SGOTM 23 - Turbo Ants

[LowtherCastle]

Of all the AIs, Churchill's the one I'm struggling to see how to conquer quickly. His land is full of forests and he's built a ton of annoying swords. Do I just take a bunch of knights (putting pressure on the other fronts) and eat some 65% battles?

I'll examine that a bit too.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Churchill Data

1. York is at 88 @2cpt = 40% on T117 , next best is Hastings at 38.
2. Coastal tiles wherever our galleys want to go.
3. We need a plusmod to get Churchill to Pleased by T116 to revolt him to Castes. = Resource trades. 50 trade-turns per plusmod, don't know how many we've accumulated, but we have 6 resources we can trade immediately (ONE AT A TIME!!!) plus 2 ongoing. That will give us another 40 trade-turns.
4. If Churchill's defenses remain as they are, I think I'd go for T116 capture Hastings+Canterbury amphibiously, T117 capture York by land, while bombarding London's defenses. The point being to grab 3 island cities asap for our economy.
5. DUmp the chariot at Nottingham at Canterbury asap to keep tabs on military build up and get the galley back to pick up units for T116 DoW.
6. Plan to use T115/116 Paper to scout Churchill's tundra city.

Hastings: 2 galleys (build 1 galley in SQ?) with 2 CII amphib knights + 2 knights/HAs
Canterbury: 1 galley with 1 CII amphib knight + 1 knight (can help with York if not used, if no culture on Cant-nw after capture)
York: 1 galley with 2 knights
London: 1 galley with 1 knight + 1 accuracy cat(chop in Paris?)


