SGOTM 19 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Mitchum]

Here is an updated GPP plan with Slavery and starving. Notes:

1. I couldn't pull the Trumpster GP in without massive starving and I'm not sure that we'd want to, would we? Plus, if we do that during the next 2 turns while still in Caste System, Trumpster will beat Cnip to 900 GPP which is not what we want. Or do we want to start starving Cnip right now too so that doesn't happen (Option C below)?

2. This plan requires that we launch the 2-person GA with our GSpy plus whatever we get in Cnip (as long as it isn't a GSpy) (Option A below). If we don't do this, we'd delay the start of the 2-person GA by 2 turns since we couldn't hire more than 2 specialists in Trumpster until then (Option B below).

3. I'm confused as to which city spawns its GP first between Hamster and Cnip since we've moved the capital so that may need to be tweaked to make Cnip beat Hamster.

This plan pulls in the 1200 and 1400 GPP great people from what I posted before but doesn't much help with the 1000 GPP out of Trumpster.

From what I can tell, the cost of going with Slavery on our GPP plans are either:

A. We launch our next GA using the GSpy + Cnip GP after our 5 turns of Slavery

or

B. We wait for Trumpster to get its GP on T128, which gives us 8 turns in Slavery instead of just 5 but pushes out our GAs by 3 turns.

or

C. We starve Cnip one pop now to beat Trumpster (Cnip gets 900 GPP on T121) so we can pull in the Trumpster GP by starving 2 pops on the next two turns to get the 1000 GPP on T127 (one turn sooner than option B at the cost of 1 pop in Cnip and 2 pops in Trumpster in the short term).

Plan showing Option A:

There are plenty of options. We just have to decide what our priorities are...

Keep in mind that the longer we're in Slavery, we either 1) introduce risk of getting multiple GSs by running 2 scientists during the stint in Slavery (the longer we're in Slavery the worse this risk will be) or 2) delay GP production by running scientists only in the city that is gunning for a GS.

Feel free to play around with this file or use your own method to figure it out. At this point, like LC always says, either come up with a solution, provide suggestions that I'll play with (possibly delaying when the turnset gets played) or live with what the team decides. I'm done playing with GPP now and plan to get started on the PPP.

 

[Mitchum]

If you look closely, the advantage of Sheep2N was that we'd only need 1 out of 3 Great People out of Cnip, Hamster, and the Economics Great Merchant.

Dhoom. Do the math. WT and LC said Sheep2N won't be able to get a GP in time. ZPV said it after playing around with it plus Mercantilism + the NE. I played with it and I'm saying it now too. If you really think Sheep2N has a shot at getting a GP in a timely manner, please show all of us what we're doing wrong. I have yet to see a detailed plan from you showing how this is even an option.

To help you if you want to do the math if you don't have access to the game, Sheep2N has 9 pops, 0 GPP and 18/38F. It gets zero passive GPP from wonders. It can work 6 specialists at food neutral, 7 at -3F, 8 at -6F, 9 at -11F and 10 at -16F.

EDIT: And Economics is not on our beeline and only adds turns to our research. I don't hear anyone else chiming up in support of this idea...

The reason for Artist Specialists in Trumpster = we can save the Great Artist for a 3-Great-Person Golden Age and have a very solid chance at being able to spawn said Golden Age. It's one of the few types of Great People that Hamster CANNOT spawn.

My idea would be to save the GSpy and use Trumpster and Cnip GPs (as long as they don't match which is probably less than 5% odds) for our two-person GA. Cnip is 82% GM, 9% GSpy and 9% GE while Trumpster is 64% GS, 28% GE and 8% GArt. The only duplication would be if we get two GEs. So with this approach, we could run scientists in Trumpster (better than artists there) and still have the same odds of not duplicating GPs.

Then, Hamster will try for a GS/GM (it already has odds for both) while Cnip will try for a GArt to be paired with the GSpy for the three-person GA.

