[BTS] SGOTM 25 - Home Slices

[Deckhand]

Although... I may have a way to get some of those buildings without the required tech

Oh, I have a way: capture a city that already has them from another civ

 

[babybluepants]

PM?

 

[Deckhand]

I'm going to be on a team, so don't reveal anything to me.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

And Japan, after T46 Cease Fire, created Korea on T47 after us gifting New York in revolt, Chongqing in revolt, and Gold City to him T46.

This took countless hours of planning, plotting, and scheming!


The lurkers ask, why Korea?

Once Korea's capital is relocated to Japan's island, and Korea creates a new colony, we can steal Civil Service from the new colony.

Yes, that's the main reason.

Wow.

If I've got the gist of this - infiltrate a Civ, preferable on an Island / another continent. Gift them 3 cities on your continent, see a colony formed and capture 2 of the 3 cities immediately (no garrison due to revolt??). Eventually kill the master, exile the former vassal offshore, gift 3 cities and watch them create another vassal. The vassal and vassal's vassal will have the same EPs as the master.

Holy smoke.

 

[WastinTime]

vassal will have the same EPs as the master

and the same tech.

(no garrison due to revolt??).

No, it has 2 warriors (usually--you can control this). If we had used England, it would have had 2 redcoats

Eventually kill the master,

You don't have to kill the master. We did that because Korea will talk much faster/easier than Toku. DeGaulle is better, but we could get him set up as fast.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

If we had used England, it would have had 2 redcoats

Ah - that's what that discussion was about!

You don't have to kill the master.

Of course yes, I see.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Apart from the average power check, there's also a check that MasterPower is high enough. Master powered is influenced by war success and it gets quite a big hit if you are worst enemy. So if you are weak in relation to the subject you try to capitulate, your best bet is to not be their worst enemy. War success also has an effect, but it is very minor.

VassalPower is multiplied by iPowerMultiplier and iPersonalityModifier, whatever those are. I think the latter is related to iVassalPowerModifier.

Great work figuring this out Elitetroops.
So there are TWO checks when an AI is considering capitulation, and if either are true then the AI will say "We are doing fine on our own"

Yes, iPersonalityModifier is almost certainly iVassalPowerModifier.
And iPowerMultiplier is most likely that 1.4 hardcoded into the game when trying to get capitulation.

if (iVassalPower > iAveragePower || 3 * iVassalPower > 2 * iMasterPower)
{
return DENIAL_POWER_US;
}

|| is an something of an OR logical operator yes?
If the statement to the left of || is true, or the statement to the right of || is true, then the consequences get activated (AI won't vassal!)?
I'm not a coder, so I can only struggle imprecisely.

We saw over and over again that if 1.4 times the AI soldier count was greater than World's Average Power, the AI wouldn't vassal.
So the lefthand part of the || statement was easy to understand.

The righthand part of the || statement 3 * iVassalPower > 2 * iMasterPower never seemed to be an issue when the human was the strongest civ in the game.

int iMasterPower = GET_TEAM(eTeam).getPower(false);
int iVassalPower = (getPower(true) * (iPowerMultiplier + iPersonalityModifier / std::max(1, iMembers))) / 100;

.....

iMasterPower = (2 * iMasterPower * iTheirSuccess) / (iTheirSuccess + iOurSuccess);

if (AI_getWorstEnemy() == eTeam)
{
iMasterPower *= 3;
iMasterPower /= 4;
}

Hmm, so iMasterPower starts out as whatever number GET_TEAM(eTeam).getPower(false) brings?
I'm guessing that is perhaps Soldier count of the human player without counting any of the Human's vassal's power?

So we start with the Human's Soldier count.
Then it gets adjusted for war success.
Assuming the human has 40 war success and the AI has 0, then the human Soldier count gets multiplied by (2*40)/(0+40)=80/40=2
Hah, that's great!

If the AI got 4 war success, then it would be (2*40)/(4+40)=80/44=1.818
Gah, the multiplier shrunk!

Anyway, it gets a 2nd adjustment if the human is the Worst Enemy of the AI, which is pretty likely if the human is trying to capitulate the AI.
human Soldier count gets multiplied by 3, then divided by 4.
That is the same as multiplying by 3/4 or 0.75.

So if the human gets 40 war success, the AI gets 0 war success, and the human is the Worst Enemy of the AI, all likely if 4 city gifts followed by war occurred,
then the iMasterPower is simply 2*0.75 or 1.5 times Human's Soldier count.
So a human with 1,000,000 Soldiers would have iMasterPower=1,500,000 ultimately.

Now we are back to the final test, 3 * iVassalPower > 2 * iMasterPower
That is the same as iVassalPower greater than 2/3rds iMasterPower
If True, then then AI won't vassal.

iVassalPower > 2/3 * iMasterPower
1.4 * AI Soldiers (both master and any vassals it has) > 2/3*1.5* Human Soldiers
1.4 * AI Soldiers > 1 * Human Soldiers

Hah!, that's great

1.4 * AI Soldiers is greater than World Average Power, won't vassal
OR
1.4 * AI Soldiers is greater than Human Soldiers, won't vassal

Something seems fishy.
Under ideal conditions of 40 flawless war success, we should be seeing the AI capitulate if the Human has a 1.4 Power Ratio (or higher) with the AI if the AI has iVassalPowerModifier=0.
But we are seeing it at 1.5 power ratio, 1.2 power ratio, and 1.08 power ratio?
Let me test some more.

How is the AI capitulating at all if the human has a lower than 1.4 power ratio?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

|| is an something of an OR logical operator yes?
If the statement to the left of || is true, or the statement to the right of || is true, then the consequences get activated ..
I'm not a coder, so I can only struggle imprecisely.

Spot on.

 

[Kaitzilla]

special cheers for Kaitzilla, i have become a big fan of your posts.

Thanks!

My posts when I read them weeks later,
I can't make heads or tails about what I was talking about without screenshots.
And I always missed my important points rereading until I started bolding the important parts.
Then it dawned on me that I better do those things for others too if they read anything like me.

It is years of aping better posters' good habits that got me where I am today.

Actually, my testing found the opposite. Land Target had no effect in my tests. And then I found this in code:

if (isAtWar(eTeam))
{
doLotsOfCalculations;
}
else
{
if (!GET_TEAM(eTeam).AI_isLandTarget(getID()))
{
iMasterPower /= 2;
}
}

Looks very much to me like the halving of MasterPower if no land target happens only when not at war (= peace vassal). If land target plays a role in capitulation, I'd be curious in knowing how.

Thanks for checking on this Elitetroops.
So Land Target only affects Peace Vassals after all.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Thanks, this would be much appreciated! The great thing with SGOTMs is that the threads leave behind such a wealth of information and strategies to explore. Would be a shame if some of it was tucked away in a private conversation forever.

It seems to be moving pretty slow, so I'll try a crack at it the hard way and just paste over everything manually.

Please Maximize your screen to properly display Spoilers inside Spoilers.
Small screens will just cut words off, so don't even try to read this on a cell phone.
If you still experience post cuttoffs, maximize->minimize->maximize screen on web browser with the top right button should get everything to show.

**To see the tiny screenshots inside Spoilers of Spoilers, right click the screenshot and select View Image**

Secret Homies Private Dialogue

Can't sue me, I have permission!

Spoiler :

Should we have this conversation posted publicly? As part of the HomeSlice thread? Lots of good discussion here.

I think that's the right thing to do. People will wonder how we were able to recycle EPs.

Yes, I was going to ask the same question. Is there an easy way to do that?

Sounds good to me.

Page 1 of 20, December 19th 2017 to December 21st 2017:

Spoiler :

Hi you two!

I hope you haven't vanished from the face of the earth....

LC

No, I'm still here and plan to play cheerleader in the next SGOTM as usual.

I don't think that I can commit to playing, but maybe this is something I could sign up for:

We just need a 3rd player that likes to take screenshots and make our thread easier to read, enjoy, and understand by Mitchum the peanut gallery.

Hey, that's my job. haha Really, the benefit of having more eyes on the game is the ability to come up with new and creative ideas. Plus, having more people testing the opening 50 moves or so can really jump start the game and put us into a winning position. Both LC and WT know what they're signing up for if they take us on their team.

Great! Also babybluepants (not sure if you've played with him) pmed me and wants to join us. He says he's rusty so might not play turns. I said fiddlesticks. Anyway, the more the merrier. Great minds think unalike and that's vital! This one's going to be interesting and weird just because of the points mix.

Yea, everyone, sign up so it looks like we have more total players . We should try to get at least one more that will play late game turns. Mitchum, u still up for playing early turns?

Mitch! Hey, old buddy. Glad to see you're still around.

Good to meet the rest.

Looks very interesting, looking forward to it. We'll need Excel for this.

Hey, BBP. Great to have you around again!! I've only "played" Civ twice in the last two years... if you consider me watching WT and LC kick a$$ playing. haha

Yeah, I can play some turns this time. I'll do what I can.

I think he means Demographics screen. You want to try to be #1 in all 9 of those categories.
I love that this ministry would make me look at an area of the game that I've never explored--like 'approval rating'
However, aren't you just giving 200 points to conquest? (100 from military and 100 civil) (Why does the best strategy always seem to be "Kill them all!"? )

Okay, if that's true, then to me the point is empire building, not exactly the same as conquest. Approval rating, for example, is the ratio of happy to unhappy citizens, and the other one, whatever it's called, is the ratio of healthy to unhealthy. So yes, lots of conquering is required...oh, I see what you mean, kill them all and we're #1. Lol. Yeah, that's an easy 100 points.

Almost posted there, but posted here because that's a strategy spoiler. Folks, please be cognizant of not revealing strategy hints. I understand there's a fine line between discussing the challenge and revealing strategy. Try to walk that tightrope wisely.

yea, I thought a long time about whether there was any strategy in my post. Do you think it does? I decided Civil is kinda broken and everyone should know. Maybe they'll change it.

It just depends on whether or not killing them all is a good strategy. If not, the civil is about nation building, right? I've never looked at those stats at the end of a game with a huge empire.

There must be some big defenses for the AI. Do I see a Rifle in the starting screenshot? If the AI starts with the normal Classical tech and we get Machinery (Chokonu) and Iron resource is available, conquest will be a joke, so I'm sure the AI gets some bonus techs...like Rifling. Stealing tech might be a popular option.

Communism is another huge one, but I suppose StateProp workshops aren't so great without Guilds, Chem.
Then there's Kremlin.

Good point on AI free techs. We'll have to keep our antenna up for them. I can't tell about AI rifles. I believe we have iron under the Roman scout. Beijing-2W. StateProp also gives an unheralded but valuable +10%h. That means, for example, with OR or forge +25%h, the extra hammer comes every 3h instead of every 4h. Ofc, no distance maintenance is huge for REX.

That +10%h was invaluable in SG10 when we were whipping nukes. Speaking of which, I think I'll pm ZPV.

I'd like them to turn on resource bubbles. I'm pretty sure that can't be Iron because the Emperor save currently does not get free IW. Seems like they wouldn't show where the Iron is.

If you look at the tech choices above, IW is already complete, so that is either Immortal or Deity. I suppose it's only fair to let all zero Emperor players know where it is.

Do I see a Rifle in the starting screenshot?

Now that I think about it, it's probably a musket.

What do you guys think of the different difficulty levels? I don't really like it and agree with lymond. It would be better if everyone just played at Imm or Dei, for an even playing field.

Edit: I see you posted in the thread, WT. +1

Deity is far and away the best, as far as I can tell. Immortal could be better if the Deity bonus settler, worker and costs slowed our fastest finish, but I don't see how. More likely Deity is better in every, single regard. Those Deity cities will give us cash for our engine. And then there's the GP. And then there's the GSpy. And then there's the bomber. Sheesh. Deity is like candy in a candy shop.

I posted yesterday in the thread I wasn't sure, but since then, it's become completely obvious to me.

I think the Deity option sounds fun. It's cool to figure out how to best use the toys we were given. I'm especially intrigued with the bomber.

Oh lord, that is a lot of work.
Especially the quotes within quotes.
The ones from closed threads are even worse!

Page 2 of 20, December 22nd 2017 to December 22nd 2017:

Spoiler :

I'm bored. Anyone wanna talk strategy?
Culture:
To get 100 points as fast as possible, I'm imagining we get a couple thousand from wonders/buildings and then do 148,000 espionage culture--all in one city. This is way less spy missions.
However, if we're gonna do that much culture, I suppose we could just win a culture victory by spreading it out over 3 cities.
But, something tells me we'll have a domination or conquest at our fingertips, so the 148K city might be best.

If we can achieve a fast conquest, I assume we already have 100military + 100civil + 50AP + 75?wonders + 50?science = 375. We won’t get any points for economy. Leaves us needing only 45pts for culture, or about 67,500. Is that right? Maybe the science points are hard to achieve, depending on how long the game is.

I have a limited understanding of esp culture, since that strategy happened after my “retirement”, but from what I understand of it, using one city that way to complete the 420pts sounds good.

A bit premature without knowing for sure what goodies we'll have. The GSpy means an automatic X culture (have to dig up a spreadsheet on that -- Mitchum, didn't you have all that figured out?). From there, it's a question of the optimal mix of ministry points. Assuming beat down:

100 Civil
100 Military
42 Science (3 eras)
50 Diplomatic
----
292 subtotal

Still need 128 between wonders and culture, so the question is what's cheaper, the eps and spies or the wonders for the final points? Also, if we don't beeline sushi, then we have some GPs to burn. Could be early golden ages or Artists?

xpost w/ bbp

I assume we would capture a pile wonders in a imm/dei conquest/dom. 70+ points from there seems a given. It's also 4pts per wonder if we're under the 100pt cap, which seems like a nice return on hammer investment, esp. if we have some 100% bonus wonders to build late.

As we all agree, we could get 100 points in culture, Military, and Civil, but we get no bonus for winning those VCs. We get a 50 point bonus for winning AP or Diplo. So 75-100 points in this ministry is possible

The GSpy means an automatic X culture

It's about 15000-18000 culture. For 3000 EPs.
We also have GWall, so that means another easy GSpy if we want it.

One things is I don't think we can get more than 7/9 civil without winning by conquest. Health and happy is probably impossible and even exp/imp might be tough if we're warring a lot and can't get OB at the end (not sure about that one).

Also, I’m a bit confused about the Diplo points. It looks like only 50 max for either AP or UN to me.

Also, I’m a bit confused about the Diplo points. It looks like only 50 max for either AP or UN to me.

I'm expecting the diplo to change. It certainly needs clarifying.

Question: can we win Diplo/AP and then conquer the final city on the turn that displays the 'win' message? or is that too late?

Okay, I was totally confused about diplo but it's an easy 100:

25 AP leader
50 AP victory
25 from 25*75%/75%

actually, the way it reads, we don't need to win Diplo, we just need to call for a vote. So we could vote for victory and conquer the last city on the same turn. But I think the vote might get cancelled if there is no opponent.

Okay, I was totally confused about diplo but it's an easy 100:

25 AP leader
50 AP victory
25 from 25*75%/75%

it's confusing, but I don't think we get 50 for victory. Just the victory votes points.

That means:

100 Civil
100 Military
100 Diplomatic
+42 Science (3 eras)
----
342 subtotal, 78 remaining

Iirc, I counted yesterday about 20 buildable wonders in the first 3 eras, so we could win on that alone. Add the culture we'd get from the GSpy and that spares us the expensive ones

it's confusing, but I don't think we get 50 for victory. Just the victory votes points.

Yeah, you're right. That's how I read it at first and now I'm back to that. There's a colon instead of a semicolon.

For AP that maxes out at 33 not 50 possible points. But wait, there have to be at least three voters, including us, and we have less than 75%. So with 2 AIs alive, to get 99%, we have to gift the AP city at pop1 but then are we still the leader?

The AP thing has some wrinkles in it.

It's about 15000-18000 culture. For 3000 EPs.
We also have GWall, so that means another easy GSpy if we want it.

I might be using my old calculator wrong but I'm seeing about a 1:3 e:c ratio. So 3000eps would get us about 9000c.

I assume we would capture a pile wonders in a imm/dei conquest/dom

All AIs except FDR have a military Flavor 1. FDR = production. Bismarck, FDR, and Stalin are all industrious. Is FDR the likeliest to build us wonders?

^ All other things being equal, I would think so.
Is there a list of techs by era somewhere? I can't seem to figure that out.

I go into worldbuilder and select techs by era. Only problem with that is you can't unselect them as far as I know.

You can also find techs sorted by era in this attached spreadsheet. Go to the Techs page and scroll down a while.

Page 3 of 20, December 24th 2017 to December 30th 2017:

Spoiler :

I'm busy with the holidays for the next week or so. Haven't had much time to dig into this yet but what's new?

Merry Christmas, all!
I'm bored before heading over for a family dinner, so I've just been gazing the screenshot. Some random observations:
- Beijing has a 2h city centre (ivory? can't quite tell)
- We've gifted a city to Bismarck? Has a Chinese name and is not the German capital. On the other hand, we don't have full visibility of the inner circle.
- Neither Tsingtao nor Yan'an is a standard city name for China, as far as I can tell. Their location relative to Beijing is almost geographically correct, and Tsingtao appears to be on the coast, which is geographically correct. Maybe the map is loosely modeled on the RL map of China or the region?
- We can see only 7 out of 8 AIs.
- The fourth city in the NW seems to be covered in fog, but the one in the south is not. They both look to be in our colours, but maybe one is Roman or Japanese?

Merry Christmas!

Good spot on the second hammer. My hunch is that Tsingrao is a city settled at pop1 on purpose so we can't capture it for a short while without razing it. It's not the capital so it seems to be giving that AI another city. Another possibility is that sossos settled those cities as another way to help us against the AI by giving us easy cities to capture. Who knows? Have to ask after the game.

If that's Toku and not Stalin to the NE, then your geographical theory might have a lot of merit.

Looks like we're probably going to play Immortal rather than Deity. Fine by me but it sure would be fun to start with that bomber.

Since Germany (or is it England?) has two cities and the scoreboard is pretty even, they should all have two cities. If AIs have two pre-settled cities on all levels, the deity save is definitely easier than Immortal. Unless they get additional settlers...

Okay, so what is our group response to the choice of level? Obviously Diety would be more fun for us, but at this point there are only really two teams signed up, with a fragment of a third. Should we choose Immortal in hopes of encouraging more sign-ups?

I think we can let the signups continue with the level unknown. Then, we lock everyone in to a Deity game--the Deity game that sossos wanted. I think this all part of his master plan. EMP was never a real option, just there to get people to sign up

I personally prefer Imm, but I'm fine with either.

Do you really think there will be more sign-ups? It doesn't look too promising.

We can only hope. There's still time for some stragglers.

^ Well, we got two more today. Looks like there may just be 4 teams taking shape.

I'm attaching an Excel file with the points formulas as I currently understand them. I did also start on a test map, but with so many game settings yet to be confirmed, I'll put it off.

I'm attaching an Excel file with the points formulas

That'll come in handy. Thx bbp.
We can't really get 100% of the votes, right? We'd have to have 1 opponent vote, so 99%.
Then don't we get 99/75 * 25 points = 33 points for votes.

so that'd be 25 + 33 = 58 out of 100 for Diplo

I'm unclear on the diplo. For now, I was assuming that it caps at 50pts for either AP or UN, as everything else caps at 100. Also, it is unclear how to get the vote points - thx for asking the question in the thread.

I also noticed that I screwed up the civil ministry in the Excel. Fixed and re-attached here.

I just started calculating the scores per this formula in some previous games for interest:

Spoiler :

Rusten BOTM 103 (1160AD Domination Deity) = 394 (5/50/90/100/57/0/92)
Kaitzilla BOTM 133 (1540AD Conquest Deity) = 400 (8/50/84/100/71/3/84)
Duckweed BOTM 34 (1455AD Cultural Immortal) = 508 (100/50/87/94/42/43/92)
One Short Straw SGOTM 14 (1200AD Domination Emperor) = 318 (5/50/93/100/14/0/56)
Plastic Ducks SGOTM 14 (1190AD Conquest Emperor) = 344 (2/50/100/100/28/0/64)
Plastic Ducks SGOTM 11 (930AD Diplomatic Emperor) = 336 (7/50/88/85/42/0/64)

I was giving 50pts for diplo despite no vote being called (other than PD SG11), as I assume that would be trivial to do in these games.

It's notable that on Deity we are likely to get more points for wonders and techs with a conquest game, because the AIs tech and build faster and the game is longer, which is another thing to consider with the different difficulties. In other words, the faster you can get to conquest, the more you'd need to invest in culture and self-built wonders to make up for it.

National wonders are cheap points. We should plan on building the pre-Modern ones.

Do you guys have any experience with Classical starts? How do they affect AI tech and empire development speed comapred to Ancient?

On Classical we can't build SH or Moai (or GW but we get that for free). Our empire will grow and tech faster compared to theirs at first, most likely.

On Classical we can't build SH or Moai (or GW but we get that for free). Our empire will grow and tech faster compared to theirs at first, most likely.

Also, I would assume that the Palace doesn't count, even though it's technically a national wonder, or does that need to be clarified?

Palace counts. Why not? It's a wonder. Only counts once though, even if you build ten...

Welcome Katizilla!

Here is a test save, in case anyone wants to play around with it. Until we get the actual save, it requires a lot of guesswork. Feel free to edit as you see fit.

Some notes:

Spoiler :

- Based on a Standard Pangaea Deity, only edited the start area. Added DG as the 8th AI.

