[SPOILERS] By the Rivers of Babylon, FIN has no effect (on krovice)

[novice]

Why TS? FP can build one after Notre Dame.

[Krill]

Would FP benefit from the culture though? Looking at the borders, I don't think it would, especially if it actually finishes ND (Yay at fail fail gold). FP could do with finishing some more important infrastructure like a barracks. TS is essentially finished on infrastructure except a harbour which we can't build now, and at that point it can just do units or wealth builds.

tl;dr there isn't any real difference between the sites except FP has better stuff to do and TS has time in the build queue.

[Krill]

Some rough back of the envelope calculations. We make 1320-ish bpt at max science, -480gpt. No wealth builds, no research builds. We have 8 turns of a GA to come. We have 4 turns of saving gold at 580gpt, with 1270-ish in the bank. We make 100bpt, researching Philo with a modifier of 1.76 and less than 5 beakers overflow.

What this means is that in 5 turns we have a 100% chance of firing a GA (sop long as we remember to remove one of the scientists from Cf for a single turn). We will have 880/1370 beakers in Philo and something like 3600-3700 gold saved. Given growth, bank in Ec, I expect that to be enough for 7 turns of 100% research. What can we get with that?

Well, we know we want to revolt to Police State in the final GA turn. Any other civic swaps we want to do? Nationhood is the main one, but we could consider Environmentalism. Unfortunately, dtay has higher power, MFG, accumulated tech and probably needs to eat us to win the game so that can be ignored. We can't get Emancipation from Democracy, so we can stick with Caste or Serfdom, almost certainly Caste. We will keep FM because it's the only thing keeping us going, even ahead of SP IMO which would also require an absurd amount of beakers to reach. Finally, we have a choice between sucking up paganism for hte rest of hte game, getting Lib for FR, or somehow choosing a none Jewish religion, getting it into key cities and then revolting into Theocracy on the final GA turn. Researching Theology is trivial, but novice, do you want to figure out a way to spread religion from 3 specific cities with only 7 turns of building missionaries? I could do it using whip overflow, but without that I couldn't do it.

Theo would be worthwhile because drafts would then come out with 2XP for C1. In fact it might be even be worthwhile just to get 2 monasteries and spread religion for that alone? That would alleviate the need for OR for 7 turns...so thoughts? Monotheism>Theocracy is maybe a little more than 1 turn of breakeven tech right now.

So, Theo is a possibility. Just to carry this on a little, if we were to build missionaries, what cities would deserve religion? Any city that drafts is the short answer, which means all of them, but to prioties, I would say that MG and RC are the core 2 cities that need it. Beyond that, we are looking at cities that will build a greater number of units, so high production cities, and frankly we don't have many of them. We need to choose a city that already has religion, and it can't be Judaism because the moment dtay declares on us our cities are just going to go the shit due to unhappiness. Or would it hurt him more?

Anyway, ignoring that question for now, the only options we have are Hinduism in Ec, Toaism in FR, Cf and GE (yeah like GE counts), or Buddhism in JD and PM. That means Taoism is the only real choice so we end up helping BGN, and needs must I suppose. FR needs workshops anyway, and could reach 30 base hpt...actually, it can take the deer from Ec once Ec hits size 19 eot T161, so should hit 34 base hpt easily, so 32 plus the forge is perfect 1 turn missionaries ad infinitum. It's well positioned to spam the missionaries through out the empire due to central location. Wouldn't even need a second spam city. No critical city is more than 2 turns away, the missionary could always spread religion and if it failed then we could still adjust plans easily enough. I'm going to go ahead and go with this, dumping the overflow into a monastery in FR.

So, I think we should get Theology. We need it by the end of the GA. The other techs needed are Nationalism for Nationhood. To go back to the figures given at the start of the post, we should gain something like another 180 commerce per turn, pure profit, so I expect us to be capable of making more than 1500*7=10500 base beakers over 7 turns, not taking into account the known tech bonus. I expect more, so I'm basically going to right that off as finishing Philo.