With your plan, what do we try to get out of Hamster and Cnip for the 1200 and 1400 GPs?

Hamster has a risk of getting the same Great Person as Cnip.

An infinitely small chance if we go for a GArt from Cnip. The only duplication would be a GSpy...

If Trumpster does not give us a Great Artist, then Cnip should aggressively try for a Great Artist for its second Great Person, with Hamster remaining at a 0% chance of getting a Great Artist (don't mix up Artists + Merchants! I do that all too often!).

Right, but Cnip's GP comes before Trumpsters, so if we initially try for a GM out of Cnip and then decide to switch to a GArt if Trumpster doesn't pop one, we've peed in the gene pool again = bad.

The trickiest part will be "what do we do in Cnip between the time of Cnip spawning a Great Person and Trumpster spawning a Great Person." I think that the answer will have to be "pick either Merchant or Scientist Specialists--the opposite of what Hamster picks--and then switch to Artist Specialists in Cnip if Trumpster doesn't generate a Great Artist," but I'm open to other ideas on what to do in Cnip in that short window of time (maybe grow the City even more?).

Yup. This "trickiest part" is what makes your plan a bit dubious to me.

All of the plans have risk so we just have to pick our poison.

 

[WastinTime]

Here is an updated GPP plan with Slavery and starving. Notes:...

...

So what was your conclusion? Postpone slavery until we have a lot more Nappy cities and our GPs and drafting?

Or are you determined to make this early slavery thing work?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If you really think Sheep2N has a shot at getting a GP in a timely manner,

Not my point at all. My point was that even without the Sheep2N Great Person, we'd still be best off using a Great Spy in our 2-Great-Person Golden Age, trying for a Great Artist out of Trumpster, but then we'd have to read the details of my multiple posts of analysis to read through the various cases in order to figure out what to do in our other Cities. I don't want to redo the work... it's all written up... someone just needs to sit down and read through it again to make sure that we've covered the cases as best as we can.

EDIT: And Economics is not on our beeline and only adds turns to our research. I don't hear anyone else chiming up in support of this idea...

Then perhaps we should plan to give up on the 3-Great-Person Golden Age right now.

Without some good luck, we'll need the Economics Great Merchant to launch a 3-Great-Person Golden Age, and with some terrible luck, even he won't help us to get our 3-Great-Person Golden Age.

My idea would be to save the GSpy

If that's what we want to do, I will absolutely change my vote to be against a attempting to get a 3-Great-Person Golden Age.
EDIT: I'm sorry, but I am not willing to vote for that level of risk... trying for 2 more Great People who could be Great Spies when we need them both to not be Great Spies due to apparently avoiding Economics.

 

[WastinTime]

It would also be ideal if we could do our drafting first (recall my plan for 39 units in 12 turns).

Slavery uses a lot of population m but for less anger (opposite of drafting).

A slavery window right before our drafting sounds like a huge mistake.

slavery after drafting is perfect! Drafting leaves our cities at a decent size (5+). We can whip down our cities so the drafting anger doesn't matter/while it wears off.

Now that I think about this more, I'm convinced that an early slavery window is going to hurt us. We could have saved ourselves a day of planning.

 

[WastinTime]

My suggestion for Engineering is to just monitor what everyone is doing and try to help them. So we don't just give away everything right away, we wait to get a tech+gold, or at least some gold. I'd like to be online when you play to help keep the TS moving when we hit some tech situation.

 

[Mitchum]

It would also be ideal if we could do our drafting first (recall my plan for 39 units in 12 turns).

Slavery uses a lot of population m but for less anger (opposite of drafting).

A slavery window right before our drafting sounds like a huge mistake.

slavery after drafting is perfect! Drafting leaves our cities at a decent size (5+). We can whip down our cities so the drafting anger doesn't matter/while it wears off.