- Deity AIs start with 2 settlers, 2 workers, 2 scouts and 5 archers. I gave them 2 cities in lieu of the 2 settlers. We will have to carefully study the demographics on the first few turns to figure out what their actual city/settler situation is.

- AIs seem to have higher scores than my test map would suggest. I have a largely unsubstantiated theory about that. We can see a Praetorian and a Janissary. Maybe all AIs get the requisite techs for their UU? This is hard to test, because we don't know enough about their starts to fully simulate it. Also, it would be pretty terrible for some team to get overrun by Cossacks early, so I don't think sossos would have done this.

- Yan'an and Beijing have 13cpt, but the slider suggests a total of 18-19cpt, which is a substantial amount for the third city.

StateProp also gives an unheralded but valuable +10%h. That means, for example, with OR or forge +25%h, the extra hammer comes every 3h instead of every 4h.

33h for all that infra we can build early, including forge. We also have Math chops.

I want that Kremlin! I was thinking we might give Communism to an AI that has stone, but depending on what techs they start with, there could be a lot of other stone wonders they would build first.
IIRC, when read the code a long time ago, I thought the AI would not start a wonder unless they could complete it in a certain # of turns.

Now I'm rambling a bit, practicing some calculations with the strange bonuses...

If we build it ourselves after a forge (yuk, 120h), and SP & OrgRel bonus...
308 raw hammers for Kremlin

89 raw hammers for the forge. Let's assume we 3-whip that at ~23/120 for max overflow--even tho it's not best to overflow a forge.

That leaves about 275h. That's like 2 more whip overflows and 7 forests.
Or maybe we whip the city like 4 more times and eventually gift it away and recapture it to erase anger.

Forge only contributes 77h to Kremlin at the full 2.6x multiplier. Maybe it doesn't even pay to spend the 120h?

It would be nice to build Kremlin in Beijing. We don't have the greatest food res there, but do have some nice hammer tiles. We could probably have 50hpt towards Kremlin at pop 6 after multipliers. With a few chops, it could be a pretty fast build. We could even just build a granary there (cheap for EXP), skip other infra and have Yan'an pump out extra workers or whatever else as needed.

Regarding OR, I am still wondering how sossos will deal with the religions. We have COL and Philo, in addition to the 3 ancient religions, so we would get those holy cities, unless he pre-assigned them.

In any case, we'll want merciless early game whipping. Maybe getting HR quickly has good synergy. I wonder if we need to not mine iron early so we can build warriors for a while (sucks that our iron is on the river).

so much to wrap your mind around here.

Played around a bit, but it feels really sub-optimal so far. With the cheap granaries and pop2 start, we desperately need a lot of worker turns early. Each city could use 2 workers immediately, and even more than that would be good.

The diplo situation is dicey.

Seems that Alpha and Monarchy are popular with AIs. Our research is slow to start with multiple cities, though SP helps a bit. Maybe Currency first makes sense? We can easily OB and road to multiple AIs.

Page 4 of 20, December 31st 2017 to January 22nd 2018:

Spoiler :

I was hoping for the bomber to scout for early slaves...

To me, most critical when thinking about Kremlin (or anything else) is how much is speeds us up, not how much it costs.

I agree. It's easy enough to build, but I'm unsure about the timing of the payoff. At 308h it takes 10x 2pop whips before it repays. That's very good with 6+ cities building infra, but maybe not right away? 300 base hammers can also be invested in REX.

Welcome Katizilla!

Thanks LtC!
Been a few years since one of these, but I think I remember how.

I'm back from vacation and trying to catch up. I'll head to the SGOTM page to find out more about the status of the game.

Welcome, Kaitzilla!! Glad to have you on our their team.

Thanks LtC!
Been a few years since one of these, but I think I remember how.

It's easy -- we just win!

Depends on if/when we need it. Problem with saying it now is that a lurker can read it and go off on a espy-culture binge in the HoF or elsewhere--which may prompt a public discussion of how such early dates were being posted. Other teams could get wind of our trickery.

Fire away.

Ok, here goes.
I'm worried you're going to want to get it banned as an exploit, and then I'll never get to use it for a HoF game. Just one Can we agree to either use it or not talk about it?

We've been told our map is 'earth-like'. So that, and the fact that there are 8 AI, leads me to believe that Astro is needed. I don't want to open a can of worms on Astro discussion, but the point is: there is another decent sized landmass. That is a requirement. edit: or so I thought. Turns out any small island is plenty.

We just need to EP-bomb one AI a couple times and beat them down to 3 or less cities.

Gift them 4 overseas cities on the same landmass (maybe only 3 on a standard map)

They will create a vassal. (Note: they don't even need feudalism for this)

Long story short:
If the AI has, for example, 10,000 EPs, then the new vassal will have 10,000 EPs also!

If that's not enough, re-capture the 4 overseas, repeat.

Doesn't sound like an exploit to me. Just a game mechanic. That it can be used for the cultural espionage gambit is just what it is. Furthermore, The Ducks won a SG with the espy cultural trick, so tough luck bananas. We use it if we can.

Let me make sure I understand you. You're saying if we have 10K eps on AI#1, then we'll automatically have 10K eps on his vassal?

You're saying if we have 10K eps on AI#1, then we'll automatically have 10K eps on his vassal?

Exactly. That's what I'm seeing in my BC space race. Although, I haven't considered trying to exploit it there....yet. There is also some sort of gold created too. Maybe it is also duplicated?

In the past, questions of exploits evolved around whether or not you had costs to create it. Here you hae to create the cities and give them away. That's clear a trade-off.

Are you sure the eps play separately? If you use eps on AI#1, you still have them on the vassal?

Oh. Crap. I didnt test that. That might explain it. We'll see. Afk for the day if someone else wants to test.

Are you sure the eps play separately? If you use eps on AI#1, you still have them on the vassal?

Tested. It does work the way I thought/hoped. EPs are duplicated and used separately.

Tested. It does work the way I thought/hoped. EPs are duplicated and used separately.

Nice Work WT

Not every map has a large continent or island to make use of this, but generating huge by goading an AI to make a colony (or more than 1) is extremely strong.
This is certainly a major advancement for the victory condition!

The one drawback that comes to mind is the lack of Open Borders that will result from the constant war.
Closed Borders doubles or triples the spy casualties from successful and unsuccessful spy missions in my experience.
So instead of 50 dead spies to get the win, it is more like 100 or 150.
Check out the outrageous spy casualties when I tried a Closed Borders Espionage game:

Spoiler :

Two successful 82% missions and two failures, but all 4 spies died.
This happened a couple of times.

That's right, 91 Spies built, 64 died, and I was only HALF way done to 3 Legendary Cities.
The whole effort ground to a halt due to the extreme Spy casualties.

Still, it is possible with shared war to always get Open Borders.

**************

Ok, I found the code that regulates spy detection.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/spy-detection.247719/

I'm pretty sure Closed Borders increases the odds a Spy gets caught by 25/10 = 2.5 times compared to Open Borders no matter what they are doing.

**Edit**

That's not quite right.
The odds of them being detected while standing still or moving goes up 2.5 times with Closed Borders, but I'm not so sure it affects being caught when doing the mission.

It all boils down to what exactly is going on when a Spy Mission is successful but the Spy dies doing it.

Also, I didn't know Counter-Espionage mission hurts enemy spies so badly.
I thought it only vastly increased the cost.
If I'm reading it right, the 83% chance for a successful mission would instead be 63% chance.

Since England is probably an island, it would be good to know:

1. How many cities are enough to force a vassal.
2. Does England have room for that? (So we don't need Astro.)
3. Can we rinse and repeat, creating a vassal with double spy points using the same cities repeatedly? (Create vassal, use his points, kill him, create another...)
4. We can't gift a city to a vassal, or can we? In other words, would we have to do the espy-culture thing with an English city, 40-some tiles?

Since England is probably an island, it would be good to know:

1. How many cities are enough to force a vassal.
2. Does England have room for that? (So we don't need Astro.)
3. Can we rinse and repeat, creating a vassal with double spy points using the same cities repeatedly? (Create vassal, use his points, kill him, create another...)
4. We can't gift a city to a vassal, or can we? In other words, would we have to do the espy-culture thing with an English city, 40-some tiles?

1. I'm pretty sure it's 3 because we're on standard size. I can make 3 sometimes work on large and 4 always works.
2. Maybe. Recall how big England was on the Orient Express map. But does our map include north america this time? Could squeeze England to a couple plots.
3. Yes.
4. Yes. AI vassals take cities.

Would it work with Hong Kong and a couple of cities in Indonesia, or do they have to be on the same landmass?

Same landmass

Confirmed and tested. it is 3 cities.
AI creating vassals:

The important number is colonyMaint.

Spoiler :

colonyMaint = numcities on continent * ((numcities on continent-1) * modifier) ^2

If you use all size 1 cities, modifier is simply 0.45 for standard

ColonyMaint is:
2.43 for 3 cities

All you have to do to get the AI to make a colony is have those cities: gold + hammers + science < 3* colonyMaint.

- It's best not to use a FIN civ.
- We should be in cease fire. But I think the rule is just: Don't threaten the cities.

So total gold+hammers+science has to be < 7.29

Tricks: one way to keep under the 7.29 is to blockade the cities with Privateers and/or destroy roads so they don't have any trade rts. Since we won't have privateers, we should try cut roads. We can also block trade to the mainland with our culture if we have closed borders.

#1 trick: Forget all that. Just give them 3 cities in revolt.

So is a city in revolt = 0? Might not need all three cities in revolt.

Page 5 of 20, January 22nd 2018 to February 3rd 2018:

Spoiler :

So is a city in revolt = 0? Might not need all three cities in revolt.

No. I tried 2 cities which has colonyMaint = only 0.4

I'm guessing gold and science is 0, but hammers is probably 2 per city (city center and citizen).
So 4 is not < 1.2

I didn't just do the math, I actually did a test save. No worky.

I mean gift three cities, but not all in revolt. How do you get all three in revolt anyway?

I mean gift three cities, but not all in revolt. How do you get all three in revolt anyway?

Well, first off you don't want to put any culture in them so they are in revolt when you re-capture.

You give them to someone you beat down or even back to the original owner, recapture the cities all on the same turn --or close to the same.

For spawning the colony, you don't want to give them to the original owner (who has culture there.) Anyone else we beat down should do.

Okay, so can we pick an espy-culture target, plant the one GSpy in him, create a vassal, gift our espy-culture city, run 3000 eps worth of mission, rinse and repeat with new vassals until we have 150,000 culture in that city? (For the last cycle, use the original AI's 3000 eps.)

If so, we don't need any more GSpies.

Don't need any more than the one GSpy, but that's a lot of repeating. I always use 1/5th. So 30,000 EPs. 10 times thru the loop. And most of the spies are needed up front for the early iterations. I suppose if we find an efficient way to do it then it's only 10 turns.

And we can't do any of this if there is no 'big' island. Australia?
edit: not true, just need 1 small island anywhere. Move the AI capital there.

Don't need any more than the one GSpy, but that's a lot of repeating. I always use 1/5th. So 30,000 EPs. 10 times thru the loop. And most of the spies are needed up front for the early iterations. I suppose if we find an efficient way to do it then it's only 10 turns.

And we can't do any of this if there is no 'big' island. Australia?

We can also use the espy slider. Thing is, if we can run scientists we'll get our GPs sooner and we can use the GSes for Astro, if needed. We probably need to prioritize recon on America fairly early on to see if we need Astro.

Confirmed and tested. it is 3 cities.
AI creating vassals:

The important number is colonyMaint.

Spoiler :

colonyMaint = numcities on continent * ((numcities on continent-1) * modifier) ^2

If you use all size 1 cities, modifier is simply 0.45 for standard

ColonyMaint is:
2.43 for 3 cities

All you have to do to get the AI to make a colony is have those cities: gold + hammers + science < 3* colonyMaint.

- It's best not to use a FIN civ.
- We should be in cease fire. But I think the rule is just: Don't threaten the cities.

So total gold+hammers+science has to be < 7.29

Tricks: one way to keep under the 7.29 is to blockade the cities with Privateers and/or destroy roads so they don't have any trade rts. Since we won't have privateers, we should try cut roads. We can also block trade to the mainland with our culture if we have closed borders.

#1 trick: Forget all that. Just give them 3 cities in revolt.

3 cities in revolt?
That's genius!

Shall we use the island Tokugawa's capital is currently occupying?
From memory I think there is space for 3 cities.
Might have to raze Toku's capital to make room, don't remember.

Only needing 3 cities for the AI to form a colony is revolutionary since we can gift them a city in our continent right away.(The legendary city)
With a 4 city island, we'd have to preform a time costly war to get them down to 3 cities before they would take our mainland city gifts.

A shame we have to wait 1 turn before we can perform the spread mission.
If the new civ adopts our religion after 1 turn, that would be very bad for our multilpiers!!!

Anyway, all 3 cities have to grow to Size 2 once before we give them away.

I think we should plan on using Toku's island for this sinister exercise.

We can't raze cities we get over 20% culture ratio in, so if need to raze Toku's capital to make room for 3 cities, best to get it done.
One time I kept a city, planned to give it away later to recapture and raze it, but it got to 22% culture and I was screwed.


Closed borders causing unbearable Spy fatalities should be bearable if it is one city going to 150,000 because we will need much less spy missions than three 50k cities.



Finally, we could make more use of AI colony abuse to steal techs too.
Let's say we covet Toku's Civil Service.
We put 1000 on Toku and give him 3 island cities under blockade.
Maybe burn some and use a Spy to throw 1 of the 3 cities into revolt for one turn.
Or 2 cities into revolt if Toku is running Mercantilism.

Toku forms a colony and we get 1000 on his colony that also gets all of his techs.
We steal Civil Service from the colony using the free 1000, then conquer those 3 cities.
We get Civil Service and still have 1000 on Toku!

So the 3 city spy island will still have use after getting 150k city.
Swindling small civs of their techs that have 3 or less cities and will take island gift cities.

We do not need to raze Tokyo.

That's brilliant, Kait. So we could steal CS, for example, from Toku, then use the colony eps to create culture in our legendary city, right? No reason we can't start creating the 150K culture early. That means we can use all eps for either tech+culture or 2X culture. Those vassal cities must be a different religion than our LC.

Who has to have Feudalism for an AI to vassalize? He does, right? (More damn limitations.)


Since Toku's the only one with a tech we know we want to steal, should we put eps now on Toku?

Colonies can form before Feudalism.
I'm sure it can be done in the test game right now.

The vassal cities being a different religion than our legendary city is definitely needed.
Maybe 1 of the 3 can have our religion so it can get cheaper tech steals and city revolts.

I'm happy to hear Tokyo doesn't need to be razed.

Might have to give Toku a city on a crappy island before we take Tokyo to keep him in the game and safe from being wiped out by AI since AI are so bad at naval invasions.

Yes, definitely feudal is not needed.
And, btw, I'm doing the EPs replication thing a bit in my space game. It's working too. But gold is not being replicated Somehow, some of the vassals have 100's of gold tho.

Tokyo is already Confu but unfortunately Berlin is the HOly City. Hinduism Holy City is in Mumbai so that might spread. Also unfortunately, we doubled the likelihood of Tao spread by Shrining Yanan. If Toku doesn't settle those cities we could settle them and stick in a non-Tao religion.

why do we care where the Confu holy city is? And why spread non-Tao anywhere? What city are we stealing from?

why do we care where the Confu holy city is? And why spread non-Tao anywhere? What city are we stealing from?

Espionage mission costs are cheaper if the the target AI is not running our religion, right? Your question suddenly made me brain-dead on the question. So if the vassal has 3 non-Tao and 1 Tao (our LC), then he's less likely to revolt to Tao.

So if the vassal has 3 non-Tao and 1 Tao (our LC), then he's less likely to revolt to Tao.

Not sure if it matters if Tao is the AP religion.

Yea, we need them in a different religion, but I assume that was a given, but maybe we're planning to act so fast that the new vassal hasn't picked a religion yet. We'll iron that out eventually.

We're talking about the LC religion, not AP religion. We gift LC to pagan vassal...you get the idea.

Can we induce Toku, Churchill or Roosy to vassalize on our landmass, using the same gimmick?

^ That's what I was wondering. Isn't that easier logistically? We could plant some desert cities W of Yan, or tundra/ice up north.

Can we induce Toku, Churchill or Roosy to vassalize on our landmass, using the same gimmick?

Of course, in fact, I was just about to post that every team will experience American, English, and Japanese colonies if they leave them alone to put 4+ cities on the mainland. Probably something sossos thought would surprise a few teams and make for fun, maybe complicated diplo.

Wow, I never thought of that.

Ya, giving 1 city island civ 3 cities on the mainland desert or frozen tundra ought to cause a colony to form.

Just if we want the cities back, they'd need to get to Size 2 at some point.

Okay, when an AI creates these colonies, are they vassals to that AI? Or can we freely DoW them? (I've been saying vassalize, but that's wrong isn't it? COlonize. WHich also explains why Feudalism isn't needed.)

Page 6 of 20, February 3rd 2018 to February 19th 2017:

Spoiler :

That could also simplify your high score trick, couldn't it, WT? You no longer need an island that can have three cities. You only need to put the AI's capital on an island, right? Especially if a better map has only one-tile islands.

Okay, when an AI creates these colonies, are they vassals to that AI? Or can we freely DoW them? (I've been saying vassalize, but that's wrong isn't it? COlonize. WHich also explains why Feudalism isn't needed.)

Ya, the colony is automatically a vassal of the parent civ.

That could also simplify your high score trick, couldn't it, WT? You no longer need an island that can have three cities. You only need to put the AI's capital on an island, right? Especially if a better map has only one-tile islands.

Ya. So obvious now. thats genius! Can't believe I didn't do that.

Ya. So obvious now. thats genius! Can't believe I didn't do that.

And iiuc, you only need one AI island, right? Rinse and repeat with the same AI until you reach the total limit. Can one AI have 18 vassals?!?

No. Only enough slots for 16

Confirmed and tested. it is 3 cities.
AI creating vassals:

The important number is colonyMaint.

Spoiler :

colonyMaint = numcities on continent * ((numcities on continent-1) * modifier) ^2

If you use all size 1 cities, modifier is simply 0.45 for standard

ColonyMaint is:
2.43 for 3 cities

All you have to do to get the AI to make a colony is have those cities: gold + hammers + science < 3* colonyMaint.

- It's best not to use a FIN civ.
- We should be in cease fire. But I think the rule is just: Don't threaten the cities.

So total gold+hammers+science has to be < 7.29

Tricks: one way to keep under the 7.29 is to blockade the cities with Privateers and/or destroy roads so they don't have any trade rts. Since we won't have privateers, we should try cut roads. We can also block trade to the mainland with our culture if we have closed borders.

#1 trick: Forget all that. Just give them 3 cities in revolt.

I've been working on simplifying this as much as possible.
Using a Spy Mission to get 1AI city to revolt for 1 turn doesn't work to get an AI to form a colony.

So I tried 3 non-hilltop cities with no roads (no trade routes), no hammers, no gold, and a bit of food.
It worked ok on 1-city island Tokugawa.

Spoiler :

All 3 cities grew to Size 2 in 11 turns working a 2 grassland, and all new colony units were 2 Warriors as long as there was no source of Bronze/Iron.
The new colony had fresh relations with us, so Open Borders was signed and our simulated Spy Horde stack performed their mission without dying in droves which occurs with Closed Borders.

**Warning** The one disaster was Sitting Bull being the new colony which give 2 Dog Soldiers (4 +100% vs. melee)

Spoiler :

**Warning** Need to make sure not to try this 3 city gift with an island civ running Mercantilism!
**Warning** Tokugawa takes 10 turns to be willing to discuss peace after his Colony gets DoW'd and destroyed. (The key unsolved problem )
He is not nearly as nice as DeGaulle for talking quickly.
**Warning** If the Legendary City gift is closer to the Colony's capital than the player capital, it will (Liberate) to the colony and 2 extra garrison Warriors will be created.
**Warning** If an AI roads all 3 cities together, might need a gross 4th city gift to get that colony to form.
**Warning** 2 out of the 3 city gifts to form a colony must be non-Tao religion so the new colony doesn't switch to Taoism after it gets the Legendary City gift.

Timeline is 3 city gifts and wait 1 turn for colony to form.
Then when the colony forms gift legendary city and wait 1 turn for our borders to overlap over legendary city (One nearby city will need 100)
Then run spy missions and DoW colony and take back 4 cities with Shock Chariots.
Sign Cease Fire with parent civ who has weak power ratio, then gift 3 cities to form new colony with fresh +3000



Half tempted to make 3 Legendary Cities and just go for a victory and forget about Domination or Conquest.
Infinite to play with and 1-pop Kremlin whipped Spies makes espionage victory so much easier than it usually is.
Hell, if the Chariots heal fast enough, can just skip the 50% discount Spies get for waiting 6 turns.
Where to get 3 Great Artists though? hmm
Eh, maybe Conquest/Dom still better.

Pacal is also not ideal. Holken. Chariots no likey

Peace with Toku is easy. Gift him a city b4 DoW and recap for 10 war success

I've been working on simplifying this as much as possible.
Using a Spy Mission to get 1AI city to revolt for 1 turn doesn't work to get an AI to form a colony.

So I tried 3 non-hilltop cities with no roads (no trade routes), no hammers, no gold, and a bit of food.
It worked ok on 1-city island Tokugawa.

