SGOTM 18 - Kakumeika

A reminder: At the end of the game or sooner whichever fits our strategy best, we are going to need a lot of espionage points to raise Swinger's Pad culture to legendary via Spread Culture missions.

Dr. Evil may produce a lot of his own culture which may severely depress the city culture espionage discount to near zero from maximum of -50%. We may want to capture SP to add traditional culture via The Pyramids, working Artists with maybe The Sistine Chapel 2 Cpt bonus and possibly build a state religion temple for 6 Cpt. If we match Dr. Evil's culture, the city culture bonus will start at -25% and get better after giving the city back to Dr. Evil and perform numerous Spread Culture missions. Alternatively we can do without the city culture discount and just pay in more espionage until we get a more favorable city culture discount. The cost will not be that high.

The means of generating Espionage is somewhat limited compared to generating Research:

  1. Commerce can be converted into either Espionage or Research via the Espionage/Research sliders
  2. Specialists - only Spy specialists can generate espionage - Scientists generate research - all specialists can generate Representation research
  3. Great People - only the Great Spy can generate espionage via infiltration or settling - settled Great Scientists generate research - all Great People except Great Spies and Great Generals can bulb technologies - all settled Great People generate research via Representation.
  4. Research can be built - Espionage can not be built
  5. A few buildings can directly generate espionage - No buildings can directly generate research - State religion buildings can generate 2 Bpt indirectly via ownership of University of Sankore - No buildings can generate espionage indirectly.
  6. Both espionage and research can be multiplied by buildings - Great Spy can construct Scotland Yard which multiplies espionage by +100% and the Great Scientist can construct an Academy which multiplies research by +50%.
  7. Any Great People, except Great Generals, can be used to start Golden Ages which adds a +1 commerce to any commerce plot, thus increasing commerce significantly which benefits either research or espionage depending on the slider settings
  8. There is a corporation that generates research. There are no corporations that generate espionage.
  9. The Nationhood civic provides +25% base espionage in all cities - The Free Religion civic provides +10% research in all cities.
  10. The Representation civic provides +3 Bpt research for every specialist (including all settled great people) - this type of per specialist civics boost does not exist for espionage.

Research can not be converted into culture or espionage. It can be converted into any technology one has the prerequisites for. It can not be used for anything else.

Espionage via Spies and an opponent's city can be converted into culture or "research" via stealing technologies.

A potential trap is thinking all we need is a huge Bpt, suffient military to raze Dr. Evil's Lair, switch slider to 100% to raise SP to legendary and capture it as early as possible for the gold laurels.

I believe we should need to give more thought to how we will be generating Espionage. I have already added to the Grand Strategy that due to our strategy of avoiding Liberalism, we can not aquire Communism nor the Intelligence Agency which is beyond doubt the best espionage building in BtS due to its base 8 Ept and its +50% Ept multiplier. We need to build as many cottages as possible, because our major source of espionage will be commerce converted into espionage via the slider. We will also build Jails 4 Ept +50% Ept, the only espionage multiplier we can build. Do to the comparative lack of espionage multipliers compared to research multipliers and especially no way to switch from building research to building espionage, our espionage rate might be significantly lower than our research rate when we make the switch from research to espionage. We can build wealth to sustain 100% espionage slider, but once there no additional Hpt can increase Ept one iota. This under scores the need to build ample numbers of cottages. We want to be running 100% espionage and get SP to legendary in as few turns as possible. Any turns beyond Flight/Fascism is fat that needs to be cut down to the minimum.

If we create a super commerce city, preferably our new capital, we can run Bureaucracy for +50% Commerce. The espionage will be multiplied by the Jail's +50% and assuming we can justify the expense of a Great Spy, Scotland Yard's +100%. I don't think its possible to know yet whether Scotland Yard is worth building without knowing how long we are likely to have such a commerce city and thus how much base espionage it doubles. Buildings can together generate 2 + 4 + 8 = 14 Ept. We can run 5 Spy specialists 5 * 4 = 20 Ept. There can be at most 20 riverside Towns 20 * 6 = 120 * +50% = 180 Ept. So for a non-Financial leader we can generate a maximum of 180 + 20 + 12 = 212 Ept base. So, 212 Ept is the best the Scotland Yard would add. At about 14-15 turns of use of this theorectical maximum commerce city we surpass the 3000E that a Great Spy infiltration would generate. There are also the turns before the research 100% -> espionage 100% switch when the city generates a theorectical maximum of 20 + 12 = 32 Ept to consider as well. It does seem likely that Scotland Yard will not be better than an Great Spy infiltration. Of course it would be better to capture a city with Scotland Yard already constructed for us. This still leaves open the possibility of using a Great Spy for an infiltration mission.

