SGOTM 23 - Turbo Ants

[WastinTime]

Scout: yea, I didn't realize what a long and dangerous trip it would be for him to de-fog Sal-SE. Was just going off memory. Warrior can do that if we see there is a TR path thru Egypt.
Barbs can't spawn between india and persia unless one wanders over there, so you have the option of going back to Persia and trying to explore east. Otherwise, you try to get to China. Maybe follow a scout. Mao's was in that area.
If he dies, you save us maintenance cost eventually.

 

[WastinTime]

who are we attacking first? Egypt?
If we say them or Greece, then the question is : when are our boats ready? That's when we need our army. If we have time to get GW failgold and still get units to the boats on time, then let's do that.

Excellent planning on Fredburg, Mitchum ....now do Furcity

 

[ZPV]

Who are the war targets:
Egypt, obviously.
Ottomans, obviously.
Germany would be really good for our growth - two triple food cities can pop us great people later in the game and boost our production sooner.
Greece will give us at least 2 gems and a super canal city so I want to go through them too.
GLH owner.
Further opponents east.

TBH I think it would be faster to go against Germany first, so we can spend our limited hammers only on land units, and afterwards build a fleet to ship them over to Athens and then Egypt.
We'd want to act fast and disconnect Fred's copper then.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Back and forth we go between HBR, Masonry, Currency and Math.

If we're not going to build the GLH ourselves, I don't think we should self-tech Masonry, at least not yet. With all of that stuff you want us to build, I don't see us putting a ton of fail gold into the GW in the short term anyway. I know that we need gold to pay for this stuff but I don't see building an army in a reasonable time and spending OF hammers into fail gold.

If we're going for HBR, I think we should beeline it so that we get the most use out of it as possible. Paris can use the OF hammers to build a RAX and to get going on setting up the war machine. Workers will improve cows, copper, horses and stone in that order.

At least that's how I see a HA "rush" working... teching Masonry before HBR and putting OF hammers into the GW is not my idea of a rush.

If we insist on teching Masonry, let's not tech it until we absolutely need it. If the GW goes before we have a chance for fail gold, we decide if one stone quarry is worth the beakers required to self-tech it.

I hear you. And raise you a . . .

I think we need to answer some questions to resolve the question of how soon we can use HBR.
1. How soon can FurCity produce the second galley? WT had it at pop3 with wb+granary on T59. I had T61 and don't know how he did that. Then we need 100h for two more galleys. Is that about T70?
2. What can our other cities do by T70?
A. Paris has to build its worker, granary and Stone City settler, then the Northern Cows settler, then RAX, Stables, and 2 HAs. (Assuming it gets the stables.)
B. We need 2 more HAs and 2-4 axes. Where do they come from? Stone City?
3. Do we have any hammers left over for the GW?
4. How many research turns do we lose to maintenance costs? I calculate with our five cities our costs might rise to 11gpt or so. Our cpt will be 40+ I think. So let's call that 4t at 100% every 5t. That means maintenance costs us about 2t on HBR. Currency costs us about 2.5t. I don't see maintenance as the key factor here. I see our absolute bpt rate as the main barrier to faster research. We can save 12t by skipping HBR but it appears that will significantly slow down our conquest, which is the key to increasing our absolute bpt rate fastest, right?

(EDITED) Let's say Alexandria gives us 40 base-cpt, or 60 base-bpt. That pays for HBR in 5t. If we capture it 6t sooner than otherwise, it paid off. That's just one city.

xposts

 

[Pollina]

Here are the turn numbers I had for each variant for Fredburg:

Granary first:
T0 - Anarchy
T1 to T2 - work 2F1H forest
T4 - sheep pasture done
T7 - grow to 2 (24F and 9H)
T9 - chop resolves; whip granary
T11 - grow to 2; whip work boat
T15 - grow to 2 (may be sooner but depends on food OF)
T17 - grow to 3 - granary should be half full
Totals: 80F, 101H, 34C, 2

WB first:
T0 - Anarchy
T1 - work 2F1H forest
T2 - switch to sheep because +1F speed up growth to 3 pops by 1 turn
T4 - sheep pasture done
T7 - grow to 2 (24F and 9H)
T9 - chop resolves; WB complete (31H)
T10 - grow to 3
T14 - grow to 4; whip granary
T17 - grow to 3 - granary should be half full
Totals: 102F, 103H; 48C, 1

Maybe I missed something on the food OF but it looks like WB first wins with respect to total commerce and whip anger. Whip timing may not have been optimum either...