That's assuming, of course, the other fronts can spare the 3 knights from the Berlin queue. If not, then capture in some other pattern. In any case, I don't really see a problem wiping Churchill out pretty fast. At the very least the last Berlin knights can attack Churchill amphibiously.

~~~

Can anyone foggaze whether Churchill's far northern tundra city is on a hill or not?


to be continued

 

[LowtherCastle]

T111 Summary, part 5

Some WT posts outining our tech path and plan:

Careful with Liberalism. It's easy to put too many beakers in. Then when you come back to finish it, you have overflow and your tech rate has increased by 100's and waste 1000+ beakers. Not a problem if we end up researching RR a bit, but in the current plan Lib is the last thing we do.
I'd do Steel first in any case.

The above plan was done using 1000 final bpt(including the 20% bonus for readers that don't know that expression). I think I'm still being conservative, and if we have a slight money problem we're still on track. Let's double check it.

Here are the assumptions I used:
T103, after the GAge is triggered, we should be around 400 bpt which is 480 final bpt.
It might be a little less than that to start, but over the 8t, it will average 500 f-bpt.

T109 We've grown our cities, switch to Caste/Merc/Pacifism/etc. We may not be able to run all our specialists this early, but over the course of the next 12 turns we should have ~80 specialists per turn.

To get 80, roughly, I used the fact that 10 cities will have just 1 merc scientist,
and another 10 will be GP farms. Those average about 7 specialists each for 70 specialists...even if Fredburg and Berlin dial back their GP farm effort.

So 80 specialists. Let's say on average, 35 merc and 45 sci.
Obviously, early on, it will be more like 40-40, but as we get GM's the cities can switch to sci.

gold:
So, we can expect about 120 gpt at the start, dropping down later, averaging 105 gpt

beakers:
375 raw from the specialists.
+100 from effect on the 375 for academy/library
= 475
= ~570 final-bpt just from specialists.

So this is where I came up with ~1000.
It's the 500 we can do without any specialists plus 570 for the specialist effect.

Naturally, as more conquered cities come out of revolt, our bpt keeps going up as long as we can pay the city maint. This is why I see 1000 bpt as conservative.
btw, I love the fact that we can sustain 1000 bpt well before 1 AD. I usually consider 500 to be good at 1 AD. Thank god for the Pyramids...or in this case thank Hatty...or thank BSP--pre-game I worried that he built and destroyed them or put them out of reach.

If 1 turning RepParts and Liberalism back-to-back is tight (which I doubt), we have the power to run many many more scientists those last 2 turns, so this should never be a problem.

This leads me to wondering if we can shave off a turn. It's hard because we are doing 1 tech per turn after Steel. So the only way to do it is get some of that beaker overflow early and use it to 3t Steel instead of 4t. Now, maybe you just want the cannons, but if not, here's a plan to cut off 1t research...

109 Banking
111 Engineering (w OF)
112 or 113 GunP
114 Chem
115 Paper
(1t of steel + chem and paper overflow)
117 Edu
(1t steel + Edu overflow)
119 Econ
120 Steel
(bulb PPress)
121 PPress
122 RepParts
123 Liberalism/ Steam/5-bulb RR, workers can RR if we have coal connected! Idle workers should mine and road mines that are not river-connected. No windmills.
124 game is won... ideally.

I'm aware of that. I just thought we should figure out when knights are coming and if we're upgrading a bunch. Probably should do the trade mission and give up one GM on RR. We might not even lose any turns to that because we might have to move to a hill to connect coal after we reveal it with Steam. So we get RR in 1 turn instead of zero turns.

Actually, now that I think about it. If we're going to pull one GM off RR, why not two? This also likely costs us zero turns. We estimated GM = 1350, so two is 2700. With the overflow from Liberalism and running an extra 50-100 scientists for 1 turn and with more population a GM is > 1350, we can get RR in 1 turn using only 3 GM bulbs.
Not sure what we'd do with the extra GP if we cut that other GM. Maybe we're better off double bulbing Edu or Chem.

With PPress going that late you have a bit of a problem. You really want it T120 so you can bulb first and then finish it with lots of overflow.

In the T121 case, you have to figure out how much to put into PPress and if you come up 1 beaker short you'll lose a whole turn. On top of that, the real problem is that we're doing 1000+ bpt so you'll have to run a turn at 400 or whatever small amt is needed to complete PPress. That could be very difficult if you're carrying overflow. In fact, now that I think about it, you're carrying tons of overflow into RepParts. You can't bulb Press 121 without significant delay to Repparts/RR.

There are two problems hampering Thebes: building aqueduct-HG and growth. Alexa doesn't have that problem. It's starting now as a high-powered GP farm.

