A couple days ago I wrote up a little report based on a chat I had with Tarkeel, and it came out alright, so I'll try to do it again. I mentioned that the Economics Merchant might be an easy route to get the 2-man GA, but there is another later game option available. I should note this is mostly just to think about later-game options - it feels fairly unlikely any of this will come to fruition. Actually, let's look at 3 possible routes, starting with the Merchant.
Sid's Sushi
I have more or less never used a Corporation in a game here. Games I played they were either banned or the game was decided before. And I think it's fairly unlikely the game lasts long enough for this. But for fun, I tallied up the resources. We currently have 18 Sid's Sushi resources in our borders. However, we're about to settle some seafood-rich islands. I counted only the resources within the borders of planned cities, and this would be enough to get me up to 30. This is without any trading for resources or conquering new ones.
This would net enormous amounts of food and culture. The other corporations are pretty underwhelming here given the low number of land tiles, although Ice Island's copper helps out Mining Inc quite a bit. As for what to do with all that food, well, there are a couple late-game civics here too.
In addition, Representation exists still. So there's some interesting late-game options. There's one obvious issue here though.
Refrigeration is like 30k beakers away, and we make a few hundred per turn. The nature of the map means we're pretty low on scaling options here. There are commerce spikes upcoming. 24T of Golden Age minimum is on the table here for starters. Mercantilism and/or Free Market are nice boosts for us, and that stacks with Representation if we go the Mercantilism route. Our empire is about to grow by 25-30% peacefully, which adds more. But these are things that will have a multiplicative rather than exponential effect, so I'm not totally sure this is enough juice to really get us there. I suppose a particularly greedy/sandbagged Liberalism might be a way to do it too.
That all sounds pretty fun. But I'm not sure how realistic it is. There's a way simpler and quicker option.
The Sword
Just go get Frigates/Grens and win the game. The Grens may even be an optional step if we're being honest here. It looks extremely likely I can get Frigates prior to most (any?) players getting Astro. These 4 techs cost 8280b in-game right now. I'll use 300bpt as a break-even estimate. I'm currently below that, but I expect 1) that number will rise, 2) prereq bonuses exist, and 3) possibility of a GA at some point. So it's a good conservative estimate. This would come out to 28 turns of research. If we cut out MilSci, that shaves it down to 5520b and 18.5T of research. I did estimate the others are probably 20T from Astro? And it's not hard at all to imagine these turn estimates coming down a good bit. I bet 15T to Chemistry is super doable.
As an aside, Liberalism would cost me 5620b. I'm not sure it's really worth it in the short-term. Education is not a useful tech for us as we do not get discounts on Universities/Oxford, and our tech is more wide than tall, so the actual payback on all those hammers is surprisingly weak. And Liberalism itself doesn't do anything important either. That is 4416b (in-game) worth of techs just to get another free tech, so to me, that free tech needs to be at least that expensive. If another player wants to go for it, well that's thousands of beakers they aren't spending on naval technology where I already have the lead.
In this world, the way to win is to build a few naval stacks and make life a nightmare. All you really need is 3-4 loaded Galleons covered by a few Frigates, and you stick your stack in the middle of a bunch of valuable cities, forking a half dozen of them at once, and let your opponents decide which cities burn. Rinse repeat until concessions come.
The Base Case
It's worth comparing this to the backdrop of the base case here, which is to just keep leaning on our existing tools, in particular MoM which has a lot left in the tank. This looks something like hand-grow 2 more GP, possibly with a detour to Philosophy to make it less painful via Pacifism. Pop a 2-man GA in 10-15T, use it to clean up the first-to bonuses. Grab the Scientist/Spy at Physics/Communism and generate another GP during this to kick off the 3-man GA for 24T of Golden Age. From there there's a few options - such as using the GA to build Kremlin, or maybe if Taj sits too long, nab it right at the end for denial and 8 more GA turns. Or potentially go wild and get to a 4-man GA if enough planning is done.
While this is happening, keep using tech edge to reinforce defenses and fish for alpha strikes. No major investments - just random available units on boats looking for under-defended cities of value. The idea here is just keep the economic snowball rolling while forcing everyone else to slow themselves down with outdated military builds just to keep up with the threat. Imagine neighbors being forced to whip a round of Longbows or Caravels, for example. This doesn't even require actual war declarations, but even if it comes to that, declaring opportunistic wars will not hurt me economically because my trade routes are all domestic, so trashing of routes is not a concern.
Worth noting this route doesn't rule out one of the above options. I'm mostly talking here about not really beelining and instead keep snowballing our commerce organically and preserve flexibility at the expense of possibly missing a golden window. The main risk with this route is it gives everyone else time to figure out a post-Astro dogpile, I guess.
Any super strong feelings here?
