SGOTM 18 - Phoenix Rising

[Packers5280]

Yeah, it doesn't look too bad. But he still has a CR3 combat 2 swordsman.

 

[Izuul]

Alright, just a few things to change.

Seattle - Send the missionary here! Switch to wealth next turn (can leave it on barracks this turn) when the first chop completes, and then switch back when we get Judaism and let the chops complete the barracks. This should get us the OR bonus hammers on the chops into the barracks. Also, work the iron tile now that it's mined.

Karak - Work PH mine instead of cottage

Besh - Run engineer instead of working lake

Oh and i think we should change research to Paper. We need to get that out of the way if we are ever going to bulb anything.

 

[Izuul]

Hmm, is Mansa teching Engineering? Engineering is 1625 beakers, but he will only offer us Feudalism (1137 beakers) and 45g of his 80g for it. Does that sound right or is that a bit steep?

 

[Packers5280]

Well, I do know that the Diety trade level is .7. .7 of 1625 is 1137. So that sounds about right.

 

[Packers5280]

Yeah, I intended the mish to go to seattle. The micro sounds good. I didn't look at the cities though before posting the save, hence micro's off a bit.

 

[Izuul]

Is it crazy to trade Mansa Engineering? I know we are about to attack him, but will pikes and trebs really do him that much good in defending against us?? He already has LBs and Xbows. Heck, he will probably get Eng on his own before we get to him anyway. We could get paper + 80g + world map for it. His world map may even show us how to get to Evil's lair.

Maybe we should wait and see what Gumbolt has to say tomorrow. This could be a fairly important decision and if Mansa is teching Engineering the trade probably won't be available any longer next turn.

 

[Izuul]

I guess giving him extra time to build castles could be a minor pain. Not sure how much difference that would really make vs waiting for him to tech Engineering on his own though.

 

[Packers5280]

Yeah, I think trading engie is a pretty big decision. I don't think that it will hurt us much, since we don't have many mounted units with our stack, but I think that is a decision we need Gum for as well. Although, the world map would be nice...

 

[Gumbolt]

Engineering means castles? Would he tech it anyway? Has mansa got a gm? We could use feud and gold.

Would this really speed up rifles?

 

[Gumbolt]

Paper and maps might be great.

 

[Izuul]

Castles would mean 1 extra turn of bombarding in every city he builds one in, if he builds them. That's an annoyance but we could get Paper + 80g + Mansa's world map. That's fairly tempting.

 

[Izuul]

I've been looking at both the tech path and the bulb path to Mass Media.

-Surprisingly, Education is actually optional to get there (i never realized that) however it is in the bulbing path so we need it if we are going to bulb anything. A university will also be an obvious benefit when we get Mansa's cap.

-Avoiding Gunpowder prevents bulbing Chemistry and then Biology instead of Electricity later.

-Our current bulb path is Paper > Education > Printing Press > Optics > Astronomy > Sci Meth > Physics > Electricity. We can not bulb Radio or Mass Media, but MM is fairly cheap for a tech that far into the tech tree.

-Sci Meth obsoletes both the TGL and the Parthenon

Several conclusions can be drawn here:

1) We don't want to waste our great scientists bulbing Optics and Paper that are only 975 beakers when we can get 1600 beakers with bulbs into Edu, PP, Astro, etc.

2) We DO want to avoid Gunpowder if at all possible (and it should be i think) because picking up GP would then require us to tech both Chem and Elec if we want to bulb further.

3) We need to generate almost all of our great scientists before we use any to bulb Sci Meth as that tech will greatly hamper future GP generation.

 

[Izuul]

I also saw this post in Tachy's game mechanics thread on the S&T board. I've bolded some of the relevant parts:

I'm interested in Espionage Game Mechanics at the moment. I'm finally trying to play a Cultural Victory game where the vast majority of culture for all three legendary cities will be from Spread Culture missions. I gave my first cultural city to an AI when it had only 10 Culture, because the AI was at the opposite side of the continent and had 3 cities for quite a while, thus willing to accept a city gift anywhere in the world. If it had founded its own 4th city, I would have had to give it bridge cities at most 9.5 plots apart from its cloest city to my cultural city I had still wished to give it away.

