SGOTM 19 - Also Sprach Sid

[soundjata]

Bravo Kossin! A useful work leave

Congrats team! It's always a pleasure ridding on your backs

 

[Folket]

Great work everyone.

I guess my biggest contribution was to realize we could not build boats that could be forted to the pole.

 

[Gumbolt]

^Played much more than what I did in SGOTM17.

TSR did not go for Music line, that's the reason why they got CS faster.

TSR lost on not going for Cuis, otherwise, it would be a close fight. Our opening this time was really suboptimal (not switching to Math), plus unawareness of Alu corporation.

Great game guys.

Everyone missed Aluminium corp. We also missed the 3-4 pop barb city at start too.

It was interesting TSR beelining COL for great people instead. Was beelining currency early on the best play then??

The early rushes fooled me. I assumed you had gone HA by the dates. I was so wrong.

@ Doshin. I would summarise the PR thread on page 1 but it got a bit silly. 2-4 pages for each turn mostly deciding unit moves and stuff.

We basically beelined Aesths after HBR. Headed for music. Spammed cuirs using MT for lib and teched to demo/med using caste and 1-2 golden ages to polish game off. Moved capital to horse city. Used Asoka capital for NE and Glib.

We probably should of done things top to bottom in terms of planning game. You live and learn. As ever our graphs gave away our game play again.

This game execs and other things. Last game 50k culture arriving in 1 turn.

Anyway well done again.

 

[pomthom]

Congratulations team!!

A rewarding first place for a very balanced game and good team work. Our few downs were easily compensated by constructive debate and IMO a very good general atmosphere. Basically it was a pleasure as far as I'm concerned


Special credit to Doshin for all the efficient and hard work as well as continuous dedication to play and coach. Sincere

Duckweed proved once again that he is El Gran Strategist
I don't always agree with or understand the reasons for the directions you suggest, but I am forced to admit that you are (almost) always right


Like any other team in any other SGOTM, availabilities and dedication (and grumpiness ) were not equally distributed ; but in the end we all were involved and kept posting till the very end
(I can count at least 2/3 moving outs, 4/5 illnesses, 1/2 dead computers? Not to mention: a very dangerous borderline Wife Anger Level!!)


Bravo to kcd_swede and AlanH for their work and evilness! Bravo to all ASSes for the micro and the grand plans! Bravo to soundjata for keeping his wife! Bravo to me for not having used the same smiley twice in the same post! (the signature doesn't count)


See you soon for new adventures? Time will tell

 

[pomthom]

And thanks Phoenixes! Haven't come around to reading all your thread (I'm a slow reader ) but you seem to have played an excellent game (I am particularily interested in your early play)

 

[Doshin]

Bravo to soundjata for keeping his wife![/SIZE]

Have you read the WAL narrative you summarize on p. 1? soundjata's last comment on the matter:

WAL = 0. She's missing

Kids just went to bed so I'll study the save and last 2 pages posts now.

It seems our efforts came at a terrible price.

 

[soundjata]

Unfortunately she came back a while after

Thanks for the concerns guys by the way

 

[Mitchum]

Congratulations on a game well played. I haven't read your thread yet but understand your general strategy which proved to be more effective than ours (obviously ). Good job!!

 

[kossin]

Thoughts and observations

Interesting to note that the minimalist approach from T.S.R. more or less converged with A.S.S. empire management by the time Steam Power is researched.

A.S.S. spent 10 turns stalling from T125~T135 while upgrading HAs to Cuirassiers and saving some cash while Oxford University was constructed. Further optimization should be looked at here (earlier GM generation) as 10 turns is just too long with 0% slider.

T.S.R. and P.R. approaches are both quite similar, it appears, in terms of output capacity. The biggest difference lies obviously in the end technologies sought otherwise P.R. may have closed the gap considerably and even challenged for 2nd place. Such is the difference in unit movement... which really slowed down T.S.R.'s otherwise quite amazing BCs Democracy.

P.R. indeed lead the beaker race up until 1AD. management and a bigger Liberalism freebie gave T.S.R. the first significant lead over competition (5T over PR, 20T over A.S.S.)

Roughly 60% of A.S.S. beakers were generated in the space of ~17 turns, compared to ~30 turns for T.S.R. and ~32 turns for P.R. On the other hand, the first 70 turns appear to show little difference.

Notes

1) As pre the previous one, this only checks all beakers acquired at a certain turn (bulbed, researched, stolen, traded, bullied) and is not a perfect reflection of beaker output capacity.

2) Only a few turns are checked for each team, more turns would better reflect the progression but time never waits.

3) Not all teams went for the same technologies. For instance, P.R. acquired Divine Right from the AI while the other teams didn't bother.

4) Nothing scientific here, just quick observations looking at this graph I made over the weekend. Feel free to nitpick, share thoughts and discuss.

 

[Mitchum]

Thanks for the graph, Kossin.

It's amazing to me that A.S.S. was able to close the significant beaker gap so quickly. 60% of your beakers in the final 17 turns is pretty amazing. I guess it shows the importance of the built up "potential" energy of getting a larger empire more quickly.

