SGOTM 19 - The Shawshank Redemption

[LowtherCastle]

I just quick-tested the negmods we get for trading with someone's worst enemy.

1. The value difference of the trade does have some effect.
2. Gifting a city in my tests got a full -4. If we gift Last Mega to Asoka, all his WEs will stop trading with us. That will include Nappy as soon as they meet.

For all the supposed reasons to be nice to Asoka, I've yet to see any discussion of the lost potential trading with everyone else. That seems to outweigh all the plusses for Asoka combined.

 

[LowtherCastle]

City might peacefully flip back to us?

Hm...as I recall, the code flips it automatically back to us after 4 turns if we dominate half of its tiles. After Trumpster's borders expand we'll have 10 of those tiles. Can'at remember what the effect of missing FC tiles from edge of the map, but this could easily be tested.

What I'm thinking is that we could gift it to TOKU and get it back. That would also guarantee we get the granary and any other buildings, right?

That would zero out the whipping penalty and give us OBs with Toku. ANd of course, at Pleased, he'd be willing to trade us Alpha.

We could even rinse and repeat if we wanted to whip it to death twice.

Note: Toku is not Asoka's WE, so no negmods with Asoka.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Of course, the downside is that we would crash Toku's economy so he'd take forever to complete Alpha.

 

[WastinTime]

Yea, maybe we can get a +4 from each AI for that gift?

I agree that a -4 from the city gift to Asoka outweighs all the pluses, but I think we can trade him for Alpha or IW and not get hurt too badly.

 

[WastinTime]

Of course, the downside is that we would crash Toku's economy so he'd take forever to complete Alpha.

by the time we're done whipping that city and do the gift, hopefully we will have Alpha.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, +4 with Toku doesn't seem to get us to Pleased with him. That's what my calculator shows and that's what bears out in testing. That's weird, I seem to remember being able to get OBs with TOku by gifting him something the turn you meet him. What am I missing here?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Yea, maybe we can get a +4 from each AI for that gift?

I agree that a -4 from the city gift to Asoka outweighs all the pluses, but I think we can trade him for Alpha or IW and not get hurt too badly.

The thing is, -1 already nixes trades with Toku and Nappy. -2 with Alex. So we need to give them some plusmods first or we have to start gifting techs.

I'm not seeing any AI completing Alpha before T50 unless they do it before IW. Their GNPs haven't risen appreciably yet. (Except for increased culture for religions and Oracle.)

 

[LowtherCastle]

Anyway, WastinTime, on your CS+Mids beeline, what about focusing on commerce? Cottage the fp, grass river and sugar river tiles. Settle Gold. Settle the 15b Rice city.

Thing is, I still think we could do all our trading with everyone but Asoka. Toku might have ALpha as fast or faster.

How about this idea for the MIds? We settle on the stone, either one, and get that connected to us with roads. Could be via Asoka with OBs at the time. Then liberate that stone city to Toku if we don't want it. Gets us the extra +1 for Pleased. That way we could do it as soon as we want. Don't need to wait for Bureau. DOn't need to revolt to some religion and OrgRel.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, whatever we do, sounds like we should make sure we have enough commerce. If we can find a good solution that also skips non-beeline techs, like Currency, that's also preferable. I'm not going to be able to put much time in for the next couple of days. Unless I happen to post otherwise, I'm trusting your decisions as the turnset player, WastinTime. Good luck!

 

[WastinTime]

Mids before bureau:

Mids w/OR 400 hammers
Mids w/Stone 250 hammers
Mids w/Stone and OR 223 hammers

Note that Mids only cost us only ~150-175 extra hammers without stone.

Is stone worth it if we invest: a settler, a worker for X turns, at least 2 military, 15 gpt maintenance on the city for X turns.

 

[WastinTime]

Okay, whatever we do, sounds like we should make sure we have enough commerce. If we can find a good solution that also skips non-beeline techs, like Currency, that's also preferable. I'm not going to be able to put much time in for the next couple of days. Unless I happen to post otherwise, I'm trusting your decisions as the turnset player, WastinTime. Good luck!

