SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

[zyxy]

Great ideas floating around! And some of use seem to be getting the same ones. And Niklas has the best names .

The Kindergarten Strategy
Summary:We let India out of the bowl much earlier than the end of the MT, but we keep them backwards, either by keeping the GLib for ourselves or by not letting anyone else (who knows India) learn any techs.

Keeping the GLib seems to be the better of the two choices here, and then we don't need to worry about Spain or Ottomans. I'm not so scared of fighting India at GLib-city, it will be infantry and arty vs elephants (at best). The only problem is to keep India from racking up too much war weariness - am I correct that artillery shells don't cause war weariness?
On timing: as we need to build up our new FP core first, India will not be set loose until some 50 turns from now, and that's a very optimistic estimate. By this time, we should at least be close to replaceable parts. Most likely, India will be caged until we enter the Modern Age.

Btw, all strategies that involve moving our FP core to Tadpole have another drawback: we will have a temporary economic slowdown just after the FP is moved, because this will knock out our old FP core, while the new one is still without improvements - we don't really have the treasury to cashrush a lot of libs and markets to get the new FP core up to speed before the FP moves. It may not be very bad, as our southern core is commercially weaker than the northern one, but it's something to keep in mind. Perhaps time the FP move with the research of some cheaper IA techs like corporation, medicine, etc, if possible.

The Merry Tech-Chase Strategy
Summary:We let India out of the bowl some time after 750 AD, and let them trade/extort/research their way through the IA and MT to gain the remaining SS techs.

To be honest I don't have a lot of faith in the AI's research speed. Also, they have a tendency to research the wrong things: optionals from MA and IA, and posisbly even things like Genetics in the MT. I'm not so sure about extortion either - AI's are just as likely to extort a map or something. Trade might work a bit better: let India research a tech owned only by us (probably at 40 turn rate), then gift a tradeable tech to two opponents. If the trade goes through, gift another tradeable tech to a larger group of opponents. This way, India might get 3-4 techs every 40 turns. Note that this requires India to be at the front of the tech race (after us), whereas research or extortion work better if India is behind.

For this we need all other civs alive, to lower the cost of the techs down to 1/8 of their original price.

The beaker discount is 50% when 7 out of 8 civs know a tech (compared to monopoly price).

Typically, monopoly prices of Modern techs are 5000 - 7000 beakers at Regent level, which is the level the AI researches at. So beaker cost for India of these techs is 2500 - 3500 beakers if known to all rivals. Our sustainable research rate at the moment is about 500 bpt, which is probably more than what India would ever get: we have two cores, a good government, no clowns, a small army, and we manage our empire much better than the AI. So at best India will do perhaps 10 turn research in the Modern Age. This would be better than I thought, I'll admit, but then this figure may be a tad optimistic.

EDIT: Write a post for two hours, and then I post one minute after zyxy!

Hey, my post took a few hours too! Not to mention this one .

 

[Niklas]

Hmm, if research cost is indeed dropped to 50% (which seems to be correct when checking with CAII), that means we can more or less forget about India researching any MT techs at anything other than 40 turns. I fear zyxy's figure is indeed a bit optimistic, considering that India might not spend more than those nominal 30% on research. They should spend more since their free upkeep will increase, but you can never be sure. So with research out, that leaves extortion and trade.

But I'm not ready to roll bellly-up just yet. What zyxy proposed with using proxy town owners fits perfect with the Tech-Chase strategy, indeed it is the missing piece of the puzzle! (WarDance's suggestion is interesting, I considered something similar but never thought of using slave-settlers. But zyxy's suggestion is better anyway )

So, we have some other AI (e.g. Mongols) declare on India. When we see Indian troops ready to advance on one of our towns we gift it to the Mongols, who promtly lose it to India. Could be repeated more than once. The real beauty is that we can also be sure that the Mongols (and several others to lower the price) has some tech that India wants. When they make peace, India should be able to get that tech. We can then gift some other tech to everyone, and watch India trade, like zyxy outlined. This whole thing could be repeated with different AIs, and each time should give India at least one tech on average. There are 12 techs in the MT that India needs, should be doable. So maybe we could set this in motion at the beginning of the MT, or very late IA.

Benefits of this approach are many:

• The tech flow.
• Since the Mongols (or whoever) will be knowledgeable, and India will be too, all improvements have a chance of staying.
• We can give India towns larger than size 7 so that they will automatically retain their aqueducts (if they need any).
• We will suffer no war wariness ourselves, we will delegate that pleasure to the other AIs.
• India gets time to build up their core with everything they could want (including banks, unis etc that wouldn't be available for them if we use the Kindergarten strategy) while we are researching the remaining MT techs.

I admit there is one more reason why I would prefer the Tech-Chase strategy over the others. The Goldfish strategy is the "obvious" one in a sense, and I believe the other teams will go for it, or variations like Kindergarten. If the Tech-Chase works out as well as I think it will, it would then presumably give us an advantage over the other teams. And even if it doesn't work out quite as well as it could, we'd have taken the bold path and tried our best, and get respect for it nonetheless.


