SGOTM 9 - jeffelammar

[Jove]

Mining and roading mountains and even hills in corrupt areas (whole north) is completely useless!

I agree, almost. To hit our science targets we're going to want to run a lot of ~70% corrupt cities. Mined and rr'd hills and mountains can have some effect at that rate, but we're not ready yet. I totally agree maximizing food now is more important.
I also agree claiming open land is important. We need to make a compromise between crowding for more pop now vs. more open space to allow a higher max pop later. Maybe it's time to take some space from Otto.

We have 90 workers - that should do the job.

I disagree. We'll want to increase our population by hundreds to reach our science goals, plus work a lot of land, plus build a lot of improvements... Consider, 90 workers, all planting, chopping, and irrigating, can generate 100spt! Equivalent to 400gpt. That'd help! But then we'd need still more to stuff into too-small cities... it's most efficient to skim fast growing cities to cram slow-growing ones. Pretty much until we have no more room I think.

We don't need a courthouse in carthage, no granaries (any more) no temples (at the moment) to get those fishes - we need settlers to use all tiles we can get immediately. Even a harbor (in Iznik) is useless (unless it works fish) as it only provides two food per tile, which in corrupt areas does not support a single beaker but just the citizen that works it.

I totally agree that we want more settlers. But we can't give up on infrastructure now. Courthouses en masse have the power to lower corruption over the whole empire. Temple + fish + harbor = size 12 city, worth doing.

So, y'know, that's why we have these discussion threads. I mostly agree with you, but I think abandoning our worker-spamming now is a long-term mistake.

@denyd & Paul#42: Thanks for answering the specialist question. So, corrupt-area build order: courthouse->library->police station? I'll try to back it up with some numbers later.

 

[Paul#42]

I plan to run a little Test game tonight with some backward OCC-Civ and examine how fast they spread in unprotected enemy territory - or did anybody test that already?

Sorry, I overestimated my library. There's absolutely no game with a comparable situation and it's quite an effort (for me) to set one up. Maybe someone else has a fitting game (Or spare time to set it up)? I think it would be worth trying...

Although with team Klarius losing ~400 tiles in 20 turns it looks like quite a raid India is performing...

 

[Paul#42]

So, y'know, that's why we have these discussion threads. I mostly agree with you, but I think abandoning our worker-spamming now is a long-term mistake.

It just kills me to see a core town like Stockholm (~20% corrupt) at size 3 providing just 6 beakers instead of the 30-40 it could provide at size 8-10. And to see two flood plains unused in our core.

@denyd & Paul#42: Thanks for answering the specialist question. So, corrupt-area build order: courthouse->library->police station? I'll try to back it up with some numbers later.

I'd love to see some numbers on that, will be tough to present I fear.

 

[Jove]

@Paul#42: Here's a save of mine from COTM9 (I won the space award as the Vikings that time ) It's 1000 AD, we're a Republic, we have Military Tradition, Scientific Method is due in 4, although I won't say if that's what I actually researched next. We're at war with the Celts and the Hittites, who are down to 2 cities. If this is an acceptable test model, you could get the Hittites (and/or the Celts!) where you want them and set them loose. Sorry, no Indians.

 

[Jove]

It just kills me to see a core town like Stockholm (~20% corrupt) at size 3 providing just 6 beakers instead of the 30-40 it could provide at size 8-10. And to see two flood plains unused in our core.

Well, I looked at it as a 1-turn settler factory. Vs. 40bpt, yes, but in 30 turns of 1-turn worker action, if joined, 30 workers could be worth 90bpt. And counting. As a 2-turn worker factory, that's 45bpt after 30 turns, still an improvement, but it takes awhile.

So what do we do with Stockholm? The game doesn't last until eternity, at some point we need to get the advantages now.

 

[Paul#42]

@Paul#42: Here's a save of mine from COTM9 (I won the space award as the Vikings that time ) It's 1000 AD, we're a Republic, we have Military Tradition, Scientific Method is due in 4, although I won't say if that's what I actually researched next. We're at war with the Celts and the Hittites, who are down to 2 cities. If this is an acceptable test model, you could get the Hittites (and/or the Celts!) where you want them and set them loose. Sorry, no Indians.

Wow, that's great (depending on how far backwards these Hittites are). I will try tonight and I will also test how they cope with taking their capital to move it.

Why haven't you tested yourself? Don't you consider that test useful, are you missing the time it takes or don't you want to steal my idea?

