[BTS] SGOTM 26 - Phoenix Rising

[Gumbolt]

Quick comparison for 1320ad.
PR 1075 bpt. vs HS 1137
Techs
PR have which HS lack.
SConductors 10140
Refrigeration 6240
Communism 4368
Steam Power 4992
Also had MS. But not required.
25740 beakers.

HS had
Steel 4368
and Biology.
4368 beakers PR needed. Biology not needed.

21372 difference.Less 20% discount 17097 raw beakers.
So over 20 turns they need 854 beakers a turn more than us. We were averaging 1200-1300 beakers near the end.

So med* needs to repay 8k in beakers.

I was in a rush.

 

[lymond]

Biology was needed...and we did have it

 

[Gumbolt]

Edited to med.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

hmmm...they built quite a few forest preserves. Does that do anything for them? Better chance at forest growth?

I think it does increase a bit chance of a forest regrowth - but it is not the reason it is usually built. It gives you a free specialist with National Park, can be easily much more powerful than National Epic.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

List of techs we traded for free?
IW
literature
Aesthetic
Monarchy
Construction.
Fuedalism
Guilds
Banking
Constitution
Corporation
MT

Must be more. Trying to remember full list. *Edited list*

Many of them are military techs, that AI is often reluctant to trade. Do they just loved you so much? Or you did not these urgently and were OK with waiting until certain (high) percentage of AIs have them?

Would be great to have a larger post on your strategy of cultivating AI BFFs and accelerating their research.

 

[Tonny]

What comes to mind why we did so well here.
1. Reading the map
2. Only tech what's really required
3. Heavily discuss the victory options
4. Consensus
5. Maybe the real game winner after choosing AP. Knowing the vote mechanics.
6. Micro and testing extremely early for 30 turns more in the game (turns 15-45 testing)

 

[Tonny]

Do they just loved you so much?

Yep, they loved us

 

[lymond]

Many of them are military techs, that AI is often reluctant to trade. Do they just loved you so much? Or you did not these urgently and were OK with waiting until certain (high) percentage of AIs have them?.

Certainly did not need those urgently, and actually they would be techs I'd generally trade for in any game for that matter. Out of those, construction is one that is probably hardest to trade for usually. Others not that bad. And Friendly AIs will trade most anything.

 

[Gumbolt]

So Turn 22. Yes we had myst. We went AH myst for border pops. Cows and sheep both improved. 1 clams netted. 1 WB exploring. All cities size 2. + 20 science - 7 gold. 2 workers
HS +17 science -8 gold. One city still size 1. One workboat. 4 resources improved. 2 workers.

T26. 3 pop in cap. 2 pop in both other cities. Clams city likely reason for land. Canal was settled last.


'From LTC.

PR

For those who missed it, PR got the CS slingshot (in all likelihood) T84, revolted to Bureau, and got IW T85.

That’s after CoL on ~T78 and revolting to Confu.

Daring btards, risking a slow Oracle like that...

Note that their slow Oracle increased their chances of Confu holy city on Stone island at least somewhat. But having all 7 cities lowered it.'

So IW was got by T84. We had COl and philosophy which was bulbed on the same turn. Civic switch to caste and pacifism. We were already running rep. GLH 1800BC. Oracle went 825bc to someone else. Hadn't switched religion at that point. With Pacifism a religion increase GPP by 100%. All part of master plan.

'From LTC

Above my pay grade, Maestro. You tell me.

I haven’t studied Fippy’s or elite’s play but my impression from this SG is that they have a strategy of doing things ASAP, whatever it is, settling, whatever.

Wait... maybe Castes??? Presumably they’ve had libraries for a while, maybe to crank out a GS? Bulb Philo?'

Bingo!

Philo + Pacifism will lead to more GSes pretty fast. Snowball. They’re probably building Pyramids as we speak.

Already built sir. We had mids 950BC.

Mylene strong point is micro. Her weak point is AP wins. Quite ironic really.

Wastintime

If they didn't get any failgold, maybe they had to bulb Math and then Oracle CS.
explains the delay from CoL to Oracle.

Got loads of fail gold. Problem was SH didn't get built till 775bc! No bulb on maths. Self teched with GLH commerce.

