[SPOILERS] Margarita and the Lurkers

[Merovech]

My apologies; I wasn't very clear. I distinctly remember Seven agreeing with the idea that ORG Sumeria is not anti-synergistic (though obviously not as good as CRE Sumeria, but that's because CRE is better that ORG in most cases). If the alternative opportunity cost is the reason why EXP India is anti-synergistic, than so should ORG Sumeria be. Perhaps, I am remembering incorrectly. Your logic is completely sound, btw, though I disagree in this instance because that I think that until one hits a serious maintenance threshold, which probably won't happen for a long time on Monarch, even if it's toridial, there is no such thing as too-fast expansion.

[Maga_R]

If the alternative opportunity cost is the reason why EXP India is anti-synergistic, than so should ORG Sumeria be.

Yeah, that was my guess - EXP India would be as anti-synergistic as ORG Sumeria . The only exception would be EXP Inca.

I think that until one hits a serious maintenance threshold, which probably won't happen for a long time on Monarch, even if it's toridial, there is no such thing as too-fast expansion.

I hope that combined efforts of Plako and Sevens will not leave us with a game so 1-dimensional . That was a problem with earlier versions of civ - the answer to everything was REXing as if there is no tomorrow . That is why I voted for higher diificulty (and maintenance costs), to make finding balance between REXing and funding expansion a bit more interesting .

[SevenSpirits]

You have a lot of nice discussions here. One thing I wanted to say was: I consider EXP and India to be antisynergistic. Why?

There are two good ways to build granaries.
1) EXP.
2) Chopping.

You really want one of these in order to get new cities productive quickly. Well, a big benefit of India is it's really good at chopping, especially in new cities. So a large part of the benefit of EXP is redundant with it.

That's not to say I would complain about being India and EXP; both are top tier.

Doesn't the ability to 1.5-chop a granary make up for that? Mainly, I'm confused as to why you consider chopping into a granary to be less useful when expansive. I think I remember you once agreeing with the argument that ORG Sumeria/Aztec is not antisynergistic, where compared to ORG without a cheap courthouse UU, the hammers saved are less, but the overall cost of the courthouse is still lower, and I think that I see parallels here, just with time saved instead of hammers saved.

Suppose you are purely whipping your granary. On normal speed that means getting 22 + 24 + 26 food. Then you 2-whip the granary and after 24 food more you are at size 3 with fully operational granary. Total food needed: 96.

How much food does it take to reach that point as an EXP leader? Well you only need to produce 22f to reach size 2, then you whip, then another 22f to grow back to size 2. Now you are at 11/24, so you need 13 more to reach the same spot. Total food needed: 57. So EXP saved about 40 food. How much production is 40 food worth? Well with a granary, you can convert 25 food to 60 hammers by growing from 2 to 4 and whipping back to 2. (A 6 to 3 whip similarly converts 42 food to 90 hammers - the conversion's worse there but you get more food-to-hammer conversion for the same amount of happiness.) So that 40f you saved via EXP can be converted into about 90 hammers (more if you are 2-whipping, less if 3-whipping, probably even more if you have good tiles to grow onto).

Summary: If you are making your granary via whip alone, EXP's bonus can put you about 90 hammers ahead by the time non-EXP is done building the granary, in a typical case. Wow, that's really good! That's way better than getting e.g. double production on forges.


But now suppose your city can produce 30 hammers - half a normal granary - without issue. Maybe this is due to a math chop, maybe it's because of a non-math chop and sharing a copper tile with the capital or something. Now EXP gets the granary immediately, and has to produce 35f to reach our size 3 checkpoint. Meanwhile, non-EXP has to grow to size 2 and whip the granary, just like EXP from the previous scenario. So it needs to produce 57 food. In this case - where we are getting 30 hammers for free from a chop - EXP's advantage over non-EXP is a mere 22 food, worth 50h according to our conversion rate.


Scenario 3: You have math, and so many workers that you can easily chop 2 forests for each new city. So effectively, all cities start with a granary, and EXP civs have an extra 30h to throw around too. Here EXP's advantage is trivial to calculate: it's only 30h.

So: EXP makes a much bigger difference if you are not chopping out the granaries. It's netting you around 90h if you were getting no non-whip production, 50h if you were getting 30h of non-whip production, and 30h if you were getting 60h of non-whip production.