Spoiler :

All 3 cities grew to Size 2 in 11 turns working a 2 grassland, and all new colony units were 2 Warriors as long as there was no source of Bronze/Iron.
The new colony had fresh relations with us, so Open Borders was signed and our simulated Spy Horde stack performed their mission without dying in droves which occurs with Closed Borders.

**Warning** The one disaster was Sitting Bull being the new colony which give 2 Dog Soldiers (4 +100% vs. melee)

Spoiler :

**Warning** Need to make sure not to try this 3 city gift with an island civ running Mercantilism!
**Warning** Tokugawa takes 10 turns to be willing to discuss peace after his Colony gets DoW'd and destroyed. (The key unsolved problem )
He is not nearly as nice as DeGaulle for talking quickly.
**Warning** If the Legendary City gift is closer to the Colony's capital than the player capital, it will (Liberate) to the colony and 2 extra garrison Warriors will be created.
**Warning** If an AI roads all 3 cities together, might need a gross 4th city gift to get that colony to form.
**Warning** 2 out of the 3 city gifts to form a colony must be non-Tao religion so the new colony doesn't switch to Taoism after it gets the Legendary City gift.

Timeline is 3 city gifts and wait 1 turn for colony to form.
Then when the colony forms gift legendary city and wait 1 turn for our borders to overlap over legendary city (One nearby city will need 100)
Then run spy missions and DoW colony and take back 4 cities with Shock Chariots.
Sign Cease Fire with parent civ who has weak power ratio, then gift 3 cities to form new colony with fresh +3000



Half tempted to make 3 Legendary Cities and just go for a victory and forget about Domination or Conquest.
Infinite to play with and 1-pop Kremlin whipped Spies makes espionage victory so much easier than it usually is.
Hell, if the Chariots heal fast enough, can just skip the 50% discount Spies get for waiting 6 turns.
Where to get 3 Great Artists though? hmm
Eh, maybe Conquest/Dom still better.

Nice work, Kait!!! That means the Moscow road our slave is building might interfere with your plan. We still need it though, for faster passage to the west. We'll have to snip off roads at the edges to cut those TRs. Then after they are colonized, we could rebuild one for the 80% TR bonus, right?

So how soon do we need to start doing all this to not delay our end game?

Also, what about the possiblity of planting dG on an island and using him for all this?

Nice work, Kait!!! That means the Moscow road our slave is building might interfere with your plan. We still need it though, for faster passage to the west. We'll have to snip off roads at the edges to cut those TRs. Then after they are colonized, we could rebuild one for the 80% TR bonus, right?

So how soon do we need to start doing all this to not delay our end game?

Also, what about the possiblity of planting dG on an island and using him for all this?

As currently envisioned, we'd need 1 Great Artist for seed culture, 2 non Tao missionaries, 1 Great Spy, enough colonies formed to generate 40,000 (13 spawned colonies?), 11 turns to grow the gift cities to size 2, 1 backwards AI on an island with no Mercantilism or feudalism or gunpowder, 7 chokos or Chariots for recapturing 4 cities, and enough Spies to run 75 spread missions.

The final 50 missions will need 50% wait bonus hmm.
The final spread to reach 150,000 will require a 5% mission for 7500 which will cost 1875 which means the other 1125 will go to waste.
We need enough espionage at the end to be able to afford 2 spread culture missions per newly formed colony.
4000 sounds about right, 3k is too little.

De Gaulle is the perfect parent civ for this, not Toku.
1 city gift and capture for 10 war success will have him talking cease fire the next turn.

I estimate 25 Spy deaths, so we will need to build 30 or 35 Spies as long as we get Open Borders with colony each time.

Gun to my head, I'd want to plant and grow the 3 cities and start running Spies 50 turns before the end.

The fastest colony-legendary city gift-spy missions dow-cease fire cycle is 3 turns with Chariots or 4 with invincible Chokos if we don't want Pacal Sitting Bull surprise.

We need 10 or more colonies.
60 turns before victory would be best.


There is no need for 20% trade route bonus.
In fact, letting the 3 gift cities form trade routes would be counter productive if we had to add a 4th gift city to get a colony to form.
We'd need to give DeGaulle a big per turn gift to take a 4th mainland city, and then give the 4-city colony a big per turn gift to take our Legendary City.

Once a civ has 3 cities and a financial crisis, they still take a 4th city gift.
Once a civ has 4 cities and a financial crisis, they have to be forced out of financial crisis before taking a 5th city gift.

70 turns before victory would be even better since this has never been done before in a competitive game.
Who knows what issues might crop up!

The best way to drastically shorten this timeline is to pump more into France.
If we could get 8000 instead of 3000, then we'd need only 5 colonies to form instead of 13.
The whole exercise could be shortened to 35 turns.

It might be possible to combine our Legendary City with the 3rd city gift and shorten the colony creation cycle from 3 turns to 2 turns.

Instead of giving 3 cities to France to form a colony, give France 2 cities and the Legendary City.


If we make the Legendary City 3W of our capital and build a road 1W of our capital, Spies get to the Legendary City 1 turn slower, but we don't have to wait 1 turn to do Spread missions.

The lack of the final road keeps the Legendary City from forming a trade route, and our capital already puts culture pressure 3W, so we can do Spread missions.

It also lowers the cities we need to recapture each turn from 4 cities to 3 cities. (not counting the city gift for 10 war success against France)


Will need to use the test game to see if France can work that Gold Mine and not form a colony, or if our culture pressure retakes it in between turns preventing France from using the Gold Mine and a colony forms.

Can't we just pillage the gold mine?

Can't we just pillage the gold mine?

Certainly could.

The AI looks likely to work that Oasis, which would give a total of 8 for the 3 cities, so city gift 3W of capital is no good for forming a colony.
Will keep experimenting.

Y-2n3w, meaning we can't settle the 2gold city you wanted.

Y-2n3w, meaning we can't settle the 2gold city you wanted.

Our capital pops borders again on Turn 48 (not counting doubling after 1000 years) thanks to +11 per turn.
That shrine we settled and religious capital pumping out culture means we don't have to worry about Spread spy missions not being activated.

Spoiler :

The 2 gold city (3N2W of capital) might still work as our 150,000 Legendary City, but it can't be connected by roads to our trade empire.

We can pillage the gold mine, pillage the cows, and whip the city to size 1 to prevent the colony from going Taoism.
The new French city ought to work 3 tile over unimproved gold.
Maybe road the desert gold to our empire, and have Size 3 dual gold city churn out Warriors?

**Edit**
Actually, we could connect it to our empire, but we'd have to gift the city to France, DoW, and then quickly pillage all roads leading into the city using Chariots before our capital pushes the borders back the following turn.
Bomber can help too.
Capture the city back, Cease Fire, then do the 3 city colony gift.

The final spread to reach 150,000 will require a 5% mission for 7500 which will cost 1875 which means the other 1125 will go to waste.

Aren't we going to waste ep with every cycle for this reason? If we start with 4000c and have 4000ep, I'm getting about 6200ep waste through 11 cycles / 75 missions. Is that right?

Also, we would need 30+ spies in the first cycle, but down to only 2 by the last few.

Since we don’t necessarily need all 100 culture points (could be as low as 34pts). We get 8-9 points per cycle, I believe.

I don’t understand espy culture at all... Promise I will read up on Kait’s strategy and try one soon, so I can talk to you guys intelligently.

we'll probably have to run the EP slider a bit to minimize that waste. I hadn't considered that yet.

^ Yes, ofc. I'm theorizing with a predetermined amount of ep, but we should really be growing it gradually in-between the cycles.

The best way to drastically shorten this timeline is to pump more into France.

Yea, so a 2nd Gspy is critical or this drags out too long.

It might be possible to combine our Legendary City with the 3rd city gift and shorten the colony creation cycle from 3 turns to 2 turns.

So that didn't pan out, right? But we still get the cycle down to 2 turns by gifting LC + 3 cities in revolt. A 4-city colony is created, and next turn we gift a 5th city to France to get war success. Do our spy missions on LC. Recapture 5 cities.

Yea, so a 2nd Gspy is critical or this drags out too long.



So that didn't pan out, right? But we still get the cycle down to 2 turns by gifting LC + 3 cities in revolt. A 4-city colony is created, and next turn we gift a 5th city to France to get war success. Do our spy missions on LC. Recapture 5 cities.

The Legendary City could be gifted to France/Japan after the other 3 cities for a surefire colony formation, and it should save a turn ya, but Toku will want per turn most likely before he takes a 5th city.
Also, the Legendary City will spawn an additional 2 Warriors since it was included in the Colony forming.

I'll test right now to see if the 3 city Colony with Legendary City is possible.

We don't have to give the 'war success' city until after the colony is formed, so financial distress is not an issue, he'll have just 1 city.

And we can always gift the LC as the 5th city as long has he's owned it before. Same is true for any of these cities. If we're re-using them, we won't have a problem gifting.

It will take 5 more hours to do Pages 7 through 20.
I'll add more when I get time this week.

Page 7 of 20, February 19th 2018 to February 20th 2018:

Spoiler :

Yay!
It worked.

Just have to pillage the Cow pasture and Gold mine before giving the city away.
And never connect it to our empire with roads unless we are comfortable with a Toku war just to sever the Legendary City roads.
Capital also has to have 500 to enable Spread missions in Legendary City.

Spoiler :

2 cities + Legendary City gift indeed formed a Colony
The spies were able to do Spread missions right away, and the new colony didn't even have a chance to change civics or religions yet.
Even better, 3 garrison Warriors took their customary 1 turn move out of the city. (They return the next turn usually)

It seems really ideal for us.
Best case scenario, we only need 3 Shock Chariots to reconquer, and only Tao in Legendary City since AI adopting religion takes 1 turn, and a whole bunch of Spies to do missions during the 1 turn window.

With no Spy wait bonus, the ratio is 1 for 2
With 50% Spy wait bonus, the ratio is 1 for 4
The +7% distance penalty is pretty steep. Toroidal world wrap?

Notes:
The last city gifted to Tokugawa tended to be the new Colony's capital.
The new Colony's capital was always 2 turns away from completing an Archer.
4 Turns after the colony creation, the colony wants to gift (Liberate) the Legendary City back to the human player.

France is ideal for this since we want Toku to tech for us and not constantly spam units and Galleys.

So, we need to get France on an island, and his capital on the mainland dead before we can do the Colony Espionage trick.

We don't have to give the 'war success' city until after the colony is formed, so financial distress is not an issue, he'll have just 1 city.

And we can always gift the LC as the 5th city as long has he's owned it before. Same is true for any of these cities. If we're re-using them, we won't have a problem gifting.

Right, that's good thinking.
The war success city can be gifted the turn of the DoW, and can be anywhere on the mainland even.

so why put EPs on Toku? Who cares if we ever get CS?

so why put EPs on Toku? Who cares if we ever get CS?

We don't want to steal Civil Service after we get Alphabet?
It has pretty good benefits!
The capital could whip like a beast, or we could irrigate Beijing's rice.

It costs 150 if we infiltrate someone (even France) and get -50% espionage spending bonus.
Or it costs 300 if we don't use the Great Spy on someone.

Spoiler :

We don't want to steal Civil Service after we get Alphabet?

Maybe if it's convenient and if we have another civic change planned (or we're going to be in GAge) to save on anarchy turns, but I doubt we want to choose to infiltrate Toku just for this. I'd rather go with the most convenient colony creator.

We don't want to steal Civil Service after we get Alphabet?

And we cannot bulb compass if we steal CS.

Maybe if it's convenient and if we have another civic change planned (or we're going to be in GAge) to save on anarchy turns, but I doubt we want to choose to infiltrate Toku just for this. I'd rather go with the most convenient colony creator.

We get the almost 50% bonus no matter who we infiltrate. It's based on total ep spending.

xpost: We can steal CS any time we want. It's a great tech later on too.

Can we use this trick just as easily to create three LCs as one with 140,000+? Is maybe a cultural victory our best solution? Gives us 58 points for Diplo and we can end it on any turn we choose.

XTeam seems to have gone all out on conquest. They're ahead of us. Our only advantage might be our cultural trick. Can we leverage this? Is this game going to end incredibly fast? Like T50 or something? Do we even need to care about conquering AIs? Could we just settle lots of resource sites for the high Life Expectancy, settling enough cities for the 100 military and focus on 3 LCs + Theology?

Can we use this trick just as easily to create three LCs as one with 140,000+? Is maybe a cultural victory our best solution? Gives us 58 points for Diplo and we can end it on any turn we choose.

For 3 Legendary Cities instead of just 1, we would take 3 Great Artists not to have a crazy amount of Spy Missions, not just 1 Great Artist.

And if we go for Culture Victory, we need 156 successful spy missions and not 75.
It would take an ARMY of spies.

Instead of 40, more like 90 spies. (3600)
Enough spies where it impacts tech speed due to maintenance.

We've got other things that want production like armies, settlers, and Wonders.
It might be possible thanks to Kremlin though.
If we stole Civil Service right now, each capital whip would make 2 Spies
Beijing with a Forge could make a stream of spies.

How about 3 AIs, Toku, Stalin, and Mehmed, each with their capitals on an island, for three colony creators?

I am seeing some weirdness simulating building The AP at the end of the game for just Victory Votes.
I thought I'd see 36/37 votes, or 97% of the votes.

Instead I got 36/54 votes, or 66% of the votes even though the AP religion is totally under our control.

Spoiler :

I'm sure it's just a simple thing, but I can't figure it out

Word of the mapmaker says:

The AP victory votes % can be obtained as below:
Go to "victory conditions->member" screen, you can see how many percentage of votes you would get if a AP victory voting is proposed. You don't have to win by AP victory.

How about 3 AIs, Toku, Stalin, and Mehmed, each with their capitals on an island, for three colony creators?

France is the ideal Colony creator.
We can have a fresh colony every 2 turns with a new +6000 (2 Great Spy infiltrations) thanks to how fast De Gaulle will sign a Cease Fire.

If we had 3 Great Artists and a large army of Spies, points wouldn't be an issue.
We could race for a Culture victory with no waiting for Spies to get -50% to complete their missions.
This would be a huge time saver.
Best would be Horse Archers taking turns conquering the colony over and over while healing up.

Just capturing France's capital, putting France on an island, and growing the gift cities and legendary cities to Size 2 is a fair amount of start-up time.

Instead I got 36/54 votes, or 66% of the votes even though the AP religion is totally under our control.

Probably because you didn't spread the AP religion to get all voting members. It's just counting world population of 54.

Have to be careful, risking talking about this in the thread. Anyway, one more thought before I forget. Would it be possible to tuck one or more cities of the colony cities snug up against Roosy's culture so that when we gift it, he only gets our culture and not Roosy's? The idea being that we could maybe have the spies closer or whatever. Not sure how this helps but just in case.

Can we not just add ep, if we get an extra GSpy later?
it just speeds up the later ones. And we need less spies for the later cycles anyway.
It seems to me that getting the target AI and the 3 cities in position is the real bottleneck.

This is what I'm talking about. I'm afraid I triggered a chain reaction of spilling the beans on this technique. Let's be careful.

I see. I'm just catching up, but you all are aware, the biggest delay in our culture strategy is Paris. Is there really no other AI that will talk quickly? I'm getting quite a few quick-talkers in my space game. Maybe they're all 2t.
And maybe we're better off using a 3t cycle and getting started on it ASAP? If we do 2 GSpies, that shortens the # of cycles. I'll try to tackle the assignment I gave today on quickest culture if we focused on it rt now.

We can't let Toku have the cities and grow them because he will likely get culture in them. Then, when we recapture and gift the cities to him, they will not be in revolt.
Unless these gifts are just for getting him Pleased and we still intend to use France for shenanigans.

I see. I'm just catching up, but you all are aware, the biggest delay in our culture strategy is Paris. Is there really no other AI that will talk quickly? I'm getting quite a few quick-talkers in my space game. Maybe they're all 2t.
And maybe we're better off using a 3t cycle and getting started on it ASAP? If we do 2 GSpies, that shortens the # of cycles. I'll try to tackle the assignment I gave today on quickest culture if we focused on it rt now.

All AIs but Toku will talk after 1t if we have 32 WarSuccess (and they have none).

If we have our spies do 0 turns waiting for the first 75,000 (60 Spy missions), then 5 turns waiting for the last 75,000 (15 Spy missions), that means we need 56,250 points, not 40,000 points.

Since the number of spy missions goes down substantially with each colony cycle, we should quickly have spies available to stay in the city for 5t. It varies depending on EP conversion rate and total amount of EP, but with 6000EP, start with 4000c, and 4:1 conversion we are looking at around 40 successful missions for the first colony, but only about 12 for the second, 8 for the third, 5 in the fourth, and so on. The 40 successful spies from the first cycle could just sit in the LC waiting their turn. We will also have some failures, ofc.

We could also generate ep beyond the 6000 for the later colonies, or even get another GSpy later. How much investment in buildings and slider is realistic? It would be nice to finish with only 5-6 colonies.

It's a pity that Yan'an is wrapped by the river. Without Construction, we would need min. 3t to walk the spy from Yan'an to the LC + 1t for the mission, giving a 4t cycle minimum.

Can we spread culture the moment we gift the city or only the following turn? I'm wondering if we could skip the last colony and use the ep we have against the parent civ for a 1t savings in the end.

All AIs but Toku will talk after 1t if we have 32 WarSuccess (and they have none).

I probably just missed this, but how do we plan to get the repeated war success against DG?

Page 8 of 20, February 20th 2018 to March 5th 2018:

Spoiler :

Can we spread culture the moment we gift the city or only the following turn?

only the following turn

Since the number of spy missions goes down substantially with each colony cycle, we should quickly have spies available to stay in the city for 5t. It varies depending on EP conversion rate and total amount of EP, but with 6000EP, start with 4000c, and 4:1 conversion we are looking at around 40 successful missions for the first colony, but only about 12 for the second, 8 for the third, 5 in the fourth, and so on. The 40 successful spies from the first cycle could just sit in the LC waiting their turn. We will also have some failures, ofc.

We could also generate ep beyond the 6000 for the later colonies, or even get another GSpy later. How much investment in buildings and slider is realistic? It would be nice to finish with only 5-6 colonies.

It's a pity that Yan'an is wrapped by the river. Without Construction, we would need min. 3t to walk the spy from Yan'an to the LC + 1t for the mission, giving a 4t cycle minimum.

Can we spread culture the moment we gift the city or only the following turn? I'm wondering if we could skip the last colony and use the ep we have against the parent civ for a 1t savings in the end.

I probably just missed this, but how do we plan to get the repeated war success against DG?

This makes Toku sound like the right target. Get 9000 eps to start with, having the spies already there (that might be the longest path right there), then it doesn't really matter how long it takes the spies to get back there because it's only between the first and second cycle that it matters. After that, there will always be an abundance of spies waiting.

Could we just use Roosevelt for this? The repeated late DOWs might prevent him from building wonders, and we don't need to mess around with moving DG's capital.

One of my concerns is that we get beat to a wonder on the last turn, especially if we tie our win to the AP vote cycle. I guess we should be planning for some contingency - like 425pts minimum, in case we lose a wonder and something wonky happens with the Civil Ministry.

Could we just use Roosevelt for this? The repeated late DOWs might prevent him from building wonders, and we don't need to mess around with moving DG's capital.

One of my concerns is that we get beat to a wonder on the last turn, especially if we tie our win to the AP vote cycle. I guess we should be planning for some contingency - like 425pts minimum, in case we lose a wonder and something wonky happens with the Civil Ministry.

This is why we should stay on good terms with Mehmed and keep him alive. He hates everyone he knows, so we can bribe him to war in order to get OBs with the other AI, such as Roosevelt. We'll want to be able to rebase to Roosy's cities to see what they're building.

One thing I was thinking is that if spy production turns out to be a bottleneck (and it may be with the other goals we are trying to balance), we could also start with less spies (20-30) and just waste some ep from the first colony. The first colony could also only use 3000ep. The second GSpy is great, but we need the spy army to utilize it. Second colony gets 6000, and no 5t bonus. Subsequent colonies would get more stationary bonuses, as we recycle the successful spies.

This has some synergy with going for a GA asap, and getting a Gspy from Beijing at 200gpp. That would be tricky to achieve, though.

Starting this cycle is the critical path. Once it's going, it's so quick to recycle the ep. We need Alphabet + a bunch of spies + GA + 3-4 settlers + missionaries + growth time for pop 2. We will also need OR to be able to build missionaries and a nearby non-Tao religion city to build a couple (maybe Mongolia).

Maybe use our 100GP Great Spy for Golden Age, change to Tao + Pacifism+Civil Service?
Whip Intelligency Agency in Beijing and Theatre in Gua.
Great Artist at 200GPP, then Great Spy at 300GPP fairly later?

I want to whip another Settler in both Yanan and Beijing.

Yanan's for an city that isn't too important, that has a road leading to it so it gets free Tao spread.
It will exist primarily to gift to whichever civ gets a good tech and won't trade it to us, so we will steal it!
3W of Yanan works.
3N2W works too. (My undying love Cow+Goldz)

Beijing's would be a production city for 1S1E of that plains Pig to the south of Beijing.
It is 5, and could occasionally borrow the 5 rice from Shanghai.

What was the final decision on city sites for colonization?

Do we know for sure that we can use Roosy to make our espy vassals? What if he has another city on our landmass? What if he settles/captures a bunch of cities on his?

And if he has another city or two on our landmass, such as CHong and NY, can that simplify our vassalization process?

I'm asking this before we bomb Roosy with our GSPy.