I've seen this same phenomenon when comparing Space games with Jastrow. I'd be down by more than 20K with less than 40 turns to play and I was able to close the gap with a much larger empire that focused on early conquest rather than early early research.

Had A.S.S. chosen Aluminum Inc instead of Sid's Sushi, do you think your finish date would have been sooner? If so, by how much? It looks like you could have finished research ~5 turns sooner but maybe not because I'm assuming that some of your final beakers came via GS bulbs that may not have been able to bulb the Steam Power beeline.

TSR never built an Academy, university (as far as I recall) or Oxford. We only built a few libraries. Obviously our teching was focused on Steam Power ASAP and we determined that all of this research infra wouldn't have paid off in time. I wonder if LC's T150 victory was possible by somehow avoiding all of that infra and putting it into units instead.

In other words, in hindsight, what would the ideal game have been? Obviously beelining Democracy wasn't as critical as TSR imagined but what would the ideal approach be? Taking over the world with axes, swords and cats? Beelining Cuirassiers and Steam Power? I'm not sure...

 

[pomthom]

Very interesting kossin

Don't know how much ASS could have done better around T125~T135, we finished our research with litterally 0 left in our treasury. ASS made an important sacrifice in research during 10 turns but I think these 10 turns proved to be invaluable because it allowed the war progress to not be the bottleneck. Our grand strategy was good but I actually think we were pretty lucky the timing worked out the way it did.

 

[soundjata]

^ There ain't such thing as luck

 

[ZPV]

Thanks for the analysis, kossin.

A.S.S. spent 10 turns stalling from T125~T135 while upgrading HAs to Cuirassiers and saving some cash while Oxford University was constructed. Further optimization should be looked at here (earlier GM generation) as 10 turns is just too long with 0% slider.

I agree in principle that there "should" be a short-termist solution to a 10 turn wait so close to the end.

However, I find it hard to tell how this compares to the cost TSR paid for its army - drafting the empire to the ground essentially precluded us from doing anything else with our cities (research, hammer builds, etc), with a few exceptions.

P.R. indeed lead the beaker race up until 1AD. management and a bigger Liberalism freebie gave T.S.R. the first significant lead over competition (5T over PR, 20T over A.S.S.)

I think this probably shows that our CoL + bulb Math approach didn't work out.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Roughly 60% of A.S.S. beakers were generated in the space of ~17 turns, compared to ~30 turns for T.S.R. and ~32 turns for P.R. On the other hand, the first 70 turns appear to show little difference.

Can you plot again with a log y axis? Might be more informative about the early game.

 

[Doshin]

When ASS began researching Constitution, we ran a 100% slider. With Democracy, we had ~400G banked and cashed in a GM mission for ~1500G. We then continued to run a 100% slider for the remainder of the game, but had to build Research to finish one tech per turn. Had we raised the slider 2 turns sooner, I assume we would have finished research 1 turn sooner (building more Wealth > Research, and taking two turns to finish Biology, not one). Generating one more GS and one less GM would have brought this down to 2 turns.

~10,000B difference between SP and Medicine is not trivial. Probably 7 turns of research, or 6 turns and one extra Great Person. One of these seven turns would be lost due to the location of "Go to" necessitating Forts and Galley chains, and one turn would be lost due to the location of Coal... especially in the NW corner. So ~5 turns sounds right.

I think researching Alphabet > Mathematics cost us ~4 turns too, although that is a brown number, as Mitchum might say. We chopped TGL and NE without the 100% hammers boost to Forests, let alone the Bureaucracy bonus, and this later delayed the Pyramids and Oxford.

I am not sure whether Oxford would be the key to a Alum. Co. victory. It seems to me that Specialist economies run out of steam in the Renaissance, if the empire lacks infra-structure, and that SP falls at the divide. The minimalist approach worked great for PD in SGOTM 17, because we stopped teching at Engineering. For Sushi, a SE would surely run out of steam, unless you can switch into Mercantilism very early as well (unlikely on Immortal and without a super-Mansa). Another difficulty here would relate to warring: if you cannot whip (due to Caste), and if you cannot chop an army (due to the SoL), then units need to be slow-built, or drafted. I suppose a short stint in Police State and Slavery would be needed.

I do think (pace LTC) Cuirassiers are optimal on this map.

One question, to Phoenix Rising: did you think about building the Pyramids? I looked at your save a few days ago, and it seemed that you relied on a heavy bulb strategy early to reach and then upgrade Cuirassiers. I think one save had you targeting a 1800 great person, while ASS stopped at 1200, and TSR at 1600 (I think). Or did Tokugawa grab both sources of Stone?

 

[Gumbolt]

Mids was rejected. We had a chance to grab one of the stones but ultimately it was a huge hammer investment that could easily fail. We were focused on other things.

Would mids of really made a huge difference?? We certasinly had many turns to spare war wise.

 

[kossin]

Thanks for the graph, Kossin.

It's amazing to me that A.S.S. was able to close the significant beaker gap so quickly. 60% of your beakers in the final 17 turns is pretty amazing. I guess it shows the importance of the built up "potential" energy of getting a larger empire more quickly.

