SGOTM 16 - Plastic Ducks

[kossin]

T221... I convince QSH to stay away from Emancipation for some more time.

Spoiler :

Ugh, the barbs surprised me. They had 3 galleys (I sank 2) and placed the Frigate in the intercept lane of the 3rd one but...

Spoiler :

That was unpleasant to say the least. They got punished by an Infantry and a volley or Airships.

Another SB city, reducing him to 3 cities. This one I razed for a few reasons.
1) we have too much pop
2) we don't have enough land
3) not a great city

Spoiler :

GM trade mission $$$

Spoiler :

More cash... Eiffel Tower is good for fail cash since we got +50% Industrious and +100% Iron.

Spoiler :

State of the game follows:
Techs left - don't be fooled by the numbers, it doesn't take into account research overflow. As you can see, I hovered over Fusion... we have quite a bit of overflow to do it in 1 turn and we will amass even more soon with the cheaper techs.

Spoiler :

Hehe, that'd be pointless.

Spoiler :

SB has been harassing us with Frigates, something I hadn't quite anticipated. We lost 2 Ironclads and 1 Frigate (no Oil, no Uranium = no destroyers). An airship was moved to help deal with them and 2 Frigates are about.

Spoiler :

Paris...

Spoiler :

Orleans...

Spoiler :

All 57 of our cities!

Spoiler :

F4 techs - I traded for Divine Right and HBR... why not.

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Our 30 spies are converging towards the legendary cities. I plan on getting ~30 in Paris and ~14 in Orleans (50% extra than required.. don't like taking chances) by turn 229.

Spoiler :

HE city has started making 6 Marines for Humbaba to kill the longbows if needed.

Spoiler :

The wonderful city of Bagacum... seriously, this once crappy city has contributed huuuge to the empire. It had enough hammer overflow so it managed to build all research multipliers, making scientists there better than anything else!

Spoiler :

Situation at SB... 2 more cities scheduled to fall.

Spoiler :

Espionage points.

Spoiler :

We're about 1,100 behind the last test game I made, and at 170 fewer EPP/turn... we'll have no trouble getting sufficient EPP.

All in all, I made some mistakes here and there (like losing a city) but the game is better than where I wanted it to be.

Everything is on schedule or ahead to complete on T235.

BTW, I was wrong about AP, the last vote was on T223 - in any case, we wouldn't have enough beakers to win T234. (even though we are several thousands ahead of the test game).

Uploading to GOTM server, so everyone can have a look. The hardest part left is controlling the population so that we fall below 62% for the U.N. vote, but not too low so that we don't make it through. Saladin and QSH are a bit too far to get to vote for us I fear, we'll have to rely on our 2 vassals. (new one incoming in 2 turns by Amiens)

EDIT: uploaded.

 

[soundjata]

Saw the save I am in amazed by the crazy micro! So many specialists assigned everywhere and food tiles not worked

Be careful not to trip the domination limit Kossin and good luck wrapping the game up. 10 turns to go

 

[kossin]

We're still a way from land limit as I recall, if anything, we'll have to plan to take more of SB land than anticipated at first...we'll see!

EDIT: as for continuing, today isn't possible. I can resume tomorrow evening, I'll have to play more slowly to really coordinate everything so the last 10 turns will take a while.

 

[soundjata]

one turn a day should be ok

 

[kossin]

Maybe not that slow

~~~

I just had a look at the HoF results (never thought to do so before) for space races (the closest VC to this one in terms of length)... the fastest landing is BCool on 1625AD (T235) with research done by T223. It's a much more generous map (double gold start) with a much stronger Mining Inc (~35 resources by the end) and no need to worry about culture ... so our T235 predicted result is in the ball park.

 

[Duckweed]

Looks pretty good, 3 stops are needed for double check before moving ahead if expecting T235 victory

The turn before completing UN, this should not be a problem with the comparison of your test runs.

The turn before UN vote, make sure the population are lower than the cap by creating more vassals, leave more room in case that the vassals's cities are starved or AI's cities are whipped. Beaker output is going to be decreased in this case, have you considered this in your test game?

The last turn when you have a lot to be done.

 

[kossin]

By my estimates, we're about 2,000 beakers ahead of the test game (and pulling in an extra 1,300 beakers this turn). I was missing ~1,600 beakers in the test that only had 1 GM mission, the same situation we're in at this moment... so I'd say it's 99.99999% certain research will finish on time.

Stop points
Before completing UN: that's 2 more turns (t227)
Absolutely necessary? I'd stop the turn after the U.N. completion so we can better estimate population requirements (or I can just count them manually but it's time consuming and not as reliable).

Before UN vote
Definitely. Maybe an extra turn before.
QSH and Saladin are currently in Caste (I'll try to keep them there) and would likely go to Emancipation otherwise, the only thing we may have to worry about is them starving cities.

Last turn
Sure, however I'm not sure I want to give a beacon to other teams this time so I may not upload this one and only share screenshots (until completion)

~~~
Extra beakers when Paris+Orleans are gifted:

The test game did the full procedure so that those beakers were accounted for.