I'm a little bit confused at this point. Are we saying now that Chong+NY+Silk will be the 3 colony cities, with one of them the LC? Or are we still doing the 3 cities in the desert? If Roosevelt will always take previously owned cities, we just have to get him to accept all 3 before he settles/captures more cities in America, right?

Chong and NY are both on rivers and Silk is on the coast, which isn't great for keeping TR income down.

Do we know for sure that we can use Roosy to make our espy vassals? What if he has another city on our landmass? What if he settles/captures a bunch of cities on his?

And if he has another city or two on our landmass, such as CHong and NY, can that simplify our vassalization process?

It doesn't matter how many cities he has on his landmass.
All cities on our landmass that he owns will all become the new AI vassal.
We're sure it works with 4 cities. With 3 we have to be careful (like trying to keep the cities in revolt or no trade routes). It might be easier to just use 4 cities.

Plan A was to have him create a 3 city vassal with cities in revolt and then we gift GoldCity as our LC and recapture instantly. This way, he never owns LC at end of turn, so our spies don't get caught IBT.
We could use, for example: NewYork, Silk, Mumbai (after whipping it down to create spies, etc)

To have the city go into revolt, we want someone other than us to build up culture there. Mumbai already has English culture. NY we just have to not own it very long, it has Roosy culture. Silk: we'd have to give it to someone who will still be alive later and they need to put culture into it.
Or instead of silk, use Moscow. Moscow is also kinda a turd along with Mumbai. But we have to keep Russia alive.

Plan B would be to give GoldCity + 3 more and get a 4-city vassal. Do the spy stuff and recapture all 4. They could all be out of revolt.

Ya, 4 cities is probably the easiest option to form a colony.
Don't have to be nearly as careful if the colony forms with 4 cities.
Colony Maintanance cost is exponential.

We also need a 5th city we can give Roosevelt after the colony forms for our 10 war success.
Maybe not for the 1st cycle, since it will take our Spies a while to burn through 3000, but certainly for later cycles when talking Cease Fire fast matters.

We also need a 5th city we can give Roosevelt after the colony forms for our 10 war success.

Yea, I figure we just give the the 'city du jour'. In other words, whatever we just conquered and can recapture with our supermedic, chariot or something. Rome, Paris, etc. Loses 1 pop there, but might shorten revolt--probably add to revolt, big deal.

1. If NY has mostly Roosy culture, then when we gift to him, it's automatically out of revolt, right? Does that defeat the purpose of the revolt?
2. Why does Stalin need to stay alive again?
3. So one of the three revolting cities has to be close enough (9.5 tiles) to our LC city to gift LC to Roosy, right?

Yea, I figure we just give the the 'city du jour'. In other words, whatever we just conquered and can recapture with our supermedic, chariot or something. Rome, Paris, etc. Loses 1 pop there, but might shorten revolt--probably add to revolt, big deal.

Oh ya

@LtC
Also, gift per turn and Legendary city withint 9.5 tiles should only matter on the 1st cycle.
Later, since Roosevelt has already owned all the colony cities in the past, it should be easier to get him to accept them the 2nd go around.

Gold City is within 9.5 tiles of New York and Chong.

yea, if it's that long, we have to shorten it. I'll have to think about it. Specifically whether an extra GArt or and extra GSpy matter and which one is better.

It's gotta be GSpy. Note that we don't need the third GSpy asap. We can always add it later. I actually don't think that the second GSpy is essential for getting started. We probably can't get enough spies to use it in the first cycle. Getting the GA and a bunch of spies in place asap so we can get going is the critical path.

And LC is right about the base EP - we should be generating some later on. We'll have the IA in Beijing.

With dG's Paris too far away and blocked by closed borders, we can't hope to move him to an island soon enough for our purposes. Roosy, Church, or Toku have to be the target. It all comes down to how quickly they talk, right?
Is either of those better than Roosy?
Roosy is 2t? with warsuccess = 10? or 20? Any way to get that down to 1t?

With dG's Paris too far away and blocked by closed borders, we can't hope to move him to an island soon enough for our purposes.

Or is this true? What if we roaded to Istanbul and sprinted thru there and then thru Rome with our open borders. Knock out Paris T56? 58?

Does have an AI that will talk quickly (1t) help significantly? or is it all about 5 turn spy wait times?

Of course, we'd have to also capture this other city and likely his 3rd or 4th city too before his capital would move to an island.

We haven't done any bomber rebase-recon in a while.
I see that (presumably) Memed has a city 4W of Istanbul and 4W of that is a Roman city. Which means we probably have a pretty good road all the way to Paris.

Page 9 of 20, March 5th 2018:

Spoiler :

Eureka!!
I think I've solved it.

It should let our spies perform their spread mission every single turn, instead of every 3 turns.
That way we can just perform our first 60 missions with no wait time (at a 2:1 per ratio)
We can do the last 15 missions with 50% spy wait bonus (at a 4:1 per ratio)

All we have to do is move our capital to Gua, and designate our Legendary City as Silk City.
Someone will have to build a Monastery and a Tao missionary to spread Taoism to Silk City, but that isn't a big deal.
Once Gua gets to 100, that will activate the spread mission, so we will need Theater soon.
Palace is 160, so we will need max overflow whips from Theater, Monastery, and Horse Archer and a bit more to construct the Palace.

The key is having 4 Galleys, and a Fort constructed 2E of Gua. (We want the Galley back from Yemen!)
Galleys can load up Spies that have already performed their missions, sail to the fort, (Or pass the spy to another Galley 1S1E of Gua and return to the city) and wait 1 turn.
Then next turn, sail into Silk city owned by a Colony, do the missions, DoW the colony, teleport the galleys back towards Gua.
Cease Fire with Roosevelt once the colony is destroyed, gift him Silk city and a bunch of others, New Colony will form next turn.
Sign Open Borders, sail the fresh spies into the new colony city, and spread culture again!

Galleys can move Spies that just performed a mission and have them perform a mission again the following turn.
This kind of waste of on Galleys is completely useless, unless you have unlimited , which we do!
It cuts the turnaround for Spy missions from 3 turns down to 1 since we don't care about 50% spy wait time.
The turnaround for Spies walking on roads is 2 turns with Engineering, but we won't be able to get that tech.

Obviously the +1 circumnavigation bonus would be somewhat useful here.
We can also use our next Great General to make 4 Galleys with +1
Even if we have no movement bonuses, we can just build more Galleys so that some are always waiting in Gua to load up newly returned Spies.

Basically, with Galleys sailing on the coast, and being able to sign Open Borders with each new colony who doesn't hate us like master Roosevelt.


Getting Roosevelt to talk Cease Fire after 1 turn like France?
Maybe give him more than just 1 city for us to recapture after the Colony forms?
I'm not too sure how much war success it would take to get Roosevelt talking after 1 turn.

Anyway, this should make the bottleneck become how many Spies and Galleys we have.

Wow! That is brilliant, Kait!

What if the colony won't sign OB? Is that a possibility?

The colony should never have existed before.
I don't see how it could have any hate mods against us.

We can always give 10 and get +4 relations right?
As long as a new civ like Toku isn't formed, it should be possible.

**Edit**
Ugh, we don't have Currency.
Maybe a tech?
Hopefully the new civ wouldn't give the tech to papa Roosevelt, and then the next colony would have it.

dG: 9 WarSucces for 1t to talk
Toku never will talk in 1t
all others in this game: 32 Warsuccess for 1t to talk.

Note: We have OBs with dG now.

**Edit**
Ugh, we don't have Currency.
Maybe a tech?
Hopefully the new civ wouldn't give the tech to papa Roosevelt, and then the next colony would have it.

What about gifting a resource?

dG: 9 WarSucces for 1t to talk
Toku never will talk in 1t
all others in this game: 32 Warsuccess for 1t to talk.

Note: We have OBs with dG now.

Gah, DeGaulle would talk in 1 turn after 1 city recapture, but Roosevelt would take 4 city recaptures.
France is sooooo perfect for our scheme.

I guess we will just have to suck it up and use Roosevelt.
The limiting factor will be how fast he talks Cease Fire, but only in the later cycles when Spy missions become more expensive.

So at the end when 4 or 5 spies use up all our colony espionage points, we can start giving Roosevelt 3 cities and 1 Warrior sacrifice for fast 1 turn Cease Fire colony refresh?
That should work if we need to do it.

Maybe a tech?
Hopefully the new civ wouldn't give the tech to papa Roosevelt, and then the next colony would have it.

Wouldn't we kill it before it can?

Wait, do we actually need to do all this? If we have 20+ spies available and we only need 5 or so per cycle, can we not just walk them over and have them sit waiting for their turn?

What about gifting a resource?

Does that work?
I've never tried it before, but we did get +1 fair trade with Toku somehow
Great idea.


Also, from all the completed games I've looked back it, with Open Borders expect 1 Spy Death every 3 Successful Missions.
So we can expect roughly 25 Spy deaths for our 75 missions.

Wait, do we actually need to do all this? If we have 20+ spies available and we only need 5 or so per cycle, can we not just walk them over and have them sit waiting for their turn?

With 60 missions at no wait and 15 missions with 50% wait, that means 56000 instead of 37000 with all 50% waits.
Add in rounding losses from not being able to use all the espionage each cycle, and that is about 10 cycles.

10 Cycles where the spies have 3 turns before they can be used again means it will take 30+ turns.
But if the Spies can be used every turn, then the limit becomes how fast the AI will Cease Fire.

I would love to have 20 Spies at the start and we can just walk on roads and use wait bonuses, but the Spies will die, and every 3 turns for Spies to use a new Colony's espionage points feels slow.
No way are we starting with 20 spies, not unless we hurt our military and wonder gold production enough to let the AI spread out and get hard to conquer.


Basically, the 1 turn turnaround really matters for Spies at the start when the 1st colony forms.
They will die like flies at that speed.

I've played a few Espionage Victory games, and waiting 3 turns for the Spies to walk over to Legendary City and perform a cheap 0% wait Spread Mission takes up a LOT of turns without Engineering.

Note: We have OBs with dG now.

Hmm, can we unfog the ocean between Europe and America with our new +1 Range bomber using Paris?
Or maybe France's new city?

That might be just what we need to rebase down in clam City and reach far enough east.
Then we'd have to move to Fish city and explore far enough south.
It might be enough to get Circumnavigation bonus?

Bah, I'm not sure it's worth 6 turns of our Bomber's time to gamble for.

Unfogging from Europe to America is not a problem. It's the Pacific ocean.
I thought I counted 16 fogged tiles across the Pacific. We can't circumnavigate.

a Fort constructed 2E of Gua.

Is this fort needed to prevent the galleys from being teleported away from the city when we gift it? Very clever, but even without the fort, I think your idea can be done.

edit: I wasn't looking at the map. I see why you want a fort.

With 1 city gift, Roosevelt takes 3 turns before talking Cease Fire?

Also, with closed borders, we can't give him any sacrificial Warriors/Scouts either.

Wait, wait, my idea has a flaw!

It takes 1 turn after the DOW for Roosevelt to talk Peace, and then 1 more turn for a Colony to form.
All this work with Boats and moving capitals would only shorten the Spy turnaround from 3 turns to 2 turns.
Can't sail spies into a city we are at war with.

Cancel the whole thing.

with Open Borders expect 1 Spy Death every 3 Successful Missions.

seems like a lot. Sometimes the mission is successful and the spy dies. I always like that so much more than failure and death.

Wait, wait, my idea has a flaw!

It takes 1 turn after the DOW for Roosevelt to talk Peace, and then 1 more turn for a Colony to form.
All this work with Boats and moving capitals would only shorten the Spy turnaround from 3 turns to 2 turns.
Can't sail spies into a city we are at war with.

Cancel the whole thing.

But in the beginning wouldn't we just stay at peace while shuffling spies thru several turns. DoW and recapture several turns later. We'd want to gift size 1 cities or cities in revolt for several turns.

Wait, wait, my idea has a flaw!

It takes 1 turn after the DOW for Roosevelt to talk Peace, and then 1 more turn for a Colony to form.
All this work with Boats and moving capitals would only shorten the Spy turnaround from 3 turns to 2 turns.
Can't sail spies into a city we are at war with.

Cancel the whole thing.

Unless, we used 2AI for our scheme
3000 into France
3000 into America

The captured cities could be handed to the 2nd AI to form a colony while we wait for the 2nd AI to talk peace.

I think LtC mentioned the idea at some point, but the rounding losses skyrocket.

But in the beginning wouldn't we just stay at peace while shuffling spies thru several turns. DoW and recapture several turns later. We'd want to gift size 1 cities or cities in revolt for several turns.

Oh ya, it would still work great for the 1st and 2nd colony at the beginning

Gah, DeGaulle would talk in 1 turn after 1 city recapture, but Roosevelt would take 4 city recaptures.
France is sooooo perfect for our scheme.

What did you think about my plan to get France to an island before T60? Too late?

Continued in Part 2 a few posts from now

 

[elitetroops]

Something seems fishy.
Under ideal conditions of 40 flawless war success, we should be seeing the AI capitulate if the Human has a 1.4 Power Ratio (or higher) with the AI if the AI has iVassalPowerModifier=0.

Yes, something is fishy. Mabe it was too early to claim it was solved, because I also then noticed that I can't make the math match exactly. What I did confirm in my tests is that war success does make a difference, as does worse enemy. When I capped him with 1.2x his power, I was not worst enemy. When I did it with 1.09x his power, I had gathered probably close to 200 war success.

I would suspect that, like when calculating RefuseToTalk duration, war success is actually war success+1. Otherwise, before any battles are fought, the formula would divide by zero and the universe would implode.

When you add +1 war success to both parties, the formula behaves slightly differently. Now I would need 1.44x enemy power to capitulate as worst enemy with 40-0 war success. But that still not quite correct. For some reason the number comes out a bit too small... Or, actually when I tested these, I probably had some vassals of my own. Those might make a difference. Not at civ computer now, can't test.

There's also

int iVassalPower = (getPower(true) * (iPowerMultiplier + iPersonalityModifier / std::max(1, iMembers))) / 100;

which seems to divide personality modifier with 1 or iMembers, whichever is larger (std::max = "pick larger of", I believe). If I recall correctly, iMembers had something to do with members on team, which would mean vassals. However, that would seem odd, that vassalpower is smaller the more vassals they have. I think I must have misunderstood something there.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I would suspect that, like when calculating RefuseToTalk duration, war success is actually war success+1. Otherwise, before any battles are fought, the formula would divide by zero and the universe would implode.

Oh!
Yes, dividing by 0 is very bad!

I wonder if that is why the human player always gets a free +1 even with 0% slider.
Maybe somewhere in the billion lines of code, there is a "divide by the human tech rate" somewhere?

 

[elitetroops]

Maybe somewhere in the billion lines of code, their is a "divide by the human tech rate" somewhere?

There is, when tech slider tells you how many turns left.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Secret Homies Private Dialogue Part 2!

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Page 10 of 20, March 5th, 2018 to March 7th, 2018: (Each page should have 20 posts)

Spoiler :

seems like a lot.

Ya, I drew the data from a Civ 4 HOF game that had very mild spy losses.
156 successful missions, 49 deaths
My games tended to have 60 deaths by the end.

Spoiler :

What did you think about my plan to get France to an island before T60? Too late?

Can we conquer all French mainland cities by Turn 60?
I wish we could bribe Rome to attack France.
With our bomber taking out all city defenses and hitting their cities every turn, I'm sure Praets could conquer those cities for us.

But, our Great Artist is coming out around Turn 58 anyway right?

Yes, if we can conquer France by Turn 60, I'd say infiltrate and use France!
The 1 turn Cease Fires are Godly at speeding things up!

Send every Horse Archer and Chariot at France gogo!

I've been brewing up another twist which can be combined with your idea. The goal was to shorten the 3t cycle to 2t for Roosy. Tell me how this 2 turn cycle feels and where the flaws are:

T0: gift Roosy 1 island and 4 cities. DoW and recapture the island only.

T1: Roosy creates a 4 city colony and we use all the spies we had stationed there, then pick them up in boats from Gua.

--- cycle repeats already ---

T2: CF Roosy because the war has been 2t already (not just 1t). Gift a tech, sign OB and enter the LC with our galleys. Do missions, recapture cities, gift back to Roosy along with island. DoW, recapture island only--like T0

T3: same as T1

The key to my plan is : Will Roosy create a colony while he's at war?
In my experience, the AI will, but not if threatened. I know we have to clear our units out of the area, so I'm not sure it will work.
I think my plan fails because the units that recapture will be teleported out, but not far enough out. They'll threaten the city. We could disband them, but now we're getting crazy/desperate to shorten the cycle.
With our culture enveloping the gift city, we might be able to recapture and still have enough movement left to escape the area after teleport.
It could work if it's actually that important to shorten this cycle. Not sure that it matters.

But, our Great Artist is coming out around Turn 58 anyway right?

Depends. If we get a lucky GArt from Yanan, it's there fast. Oh wait, we're not talking about GoldCity being the LC any more.

100% GArt is born in Gua. Nice. Gets to silk in 1 turn. Same turn if we had Construction.
Our GAge could start as early as like T50 with artist born 55.
Isn't T50 about the time we would have a -50% spy ready for stealing CS?

T2: CF Roosy because the war has been 2t already (not just 1t). Gift a tech, sign OB and enter the LC with our galleys. Do missions, recapture cities, gift back to Roosy along with island. DoW, recapture island only--like T0

If we are at war with Roosevelt, we are at war with his colony, which means no open borders with colony.
So the boats don't really work, and the Spy deaths double due to closed borders.

So the boats don't really work, and the Spy deaths double due to closed borders.

I thought I had the boats working properly in my solution. We get OB with the colony on T2, T4, T6, etc.

I thought I had the boats working properly in my solution. We get OB with the colony on T2, T4, T6, etc.

If we Cease Fire, open borders, do the missions in the Legendary City, then we can't give the cities back because we don't own them.

It would take another war.

T0 - War
T1 - Colony forms
T2 - Cease Fire, OB, missions, take the colony cities back, give them back to Roosevelt, War
T3 - Colony forms
T4 - Cease Fire, OB, missions, take the colony cities back, give them back to Roosevelt, War

It doesn't work because Take legendary City back <-> Gift legendary City away can't happen on same turn.

War against the Colony means automatic war with Roosevelt, and then we can't gift him cities during war.

Because we are at war with Roosevelt before the Colony forms, we will be at war with the Colony the next turn after it forms since it is Roosevelt's vassal.
So, no chance to Sign OB.

Right, but we can sign OB on the even turns. T2, we CF Roosy and do the missions. Same on T4.

I think the confusion is on T1. That is special. It's the turn we can do missions with spies we had already sitting there (not spies coming in on boats). Otherwise, missions are done on the even turns.

But how are you moving 20 spies? That seems like the real problem with only 4 boats.

Right, but we can sign OB on the even turns. T2, we CF Roosy and do the missions. Same on T4.

I think the confusion is on T1. That is special. It's the turn we can do missions with spies we had already sitting there (not spies coming in on boats). Otherwise, missions are done on the even turns.

But how are you moving 20 spies? That seems like the real problem with only 4 boats.

If we can get 20 spies and France on an island by Turn 60, I wouldn't mind walking the Spies on roads to Gold City.

I was originally worried we'd only have a few spies on Turn 60 since they are hard to 2-pop whip, we'd spend ages walking Spies on roads to get to the 2nd colony breakpoint, and then we'd be stuck on the Cease Fire timetable after that.

But a huge stack of spies and France solves a lot of problems.

The first Colony will take 19 missions with 3000
It will take 25 Spy attempts and 6 deaths to get 19 successful missions.

========================

1st Colony will take 27 successful missions with 6000
It will take 36 Spy attempts and 9 deaths to get 27 successful missions.

2nd Colony will take 11 successful missions with 6000
It will take 14 or 15 Spy attempts and 3 or 4 deaths to get 11 successful missions.

3rd Colony will take 7 successful missions with 6000
It will take 9 Spy attempts and 2 deaths to get 7 successful missions.

This is where France and 1 turn Cease Fires starts to Shine!

4th Colony will take 5 successful missions with 6000
It will take 6 or 7 Spy attempts with 1 or 2 deaths to get 5 successful missions.

Only 25 more missions to go......

5th Colony, the rounding errors are getting pretty big here already!
Assuming 50% wait bonus..
Will take 8 successful missions with 6000
It will take 11 Spy attempts with 3 deaths to get 8 successful missions.

6th Colony, with 50% wait bonus, will take 6 successful missions with 6200
It will take 8 Spy attempts with 2 deaths to get 6 successful missions.

Only 11 more missions to go......

7th Colony, with 50% wait bonus, will take 4 successful missions with 5200
It will take 5 Spy attempts with 1 death to get 4 successful missions.

8th Colony, with 50% wait bonus, will take 4 successful missions with 6300
It will take 5 Spy attempts with 1 death to get 4 successful missions.

9th Colony, with 50% wait bonus, will take 3 successful missions with 6300
It will take 4 Spy attempts with 1 death to get 3 successful missions.

========================

It seems to pay off best with first 50 missions 0% wait, and the last 25 missions with 50% wait.
100 Spread attempts, 33 of them at 50% wait, with 25 deaths.



The Galley moving Spies idea was mostly to help with the first 50 successful 0% wait missions during the first 4 Colonies.
67 attempts, 17 deaths, 50 successful missions gets Legendary City to 45,870

Now imagine the 1st Colony forming and we only have 8 Spies walking road to Gold City.
That would really, really, really slow down the 150,000 city finish date.
Dying, walking on roads, dying, it would take ages to get to the 2nd Colony forming (36 Spy attempts).

