[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

I'm assuming that working 4 or 5 Rep Scientists in Lucky and My Finger for 50 turns is better than working 4 or 5 coastal tiles, which may be totally wrong as +10 food is very valuable... Having a second Pacifism GA at t214 would reduce that number of turns by about 15 though...

Yeah, the real comparison is 5 rep scientists vs
X turns of 5 coast
X turns of 5 coast + 1 scientist
X turns of 5 coast + 2 scientists
etc. until the GP is born + then quantifying how much more productive the bigger city will be for the rest of the game. I'll take a look at MF or L so that this isn't just a theoretical exercise.

I agree that known-tech bonus is going to be bad for a front-runner, but if we (or us and BGN) are the only front-runner then 8% (or 16%) doesn't seem that hot. We could also offset it by trying a deep beeline to something that others won't want to follow us to (maybe for a wonder, tanks, advanced boats or bombers?)

Totally, if we see an attractive snowballing opportunity then starting the 3rd GA accordingly early becomes attractive. Sullla is a fan of using a late GA for getting industrial infra (factory+power plant) in place. That's not a magical move in all situations, but I think that it's a possible option for us: We spend the rest of the game in Theocracy, but switch into OR for 7 turns and make an infra push during our 3rd GA.

We do seem to have a lot more cottages than our competitors (and correspondingly fewer workshops ) which could mean that known-tech bonus doesn't hurt us as bad as it did Mackoti in PB13.

I'm really looking forward to those Caste and RP hammers. They will make our MFG a lot better. Whipping has been good for us and to some extent we will miss it (especially in undeveloped/new cities), but the era of caste has already began a while ago.

On golden ages - once our cities are grown and our land is totally developed I'm planning to use spare worker turns to convert grass farms to workshops and plains workshops to farms where they cancel each other out, meaning extra golden age hammers on as many tiles as possible (already done at Hazelnut).

[TheHumanHydra]

Sullla is a fan of using a late GA for getting industrial infra (factory+power plant) in place.

On golden ages - once our cities are grown and our land is totally developed I'm planning to use spare worker turns to convert grass farms to workshops and plains workshops to farms where they cancel each other out, meaning extra golden age hammers on as many tiles as possible (already done at Hazelnut).

I like these ideas, especially the first one. Levees after the first two for cities that can use them, too.

[mackoti]

Truth beeing told here the KTB is less then was in that game and even with that stinky KTB when game ended i hat at least 60-70 k neakers more researched just i decided to let techs 100 or lees beaker untill full researched.So when i would finished that i will had enought overflow to finish tsch tree in 5-6 turns so no one can catch up then.Still KTB was a very unfun stuff , which in the end make game to have no conclusion cause otherwise other would had been so behind that would had conceded this way evryone was well i am 4-5 techs less then mackoti which was like 80 k beakers(yeah tech were crazy expenzive as well).So my advice and i what i done wrong there and was mostly becasue i was working at my house i didnt went full war that would had forced an concesion.I had over 4-5 k production at some point thats 20 tanks turn at least.From what i see you have time so cover world in blood.

[Ceiliazul]

cover world in blood.

Can I get a qotm, please? Jowy's "god at civ" has been up there a while...

Also, I vote yes!

[Old Harry]

Turn 179

dtay offers peace again. He's got so many Cavalry and highly-promoted Oromos and Rifles in his cities down south that I don't think our Amphi Grenadier attack is going to work (we get 20% vs Ravnica and 5% vs Lorwyn). At what point does a cease fire (not a peace treaty - that allows him to boat us on the turn it expires) become attractive? Or does permanent war, blockade and containment do the job instead?

Up north our fleet is pinning 12 Cav and 17 Rifles in these cities, and our Galleon can now take Nav 2, so eight cities are in range of our two Amphi and one C2 Cuirs next turn. Will dtay realise?


OMG! We got an Engineer! Arse. If we use him on the SoL the golden age is delayed to t204 . I guess we have to use him for the golden age don't we?


Cover the world with blood? Take this lurkers!


I hate you sneaky bastards .


I'm feeling a bit less worried about BGN attacking us now . Although he's going to get a load more land off Q .


Stuff we're building in the near future:
Forbidden Palace in Endive, SoL in Zucchini, West Point in Hazelnut, Wall St in Alfie, lots of missionaries for our new cities. Hmmm. Maybe OR is the best civic for the golden age after all...


Demos and power. dtay's drafting shows up, and who's beating our GNP? I'm guessing Boldly (who we've lost research visibility on) is researching Chemistry.

[Fintourist]

At what point does a cease fire (not a peace treaty - that allows him to boat us on the turn it expires) become attractive? Or does permanent war, blockade and containment do the job instead?

Based on turn tracker thing Krovice captured/razed a city from dtay. So is dtay finally split in half?