Won't the sheep be pastured on T3 and the forest chopped T8?

 

[Pollina]

TBH I think it would be faster to go against Germany first, so we can spend our limited hammers only on land units, and afterwards build a fleet to ship them over to Athens and then Egypt.
We'd want to act fast and disconnect Fred's copper then.

That's what I've been thinking, too.

I'm going back and forth between all the tech options. Can't make up my mind.

 

[WastinTime]

I'm leaning with ZPV and Pollina that we take Germany. He'll settle a 3rd city so we can still worker farm him.

If we go naval, I estimate we can get 2 galleys moving out of FurCity by like T66.

We're going to settle stone obviously and northern cows, right? or skip it for the 'rush'?
Here's thought... (now that we've already roaded the sheep ) we settle cows now and leave Fred to settle Fredburg. Another free, easy flat land city. Do we know when he'll get a settler? should be fast with his capital. does he already have one?

 

[LowtherCastle]

 

[Mitchum]

OK. I used this save (save attached) to run my tests. My calculations were a bit off:

Note: T0 is the turn we settle and revolt to Slavery

Granary first: T16 - Granary and WB done, 3 pops
T17 stats: 4 pops, 14/28F, 84F, 99H, 39C, 11 whip angry turns.

Workboat first: T17 - Granary and WB done, 3 pops
T17 stats: 3 pops, 19/26 F, 103F, 100H, 50C, 7 whip angry turns.

I also built a farm where the settler was standing (i.e. the forest we chopped).

WB first is one turn behind on growth but +1H, +11C and -4 whip angry turns.

EDIT: I accidentally posted this in the maintenance thread. Not too much to be gleaned from it though.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'm leaning with ZPV and Pollina that we take Germany. He'll settle a 3rd city so we can still worker farm him.

If we go naval, I estimate we can get 2 galleys moving out of FurCity by like T66.

We're going to settle stone obviously and northern cows, right? or skip it for the 'rush'?
Here's thought... (now that we've already roaded the sheep ) we settle cows now and leave Fred to settle Fredburg. Another free, easy flat land city. Do we know when he'll get a settler? should be fast with his capital. does he already have one?

Most likely we're going to need 3 axes per archer in Berlin minimum. With roads, axes will take 6t from Paris to arrive at Berlin, attacking on the 7th, which is DoW+2. If Fred settles Freburg, add 1 to all of that, except the roads. We'd have to build 12 wkr-turns of roads assuming we settle Cows North. Assuming we send only 6 axes, which to me would be folly, when does the 6th axe attack Berlin?

Alexandria might be massively underdefended. We might even be able to take it with 2 axes, on a fluke. I'd send a couple HAs or axes on the first galley asap just in case.

 

[Mitchum]

Won't the sheep be pastured on T3 and the forest chopped T8?

When I created those notes, I counted the current turn as T1. My new numbers use the current turn as T0 so yes, the turns are T3 and T8 using your turn numbering.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'm going back and forth between all the tech options. Can't make up my mind.

I'm not any more. It's HBR all the way for me. I also agree with Mitchum now. Skip Masonry for the time being. I'd go all out to capture Alexandria absolutely asap. It's a monster and I'm willing to be it's a sitting duck. If not, so be it, we bring the cavalry. It's worth it. If we can't access Alexandria by BSP direct coastal tiles, then we go down on anyone else we want, Germany or whatever, but using HAs. We'll have HBR in 12t. I challenge anyone to mobilize anything faster than that.

With HAs, we'll capture GLH, if needed, anywhere on the map.

 

[WastinTime]

Let's at least snag Hamburg (+Fredburg?) with our first few units. Or do we have to worry about keeping Hamburg with Berlin's culture? when does that pop again? It went on T35 iirc.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Let's at least snag Hamburg (+Fredburg?) with our first few units. Or do we have to worry about keeping Hamburg with Berlin's culture? when does that pop again? It went on T35 iirc.

