[PB65] Pinch-Hitting Pindicator

[civac2]

If you have at any point 3 completed missionaries the hammers in additional missionaries which have been removed from the build queue in that fashion will be converted into gold.

[pindicator]

Wait - what?

As much as I want to take advantage of this, i don't think I have the time to. It's going to be a slower rollout of religion to all our cities now that Dominion is on Hanging Gardens duty.

[RefSteel]

Ack - I had missed that in my quick confirmation test; thanks, civac!  But it's actually a little more complicated than that:  Your missionary hammers only get converted to gold if you have three live missionaries on the board when production processing gets to the city with the banked out-of-queue hammers.  Or in other words:

If you finish a turn with three missionaries already in play (i.e. you don't use any of them to spread religion) or completing cities you planted before Dominion (so I think just Wingspan, Eldritch Horror, and Sushi Go?) then the hammers in Dominion's missionary will disappear and be converted to gold. Otherwise, they'll still be sitting there in the Missionary; the game will track them in spite of the fact that when you have three missionaries in play, you won't even see the Missionary as a possible build (even greyed out) until one of the Missionaries spreads the religion.

Note I tested this in single player, so I'm not 100% sure it works the same way in Pitboss but I can't think of any reason why Pitboss would differ.

[EDIT: As for not having time to, that's totally understandable; as I posted originally, I'm not sure if it's an important distinction anyway. But I keep being reminded that when you get in among the weeds, Civ4 can be even more complicated than I realize!]

[El Grillo]

I vaguely recall reading a thread that used this trick for a wealth boost pre-Currency, I think it was one of the civ.de players. If it is indeed a 1:1 conversion of hammers to gold then it seems like it would be worth the setup.

[Sullla]

With this being Turn 100, I wanted to mention that this has been a thoroughly well-reported and well-played game to date, a thread that's been a real pleasure to read for the past few months. I'm looking forward to seeing where things stand by the end of the current Golden Age! Any additional thoughts about the more general state of the game or plans going forward now that you've made it through a full hundred turns?

[Amicalola]

I vaguely recall reading a thread that used this trick for a wealth boost pre-Currency, I think it was one of the civ.de players. If it is indeed a 1:1 conversion of hammers to gold then it seems like it would be worth the setup.

I think Lazteuq did this (very effectively) in PB60.

[pindicator]

With this being Turn 100, I wanted to mention that this has been a thoroughly well-reported and well-played game to date, a thread that's been a real pleasure to read for the past few months. I'm looking forward to seeing where things stand by the end of the current Golden Age! Any additional thoughts about the more general state of the game or plans going forward now that you've made it through a full hundred turns?

I appreciate you saying that!  And I also appreciate all the information about missionaries that everyone else has provided.  It's amazing that there are still little details like that to still learn about playing Civ4.

You're right that I've been neglecting posting about the long term plans.  In my mind it's always been "get to Currency and then see which way the winds are blowing".  But really what that means is that after Currency we need to prepare to invade one of our neighbors.  The current state of tech:




One of Bing or SucksatCiv picked up Sailing, as only 1 person knew that tech when I last played.  Also, we still have someone with Theology out there - either Superdeath or Cornflakes.  But the important detail is nobody has Currency yet, which means the tech pace is SLOW.  So Hitru & I have decided we get Currency we're going to be at a clear advantage over civs who do not have it, and need to research military techs straight away and prepare for war.  Right now we are decided that after Currency we go Sailing (1-turn tech and the southern cities really need it for food), Horseback Riding (need to settle the horses soon), then Construction.  This will give us Elephants, Horse Archers, and Catapults and I am fairly certain that one of our neighbors will not be able to withstand that.

Who is the target of this attack?  It will depend.  Right now Superdeath's power is very low, he has a shrine, and he is chopping and cottaging his lands very nicely.  He also can be a dogged defender, so if he gets his affairs in order then Bing is probably the next candidate.  Lastly, I don't want to discount going after Mjmd.  When I went into the game to take some screenshots for this write-up, I once again was greeted with this request:




Now I think this is not Mjmd making demands, but begging due to the state of his economy.  He has expanded to 12 cities and cottaging everything he can.  I've seen him cottaging grass hills.  My guess is he is completely over-expanded and tanked his economy, and is begging for any little extra bit he can to limp along to Currency. 

