Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[novice]

The alternative is to simply go for researching Liberalism as quickly as we can, without trying to hide things.

I don't see anything about my suggestion that slows down our Liberalism research.

[Sullla]

Turn 121 - 150AD

I'll get to the whole Liberalism tech path stuff at the end. Hold your horses until then.



WPC seems happy with the missionary we're sending to them right now. I opened up the game to find this message from their team. They seem to want to send an archer in return, so sure, why not. We'll take it. We can always stuff it somewhere for military police purposes. They also don't appear to have any idea how to exchange messages without proposing a gold transfer, and thus the 1 gold for 1 gold exchange. Cute.

I have no idea where they want us to send the current missionary, but I suspect they'll send more messages to that effect soon enough.



We've got visibility on the final CFC city, Bono, down in the southern tundra. It has a granary and nothing else at present. There's also a ton of Fast Workers building a grassland farm down here for some reason. I guess they want a bigger food surplus in the city, which makes sense. We now have vision on all 12 CFC cities. I'm going to send the chariot to scout the remaining southwest corner of CivFanatics territory, just to make sure that there's no land bridge down in that corner over to our territory. Still waiting for CFC to plant more cities, they've been on 12 for some time now.



At the complete opposite side of the map, or close as the seagull flies across the toroidal north/south pole, we've confirmed the presence of icy islands in the ocean. This is actually only about ten tiles south of our own polar region. Definitely want to get a ship down from Starfall in the future to explore this. I'm also really hoping that we'll be able to land Great Lighthouse now, as there appears to be quite a lot of room for coastal cities along the edge of the map. Due in 5 more turns on that wonder, no way to speed it up since we're outside of Slavery civic at present.



We did get revenge on the barb axe that killed our war chariot earlier. Lew will heal for one turn to reach 4.8 health, and then head further south to keep exploring.



Probably the biggest news from the turn was the founding of city #15 down to the south of the capital. We had no popular name for this city, so I went ahead and went with French Riviera after the name of Adventure 15. Close enough, and the number was thematically appropriate and everything. The workers managed to finish a road to the spot before settling, allowing us to begin with two foreign trade routes immediately. French Riviera's micro has it run an Artist for the first two turns to pop borders while workers finish a cottage on the floodplains (T121-122). The other worker to the southeast meanwhile roads the plains forest tile. Then on T124 the workers all move to the forest and chop to insta-complete the granary, then move onto the wheat and farm it. We could get slightly more food and production in here via the Build Culture bug, but sadly CivFr's grab of Music tech has ruled that possibility out.

We discovered Drama at the start of this turn, and a lot of cities have gone onto theatres as a result.



On the other side of our territory, The Covenant overflowed into and will finish a war chariot, which will finally give that city a military police unit. Maybe we can use the archer from WPC in that city or something. There's an axe moving to Tree Huggers for the same purpose which will arrive there next turn. There's a missionary in both German and WPC territory just visible in this picture. Please send off some kind of message to the Germans letting them know that a missionary is on its way. I'll probably gift it to them and just let them pick which city to spread the religion in.

Workers are building cottages and clearing jungle all through this northern region. We'll have a farm next to the rice to spread irrigation there finished next turn. Chop also completes the Cutting Edge granary next turn.



Here's the obligatory "Moai city in a Golden Age" screenshot as Horse Feathers builds Heroic Epic. We're borrowing the corn tile from the capital for a single turn to get +9 food and a city grow to size 11; HF will then work the plains hill mine and a normal grassland farm and give the corn back to the capital. We'll grab the iron mine back from Gourmet Menu as soon as it finishes its own Great Lighthouse project. Heroic Epic is due to finish eot 127.

Overview / tile micro:

I've drawn in all of the tile micro, including the cadre of Scientists over in our eastern cities. We're up to 15 cities overall, and the settler from The Covenant is on its way to the marked tile in the northwest, due to settle city #16 on T125. Everything is pretty much on schedule as planned.

We are not planning on researching Metal Casting next; I've stuck us on this tech while we discuss things over. No reason to tip our hand to Apolyton in the Liberalism race until we have to do so.



Here are the disgusting Golden Age Demographics when I set our research to Philosophy tech (40% prerequisite bonus + 3% known tech bonus). I wanted to see how high we could make the GNP number go. Everything else is about what you would expect. Note that we've climbed into second place in Soldiers now despite making no real effort to do so. We have almost 70 more tiles under our control than any other team.

