Short fun game (immortal)

[Silu]

Sorry, I had to stick in a little friendly dig. It's not even a big deal, as the libraries are up soon anyway.

Haha, I didn't take it as a dig actually, even a friendly one. I just have a habit of whipping myself pretty badly for mistakes in any team efforts. It can be considered a pretty hefty screwup though for Sarmatian, the border battle isn't trivial. Though that and Ya-Sugar's problems make it ever the nicer to bash Mao's face in in a couple dozen turns.

Another thing - do we want GT with HE? We don't have Drama yet, and IIRC only Gandhi does. Theaters are dirt cheap and we have solid production most everywhere, so it would be pretty easy to get built.

I don't see GT as necessary IMO, I foresee us waging war almost completely with 2move units so I don't see drafting as that necessary. Moreover, our capital is and will be almost all our science so staying in Bureu is quite enticing.

About who to attack first, I'm fine with any of our neighbors actually. Biz is a bite-sized semi-easy chomp-up, Churchill is probably weak and small from his current war and Mao is the most likely to cause us trouble and our only neighbor we're not on good terms with. Gandhi first I don't like as I feel it's unnecessary to go for the farthest dude and Churchill is somewhat gumming up his gears anyway.

Mao->Gandhi feels solid, possibly racking up some more EP for Biz to make it effortless to wipe him out as an afterthought. He's not going anywhere from his plains/tundra heaven.

 

[shyuhe]

I'd prefer to invade from the south so that we don't expand our borders too far. But if we're going to go north, I'd go Mao -- Gandhi -- Churchill -- Biz. The last two are small anyways so they'll go down easy.

 

[babybluepants]

Well... This didn't quite go according to plan...

T105 - 900 AD
Not much, just switched a few tiles and specialists.

T106 - 920 AD
Founded Vladivostok 1S of banana.

Up slider to 10% for Lit in 1t.
Start HE.

T107 - 940 AD
Lit done, start Music at 0% slider. Gandhi doesn't wanna trade it.

T108 - 960 AD
Starve St. Pete down to shave a turn off GS.

Moscow grew and can shave a turn off Taj - yay! ... Except...

T109 - 980 AD

Gandhi completes Taj! Bloody hell! Whateva, man... The bald bastard's gonna get it soon...
In other news, Bismarck has Education! S**t. We're still 6t from Lib...

T110 - 1000 AD
Make a CS+105g for Machinery trade with Churchill.

Gandhi's in golden age now, and I figure Churchill can use maces. His city has been under siege, though there's no chance of it falling.

T112 - 1020 AD
Trade gems to Mao for crab (we can definitely use more health).

Music done. Education can be completed in 1t without the second bulb, with overflow...

Do we still want Lib? Bismarck has had a significant head start.
HE is complete. NE in 2t. Stables done.

 

[Silu]

Hm, I guess we have so much cash that the second bulb wouldn't speed things up? If that's not true we should still wait for the 2nd bulb. Oh if there only was a way to store that overflow in the meantime Should have "stored" this in Music maybe if the math leans that way. EDIT: Never mind, didn't notice the 2nd scientist was already done

We could trade Nat to Biz (for Feuda+Theo), being his favcivic and all maybe he will adopt it and let us win Lib. 3 turn head start is a lot though and even a Nat adopt will only mean 1 turn

I guess we were a bit too greedy after all Oh well, the gambit was worth it IMO and not like losing either of these matters that much in the final analysis.

More after looking at the save

EDIT: Kinda wishing we had left our EP on Biz, would be lights on on research now oh well, hindsight and all that...

 

[Silu]

I think we should still use the 2nd bulb for Edu and try for Lib, making the Nat trade. It's the most efficient use for the GP and we still need Edu for Gunpowder. Since we can power 100% all the way we should change Wealth builds to Research and hopefully catch up with Biz. Wishful thinking (as Lib is probably 4-7 turns for Biz ) but failing won't matter that much and winning would be very nice.


Making rudimentary calculations, for us Lib is 2 or 3 turns from the save with full steam (almost all cities building Research, 100% slider, using bulb), hard to say which without actually using the bulb (spoilerz! ) . My educated guess is 2 turns with a sprinkle of math so if Biz doesn't get it next turn we should get it.

EDIT: Since Lib has 2 prereqs instead of Edu's 1 we should actually gain even more beakers by bulbing to get the overflow into Lib. I'm 80% certain we could get Lib in 2 turns from the save

 

[babybluepants]

I think you may be right - if we build research everywhere, we could probably do it in 2t. It's hard to say exactly...

The GS popped this turn. It was a really awkward set tech-wise, since we had nothing to put beakers in (MT and Educ make no sense as we're supposed to get them for free; Lib and GP need Educ to unlock; Educ is waiting on GS). Bulbing Educ is still the best use for the GS.

The Nationalism trade is clever Would the fav civic really override Lib race? bestsss?

