SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

[bcool]

I do like the combination of options and advantages the "infiltrate west, then see if GA to rush Philo will work" plan. Reduced revolt turns, more secure HG, faster extra population from HG, and faster access to our "leverage" techs of Literature and Currency are all very valuable, and increasing the security of our 40% espionage discounts are particularly good.

I'm not sold on the value of infiltrating the northern witches. We were going to infiltrate them perforce if the western witches were not exploitable with the city gift. We have succeeded with west, how. We know west will greatly out-tech north (and may already be doing so), and with the religious barriers that will be going up, I don't see all that much inter-AI tech trading going on.

I'm also not sold on the value of two infiltration missions, regardless of who the targets are. Infiltration does offer a good return of beakers for EPs eventually, but a large stockpile of EPs from the second mission does very little (or nothing) for us until the AIs get techs that we actually wish to steal. We knew we wanted very many GScientists for bulbing to the UN, and we have not got one that we might have got. I think we want to use the GPerson we did get to further our strategic goals in a clear manner. A Golden Age does this, I think. Scotland Yard or settling doesn't. Scouting the western witches might do this, but it is unknown.

We should be sure to run max scientists in the meantime in the city that would rush the Gscientist in any of the scenarios.

I suppose another option is to infiltrate the western witches with the great spy in stone city (he could infiltrate on T103). Then we can assess the philosophy situation...

If we think a golden age is worth the risk then we can use the exploring Great spy for it.
If we think a golden age isn't worth it then we have a great spy to continue exploring and if we want to infiltrate the western witches again or to go explore and find the northern witches and eventually infiltrate there is we find a good reason to do so.

 

[Manco Capac]

If you set yourself up on a team of 2 on normal speed on emperor difficulty...

Philosophy costs 1716 for a human player teamed with an emperor AI and a Great scientist bulb value is 1506 (with 1 pop) 1575 with 23-4 pop

So I'm still not sure if an AI would be able to bulb philosophy since AI have bonuses with research right? It is close, so there is a real risk certainly if they have started the research that they could bulb it with a great scientist.

As Tachy concluded above...

The thing that bothered me is with 19-20 pop (20: an additional pop from Asoka if ever it counts in her bulb), Isabella was able to bulb philosophy without inputting any beakers in philo.
She was researching drama I closely followed the beakers investment.

 

[mabraham]

If you set yourself up on a team of 2 on normal speed on emperor difficulty...

Philosophy costs 1716 for a human player teamed with an emperor AI and a Great scientist bulb value is 1506 (with 1 pop) 1575 with 23-4 pop

Eh? You mean a human emperor with a noble AI, right?

So I'm still not sure if an AI would be able to bulb philosophy since AI have bonuses with research right? It is close, so there is a real risk certainly if they have started the research that they could bulb it with a great scientist.

As Tachy concluded above...

AIs always play on Noble. I don't think there's any further advantage to teching. The emperor human has to pay more for the tech. I think a valid test case is a human on Noble paired with an AI.

 

[bcool]

emperor AI get what? 30% discounts on techs so she would only need 1320? for philosophy. So she could bulb it with just 1 great scientist.

Sorry, mabraham points out the problem. Humans get a penalty rather than the AI getting a bonus to teching...


so doing his suggested test noble human teamed with 1 AI philosophy costs 1560, so an AI with about 20 pop would be able to bulb philosophy with just a single great scientist with no prior investment if our assumptions are correct.

 

[Manco Capac]

emperor AI get what? 30% discounts on techs so she would only need 1320? for philosophy. So she could bulb it with just 1 great scientist.

Wait a sec. I have the info.

EDIT:

Sorry, mabraham points out the problem. Humans get a penalty rather than the AI getting a bonus to teching...

The AI plays noble forever. 20 additional % of beakers for humans. ==> Linkie.

Sorry, crosspost.

 

[Manco Capac]

so doing his suggested test noble human teamed with 1 AI philosophy costs 1560, so an AI with about 20 pop would be able to bulb philosophy with just a single great scientist with no prior investment if our assumptions are correct.

