SGOTM 18 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Mitchum]

Here is an updated plan.

You can see on T175 that we're going to be almost 2,000 beakers ahead in getting Fascism in one turn. So I've been slowly hiring more spies just to ensure that we have enough EPs. We should need on the order of 17,500, so we have a save margin of about 1K Eps too.

We have 46 spies in Swingers Pad now that will have the 50% discount by T177. We should have 8 to 11 more next turn that will have full stationary bonus by T178. That gives us a total of 54 to 57 spies when we need ~42 successful. If we add the 9 more to be built, that will be more than enough and provide some margin.

What we need to have wired now if the UN and paratrooper plan because everything else is good to go as far as I can tell.

EDIT: Updated turn we gift UN.

 

[Mitchum]

Testing Needs:

Paratroopers

We have to decide if the plan of 23 paratroopers is enough. I can't see it being an issue, but you never know. What could screw us up is not being able to land where we want. On any given turn, there are units 1NW, 1N and/or 1NE of the Lair. I've never seen all of them covered, but we could get screwed. What we need to do is have the first 7 jump in and secure spots for the next batch of 16 jumpers. We'll just have to play this by the seat of our pants, I guess. If you haven't played around with paratroopers yet, please download my test game and try them out. Also, please make 100% sure that I have the geometry (i.e. Coimbra and Banana Thief in relation to the peaks and Evil's Lair) correct for getting over the peaks.

UN Voting Cycles

Please make sure that I have the UN voting cycles correct. Also make sure that the timing for the gifting of Swingers Pad makes sense. We also have to be sure to finish the palace in Culture on the turn we gift Swingers Pad.

I just noticed a mistake on when we gift the UN, so I'm going to update the plan in the previous post now.

 

[Mitchum]

Is there ANY chance Mansa won't trade Rifling to us next turn?

 

[Mitchum]

I'm going to check to see if we can make Fascism a one-turn tech in case Mansa won't give us Rifling. It will also give us an extra turn for paratroopers if we do get it...

 

[Mitchum]

I just checked it out we can eek out our research to happen in 3 turns (i.e. one-turn Combustion -> Fascism -> Flight in that order). I was trying to do it with Flight before Fascism but Flight is too expensive to get next and we just ended up with a ton of OF into Fascism. If we put Fascism before flight, we can get there... barely.

And then I noticed an error... Flight, like Astronomy, gets no prerequisite bonus.. at least as far as I can tell from looking at the tech tree. So Flight is going to cost 20% more than what I was planning. What I'm not sure is if the OF beakers from Combustion will get the 20% bonus or not. My guess is no, but I'm not 100% sure.

So in a sense, I just lost 8125/1.2 = 6,771 8125 - 6771 = 1,354 beakers from my plan.

We can still get there, but we need to prioritize beakers over EPs again. But that's not a concern because we should revolt to Nationhood (instead of Bureaucracy) for the +25% EPs and that's not accounted for in my spreadsheet.

So, I'll re-work the numbers so that ingentingg knows what beakers/turn he has to hit to get there.

If there is any risk that Mansa won't trade Rifling, we should delay the UN by a turn. Rifling does not open up any wonders, so I can't see why he wouldn't give it to us but if he didn't and we finish the UN this turn, we could be in a tight spot.

 

[Mitchum]

@ ingentingg

Are you planning to put a PPP together? I can give you some details about tech rates and such. If so, when can you have it done so that we have a chance to check it over quickly?

Plus, someone needs to test the UN stuff... I'll try again but I'm working on our techs right now and it's getting late.

 

[ingentingg]

I could make a PPP one hour before I play, then wait for feedback while checking UN plan and paratrooper plan. This will be about 12 hours from now. I guess there won't be too many points in the Ppp, but they will be of high importance.

 

[Mitchum]

Here are the tech numbers you should try to hit:

Note that you should do what you have to do in order to hit the number in the "Visible Research Rate" column, which represents the number of flasks shown right next to the science slider. The easiest way to increase the tech rate is to fire spies in cities with powered factories and work high-hammer tiles (if they have commerce too, even better).

The trickiest part will be ensuring that Flight is a 2-turn tech. Fascism will be easy to get in 1 turn. So, if at the start of the next turn it looks like 3700 visible beakers won't be enough to get Flight in 2 turns, increase the tech rate. I was able to get ~4300 beakers maximum, so 3700 shouldn't be an issue. That had me cancelling all of the spy builds. I don't think we can afford to do that but 3700 should be very doable. Don't overly worry about EPs. We'll catch back up under Nationhood.

So, if we do this right, we should only have 4 more turns of research left, which assumes that we get Rifling from Mansa.

Before anyone plays, I want everyone on the team to agree to take the risk that Mansa won't trade us Rifling (I can't see it happening, but who knows?). If that happens, our victory date will most likely slide by 6 turns since we'll have to wait for the next UN voting cycle unless 7 paratroopers alone can raze the Lair, which is unlikely.

 

[Mitchum]

I just tested the UN again and it looks right. But I'd still like someone else to run a test game on it to make sure. I'd hate to mis-time everything because my testing was screwed up... so that's why I'm not sharing my test game.