Now that I think about this more, I'm convinced that an early slavery window is going to hurt us. We could have saved ourselves a day of planning.

While working on the PPP and re-reading a lot of posts for a third time, I'm thinking that early Slavery is a bit of a gamble. The worst part of it for me is that we have a 5-turn window where we can't run many specialists at all. Most cities that are hiring one free SoL specialist will turn to a 3B citizen. Not horrible but not great either. Plus, it adds a bit more risk of getting another GSpy in Cnip since we'll be forced to run 0 merchants there for 5 (or more) turns. It also puts a lot more stress on our GPP planning overall.

Unless LC wants to lay out a plan for how the GPP will work without major issues between now and when I play tomorrow, I'm going with the assumption of no early Slavery. I really tried but I just couldn't get it to work as well as I wanted.

 

[WastinTime]

AI-AI wars.

For now, we don't worry about this. Eventually, when we're trading KK for a tech, or Caste, etc. we will stop the war with Asoka. For now we need the +diplo.

Then, when we're ready to give KK some big techs, we could bribe him to war on HC.

Alex is going away from Asoka, so he must be after KK. So we can let that happen naturally.

 

[WastinTime]

While working on the PPP and re-reading a lot of posts for a third time, I'm thinking that early Slavery is a bit of a gamble. The worst part of it for me is that we have a 5-turn window where we can't run many specialists at all. Most cities that are hiring one free SoL specialist will turn to a 3B citizen. Not horrible but not great either. Plus, it adds a bit more risk of getting another GSpy in Cnip since we'll be forced to run 0 merchants there for 5 (or more) turns. It also puts a lot more stress on our GPP planning overall.

Unless LC wants to lay out a plan for how the GPP will work without major issues between now and when I play tomorrow, I'm going with the assumption of no early Slavery. I really tried but I just couldn't get it to work as well as I wanted.

Fine. I think it's time to drop the idea. Even if you could figure out a GPP plan that makes you happy, how do you address the fatal flaw of whipping before drafting?

 

[Mitchum]

Not my point at all. My point was that even without the Sheep2N Great Person, we'd still be best off using a Great Spy in our 2-Great-Person Golden Age, trying for a Great Artist out of Trumpster, but then we'd have to read the details of my multiple posts of analysis to read through the various cases in order to figure out what to do in our other Cities. I don't want to redo the work... it's all written up... someone just needs to sit down and read through it again to make sure that we've covered the cases as best as we can.

I've done that (i.e. re-read every GPP post 3+ times) and I came up with a plan that works... at least for me. I've listed it in a previous post. If you don't like it, YOU can read through the posts if you want and re-lay out your plan.

@ everyone else - Is my plan in post 5222 fine? It entails saving the GSpy for scouting and using the GPs from Trumpster and Cnip for the 2-person Golden Age. I know that LC was in favor of this plan so that's two.

Then perhaps we should plan to give up on the 3-Great-Person Golden Age right now.

This comment is not helpful and is actually quite laughable. I have no idea how you make this connection, Dhoom. If we don't plan on self teching Economics, you're saying that we just give up on the 3-person GA? Really?

Without some good luck, we'll need the Economics Great Merchant to launch a 3-Great-Person Golden Age, and with some terrible luck, even he won't help us to get our 3-Great-Person Golden Age.

If you call 91% chance of a non-GSpy from Cnip and then another 95% chance of a non-GSpy from Hamster good luck, then I have a whole host of 90% bets I'd like to make with you!

Every plan we've looked at has some risks. In my opinion, "wasting" gold + beakers on Economics is not an option and I don't think not going for it means no 3-person GA.

If that's what we want to do, I will absolutely change my vote to be against a attempting to get a 3-Great-Person Golden Age.
EDIT: I'm sorry, but I am not willing to vote for that level of risk... trying for 2 more Great People who could be Great Spies when we need them both to not be Great Spies due to apparently avoiding Economics.