Great thing about India is that they don't need horses and probably (hopefully) will build Elephants immediately (even before Infs) so they could get a new town every turn. To trigger his GA we should place a reg warrior (any idea how to redline him? ) in the last core city (or rather in the last city of the continent?)

No matter how far our research is the gifting should start in turn 289 - at least one turn before team Klarius

 

[Jove]

Oh yah! Maybe 2 turns earlier, if we're feeling risky!

India really is different from the rest of these civs, on account of their no-resource War Elephants. I bet they can take over pretty quick.

 

[CKS]

I'm thinking that declaring on America now and allying the Celts may be a good thing. The only possible required tech we can get from the Celts is flight, assuming we gift them to that point, so getting them involved in a war there won't hurt our research efforts. We want to finish off the Spanish reasonably quickly, and then get to work on the Americans, but denyd's head-start idea is good, I think. And getting a foothold over there will be helpful, too.

I don't know what to do with Stockholm, but I definitely agree that we need to keep irrigating and railing as fast as possible. There are places that aren't too corrupt where mining and railroading hills may be a benefit, but production needs to take a back seat to population, and every hill we work loses us half a specialist. The only reason to road mountains is for movement, and unless we think we'll be invaded soon, we can just stay off of them.

Good job on getting the science rate up. We have a long way to go, but we're making good progress.

 

[denyd]

I disagree with letting India off their island before all of the SS techs are known. We would have a difficult time in getting any new techs to Gandhi at that point and his research rate with be at the 50 turn level.

I'd like to get Stockholm back up to a size 12 and then if we need them start pumping out workers again. At some point very soon, we should have every worked tile railed and either mined or irrigated. At that point we'll be stuffing workers in to get cities up to size 12. Make sure we only stuff in homemade workers and save the slaves for pollution control.

How's our unit support costs? I'd hate to be paying gold for a couple workers that could have gone to science.

 

[jeffelammar]

I disagree with letting India off their island before all of the SS techs are known. We would have a difficult time in getting any new techs to Gandhi at that point and his research rate with be at the 50 turn level.

I agree with Deny here. We should have all SS techs before letting Gandhi out of his cage.

How's our unit support costs? I'd hate to be paying gold for a couple workers that could have gone to science.

Great point Deny. Also another great arguement for ICS in the north. More Cities == more support.

 

[Paul#42]

Great point Deny. Also another great arguement for ICS in the north. More Cities == more support.

No problem there. 152 units supported and we have 126 at the moment. No argument for me against more workers there

I just checked out we need 10 techs in Modern Times (one from Ottomans)- after my estimated 50 turns for completing the Industrial Age that only leaves us just 40 turns for the rest to compete with Klarius. Speed up, guys!!!

 

[Jove]

I agree with Deny here. We should have all SS techs before letting Gandhi out of his cage.

To really be efficient, we want to guess at how many turns it will be between gifting Ghandi his city and his starting to capture more. Say with a super-productive Aarhus (Factory and Solar Plant), it takes Ghandi 10 turns to squeeze out an elephant and take something over. Well then, we want to gift him the city 10 turns before we learn the last tech, so that there isn't a lag. Assuming we can keep our science rate up, we can gift Ghandi significantly earlier than that and just defend what we don't want him to have. Then he can build up a little head of steam for when our defenders vanish.

 

[denyd]

Hopefully we'll have a couple of tricks up our sleeves that Klarius didn't think of.

Does Stockholm have any wonders besides the Iron Works?

We'd be best served by giving Gandhi a high shield city, as his first builds will be defensive units.

Any thoughts about after gifting Gandhi a city, taking Delhi? That would move his capital to the high shield city (no corruption).

Did we save any warriors/archers? They would make nice fodder to help Gandhi initiate his Golden Age if we would prod him into building a War Elephant.

A quick recap of the plan for the next 30-40 turns:

1. Kill off Spain ASAP (let's skip leader farming and get on to America)
2. Declare on America
3. Ally with Celts against America giving techs
4. Research ASAP Steel, Refining, Combustion, Sci Meth, Mass Prod, AT & Electronics, Motorized Transport (how's that order?)
5. Trade Celts techs for $$ to keep research at 100%
6. After combustion sell techs to Celts to encourage Flight research
7. Complete railing & irrigation/mining of northern lands
8. Add aqueducts,harbors, libraries & markets to nothern lands
9. Settle, rail & irrigate/mine old Spain
10. Begin worker packing using only native workers in North & Spain
11. Setup city as Hoover pre-build
12. Setup city to time TOE pre-build for first turn of Modern Era
13. Gift Ottoman to Modern Era
14. Acquire Ottoman tech then kill him off
15. Complete TOE and select 2 Modern Techs (which 2?)

