SGOTM8 - Wacken

[dmanakho]

Thanks Wacken!

Will follow the plan. This one will be really hard to screw up even if i tried

Again, I'll most likely be playing tomorrow, but since there isn't really much else to discuss if i get a chance i will try to do it today.

 

[Offa]

I think building airfield on AIs territory is the same as the building the city and equal of declaration of war

On my test, it was actually not possible to build a airfield on the AI land, even with an ROP. They can be built only on our land or in unsettled land.

It is indeed possible to restore mines/irrigation after building an airstrip.

Airstrips are not generous. On a given turn they can give only once, but receive multiple times



Regarding counting shields, if you can't face they possibility of a misclick using Wacken's method (pricey worker!), Civ assist2 tells you the same info in the production tab.

 

[dmanakho]

On my test, it was actually not possible to build a airfield on the AI land, even with an ROP. They can be built only on our land or in unsettled land.

Bammer.... Here comes my experience of modern warfare
Oh well.... not a problem... we need to move settler to foreign land
establish a city 1st and then build airfield next to it. That should work, right?

Civ assist2 tells you the same info in the production tab.

Civ Assist2 is reallly a major pain. For me at least that is. I have a computer with 700Mb of RAM but when i have C3C and CivII running computer is becoming increasingly slow and in only few minutes reports of low virtual memory crap. Then i have to use task manager to kill Civ Assist to restore system response.
Don't like it at all.

 

[grahamiam]

Civ Assist2 is reallly a major pain. For me at least that is. I have a computer with 700Mb of RAM but when i have C3C and CivII running computer is becoming increasingly slow and in only few minutes reports of low virtual memory crap. Then i have to use task manager to kill Civ Assist to restore system response.
Don't like it at all.

sounds like i'm not missing anything, as I only have 512MB RAM. ah well, by the time I'd figure out how to properly use it, Civ4 will be out

 

[Offa]

Well, I have 1GB of RAM and civ assist runs OK . I do rely on MapStat much more while playing though.

Looking at the submission page, we have played a lot further than the others. It almost looks like they are waiting to see our finish date to plan their own games . Although we are doing very well, I am still pretty worried about this game. It is possible Klarius' mob are cruising ahead of us.

 

[dmanakho]

Although we are doing very well, I am still pretty worried about this game. It is possible Klarius' mob are cruising ahead of us.

Here us the quiz for the team:

Who does mention "Klarius" name more this time around.

a) did I do it?
b) or was it Offa after alll?

 

[Offa]

Arrrrghhhhh. Mea Culpa.

No more, I will not say it again .

 

[WackenOpenAir]

No idea, but surely team Klarius is our main enemy. I do not fear anyone but them.

We still don't need to build a city. We can build airstrips after capturing their first city.

I used both civ tools a little, and they worked fine. They of course work fine on this PC, but iirc, they also worked fine on my AMD 1200+ with 512 MB.
I rarely use them anymore, i just don't like it

 

[Offa]

Just for the sake of saying something:

I am sure you have all seen the 2 little viking settlements on the English island. There must be a reasonable chance these will be available in a peace deal. If we can get one of them, then we can build an airstrip and land our entire force on England, killing off the poms well before we get advanced flight. Bombing another AI might give us an opening into their lands too in a peace deal.

I really like this idea, and am still unconvinced that going straight for Hoover is better.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I am not sure either if going for Hoover was the optimal plan, i never really had a strong stance on this issue, But it is chosen to go there now.
If it is not the best thing, i don't think it can be too bad either. There are many factors that play their role in here, and it is hard to say what would have been the right thing to do.

Of course, trying to do whatever conquest we can do before AF is a good idea.

 

[Xevious]

@Wacken: Steel costs 3500 according to CivAssist, which means to get it in 4 we need 875 beakers per turn. I don't know that we can reach that in time. If we can't that means delaying TOE another turn, and we'd be finishing TOE and Hoover the same turn, but since Washington is first in the build order, it will not have Electronics ready to finish hoover, meaning we'd have to delay hoover a turn also.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

hmm, did i make a mistake in my planning somewhere?
let me look again.