Thanks for casting your vote. I'm 99% sure that LC is on board with my plan but I'll let him speak for himself (he doesn't like to be spoken for ) I'm also interested to hear what others want to do.

 

[Mitchum]

Even if you could figure out a GPP plan that makes you happy, how do you address the fatal flaw of whipping before drafting?

My thinking is that we could whip key infra (not sure what) and then a load of HAs and cats to speed up our wars. Right now, we can barely support a single SoD which is making our warring VERY slow (i.e. one city at a time). If we could open up a second front right now with a second SoD, our war with Nappy could be cut by 5+ turns (assumes we want to eliminate him). We could then afford to hit KK from 2 sides at once several turns sooner. Just like everything in Civ, warring snowballs so the sooner you get on with it, the easier and faster it goes. If we have an inkling that Conquest is our critical path, Slavery makes a lot of sense.

I agree that Slavery + Drafting is a bit strange and Slavery will be a good way to clean up any we have from Drafting while the opposite is not true. So I'm fine dropping Slavery for now.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If we're going to delay Slavery, then sure, front-load a lot of our Drafting (WT has already kindly laid out a pretty good plan) and be very conservative with our Cats. I.e. Cats will mostly be used for Bombarding and not so much for Collateral Damage. Confirm that Stack Attack is off otherwise all Cats in a stack will, from my experience, get used first (normally bad, but very bad here). Our warring won't be quite as efficient initially since we'll have less Collateral Damage. It sucks to go in with less Cats, but if we want to both Draft and Whip, then Drafting should come first in many cases.

Remember that you can use the hover combat odds text to look for the magic breakpoint numbers, such as 20, 19 in our favour and avoiding 19, 20 in favour of the AI... if we're stuck with 19, 20 versus say, 17, {some other number}, attacking with the 17, {some other number} is probably better... the same number of hits for this round but maybe beating a breakpoint for the next battle with our unit who was 19, 20 for this battle.


Wine: If we're eventually going to go down on Kublai, should we hire an Artist at Stone City in Lali to get our Wine within our Cultural Borders?
EDIT: Lali, not Stone City, would have to hire the Artist.

YOU can read through the posts if you want and re-lay out your plan.

Great People
Is it possible to put our Forbidden Palace in a City other than Hamster within a timely manner?

If yes, we would be okay with getting up to 1 Great Spy out of Cnip out of the 2 Great People that it will produce.


Assuming that's not possible, and assuming that we want to avoid self-teching Economics...
A] A Great Spy coming out of Cnip next should probably spell the end of our 3-Great-Person Golden Age (or, we should be willing to put Economics back on the table)
B] A Great Engineering coming out of Trumpster should probably spell the end of our 3-Great-Person Golden Age if we use the Cnip Great Person in our 2-Great-Person Golden Age (again, unless we are willing to put Economics back on the table)
C] Out of the choices of Great Spy, Great Engineer, and Great Merchant, the best option for Great Person #1 out of Cnip is a Great Merchant
D] Out of the choices of Great Artist, Great Scientist, and Great Engineer, the best option for a Great Person out of Trumpster is a Great Artist
E] Hamster is a mess, but we can hope for a Great Prophet at low odds. Barring that, since we're already trying for a Great Merchant out of Cnip, since we don't want to run Artists in Hamster, and since Econ would give us a Great Merchant, our best Specialist of choice in Hamster are Scientists
F] What we do with Cnip depends upon what we get out of Cnip for Great Person #1:
a) If we get a Great Spy, we can hire 1 Engineer Specialist and the rest Artist Specialists, as we will have no choice but to use the Trumpster Great Person in our 2-Great-Person Golden Age, so it doesn't matter whether Trumpster spawns a Great Engineer or a Great Artist as that Great Person cannot be saved for the 3-Great-Person Golden Age
b) If we get a Great Engineer
i. If Trumpster spawns a Great Engineer, too... We'll probably need to go for Economics, so purely Artist Specialists in Cnip would have been best, while Scientist Specialists would have been okay. Merchants would have been bad.
ii. If Trumpster spawns a Great Artist... We would have been happier with Scientists in Cnip than Artists, but either is better than Merchants EDIT: We would have been happier with Merchants, but are better with Artists than Scientists and can switch to Merchants
iii. If Trumpster spawns a Great Scientist... We would have been happier with Artists in Cnip than Scientists, but either is better than Merchants EDIT: We are golden with Artists
C) If we get a Great Merchant, it's probably the same as a Great Engineer