I guess we have 2 options:

• Bulb Education (?) - tech MT+GP.
  I haven't checked, but I believe we can probably tech GP in 2-3t and MT in 4t. Call it 7t total. We easily have that much saved up in deficit cash (some cities are running wealth right now, but there's not much else for them to do). Gives us Cuirassiers in 7t? (we can also build research potentially to speed up).
• Bulb Education - trade Nationalism - tech Lib in (hopefully) 2t.
  We get MT+GP in probably 5t. Maybe 4t?
• Same as above - lose Lib race.
  If we run all research-building, we're probably losing about 120gpt? If we lose Lib, we'll have wasted 120g, I guess, leaving us with approx. 480g, which is probably good for 7t of research - equalling what we need for MT+GP. Lib also has some trade value maybe? Though we could already trade for everything we need and more, so that's not really a valid concern.
  Worst-case scenario: we lose Lib having teched it for 2t, run out of cash going to MT, save up for 1t = maybe 10t to Cuirassiers. I think it's more likely 9t, so two off the direct pace, which makes sense.

I don't know... I think the question is - do we need Lib and what would we research next otherwise? Chem and Astro are the next big techs, and both are bulbable, ofc. If we didn't go for Lib, we could maybe get Eng?

Note to next player: I didn't really look at the cities this turn. I think I may have started a couple of Maces, for lack of anything useful to build. Maybe switch those to wealth/research regardless of what we decide tech-wise.

 

[Silu]

^ Great breakdown of our choices. Since the other "hot techs" are not urgent by any means (they would help a bit with WS hammers and ocean scouting but by no means necessary for now) I'll vote for going Lib. Probably my FPS (fancy play syndrome) striking up again though, but I like fancy! We have a lot of open techs to trade around for a bit of cash should we need some to optimize our science.

IMO the main question about Lib/not Lib is if we want to burn the GP for the bulb, the penny-rounding isn't going to affect nearly anything in any case. My opinion still stands that the Edu bulb here is very good compared to the options (bulb another tech, save for GA, settle).

The Nationalism trade is clever Would the fav civic really override Lib race? bestsss?

I'd be very, very surprised if the civic changing check routine takes "tech races" into account. AFAIK it just counts a lot when choosing what to tech, similar to sunk beaker investment, open GPs and open religions. I could check but I'm too lazy

It's worth noting that the Nat trade can't affect anything if we get Lib in 2 turns since then his last chance would be to get it next turn, same turn which would be his first opportunity to adopt Nationhood.

 

[shyuhe]

I doubt Bizzy would be dumb enough to adopt nationhood at this point. The AI loves bureau and generally doesn't leave it for some time. As for liberalism, I'll have to open the save and see how many turns it'll take us before committing. At this point, I think it may be better to skip liberalism and just go straight MT--gunpowder and try to grind out a non-GS for a golden age to speed up the military building (and whipping).

Roster:
shyuhe -UP
Ras - AWOL
mysty (on deck)
Silu
bbp just played

 

[babybluepants]

It's worth noting that the Nat trade can't affect anything if we get Lib in 2 turns since then his last chance would be to get it next turn, same turn which would be his first opportunity to adopt Nationhood.

Could he not revolt right away and lose the next turn of research?

I guess I agree with still going Lib, too. I do think there's a pretty good chance we get beat to it, but the difference is most likely a mere 2t. That seems sorta insignificant, compared to what it will take to amass an army and move it out.

EDIT: x-post with shyuhe. The GA sounds like a sensible plan, too. I'm divided again... It would take some time to grind out another. Can't open the save right now, but NE could be up in 2t, and we can start with 7 scientists in 3t, IIRC. We've had 4GS so far? That means 335gpp for the next... 11t for the next GP, I think. Not too bad.

I think I'm 50:50 on this.

 

[Rusten]

We could trade Nat to Biz (for Feuda+Theo), being his favcivic and all maybe he will adopt it and let us win Lib.

Or just ask him to adopt Caste System.

EDIT: Since Lib has 2 prereqs instead of Edu's 1

*Confused*

I was under the impression that only the techs next to it in the tree counted (the white lines).
You are talking about philosophy right?

 

[babybluepants]

*Confused*

I was under the impression that only the techs next to it in the tree counted (the white lines).
You are talking about philosophy right?

Same here. Had to think about it a bit... How does it work?

EDIT: from Technology Research Explained

Calculating the Prerequisites modifier

1) Start with 1. If the technology does NOT have a minimum requirement (i.e., the starting techs = Fishing, The Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Mysticism, Mining), then use 1 AS the modifier.
2) Add 0.2 to 1) if a Technology has a MINIMUM Requirement that the player has met. Note: Even if a tech has MANY MANDATORY PREREQUISITES, it will still only give you a boost of 1.2 because you MUST have all those prerequisites to research the tech. (IOW, the minimum requirement IS all of those prerequisites.)
3) Add 0.2 to 2) for EACH ADDITIONAL OPTIONAL Prerequisite that the player has met.
Requirements modifier = 1 + (0.2 * MINIMUM Req. met) + (0.2 * # of Optional Prereq. met)

So, Philosophy does give a discount.

