Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[Bigger]

are we really worried about losing MoM? Does another civ even have calender yet? (not a comment on the micro plan or the switch to OR).

[NobleHelium]

Okay I spoke with Seven a bit. The vague continuation to the posted plan would be to tech Meditation -> Code of Laws -> Philosophy which we're currently estimating to take 16-17t. We'll start Great Wall in MM after the 6t worker (on t95) and slowly build it while growing to size 7. Then at size 7 we'll work the gold and plains mine to finish the wonder in 3 more turns (finishes eot105). Then we could work 3-4 specialists in the city to line up a GP to pop a Golden Age right as we finish teching Philosophy. Then we'd pop the GA, swap into Caste System and Pacifism while generating GPs and teching Civil Service and Monarchy, which we could swap into 6-7t into the GA (HR may have to wait until the end of the GA depending on tech rates). At the end of the GA we'd swap back to Slavery and Organized Religion of course.

If we go with this continuation, I'm okay with Seven's posted plan with the OR-only revolt on t86. If we fail to get Great Wall then we get fail gold at a great conversion rate and just use that to get to Philosophy sooner, which still roughly lines up with the GP birth.

[Sullla]

I'll be happy to look at this in more detail tomorrow. My initial thoughts:

* Wouldn't it be a better idea to wait another 3-4 turns and double revolt to Organized Religion and Hereditary Rule together? Monarchy will be our next tech and it's not that expensive to research. I don't agree with the single revolt when we are so close to another highly useful civic.

* I agree with Bigger that it seems unlikely we're in a tight race for Mausoleum right now. No one else has Calendar tech to the best of our knowledge, and we haven't seen many wonders fall that are much cheaper / much earlier on the tech tree. Still no Great Wall, Pyramids, etc. I could certainly be wrong, but I don't think we have to rush to mine the hills and chop the forests at Focal Point in the next half dozen turns.

EDIT: I do *NOT* agree with that tech path at all. We have wines at Brick By Brick and we can research Monarchy tech in like 4 turns. And why in the world do we want the Great Wall? I am not on board with suddenly reversing course 180 degrees from what we spent the last few weeks planning out.

[SevenSpirits]

I updated the spreadsheet to include NH's idea to build great wall in MM after the worker, which I think is a really good idea. It costs us only about 69 base hammers (i.e. 2 axes) and it will give 2gpp in the most useful location, easier handling of barbs, and awesome GG point boost if we get attacked later.

We should discuss our next techs. NH was thinking Monarchy earlier, and then presumably CoL->CS. My thinking was (as he just said) to get Meditation-CoL-Philosophy first, and spend the first part of the golden age in caste/pac. Another possibility is to go CoL->CS next, trigger the golden age when bureau is available, but don't do the whole caste/pac thing until the second half of the golden age. I'm not sure which one I like better. (Btw, this is assuming we land MoM so we can fit 3 civic swaps into a 12t golden age).

If people are generally on board with the micro plan I proposed then we need to nail down these golden age details. Important factors will include: How many GPs do we want to produce in the GA, of which types? Which cities will be large enough to handle GP production? How many turns do we need until our Moai city is ready for the GA? What will our estimated tech rate be and what will this allow us to tech to?

[SevenSpirits]

* Wouldn't it be a better idea to wait another 3-4 turns and double revolt to Organized Religion and Hereditary Rule together? Monarchy will be our next tech and it's not that expensive to research. I don't agree with the single revolt when we are so close to another highly useful civic.

It's worth considering. This will have the following effects:

Good:
* +1 happy in all cities with military police, from now until GA time, which we probably want in the t114-120 range, so for about 16t. Having played through the last 7 turns I don't think we need this. Even on the last turn we are at 1 or more surplus happy in all cities! And keep in mind that if we go this path we also got +1 happy from wine. (Conversely, we can also get monarchy and thus wine without waiting to revolt to HR.) We are still expanding heavily meaning we are using up a lot of surplus food to build more settlers and workers. Plus, we're about to have OR so buildings are a better deal, and needing to work mines and specialists for MoM + GP, which also costs food. Only one city really needs a higher happy cap and that's gourmet menu. And I am using the earlier OR to get a missionary to it ASAP, both for +1 happy and to whip some nice buildings in.