I still say that building a Courthouse in Capitalist still makes sense to generate +2 Ept. With Bureaucracy, the Courthouse can be built very quickly. We are stuggling to keep Mansa Musa's research visible at 4 Ept from the Palace. We need more espionage so we can keep Gandhi converted to Buddhism. We'll need again more Ept, when Mansa Musa completes several Courthouses of his own.

Final reminder: Build more cottages or other sources of commerce. Build sources of espionage.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
In playing the "End Game Challenge", I learned what we need to know about generating EPs. Based on that, I updated the Grand Strategy to run 100% esp. sooner and finish research with 'build research' and specialists. We can easily balance these two with the slider. It was trivial to get the EPs we needed, and I didn't even bother building Jails because it was just a quick test. Naturally, we will do jails.

Don't forget Nationhood for 25% bonus. (a good time to switch civics is when we move the Palace)
 
Wait, we are mothballing ClamsStone and putting the overflow hammers in Shark into ... fail gold?

How on earth are we ever going to get boats to attack Goldmember's big city?

.
Put the trireme overflow into University.
Then 2 pop whip a galley and put that overflow into a University too.
Make the 1st unit out of Pigs a +1 vision chariot and put it on the galley.
Sail all 3 boats down together and get a look at Goldmember's city.
Then sail back north and put the chariot into Shark to damp down the whip anger.

We don't need a ton of galleys. 2 making more than 1 trip can ferry troops at a fast enough rate once we have the right forces to take the city.


Joao's main prize remains his capital. 50% faster workers is nothing to sneeze at. We should think about Construction again in 5 turns when Mansa decides on his next tech.


Also, make sure Ning gets all the chops. It shares tiles with more than 1 city :eek:
 
I think I agree with Kaitzilla. The odds of getting a free religious spead to Clam Stone are very very slim. I suppose Mansa might send over a missionary for us. I don't know the odds of that.

I guess I'm okay with waiting until Clams Stone gets Buddhism before whip a lighthouse or granary.

I suspect it won't take that long for the 40 hammers we put into the missionary to pay off in Clams Stone though.
 
Normally AI builds / sends a Missionary on the turn a city is founded, I've seen that in my culture-games, it's like they check the diplomacy screen and see "ah, new city, here you go Missionary" .

Also, Lighthouse + Granary alone aren't enough Hammers to justify building a Missionary from the perspective of efficiency / economy and we're also likely to switch to pacifism once we aquire Philosophy, so 3 reasons to not build that Missionary imho.
 
Why is scouting goldmember city so urgent we want to delay our first golden age by whipping shark? Who believes it'll be less than lbs on hill with 100% culture?
 
Why is scouting goldmember city so urgent we want to delay our first golden age by whipping shark? Who believes it'll be less than lbs on hill with 100% culture?

Fine. Let's just put our boats on fish and scout nothing then.

Don't scout Genghis with a spy.

Certainly don't scout Swinger's Pad or the rest of Dr. Evil's mountain chain. We can't spare even a few hammers to explore the map.

Maybe a chariot could look at Joao's cities.
 
I think we can scout Goldmember with our Triremes. With coastal bonus we got good chances to survive, last time he only had Galleys, but I don't think that we need that much more. I also don't know what he has in his cities, in between turns he usually shows up with random ancient units so Axes, Swords, Spears. What mabraham writes about Longbows and 100% cultural anyhow does make some sense to me, I mean, at least his city is on a hill, why would it be if it was only defended by ancient units... Let's find it out, if he was able to beat 2 triremes, that city would be anyhow until Astro or what is our plan, to begin roleplaying and build an armada? ^^
 
Fine. Let's just put our boats on fish and scout nothing then.

Don't scout Genghis with a spy.

Certainly don't scout Swinger's Pad or the rest of Dr. Evil's mountain chain. We can't spare even a few hammers to explore the map.

Maybe a chariot could look at Joao's cities.

:) Earlier this turn set I have suggested galley + spy for scouting Goldmember - I'm not averse to spending some hammers on scouting! The question is one of priorities.

The issue is that these hammers would have to come from whips in Shark, which is also the place from which we can grow enough people to run specialists to get our next GPerson, which starts the GoldenAge chain, which has huge flow-on effects.