Liberalism Tech Path Stuff

Alright, this discussion is going to take a bit of time, so might as well pull up a chair and settle in. I'm going to explain our situation as best I can and then outline what I believe is our best route through the tech tree over the next dozen turns. First of all, here's what the tree itself looks like right now:



We currently need Philosophy, Paper, and Education techs in order to research Liberalism. Apolyton needs Paper and Education techs; they are up Philosophy because of their earlier Great Scientist lightbulb of the tech (which they used to found Taoism). We are up a bunch of other techs on Apolyton that are not important to the Liberalism race one way or the other. Every other team is out of the Liberalism race and will play no part; even CivFr is missing Code of Laws, Drama, Philosophy, and Civil Service. There's no way they can make up that many missing beakers when we're in a Golden Age and have multiple Great Scientists to play around with for lightbulbs. So Apolyton is the only real competition here.

Apolyton spent three turns accumulating gold (eot 116, 117, and 118). They make roughly 100 gold/turn when they run 0% science, and then they lose about 100 gold/turn when they run 100% science. So they amassed gold for three turns until they had ~325 gold, then they flipped research back on at the start of Turn 119 and ran max research at eot 119 and 120. We are currently at the beginning of Turn 121, and they have 100 gold left in the bank, with no new techs researched as yet. This means that they must be going for one of the following techs:

Feudalism (unlikely)
Machinery (very possible)
Paper (also very possible)

They would have already finished a cheaper tech like Calendar or Construction, and I can't see them going for Theology tech when the religion and AP wonder are already gone. So it's almost certainly Machinery or Paper tech in the works for them right now. We should now at the start of next turn which one they are researching. If we're lucky, they've decided they need maces and went for the otherwise unimportant Machinery tech. Should that be the case, you can stop reading this section right now, because we have Liberalism in the bag.

Of course, we have to plan for the worst case scenario, which means a direct Liberalism beeline going through Paper. This is probably the most likely case; Apolyton is Philosophical in this game, and they have every reason to push for cheap universities and early Liberalism. But this is not such bad news either, as it means that Apolyton needed 6 full turns (3t @ 0% research building gold and 3t @ 100% research knocking out beakers) to get the relatively cheap Paper tech. If they can't do better than 180 beakers/turn at break-even rate, then we should be able to beat them to Liberalism in a walk.

Still, we'll assume the worst case scenario, and also assume that Apolyton is engaging in some kind of complex research swapping game to build up tech overflow. What's the fastest way for us to get to Liberalism? Well, we have two Great Scientists to play around with. We would prefer to use one of them on an Academy in the capital, but we should be willing to burn both of them on lightbulbs if necessary to land Liberalism first. I'm arguing for this due to the following reasons:

* Liberalism into Nationalism gives us an extremely good chance to build Taj Mahal. Landing 8t more of Golden Age and denying 12t of (Mausoleum) Golden Age to CivFr is almost enough to lock up a victory for our team right there.

* This is a Huge map. Individual cities are less important on a Huge map. The Bureacademy capital with Oxford is inherently less valuable here. Still good stuff, but we're very likely to get 30+ cities on this map before we're done. This is not a Standard game where everyone gets 8-10 cities. Academy is simply not as important.

* We're only going to be in Bureaucracy civic for about the next 20-25 turns before we going into Nationhood civic and draft for pretty much the rest of the game. This makes an Academy in the capital less valuable.

Again, we'd like to use a Scientist on the Academy, but we certainly aren't tied to it. We can use both on lightbulbs if necessary. With that in mind, what is then the best path through the tech tree? The BTS Great Scientist list heavily favors Education tech for lightbulb priority:

Great Scientist:
Writing
Mathematics
Scientific Method
Physics
Education
Printing Press
Fiber Optics
Computers
Laser (BTS)
The Wheel
Alphabet (BTS)
Philosophy

This is all the relevant stuff; we're not going to do all the elaborate trickery necessary to open up a Liberalism bulb itself. Not worth it. Essentially, we lightbulb Education first, and then we can lightbulb Philosophy if we clear Alphabet first. Which is more valuable to lightbulb? Some numbers on the techs:

Philosophy = 1440 beakers
Education = 3240 beakers

A Great Scientist lightbulb is worth about 1800 beakers for our civ currently. We'll be wasting some of the value on Philosophy tech no matter what we do here, making Education a better choice. But it's actually even more lopsided than this, because Philosophy tech gets 40% bonus beaker multiplier from two pre-requisites (see the tech chart picture above) while Education only gets 20% bonus beakers. This makes Philosophy cheaper than a "normal" tech, and a worse choice for a lightbulb. Then we get another 3% bonus on Philosophy tech because Apolyton has it, and we benefit from "known civ" bonus as well. And furthermore, we have to research Alphabet tech to lightbulb Philosophy tech at all. This makes it a bad deal: we want to research Philosophy tech, not use a Great Scientist on it.