The boats really speed things up if there are around 10-15 spies.
They race to their deaths every turn!

20-25 Spies gets things done fast, and only need roads.
They will all die, but their replacements will gradually get the city to 150,000

We could start creating a few colonies ahead of time (as soon as we infiltrate NY.) Ideally, with 3 cities in revolt so we can gift the new vassal an island. That would save us 1 turn. As soon as we get CF, we can gift LC to a waiting vassal and do more missions instead of waiting for a new vassal creation.
But these vassals would hate us for re-DoW after reDoW. No open borders.

We could start creating a few colonies ahead of time (as soon as we infiltrate NY.) Ideally, with 3 cities in revolt so we can gift the new vassal an island. That would save us 1 turn. As soon as we get CF, we can gift LC to a waiting vassal and do more missions instead of waiting for a new vassal creation.
But these vassals would hate us for re-DoW after reDoW. No open borders.

If the Legendary City is gifted after the Colony is formed, we have to wait 1 more extra turn before the spread mission is activated.

Doing all the spread culture missions with closed borders, the Spy casualties will be appalling.

My brain hurst

If we need that many spies fast, we could put 6/40 into a Spy in each city, gift away Beijing 1 turn if the Great Spy is done, 2-pop whip all spies, take Beijing back, and have every city produce 2 spies.
That should get us to 20 pretty fast.

Shoot, another 1 pop whip after that with Kremlin, and even a 1 hammer city can get 3 spies out in 5 turns with 3 population and 2 anger.

**Edit**
Mmm, losing 30 to gain 1 happiness is probably not a good idea.
nevermind

So what if we do 9000 eps and start 5t later? As WT points out, we have more spies to begin with. And suppose we do it with deGaulle because that gives us the extra time to put his capital on the island?

Question: Can we gift a vassal cities, forcing it to vassalize those cities instead of dG?

Question: Can we gift a vassal cities, forcing it to vassalize those cities instead of dG?

no, not til dG is dead. His vassals won't create vassals.

Now imagine the 1st Colony forming and we only have 8 Spies walking road to Gold City.
That would really, really, really slow down the 150,000 city finish date.
Dying, walking on roads, dying, it would take ages to get to the 2nd Colony forming (36 Spy attempts).

Do we need the 36 attempts in the first colony? As far as I can tell, there is no point waiting for more spies. If it takes us 2t to produce or walk over more spies, we may as well use those 2t to run an extra colony cycle with any spies that we do have in place. Once we have the basic setup in place (GA bomb, target AI ready to spawn colonies, some spies), we should just be running a 2t cycle. Since we have infinitely recyclable EP, we shouldn't care about wasting any of it in any given cycle. We are primarily spy-limited (until the last 15 missions or so). Your galley idea may well be the optimal solution to that problem.
Calculating this makes my head hurt, too. There are too many variables.

We haven't done any bomber rebase-recon in a while.

I see that (presumably) Memed has a city 4W of Istanbul and 4W of that is a Roman city. Which means we probably have a pretty good road all the way to Paris.

Such a road would be very helpful!

This shouldn't be hard to optimize to our conditions.

Optimization #1: Start backwards.
X = how much culture we need on the last mission. That gives us 150K - X. How much for second to last, etc? This tells us our optimal choices for how much culture to start with.

Table #1: Table of likely base-culture scenarios corresponding to Opt#1 choices. (1 GA bomb, 2 GA bombs, added culture)

Table #2: Table of successful missions needed for Table #1 scenarios.

Optimization #2: Calculate optimal # of spy missions versus amount of base culture.

Analysis: Most spy missions occur with low base culture. Plus, having many spies is a problem. Is the biggest time savings a second or even third Artist rather than more GSpies?

Of course, this might miss some factors, it's just a quick and dirty attempt.

No response? I'd do the calcs but you guys already figured it out. I don't have the exact formula. Just need to figure out the approximate number of eps for each mission going backwaards from the final 150K mission. Easy spreadsheet problem.

I think this can quickly help us answer the questions WT is asking about whether or not to move our palace and whether or not dG. Also, if we want two GArtists from our Golden age, WT needs to plan for that immediately.

Am I correct in thinking we get Trunc(5%) of the culture in the city for each culture spy mission?

1GA = 74 missions
2GA = 60 missions

The total EP requirement is almost the same, so we don’t save much time out of the colony cycle (maybe 1x 2t cycle). We save on number of spies required, including the difficult to get early stack. The issue is that the second GA takes time to get, and we could just be rolling with the missions.

Page 11 of 20, March 7th, 2018:

Spoiler :

Are we assuming roughly 3000c in our other two largest culture cities?

That's pretty high, isn't it? I haven't really calculated. If we start with 1 GA bomb, I was assuming we would need 74 missions for 147k.

Right. It doesn't matter really. We just fine-tune how much to put into our LC to make up the difference.

I assume your column C is roughly estimating the amount of eps, right? (4:1). Thing is, aren't we planning to mostly have the spies in our LC for only 1t, to minimize their failure and death? That means 0% bonus for the standing spy factor, right? That gives, by my dubious calcs, a 1.7857:1 factor instead of 4:1, thus corresponding to something on the order of 81,000 eps. (For 1 GA bomb.) Hm...am I doing something wrong here?

What MAxPlotDistance are we using?

Right. It doesn't matter really. We just fine-tune how much to put into our LC to make up the difference.

I assume your column C is roughly estimating the amount of eps, right? (4:1). Thing is, aren't we planning to mostly have the spies in our LC for only 1t, to minimize their failure and death? That means 0% bonus for the standing spy factor, right? That gives, by my dubious calcs, a 1.7857:1 factor instead of 4:1, thus corresponding to something on the order of 81,000 eps. (For 1 GA bomb.) Hm...am I doing something wrong here?

According to Kaitzilla it is about 2x for 0t wait and 4x for 5t wait. Realistically, our missions would vary from 0-5t. You could guess at an average for the purposes of a quick estimate, but we’d need to figure out how many spies we can realistically produce, how long they take to recycle from the capital, etc. I think that Kaitzilla was assuming low multiplier for the first 50 missions and closer to 5t wait time for the last 25, or something along those lines.

Are we assuming a TR bonus?

According to Kaitzilla it is about 2x for 0t wait and 4x for 5t wait. Realistically, our missions would vary from 0-5t. You could guess at an average for the purposes of a quick estimate, but we’d need to figure out how many spies we can realistically produce, how long they take to recycle from the capital, etc. I think that Kaitzilla was assuming low multiplier for the first 50 missions and closer to 5t wait time for the last 25, or something along those lines.

Okay, I get it. Once we have too many, they manage to wait 5t. That makes sense. That works in our favor since the early missions are cheaper anyway.

So I'm seeing insignificant difference between 1 or 2 GSpy bombs. I wonder if our total espionage expenditure increases with each new vassal.

The extra GA bomb reduces the total number of successful spy missions from 74 to 60, as you say bbp, and maybe more significantly reduces the number of spies needed for the initial cycle.

4000c >>> ~26 succ spies using <=3000eps (50% spy bonus)
8000c >>> ~17 succ spies using <=3000eps (50% spy bonus)
12,000c >>> ~13 succ spies using <=3000eps (50% spy bonus)

4000c >>> ~17 succ spies using <=3000eps (0% spy bonus)
8000c >>> ~10 succ spies using <=3000eps (0% spy bonus)
12,000c >>> ~7 succ spies using <=3000eps (0% spy bonus)

So my conclusion is that ideally we should plan to use the GSpy for the Golden Age, whenever is optimal, an plan to produce two 100% Artists during the Golden Age or one GA plus Music.

Also, this appears to support the plan to create the vassal asap and run spy missions asap because the 0% spy bonus is not particularly important early on if we don't have enough spies. We just end up waiting for more spies before making the next vassal.

uh oh. Another factor to consider. The final missions cost 1500+ eps. Now I finally understand what you guys were talking about with the lost eps.

Ouch. With only 3000 on Roosy we end up needing as many as 14 vassals, with one per mission the last few missions. We can counteract that by putting our eps on Roosy and building that up. If we could get Roosy up to about 4000 eps by the 5th or 6th vassal, then we're down to 10 vassals by my calcs.

How does that sound?

Am I correct in thinking we get Trunc(5%) of the culture in the city for each culture spy mission?

Yea, I think so.
------------------------------
I've already been thinking about the possibility of getting Music in time. We'd get 40% bonus if we got Aes+Lit first, but we'd have to forego that for the usual 20% and just do Music next. I would think with the GAge and Caste, we could manage that. I haven't really looked yet. Maybe we can do Aes+lit first

I'm also starting to think we focus on a much faster Tokyo capture for GLH to meet our research needs.

Moving the Palace, a monastery and missionary, and using 4 boats has a cost of 160 + 60 + 40 + 50 + 50 hammers, or 360, plus 2 roads and a fort.

But it shortens the Spy walk from 3 turns to 1 turn during Colony 1, 2, and 3.
But only for 8 spies every other turn since they have to sail back and forth.

Perhaps focusing on a 2nd Great Artist to remove 15 successful Spy missions and pure Spy production and chops is best?

Not moving the capital and making a Fort would save enough hammers for 11 Spies at the start, and they would perform missions until they died.


It would be nice to get Literature before the 2nd Great Artist was born.
Then the 2nd Great Artist could bulb Music, and produce a new Great Artist in our capital that wouldn't have to walk so far.

All my above calcs are assuming no TR with LC.

What about 3 GAs including Music and the next GP after that a GSpy in Beijing, some time after the GAge is over? I think getting the Spy late is far more useful than getting another GA late.

In other words
200 gps = GAge
300 gps = Artist
400 gps = Artist
500 gps = GSpy

Unless I’m missing something, a second GA reduces the number of spies and missions, but not the number of colonies required (maybe by one) and therefore not the overall duration. Another GSpy does that for the later colonies, when we need the 6k. If the turns it takes us to get a second GA delay the start of the whole exercise, or if we have to compromise other things to produce it, I don’t think it’s worthwhile.

Isn't the fail rate higher if you do a spy mission with no wait? Doesn't success go from like 64% to 85%? or am I confused? I just tested and it looks like success rate is always 85% with multiple spies stacked.

Unless I’m missing something, a second GA reduces the number of spies and missions, but not the number of colonies required (maybe by one) and therefore not the overall duration. Another GSpy does that for the later colonies, when we need the 6k. If the turns it takes us to get a second GA delay the start of the whole exercise, or if we have to compromise other things to produce it, I don’t think it’s worthwhile.

We're definitely doing 2 GSpies for 6000. I don't think a 3rd helps much.
Feels like a 2nd GArt will have a good impact on our speed and allow us to do other things more efficiently. We still have wars to win, research to do, and wonders to build.
A 3rd GArt: not much impact.

We won't delay the start of the exercise beyond ~T60 trying to get a GArt which is plenty fast if we go with dG. In fact, if we want to start T55-ish, I can still get us Music by then. Aes and Lit too! I'm starting to see a possible research rate of 400bpt from T50 to T55

That would get us Aes 51, Lit 52, Music 54.

moved...

We're definitely doing 2 GSpies for 6000. I don't think a 3rd helps much.
Feels like a 2nd GArt will have a good impact on our speed and allow us to do other things more efficiently. We still have wars to win, research to do, and wonders to build.
A 3rd GArt: not much impact.

We won't delay the start of the exercise beyond ~T60 trying to get a GArt which is plenty fast if we go with dG. In fact, if we want to start T55-ish, I can still get us Music by then. Aes and Lit too! I'm starting to see a possible research rate of 400bpt from T50 to T55

That would get us Aes 51, Lit 52, Music 54.

Whaaaat 400? Really?

I am now in favor of the 2 Great Artist idea!
That 2nd Great Artist shaves off 20 attempts (15 successful) and 5 spy deaths. 200

That is 20% of the work we need to do off the front end.

I now think it is a more efficient way to speed things up than moving the capital since it is instant.

That gives us time to get France, which shortens the colony cycle time down to 2 turns instead of 3.

That should save a lot of turns on the back end.


Taoism better spread to Gold City!

With 2 Spies and 2 Artists I'm only counting 6 vassal cycles. But the first one involves 26 successful missions with, what, ~33 spies?

That's assuming 5t wait time, right?

With 2GA/2Gspy to start, we would want about 28 successful missions in the first colony, so how many spies? 35-40? When and where can we produce that?

Page 12 of 20, March 7th, 2018 to March 8th, 2018:

Spoiler :

Well, we're probably not getting 35 spies for the start, but we'll do our best. Nothing wrong with a few rounds of 0t wait times on the first 6000 EPs.

Whaaaat 400? Really?

It's always a bit of a shock when you turn on GAge+REP+caste+GLH in 16 cities.
I wanna take a 2nd look and see if we can really do 400 with all the whipping we need. Sounds like we're going to go for dG which means HAs ASAP. Still planning IntelAgency, Max failgold on Mids and so many granaries/wbs, etc. since 5 of our 16 cities are not settled yet.

Even if it's only 300 bpt, we get Music in plenty of time, just not Engineering.

That's assuming 5t wait time, right?

With 2GA/2Gspy to start, we would want about 28 successful missions in the first colony, so how many spies? 35-40? When and where can we produce that?

Yes, at 1t wait (10%) it goes down to 17-18 successful missions.

Isn't the fail rate higher if you do a spy mission with no wait? Doesn't success go from like 64% to 85%? or am I confused? I just tested and it looks like success rate is always 85% with multiple spies stacked.

Here's the Spy Detection thread. Having no wait or having a second spy on the tile triggers the same penalty.

And finally, if our spy just moved onto the square, or if we already have a spy on that square, we trigger "ESPIONAGE_INTERCEPT_RECENT_MISSION", or EIRM, value of 15.

That means before Construction, our spies require 3t to conduct the second mission from Yanan but only 1t from Gua!?!

Yanan
T0 Mission#1
T1 move
T2 move
T3 Mission#2

Gua
T0 Mission#1, 2 spies board galley in Gua, galley moves 2 tiles, Max: infinite spy missions
T1 Galley moves into Silk, spy lands, Mission#2, #OfGalleysX2 board galley. Max: #OfGalleysX2 spy missions
T2 Galley moves into Silk, etc.

Pre-Construction, Yanan spies need 8t between 50%missions. Gua spies need 6t between 50% missions.

Yanan
T0 Mission#1
T1 move
T2 move
T3 fortify
T4 10%
T5 20%
T6 30%
T7 40%
T8 50% Mission#2

Gua
T0 Mission #1, board galley
T1 Fortify
T2 10%
T3 20%
T4 30%
T5 40%
T6 50% Mission#2


Best-case scenario (Engineering), Yanan spies need 7t between 50% missions.

That means before Construction, our spies require 4t to conduct the second mission from Yanan but only 1t from Gua!?!

Yanan
T0 Mission#1
T1 move
T2 move
T3 move
T4 Mission#2

I assume you meant T3: Wait (not move)

But no, there's no extra penalty for having just moved there and having a stack of spies. So we don't need to wait an extra turn (T3).

I assume you meant T3: Wait (not move)

But no, there's no extra penalty for having just moved there and having a stack of spies. So we don't need to wait an extra turn (T3).

Okay, going from memory that the spy needed to cross two rivers. I'll fix above calcs.

ua spies need 6t between 50% missions.

I don't wanna fan the flames cus I don't like where you're going with this, but it'd only be 5t if I understand the galley thing correctly.
After the spy does it's mission, it wakes up next turn inside SilkCity and can perform an action or wait just 5t for -50%.

Nevermind. it's 6t.

No doubt this is a groundbreaking new idea for future spy games. I just don't wanna move that Palace this game (along with the other baggage).

I don't wanna fan the flames cus I don't like where you're going with this, but it'd only be 5t if I understand the galley thing correctly.
After the spy does it's mission, it wakes up next turn inside SilkCity and can perform an action or wait just 5t for -50%.
No doubt this is a groundbreaking new idea for future spy games. I just don't wanna move that Palace this game (along with the other baggage).

Actually, there's nothing new about this idea. I've been using galleys to put spies into coastal cities forever, but your description is 6t, not 5t.

T0 mission
T1 0% wait
T2 10%
T3 20%
T4 30%
T5 40%
T6 50% Mission

The reason you can't get it to 5t is because though you can put the spy back into SIlk on T0, it doesn't have a movement point, so it can't perform the Wait turn yet. So for this game and future reference, you don't actually want to put the spy in until T1 when it has a movement point. Otherwise, it's needlessly risking getting captured between T0 and T1. That's part of the beauty of using this technique. A spy doesn't "travel" through enemy territory, it just arrives with a movement point, ready to perform whatever mission.

And where I'm going with this, just as always, is discovering the fastest finish, whatever that might be. Not pushing either liberal or conservative ideology.

Note also:

No, they changed it in 3.13 so that spies can't be caught if they are in a ship.

How about this

We steal CS from Gold City whether we get Tao spread or not. We'll make it happen

Later, we settle "Dye City" but 1N between Cows and Dye instead of on Dye like I suggested before.
Long story short, we move the Palace to Shanghai and our LC is DyeCity.
No fort or roads needed. We still need that damn monastery, missionary, galleys and 100 culture in Shanghai. And a settler. But at least we have 100% chance of Tao spread success. Our other LC choices could get pagan religion spread and then we could have Tao spread failure and mulitiple missionaries + monastery are still needed.

One other factor to consider in our choice of capital, Yanan or otherwise: Proximity to built spies. It's one thing to build 30 spies, it's another to move them to our LC. We need roads and turns...

SO do we need to think about how many spies we can build by Txx and where? Or is that of lesser importance?

I have completed testing on Gold City.
Test France does use the Oasis tile before Yanan's 500 takes back the tile.
So no colony forms.
It takes 1 extra turn for the 3 city colony to form after Yanan takes Oasis back with authority.

If we settle 1S of Cows, then the 3 city colony plan still works.
Just have to pillage cow before giving gold city away, and the other 2 cities can't have trade routes with each other or work anything but a non-river food tile.
The road between Gold city and our empire doesn't have an effect because no one will Open Borders with France to set up a trade route with him.
If we go with the 3 city colony idea, would probably still have to make 2 special desert Size 2 cities, and settle 2 tiles away from Oasis tile.


Finally, in regards to just making a 4-city Colony gift, a 4th city gift does not work without Currency to grease the wheels.
But if France owned the city before in the past, it will always take it. (Unless we vassalize France ourselves)
So make sure the 4th city gift to France is a city he owned in the past, or we will have to do an extra war to sort everything out.

After that, France will have owned all 4 cities in the past, so Colony 2,3,4, etc. should have no problems with city gifting.

We can always just gift Paris or the other European city. Or we could pre-emptively gift and recapture the 4th city before we start the colony cycle.

The one last thing to consider is whether we actually need the full 100 cultural points. With 6000ep and 4:1 conversion, we are getting about 16pts per 2t colony. We know that tech (1 era), military, civil, diplo + wonders (palace/shrine/gw/mids/kremlin/hg/glh) will be 296-300pts, depending on civil total. The remaining 120-124pts are culture+wonders+(tech). With the Rep specialists, maybe we can actually finish a tech era before we can get the 100 culture points? We will certainly be able to build some more wonders - I would think more than 5-6 (20-24pts).

The one last thing to consider is whether we actually need the full 100 cultural points. With 6000ep and 4:1 conversion, we are getting about 16pts per 2t colony. We know that tech (1 era), military, civil, diplo + wonders (palace/shrine/gw/mids/kremlin/hg/glh) will be 296-300pts, depending on civil total. The remaining 120-124pts are culture+wonders+(tech). With the Rep specialists, maybe we can actually finish a tech era before we can get the 100 culture points? We will certainly be able to build some more wonders - I would think more than 5-6 (20-24pts).

Right. We should keep this balance in mind, especially toward the end.

The one last thing to consider is whether we actually need the full 100 cultural points. With 6000ep and 4:1 conversion, we are getting about 16pts per 2t colony. We know that tech (1 era), military, civil, diplo + wonders (palace/shrine/gw/mids/kremlin/hg/glh) will be 296-300pts, depending on civil total. The remaining 120-124pts are culture+wonders+(tech). With the Rep specialists, maybe we can actually finish a tech era before we can get the 100 culture points? We will certainly be able to build some more wonders - I would think more than 5-6 (20-24pts).

After more thought, I think we can build wonders as fast or faster than getting 150K culture. We should be targeting a T80 finish at the latest.

100 military
098 civil (71/72)
058 diplo
028 tech
080 wonders (20 for example)
056 culture (84,000c for example = 48 succ spy missions starting with 8000c + 6000eps)

Thus, we don't waste beakers on Engineering. We only need 7 more Classical techs, Music and Feudalism.

Engineering was just a thought. I figured we'd rather get Theo and our classical needs.
The question is: If we're going with this new shift from culture to wonders...
Do we need dG? How about Churchill? He's got an island capital already. And we can infiltrate Mumbai.

I have completed testing on Gold City.
Test France does use the Oasis tile before Yanan's 500 takes back the tile.
So no colony forms.
It takes 1 extra turn for the 3 city colony to form after Yanan takes Oasis back with authority.

If we settle 1S of Cows, then the 3 city colony plan still works.
Just have to pillage cow before giving gold city away, and the other 2 cities can't have trade routes with each other or work anything but a non-river food tile.
The road between Gold city and our empire doesn't have an effect because no one will Open Borders with France to set up a trade route with him.
If we go with the 3 city colony idea, would probably still have to make 2 special desert Size 2 cities, and settle 2 tiles away from Oasis tile.