Sid's Sushi
I have more or less never used a Corporation in a game here. Games I played they were either banned or the game was decided before. And I think it's fairly unlikely the game lasts long enough for this. But for fun, I tallied up the resources. We currently have 18 Sid's Sushi resources in our borders. However, we're about to settle some seafood-rich islands. I counted only the resources within the borders of planned cities, and this would be enough to get me up to 30. This is without any trading for resources or conquering new ones.
(August 26th, 2023, 13:41)Charriu Wrote: [*]Sid's Sushi Co.:
Available at Refrigeration instead of Medicine
Food per resource decreased to 0.333 from 0.5
Culture per resource decreased to 1.5 from 2
Maintenance costs 3/4 of original,
This would net enormous amounts of food and culture. The other corporations are pretty underwhelming here given the low number of land tiles, although Ice Island's copper helps out Mining Inc quite a bit. As for what to do with all that food, well, there are a couple late-game civics here too.
(August 26th, 2023, 13:41)Charriu Wrote: [*]Emancipation:
+2 hammers per specialist
remove unhappiness effect
[*]Environmentalism:
Available at Biology instead of Medicine
Normal Corporation costs like any other civic
+1 commerce on water tiles
In addition, Representation exists still. So there's some interesting late-game options. There's one obvious issue here though.
Refrigeration is like 30k beakers away, and we make a few hundred per turn. The nature of the map means we're pretty low on scaling options here. There are commerce spikes upcoming. 24T of Golden Age minimum is on the table here for starters. Mercantilism and/or Free Market are nice boosts for us, and that stacks with Representation if we go the Mercantilism route. Our empire is about to grow by 25-30% peacefully, which adds more. But these are things that will have a multiplicative rather than exponential effect, so I'm not totally sure this is enough juice to really get us there. I suppose a particularly greedy/sandbagged Liberalism might be a way to do it too.
That all sounds pretty fun. But I'm not sure how realistic it is. There's a way simpler and quicker option.
The Sword
Just go get Frigates/Grens and win the game. The Grens may even be an optional step if we're being honest here. It looks extremely likely I can get Frigates prior to most (any?) players getting Astro. These 4 techs cost 8280b in-game right now. I'll use 300bpt as a break-even estimate. I'm currently below that, but I expect 1) that number will rise, 2) prereq bonuses exist, and 3) possibility of a GA at some point. So it's a good conservative estimate. This would come out to 28 turns of research. If we cut out MilSci, that shaves it down to 5520b and 18.5T of research. I did estimate the others are probably 20T from Astro? And it's not hard at all to imagine these turn estimates coming down a good bit. I bet 15T to Chemistry is super doable.
As an aside, Liberalism would cost me 5620b. I'm not sure it's really worth it in the short-term. Education is not a useful tech for us as we do not get discounts on Universities/Oxford, and our tech is more wide than tall, so the actual payback on all those hammers is surprisingly weak. And Liberalism itself doesn't do anything important either. That is 4416b (in-game) worth of techs just to get another free tech, so to me, that free tech needs to be at least that expensive. If another player wants to go for it, well that's thousands of beakers they aren't spending on naval technology where I already have the lead.
In this world, the way to win is to build a few naval stacks and make life a nightmare. All you really need is 3-4 loaded Galleons covered by a few Frigates, and you stick your stack in the middle of a bunch of valuable cities, forking a half dozen of them at once, and let your opponents decide which cities burn. Rinse repeat until concessions come.
The Base Case
It's worth comparing this to the backdrop of the base case here, which is to just keep leaning on our existing tools, in particular MoM which has a lot left in the tank. This looks something like hand-grow 2 more GP, possibly with a detour to Philosophy to make it less painful via Pacifism. Pop a 2-man GA in 10-15T, use it to clean up the first-to bonuses. Grab the Scientist/Spy at Physics/Communism and generate another GP during this to kick off the 3-man GA for 24T of Golden Age. From there there's a few options - such as using the GA to build Kremlin, or maybe if Taj sits too long, nab it right at the end for denial and 8 more GA turns. Or potentially go wild and get to a 4-man GA if enough planning is done.
While this is happening, keep using tech edge to reinforce defenses and fish for alpha strikes. No major investments - just random available units on boats looking for under-defended cities of value. The idea here is just keep the economic snowball rolling while forcing everyone else to slow themselves down with outdated military builds just to keep up with the threat. Imagine neighbors being forced to whip a round of Longbows or Caravels, for example. This doesn't even require actual war declarations, but even if it comes to that, declaring opportunistic wars will not hurt me economically because my trade routes are all domestic, so trashing of routes is not a concern.
Worth noting this route doesn't rule out one of the above options. I'm mostly talking here about not really beelining and instead keep snowballing our commerce organically and preserve flexibility at the expense of possibly missing a golden window. The main risk with this route is it gives everyone else time to figure out a post-Astro dogpile, I guess.
Any super strong feelings here?