On the issue of the GA, I'm ready to agree with CF though. We're approaching the limit of our capacity for 4-turn research, and we need a boost to be able to keep it up. But where he wants to use it partly for units and warfare, I want to use it for cash to rush things in our core-to-be. I'd rather finish off America, leave Spain in the game, and disband almost all our military to help rushing and to reclaim cpt.

 

[ControlFreak]

So, we have some other AI (e.g. Mongols) declare on India. When we see Indian troops ready to advance on one of our towns we gift it to the Mongols, who promtly lose it to India. Could be repeated more than once. The real beauty is that we can also be sure that the Mongols (and several others to lower the price) has some tech that India wants. When they make peace, India should be able to get that tech. We can then gift some other tech to everyone, and watch India trade, like zyxy outlined. This whole thing could be repeated with different AIs, and each time should give India at least one tech on average. There are 12 techs in the MT that India needs, should be doable. So maybe we could set this in motion at the beginning of the MT, or very late IA.

Benefits of this approach are many:

• The tech flow.
• Since the Mongols (or whoever) will be knowledgeable, and India will be too, all improvements have a chance of staying.
• We can give India towns larger than size 7 so that they will automatically retain their aqueducts (if they need any).
• We will suffer no war wariness ourselves, we will delegate that pleasure to the other AIs.
• India gets time to build up their core with everything they could want (including banks, unis etc that wouldn't be available for them if we use the Kindergarten strategy) while we are researching the remaining MT techs.

I admit there is one more reason why I would prefer the Tech-Chase strategy over the others. The Goldfish strategy is the "obvious" one in a sense, and I believe the other teams will go for it, or variations like Kindergarten. If the Tech-Chase works out as well as I think it will, it would then presumably give us an advantage over the other teams. And even if it doesn't work out quite as well as it could, we'd have taken the bold path and tried our best, and get respect for it nonetheless.

I really think this group strategy thing works! With progressive iterations, I think Niklas has delineated a plan that incorporates everyone's ideas and solves most of our dilemmas.

Not that it's going to be easy to pull off. We're talking about keeping six AI cloistered away and not trading with India until we've built Factories and railed our lower core. Then we're looking at lighting a fire (with very little military on our side) and trying not to get burned. But I'm willing to give it a go. The real advantage is that India will have time to build a FP which will really help their potential Spaceship builds happen simultaneously.

On the issue of the GA, I'm ready to agree with CF though. We're approaching the limit of our capacity for 4-turn research, and we need a boost to be able to keep it up. But where he wants to use it partly for units and warfare, I want to use it for cash to rush things in our core-to-be. I'd rather finish off America, leave Spain in the game, and disband almost all our military to help rushing and to reclaim cpt.

I'm fine for cash rushing things in our new core. I really want to spend 1500g in upgrades though and I do want to wipe out Spain. You cant disband almost all of our military without dealing with the gorilla in this game. However, to be able to manipulate the MA's I don't know if our rep needs to be intact. If so, I agree to let Spain live.

I just think either you go military now and drop Spain to OCC, or you live with higher military costs later. I would prefer to clear them out unless you think they will help research techs for us.

Either way, the GA triggered by Leo's is what I think we need.

If we play this right, we should be able to get a big treasury which would benefit India anytime they take our towns. In addition to the big gifting of cities, we should also add, letting India take one of our lucrative towns as part of the strategy. I think gifting a tech to every civ, then losing one or two towns to build India's treasury could work as a tech grabbing scheme for them too. Of course, if we're going to have 100 cities, it might not be that great an idea. But for the last few SS techs (we have them, India needs them), when we can afford to lose all our towns and all our money, it would definitely work.

So as I see it, the Gift and Gaff strategy involves:

• Research Chemistry>Banking>Metalurgy>Military Tradition
• Build Leo's in Missismurki triggering our GA in 15 turns.
• Develop prisons (prefereably land-based, like Sing Sing) for Carthage, Ottomans, Mongols, and America.
• Wipe out America (leave OCC) and Tadpole Spain.
• Develop a new core rushing librarys/markets during the GA.
• Get a leader while fighting a holding war on Spain.
• Raze HotB and build the FP NW of Chicago.
• Gift India Indianapolsmurkz. Hold them at bay with Artillery until remaining towns are ready.
• Let them take TGL with enough techs to keep Factories.
• Gift cities to one of the civs that India hasn't warred with in the last 20 turns and buy them into a war. India should take the towns and settle for peace for a nice new tech.
• When India is a peace again, gift a tech to all civs and let india take a town or two until they have enough cash to buy the tech.

I have a couple of details to watch out for:
First, on the turn we're going to lose TGL to india, they are going to get some cash with it. We have about 50 towns so a capture is currently worth 40g. As our treasury grows, that number will not be insignificant. We need to make sure it's not enough to let them buy Education or else they will have Education when the IBT checks to see what techs they get. "No tech for you!"

Second, the amount a civ is willing to pay for peace depends on how much the towns were worth that were taken over. With the corruption and distance from the capitols that these gifted towns represent to our patsies, there is no guarantee that the peace will come quickly and that the tech trade will happen quickly either. I'd feel better if we only had to do this a few times.

Third, with the number of cities needed to pull off the "worth at tech" gift, we're going to run out of cities quickly. Are we planning on taking them back, killing the Indian's with War Weariness? What happens if we run out of towns and India still hasn't gotten the Space Ship techs? I guess once we own all the SS techs, we can start gifting our cities away.

