SGOTM 16 - U'nu'sual S'us'pec'ts

Oh, well, really good mapmakers play the whole game through turn by turn and use worldbuilder to found the wonders on the correct turns, found/destroy barbarian and AI cities, force AI to meet (or not meet) each other and the player on particular turns, etc. You can even prevent the AI from building wonders by using regular autosaves and going back a few turns before they built a wonder and taking away the techs that allow the wonder to be built. All that is time consuming, but it can be done...

Wow! That is a lot of dedication however and I'm not sure if we can do that considering we do have a time limit on this game :)

Can we focus espionage on Ramesses and steal Iron Working from him?

Distance penalty may make things a lot more difficult.
 
Returning to grand strategy....

Tech Steal
The limitation to steal a tech is going to be the espionage points, not when we get Alpha. I can't see us getting enough points on Brennus to steal IW easily. We probably will have to wait for Courthouses.
Astro is completely out of the question. We are going to hopefully bulb it at least 1000 years before anyone else gets it.
Physics seems almost as bad, though by that stage we could do Communism after SM for the spy who would give us the required points to steal it from anybody.

At this point, ALpha is likely to give us access to: Spies, Hunting, Poly, Archery and maybe IW. That's it.

Ramesses does not have a single EP on us, he is focusing them on Brennus and/or whoever else is out there.

Goals
Great Lib - requires Poly, Aesthetics & Literature.
Astro bulb (with GS from GLib) - requires Maths, Calendar, IW, Compass, Machinery, Optics

Note there is no Alpha or CoL required, but we will need IW. This is a massive contradiction.

Question I have is: Do we wish to continue with targeting IW? I am not sure anymore, but I am thinking Physics might be a better option.

edit: I have to learn to type faster to avoid these epic x-posts

I did make a post about grand strategy you may have missed. :)

We can put our espionage slider up. Commerce converted into espionage shall make stealing IW dead easy. Stealing Physics I think is a bad idea. That free GS is pretty damn good!
 
Can we focus espionage on Ramesses and steal Iron Working from him?

That's a good question. At the moment we have no idea of his EP output.

Can we infer anything from the fact that Brennus is splitting his EP's and Ramesses is not?

Does this suggest that Ramesses is also splitting his, but just not on us?

Ramesses might not have the same EP output as Brennus, but it will take 8 turns of switching EP to him (and him not putting any on us) just to find out. This eats into our current EP lead on Brennus (which seems static btw 247/300)
 
I did make a post about grand strategy you may have missed. :)

We can put our espionage slider up. Commerce converted into espionage shall make stealing IW dead easy. Stealing Physics I think is a bad idea. That free GS is pretty damn good!

I did read it :), and I wasn't ignoring it (thats why my post started with 'returning to grand strategy...'),
I just wanted to focus on the targets and outline what is required, but I mostly wanted to point out the contradiction between pure GLib/Astro course and getting IW.

I'm not so sure about Brennus and EP. He obviously is producing a lot of EP, he could easily switch more of that onto us if we started using the slider.
 
Good answers Chris. For test game purposes, I just meant more to help me work on the micro. Not worried so much about the macro being accurate. But trying to get the most out of our workers / city builds is not something I'm good at without a test game.

EDIT: OMG, X-post times a million. Gimme a second to catch up
 
Ah fair enough.

Well, I'm playing on in the test game, a bit clumsily without really looking at what is necessary, etc.. and just trying to figure how long it will take us to get IW off of Brennus.

Also, one thing I'm wondering: Does the cost of stealing a tech decrease as you invest more beakers into it? For example, if we leave IW until one turn, put the EP slider up for a turn or two and steal the remaining off of him, will it work?
 
Well, we will get a trade route discount 20%, a distance cost of let's say 25% and a 50% fortify discount. Chances of success are roughly going to be 60% so we invest two spies, fortify for five turns and steal IW. Easy :p We don't lose Epoints if the spy is caught and mission fails, the diplo modifier has a very short life and decays very quickly.

At break even, we get like 30 E points a turn or so, just closed so can't remember but the slider on for around 8-9 turns (this is assuming we have 0 ep points against him as it is) shall net us IW.

I think the Espionage points he is spending on us is negligible and has almost no effect on our play.
 
Also, one thing I'm wondering: Does the cost of stealing a tech decrease as you invest more beakers into it? For example, if we leave IW until one turn, put the EP slider up for a turn or two and steal the remaining off of him, will it work?
I don't think so. Not certain but pretty sure our own investment doesn't matter.

Did we decide that he is splitting his EP but doesn't have a settled GSpy? And doesn't have any esp buildings? Where is he getting his extra EP? Did he just get behind to us and then switched all to us?
 
I don't think so. Not certain but pretty sure our own investment doesn't matter.

