SGOTM 16 - Fifth Element

[ZPV]

It would be very friendly if you could write out the meaning of it when you use an abreviation for the first time. I had to google wftyagta or what it was called and I dont understand "We must arrive soon at least to 6 cities for the OU" either.

these discussions seem to be intresting but I dont understand them cause of all your slang.

I asked a while ago why you guys think its allready to late to build cottages (below 100 turns played!) and noone felt responcible to answer that question.

Sorry - I must have missed your question.
Why do I think it's getting too late to build cottages outside the capital? Well, we haven't hit that limit yet, but then again we're not really close to being able to settle the next round of cottage cities either.

The main reason is because a hammer economy from the industrial age onwards (where you build workshops, hammer multipliers, and then build Wealth or Research) (with or without corporations) is much more flexible - we only need one set of commerce multipliers in the cities that keep their old cottages because we can keep our slider at either 0% or 100% - and is much faster to set up in new cities since you need fewer buildings and have the hammers to build them quickly.

The question is, how advanced does a cottage have to be, to want to keep it instead of a workshop in the Industrial Age? Realistically, except where you already have big multipliers like the capital, you're looking at needing towns if you want to outperform workshops. Those take a loooong time for our outside cities. The game is just too fast to be able to wait 70 turns (or 35 with Emancipation) for them to develop.

 

[Shaandore]

So the distance maintenacne for corn city is 3.12 and for pigfish 0.95. All the others (number of cities and civic maint.) are the same, so the difference will be ~2gpt in maintenance cost, which is not huge at all. With that in mind, I'm again undecided about settling in the jungle (which will give us much more research in the longer run)
I think that it is time to vote. I will abstain

@Blubmuz: How should I post the save? Shall I upload it? AlanH told us not to post live saves in our team thread.

In the meanwhile, I would like to play ahead until first settler comes out. Once again my

PPP:

Every turn: make sure Lyons has the Engineer hired.

Do we trade for sailing? If so, what shall I give for it?

Military: One north warrior comes south, the same amount of fogbusting can be done on that forest just N of the mountain range. (AFAIK barbs cannot spawn on horse resources, and the northern corner of our landmass is not spawnbusted anyway.)
We will need at least one more warrior if we plan to settle the red spot. The other warriors will continue scouting as planned.

Paris: grow while building a spy, then build a warrior/barracks/research
Lyons: build work boat, then build granary while growing to size 6. Put >10 hammers into settler and whip 3 pop into granary.
Orelans: build barracks (or maybe a warrior first) until size 6, then whip a settler.
Rheims: work clams for five turns, and whip a workboat. (this is much better than building workboat while working mine) After that build granary.

Workers: One worker in Lyons mines the other grass hill, then goes south/east to improve new city
Other Lyons worker chops into the workboat, then stay in the general area to improve FloodPlains.
Orleans worker starts road south to the new city/stays near Orleans and improve FPs.
Paris worker builds the last green riverside cottage, then starts building the other riverside plains cottage that could be shared with Orelans.
Rheims worker finishes the road and builds a road on the gems tile. (gives us faster spy movement, and we will need the road soon anyway.)


Important question: do we farm or cottage the FPs? There are two cottages in the area. I would Farm them, since those cities won't be used as science cites. (We could even consider bulldozing the existing FP cottages once our economy comes back in shape)

Questions that need to be adressed are underlined. Mini-turnset ends when the first settler gets built.

 

[ZPV]

So the distance maintenacne for corn city is 3.12 and for pigfish 0.95. All the others (number of cities and civic maint.) are the same, so the difference will be ~2gpt in maintenance cost, which is not huge at all. With that in mind, I'm again undecided about settling in the jungle (which will give us much more research in the longer run)
I think that it is time to vote. I will abstain

The main difference is not in how much maintenance there is, but in how quickly the city becomes productive. Since it's a big economic investment, every turn matters. The nearby city has more food and is close to all our workers so it can get more improvements quickly.

PPP:

Every turn: make sure Lyons has the Engineer hired.

Do we trade for sailing? If so, what shall I give for it?

Is Sailing available for trade? Then yes, definitely. Right away. We'll immediately get foreign trade routes with Brennus, and we'll get trade routes with Ramesses when we've explored enough of the south coast.
If either of them still lacks Fishing, I'd consider giving it to them so they can research it for us.

Military: One north warrior comes south, the same amount of fogbusting can be done on that forest just N of the mountain range. (AFAIK barbs cannot spawn on horse resources, and the northern corner of our landmass is not spawnbusted anyway.)
We will need at least one more warrior if we plan to settle the red spot. The other warriors will continue scouting as planned.