Another thing that would bring down the power of Peace for india is that they will still be at war with the global power (us). We will need to really make sure that the gifted civ is a wimp.

Anyway, I'm ready to give it a go. If zyxy agrees, give 'em heck!

 

[ControlFreak]

I admit there is one more reason why I would prefer the Tech-Chase strategy over the others. The Goldfish strategy is the "obvious" one in a sense, and I believe the other teams will go for it, or variations like Kindergarten. If the Tech-Chase works out as well as I think it will, it would then presumably give us an advantage over the other teams. And even if it doesn't work out quite as well as it could, we'd have taken the bold path and tried our best, and get respect for it nonetheless.

Actually we're supposed to be TEACHING Ghandi how to win a space race. Now he's going to have a chance to learn pointy stick research, two-fers maybe, and the value of a good scientific core.

 

[ControlFreak]

sorry for the multiple postings. I keep thinking about different things during the day and my timezone appearantly doesn't coincide with anyone who wants to post between my posts.

Workers
We are going to get rails in about 27-31 turns from now depending on whether the Ottomans get Steam Power. We're going to want a ton of workers/slaves to finish rails quickly. (Yay, I love workers ) Our southern core has priority for rails I think.

Once our GA is over and the lower core has their infrastructure, they can all build workers non-stop, dropping the Viking population down in those towns. The workers will be moving to help rail our Northern Core and then shipping over to rail our new core. Doing the cores in this order lets the workers end railing in the New Core and they can be joined to our new core cities which lack the benefit of the Pyramids.

Slaves
I think we should get a lot of foreign workers from America, and if we start clobbering Spain, the will provide a TON. (They have their cities on Tadpole hooked up to a luxury, iron and horses already and they've only owned the place for like 20 turns!) Some of these slaves should build a road network on Tadpole so that new settlers can go where they need to quickly, but the majority need to ride the boats back to our mainland where they will help rail the southern core quickly.

The slaves unlike the workers, the slaves should stay near the southern core. Plan on finishing the railing/improvements of the southern core with slaves only. Then they need to be ready to be joined in to the towns that India is going to capture. Keeping slaves grouped by nationality will ensure that India isn't at war with their newly aquired citizens. At a minimum, this should be done with our first "gifted" town, but probably with all of them that we let them capture. Size 7 is a good size to gift if the aquaduct is build. If the town is on the river, we need to assess what happiness level India can handle at the time and join slaves to get it up to that level.

I don't think this works for gifting cities because I think all the citizens are converted to the Nationality of the receipiant. But I haven't checked this out. It could be that only the Viking citizens are converted which would mean we could add slaves to cities gifted to the GGP (Gift and Gaff Pasty).

Science
Our current Maximum bpt is 688bpt with -146gpt.
Our current no deficiet science is 70% which gives us 488bpt +21gpt.
Based on CAII, we can research ANY MidA tech in 4 turns at positive gpt, but we CAN'T research ANY IA tech in 4 turns, even at 100% science.

Steam Power is about 3200beakers so we need to get to 800bpt in the 27 turns it's going to take to get to the MidA. That means added a minimum of 112bpt.

I exported CAII data to excel and manipulated it to determine our potential science gains if we build Libraries and Unis everywhere that doesn't have one now. If we do that, keeping the Shields/Gold the same as it is currently, and letting Missismurki finish Leos/Sages finish Cop before building their university, the next 27 turns look like this:


That means, IF we prioritized all infrastructure, we still could not research Steam Power without negative gpt, but we could research it at 100% Sci and possibly at 90%. So I think a GA is important in the next 27 turns. Using Leos would give us the benefit of cheaper upgrades as well as triggering the GA in good timing to: finish libs/unis earlier, help with the cost of research until the libs/unis are done.

EDIT: Extrapolating this out, our existing cities with their existing population/science would max out around 970bpt in 80 turns @100% Science. That doesn't count growth or rails. If rails are a 30% improvement, that brings us to 1260bpt which is enough for 4-turn until Atomic Theory/Radio. That doesn't count growth but it does mean we're going to need to do more than just sit with what we have. We'll need aquaducts, Hospitals in our cities that can get bigger, prebuilds for Labs that finish the same turn as the tech is invented and lots of corrupt scientists. (We could detour for the internet, but unless we can't build enough Labs to maintain 4-turn, it would waste 4-5 turns going for an irrelavent tech.

 

[ControlFreak]

Sorry to add a fourth post, I didn't want to edit a post that is almost 4 hours old.

I went looking for land-based prisons similar to Sing Sing and found three.

They all follow the same rules as Sing Sing: not on the shore, must have lots of cultural pressure, will be restricted to size 2 unless railed somehow. (I picked names based on nearby cities.)

Tadpole West - "Scotland Yard"
(This gets iron but I don't think that matters.)


Tadpole South - "Alcatraz"


Tadpole East - "Attica"
(This one will need more work as we have to relocate Buffalo, setting on a food bonus . We also need another town to prevent giving the prison a coastal tile.)