 

[ingentingg]

We should get rifling. At friendly, I think it is only wonder techs and space techs that might not be available in trade.

 

[Mitchum]

I could make a PPP one hour before I play, then wait for feedback while checking UN plan and paratrooper plan. This will be about 12 hours from now. I guess there won't be too many points in the Ppp, but they will be of high importance.

Right. 75% of our cities are building Research. 22% are building spies. 3% are building the UN. The key items to me are:

1. Verify the UN timing.

2. Feel comfortable with getting Rifling from Mansa, else we should delay the UN by a turn.

3. Feel good about the paratrooper plan (it was in my last PPP). Also verify my test game with the real game and make sure that everything works as expected.

4. Hit the numbers to learn Combustion (1 turn), Flight (2 turns), Fascism (1 turn).

5. Figure out how many more spies to build. Like I said, I thought I had enough and I fell short in my Culture via Espionage attempt, so I'd rather have way too many than fall short. Depending on the exact culture Dr. Evil has there, we need ~41 successful spies. Assume a few will be caught IBT. IIRC (to be tested!!), with stacked spies and the EP differential that we have with Joao, the game says that the chances of success are ~85% for each spy. Again, please verify this. Since we only have one shot, I'd assume something like 60% success. That says that we'd need 70 spies... throw in another few just to be safe?? The team needs to agree on what level of risk we're willing to take here. We have 54 spies now and 9 more to be finished next turn IIRC. I'd keep building more spies as long as we can hit our research targets listed in a previous post.

6. I blew our wad at Golden Dome. I think the only option is to just throw everything we've got at it next turn. If we get it, cool. If not, who cares. The city means nothing to our end date at this point. We've been farting around there too long as it is.


BTW, once research is done, we can't forget to build the Palace in Culture. But not before, so it won't happen during your turnset.

Maybe you should only play 3 turns through the completion of Flight. It's possible that we'll want to keep the option on the table of whipping airports should that be required to raze the Lair. I don't think so, but if you play that 4th turn, it will be too late to do so.

 

[Mitchum]

We should get rifling. At friendly, I think it is only wonder techs and space techs that might not be available in trade.

Agreed and that's been the case so far with the only non-traded tech being Democracy because Mansa immediately went for the SoL. Dhoom is the self-proclaimed tech trading specialist, so I'd like to hear his thoughts on the matter before we advance the game.

 

[Mitchum]

By the way, I'll be online while you're writing your plan, testing and playing so I can try to help if you need it. Getting a PPP approved in 1-hour may be tough, so hopefully Dhoom can post his thoughts on most items for the turnset and we can be sure that they are incorporated into the plan. We don't have the luxury of waiting 24 hours to get it approved...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Great job on getting Open Borders with Joao! We'll need to wait 10 turns before we can ask our allies to Close Borders with Joao, but we seem to have enough time according to the plan to make that happen.




We probably want 2 Horse Archers in Culture City at a minimum, not just 1.


If you want Gandhi or Mansa to have a greater chance to work up the courage to attack, in addition to asking them to attack Golden Dome every turn, you can potentially do some more Bombarding at Golden Dome, if you haven't been already.


For our Paratroopers, I'd aim to send 3 of them to Banana Thief for the initial turn of paradropping, even if we will send the majority to Coimbra, so that if we get screwed and there are units to both the NW and N of Dr. Evil's Lair, some Paratroopers can land NE (unless we get really screwed) and can secure the N square on the following turn to allow for more Paratroopers to arrive from Coimbra.
EDIT: Make sure that we have enough Railroad pieces.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I see no reason why Mansa wouldn't trade us Rifling, other than us potentially not having saved him any techs to give to him in exchange.


Tech overflow is pretty accurate in BtS (there may be minor rounding errors of a Flask or two), so you cannot expect any overflow Flasks to get the wrong bonus, regardless of whether you overflow into or overflow from a tech that has a bonus on Flasks relative to a tech that doesn't have a bonus on Flasks.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm also okay with us building extra Spies if doing so doesn't impact our Research goals. Cities that switch from Research to Spies may lose a lot of Hammers in Research for only a small number of Hammers going into Spies, so building Spies in Cities that can barely produce the Spies in 1 or 2 turns (but where the Spies can still reach Swinger's Pad) may give you the best results.


Spies can auto-die in the in-between-turns time, and although we probably won't lose many, we might lose some that have the 50% stationary bonus on them.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Are we still going to be in a Golden Age in 3 turns? If not, then it won't be possible to whip Airports as we won't be able to slip into Slavery.

That said, I'm not convinced that slipping into Slavery will be the correct choice... if our Research is very tight, then losing the Hammers from Caste System could make us miss our Research targets.

 

[Mitchum]

We revolt to Slavery and Nationalism after research is over while still in a Golden Age. I think we should also go for Police State so that more cities can whip paratroopers. We should also extend the RR to those cities TBD.

We can't accept a request to change civics or else it screws up Slavery. No neg mods with Gandhi anyway and we can afford a -1 with Mansa.

 

[ingentingg]

I'm away from the computer now, but is it possible for paratroopers to jump from a Fort? If that is the case, is it possible to build a Fort somewhere and increase the number of tiles we can reach?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Good luck, maestros!