SGOTM 14 - Plastic Ducks

[Deity player]

The action of saving worker turns in silver city led to a side effect (I did not realize before) -- The missionary can only arrive canal city on T93. Therefore, if Tao holy city is in Canal city or there's a Tao spreading there, there will be ~10% odd of failure of spreading of Confu. I don't want to take the risk on silk city, which is further to reach. So, send missionary on T90.

Ok, changed.

If we send the worker to Phi (I incline for this choice now), we can mine the hill 1 turn earlier (2H, could lead to finish LH 1 turn earlier, means another 1F) and have at least 1 farm up 1 turn earlier (1F), so that worker is probably better than 3F.

Ok.

 

[Deity player]

Regarding the Washington tile management, working on spice gives 1H to settler, so if that 1H is important to pump settler 1 turn earlier, then on spice, otherwise, I'm fine to hire a scientist.

I tried hiring the scientist and - after chopping the forest 1S of silk to NY - working spices instead of the chopped forest -> this doesn't delay the settler.

 

[Deity player]

I don't have much time for testing these days but maybe tomorrow night I'll be able to check the different options left.
Though if Deity is ready to play before that, I don't know if it's worth delaying playing the turnset...

I vote for hiring the scientist (see my post above) and sending the worker to Phi. I also could do some longer tests in a few days but maybe we should move on. I am ready to play right now.

 

[kossin]

Personally, I can't play/test until the weekend so there's no real hurry if you finish tomorrow of Friday

 

[Duckweed]

Green light from me. As kossin has no time until the weekend, Deity player can play another 1 turn mini-set to T93 and make it clear whether we can spread Confucian to canal city successfully.

 

[Bebekija]

Of course the safest solution would be to delay the civic switch by 1 turn in order to spread Confu in Canal, THEN bulb Philo.
Or even better, one AI could found Taoism before we do, which happened quite a few times in my tests. But IIRC, none of the AIs have CoL in the live game, so that's pretty unlikely.... (EDIT : actually no, both the West and South witches can research Philo, and the West witches already bulbed Theo, so maybe that can happen after all...)

I'll run some test tonight to see if we can manage to keep the same GP dates when delaying the civic switch, and the difference in beakers in the end.

 

[Deity player]

I'll run some test tonight to see if we can manage to keep the same GP dates when delaying the civic switch, and the difference in beakers in the end.

Nice to hear that!

Personally, I can't play/test until the weekend so there's no real hurry if you finish tomorrow of Friday

I will wait then at least until tonight. I am quite busy at the moment anyway.

 

[kossin]

Of course the safest solution would be to delay the civic switch by 1 turn in order to spread Confu in Canal, THEN bulb Philo.
Or even better, one AI could found Taoism before we do, which happened quite a few times in my tests. But IIRC, none of the AIs have CoL in the live game, so that's pretty unlikely.... (EDIT : actually no, both the West and South witches can research Philo, and the West witches already bulbed Theo, so maybe that can happen after all...)

I'll run some test tonight to see if we can manage to keep the same GP dates when delaying the civic switch, and the difference in beakers in the end.

Yea, I remember seeing one of them in Caste if memory serves.

Anyway, delaying civic switch will likely cost 1t because of research but there shouldn't be too many problems with GPP however.

 

[Duckweed]

Of course the safest solution would be to delay the civic switch by 1 turn in order to spread Confu in Canal, THEN bulb Philo.
Or even better, one AI could found Taoism before we do, which happened quite a few times in my tests. But IIRC, none of the AIs have CoL in the live game, so that's pretty unlikely.... (EDIT : actually no, both the West and South witches can research Philo, and the West witches already bulbed Theo, so maybe that can happen after all...)

I'll run some test tonight to see if we can manage to keep the same GP dates when delaying the civic switch, and the difference in beakers in the end.

Good to test it. I guess it's hard to speed up GP production by 1 turn with 1 more turn of growth. Or if we hire scientist before switching to Rep and Pac, the loss of beakers and GPP are just too many. The failure of spreading Confu is low odd.

1. There's still chance of auto spreading of Confu to canal and/or silk city.
2. Three cities are possible holy city for Tao
3. As you said, other AIs have the chance of bulbing Phi before us.

So the actual odd of bad luck is no more than 5%.

 

[Bebekija]

Ok I did test it and it is quite possible to maintain our GP plan by delaying the civic switch by 1 turn.
The consequences are :
- loss of 45 raw beakers
- loss of 8F in Boston
- loss of 5F in Seattle (somewhat problematic, Seattle ends up @Pop 7 when popping its GS rather than Pop 8, so the difference in tile yields adds up)

Are we willing to pay this price for 100% guaranteed Confu spreads?

(BTW, in one of the test I popped a GA, so to be really thorough we'd have to check if delaying the civic switch makes it harder for us to manage this situation. I didn't)

 

[kossin]

Looks pretty bad =\

But then it's even worse if we fail Confu spread...

 

[Duckweed]

1 pop = 30H
1F = 2H or 3B

The cost is too much for the increasing odd from 90% to 100%. In my eyes, the odd of losing mids is much higher than 10%.

Edit:
Hehe, there's one way for 100% guaranteed Confu spread with much smaller cost.

Hire scientists in Washington and Silk to avoid growing to unhappiness and do the religion and civic switch on T92 and 93. Or just ignore the unhappy citizens, seems better in silk city.

 

[kossin]

So we lose 4F this way but gain 100% Confu. I can live with that.
Wish I'd stick to my point of improving silver right away.

 

[Deity player]

^^ I regret that worker micro in Chicago, too... We can only hope that those 2 workerturns will be crucial elsewhere yet.

I will look into the Duckweed's suggestion and possibly change the PPP tonight.

There are 2 more turns for the AIs to discover Philosophy or for a useful Confu spread so let us cross our fingers...

EDIT: If you agree, I will play until T90 tonight before anything else. If we get lucky, this would spare us all the worries.

 

[Bebekija]

^^Fine by me

 

[Snaaty]

^^Fine by me

 

[kossin]

Good to go.

 

[Duckweed]

^^ I regret that worker micro in Chicago, too... We can only hope that those 2 workerturns will be crucial elsewhere yet.

It was the team decision, at least no one presented strong argument to against your suggestion at that time.

In fact, I think we made the right decision. If any religion (including religions other than Confu) spread to either canal or silk city before T90, then we save 2 worker turns. In the worst case, we lose 4F from 2 unhappy citizens. It's hard to say whether the 2 worker turns or the 4F is better since those 4F are not crucial for GP production.

BTW, it's probably better to switch the research to Compass after trading IW.

 

[Deity player]

BTW, it's probably better to switch the research to Compass after trading IW.

I agree. What about others?

 

[kossin]

Yes of course.