[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

As far as I know, there is no way to track GPP of another player. We can only see how many Great People BGN has generated; I think the count is 4 thus far.

Athmos, that post doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Our Pentagon date is basically locked in at this point, as it's tied to producing a Great Engineer and we already determined we can't shave a turn from that. (Well we could but only through mass starvation of Telegraph, and by running so many non-Engineers that the GPP pool would drop to 75% odds, which is not worth it.) Similarly, we need to finish our factories first before making a play for Fascism tech. The goal is to 2-turn the tech by mass building Research, but we need the extra production to make that work. And finally, right now is a perfect time to build factories and coal plants, while we're getting the Organized Religion bonus.

By all means, keep the suggestions coming, but I wanted to explain that there are reasons for our current decisions.

[Oddborn]

Another (unspoiled) lurker here, chiming in to say that I really enjoy reading this thread. I live in Norway, a couple of hours ahead of the U.S., so your evening reports make for a good read during my morning commute. But I have to admit that I usually check for updates several times during the day...

I hope to see your push for the Pentagon succeed!

[Athmos]

Well, sorry for my tone or if I didn't make a lot of sense, I was mostly reacting to scooter seemingly feeling more hesitant about the pentagon play (Well he said he was "softening on the idea", which I might have misunderstood - english is not my first language).

I also understand that the commitment for such plays is risky, I guess I'm just invested in the game now - which you can take as a compliment to the quality of both the thread and your plays !

Keep it up, I'll shut up now, and thanks again !

[Zed-F]

Scooter mentioned that he was softening to the idea of pushing out multiple great people during the next Pacifism stint, not that he was softening on the one engineer they will need for the Pentagon. It sounds like he'd prefer to just work a bit more slowly on building up some GPPs without committing to pushing out multiple GPs in the short term, while still finishing the engineer.

[scooter]

Well, sorry for my tone or if I didn't make a lot of sense, I was mostly reacting to scooter seemingly feeling more hesitant about the pentagon play (Well he said he was "softening on the idea", which I might have misunderstood - english is not my first language).

I also understand that the commitment for such plays is risky, I guess I'm just invested in the game now - which you can take as a compliment to the quality of both the thread and your plays !

Keep it up, I'll shut up now, and thanks again !

Scooter mentioned that he was softening to the idea of pushing out multiple great people during the next Pacifism stint, not that he was softening on the one engineer they will need for the Pentagon. It sounds like he'd prefer to just work a bit more slowly on building up some GPPs without committing to pushing out multiple GPs in the short term, while still finishing the engineer.

Yeah, Zed-F has it right. Sorry for the confusing wording! We're definitely pursuing the Pentagon play, and we'll definitely evaluate Fascism if it's still there once we get Steel. I originally was thinking we ought to follow both of these up with a 2-man golden age to do a military buildup, but now I'm less certain that it's the right time for that. It would still be nice to rack up some GPP for future use during Pacifism just to make the most of the time spent in the civic, but we don't need to do anything crazy like starving or running heavy deficits to make it happen.

[Sullla]

Let me also emphasize that we greatly appreciate the people reading this thread. It's about to top 50,000 page views in a little over two months of active time, which is a popularity rate that no Pitboss spoiler thread has achieved in years. Don't hesitate to ask questions and hold our feet to the fire if it looks like we're slacking off here.

Items from the current turn (T310) before scooter has played for the day:



The jail that we finished between turns in Haber Process has finally given us some espionage points to play around with. That one building took us from 4 EP/turn up to 10 EP/turn, and I'm going to slip in the espionage agency at an appropriate later moment to stack the benefits and get 20 EP/turn in that one city (24/turn total). We can do the espionage buildings pretty painlessly in our top production cities, and I'd like to get the jail/agency combo in several of them. It shouldn't be too hard to get research visibility on some or all of the teams, and there are other passive espionage benefits too, like the ability to walk spies around in enemy territory without much chance of them getting caught if you have way more total EP than your neighbors. I think a small investment here might pay major dividends later. Anyway, in the immediate future, we'll get bar graphs with REM in a turn or two, then get them back with pindicator, and then finally see BGN's for the first time all game after that. We'll decide what to do with our EP after that.



Here's the view of BGN's capital. The news this turn is that he finished a lumbermill on the forested hill northeast of his capital. I thought that tile improvements didn't update in the fog, but nope, apparently they do update in real time just like the city center. I went back and compared to a picture of BGN's capital from a couple turns ago, and he's been adding workshops on a couple of these tiles. It definitely looks like he's racing us to the Pentagon.

So what's our production investment number for this turn? Production tracking shows Mossack Fonseca with 189 production invested into something, and that's almost certainly the Pentagon. Now that is not BGN's normal production rate, let's be clear about that. The 189 figure includes some overflow from his last two builds, as he 1-turned both the coal plant and the grocer last turn. I counted up his tile improvements, and I'm guessing that BGN has right around 50 base production/turn, which puts his production after multipliers at about 145 production/turn. This squares with the numbers I've been estimating all along, with Pentagon finishing on Turn 316 with no forest chops and Turn 315 with double forest chops. Since our own projected Pentagon finishing date is also Turn 315, we've got a mighty fun race on our hands here.