You're probably correct that dtay's defenses make him uneconomical target to hit currently, but as long as we think that just moving our ships around causes him economic trouble and keeps the conflict with Krovice alive I think we should continue. I haven't logged in so I don't know how realistic grabbing a beach-head would be, but as we chose to compete for SoL instead of RP-Rifling maybe city captures aren't too attractive unless dtay and Krovice really sacrifice some units. So far it's mostly dancing and small fights betweem them if I've understood correctly.

OMG! We got an Engineer! Arse. If we use him on the SoL the golden age is delayed to t204 . I guess we have to use him for the golden age don't we?

Yeah, eating 2-turns of Anarchy for Caste or 4 turns for Caste+Represenation isn't really an option. And increased chance of winning SoL isn't a good enough reason IMO for losing all those Caste-hammers and Rep-beakers what delayed GA would cause us. So yeah, I think we just go with the Golden Age as planned.

I'm feeling a bit less worried about BGN attacking us now . Although he's going to get a load more land off Q .

And based on turn tracker BGN attacked Nakor as well. If you have chance to provide any intel on these conflicts / expected gains for BGN that would be good. I guess we used our "hurt-someone-and-stop-him-from-running-away card" on dtay and we don't have enough resources and neighbours like pindi+Krovice to stop BGN, but I think we need to evaluate how far ahead BGN can get here and what kind of risks we need to take / what needs to happen if we want to remain competitive.

Demos and power. dtay's drafting shows up, and who's beating our GNP? I'm guessing Boldly (who we've lost research visibility on) is researching Chemistry.

Can be Boldly, can be someone else researching a tech that some other players know. E.g one person knowing a tech already inflates our GNP by ~250 units. With e.g 6 players it's already 1500.. You can check how our GNP looks if we research RP :P I'm not sure we have another tech that more than 1 competitor knows.

It's not a perfect method, but IMO one gets the best idea from people's tech speed by checking diplo screen often enough and trying to find out opponents' max gpt. Specialists, differences in multiplier infra, etc. screw things up, but that's something one can find out without time-consuming C&D efforts.

[Old Harry]

Turn 180 part one

I'm not sure how I missed this - they captured it while I was playing the last turn . It's going to be very vulnerable to anything in Bell Preston, so will be interesting to see how long they hold it (culture makes me think they didn't raze the city, but that could just be what two artist bombs has done for Willow Lake.)


So long as we're pinning this number of units in his coastal cities dtay won't be counter attacking though... We have another seven Frigates joining from the south, but the question is: do we draw dtay's stack further away from us or do we try to join our stacks up? Doubling back this turn would allow dtay to hit our Galleon stack with 10+ Frigates and any survivors would be able to duck into Moss to heal. So I think we push on, and perhaps even pay TBS a visit, for reasons that will become clearer...


Looks like Boldly decided Nakor was a more attractive target than Q. If Nakor knows what he's up to these galleons should be sunk by a counter attack, but I don't see it somehow .


We missed getting tech visibility on BGN by 4 EPs, but we did get it on TBS to discover that he's saving cash on CORPORATION! So he's our main rival for SoL (PHI, SPI, Native America) he is eating Mackoti/Dazed who only has four cities left, so he *might* be able to spare some hammers.

Right now we could 1-turn Corp, then 3-turn Democracy. But with overflow and research builds in Cornelius, Daisy, Izzy, Jelly Bean, Nina and Quentin Democracy becomes a 2-turn tech... If we get Democracy eot181 then Zucchini needs to whip the Cuir into the Grocer this turn and next, then can dump the hammers into SoL t182 and whip the Gren before revolting to Caste t183. I think starting SoL two turns earlier trumps the 1000 extra Corporation beakers. It pays that off in 2.5 turns if we get it...


I'll finish off the turn tomorrow night.

[TheHumanHydra]

I agree with like everything Fintourist said, except I don't know what to think about the Golden Age on account of the SoL competition. On that note, I agree the increased chance of getting it is probably worth the beakers in this case. As for the fleet, I don't really like the idea of sailing it clean through his territory where it may be cut off and lost to us forever, but it sounds like going back would guarantee that outcome, so I guess push on. Hopefully having to make such a choice in the future can be avoided.

[Fintourist]

Yup,

Getting SoL benefits 2 turns earlier + increased chance of actually getting the wonder + possibly some known-tech bonus for corporation --> Sound like enough compensation for those 1000 Corporation beakers

[Fintourist]

Analysis time..

Answers to couple of questions that I asked earlier..

1. The value of a great scientist
Formula: 1500+3*population
Funnily enough we have currently exactly 400 citizens and thus a bulb is worth respectible 1500+3*400 = 2700 beakers. Of course these are adjusted beakers that won't get further bonus from known-tech or pre-req bonuses. Still more than I actually remembered/thought..