Summary of Great People to try for:
Trumpster: Great Artist
Cnip #1: Great Merchant
Cnip #2: Great Artist (with a hint of Great Engineer if Cnip #1 = Great Spy)
Hamster: Great Scientist


We can revisit the situation after we spawn our Cnip #1 Great Person + Trumpster Great Person.

I would plan for us to wait until we generate both Great People before launching the 2-Great-Person Golden Age, with the only exception being that if Cnip #1 generates a Great Engineer, we can consider using it in a Golden Age sooner than the Trumpster Great Person would arrive, if necessary.

Alex is going away from Asoka, so he must be after KK. So we can let that happen naturally.

Is Alex going directly for Kublai with said units? If not, then could he perhaps be going after a Barb City? If you're talking about a stack that was "in the fields" when we got Alex into a Cease Fire with Asoka, then that stack may very well have to return to one of Alex's Cities before it gets new orders. Seeing where new stacks go may give us the most reliable info about the stack marching on a target City, but again, a new stack might just have targeted a Barb City.

 

[Mitchum]

Here is a non-Slavery GPP plan. You'll see that we can get our next GP on T121 from Cnip and the the following one on T123 from Trumpster.

We want Cnip to get the 1200 GPP because Hamster is bigger and can more quickly get the 1400 GPP. So we can't really start starving Hamster too soon. The crappy thing is that if we go into Slavery after the 2-person Golden Age, we'll really delay the 1400 GPP out of Hamster if we're forced to run only 2 specialists there. I'm not sure Slavery is in the cards at all... but if anyone sees something I should do now (like hire more specialists in Hamster?) let me know. Keep in mind that if we speed up Hamster in any way, then Cnip will have to produce the 1400 GPP.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Hamster also gets a potentially unaccounted-for +1 GPP from The Forbidden Palace... probably not enough to matter, but there it is.

 

[Mitchum]

Wine: If we're eventually going to go down on Kublai, should we hire Artists at Stone City to get our Wine within our Cultural Borders?

Will that actually give us the wine? Or do we have to run the artists in Lali instead?

Is it possible to put our Forbidden Palace in a City other than Hamster within a timely manner?

Where would you put it and how will this affect WT's executive plan if you plan to chop it or WTs drafting plan if you need the city to work hammers and not draft? We only have 50/200H into it now, so switching wouldn't be a loss (we'd actually get failure gold) but I'm not sure where it goes...

A] A Great Spy coming out of Cnip next should probably spell the end of our 3-Great-Person Golden Age (or, we should be willing to put Economics back on the table)

What? We have a 9% chance of getting a GSpy out of Cnip at 1200 GPP and less than 5% out of Hamster at 1400 GPP. Why on Earth would you want to scrap the 3-person GA?

B] A Great Engineering coming out of Trumpster should probably spell the end of our 3-Great-Person Golden Age if we use the Cnip Great Person in our 2-Great-Person Golden Age (again, unless we are willing to put Economics back on the table)

What? Cnip has a 9% chance of spawning a GE, so 91% of the time we're fine. Plus, if we get a GE from Trumpster and a non-GE from Cnip in the next 6 turns, we'd be fine as we could use them for the 2-person GA.

D] Out of the choices of Great Artist, Great Scientist, and Great Engineer, the best option for a Great Person out of Trumpster is a Great Artist

This is a don't care for me because I'd like to use this GP and save the GSpy.