The only island prison that will remain a prison for a little while is Levinworth (the tunrda island). Make sure that it's gifted to a non-Military civ so that they can't build a cheap harbor. Once the harbor is built, it's easy to escape.

We would need one more prison if we strike down Spain. The other islands have fertile land and are easy to escape from regardless of a harbor. Prioritize one with fewest bonuses (e.g. Spain's Victoria)

 

[Niklas]

Glad to hear I've convinced you.

Don't have time for a lengthy post now, but I have a few comments on various things.

• I see no reason to research MilTrad. We're not going after Spain until around the time we have at least tanks, possibly MAs. We can fight a holding war with the troops we have now, and berserks, if we only throw in a bunch of cannons. Thus my proposed research path would be Chemistry->Banking->Physics->Metallurgy->Magnetism->ToG => IA.
• Miniaturization on the other hand is a required tech, since one of the SS parts becomes available with Robotics to which Mini is a prerequisite. So going for the Internet is not a detour.
• I'm not so sure about letting India taking any of our towns for cash, at least not before research is all but done. Also note that we may not need to keep up 4-turn research near the end, after Gandhi has taken the elevator. As long as we keep ahead of India's need we'll be fine.

Hope to join in with more thoughts tomorrow.

 

[ControlFreak]

I'm OK with skipping MT as long as we're not going to hit Spain. But I think we're gong to at least be at war with them to collect their Tadpole holdings. Can we really handle fighting on their turf with the units that we have in the field? At least on my turn, there was a very large Spainish presence on Tadpole. Not that I'm afraid...we can make anything work, I just would prefer to have a dominant power rather than a 1:1 unit ratio.

You're other notes are good ones. I almost never research the MoDern times so I didn't realize we need Miniaturization for the SS. And there's no sense researching faster than India can buy/steal. However, the sooner we have all the necessary techs, the sooner we can roll over and give India anything we want.

Speaking of Giving to India, there are two wonders I'm thinking about from India's point of view:
The first is Shakespeare's Theatre. It gives 8 happy faces which is huge for this War Weariness game. If we give it to India it would be their most productive city (Space Ship builder) since the AI never manages Happiness well. On the other hand, if we can build it in Sages, with a Hospital, we could really have a huge research improvement with all the coastal tiles that could be worked. Without Shakespeare, and War Weariness from India, I don't thing any city will be happy over 12 so no need for hospitals anywhere else. (With Shakespeare being three optional techs and Hospitals being a fourth, Shakes may never get built.)

The second is the Internet. If we build it somewhere that could be kept until we know the SS techs, and then gifted to India, that would help their research rate a lot. But by the time we gift it, India should own a lot of the southern holdings, so where to build it? May be just North of the Western Choke?

Universal Sufferage should be built and almost immediately given to India.

Can we get India to build the Theory of Evolution? By the time they get that tech, we should start giving them productive cities. The other AI's will be making 4-6spt max, with the Possible exception of Spain. We can thwart Spain's attempts by a well timed war. Depending on what floor the elevator reaches, the TOE free techs may well be Modern ones for India.

War Plans
I think zyxy should be able to take Washington and New York. Depending on how healthy the units are Chicago and Buffalo are reachable on the turnset as well. Reinforcements will be coming to help attack Chicago from Entremont if Spain doesn't beat us there. Then I think Detroit will come in the peace deal leaving their capitol temporarily on the island of St. Louis. That will give us the time to setup their prison. They will probably settle another city or two during the peace.

I don't think the Spainish war will start on zyxy's turn unless they take all the Northern American Cities.

I do think units will be heading toward Gergovia to lock the Celts into Sing Sing, but I don't think they will attack on zyxy's turn.

At this point, I'm thinking we raze the Great Wall but let Leo's finish to trigger the GA in 15.

 

[zyxy]

Some comments on this plan:

• How many techs will India get in peace deals? The Modern techs are worth at least 2500 beakers at last civ price, so I doubt she'll get more than 1 per peace deal. If we want these techs to have any trade value, then India needs to get them at 3rd price and they become even more expensive. Moreover we run the risk that our ally will use them to buy more alliances. I think we cannot count on India getting more than a handful of techs in total in this way. Thus we would need to use the Tech Elevator no sooner than when we are near completion of our research. I don't really like this technique as we cannot control it at all, and silly Ghandi might well botch it. He could even lose cities to culture flips, who knows.
• When we let India out of the pond, she'll need some turns to build up enough forces to threaten several towns at once. There's no point in letting India have the GLib before that happens. The number of turns is hard to guess: a few defenders will be trained first I think, followed by more units for the attack. Assume about 9-10 spt (3 hills), and a need of 4-5 attackers. In the unlikely event that she has chivalry India will probably build elephants (70 shields), and it would take about 40 turns. Otherwise she'll train archers (no iron, as Delhi has no harbor), and it will go quicker, perhaps 20 turns or so.
• After that it will take a number of turns to let India capture the towns and build up improvements. During the capture phase we can feed our research to India by proxy. I still doubt that this will shorten the game by much, probably at most 20 turns as we are talking about 5 techs or so that India can get in this way.
• Commerce-wise the ideal moment for our GA is when our economy is maxed out, that is, when we have two developed cores with uni's. I would prefer to postpone it more than fifteen turns from now, and build a more useful wonder than Leo's (Smith's would save gpt, but also cost 1500 beakers - still, probably useful), but CF's figures show we may have little choice. Although, if we cannot keep 4 turn research now, I don't see how we can do it later (without a GA), as techs become more expensive and we may lose one of our cores. Btw, I don't see how rails will give a 30% increase in commerce...
• I would prefer to use our gold reserve on improvements rather than units. Spain can wait. Although, if we build Leo's, then cavalry becomes reasonably cheap.
• Nationalism. Last game we saw that when we gift a town, it will not get any free defenders. So when we do this to gift towns to Ghandi by proxy, then they'll be defenceless. However, if our "ally" moves before Ghandi, then he can cashrush, poprush, or draft defenders, perhaps (I'm not sure how the timing of this works exactly). To prevent this, we'll want our ally to have no cash, no Nationalism, and no poprushing government (Communism). Nationalism is the biggest risk, and both Ottomans (free tech) and Spain (research or extortion) might get it. If they do, we cannot use these civs as allies against India and we will have to kill them before the other civs get a chance to trade for Nationalism. I think we can prevent trade until we have to gift an ally up, so the too-advanced civ(s) can in any case help out with the tech elevator.
  Question: do we want India to get Nationalism? The advantage is she might mobilize (gives higher production, and less improvements), the disadvantage is she might draft. MPP's could also create a mess.

