[SPOILERS] Dazed and scooter play Stalin of Vikings and make a big mess

[scooter]

So the RNG screwed us...



With a bad event . I'm assuming we have to take this like a man and ditching out of the event is not kosher. So I picked this as it cost us 11g, but it is the least damaging option, so I went with it.

Yeah, I was misleading. It screwed us on the event, but great person...



ACADEMY SUCKAS.

That was a pretty significant boost to capital science output. Unfortunately the civ-wide output was tempered just a bit due to the temporary revolt, but that's not significant. Anyways, great news about the academy. I'm happy.

Also, did not play turn yet Dazed - let me know if you want it or not.

[scooter]

Wanted to take a few minutes to outline the plan that's being cooked up. We now have an Academy, so again we have some time to enjoy our blindingly fast tech pace before others eventually make up the difference. We need to think past our current situation. Machinery is about to finish. The question is, what to tech next? Any wonder builds planned? How hard to we push for an Optics/Caravel circumav? How hard do we push for Notre Dame? Is MoM an option? Here's the tech/wonder plan I'd like to pursue after Machinery, and I'd like to do it in this order:

1) Tech Calendar real quick and build MoM in the capital. MoM will be a massive boost to us, especially as we likely will have the inside track on the Taj with a tech lead and a recently discovered marble source that we should probably be able to hook in time for Nationalism if we push. Working GA Colossus coast for a long period of time would be just the slingshot we need to ensure we maintain a big edge into the later game where we could hopefully hammer our way onto one of the continents.

2) Tech to Engineering to build Notre Dame (correction on my comment about ND needing Music - that was wrong). I believe MoM is the higher priority here despite how crucial that +2 happy is. The reason is two-fold. First, others will not be in as big a rush to get to Notre Dame as we are. They will have real life happy resources and be able to freely trade for more to other players. We have no such thing. So in theory, nobody else will rush for it like we will. Second, we have stone which is the ND doubler. Building it in the capital with stone, Bureau, forge, OR, and IND trait will be comically fast (that's 250% bonus). We still get a 150% bonus on MoM in the capital, but MoM is more attractive to other players and we can't build it quite as blindingly fast, therefore we will prioritize it pretty heavily.

3) Finally, if circumnav is still there, tech Optics and get out a Caravel. Circumnav is awesome, but it's not as crucial as those two wonders since we already have Free Circumnav with the Vikings. However, again, I expect we'd be first to Optics even after executing the above plan, so I think we can still get it. We're in a better position to get it than anyone unless there's an unlucky island chain to the north (possible, but I wouldn't bet on it).

4) Ignore the Music great artist. This is remotely tempting since it's still there, but Krill landed Glib an eternity ago and surely would benefit from it, so I think our chances of actually getting it is quite low. Also, we'd have to tech quite a few useless techs to get there - we don't have Heroic Epic unlocked yet so it's not like we get that from Literature.

In other news, still planning on some sort of Sumerian strike after Machinery comes in. We're actually good on the galleys we want, but we'll need more berserkers. I've begun working on logistics a bit, and quite a bit of planning is still to come. That'll slot in roughly between steps 1 and 2, so at some point we'll forgo about 3 turns of science for Axe->Zerks upgrades.

[scooter]

Ok, I logged in to finish T129, and we met Krill!



You can see his chariot through the interface if you look closely. Anyways, I scrolled down so you can see his cities. He has 12 cities, we have 9. He also has gold, wine, fur, and I think one other happy resource, which is just brutal to see . I'm considering an OB trade, but I'm not sure he's the guy we want OBs with considering he's the runaway here. We could still use some more foreign IC routes though - only about half our routes are covered by Nakor. Also not sure we want to trade maps with him - we see enough as is, and I'd rather him not see our land. Anyways, notable events:



Brick double-revolted into OR + HR after a crapton of Hindu spreads went into his lands. Our shrine is getting SO valuable, I'm starting to take back my negativity about getting a prophet earlier. See:



13 gpt! That's great. After this galley gets done we need that market ASAP (we should take that stone from Last Bow as SOON as Moai finishes).

[T-hawk]

Second, we have stone which is the ND doubler. Building it in the capital with stone, Bureau, forge, OR, and IND trait will be comically fast (that's 250% bonus).

I was struck by that thought. It feels like a wasting of the Bureaucracy bonus to layer it on top of everything else like that. Another city could do ND with all the rest of the same modifiers while the capital could use Bureau for a greater proportion of something else.

Bureaucracy would account for 1/7th of Notre Dame, since it brings your total production multiplier (including base) from 300% of base to 350%. But Bureaucracy could provide 1/4th of the capital's productivity rather than 1/7th on another item instead. (Forge+OR is 150%, forge+OR+Bureau is 200%.)

