Our Strategy....You Probably Haven't Heard of It

[oledavy]

So, I started reviewing my cities today and began thinking about great person options and what we want to research.

I think paper -> education is a given after we finish engineering, but what after that?

At this point, I feel like we want to prioritize techs to boost our economy (to keep pace with Team Spullarise) and that dovetail well onto our REXing approach to the game. To this end, upcoming techs that would help are:

Constitution
Representation + Mercantilism just makes a lot of sense, we basically get three beakers per city for free, not to mention the enormous boost it would give me running specialists. Given that we're trying to expand as quickly as possible, per city bonuses are great for us. Jails also wouldn't be half bad, we could use EPs and for India they're mausoleums for +2 happy. (Requires Philosophy -> Nationalism, unless we want to get Divine Right )

Astronomy
Observatories for +25% beakers and a scientist slot, allowing me and Shoot to potentially get up to +85% research in each city. Salons are my unique building. They're pretty bad, but GPPs are GPPs. It also gives us offensive options against Team Spullarise as far as boating Sunrise's cities or potentially attacking Sulla in the east. (Requires Optics)

Corporation
+1 Trade Routes per city, do I need to say more? Also we get Wall Street for WK out of the deal to better leverage our early banking. We would have to pursue this after getting Constitution though (Requires Economics, Constitution).

So to this end, my proposed tech path is the following:

1. Engineering
2. Paper
3. Bulb Philosophy
4. Education
5. Bulb & Research Economics (Get GM for more Bulbing)
6. Nationalism
7. Bulb & Research Constitution
8. Bulb & Research Corporation

I'm still working out the kinks in my great person plan, but basically I use a Great Scientist to bulb philosophy before we finish paper and open up Education; then use a Great Merchant to nab the economics Great Merchant, rolling him into a bulb along the way with another great merchant to get us most of the way through corporation. Problem is if we're not first to economics, it puts the entire plan back a bit and forces us to research a worthless tech. Alternatively, we could just tech to Constitution and ignore the Economics -> Corporation part. Getting to nationalism before we finish education would allow me to expend a Great Merchant on bulbing Constitution (prefers Economics), not to mention giving us nationalism for drafting (musketeers ). There's also the potential here to bulb some of education if need be, to make up for the delay so we can still get universities and Oxford up in a decent time frame.

Tech Paths This Ignores

1. Gunpowder
2. Optics -> Astronomy
3. Gunpowder -> Music -> Military Tradition
4. Gunpowder -> Printing Press -> Replaceable Parts -> Rifling

I feel like none of these are particularly worth it. I think Constitution & Corporation route outweigh the Optics -> Astronomy route and that the others are militarily focused and are not a winning proposition. Major drawback here is that by delaying gunpowder so long we'd basically forego the use of musketeers.

Thoughts?

[WarriorKnight]

At this point, I feel like we want to prioritize techs to boost our economy (to keep pace with Team Spullarise) and that dovetail well onto our REXing approach to the game. To this end, upcoming techs that would help are:

I've been trying to think of a good name for Team 1. Team Spullarise sounds good enough for me.

Constitution
Representation + Mercantilism just makes a lot of sense, we basically get three beakers per city for free, not to mention the enormous boost it would give me running specialists. Given that we're trying to expand as quickly as possible, per city bonuses are great for us. Jails also wouldn't be half bad, we could use EPs and for India they're mausoleums for +2 happy. (Requires Philosophy -> Nationalism, unless we want to get Divine Right )

Rep is nice, but it means giving up HR, that doesn't matter too much for me but I think Shoot has something like 6 warriors in his capital solely to abuse HR. If we can overcome that then heading for Rep would certainly be worthwhile.

