SGOTM 19 - Also Sprach Sid

[kossin]

Did you take into account we are currently carrying a 1700ish beaker overflow?

Yes, I estimated it as ~1500 base beakers in the first spoiler.

The bottleneck of spreading is the NE corner barbarian city since it needs 3 turns travel from BS, on top of that, BS needs to produce 2 more executives to another north cities. The spreading and HQ site should plan around this.

All HRE cities can be gifted back later to HC as Doshin mentioned.

I agree, the north-eastern part will be the bottleneck because there are many tiny cities in the area and not many sources of executives in the region. Ex-spanish cities are big, have forests and can spread the corporation quickly.

Note that not only the north-eastern city will be far away... the southwest Arab city is also just as far. While these 2 missionaries are traveling, we'll lose out on 4 new executives.

What I'd like to see next is a plan AND test to get rid of most of HC cities. I'd rather NOT gift to HC unless the city can be re-captured the same turn. Otherwise we're just shooting ourselves in the foot by spreading our military around. Once we know what cities we have to deal with, we can adjust the HQ accordingly.

 

[kossin]

I changed the meaning, sort of. Ther consequences of the change are the same for the players, though: only 1 city liberation maximum in each of the remaining civs.

The main point of the rule to limit the amount of +diplo you can get from liberating cities. You may have a good reason to liberate a city or two besides the +diplo. But +3 is too much.

If anybody wants to give away more cities, just leave them undefended and let somebody take them off your hands.

Does this mean we can liberate more than 1 city to the same AI as long as we make sure it is dead by the time the game is over?

Not very likely but we never know...

The answer to your question is "yes".

But I think I might need to clarify something: you absolutely will NOT be allowed to gain UN/AP diplomatic victory with votes from such a civ and then eliminate them in the final "Wait---one---more---" turn. The purpose of this restriction is to prevent use of city liberation from making diplomatic victories -and diplomacy in general- a lot easier. But it is a valid game mechanic with useful purposes even if diplomacy isn't the main intent, so I did not want to prohibit it altogether.

Mystery solved.

 

[Duckweed]

What I'd like to see next is a plan AND test to get rid of most of HC cities. I'd rather NOT gift to HC unless the city can be re-captured the same turn. Otherwise we're just shooting ourselves in the foot by spreading our military around. Once we know what cities we have to deal with, we can adjust the HQ accordingly.

I think the spreading plan determines the gift&raze plan. You could remove all HRE cities from the plan since it does not matter much who to gift.

We could gift Augsburg and then Vienna to Alex on T146 and then raze Augsburg and keep Vienna to enjoy the wonder bonus for a few more turns and then liberate it to HC. Or just raze Vienna.

However, whether to gift away Santiago and Seville requires the spreading plan. If keeping , then we can also keep Nuremberg since it's the middle site between Santiago and Khur.

Edit: One issue needs the confirmation from kcd-swede is "What if barbarian cities spawn on the turn of victory and we don't have enough units to raze them immediately."

 

[soundjata]

Edit: One issue needs the confirmation from kcd-swede is "What if barbarian cities spawn on the turn of victory and we don't have enough units to raze them immediately."

We have to fogbust I think

 

[Doshin]

In terms of speeding up Executive movement:

1. Galley chaining has a limited use in the NE corner: if we move a BS Executive to the Ice tile 3S of the Ironclad, we can load and chain to the new landmass in one turn (= 2 turns total). We need 100 in Whale City to have all necessary Forts fall within our borders.
2. Teleporting has been our perennial friend in SGOTM. Here its main use is for the SW Crab city and maybe Lalibela ---> Yeha ---> Stone ---> Mycenian road ---> spread to Mycenian (1-turn).

1. Is not too hard, with Caste, the Sistine Chapel, and Artist specialists. Just one Galley is needed. If we do chain, we may even be able to build Forts further into the Ice corner (there is 1-tile that could potentially stop this). We will know more after the first troops invade.

2. Requires tests.

-----

It may be the case that the NE barb city doesn't hide a resource, but just needs to be razed to satisfy the hidden requirement.

FYI, we can't see this city with our present map:

Spoiler :

 

[kossin]

Barb cities are a bit of an annoyance but I assume that if one pops on the last turn, then the hidden requirement isn't met.