Finally, in regards to just making a 4-city Colony gift, a 4th city gift does not work without Currency to grease the wheels.
But if France owned the city before in the past, it will always take it. (Unless we vassalize France ourselves)
So make sure the 4th city gift to France is a city he owned in the past, or we will have to do an extra war to sort everything out.

After that, France will have owned all 4 cities in the past, so Colony 2,3,4, etc. should have no problems with city gifting.

Just so I understand, in the 4-city gift, do we still have to worry about dG working the oasis and such factors or doeshe automatically vassalize the four cities?

If Gold CIty is to be our LC anyway, then wouldn't it be a good choice for planting the GSpy for CS?

xpost

Page 13 of 20, March 8th, 2018

Spoiler :

Engineering was just a thought. I figured we'd rather get Theo and our classical needs.

Yes, I was thinking that if Roosy builds AP in America, we're a bit screwed, right? We don't want to delay Theo too long.

Just so I understand, in the 4-city gift, do we still have to worry about dG working the oasis and such factors or doeshe automatically vassalize the four cities?

If Gold CIty is to be our LC anyway, then wouldn't it be a good choice for planting the GSpy for CS?

xpost

Well, if we are doing 4-city gift, then we need WastinTime's Colony Maintenance formula if none of the 4 cities will be in revolt.

Confirmed and tested. it is 3 cities.
AI creating vassals:

The important number is colonyMaint.

Spoiler :

colonyMaint = numcities on continent * ((numcities on continent-1) * modifier) ^2

If you use all size 1 cities, modifier is simply 0.45 for standard

ColonyMaint is:
2.43 for 3 cities

All you have to do to get the AI to make a colony is have those cities: gold + hammers + science < 3* colonyMaint.

- It's best not to use a FIN civ.
- We should be in cease fire. But I think the rule is just: Don't threaten the cities.

So total gold+hammers+science has to be < 7.29

Tricks: one way to keep under the 7.29 is to blockade the cities with Privateers and/or destroy roads so they don't have any trade rts. Since we won't have privateers, we should try cut roads. We can also block trade to the mainland with our culture if we have closed borders.

#1 trick: Forget all that. Just give them 3 cities in revolt.

No. I tried 2 cities which has colonyMaint = only 0.4

I'm guessing gold and science is 0, but hammers is probably 2 per city (city center and citizen).
So 4 is not < 1.2

I didn't just do the math, I actually did a test save. No worky.

With 4 cities, the Colony Maintenance is 4*((4-1)*0.45)^2 = 7.29

Spoiler :

If you remember math, the order in which operations are calculated is PEMDAS, or do Parentheses first (), then Exponents ^, then Multiplication and Division */, then Adding and Subtracting +-

total gold+hammers+science has to be < 29.16

This shouldn't be too hard.
As long as the 4 cities don't combine science+gold+hammers above 29, they should form a colony, so the oasis shouldn't matter.
As long as all 4 cities are Size 1, don't form a trade route, and don't have a big hammer or gold tile like a Gold Mine or Iron mine, should be easy peezy.

Churchill would be a little worrisome with Mercantilism and free +1 Specialist.

Engineering was just a thought. I figured we'd rather get Theo and our classical needs.
The question is: If we're going with this new shift from culture to wonders...
Do we need dG? How about Churchill? He's got an island capital already. And we can infiltrate Mumbai.

Churchill would be acceptable.

10 War Success, he will talk Cease Fire in 2 turns.
40 War Success, he will talk Cease Fire in 1 turn.

And he is on an island ya

Just have to watch out for Mercantilism shenanigans when forming a colony.

Yes, I was thinking that if Roosy builds AP in America, we're a bit screwed, right? We don't want to delay Theo too long.

Roosevelt building AP would really, really screw us yes.

Well, if we are doing 4-city gift, then we need WastinTime's Colony Maintenance formula if none of the 4 cities will be in revolt.





With 4 cities, the Colony Maintenance is 4*((4-1)*0.45)^2 = 7.29

Spoiler :

If you remember math, the order in which operations are calculated is PEMDAS, or do Parentheses first (), then Exponents ^, then Multiplication and Division */, then Adding and Subtracting +-

total gold+hammers+science has to be < 29.16

This shouldn't be too hard.
As long as the 4 cities don't combine science+gold+hammers above 29, they should form a colony, so the oasis shouldn't matter.
As long as all 4 cities are Size 1, don't form a trade route, and don't have a big hammer or gold tile like a Gold Mine or Iron mine, should be easy peezy.

Churchill would be a little worrisome with Mercantilism and free +1 Specialist.

Possible to have a TR with just our LC in that scenario? :greedy:

Here's an attempt at the realistic vision of what happens in our Gold City LC without Engineering, going for 84,000c = 56 cultural VC points:

Method        T0 1st vass (??%) T3 2nd vass (0%)  T6 3rd vass (0%)  T9 4th vass (0%)  T11 5th vas (50%)
------------  ----------------- ----------------  ----------------- ----------------- -----------------
              succ  total cumul succ  total cumul succ  total cumul succ  total cumul succ  total cumul
              spies spies cult  spies spies cult  spies spies cult  spies spies cult  spies spies cult
------------  ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
 8000c/6000e    18    24  19224    9    12  28427    6     8  38092    5     7  48612    7    10  68399

Vas #1       #2       #3       #4      #5      dG
    T0 T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9 T10 T11 T12 T13
    -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --- --- --- ---
 -2  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1   1   1   1   1
 -1  1 19  1  1 10  1  1  7  1  1   6   1   8   1
  0  1  1 19  1  1 10  1  1  7  1   1   6   1   8
 0% 24  1  1 19  1  1 10  1  1  7   1   1   6   1
10%        1  1  7  1  1  2  1  1   1   1   1   6
20%           1  1  7  1  1  2  1   1   1   1   1
30%              1  1  7  1  1  2   1   1   1   1
40%                 1  1  7  1  1   2   1   1   1
50%                    1  2  9 10  11  13   4   5
 
Ali 27 22 23 24 22 23 24 23 24 25  24  25  23  ~84,000c = 56 cult points
Dead 0  6  6  6  9  9  9 11 11 11  13  13  16
Tot 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36  37  38  39
Assuming 24 there on T0 (ignoring their respective wait %s) and 1 new arrival per turn. Standard # of deaths. Always running missions with lowest % wait. Numbers represent status before missions occur on that turn.

As can be seen, the slowest factor by far is getting the wait bonus to 50%. This can surely be optimized, maybe by running fewer missions early on (wasting leftover vassal eps), every two turns, and letting more of the original spies wait to 50%.

Notice that vassal #2, #3, and #4 all came on 3t intervals.

total gold+hammers+science has to be < 29.16

The 3 * colonyMaint is a hardcoded 3. Not # of cities.

21.87

Any 4 cities should be under that.

The 3 * colonyMaint is a hardcoded 3. Not # of cities.

21.87

Any 4 cities should be under that.

Thanks for the correction!
21.87, need to remember that.


So Gold Gity, 1S of cows?
Every bit helps, and no Oasis is 2 less we have to worry about.
That spot will be covered by Yanan when it reaches 500, so the spread mission will still activate.

Plus, the 2 Gold City colony defenders won't have hilltop +25% defense helping them.

So is dG attack off? and Churchill the target?
Before you decide, here's a scary scenario I imagined:

It's bad enough if he settles a 2nd city on his island. That makes city gifting harder, but we can work around that like we were doing with Roosy.

What if he settles a 2nd city on our landmass?
Then, he will create a colony including that city. And if I know my rules, that city has to be captured, because if you gift him 4 more cities, he won't create a 2nd colony, he will give those 4 cities to the 1st colony.

.....

.....

After more thought, I think we can build wonders as fast or faster than getting 150K culture. We should be targeting a T80 finish at the latest.

100 military
098 civil (71/72)
058 diplo
028 tech
080 wonders (20 for example)
056 culture (84,000c for example = 48 succ spy missions starting with 8000c + 6000eps)

Thus, we don't waste beakers on Engineering. We only need 7 more Classical techs, Music and Feudalism.

Turn 80?
You feel it too I see.

20 wonders though, that seems like a lot

Lets see:

1) Palace - Done
2) The Great Wall - Done
3) Kremlin - Done
4) Hanging Gardens - Done in 1 turn
5) The Great Lighthouse - Ours when Tokyo captured

6) Pyramids - 500 double with Stone
7) Temple of Artemis - 350 double with Marble
8) Heroic Epic - 200 double with marble, requires Barracks
9) National Epic - 250 double with marble, requires Library
10) Globe Theater - 350, requires 6 Theaters (we should have plenty soon)
11) Mausoleum of Maussollos - 450, double with Marble, [Calendar]
12) Statue of Zeus - 300 double with Ivory, requires 3 Monuments [Monuments obsolete with Calendar]
13) Shwedagon Paya - 450 double with Gold
14) Parthenon - 400 double with Marble
15) Angkor Wat - 500 double with Stone
16) Chichen Itza - 500 double with Stone
17) Colossus - 250 double with Bronze, requires Forge
18) Sistene - 600 double with Marble [Music]
19) Apostolic Palace - 400 [Theology]
20) Hagia Sophia - 500 double with Marble [Theology]


**Edit**
WastinTime mentioned the Shrine that I forgot about.
That means we can strike off 1 difficult to get wonder!

shrine

I think I got it.

We are all stressing about who to perform the 1st infiltration with right?
Roosevelt, De Gaulle, Churchill.

How about, once we Cease Fire with Japan on Turn 46, we give him 3 cities?
Gold City (1S of the cows please), and the 2 Roosevelt cities that are in Revolt?

It will form a Colony since the 2 American cities should still be in revolt (right?), perhaps a new civ that will talk Cease Fire in 2 turns like England? (70% chance? not sure)

We give the new 3-city Colony a new island city that perhaps Gua produces (or maybe Fish City itself), then attack on Turn 46, recapture all 3 gift cities guarded by 2 Warriors, then take Tokyo and wipe Toku out of existence.

The new 1 city colony civ will have all of Toku's techs, the 150 we put into Toku, and will take back Gold City whenever we feel like stealing Civil Service.
And if we are lucky, it will talk Cease Fire in 2 turns with 10 war success like England.

If it does, it is a keeper and we can infiltrate with 3000 eps.
If it is a bad civ like Japan that won't talk peace in 2 turns with 10 war success, we give back all 3 cities, and it forms a new colony.
Perhaps, one that will be more reasonable.


All this work means we don't have to send a huge army west.
And we don't have to worry about England establishing a new city at the worst time T60-80 on the coastline somewhere and messing up our colony cycle as WT pointed out.
The whole thing should be firmly under our thumb.

**Edit**
If it is Sitting Bull, we will need Chariots to sort it out, but if it is Pacal I'm so fired

That blows my mind! Brilliant

Yes! Clone Toku.
Avoids the nightmare I just posted in the main thread. Scary.

Are we sure that Toku will produce warriors? Even with CS, I'm sure it won't be macemen. Those are not conscription units.
Best if there's not metal for the new colony, but why would there be?

14 out of 52 AI take 3 turns to talk peace with 10 war success, Sitting Bull is even worse than Toku.
The rest should talk peace in 2 turns with 10 war success.
There are no others like DeGaulle that talk peace in 1 turn with only 10 war success.

1) Boudica
2) Brennus
3) Roosevelt
4) Genghis
5) Hammurabi
6) Isabella
7) Justinian
8) Montezuma
9) Napoleon
10) Ragnar
11) Shaka
12) Sitting Bull *Dog Soldiers instead of Warriors*
13) Tokugawa
14) Victoria

I'll add Pacal since Spearmen (Holkens) instead of Warriors makes him unsuitable
15) Pacal

Now we subtract out all the current civs in our game from the 52 civs total.

Roosevelt and Toku from the bad guys.
7 more civs from the good guys counting ourself.

43 possible choices for the new Colony to spawn.
13 are bad ones for our purposes.

30.23% chance we get a bad one and have to do it again .
69.77% chance we get a good one.

Wow, I really guestimated that well!

Are we sure that Toku will produce warriors?

As long as the new colony doesn't have metal, and Toku doesn't have Feudalism, it should be Warriors yes.
**Edit**
Would a Mansa colony have Warriors? Or Skirmishers since that is his Unique Unit?
Holkans are not strictly draftable Axemen, but I know a Pacal Colony gets them.

If it was the Ottomans with Gunpowder, I'd worry.
But Toku should make warriors in his colony.

I'll run a test with test game Toku having Industrialization later, and make sure the colony starting units aren't something silly like base on Era.

Actually, perhaps moving Stalin's capital to an island might be easiest.
We will have time to move him before the Great Artists are born.

He will talk peace in 2 turns with 10 war success like England also.
Plus, he is a lot closer than France, and he won't pull any coastline Settler shenanigans if his capital is on Japan's island.

If we just want an AI that will spawn colonies with Warriors and talk peace in 2 turns, he is a valid choice after his capital is forcibly moved.

He is also close enough to infiltrate with 3000 before Toku gets Gold City and we steal Civil Service.


I guess it depends on the Bomber timing and when exactly we need to steal Civil Service.

Page 14 of 20, March 8th, 2018 to March 9th, 2018:

Spoiler :

30.23% chance we get a bad one and have to do it again .
69.77% chance we get a good one.

I hate to burst your bubble, but there is a 100% chance that we will get Wang of Korea
Japan in the XML...
<DerivativeCiv>CIVILIZATION_KOREA</DerivativeCiv>

so you're not fired

In case you're thinking evil thoughts for now or in the future.... no, France is not a derivative civ of anyone. So you can't just make DeGaulle appear 100% in any game. And even if you could, it would be 50-50 with Louis.

Japan is the derivative civ of Korea, but we won't get a civ that has existed before until we've used up all the others (I think that's true at least). That will be random.
Doesn't matter, right? we don't care much who comes out of Korea.

I hate to burst your bubble, but there is a 100% chance that we will get Wang of Korea
Japan in the XML...
<DerivativeCiv>CIVILIZATION_KOREA</DerivativeCiv>

so you're not fired

, WT, you Wanged Kait...

Where do you find out derivatives? Does that mean we get to use Kait's fun idea after all?

Where do you find out derivatives?

CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml

I hate to burst your bubble, but there is a 100% chance that we will get Wang of Korea
Japan in the XML...
<DerivativeCiv>CIVILIZATION_KOREA</DerivativeCiv>

so you're not fired

That's Genius!
OMG, Japan's 1st colony is always Korea!

A nice civ that will talk Cease Fire in 1 turn with 20 war success (2 city gifts), and 2 turns with 10 war success!
That couldn't be better for us.

Korea is Financial and Protective, but that is not too hard to work around.

Here's an attempt at the realistic vision of what happens in our Gold City LC without Engineering, going for 84,000c = 56 cultural VC points:

Method        T0 1st vass (??%) T3 2nd vass (0%)  T6 3rd vass (0%)  T9 4th vass (0%)  T11 5th vas (50%)
------------  ----------------- ----------------  ----------------- ----------------- -----------------
              succ  total cumul succ  total cumul succ  total cumul succ  total cumul succ  total cumul
              spies spies cult  spies spies cult  spies spies cult  spies spies cult  spies spies cult
------------  ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
 8000c/6000e    18    24  19224    9    12  28427    6     8  38092    5     7  48612    7    10  68399

Vas #1       #2       #3       #4      #5      dG
    T0 T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9 T10 T11 T12 T13
    -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --- --- --- ---
 -2  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1   1   1   1   1
 -1  1 19  1  1 10  1  1  7  1  1   6   1   8   1
  0  1  1 19  1  1 10  1  1  7  1   1   6   1   8
 0% 24  1  1 19  1  1 10  1  1  7   1   1   6   1
10%        1  1  7  1  1  2  1  1   1   1   1   6
20%           1  1  7  1  1  2  1   1   1   1   1
30%              1  1  7  1  1  2   1   1   1   1
40%                 1  1  7  1  1   2   1   1   1
50%                    1  2  9 10  11  13   4   5
 
Ali 27 22 23 24 22 23 24 23 24 25  24  25  23  ~84,000c = 56 cult points
Dead 0  6  6  6  9  9  9 11 11 11  13  13  16
Tot 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36  37  38  39
Assuming 24 there on T0 (ignoring their respective wait %s) and 1 new arrival per turn. Standard # of deaths. Always running missions with lowest % wait. Numbers represent status before missions occur on that turn.

Analyzing this once more:

1. For the hammer investment of about two wonders for the spies, we get an ever increasing number of VC points up to 100.
2. On T13 we actually have about 60.
3. On T18 we should be able to have 100 VC points.

So this is clearly the way to go. I wasn't thinking quite right in the original analysis to this table. So we have:

100 military
100 cultural
098 civil (71/72)
058 diplo
028 tech
036 9 wonders (Palace+GW+Dai+Krem+HG+GLH+Mids+ToA+AP) for 13: (+NE+Parth+HE+Colossus)
-----
420

Conclusions
We're at the point where we simply have to figure out how to 1) achieve conquest asap and 2) get those spies fast flowing to LC and 3) get the two Artists asap.

1. Shanghai and Gua should easily be able to get the 300 and 400 (with library-NE in one and maybe Parthenon somewhere) Artists at 100%. Infiltrate our two existing Spies and spam the GAge GP in Yanan on T56 or sooner, as per WT. No need for Music!

2. Also, since 9 wonders is so easy for us, 13 wonders would obviate the need for all the Classical techs, so the fastest victory may be to focus on teching Aesthetics-Literature-Theology-Feudalism.

3. We could even go for 3 Artists including Music. This might save us ~2t on 150K. With 14 or more wonders, it might even save us 5t, making either tech or Conquest the Critical Path.

4. We can stop wasting time with actions such as sending the Spy to the north, building unnecessary cities, anything else

5. Make sure we do all necessary actions, such as make sure the we have the right religions in key cities, and above all, get spies and HAs moving to their destinations.

6. Watch America's hammmer production. Don't want our wonders getting built there, especially: AP and ToA (Civic VC points).

We can't tech Aes, Lit (or anything) until we get Mids and start the GAge. So we're not going to have NE or Parthenon soon enough. Remember we have to grow back to size 7 or 8...and be happy! We can't whip half that stuff and expect to be happy at size 8.

We can't tech Aes, Lit (or anything) until we get Mids and start the GAge. So we're not going to have NE or Parthenon soon enough. Remember we have to grow back to size 7 or 8...and be happy! We can't whip half that stuff and expect to be happy at size 8.

Okay, I guess I waasn't aware of when you were starting the GA when you gave your date estimates for Aest and Lit.

Parth could be built in Chong pretty fast. We might be able to squeeze in Aesthetics just before the GA begins.

We can't tech Aes, Lit (or anything) until we get Mids and start the GAge. So we're not going to have NE or Parthenon soon enough. Remember we have to grow back to size 7 or 8...and be happy! We can't whip half that stuff and expect to be happy at size 8.

Clearly, we're going to have to specialize our cities. I doubt warring is going to be a big problem. Bomber + HAs will slaughter the opponents. Capture Moscow, bring some workers along to chop forests and move on. No need for our homeland to build more HAs than is necessary for Moscow+Tokyo+NY+Mumbai.

What religious civic after Pacifism? OR? Then let's use oureastern cities for wonders later on. That is, build a Taoist monastery in Beijing and build Tao MIsses for Gua and Shanghai. They'll produce two Artists, then wonders.

All other cities can produce the initial HAs needed, then spies.

Yanan produces the GAge GP then spies.

That's my post-insomnia Holiday Inn Express solution.

The way I see it, we already know the distribution of the first 300 points:
Military 100
Civil 96 (assuming that we are #2 to Roosevelt in Approval Rating, Life Expectancy and Imports/Exports - I know we can get a couple more points here, but I am only listing the absolutely guaranteed points right now, and 96 is good for rounding)
Diplomatic 58
Science 14
Construction 32 (Palace, GW, Dai Miao, Kremlin, HG, GLH, Pyramids, AP)

The remaining 120 points have to come from some combination of culture, science and construction.

Culture is max 100, and it comes down to X-number of turns after we initiate the colony cycle. The important parameter is how many points we get per colony (i.e. per 2t). It is maximum 16pts for 6000ep, but could be less if we lose ep to rounding. Probably about 12-16 range.

Science is 14 points for another era. This will be easy to estimate closer to the end. I think we'll also have a better idea once we have Alphabet and see if we can steal / trade for any.

My thinking on wonders is that we will have some turns at the end of this game when we have nothing better to do with our cities. We won't need to keep producing spies and HAs right up to the end. How many turns of this are there? Maybe 10? We could go into OR towards the end (once we are done HA production, we could even do 1t anarchy), for 2.35x multiplier on marble/stone wonders in Tao cities.

Edit: xpost with LC

Edit: The critical paths are conquest and colony culture. The rest we balance towards the end. All I'm talking about here is +/- 2t at the end.

Note: I think we can get at least up to 20 cultural points on the last one with some additional eps. Just a comment.

What religious civic after Pacifism? OR?

Not sure we'll be done with Pacifism. We have to make our last change to civics 7t after the GAge. But if Yanan can finish the 500gpp without Pacifism, we should do something else. It's kinda a waste staying in it.

Create Korea. Set EPs on Korea.

EPs on Korea for CS is it? Who will we infiltrate? Not sure of the latest incarnation of our plan.

The new Great Spy will infiltrate Korean NewYork eventually

Guess that answers my question.

Not sure of the latest incarnation of our plan.