You bring up the case of stacking discounts on courthouses, e.g. ORG + Sumeria. A quick summary of that argument:
* ORG saves 50% on courthouses, so 60h.
* Sumeria saves 30h on courthouses since they just start cheaper.
* Let's set aside the fact that Sumeria also makes courthouses available earlier; this is just about the two discounts.
* If you take ORG as Sumeria, ORG only saves 45h. So ORG isn't doing as much, it's antisynergistic. Alternately, you can take ORG as a given and consider the benefit of Sumeria. Normally it saves 30h, but since you are ORG it only saves 15h.
* BUT!! ORG doesn't just save you hammers on courthouses you were already going to build. It also makes you want to build more courthouses (and build them earlier), because at half price there's a much lower bar for how much money it has to save you for a courthouse in a given city to be a good investment. And similarly, Sumeria doesn't just save you money on courthouses you were already wanting to build, it also makes you want to build more of them. And these "you-want-to-build-more" effects synergize very well with the discounts. The end result is that IMO, ORG and Sumeria are synergistic.

So you ask, why doesn't this apply here? Well, the thing is that granaries are the best thing ever, and if you have just one of EXP or India, you already want to build them everywhere as fast as you can. If you have EXP, and you add India to that, there is no effect from India making you want to build granaries more, that could synergize with EXP's discount. Because you already want to build them as much as is humanly possible.

[Maga_R]

You have a lot of nice discussions here. One thing I wanted to say was: I consider EXP and India to be antisynergistic. Why?

There are two good ways to build granaries.
1) EXP.
2) Chopping.

You really want one of these in order to get new cities productive quickly. Well, a big benefit of India is it's really good at chopping, especially in new cities. So a large part of the benefit of EXP is redundant with it.

That's not to say I would complain about being India and EXP; both are top tier.

Doesn't the ability to 1.5-chop a granary make up for that? Mainly, I'm confused as to why you consider chopping into a granary to be less useful when expansive. I think I remember you once agreeing with the argument that ORG Sumeria/Aztec is not antisynergistic, where compared to ORG without a cheap courthouse UU, the hammers saved are less, but the overall cost of the courthouse is still lower, and I think that I see parallels here, just with time saved instead of hammers saved.

Suppose you are purely whipping your granary. On normal speed that means getting 22 + 24 + 26 food. Then you 2-whip the granary and after 24 food more you are at size 3 with fully operational granary. Total food needed: 96.

How much food does it take to reach that point as an EXP leader? Well you only need to produce 22f to reach size 2, then you whip, then another 22f to grow back to size 2. Now you are at 11/24, so you need 13 more to reach the same spot. Total food needed: 57. So EXP saved about 40 food. How much production is 40 food worth? Well with a granary, you can convert 25 food to 60 hammers by growing from 2 to 4 and whipping back to 2. (A 6 to 3 whip similarly converts 42 food to 90 hammers - the conversion's worse there but you get more food-to-hammer conversion for the same amount of happiness.) So that 40f you saved via EXP can be converted into about 90 hammers (more if you are 2-whipping, less if 3-whipping, probably even more if you have good tiles to grow onto).

Summary: If you are making your granary via whip alone, EXP's bonus can put you about 90 hammers ahead by the time non-EXP is done building the granary, in a typical case. Wow, that's really good! That's way better than getting e.g. double production on forges.


But now suppose your city can produce 30 hammers - half a normal granary - without issue. Maybe this is due to a math chop, maybe it's because of a non-math chop and sharing a copper tile with the capital or something. Now EXP gets the granary immediately, and has to produce 35f to reach our size 3 checkpoint. Meanwhile, non-EXP has to grow to size 2 and whip the granary, just like EXP from the previous scenario. So it needs to produce 57 food. In this case - where we are getting 30 hammers for free from a chop - EXP's advantage over non-EXP is a mere 22 food, worth 50h according to our conversion rate.


Scenario 3: You have math, and so many workers that you can easily chop 2 forests for each new city. So effectively, all cities start with a granary, and EXP civs have an extra 30h to throw around too. Here EXP's advantage is trivial to calculate: it's only 30h.

So: EXP makes a much bigger difference if you are not chopping out the granaries. It's netting you around 90h if you were getting no non-whip production, 50h if you were getting 30h of non-whip production, and 30h if you were getting 60h of non-whip production.