Hamburg should be easy because Fred can't even build monuments. Incidentally, we should avoid trading around Mysticism for that reason, I think. AIs love to build monuments. Keep them at 0 instead. Ais will build granaries instead. Tachy showed they like to build a building with their first build in new cities.

 

[LowtherCastle]

If the archers don't have a promotion, even our chariots have positive odds. That's how to grab it fast if you want. Send first axe and chariots catch up. Attack from the east.

 

[WastinTime]

I think I'm alone now with wanting GW failgold, and I think we can take the GLH from these wimps. So I'll agree no masonry.

We could take Germany's non-capital cities with Axes while researching Math and getting IW free. We should have 5 workers by then and they won't have anything to do except chop, so why not have Math.
Then, depending on Iron, we could do swords instead of HAs (so research currency)

I really think that we are hurting our RR date greatly by delaying wealth generation options: currency and failgold.
HBR next seems like = economy collapse (maybe we need to run test games out to see if this is really true. I'd be happy if we can get HBR, Math, Currency before a major crash) Otherwise Math from the AI when? T80? Or do they trade that pretty easily?

 

[Mitchum]

As I see it, we have to make the following decisions before I can play (add more if I miss any):

1. Next tech: Masonry, Currency, Math or HBR? (at least we finally scratched one off the list)
2. Settle Fredburg or NorthCows with our settler?
3. Which AI, if any, to enable with certain techs?
4. Which micro in Fredburg if we settle it, although I don't think it matters that much (at least to me)?
5. Others?

 

[WastinTime]

So did we CF Fred already? Did we move our Warrior so it doesn't teleport farther from the sheep? Are we heading back to the Sheep?

2. I want to settle NorthCows. I'm not waffling on this like I am on our next tech.

3. Tech enable: active player makes a suggestion based on discussion so far. It will likely be accepted or we can tweak it.

4. moot

 

[LowtherCastle]

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

I can't believe it. I haven't played a Specialist Economy in ages. I used to love the SE but got away from it because of the GLH and the cost of the Pyramids. But here we are, Mids "free" for the taking.

I really think that we are hurting our RR date greatly by delaying wealth generation options: currency and failgold.
HBR next seems like = economy collapse (maybe we need to run test games out to see if this is really true. I'd be happy if we can get HBR, Math, Currency before a major crash) Otherwise Math from the AI when? T80? Or do they trade that pretty easily?

GP Thoughts

GS's: Edu?, Ppress, Chem
GM's: Econ, RepParts(1-2), railroad(4)

Seems like we could use 6-7 GMs and 3-4 GS

D'oh! How can we possibly run out of cash if we're running a SE? Especially if we're creating GMs later on. Flat map. Organized trait. It all dovetails. Every city with a library gets 15 base-bpt at 0% slider. And Hatty loves cottages. She's probably already got a handful of them in her floodplains if BSP created Egypt at all realistically.

Priorities
1. Thebes + Alexandria.
2. Every food city on the map. Yesterday. No delays. No waiting for AIs to build them.

Tech: HBR

Why HBR? Faster captures, fewer losses, freeing cities to focus on growing and running specialists. Fred's flat cities can be captured any time. A couple of HAs will use them for XP harvesting.

The SE has long since be known to be the fastest tech rate up to around the middle of the tech chart. It blows all the others away. And we need GSes. It's a no-brainer, folks. First Hatty, then the world.

 

[Mitchum]

So did we CF Fred already? Did we move our Warrior so it doesn't teleport farther from the sheep? Are we heading back to the Sheep?

We were initially not able to CF but after we got BW, Fred caved as Pollina suggested and we are no longer at war. Our Warrior had to spawn bust that one tile when the settler and Jesus did their swap so the warrior will now head back for more.

2. I want to settle NorthCows. I'm not waffling on this like I am on our next tech.

Oh no? Can we at least debate the pros and cons?

3. Tech enable: active player makes a suggestion based on discussion so far. It will likely be accepted or we can tweak it.

I'll have to suggest something when I'm back in front of the game.

P.S. Your original post grew after I read it! Luckily I'm very diligent and read each of your and LC's posts multiple times.

@LC I need to think about the SE but I recall being in love with it back in the day. Not sure why it fell out of favor...

Off to a science fair of the 7th-grade variety.