Back to my problem. With only 10 culture, it seems that the game is computing the Spread Culture mission as 10 * 5% = 0 and thus doesn't offer the mission at all. I had hoped the game would round the value up to 1 in this case, but it seems that the game is truncating the value of 10 * 5% = 0.5 culture down to zero. My question is would a total culture of 20 in the city suffice to make the Spread Culture mission available? The mission should thus spread 20 * 5% = 1 culture. I already have another city generating tile culture on the gift city's center plot which is the primary requirement for the Spread Culture mission to be available at all.

My proposed solution is to spread my state religion to this gift city, so the AI who doesn't have a religion yet will adopt it and it will gain 1 culture per turn until it gets 10 culture itself. At that point the combined city culture will be 10 + 10 = 20, and 20 * 5% = 1. That should enable the Spread Culture mission.

Another problem is this city is under so much cultural pressure that it revolts every two turns and would never gain its own culture. It is in its 4th consecutive revolt. It seems that I need to provide military police units to this city to maintain order long enough for it to gain the desired 10 culture.

EDIT: Not having enough culture was not the issue. After allowing the AI to accumulate 10 Culture for a total of 20 Culture, the Spread Culture mission was still not abailable. The final answer is the game computes the Espionage needed to complete the mission using all applicable discounts and if the computed espionage required is less than 1, the Spread Culture mission will not be available. To work around this issue, one needs to reduce the discounts until the computed espionage is 1 or more. The easiest way to do this is to move the Spy out of the city and back in so it loses the stationary Spy bonus. Otherwise, if the player Leader is spiritual switch to no state religion or another state religion to avoid that discount. There may be other ways to reduce the discounts. Or one can just wait until the AI accumulates enough Culture until the computed espionage needed becomes 1 or more.

Finally, since we share the same state religion, there will not be a -15% discount for state religion or the -25% discount for owning the corresponding holy city. I may need to spread another religion to its capital and other large cities to get it to convert to this other religion, assuming it doesn't found its own religion. I may even need to use espionage to cause to switch to this other religion as its state religion. Causing it to switch to Free Religion is another option for gaining the state religion and holy city espionage discounts.

I know that I have everything planned out and I'm quite capable of reading the Software Developer's Kit (SDK) on my own, so you don't need to respond on my account, but others reading your game mechanics thread might like you to comment on the mechanics behind the Spread Culture mission and other espionage missions. It occurs to me now to ask "Have you already covered this topic in detail?" My apologies in advance, if you have already covered espionage topics in detail.

Sun Tzu Wu

The first part is of particular interest. I am unclear whether an AI will accept a gifted city anywhere on the map anytime they have less than 4 cities or only if they never founded a 4th city. How many cities did Gandhi found?

The second part shouldn't be an issue for us as i don't believe we will have enough discounts to get the mission cost below 1, but if it does happen, we will know how to work around it.

 

[Izuul]

Pros and Cons of this Engineering for Paper trade?

Pros
-We get 80g. Hey, gold is gold!
-We gain a 975 beaker tech. Given our current financial state and the fact that we are about to fight another war, how long would it take us to get this ourselves??
-Paper opens up better bulbs like Education and PP. It also opens up the possibility of getting all or part of these techs from Mansa in a peace deal. If we don't get Paper now we might still lack it when it comes time to make peace.
-We get to see Mansa's world map. Sadly it probably won't show Dr Evil's lands or the coast down there since Mansa has neither OB with Evil nor a coastal city to get a ship in the water. However, it probably will show us the entire NW part of the map that we have yet to explore.