I don't think BGN can cut another turn off his Pentagon build barring something really bizarre. It would be really tough for him to get much in the way of third ring forest chops, since he surely has other cities nearby that will likely take the production bonus if he tries to knock them down. (I'm sure that there's a city by the horses and whales, for example.) He's running Caste System so Slavery civic is out for the moment, and BGN doesn't have anywhere near the money he needs for cash-rushing with Universal Suffrage. Looks like a dice roll then.

Or maybe not? Perhaps Athmos did have a point earlier today:

Great news all around indeed ! But I think if you want the pentagon, you should push hard and make sure to do your best to land it, or run the risk of missing the window.

What if we decided to do some hard pushing?

As it turns out, we can push up the Great Engineer's completion date if we're willing to do a little starving at Telegraph and run a bit of a dice roll risk on the actual Great Person type. We don't have to do anything different this turn, but when we pop into Pacifism next turn...



Why yes, that is 12 specialists in a size 12 city. *Insert some comment about forced industrialization here.* This drops the GPP counter down to 2 turns remaining, followed by this setup on TUrn 312:



We can fire one specialist but not two, and unfortunately that just barely causes the city to starve. If we want to avoid this, we could hire 2 Scientists this turn, but that slightly increases the risk of getting a Great Scientist instead of a Great Engineer. Overall, our odds would be around 80% Engineer / 20% Scientist. Any poker player would tell you those are great odds, but they're definitely no certainty.

The payoff is huge if the odds hold true. I think we would almost certainly win the race to the Pentagon; the capital actually has enough overflow from its settler build to 1-turn it with help from the Great Engineer:



It's currently Turn 310, and this would have the wonder completing on Turn 314. I do not see BGN finishing the wonder in four turns, forest chops or not. He'd have to average over 200 production/turn, and his capital (which is very similar to ours) just cannot do that. Removing all the production multipliers, he needs about 285 base production for the wonder, and he gets about 50 base production/turn. It seems pretty dubious even with forest chops, and if he's tracking production in our capital, there's nothing to see until the final turn when we pop the wonder. Furthermore, if it looks like a coin flip, we could also choose to save the Great Person for a Golden Age. In the event of getting a Great Scientist, that's exactly what we would do, and we wouldn't be in terrible shape. So it's probably worth trying this, given that the result if we fail is still OK, and the benefits for succeeding are very big indeed.

A related question: why do we care so much about the Pentagon? Well, it really is a perfect wonder for a team that has Aggressive as a trait like we do, plus Spiritual to exploit civic swaps for maximum XP accumulation. With Vassalage + Theocracy + Pentagon, we get 6 bonus XP on all units that we produce. Plus we get free Combat I on all of our Gunpowder units! They start with 3 promotions and only need to win a single battle to get 4 promotions. Hello C3/Pinch infantry getting +90% strength against other gunpowder units! Good luck beating that with outdated rifle spam. Infantry units can also start with C2/Formation, which turns them into cavalry slaughterers. Scary stuff.

But the real danger is that ships can start with 3 promotions with a drydocks + Vassalage + Theocracy + Pentagon. Barracks and drydocks both used to give units 4 XP in the non-expansion version of Civ4. Barracks were changed in the expansions to give 3 XP, but apparently someone forgot to do the same for drydocks, which still give 4 XP. That means 10 XP for ships out of the gate, and our drydocks are half cost for being Aggressive. They will be very, very cheap to build, and with factory/coal plant in play, we get +160% production on naval units (!) We should be able to 1-turn frigates and galleons anywhere we want.

And that allows for these kind of shenanigans:



Three promotion naval units can take Flanking / Navigation I / Navigation II promotions. That's 2 extra movement points, enough to turn frigates and galleons into 6 move units. Striking out of the fog into an unprepared opponent, they are unbelievably deadly. I can't tell you how many Multiplayer games (here at Realms Beyond and on the old CivPlayers ladder) have been won by naval units with extra movement points on them.

Here in this situation, we could stage in the city of Radio (unseen by Donovan), and then roll out in one huge burst. Frigates move 5 tiles and still bombard out the defenses of Sector 19, which gets hit overland by triple promo cavs. Maybe one or two cannons attacking off a ship to help them, depending on what's in there. The main galleon stack moves 6 tiles and drops off the full army next to the Indian capital. I'm thinking 4-5 cannons and 12-15 infantry, roughly 6 galleons full of units. On the next turn, the frigates sail up and drop the defenses, then the cannons collateral the defenders, and the C2/Pinch infantry clean up whatever is left. At the same time, a small force takes over the island city to the north, which likely has 1-2 rifles for defense. Speed is the true killer here; if we play at the end of the turn, Donovan opens up the savefile to see two of his cities captured and a stack of 20 units next to his capital. WTF just happened?!