However, there are 2 options on how to do the culture missions, it all depends on whether we get 1 spare GA of the next 3 GPs. (need to keep something for corporation - we'll know the next GP types by T228 Marseilles, T229 Thebes, T231 Babylon)

1) If we don't have a spare GA, then we have to gift Paris+Orleans on T233. Why? Because if we keep them until T234, it'll be incredibly difficult to have enough population to win the vote on T234, and not too much to prevent the Diplo vote.

For example:

Spoiler :

1,000 total populations
620 for win
Paris size 20
Orleans size 23
Our vassals are worth ~40 votes.

Keeping Orleans + Paris we can have a maximum of 619 population at the start of T234... but then they are gifted to SB. We get to 619-20-23 = 576 population

Add in our vassals: 576+40 = 616 < 620

In this case, we have to have a lot of cities on "prevent growth" for some turns and allow ~25 of them to grow on T234.

2) We have a spare GA, then we can gift Paris+Orleans on T234 and starve some crappy cities more.

The procedure is as follows.

Spoiler :

T234
-Cease Fire with Ragnar
-gift Orleans
-culture bomb in Paris: this adds French culture in Orleans and allows us to spread culture the same turn
-gift Paris
-spread culture in Orleans: this adds French culture in Paris and allows us to spread culture the same turn (note: )
-finish spreading culture...
-DoW SB
-re-capture both Legendary cities

I prefer the second option as it gives us an extra GP in Orleans, but it depends on what we get...

Either way, using the "prevent growth" option is the safest thing we can do. Depending on how much land tiles we get, we can gift a few cities back to Hammy to get us more votes. I'll let one of them grow for the next 10 turns (Nippur?).

 

[Duckweed]

Why not gift Paris and Orleans on T235? We can create at least 5 more vassals if necessary (SB's cities + the cities near Humbaba + 3 from island cities) or liberate Hammy's cities, which will guarantee enough UN votes.

One thing about gifting city is that all units will be moved outside the BFC of the city so that the units for recapturing should stays away so that they won't be randomly moved to a tile without road.

 

[kossin]

SB's cities would have to be liberated with all of Hammy's (all on the same landmass), we'd fall way short of the land limit.

Spoiler :

(from the test game which I was inspecting, but real game is the same; just checked)

Perhaps liberating the 3 cities by Humbaba is the solution, I'll have to count tiles - we'd need about 100% of old SB lands is my guess. It'd probably be easiest, we could wipe out SB on T235 and settle back a few cities. They control 35 tiles altogether, so we'd lose credit for 18 tiles... definitely possible and a lot simpler than starving a lot.

When gifting cities to AI, they don't actually get free units in them. All I need to do is move the guarding warriors on T235, gift, spread culture and recapture with warriors... if you feel uneasy about this I can probably spare a few hundred hammers to make some Infantry In any case, I've added railroads leading to both cities.

 

[kossin]

Just figured out a possible way to pay less EP, not that it matters at this point anymore but...

-have QSH DoW SB after gifting both cities
-DoW QSH
-OB with SB (! an extra 20% discount) due to shared war
-culture missions
-DoW SB and recapture

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to increase the odds of success of the missions. They're still stuck at 83%.

 

[Duckweed]

Then just liberate cities to Hammy and create vassals from islands cities, we have 10+ island cities? together they should count for ~100 population.

We have to recapture cities with 2 movements units, not warriors.

Have you considered a GP for 3rd corporations?

We can DOW Saladin on T234 and capture and resettle some more cities on T235.

 

[kossin]

We can't create a colony unless there are at least 2 cities on a landmass. The only option becomes Rouen-Aryan-other city I forget.

Warriors are enough to re-capture
The GA bomb adds culture back into the first ring of Orleans and the culture mission in Orleans adds back culture to the first ring of Paris, I'll upload the test game back when I get home.

As I said, I'll count tiles. Pretty sure we'll have enough with SB lands.

We can minimize the number of city starves in Colonies by having them revolt civics on T233. In any case, they could only lose 1 pop per city per turn max.

All will be clearer in 3 turns, we should be able to have 60~70 votes from colonies, more than safe.

 

[Duckweed]

IIRC we have some chariots, so why not use them to be safe.