Did I miss anything?

Any thoughts on which 2 techs to take with TOE? I'm partial to Computers & Fission (if the Ottoman get one of the others)

Edit: to Jove - Nice idea about gifting pre-final part

 

[TimBentley]

Computers and miniaturization sound like a good pair of techs (with a prebuild for the Internet ready, I think).

 

[denyd]

That's my second choice if the Ottomans get either Fission or Computers (a 50-50 chance). Fission is the most expensive first level tech and one I'd like to be sure we get without researching.

 

[Paul#42]

I ran a little test with Jove's Cotm9 save.

It's not completely comparable because of several differences to our game:
The Hittites knew other civs, already had their GA (think so), could not capture GL from us, already had some culture and had a different color

However I think I could extract some important points I did not think of before:
1. In every conquered town they face severe resistance with very few units to fight it.
2. For the gift town we should make sure it can work more then 9 tiles or at least high food tiles as well.
3. Workers we offer him should be placed in cities to not waste his unit moves
4. He has no or few luxes and suffers happiness problems. Cities will starve to size 2-3.
5. It took him 3 turns to build the first spear because he rather worked food tiles in attempt to save starving population. Maybe we should bring our core cities to lower size (6) to keep him from trying...
6. Over small distance (7 tiles) corruption at least for the gifted city is not notable. Maybe razing Delhi is not necessary.
7. His first offensive unit attacked my spear although there where undefended cities around - Gandhi would attack our warrior immediately when we want to.

Progress from gifting turn:
First building was a spear (3rd turn), second spear attacked my wonder city (8th turn). Third unit was an archer who attacked my spear and took my capital (14th turn). 4th empty town he conquered with two archers (20th turn). 5 & 6 in turns 26 and 27. He takes his time...
After 35 turns I make peace and take a look at his 7 cities:
Most of them have lost their factories, the only coal plant is lost - about 50% of the no-culture-buildings are gone. 5 cities are building guerillas, one builds a library , one builds Smith's. 3 of those former size 12 cities are size 2 now. Even the gift city is size 3.

Now that's disappointing, no?

 

[denyd]

From that there's a couple of do's

1. We must have the Internet available for him in Channel City to make sure he expands all his captured cities without needing cultural buildings
2. We should probably shrink cities to below size 6 as soon as we get the last SS tech.
3. We should probably attack his WE once he gets 4-5 cities to trigger his GA rather than wait for him to come to us
4. Force feeding him cash will only help if/when he revolts from Despotism
5. The more developed a city is the better chance of at least some improvements surviving

 

[pindicator]

Does Stockholm have any wonders besides the Iron Works?

Stockholm doesn't even that IW. The MGL was turned back to Spain when our zerk army died.

Did we save any warriors/archers? They would make nice fodder to help Gandhi initiate his Golden Age if we would prod him into building a War Elephant.

I know we have at least 3-4 warriors/archers

 

[TimBentley]

I finally finished the preturn, and here's a tentative dotmap I drew up for most of the Spanish island. It only requires 2 aqueducts (I think the aqueduct should go to the blue dot). The blue dots we already have, the large red dots (hopefully you can recognize the difference) are cities, the small red dots (give or take a couple) should be worked tiles.

There's also a picture of the embassy with the Celts. Not shown are university, colosseum, Oracle, Magellan's, Leo's, Bach's, ToA, MoM, iron works. Poor America (96spt!!). I don't know if it's worth mentioning that the Celts have less than 30gpt left to give (regardless, it has been mentioned).

 

[Paul#42]

There's also a picture of the embassy with the Celts. Not shown are university, colosseum, Oracle, Magellan's, Leo's, Bach's, ToA, MoM, iron works. Poor America (96spt!!).

He's in Golden Age right now, isn't he? Funny, quite late. Is he at war with America? Or did he build a wonder lately?

I don't know if it's worth mentioning that the Celts have less than 30gpt left to give (regardless, it has been mentioned).

You mean after selling Industrialization to them for ~250gpt? That's the deal he would accept in current save.