E] Hamster is a mess, but we can hope for a Great Prophet at low odds. Barring that, since we're already trying for a Great Merchant out of Cnip, since we don't want to run Artists in Hamster, and since Econ would give us a Great Merchant, our best Specialist of choice in Hamster are Scientists

That's fine but in my plan, it could be a GM or GS. We can run scientists while we wait to see what we get from Cnip and Trumpster and then adjust.

F] What we do with Cnip depends upon what we get out of Cnip for Great Person #1:
b) If we get a Great Engineer
i. If Trumpster spawns a Great Engineer, too... We'll probably need to go for Economics, so purely Artist Specialists in Cnip would have been best, while Scientist Specialists would have been okay. Merchants would have been bad.

Why would we need to go for Economics? We'd have a likely GS coming from Hamster and a GE in the bank so Cnip could try for a GArt with no risk, right? I don't understand the logic of needing to go for Econ but I can see that you're pushing for it very hard.

ii. If Trumpster spawns a Great Artist... We would have been happier with Scientists in Cnip than Artists, but either is better than Merchants EDIT: We would have been happier with Merchants, but are better with Artists than Scientists and can switch to Merchants.

In my plan, if we get a GE from Cnip and a GArt from Trumpster, we're golden. We use them to fire off our GA. This is a case where you introduce a bit more risk than my plan because you've already run artists for 2 turns accumulating 103 GPPs (mostly GArt) and about a 9% chance of getting a second GArt.

Summary of Great People to try for:
Trumpster: Great Artist
Cnip #1: Great Merchant
Cnip #2: Great Artist (with a hint of Great Engineer if Cnip #1 = Great Spy)
Hamster: Great Scientist

My plan:

Trumpster: Don't care but I'd rather run scientists than artists here.
Cnip #1: Great Merchant (don't care as long as it doesn't match Trumpster but GM is good).
Cnip #2: Great Artist
Hamster: GS or GM

As you can see, Dhoom, both plans have risks. The biggest benefits of my plan are:

1. We have a GSpy to help us with our conquest. This could be invaluable and is a pretty big bonus in my opinion.
2. We can run scientists in Trumpster (not a big deal since its a difference of about 60 base beakers).
3. We can run either scientists or merchants in Hamster depending on whether we need research or wealth with no issues.
4. Avoids the Fbii issue you have with having to switch artists to merchants in Cnip which gives us a chance of not being able to run the 3-person GA.

The risks are:

1. We get a 9% GSpy from Cnip or a 5% GSpy in Hamster and can't run the 3-person GA.
2. We get a GSpy immediately out of Cnip or Trumpster and then we default to your plan.

So, are the benefits listed worth the risk (mainly risk #1 since risk #2 forces us to Dhoom's plan).

I will not engage Dhoom on this any longer until others state an opinion. This is an OPEN ITEM so please check it out and state your opinion because we're currently at a stalemate.

 

[Mitchum]

Hamster also gets a potentially unaccounted-for +1 GPP from The Forbidden Palace... probably not enough to matter, but there it is.

Good point. It may mean that we have to slow Hamster down even more which is fine because we'll be able to work the Moai water tiles.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm still working on the PPP. I hope to have it done in the next 2 hours.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

My error in regards to Courthouses... I misread the display and was expecting to see the discount applied right away. Instead, we see something like:
0.87 Distance from Palace
4.42 Number of Cities
8.30 Corporation payments <-- I was incorrectly looking here
----------------------
6.79 Total Maintenance (-50%) <-- I should have been looking here, as well


So, is there anywhere where we'd like to build a Courthouse? Probably not, but at least we know that our Gold costs won't be as bad for 6 of our Cities.


EDIT: Yes, Lali would have to hire an Artist in place of the Merchant, my bad.