Barbs can and will spawn on the horse resource. That corner should be spawnbusted if possible.

Paris: grow while building a spy, then build a warrior/barracks/research
Lyons: build work boat, then build granary while growing to size 6. Put >10 hammers into settler and whip 3 pop into granary.
Orelans: build barracks (or maybe a warrior first) until size 6, then whip a settler.
Rheims: work clams for five turns, and whip a workboat. (this is much better than building workboat while working mine) After that build granary.

Since one extra city costs so much, we absolutely cannot afford two. I'd suggest removing one of the settlers from this list - those population can be whipped into something else (like an aqueduct for the hanging gardens in Lyons if we can get mathematics in time).

In Orleans, if you start a warrior, make sure you finish it. Hammers in a unit start to decay after 10 turns not being built. In a building, you get 50 turns.

In Paris, I think I'd recommend Research. It's better than putting 1h/turn in a Barracks or soon-to-be Spearman.

Workers: One worker in Lyons mines the other grass hill, then goes south/east to improve new city
Other Lyons worker chops into the workboat, then stay in the general area to improve FloodPlains.
Orleans worker starts road south to the new city/stays near Orleans and improve FPs.
Paris worker builds the last green riverside cottage, then starts building the other riverside plains cottage that could be shared with Orelans.
Rheims worker finishes the road and builds a road on the gems tile. (gives us faster spy movement, and we will need the road soon anyway.)

Important question: do we farm or cottage the FPs? There are two cottages in the area. I would Farm them, since those cities won't be used as science cites. (We could even consider bulldozing the existing FP cottages once our economy comes back in shape)

There's no need to bulldoze the cottage that already exists any time soon - but later on when we can use the extra food from farms then that is a better improvement. Neither city is so full of resources as to justify being a hybrid commerce/production city.

In Orleans, only improve tiles you intend to work. Any others are pretty much just wasted worker turns.

Is it possible to save the forest in Lyons and get the work boat another way? If not then don't worry, but it would be great if you could.
One thing you might do is whip the granary for two pop (i.e. before doing all that growing to size 6), build the work boat with overflow and mines, and then grow.

 

[BLubmuz]

@Blubmuz: How should I post the save? Shall I upload it? AlanH told us not to post live saves in our team thread.

That was a suggestion, it's not mandatory. It's 15 games i hear the same suggestion .

If your aim is to play until the first settler is ready - just ready - go on.
I can have the time to think to the dotmap and to discuss with ZPV about the 2nd settler. If you missed it, i'm all for quick expansion.

BTW ZPV, why HGs and not Pyramids? Representation is always a big boost to anything. If you sum the cost of an aqueduct to the cost of the HG, you have... Pyramids. more or less. But the usefulness... If not we can have failure gold.

 

[ZPV]

That was a suggestion, it's not mandatory. It's 15 games i hear the same suggestion .

If your aim is to play until the first settler is ready - just ready - go on.
I can have the time to think to the dotmap and to discuss with ZPV about the 2nd settler. If you missed it, i'm all for quick expansion.

BTW ZPV, why HGs and not Pyramids? Representation is always a big boost to anything. If you sum the cost of an aqueduct to the cost of the HG, you have... Pyramids. more or less. But the usefulness... If not we can have failure gold.

Well, Representation is definitely useful, although this is limited by the fact that we're not going to run large numbers of specialists soon.
The costs are not really equivalent though - we can whip the aqueduct whereas the 300 vs 500 hammers that have to come from chops and worked tiles are what take such a long time. However, this isn't the main reason to prefer HG. Instead it's that I think the Pyramids will be built abroad soon (hopefully in Celtia ), and I'd rather have the sure GE points than a small amount of failure gold. If we could be sure of getting it in Lyons I'd say go for it, but I think it's too late, when we already know one AI with stone and an industrious wonder whore.

Now, building the Pyramids somewhere else for failure gold... that's an idea I think we can run with, even without stone. It's a better build, say, in Orleans, than a Barracks we can't use yet.

HG is still a good wonder. +1 citizen immediately in every city is worth the cost - we might even be able to time it with settling a city or two.

 

[ZPV]

That was a suggestion, it's not mandatory. It's 15 games i hear the same suggestion .

The only mandatory thing is at the end of the turnset you upload the save, and the next player downloads it from the server.

 

[Folket]

I'm voting on pig/fish city.

