 MDI vs 1/4 pike -> 4/5 MDI and the city is taken [8-2]

Outside the city
4/4 MDI vs 4/4 pike -> 2/5 MDI
6/6 AC vs 3/3 spear -> 6/6 AC
5/5 AC vs 3/3 spear -> 5/5 AC
4/4 MDI vs 3/3 MDI -> 1/3 MDI
5/5 AC vs 3/3 MDI -> 5/5 AC
4/4 Knight vs 1/4 MDI -> 2/4 Knight [12-3]

[inter-turn]
Abe asks for a ROP. I turn it down
Isabella asks for peace. I refuse.
So she moves fifteen troops towards Barcelona.

Turn 7 420 AD
Nothing significant yet

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Things look pretty good.

Oporto has the following options:
-No buildings, support 4 specialist at size 7. (costs nothing)
-PopRush Lib(2), support 4 specialists at size 8. (costs 2 pop)
-Rush lib not by pop, support 6 specialists at size 11. (costs worker cuts or unit disbands)
-PopRush Lib+market(7), support 6 specialists at size 11. (cost 7 pop)

7 pop is a lot, it would be nice if we could get a lib there without pop rushing. No worries if that takes 20 turns.


Lisbon has 13 grassland tiles, If it only pop rushes a hospital, it will have enough tiles to use up all remaining happyness. No Library is needed. Only if we can add a significant amount of happyness in the future (or just over time when whip unhappyness decreases) the library can be added.


Medina has 9 grassland tiles, It has used 8 on whipping and thus maxes out at 17 without further help. It can support 9 scientists at size 17. We probably want to pop rush one more guy into the hospital, so we would have only 8 scientists. It could support 10 with more help. This fits pretty well. The 10th scientist will come later.


Mecca has 6 grass and 4 plains. Without hospital, it can support 6 scientists at size 11.
With a pop rushed hospital, it will have used 10 and maxes out at 15. This would enable it to support 7 scientists at size 13 or 8 at size 16 with extra happyness.
I don't think there is a hurry in pop rushing a hospital here.


Trontheim is half corrupt, but it has no grassland either. That sucks. In the end, we want both scientists and some commerce there. It can soon start building usefull things and get a few railroads.


Orleans should also soon start building infrastructure. It will grow very rapidly. It needs a lot though, market, lib and hospital. With some growth we can probably keep it above 5spt even with growing corruption. We can build much of this without rushing. A courthouse could be interesting here as well.


Were we at war with the Mongols already ?
They can land units pretty much everywhere and we don't have any defences. Now the Mongols scare me a little. I expected an alliance against one of the southern nations like Iroqs or russia.


Before deciding on how to do the tech thing with our russia reputation problem, please look more carefull at how they want to take our gpt. If they do not pay more than 15 gold per 1 gpt, our deals are damaged and our gpt is valued too low to be able to get it back.
Diplomacy is not my department though, so i'll leave it this part to you guys

It may be nice to capture Bach's some day for some extra happiness. Paris should have less irrigation than i stated earlier. It can't grow past 25 with just the market for happiness. It has food for like being size 40. It should keep it's production and probably build a temple and cathedral after the hospital, we can then also look for capturing Sistines.

In the next turnsets, we need to be carefull where to use the whip. Happiness is limited.
We also should be carefull not to railroad more tiles than the city can use with it's available happiness. I will go into more detail about all this later of course, for now, just keep in mind the vital things:
-not wasting worker turns, don't do jobs that will turn out unneeded. Worker jobs are very expensive.
-make as much population as possible. more pop = more research.
-think well before using the whip. Whipping useless things is costly.

 

[Abegweit]

Were we at war with the Mongols already ?
They can land units pretty much everywhere and we don't have any defences. Now the Mongols scare me a little. I expected an alliance against one of the southern nations like Iroqs or russia.

Americans only know four nations so the choices were limited. I would, of course, have preferred someone like the Iros. We could bring the Babs or Persians into the war to keep them preoccupied.

Before deciding on how to do the tech thing with our russia reputation problem, please look more carefull at how they want to take our gpt. If they do not pay more than 15 gold per 1 gpt, our deals are damaged and our gpt is valued too low to be able to get it back.
Diplomacy is not my department though, so i'll leave it this part to you guys

I'm pretty sure that none of these civs know the Russians. There is remarkably little contact from one island to the next. I'm no diplomacy expert either but I'll try to make it work. It's hard to make the test you suggest since no one has as much as 15 gold

 

[WackenOpenAir]

When we tested earlier, there were civ's who did not pay the full sum.
They don't have to know russia, the stories can also spread indirectly.
Sure, bring in someone else against the Mongols. Still, we need some defences. I see we have 5 units at paris now, maybe bring one to Orleans instead and maybe we need 1 or 2 more units on the Japtec island. I think we can transport 2 back from Portugal.

 

[Abegweit]

Opporto has a fair amount of productive power (it's only 37% corrupt) and could easily build its own infra. Given the watery location, it should be quite useful as a regular city. At size 12, it should make 24 bpt with a lib and 36 with a uni (working the two gold, the bg, the horse and eight coast). That's better than it could ever be as a science farm.

In the same vein, it might be better to give Lisbon a court instead of anything else.