Anyway, it seems we have a reasonable idea what to do, at least for now, and some decisions can be postponed. I'll play tomorrow I think, and I hope to write a plan later tonight.

 

[Niklas]

I imagine the following scenario for "transfering" techs to India.

• Sign in AI X (who is not Ottos or Spain) vs India.
• Some turns later gift one or more towns to X that India can take.
• At the same time, give X and everyone except Y (who is not Ottos or Spain) a tech A that India doesn't have.
• Let India make peace with X, getting the tech A in the peace deal.
• Give everyone including Y another tech B that India doesn't have.
• Wait to see India trade A for B with Y.
• Rinse and repeat (or rather, run several with successive starts).

The unknown of the equation is whether India gets A in the peace deal at all.

I think the important thing to agree on right now is that we don't have to wait until Robotics to let India ride the elevator. The exact floor to lift Gandhi can be decided later, I just want us to have it in mind. I want to see us use the GA before that date though, not after, and similarly I want to use ToE before (I don't think we could make India build it, although that would be even better). After the elevator has gone up, the need to maintain 4-turn research lessens, since India most probably won't get 1 tech per 4 turns on average in this stage.

Nationalism is clearly an unknown. I think we can safely keep it from the four real proxies (Mongols, Carthage, Celts, America), but if we can't things could be troublesome. But we don't really have to gift them up to par until India has already conquered the Library, and at that point they'll have no research and no trading to think of. However, if we want to give India Nationalism, it will be hard to keep it from the rest.

WarDance, CommandoBob, what are your opinions on all this?

 

[ControlFreak]

I did some interesting tests today (with the help of you're SG08 game )

Test #1 - How does gifting affect Nationality?
I took an entirely greek city and gave it to the Romans. I tried to check their nationality with the embassy but the Investigation does not show you nationality and I'm not clear enough on the graphical differences to tell you what the citizen's Nationalities were. If I had to guess, at least two of them were still Greek but the third might have been different.

I took the city back immediately, now at size 2 instead of 3. Both citizens were Greek.

Conclusion: Gifting cities only changes your citizens.

Test #2 - How do foreign citizen's affect the draft?
I took an entirely Japanese city and added Japanese workers up to size seven. The city did not allow me to draft any units.

Conclusion: We can gift cities that are made up of citizens that are neither ours, nor the giftee and they will not be able to draft units. This is going to take a lot of work to get our POP to 1, add the slaves, rush a worker that is hopefully the remaining Viking in all cities before we gift them.

Other alternative is to prevent others from getting Nationalism. (I'll revisit this later.)

Test #3 - What will India build when they are gifted a city?
I went back to an old save (I hope that's legal. I could have built a scenario with the same map characteristics but it would have taken me longer to play.)

Keeping them in Despotism
I settled for Peace with India and gave them Indianaposmurkz. They waited one turn and then rushed a spear, presumably because the town was unprotected. The next build was a settler. I stopped the test after this turn.

Giving the Republic
In retrospect, I should have given them Monarchy because it's a better WW government for the AI. Anyway, the results were that India now could not pop rush (nor Cash rush because of lack of gold) so they built a spear by hand. The next build was a settler, same as the first scenario. I really want them to build a galley because they have a ton of units in Dehli that can't get out.

Meanwhile, Dehli is building a spear, then builds Temple, presumably because of the lost MP affect, then they start a Colloseum!

I did not redeclare war so I'm not sure if they would have built the cultural buildings if we were still at war. But then, I couldn't check in on them if we were at war either.

Giving them a canal city
I had hoped that by giving them a city on the Atoll, they might think that galleys were a good idea. I marched a settler (the save was old enough that our two Atoll town's weren't founded yet) and founded. The progression was exactly the same: spear, then settler. Dehli also pursued the spear, then Temple progression.

