SGOTM 18 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Mitchum]

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?

Yes, you can jump from a fort based on my testing. So we should plan on putting a fort on the floodplain watermill at Lair-5N (i.e.Coimbra-SE). From there, we can drop into 1W, 1NW, 1N, 1NE and 1E of Evil's Lair. There is no way he'd have all of those tiles covered.

Some units, like the one from Pig, won't be able to get to the fort and can only get to Banana Thief, so we should aim to have our first paratroopers jump in and secure Lair-NE (i.e. his horse resource) so that units from Banana Thief have a place to jump.

I'm going to test dry whipping paratroopers now to see which cities could possibly do so. If we decide to build more paratroopers (why not go overkill if we can and it costs us nothing?), then we'll need RRs connecting these cities as well.

EDIT: A FP fort takes 9 worker turns to complete.

 

[Mitchum]

I just ran the paratrooper dry whip test and this is what the results were when in Slavery (duh!) and Communism (+10% production):

                                           Pops            OF
                                         Required        Hammers

City w/forge + powered factory (+110%)      4              8H
City w/forge (+35%)                         6              2H
City without anything (+10%)                8             16H

Now here are the results when we're also in Police State (+25%):

                                           Pops            OF
                                         Required        Hammers

City w/forge + powered factory (+135%)      4             28H
City w/forge (+60%)                         5              0H
City without anything (+35%)                6              2H

Since we'll be done with the research phase and we'll be whipping like crazy, I see no need to stay in Representation. The +3 flasks will be irrelevant and who cares about the +3 when we'll be whipping all of our top cities anyway. Sure, Members Only will get +3, but who cares?

So I propose that on the turn after our research is finished (i.e. T176), the we be running these civics:

Police State (instead of Representation)
Nationhood (instead of Bureaucracy)
Slavery (instead of Caste System)
State Property (current civic)
Free Religion (current civic - required per the game rules)

 

[Mitchum]

Paratroopers:

A. The following cities can build a one-turn paratrooper and reach a fort on the FP tile in 1 turn assuming that there is a RR connection to it:

- Coimbra (11 pops)
- Cow (12 pops)
- Ivory (14 pops)
- Lisbon (10 pops)
- Dye (10 pops)

B. Here are the cities that can build a one-turn paratrooper and make it to either Coimbra or Banana Thief but not the fort in one turn:

- Sugar (10 pops)
- Pig (11 pops)
- Ironside (8 pops) – I left this off the previous list…

C. Here are the cities that can build a one-turn paratrooper and make it to Coimbra, Banana Thief or the fort in two turns and have enough pops/production to make a one turn paratrooper or cities that can build a 2-turn paratrooper and make it there in one turn:

- Cap (12 pops)
- Banana Thief (6 pops)
- Corn (16 pops)
- Sheep (13 pops)
- Beshbalik (12 pops)
- Ulundi (14 pops)
- Swingers Pad (13 pops)
- Dhoomville (10 pops)

Here is a timeline where P0 (T176 which is now 3 turns sooner than our estimate 7 turns ago) is the turn we can first build paratroopers:

P0 (T176):
- All cities (other than Banana Thief) produce a 1-turn paratrooper. Do it with raw hammers if you can and dry whip if you can’t.
- Banana Thief starts a paratrooper that will be whipped next turn.

P1 (T177):
- Units from category A and B (8 total paratroopers) move into either the fort (if possible), Coimbra (preferred if they can’t make it to the fort) or Banana Thief.
- Units from category C begin to move toward the fort or jump city (7 paratroopers) and Banana Thief whips it paratrooper now (1 paratrooper).
- Cities from category A and B finish another paratrooper if possible . Cities with 12+ pops can dry whip a second one if necessary. Cities that had to dry whip last turn with less than 12 pops will have to try to use the 28H OF plus production to finish another one. Should be doable since those cities will have hammers from P0 + OF from whipping + hammers from P1 with 135% bonus (8 paratroopers).

P2 (T178):
- First 8 paratroopers make the jump.
- Paratroopers from category C arrive at the jump point (8 paratroopers)
- Second batch of paratroopers from categories A and B arrive at the jump point (8 paratroopers).

P3 (T179):
- First 8 paratroopers from P2 secure area if required to open up a jump point for the next batch:
- 16 more paratroopers make the jump.

P4 (T180 - the turn the results are announced of our Diplo victory and the final turn of the game):
- We raze the lair with 24 paratroopers (assuming none died to counter-attack) vs. the 18 random units Evil had in the area last turn. Should be a blood bath!!