I've seen this same phenomenon when comparing Space games with Jastrow. I'd be down by more than 20K with less than 40 turns to play and I was able to close the gap with a much larger empire that focused on early conquest rather than early early research.

Had A.S.S. chosen Aluminum Inc instead of Sid's Sushi, do you think your finish date would have been sooner? If so, by how much? It looks like you could have finished research ~5 turns sooner but maybe not because I'm assuming that some of your final beakers came via GS bulbs that may not have been able to bulb the Steam Power beeline.

TSR never built an Academy, university (as far as I recall) or Oxford. We only built a few libraries. Obviously our teching was focused on Steam Power ASAP and we determined that all of this research infra wouldn't have paid off in time. I wonder if LC's T150 victory was possible by somehow avoiding all of that infra and putting it into units instead.

In other words, in hindsight, what would the ideal game have been? Obviously beelining Democracy wasn't as critical as TSR imagined but what would the ideal approach be? Taking over the world with axes, swords and cats? Beelining Cuirassiers and Steam Power? I'm not sure...

I think Doshin covered much of what I'd want to say. T150 or even a little bit earlier should be quite possible with Swords+Cats > Maces+Trebs > Knights as to avoid Military Tradition. The biggest annoyance would be barb cities all over the place. Also, keeping every AI alive in order to raze some cities near the end would get my thumbs up

Can you plot again with a log y axis? Might be more informative about the early game.

I had considered it but given that my data points had T0, ~T40, ~T60, ~T85 it wouldn't be very representative. But anyway the data is gone now...

 

[Fippy]

One question, to Phoenix Rising: did you think about building the Pyramids? I looked at your save a few days ago, and it seemed that you relied on a heavy bulb strategy early to reach and then upgrade Cuirassiers. I think one save had you targeting a 1800 great person, while ASS stopped at 1200, and TSR at 1600 (I think). Or did Tokugawa grab both sources of Stone?

I think Pyras did not matter for us, we teched Constitution rather fast so later Rep. would not explain how many more beakers you guys made later.
The stone further northwest was grabbed by Toku i think, yep. Was no option for me settling a crappy desert stone for something that HC or any other AI could build any time now.

We did plan our Bur. Cap too late (and Academy so late that we had to do maths if it's still paying off), we forgot to translate early Edu into early Ox.
We also had only 1 other cottage place besides our average Cap.
Overall we did not expect the fast conquest, and did not push our late game beaker setup optimal
Like i was posting for my team, if we believe in our stuff (something you guys always do) and have less worries, we can be even faster.
So i disagree with kcd on that, we did not play above our level this time..i know that speaking for myself at least i could still do things better.

 

[Jastrow]

I think Fippy is very on point with her last two paragraph... Many/most/nearly all of us often underestimate our skills/empires and allow our worries to worsten our own performance.

Taking space races as an example. I cannot count the number of times I have wasted many golden age turns at the end because I hold of on starting the series with the thinking "the ship can not possibly be ready on time." My timing and dates improoved consideribly once I started thinking "What the heck, lets try it anyways... Maybe I can make it"... It is amazing how often once a target is set, that you can actually acheive several turns faster than what you would have guessed.

 

[Doshin]

T150 or even a little bit earlier should be quite possible with Swords+Cats > Maces+Trebs > Knights as to avoid Military Tradition.

I don't think this would be any faster. Warring primarily with Maces/Trebs/Knights means that the human player must self-tech some combination of Machinery/Engineering/Guilds, all of which we received in trades or in a peace deal. This negates the saved through avoiding MT. The units are slower and weaker, so larger stacks are needed, and the AI is more able to whip/chop/shuffle emergency defenders. It is also very difficult to build 6 Universities and Oxford (plus the Pyramids, Libraries, Courthouses, and Missionaries...) while conducting such a war.

It would be the quickest way to clear the map, but the economic impact is severe.

Mids was rejected. We had a chance to grab one of the stones but ultimately it was a huge hammer investment that could easily fail. We were focused on other things.

Would mids of really made a huge difference?? We certasinly had many turns to spare war wise.

I can't comment because I don't know the details of your game. I just noticed (from a later save) that you guys had generated many more GPP than us, and the TSR save reminded me that a mediocre Stone site was available, if you wanted to gamble and try to build the Mids. "Gamble" is too strong a term, if you keep an eye on HC's production via the espionage screen.

I don't think it was game-making or game-breaking in any case.

IOverall we did not expect the fast conquest, and did not push our late game beaker setup optimal
Like i was posting for my team, if we believe in our stuff (something you guys always do) and have less worries, we can be even faster.
So i disagree with kcd on that, we did not play above our level this time..i know that speaking for myself at least i could still do things better.

There is always going to be some doubt, and hindsight is 20/20. But a good team is better than the sum of its parts. The best teams (for me) contain several players who can (1) contribute different insights, (2) are available to play, and (3) are open to feedback (or, more negatively, don't let their egos interfere with their play). PR seem to have this formula down. A team of 6 Deity pros should theoretically win the competition, but if those players don't gel, the team soon falls apart.