Bad:
* Forces us to research monarchy next. Perhaps we want to do this anyway, since we will have wines to hook. On the flipside this probably delays bureaucracy and other golden age goodies by 4t each. To get a good idea of whether this is a big drawback or fits just fine into our plan, we need to figure out what our golden age targets are.
* Misses the turn where we have two settlers in transit to revolt on.
* Delays missionary to gourmet menu, a pretty useful guy.
* Delays Moai Statues a few turns.
* Loses hammers into MoM, delaying it 0-1t.

I do not believe this has an easy answer. We should discuss it. I am leaning towards just OR but I could be convinced otherwise.

* I agree with Bigger that it seems unlikely we're in a tight race for Mausoleum right now. No one else has Calendar tech to the best of our knowledge, and we haven't seen many wonders fall that are much cheaper / much earlier on the tech tree. Still no Great Wall, Pyramids, etc. I could certainly be wrong, but I don't think we have to rush to mine the hills and chop the forests at Focal Point in the next half dozen turns.

We're certainly not in a tight race for mausoleum. But right now we could lose a meandering stroll for Mausoleum. Even in this plan we are expecting to build it TWENTY-TWO turns after we first were able to. Guess what, if a strong team out there got marble they could build MoM in a single turn at this stage of the game. It's true that it's pretty unlikely this would happen. But this is the way people lose games.

We are not talking about some insane emphasis here. Only enough worker turns to mine three hills and chop 6 forests. I'm sure we were not planning to save some of those forests later, right? And we want those mines, right? There is no panicked sacrifice going on here, just a brisk walk.

In terms of changing the MoM plan from previous version, I made one change (plus finalized some details). Instead of dumping hammers into MoM, I put them into a worker. Overall this change actually frees up more worker turns for other cities, assuming we were serious about MoM. So I think you should be happy about it.

why in the world do we want the Great Wall? I am not on board with suddenly reversing course 180 degrees from what we spent the last few weeks planning out.

Great Wall is a pretty great wonder for its cost if you have stone. It's 2gpp in a city that will be putting them to use immediately. It gives fantastic protection against inevitable attacks when you are the leader. And in this game it even helps vs barbs!

None of this is in any way a 180 degree reversal from previous courses. It's just an updated micro plan.

[Sullla]

OK, before we commit to a completely new plan, I'd like to suggest again that I don't particularly like this proposed tech path. I'll try to explain my reasoning in more detail.

The Great Wall idea is actually pretty good, mostly because the wonder is dirt cheap with stone. Assuming that someone else doesn't build it in the next few turns, it would be a good idea to try for the wonder in Mansa's Muse for the free Great Person points. I think that this is a solid idea.

I don't like the proposed tech path at all, however. Philosophy tech is very expensive and I don't think it does very much to benefit us at all. Here are the tech costs:

Meditation (144) -> Code of Laws (630 beakers) -> Philosophy (1440 beakers) = 2214 beakers

With the standard 20% pre-requisite bonus for all three techs, we're looking at needing 1845 base beakers for those three. Specifically, those techs unlock monasteries, courthouses, Taoism religion, and Caste System / Pacifism civics. The main reason to follow this tech path would be for those two civics, but I just don't think they are all that useful for us. We aren't playing as a Spiritual civ, meaning we can only use these civics in a Golden Age when we're getting free civic swaps. We're obviously tied into Slavery civic for the duration, and Organized Religion is much too useful at this stage of the game to stay in Pacifism. Are we really going to research 2000+ beakers so that we can produce 50% more Great Person points (from +100% to +200%) during the few turns we're in a Golden Age? That benefit feels relatively minor to me (think of how non-prioritized Parthenon tends to be; this is almost the exact same benefit).