 

[Mitchum]

@ WT

If you want to save me some time, please list all cities in your executive plan that have to do something or I have to be careful with (i.e. grow to x pops, build a forge, not chop, etc.). Otherwise I'll have to study your plan to make sure I don't mess anything up.

I know that the Dead End cities are fine. It's the others that I could use help on.

I also have to study the worker actions required by Free Willy since I'm not yet 100% sure where the forts need to go... but I haven't even looked into this yet. If you've got this part wired, spell it out and save me time.

Seriously, I don't mind doing this stuff myself because I like it. But if you want something put up sooner, spell it out.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Where would you put it and how will this affect WT's executive plan if you plan to chop it or WTs drafting plan if you need the city to work hammers and not draft? We only have 50/200H into it now, so switching wouldn't be a loss (we'd actually get failure gold) but I'm not sure where it goes...

Cnip is out as we've already clear-cut it.

Trumpster is an option, as we will work Hammer-based squares after getting our Great Person, but we'd delay and reduce the beneficial effects of The Forbidden Palace due to building it later and in a less centralized location.

What? We have a 9% chance of getting a GSpy out of Cnip at 1200 GPP and less than 5% out of Hamster at 1400 GPP. Why on Earth would you want to scrap the 3-person GA?

I would vote to go for the Great Merchant from Econ in those cases, but, if outvoted on that, would vote to scarp the 3-Great-Person Golden Age.

If the Ducks can get a badly-needed Great Engineer at 2% odds, then we can hose ourselves at 9% odds. The point is that we want to be able to switch Civics ASAP at the time of learning Steam Power, so I'd rather have a guaranteed but delayed 2-Great-Person Golden Age to do so than to risk coming up short on our needed Great People and end up having to spend 2 to 3 turns in Anarchy.

This is a don't care for me because I'd like to use this GP and save the GSpy.

Even with The Forbidden Palace being built in Trumpster, I'd vote against trying for a 3-Great-Person Golden Age if the plan is to save our current Great Spy and to avoid self-teching Economics. Instead, we should rip the plan apart and plan to get Great People types that will help us, such as Great Merchants for Trade Missions earlier on, a Great Scientist at the right time for Chemistry, and whatever else we could use near the end... a Great Artist can often be helpful near the end of the game.

Why would we need to go for Economics? We'd have a likely GS coming from Hamster and a GE in the bank so Cnip could try for a GArt with no risk, right? I don't understand the logic of needing to go for Econ but I can see that you're pushing for it very hard.

Because if we get 2 Great Engineers, one will have to be used for a potential 3-Great-Person Golden Age and we shouldn't plan to have exactly 3 Great People when Cnip could spawn another Great Engineer.

1. We have a GSpy to help us with our conquest. This could be invaluable and is a pretty big bonus in my opinion.

Then scrap the 3-Great-Person plan and plan to get Great People that we will want to use in a certain way, such as spying with a Great Spy.

I'd rather NOT risk getting 2 Great Spies for a 3-Great-Person Golden Age and spend a bit of Commerce on an AI to get City visibility... Great People are finite... Commerce is tight but if it speeds up our warring to see what's in all of an AI's Cities it can be worth the investment in EPs.

2. We get a GSpy immediately out of Cnip or Trumpster and then we default to your plan.

What I suggested for that scenario has us scrapping the 3-Great-Person Golden Age or planning to go for Econ.

4. Avoids the Fbii issue you have with having to switch artists to merchants in Cnip which gives us a chance of not being able to run the 3-person GA.

I don't know what the Fbii means, but how feasible is it to run, say, only a single Specialist between the time of Cnip #1 and Trumpster Great Person spawning?

1. We get a 9% GSpy from Cnip or a 5% GSpy in Hamster and can't run the 3-person GA.

I'm not sure how to calculate those numbers, but surely we can come up with a plan with lower odds of messing ourselves up by using the Great Spy in our 2-Great-Person Golden Age.