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Ellimist

Okay, I've had some time to run some numbers about our various tech options. I'm really not sure which choice is best to get next, but due to our low breakeven slider rate, I'm just stockpiling gold for now until we make the decision.

Here's my math-heavy analysis so far:

One problem we are facing is that we are currently the tech leader. As far as I can tell, nobody has any technologies we don't except theology and meditation. So whatever we research won't be discounted and it will give a 7.5% bonus to each of our opponents. To me, this actually says we should go up the Aesthetics/Music path, as it gives more value(The wonders and the free artist) to whoever gets there first. I think we'll also benefit grearly from the Shwedagon Paya, but we'd need meditation as well for it.

Civil Service would be great, obviously, but I don't know if it gives us the best RoI over the alternatives. If it does, is it better to tech Feudalism first and save about 131 beakers(nearly two turns) worth of research?

Feudalism(then CS) is also very tempting. Longbows would make us nearly immune to attack for quite awhile. I've run the numbers on vassalage, though, and it's really only worth adopting for the exp. After you factor in the "high" cost of the civic, it would only save us about 4 gpt right now. (And of course we can't run both Bureau and Vassalage at the same time.) Serfdom is of questionable value, right now we aren't being forced to work any unimproved tiles anywhere, so it's hard to say what we'll need moving forward. We haven't started clearing jungle yet, and most of the cities with jungle also have coast.

HBR, Machinery, and Construction are all tempting if we want to go on the warpath. Do we really, though?

I think we can safely ignore Theology and Alphabet for now. If we build Shwedagon Paya, we don't really need to ever tech Theology.

Compass seems like a very reasonable next choice. Thanks to our expansive cothons, it's one tech that benefits us a lot more than our opponents. None of them are likely to research it for awhile, and so it is unlikely to be discounted any time soon.
Each Cothon we build will not only add a trade route, but also boost the city's current trade routes from 3 to 4 commerce per turn. The "base" cost of a Cothon is only 40 hammers if the city already has a forge and religion, or 45/50 if not. It is also significant that this is RAW commerce. It will be multiplied by bureacracy(if it applies), then multiplied again by a library/market/academy.

By writing this post, I think I may have convinced myself to get Compass next. 5-6 commerce per city for most of our cities sounds very reasonable. It requires a bit of a hammer investment, but one that we plan to do eventually anyway. The payoff isn't quite as immediate as Bureaucracy would give, but the overall impact is comparable.

Hmmmm, let's look a bit deeper...
Bureaucracy will increase the commerce of Sirius by 20-26 per turn, at a cost of about 5-6 gpt. (We don't have many libraries, so our beaker/gold efficiency ratio is only 1.05.)

There are currently 32 (14/11/7) foreign cities, with 19 of them on the donut. We have 11, and will settle 5 more soon, 8 of ours being on the donut(and only two non-coastal). I don't know if the game AI is smart enough to maximize the # of overseas routes.

I suppose it doesn't hurt to keep science turned off for a bit longer.

Ellimist · September 28th, 2011, 19:45

Had a short discussion with Jkaen earlier, this is the most relevant bit:

Ellimist · September 28th, 2011, 23:30

Okay, I added some pictures to this post, and here are some more from turn 107.

City Screens:

Canopus:

Regulus:

Denebola:

Pollux:

Castor:

Arcturus:

Alphecca:

Fomalhaut:

Antares:

Vega:

[/SPOILER]Global info and graphs:

Score:

GNP:

MFG:

Food:

Power:

Culture:

Espionage:

Top 5 cities:

[/SPOILER]Advisors and Empire info:

Finance:

Civics:

Foreign:

Apparently the AI likes being gifted cities:

Units:

Science:

Religion:

Victories:

Espionage:

[/SPOILER]

Ellimist

I'm considering sending this diplo message to Kuro. I think it summarizes things quite well:

Played turn 108.

Kuro's city of Karkat is empty. EMPTY. Totally, completely, freaking EMPTY.

This is a city 4 tiles away from Vega by water. Once we have catapults, we can probably throw a rock that far.