I have no idea what we can all agree to do next. Seems like Rice city could fit into everyone's plan. It gives us the option to secure the gold site next or attack Asoka. Rice city should be up and running in time to add an Axe or two to the attack if we go that route.

Dhoom, will you agree to a worker and settler for the Rice and then Axes? We send our first axe to defog, not worker steal. I don't want to write another PPP if we're still going to talk about rushing and gifting a city.

Others, please chime in on the settler. We don't even really need to decide where it's going yet.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Running with WastinTime's Gift and Let an AI Keep the City for a while Idea
I'd be fine with 2-pop-whipping a Settler out of Late Megacity, followed by quickly whipping a Monument, and then quickly whipping Axes and a Spear that we'd prepared with 5 or more Hammers invested in them.

The Settler could then become a City which gets gifted to Napoleon. Napoleon can build a Road between his empire and the City, which looks like it is on the path of the Stone Resource.

One option could be Rice City placed 1S of where WastinTime was settling it (to share 1 Sugar + 1 Silk and to get the remaining Silk), which WOULD give us Foreign Trade Routes with that City and with Asoka if we built a Road to said City.

That way, we can put Rice City in a good spot, it can potentially get Buddhism (due to a Trade Network--Asoka and Napoleon can hate each other and never Open Borders but Buddhism could still spread there), but we wouldn't be burdened with a City where the Rice isn't in the initial 1-square radius.

The alternative option would be to gift Napoleon a Sheep + Wheat + FP City for a similar reason... ideal placement, but not being able to work the Sheep Resource for a while, but we wouldn't get Foreign Trade Routes until a Road to the City existed (which would probably happen too late).

We would still gift Late Megacity to Asoka right before declaring war on Asoka.

Roading to get the Foreign Trade Routes would probably delay our attack on Constantinople to Turn 51.


Is it worth it to spend 67 Hammers to earn +2 Commerce per turn, as well as a future City and a Happy Nappy? Maybe.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Culture Flipping
Culture flipping takes time. You need two successful revolts and you're going to need to be putting a lot more than +3 Culture per turn on a City.

Think in the order of waiting 50 turns in some cases.

It's not really going to be a viable strategy, especially not for a City that we will want back very soon.


Gift City to Asoka
If we absolutely do not want to gift a City to Asoka, then I'd have to go in the opposite direction with the micro, focusing more on 2-pop-whipping out of Late Megacity, to keep Whipping Unhappiness down.


PPP Settler and Worker
The thing is, I'm still not happy with a plan where we grow Trumpster into Unhappiness (and don't whip away the Unhappy citizen). I think that we have several alternative micro options that have been presented which can do better, albeit with the need to run the Commerce Slider at 0% Science for 2 turns due to delaying Math as a result of earlier whipping plus the need to regrow. But, even in all of WastinTime's peaceful games, we needed to run the Science Slider below 100% before Civil Service was in, so I don't see the need to drop the Science Slider for 2 turns to be a bad thing.

In other words, even if we didn't go with a rush approach, I'd like to see one of the micro options for Trumpster used (early 2-pop-whipped Settler or early 2-pop-whipped Worker or 2-pop-whipped Spearman) such that we delay Math by 2 turns and get a lot more value out of Trumpster.

I have presented detailed micro for a couple of options that do so, so take a look at the micro if you haven't already.

In other words, rush or not, I think that the PPP micro should be improved.

 

[Mitchum]

Regarding gifting a city to Asoka, I thought it was clear that this is off the table to avoid the -4 diplo hit with everyone else, right? Can we put that behind us?

Regarding an unhappy citizen in Trumpster, is it really that huge a deal? When building a worker/settler, the unhappy citizen eats no food right? So for all intents and purposes, it's like he doesn't even exist... unless +1 pop increases maintenance. Also, wouldn't the unhappy citizen only exist for 2 turns or something like that? I don't see it as a MAJOR issue for not playing forward with the current micro...

