SGOTM 23 - Turbo Ants

[WastinTime]

I think the forge is a good idea in Berlin.

1) we can't build HE yet (marble)
2) Unless urgent, we shouldn't build units before the HE.
So I thought max OF whip Rax first (to OF into HE, rax is required prereq.)
Then max OF whip forge

As you may have noticed, I've got it set up to put 59h into it (only 36 more). The rest of the investment is food (3 pop whip).

So one way to look at it is...were only spending ~6 more hammers on the forge (cus we get the 30 overflow)

One thing that would make me want to skip the forge is if you can tell me we can build almost 1 unit/turn using chops. I don't think we're even close to that when it comes to knights.

another thing that might change my mind would be if we'd have trouble setting up 2-whips.
If we put 14h raw into a knight, we can 2-whip it.
But with a forge, we can only put 11h.
Those are both ideal numbers for Berlin except that we'll probably have overflow too.

And finally, I might skip the forge if we can't afford to lose 3 pop since Berlin is a GP farm. I suppose that's your whole concern now that we're pushing the GA forward a few turns.

 

[WastinTime]

Munich can't be a GP farm if we don't get the Deer. We'd be lucky to get control of it by building culture for 10 turns after the lighthouse. What a waste of hammers. Substitute Canal city?

Attacking Stalin is an easy fix for the Deer, but not really in our plans. No chance of peace vassal then.

 

[ZPV]

Munich can't be a GP farm if we don't get the Deer. We'd be lucky to get control of it by building culture for 10 turns after the lighthouse. What a waste of hammers. Substitute Canal city?

Attacking Stalin is an easy fix for the Deer, but not really in our plans. No chance of peace vassal then.

Canal City seems OK for a GP. We need to rearrange the GP plan a bit anyway to take account of the new timetable, and to bring the last GS forward. (T+19 is too late to start the PP-RepParts-Lib-Steam chain and then connect Coal.)

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[LowtherCastle]

WT: Yes, it's all about the population lost in Berlin. I don't even want to 2whip the rax. We can't whip any units during the GA. You're running 5 specs in Berlin, iiuc, plus it needs pop11 to build 1 knight per turn. We're not getting it to pop16 I don't think (not checked), but we need it as close as possible. So I was going to finish the rax, 4chop HE T105, then units. No stable.

Anyway, the forge only saves about 15 raw-h on HE and 5 on each knight. Takes something like 17 knights to pay off, not including the hammers lost to lower population and including the hammers already in the forge.

 

[WastinTime]

Canal City seems OK for a GP. We need to rearrange the GP plan a bit anyway to take account of the new timetable, and to bring the last GS forward. (T+19 is too late to start the PP-RepParts-Lib-Steam chain and then connect Coal.)

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

it's late, but is it too late?

On T+19 we bulb PPress (having already researched part of it). Then also double bulb RepParts (we must have 1350 per bulb)
T+20 we finish Liberalism for Steam and 4x bulb Railroad
T+21 finish Railroad and mine coal
T+22 workers can railroad.

 

[WastinTime]

WT: Yes, it's all about the population lost in Berlin. I don't even want to 2whip the rax. We can't whip any units during the GA. You're running 5 specs in Berlin, iiuc, plus it needs pop11 to build 1 knight per turn. We're not getting it to pop16 I don't think (not checked), but we need it as close as possible. So I was going to finish the rax, 4chop HE T105, then units. No stable.

Anyway, the forge only saves about 15 raw-h on HE and 5 on each knight. Takes something like 17 knights to pay off, not including the hammers lost to lower population and including the hammers already in the forge.

ok. I keep forgetting we can't whip any more after GA. We should be very aggressive whipping non-GP farms.

 

[WastinTime]

Another way to do this is have Alexa put out a GS even later: T+20 or 21 and use it for our contingency 'no coal' plan bulbing Sci Meth.

This gets us Railroad 1t sooner assuming our research is fast enough to manually research PPress.

We should probably just be flexible on this and change based on our research speed.

 

[WastinTime]

We've also got new information on Istanbul since making our GP plan. It has an Academy.
So, if we run Scientists there instead of Merchants, we get 600+ extra. over the 17t it would have run 8 merchants (loss of 400 gold--but who cares)

We could plan to have this GS for SciMeth and make up the research.