The final incarnation is to put all EPs on Japan and/or Korea (same thing). Anything we put on Japan gets transferred to Korea.
Japan will die and we will finish the game with Korea.
But once we spawn Korea, we don't want to put any more on Japan. Hence the note I made to myself.

The final incarnation is to put all EPs on Japan and/or Korea (same thing). Anything we put on Japan gets transferred to Korea.
Japan will die and we will finish the game with Korea.
But once we spawn Korea, we don't want to put any more on Japan. Hence the note I made to myself.

Could we infiltrate Toku, leave him alive until the GA bombs and do this:
T0: give LC to Tony, spread culture, recap, kill Toku, give colony cities to Korea
T1: Korean colony forms, spread culture

Who's Tony? (pulls hair out trying to follow all these names like a Tolstoy novel)

Do we use Toku's EPs before gekilling him? Or does it matter? What about Compass?

Could we infiltrate Toku, leave him alive until the GA bombs and do this:
T0: give LC to Tony, spread culture, recap, kill Toku, give colony cities to Korea
T1: Korean colony forms, spread culture

One GSpy is too far away to do this, but we could infiltrate NY when Toku briefly has it, sure, why not? we lose our super-scout. I wonder if the super-scout will be more useful (at Mumbai) than doing this little trick. It would allow us to airstrike. Vision on Mumbai will not be easy.

Anyway, that means we have Korea at 6000+ and Japan at 3000+.
Is that useful to use it how you described? We don't have the spies for that much EPs, but maybe we save it til the end? Use up Japan when we need 1500 per mission. That also means Japan might finish Compass by T80.

Is that useful to use it how you described? We don't have the spies for that much EPs, but maybe we save it til the end? Use up Japan when we need 1500 per mission. That also means Japan might finish Compass by T80.

Yes! That's what we should do.

Page 15 of 20, March 9th, 2018 to March 26th, 2018:

Spoiler :

One GSpy is too far away to do this, but we could infiltrate NY when Toku briefly has it, sure, why not? we lose our super-scout. I wonder if the super-scout will be more useful (at Mumbai) than doing this little trick. It would allow us to airstrike. Vision on Mumbai will not be easy.

Anyway, that means we have Korea at 6000+ and Japan at 3000+.
Is that useful to use it how you described? We don't have the spies for that much EPs, but maybe we save it til the end? Use up Japan when we need 1500 per mission. That also means Japan might finish Compass by T80.

Hm...if we have spare spies near the end, we might also gift away Beijing to a second vassal and run missions in two cities at once. Maybe shave off another turn.

I'm out for most of the day starting in a couple hours. Maybe I can get the worker plan--for at least a few turns-- done and we can get the PPP approved to play 1 turn tomorrow (daytime). I'm out tomorrow evening.

Anyway, that means we have Korea at 6000+ and Japan at 3000+.
Is that useful to use it how you described? We don't have the spies for that much EPs, but maybe we save it til the end? Use up Japan when we need 1500 per mission. That also means Japan might finish Compass by T80.

Wait, who forms our 2nd colony starting around Turn 68?

Can Korea form a colony while still a colony and a vassal of Japan?

I think Japan must cease to exist around Turn 68.

Also, as soon as we infiltrate him, a bunch of his slider will go to espionage, so Compass will be tight.

I think Japan must cease to exist around Turn 68.

that's right. brain fart. He has to die.

Like the movie Inception.
Brain fart indeed.

that's right. brain fart. He has to die.

Unless... Wang breaks away from Toku because Toku is so pathetic, but I think there is a minimum wait time before he can break free.

Think with me, folks. When we get to about 75K, the spy missions at 50% cost ~1000eps, and yield ~4000c or 2.67 victory points. At 6000eps per vassal, that's 6 missions or 16 vc points. Clearly, that's the most crucial time to have the 50% missions. Now, will we be able to run two consecutive cycles on our final go? That is, can we hit Vassal X, capture city, gift to Korea and hit him the same turn? That would give us roughly 12 missions or 32 points on that last turn, assuming we have 16 50% spies available (ignore that for now).

We are at war with Korea when we hit the vassal, aren't we?

Obviously, if we can double up the vassal and Korea, then it doesn't have to be at 75K. It can be at less culture.

We are at war with Korea when we hit the vassal, aren't we?

Hm... Good point. Okay, then can we abuse the ability to get Korea to talk after 1t to run missions on the final two (consecutive) turns?

Or have we already been at war with Korea for a turn when we hit Vassal X?

yea, we could probably save 1 turn by doing Korea on the final set.

Or have we already been at war with Korea for a turn when we hit Vassal X?

No, we are at peace and hit end turn to wait for the vassal to appear.
Technically, we don't have to be at peace. If you really, really want to, we could try to work around the rules for creating vassals while at war. Involves not threatening the city.

We only need 11 WarSuccess with Korea for 1t, assuming beating down on his vassal doesn't count.

Btw, will Korea talk to us so we can gift him cities even if we're his WE?

Btw, will Korea talk to us so we can gift him cities even if we're his WE?

I don't believe WE should affect this. I was just playing a game the yesterday and gifted a city where I was the WE.

When are we done with tech research? We could turn on the espionage slider for a few turns at the end, to try and get a few extra spread culture missions.

Yokay. I have this:

Based on Kaitzilla's PPP

Assuming we start with 6000 eps and 6000 culture (sorry, should be 8000c, but I screwed up)

Vas #1       #2    #3    #4    #5      #6  dG
    T0 T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9 T10 T11 T12
    -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --- --- --- ---
 -2  2  5  1     1
 -1  2 18  8  1 12  1  8     5      5       4   5
  0  4  2 18  8  1 12  1  8     5       5       4
 0%  5  4  2 18  8  1 12  1  8      5       5
10%  1        2  4  8    12     8       5       5
20%  3              4        6      1
30%  2                 2        6       1
40%  3                    2         6       1
50%  8                       2  2   2   8   8   1
 
Ali 30 29 29 29 26 26 23 23 21 21  19  19  18  15
Suc 16 19 19 31 31 39 39 44 44 49  49  53  58     ~101,000c = 68 cult points, including culture from other 2 LCs
Fail 6  7  7 11 12 14 14 16 16 18  18  19  22
Tot 30 35 36 36 37 37 37 37 37 37  37  37  37

In other words, on t75 we have 68 cultural points! No guarantees as usual, but I also started with 6000 insteead of 8000c so that's a buffer.

What you see above is using Kait's projected spies and running them mostly at 0%. I did the chart slightly differently. The key line is Suc(cessful missions). We need it at about 58.

This means we need a new vassal every other turn except the first cycle, which only needs it a turn later. This could easily change based on starting from 8000c, especially at the beginning, with costs starting higher. It might actually be new vassals every other turn, but then, that means finishing on t74 anyway, so no harm done.

I'm thinking that Engineering might significantly affect all this. Maybe shave off a turn, two, or more, if we can have it by t63.

It's interesting. Running the spies at 0% works faster because we don't have to worry about eps. Heavy abuse of that factor. If we started with another 5-10 spies, we might be able to shave several turns off. Or alternatively go for more cultural vc points. Especially with engineering.

The crazy aspect is that the number of successful missions is the same, no matter the cost. All that matters is getting 58 (or however many) successes asap. So the wait % only becomes a limiting factor when the missions cost so much that new eps every two turns becomes a drag, which didn't happen in my calcs.

One more note: In actually playing this, we may need some more eps than jjust the 6000 toward the end of the cycle, but I assume that won't be a problem. We've already got them on Korea, right?

Page 16 of 20, March 26th, 2018 to March 27th, 2018:

Spoiler :

The capital can whip Spies starting T62 with 60% bonus.

That might give a lot more points than Globe Theater.

Right now we got 6200 eps on Korea.
Near the end we can use up the final colony, then the next turn use up Korea.

WastinTime also pointed out that we could also try to get Korea to form a colony during war.
If successful, we could have 12400 EPs available in a single turn!
(Consume the colony 6200eps, give to Korea after Ceasefire, consume Korea's 6200)

Note, the lines at the bottom of the chart may be a bit confusing. Here's the legend:

Ali = # of spies alive at the beginning of this turn
Suc = total # of successful missions completed at the end of this turn
Fail = total # of spies having died at the end of this turn
Tot = total # of spies created ever

Plus, the numbers in the body of the chart show the spies at the beginning of that turn. (Once they doa mission, ofc they teleport back to Yanan, so the living ones reappear next turn at -1).

The capital can whip Spies starting T62 with 60% bonus.

That might give a lot more points than Globe Theater.

Right now we got 6200 eps on Korea.
Near the end we can use up the final colony, then the next turn use up Korea.

WastinTime also pointed out that we could also try to get Korea to form a colony during war.
If successful, we could have 12400 EPs available in a single turn!

So the t62+ Yanan spies would arrive in LC starting t64, right? 0% on t65? (without Eng)

Kait, what's you best estimate on our total ep spending versus, Korea's? I've been just using 6500:500.

Also, any clue on MaxPlotDistance?

Wow, from 8000c we only need about 52 successful missions. Big difference.

This seems too good to be true but here's V.2, 6200eps, 8000c with t63 Engineering and Yanan cranking out spies starting t63, and assuming on t11 we have 12,400eps and t12 we have korea's 6,200eps:

V.2: 8000c, w/Engineering t63, Yanan whipping spies t62+

Vas #1    #2    #3    #4    #5   #6+7 Kor
    T0 T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9 T10 T11
    -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --- ---
 -2  6  2  1  2  1  1  1  1  1  1   1
 -1  3  6  2  1  2  1  1  1  1  1   1
  0  7 19  6 13  1  9  1  7  1  6   1  11
 0%  5  7 19  6 13  1  9  1  7  1   6   1
10%  1     7  5  6  3  1  3  1  3   1   6
20%  3        6  5  6  3  1  2  1   3   1
30%  2           6  5  6  3  1  2   1   3
40%  3              6  5  6  3  1   2   1
50%  8                 6  9 15 16  17   5
 
Ali 38 34 35 33 34 32 33 32 33 32  33  34
Suc 16 16 27 27 34 34 40 40 45 45  55  59       ~142,000c = ~97 cult points, excluding culture from other 2 LCs
Fail 6  6 10 10 13 13 15 15 17 17  21  22              (1 successful mission short of 150K)
Tot 38 40 41 43 44 45 46 47 48 49  50  51

No promises that I didn't screw something major up somewhere, but this is what I'm getting. Yup, that's right -- T74 !!!?!!!

Note I'm also assuming all the spies approaching LC on t63 move 3 tiles instead of 2.

assuming on t11 we have 12,400eps and t12 we have korea's 6,200eps:

I thought we get ~6200 each time, and if we can manage to use Korea's on the same turn, we'd get 12400, but that ends it. Korea has been drained.

I thought we get ~6200 each time, and if we can manage to use Korea's on the same turn, we'd get 12400, but that ends it. Korea has been drained.

Okay, then shift #7+Kor to t12. It doesn't really matter, though. What this tells us is that we have flexibility at the end. And maybe that conquest is the slowest path. Engineering will help both culture and conquest. Is it attainable ~t63?

I can't get the AI to form a colony during war in testing.

are all your units 3 tiles away?

I can't get the AI to form a colony during war in testing.

I doubt it really matters. Just looking at my chart above, I assume we could start running the 50% spies on T6 and use them up by T11 or so and get pretty close to 58 missions. We won't need that many anyway, right, so who cares?

@LC,
T0 in your spreadsheet in T63, correct?
Could you add LC culture total for each turn? I assume you have it in the underlying spreadsheet.
I think it would be useful to graphically plot scenario culture points (including Yan'an and Beijing) per game turn, and correlate it with number of wonders required.

@LC,
T0 in your spreadsheet in T63, correct?
Could you add LC culture total for each turn? I assume you have it in the underlying spreadsheet.
I think it would be useful to graphically plot scenario culture points (including Yan'an and Beijing) per game turn, and correlate it with number of wonders required.

Yes, T63.

It directly corresponds to the # of successful missions. The actual amount depends on the accuracy of my calcs, which depend on some variables I don't know exactly (MaxPlotDistance, our total ep spending, their total epe spending), but it's a good ballpark estimate:

T63 16  17,456
T65 27  29,848
T67 34  41,995
T69 40  56,273
T71 45  71,818
T73 55 116,967 (ofc, this is wrongg because it used 12,400 eps, so cut the change in half roughly)
T74 59 142,183

Kait, how closely do these numbers match yours?

NB: I didn't include in my calcs spies dying just for being in enemy territory. With closed borders, I vaguely recall this to be about 6.25% instead of <1%. That means we could actually lose 1-2 spies per turn just from that. That's a significant hit, and the longer it takes, the bigger the hit. Another motivation for Engineering.

My understanding is that there's no feasible way to have OBs with Korea and he'll still vassalize, right? If we could somehow have the other two (or other three) cities in revolt, enabling us to have OBs with Korea, via a common war with Mehmed, that would drastically reduce our odds of spy losses.

are all your units 3 tiles away?

Ya, I even deleted every military unit to be sure.

Still no colony with 0 units on the map.

maybe the cities are too close to us (land target) or something like that. I've only done it with overseas islands.
Or our capital is in the 'area'. Let's just forget about it.

Yes, T63.

It directly corresponds to the # of successful missions. The actual amount depends on the accuracy of my calcs, which depend on some variables I don't know exactly (MaxPlotDistance, our total ep spending, their total epe spending), but it's a good ballpark estimate:

T63 16  17,456
T65 27  29,848
T67 34  41,995
T69 40  56,273
T71 45  71,818
T73 55 116,967 (ofc, this is wrongg because it used 12,400 eps, so cut the change in half roughly)
T74 59 142,183

Kait, how closely do these numbers match yours?

So, assuming 285 points in military/civil/diplo/science, we would need the following numbers of wonders:
T72 - 22 wonders (97 civil)
T73 - 14 wonders (99 civil)
T74 - 10 wonders (96 civil)

We will definitely build 13 wonders:

Spoiler :

01 Palace
02 Great Wall
03 Dai Miao
04 Kremlin
05 Great Lihgthouse
06 Hanging Gardens
07 Pyramids
08 Apostolic Palace
09 National Epic
10 Heroic Epic
11 Parthenon
12 Temple of Artemis
13 Great Library

It seems like T73 is the sweet spot, but getting a conquest win by then will be tough.

Another thought - can we win this by chain capping a number of the AI and not bothering to capture all cities? If we get close to max culture, we may not need to be so close to max civil, which was one major reason to kill them all. That may help if we find that the conquering all cities is taking too long.

On Diplo:
1. Is there an election for AP Leader if no one but us has our religion?
2. Does the F8 (or whichever screen) show us as the AP Leader if we win by conquest?

Page 17 of 20, March 28th, 2018 to April 4th, 2018:

Spoiler :

On Diplo:
1. Is there an election for AP Leader if no one but us has our religion?
2. Does the F8 (or whichever screen) show us as the AP Leader if we win by conquest?

Yes and yes

technically, we don't even need to have AP religion.

If tech turns out to be the longest path, we don't necessarily need to finish the Classical techs, as close as we are. A turn is a turn.

All AIs but Toku will talk after 1t if we have 32 WarSuccess (and they have none).

LC, I'm curious for another game, how do you determine these thresholds?

Spies in Gold City with 0% wait bonus and ready to do missions
(This measures when and how many spies arrive in Gold City)
T53 - 1 Spy with 0% wait bonus
T54 - 0
T55 - 0
T56 - 3
T57 - 2
T58 - 2
T59 - 3
T60 - 2
T61 - 3
T62 - 1
T63 - 5
T64 - 4
T65 - 2
T66 - 2
T67 - 5
T68 - 0
T69 - 1

36 Spies Total
Expected 15 deaths to get 75k:culture, and 20 deaths to get 150k
Casualties might be slightly higher with Closed Border detection rate in between turns.

We should update the calculations with this info. LC, do you wanna do that?
We can get OB with some new colonies, right?

I used the test game to focus on us getting Engineering complete by the start of T62.
It brought the Spies in Gold City on T63 up from 26 to 33!
So, supremely useful.

Spoiler :

Then the fun started.
I ignored the empire, wonders, conquest, and focused on a few more spies (most were built by T63) to simulate only the 150,000 city gameplay.

T62 - Gave Hamburg, Berlin, and Gold City to Korea. Infiltrated Great Spy in Hamburg.
Berlin was in revolt, Hamburg had a +1 trade route with Berlin, and Gold City had a +2 trade route to Korea's capital.
That is 0+3+7=10 too much to form a colony, so had to give New York to Korea also.
(The order matters! New York must be given last since Korea already owned it)

T63 - Gifted New City #1 near Manchou and Manchou to Korea for war success and clearing severe anger in Manchou.
1st Colony: Hyuna Capac started out Worst Enemy due to border tensions, and refused to sign Open Borders because W.E. takes 1 turn to wear off.
Hyuna Capac did a lot of damage to my Choko's with +100% bonus to Archers.

3 Spies died in between turns when the colony formed. 6%? closed borders detection rate.
25 Successful Mission
3 deaths
6 Spies Died Total

DoW'd Korea.
Main army near Berlin squashed the Quechuas in Berlin and Manchou easily.
Pacal would have been ugly with only front line Horse Archers.

Manchou was retaken instantly with Chariot.

T64 - Killed my way into New York and retook undefended New City #1.
Cease Fire with Korea.

Gave Korea Silk City, New City #2 (between Gua and Chong), New City #1 (between Manchou and Tsing), and Gold City.
That is 4+5+6+6=21 which is small enough to form a colony.

T65 - Gifted Hamburg and New York to Korea.
These are the two best gift cities for Rounds 2 through 7 because New York is on a hill and will pop borders thanks to Korea's Palace so it always has +20% defenses.
Plus, New York is on a hill so emergency whip can't reach it.
Hamburg is great because only 1 Chariot is needed to recapture it every turn.
The front line troops are not affected.

2nd Colony: Joao formed.
Worst Enemy, would not sign open borders.
4 Spies died in between turns.
10 Successful Mission
6 deaths
10 Spies Died Total

DoW'd Korea.

Gold City was particularly hard to reconquer because it formed with an extra Archer!
The last city given to the AI will always be the new capital, and be close to (Or Will) produce an Archer in 0 or 1 or 2 turns.

Great Prophet Born, bulbed Theology.

T67 - 3rd Colony: Shaka formed
Worst Enemy, no open borders.
1 Spy died in between turns.
6 Successful Mission
4 deaths
5 Spies Died Total
Left 918 on the table

T69 - 4th Colony: Dutch formed.
Signed Open borders, got a trade route to Philippines, no -20% Trade Route Bonus
2 Spies died in between turns.
6 Successful Mission
1 death
3 Spies Died Total
Left 898 on the table

T71 - 5th Colony: Justinian formed.
Worst Enemy, no open borders
1 Spy died in between turns.
6 Successful Mission
1 death
2 Spies Died Total

T73 - 6th Colony: Ethiopia formed.
Signed Open borders, no -20% Trate route bonus
0 Spies died in between turns.
5 Successful Mission
2 deaths
2 Spies Died Total

T74 - Korea was gifted Gold City, found out yes you have to wait 1 turn before Spread mission activates. >_<

T75 - Korea
Worst Enemy, Furious
1 Spy died in between turns.
Korea adopted Taoism, -40% religion bonus is now -25%
All espionage missions cost more, but it ended up not mattering.
3 Successful Mission
1 death
2 Spies Died Total

Final Result
Gold City - 157,000
100 Points!

53 Spies built - 30 Spies died
Five 50% Spies remained in Gold City unused.

Spoiler :

=======================================================

Also, I lost the game 3 times during the test.

1) Barbarians overran Korea's island capital when I wasn't paying attention.
All 6300 vanished, which is worse than missing an AP vote.
Probably won't happen in real game.
2) Forgot to give Korea 2 gift cities before DoW'ing on T67. Easy mistake to make and costs us 2 turns. Probably will happen in real game.
3) Forgot how many CGII Archers Korea can build on a hilltop island city. My token army on paper wasn't able to conquer T75. Probably won't happen in real game.

Spoiler :

All 4 Colony Cities were easy to manage.
Any Gold City problem was solved by Yanan whipping a Mace or Choko.
Any New City #2 or Silk City problem was solved by a Mace on a Galley. It could amphibious attack Silk City, or unload in Gua and walk 3 tiles north to attack New City #2 instantly.
Any New City #1 problem was solved by Tsing whipping a Choko and the new unit walking 3 tiles to kill.
Only Sitting Bull or Pacal could have theoretically posed a challege, but there were too many Horse Archers and Chokos around to counter the Dog Soldiers and Spears.

Silk City was the Go To target for forming the capital for Colonies 3,4,5, and 6.
It formed an extra Archer 1 time.


This is the most complicated turnset I've ever participated in.
Just need to tech Theology + Feudalism between Turn 63 to Turn 73.

The 500 GPP needs to be a Great Merchant or a Great Prophet.
900 or Theology bulb would help us more than the Great Artist I now feel.
Engineering means that Great Artist is not needed.

Had no problems building 9 or 10 more Wonders.
Compass + Calendar for 14 more points is great for only 1100, but we don't need.

150,000 city solves a lot of problems.

Kait! How long did that test take?

Can we possibly win 2t faster?? We'd be at 135k after 58 missions, right?

Kait! How long did that test take?

Can we possibly win 2t faster?? We'd be at 135k after 58 missions, right?

Ya, we'd have 90/100 points on T73.

Would have to make it up with 14 points from Compass + Calendar.
Or complete a few more wonders.