Nice! This closes the concerning case about bulb.

 

[mabraham]

So, with Gandhi's six cities, we have to presume he'll be in the ballpark for having enough population to bulb Philo. Maybe Mansa likewise. But are they likely to get a GScientist in enough time? I think they respectively popped a GEngineer T82 (for ToA T83) and a GProphet T84. So I think they'd have to work pretty hard to get a GScientist in time to beat T110 or so, though Philosophical Gandhi running Caste could certainly do it. I don't think north or east are in the game.

Will infiltrating west give enough espionage for passive vision inside a city? Or does that require an actual mission? If so, we could see the GP pool.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Interesting. 2 Great Spys now.

Who's he going to infiltrate? Eni Meni Mini Mo, Eastern Witches, Southern Witches, Western Witches, No, but Northern Witches, Ho!

Basking in the good fortune that befalls us now.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I hope no one has posted this particular link here yet:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10566446&postcount=123

It comes from the German Forums, but has been translated to English in its current form above.

Enjoy!

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[shulec]

The way this reads, we get a 15% bonus for running a state religion different than Monte if our state religion is in Trojan Horse City. If we have the holy city for our state religion, we get an additional 25% bonus.

This contrasts the assertion that we will get an additional 40% if we have the holy city.

An alternative to founding a holy city is taking Ragnar's Buddhist holy city or hope Asoka founds Taoism or Theology and take that holy city.

 

[Manco Capac]

I hope no one has posted this particular link here yet:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10566446&postcount=123

It comes from the German Forums, but has been translated to English in its current form above.

Enjoy!

Sun Tzu Wu

Please. Don't gnaw the few contributions I did... I don't care in fact...

Nonetheless, you made remember a thing out of the window now, but can be of use...if done on AI's without sworn foes in the future.
Just a reminder...

 

[bcool]

The way this reads, we get a 15% bonus for running a state religion different than Monte if our state religion is in Trojan Horse City. If we have the holy city for our state religion, we get an additional 25% bonus.

This contrasts the assertion that we will get an additional 40% if we have the holy city.

An alternative to founding a holy city is taking Ragnar's Buddhist holy city or hope Asoka founds Taoism or Theology and take that holy city.

certainly in time we would get the 15% espionage bonus for having a state religion different then Monty without founding pacifism ourselves.

However, the 40% espionage bonus if we did manage to found taoism would be ours for several tech steals in the short term since we could use the free missionary to convert monty's city.

This especially true if we run a golden age, because during a golden age we would be able to freely switch religions.

If we didn't run a GA, I'm not sure a switch to a religion and whipping a missionary would be a high priority for us.

The buddhist holy city is an option, but how much will that help 40 turns from now? The techs the AI will have that will help us get to Mass Media are likely ones that we want to steal sooner rather than later.

 

[bcool]

Nonetheless, you made remember a thing out of the window now, but can be of use...if done on AI's without sworn foes in the future.
Just a reminder...

I tried this in some games a while back, it didn't necessarily work that well. I may have been doing something wrong, but it certainly wasn't a clearly great strategy. Perhaps they have changed some things with the way the AI deal with excess gold. Plus with team AI they can freely trade gold between each other, so there might be some even harder to predict behavior with gold trades.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Will infiltrating west give enough espionage for passive vision inside a city? Or does that require an actual mission? If so, we could see the GP pool.

No mission is required for any passive effects of Espionage.

I'm not sure an infiltration will be enough to see inside cities, except the ones we gifted due to closeness to our capital.

A test game would quickly answer this question with greater certainty.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[mabraham]

The techs the AI will have that will help us get to Mass Media are likely ones that we want to steal sooner rather than later.

I think this is the crux of the issue. The AIs will have a lot of land to expand into, and will likely kill their own economies with it (excepting the western guys), and then focus on religious warring. IMO, the techs that they might have to steal that we might want are those they have now and the next 40-50 turns... CoL, Construction, MC, Calendar, CS, Machinery, Currency. Maybe a second round of infiltration will not be useful, inasmuch as we don't have to steal all of those techs. Some steals and some trades will work for us also.