Implications for this turnset are that we need to ensure that we:

a. Update the railroad network to have it lead a fairly straight path to the fort.
b. Continue to extend the existing RR network as outlined by signs in the save. We should be able to finish it this turn.
c. Get started on the fort, probably not in the next turn or two since the RRs are still needed by the spies but definitely get it 1 turn from completion in the next 4 turns. No need to finish it yet since it will destroy the FP watermill.

When extending the RR, workers west of Lahore can make it to the far eastern part of the RR and build a segment, but you have to start with the workers closest to Lahore first since they have to travel the furthest. Some workers can peel off and build the RR connection up toward Sugar. There are also workers in New Mongolia that should continue to build the RR from east to west. We have time to get it done, but it just take a little thought as to which workers to move first so that they all have a chance to build a RR segment next turn (I already moved them all this turn).

 

[ingentingg]

T172 (1120 AD) PPP

Civics:

No changes till research is done

T176: When research is done switch to slavery, nationhood, and police state

Techs:

combustion (turn 173)-> filght (turn 175) -> fascism (turn 176)

(turns are estimates)

Diplo:


Give Gandhi or Mansa a Demanded/Requested tech. Pause it they ask for more than 100 gold.

Tech Trades:

Trade for rifling from Mansa when he is done.

Sell techs as Gandhi approaches 200 gold. Do not sell Electricity to Gandhi unless he starts to tech it. Do not sell Radio or Mass Media to Gandhi.

Sell techs as Mansa approaches 300 gold (or we need it to keep our slider at 100%). Only sell a tech to Mansa if we are two techs ahead of him on the Electricity -> Radio -> Mass Media path.



Espionage:


Cities:

Note that "Research" means either building Research, Wealth,

Build Research until gold is gone and then just enough Wealth to balance the budget. Don’t forget that OF hammers in spies will convert to gold.


When building Research, hire the number of spies specified in parenthesis while also maximizing total beakers.

Paratrooper Buildup

No airports will be needed.

Units in New Portugal + Pig can get to one of the drop cities in 1 turn and drop the next (needs RRs the whole way). So if we have all of the cities within 10 tiles of one of the cities build 2 paratroopers through a combination of OF, whipping (dry if necessary) or just hammers, that would be 14 paratroopers. Cities include Pig, Sugar, Lisbon, Dye, Ivory, Cow and Coimbra. If the first turn we can build paratroopers is P0 (i.e. T176), we'd have:

P0 (T176) - Start 7 paratroopers (all to be completed in 1 turn)
P1 (T177) - Move 7 paratroopers into position, start 7 more paratroopers (all to be completed in 1 turn)
P2 (T178) - Jump 7 paratroopers into the Lair, move 7 more into position.
P3 (T179) - Jump 7 more paratroopers into the Lair.

Several cities could build a unit on P0 (1 turn) and get it into position on P2 to jump on P3 via railroads. These include Sheep, Corn, Ironside, Beshbalik, Ulundi, Swingers Pad, Cap, Dhoomville and Banana Thief. This gives us:

P3 - Jump 9 more paratroopers into the Lair.

So this gives us:

P2 (T178) – 7 paratroopers
P3 (T179) – 7 + 9 paratroopers
P4 (T180) Raze Lair

That's a total of 23 paratroopers, which should be more than enough.
We currently have 54 spies, and I'll finish the 10 spies in queue and then build research and gold till after research is done.

Cap
Builds: Research (2 scientists)
Improvements: None

Pig
Builds: Research (1 spy)
Improvements: None

Gold
Builds: Research (2 spies, 2 scientists)
Improvements: None

Fish
Builds: Research (3 spies)
Improvements: None

Corn
Builds: – Research
Improvements: Riverside farms should be converted to watermills, workshops.

Cow
Builds: Research again starting on T172 (2 spies)
Improvements: one plains workshop

Lisbon
Builds: Research starting on T173 (0 spies)
Improvements: None

Ivory
Builds: Research (until T170) – Spies (Max OF) – Research starting on T174 (2 spies)
Improvements: 1 plains workshops and convert 1 PFarm to watermill

Karakorum
Builds: Build Un (1 turn) finishes on 173
Improvements: chop forests at any time since we’re building either Research or the UN until it’s time to complete the UN.

