SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, I have found a Granary -> Lighthouse path that puts us 6 Food (8 Food with the help of Stone City) ahead of the current plan. In exchange, we are 21 Hammers behind the current plan, meaning that we don't yet have a Warrior for Pig City.

This fact is probably not a huge problem, since at City Sizes 6 and 7, we will only have Military Police Unhappiness from 2 population points. Combined with 1 Unhappiness from Whipping anger still lingering around, that means that under Representation, we can be Happy at City Size 7 without a Warrior defender.

So, there would only be 1 turn lost to not having a Warrior defender on Turn 141 (the turn before The Pyramids are scheduled to be completed).

Now, if we look very carefully, we can see that on Turn 140, Stone City will have 25 Hammers in a Trireme (assuming that we don't change the build order in that City). Instead of a Trireme, we can build a Warrior defender for Pig City, thus giving us +2 Food on Turn 141 in Pig City, getting us a whole 8 Food ahead of the current plan in Pig City, while still giving us a Warrior defender there so that we won't have to worry about having to work Pig City's DesH Mine prior to arriving at City Size 8 in order to complete a Military Police Warrior there.


Of course, Trireme 2 gets massively delayed this way, but with a Warrior still coming from Stone City for Copper Island, we free up the Galley to "play chicken" and try to lure away any Barb Galley that comes our way, should our lone Trireme 1 be unavailable to fight off the Barb Galley.


Yes, overall, gaining 8 Food at a cost of 21 Hammers doesn't sound amazing, but I didn't calculate the Commerce difference... I have the numbers for Commerce for this runthrough but not for the original runthrough, so if we really care, I can get the Commerce numbers for the original runthrough and compare. But, I don't think that it really matters: we just want to grow our Specialist-hiring Cities as much as possible at this stage, so that we can get to work on generating Great People as soon as possible, and really the gain of +1 Great Person is far more than the loss of Hammers valued at the price of 1 Warrior.


I also have a few more Granary-first scenarios in Pig City that I'd like to try out, but my thinking is that this approach will almost certainly mean that we'll want the extra production from Stone City, which, given the results that we saw from Pig City, will probably best come from a Lighthouse -> Granary build in Stone City, as opposed to the opposite (since Lighthouse first seems to provide more Hammers overall--well, at least it did for Pig City--this fact may or may not carry-over to Stone City). Thus, since we need those Hammers coming out of Stone City, I doubt that I'll run Granary -> Lighthouse tests for Stone City (it has less of a chance to benefit, what with all of its growth squares being Coastal), but we'll see if I can get the time to do so.

Growth in Stone City isn't all that important, anyway, since we won't be hiring Specialists there (at least not for the purposes of generaing a Great Person).

 

[shyuhe]

I didn't look at worker turns but do we have enough worker turns to get a quarry and mine up in time for stone city? If so, then I'm good with emphasizing food in pigs and hammers in stone. It makes more sense that way anyways.

Also, 8 food in a granary city is about a third of a growth bar on epic speed or about 15 whip hammers. So it's not that bad of a trade-off from a hammer perspective either.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Yes, I have to delay Roading the Grassland Pig (not delaying the Pasturing of it, just delaying the Roading of it), but in so doing, I can get the Grassland Hills Mine up in time.

Since we're currently receiving a Pig Resource in trade, we have no rush on connecting-up our own Pig.


So far, I have run 14 different Granary -> Lighthouse approaches in Pig City (yes, there are that many of them) using a 2-pop-the-Granary approach and optionally self-build or 1-pop-whip the Lighthouse. Out of those 14, I have a "top pick" and that top pick just happens to match the scenario that I listed above (although I found a way to get +4 Commerce and identical Food and Hammer levels to the scenario listed above).


Next will be trying things along LC's suggestion--1-pop-whipping the Granary.

Finally, I'll try a couple of more formalized Lighthouse -> Granary approaches just to give it a proper comparison's sake.

Hopefully, I'll be able to beat the +8 Food of the above scenario, but if not, at least we'll know that we have as good of a growth plan as possible in Pig City, which is what we're really after here.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, I am pretty confident that 1-pop-whipping the Granary then 1-pop-whipping a Lighthouse cannot beat 2-pop-whipping a Granary followed by manually building a Lighthouse.

I don't see how 1-pop-whipping a Granray then manually building a Lighthouse would even work, since at Size 4 we'd want to be working 3 Coast squares and at Size 5 we'd want to be working 4 Coast squares. The lack of a Lighthouse is too huge of a cost, so whipping it beats not whipping it in this scenario (a scenario where there are virtually no overflow Hammers from a Granary since we try to 1-pop-whip the Granary as soon as possible at 45 Hammers).