A surgical strike on a Buddhist or Jewish holy city is not out of the question, but there's a significant cost and delay in doing that fast. We'd have to get EPs and a spy for a revolt and at least four galleys loaded with at least 8 axes and swords, or delay to Construction and add four catapults for two of the axes/swords.

 

[bcool]

If we fail to get Taoism during a golden age, I can see how Christianity might be a back up plan.

During a Golden Age we will have a large amount of research to spend as we will. If we commit to a GA to get Taoism and lose it, we could make a run for theology.

This is not as bad as it might seem since we could then be relatively assured of getting the AP religion and then using the AP and the AP religion to convert an AI permanently.

The AP and hammers from religious buildings is definitely a big bonus in longer games like space games, I'm not sure it is worth it shorter games like we hope ours will be. However the AP and the AP religion does have some power that we can use to our diplomatic advantage regardless of the hammer bonuses of the AP religious buildings.

 

[bcool]

Espionage Effects/Options
Quote:
Originally Posted by mabraham
Will infiltrating west give enough espionage for passive vision inside a city? Or does that require an actual mission? If so, we could see the GP pool.
No mission is required for any passive effects of Espionage.

I'm not sure an infiltration will be enough to see inside cities, except the ones we gifted due to closeness to our capital.

A test game would quickly answer this question with greater certainty.

Sun Tzu Wu

An infiltration mission in the test game easily gave us city visibility, but of course we need to uncover the fog ourselves before we get city visibility of specific cities.

 

[shulec]

I think this is the crux of the issue. The AIs will have a lot of land to expand into, and will likely kill their own economies with it (excepting the western guys), and then focus on religious warring. IMO, the techs that they might have to steal that we might want are those they have now and the next 40-50 turns... CoL, Construction, MC, Calendar, CS, Machinery, Currency. Maybe a second round of infiltration will not be useful, inasmuch as we don't have to steal all of those techs. Some steals and some trades will work for us also.

A surgical strike on a Buddhist or Jewish holy city is not out of the question, but there's a significant cost and delay in doing that fast. We'd have to get EPs and a spy for a revolt and at least four galleys loaded with at least 8 axes and swords, or delay to Construction and add four catapults for two of the axes/swords.

One additional benefit to winning the race to Philosophy is that will slow the AI's progress to Liberalism, since they will not aggressively pursue it once we have it.

We won't be trading the techs we will be bulbing, such as Philosophy, Paper, and Education.

I want Compass and Music for trading. These would be good to steal. I also want Engineering, and Optics from the AI.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Please. Don't gnaw the few contributions I did... I don't care in fact...

Nonetheless, you made remember a thing out of the window now, but can be of use...if done on AI's without sworn foes in the future.
Just a reminder...

Sorry, you didn't provide a link back then. I usually bookmark good stuff like this, so I can offer it to others or refer to it myself later.

Considering AW Deity threads/games: They are playing with unrestricted leaders which throws game balance out the window. They milk espionage for stealing Technologies and deny the AI to trade them (no tech trading). They are changing the game so they can win Always War Deity games. I'm not too impressed by what they have done, but it is impressive that they are able to win about half the games they start. I just started treading aw4 and they are looking at other options, but still only unrestricted leaders.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Manco Capac]

I tried this in some games a while back, it didn't necessarily work that well. I may have been doing something wrong, but it certainly wasn't a clearly great strategy. Perhaps they have changed some things with the way the AI deal with excess gold. Plus with team AI they can freely trade gold between each other, so there might be some even harder to predict behavior with gold trades.

Really? I remember in one game I could suck so much gold I was running afloat 100% of the slider easily. Anyways, the fact teamed AI's can easily make up the losses and restore the balance renders that tactic less powerful. But still, to my opinion, it is not all about economically killing the AI, but boosting yourself in abusive way. Anyways, if cultural victory was the target, automatically, that tactic is strong. Of course, the tactic works best on emp+.