I looked at building aqueduct-HG elsewhere but struck out. It requires 250 base-h. Lisbon needs to build the Parthenon so Athens can pop the GA#2 GP so Paris can grow to pop11 by T112 for the 1300g trade mission. And so on. Complicated. Even building Parth in Lisbon is forcing me to move Moai away from Oporto (insufficient worker turns), probably to CEB, which will cost us a couple hundred gold on Moai but get the money sooner, which is probably a good trade-off. I'll try to get the gold back on another wonder.

Anyway, I forgot to ask you the question you answered. Yes, we can switch Alexa and Hamburg, no probs. Idon't see any useful way to double up GPs in one turn.

How's this?

 200 T105 GS Alexa GA#2
 300 T110 GM Istan Trade Mission
 400 T111 GP Athen GA#2 
 500 T113 GS Alexa Chem
 600 T118 GM Munic Econ
 700 T119 GS Paris Educ
 800 T120 GS Alexa PP
 900 T121 GM Hambu RR
1000 T122 GM Thebe RR

 

[LowtherCastle]

Current total population: 164
GS bulb = 1992b
GP bulb = 1328b

 

[LowtherCastle]

We can cancel our metal deals on T112.

 

[LowtherCastle]

PR seems to have produced a giant herd of knights:

That's 300K in 6t or 5 knights per turn. If they upgraded from HAs, that's even more @ +4k per upgrade. Hard to believe they could produce 30 or more knights in 6t without Slavery, unless they're chopping like mad. Then again, these graphs always surprise me.

Their conquest isn't far. The question is, how far is their Orient Express?

 

[ZPV]

Churchill Data

Thanks LC. Churchill's northern city is on flatland.
Amphibous Knights! At least they're not elephants, although I was tempted to build one if Berlin was short on hammers one turn.

I'm relatively close to pulling it all together - I've been playing with screenshots to demonstrate the war plans. I should be able to post it all in the next couple of hours.

I guess I'll upload the spreadsheet I've got it on too - that has a city/unit/turn summary on page 1, AI-by-AI unit arrival on page 2, city/GP/turn + tech summary on page 3, city-by-city micro on pages 4-X.

 

[LowtherCastle]

ZPV: Gandhi only has 2 more cities, Bombay and Viagra (on the east coast on or near the ivory). That means barbs are likely to spawn in the south if they're able to spawn at all.

Also, on T110, Gandhi had an un-escorted settler facing se at Bombay-2s1e.

 

[LowtherCastle]

40 unowned tile per barb unit on Monarch. I estimate 160-200 unowned tiles, so at least 4-5 barbs are spawnable, if not already roaming somewhere.

One is likely to spawn to the south of Delhi this IT.

 

[ZPV]

ZPV: Gandhi only has 2 more cities, Bombay and Viagra (on the east coast on or near the ivory). That means barbs are likely to spawn in the south if they're able to spawn at all.

Also, on T110, Gandhi had an un-escorted settler facing se at Bombay-2s1e.

Good spot. That means spawnbusting with workers once Gandhi's dead.
The settler was likely running for his life. Non-aggressive AI doesn't send them on settling missions without an escort. Vijay looks like it's on the Ivory to me.

 

[WastinTime]

Since Gandhi's last city is not blocking the way to the next AI, we should consider skipping it and clean up later. Or is that the plan already?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Good spot. That means spawnbusting with workers once Gandhi's dead.
The settler was likely running for his life. Non-aggressive AI doesn't send them on settling missions without an escort. Vijay looks like it's on the Ivory to me.

He left Bombay before we came within 2 tiles of it and if I'm not mistaken, there were no tiles that Gandhi didn't own to the se. Maybe the settler's in Vijay.

 

[ZPV]

Since Gandhi's last city is not blocking the way to the next AI, we should consider skipping it and clean up later. Or is that the plan already?

My roadbuilding is going to see the two HAs at Delhi slightly isolated, so it might be convenient to capture it with them. Vijay is a "play it by ear" city.

 

[ZPV]

Well I need to do some more unit counting for Kublai - I think I want one too many knights there from Berlin so I'll have to rejig the Churchill flotilla.

I've got my solid plans for Saladin and Mao - the former Ottoman and Persian lands are very production-rich so I have enough units coming in time.

 

[ZPV]

I'm having a bit of a funny turn and need a couple days away from the internet. I should be back after that.
I haven't made any moves, if anyone else wants to play this turnset.

Un- got it. :/

 

[LowtherCastle]

Any status updates, ZPV? I think we're all waiting for you.

 

[Mitchum]

What do you guys say about an extension now? With WT finishing his HOF game, we may have a better chance of finishing this game in style.

Note, I'm still on vacation and have a hell week ahead of me after missing 2 weeks of work...

 

[WastinTime]

I'm out of town again for 10 days starting 8/30. I think the game goes until 8/31, so an extension doesn't matter to me.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I say we fiinish by 31.

 

[WastinTime]

I just had a new speed-conquest idea I've never tried before.

March

(heal while moving)
At first glance, it seems you need C3. So that would be 4 promos
But, we could instead take C1, Medic, March. The medic+march is kinda the whole point anyway.

Questions:
1) are we producing units with 3 promos? (yes, I've been out of the game so long I don't know)

2) Are C3 knights that much better than C1-medic-March? in other words, won't C1's rip thru everything?