So, having eliminated 1-pop-whipping of a Granary in Pig City (regardless of whether or not the Lighthouse then gets whipped), I will now move onto the other remaining possibilities.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Oddly enough, whipping reduces population points. So, if we pick our "relatively arbitrary" cut-off date of Turn 142, when The Pyramids are planned to be completed, then manually building a Lighthouse followed by starting on any other build item (such as a Granary), thus doing no whipping at all, then this scenario comes out ahead of our currently-leading scenario!!!

Of course, we don't care about an arbitrary cut-off date. So, what date do we care about? Well, the City can stagnate at 5 Specialists hired while working the GPig + Magical Fish, so "Size 7" should be our target City Size, given that the sooner that we can hire 5 Specialists, the sooner that we can start work on our Great People.


Thus, if we play out the "whip nothing by manually-completing the Lighthouse" scenario, we actually TIE our currently-leading scenario in the date that they arrive at City Size 7 in Pig City, which is Turn 147 if you count 1 turn of Anarchy for Representation (but not counting any other turns of Anarchy). So, that's only 4 turns of growth after having completed The Pyramids, which is not too bad, at all--and the date where no buildings were whipped will probably closely approximate earlier playthroughts by mdy and LC where they were just going quickly in order to get relative major dates planned out, to see if going for The Pyramids was at all feasible.

Of course, our currently-leading scenario would be ahead by an entire Granary in terms of Hammers and would be up a nearly-half-full Foodbox, so our currently-leading scenario is still the leader.


When I looked at other "manually-build the Lighthouse first" scenarios, where we follow-up by whipping the Granary, these other scenarios came up as pretty inferior choices.


Manually building the Granary and then manually building the Lighthouse doesn't make much sense, since it would take too long to manually build the Granary this way while we would only have two Food-based squares that would provide more than 1 Food each (Coasts without a Lighthouse only give 1 Food and we don't even have a Grassland square in Pig City), so that option is out.


As far as I can see, that only leaves trying to optimize the original approach of whipping a Lighthouse followed by doing something with the Granary (manually-building it, 1-pop-whipping it, or 2-pop-whipping it are all possibilities), to see if any of these options can beat the currently-leading scenario of 2-pop-whipping the Granary at a certain point followed by manually-building the Lighthouse with mostly overflow Hammers.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I'm done with Pig City, but we do have a decision to make.

For example, at a cost of a certain amount of Hammers and Commerce, we can grow the City to City Size 7 one turn sooner.

If the goal is to hire 5 Scientists as soon as we reach City Size 7, then we can do so on Turn 147, 395 BC (plus Anarchy turns for each of Confucianism, Pacifism, and Caste System), meaning that the date will really be 150, 350 BC.

However, there is a reasonably-compelling case to consider the next-best alternative, as the next-best alternative only grows 1 turn slower but gets us more Hammers and more Commerce.

In fact, if we wanted to grow to Size 8, such that we'd hire 6 Scientists at a Food deficit for a while, then both scenarios would have us growing to Size 8 at the same time. The difference being that the faster-growing scenario would allow us to hire 6 Scientists for 4 additional turns (+8 Food at a cost of 2 Food per turn = 4 turns).


So, what do the final numbers look like?
Scenario I) More Food
2-pop-whips a Granary
Manually completes a Lighthouse
+8 Food
Has the ability to hire 5 Scientists 1 turn sooner
If we wait 3 more turns, we can grow to Size 8 with 34 Food in the Foodbox and then can hire 6 Scientists for 17 turns before our Foodbox would become empty and we'd have to go down to hiring 5 Scientists

Scenario J) More of Other Things
1-pop-whips a Lighthouse
1-pop-whips a Granary using overflow Hammers from the Lighthouse
+ 21 Hammers (which means that it builds itself a Warrior and Stone City can put 22 more Hammers towards Trireme 2 instead of requiring Stone City to build a Warrior for Pig City)
+ 10 Commerce (not a major factor but it is still a factor)
Arrives at Size 8 on the same turn as Scenario I), which is Turn 153, 305 BC, once you factor in the 4 turns' worth of Anarchy, with 8 less Food in the Foodbox (26 Food), meaning that we could hire 6 Scientists for 13 turns before our Foodbox would become empty and we'd have to go down to hiring 5 Scientists


So, I'm afraid that in order to make a properly-informed decision, we need to know more about the Great Person Generation Plan.

