Chevalier Rides Again: A City Lights exploration

[Erasmas]

I don't think the boni to space projects apply to the spaceport itself - just the projects.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Correct, that's why I left the 1800 cost unchanged. I also can't use builders to speed the spaceports along (Aztecs sneakily good at science victories because of this).

[Erasmas]

I was referring to your remarks about Sagan and Kwolek.
You seem to be very knowledgable but I will drop two more random facts anyway.
- The space lasers tech is always the one before the final future tech. Sometimes you can skip some branches if you know that.
- Overflow from the space projects is wonky: don't expect any overflow if you finish a laser with a 3000 GE. Ideally you want to use Sagan on one of the general projects, but usually they are finished by the time I get him.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I was referring to your remarks about Sagan and Kwolek.
You seem to be very knowledgable but I will drop two more random facts anyway.
- The space lasers tech is always the one before the final future tech. Sometimes you can skip some branches if you know that.
- Overflow from the space projects is wonky: don't expect any overflow if you finish a laser with a 3000 GE. Ideally you want to use Sagan on one of the general projects, but usually they are finished by the time I get him.

True, if I was being precise with the math I should have left the 1800 production cost undivided when referring to the scientists - so it's 1800 + (.5 x 5000) = 4300 production instead of 3400. But it was mostly back of the envelop stuff so I didn't bother with precision. And thanks for the tip on the future tech! I actually rarely play this late (I usually get bored and conquer everyone around the Renaissance/Industrial era) so I don't know the end of the tech tree especially well. 

244

Start the turn with Radio, which enables our final strategic resource, Aluminum. It's important for building planes and for running some of our final space projects. 



The good news is, we have 4 sources, 2 already improved. We have:

One at Cerin Amroth, already mined (which is a eureka for Nanotechnology):



One at Henneth Annun, needs to be mined instead of the lumbermill present:



And two just to the north at Osgiliath, one under the Entertainment district and one in the desert tile I intended for the spaceport, which will be relocated now:



Note the wonky distribution of strategic resources - the game makes no attempt to balance this. We had horses and iron only at my start. The only niter we've acquired came from the colony at the Misty Mountains, and now some coming from the former Japan. Coal we had in relative abundance, although not really enough for strategic needs, and oil thanks to our extensive tundra settling and island cities. Aluminum is found only in former Japanese and English lands. Phoenicia has no coal and no terrestrial oil, just a few island sources, and Indonesia and Norway are too backwards to ever be relevant. I shudder to think what would have happened had I not aggressively conquered any threats, though.

In case any of them DO get uppity, however, the Grand Fleet has almost fully assembled in its peacetime anchorages, completely filling the Gulf of the Misty Mountains:


In order, Escort 1, Escort 2, Escort 3, Escort 4, Bombardment 1, Battle 1, and Battle 2. Bomb 1 is missing 2 BBs and Battle 1 is missing 2 DDs, which are either repairing or on barb suppression duties near some Norway - they'll return shortly. I have enough privateers surviving to form a fifth privateer squadron, which is Reserve 1. It's also on barb suppression, mostly keeping the seas between Japan/Norway and Mordor/Phoenicia clear. The rest of the world is everyone else's responsibility.

Okay, Great Engineers.


Sadly, Alavar Aalto is up next, and he's thoroughly useless for my purposes. Tesla would have been much better. Still, I won't bypass him because Phoenicia might, too, and then the Engineers will be locked until Indonesia or Norway shambles to enough points to recruit him, like happened in the Medieval Era. In the next round, Korolev is our favorite, clearly, 1500 production - good for one project, essentially. Roebling and Drew wouldn't be terrible, though, as more amenities are always useful. Then in the final era there's Werner von Braun, good for another +100% boost. If we were to land him AND the Great Scientist, we're looking at +200% (so basically costs are down to 1/3, not to 1/4 - I THINK my bonuses are all additive, not multiplicative, so I don't get 200% production for one scientist and then 400% for the engineer). That would bring our costs down, functionally, to 1800 + .333(5000) = 3465 total production. 

I can secure a further 15%, as all my cities can build Seaports:



And reaching my final government will grant a further +30%:



All these bonuses pretty clearly indicate that we should comfortably beat the t300 deadline, it's just a matter of having the research in place to keep the spaceport active once we have it built.

City overview:


Cirith Ungol has the highest production atm, but that's mostly a function of trade routes running out of the city - a legacy of the Venetian Arsenal project. Osgiliath is probably the highest raw production city and so we'll be relocating trade routes there as they finish. Caras Galadhon, Minas Morgul, and Moria will round out our quintet of Spaceport cities - Moria seems low on the list but note that it hasn't finished its power plant yet. It might be a good candidate to convert to Nuclear after we research Fission, in order to eureka Fusion. Hm...

[williams482]

These production bonuses are all additive, as you suspected. This of course also means they are vulnerable to overflow losses, and at that level of production multiplier you can safely assume no overflow whatsoever between projects. In addition to the one-time production charges from Sagan and Korolev, which as mentioned before is hardcoded to produce zero overflow towards subsequent builds.