As for spies, I think we should get two spies. It is so easy to fail with only one.

 

[Shaandore]

One spy is out, and we start putting hammers into the next one in Paris next turn. I don't think we should run for Pyramids. Maybe I should put hammers into it in Paris after the spy is out? It would be better than building research. Orleans will need that barracks sooner or later.

save is coming soooooon. Sorry for the delay.

 

[Shaandore]

Here it is.

 

[BLubmuz]

Here it is.

Thank you, my thoughts:

First, North:

Spoiler :

I must say that i consider to discard the original fish city (marked in light blue). I prefer the one marked in red, it's a true city, not a fishing village. If we settle both, the blue one remains a fishing village, but the red one will have less food. And without those pigs, the blue one is really nothing. I also do not like a city in the NE to hook those horses: it would be a really poor city.

Then, the city NW (marked in yellow). I think it's good city under any aspect.

Then South:

Spoiler :

The red one is a very good city, like the blue one. The green can be decent, but it's a future thought.

Some suggetion for Shaan: road where the workers are (sheeps and hill). Those roads are needed to hook sheeps and horses and the one on the hill is needed to hook both pigs and gems. Unfortunately it can't speed the spy movement.

I noticed the Lyons doesn't have the chop hammers into the library: i recommended to keep those hammers for their best value (+100%) but someone thought differently. Why?
Now, move the citizen from the farmed FP to the mine, to speed that WB.

 

[ZPV]

Thank you, my thoughts:

First, North:

Spoiler :

I must say that i consider to discard the original fish city (marked in light blue). I prefer the one marked in red, it's a true city, not a fishing village. If we settle both, the blue one remains a fishing village, but the red one will have less food. And without those pigs, the blue one is really nothing. I also do not like a city in the NE to hook those horses: it would be a really poor city.

Then, the city NW (marked in yellow). I think it's good city under any aspect.

Then South:

Spoiler :

The red one is a very good city, like the blue one. The green can be decent, but it's a future thought.

The purpose of the blue city in the north is to work cottages on the four plains tiles shared with Paris. We're already slow in getting its cottages set up, and if we don't do this it won't have good tiles to put through the multipliers of Buro, Academy, etc when the happiness cap grows. Once it's done that it can be relegated to a fishing village, generating a key great scientist.

The red city in the north is a production city. We do not need another one of those yet. We can barely afford the 4 cities we have. If we said before starting that we'll make 13 net gpt at turn 85, that would have sounded ridiculous. It's just not enough. 5 will be a major stretch, even more so if the 5th has little commercial upside.

Some suggetion for Shaan: road where the workers are (sheeps and hill). Those roads are needed to hook sheeps and horses and the one on the hill is needed to hook both pigs and gems. Unfortunately it can't speed the spy movement.

I noticed the Lyons doesn't have the chop hammers into the library: i recommended to keep those hammers for their best value (+100%) but someone thought differently. Why?
Now, move the citizen from the farmed FP to the mine, to speed that WB.

Chops give their best value for things we can't whip (wonders and expensive buildings, and starter buildings in new cities), not the things with the highest production bonus. It's 20 base hammers either way, and replaces 20 hammers from mines, etc just the same. A Library is very easy to get without chops, so chops should really be saved for the things that need them the most. When we can't do this, chops go into our first immediate need, and that is also not a Library in a city with very little commerce and which mustn't run a scientist.

 

[ZPV]

Thoughts on the save:
Paris has a happiness cap of 7. We should work hard to use all of that - one of the workers at Lyons should come over and help build cottages; and when (if) the western city is built a third worker will be needed.

Is there some other way to build a backup spy? If so, we should free up Paris from having to work that mine. It's time to stop thinking Paris can both build stuff and run our economy. It is not powerful enough to do both.

Micromanagement of Lyons:
The target is to have a work boat and a granary, and at least 3 population, so as to hit a high growth configuration, ASAP, while constantly running the engineer. For that we need 90 forge-adjusted hammers.
The limiting factor on that is food - nothing competes with the hammer production of slavery, so the target is to hit size 5 as soon as possible and run a 2 pop whip to generate 75 of the hammers. The other 15 will come easily from passive production - we can consider switching to maximum production at size 5 to finish the work boat quickly (i.e. it'll take 5 turns instead of the 4 it takes stalling at size 4, but we have an extra citizen), then whip the granary just before the food box is half full.

Rheims:
This city needs a workboat and a granary right away - these are urgent enough that one pre-maths chops is warranted - I think chopping into the work boat is best, then working clams + a mine to get 30 hammers into the granary before poprushing it.