It would be different if we were Spiritual or Philosophical, you could definitely talk me into rushing Philosophy/Pacifism civics under those conditions. I've done it myself in other games. But we're not playing with those traits, and trying to bend our civ around a heavy Great Person / specialist setup does not fit our leader or gameplan thus far. We're playing as Fin/Exp Pacal, and we've been running a rapid expansion with mass cottages strategy. I expect to parlay that into massive State Property / workshop abuse late in the game. I just don't see Great People being the focus of our plan. We'll set up one city with National Epic and use it to pop out enough Great People for our purposes, and that will be fine. We don't need to rush Philosophy tech to do that. Remember, we can't even use Caste System and Pacifism unless we're in a Golden Age. Even with Mausoleum, that won't be too often. Is the uber-expensive Philosophy tech really THAT useful for our civ?

I think there are significantly stronger paths through the tech tree. I would argue that we want the following:

Monarchy (540 beakers) -> Metal Casting (810 beakers) = 1350 beakers

With the modified beaker counter being 1060 beakers, since Monarchy's 40% pre-requisite bonus makes it cheaper than the raw cost appears. In fact, Monarchy + Metal Casting + Code of Laws combined are still cheaper than teching to Philosophy (1585 vs 1845 beakers with prereq bonuses). Monarchy tech I thought would be an obvious next target, due to the very cheap cost, the fact that we'll be settling at a wines resource next turn, and opens up a very useful civic. (I believe that Hereditary Rule is more useful for us than Pacifism, and Monarchy tech costs less than 1/3 of Philosophy.) After that, I'd like to see us prioritize Metal Casting next so that we can get to work on early forges. Along with Organized Religion civic, forges will increase our whips and chops to 45 shields, making it easier to build all of the other useful Classical and Medieval era infrastructure. It seems like we'd do better in a pure builder scenario to build forges first before courthouses, markets, etc. And we also have gold + gems sitting around, so forges are worth a further +2 happiness in every city. Monarchy/Metal Casting together greatly increase overall city happiness. Here is the breakdown on that:

4 happiness (default)
5 happiness = gold
6 happiness = gems
7 happiness = spices
8 happiness = silks
9 happiness = religion present
10 happiness = wines
11 happiness = HR garrison unit
12-13 happiness = forge

Going from a happy cap of 9 to a happy cap of 13 is a pretty big increase to me. This tech path is significantly cheaper in beaker cost, adds +2 happiness from the start (wines/HR) and potentially another +2 happiness from forge, plus lets us build one of the most useful city improvements in the game. Philosophy tech doesn't open up any buildings at all, and lets us run an alternate civic that increases Great Person points from +100% to +200% during the minimal turns that we're in a Golden Age. I don't think this is a very strong tech path.

We also have a non-Spiritual, non-Philosophical civ which has been running essentially zero specialists for the game thus far. I'm completely failing to see why we would want to push for techs which seem designed for a heavy specialist economy (Caster System/Pacifism). Am I totally missing something here? Why wouldn't we just keep expanding and working tons of cottages everywhere? Like... we've been doing the whole game to tremendous success thus far?

I say we go Monarchy -> Metal Casting, and probably Code of Laws/Civil Service from there.

[SevenSpirits]

We also have a non-Spiritual, non-Philosophical civ which has been running essentially zero specialists for the game thus far. I'm completely failing to see why we would want to push for techs which seem designed for a heavy specialist economy (Caster System/Pacifism). Am I totally missing something here? Why wouldn't we just keep expanding and working tons of cottages everywhere? Like... we've been doing the whole game to tremendous success thus far?

Great people are a very powerful limited resource we get.

Philosophical leaders can get their great people whenever they want. Spiritual leaders can run caste system and pacifism and get their great people whenever they want after that point of the game.