 

[shyuhe]

I'll check the math to see if a caste system bribe will give us enough time to complete liberalism.

 

[Silu]

Guys guys, bribing AIs to swap civics doesn't cause anarchy (if I'm not gravely mistaken, seeing 3 strong players think it does always kinda makes me doubt myself) Except when/if they change them back a couple dozen turns later.

Sorry about the confusion about Philo/Edu, they do have the same benefit multiplier to overflow. From BBPs quote I understand that this multiplier is the same for techs that have 1 mandatory prerequisite and techs that have 2 mandatory prerequisites though it's quite damn confusing. The white lines don't mean anything, they just couldn't draw all the lines they wanted without the lines overlapping so they put some as icons instead. All that matters if the techs are an AND prerequisite or an OR prerequisite.

BIG EDIT

Could he not revolt right away and lose the next turn of research?

He can't revolt on our turn now can he? I'm only 95% sure but seeing how civics are changed during the turn and the only way he could get Lib if he had Lib at 1turn left last turn (i.e. it must trigger at the start of his next turn) it wouldn't help if we can do Lib in 2.

I checked some of the code... and tech races and civic change times don't appear to have anything to do with each other. So yes indeed he's "dumb enough" to do it if he feels like it It mostly depends on the last time (amount of turns since) he changed civics. Now this isn't scaled to game speed so it's quite probable he doesn't want to swap yet

---

Not bulbing means about that Cuirs come out about the same time as if we fail at Lib while bulbing. Since so many cities are building suboptimal builds already (read: Wealth and Research) I'd like to try to optimize the time when we get Cuirs into queues regardless of if we go for Lib or not. So if we abandon Lib (which I don't think we should ) I think we should still bulb. I doubt we're going to get a 3GP GA that matters so delaying our second GA for a dozen turns might not end up affecting the game in any way.

 

[Rusten]

Guys guys, bribing AIs to swap civics doesn't cause anarchy

Sounds more like it -- it would be very abusive if not.

Haven't used it in years seeing as it was bugged last patch, so I wouldn't know.

 

[shyuhe]

I thought it did cause anarchy... I always did it when taking peace deals and the AI had nothing better to offer.

 

[babybluepants]

Guys guys, bribing AIs to swap civics doesn't cause anarchy (if I'm not gravely mistaken, seeing 3 strong players think it does always kinda makes me doubt myself) Except when/if they change them back a couple dozen turns later.

Seriously?! I'm learning a whole sh*tload about this game today.

Sorry about the confusion about Philo/Edu, they do have the same benefit multiplier to overflow. From BBPs quote I understand that this multiplier is the same for techs that have 1 mandatory prerequisite and techs that have 2 mandatory prerequisites though it's quite damn confusing. The white lines don't mean anything, they just couldn't draw all the lines they wanted without the lines overlapping so they put some as icons instead. All that matters if the techs are an AND prerequisite or an OR prerequisite.

I think it means something like:
Scientific Method requires Printing Press + either Chemistry or Astronomy. If you only have PP+Chem, for instance, you only get the .2 modifier for minimum req. met. If you also have Astro, you get an extra .2 for optional req.
So, I misread it the first time. That would actually mean no additional .2 on Lib, as both Philo and Educ are required, not optional? Right?

 

[Silu]

So, I misread it the first time. That would actually mean no additional .2 on Lib, as both Philo and Educ are required, not optional? Right?

Right. But both do get that confusing 20% boost (like every non-starter tech), so if anyone is going to count beakers to Lib keep that in mind.

 

[Silu]

Here's my "proper" Lib beaker math for those interested (from memory actually since I can't get to Civ right now so crucial numbers might be off, marked with (?) ):

Edu is 810(?) beakers from completion.

Moving the slider so that Edu is ~done shows our bpt as 304(?), rounding up to 310 since it's not quite done with that slider setting.

We can get 450(?) beakers with "normal" full steam, meaning 140 * 1.2 = 168 extra to what is left of Edu, 810 + 168 = 978. On the next turn without overflow we'd get 450*1.2 = 540 so in 2 turns total 1518. Lib was about 1589(?) That would leave us 71 beakers short, meaning 71/1.2/2 ~ 30 bpt. So we'd need around 480bpt instead of 450, that should be possible with extensive citizen micro and total Research buildage?

 

[babybluepants]

^ IIRC, this morning I roughly estimated around 470bpt, but that didn't include any scientist assignment micro. I think Lib is possible in 2t. No access to the game now... Maybe someone can just quickly do all the micro, so we know the exact number?

 

[shyuhe]

We can get 500 beakers hiring scientists and putting all cities to research.