SGOTM 16 - Fifth Element

[ZPV]

a) War with Babylon.

We have two stacks in the sea:
1) 3 Infantry, 5 Musketeers and 1 Cannon
2) 6 Muskets, 1 Machine Gun, 2 Super Medics, 3 Cannons.
We also have 3 cannons near Dur-K, and three cannons in Arabia (which need 3 turns to move two squares away from Dur-K).

Plans:
i) If it has more than one rifle and a few other units, Babylon is too strong to capture amphibiously. (The longbow and pike will probably have been upgraded by now.)
The airships can't attack us because they'll have to rebase away from a threatened city.
Stack composition: 2 cannons, 2 infantry, 5 musketeers, 1 medic.

ii) Dur-K just needs cannons, the machine gun, and some killer units (musketeers). I'll send one infantry there too.
Stack composition: 5+3 cannons, 1 infantry, 1 machine gun, 6 musketeers, 1 medic.

I plan to declare in 2 turns. The Arabian cannons will be a turn behind the other ones, but that's ok because I'll spend a turn bombarding that city.
There's a spare galleon to the south. That will let me cycle the correct units into unmoved galleons to join the Dur-K stack via Nippur.
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I will beg Saladin and Qin for peace treaties right before I declare. That way we won't get dogpiled.

 

[Folket]

But Saladin and Qin will continue to be pleased with us after the declaration. Saladin could perhaps become cautious once we capture Dur-k from border tension.

I would do an amphibious attack. Just one more cannon should be enough to decimate the defenders. But I trust what you are doing will work as well. I guess playing conservatively will give us a better warscore for his capitulation.

I was unable to find any stack when I scouted his lands. It seems like he just has small numbers of riflemen everywhere.

 

[Shaandore]

I don't like the amphibious plan. We might need to take some more cities, in which case losing units at the beginning is a bad idea. And ZPV is right that taking some more cities from Ham is good because we will get to domination easier later.

One more thing: if we will have bombers (actually, stealth bombers) why not bombard Humbaba's city, and then take him out with less (5?) guided missles? It looks more hammer efficient to me. (Although it might not matter in the end because Culture seems to be the bottleneck...)

 

[ZPV]

But Saladin and Qin will continue to be pleased with us after the declaration. Saladin could perhaps become cautious once we capture Dur-k from border tension.

I would do an amphibious attack. Just one more cannon should be enough to decimate the defenders. But I trust what you are doing will work as well. I guess playing conservatively will give us a better warscore for his capitulation.

I was unable to find any stack when I scouted his lands. It seems like he just has small numbers of riflemen everywhere.

Cannons cannot attack amphibiously.
We'd have to sacrifice our infantry to do that - musketeers will barely scratch rifles in a city with 80% culture and another 50% bonus.

You're right; I thought we were closer to Cautious than we were. I'll hold off on the Arabian treaty.
Qin can declare at Pleased anyway, and can also be bribed against his Pleased friends. Thus, we need the treaty with him.

 

[Folket]

Yes, let us kill Humbaba 15 turns before our end date.

You are probably both right. The amphibious invasion is more of a option to prevent Hamurabi from moving more units into the city.

 

[Folket]

You are right about Qin. Let us get a treaty with him.

 

[ZPV]

I don't like the amphibious plan. We might need to take some more cities, in which case losing units at the beginning is a bad idea. And ZPV is right that taking some more cities from Ham is good because we will get to domination easier later.

One more thing: if we will have bombers (actually, stealth bombers) why not bombard Humbaba's city, and then take him out with less (5?) guided missles? It looks more hammer efficient to me. (Although it might not matter in the end because Culture seems to be the bottleneck...)

Cultural defence makes almost no difference to the damage that missiles do.
It's 10HP per missile @60% against the Mech or 11HP @0%.
Bombers will get intercepted by the mech unless we have a lot of them, and we won't want to hook up oil and build them until late anyway.

Stealths require robotics, which we won't be researching. Jet fighters and regular bombers are the limit. (Similarly modern armour requires Computers.)

 

[Folket]

Regular bombers should be enough. We can use 8 bomber during at a time when we are at peace.

 

[ZPV]

b) Culture/ great person planning
We have 9 megacities. I expect each of them to produce us a great person, and Gergovia to give us two. That's 10 GPs, out of which we can expect to get 9 usable great artists.