I may need to think about this effect. (Of course, if your capital is your only strong hammer city, you'd want to do the wonder there.)

[scooter]

I was struck by that thought. It feels like a wasting of the Bureaucracy bonus to layer it on top of everything else like that. Another city could do ND with all the rest of the same modifiers while the capital could use Bureau for a greater proportion of something else.

Bureaucracy would account for 1/7th of Notre Dame, since it brings your total production multiplier (including base) from 300% of base to 350%. But Bureaucracy could provide 1/4th of the capital's productivity rather than 1/7th on another item instead. (Forge+OR is 150%, forge+OR+Bureau is 200%.)

I may need to think about this effect. (Of course, if your capital is your only strong hammer city, you'd want to do the wonder there.)

Yeah this has crossed my mind. It definitely is our best hammer site, but we could build it elsewhere. I hadn't thought of it in terms of overall productivity. I think a better way to put it is it would be more efficient for the capital to do something else when the multipliers are that high. A better way of testing may also to be how much faster the extra 50% from Bureau makes the wonder. If it only speeds it by, say, 1 turn... Maybe not worth it. Though there are other benefits to having it in the capital, such as:

1) Capital has most infrastructure, while other cities may rather be getting in infrastructure instead of a wonder.

2) More wonders in capital increase GPP production which is already quite good coming from the capital - whereas in another city those GPP might get wasted since the capital GPP is so strong that a smaller city may never generate a great person. (the counter to this is, of course, artists suck especially in the islands so who cares? but we'll surely want 1-man Golden Ages at some point so I'm not sure this is a valid counter)

Hard to gauge whether those benefits outweigh a potential Bureaucracy efficiency problem.

[T-hawk]

Hard to gauge whether those benefits outweigh a potential Bureaucracy efficiency problem.

I've got a firm handle on it now, after a think during my commute home. First question is whether the effect exists, and then how to quantify it so it can be measured in relation to your other concerns.

First answer is yes and now I see why. Because Bureaucracy occupies some of the wonder's cost, it steals away some of your chance to get bonus hammers from Industrious and Stone.

In a Bureaucracy city, Notre Dame costs 550 / 350% = 157.1 base hammers.
In another city, the wonder costs 550 / 300% = 183.3 base hammers.

The Bureaucracy city would get 157.1 x 150% = 236 hammers worth of wonder bonus.
Another city would get 183.3 x 150% = 275 hammers worth of wonder bonus.

So a non-Bureaucracy city would get an extra 39 Notre Dame hammers out of Ind+Stone. Because the city's total multipliers are 300%, these 39 ND hammers divide back to 13 base hammers. That in turn would multiply back to 19.5 spendable hammers via forge+OR.

Is an extra cost of 19.5 hammers in the capital worth the other benefits of building the wonder there? You'd get the concentrated GPP and the turn economy of having the wonder sooner (which itself is also more GPP.) It's up to you, but my magic eight ball would say probably.

I might still want to think about this in other scenarios, particularly in the late game when the magnitudes escalate to cities with 300% base multipliers (Ironworks) and spaceship parts with 150% additional (laboratory and resource).

[scooter]

Thanks T-Hawk. I was about at that conclusion and the lightbulb was warming up, and then you spelled it out and turned it on.

One espionage mechanics question. Is there a way of determining if an opponent has city visibility on you? Brick has yet to meet anyone so he's been dumping espionage on us for forever. He surely has tech visibility (so he knows we're getting Machinery end of this turn), but I'm fearing that he's getting awfully close to city visibility. Is there a formula to figure out what his city visibility cost is?

[scooter]

T131 and Machinery is in. I shut off research, but set it to Calendar. Upgrading to Berserks is a bit more expensive than I thought:



125g. That's precisely 1 turn of science off. So 3 turns of science to upgrade our axes - fine by me. We make 50bpt at 0% science though so that makes it a little better. Though I'm kinda leaning towards turning it on before we upgrade so we can get MoM started in the capital. Anyways, I whipped granaries in Norwood and Black Peter. Also, this island way out west is pretty nice:



All things considered anyway it's not bad. I guess "nice" is overstating it, but better than what we have. We'll want that marble for Taj. The main problem though is how hard it is to get there. To demonstrate:



We have to go way north to get to it. This is SUCH a pain. It's much easier for Nakor to get to that island for instance. We can't let him get that marble, that'd be really bad. Anwyays, Berserkers going up:



Those are almost all whippable though FWIW. So we can get them quickly. We should probably talk about this sometime soon. Finally, our Moai city is up and moving:



We'll want to grow this as much as we can.

[spacemanmf]

Missing '[' on this pic:

[scooter]

Thanks, fixed. I usually am particular about previewing the longer turn reports and checking for mistakes, but the ONE time I rush it I mess up an image link .