Our NAP with him ended this turn. Do you remember a bit back I was offering him things to extend it and he refused? Karkat even has 6 unchopped forests in the BFC. I think he wants us to take it.

And it's not the only city that is undefended or weakly defended. I did some basic C&D. Kuro's power rating is 108 to our 159. I'd like to figure out what this means as far as actual units. Global population is 199, we have 49, NH has 64 or 65, and Jkaen says 29. So Kuro has 56 or 57.

Kuro Maps:

I'm talking to Jkaen. He says he has a NAP with Kuro until maybe turn 112. He's not sure when he'd be able to attack, or if. Fair enough, neither am I.

... ... ... ... ...

Seriously. we can't NOT attack him. Jkaen thinks we can get away with capturing 3-4 cities then trading a city back to him for peace.

If not now, when? Should we use axes or get to 5 exp macemen first? Should we build the jungle border cities so we can send a force by land?

This is not a great time for us to be warring. We lose gold at 40% science.
He has THREE academies. He'll have the AP and probably Christian Shrine soon.
Of course, he can build military pretty quickly if he wants to.
Right now, though, Kuro is gift-wrapping his cities for us.

Okay, somebody talk some sense into me.

SleepingMoogle · September 29th, 2011, 12:54

What's Kuro's power at in relation to ours? If we're already going to Compass for our UU, we could consider picking up Optics fairly quickly after and ensure naval domination? (That would also fast track us to Astro and circumnavigation, both of which will be useful).

I'm not too hot about the prospects of an attack right now though. We don't have maces yet, or mounted units, and Kuro's juicy cities are too far removed from our borders for a quick strike. It feels better to me to fill up the remainder of our lands, leverage that into a tech and production lead, and attack Kuro later on once we can field a force that he won't be able to counter.

We should not delay CS for much longer either (and transferring the capital). I would recommend going for it after Compass, and seriously looking at Liberalism and Nationalism after that.

Ellimist · September 29th, 2011, 14:01

Quote:What's Kuro's power at in relation to ours? If we're already going to Compass for our UU, we could consider picking up Optics fairly quickly after and ensure naval domination? (That would also fast track us to Astro and circumnavigation, both of which will be useful).

Kuro's power is 108. Ours is 159. His population is 56-57. Ours is 49. We haven't put any beakers into compass yet, but we have 333 gold on hand so we can run 3 turns of 100% science on whatever we decide on.
I'm not real keen on prioritizing Astronomy, as it will obsolete the Colossus. Plus we can't circumnavigate a flat map.

Quote:I'm not too hot about the prospects of an attack right now though. We don't have maces yet, or mounted units, and Kuro's juicy cities are too far removed from our borders for a quick strike. It feels better to me to fill up the remainder of our lands, leverage that into a tech and production lead, and attack Kuro later on once we can field a force that he won't be able to counter.

So should we beeline maces, then? I don't think we should wait longer than that. And in the meantime, what about a tiny little opportunistic strike at Karkat? It's undefended, we'd be insulting him if we didn't take it.

Quote:We should not delay CS for much longer either (and transferring the capital). I would recommend going for it after Compass, and seriously looking at Liberalism and Nationalism after that.

Well Sirius is looking pretty decent for Bureaucracy right now. I'd prefer to wait on the palace transfer until Regulus's cottages mature further.
Should we get CS now? What about slotting in feudalism first? Do we want to do as Sullla/Locke did in pitboss 4 and bulb our way up with scientists?

SleepingMoogle · September 29th, 2011, 14:42

Unless we want to attack asap, we can leave Machinery a while longer and focus on Compass -> CS instead. But nah, we'd need a lot of time to build an army that can do serious damage, and chances are Maces will already be in decline by then. Our only options are to create large stack with Catapult support which then spends a half-dozen turns trudging through the jungle to even reach Kuro's borders, or build a large amount of Galleys that can do the job a little faster, but gobble up large amounts of hammers in the process.

If done in tandem with an attack by Jkaen, this might work, but I still think it would be too slow to be worth it right now. So neither of those options sounds particularly worth it to me. I'd much rather attack a little later on with a force of Knights (maybe even Curi's depending on our tech rate), perhaps combined with some smart Sirian doctrine.