Did we decide that he is splitting his EP but doesn't have a settled GSpy? And doesn't have any esp buildings? Where is he getting his extra EP? Did he just get behind to us and then switched all to us?

You are right. Just tested it. Sadly that sucks! :lol:

I am almost certain it is the slider. The AI waste a great spy they get on a golden age or use it to explore if we give it to them in the beginning and no pre settled buildings otherwise we would be able to tell via land. Extra EP points from the dot probably mean that he is very close to Rams or kcd may have put his scout on the other continent.


Anyway, I'd like some data guys if that is possible.

Chris: The EP ratio on the turn we met Brennus, the turn AFTER we met Brennus please. Just open the file, hover over Brennus's name and write the two numbers it gives. Also the EP ratio the turn he founds Buddhism and the EP ratio the turn after. And at the end of your turnset.

Neil: First turn of your turnset and last turnset please. I'd also like the EP ratio the turn before you set all of our EP on Brennus, the turn you set it and the turn after please.

Trystero:
EP ratio on the first turn, last turn and middle turn of your turnset please.

Thanks! :)

For my turnset his espionage points on us are increasing at the same rate ours are on him. This automatically points to the slider and a ratio of something like 2:1 or something more ridiculous depending on how many AI he has met.

We can see how this ratio changes over the turns. Sadly, there is no way to monitor this change over the course of the game, rather, we have to check individual turns and extrapolate data.
 
Trystero:
EP ratio on the first turn, last turn and middle turn of your turnset please.

Thanks! :)

EP ratio Brennus/us:

turn 57: 147/200
turn 64: 175/228
turn 72: 207/260

Just catching up, but I am worried about waiting until Physics for the tech steal.
 
turn 31: 47/100.

This was the start of my turn and when I set Brennus to rank 1.
We have had a lead of 53 ever since then.

Brennus has increased his EP rate twice since then though, probably to put it on Ramesses.
 
This espionage thing is doing my head in.

I suppose the important thing is that we steal IW, using the slider, before Brennus starts building courthouses or such. Whatever it costs
 
Yeah - I agree. I think we should plant the next city near him for espionage cost purposes, open borders ASAP, and hope for religion spread.

All these things should reduce the espionage mission cost. (Here's another reference link)

Edit: A careful reading of that article indicates that we only get an espionage bonus if our state religion is spread to his target city. Regardless, we probably want religion spread from him anyway, so that's another reason (beyond tech stealing) to want open borders.

Edit2: More info on tech stealing here.
 
That's a really handy link, got to bookmark that one.

According to the link, the religion discount only applies if the target city has the same state religion as us, but the target civ is not in that religion.

In other words, forget Buddhism. If we found Confused, revolt to it and spread it to the target city, only then do we get the bonus.

Also, Brennus is very close as it is. The only land between us is a few jungle squares, so I doubt we will be settling any cities south for a little bit.

edit: x-post with your edits. :)
 
Thanks. Just waiting for Chris now :)
It may give us some indication. I think Chris's one will be the most different and give us the most information. I suspect that before the slider change, his e points on us was increasing at a different rate.

Anyway, if you start a new game and put a gspy in all ai cities and infiltrate, you can see their city (and their slider) on the same turn before they have the chance to up the slider in reaction to our infiltration.

As it is, I think stealing IW is going to be cheaper than researching it anyway.
 
revent, you and i are the thread spammers, for sure.

I am happy to get IW from Brennus, it might cost us with slider to EP, but that is life, we need to steal something and this is probably the best way to get it.

Sorry, but i have not done anything on the test map, but i agree that it is really only useful for worker micro from here. Macro decisions are probably more important now.
 
Thanks. Just waiting for Chris now :)
It may give us some indication. I think Chris's one will be the most different and give us the most information. I suspect that before the slider change, his e points on us was increasing at a different rate.

Anyway, if you start a new game and put a gspy in all ai cities and infiltrate, you can see their city (and their slider) on the same turn before they have the chance to up the slider in reaction to our infiltration.

As it is, I think stealing IW is going to be cheaper than researching it anyway.
how is that for a x-post. :)
Anyway, the more i think, the more i agree. IW is possible, and desirable.
 
Yup, definitely thread spammers :p But SG's have so much more fun than a normal Bts game!

Yeah, I do think IW is desirable. But we will need to focus our expansion as soon as possible ie start building settlers and workers as soon as we start researching Alpha to settle that jungle (or at the very least, the best sites). Not sure how long it will take Brennus to settle it.

I think the test map can be left. It's not that important. The main issue is the worker micro anyway which I have already done and posted a test save. However, that map may need some modification if Benginal decides to settle a city in his turnset.
 
hell yeah, sg's rock.
i agree with expansion, but it has to be worthwhile. the only city spots i see are barb cities or offshore. jungle can wait until we have both iw and idle workers. more workers is normally a good play.

i missed the test save. thanks, saves me some hassle
 
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