 

[Shaandore]

I really should have posted the save earlier. Many helpful comments, thank you, guys!

It seems that ZPV's style is almost the same as mine, so he pretty much said all that I wanted to about that Library in Lyons.

My thoughts on our economy: We really shouldn't settle anything in the next ~10 turns. After that (or around that time) we will hopefully have sailing, so we will have an economic boost, and we can get away with one more city, while researching currency. After that, we can settle more agressively.

With that said, I change my vote from abstaining to the fishing village, and if we get sailing early, we should make relatively fast next settler for the jungle corn spot.

@Blubmuz: I did plan to road the hill (See previous PPPs). The hill road together with the Gems road would have sped up the next spy's movement, but it won't be ready in time with the current worker plan.

I will have time to play this turnset tomorrow night, it will last about ~10 turns if nothing comes up. The last mini-turnset will be played during the weekend, so no need to worry about objective 10

Updated PPP:

Every turn: make sure Lyons has the Engineer hired.

Military: in emergency, trade writing <-> archery with Brennus.
Research/Diplomacy: Do we gift fishing to Brennus so he can research Sailing for us?

Cities:
Paris: grow on cottages while building research
Lyons: build work boat, finishing it at max production staying at size 5. Put minimal hammers into granary and whip it with almost empty foodbin. Build research while growing back to size 5, and then build a worker.
Orelans: build spy and later barracks until size 6, then whip a settler.
Rheims: work clams for five turns, and build workboat with the help of a chop. (this is much better than building workboat while working mine) After that build/whip granary.

Workers:
Sheep worker at Lyons builds road on sheeps, then mines the other grass hill, then stay in the Lyons-Orleans area to build some roads and farm FloodPlains when needed.
Other Lyons worker starts moving near Rheims (to help at clearing the pigs and gems when IW is stolen) while building roads on silk and the farmed FP NE of Orleans, and maybe a road 1SE of Orleans if we have the time.
Orleans worker finishes cottage, and goes to help Paris worker next turn (while building partial road on silk tile).
Paris worker builds the last green riverside cottage together with the other worker, then they start building the other riverside plains cottage that could be shared with Orelans.
Rheims worker finishes the hill road and builds a road on the gems tile. (gives us faster spy movement, and we will need the road soon anyway.) chops into the workboat.

Questions that need to be adressed are underlined. Mini-turnset ends when the first settler gets built.

 

[ZPV]

Sounds good to me. Give Fishing to Brennus when IW shows one turn left. Both AIs will need to research Sailing before we can trade it, but it's cheap and useful for both, so it shouldn't be too long. If they don't have it/start it by the time we finish Mathematics we'll have to consider researching it ourselves.

The motivation for the delay is to minimize the Worst Enemy trade negmods with Ramesses. It works out the same after 6 turns, but it's better if we don't have him dip to Annoyed to us, which is a small risk with the earlier gift (since it's proportional to trade value/turns we've know Ram.).

 

[unclethrill]

Just a quick note. In my early tests, I had spies in the ai city and was able to steal a tech but IW was not the first choice. I think we need all techs below IW before we can steal IW. I haven't look at save to see if this is relevant but thought I wold inject that note in case we happened to overlook it.

 

[ZPV]

Just a quick note. In my early tests, I had spies in the ai city and was able to steal a tech but IW was not the first choice. I think we need all techs below IW before we can steal IW. I haven't look at save to see if this is relevant but thought I wold inject that note in case we happened to overlook it.

You can steal any technology you can research - you pick which tech to steal when the spy executes its mission.

We do have BW, so IW will be available.

 

[unclethrill]

Fair enough. I don't play with spies much but in my tests I had bw but the steals were like fishing and masonry etc. Just as long as shan is aware of how it works is all I wanted.

 

[Folket]

It is likely you did not have enough espionage points.

I'm more worried about the plan to use espionage to create a legendary city. Have anyone done this? How many spies do you need? 50? 200?

 

[Shaandore]

I'm pretty sure that IW stealing will be starightforward. The one problem that could hurt us is if we don't have enough points even after the 50% reduction from stationary spy. In that case we might have to wait until we have enough.

I have no idea about legendary city making, I have never tried that. ZPV please tell us more about that. Have you used that tactitc before?

 

[BLubmuz]

I don't use espionage in my solo games, i just build some spies late in the game for counter-espionage, thus i'm not the one to ask advice.

Culture by spies? i should have seen something, but never bother to inform.