SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

[Xcalibrator]

The problem is that a Great Sci currently bulbs Philosophy (I checked my bulb list and in-game); we need to get that out of the way before it will bulb Paper. Of course, Philo has its own uses (Pacifism to add another 100% to GP production) so we may want to bulb it, but that would mean we'd need a 2nd Great Sci to bulb Paper--faster to just research it (I would assume). And with Bolly's priest contamination, there's no guarantee we'd get a Sci.

 

[Trystero]

The problem is that a Great Sci currently bulbs Philosophy (I checked my bulb list and in-game); we need to get that out of the way before it will bulb Paper. Of course, Philo has its own uses (Pacifism to add another 100% to GP production) so we may want to bulb it, but that would mean we'd need a 2nd Great Sci to bulb Paper--faster to just research it (I would assume). And with Bolly's priest contamination, there's no guarantee we'd get a Sci.

Philosophy would be good too for Pacifism. How many scientists could we run in Bolly? We could dimish the impact of the GPro points by running a lot. And how quickly could we get a GS at max scientists? (Sorry - I'm at work so I can't check myself)

Edit: I guess the real question is how quickly we could get the next one if are running Pacifism and max scientists.

 

[kcd_swede]

I PM'd Rusten to see if he's got a BtS-working computer now. No word yet, so on down the list. It would be good to hear from DH, HKJJ and CS to confirm their status is still "not available". Unless we hear the opposite from one of those 4 team members, we should proceed with Steelhorse at the helm.

I'll wait a little to hear who's available or not before I volunteer for anything.

 

[vra379971]

Philosophy would be good too for Pacifism. How many scientists could we run in Bolly? We could dimish the impact of the GPro points by running a lot. And how quickly could we get a GS at max scientists? (Sorry - I'm at work so I can't check myself)

Edit: I guess the real question is how quickly we could get the next one if are running Pacifism and max scientists.

Without doing any math, I'm going to just guess that by the time we could get the next one we could probably have Paper done the 10 turn way and Sankore built.

 

[Deckhand]

Yes, I am not available. I try to log in each night (or so) and read the posts. No time to play.

Spoiler :

I've skipped some xOTMs and started but not finished others. Didn't submit any last month.
Hmmn, 5 days to finish France Warlord game. - did I start it? How far did I get? Wonder if I sh try. Or will I have time to play the current GOTM or BOTM?
Even if I can make the time for some of them, it won't be with the care that this game requires. sorry

If we run a lot of scientists, then their research can get us paper. Or, their research can get us other stuff and then bulb paper. This decision calls for some analysis. I don't usually bulb paper, doesn't seem like enough bulbs for the great person. OTOH, sounds like we want UoS or bust - like we went for AP. If that's our plan, then how can we get paper fastest?

 

[kcd_swede]

Without doing any math, I'm going to just guess that by the time we could get the next one we could probably have Paper done the 10 turn way and Sankore built.

If we run a lot of scientists, then their research can get us paper. Or, their research can get us other stuff and then bulb paper. This decision calls for some analysis. I don't usually bulb paper, doesn't seem like enough bulbs for the great person. OTOH, sounds like we want UoS or bust - like we went for AP. If that's our plan, then how can we get paper fastest?

I think Vra is right, if we want Paper fast as possible, we tech it with binary research. Do we want that?

 

[SteelHorse]

I PM'd Rusten to see if he's got a BtS-working computer now. No word yet, so on down the list. It would be good to hear from DH, HKJJ and CS to confirm their status is still "not available". Unless we hear the opposite from one of those 4 team members, we should proceed with Steelhorse at the helm.

I can take the next round if no word from HKJJ and CS. Now a bit of a ramble.

I smell a medal here. Neil has made this game a horror for a military solution, which many teams are undoubtedly taking. And he has made the AP route very difficult, with a large potential for complete failure. But he has set up a cultural win as a good option. A great leader, all the resources you need, defend-able borders (if we can find the other choke point). And we have four religions. If we are one of the first to aim this way we may be in good shape.

I agree with AAA that a military victory is going to be slog. Trying to balance economy with the required military cost for a long distance campaign with narrow choke points will be painful.

I have not conceded though the religious victory though for the following reasons:
1. England has almost all of the early GA wonders are gone SoZ, ND, Sistine, Parth, MoM. They are in the drivers seat for Cultural. In addition to plotting our own course we would likely need to stop them.