Astronomy
Observatories for +25% beakers and a scientist slot, allowing me and Shoot to potentially get up to +85% research in each city. Salons are my unique building. They're pretty bad, but GPPs are GPPs. It also gives us offensive options against Team Spullarise as far as boating Sunrise's cities or potentially attacking Sulla in the east. (Requires Optics)

I think early Astro is certainly a good idea. It doesn't get a pre-req bonus, so it's a good thing for a GS to bulb. It gives both economic (observatory/Salon) and military (galleons and eventually frigates) bonuses. Plus you could use Optics at some point since I think you have 2 whales in your general area.

Actually, checking the bulbing chart, PP and paper are higher than Astro, so it can't easily be bulbed unless we grab PP (which isn't as useful compared to a normal game since we don't have as many villages/towns).

Corporation
+1 Trade Routes per city, do I need to say more? Also we get Wall Street for WK out of the deal to better leverage our early banking. We would have to pursue this after getting Constitution though (Requires Economics, Constitution).

I have no idea how long it'll take me to build the 8 banks I need for WS, but I know that I won't be getting them all anytime soon. Then again, we probably won't be getting Corp in the short term either (need 6 more techs).

Is +1 trade route in each city worth multiple GM bulbs? I'm not so sure. I can agree with bulbing Econs for denying the GM there to everyone (if we lose that and have a GM to spare, we can probably fire a GA instead), but I think your overrating trade routes here (Rep + merc > +1 trade route).

So to this end, my proposed tech path is the following:

1. Engineering
2. Paper
3. Bulb Philosophy
4. Education
5. Bulb & Research Economics (Get GM for more Bulbing)
6. Nationalism
7. Bulb & Research Constitution
8. Bulb & Research Corporation

Firstly, Edu is higher priority then Philo on GS bulbing list and bulbing Edu >>> bulbing Philo since Tao is gone and we have Pacifism (Philo does nothing except open up Angkor Wat and Nationalism/Lib, Uni's alone at Edu beat that).

I dunno what else to propose as a tech plan yet, mainly cause I don't know yet what we should do after Edu. (aside from bulb Econs with a GM if no-one else is there yet). We should definitely bulb Edu though. Constitution and Astro are both worthwhile targets, we should get them both sooner rather than later. MT and Rifling will be needed eventually, better to get them before Team Spullarise have them (that won't happen but you get my drift).

Tech Paths This Ignores

1. Gunpowder
2. Optics -> Astronomy
3. Gunpowder -> Music -> Military Tradition
4. Gunpowder -> Printing Press -> Replaceable Parts -> Rifling

I feel like none of these are particularly worth it. I think Constitution & Corporation route outweigh the Optics -> Astronomy route and that the others are militarily focused and are not a winning proposition. Major drawback here is that by delaying gunpowder so long we'd basically forego the use of musketeers.

Thoughts?

Keep in mind while you have a ton of expansion room left and thus aren't in much danger, me and Shoot are much closer to the action and could use military techs if the situation turns ugly. If Team Spullarise beeline MT or Rifling, we'll certainly need something to counter that.

It seems a bit silly to prepare your draft camp to draft musketeers all day, then not plan to go for gunpowder. I think we should grab that some time shortly after Edu.

[Shoot the Moon]

Keep in mind while you have a ton of expansion room left and thus aren't in much danger, me and Shoot are much closer to the action and could use military techs if the situation turns ugly. If Team Spullarise beeline MT or Rifling, we'll certainly need something to counter that.

That mostly sums up my opinion. With neighbors so close, I'd say we should probably plan on engineering and then paper and then reassess at that point based on what the other teams have done during that time. It's just with unpredictable human opponents I don't know how far out we can really plan our tech path beyond a couple techs at a time.

[scooter]

Hey guys. Was a fairly busy semester so I mostly checked out, but I'm going to try to catch up now and see how things look. I skimmed over things, and it looks like we are leading in Food/MFG but trailing in GNP. Anything notable happen? I'm going to start reading through the threads, but any short explanations of the state of PB6 would be nice .