In particular, will we gain anything at all by growing Pig City to Size 8 so that we will have some turns where we can hire 6 Scientists? Well, on paper, the answer is "maybe," in that in Scenario I), we will have 3 turns where we aren't hiring any Scientists (missing out on 15 Scientist turns) in exchange for getting 17 turns where we have 6 Scientitsts hired. So, yes, there is a gain in Scenario I) by actually waiting to grow to Size 8, as long as whoever runs that turnset is careful not to accidentally starve the City down when the City runs out of Food in its Foodbox (we can have 0 Food but not -1 or less Food).

For Scenario J), "losing" 15 Scientist turns in order to gain 13 Scientist turns by waiting to grow to Size 8 doesn't really look like it's great, but it's pretty close, and we also get +21 Hammers and +10 Commerce.


Now, here are some wrenches to throw into the mix:
a) If we want to generate a Great Person elsewhere, then growing to Size 8 in Pig City while another City is generating a Great Person can be helpful, as then Pig City can focus on getting a later Great Person, while if we "race" to get a Great Person in Pig City, we may or may not end up beating a City that we shouldn't beat

b) While growing to Size 8 with Scenario J) does give us 2 less Scientist turns (12 less Flasks and 12 less GPP), it gives us 21 Hammers and 10 Commerce. Our empire is production-poor and those 21 Hammers could mean that 22 Hammers won't have to be diverted from our Trireme #2 in Stone City, while the Flasks versus Commerce roughly equate to each other. The question then becomes: how important are those extra 12 GPP--if they will make the difference between getting a Great Person or not, then we definitely want to go with Scenario I), but if they would just be "extra" GPP, then we can seriously consider going for Scenario J), particularly since it gets us additional production in a production-poor empire.


I currently have NO CLUE what our Great Person Generation Order is planned to be.

We will definitely have Paris, Gold City, and Pig City each trying to generate a Great Person after Gold City produces the Great Scientist for Philosophy.

It is possible that we may even want one or two of these Cities to try and produce multiple Great People.

Then, there is the whole "shall we risk getting a Great Prophet in Marble City" and try for another Great Person there? If not, should we at least hire Specialists (but not enough to generate a Great Person) so that we can take advantage of 6 Flasks per Scientist in favour of 2-Food-2-Commerce Coasts? Or will that extra Food be more valuable in terms of being able to be converted into production once we revert back into Slavery? We don't really need to decide whether to run Specialists or not in Marble City if we aren't aiming to generate a Great Person there, but if we are aiming to generate one there, then the timing of generating a Great Pereson here versus other Cities is a relevant issue.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I really have no interest in figuring out the Great Person Generation Plan. I mean, I can't plan out the whole game by myself and I think that I'm already up to my limit with this current turnset. So, hopefully someone will pick up the ball with an appropriate spreadsheet.

What I can say is that as of Turn 142, 470 BC, the date that we plan to complete The Pyramids without having "spent" any turns of Anarchy:
- Paris will have 32/300 GPP with a 100% chance of getting a Great Engineer
- Marble City will have 76/300 GPP with a 100% chance of getting a Great Prophet
- Each of those two Cities will passively gain 2 GPP per turn outside of Pacifism and 4 GPP per turn inside of Pacifism
- No other City will have any GPP as of that date

We will also need to spend 4 turns in Anarchy after that date before we can start to hire our Caste + Pacifism + Representation + Confucianism Scientists.

In addition to the turns of Anarchy:
Scenario I) will have Pig City grow to Size 7 in 4 turns and to Size 8 in 7 turns
Scenario J) will have Pig City grow to Size 7 in 5 turns and to Size 8 in 7 turns

Marble City is already at Size 6 as of Turn 142, so it can immediately hire 4 Scientist Specialists. If we're prefer to grow to Size 7 and temporarily hire a 5th Scientist, we can do so in 2 turns, with 28 Food in the Foodbox, meaning that we could hire 5 Scientists for 14 turns, followed by 4 Scientists for the remainder of the time.

Paris is already at Size 7 as of Turn 142, so it can immediately hire 4 Specialists (would we intentionally try for an Engineer or just go for 4 straight Scientists--that's a detail to decide later). Paris can also stop working the Mines and grow to Size 8 in 2 turns, with 28 Food in the Foodbox, allowing us to hire 5 Scientists while still growing at a rate of +1 Food per turn. If we wanted, we could grow yet again to Size 9 in 3 more turns (5 turns of growth total, again by skipping the Mines and instead working the Coast squares), such that we'd have 34 Food in the Foodbox, meaning that we could hire 6 Specialists for 34 turns (at -1 Food per turn).

