SGOTM 17 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Dhoomstriker]

I think you missed something, or I am missing something...

I have no prague settler involved... I am using Ivory settler for NE, and Aachen settler #2 for Silver. If you also produce a settler in prague, we have one too many... I guess we could drop settler #2 from Aachen instead, but this does not speed up the pyramids very much.

And in my plan, NE gets settled much earlier that SIlver. Indeed, on turn 68 or 69, depending on the exact location, so of course it also gets the free pop from HG.

An extra Settler will be fine, as then we'll just have a Fish City that can also immediately whip its Monument, giving us 2 Coastal Cities with quick Monuments and thus an extra chance to see the Ocean layout and maybe meet an AI sooner.

So, we'd have:
Aachen produces the Horse City Settler
Ivory City produces the NE City Settler
Aachen produces the Fish City Settler (the Galley can help move the Settler quickly into position... 4 turns from Settler completion to settling date if we send the Settler on a Galley down the east coast of the peninsula or 3 turns from Settler completion to settling date if we can load up the Settler on our Galley right next to Aachen and then unload the Settler inside of Rice City to save a turn)
Prague produces the Silver City Settler

 

[Jastrow]

I do NOT think we can afford that... We can try it out (I cannot until saturday morning), but as I said, after putting down Horse and NE, we were at 0 or +1 gpt... I then founded silver, and we went to -8... There is some optimization left, but I dont think we can afford fish city before currency.

 

[Jastrow]

Just make sure that Prague will have enough Health even without its Forests. If you're not sure, then just keep the Cow for now. We aren't desperate for Happiness with Mansa for any reason.

I will check this in my final practice run through.

Have you tried to see how well NE City can be set up if we use this Worker to help out doing that instead?

Actually, I like that idea...

Sounds good conceptually, without me having tried it out to confirm the timing. A question: how does the timing of the arrival of the Work Boat at the Crab align with the timing of our Cultural Borders expanding over top of the Crab?

I think the WB is two turns too late... Since we are working a good tile to build the granary in the mean time, being two turns late is not the end of the world (and this plan is optimum for speading up GLH, which is a high priority given our economy.)

Okay, I see what you're doing there. Since we don't need the Temple in Prague, we can thereby get an extra Settler.

It would be nice to send the Ivory City Settler to the peninsula location by the Fish.

No, Ivory to NE and Aachen to Fish, but again, ONLY if we can afford it.

The Warrior can also explore within Mansa's Cultural Borders if we come across a wall of Peaks in the west. By that time, we'll need a few more Military Police units, so we might as well send him to one of the newly-founded Cities that will grow quickly (NE City?). Unlike the Scout, the Warrior can actually act as a Military Police unit.

Agreed... but it depends on our economy.

Since we don't have Missionaries or Stonehenge, it's got to be adjacent to the Pig. That fact only leaves one square that makes sense: on the G For that is SW of the G Pig For and NE + N of the G Ivory.

That is my prefered site as well. The alternative (which I do NOT prefer), is S of pig, to get access to fresh water.

Here's the best way to think about it: only certain events TRIGGER the Trade Routes to be recalculated. One such event is Opening Borders with an AI. Another such event is building a City. Other actions, like building a Road, happen too regularly for the game to perform the calculation at that time.

Thanks. Tha makes it easy to remember.

It's got to go there if we don't want to lose either the Pig or eastern Banana...

Yep, just confirming. I cannot see an alternative.

Sure. Ideally, we'd be able to either build Rathauses or Horse Archers instead, but until we get to being able to build one of those build items, a Barracks is a good placeholder build item.

If Rathaus is availalbe, obviously. I dont want to start building Horse archers yet, given the economy.

We'll probably want to hire 1 to 2 Scientists here soon anyway (even temporarily losing Food while hiring 2 of them might make sense), so we probably won't complete the Barracks for a while.

Agreed

A Monument first in Horse City, as we want to be able to improve that Gems Resource as soon as Iron Working comes online.

This depends on when we think we will get IW, but you are probably right that this is the correct approach. I will think about it a bit more.

NE City will go Granary -> Library (Chopped if we have enough Workers in the area--which is why we care more about bringing up the island Worker than we do about a Cottage down on the island).

Yep, I have two workers in the area, but a 3rd will help as well.

The island City will make enough Hammers from the Stone to be able to later 1-pop-whip its Lighthouse, so we don't really need a third improved square there, as after we get the Lighthouse, the Coast squares will count as "improved" squares.

Yep... I was never really a fan of this cottage to be honest... I put it in my first run through because we had been talking about it.

Or, you discover that you have deviated from the plan.