[oledavy]

Hey guys. Was a fairly busy semester so I mostly checked out, but I'm going to try to catch up now and see how things look. I skimmed over things, and it looks like we are leading in Food/MFG but trailing in GNP. Anything notable happen? I'm going to start reading through the threads, but any short explanations of the state of PB6 would be nice .

Hey Scooter! Glad to have you back Basically Team Spullarise has been stomping everyone in GNP while we've been steadily leading in expansion. They have ~4,000 beakers on us and everyone else. Team #4 has been putzing around and missing turns thanks to frequent player turnovers. We landed the HG and SP, Team #1 nabbed the GL, while Lewwyn has been wonder-whoring it up grabbing everything else. Big news from the last turn is that Speaker set off an artist bomb on his border with Luddite and apparently captured a city. Meanwhile, I'm about to go into great person overdrive to try and bring us back up to tech parity. Recommend when you're reading the game you open up all the threads across several tabs and read the concurrently posted stuff - our conversations have had a habit of stretching across multiple threads

[oledavy]

I've been trying to think of a good name for Team 1. Team Spullarise sounds good enough for me.

Wish I could say I thought of it myself It was Shoot's idea.

Rep is nice, but it means giving up HR, that doesn't matter too much for me but I think Shoot has something like 6 warriors in his capital solely to abuse HR. If we can overcome that then heading for Rep would certainly be worthwhile.

There are other ways to get happiness. We'll have access to 3/4 market happiness resources (I can't recall if we have ivory around), and will soon have copies to all three forge happy. The capital is the only city me and Shoot are heavily relying on HR in atm, and I don't think it would be too hard to make the switch to Rep.

Speaking of specialists, do either of you have plans to throw up the National Epic at some point? While I'm obviously the GP producer for this team, there will come a point where it's significantly cheaper for you two to produce a great person than me. To that end, it would be useful at some point to get the National Epic in place.

I think early Astro is certainly a good idea. It doesn't get a pre-req bonus, so it's a good thing for a GS to bulb. It gives both economic (observatory/Salon) and military (galleons and eventually frigates) bonuses. Plus you could use Optics at some point since I think you have 2 whales in your general area.

Actually, checking the bulbing chart, PP and paper are higher than Astro, so it can't easily be bulbed unless we grab PP (which isn't as useful compared to a normal game since we don't have as many villages/towns)

An astronomy bulb sure would have been nice. It's definitely worth consideration for our next tech target.

Agreed, PP just isn't as useful as it normally in this game - since there's only been 50 turns to grow cottages instead of the usual 130. The net effect is to weaken the rifling path a bit as you have to get through two mediocre techs (printing press & replaceable parts) to research rifling itself.

Is +1 trade route in each city worth multiple GM bulbs? I'm not so sure. I can agree with bulbing Econs for denying the GM there to everyone (if we lose that and have a GM to spare, we can probably fire a GA instead), but I think your overrating trade routes here (Rep + merc > +1 trade route).

You're right. I had forgotten we were restricted to local trade routes, so in the end it ends up being only +1/+2 commerce per city. Rep+Merc definitely better than +1 trade routes. Btw, how much is a great merchant trade mission worth in a teammate's city? Does anyone have a ballpark estimate?

It seems a bit silly to prepare your draft camp to draft musketeers all day, then not plan to go for gunpowder. I think we should grab that some time shortly after Edu.

Good point, does seem like something of a waste if we don't utilize musketeers. I just feel like we generally want to be prioritizing economics techs. FWIW, current estimate for when I get the globe up is ~t160 or so.

Hopefully we get the economics Great Merchant. If so, we can research Nationalism and leverage him into bulbing a 1/3 of Constitution.

That mostly sums up my opinion. With neighbors so close, I'd say we should probably plan on engineering and then paper and then reassess at that point based on what the other teams have done during that time. It's just with unpredictable human opponents I don't know how far out we can really plan our tech path beyond a couple techs at a time.

