SGOTM 18 - The Shawshank Redemption

[LowtherCastle]

@Mitchum

As usual, beaker analyses are being done incorrectly. This dates back to Ding Ding and jesusin before him and perhaps even earlier. The correct unit of analysis is turns, not beakers, in a fastest finish game. Mining inc was a decent choice, but people who argue that Mining Inc was better than Communism haven't a clue about how Communism should have been done and how much TSR left on the table.

That's not in any way a criticism of TSR's performance, which I think was superlative under the circumstances of a complicated game and few contributors.

 

[Mitchum]

@LC

Of course it's turns. I just took a snap shot at 1 AD and compared the relative differences between our three games with respect to a few things, not just beakers. But, even though beakers are not the end-all, be-all, they do play a very significant role in a research-based game like this.

Just out of curiosity, what is the proper way to fully leverage Communism? Enlighten us...

 

[LowtherCastle]

@LC

Of course it's turns. I just took a snap shot at 1 AD and compared the relative differences between our three games with respect to a few things, not just beakers. But, even though beakers are not the end-all, be-all, they do play a very significant role in a research-based game like this.

I'm talking about the analysis. It was clear from the beginning of this game that science was the critical path. We knew that and discussed it. So the unit of analysis is turns relative to that critical path.

Ding Ding's analysis after SG11 was inaccurate because he only totaled beakers and then compared this, that and the other based on those beaker totals. I went through one part of his analysis and analyzed the same thing based on beaker-turns and his analysis was off by several turns on one single factor. In other words, 1000 beakers at 1AD = X turns, 1000 beakers at 1000AD = Y turns... A proper analysis necessitates taking the time to break it down into chunks where beakers-turns are roughly consistent. Then you can get the correct answer.

Duckweed's method of analysis is okay, btw, because he's not evaluating turns when he does it. WastinTime's method of analysis is also okay because he's not comparing different methods, he's testing. In other words, WastinTime's method is useful for comparing Kaku to Kaku but not Kaku to TSR/Communism.

Just out of curiosity, what is the proper way to fully leverage Communism? Enlighten us...

I haven't reviewed our thread, but I believe I laid it out at the beginning. I can't say the "proper way" because I don't know how much you guys deviated from my plan other than what you said in our emails and what you posted here recently. You already mentioned the deficiency of workers. The basic idea of course is:

• Maximally early Communism (GS bulbs + rep)
• Tons of well-populated cities
• prebuilt workshops and/or watermills
• minimal infrastructure

You guys succeeded with most of this stuff (duh, you got the gold ). Where I would look for ways to save turns would be the possibility of 1) more bulbing (lots of turns saved by those bulbs), 2) more workers (e.g., did you worker-farm Island-Guy?), 3) greater focus on capturing Swinger's Pad asap (yeah, I know you did this fast, kudos, but still the goal was to use scientists+rep for research and bulbs, while max-REXing, so Rep was critical and I'm just hypothetically looking for more turns here).

That's off the top of my head.

I deeply, highly, and profoundly doubt that Mining was the way to go on such a short tech path and with such great benefits from Communism, one of the most powerful, if not THE most powerful tech on the entire chart, especially with GS bulbing giving it to you in or close to the BC era if you choose. Mining requires uncertainty (getting the GE) or doing stuff that's off your critical path, plus it requires so much more teching. The reason WastinTime thinks it's so much better (imo), is that Kaku did such a good job of teching, because that's WastinTime's uber-forte. I'm willing to bet he never even tested the Communism path wholeheartedly because he's infatuated with corporations and because he never studied MW-SG10. Combine WastinTime's teching ability with the Communism beeline et al., and you beat the Mining solution hands down. That's my view on it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Take Two:

GS spamming is critical to this strategy. It has a domino effect.

Oxford was relatively weaker in this game because the capital only had so many cottages. An additional fine-tuning would have evaluated how hard to push for Oxford versus the contemporaneous build-up of cities and workers. If you're not bulbing to Communism, you're forcing yourself to rush Oxford and limit your REX. The warring should help but it's not all-out warring so the capture-gold is limited and the unit maintenance is dicey. All the more reason to get the Mids asap and bulb to Communism.

