[SPOILERS] Four Score & Seven Dynasties Ago: Pindicator plays Lincoln of China

[pindicator]

Turn 114

So I made a few mistakes last night. Luddite and I got a few beers last night and I came back to find my turn up. Perhaps I should have waited and played sober

Anyway, here's the setup at the start of this turn.



Moogle's moved spears onto the flood plains tiles to prevent from pillaging all of them. He's moved more spears in from the north, took out my chariot on the marble with another spear, and upgraded the warrior inside of Sixpool to yet another spear.

Moving the chariot to the marble was obviously a reach and I should have just pillaged the ivory and moved away. And in the main group I should have kept all chariots on the same tile and not moved a few extras north. I honestly don't know what I was thinking by moving two chariots north of the main stack, but it let Moogle attack and kill one of them with a spear.

He has plenty of defense in his capital so there's no hope of punching through to score a win. I decided the best I could do was punch through one of the spears and then pillage on last village into dust.

Got very lucky with the first chariot and scored a withdrawal, bringing the spear down to 1.4/4. But I followed that up with my second mistake and attacked with my shock chariot next at 85%. I was planning on deleting the pillagers and then withdrawing the rest; so why not save the shock chariot instead of a lesser promoted one? To add insult to injury, the shock chariot lost the battle.

3 more chariots moved onto the tile and pillaged down the village, gaining me 24 + 6 + 12 for village, hamlet, and cottage. Then I took the chariot that withdrew from battle and moved him to the coast for a little extra sight. The 3 remaining chariots withdrew and should be able to escape. Here's the scene before I started deleting units:



Assuming my 3 last chariots get away, here's the run-down for this little raid:

Gains
Pillaged 5 tile improvements (Village x3, cottage, mine), gaining 113g.
Sight on a new city, 2RaxAllIn
Forced Moogle to 2-pop whip his capital (? - Assuming he whipped a spear)
Moogle spent 80g upgrading a warrior to a spear
Made Contact with SlowCheetah
Killed a spear - 35h

Losses
7 chariots - 210h

What I could have done better - a.k.a. the list
t112 - the chariot that went west to the mines could have pillaged the plains mine before moving
t113 - the west chariot should have moved to the ivory tile instead of the marble
t113 - should have kept all chariots on 1 stack
t114 - should have saved the shock chariot

I like the exchange. I would have liked it more if I hadn't made those mistakes and saved 5 chariots instead of 3, but all-in-all I think it was good to put that kind of pressure on Moogle instead of sitting back and letting him tech away. We'll have to gear up for round 2 soon. Speaking of round 2, now that we've encouraged Moogle to make a ton of spears, let's steal some parlance from Starcraft and follow this up with a tech switch.

Because back home, I had another plan finally come to fruition:



I mistakenly was thinking that a bulb would get me 1000 + 1b per pop, but it's actually 1000 + 2bpt. That means scientists are 1500 + 3b per pop -- correct? All the more reason to grow! So the engineer managed to give me 1110 out of 1207 beakers. With all the overflow from Metal Casting I could have teched Machinery on overflow alone. The iron also was hooked up this turn, which means that I will start CKN production next turn. Here are the cities that will switch over:



I likely will whip Angry Sun & Thwomp to finish their CKNs. Maybe Birdo as well. Thwomp and Bob-Omb will slow-build, and ... hey, Bullet Bill isn't going to swap over It's going to whip it's library next turn! Also, the forge in Goomba will finish on t116 and it will start building on that turn as well.

Or would it be better to stay on Wealth and tech to Monarchy before going mass CKN production? I'm debating this...

Here's a set-up at the end. I need to watch out for a Moogle counter-attack

[AutomatedTeller]

yes, scientists are 150% of other GP on a bulb - 1500 + 3 bpp (beakers per pop)

[pindicator]

So all the talk in the General Discussion under this thread has got me thinking about my Hanging Garden maneuver. Just how beneficial was that wonder and what kind of return did I get?

I spent 250h (Aquaduct + Stone-Enhanced HG), and got 8 population immediately. The population I'm going to conventionally call 240h, because of all the whipping I did right before I landed the wonder (remember all those barbs?). I also got a GE which let me bulb 1110b into Machinery 25 turns later.