Obviously we can't help him here - a number of our cities would go into unhappiness if we gave him Wines - but it will be interesting to see how Mjmd will look in 20-30 turns when we've teched the next round of military techs and whipped up an army.

After that there the next round of economic techs on my mind:  Metal Casting for forges and to potentially pop out a Great Engineer (I'm constantly dreaming about what windmills would do for some of my cities), and Code of Laws for Courthouses will probably become necessary soon.  Maintenance is our larger cities is creeping up over 8gpt, which is usually the magic number for me when it comes to considering courthouses.




There's a brief window between researching Currency and getting those next military techs where I am going to fit in a round of infrastructure to our cities.  Cities with a yellow highlight are main commerce cities now and will be building a market at first opportunity.  Orange highlights are cities that I eventually expect to grow into a commerce capability, and will likely get markets down the road a bit.  Maybe I could add Clank! to that list, I'm on the fence what that city will be for us.

Another big boost for us will be Hanging Gardens.  Whether we land the wonder or reap the failgold, I've got our build time down to 4 turns and we do not use Slavery.  We do sacrifice quite a bit at Dominion to build it in that timeframe:




I'm glad that I was able to rearrange tiles when it is not my turn.  (You can't issue any unit orders, though; not even canceling current orders.)  With this setup, I have the following timetable for building Hanging Gardens in Dominion:




Hopefully my notes aren't too cryptic, but the tiles worked don't change over the 4 turns.  Though on the last turn we'll have 3 less yield due to forest chops (and 2 more commerce that I didn't account for here but nevermind).

t101: Worker E finishes its chop.  Worker B moves NW-SW to the plains forest farthest from Dominion.  Worker A (currently on the deer tile by Azul) moves NW-NW-NW to race towards the last forest.  Aqueduct gets 60 x 1.25 = 75h
t102:  Worker A moves NW-N-NW to the plains forest beside Dominion.  Worker B needs to kill a turn so I would have it put in a turn of road here; next turn it chops.  Worker E moves NW-N to the forest north of Dominion.  30 hammers production means the aqueduct finishes this turn at 112/80, 25h overflow after Org Rel.
t103:  Workers A, B, & E all start their chops.  With Serfdom it only takes 2 turns.  Hanging Gardens is started in Dominion and gets 25h overflow + 30h base production.  With Stone & Org Rel we get a 1.75 multiplier, good for 96h at end of turn.
t104:  All 3 workers finish their chops for 90h.  This decreases the yield of Dominion by 3h to 27.  (90 + 27) * 1.75 = 204.  We finish HG on the nose.  Also, we have no food left in our city granary after this turn.

I'm not sure if there are any improvements to be made from here.  Ideally we finish the Aqueduct in 1 turn or put chops into HG earlier so that if we lose out on the wonder we have more odds of getting failgold.  But chopping earlier cuts our base yields at Dominion, and because we finish at 0/28 food in the box we don't have any wiggle room to swap a plains tile to a plains hill.

It's also ugly working all those unimproved plains, but it gets the job done.  After we can move Dominion back to a setup more like what I showed in the last turn report.



I feel like this has been a game of riding as close to the edge as we can go without falling off. We've managed to do that with not just economy, but also workers. But Hanging Gardens is going to be the straw that breaks the workers' back. I've swapped Azul to a worker. Getting the wonder is going to put a lot of cities working unimproved tiles. And Gloomhaven is just going to be a sad, sad sight: size 7 and only having 2 improved tiles to its name. We'll have a lot of workers up by Gloomhaven to improve it, but it may not be a bad idea to swap back to Slavery a turn early on t105 and whip a little. Obviously we want to be back into Slavery on t106 at the latest, the last turn of the golden age.

Empirewide overview:





Graphs:














I'll post more details for Krill later on worker actions for the next 5 turns and the revised missionary plan. This post is long enough already.

[Krill]

nm.

[pindicator]

So I'm going to leave the instructions big-picture and avoid detail because it's 2 weeks, and also because I'm not sure when the game is going to start up again with Cornflakes' situation.  There might be 15 turns played, there might not be any.

Units should be built when we need MPs or when we see a neighbor start to climb in power, but we are trying to keep unit expenses down until Currency is in. Libraries are the priority in Sushi Go and Libertalia; Barracks should be built everywhere else. Walls in border cities that don't have them (Catan is the only one). Yes, there is a Library being built in Citadels; No, I am not heeding my own advice.