Again, this is all getting ahead of ourselves but I don't think it's totally unreasonable either. Our current timeline looks like this:

Turn 313 Discover Steel tech
Turn 313 Settle northern isthmus city
Turn 313 Generate Great Person (80% Engineer) (?)
Turn 314 Settle western isthmus city
Turn 314 Complete Pentagon
Turn 315 Discover Fascism tech (should be doable in 2 turns after finishing Steel)
Turn 315 Settle southern island city
Turn 316 Revolt to Police State / Vassalage / Theocracy (with Pentagon?)

Turn 325ish Kick someone's behind

[Sullla]

Followup: there is a way to do this Great Person plan within starving, or at least without starving below size 12. To do this, we would run 4 Engineers this turn and work one of the grassland/coast tiles in Telegraph; this causes the city to grow to size 13. Then on Turn 311, we run 11 specialists (5 Engineers and 6 Scientists) while working the sheep and wheat tiles, which starves the city down to 3/36 food in the box. And on Turn 312, we run the full 13 specialists (5 Engineers and 8 Scientists), which finishes filling up the GPP bar. Telegraph starves, but you can only starve 1 pop point no matter how far you are in negative food, so we drop back down to size 12, right where we started, albeit with no food in the box. This seems like a better way to do the same plan if we want to pursue this.

Odds of a Great Engineer are exactly 80% / 20% from what I can tell.

[Mardoc]

Turn 325ish Kick someone's behind

Why limit yourself to one? You could arrange your own dogpile. Declare war on all your neighbors, and maybe someone halfway across the map as well. It'll be like old times!

[scooter]

Before I get into the post - a polite request... I noticed after Sullla posted about Pentagon dates, there was almost immediately a lurker comment in BGN's thread. I obviously have no clue what the comment was about so maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but I'm sensitive to him getting suspicious that he's in a race due to people suddenly taking an interest in his thread after it being pretty quiet for the whole game. So this is just a request to be careful. This game is getting more attention than normal, otherwise I wouldn't even bring it up.

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Minor detail: Donovan can actually see inside Radio because the horses are on a hill. Same with the tile 1N of Radio due to the hill NW-NW of it. However, the Wax and Sector plans are totally doable from the planned isthmus city. I don't see a way to totally blindside the island city, but we could land next to the city out of the fog from the lake 1 SE of Radio. That would probably be good enough.

That said, I'm definitely thinking along the same lines.

As for the Pentagon thing, I'm thinking about it now, but I'm leaning towards accelerating it. Thinking about it in percentages, first, here's my semi-educated guess on the chances of BGN finishing it on each turn:

314: 10%
315: 75%
316: 15%

Here's our chances of getting an Engineer for each target date:

314: 80%
315: 95%


So our chances of actually getting the Pentagon on either date would be something like:

314: 75% (80% -5% for possible coinflip)
315: 48% (95% -37% for possible coinflip -10% for possibly finishing on T314)

It's not exactly super scientific as since I'm guessing on the numbers, but I think it illustrates a point anyway - we improve our chances significantly by pushing it forward by 1T. On the flipside, I'm not accounting for the possibility he isn't even pursuing it.

[scooter]

Turn 310

Dreylin popped a Scientist. He immediately put it to use:



Alright then. Airships it is for them. I guess it's nice to know that whenever we get to Physics, we should get a nice known tech bonus. As far as I know, Dreylin has yet to discover a tech in this game by any method other than bulbing. I'm not throwing stones or anything because, you know, scoreboard and all that. Just pointing out what a wild game this has been. Anyway, it seems like they were probably angling for that scientist, so maybe it's a good thing REM stole it? I've given up on deciding which of them scare me more.



I liked the plan to grow Telegraph this turn, so I went with it. Pasteurization had a spare workshop for this turn only, so I passed one of its workshops to Cotton Gin, which allowed me to pick up Cotton Gin's workshop here.



The other boat is a Frigate. His neighbor on this water is Dreylin. I do hope that Frigate isn't headed to ambush Induction Coil via forting. I may turn back and follow his south coast to be sure.



Looks like I somehow got out of sync with what you were thinking on Galleon movements - the Galleon moved into Photography this turn and not last turn. A couple turns ago I didn't want to leave Induction Coil lightly defended (because pindicator hadn't played yet and had Cossacks nearby), so I held off on a unit transfer. It hadn't cost us any worker turns because we still started the Photo workshop this turn, but being unable to load the Galleon this turn means H will be delayed in getting up there to workshop.

I thought about it, and I ended up just moving 1SE and completing that road. We can load him up next turn.



GNP is pretty atrocious, but I think this has something to do with it:



That and the fact that we haven't invested in many of the multiplier buildings, but we can get to that later. Given all the drastically different games everyone is playing (Courthouses! Specialists! Build Research! Bulb And Almost No Other Teching!), it's pretty hard to put a lot of meaning on the GNP figure.

Maybe next turn I'll post the MFG graph. It looks like a golden age.



Pasteurization starts a settler next turn after the coal plant completes, and our next 3 cities will be settled on 313, 314, and 315. There are a couple other very marginal spots we could theoretically squeeze in settlers, but I'm pretty certain that after those 3 cities, our next addition will be via war.