Costs:

Corporation: 2500
Refining: 4000
Steel: 3500

corp: 2500 / 4 = 625.
Refining: 4000/5 = 800.
Steel: 3500/4 = 875.

I have opened the save again and counted the science. This is my result:
Current research At 100% : 684
Expected research with few more libs, citizens and a uni in 5 turns: 725-730
Max scientist research: 60 scientists for 180 research.

Therefore, we will be able to make 900 science per turn in 5 turns. This does mean ending ALL growth by going for the maximum scientists in ICS land, maybe even accepting some food shortshortage in those cities that can handle it for 4 turns without losing a citizen. But it IS possible.

During the research of corporation, look carefully to grow the ICS cities while they still can without delaying the research. Then for refining, add some more scientists, starting in the cities that can't grow further or that benefit least from further growth, just enough to get Refining in 5. Then when starting Steel, they all need to be scientists.

So no worries

 

[Offa]

Re this Hoover thing. I don't really understand why we are committed. We have researched two techs "off route" for flight, but could get those back via TOE as there is no rule meaning we have to take Atomic and electronics from this. In any case we needed to get electricity first so the AI could get rep parts.

This is less relevant if the Vikings won't give us a town on Blighty, but I don't see why we have stopped the discussion.

 

[dmanakho]

I am playing tonight and i don't really have good opinion on strategy...
I can postpone playing if we want to discuss the matter and weight Offa's plan seriously. (and i mean do some excel calculations i am so bad at)

if i don't hear from anyone i will use the original plan and go after Hoovers.

Do we have extra workers i can join into our ICS cities for extra science?

Do we have pop 12 cities that can pop workers/settlers to be joined to ICS cities?
That might help to expedite research a little.

 

[Xevious]

I have no problems with going toward flight first, but the main reason for taking at least atomic theory with TOE is it's 5000 beaker cost. Even at 900 shields it will still take 6 turns to research it by hand. If we can get away with stealing cities through peace deals and build airports and bring in troops though, the extra time to research to advance flight may not be as big a deal. We could easily use Washington to build TOE in 10 turns by stealing a tile from Chicago after it finishes its factory. That would give us:

1: Sci Method
5: Corporation
10: Steel (cheaper than refining, will save some gold) (TOE finishes)
Take Refining and Combustion
15: Flight (assuming we can get to 900 beakers/turn science)
21: Atomic (unless we can find a way to get science to 1000)
26: Electronics and Golden Age (assuming perfectly timed prebuild of Hoover)
30: Mass Prod
34: Motorized
38: Advanced

This puts us 4 turns behind WOAs solution for Advanced Flight, BUT, we could be well on our way to owning England already by then AND we'd be able to build our tanks earlier and longer in the GA.

In this scenarion, SF could use its shields to build a coal plant (wasting 40 shields plus its current turn capacity), or continue on to a different Wonder.

I for one would like to see a bit more discussion before dman gets started. And who knows, if we get lucky, we could maybe grab a city on both englands island and the vikings as well.

 

[dmanakho]

I will listen to Xevious and postpone my turns for a little bit...
Just want to make sure everyone agrees on what to do.

 

[grahamiam]

so we save 4 turns of research by tripping our GA earlier. I think that's a pretty good arguement for going for Hoovers now. ah, I see the difference now hmm, tough question, but I think the sooner we get flight, the better.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I am playing tonight and i don't really have good opinion on strategy...
I can postpone playing if we want to discuss the matter and weight Offa's plan seriously. (and i mean do some excel calculations i am so bad at)

if i don't hear from anyone i will use the original plan and go after Hoovers.

Do we have extra workers i can join into our ICS cities for extra science?

Do we have pop 12 cities that can pop workers/settlers to be joined to ICS cities?
That might help to expedite research a little.

I am still not sure about flight first or not, i am gonna think about it hard, but there are so many factors, don't expect any calculation from me that shows a clear choise here. I will start with creating a time picture of both choises. Expect more on this soon.