Would absolutely have to try and vassal Churchill in that scenario.

The good news is WastinTime was right about DeGaulle's #2 city.
It can be conquered 2 turns after Berlin on Turn 64 if we get really lucky.

Hopefully giving Hamburg back to Germany on T56 after pillaging Rice will lure over some Workers for us to capture.


Chariot might be worth suiciding to pillage that Iron as soon as German war restarts.


I think settling all matters by Turn 75, and getting the Victory screen on Turn 76 should be our goal.

There are too many unknowns to push for planning Turn 73 or Turn 74.
This spy thing has a fair amount of randomness built into it.
And the Deity AI all have Iron to counter our Horse Archers, not to mention the Redcoats!

Having the homeland sending 0 reinforcements to The Front before T63 and relying everything on the Bomber and St. Petersburg is already stressful.

We'd also probably have 1-2pts worth of culture in Yan'an and Beijing.

To be honest, there are so many points of failure in the current plan, it is hard to count them all.

1) Stalin whips ToA complete early, we lose 300ToA gold, and Engineering is delayed around 3 Turns vastly hurting our 150,000 city efforts.
2) If Toku city is building a Worker, we will have to sacrifice the AP City Settler south of Moscow Worker to found a new island city T60 northwest of Tokyo just for Korea. Moscow will have to whip a Settler T62 so not a huge deal.
3) Hamburg gift by T66 or Worker + Warrior kill in New York is needed to get Korea to talk peace by T58. 0 War success against Korea once the Toku war starts is a 7 turn wait which is a disaster.
4) Korea WILL get bronze online T56 and upgrade any Warriors in New York into Axeman.
It sucks, but it can't be stopped. Will bring over a Chariot.
New York starting a CGII Archer after the Barracks finishes on T56 will be a bit stressful.

5) Fat finger mistake on 0 margin for error Great People plan in Gua + Shanghai, delays whole game 1 turn.
6) Fat finger mistake screws up fail gold for Engineering, costing us many turns.

7) Taoism spread to Gold City fails because of Islam on T56, halting the game. 326 Fail Gold is being generated in Nanjing T57, the only city that can make a Tao missionary.
Theoretically, Yanan the capital can make Tao Missionary by T63, but the new colony won't have Open Borders most likely. It's a coin flip, and +40% more expensive missions would be a bad start!
2 pop whipping Tao Missionary in Nanjing would lose us a vital 126 Fail gold.

8) Roosevelt gets a lucky Theology bulb, and starts AP trying to ruin our game.

9) Korea's 1 city island gets captured somehow

10) Churchill or Roosevelt surges in power, refusing to vassal at the end of the game.

11) Silly mistake gets Bomber killed, making all Conquest double in difficulty.

I'm sure I left out a few.
I worry I don't know about a few.

Can we give Wang Indonesia and raze the Japanese capital? That way we don't need troops on the New Japan island and there's no danger of barb capture (though there are no barbs in the real game, correct?)

Do we need to pre-gift some cities to Roosevelt? I mean, do we know that he will accept war success cities other than Chong and NY in the end? He could found more cities or capture barb cities in America.

Out of everything, the AP is my biggest fear. It's a major reason why I was against Engineering before.

Note that Churchill doesn't have Rifling in the test game.

Can we give Wang Indonesia and raze the Japanese capital? That way we don't need troops on the New Japan island and there's no danger of barb capture (though there are no barbs in the real game, correct?)

Do we need to pre-gift some cities to Roosevelt? I mean, do we know that he will accept war success cities other than Chong and NY in the end? He could found more cities or capture barb cities in America.

Out of everything, the AP is my biggest fear. It's a major reason why I was against Engineering before.

Note that Churchill doesn't have Rifling in the test game.

Indonesia is good for 6 or 7 purely in trade routes to our mainland coastal cities.
And it does help tech later.
It is a good decision to make T54 before the chop happens when we maybe get a look at Japan's city.

Pre - Gift cities to Roosevelt? hmm
In theory we could build Wealth in all cities, get a large per turn briefly, gift it all to America, give him 4 cities, then DoW getting the money back.
I think we will be ok since we have New York and Chong in our hands.

AP should be fine 3S of Moscow with 12 or 13 forests.
All 17 empire workers run out of stuff to do around T65, and AP only takes 10 chops with Taoism.

Teching Theology is harder than chopping it.
If there is no Great Merchant or Great Prophet on Turn 65, then we will have to really wrack our brains on how to get Theology + Feudalism in time.

Once Golden Age runs out, the test game was losing a lot of gold per turn.
I think we need to stay in Representation in that case, and commit to vassalizing Churchill if French chopping does not work out.
That means whipping a lot of Maceman T70 to T75 to drag the World Average Power rating up enough to get Churchill to surrender while Roosevelt is still alive.

The 5 chops in Chong should go into Shwedagon Paya, something every city can contribute fail gold towards.
Cash it in T69, race to Theology by T71, build AP by T73, vote T74
Feudalism by ???
AP or Hagia in Chongqing is unrealistic now since we are so poor due to Engineering.

ANy way to avoid the WE negmods with those vassals? That is, plant those cities somewhere where there won't be close borders?

Can't we raze Korea's copper mine?

Can't we raze Korea's copper mine?

If we step on it and wait 1 turn sure, but Korea can still upgrade in between turns.

It not a huge deal with Choko plus Chariot.

ANy way to avoid the WE negmods with those vassals? That is, plant those cities somewhere where there won't be close borders?

Honestly, it is best to have the colonies closer for emergency whips.

Far away also means they won't be Size 2 by Turn 64.

We just have to eat the slightly higher spy detection rate when performing missions.

Best way to avoid Worst enemy?
I'd say if someone was at war with Korea, but then a colony won't form.

In fact we better pray no one Dows Korea in between turns!

1) Can't we just give Hamburg to someone and recapture, then gift it in revolt so a colony forms with only 3 cities?

2) Improving spy losses. Couldn't we gift 3-4 cities (but NOT GoldCity). Then, next turn, after the colony forms, gift GoldCity to the new AI to perform spy missions. No losses IBT.
(fyi, GoldCity is 9 tiles from NewYork)

Hm, I was thinking siccing Mehmed on Korea would be an OB solution, but if Korea won't vassalize in that case, then no good.

It seems like each extra spy costs us a huge amount of failgold. A better compromise is to create more failgold, fewer spies, and maybe WT's solution of gifting Gold CIty on even turns. That also guarantees GC won't have units in it, right?

Did you guys see Deckhand's post in the maintenance thread?

A question has come up regarding the Political Bureau scores.
I don't want to discuss it here.
Would each team please post in their thread how they expect to meet this requirement? Along with how you are calculating the score.
If you are still considering different approaches, then post the various likely options.
Post your plan, don't do any rethinking or speculating.
Thanks.

Here is a draft - any comments?

We don't have a definitive plan yet, but the options are:

Spoiler :

Culture ministry: 90-100 points
Spread culture with spies in one city, up to 150,000

Science ministry: 28 points
Complete the remaining classical era techs (Currency, Construction, Compass and Calendar still remaining)

Civil ministry: 95-100 points
We intend to kill most AIs, leaving only 1-2 alive. That will guarantee us no worse than #3 in any of the Demographics categories. We are currently #1 in 6-7 categories, and think that we can be #1 in at least 8 by the victory turn.

Diplomatic ministry: 58 points
Build AP, elect ourselves AP Resident, control 99% of the AP religion's population.

Military ministry: 100 points
Kills: 6-7
Population: greater than 80% (only the American cities and possibly London will remain in others' hands)
Land area: current 12.58%, but should go up quite a bit, probably circa 20%
Score = 30pts * (75%/35%) + 30pts * (12.5%/60%) + 40pts * (6/8) = 64.28pts + 6.25pts + 30pts = 100.53pts - round down

Economy ministry: 0 points

Construction ministry: 42+ points
We currently own:
01 Palace
02 Great Wall
03 Dai Miao
04 Kremlin
05 Great Lighthouse
06 Hanging Gardens
07 Pyramids

We definitely intend to build:
08 Apostolic Palace
09 National Epic
10 Heroic Epic
11 Parthenon
12 Temple of Artemis
13 Great Library

That gives us 42 points.

We could build other wonders as needed to complete the 420 and balance the win date (Colossus, Chichen Itza, Angkor Wat, Shwedagon Paya, etc.)

Page 18 of 20, April 4th, 2018 to April 7th, 2018:

Spoiler :

I would just post that and add that we'll remain flexible on the Cultural, Wonder, and Science (and maybe others if applicable) as weapproach the final turn. He's probably wondering about the Religious tally (58 > 50) but doesn't want to help teams that didn't figure that out.

Ok, that sounds good. Kait and WT should also comment before posting.

The only other one that could be open to interpretation is the population score under military - they could decide to cap it at 30 points, which would definitely hurt.

No point speculating, though. I assume Deckhand will tell us right away if there's any issue. It's actually a good thing to check their interpretation at this point.

Agree to post that.

1) Can't we just give Hamburg to someone and recapture, then gift it in revolt so a colony forms with only 3 cities?

2) Improving spy losses. Couldn't we gift 3-4 cities (but NOT GoldCity). Then, next turn, after the colony forms, gift GoldCity to the new AI to perform spy missions. No losses IBT.
(fyi, GoldCity is 9 tiles from NewYork)

Juggling Hamburg's revolt is weird.
It usually resets to 3 turns, but when given to Korea the 2nd time on T62 it was gone.

Honestly, New York as a 4th colony 1 time felt fine.

Gifting Gold City after the colony forms causes the spread culture mission to delay 1 turn, delaying our end date 1 turn.

Every Spy has no choice but to endure the Closed Borders detection rate when the colony forms.

Right, Gold City is near enough to New York.

What if just cap everyone, everyone has AP religion and we have less than 75%?

Edit: in other words, we have to give Churchill and Roosevelt AP religion cities at the end of the game and make sure they get 25% of the population.

Edit2: In the first screenshot, the conditions are met. In the second, the player has over 75% population and the number of votes is red - ineligible.

...We are changing this calculation as follows:
Victory Votes can be counted even if you are not eligible to propose the victory; however these are capped at 25 unless you are eligible. Thus max points from AP is 50; unless eligible to propose victory, then it is 58.

Spoiler specifically :

25 points for AP leader
25 points max for AP votes (if ineligible to propose election); 33 points max if eligible to propose AP victory (25 * %Displayed/75%)

What if just cap everyone, everyone has AP religion and we have less than 75%?

Edit: in other words, we have to give Churchill and Roosevelt AP religion cities at the end of the game and make sure they get 25% of the population.

Edit2: In the first screenshot, the conditions are met. In the second, the player has over 75% population and the number of votes is red - ineligible.

Ya, that is a good thought Bbp.

Since we can't gift cities to vassals, we need to make sure Roosevelt and Churchill have Tao Cities and greater than 25% of the AP votes before we DOW them.
It is a bit of a headache, but 8 points are 8 points.

That means a lot of core Tao cities need to complete their wonders before T74 starts so we can give them away T74, capitulate 2 civs on T75, and get a T76 victory screen.


Perhaps we can revolt out of Tao on T76 to lower our voting power before submitting the game?
I am unsure if no one is AP religion if AP victory can be proposed.

What if just cap everyone,

I wasn't sure religious would be legal with only vassals.

I think they might have screwed up rv so bad that only 49 pts is possible. Depends on rounding and if rv is legal at exactly 75%.

Yea. There's no way to get the 8 pts back. Gifting so we are below 75 means we can't get even 50 That way. Stick with 100%

Oh wait i c. Our vassal will vote for us. Still. We cant get 58 pts.

The only way I see us getting 33 points is if we are the AP leader,our election opponent owns the AP and has at most 1% of the votes, and our vassals have another 25%. Then we get the full 33 points. But then of course, we lose 4 points for not having the AP. Net 29 points.

But will our vassals even vote for us? They have to have 8 hidden plusmods, right? That's not going to happen is it?

That means a lot of core Tao cities need to complete their wonders before T74 starts so we can give them away T74, capitulate 2 civs on T75, and get a T76 victory screen.

Wait, if we build wonders in a city then gift it to our vassal, does that count as us owning the wonder? I doubt it.

~~~

okay, I just looked at bbp's screenies. Does that mean vassals always vote for us, at any negmod? If so, then one simple workaround is to build the AP in a non-Tao city and make the AP non-Tao. Then it's easier to make sure Roosy and Church have it and at least 25%. In fact, they can have all of the votes except our AP city votes, right? We get them all.

But what I don't get is, how does it qualify if we don't have an opponent? Is one of our vassals our opponent? It doesn't seem like it from the bbp screenies.

Wait, if we build wonders in a city then gift it to our vassal, does that count as us owning the wonder? I doubt it.

Oops!

Yes, you are right.

Why are we discussing this privately? Staff should read along

But what I don't get is, how does it qualify if we don't have an opponent? Is one of our vassals our opponent? It doesn't seem like it from the bbp screenies.

Here is a slightly modified version of my test. I made everyone a vassal and won by conquest the turn before the vote - the Religious Leader vote comes up on the victory turn. (Have to win by conquest, because the vote comes up at the beginning of the turn). I was the only candidate. The following turn the results are announced - 100% vote.

I don't see how that wouldn't meet the requirements. I think it proves that it is theoretically possible to have an AP victory vote under the following conditions:
- All AIs are vassals of the human player.
- Every player has at least one AP religion city.
- No one has more than 75% of the vote.

I think they messed up the diplo ministry. It should have just been capped at 50pts for Leader+75%. All this business with being able to propose a vote is confusing for everyone, admins included.

Remember that vassals won't accept city gifts the same way opponents would.

Here is a slightly modified version of my test. I made everyone a vassal and won by conquest the turn before the vote - the Religious Leader vote comes up on the victory turn. (Have to win by conquest, because the vote comes up at the beginning of the turn). I was the only candidate. The following turn the results are announced - 100% vote.

I don't see how that wouldn't meet the requirements. I think it proves that it is theoretically possible to have an AP victory vote under the following conditions:
- All AIs are vassals of the human player.
- Every player has at least one AP religion city.
- No one has more than 75% of the vote.

I think they messed up the diplo ministry. It should have just been capped at 50pts for Leader+75%. All this business with being able to propose a vote is confusing for everyone, admins included.

Okay, thx for testing this. I was wondering if it was possible to run this simultaneity. If I understand correctly (can't remember), the vote comes up before we can do anything that turn. So the sequence has to be:

1. vassalize two remaining AIs
2. end turn
3. get AP vote some time at the beginning of the conquest victory turn.

I think you should just post your above post in our regular thread with an alert to Deckhand and see what he says. As you say, this appears to qualify under the conditions he listed. At the same time, it doesn't seem to qualify in the spirit of the RV, which is what he was trying to abide by I think. That is, we're "eligible" for a vote, but we can't win by RV with everyone vassalized. AP votes have always had quirks in terms of getting a vote and then if something changes before the next turn, the vote is altered or nixed.

fyi, we don't need the AP vote turn to be timed with anything. All you need to make clear to DH is that we plan to submit the final save with us and 2 vassals where we have <75% of the AP religion.

fyi, we don't need the AP vote turn to be timed with anything. All you need to make clear to DH is that we plan to submit the final save with us and 2 vassals where we have <75% of the AP religion.

True. Nonetheless, bbp's tests show the conundrum for Deckhand. We need to know what we're going to get.

Ok, I posted in the thread. I wanted to have a private discussion, so as not to potentially give away a competitive advantage. I'm thinking now that they should just reconsider all this and cap the points at 50. It's ill-conceived.

The messed up thing about all of this is that you would actually get the full 58 points in the scenario I described, but less than that by winning an RV (since the other candidate would have some of the percentage vote). Right?

Page 19 of 20, April 7th, 2018 to May 1st, 2018:

Spoiler :

Ok, I posted in the thread. I wanted to have a private discussion, so as not to potentially give away a competitive advantage. I'm thinking now that they should just reconsider all this and cap the points at 50. It's ill-conceived.

The messed up thing about all of this is that you would actually get the full 58 points in the scenario I described, but less than that by winning an RV (since the other candidate would have some of the percentage vote). Right?

As long as you and your fellow voters get 99%, then you get the full 58 points. So in this scenario, the only way to win via RV and get 58 points is if your opponent own the AP and has at most 1% of the votes. (And then you miss out on the 4 points for the AP.)

Okay, based on Deckhand's response, are we back to 58 RV points? And we have to make sure that Roosy and Churchill have but don't adopt Taoism, right? That's the way to get the full 100%, as I understand it.

Edit: nvm, posted in the thread - no need to keep it private any longer.

I just spotted an exploit on the military points calculation:

Military Ministry: 30 points * population% / 35% + 30 points * Land area % / 60% + 40 points * (destroyed civilization + vassal civilization )/ 8

The 8 in the denominator is constant so we'll be multiplying the 40 by greater than 1. A lot greater if we create a large number of vassals. I think Deckhand actually intended that to be 40 points max. Then again, he's the one who put the destroyed + vassal, which is obviously greater than 8 automatically for conquest. Plus, the other two 30 scores can go higher than 30...

Never mind.

Ha! xpost with Kait's PPP...

Hmmm… I think that the “vassal” in the formula is for starting AIs that capitulates. I think that the exploit you are describing is definitely not what DH would have intended, but, as you say, not really much different from what we are proposing to do with population points (i.e. to not cap it at 30pts).

Let's just assume it's a max of 40 points. Better to not give other teams any hints. The culture gambit is too powerful.

Yea we can assume they intended the word civilizations to mean original starting civilizations

On techs, I was wondering if we can gift a tech to a newly created Korean vassal to get +4 plusmods, maybe giving us a chance for OBs.

Also, I cant remember if we discussed this, but is it possible for Korea and us to share a common war with Mehmed, thus allowing us to get OBs with Korea each time we CF? Iirc, maybe the problem was Korea won't create the vassal if he's at war?

yea, we weren't having much luck with new vassals during war.

The problem with the tech gift is when we are WE. That won't wear off instantly. But not every new vassal should be our WE from the get go, right? So we can try this.

Also, if any of the cities we gift to the vassal have none of our culture and are closest to his capital, they would give us liberation points, right?

T74 - Korea was gifted Gold City, found out yes you have to wait 1 turn before Spread mission activates. >_<

T75 - Korea
...
3 Successful Mission

In your test, you did the last colony T73 and Korea T75.
Was this our latest analysis? That we are not using Korea's EPs 1t after like we thought we could?

If that's true then wouldn't we just not make a colony and use Korea's T73?

In your test, you did the last colony T73 and Korea T75.
Was this our latest analysis? That we are not using Korea's EPs 1t after like we thought we could?

If that's true then wouldn't we just not make a colony and use Korea's T73?

I would not recommend it.
Doing Korea T75 put us over 100 points even though Korea adopted Taoism, lowering our religious bonus from -40% to -25%.

In our current real game, doing Korea T73 might very well lower our expected 79 points. Or our 83 points if we have some luck.

The final T73 colony will have to be instantly conquered, so that means extra Horse Archers for all 4 colonies.

Also, doing a colony T73 preserves our ability to go for more points T74 or T75 if needed.

Should we have this conversation posted publicly? As part of the HomeSlice thread? Lots of good discussion here.

I think that's the right thing to do. People will wonder how we were able to recycle EPs.

Yes, I was going to ask the same question. Is there an easy way to do that?

Should we have this conversation posted publicly?

Sounds good to me.

Should we have this conversation posted publicly? As part of the HomeSlice thread? Lots of good discussion here.

Absolutely. How? Can an admin just make it a public conversation and link it from our first page? That seems easiest.

I'll ask.

Absolutely. How? Can an admin just make it a public conversation and link it from our first page? That seems easiest.

AlanH doesn't think that can be done, but he's checking.
The really slow way would be quoting each post. That's a real chore.

Or add anyone who wants to be added. I clicked on Edit COnversation and was allowed to let anyone in the conversation to accept others. Could make it a chain reaction that way. Only so many people really interested for the time being.

Page 20 of 20, May 1st, 2018 to May 3rd, 2018:

Spoiler :

"Copy Conversation/Conversation Message to thread. Allow exporting of entire conversations or selected messages to a thread."
XenForo can do it with 'Conversation Essentials' add-on
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/conversation-essentials.275/

I'll PM AlanH

Anyone object to adding Fippy, elite, and anyone else who wishes to this conversation while we figure out the conversion details? I don't think we badmouthed anyone, did we?

no objection, but it would be nice to get it in public. I don't think you can search it like you can search a single thread, can you?

Sure, no objection.

Hm, I can't find the link to add someone to the conversation. What am I missing?

It only let me add 3 more.

Hm...well, unless each person can add so many, we're stuck. I was hoping we could simply announce that anyone interested can be added. Meanwhile, of course, we still try to solve the long-term problem.

Wow, thanks for adding! You guys have been busy. Seems I have a long bedtime story to read tonight.

Hm...well, unless each person can add so many, we're stuck.

There was an "invite more" option below all of the conversation participants on the right. I don't see it anymore - do you?

There was an "invite more" option below all of the conversation participants on the right. I don't see it anymore - do you?

I'm gonna guess that there may be a permissions thing regarding convos, limiting the number of participants. Either that, or convos are simply limited regardless. I suspect that super admins handle this, but you might send a PM to Alan asking him about the permissions and whether they can be increased for you (or probably a "group" of forum users). Or start a discussion in Site Feedback, which will get direct Admin response.
(Very likely that it was some default setting when the forum was migrated. Other stuff was limited or not available back near the start that were added/adjusted after complaints.

Done!