The fundamental benefit of Literature, in my mind, was to accelerate GS spamming at a point in the game when limited population puts a severe crimp on GS spamming. Lit = G Lib + NE, both GS accelerators. This is an important factor most people don't heed, mainly because it's very difficult to balance these factors. The GS spamming triggers a domino effect that is critical to this strategy.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

One question that has been bugging me is what were the techs, if any, that were gifted to the AIs + Goldmember in this game? Goldmember and Dr. Evil had Fission, while we had Composites, but "Some other techs to some civs can be there." What were those techs?

For example, Goldmember seemed to get Beserkers quite quickly... perhaps he started with one of Civil Service or Machinery?

If he did start with Civil Service, for example, a team that went for The Great Wall and who was able to capitalize on it properly by sending a Great Spy to Goldmember could have grabbed a strong early advantage.

 

[LowtherCastle]

You can download the WB save from the Progress Page now.

 

[kossin]

"Sorry, file sgotm18.CivBeyondSwordWBSave is not available."

When I tried...

 

[kcd_swede]

While you enjoy your Mojo,

and maybe the Fembot can help with that

Dr. Evil is plotting your doom.

Just saying, in case you think any of your fears or nightmares might not come to fruition.

Mwaahaaahaaa

 

[AlanH]

"Sorry, file sgotm18.CivBeyondSwordWBSave is not available."

When I tried...

Sorry. It wasn't uploaded. Fixed!

 

[LowtherCastle]

While you enjoy your Mojo, Dr. Evil is plotting your doom.

Just saying, in case you think any of your fears or nightmares might not come to fruition.

Mwaahaaahaaa

yada

Our goal was that teams should be very scared

yada

I really wanted at least one team to lose.

yada

 

[WastinTime]

One question that has been bugging me is what were the techs, if any, that were gifted to the AIs + Goldmember in this game? Goldmember and Dr. Evil had Fission, while we had Composites, but "Some other techs to some civs can be there." What were those techs?

For example, Goldmember seemed to get Beserkers quite quickly... perhaps he started with one of Civil Service or Machinery?

If he did start with Civil Service, for example, a team that went for The Great Wall and who was able to capitalize on it properly by sending a Great Spy to Goldmember could have grabbed a strong early advantage.

i don't think u can do spy missions on Goldmembers.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

You can download the WB save from the Progress Page now.

Thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately Shaka built all his units in Devil's lair

In the World Builder saved game, Dr. Evil's Lair has an Airport, so such units could have theoretically teleported airlifted out. The same was true of an Airport existing in Golden Dome in the World Builder saved game.

In playing only a couple of turns, Dr. Evil had teleported airlifted (the claim was that he'd mastered the tricks of teleportation) one of his two Archers from Dr. Evil's Lair to Swinger's Pad to guard Swinger's Pad alongside of Fat Bastard. The two Archers 1S of the City stayed in place (instead of going into Swinger's Pad) until Swinger's Pad's Culture had expanded over top of them.

The extra Trade Routes that seemed to be indicated by the F9 DEMOGRAPHICS start to make a bit more sense, now (an Airport gives +1 Trade Route in a City).


In fact, Mansa was gifted a Granary to start with and each non-human player received a Worker (actually, Goldmember and Dr. Evil started with 2 Workers each).

I'm not sure how kcd_swede could have given multiple Airports to Dr. Evil, though, what with Dr. Evil only starting with 1 City, unless one got erased when the decision was made to give Swinger's Pad to the human player on Turn 0.

There was also indeed a free Settler gifted to Dr. Evil just south of Swinger's Pad, with a Scout there and another Scout positioned to reveal the Ulundi area. I wonder if any team noticed said Settler.

It seemed to head for Swinger's Pad initially, to wait to be grouped with other units, and only then set out to found Ulundi when it had 2 Archer guardians.

i don't think u can do spy missions on Goldmembers.

Hmmm, it seems that Tachywaxon has proven to be incredibly worthwhile to have around, yet again:

Spoiler :

However, Goldmember did not start with Civil Service or Machinery (nor did he start with a Colosseum or Construction--I assumed that he started with a Colosseum when we saw one built in Members Only early on in our game--but it must have been self-built, so Goldmember really was teching quickly).

Goldmember's initial tech advantage was getting Satellites for free, which seemed to be there more to reveal the entire map to him.