Cons
-We give Mansa access to pikes, trebs, castles and +1 road movement. The pikes and trebs are probably not much an issue, the castles and extra movement are certainly annoyances but nothing game-changing.
-There will be one less tech that Mansa could possibly detour to rather than going for RP and Rifling. Given his current tech rate Eng would probably take him ~3T.

Other things to keep in mind
-Joao has engineering and could easily trade it to Mansa even if we don't!
-There's probably little chance that Mansa won't have Engineering when we attack whether we trade it to him or not. At best he uses a few turns to research it himself. At worst, Joao gives it to him and we completely lose out.

 

[Izuul]

The more i think about the more i think we have to make the trade. Joao trading it to Mansa would be a disaster and that seems dangerously likely to happen doesn't it?

I think the only reason that Joao hasn't already traded Mansa Eng is that only he (and maybe GM) had the tech. Joao will trade a tech once 40% of the players have it. If GM is considered to be a real player in this game then 3/7 (43%) will now have the tech thus causing him to trade it to Mansa as soon as we end this turn.

I really think we need to pull the trigger on this one.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think we have to do the trade for paper.

As you rightly say we may be able to get edu as part of the peace deal. If we don't he techs it anyway. Or trades it with JoaII. Feudalism offers little to us. We may be able to trade maps with Indians too for a tech? We may be slow to tech paper anyway. I would rather bulb PP over edu.

We can't stop Mansa teching. He may well whip castles. By time we get their GM may be attacking one of his cities anyway? Which might be a good thing?

Of course teching paper ourselves enables a trade with JoaII. But what is he likely to tech that we actually want?

We may need to consider spreading Jud to the swingers pad before we gift it. We need to max the espionage bonuses.

The 3 city and 9.5 tiles sounds about right.

We need to be playing 2-3 turns a night.

 

[Gumbolt]

Thinking about the game. Those that take out Mansa too soon can't reap the techs he has teched.

 

[Gumbolt]

Alright, just a few things to change.

Seattle - Send the missionary here! Switch to wealth next turn (can leave it on barracks this turn) when the first chop completes, and then switch back when we get Judaism and let the chops complete the barracks. This should get us the OR bonus hammers on the chops into the barracks. Also, work the iron tile now that it's mined.
Put hammers into mace till it get's jud. Then switch to barracks. Obviously don't complete the mace.
Karak - Work PH mine instead of cottage

Besh - Run engineer instead of working lake

Oh and i think we should change research to Paper. We need to get that out of the way if we are ever going to bulb anything.

Trade for paper for maps and then let us know who we can trade maps with?

 

[Izuul]

How many techs can we get from him without being able to make him a vassal? Best case he gives us all of Edu for peace. Without his cities his tech rate gets crippled to the point that we can actually catch up and maybe make a couple trades, but will he still be willing to trade with us? He will trade as long as he isn't furious with us...

That also brings up something else that I have been wondering about. Which cities do we take from Mansa, and what do we leave him with? Which one do we make our capitol? We have to be careful that we don't let Mansa get completely killed off which suggests that we need to leave him with a city. The obvious city to leave him with now is Gao.

Timbuktu is the obvious place for our capitol as it's just a fantastic city, but if we leave him with Gao then the culture pressure on Timbuktu and Djenne will be too great to use either of them as our capitol. We won't be able to work a lot of the northern tiles due to Gao culture since we cannot capitulate Mansa. That essentially just leaves...

Kumbi Saleh - Culture shouldn't be an issue here. 10 mature towns and 1 cottage visible right now with room for 2 more cottages. 13 base hammers working the gems and 2 PHs mines, 18 if we eventually work marble and stone. Food surplus will be pretty small at smaller sizes but good at larger sizes as more FPs are worked.

Now if we can somehow set him back up in Walata and just leave him with that city, then Timbuktu is the clear choice.

 

[Gumbolt]

We can also gift him a pointless city somewhere? Maybe in the mountain corner at top of map east of his mountain area. Safe from GM and other Ai reach. We could gift this before the war?

We could also take out GM's cities before we take his final cities. We don't want any gifted cities blocking us.