SGOTM 22 - Anti-TSR

[LowtherCastle]

I don't think gift cities can flip back, but I'm not certain.

I'm also thinking our next tech might be Alpha. Seems like we'll get it right about when we get our GSpy, right? IN that case, can't we just plan on stealing BW, IW, Math, Sailing, etc?

 

[WastinTime]

A tech-steal city wants to be as close to the capital as possible, primarily so the spy can return quickly.

I not so excited about stealing tech, but we can get a spy there pretty fast on a boat and it's close enough for good prices.

I'm more interested in killing Darius' economy and having him send workers roading across the planet and dropping them on our doorstep (yes, in about 80t).

I also like having an AI city near us which we can gift cities to in case we want to capture and keep another, then get our Rome rules satisfied to support an additional city and recapture the gift.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We can safeguard Rome-3S2W with 3 units until Fish is settled.

 

[WastinTime]

I don't think gift cities can flip back, but I'm not certain.

I'm also thinking our next tech might be Alpha. Seems like we'll get it right about when we get our GSpy, right? IN that case, can't we just plan on stealing BW, IW, Math, Sailing, etc?

Oh yea, I forgot about that. We are probably getting a GSpy whether we want one or not, so we should make it 100% and use it well. Now, it's clear we want to set up this Darius thing right. So Gemscity is not enough, we want that as a keeper for the coins and happy, so I'd say the the team should concentrate on where we want this next gift city.
If next to stone, then build a settler next in Rome.
If somewhere much closer, then we can build something else in Rome first.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I not so excited about stealing tech, but we can get a spy there pretty fast on a boat and it's close enough for good prices.

I'm more interested in killing Darius' economy and having him send workers roading across the planet and dropping them on our doorstep (yes, in about 80t).

I also like having an AI city near us which we can gift cities to in case we want to capture and keep another, then get our Rome rules satisfied to support an additional city and recapture the gift.

I don't see why Rome-3S2W doesn't satisfy all of those better than near stone and it gives us a 2c TR.

oops xpost again

 

[WastinTime]

Settling on the wine (instead of Fish-N) is what I prefer (for forests). I don't think it will be hard to close that chokepoint like you said.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Oh yea, I forgot about that. We are probably getting a GSpy whether we want one or not, so we should make it 100% and use it well. Now, it's clear we want to set up this Darius thing right. So Gemscity is not enough, we want that as a keeper for the coins and happy, so I'd say the the team should concentrate on where we want this next gift city.
If next to stone, then build a settler next in Rome.
If somewhere much closer, then we can build something else in Rome first.

Okay, I just changed my mind. We preferably gift Rome-3S2W right when we want to steal lots of techs and after we've put plenty of culture into it. Otherwise we lose the 50% culture multiplier. Tech stealing's only good if you really do it right. Get all the multipliers. Damn, it's a PITA not being able to put culture straight into cities yet.

How about planning to eventually use FIsh CIty for tech stealing? WOuld that make any sense? Or do we just forget about getting a GSPy? We could possibly get Fish ramped up with 2 scientists pretty fast.

argh

 

[LowtherCastle]

That's also why I wanted to hurry to capture one of Sal's Holy Cities. Get a missionary into our tech-steal city. Darius won't get any culture from the wrong religion. That gives us culture *.5 and religion *.6 in one fell swoop.

 

[WastinTime]

I don't see why Rome-3S2W doesn't satisfy all of those better than near stone and it gives us a 2c TR.

another good point, we get 2c without Sailing again. Nice.
I was just thinking it would be nice to have an option to pick up stone. I don't see us settling the NW stones. Maybe the best way to get stone will be to wait for an AI to get 2 stone and trade resources for it. Or maybe we can demand it?

I've been told several times a gift city won't flip, but I feel like I've done that before.
Didn't we do it to Tokugawa in the multi-gawa scenario? Or was that a city we captured?

Seems like you'd have to check game option: "No city flipping from culture" to prevent the gift city from flipping. But that's never checked.

 

[WastinTime]

That's also why I wanted to hurry to capture one of Sal's Holy Cities. Get a missionary into our tech-steal city. Darius won't get any culture from the wrong religion. That gives us culture *.5 and religion *.6 in one fell swoop.

That feels like a long way off. Finding, building an army, capturing, getting a missionary across the planet.
I suppose religion could/should spread to a closer city, but we still need Mono.

Here's the thing with tech stealing this game...
Yes, it's great to do it right with all the discounts. Then it can be better to run the EP slider instead of beakers. However, we are not choosing between beakers and EPs. We get an EP bomb, and it's not like we need to steal Fusion, so efficiency is maybe not a big concern. How big is the bomb again? I wanna say 3000.

 

[WastinTime]

I'm gonna sign off for today and let some of this gel and let more of the team chime in.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Yeah, I can't think any more. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

 

[Pollina]

I've been told several times a gift city won't flip, but I feel like I've done that before.
Didn't we do it to Tokugawa in the multi-gawa scenario? Or was that a city we captured?