2. While we have a good southern choke point, we don't yet have a northern choke point to prevent invasions from the north. So more warring is in our future before we can start to switch to cultural mode.

3. As XCal states we can't even start producing the required GAs.

Great Artists would be best for a Culture win, but I don't think we'll have the luxury of running only artists--other GPs are needed to bulb techs and for Golden Ages.

All that said, we don't have anyone out of worst enemy mode yet, even though Toku and Hatty are at war, nonetheless close to Hindu or Pleased.

I think to have a hope, we are going to have to bring the AP into play for things like opening borders (for more religious spread), ending wars against us, getting others to join Jihads, etc. To that end, there are opportunities to gift infect cities to Hammy, Hatty, and Toku. IMO, this should be considered.

Note also that with No tech Brokering getting even 2 trading partners can go a long way.

So a few questions.
Can we continue without deciding a VC or have we concluded Cultural is it?
Is Paper/UoS a clear path to victory? (not arguing against, agree it helps research, but does it help with a cult or relig victory?)
Should we consider the city gifting for Hindu spread?

 

[kcd_swede]

OK, you are UP Steelhorse, and I am on deck (until someone pushes me off, which would be really nice but I'll plan to play following you).

So a few questions.
Can we continue without deciding a VC or have we concluded Cultural is it?
Is Paper/UoS a clear path to victory? (not arguing against, agree it helps research, but does it help with a cult or relig victory?)
Should we consider the city gifting for Hindu spread?

I think we decided a culture VC with possibility for an opportunistic religion VC.

I think we are pretty much decided that culture will be our primary VC but it won't be all that fast so we should be willing to slow it down a bit more whenever an opportunity to enhance the religion side of things.

Note, we all agree that more warring is in the cards. Some of us are pretty convinced that we will repeatedly get targetted by one or more Tokus all through the game. For that reason, we cannot afford to fall too far behind in tech. So it will be a very unusual culture push.

From the culture side of things, as you point out, we'll eventually have to do something about Elizagawa. Be nice to grab the Sistines, but that won't be possible if we don't beat her to some military tech. (And explore). So the UoS does make sense for THIS kind of culure game. Note, the same agruments apply for religious VC, where the only way we can mass up the +diplo will be joint war efforts. So no matter how we slice it, we need tech.

Note, Paper would be extremely useful if we can get maps for peace, since they all have open borders. Faster than exploration at this point. But we still need Caravels to transport missionaries, maybe even galleons to transport settlers for gift cities.

So right now, the tech side of things is our bottleneck, and UoS does a lot to help. We will be having +2hammer temples built in every city for the culture, might as well get the beakers for them too. GA's are nice, but most culure comes from Free Speech cottages anyhow.

We want to control every AP vote, so that spreading Hindu everywhere we can is #1 priority. I think we will need OR to do this as fast as possible. Since we want a chance at a diplo vic, we need to get that to the AI, also. The only (reliable) way to do that is to give them cities with hindu - either new or existing cities. The problem is closed borders. Espionage can overcome civics and state religions, but it can't open borders.

So switch to OR and infect the cities we are least likely to keep first. Make a standby settler and hindu mish for if we see a spot become available during a war.

Diplo will be very critical. We want to get common war bonus. Might become worthwhile to DOW Toku again, but lets wait a bit and see if we get asked. We can protect Kago as Japanese by not having OB with the other 'gawas.

We aren't going to meet everyone we need to meet before Optics unless we get a spy or few built, too. Scouting only, for now.

Also, if/when we DOW toku for the +diplo, we ought to bribe anyone else we can to join the dogpile. More diplo to get OB.

Keep units in the south where they are, that's where they'll be needed. In addition to OR, we will want to go to slavery once we pop the needed borders... then whip to the ground any city we will be giving up. Personally, I think everything east of Kyoto can be sacrificed, and we'll not need anything north of the western pass. Note, I think getting DOW by Hammy is both inevitable and just as well. We should target Nippur as a city to take, infect, and gift back (depends a bit on what else is over there, maybe, if we want to go farthyer).

I hope that clarifies my position on the big picture and what needs to be managed in the short term, too.