As WT laid out, maybe settling the stone for the Mids isn't a mandatory thing. Let's play that by ear. Plus, it's after the current turnset so we can discuss it later.

 

[WastinTime]

I don't see Trumpster running much unhappiness and the 2 turns it is unhappy it's not losing food to the settler/worker build. Then the one turn at size 6 it is unhappy, we whip it (or maybe whip at size 5) We are better off with a city at size 5 in general -- and specifically right now since LateMega is so small and will continue to be whipped 4->2. Let's work our improved tiles.

I will try to see if I can work in an early whip in Trumpster.
I won't delay Math tho unless it really makes sense.

We are agreed then on no rush yet.

We are agreed on 4->2 whips in LM. No gift to Asoka.

PPP coming soon....

 

[ZPV]

I do not want any negmods with the warmongers for now. I know there'll have to be some "DoWed a friend" ones later. One classical-age tech should just about dissipate by the time we'd do the next round of trading, but it's a general pain, and delays any other diplo stuff we want to do with them.

Note: the formula is
Value we trade WE/30 + Value we gift WE/10
all divided by the number of turns we have known the warmonger in question.

 

[LowtherCastle]

On deciding where to settle the Rice-N city, we should also get the axe up there defogging, in case there's anything juicy nearby, either coastal or land.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Note: the formula is
Value we trade WE/30 + Value we gift WE/10
all divided by the number of turns we have known the warmonger in question.

Awesome. Never seen that before, iirc.

How is tech value determined? What is a gifted city value?

 

[WastinTime]

Not much has changed, majority has approved already. Target play time: 8 hours from this post. Let me see what I can do about whipping earlier in Trumpster EDIT: I just don't like it. We are whipping away great tiles. Trumpster can whip later. Closer to when the scientists are fired. As it is, we will whip again before anger wears off. Re-growing Trumpster now will not only delay Math, but also slow down LateMega cus it has to give up corn.

Detailed PPP #2.1 T26-35

Cancel OB (Asoka will be unwilling to even talk if we are forced to cancel.)

Research
100% CoL

Trumpster
T26 Axe; Pig, Copper, 2xSci
T27-8 Worker; Pig, Copper, 2xSci, angry
T29 Worker; Pig, Copper, FP, 2xSci
T30-32 Worker; Pig, Copper, 2xSci, Marble
T33 Worker; Pig, Corn, 2xSci, Marble
T34 1 turn/1 hammer OF into barracks (5 hammers total)
T35 Axe (4 hammers for 2-whip) (size 5: food 18)
T36-8 Barracks

Late Mega
T26-32 Axe; Corn (grow and add: riverSugar, FP)
T33 Settler (1 angry); FP; Copper; Silk
T34 whip Settler; Copper, Silk
T35 Axe (20/35) (size 2: food 14)

Worker
T26-30 Quarry
T31 Move to city
T32-5 FPcottage
T36 1W road


Worker 2
T34 FP cottage
T35 1W-Road Cancel Road
T36 Move towards Rice (after other worker completes road)
T37-40 Rice


Warrior
See advice at this post.
Heal in place, continue West (and a bit south, away from ice)

Scout
continue West, at a lame 1 move/turn (with 100% against animals, we should be able to safely move to a forested hill in the short term)

Axe
Reveal the Lake and get into position for the settler/worker travel to goldsite
Clear the way for RiceCity
If possible, try to be in LM on T33 for angry citizen.

Every turn
Save
Zoom out and look for culture.
Monitor Thessalonica's culture each turn.
Check the Tech Trading screen each turn, in case some AI, like Toku, teched Alpha

 

[ZPV]

Awesome. Never seen that before, iirc.

How is tech value determined? What is a gifted city value?

Tech value is his beaker cost * something between 1.5 and 2, depending on how much of a monopoly it is.

Cities typically have a large value.
300 + 50*pop + 200*culture level + (200*pop + 400 + elapsed turns)*our culture percentage
Add some extras for resources.
Then *1.5 if they've never owned it.