You bring up the case of stacking discounts on courthouses, e.g. ORG + Sumeria. A quick summary of that argument:
* ORG saves 50% on courthouses, so 60h.
* Sumeria saves 30h on courthouses since they just start cheaper.
* Let's set aside the fact that Sumeria also makes courthouses available earlier; this is just about the two discounts.
* If you take ORG as Sumeria, ORG only saves 45h. So ORG isn't doing as much, it's antisynergistic. Alternately, you can take ORG as a given and consider the benefit of Sumeria. Normally it saves 30h, but since you are ORG it only saves 15h.
* BUT!! ORG doesn't just save you hammers on courthouses you were already going to build. It also makes you want to build more courthouses (and build them earlier), because at half price there's a much lower bar for how much money it has to save you for a courthouse in a given city to be a good investment. And similarly, Sumeria doesn't just save you money on courthouses you were already wanting to build, it also makes you want to build more of them. And these "you-want-to-build-more" effects synergize very well with the discounts. The end result is that IMO, ORG and Sumeria are synergistic.

So you ask, why doesn't this apply here? Well, the thing is that granaries are the best thing ever, and if you have just one of EXP or India, you already want to build them everywhere as fast as you can. If you have EXP, and you add India to that, there is no effect from India making you want to build granaries more, that could synergize with EXP's discount. Because you already want to build them as much as is humanly possible.

Thank you, Seven, for such a detailed and prompt explanation! Turns out I misunderstood ORG Sumeria a bit.

But would you say that PHI (cheap unis) + Korea (normal price, but boosted unis) is more synergistic that combining traits giving discounts on certain building with civs that are getting these buildings cheaper (like ORG Sumeria)?

[SevenSpirits]

Moreover, since India is ranked only 3.5 - and any civ with good starting techs or strong UU or UB would be at least 1, it means that the difference between having first or last civ option would be at most 2.5.

Well, I neglected to specify this but I believe I was taking good techs as the baseline; e.g. Babylon (good techs, practically meaningless UU/UB) would be a 0. In other words India would be at least 2.5 better than civs other than itself and Inca. But otherwise, yes, that's how I would approximate it.

Personally, if having bad techs was not much of an issue for the start in question, I would always pick India first. It's just too fun.

[Maga_R]

Personally, if having bad techs was not much of an issue for the start in question, I would always pick India first. It's just too fun.

I was tempted to pick India no matter what, if only available . Now I am starting to lean towards Pacal but still secretly hoping for an India-friendly start - and of course that India would still being available when we will pick as 3rd.

[SevenSpirits]

But would you say that PHI (cheap unis) + Korea (normal price, but boosted unis) is more synergistic that combining traits giving discounts on certain building with civs that are getting these buildings cheaper (like ORG Sumeria)?

Yes. I would call those two completely synergistic as their benefits multiply each other. By comparison, ORG and Sumeria have synergistic and antisynergistic aspects which I only consider to be positive on balance.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that the absolute benefit from the synergy between PHI and Korea is bigger than the benefit of the synergy between ORG and Sumeria. For example, If Korea's seowons were only +26% beakers instead of +35%, the synergy between it and PHI would still be ideal, but Seowons would be so lame that it wouldn't matter much.

[Maga_R]

But would you say that PHI (cheap unis) + Korea (normal price, but boosted unis) is more synergistic that combining traits giving discounts on certain building with civs that are getting these buildings cheaper (like ORG Sumeria)?

Yes. I would call those two completely synergistic as their benefits multiply each other. By comparison, ORG and Sumeria have synergistic and antisynergistic aspects which I only consider to be positive on balance.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that the absolute benefit from the synergy between PHI and Korea is bigger than the benefit of the synergy between ORG and Sumeria. For example, If Korea's seowons were only +26% beakers instead of +35%, the synergy between it and PHI would still be ideal, but Seowons would be so lame that it wouldn't matter much.

Yeah, exactly, here size of the effect matters . Glad I got that one OK .

[Merovech]

Ahh, thank you Seven. I actually thought of that idea, then discarded it, thinking that, "Oh, granaries are just so good that getting them a tad bit earlier would aurely make up for the lesser efficency, but that is a huge difference. I see that you already covered that though by saying that EXP India is still top tier. That doesn't change the antisynergy, I suppose, just often outweighs it. I suppose then that you'd prefer Willem of India over Pacal of India?

@Maga. As for REX not always being the right choice, I actually meant growth in general, though I didnt really say that. Granaries, of course, help with both (well, technically, one probably wouldn't whip as much without granaries, so they only help a little with vertical growth, but still a non-neligible amount).

[Maga_R]

@Maga. As for REX not always being the right choice, I actually meant growth in general, though I didnt really say that. Granaries, of course, help with both (well, technically, one probably wouldn't whip as much without granaries, so they only help a little with vertical growth, but still a non-neligible amount).

@Merovech: Yeah, I thought you probably meant something different that it appeared to read.