Conclusions: India is going to build a spear and settler from whatever town we give them. They will not leave the town undefended if we're at war so they will have nothing to capture the Great Library with for at least two spear builds. They probably will not attack Grad with one of their two spears and they will not build a boat from Dehli to use the worthless units trapped in there. So we best give them SOMETHING at 750AD because it's going to be a while before they are able to take the GL.

If we let india out at 750AD and then lead them toward the Ivory with empty towns, they could develop that quarter of the contient while we improve the HotB area for them. The western continent is our least productive area anyway so why not let them invest the shields in building infrastructure. After all, they do get a discount to build stuff.

When we have the HotB core finished for them we can let them take the GL. I really think that we're going to end up needing the elevator to go to the top. Any middle age tech being worth 2500g is never going to sell for peace to India because the combined worth of the cities taken won't be that big. (It's going to have all foreign citizens and be fairly corrupt for almost all civs.)

However, I'm willing to gift them Indiaposmurkz at 750AD and anything West of River up to the Western Choke point to see if they can get a rolling economy. If they start having a large positive cash situation, then I'm OK giving them the GL earlier with the expectation that they can get techs through peace by paying for them at a discount.

My only other thought is to gift them Madrid because it's a shield haven, then whack Dehli with Berserks. If we capture all the towns on Ostrich and hand them over to India, they will have a powerful production potential. The problem with that strategy is they won't be able to capture the Great Library. It's too bad that we stole the Great Library from spain or it would have been the perfect solution.

 

[Niklas]

Nice analysis.
One note, we can't give them Madrid since the rules say the town we gift away must be within RCP 7.0 from Delhi. So don't waste thought processing on that option.

 

[zyxy]

I imagine the following scenario for "transfering" techs to India.

• Sign in AI X (who is not Ottos or Spain) vs India.
• Some turns later gift one or more towns to X that India can take.
• At the same time, give X and everyone except Y (who is not Ottos or Spain) a tech A that India doesn't have.
• Let India make peace with X, getting the tech A in the peace deal.
• Give everyone including Y another tech B that India doesn't have.
• Wait to see India trade A for B with Y.
• Rinse and repeat (or rather, run several with successive starts).

The unknown of the equation is whether India gets A in the peace deal at all.

Or whether Y will get A from X in an alliance deal...

I think the important thing to agree on right now is that we don't have to wait until Robotics to let India ride the elevator. The exact floor to lift Gandhi can be decided later, I just want us to have it in mind.

The decision on when exactly to let India ride the elevator can be postponed for a while, because it is going to be at the end or near the end. The first case gives a certain delay of 4 turns per tech, the second a (perhaps small) probability of a 40 turn delay per tech and a (perhaps large) probability of no delay.

I want to see us use the GA before that date though, not after, and similarly I want to use ToE before (I don't think we could make India build it, although that would be even better).

Obvious. But the real choice is: GA in 15 turns, or as late as possible (probably end of IA, early Modern Age).

---------------------------------------------------- [this is a delimiter]

I did some interesting tests today (with the help of you're SG08 game )

....

When we have the HotB core finished for them we can let them take the GL. I really think that we're going to end up needing the elevator to go to the top. Any middle (you mean "modern") age tech being worth 2500g is never going to sell for peace to India because the combined worth of the cities taken won't be that big. (It's going to have all foreign citizens and be fairly corrupt for almost all civs.)

However, I'm willing to gift them Indiaposmurkz at 750AD and anything West of River up to the Western Choke point to see if they can get a rolling economy. If they start having a large positive cash situation, then I'm OK giving them the GL earlier with the expectation that they can get techs through peace by paying for them at a discount.

My only other thought is to gift them Madrid because it's a shield haven, then whack Dehli with Berserks. If we capture all the towns on Ostrich and hand them over to India, they will have a powerful production potential. The problem with that strategy is they won't be able to capture the Great Library. It's too bad that we stole the Great Library from spain or it would have been the perfect solution.

Good tests, and I agree with your conclusion that India should be let out asap. We just keep some cannon nearby to knock down any intruders while we don't want them.
Odd that Delhi starts producing improvements as soon as India gets another city. Maybe the AI is hardcoded to build only units while it has only one city?
Btw, note that we are not allowed to gift Madrid, it's too far away.

Attached is a game with modified rules that helps a bit to test various tactics. For example, you have amphibious horsemen on steroids, and the CIA for spying on India.

 

[zyxy]

Official plan for this turnset.

Long term

Get India to space asap:

• Gift Indianoposmurkz to India in 750AD.
• Tech Elevator: Let India take the GLib city near or at the end of the tech race. On the same turn, gift all techs to some AI (probably Ottomans).
• Gift India our southern core by proxy (i.e., via the other civs) asap after the Tech Elevator. Possibly these towns will get great wonders to protect them against razing. Possibly India will get some techs in peace deals (to be decided later).
• Ottomans will stay alive for their free techs. All other civs are to stay alive to act as proxies if needed, and possibly to do some research (of optional Middle Age techs). Exception: any AI that learns Nationalism has to die before the Tech Elevator starts, to prevent drafting. America will be reduced asap to OCC, and Spain at some convenient moment in the future.
• We do not really need a new FP core, but can build one anyway, on Tadpole, just in case (and because it will generate more commerce).

