October 18th, 2012, 07:45
(This post was last modified: October 18th, 2012, 07:46 by v8mark.)
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(October 18th, 2012, 07:15)mostly_harmless Wrote: I am also in favour of managing the techs in a way that they fall at the latest possible moment (i.e. Fishing one turn before Fish city will be settled). Idea being to mask our lead somewhat. Sure our GNP will still reveal our strong lead, but GNP is not necessarily assigned to us, if other C&D departments are not on the ball and the only civ that can see our graphs is CFC.
Stockpiled gold is always good. Emergency upgrades for example.
mh
Can we do that by running the slider at 50% some of the time as xenu suggested? Better to have a steady GDP than one that bounces around all over the place (and makes it clear what our *potential* GDP is)...
October 18th, 2012, 08:05
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Our slider setting doesn't matter right now, since we're researching Fishing. No prerequisites, and no known tech bonuses.
Furthermore, I consider that forum views should be fluid in width
October 18th, 2012, 08:20
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Re: Oracle --> MC: We don't need to build forges everywhere initially, but I think a very good case could be made for our military pump to have one. We're not going to have a lot of cottages there anyway. AO/MM probably don't need one right away, AO MAYBE if we have a lull between worker/settler builds (that I don't see) and #4 only if we're going to put that large statue in the water, but probably only after WB/Granary/WB (I'm hoping by then that city #5 for the FP is coming up soon).
Tech path: If we lose a single beaker, I don't want to mess with the slider rate. We have vast distances between nations, so anyone who is gunning for us will have to waste a lot of time and resources. If someone wants to ruin their game and send some units our way, let them. Scooter is doing a good job with diplo, let him earn his keep.  Also, we have only met CFC. We know OF WPC (not quaking in my boots, based on demo analysis of them, sorry) but have not met them. As of now, they'd be the only candidate even close enough to throw a couple units our way, and they don't have demos on us. Is anyone going to wander the map looking for an easy target that they are not guaranteed to find? I don't think so. Let's go full court press, maximize efficiencies because I think we're the best team at doing this, and let Scooter shoo flies until our borders are encroached by us expanding on other civs. Then we sharpen knives.
October 18th, 2012, 08:23
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Re: Oracle -- I agree with both waiting before starting and with going for it and taking MC. I do think we should try to go for it. The conversion rate between hammers and beakers is very good.
I think we should research fishing since we need it and start saving for a monarchy (via priesthood) run. We can slide in writing if we feel necessary at the time.
Regarding hiding our GNP I think it is a good idea to do as much as possible now before we meet other teams.
Kalin
October 18th, 2012, 08:52
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(October 18th, 2012, 08:23)kalin Wrote: Regarding hiding our GNP I think it is a good idea to do as much as possible now before we meet other teams.
In what reasonable way can we hide our GNP?
We're already producing more culture per turn with our holy city than every other team but CivFr. If we land Stonehenge then our culture production will be almost tripled. We produce far more commerce than every other team with our five riverside cottages at our capital.
Right now we should expand as hard and fast as possible. The only reasonable way to mask our GNP is by crashing our economy. We can trust our diplo team, that dogpiles always break up, distances, and that we will be more advanced than our opponents to keep us secure.
Furthermore, I consider that forum views should be fluid in width
October 18th, 2012, 09:03
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kjn, good points. I should have said not exposing our 100% research peak GNP rather than hiding it. Once we have an academy and library in AO plus high pop from HR, that peak will have a strong psychological impact. I am not saying that we should play worse to "hide" our GNP.
Kalin
October 18th, 2012, 09:05
(This post was last modified: October 18th, 2012, 09:08 by scooter.)
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I think there's a little too much fear of the demo screen GNP number right now. We have contact with 1 team (a team we got a very long NAP with) and we are aware of another team (one of the weakest in the game). Who should we be hiding our GNP from exactly? So what if some random team on the other side of the world knows we're killing it in GNP on T50 or T75 for that matter? Dogpiling on this map is going to be difficult - we're spaced out pretty nicely. Once we've actually met our neighbors and seen what things look like, then we can start fretting about avoiding a dogpile, but letting our actions be dictated by dogpile fear when we've met 1 out of 9 rivals is silly.