In 15 turns, they should be able to reach the following sizes:
Orleans: hopefully 27. This might be a bit of a stretch.
Rheims: 27
Uzbek: 24
Gergovia: 32
Verlamion: 24
Tolosa: 24; needs farms.
Isca: 24
Vienne: 25
Giza: 26

Assume each of these will have 1 free specialist (SoL), and also a salon.
A couple of these will have to start starving just before the golden age; they don't all want to line up, or else the best cities will pop the cheap GPs rather than the expensive ones. At the height of population, we'll have to run the culture slider for a couple of turns (say 20% for +6) so we get specialists instead of unhappy citizens.

Heliopolis: 22. Maybe more if I can get the workers in place. I'm cancelling it as a megacity, unless there are so many workers available that we can farm over the towns.

The great people they will pop will cost:
1400, 1600, 1800, 2000, 2200, 2400, 2600, 2800, 3000, 3300 GPP.
Those last ones will be difficult enough; generating another four GPs will probably be prohibitively expensive.

Pacifism + Golden age will give us a *3 multiplier on GPP, or a *4 multiplier in Gergovia.
We'll want to get into Caste+Pacifism very soon anyway - so much so that I'd like to build Cristo right away in Thebes, and Eiffel Tower only afterwards.

During the last 15 turns, I expect both Orleans and Gergovia to produce >1000 culture/turn, by running Sistine artists and starving. Up to then, average 650/turn from Orleans; 450/turn from Gergovia producing 26k in Gergovia and 34k in Orleans. That means 10 great artists will be enough, or else a few extra turns in Gergovia starving out culture.

 

[ZPV]

c) Tech path, wonders, and city priorities.

Proposed tech path:
Radio
Refrigeration (supermarkets for our megacities)
Combustion->Flight (airlifting, bombers, etc.)
Mass Media (Hollywood, UN)
Industrialism
Rocketry (for Humbaba)
Superconductor->Genetics
Plastics->Composites->Stealth->Future Tech.

Wonders:
Broadway->Rock'N'Roll: Both in Orleans.
Cristo Redentor->Eiffel Tower: Thebes.
Hollywood and the UN are both jobs for Thebes too - Orleans won't want to work hammer tiles by then.

Cities:
Megacities need theatre, salon, and probably some health buildings will be worth it. Happiness buildings probably not. These cities draw most of the worker priority.

Paris - pure science city. Don't bother building anything. Those two towns that are shared with Orleans might have to be farmed over.
Lyons - might build units later.
Apache - build a few infantry for Humbaba, then wait until better units have been unlocked.
Bibracte - gold.
Calleva: whip a factory, then coal plant->wealth/research
Thebes: workshop over most of those tiles, and build wonders, then units.

Most of the island cities won't get Sushi. (Cherbourg is the exception; this city also needs a lighthouse.)

Civics:
Switch to Caste+Pacif as soon as I can do it without anarchy.

 

[BLubmuz]

About Humbaba, let's try to not waste hammers (we did that all the game). 4 missiles are enough and a transport or 2 galleons loaded with marines, too. We risk a Marine on the first attack. but better risk than lose for sure the hammers of a missile.

About the Babyl. war, i hope those cannons will receive some decent unit to protect them or they are toasted.

 

[ZPV]

About Humbaba, let's try to not waste hammers (we did that all the game). 4 missiles are enough and a transport or 2 galleons loaded with marines, too. We risk a Marine on the first attack. but better risk than lose for sure the hammers of a missile.

About the Babyl. war, i hope those cannons will receive some decent unit to protect them or they are toasted.

Marines are expensive - 160h each.
Missiles are only 60h each.

However, 8 missiles are probably excessive, since we can reuse a galleon or two full of units, and bombers.

(btw, bombers do 7HP of damage to Humbaba - they're really only there to do some collateral damage to the longbows so we can mop them up with cheap units).

Yes, the cannons (by Dur-K) are getting an infantry and a machine gun. I'll leave the three Arabian ones out of the range of riflemen, and cover them with a formation-promoted musketeer to discourage knights.

 

[Folket]

It is not faster to unload your units in Nippur. Unloading in Babylon is equally fast and gives you slightly more freedom on where your units can be in two turn because of the road network. But then I expect you to know where to stand to be ejected to the right square.

You are right. four more great people will be immensely expensive. 16k GPP. We would have to run 150 artists during the extra golden age while still beeing able to starve them out during the next golden age.

 

[Folket]

The PPP look good to me. You have my green light.

 

[ZPV]

It is not faster to unload your units in Nippur. Unloading in Babylon is equally fast and gives you slightly more freedom on where your units can be in two turn because of the road network. But then I expect you to know where to stand to be ejected to the right square.

Good point. I forgot there was a road missing between Nippur and Dur-K.
However, if the units are 1NW of Dur-K they will be ejected onto Dur-2NW with 1/3 of a movement point left.