Yes, that would fall under "unexpected"

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I think the WB is two turns too late... Since we are working a good tile to build the granary in the mean time, being two turns late is not the end of the world (and this plan is optimum for speading up GLH, which is a high priority given our economy.)

I can agree with this reasoning.

No, Ivory to NE and Aachen to Fish, but again, ONLY if we can afford it.

Okay, it's going to basically take playing out the test game to know... since, if we don't whip away citizens working Coast squares, we will artificially appear to have more Commerce than we actually have.

Still, we don't have to settle Fish City until the same time as Silver City (just before completing The Hanging Gardens), even if the Settler gets there slightly sooner.

A Monument first in Horse City, as we want to be able to improve that Gems Resource as soon as Iron Working comes online.

This depends on when we think we will get IW, but you are probably right that this is the correct approach. I will think about it a bit more.

The problem with, say, going for a Library first is that our Granary will come quite late. I'm not too comfortable relying on luck for Confucianism to spread there. By the time that we are able to connect up the Gems Resource, we're going to be desperate for +1 Happiness in every City.

On a side note, at that time, we're also going to be very short on Worker turns... I mean, we will have these Junglified Resources to take care of:
1. Any Ivory Resources that had Jungle grow over them between now and then
2. Pig at Rice Peninsula
3. Pig shared by Prague/GP Farm
4. Pig at GP Farm
5. Rice at GP Farm
6. Banana at GP Farm
7. Pig at Horse
8. Gems at Horse
9. Rice at Horse
10. Banana #1 at Horse
11. Banana #2 at Horse
12. Banana at Fish/Rice Peninsula
13. Pig at Silver City
14. Banana at Silver City
15. Silver at Silver City
16. Banana at Dual Banana City

WOW, that's a lot... maybe early Alphabet (had we known that Mansa would have avoided it--which we could not have known--and he might have teched it if we did due to piggyback research reasons anyway) would have been stronger... getting those Resources online sooner could really catapult an empire. But, we suspected that Mansa would go for Alphabet before Iron Working, so no regrets... it's just that a team that gambled and got lucky will really have gotten lucky. On the plus side, we guarded the 2 most important Pig Resources, so we're still in great shape.

We might have to launch a war on Mansa at the time of learning Iron Working for the sole purpose of stealing 2+ Workers, though, haha.

City Capture Gold could also be helpful but unrealistic at that time.


Say... I normally don't think of using a SPY to Sabotage an improvement because then an AI will rush in to re-improve it... but... maybe we SHOULD plan to Sabotage an adjacent Resource (the Copper or Rice on the Prague-Djenne border) to INTENTIONALLY lure a couple of Workers there, heh heh.

Of course, then we'd need Alphabet in order to build a Spy, but it's an idea to keep in the back of our minds.

 

[Jastrow]

Yes, I realized the same thing overnight... We can follow the basic plan, and if the budget does not work out, then have BOTH the silver-bridge and fish-city settlers simply wait a turn or two before settling. We gain littel from settling these cities more than one turn before the HG is ready, unless a MM settler party is in the area (VERY unlikely), so that is what I am thinking of dong now.

I still think our approach was better, despite all the jungle resources... Yes, we will be short on worker turns once they are up, but even with 3 worker steals, we are not exactly having spare worker turns now... SO and earlier IW would NOT mean that we have all those extra resources on line. They would be on line instead of soemthing else. And yes, some of them are very nice, but remember that because of the time it takes to chop the jungle, each of those being on line would be replacing TWO of the ones we have.

 

[Mitchum]

I like where things are headed; it looks like we're on the right track. Getting the HG and Currency will really jump start our empire.

Regarding tech trading with Mansa, I don't think we every needed him to research Alphabet before IW (I think I saw that somewhere). What we need is for him to research Alphabet before he researches Math or Currency, right? When he researches Alphabet could cause huge swings for different teams depending on when he researches it. I guess we're subject to the RNG in a big way on this one. Let's just hope that he learns Alphabet shortly.

By the way, we've caputured 4 workers, not 3. Speaking of workers, we may be fine right at this moment, but does it make sense for us to think about building (or stealing) more in the near future? As mentioned, once we learn IW and settle a few more cities, we're going to have a ton of improvements to make. We just need to be sure that we have enough workers to keep up with the growth of our cities minus any whipping we do, so maybe we're in okay shape...

 

[Mitchum]

@ Jastrow

Nice working beating the last deity BOTM and getting the fastest Space victory to boot. I didn't play it but based on the fact that only a handful of people won, it must have been quite a challenge. Nicely done!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Great People
Is there anything that a Great Scientist could Lightbulb that we will want?

