SGOTM 9 - jeffelammar

[Paul#42]

Getting lonely...
Bad luck about not getting a leader in Spain. I would have loved to rush Wall Street over there. In "the old world" it would not help us too much as we won't accumulate too much money at 100% research...

We should sell combustion immediately to profit from it and speed up Celts research of flight.

We need settlers to block land in Spain and America.

Good luck!

 

[TimBentley]

I confirmed my assumption that cities later in the order than the Hoover building city would get their hydro plant before producing their shields. Pollution could mess up our builds, so we'll want to be willing to waste a few shields to be on the safe side. Molde would need a policeman for 5 turns (I earlier failed to notice the police increased production by 2 shields) plus a couple to be on the safe side. Channel City would overrun by 132 shields (it would need to finish the turn after ToE); switching the irrigated desert and irrigated plain to the coast would take care of about 69 of those. On the other hand, we could build ToE in Trondheim (8 wasted shields), starting it after building a knight in 2 turns partially rushing it after 1 via a privateer. That would finish Internet a turn early, and would reduce the waste in Channel City to 76 shields (7 shields after the above micromanagement).

We may want to include gpt in the combustion for communism deal instead or straight cash to be surer that the Celts will research flight in time. Their total income is less than 400gpt, and they need about 174 beakers per turn to research flight in 22 turns.

 

[denyd]

Nice work gentlemen - I've got some family business keeping me busy for the next couple of nights so I'll need either a skip or swap. I'll probably be available again on Wednesday.

What's left in the Industrial age that we need to research? We should time the TOE for the turn after that. We'll need a big chunk of cash to buy what ever the Ottoman get as their age change bonus. Of course we'll get it right back.

 

[Paul#42]

Being already in last place (just in played turns ) I would suggest to swap and let Jeff play on if he can.

@Tim: Nice calculations, I will have to check them thoroughly (to learn)...

 

[Paul#42]

I confirmed my assumption that cities later in the order than the Hoover building city would get their hydro plant before producing their shields. Pollution could mess up our builds, so we'll want to be willing to waste a few shields to be on the safe side. Molde would need a policeman for 5 turns (I earlier failed to notice the police increased production by 2 shields) plus a couple to be on the safe side. Channel City would overrun by 132 shields (it would need to finish the turn after ToE); switching the irrigated desert and irrigated plain to the coast would take care of about 69 of those. On the other hand, we could build ToE in Trondheim (8 wasted shields), starting it after building a knight in 2 turns partially rushing it after 1 via a privateer. That would finish Internet a turn early, and would reduce the waste in Channel City to 76 shields (7 shields after the above micromanagement).

Nice! I did not have the order of cities in mind when I flirted with getting ToE and Internet on the same turn. Good Job! Trondheim building ToE would guarantee us to get the necessary techs before Internet prebuild (with Palace at cost 1000 - a real small margin for errors) in Channel City is ready.
We really don't want to end up with a Palace Jump to Channel City and ~20 more turns to build on internet
Good idea to have some shields wasted in Trondheim then to be on the safe side regarding pollution. I neglected the gain by Hoover for the last ~8 turns to get this cushion

Now that will be a turn we should spend more than one thought on...

 

[jeffelammar]

Nice work gentlemen - I've got some family business keeping me busy for the next couple of nights so I'll need either a skip or swap. I'll probably be available again on Wednesday.

I have a roller hockey game tonight, but I'll be able to play tomorrow night. Then Deny can pick it up and play after me.


Sounds like my main goals are
1. Trade combustion to Brennus for communism + whatever else I can get.
2. Settler's for Celtic Gaps if possible
3. Forestry - Try to get as much as possible out of it...
4. Don't screw up...

 

[Jove]

Nice job!
I don't have much to add that isn't already obvious. This is the best example I've seen of farming the AI for tech. I think we pretty much nailed it!

If we want to speed up Brennus' research, I suggest gifting him some lux. We have 6 to trade, can only assume some of his people are unhappy. This works in my games sometimes to get AI to produce a little more gold. You know, gift a lux, wait a turn and see how much gpt they have gained. It should work for science too.

 

[jeffelammar]

If we want to speed up Brennus' research, I suggest gifting him some lux. We have 6 to trade, can only assume some of his people are unhappy. This works in my games sometimes to get AI to produce a little more gold. You know, gift a lux, wait a turn and see how much gpt they have gained. It should work for science too.

Nice thought. I'll give it a try.

 

[TimBentley]

1. Trade combustion to Brennus for communism + whatever else I can get.

More like get communism from Brennus for combustion and as little as is possible.

 

[denyd]

Do the Celts have RP yet? As soon as he gets Fascism, he'll be choosing between combustion (or flight) and scientific method.

We'll need to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't steal ToE from us.

 

[Paul#42]

More like get communism from Brennus for combustion and as little as is possible.

... as long as we can stay at 100% research without deficit.

Which improvements make sense to be rushed in corrupt cities? Aqueducts - and what else? Will Indias "non-corrupt zone" differ from ours and should that encourage us to build markets and factories in those towns as well? Does India have a different OCN from ours?

Or should we rather ship drafted units to Spain to prepare our new core? We will need mostly factories and commercial buildings there, scientific buildings are of less / no importance imo.

 

[CKS]

With a courthouse and a police station, a city is no more than 70% corrupt, so I think they are good buildings to have. Even without them, our northern cities pick up a second gp when their 6 citizens work tiles. With them, we'll pick up more gold even when half the citizens are scientists. Then adding in citizens to work water tiles will help us out.