2. The value of a Golden Age
In our current configuration starting a Golden Age will increase our output by 345.5 base commerce and 190 base hammers per turn. So 8 turns of GA brings in 2764 commerce and 1520 hammers (+benefits from civic changes + some GPP in this configuration)

3. Conversion of commerce into gold or base beakers
Currently our empire-wide science multiplier is 40.3 % (ie. we produce 1948 commerce per turn currently and our max beaker rate is 2747 bpt without research builds)
Similary our empire-wide gold multiplier is 31.1 %
Once the Wall Street is completed in Alfie the gold multiplier jumps to 40 % as well, but meanwhile 1 gold is us more valuable than 1 base beaker.

4. Great Scientists or Golden Age
I'll do this roughly by converting everything into base beakers.

First the value of a Great Scientist.. If we assume that we would use bulbs for techs that nobody has researched yet a GS bulb brings in 2700/1.2 = 2250 base beakers. If one person already knows the tech the value of the bulb is 2700/1.28 = 2109 base beakers, and so on.. Let's say the bulb is worth 2200 base beakers..

Golden Age Commerce (2764) * (1+ Beaker multiplier (40.3 %)) = 3878 base beakers
In Seven's exchange rate article he values beakers by 3 points and hammers by 5 points. I say that in our positions an extra hammer would be comparably a bit more valuable:
Golden Age Hammers (1520) * (1+ Hammer multiplier (didn't calculate it, let's say 15 %) * Beaker conversion (2) = 3496 base beakers

Overall the Golden Age value is thus 7373 base beakers, which is around 3.35 Great Scientists based on above calculations. On top of that one can add value for GA based on GPP bonus and civic switches.

Of course Great Scientists (or merchants that I've ignored so far, but which should be a bit more valuable than scientists if a suitable location for a mission can be taken as given) have the benefit that they can be used earlier while a 4-person GA comes significantly later (if you discount the values properly 3-man GA does not look that hot either - Seven's discount rate if adjusted to normal speed is 2.3 %, which means that a beaker today is roughly as valuable as 2 beakers in 30 turns). Another factor: The value of a Golden Age develops faster during the game as we add more population if we compare it to a single bulb. However, if we compare 4 bulbs to a single Golden Age additional pop brings more value when we go with bulbing (actually a fun exercise to compare as well as one needs to take into account the timing of that additional pop etc.).


Aaaaanyways, the conclusion is that despite discounting 3-man Golden Age is still clearly something that we prefer over bulbs and missions. However, when it comes to a 4-man GA it's a bit more difficult. If we could plan our Great Persons e.g. around 3 useful Great Scientist bulbs and 1 Great Merchant Mission the output will exceed the direct Golden Age benefits from increased output and possibly help us snowball earlier. Buuut, Golden Age allows us to use that increased output where we most need it and we aren't tied with bulb lists + there might become a time where hammers are us much more valuable than beakers (late phase of a space race) + civic switchs --> I'm fine with targeting a 4-man GA as well



I had actually couple additional analyses that I was planning to do (e.g. what to do reg Lucky and My Finger), but this is enough theory for today.. :P And here are also couple of macro points that I planned to state more properly, but here they are just bluntly:
- TBS built Sistine. Let's keep our eyes open reg a culture win attempt
- Our power is actually pretty weak (only 6th and almost 800k behind Krovice). We have a huge navy and we are still building more ships in many cities. Probably some of those will advance so slowly that they actually will be auto-upgraded into destroyers, which is fine, but overall I would love to see more musket-rifle and cuir-cavalry auto-upgrades in preparation
- BGN has easy targets and with cossacks there is a real chance that he just eats Nakor + Q with ease and is soon up to 70 cities. If we weren't already in war I would consider crippling him with a naval strike, but our stuff is in east and we probably can't afford hateful borders with our top 2 competitors simultaneously.
- Consequently, I wonder how fast we could eat Dreylin once we get rid of dtay-war. With enough time we can eat dtay's western part of the empire if the conflict continues as it is and our power improves. Our current land forces (cuirs+cats+grens) are too weak for the real invasion at the moment unless dtay and krovice really clash.
- Krovice's economy is actually pretty weak, they make only a bit more than 700 gpt when saving gold. They really need a breakthrough with dtay, which probably would mean dtay putting a big stack of units in range of krovice cannons. They probably can continue rolling cities one by one, but the total destruction of dtay would have required pindi continuing his push in the north + us starting the invasion in the south (Maybe Krovice wasn't ready, but moving in couple of turns sooner could have made a difference as now dtay has drafted couple of rounds and spent thousands and thousands of gold for upgrades). For us the current position is already a great result, but Krovice would have needed a bit more. Well, we keep still dtay's forces divided and try to help Krovice, let's see if they have further big moves in their sleeves.

Well, that was long..