I think that if we manage to get the right set of techs in trade (Aesthetics, Calendar... I don't remember the list off of the top of my head), we can Lightbulb Machinery, but it feels rather contrived, so it's not likely.

So... the answer is probably "no for now" (Education maybe later, but no point hanging onto a Great Person for that long).


So... I'm thinking that we'll launch a Golden Age.

Now, the Ducks are big fans of building the MoM Wonder (and we do have Marble) and THEN launching their Golden Ages.

It's not a bad approach, but it also kind of relies on us getting Calendar in trade before an AI builds that Wonder, and it also delays the time of when we can launch our first Golden Age.


What I'm considering is perhaps delaying the switch to Confucianism (whipping the Aqueduct earlier or else pre-building the Settler for a turn and then accepting a turn of Unhappiness in Prague) and instead using our first Great Scientist on a Golden Age.

Unfortunately, we won't yet be ready to switch into Police State or Organized Religion, we won't be hiring TOO many Specialists during the Golden Age period (for their bonus GPPs), we won't yet be able to convert the extra Hammers into Wealth, and we won't benefit from MoM.

But, we will save a turn of Anarchy on Confucianism and we would earn more Commerce than we would earn in Flasks in the short term versus settling the Great Scientist. The extra Hammers wouldn't hurt, either, in speeding up our Wonders (+3 Hammers per turn going into The Great Lighthouse, as one example, earning us that Wonder faster and thus extra turns of bonus Trade Routes).


Settling a Great Scientist gives us, what... 600 base Flasks and 100 base Hammers after 100 turns. With bonuses from a Library, a Monastery, and say 20% bonus to research (we don't normally get the full 20% but some techs give a 40% bonus, so let's just use 20% as an average), that will mean: 6 * 100 * 1.35 * 1.2 = 6 * 135 * 1.2 = 6 * 162 = 972 Flasks

Say that we'll get a Forge halfway through and we'll also get the Stone bonus to The Hanging Gardens, so let's say that we'll earn about 15 extra Hammers in The Hanging Gardens and 100 * 1.12 = 112 Hammers with a Forge (and that's only if we can get multiples of 4 Hammers), giving us 127 Hammers

Well, a good Great Scientist Lightbulb can easily get you more than 1500 Flasks... then again, such a Lightbulb comes later and "Flasks now" are nice (although a settled Great Scientist only gives you a few Flasks now and then more as time goes on)... but, we should at least check to see if launching a Golden Age now works out nicely for us.


Really, we just need to get over the Currency hurdle, at which point we can build Wealth (instead of Units that we can't afford) to power us through Alphabet (if Mansa hasn't learned it by then) and then probably Horseback Riding.

If launching a Golden Age can speed up our arrival at Currency by, say, 3 turns or more (if we convert some of that Commerce into Flasks), then we should seriously consider launching a Golden Age with Great Person #1.


Otherwise, a Golden Age with Great Person #2 might be the best use for a second Great Scientist.

 

[Jastrow]

Just to be sure this is clear... I plan to play in about 12 hours from now, based on everything we have discussed. I will work out the detail micro just before that, and make sure we do not settle so much that we break the economy. I will of course stop if anything starts deviating from the plan, or if anyting unexpected comes up.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If you don't plan to post the micro for review, then I'd recommend that you pause and upload the saved game every 3 turns or so and give a chance for comments before proceeding with the next, say, 3 turns.

That way, we'll have a couple of pairs of eyes looking to see if we missed anything important.

Hopefully, we'll be able to pump through a good number of turns using this "temporary pausing" technique, without too much of an overhead burden of detailed micro that could end up changing anyway if we end up doing something slightly differently from the plan.

 

[Mitchum]

@ Dhoom

Are you planning to be awake at 6 AM your time to do this? If not and if this is the only window when Jastrow can play, it will slow us down. Is the micro that critical at this point? If so, which areas are you particularly interested in? I'm assuming that most cities other than maybe Prague and Aachen are pretty straight forward, right?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@ Dhoom

Are you planning to be awake at 6 AM your time to do this?

Yes, although it will be more like 4 AM when I'll need to wake up.

I'm just giving an alternative option to posting a reasonably-detailed PPP in advance of the turnset.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Golden Age now?
So, what would a Golden Age now be worth?

Well, roughly 12 Commerce per turn, 15 Hammers per turn, 1 turn of saved Anarchy, and a few more GPP.

That's roughly 100 Commerce plus say another 12 Flasks from 1 less turn of Anarchy. That should save us just over 3 turns in getting to Currency. It would also get us The Great Lighthouse 3 turns faster.