Piece of cake.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Agreed with just about all that SH and kcd said. And please see my post 1092. We need to use Hinduism and the AP as weapons, ideally to get a Religious win but at the least to set the AI world aflame with hostility and anger. Remember what Murky did in that OCC Deity SGOTM? We're going to have to be a bit reckless, both because of time constraints and because we can't predict how the AIs will react to our "foreign interventions." I would sell CoL to Shaka for his gold in the hope of getting open borders, being willing to trade Monarchy, etc. Pillage Tokyo, infect with Hinduism, and gift to Liz. My main question is, do we want to keep Toku alive to help with AP votes---we'll need to get somebody to Friendly if we want to get a Religious win--or use him as an expendable whipping boy to gain common-enemy points with other AIs? (In any case, let's use those espi points we have on him to steal techs before he disappears.)

I disagree a bit about keeping most of our units in the south. Kyoto is a very strong defensive position and we'll need a lot of units to attack Hammy in the north at some point. I'd also delay or severely limit how much time we spend in Slavery; other than whipping out an Islamic missionary from Tokyo (and making sure it successfully spreads to one of our cities) I don't see an urgent need for whipping. Note that Tokyo is only pop3 and won't come out of revolt for 3 more turns, and that we'll need either pop4 or several turns of hand-building the missionary before we can whip it so there's no rush to switch to Slavery yet.

Binary research ain't gonna cut it at ~10% breakeven--we need to build research and run lots of specs to get Paper ASAP. Only building H missionaries for our cities might be considered a higher priority. And then chop forests for temples like there's no tomorrow so those cities can be devoted to building research.

 

[Trystero]

Nice analysis guys.

I don't know about gifting Tokyo to Liz. If we gift it Toku, and then Hatty captures it, we could spread Hinduism to 2 opponents.

So I am advocating: 1. spread Hinduism to Tokyo when our missionary gets there (2 turns). 2. Get an Islamic missionary out of Tokyo. 3. Gift Tokyo to Toku. 4. Try to get Hinduism to Kagoshima. 5. Try to get Toku to convert through espionage or diplomacy. 6. Hope Hatty captures Tokyo.

BTW, let's get a spy out exploring. We still have 3 AI to meet, and looking over the beginning of the game, I realize I'd forgotten that two AI are playing as a team. I wonder what complications that will provide?

 

[kcd_swede]

I disagree a bit about keeping most of our units in the south. Kyoto is a very strong defensive position and we'll need a lot of units to attack Hammy in the north at some point. I'd also delay or severely limit how much time we spend in Slavery; other than whipping out an Islamic missionary from Tokyo (and making sure it successfully spreads to one of our cities) I don't see an urgent need for whipping. Note that Tokyo is only pop3 and won't come out of revolt for 3 more turns, and that we'll need either pop4 or several turns of hand-building the missionary before we can whip it so there's no rush to switch to Slavery yet.

I defer to your superior wisdom on where we will be using those units next.

Slavery/OR is a traditional culture vc combination for getting religion spread and temples done asap. This isn't a traditional culture game, so we can feel free to adjust the civics as they best suit the situation. SPI trait is nice.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Slavery/OR is a traditional culture vc combination for getting religion spread and temples done asap. This isn't a traditional culture game, so we can feel free to adjust the civics as they best suit the situation. SPI trait is nice.

Yeah, I can see Slavery being vital for, among other things, getting temples (of all 4 religions) up quickly. But we don't have our religions spread very well yet and getting Paper and the UoS seems like the most critical task at the moment, and for that we need to run specs for at least several turns to help with the teching. Hmm, I wonder how SH will balance our priorities in his PPP? All we're asking for is everything, right now.

Some thoughts on GPs:

• Great Merchants will bulb Currency (400 base beakers, times whatever our game factor is--1.56?), Metal Casting (450), and Paper (600). Settled he gives 1fpt, 6gpt. A trade mission would be best--I believe that GMs can pass through closed borders, yes? As long as he doesn't get killed by somebody, that might be our best option.
• Scientists will bulb Philo (800), Paper (600), and Compass (400). Paper will come too later, but Philo (even though Taoism has already been founded) could be good for Pacifism (+100% GP rate on top of our Philosophical +100%) and for trade bait if anybody will ever trade with us. Settling gives 1hpt, 6bpt.
• Prophets give Divine Right (1200 base, so bulbing gives ~60%--allows Spiral Minaret), Monarchy (300), and Music (600). Is the free Music GA gone yet? Settled they give 2hpt, 5gpt. We could also build the Christian shrine (in Drona, right?). I'd say the choice is between the shrine and DR, with the latter being a somewhat risky step toward trying for the Spiral Minaret.
• Artists bulb Monarchy (300) and DR (1200). Monarchy is too cheap to be bulbed by any of our GPs, but using 2 GPs toward DR is slightly tempting. Saving for culture bombing or a Golden Age is probably best, though. Settled is 3gpt, 12 cpt, but it's probably too late for that to pay off, unless we're really desperate for gold.
• We ain't gonna get an Engineer any time soon, but if we can get MC soon and build some forges, engineers should be run wherever possible. (?)
• Edit: Forgot about spies, which can be run with courthouses. Should we run these everywhere we can, even before engineers?