Gold City is already at Size 9, so it could immediately hire 6 Scientists. If we wanted, we could grow the City for 3 turns (say, that we were to work the Gold and the rest Coasts, since working purely Coasts doesn't reduce the value of 3 turns) and arrive at Size 10 with 29 Food in the Foodbox. Doing so would allow us to hire 7 Scientists for 14 turns, then 6 Scientists for the remainder of the time.


It should be noted that Paris at City Size 9 and Gold City at City Size 10 require us to have +1 Health in order to remain Healthy, which we will get from Netting Fur City's Crab. Meanwhile, Representation takes care of all Happiness issues. Thus, we really shouldn't have to worry about Happiness or Healthiness issues for any of the above scenarios and thus you can use the numbers as presented to you in making your spreadsheet.


Part of the spreadsheet process will just be figuring out what our options are, in terms of how many GPP each City could feasibly produce, and once we have those numbers listed on a date-by-date basis, then we can always consider working backwards to see which City should spawn a Great Person in which order relative to the other Cities.


Remember, each Specialist = 3 GPP and will HOPEFULLY = 6 GPP under Pacifism (unless we have terrible luck with getting a Religion to spread around). I think that we should probably plan for getting 6 GPP and if we don't have it, we'll just have to delay the Great Person Generation process in order to trade for or self-tech Monotheism, switch into Org Religion, spam some Missionaries, regrow any City that had to whip a Missionary, and then finally implement the plan.

I.e. Even if Religion isn't spreading well, we probably won't implement the Great Person Generation Plan until most, if not all, of our Cities have our State Religion, and since a Great Person Generation Plan is going to matter most in terms of one City's relative Great Person Generation, we should just assume the ideal case of having our State Religion in all Cities, as we'll eventually have to get to that case anyway.

Yes, the +2 GPP from each of The Oracle and The Pyramids could slightly skew the results for the intervening turns, but hopefully not to a sufficiently noticeable degree that we wouldn't be able to work around.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Actually, I had a calculation error and Scenario J) is only ahead of Scenario I) by 8 Commerce.

I suppose, then, that we can more directly compare the two Scenarios by saying that we will grow Pig City to Size 8, in which case Scenario I) has 17 turns versus Scenario J)'s 13 turns of hiring an extra Scientist.

So, Scenario I)'s extra Food will be "used" as (assuming the ideal case of having our State Religion spread around) 4 * 6 Flasks + 4 * 6 GPP = 24 Flasks + 24 GPP

So, the comparison becomes:
Scenario I) + 24 Flasks + 24 GPP
Scenario J) + 21 Hammers + 8 Commerce

Considering that if we keep things simple with Stone City (I'll probably do one more runthrough to double-check), we should be able to squeeze out: Work Boat (1 turn) -> Warrior for Copper Island -> Lighthouse -> Granary -> Warrior for Pig City -> just barely start on Trireme 2 by Turn 142, then we don't absolutely need those 21 Hammers in Pig City.

Thus, it becomes a straight value-based comparison. If we are going to end up with "too many" GPP, we can always temporarily work Coast squares instead of Scientists, so I'd rather have the ability to have more GPP and not need them than have less and actually need them.

Thus, I think that there's no real need to come up with the Great Person Plan now... but it's certainly there for someone to do, as it will be the main theme of the next turnset and the numbers should be roughly similar by the time that that turnset rolls around--similar enough to be able to build a spreadsheet wehenever... yet I don't want to hold up the current turnset. So, I plan to go with Scenario I), which matches what I earlier called our "currently-leading scenario."


As for trying to optimize Stone City (or even Marble City) any further, I have completely lost interest. Honestly, I ran 25 different possible scenarios for Pig City. That's not even counting the scenarios that I ran (many of which would have been duplicates of the "official 25") prior to being dilligent about recording my results. I'm beat and I'm done. All for a bit more Food (which translates into more Flasks and more GPP).

 

[shyuhe]

Pig will definitely pop GPP. I'm comfortable trying to force a scientist out of Marble too. If we get a prophet, we just burn him on a golden age. Gold should try to pop our second scientist.

 

[mdy]

I'm finally back on line. Thanks to everyone who posted my emails for me, we look like we are in a really good position.

Pigs city will almost certainly generate our final GP, so the date this city grows to size 7 and hires 5 scientists might be the limiting factor in determining when we can cease our research phase and go to war, so I would be inclined to MM pigs in such a way as to get it there ASAP.

 

[Mitchum]

...the gain of +1 Great Person is far more than the loss of Hammers valued at the price of 1 Warrior.

I'm not sure that +6 = +1 Great Person, but I get the point. We need to grow Pigs as soon as possible per mdy's plan.

I'll work on a GPP spreadsheet. As you said, we don't need it right now, but I'll try to have it done by the end of your turnset.