So, given that we'll soon plan to have 8 to 9 Cities (9 should be quite doable if we can get to Currency sooner), that's another 24 to 27 Commerce from the Currency Trade Routes and another 2 * 5 * 3 = 30 Commerce from The Great Lighthouse's Trade Routes.

So, in all, we're making roughly 100 + 24 + 30 = 154 Commerce + 12 Flasks.

But, it also means being able to build Wealth sooner, which could help get us to Alphabet sooner and thus get us to learning Iron Working sooner, thereby being able to improve some of the multitude of Jungle-covered Resources sooner. It's hard to easily quantify this gain.


Now, that's not nearly as good as Lightbulbing a high-Flask, useful tech, but that's kind of what Mansa exists for... trade with him and then beat down on him so that he gives us more techs... and then later his research rate will be lower so we can just backfill techs from him.


So, let's throw on a 15% multiplier to that Commerce for having some Libraries in our high-Commerce Cities, giving us roughly 154 * 1.15 + 12 = 177 + 12 = 189 Flasks

Let's say that the Great Scientist earns us 8 Flasks per turn (it might be 7 on some turns, but whatever)... 189 / 8 = 24 turns.

Of course, we'll also get some Hammers (including Hammers for the turn of Anarchy), some Food from the turn of saved Anarchy, and some extra GPP, but we'll also "waste" a Golden Age.

That said, in how many of your games do you end up finding that you "wait so long to get a perfect Golden Age that you just launch a bunch at the end of the game, long after it matters"?


We'll definitely get more Hammers, Commerce, and GPPs from a later Golden Age. But, we're also pretty desperate for Commerce now just to get us over that Currency hump.


I can't say that I've conclusively convinced myself either way at this point (settling the Great Scientist versus launching a Golden Age).

 

[Mitchum]

If it were up to me, I'd settle him. If you're going to settle (or build an academy), the earlier the better, right? Plus, saving one turn of anarchy isn't great when shortly we may need two more for OR and PS/HR...

 

[chopster]

Settling is unlikely to be the optimum choice IMO, but it's passive and ongoing for the entire game, so it can add up.

I'm not convinced by the math Dhoom just posted that a GA right now is of significant enough value to warrant it.

I'm on the fence currently, without a huge desire for either.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, let's stick to the plan to settle our first Great Scientist in Prague, then.

We can plan to use our second Great Person on a Golden Age, when we can hopefully temporarily switch into Caste System (to earn additional Great People during the Golden Age period, if we have enough population points to warrant doing so) and can switch into at least Police State and possibly also into Organized Religion at that time.


We might as well stick with the "revolt to Confucianism" plan... I mis-remembered us having 4 turns of Unhappiness in Prague, but we actually have 5, so we might as well switch to Confucianism as per the plan.

 

[Jastrow]

Starting my final practice run through now... I will then start playing (probably in about 2 or 3 hours.)... If I am only to play 3 turns then, I will do that, but after that I will be looking to hand of the save... The window in my schedule where I have free time is closing.... If the micro is important enough that we should be discussing it every two or three turns, then it is better if someone else take the save. I will check in again after my runthrough...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

My point was only to have a brief pause between roughly every 3 turns... just long enough for whoever is online to give you some quick feedback, hopefully with a short turn-around time (30 mins or less). I'll go take a 2 hour nap now.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It doesn't have to be uploaded saved games. That was meant to be an example. If you can provide your final run-through's test saved game, that will be helpful.

An alternative to regularly-uploaded saved games would be regular updates on what's going on with the main topics in our empire...
i. spawn-busting
ii. Worker management
iii. City micro
iv. empire-wide concepts, such as Resource Trades

Screenshots help, say, one screenshot of the east and one screenshot of the west roughly every 3 or 4 turns, not necessarily on the same turn as each other, but more when you have something interesting to highlight.

Basically, make it easy for us to give you feedback. If uploading saved games is a pain, don't pick that method. I honestly thought that it would be easier to do so than to be accurate in describing the situation as it unfolds, but whatever method works best for you will be fine by me... just give us a way to help you through your turnset is all that I ask.

 

[Jastrow]

Dhoom,

Perhaps you fail to understand how "well" my lap-top runs this game. Every time I pause to post a single letter in the forum, it is either a 5 second thing (if all tab works without a massive memory swap, or a 15 minute item). As near as I can tell, which of the two it is is random. As long as the first is happening, then I will post some short updates. Once the second starts happening, then it just becomes too cumbersom.

Anyway, I am playing the first few turns now... Will then update, and see how it goes... We will get through whatever we get through until my hob calls me in this afternoon, at which point I will hand of the save, wherever we are...

Playing the first 2 or 3 turns now, anyway....