Sheep
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: None

Sugar
Builds: 5 spies (Max OF) – Research starting on T173 (1 spy)
Improvements: 1 plains workshop

Stone
Builds: Research (2 spies)
Improvements: None

Beshbalik
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: None

Swingers Pad
Builds: Culture (7 artists now and 6 artists on T169 to avoid shrinking)
Improvements: Road at Pad-NE+NE

Dye
Builds: Research starting on T171 (1 spy)
Improvements: None

Turfan
Builds: Research (Grow into spies)
Improvements: Convert two farms to watermills

Members Only
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: None

Ulundi
Builds: Research starting on T177 (1 spy). Work scientists instead of G farm or lake tile.
Improvements: workshop GFarm at Ulundi-N

Coimbra
Builds: Research starting on T173 (2 spies)
Improvements: Chop forest at Coimbra-2E for max OF of spy into gold.

Banana Thief
Builds: Research (1 spy)
Improvements: uranium mine

Ironside
Builds: – Research (2 spies)
Improvements: None

Wine
Builds:– Research (2 spies)
Improvements: 1 PRiv workshop

Dhoomville
Builds: Research (2 spies)
Improvements: 1 PHRiv mine.

Culture
Builds: Research starting on T177 (0 spies) – DO NOT FINISH PALACE YET
Improvements: None

Nidaros
Builds: Research (0 spies – hire scientists as the city grows)
Improvements: corn farm after we capture Golden Dome

Incense
Builds: Research (2 spies)
Improvements: watermills and workshops

Wheat
Builds:Research (2 spies)
Improvements: Workshops

Flood
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: None (work scientists as the city grows).

Siberia
Builds: Research (2 spies)
Improvements: workshops and an iron mine

City A
Builds: Research (Jail on hold)
Improvements: watermills and workshops

Lund
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: None

SW Whale
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: workshops

Fake Whale
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: 1 watermill and workshops

Desert Mines
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: chop into failure gold

PH Farms
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: None

Lahore
Builds: Research (0 spies)
Improvements: 2 FP watermills – plantation

Units:

Workers need to build a RR as a number one priority. They can also put RRs on mines in our high-production cities for +1H.

GK:

None.

Settlers:

Gold Member:

Capture Golden Dome if possible.

Open Items:

None

How far should I play? If we don't want any airports, I'm fine with playing till all research is done.

 

[ingentingg]

I tested both the paratroopers and the UN in a new game.
Both worked as you said.

With a fort I was able to jump to 5 tiles near the Lair. I didn't worldbuild anything.

The timing on UN was also exactly as you said.
Finished UN on end of turn 1 in real game, gifted city on turn 7, and "won" on turn 9. That correspondes to finish Un on end of turn 172, gift on 178 and win on turn 180.

 

[Mitchum]

I have a few comments on the PPP:

1. The plan goes through Fascism but please pause and upload in 3 turns (i.e. once Flight is learned) just to make sure everything is going according to plan. I’d like to take a quick look before you play one more turn since the focus on that last turn will be finishing Fascism and then slightly starting to increase EP production. Then it would be best if you did play that last turn so that we can take some time to see how the paratrooper buildup is going.

2. Add in the diplo section that you will refuse any request to change civics. You can do this and continue play without waiting for feedback.

3. I think it’s fine if Gandhi obsoletes the AP now that we have OB with Joao. But we have so many techs on him that we don’t have to give him the techs leading to Mass Media.

4. Do not try to get Mansa or Gandhi to close borders with Joao when it becomes available. If we do and the next AP resolution is to OB, we could be in trouble.

5. We’re so far ahead of Mansa in tech that as long as we have 2 techs over him, we should be fine. I can’t see you selling that many to him anyway, so we should be fine.

6. Be sure to hit the beaker targets for each turn as outlined in a previous post. This may have you hiring fewer spies than what is in your plan.
- T173: 3600
- T174: 3700 or whatever is required to get Flight in 2 turns.
- T175: 3700 or whatever is required to get Flight in 2 turns.

7. The paratrooper plan is slightly out of date.

8. I wouldn’t worry about making the tile improvements listed in your PPP until the RR network is 100% from all paratrooper cities to the fort, Coimbra and Banana Thief and the fort is 1 turn from completion. You can also build RRs on mines and quarries for a +1H if you have a chance after the key “stuff” is done.

9. The PPP says to stop building spies in several cities, like Cow. I would still build the spies in every city that is currently building one and then stop building them next turn in all but 3 or 4 cities closest to Swingers Pad. Of course, if you can’t hit the research target, you may have to switch a spy or two to a Research build, but try to bump up our tech rate in cities building Research already first by working hammer tiles and/or more spies. Ivory says it will build spies until T174. Now that we’ve moved our timeline up, I’m not sure that makes sense anymore.