In practice, that means a base 100h city (should be a reasonable target for a maxed-out Osgiliath) with cumulative bonuses of 20%+15%+30%+100%+100% = +265% will spit out 365h per turn effective, truncating overflow with each completed build. So, if all projects were built with these bonuses in play:
- 3t for the 900h earth satellite (This is an exact match at +200% production, so Goddard, ISC, and Technocracy bonuses are just barely irrelevant to this timeline)
- 5t for 1500h moon landing (enormous amount of wasted overflow here: get base production up to 103h and it's a 4t build, if not then G+I+T production modifiers are irrelevant again)
- 5t for each of the the 1800h Mars Habitation, Reactor, Hydroponics, and Colony projects (unlike the moon landing these are pretty close to optimal, all the bonuses matter, and at least 99 base production is required to hit this mark)
- 6t for the 2100h Exoplanet Expedition (another relatively optimal one, minimum 96 base production for this threshold)
- 2t for each laser station, with significant overflow. 83 base production will be sufficient to two-turn these, while one-turning them requires an implausible looking 165h base.

I'd say these are the big takeaways:
- Try to get multiple spaceport cities over the 99h base production threshold. (103h is a relevant threshold if you think you can get both the +100% boost great people before starting the moon landing, but I doubt that will happen.) 99h seems like it should be pretty doable with trade routes and amenity boosts (Amenity multipliers *are* multiplicative with other modifiers)
- Don't delay the earlier projects while chasing great person production boosts, increased production efficiency will not pay back lost time.
- The most time we can possibly save with Sagan or Korolev is six turns for the last big project or five turns on any of the others.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

These production bonuses are all additive, as you suspected. This of course also means they are vulnerable to overflow losses, and at that level of production multiplier you can safely assume no overflow whatsoever between projects. In addition to the one-time production charges from Sagan and Korolev, which as mentioned before is hardcoded to produce zero overflow towards subsequent builds.

- 5t for each of the the 1800h Mars Habitation, Reactor, Hydroponics, and Colony projects (unlike the moon landing these are pretty close to optimal, all the bonuses matter, and at least 99 base production is required to hit this mark)

Thank you for cranking the numbers on this! Especially the key takeaways so I have concrete targets to hit in each city. Four of the five candidates will just be building Spaceports and running the final projects - all the other projects have to be done sequentially so no reason not to run them at my highest production city.

Note that in Gathering Storm, Science Victory was reworked - the various Mars components were replaced with the single Martian Colony project and the Exoplanet Expedition (and its accelerators) were added. I think the idea was to make science victories slightly less dependent upon production, by requiring you to only launch 1 project (and then wait 50 turns) while still allowing production to help (via the laser projects to accelerate the final victory).

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

246

Quick turn, as there are few decisions to make. Umbar finishes our first native holy site:


Gives us a total of 3, and about 50 faith per turn in the empire - still well short of Indonesia's faith generation and their considerable reserve.

Phoenicia neutralizes our suzerainty of Mexico City, with its awesome +3 range bonus (and +15% empire-wide production via Kilwa):


Fortunately, I have 3 envoys in reserve - I had been planning on dispatching them to Rapa Nui to seize suzerainty from Indonesia and secure +15% culture empire-wide, but that will wait, as I want the extended factories, power plants, zoos, and stadiums more than more culture. Our next batch of 3 envoys will go to Rapa Nui.

Also, since I'm allied with every civ on the map (alliances with Indonesia and Phoenicia expired over the last two turns, renewals are in process), I can't send my spies to any of their cities, nor can they spy on mine. So my 3 (soon to be 4) spies are en route to Mexico City, Hong Kong, Rapa Nui, and Nan Madol - the 2 industrial and 2 cultural city-states on the map, where they'll run Fabricate Scandal missions, which nuke 3 enemy envoys upon completion.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

248



Our first biplane flies! Also note my first Acropolis finishing on turn 247, lol. Those are good sources of envoys if I need them to take full advantage of Kilwa.

We finish Computers, enabling our seawalls:



2 turns before the first icecaps melt and sea level rises. I faith purchase a lot of walls around my empire. My faith income is up to 2/3 of Indonesia's, and while he has a massive reserve I gamble that he's not focused on a sudden religious blitz. I signed a religious alliance iwth him so I THINK I'm safe from his religion, but not certain. Anyway, he's been passive enough that I think I can spare the faith to pray for protection from the angry seas. 

Stock Exchange finishes at Annun, half of the inspiration done, and I continue the science program...



And go for my second Biplane to inspire Advanced Flight:



Meanwhile, Occupied Japan/Lothlorien is working on the inspiration for Satellites, 2 broadcast centers, should be done in 10 turns:



Core is finishing Stadiums and then moving on to Labs or Spaceports (and a Stock Exchange at Barad-Dur) over the next 5 turns:



Will try to buy Nobel in 3 turns, sniping him from Phoenicia. The extra 100 GP points will be worth it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Randoms 250

No real news on this turn. The seas rise, but my seawalls are in place. I get era points for it:





65 tiles globally flooded. Next polar ice melt is in only 16 turns! I think climate change is going to hammer Indonesia and Norway this game, and even Phoenicia isn't getting off scot-free. Their Industrial Zone at the city of Lpqy is annihilated:



Devastating blow, as that was his only fully developed and functional IZ with the working oil plant(he has no coal for his coal power plants). 

Otherwise we continue our rapid improvement of amenities, science, and faith production:



More and more cities creeping into bonuses and I have only 1 stadium (Osgiliath) finished so far, and no fully built out Water Parks to add their amenities as well.

[shallow_thought]

Well, at least destroying the world around you fits your city naming theme.