Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[SevenSpirits]

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?

Well, you are comparing it to an 1800b bulb, which is not what we are discussing.

Perhaps a better comparison to start with is a second education bulb (1400/1.2 b) vs a PP bulb a bit later (1800/1.2 b). I think the PP bulb is clearly better, except in the case where we NEED to bulb education twice because we are in a race. Therefore, if we can convince ourselves that a PP bulb is better than an academy, everything becomes really simple. (We plan to bulb PP, but double-bulb Education if necessary.)

How does a PP bulb compare against an academy? Well, I can't find a recent pic of our capital with tile yields on, so I don't know. I'd guess 25b/t is a reasonable estimate for the value of the academy, which IMO is worth about 1100b instantly. The bulb gets us 1500b (well, probably a few more from pop growth, but it's not a lot), but not instantly. I would guess PP would only be bulbed and completed 15t after we could build the academy, which IMO reduces the value of the 1500b by a factor of 1.4. So the PP bulb would be worth only about 1060b - less than the academy.

If those numbers are right, I think the 40b difference in value of the two plans according to these numbers is well worth the added flexibility of being able to double-bulb education if we need to, without delaying an academy. But really what it means is we need to get a better idea of our capital's beaker output, and how soon we could/would get printing press.

[SevenSpirits]

Btw Sullla, the advantage of doing things like building up overflow on archery, is so we can change plans if it turns out someone is going to beat us to liberalism. We do not want to spend any beakers on liberalism unless doing so gives us a free tech.

In other cases, it also makes it more likely we get tech discounts from other teams.

[Azoth]

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

Nope, I factored that in:

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.)

Well, you are comparing it to an 1800b bulb, which is not what we are discussing.

Perhaps a better comparison to start with is a second education bulb (1400/1.2 b) vs a PP bulb a bit later (1800/1.2 b). I think the PP bulb is clearly better, except in the case where we NEED to bulb education twice because we are in a race. Therefore, if we can convince ourselves that a PP bulb is better than an academy, everything becomes really simple. (We plan to bulb PP, but double-bulb Education if necessary.)

How does a PP bulb compare against an academy? Well, I can't find a recent pic of our capital with tile yields on, so I don't know. I'd guess 25b/t is a reasonable estimate for the value of the academy, which IMO is worth about 1100b instantly. The bulb gets us 1500b (well, probably a few more from pop growth, but it's not a lot), but not instantly. I would guess PP would only be bulbed and completed 15t after we could build the academy, which IMO reduces the value of the 1500b by a factor of 1.4. So the PP bulb would be worth only about 1060b - less than the academy.

If those numbers are right, I think the 40b difference in value of the two plans according to these numbers is well worth the added flexibility of being able to double-bulb education if we need to, without delaying an academy. But really what it means is we need to get a better idea of our capital's beaker output, and how soon we could/would get printing press.

Hmm. Comparing a second bulb of Education with a full bulb of Printing Press makes a lot more sense. And, yeah, the PP bulb is clearly better. It won't be long until we get there. PP is required for both Communism and Rifling, so it's likely our next target, and all we need is Metal Casting, Machinery, and Alphabet. (As for the capital's output, I couldn't find a recent screenshot, so I had to guess.)

What I'm saying is: I'm not sure about the reasoning behind your numbers - in the early Renaissance, not expecting a space race, I'd probably take 1100 instant beakers over 25b/t every time - but the conclusion makes sense. Bulb Education if we have to, else save the GS for Printing Press.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Another point about estimating Civfr's beaker rate, we don't know how much overflow they're trying to generate, one potential way of counter C&D is to overtech something when there's only a sliver of the bar left. It's inefficient but it could cause us to underestimate their beaker rate. So it's possible they're making ~250 beakers at max research. Which is still weak as hell.

But yeah, in general, I agree with the plan, especially Seven's refinements regarding PP, hand-tech philo which has both pre-req and shared beaker bonuses, bulb education if necessary. Remember, the double-bulb would let us instantly clear Education and make it possible to put beakers into liberalism the same turn.

Something else to consider: we might end up never ever building an academy . Later GPs might end up getting earmarked for extra golden ages and perhaps even a printing press bulb (whose +1c on a ton of tiles in our empire (and our rival's empires)) could outstrip the academy with both a temporary bonus and a long-term bonus.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Can we prioritize a galley out of Starfall over a theater? We could really use some scouting on the ocean. Is circumnav possible?

[kjn]

Can we prioritize a galley out of Starfall over a theater? We could really use some scouting on the ocean. Is circumnav possible?

Prioritising a galley over the theatre depends on how quickly Starfall can finish its theatre compared to the last other theatre needed for the Globe.

Anyway, we can't whip right now, and can only put 1hpt into the the build right now, and it's pretty much a wash what we put production into right now.

[SevenSpirits]

Well, we plan to run nationhood over bureaucracy, so the academy is less useful than normal. It's also less useful because it is already the age where bulbing is strong (partly because we spent our first GP on a shrine).

[kjn]

For those wondering about AO's output, it's currently generating 131bpt in our golden age, and it still only has the library for a research multiplier. So the capital generates 105 commerce per turn, 70 before the Bureaucracy bonus. 8 of that comes from the capital, and 6 from trade routes.

That leaves 56 commerce from tiles in our golden age.

(Note: this is reverse-engineered from the F1 screen right after turn roll, so actual current values are likely different.)

[novice]

Sullla's plan sounds good. Couple of comments though:

- We should save up enough gold now for Philo, Paper and Lib before finishing any techs. We can save gold while teching things to near completion though.
- I don't see any particular advantage in finishing Philo before we need to.
- Philo signals a Lib run more certainly than Paper, since Edu is more useful in its own right.
- Screenshot shows us making 560 bpt. Lib should be 2520. So max overflow from Philo, Paper and Archery times 1.2 multiplier might be enough to 1-turn Edu+Lib.

[Ceiliazul]

It isn't worth trying to hide a lib run if Apolyton has research vis on us. (Sulla says they do)

I like sulla's plan, as usual.

We do need a galley from starfall before the theater. I think the galley is even worth delaying globe a little. This is because cNav is possible, and for scouting those islands. Can we also get a chariot to explore the west side of our clam slot in the South? There's a lot of land on that side we haven't explored yet.