10. The PPP calls for way fewer spy specialists than what exists in the game. For example, Sugar has 4 hired and the PPP says to hire just 1. Please keep more spies hired than what the plan says… unless you have to hire scientists over spies in order to meet the research rate goals.

11. Swingers Pad is building spies, not Culture at the moment. I would build 2 more there (one this turn and one next and possibly even one the following turn) since they are already in place and can start getting the stationary bonus right away.

12. Pause play if we don’t get Rifling next turn.

Dhoom has made his comments and we've taken them into account. So assuming that you're fine with the comments above, I think you're ready to go. If you disagree with any of the points above, let's discuss them first.

 

[Mitchum]

I tested both the paratroopers and the UN in a new game.
Both worked as you said.

With a fort I was able to jump to 5 tiles near the Lair. I didn't worldbuild anything.

The timing on UN was also exactly as you said.
Finished UN on end of turn 1 in real game, gifted city on turn 7, and "won" on turn 9. That correspondes to finish Un on end of turn 172, gift on 178 and win on turn 180.

Thanks for testing this. I didn't want to be the only one to have done so just in case my testing was flawed like what happened in the EP testing I did.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm sure that you noticed that the game as uploaded falls way short on the required beakers we need this turn. So even though all units have already moved, be sure to spend the time MMing every city to get the flask count up. Obvious, I know. I just wanted to make sure that you didn't end turn just because all units have already moved.

 

[ingentingg]

I'm fine with all your comments. As you probably saw I did some cut and pasting, and didn't check the city details very thoroughly.

I will stop at flight, or if I fall behind on beakers.

 

[ingentingg]

I'll start to play in under an hour, but will post a got it post when I start.

 

[Mitchum]

I quickly went through all cities to see what research rate I could get. Here is what I did:

- Cities building spies switched spy specialists to scientists EDIT: and continued building a spy this turn.
- Cities building Research would fire all spies and then either worker hammer tiles or hire scientists instead, whichever gave us more beakers in that city.
- Swingers Pad still kept its 6 artists hired.

This got us 3482 flasks. I didn't take the time to make everything perfect, so maybe 3500 is possible. I think that is close enough to the 3600 goal because on the following turn, if you stop building spies in say 5 of the 10 cities building them this turn and build Research instead (and work hammer-heavy tiles) and build Research in Karakorum after finishing the UN, our research rate next turn will be ~4000 so we can make up ground next turn.

 

[ingentingg]

I'll start to play now.

 

[Mitchum]

Awesome! Good luck!!!

 

[ingentingg]

I have 4400 beakers (next to the slider) on turn 173. Should I maybe rehire the spies?

 

[ingentingg]

We have rifling, (Had to give both Steel and Steam Power) finished UN and voted on ourselves for general secretary.

 

[Mitchum]

I have 4400 beakers (next to the slider) on turn 173. Should I maybe rehire the spies?

Sure. Just be sure that Flight is a 2-turn tech and feel free to hire back spies to up our EP count. We can fine tune it on T174 T175 with the EP and research sliders too.

How many spies (EDIT: actual spies, not spy specialists hired in cities) exist right now (I check the F5 screen) and how many more do you plan to build this turn?

 

[Mitchum]

We have rifling, (Had to give both Steel and Steam Power) finished UN and voted on ourselves for general secretary.

Excellent!!

 

[ingentingg]

63 spies. Didn't plan to build more, but I guess I can do it since we have so many beakers. Mansa took Golden Dome.

 

[Mitchum]

Yes, please build more spies. I'd rather have WAY too many than fall 1 short. Maybe just build them in the cities right around Swingers Pad + Ivory and Lisbon... or something like that. Like you said, beakers are not an issue at all. Spies could be so let's not flirt with disaster.

 

[Mitchum]

Mansa took Golden Dome.

Either way, those votes go toward us, right?

By the way, to win a Diplo victory, you must have at least one AI vote for you (two per the requirements in this game) AND you cannot have more than a certain percentage of the total pops. We need to ensure that we'll meet this requirement of not having too many pops. It shouldn't be an issue, especially since we'll be whipping away several pops and Joao will own Karakorum.

I'd say move all of our troops back to the Singers Pad area just to ensure that we have enough units to capture it after we've made it legendary. We may as well have a 2-movement unit or two near Karakorum too so that we can re-capture it after the vote is announced and we've won the game for a few extra points.