Be careful on SB's land, if you raze his cites and wait to resettle them in the end, Saladin or Qin might send settlers to claim them. so the safe way would be razing them in the last moment.

Remember to build Palace somewhere so that Paris can be gifted.

 

[kossin]

Palace is going to Lyons, closest city to both Orleans and Paris for discount.

There's a settler in production which completes next turn, he can grab 21 of the 24 tiles available in the north before AIs are able to do anything about it. I've noticed that Saladin has a settler lying around but he hasn't moved in forever.

I'm starting to count tiles we'll get from SB. Also, we might get a few more from culture from China and Arabia. Summary to come...

 

[sossos]

Palace is going to Lyons, closest city to both Orleans and Paris for discount.

There's a settler in production which completes next turn, he can grab 21 of the 24 tiles available in the north before AIs are able to do anything about it. I've noticed that Saladin has a settler lying around but he hasn't moved in forever.

I'm starting to count tiles we'll get from SB. Also, we might get a few more from culture from China and Arabia. Summary to come...

Is it possible to make a check list for the 10 vicotory conditions? We can list all prerequistes from T235 back to T225. As long as the checklist is fulfilled step by step, we don't need to worry too much about any potential miss.

 

[kossin]

The Decathlon objectives are as follows:

• Humbaba --an advanced era barbarian unit -- must be dead (Thanks Leif). He is a real monster just like in BOTM 41, but now lives in a fairly secluded place.
  Should be dealt with by T232.
• You own at least 2 Legendary culture cities.
  Should be done on T235.
• You are EITHER the United Nations Secretary General OR the Apostolic Palace Resident.
  UN victory means we're UN secretary.
• You have learned Future Tech 1.
  Planned for T235.
• At least one AI opponent has been eliminated (conquered) by your team.
  Done: Brennus and Ramesses.
• You own at least three Holy Shrines
  Done: Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism.
• You own at least three Corporate Headquarters
  We're 100% getting a Corporation GM from Orleans on T234, also 98% odds in Rheims and very high in Thebes.
• You have stolen EITHER Iron Working, OR Astronomy, OR Physics using espionage.
  Done: Iron Working.
• You fulfill the requirements for TWO victory conditions, at least one of which is NOT Conquest or Domination. (For example, your spaceship arrives on Alpha Centauri the same turn you get Domination, that’s two. If you achieve domination on the same turn as conquest victory, then you need one more victory condition to fulfil this condition. Understood? ).
  Diplo planned for T235, Domination pop achieved, Domination land being counted.
• Blazing: You must submit a save covering at least your first 100 turns – or victory or defeat - not later than 2 months after game start. **
  Done: T102 submitted November 11th.

There.

 

[kossin]

Info from the game.

Spoiler :

1142 land tiles in all
0.64*1142 = 730.88 ~ 731 tiles for domination

From F9 screen, we control 672 tiles at the moment, and the smallest AI is Hammy with 11 tiles.

672 + 11/2 = 677.5 ~ 677
677/1142 = 59.282% Checks out.

Land variations

Spoiler :

From Amiens: -7 tiles to a vassal
From Rouen-Avignon-Aryan: -35 tiles to a vassal
From Humbaba: +4 tiles (assuming no time to pop border, otherwise 8 tiles)
From SB lands: +60 tiles (I only counted 100 culture border pops for captured cities except Chaco Canyon which is already close)

Possible tile flips:
From Saladin: +6 tiles (the typed numbers were culture on the previous turn) [0 taken in calculation]
From QSH: +2 tiles [0 taken in calculation]
From Hammy: -4 tiles gone to Saladin [-4 taken in calculation]

Totals:
672 - 7 - 35 + 4 + 60 + 0.5*(7 + 35 + 11 - 4) = 718.5 ~718 tiles

Give or take 720 with tile flips from our culture.

So 11 more tiles are needed. Giving 500 culture to Cahokia gives 3 more tiles, razing the last SB city gives the remainder if we found a city on the copper.

There are a few more islands here and there that can be settled to get 7 more tiles as well. It's simplest to just kill SB on T235 and re-settle the land with 1~2 cities.

 

[Duckweed]

We have that many troops, besides killing SB, we can also take some of Saladin's bordering cities for more land tiles.

 

[kossin]

We'll see, I needed to move some galleons back to the main continent for moving spies and troops for Humbaba.

One of the things that makes turns so long is lag... it starts slowing down and I save & restart just about every turn to avoid a crash.

 

[kossin]

T227, we have over 10k beaker overflow... maybe 5k more than test game.
U.N. in 1 turn. I'll do a bit more micro but that's all I can do tonight, I have a bit of time tomorrow so I'll cram in another turn early.