This has the potential of getting Railroad 3t sooner! But again, it depends. Now we have a lot of pressure to research even more manually in less turns.

And on top of that, we're not talking about t115-132 anymore. It's more like T112-T129. That's significant as our bpt goes up every turn making it harder to meet our needed bpt rate with an earlier window. It will be a lot easier to estimate once we start the GA and run specialists, so we can make our final adjustments then.

Another adjustment might be to use 5 GM's to bulb railroad. That would allow:
T+n: Liberalism/Steam, same turn bulb RR.
If we've mined and roaded everywhere and get coal instantly connected, we win 1t earlier.

 

[LowtherCastle]

To 5-bulb RR to completion, we'd need to have a population of 173.

 

[WastinTime]

To 5-bulb RR to completion, we'd need to have a population of 173.

What a coincidence. Isn't that almost exactly what we need to 2-bulb Rep Parts too?

 

[LowtherCastle]

What a coincidence. Isn't that almost exactly what we need to 2-bulb Rep Parts too?

Yes, I just noticed that too: 175 173. Identical.

Edit: Not really a coincidence. 6727 *2/5 = 2691.

 

[WastinTime]

We also have the Fredburg option instead of CanalCity or Munich for a GP farm. It can easily be ready by T111. The islam duties would need to be passed on to someone else.

 

[WastinTime]

I think we should start at least 2 out of those 3 on the path of GP production. If things are going badly for manual research, we could always work in both of them and push everyone else out. So we'd be generating GPs for ~22 turns instead of 20.

 

[WastinTime]

In case you haven't studied the GP plan too closely, let me point out the key to shortening it. It's the 600 gp (in the latest iteration.)

We pop a few quickly with our big cities which will pop a 2nd one later. Then there is a gap from T+5 to T+9 waiting for Munich, et al. If we get that one, the 600 gpp early on T+8, it allows everyone to move up. So, we could either run a bigger city like Fredburg who could slow starve and run +1 specialist over Munich or CanalCity.
OR
we'd need to get a head start...which usually requires something like a library...bu tthat corrupts the gene pool.

 

[WastinTime]

goldcity: no granary, workboat while working gold, then get to size 3 and work 2 gold, maybe size 4 +incense too before the game is over.

 

[WastinTime]

we need some MP.
Any value in giving away copper/iron and building warriors? Even archers are about to be obsolete.

or just use the chariots? How many cities actually need MP?

 

[LowtherCastle]

we need some MP.
Any value in giving away copper/iron and building warriors? Even archers are about to be obsolete.

or just use the chariots? How many cities actually need MP?

Good point, I had forgotten about them.

 

[WastinTime]

Cashflow problem or not?

- After our GA starts we're done with HE, Moai, Parth, MoM, HG. So failgold comes from where? NatEpic? that requires a library

- Once a GM is born, we want to work all scientists (or coastal tiles, etc), but not merchants. This could cause a $$ stress along with our massive conquest.
So let's not ignore a possible money problem. it'd be nice to trigger some failgold around T125.

Or use missionary failgold?

Other? pillage everything in the east?

Can we spot the AI building Chichen?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Should we consider libraries anywhere? That wouldboost research 25% and allow for NE failgold.

 

[WastinTime]

Should we consider libraries anywhere? That wouldboost research 25% and allow for NE failgold.

I would love them with REP and all, but we're just so fast this game. We need sooo many huge cities in the BC years. And not many forests left.

If you did manage to whip/chop them, then there would likely not be any room for failgold. I'll be happy to see some in your plan, but not expecting them. You were even considering killing Lisbon's library. That was needed to get a few GPP headstart and seems appropriate considering we'd pop a GS there. We may need to adjust the GP plan if you need to skip it.

Fact is, without forges or OrgRel, or IND trait, failgold is still good, but not spectacular.
What we're really missing out on is being able to 3-4 pop whip Moai in several places and remove it from the queue. Easier to do with all those bonuses.

I don't know if you can make use of it, but there is a tiny, miniscule window of Org Rel bonus. On the GA turn, you can switch to Islam first, whip buildings with OR bonus, then switch to Pacifism, et al.

Missionaries and pillaging might be best.