Edit: this sounds more inflammatory than intended - sorry! I don't intend this to shoot down discussion - just intended to give a strong opinion.
October 18th, 2012, 09:24
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(October 18th, 2012, 09:05)scooter Wrote: I think there's a little too much fear of the demo screen GNP number right now. We have contact with 1 team (a team we got a very long NAP with) and we are aware of another team (one of the weakest in the game). Who should we be hiding our GNP from exactly? So what if some random team on the other side of the world knows we're killing it in GNP on T50 or T75 for that matter? Dogpiling on this map is going to be difficult - we're spaced out pretty nicely. Once we've actually met our neighbors and seen what things look like, then we can start fretting about avoiding a dogpile, but letting our actions be dictated by dogpile fear when we've met 1 out of 9 rivals is silly.
Edit: this sounds more inflammatory than intended - sorry! I don't intend this to shoot down discussion - just intended to give a strong opinion.
 I agree, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels, until the edit. Is THIS our team diplomat? We're screwed!! :P
I have faith that logical decision-making will prevent anyone from marching a large army 20-25+ tiles in our direction and I trust in Scooter's ability to talk someone off the ledge long enough for us to get a superior army in place, if needed.
October 18th, 2012, 09:41
(This post was last modified: October 18th, 2012, 09:43 by NobleHelium.)
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I don't care about masking GNP, as long as we're not intentionally inflating it by queuing techs. Why do you keep saying that we need to research Fishing now when you say that Jesus City will be planted t56 at the earliest? t56 is not now. Obviously we will finish the tech before then, we only need to start teching it on t54.
October 18th, 2012, 09:46
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I agree with the last couple of posts. One thing that can become an issue with Realms Beyond is overthinking subjects, since we have a lot of talented people. Doing all sorts of gyrations to try and hide our research/Demographics performance would be an example of that. It's not worth it. Just to elaborate further:
* We currently have no beaker multipliers at all. 100% science = 100% gold in terms of commerce. Saving up gold has no meaning right now.
* While we're researching Fishing tech, 100% science actually gives the same GNP value as 0% science, since there are no pre-requisite bonuses. It literally doesn't matter where we set our slider while we are on this tech.
* Known tech bonus is totally irrelevant right now. It's 3% per civ who knows the tech on this map. When we we researching Mysticism tech (which CivFanatics had), I checked for the bonus. We received 1 extra beaker on each of 2 turns. 2 beakers total. Any civ who would get a known tech bonus from us will benefit with 1 beaker/turn at most (they must hit 67 beakers/turn to get a second beaker from known tech bonus). Plus, we only know one other team. This is worrying about trivialities.
* I don't think that banking gold is a good idea at all. Gold in the bank does nothing for us until it's converted into techs. Sitting on a big pile of gold just wastes our investment in commerce, and robs us of our advantages. Furthermore, I'd argue that stockpiling gold is even worse from a metagaming perspective. It would set us up for a long and "scary" period of 100% research, and that after we're further into the game and met more teams. (Right now, CFC is the only team who has contact and the only team with any idea what our numbers look like.)
* If we research techs to 99% completion and stop research there, to avoid piling up score points, that has a similar effect. We don't get the benefit of the tech, whatever it is, and we set ourselves up to get something like 5 techs in 5 turns, which would look even worse to anyone watching the numbers. It's actually better to space them out over time.
The best solution is to run steady state break-even research, which looks far less intimidating on the Demos screen. Unfortunately we have to get more total beakers first to avoid losing out on rounding errors; we need to get up to roughly 100 commerce to hit this point. In 25-30 turns, we will probably be ready to do this, but for the moment 100%/0% is superior. Given the limited contact with the rest of the world, I would argue we should stop worrying about this and just concentrate on playing our game.
I also saw a question asking about forges and Organized Religion civic. I thought it was pretty obvious why that was a nice combination: 50% bonus on all infrastructure whips and chops. 45 production per pop instead of 30 production. Maybe we'd rather chop workers/settlers instead of the Oracle, that's an argument worth having, but I thought it would be self-evident why Metal Casting would be a desirable tech to slingshot (forges, Colossus, etc.)
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