Seems like you'd have to check game option: "No city flipping from culture" to prevent the gift city from flipping. But that's never checked.

if (pCity->isBarbarian() || (!(GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_NO_CITY_FLIPPING)) && (GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_FLIPPING_AFTER_CONQUEST) || !(pCity->isEverOwned(eCulturalOwner))) && (pCity->getNumRevolts(eCulturalOwner) >= GC.getDefineINT("NUM_WARNING_REVOLTS"))))
{
if (GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_ONE_CITY_CHALLENGE) && GET_PLAYER(eCulturalOwner).isHuman())
{
pCity->kill(true);
}
else
{
setOwner(eCulturalOwner, true, true); // will delete pCity
}
pCity = NULL;
}

The Toku game was played with "City flipping after conquest", that's why a gifted city could flip back in that game. There is no way a non-barb city will flip back to a previous owner without that option checked.

 

[Pollina]

I’ve been trying to keep up with the discussion these past few days, but I probably missed a few things.

1. How much do we want the Mids?
2. Would we get HR faster by stealing Monarchy from Darius? Would we self-tech the Monarchy prereqs or try to steal them, too?
3. How are we going to defend our city gifts from barbs? How many spawnbusters do we need in the south?
4. Rome will be unhappy at pop6. So the plan is to not expand to 4 or more cities until after HR, and settle a few “3rd” cities in the meantime, right?

HR should be our next big milestone. I can’t think of a good plan to get Mids in less than 45 turns, so I would think stealing Monarchy is the way to go. How long would it take to tech Alpha, build x spies and have them (fully?) fortified in Rome-3S2W?

Here are some estimates for how much stealing Monarchy would cost in Rome 3S2W (after EP bomb):

Spoiler :

I'm always surprised how cheap tech stealing can be, once you get a few multipliers in.

 

[WastinTime]

Thx, Pollina. So only cities you've never owned flip to you.
So why is everyone always worried about a captured city flipping back to the AI? Or maybe they're just trying to keep it out of revolt. Anyway...

When we got that trade symbol with Sal, I forgot to check if he had anything. We should get messages if anyone has a resource to trade. Sal does not, and he will take our Pig. So here's hoping he hooks up a couple silver or gold or fur.

changing gears again:
Remember the BSP quote for what does not count as a building: "barracks, walls, stables and the like do not"
People were asking what "and the like" meant, drydock? Westpoint? etc.
Seems like a good indication that BSP never specified the other buildings because he doesn't expect us to research too far.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, a good night's sleep (with my mind going full steam of course) led me to this:

Rome-3S2W, T91 after spy bomb

Tech   w/relig+                   with     without
Cost   culture  w/relig w/culture neither  OBs
====   ======== ======= ========= =======  ========
1000b   108 eps 217 eps  181 eps  362 eps  453 eps

So even without religion or culture but with OBs, we're still getting BW(179b) for 64 eps and IW(299b) for 108 eps. That's still a bargain, I think. Remember, that's assuming the spy has sat there for 5t. If more than one spy is there, the odds of success drop edit: to 80% with OBs under 70%, so we're most likely to steal once every 5-7 turns, since we don't want build a stack of spies.

Settling Rome-3S2W is simpler, enables tech steals every 5-7t. 5t is only possible with a second spy waiting on a galley. 6t with a second spy on land waiting. 7t with the same spy over and over till he dies.

And gives us the 2c TR.

That price would require OBs, which gives us a 20% decrease in ep cost, so that probably rules out gifting Gems and DOWing to re-capture. That in turn means we need BW for the gems mine. OBs make it much safer for our spies to survive.

xpost x2

 

[WastinTime]

Got to thinking about the city gifts.
Why not give Rome3S2W to Darius, but give GemsCity to someone else?

That way, when we DoW to get Gems back, we don't lose the TR with Darius and we don't lose OB which could be connecting us to Silver, etc.

Other benefits: We get +4 with Darius and +4 with the other AI. Our spies survive longer with OB. and we keep the EP discount

Warnings: Darius is WE of Gilga and Brennus Sal probably won't like him either if they meet.
So we will get -4 diplo from all those AI.

edit: xpost

 

[WastinTime]

Doing some research on my own for a change instead of waiting for Pollina..

Sal will trade happy resources at annoyed, but Brennus and Gilga won't.

 

[Mitchum]

We're going to want a bunch of techs as soon as we've gifted the Trojan horse city, right? I don't want to wait 7 turns between techs and risking the spy getting caught. At a minimum, I think we would want 2 to 4 spies there on T0. Who cares if the odds drop to 70%. We would get 3 techs on T0 which seems worth the hammer cost of 4 spies, no?

Are we planning to put our own culture into the city? That would have us building a monument. But how much culture is enough? Is 1 culture vs 0 of the AI's culture enough to get the culture discount? Or do we need a minimum amount?

 

[LowtherCastle]

More Tech Stealing data

1. In Pollina's test game, the chance of failure seems to be fixed at 80% with OBs, regardless of how many spies are sitting there beyond the first, BUT 99% for only one spy who has sat there for at least 1 turn.

2. Verified: We can steal prereq techs under the scenario settings on the same turn.

3. We can get 1 tech per turn at 99% odds by galley-unloading a spy with mvmt points after conducting the current tech stealing mission. For this we would need 4 spies and 1 galley.

T1: Spy1 steals tech, teleports to Rome, Spy2 unloads from galley, Spy3 loads into galley, Spy 4 moves from Rome 2 tiles.
T2: Spy2 steals tech, teleports to Rome, Spy3 unloads from galley, Spy4 loads into galley, Spy 1 moves from Rome 2 tiles.

4. 4 spies + galley cost 210h. Mids w/stone cost 250h. But Mids have to be built in Rome, spies not necessarily.

5. 90% our culture in the city equals having the spy sit for 5t instead of only 1t.