LTC

Plus, if they bulb Philo when they get CS, they can revolt to bureau+pacifism. Having planned that, they knew castes was another turn of revolts so why not sooner?.

Not sure Civil Service was in our plans. Rep scientists and pacifism mixed with AP was.

Alpha is 4k so maybe they got it T71, then had to gift something before they could get something T72, but there are no remaining techs with 2k power.

This is baffling.

For me too. We had maths but no alphabet. We had 5 foreign trade routes including 3 from Russia and 2 from SB. Moscow worth 3c. Rest mostly 2c. Of course after x turns of peace these grow nicely. We had scouted the 1 dot island cities by this point. We often upload saves twice. Sometimes just to check micro.

LTC

PR Scenario 1

: Beelined BW-Writing, skipping TW-Pottery

Then the T71 +6k power could indicate a late TW. Whipped 3 libraries T55? Why no drop in score and power?

PR Scenario 2: TW-Pottery-Writing

What caused the T56 jump from 6cpt to 12cpt?
This should be obvious but I’m missing it. We have a lot of data.'

GLH!

wastintime

GLH makes sense, right?
Sounds like we're going to find out hard early GLH is going to be to overcome. With only 1 island, it's a bit crippled unless they explored and found a few AI.

Already met Russians. Ai were expanding too. Sweet!

Kait

If we are semi-isolated with Sitting Bull only, then GLH is crippled ya.

If they can meet a ton of AI cities, stay at peace with them, and build harbors and custom houses, they can reach +4 per turn trade routes.

Custom houses cost almost as much as universities.
Takes 90 turns to overcome fail gold I think.

What an exciting game

I too favor Colossus.
We can DOW the whole world and it pays the same each turn.

If we are going for mass scientists and meet a bunch of AI, then GLH would be better I think.'

The end bit. GLH really paid off here. We got compass pretty early and lucked out seeing a German border pop near Russia. Our exploring caravels found HRE and other AI quickly.

All these comments were taken from page 75 on Home Slices thread. Nice to see we kept you interested. Replies in bold.

T 75
PR 104 bpt -52 libraries 3. Granaries 4. Light Houses 3. PR pop 25. We had just whipped a library and granary. Heavily whipping at this point. So Add 1 to G and Lib for next turn. With caste switch coming this made sense.

HS 96bpt -54 gold. Med/PH ahead. Libraries 1 Granaries 3. No lighthouses!
HS Ahead in tech but 8 bpt behind in raw science at 100%. HS pop 26
PR with more granaries and libraries fitting in with our GP and scientist push. Mids 2 turns off. We had whipped library into mids too. Had 2 workers chopping. Mids/COL/philosophy likely reason our score jumped past yours. That and population regrowth from whips and granaries built. Mylene and Tonny micro and testing was great here.

 

[lymond]

Interesting stuff. Easier to read by putting their stuff in quotes.

So they thought we did a CS sling?
they'll likely be shocked when they see we did not build one cottage

 

[Gumbolt]

I didn't quote as it would inform them I had?

 

[lymond]

You can put text in neutral quotes.

 

[Gumbolt]

P85HS LTC

PR clearly got an empire development advantage on us by settling Clams(?) T5/6. They apparently teched Writing in the 50s enabling earlier exploration of SB land. They might have popped a GS in tge 70s and bulbed Philo in the 80s (+5 ).

We have a chance to regain some advantage by trading for Philo, but we need Alpha. In delaying meeting AIs we’re gambling on getting Alpha from either SB or Peter, instead of having several AIs who could get it for us.'

Spot on.

P167 LTC

'If PR is not beelining Sushi, any ideas what they’re doing instead? Mining, Inc?

Communism for a hammer economy?

Wastintime

'no mining resources.

StateProp workshops? Can't do those on riverlessTundra, so I don't see that working.

They may have sushi, What makes you think they don't? If they're whipping as much as they are growing, there wouldn't be a steep score increase.

And wouldn't a score of 2200 mean they're growing beyond normal limits? probably with sushi. Gotta be some population to that score.
I'd like to see how they could get to sushi faster than we are, but maybe they found a way in early T140's. Graph might indicate that.

We had no interest in corps. *Mass Media/ Civilized Jewlers* (edit) was easiest option for a corp. We were beelining super conductor. We 4xbulbed Electricty and grabbed Superconductor with Lib. We slow built the Lab. We then back tracked for communism and state property. Much better than a free trade route.