So ignoring the population benefit would it be fair to say I got 1110b 25 turns later for a 250h investment? Too bad SevenSpirits is playing in this game. Because if that is true, then we can use the formula to calculate rate of return on compound growth:

Code:

Rate of Return = (Return / Amount Invested) ^ (1 / Years)

Instead of years we'll use turns. We need to convert hammers and beakers to a like value. I'm going to use Seven's f = 8; h = 5; c = 3 model. Also, we will divide 1110b by 1.2 because any beaker that would have been applied to Machinery would have had that 1.2 modifier attached. This gives us:

Code:

Rate of Return = ( (1110b / 1.2 * 3) / (250h * 5)) ^ (1 / 25)
= (2775 / 1250) ^ (0.25)
= 3.24%

Which is less than the average rate of 3.5% that they were talking about in that thread. But this ignores the population. How do you factor in the population? Just subtracting it from the investment does seem like the right way to calculate it. That would mean we only invested 10h (again, assuming 8 pop = 240h due to our whipping) and give us a value like so

Code:

Rate of Return = ( (1110b / 1.2 * 3) / (10h * 5)) ^ (1 / 25)
= (2775 / 50) ^ (0.25)
= 17.42%

Which is an absolutely crazy rate of return.

Is there a better way to compute how much of a return I saw for my investment into Hanging Gardens? I feel the answer is somewhere between those two figures.

[Krill]

So the rate of return is somewhere between 3.5% and 17.5%?

[luddite]

Well don't forget that that, in that model, the value of hammers also degrades over time. Any production you put into the HG at the beginning is worth more than production after it finished. I would guess that the initial cost should be multiplied by a factor of about 1.5, giving it a net cost of 135 hammers, and a rate of return about 10%

[pindicator]

Hey, I majored in English. I'm doing the best I can

[pindicator]

I'm considering running a pair of merchs and an eng spec in the capital to get my 2nd or 3rd great person as a GE/GM. The basic idea is that if I get a GE I'll bulb Feudalism and if I get a GM I'll bulb Civil Service. This kind of fits because if I stay on course for a GS 2nd it will come out on t122 and then I'm going to need to have him wait around while I finish teching Monarchy, Aesthetics, Alphabet, and Construction. If I squeeze in a GE/GM, then a GE can bulb Feudalism right away and a GM would only need me to tech Code of Laws before it could bulb Civil Service.

Before I commit to this I want to see the timings for my 3rd & 4th GPs and what I'll be giving up in the capital to do this.

[pindicator]

Rego is really a bad influence as a team mate. Look at me starting to thread spam

I think the above GP plan is a go. How it will play out is like so:

T116 (next turn): Hire two merchants in Goomba; forge finishes in Goomba
T117 - hire an Eng in Goomba. Whip Market in Piranha and fire scientists
T120 - hire back scientists in Piranha.
T125 - Great Person born in Goomba. Odds should be 54% GM, 46% GE
T133 - Great Scientist born in Piranha.

Need to fire the scientists for a few turns in order for the GM/GE to come first. Figure that the best time to do that is after whipping the market so we can grow back quickly. I could potentially hire a pair of merchants in Piranha on T124 to get that next great person out on T129. This would give 10% odds at a Great Merchant so I may do that as well. Except I may not need the Great Scientist then anyway since Engineering is still a ways out. But it speeds up future Great People too...

I need to keep in mind that if my GE/GM mix from Goomba comes out as a GM then I do not want to use him on Civil Service right away - if I do then the GS will not bulb Engineering but instead will bulb Paper.

Now I also looked at how to get an attacking force together while doing this. I think I can get together 10 CKN, 2 swords, 4 spear, 3 or 4 axe, and 3 or 4 chariots to assault Proxy Pylon. They would leave Bob-Omb on T125 and be in position to attack on T127 or T128 (probably T128).

Do I want to do this? I would only be using my hammer cities of Hammer Bros, Bob-Omb, and Birdo to build the troops, so I don't think I would be losing much for economy (outside of pushing Wealth builds and paying for troops). The trade-off would be not building forges. And if I wait I give Moogle more time to tech to Feudalism and plant Longbows in the city.

What the hell. This is AW. Let's make some war.

[waterbat]

with a stack of that size, why not go for the decapitating blow at Sixpool?

he would have more visibility there, so you think it would be too easy for him to react and hold? Is it just an issue of you holding it after you take it?

Thanks for regorraring up the thread! I'll break it with this post though

[pindicator]

with a stack of that size, why not go for the decapitating blow at Sixpool?

he would have more visibility there, so you think it would be too easy for him to react and hold? Is it just an issue of you holding it after you take it?

Thanks for regorraring up the thread! I'll break it with this post though

It's a number of things. Being able to hold it, certainly. It's a long ways from my cities and so it would be a killer to hold. Also, keep in mind I just pillaged away most of it's good villages so it's not quite as desireable as it once was It would take longer to get my forces there: I could run them outside of Moogle's sight and get there by t132. But just as big a thing: SixPool's borders popped again, so he has 60% cultural defense and will see my stack coming 3 turns in advance.

Speaking of SixPool, here's a look at the GNP graph:



That's a noticeable dip for Moogle