Micromanagement Sims/Planning

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Good point about how behind the Germans are, we may as well delay the war and push back the timetable for rolling them over from a simple knight rush. The question is how do we spin that with WPC? Obviously we shouldn't cripple ourselves just to give them a bit more land.

Also, is it more efficient to be in Slavery for the Kremlin-boosted whips, or Caste for the 2/4 grass workshops?

[Shoot the Moon]

Good point about how behind the Germans are, we may as well delay the war and push back the timetable for rolling them over from a simple knight rush. The question is how do we spin that with WPC? Obviously we shouldn't cripple ourselves just to give them a bit more land.

Also, is it more efficient to be in Slavery for the Kremlin-boosted whips, or Caste for the 2/4 grass workshops?

If I remember from PB6 stuff someone ran the numbers and workshops came out ahead. That being said though with CR not banned this game (at least I don't think it is right?) in the late game we could potentially do both.

In terms of long term planning though, I'd also rank SoL pretty highly on this map as well though (and democracy should also be appealing for other reasons as well--US will be strong for us especially considering we haven't heavily needed HR happiness anywhere).

[SleepingMoogle]

SoL is kind of long-term still, though certainly not beyond reach if we manage to land Liberalism and the Taj. How about the Notre Dame btw? It hasn't been mentioned so far, but it is a powerful wonder on this map and we do have access to Stone.

[MWIN]

If we are not adopting Bureaucracy until T120, can we gather gold for 2 or 3 more turns? Did we plan chain irrigation based on T117 date? Just thinking, may be we get more known civ bonus, if we wait....

[Ubercannon]

Also, is it more efficient to be in Slavery for the Kremlin-boosted whips, or Caste for the 2/4 grass workshops?

Most efficient would be towns, with universal suffrage, free speech, and the kremlin. They'll produce 8 commerce, which turns into 4 hammers with the kremlin and US, plus the 1 base hammer for 5 hammers total. Also you can switch instantly between research and production.

Slavery with the kremlin comes out ahead for small cites, but its not as good in big cities. Partly because they need more food to grow, and partly because you can only grow one pop per turn, so they're limited to (on average) 45 hammers per turn from slavery. And the unhappiness really adds up after a while.

It would be really nice to pick up democracy before communism, if its possible to do that and still win the kremlin.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

USuff might not even be on the cards, there'll be a looong gap between Communism and Democracy techs, in the meantime I'd rather stop growing cottages outside our core and instead turn all our jungle cities into insane 40 hammer per turn behemoths to start pumping out cannons and cavalry. Plus, USuff + Free Speech locks out nationhood, which is a bad thing when we want to go nuts drafting out a bazillion rifles.

I think delaying the war until post-Communism is already too late. I can see us using the post-Taj timeframe to buildup a doomstack to take over the Germans. What's important is how our economy should be arranged just after Communism, not after we've teched that AND Constitution-Democracy.

[Ubercannon]

I guess I don't understand what the rush is? Why is it necessary to take over the Germans ASAP? Invading them will only slow down the research rate, especially if it involves heavy drafting. My advice would be to just play defensively and keep teaching faster and faster until the modern era. With nukes, you can pretty much instantly shut down any team that looks like a threat.

[Ellimist]

The sooner we take them over, the sooner the land we take from them will be profitable.

[Sullla]

Here's the latest updates to our planning. I've got us mostly through the Golden Age; I'll go back when I have more time and finish up the last few turns. Same link as before: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...ring#gid=0

Save stack: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/IS...-saves.zip

Comments:

* The worker micro and city tile micro was pretty easy to do on this one, and we're able to keep the number of improved tiles on pace with the rate of city growth. I'm certainly hoping that we're able to land the free Great Artist from Music tech, because I have some fun tricks exploiting the Build Culture bug written into a few places.

* Research path is set to Drama (1t) -> Music (1t) -> Metal Casting (2t) -> Philosophy (3t). I found that we didn't really need Horseback Riding tech as all of our high production cities had plenty to build in the way of forges and such. We can skip it for now and come back later for elephants and stables. The first two techs are easy to figure out at 100% science rate both turns. For Metal Casting, I have us running break-even 60% rate for the two turns, and I do not want us to delay forges any longer, and it would take more turns to run a 0% / 100% research cycle. This is subject to change if Apolyton would suddenly start racing for Liberalism and we have to go after Philosophy tech instead. We shall see. I'll adjust the plan accordingly if that happens, or if CivFr would claim Music tech a turn before we do.