1130ad we had SC and communism. Most of our GLH trade routes were now 4c. So 8x6=48 or just under commerce a turn. T140 we had chemistry and astronomy. 1/3rd through SM.

P202 LTC

PR’s score graph

Are they running HR and spamming warriors? (Not Sushi cuz no sushi culture...)

Or simply teching so fast?

Likely the last one. 4xGS on electricity. Mixed in with UoS, TM and OU. Golden age 450ad.

Wastintime

Seems like they have to be cus I have not been able to figure out another reason for hi score. It can't be more wonders than us cus we have more culture, it can't be land--well maybe a few tiles, I hope it's not tech. So it must be population.'
I'll be happy to see how HR performs. Hard to beat REP tho.

100% ran rep most of the game. When you ran as many scientists as we did it's a no brainer.

Taking a break. So far mostly LC studying our graph.

100 more pages to go.

 

[Tonny]

Mylene strong point is micro. Her weak point is AP wins. Quite ironic really.

lol...
actually it was My's epiphany on AP win with MM that brought us the victory (post 194 if I recall correctly)

 

[Fippy]

Gumbo is right in some way thou, i never liked AP in past games
For this one i had fun testing with it so that changed, we also excelled in managing AIs by buffing them and having good relations.
Even Bully contributed with Construction

 

[Tonny]

To be able to do the AP opened the GLH for us and our fast tech rate.

Luckily I had some experience with AP games to chime in here

 

[Gumbolt]

Turning weaknesses into strengths.

I think we did ponder what Home Slices were up to. They certainly used the granary trick quite a lot. Including using halt growth to avoid additional costs where a city would of grown. Kaitzilla was all over that. Credit where credit is due there. Not sure which SGOTM we started to use that trick. I think we have used it before. Seems to be standard play here now.

 

[lymond]

Not sure which SGOTM we started to use that trick.

Probably the one where My joined our team I recall Iz being quite familiar with the trick too.

I don't believe we were even optimizing granaries at all before she joined us.

The MM not obsoleting AP vote on turn of discovery find was monumentally brilliant.

 

[Gumbolt]

P288 has some good chat about their sushi plan.

LTC

Our score is +1 on PR. How does our population compare to what theirs is likely to be maxed out at without Sushi?

We had some pretty big cities. Our capital was size 18 without Sushi. Many other cities size 14-15 too.

Wastintime

They need a corp and could have Cereal Mills which does not have a culture component. However, there are only 4 resources (+3 food). So that makes no sense cus you need Electricity and Refrigeration.

Wait, was Medicine/sushi an optional tech? Did we do an extra 7000 just to get sushi?

Corp was created on final turn. Otherwise it costs us -4G a turn?

Kaitzilla

If we made the wrong choice, the Pheonixians will show us.

I'm happy with Sushi.

5 extra scientists in 5 cities is +55
5 more in Science is +100
+350 per turns pays back in 20 turns.

We also can get Ironworks and UN+ Wall Street done in good time with the extra food.

I think we discussed this back on July 2nd.

Heck, our most recent Great Scientist worth 1800 would have been a dud if it was born a few turns later.
Thanks Sushi!

It was founded T154 and completely spread on T163.
So about +600 for each city over the course of the game.

It costs Emperor maintenance, not the horrifying Deity maintenance.
Its competition, Cereal Mills, is a bit of a dud on this map.
+1 for Wheat and Rice.
More from other AI.
No border pops to get lots of extra forests.

Yes we twigged once you can bulb fission the GS were only good for academies or settled GS in the capital. Worth 30-40 beakers a turn by time we got to the late game.


Kaitzilla

Right, a 10k tech.
We gave that up for Sushi.

Sushi Maintenance was 117 per turn on T182, but we got 56 per turn from HQ.
So it is -61 per turn maintenance.
Call it -3600 for the game.

I still think 60 turns of kicking butt with Sushi put us ahead of the opportunity cost.
+600 for each city by the end of the game.

**Edit**
Hmm, ok we aren't that far ahead of "no sushi" now that I look.
Thought we could get more Sushi resources

Mitchum

Do you think PR just whipped the UN? If so, they could be finishing at about the same time we will. I see no uptick in culture though. They have to be going for Diplo or Religious though since they never had much of an army.