Not trying to come up with a binding tech path, just a general idea of techs we want to target (Constitution, Astronomy). I need some idea of our goals when planning out great person production for bulbing purposes. However, you are right - need to be flexible to deal with the evolving situation in the game.

[WarriorKnight]

Speaking of specialists, do either of you have plans to throw up the National Epic at some point? While I'm obviously the GP producer for this team, there will come a point where it's significantly cheaper for you two to produce a great person than me. To that end, it would be useful at some point to get the National Epic in place.

Despite having Forums, I don't have any GP plans. I don't have any cities that have enough food to spare and enough production to build NE relatively quickly.

Btw, how much is a great merchant trade mission worth in a teammate's city? Does anyone have a ballpark estimate?

I don't think you can even do a trade mission in a teammate's city in the first place.

[oledavy]

Alrighty, here are the details of the Great People I have coming up.

I have Great People being born on turns: 133, 135, 137, 140, and 142

Turn 133 Great Person (Scientist)

Odds: 51% Scientist, 33% Engineer, 11% Artist, 4% Merchant
Produced From: Waterloo
Purpose: Academy in Stringer Bell

This is the best chance we have of being screwed by the RNG. If we get an engineer instead of a scientist....we'll cross that bridge if we reach it. Would likely use the GE to rush Sankore or ND and have to forego our education bulb.

Turn 135 Great Person (Scientist)

Odds: 96% Scientist, 4% Artist
Produced From: Waterloo
Purpose: Academy in May, 1940

Turn 137 Great Person (Scientist)

Odds: 85% Scientist, 15% Engineer
Produced From: May, 1940
Purpose: Philosophy Bulb

Turn 140 Great Person (Scientist)

Odds: 96% Scientist, 4% Artist
Produced From: Waterloo
Purpose: Education Bulb

Turn 142 Great Person (Merchant)

Odds: 99% Merchant, 1% Artist
Produced From: Sedan
Purpose: Economics Bulb

Dunno if Angkor Wat will still be available though, it's pretty much the only reliable way to generate a prophet (aside from a cathedral, which I would rather do than Angkor) and any other team who's interested in a shrine should be able to realize that. Otherwise I have no problems with it.

I can complete it in Trafalgar on t142 if my number-crunching is correct.

The only other team that can build it at this point is Team Spullarise. I feel pretty sure they're going to net their Great Prophet using a Temple + Cathedral, since they already have music and it's a smaller hammer investment with extra happiness to boot. Team #2 also has music and is more likely to get their GP via that method as well. They're also more inclined to prioritize military techs over philosophy right now with Speaker Great Artist bombing in their grill. Team #4 is our biggest threat for it. I feel like they'll probably go for education after their recent research into paper, but if they go for philosophy instead they could give us a run for our money.

If you running out of ideas for GP uses, I would be interested in a culture bomb in B. Nothing quite like bombing up on someone else's capital. If you've got uses for all your GP though, no problem. Catching up in tech is more important.

All GP accounted for at the moment, but I'll see what I can come up with for after that. GA's for bombing are really powerful on medieval starts, and it would be a shame to not set off at least one

[WarriorKnight]

If we get an engineer instead of a scientist....we'll cross that bridge if we reach it. Would likely use the GE to rush Sankore or ND and have to forego our education bulb.

Or, just thought of this, Globe would also be nice to rush since it doesn't get a doubler and will mean one of us can get it up instantly. Or use it to get Oxford/Wall Street up quicker (although Oxford with stone isn't that expensive).

[oledavy]

Or, just thought of this, Globe would also be nice to rush since it doesn't get a doubler and will mean one of us can get it up instantly. Or use it to get Oxford/Wall Street up quicker (although Oxford with stone isn't that expensive).

Rushing Wall Street would probably be the most useful of the three. We have stone for Oxford, and don't get as great a benefit from rushing the globe without immediate access to nationalism. Alternatively, a GE expended at this point would bulb gunpowder. Hopefully, however, we get a GS for an academy in Stringer Bell.