Any GP can be used for a Golden Age, of course; with a big enough empire this might be worthwhile. We should probably try to have each city specialize in a particular kind of specialist. Bolly and Drona each have a Prophet wonder, and Bolly will (hopefully) get the UoS (Scientist). I'd say Bolly should run sci's (since it has a library), Drona priests. Delhi has lots of food but not much happiness headroom, and should probably work all its wonderful riverside cottages before specs. Other cities should run mer's or artists. Perhaps Bolly should run mer's for now, though, since a trade mission would give us the most flexibility?? I don't know...

Note that Bolly can build the UoS (and SM) in ~9 turns: 22 base hammers (I think), +100% with stone +50% for Bureau +25% with OrgRel --> 60 hpt toward 550 total.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Should we be pushing hard for Liberalism? The free tech would be nice, but I'm thinking that if we gave it to some/all the AI a good fraction of them would convert to Free Religion and get off our back for being Hindu, which might make our life significantly easier. All we need is Philo, Paper, Education, and Lib'ism. The first 3 are all way up on the Great Sci bulbing list and we're going to get Paper soon regardless. We'd have to skip Machinery to bulb Lib'ism with a Sci but that's probably not a good idea. I think bulbing it with other types of GP is even trickier.

If Lib'ism is our aim, we should run sci's. If we want Divine Right/Spiral Minaret, we'll probably want one or two Prophets quickly, or maybe a Merchant to finance research. (Remind me how the AIs feel about trading DR? Somebody has it because Islam has been founded. I doubt we'll be able to steal it because we don't have enough espi pts.)

 

[vra379971]

Islam was founded Day 1 was it not? Probably to ensure everyone stayed Hindu. So, I'd not call it risky at all really. As clearly, the purpose of the 'extra civ' was to absorb other religions so they would not break the bloc.

I'd suggest running scientists long enough to grab Paper, then go after a Prophet to bulb DR, and get those built inside of the next 40 turns.

That said, I think we need to be going for 20-25 turn turnsets twice a week as we're a long way from goal, and desperately need to get moving here.

My suggestion is we swiftly draw up a very comprehensive strategic...IF....THEN document, so people can just keep playing and don't have to stop for discussion. We simply can no longer afford the amount of discussion time we're taking. As we're soon going to be medal competitors - if we'd made the finish line.

So, I'd say...

A) Specific GP/Tech Plans
B) General Military orders. "Thou shalt..."
C) Overall City Purposes

And then go.

...and then just get going.

 

[Xcalibrator]

The risky part of going for DR was that someone might beat us to the Spiral Minaret--there isn't much reason for us to invest beakers in DR otherwise.

Yes, we must indeed heed the need for speed. But, uh, would anyone object if I casually inquired in the Maintenance thread if any other teams are interested in a wee extension?

 

[vra379971]

The risky part of going for DR was that someone might beat us to the Spiral Minaret--there isn't much reason for us to invest beakers in DR otherwise.

Yes, we must indeed heed the need for speed. But, uh, would anyone object if I casually inquired in the Maintenance thread if any other teams are interested in a wee extension?

By all means check lol. That said I think any concern about being beat to SM is low, and as we're in need of cash flow, will be worth it. I'd be far more worried about losing Sankore though, as that's on the middle path.

 

[SteelHorse]

Ok - Lets see if we can summarize next steps.

Priorities:

1. Tech Rate - Paper/UoS (936 beakers). We currently have 5 cities w/o Hindu. We have 3 cities with Temples with 3 in progress. No monasteries or mandirs.

2. Infect Hatty and Toku and Hammy - Missionaries (also needed for #1) and Settlers for gifting cities. 3-5 missionaries and 2 settlers.

3. Scouting - Spies (which brings up the issue of Espionage). 1 for the north and 1 for the SE would be nice since we don't have open borders.