I think you've optimized this turnset to the max. I'm fine with you playing with your current plan.

 

[Mitchum]

I've created a generic gpp spreadsheet. I belive that mdy put one together a while back. This is the same format we used last game. I assumed nothing other than the baseline (i.e. 4 specialists in Paris, 6 in Gold City, 4 in Marble City and 5 in Pigs).

I also assumed that we had our state religion in all four cities (if this is not the case, change the 1 to a 0 in row 4 for each city that does not have it).

In the spreadsheet, it is easy to change the number of specialists hired each turn in each city.

We can assume we use our first great person on a GA and see how that impacts our GP generation (just add a 1 to column C for each turn we are in a GA).

We'll have to optimize this once we know exactly how many Great People we need and which flavor we want first.

 

[shyuhe]

I thought our current plan calls for 2 GS only for astronomy? A merchant may be useful at some point to make sure we don't go bankrupt while warring but any non-GS will be converted into golden ages.

 

[Mitchum]

I thought our current plan calls for 2 GS only for astronomy? A merchant may be useful at some point to make sure we don't go bankrupt while warring but any non-GS will be converted into golden ages.

There was some discussion of using a Great Engineer to bulb Machinery... I haven't looked in detail at the bulbing preferences to figure out exactly how to make that work though.

 

[babybluepants]

Machinery is #1 on the list.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

There was some discussion of using a Great Engineer to bulb Machinery... I haven't looked in detail at the bulbing preferences to figure out exactly how to make that work though.

It's easy enough to make it work. Machinery is a Great Engineer's #1 choice. As long as Machinery is unlocked as a researchable tech and is currently unresearched, a Great Engineer will Lightbulb it.

One further thought on Lightbulbing: the more Lightbulbing that we do before we switch into Slavery (after being in Caste System) and whipping away our population points, the better, since Lightbulbing is partially based on population points. Maybe it's an obvious point, but sometimes the obvious points are the easiest ones to be forgotten.

For a Great Engineer, Lightbulbing in our game gives 1500 Flasks + 3 Flasks per population point, while Machinery will cost us 1638 Flasks.


Edit: Ninjaed!

 

[Mitchum]

Machinery is #1 on the list.

That makes things really, Really, REALLY easy. That's what I get for being lazy.

Regarding beakers per specialist, isn't the formula different for GS vs. the rest? From DaviddesJ:

Great Scientist gives up to (1500 + 3*pop) beakers
Other Great People give up to (1000 + 2*pop) beakers​

I'm not sure which game speed this is for, but a GE will give fewer beakers than a GS.

EDIT: Maybe the numbers DaviddesJ gave are for normal speed and Dhoom's numbers are for Epic...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay,it sounds like we don't have any major objections to the current plan.

Minor updates that will be made are: Pig City will aim to get its +8 Food (+6 but also +2 with help from a Warrior coming out of Stone City).

Stone City will build a 2nd Warrior prior to a Trireme just so that we can get above-mentioned Food. Stone City will also focus on Hammers so that it can get the Warrior on time.

Other than those items, I don't think that we had any changes.

The only outstanding suggestion (please correct me if I missed something) was to see if Stone City would benefit from building a Granary prior to the Lighthouse. I can run a quick test or two to see, but if doing so means that we'll be short on Hammers, then we'll just stick with the approach outlined above; in other words: those Hammers coming from Stone City must also appear if we go Granary -> Lighthouse, and if they don't, then we'll stick with the Lighthouse -> Granary approach for Stone City.


No one seems to have suggested a settling location other than Fur City, but if you would like to advocate one, I'd appreciate hearing about it before I get too far into my turnset, so that I can plan to have our Galley in the correct place on the appropriate turn.


So, since things seem to be in relative order (please correct me if I am wrong), I'll aim to start playing the turnset this evening.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

EDIT: Maybe the numbers DaviddesJ gave are for normal speed and Dhoom's numbers are for Epic...

Regardless, the numbers that I presented match our current game.

But, if you are interested in a handy bookmark as a reference for future games, I recently posted a message that gives numbers for all Game Speeds and other related factors for determining the number of Flasks that you get from Lightbulbing a Tech.

Total Flasks from Lightbulbing

 

[shyuhe]

We want the GS bulbs to go to astro. Anything else will waste too many beakers I think. GE on machinery sounds good.

From my previous post, techs we need:

astronomy (GS x 2)
optics
compass
IW (trade)
calendar
civil service (be careful of timing)
code of laws
math (nice if we can trade for it)
machinery (GE bulb?)
alphabet (to unlock bulbs)
construction
currency (to pay for our cities)