If we scout GoldMember and find it's another Hades Anvil, then the information is only mildly useful, and in a negative sense. If we scout GoldMember and find it's reasonable to conquer, we still have to build some more boats, build more units to send down there, secure it, perhaps later defend it from the west, and bring the remaining units back to the Joao front. It *could* be a super-tasty city (but Colossus will go out of date, and GLH is only two 1:commerce: trade routes times 3-4 cities). We *could* find a nice island to settle. But all that is opportunity cost from doing something else with Shark (GPerson) and later the army (GK/Joao).

I think we can scout Goldmember with our Triremes. With coastal bonus we got good chances to survive, last time he only had Galleys, but I don't think that we need that much more. I also don't know what he has in his cities, in between turns he usually shows up with random ancient units so Axes, Swords, Spears. What mabraham writes about Longbows and 100% cultural anyhow does make some sense to me, I mean, at least his city is on a hill, why would it be if it was only defended by ancient units... Let's find it out, if he was able to beat 2 triremes, that city would be anyhow until Astro or what is our plan, to begin roleplaying and build an armada? ^^

I'm happy to scout with the pair of triremes as a stack, while we put some hammers in Shark on whichever units make sense, with a plan to whip things after the GPerson birth (if that is warranted, compared with getting on with more GPeople).
 
Shark does have 10 hammers/turn. It doesn't have to whip everything. Stay on track with the GP We'll find out soon enough that we are not ready for Goldmembers or Dr. Evil.
 
I'm against scouting with 2 triremes (just as I was against scouting with 1 galley). If we go down there again, don't make the same mistake as last time, but please don't go down there yet.

I fear for our fish (and as a direct effect: our GP).

Prediction: We will be out 2 Triremes, 1 Fish and delay our GP.
 
Don't be so negative Wastin. To risk is what to gain, and if Goldmember really had wanted to show up at our place he probably would have done so already, there's something that prevents him from doing so. Maybe it's the unusual coastal tile or whatever. Then the question is, when and how do we want to scout that city and conquer it if 2 Triremes aren't enough protection. Do we want to build 5 Triremes or even 8? How many would we be willing to build for an exploration purpose? Do we want to wait for Caravelles and invest 200 :gold: on upgrading for some boats which could circumnativate, yes, what, the lake? ^^
Swede wanted us to go there pre Optics / Astronomy, that's why there's an unusual coastal tile, and Goldmember only had Galleys last time, why should he now have Triremes if the tech he researched in between was CoL?

Don't forget, in the movie, Goldmember is imortant to get to Evil and stop him, and the city could even be the holy one which would have impact on our play, as then we wouldn't have to go Divine Right, unless we're planning to bring Swingers Pad to legendary without the additional 15% bonus which are quite a lot EP. I'm 100% sure that the city won't be a Hades Anvil and what we've seen 'til now for me is encouraging.
 
I agree that exploring Goldmembers' city south of Shark is a reasonable objective. I like Kaitzilla's idea of building a vision Chariot/Horse Archer in Pigs and a Galley in Shark and escorting it will two Triremes. Seraiel is right that Goldmembers is unlikely to have any better navy that Galleys. He certainly will not attack our Trireme stack with Galleys, especially when they get the Shore defensive bonus.

I also like mabraham's idea of sending a Spy too. I guessing that a Spy may have better, even 100%, survival chances in a minor Civ's culture like it would in Barbarian culture. We can't mitigate the risk via EPS, because Goldmembers is a minor Civ? It seems likely that there is no risk at all? Can anyone verify this? If the Spy can explore around Goldmembers culture without risk, we should should definitely send one there.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
If ya'all decide you can't resist the suicide mission. I'd recommend dropping off a spy and then returning for Fish defense.
 
If ya'all decide you can't resist the suicide mission. I'd recommend dropping off a spy and then returning for Fish defense.

Can you explain why you think sending two Triremes and Galley is a "suicide mission"? It seems reasonable to expect that Goldmembers has nothing better that Galleys to attack our two Triremes with.

I support your suggestion of sending a Spy.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Thanks WaistinTime for mentioning that Nationhood providing a +25% multiplication of our base espionage. I somewhat missed that espionage multipliers in my espionage/research comparision post.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Can you explain why you think sending two Triremes and Galley is a "suicide mission"? It seems reasonable to expect that Goldmembers has nothing better that Galleys to attack our two Triremes with.

I support your suggestion of sending a Spy.

Sun Tzu Wu

I just think that 4 galleys can still kill them both (he probably has 8 galleys) or he has Triremes...or caravels... who knows what techs they've been given.

I still would not whip Shark excessively to achieve the scouting mission faster. The 2nd Trireme whip is, of course, approved.
 
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