Cities: Drona and Bolly are the two big produciton cities. If Bolly take the corn from Pata it can run 4 Sci and work 2 Vills + 3 Hams. This would give a GP in 9 turns. Drona can focus on Missionaries and Settlers. The rest can be infected and build temples or build missionaries or spies.

Others: What to do with Tokyo after infecting. Hmm. If Hatty wipes out Toku's 1 city in the east, that leaves Kago. Perhaps we need to hang onto for now just to get the Islamic missionary out which was suggested earlier. Then gift to Hatty for a diplo point + Hindu spread. Once the war is over we are likely to become worst enemies again. We can build a second city for Toku in the south and infect and gift.

Civics: We are in OR which is good for missionaries. We are in Caste. But it would be nice to whip temples and graneries, but would conflict running 4 Sci in Bolly. Suggest switching to Slav for 5 turns after border pop in Kyoto and back to Caste after.

If this sounds about right I can work on the PPP.

 

[Trystero]

Re: Cities. Kyoto's borders will pop next turn. This means it will have access to the copper mine and corn tiles. It's production should improve substantially, but we should either build more workers or get workers over there to mine and road the hills we pillaged. Also we should get some workers to mine the iron in Bombay and repair the wheat farm in Vijay. We should also finish cottaging Bollywood and Pata. I think we'll need a couple more workers. I think we should also consider settling the iron/fish city soon.

Drona can build a missionary every 2 turns, and HC in 4 turns.

Build libraries and courthouses anywhere that seems appropriate.

The suggestion to switch civics sounds good to me.

Edit: And yes, build some spies! We simply must have more map information. I agree that at the very least it would be good to see what Hammy and Hatty are up to. Maybe switch the EP focus to Hammy for now?

 

[Xcalibrator]

We're trying to juggle too many things, I think. All are important but we need to focus on the two most important and/or urgent: (1) get Paper ASAP and (2) successfully infect one of our cities (other than Tokyo, which we will very likely lose one way or another) with Islam. Popping a GP in Bolly in 4 turns will be nice, but it may not be a Scientist, and even if it is, it does not give us Paper--it gives us Philosophy. 4 sci's is still only 12 bpt (15 with Bolly's library). We can drain our gold (200 hundred something) but then breakeven is 10 or 20 bpt (more if we run merchants, etc., but still not enough). We need to have (nearly) all our cities build research for several turns--that'll be around 100 bpt. Run specs or build settlers in cities that have too much food, etc., but we need to use brute force on our research for awhile. We simply cannot afford to lose the UofS. Build something in Bolly so that when Paper is completed there will be a large overflow toward UofS. As for other cities, note that while they're building research, any chopped hammers will be saved up (for temples or whatever).

Edit: Note that we already have some (50ish?) beakers toward Paper. Draining our gold will give another 200+. And we get a 1.4x research bonus for having both Paper prereqs (at least, I think the bonus applies to built research). 4 or 5 turns of building research ought to do the trick. Speed is essential.

 

[vra379971]

We're trying to juggle too many things, I think. All are important but we need to focus on the two most important and/or urgent: (1) get Paper ASAP and (2) successfully infect one of our cities (other than Tokyo, which we will very likely lose one way or another) with Islam. Popping a GP in Bolly in 4 turns will be nice, but it may not be a Scientist, and even if it is, it does not give us Paper--it gives us Philosophy. 4 sci's is still only 12 bpt (15 with Bolly's library). We can drain our gold (200 hundred something) but then breakeven is 10 or 20 bpt (more if we run merchants, etc., but still not enough). We need to have (nearly) all our cities build research for several turns--that'll be around 100 bpt. Run specs or build settlers in cities that have too much food, etc., but we need to use brute force on our research for awhile. We simply cannot afford to lose the UofS. Build something in Bolly so that when Paper is completed there will be a large overflow toward UofS. As for other cities, note that while they're building research, any chopped hammers will be saved up (for temples or whatever).

Edit: Note that we already have some (50ish?) beakers toward Paper. Draining our gold will give another 200+. And we get a 1.4x research bonus for having both Paper prereqs (at least, I think the bonus applies to built research). 4 or 5 turns of building research ought to do the trick. Speed is essential.

Agreed.

Might someone be able to draw up a focused 'Sankore' turn set that outlines how we'll tech it, and then build it - though I suppose there's really only one place to build it - and move on that? Said turnset would end either when we get it or lose it, so, 15 turns or so.