We are neither. The best time by far for us to get our great people is when we are in a golden age. As far as I can tell, our plan for a long time now has been to have our first golden age shortly after building the mausoleum, at about the time we get civil service, at about t120. This is an incredibly-commonly-used plan with a great track record. Whenever we have our first golden age, we need to take advantage of the GPP modifier and caste system opportunity, which is the most powerful part of the golden age for us. If we continue with our push for a medieval era golden age coinciding with a revolt into bureaucracy, then that is when we will need to do the whole GPP thing.

I believe you are pushing for a later first golden age. This is a legitimate plan, though it does delay bureaucracy, our academy, and whatever other benefits we can get from great people. I's not what our civ has been aimed towards for the last howevermany turns, and delaying those large benefits would be pretty costly. Either way we should settle on an actual plan about when to have our first golden age, which techs we will have by then and which we can get in the following 5-6t, and which cities to turn into GPP pumps.

Regarding forges. The ideal time to invest in forges is after we have built up a large amount of population, shortly before we liquidate it into hammers. This is exactly what happens right after a golden age. You want max pop for the GA and you aren't in slavery and you get a bunch of techs. Then shortly after you whip a ton of those people away to build the shiny new things you have access to. During and immediately after the first golden age will probably be the best time to build forges in most of our cities.

[kjn]

Sullla, I think we as the micro planners need here is you to make a decision: which micro plan format is the official one? (Ie, which one do you follow.)

It's in the nature of the beast that micro plans change, especially in the latter half of the plan. You've already done one yourself. Pretty much every post from NobleHelium, Seven, and myself in the micro thread assumes the whip overflow from worker, once it was pointed out the overflow wasn't that much given a fully mined up Focal Point in OR.

As for the golden age debate, I'm officially over my head there, but I think we need to discuss what our goals with it is, ie what state do we want to be in with regard to great people and civics once it ends. Otherwise we will simply talk around in circles.

Core requirements:

One Great Scientist for an academy in Adventure One
We leave the GA in HR, Bureaucracy, Slavery, OR

Are there any other things we must do? Do we want to do anything more than that? We can probably time another GS (for a bulb or a second academy) soon after the GA simply by running plenty of scientists in another city, but if we want another GP during the GA we will need Pacifism.

[NobleHelium]

It's not really about what we must do in the GA. It's about maximizing the GA. We can easily generate 2-3 GPs during the GA with Pacifism, and it's the best use of the GA. MoM is a very powerful wonder because you can spend such a huge portion of the game in Golden Age, but to get that to happen you need to spend effort generating GPs during the GA. Without MoM you get fewer GA turns to start with which means fewer turns that you can spend in Pacifism with the GA bonus, which in turn leads to fewer GPs. We spent 27 (Quick speed) turns in Golden Age in PBEM 38 and had a 50% chance of getting another 9 turns a few turns after the game ended, and that's without landing the Taj Mahal. Sure, we weren't Financial, but just because a few cities are working a lot of specialists doesn't mean we're actually giving up a lot in terms of (Financial) tiles worked.

[SevenSpirits]

NH pointed out to me that I had a free hinduism spread to AO. Whoops, I think that happened eot89 when I was just getting the sandbox up-to-date, not even making decisions yet. Not having religion in AO does make HR a bit more appealing than I thought.

I am not in any way dead-set against picking up HR alongside OR. Remember early in the game (before we went for the Currency/Oracle plan) I favored getting Monarchy before Math. The question is just, do we still want to build up more happiness or is it time yet to make our first push for powerful medieval stuff?

Sullla, I urge you to argue with issues one at a time, rather than arguing against an entire plan due to some aspects of it. I had to make some debatable choices while playing out the turns; this is inevitable. Where possible I went with the choice that I felt we hadn't explored enough - hence the OR revolt, and settling our cities aggressively. We need to discuss these choices and not take them for granted. These are decisions where thinking ahead can be very profitable for us.