 

[Jove]

Yes. And then there's drafting. Perhaps after we reach max population we'll want to start the draft in the floodplains cities where we're currently rushing workers. Then, civil engineers there while the unhappiness builds up to work on a marketplace, to allow the drafting of, I don't know exactly, 7 or more infantry per market... there's a net gain of shields there.
I think we'll want to overshoot our target of ~2000bpt by a little. Someone had the idea of allowing Ghandi to take selected cities in the MA, before he gets the GL. I like it, but it'll trim our science back in the process.

Does India have a different OCN than us? Surely, unless he's built the FP. I think courthouses and police stations for him might be nice. If we want to really get fancy, we could allow him to take a number of cities exactly equal to his OCN. But then, that could be a lot of trouble for not much gain, and it isn't clear that AI corruption works the same anyway.

But with all this infrastructure, how's our military? We need enough to fight Brennus, but then we can always raid him from ships with Berserks. We may want to start planning this now too.

 

[TimBentley]

India would have 1.5625 times our OCN (25% for not being human, 25% for commercial), not counting the FP and government and such. They would have about 1.136 times our OCN counting the FP.

 

[Jove]

That's neat. I spotted an OCN calculator in the GOTM51 pre-game thread, haven't tried it yet though. Do you think India's OCN is worth trying to manipulate?

 

[denyd]

My thoughts about the toughest things left to do will be to persuade India to:

1. Keep our cities and not raze them
2. Build the Apollo Program
3. Build Spaceship parts
4. Not build ICBMs to hit our cities

One more thing to consider, resources. India will need rubber, aluminum and uranium to complete all of the spaceship parts. They'll be able to use the rubber near Aarhus, but we won't know about the other resources until we get to the modern age. We might have to gift a couple of cities to the other AI to allow them to trade a needed resource to India.

 

[jeffelammar]

Good points Deny.

My views on them.

1. Keeping cities. I very much doubt that the AI will raze our cities as they take them. They don't tend to do that very often.

2 & 3. I think the only way to encourage that is to make sure that we have no cities on their island as quickly as possible. The AI will build space parts with some cities as long as they are not threatened by enemy units. (I hope)

4. Resources: I'd be willing to bet that all necessary resources are on the home island, but if not, we may need to keep a celtic or American city around to provide them. Something we definately need to keep in mind.

 

[jeffelammar]

The Save


Turn 1 - 1110 AD
Lots of Forestry.
Land Settler in Celtic Gap. Load Settlers for other gaps.
No interesting trades.

IBT
Sabratha Harbor -> Aqueduct
Tronso Courthouse -> Library

Turn 2 - 1120 AD
Keep up the forestry.

IBT
Tatu court -> worker
Going to stop this recording of builds... I think you get the idea
Courthouse if it has enough commerce
Harbor if it can grow
Library only if it has 5+ beakers or it needs expansion to get good squares...

Turn 3 - 1130 AD
Forestry
Load a bunch of workers for trip to spain
MM bunch of Civil Engineers, still get SM in 1.

IBT
Discover Scientific Method
Trondheim starts TOE.
Stockholm starts Iron Works.

Turn 4 - 1140 AD
Arrghhh. At 100% with all my specialists, AT is 6 turns... I'll see if I can shave it more...
After everything, I'm at 5 turns. AT is really expensive, so I don't see how to get more.

IBT
Not much to report.

Turn 5 - 1150 AD
Continue Forestry.


Notes:
1. Forgot to check trades this turn, but I doubt there's anything new.
2. I currently have us close to maxed on beakers (AT is one of the most expensive)
3. As set up before me, Stavenger is prebuilding for Hoover
Trondheim has started a TOE prebuild targeted for about when we should hit the Modern Age.
Channel City is building Palace as an Internet prebuild.
4. I turned some mines into irrigation to force madrid to grow faster. We may want to switch back now that it has a courthouse. (I used a couple conscripted infantry to rush it)
5. I think we should be able to research all other IA techs at 4 turns.
6. We are now only 150 tiles from domination, so we need to be careful about where we build culture buildings.
7. I made a play at some gaps on the celtic continent. They really need Libraries ASAP (one has it already), but funds were low after I put everything into Atomic Theory.

Sorry for no screenies. I need to go to bed.

 

[jeffelammar]

Ok, I lied here's a screenie.

Also I noticed something I failed to notice before saving. We are losing money. That means that the Celts probably have some gpt now.

I'd suggest selling Luxuries to offset our research.

I don't want to give the Celts Electricity yet. Even though they would still have to research Sci Meth, Entremont is such a production monster that letting them closer to being able to build TOE just scares me.

 

[Paul#42]

Yes. And then there's drafting. Perhaps after we reach max population we'll want to start the draft in the floodplains cities where we're currently rushing workers.

Shouldn't we draft at size 7 there for faster regrowing? Can we draft every turn? Or will Unhappiness prevail the happiness from lux and wonders (i.e. are easing factors applied to real citizens or "citizens that might be unhappy if they exist)? Oh, I just remember that not applicable Unhappiness from drafts will be passed over to near cities - We don't want that to happen. So watch that closely!

Someone had the idea of allowing Ghandi to take selected cities in the MA, before he gets the GL. I like it, but it'll trim our science back in the process.

As those cities would certainly lose all improvements (Gandhi has not researched so far) I vote against that.

But with all this infrastructure, how's our military? We need enough to fight Brennus, but then we can always raid him from ships with Berserks. We may want to start planning this now too.

We can not build more berserks, can we? But Marines (some day) might do the job, too (not as fierce as our berserks, of course ).

I don't want to give the Celts Electricity yet. Even though they would still have to research Sci Meth, Entremont is such a production monster that letting them closer to being able to build TOE just scares me.

Plus they could try to research RP instead of flight .