OK, with that out of the way, which tech to research next then on our Liberalism beeline: Philosophy or Paper? Well, both are viable options, but I suggest Philosophy tech first. This is mostly due to the fact that Apolyton already has researched Philosophy, making it cheaper for us to research by following in their wake. We get no such known civ bonus on Paper, and we could even make it cheaper for Apolyton by blazing ahead in that direction first. Plus, researching Paper tech makes it extremely obvious that we are going for Liberalism. With Philosophy tech, we could theoretically be going for Angkor Wat or something. I mean, it's theoretically possible, right?

So I would suggest following along this path. Philosophy first. The two turns it takes to research the tech will let us known if Apolyton is going for Paper or diverting off into Machinery/Feudalism for defense. We then research Paper second, and knock out 95% of the cost or whatever, then build gold for a few turns. We'll be able to see if we need to use one Scientist on Education or if we need to double lightbulb it, depending on what Apolyton is doing, but then we knock out Education almost instantaneously and push on to a very fast Liberalism. My estimates have us able to finish the whole path around T131-32 with a double lightbulb, should that prove necessary. Apolyton would need to clear 6800 beakers in the next 10 turns to beat us, and since they appear to be researching at under 200 break-even beakers right now, that doesn't seem likely. We can fiddle with mass overflow from Archery tech or whatever if people like that, but I think Apolyton will know full well what we're doing the minute we start teching Paper, and we might as well just race them straight out. Up to you, of course.

TL:DR - We should research Philosophy tech for now, then 95% of Paper tech, while watching what Apolyton does. We build gold for a few turns, single or double lightbulb Education, and then push on to Liberalism at 100% research to finish around T131-32.

Let the discussion begin. (Someone always has something to say. )

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Good point about de-emphasised Academy and Oxford on a Huge map size, that was always a concern about how high to prioritise. I'd still like to slot it in at some point, we have a baller high-commerce capital Bureaucracy or no Bureaucracy.

Also, while we have an agreement with CFC for their Marble, how confident are we that we will actually have marble during our window to build Taj?

A final possibility: there's always a risk of someone ragequitting and gifting gold to 'poly or Civfr. But hey, I'm paranoid, people don't seem to like another that much . Spanpoly and Civfr don't like one another, CFC are distracted, and somehow I think Civfr and 'poly see one another as rivals.

And remember that 'poly are just as capable of doing double-bulbs into Education as we, so we might have to adjust our ETA downwards. Finally, us teching philo is just as indicative of a liberalism race: remember, we have the Paya, we don't actually need philo for pacifism.

[Azoth]

On the question of an Academy vs. a second Bulb, some math on the fly:

Let's say the capital makes 80 raw commerce per turn over the near future.
(That's probably an overestimate: I'm counting the Palace, trade routes, and at least 4 commerce per citizen.)
Bureaucracy bumps that to 120 commerce. So an Academy will produce 60 bonus beakers per turn.
Except we're not running 100% science. At 50% (again, an overestimate) we make 30 beakers per turn.
And once we leave Bureaucracy, 20 beakers. But those beakers benefit from arrow multipliers, while bulbs don't.
So if we tack on an extra 20%, we get 36bpt and 24bpt, respectively.

If we run Bureaucracy for the next 20 turns, an Academy will produce 720 bonus beakers.
After that, it will take at least 40 turns for the Academy to break even with a 1800 beaker bulb.
(Roughly, 1800 minus 720 is 1000. And 1000 divided by 24 is 40.)

So, even with some very optimistic numbers, an Academy doesn't catch up to a second bulb for 60 turns.
That's way too late to matter. Even if we weren't in a Liberalism race, I'd say the bulb is the better option.
Or am I missing something?

[Cornflakes]

The second bulb would only get about 1400 beakers (whatever the difference is between the cost of the tech and the first 1800-beaker bulb) but using that in your analysis still puts it in the 40-ish turn payback range (note: I'm only commenting on the math, not method or yea/nay bulb)

[Merovech]

Sullla's outline seems ideal to me; I was actually thinking along those lines while catching up on the earlier Liberalism discussion.

[Azoth]

Heh. It turns out I was missing something! But even a 40-turn payback window is too long.
Where were we 40 turns ago? We had just enabled foreign trade routes and settled City #7, Seven Tribes.
Where will we be in 40 turns? Who knows? I doubt 24 extra beakers will make any difference then.

Plus, not having an Academy gives us more flexibility to swap to Nationhood when we need to.
We won't feel the need to make good on our investment.

[antisocialmunky]

If we want an academy, can't we just draft a bunch of rifles and take someone elses?

[NobleHelium]

It's closer to 33 turns because we get a 1.2x multiplier on normal research in most cases.

[Lewwyn]

I like Sulla's proposed plan. Whether we need to double bulb Education or not should become clear after philo and most of paper.