No we whipped about 7-8+ builds which we had put hammers into. Didn't need the pop for AP as we already had enough AI votes. No one was in the AP religion.

Wastintime

If they did GLH, like we suspect then it has to be religious. Maybe just whipped a lab and whipped our butts?

Lab was built once we had SC.

LTC

PR switched to Slavery without loss of turn so they saved a golden age for now. The grid shows T210 so their whipping wasn’t on T-Game over. Hard to believe they whipped before finishing their teching so...

If they beat us by 10t, that’s an ugly beatdown. At this level of competition, we shouldn’t lose by more than a turn or two, so will tell us about our strategic choices.

Yes whipped so builds completed for final turn. Some cities had 2 builds to whip. This was our 3rd golden age.

Kaitzilla

If Phoenix Rising got Turn 211, I will happily tip my hat to them.

We've played a tight game so far, always pushing to finish faster.

How did they get a 20xp unit?
I don't see much on their power graph, so not much of an army.
Their Sitting Bull is still alive?

How did they get all their buildings? (multipliers)
Their score graph does not indicate a lot of whipping.

Ours is like a jagged saw, dripping with blood from the whip

Their corporation is probably Cereal Mills, so perhaps they went one more tech and got Labs quickly?

The huge whipping is clearly significant.
I hope it is Kremlin, but I fear it might be whipping to get their religious vote below 75% of the world total.

We built we musketeers and used galleons/frigate to reach 30xp required. HRE had a lot of fodder stacks that gave easy wins. We traded for iron off Louis. Whipping was not required to keep our vote below 75%. Only 2 of our cities had xtianity.

Mirrorguard

AP hammer? If they get theology and Christianity, their cathedral is half price with access to stone. +6 before sci-method and +4 after.

Whipped academy in final few turns. Hence why our score dropped nearly 200 points near end.

Kaitzilla

Simply excellent then.

Extremely early Clam City and cottages everywhere?
Fast gems and an Academy?

I can't wait to see what they did.

And the final obstacle of an early AP construction, the victory vote every 10 turns?
To us it seemed intolerable.
Perhaps they arranged it so no resolution was possible, then on those special 4 turns spread and got the victory vote at a good time?
That means it is not 1 chance every 10 turns with a 20 turn wait for chair election, but more like 4 every 14 I think.

They also could not Oracle Civil Service. Hmm
They also could not build a religious shrine.

Early Great Lighthouse also means a focus on early Theology.
If the 4 AI in the new world get AP first, the game is a bust with no UN possible.
Unless they did something heroic like monitor the AI hammers, spread Christianity to the target city, and did a religion flip with a spy at the critical moment.
Then vote themselves the chair and hope the AI city does not spread Christianity.

No early academy. Mylene has given a good game summary in lurker thread. We tested the AP vote.The timer for the vote was trigger by date we spread the religion to the final AI. We had worked out last possible date we needed to do this for T210 vote. Really did little or no management on AP till close to end. Just kept conf spread enough to keep local AI friendly.

Wastintime

This game was one big brain fart. We had no interest in sushi until (seeing Peter's seafood) we hoped/calculated sushi might give 30+ food and dreamed there would also be some calendar happies around for that to work, but when the map was revealed, we didn't stop and change the plan.
By then, I don't know about ya'all, but I forgot that Medicine was not even required We probably woulda done free Radio for 9360.
With sushi working like we imagined, on a normal map, our cities would be size 25 already. That was supposed to be ~T205 Superconductors/win. (50 turns after sushi)

Bulbing Edu was probably fine for quicker uni's and Oxford--one of the last things we did right, but after that, we went the wrong direction. With no major booster like corporations, there's no reason to bulb virtually-useless techs like PrintingPress, Chem and SciMethod (killing our monasteries and Sankore). Academies give more if you can be patient and wait for it. Probably no reason to build forges or even most courthouses, No extra bank, market, grocer, no extra barracks, etc. There really wasn't much to build.
Simple game really. Just turtle-up with Academies. Work all the coast tiles. Cooperate with the AI. I'm kinda sad we didn't get to play that game to compare our failgold/wonderbread and directed-AI-research plans. I thought all of that went well. I think our city locations are good too. Curious how different that aspect will be.