Sentry units can cover 5x5 tiles so there's that. Some workers can be used for 3x3 busting as well.

~~~

What we can gift/raze will dictate spreading plan, not the other way around. We find out what we can raze, then make the plan; if it turns out one city doesn't have to go then we can keep it if it provides gold.

Besides, it's useless to keep cities for score, there is no tie-break.

 

[Doshin]

It is easy enough to test. We just need to find an old game where the player has ~24% culture in an AI city and ~26% in another. Capture both cities, see what options are offered. Gift the cities to a third AI, recapture, and see what happens.

Besides Tachy, Zulan (who used to play with snaaty) says the same thing about culture in posts #749 and #751.

Although we can test the above, the only uncertainty for me concerns the Spanish cities and the plot culture of these cities, now that Kublai has been eliminated.

 

[soundjata]

I am building a plan for spreading. Will display later.
Toledo appears to be the better HQ: 7 turns to Barb Corner (NE) and 8 turns to Aachen.

Without city gift, I'd expect 11 turns total
If we can give many cities and raze them later, spreading is down to 8 or 9.

Gonna try and test some city gifting now. (can't read German )

 

[Duckweed]

^I did not run accurate tests, but some rough tests showed that city with part of our culture could be razed.

You don't need to consider any HRE cities plus Santiago and Seville in the 1st draft since they can be gifted away and razed if we want. all the cities from Alex and Nappy can be razed as well, of course, there are 2 resources site to be counted in the plan.

However, in your 2nd draft, you need to consider whether keeping Santiago and Seville is going to slow down the spread. Therefore, the spreading plan determines the gift/raze plan.

 

[pomthom]

I am building a plan for spreading. Will display later.
Toledo appears to be the better HQ: 7 turns to Barb Corner (NE) and 8 turns to Aachen.

Without city gift, I'd expect 11 turns total
If we can give many cities and raze them later, spreading is down to 8 or 9.

Gonna try and test some city gifting now. (can't read German )

The NE Barb city needs to be considered with a grain of salt, as Doshin mentioned there might not be a Sushi resource there at all

 

[soundjata]

Tests are completed, giving simple enough results:

1. Dead AI culture does not count.

2. A city can be razed if the player culture is less than one third of someone else's culture inside the city. (10 versus 31 for example)


This confirms we can give away HC's cities to anyone then raze em.

Cornish Cow (60 dutch culture) can't be given away.

Cordoba, Yeha, Mycenian (around 20 of our culture) can't be given away either, except if we manage to have an AI put more than 60 culture inside.

As a consequence, I think we'll have to spend 10~11 turns spreading. I'll try to finalize the plan now.

 

[soundjata]

The NE Barb city needs to be considered with a grain of salt, as Doshin mentioned there might not be a Sushi resource there at all

It probably means 1 turn difference.

 

[soundjata]

Attached my spreading plan.
Takes 12 turns after Sushi. 35 cities infected. (all but Nuremberg, Augsburg and Vienna, they can be given back to HC a couple of turns before the end of the game)

Check it out. If no objection, I'll try and push the game tomorrow.

Concerning the number of turns until Sushi, do we gun for 152 or not? Is there a risk going all in science at this stage?

20 turns to go.

 

[pomthom]

Stop everything you're doing.

Take a look at this:

Spoiler :

No? Look again:

Spoiler :

Do we see a corporate HQ if we don't have the tech? Surely.

NE Barb city???

Your goal: You will found or capture the Corporate HQ of at least one corporation, and monopolize (owned and accessed, or traded for) every instance of its resources on the map before winning the game in any way you choose.

 

[Duckweed]

Ahh, we are so careless.

Then just raze the that city.

Is it possible to spread that corporation without the correspondent techs?

 

[pomthom]

Forget it, even if the NE barb city does have the Alu HQ it's too late

Had we spotted this sooner, our tech tree might have stopped at SP/Corp...

 

[pomthom]

Is it possible to spread that corporation without the correspondent techs?

Yes you just need Corporations I think.

But there's no way we would capture the city + out of revolt quickly enough to be better than a T152 Corp founded in a ~20 pop city right?

 

[Duckweed]

Even worse, it only needs SP and a connected coal to spread it.

We can't change our plan now.

 

[Doshin]

With a post #1854 vs. post #4512 discovery, our collective ineptitude is less than half that of the previous game.

 

[Duckweed]

10K more beakers, cost us ~7 turns.