@Everyone:
I hope to play some turns in about 22 hours. If there's something you'd like me to look at in more detail, please say so.

 

[Shaandore]

ZPV, you are right in
a) I forgot that Stealth bombers need robotics. Maybe guided misslies are the most hammer efficient after all.
b) I forgot that GP cost is not rising by 100 GPP after a wihile

So the 2 Golden Ages plan was a bad idea. Having MegaCities for just 9 GArtists also mean that we might have problems winning in 30 turns if my estimations are accurate. We need to grab everything we can to increase our culture. We might end up running culture slider for some turns in the end...
I wonder if when building culture+running 100% culture slider having watermills/windmills/workshops around Gergovia and Orleans would increase our culture output rather than starving a relatively small city. (They will be starved to small size, so it seems like a better option than farms and trying to grow to have specialists.) It is all situational of course, they might only need a final push in which case starving some more is clearly superior.

Let's hope that we will get lucky with Artists and we get a lot of culture until then, so it doesn't comne to running culture slider.

Green light from me on the PPP.

 

[ZPV]

The map has 1142 land tiles.

Domination limit is 731 (or 730 if it is rounded down...)

We have 566 land tiles now, and we can get 12 more on our landmass/on the islands if we don't settle more cities, and 9 more if we settle the red spots (not a good idea if we want to stay under 2/3 of world pop) and the Humbaba city. 3 of these tiles are currently Saladin's. So with red cities, max culture and Humbaba, that is 587 tiles.

Now I'll list the number of tiles that each player possess:
Hammurabi: 130
Qin: 183
Sitting Bull:109
Saladin: 134

There are 2 more ice tiles south of Babylonian lands near Shushan.
Sum is 1142

Conclusion: We can finish off Babylon if we want to. Or we can get two vassals if none of them is China. (We would have to gift some cities back though if we want two vassals).

Taking another look at this:
We currently have 572 tiles.

If we capitulate Hammy after capturing just Dur-K and Babylon, our domination land total will go up to around 640-50 tiles - we still need another 80 or so more.
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I'd like to leave both Borsippa and Nippur in Hammy's hands, to counteract Saladin's culture.
We could capture Akkad for the extra ~5 tiles if we really want, but we're going to need to raze+resettle quite a lot of land anyway and it's probably not worth the effort.

Instead, we'll need a big war against China - 8 bombers, 10-15 tanks, 9 settlers and 10 turns should be enough to get what we need - we'll just have to be careful to go to 731 tiles (and enough population, which won't be a problem even with UN requirements) only at the right time.
The good thing about tanks is that they get Blitz, so even large stacks of antiquated units won't slow us down.

 

[Shaandore]

10 turns would be enough? To me it seems a little short. If we attack from Babylonian lands using airlifts, we need to march through all the land. Transportation on the sea is slow. Maybe we should move Industrialism before Mass Media? We can build UN very fast in Thebes, so I think that it could work.

 

[BLubmuz]

If we build some marine to use in Humbaba Haven, we have them promoted when it's time to strike China. Tanks are nice, but marines are even better. Almost all China cities are coastal and Marines + bombers can do a great job. Please don't forget that i'm probably one of the best modern warfare fighters. (fight is not just fight it's logistic and troops choice)

About the culture slider, i'm not much concerned by that. Keeping culture @20-30% will be necessary during the war. Looking at the save i've seen some city with angry citizens, due to the lack of happy buildings and to Emancipation.

I suppose we will keep Humbaba's city. Have you counted those tiles?

 

[ZPV]

If we build some marine to use in Humbaba Haven, we have them promoted when it's time to strike China. Tanks are nice, but marines are even better. Almost all China cities are coastal and Marines + bombers can do a great job. Please don't forget that i'm probably one of the best modern warfare fighters. (fight is not just fight it's logistic and troops choice)

About the culture slider, i'm not much concerned by that. Keeping culture @20-30% will be necessary during the war. Looking at the save i've seen some city with angry citizens, due to the lack of happy buildings and to Emancipation.

I suppose we will keep Humbaba's city. Have you counted those tiles?

Marines sniping off coastal cities aren't really appropriate here - we're trying to clear out land so that we can settle it for domination, so we need to take out the big inland ones.
Ok, marines could clear out one coast for us after we get the inland cities some other way, but frankly the units we used for the inland cities can do that almost as easily, but at no extra cost.

6 tiles for Humbaba's Haven will be nice (yes, we will keep it), but won't make much of a dent in what we need for domination.

edit: the culture slider currently costs us ~200bpt per 10%. I'll run it when it makes sense, but that won't be too often.