Short term

• American War: raze Wahington, Boston. Take Chicago, New York, Lugdunum, and possibly Buffalo. Abandon SF.
• Ottoman War: take Bursa, and make peace asap.
• Research: Chem -> Banking and on to Magnetism and ToG. Skip all optionals.
• Workers: prioritize the home continent.
• Sages: Copernicus -> cashrush uni and harbor -> Newton. Missi: Leo's if we want GA, otherwise can switch to Chapel or Smith next set. All other cities: prioritize infra. We have enough military, it's just spread out a bit, and settlers are a low priority. Cashrush improvements where needed.

Here's a dotmap for Tadpole:


It has the FP in Chicago, and reuses a lot of existing cities. Note that a perfect 5 ring would be possible with a little extra effort, should we need to jump the palace rather than the FP.

 

[ControlFreak]

Short term

• American War: raze Wahington, Boston. Take Chicago, New York, Lugdunum, and possibly Buffalo. Abandon SF.
• Ottoman War: take Bursa, and make peace asap.
• Research: Chem -> Banking and on to Magnetism and ToG. Skip all optionals.
• Workers: prioritize the home continent.
• Sages: Copernicus -> cashrush uni and harbor -> Newton. Missi: Leo's if we want GA, otherwise can switch to Chapel or Smith next set. All other cities: prioritize infra. We have enough military, it's just spread out a bit, and settlers are a low priority. Cashrush improvements where needed.

Some questions:

• Why are we razing Washington and Boston unless you want workers from Washington?
• What about leader fishing from the Ottoman's? Why the big hurry to strand them in the same play pen as the Mongols? And we would really like a leader to move the FP.
• Why Magnetism before Metallugy? It makes the GLighthouse expire faster and we still have shuffling to do between continents.
• I thought the harbor in Sages could wait until after Newtons as it is going to be on mined plains until Wonderbuilding is done. You're going to need to get a ton of workers over there chopping the forest, timed for the turn after Cop's finishes if you want the chops to reduce the cost of the rushed university.

Don't deplete the treasury too much as we're heading for 100% Sci soon. Also, since it sounds like we're going to keep Spain around, should we sell/gift them up to a point where they can at least try to research optionals for us? They should probably be introduced to the other civs at some point if you do that. The danger is that trading gets out of control, but I doubt they have much to gain from trading with the others. It also means more wonder cascades. They are a sheild monger and with their discount have a good chance at beating us to any wonder that we start at the same time.

Based on India's priority to build units in undefended cities, it might be better for them to have Nationalism so it doesn't take them long to build their required two defenders. It's like letting them pop rush units in Monarchy. I don't need to kill an AI just because he has Nationalism.

Sorry about suggesting Madrid. I think that's the second time you had to remind me about the RCP 7 rule. I have a bad memory.

 

[zyxy]

- Razing for workers, no flips, and no domination victory. Apparently, Tadpole is too much land to keep.
- We are at war with Ottomans. Bursa has to fall for flip risk - that was the point of declaring I thought. We can stay at war after that, but I don't see the point.
- I like free ocean travel - for luxes mainly. Metallurgy first might be ok too, didn't realize about the Lighthouse.
- The harbor gives extra food, which translates in extra shields or extra commerce, whichever we want. Yes, forest chops are going to be difficult to pull off, we'll see.

The use of the treasury depends on when we time the GA. Most votes (Niklas, CF) sofar are for having the GA in 15 turns, with one dissenter (me) and two unknown (CB, WD). If we get the GA in 15 turns, then we can spend some money on improvements if they will pay back for themselves. Harbors are a good investment in general, because coastal squares have lots of commerce. If we postpone the GA, then we need a cashreserve for deficit research, I agree.

 

[WarDance]

I agree that Bursa should go, but I still think building another town there and gifting it back to them is a good idea in case the Mongols take out their island city. Razing Bursa is primarily to take cultural pressure off our towns up there.

Regarding the American war, I'd say keep Boston and Washington, if for nothing else than holding the land so Spain doesn't move in too much. If they aren't placed properly we can do the abandon for settler trick after starving them down. I don't think they have enough culture at this point to be much of a flip risk.

A couple of size 12 towns had entertainers, if I remember correctly. It might be worth it to peel a quick worker off of them.

 

[ControlFreak]

- Razing for workers, no flips, and no domination victory. Apparently, Tadpole is too much land to keep.
- We are at war with Ottomans. Bursa has to fall for flip risk - that was the point of declaring I thought. We can stay at war after that, but I don't see the point.
- I like free ocean travel - for luxes mainly. Metallurgy first might be ok too, didn't realize about the Lighthouse.
- The harbor gives extra food, which translates in extra shields or extra commerce, whichever we want. Yes, forest chops are going to be difficult to pull off, we'll see.

On Razing
We would get twice as many workers if we capture the cities and rush/build slaves from them. We run very low risk of flipping because our total culture is way above the other civs, and their capitol is going to end up just about as far away from Washington as ours is. I know the total tiles are going to exceed domination but the point is that we are still only halfway to the limit. There is no reason to raze these cities that could have libraries rushed and start getting ready for the presence of the FP. When we get within 50-100 tiles of domination, then we can see what we still want to keep and what we can unload. Keep in mind that domination includes all the coastal tiles and many of them wont be in our territory until one or even two culture expansions occur. My vote is don't raze.