Anyway, we can keep on executing well on our horrible strategy. At least the pressure is off, Mitchum!
I'll check for any open items in the PPP and play later today.

We think we could of knocked a few turns off T211 if we had fed the AI techs more sooner. We worried about privateers that never appeared.

LTC

Imo we went awry on T5 when, with plenty of map knowledge, we failed to study the map and notice how powerful 2Clams was with its river plains tiles, relative to the other tundra sites.

2Clams with minimal distance maintenance not only didn’t slow down tge cow pasture (T14 either way), it was twice closer to Cows for fishing boats.

Then 2Clams was twice closer to Canal for fishing boats.

Of course, as you’ve all mentioned, failing to properly analyze the nature of a deep tech run with 7xOCC was fatal.

All kudos to PR.

LTC

We had totally irrational ambitions:

“SGOTM 26 Announcement - Lady Stoneheart, Queen of the Ice Age

Winter has come - such a long, long Winter that Summer is regarded as a myth, no living person can remember the warmer times. Food is scarce, the land is tough, little grows, some animals are extinct - unable to exist in such harsh conditions.”

There was nothing normal about this map. But my point is that much later on WT analyzed the potential of clams and it has bery high hammer and pop potential. Far more than what had already revealed on T5, which was quite a bit.

I’m curious to read PR’s early analysis snd decision to settle there.

Mylene quickly spotted this city would have good hammers late game. The cancal city was our last one to be settled.

Think that is most of the quotes regards to PR. Sushi debate comments were interesting as we never really took it as a serious option.

 

[lymond]

Gumbo - I would add to that last post or rather amend that we rush-bought quite a few buildings at the end. More than we expected/planned initially simply as we had the gold, and acquired additional gold on final turns from trade - and lower slider. Conf Academy was rush bought - we did not plan to whip KS at the end. Broadcast Tower and Conf Academy were only builds planned for rush buying, while all other builds were setup properly for whips. We simply rush bought several of those instead to save some pop for score, if needed.

Wait, was Medicine/sushi an optional tech? Did we do an extra 7000 just to get sushi?

WT's statement here is telling. PR determined very early what the requisite techs were here per the game requirements. Based on that, it was determined that Cereal and Jewelers were the only Corps found on the requisite tech path, both of which were useless. So early on we determined that Corps would have no bearing on the game and that we'd save a GA to found Jewelers on the last turn. Of course, with GLH we avoided Corps tech to the nth degree, trading for the tech only when Assembly Line path was required/remaining.

Superconductors was essentially our beeline and the tech we used Lib on. Huge to be able to use that on the most expensive tech in this game.

Sushi was certainly discussed and debated, but with Med a non-requisite tech and essentially dead-end, we felt the diversion was not worth the payoff. Limited health/happy resources as well, which we knew rather early on from optics scouting/maps....and the added cost of spread/maintenance.

Kremlin was slow built with a coupla chops, and was integral to our final whip/rush-buy calculations. Many requisite builds/NWs were finished on the final coupla turns, including:
Globe
WP
Intel Agency
Broadcast Tower
Wall Street
Market
HE
Drydock
IW
Industrial Park
Confused Academy

Also, I think it interesting to note that though the order was certainly different, it appears Homies and PR settled the exact same sites.

As for AP, Tonny mapped out the timer early on based on when we completed the AP, including the no resolution 4 turn factor, as Kait had noted. As long as no resolutions are possible then the timer window is simple to plan around. So we knew a range of possible finish dates to shoot for with t210 the most reasonable option based on estimated research requirements. Ton mapped out possible dates to spread X to the last AI such that we could alter the finish date in our favor. The idea here being that we may luck out on AI trades like Steel. The AI was not cooperating with PR on this effort late game - going for things like Rifling, Demo and Military Science instead.

(Note: It was essential to keep one AI from X until the right moment, as all AIs having X initiates the DV vote and; therefore, the "no resolution" factor and; thus, altering the AP window significantly. We actually came extreeeeeemely close to messing this up entirely at one point in the game)

Big to Tonmeister for the work he put in this game on the Maths component.

It should also be note that X was only in two Celtic cities. AP hammers were not a big part of this game.