We have a very real chance of out-teching the competition right now through sheer amount of land, and there is no real point in gambling that quite yet. I'm not even sure if razing a non-important border city will do anything but make Kuro our sworn enemy for the rest of the game.

Edit: Non-important for us. We would probably be helping Jkaen claim more of the land, but if anything our efforts should focus on claiming as much of the land as possible that's already next to the expected border, and leveraging that to strike into Kuro's core cities.

Which turn would we be able to strike that city, and how likely is Kuro to move defenders into city between now and then?

Ellimist

Well if we are planning for a war, (and really we ought to take advantage of our NAP with NH,) Compass is less valuable. Even at two routes per city, we need OB with all three opponents to avoid the less profitable domestic routes.

Feudalism-CS or just CS seems better for a hawkish tech path. Feudalism reduces the cost of Civil Service and gives us access to 5 exp units, while Civil Service gives us Bureaucracy as well as maces(with Machinery.) Luckily, Kuro hasn't played the turn for the past 20 hours so we haven't had to make a decision yet.

I don't have a problem with helping Jkaen take a slice of Kuro's land. He's no threat to us, and he's so hopelessly behind that the damage to Kuro would be worthwhile by itself.

Ellimist · September 30th, 2011, 02:20

T109 played.

I founded Procyon in the SW site of the home island. At 100% gold, it was revenue neutral. Next turn we settle Polaris, Bellatrix, and Rasalas. We'll delay (2 turns) going back to slavery so these three can pop borders. Workers are in place to chop granaries in all three of them.

Granaries were chopped to completion in Antares and Alphecca, and I started both cities on a forge for the moment. I'm not sure whether to switch that next turn. Vega expanded borders this turn, so that granary will finish chopping then. Fomalhaut grows to size 2 at eot12, so that granary will be whipped the following turn.

We'll have a silver mine and a gems mine up on T111, and a silk plantation on T112. That's +5 happy to all our cities that might need happiness. I'm thinking we'll do a missionary-courthouse push next. Costs are high and only going higher, and I'd like to get the Forbidden Palace up in Vega before too long. Only 5 of our 12 cities have Hinduism, and Courthouses are too expensive to not benefit from the OR bonus. Plus, Pollux and Fomalhaut have Confucianism and won't get any free spreads so the missionary is required.

We're up to 409 gold and gaining 79 gpt at 100% gold, and we'll lose 125 gpt at 100% science. Of course, these numbers will be affected quite a bit by settling three cities on T110 and another on T113.

Ellimist · October 1st, 2011, 23:26

Okay, I've been thinking about our tech path. I think the optimum next tech for us to get is Civil Service. If we don't get it next, we're delaying it by a significant number of turns, each of which is costly. Our tech rate is atrocious. These latest cities are costing a fortune, thanks to increasing our # of cities maintenance across our entire empire. The majority of our cities are now at or approaching the 6 gpt cap on # of cities based maintenance. Meanwhile, for reasons I don't understand, we now have six non-foreign trade routes. I put the settler at Canopus on hold and started on a market, we have enough "baby" cities at the moment, and this gives Canopus a chance to grow a bit by working coast.

It's interesting, actually, our costs have gotten so high that incremental increases in total commerce cause disproportionate increases in our (average) net beakers per turn. Our current cost of doing 100% science is 168 gpt, producing 242 beakers per turn. At 0% science, we gain 63 gpt. This means our average net bpt is about 65. My best projections for what impact Bureau will do is increase this number to 95 bpt. (Assuming we complete the market in Sirius, it's about +36 beakers/gold per turn, and the civic costs about 7 gpt.) This is a 46% increase in our actual tech pace. It only increases our 100% bpt by about 15%, but boosts our net average bpt by 46%. (This also disregards the hammers boost.)

The bottom line is, our youngest cities are a drain right now. We can't make them productive and profitable any faster, so the next best thing is to squeeze maximum value out of our developed cities. This is very viable right now, our largest city is size 12(Sirius) but can grow to size 17 with its current happy cap. That's with a one unit garrison, but no remaining whip anger. This is a very food-rich map, so we can really get some decent vertical expansion in most cities.

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