* The biggest subject of potential debate in this plan is probably all of the theatres that I have us building. Let me explain. I view Starfall as an enormously valuable location where we want to get the Globe Theatre up and running ASAP. Starfall's +12 food surplus at size 5 allows us to whip every 2t or draft (nearly) every turn. This is enormously abusable, and it's the best way to make use of Starfall's otherwise weak desert terrain. We can build the Globe Theatre in about 20t (despite its 300 production cost) by making use of repeated whip overflow. Turn 1, set the city to build a catapult. Turn 2, whip the cat for 75 shields (with forge). Turn 3, overflow roughly 30 production into Globe. And then keep doing that over and over again until the wonder is finished. The completed unit provides military police to cover the unhappiness via Hereditary Rule civic. We can also whip cheap buildings to completion (barracks, monastery, etc.) and get even more overflow from the forge + OR civic combination. Basically, we just need to get started as soon as possible to let the 3t whip cycle do its magic.

Of course, that requires getting 8 theatres up and running in order to start on Globe. We actually have a nice little window to do this, as we have 3t during the Golden Age between finishing Drama and finishing Metal Casting techs. I was looking for something to build in our high production cities during those three turns, and it suddenly hit me that this was the perfect time to slot in those theatres. So we use Turns 121-125 to pop out cheap theatres in a bunch of core cities, and we'll have 8 done and ready to go at the end of the Golden Age for Starfall to start playing around with Globe Theatre starting on about T129-130. I estimate it will take roughly 20 turns to build the Globe with whip overflow, so we finish around T150... which is right about when I expect us to finish Taj and swap permanently into Nationhood civic for drafting fun. Obviously this is still very much in the theoretical stages, but it feels like a pretty good plan. We can draft Starfall something like 9 out of every 10 turns, and that means an endless march of conscript maces/muskets/rifles to throw at our enemies.

* One thing you don't see us building much of are courthouses in this plan. I haven't emphasized them at all, choosing to go for those cheap theatres mentioned above, and then forges after that. Oh, we'll build some eventually, but I don't see them as a huge priority. I value the forges much, much more than I do getting courthouses. Remember, our long term tech goal is Communism / State Property civic. It will let us run our bloated empire on the cheap and spam workshops and watermills everywhere throughout those massive stretches of jungle. In the Renaissance era, we'll definitely want to pick up Gunpowder and Printing Press, and possibly Military Tradition depending on how much fighting we're doing. But after that... is there really any reason not to go straight for Chemistry -> Sci Method -> Communism? Maybe we want Rifling, again hard to say now, but the tech path above is just so strong for us. Anyway, if we are beelining Communism, then we have little need for Forbidden Palace and much less interest in building courthouses everywhere, since all those distance maintenance costs will magically vanish down the road. That's how I see our priorities. (Oh, and I didn't even mention the free Great Spy and Kremlin wonder sitting there at Communism. Could that tech be any more broken for our civ in this game?!)

* The Great Lighthouse is set to finish eot 125. I think we have a very good chance to land that one, and it should be quite valuable, at least so long as the other teams are dumb enough to keep giving us Open Borders. We have no need to research Corporation until we go for Assembly Line, and that's a loooooooong ways away.

* Heroic Epic finishes eot 126, and Horse Feathers will be a very strong city as soon as that happens. Just needs a forge (and later stables) and it's ready to pump out units forever. We can always build cats while waiting on Horseback Riding tech.

Let me know what you think. I went through about four different versions of these turns, and I'm very happy with what I have now.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

It sounds like solid strategy to my mind. We want to be in position to start really building up militarily right around the time we can start building gunpowder units and knights, and it sounds like we will be in just such a position by prioritizing a draft camp and forges.

I think only our distant or high production cities should even consider courthouses if we think we can hit Communism at an early date. Markets may have a better return anyway in any commerce cities.

I think the biggest variable is the Liberalism race. We shouldn't dally at all in that race, so if we get even a hint that Apolyton is racing there, we need to go full bore.