Nationalism is known by 2 people, but dtay will make 3. That means cost is 2811 base beakers. So that means we have 7700 base beakers left. Mono and Theo are known by most people and 6 people respectively, so that's a further 600-ish base beakers needed, leaving 7000 base beakers. Other choice is to just build the SP by the end of the GA. FP could do that, actually, very easily...another decision to make, and I prefer SP. But I digress, like always.

I think we should aim to get Corporation. The trade route is free, no civic swaps needed. Constitution is 4300 base beakers, Corp is 4025 base. That's attainable within the scope of the GA, or a few turns after. PP is worth about 50 bpt to us. An extra trade route in every city, with FM +25%? Just so much better. At that point we have no more easily accessible, free economic boosts to get, so we simply trash everything and get military techs at however fast we crawl there. We'll have Globe, drafting, Theocracy and PS. We're as unappetising as we'll ever be...if we build some damned units.

So, I think the best way to play this out, is not to rush straight there. We're saving gold now, we can put off the GA a bit but I don't think we want to do that. Trigger it as planned and reassess beaker output. Maybe save gold for I think 1 more turn, but research Monotheism (suck it up), Nationalism (obviously) and Compass (harbours for trade route increase) to within 1 beaker of completion. Overflow the beakers from all of them should account for something like all of Constitution and at least 1K beakers of Corp. Even if we need to swap on any turn we should be capable of 1 turning Gunpowder even without the overflow; the saved overflow is just useful in case we need to swap to something like Mil Trad (Rifling and Steel still unobtainable by end of the GA except by ignoring Nationalism).

I know that this idea needs tidying up, specifically on the turns to save gold, and what techs need researching on which turns, at specific slider amounts. That much is just fugly, but it's 2330 now and I need to be up in 6 hours.

[novice]

If we want Theocracy I think we should go for Paya, yeah. Then just pick up Theology last minute if we don't get Paya.

Do we have any confucian cities that could pump missionaries?

[Krill]

No good ones. I think KM might be but nothing that can do even three turn missionaries.

[Krill]

Notre Dame Fell, building SP.

[Krill]

With fail gold we have 2271. We make 591gpt. Bank in Ec completes eot along with growth, need one more poop point there and finished. Next two turnsd should make about 650gpt for 4150-ish gold, enough for over 8 turns 100% research.

dtay started research into Nationalism in 2 with a GNP of 2070-ish. His max bpt is not scary. His accumulated beaker total is. About 6 people have Gunpowder so that is a 1 turn tech for either of us at this point.

Next turn due Thursday, novice you want that or shall I get it?

[novice]

Up to you. If you have time and motivation, great, I'll take just take a look when I can.

If you want me to play, that's not a problem. I'll reserve time for proper turnplay.

What is our tech and civics plan again? I like getting Corporation.

[novice]

I guess you covered techs and civics, but if it's a bit fuzzy to me when we get GP and NH and start drafting. If we have the gold now, should we grab the techs? Get GP next turn and Nat when dtay is done? Or do you want to stay in Bur and grab corp first?

[Krill]

I have motivation. I have time. I'm just extremely angry right no so I may not be rational.

Tech plan is in flux, basically need to react to dtay. I know that with a Corp play we have no issues with civics so it's simply can we get Corp and then get military units and not die to dtay. That may not be possible because he may get Rifling around T170, or as early as T167. We might not even have Gunpwder by then.

I think we could get Nationalism and Steel by that point though, or at most a few turns behind dtay. And cannons, Police state and drafted 1 pop muskets are perhaps the strongest defence we can get this side of cav. Philo>Nat is a 2 turn jump. GP is 1 turn. Chem is 3 turns with a tone of overflow. Steel is the biggie and a 4 turn tech in a GA, at least half of which we can get IMO.

The timing for Nationhood IMO is always the same: the end of the GA. But with ND falling and starting Sp now, I would not want to revolt into Nationhood before we know whether we can revolt into Theo as well. If we get SP, then the earliest we could revolt is the third or fourth turn of the GA, and we would revolt on the last turn, T167, at the latest. If we missed SP, then the earliest we could revolt is still the 4th turn of hte GA, and we should finish SP in about 6 turns anyway, so we will always have time to tech Mono>Theology.