On Ottomans
Yes Bursa has to go at somepoint, but the war was started to take advantage of the catapults and elite units that couldn't make it onto the boats. By bombing down Ottoman units and giving our elites easy kills, we were trying to maximize our leader fishing. Most of our units should be heading to America so we don't really have enough to run a proper attack on the Ottoman's so far up North. Once America is crushed and the Spainish Tadpole holdings are ours there will be plenty of time to eliminate Bursa. If a town does flip, it shouldn't hurt us too badly and we can deal with it then. I vote to continue leader fishing off Bursa and not capture it.

On Metallury before Magnetism.
I think you were right. The Great Lighthouse will expire but we'll be able to travel straight across the ocean, stopping wherever we want in that case, there is little difference between 8 move and 9 move boats but there is a big difference between 4 units and 3 units. Plus I had forgotten that we'd be able to trade luxuries across the ocean. That's a big plus for us since we're on the borderline of happiness and could gain wool for Home and alot of Luxuries for Tadpole once Entremont gets a harbor. I vote for Magenetism before Metalurgy and maybe even before Banking.

Sages Harbor will be relatively cheap so I'm fine with it, just didn't think it was needed because we'd only gain maybe one sheild if we're lucky. We're currently at 15spt which will cause a 9s overun in 8 turns. Drop to 14spt still getting Cops in 8 with 8 more food in the bin, or we could go on starvation making -1FPT, 16spt and get Cops 1 turn earlier. Going +1fpt,14spt is probably prefered because it also results in +2gpt due to the market. (River plain is worth 1g more than roaded forest but the market adding 50% ends up rounding to 2 in this case.)

Forests/Rushing In Sages
To rush the harbor, make sure you have enough workers to chop a forest on turn one. That puts some sheilds in the bin and gives you the cheaper cost of 4g/s. Then rush a settler bringing the bin to 30, switch to harbor which will be due in 1 based on Sages production. The twelve slaves near San Ansmurkio plus the four mining between Arismurkz and Zentral make up 10WT and will chop a forest in the 1 turn if grouped together.

For the university, we could do a similar short rush using two forest chops. The first gets some shields in the bin to reduce the price of buying shields, then we cash rush a Bank, then we chop one more forest to put 170s in the bin. Sages can do 15spt so it will finish the Uni in two turns, saving us 120g. You will need two forests that are near chop and enough workers to finish the chop. We will also need to have banking by then.

Since all the forests are roaded, you can move workers to a forest and still chop it the same turn. Unfortunately, since we haven't mined the excess plains yet, we're going to have a spt loss for a bit until the plains get re-mined. The stack of 2.5 workers due to finish mining near Stein, could also be brough in to play: one of the slaves can be woken and moved N to start mining the BG up by Bursa. (Don't forget to give him cover.) The rest will finish the mine in one still and can be moved down to help the Slaves from San Ansmurkio finish mining the unused plains before moving to setup the forest chops.

[Soapbox]
Trying to find enough workers to bring back to Sages, I ran in to what zyxy has previously stated, the workers are in weird groupings. There are at least 5 stacks that are wasting at least one of their workers. One of the stacks wastes 4WT in overrun. Before you move workers to do a job, ask yourself how many worker turns do I need to compete the job. e.g. For a mine, the answer is 6. You have 5 workers to move, don't just join all five and move them because when they end their first turn, they will have done 5/6 WTs, the next turn you only need 1 WT but you still are stuck with spending 5WT. Instead, you should move three to the tile. It still gets done in 2 turns but you have 2 extra workers to move elsewhere. Same thing with the mines that are using 3 workers and 1 slave. That extra slave could have gone to start something else. It doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. Just on this turn, we could have essentially had another 10-15 workers if we didn't have these inefficiencies. That's two mines in Sages (which is what we need to be prepared for the forest chopping). I understand that worker turns, like MM is tedious and not everyone likes to do it. But ignoring all the fancy worker chain stuff and finishing tiles with workers arriving on turn two, the simple (WT needed/Workers Available) analysis needs to be done. (You knew it was coming... )[/Soapbox]

 

[WarDance]

I've been spending some time practicing my worker moves, CF... I think I'm getting it. We'll see after my next turnset.

 

[ControlFreak]

I've been spending some time practicing my worker moves, CF... I think I'm getting it. We'll see after my next turnset.

So you know where it comes from...
When I was new to Civ, I joined an "SG" started by LKendter. The theme was that every player would play ten turns and LKendter would pick the best turn set. Then we would all play from that set.

On my first submission, I got for my worker usage. If you've ever played with LKendter you know he's a great player but doesn't own "kid gloves". I've been trying to improve my worker usage ever since. It doesn't help that I'm a MM nut and a ControlFreak to boot.

BTW, if anyone ever wants to take the time to run a "Best Ball" format it was a fun time and a good learning tool. LKendter complained about how long it took him to go through the files but with CAII and some of the automated QSC scoring stuff, it might be easier to evaluate the saves. I don't follow the SGs anymore so I don't know if it's been done again.