To be honest, I suspected that each Civ other than Mansa was going to have a Space Ship tech which could be stolen ONLY if you were willing to gift an AI up to the right number of techs (and if you thought to try doing so), which could have made a Space Race more viable, but it doesn't appear that there were any secret techs besides Satellites given out to the non-human players.

On the other hand, Goldmember did not seem to start with Fission, so the label on the box was not quite as claimed. I suppose that this tech gift got lost in one of the multiple versions of the saved game that got passed around. I don't mind the map makers having the prerogative to hint at non-human players getting extra techs and calling that aspect "never trusting a map maker," but barring mistakes, it is highly preferred when a clearly-stated claim turns out to be true. Hopefully, no team tried to steal Fission from Goldmember and got messed up when the tech wasn't available for theft. No worries if it was a mistake, but my point is simply that I would like to be able to take map maker claims at face value when said claims are clearly stated, so I hope that this missing tech was simply an accidental omission (perhaps it was even there in the real game but not in the World Builder saved game?).


Anyway, the World Builder saved game was very enlightening. Thanks for that.

 

[kcd_swede]

If Goldmember did not start with Fission, it was an error. I thought he had it. In fact, the Manhatten Project was given to Goldmember for the specific purpose of preventing Goldmember and Dr Evil from wasting a lot of early turns building the Manhatten Project. So if the technology was missing, I did not know about it. Sorry about that, but I am glad it did not have a big impact in the outcome.

 

[WastinTime]

I guess I didn't really mean that you couldn't do spy missions. I was actually thinking that you can't put EPs on Goldmembers, so the only way to get EPs is infiltration (an EP bomb of 3000) and that seems like a huge waste of EPs...depending on what/how much you intend to do to them.

 

[Doshin]

You could put EPs on Goldmember. At a late point we thought about the merits of stealing Fission:

Here's how we'd do it, if it's possible:

Spoiler :

X = Berserker bait, after the Palace is moved to Ulundi.





Last picture to show that the AI must lack Rocketry, otherwise we'd have seen the Apollo Program by now.

Nuking Evil's Lair could have saved one–three turns compared to using massed Paratroopers, but the investment in Rocketry was prohibitive.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I was actually thinking that you can't put EPs on Goldmembers, so the only way to get EPs is infiltration (an EP bomb of 3000) and that seems like a huge waste of EPs...depending on what/how much you intend to do to them.

Minor Civs seem to show up on the Espionage screen (Ctrl + e), so you can choose to assign an Espionage Points Weighting to them, if you so desire.

What made doing so very tricky in this game was that Goldmember started with The Great Lighthouse, The Colossus, an Airport, full map knowledge, and two Cities, so he had a lot of Commerce from the very beginning. With only a minor EP investment using the Commerce Slider (20% seems pretty standard for most AIs), it would be tough to beat his EP expenditure until later on in the game. He also had The Forbidden Palace, which may contribute raw EPs, too (I forget if it does or not).

Still, given Goldmember's breakneck tech pace in the early game, it could have been a worthwhile investment to steal techs from him, especially since trading with him was not an option. The toughest part would have been navigating the waters long enough to keep your Galleys alive, since you would have been unable to gift one of your own Cities to him.

 

[WastinTime]

EPs on minor Civs:
Ok, I must be thinking of the fact that you can't talk to them or trade with them. Or can you do that too?

 

[Doshin]

I don't think so, although there could be a work around via AP or UN resolutions. The AI at least were able to be bribed to make peace with GM, which suggests that they could "talk" with one another.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Yes, I think an EP bomb on Goldfinger might have been a huge tech boost. In fact, combine that with the fear of losing FIsh City and you could build Fish City asap and not worry about it. If he captures it, you get your techs all that much cheaper, if not, you've got a great city.

 

[Manco Capac]

Hmmm, it seems that Tachywaxon has proven to be incredibly worthwhile to have around, yet again:

No! With my meager 60 posts, I beg to differ, sir. Dhoomstriker & Mitchum were the pillars of the teams and led it to its first gold medal against the indestructible PD.

Yeah, I'm lurking 'round. I prefer to remain in the penumbra out of shame. I just can't keep with your pace. (Just like I couldn't in Kaku)

Now, where is my invisibility cape...ah....here it is.

*thwerp*

Squadala, I'm off!