For your questions:
We can get that 900 research without any joins. So it is not needed. If when we go follow another path and it turns out to be really needed, then yes i think it is possible to join some of our workers. If not needed, first railroading ICS land is prefered. If after that we join workers, we may get our research close to 1000. (which could be helpfull if we end up going flight first, but we'll see that later)

Of course, Atlanta and other cities when they finished all buildings could skim workers / settlers. I think however that we have well enough workers now so i don't think we should do it now. Every worker would cost 30 shields worth of production.
If we want to do offencive settling later, we could skim some settlers just before we reach flight (so we waste shields otherwise used on cavalry/pikes, not bombers/tanks/choppers)

 

[grahamiam]

sorry, mumbling in my head here
what advantages does taking flight earlier have? We still cannot transport settlers overseas. However, we may be able to gain footholds by bombing towns down to 1 pop and getting them for peace. We can then airlift units to the new city and start conquering. Can we do this within 19 turns of researching flight?

War with Vikings will probably last 7 to 10 turns, so that means we need prebuilds for bombers right away so we can start pounding them on turn 16 or 17, which will give us our foothold on turn 23-27, if we're lucky.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

If we go flight, we lose one of the prebuilds.
When looking at what to do with the lost prebuild i came to another thing. If we swich Washington to Coal Plant, it will get 60 shields. 68 if we use tiles from Chicago. Now if Washington was to build the Hoover, this would not be usefull as the Hoover is gonna bring us that increase anyway. If we delay the Hoover, swiching to Coal plant and taking those tiles from Chicago will give us a still ToE in 10, but with a free coal plant.

The wonder build in SF could then either be used for another wonder, but they all look pretty useless, so there i would then also build a coal plant.

I agree with Xevious Timeline.
So now is to compare those timelines. I'll make them both, stating only what really matters here.

Hoover first:
15: Hoover & Golden Age
22: Flight
34: Advanced Flight
35: END GA

Flight first:
15: Flight
26: Hoover & Golden Age
38: Advanced Flight
46: END GA


First i take a look at our cities. I concider a city ready for war when it has a factory. StDman and Houston i consider lost for production, they wont get a factory anywhere soon, and their productive tiles can be use by neighbours.
I round all numbers to multiples of 5 here.
We will have the following shields available for production
Within 5 turns: 20(2), 25, 30(2), 35, 45
total Within 15 turns: 15(2), 20(4), 25, 30(2), 35, 45
GA and Hoover together would create roughly the following productions:
30(2), 35(3), 40(3), 50, 60, 65, 80


If we go flight first, We should build stronger units and not units for upgrade as we need them before gold is available. We would in 15 turns have roughly the following units:
Washington would be building ToE for 10 turns, then HooverDam.
SF would have a coal factory and go from 34 to 45. = 7 cavs.
35 city = 5 cav
25 city = 4 cav
20 cities = 6 cav.
Total 17 cavalry and 5 muskets When we get flight. Adding our current army would make that 20 cavs.
Until GA, We would then have 11 turns more to produce ~30 units (3 units per turn)
Between GA and AF(12) we would produce 55 units. (4.6 unit per turn)
Then after AF, we have 8 more turns of golden age to produce about 5.5 - 6 unit per turn using gold on shortrushes.

Now if we go Dam first, we would have first 15 turns to produce say, 10 cavs and 20 pikes/horses.
We'd then have Hoover and Golden age, boosting our production. In the 7 turns until flight we would produce 39 cavs.
Then when we get Fligth, we would have 12 turns till AF and. In those 12 turns we would build 55 units (bombers, cavs or tanks)
After AV, we would upgrade 2 units per turn and production would go down to about 3 units per turns for about 5 total units per turn.

So now getting everything together:

Flight:
15: Flight. 20 cavalry.
-3 units per turn.
26: 20 cavalry + 30 bomber
-4.6 unit per turn.
38: Advanced Flight. 20 cavalry + 85 bomber
-6 unit per turn

Dam
22: Flight. 49 cavalry + 20 upgradable (or 59 cavalry if we want)
-4.6 unit per turn.
..........26: 49 cavalry + 15 bomber + 20 upgradable
34: Advanced Flight. 39 cavalry + 55 bomber + 20 upgradable
..........38: 49 cavalry + 70 bomber + 20 being upgraded.