After Currency we are aiming for Sailing and building Lighthouses in the southern coastal cities. We need to get a settler out around this time to finally hook up the horses, too. Then it's HBR & Construction, in whichever order seems the most prudent.

There are 3 priorities over the next 5-10 turns:

• Hanging Gardens
  
• Getting Currency
  
• Missionary Spread
  

Hanging Gardens
See my previous post.  I will add that there's no plan for what to do with all the extra population, so I'll leave that to your best judgement.

Currency
We might not be able to get this by the end of the golden age.  Expenses are really prohibitive this game, and the HG project is taking a lot of commerce off the table.  What I will say is that when you have the choice, emphasize commerce - especially in cities that aren't building anything vital.  My latest plan has us coming up 3 beakers short with no gold in the bank, but I expect I underestimate expenses again.  Also, I don't know how to factor in Hanging Gardens.  If we don't get it then we should be able to focus commerce again and make it by end of t106.  If we get it then we'll have a lot more pop to work commerce, though probably a lot more expense as well.

Missionary Plan, Part 2
The plan is to spread the religion as fast as possible so we can take advantage of the OR bonus for markets and lighthouses, as well as getting culture to cities on the eastern border which badly need it.

Missionary 1


Largely unchanged from before.  M1 just finished end of t100, and will go to Sushi Go.  Sushi Go will chop out the next missionary the turn religion spreads there.  (NOTE:  For the chop timing to work out, Worker I must cancel its action at end of t101.  Then it will chop t102 & t103, and finish the cottage t104.)  This missionary then goes to Catan on t105.  Catan then chops out the next missionary as a 2-turn build, finishing eot106.  Then on to Libertalia, which chops out the next missionary t107.  That missionary then gets to Clank on t109.

End of Post Edit: I think I made a mistake at the end here, Libertalia probably can't 1-turn the missionary. No worries if that's the case

Missionary 2


Pretty simple: Gloomhaven starts a new Missionary on t101, and it goes to Citadel. You can speed this along with a road on the circled tile by t105, but honestly I haven't found a way to fit that in and there are higher priorities. I think I only kept it here out of wishful thinking that I could find a way to fit it in.

Missionary 3


Eldritch Horror finishes its missionary end of t102. It goes to Wingspan and spreads religion t104; Wingspan then builds the next Missionary for Azul. Azul gets the missionary t107.


And finally, Worker Turns.




I hope my shorthand makes sense, but here's a quick primer:
Movement given in cardinal directions
A number after an action shows how far along that action is.
X = cancel action, usually because the worker needs to do something different the next turn
fin = action finishes
chop fin (City Name) = name of city that gets the hammers

There isn't too much after t104 because whatever happens with Hanging Gardens will determine what needs to happen next. Really, we want to cottage and grow as much as we can, probably will want to put a chop or two into markets when we can build those, but I leave it up to you.

I would recommend moving another worker or two to the southeast. Honestly, it might be better to swap Clank! to a worker too.


That's it, I should be able to check in here or on Discord if you have any questions. Hitru is a great help too and is familiar with the game state.

Oh, and password:

baseball

[pindicator]

102

Sucksatciv has planted his 8th city, so we're all on even numbers now. We still haven't started the settler for our 11th; I decided to start 2 more workers instead, anticipating needing more with Hanging Gardens being more likely as falling for us soon.




Dominion is selected so you can see the tiles being worked. Workers moved onto the trees to chop this turn. I would have moved one earlier, but then realized that chopping trees before the last turn will take away hammers and we are nailing this on the dot as is so I can't spare any hammers. If someone else does pick up Hanging Gardens ahead of us we should hope that it doesn't happen this turn, as we finish the aqueduct this turn. After next turn we'll at least get fail gold.

Our first Jewish missionary moved to the tile S-SW of Sushi Go this turn, and will be our first religion spread next turn.

You can also see Superdeath has finally taken cultural control of the elephant tile at Eldrtich Horror. Not sure what we can do there, as we've built most of all the culture buildings we have access to. Only a temple would get us. SD must have built a Monastery and really pushed culture against us; I don't know how else he could have gained on us here.

A neat addition of CtH is highlighting a building in the city screen will tell you how many years are left before culture doubles. Sadly we are 575 years away from the library doubling in EH, but the monastery will double in 45 years (2 more turns). Maybe that will do something.




Not a lot of change in demos. EH grew to size 9 end of turn, so we have 2 cities at 9 and 2 cities at 8 right now.