[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[retep]

Hi, how things are going? I'm not here to kill this game

[Old Harry]

Hi, how things are going? I'm not here to kill this game

Hey, PB18 is made of adamantium - not even you can break it!

How much do you know about BGN? I think his best move for the win would be to invade us with Cossacks now, before we've got time to get to Rifles, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to do that, thus allowing us to commando his capital some time in the next fifty turns. Does that sound likely to you?

A bit more detail about the specialist plan.

Cornelius has 44/54 food, 158 GM points, can work four specialists at food-neutral and a lot of these villages won't become towns for another 20 turns anyway. I'd rather work the villages than specialists, but those 158 GPPs are calling.


Gertie has 42/62 food in the box, 77 GPPs and can work six specs at food-neutral. It's our main ship-pump at the minute, but I'd like to build a Jail (3 turns) and a Security Bureau (5 turns) here to allow us to work more spies more efficiently and keep one step ahead of BGN and dtay on espionage.
The plan: Mixed spy/engy/merchant t216, another ~t250


Kirby has 27/48 food, 14 GPPs, it can work six specs at food-neutral and has the National Epic.
The plan: merchant t192, artist t214, something else t237


Lucky has 32/40 food, 6 GPPs and it can work four specs at food-neutral.
The Plan: Merchant t222


Marmalade has 38/44 food, 123 GPPs and can work five specs at food-neutral.
The Plan: Scientist t203, t261


My Finger has 31/36 food, 0 GPPs and can work five spcs at food neutral (leaves has stolen its deer tile for the golden age).
The Plan: Scientist t239


Our plan had Kirby pumping out the first GP, if we're going to work specialists in Cornelius I'd want it to be first to pop (to get back to cottages earlier), but it'll be t200 before it can which delays there of the other GP cities. I think we're better off just forgetting those GP points and working the villages in Cornelius. Anyone disagree?

[Fintourist]

Here are a bunch of comments, some of them consider this turn already.

5. Revolt to US and Caste... DONE

Alfie looks crazy good in US.. 46 base hammers, 156 base commerce. Add bureaucracy bonus to that and all the multipliers..

7. Start the Statue of Liberty... DONE
Zucchini will slowly starve during the golden age. I don't know what the end of our GA does to the ETA, but I think 12 turns seems reasonable. RP will get us another five base hammers per turn towards the build, I wonder if we can finish researching it next turn? The potential competition is Plako, GermanJojo and TBS who all have Constitution, but they're probably going for Corporation before Democracy...

Good job with Zucchini. The wonder isn't in the bag yet, but someone needs to make a real play for it if they want to steal it from us. I think plako just got PP and for his economy Democracy isn't a fast tech. TBS is just about to finish Corporation, he should not have any beakers in Democracy, I don't have my notes on GermanJojo, but I'm not too worried about him either. Things look good and of course we aim at earliest possible ETA anyways, because SoL-benefit is so big.

After Wall St should we build a Jail and Security Bureau here or in Gertie? Actually G will be working a spy for the foreseeable future so that would probably be better.

G would make sense (maybe Alfie later too though), because we anyways planned it to be a place where we get the non-merchant-artist-scientist for our 4-man GA. I guess you already plan to start the Jail this turn, but let's just say I approve it

How much do you know about BGN? I think his best move for the win would be to invade us with Cossacks now, before we've got time to get to Rifles, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to do that, thus allowing us to commando his capital some time in the next fifty turns. Does that sound likely to you?

I don't consider it attractive for BGN to attack us in the near future. Even though it seems he seems to be winning his wars easily I doubt he wants to fight 3 wars at the same time. BGN's game winning move is to eat couple of easy neighbors, become the strongest (MFG, GNP, power) and run away with the game. He is currently at 56 cities and that won't be the end of it.. (I speculate about macro a bit later)

I think we're better off just forgetting those GP points and working the villages in Cornelius. Anyone disagree?

Yeah, let's just forget about those GPPs.


Small details:
- First of all I like how you still keep taking small things into account and have optimized tile sharing between cities etc.
- Why is Terry working artists? I don't see any use for culture there so scientists should be better
- Spy specialist in Flossie?
- Ophelia: I would prefer musket our cuir instead of ship of the line.
- Watercress: The city is about to finish a musket let's save those hammers for a rifle and finish market instead?


GP plan + macro
- I'll catch you in chat reg these

[Old Harry]

Finishing off the turn, we'll get a Jail in Gertie, then think about more navy or a security bureau. I've split our EPs between BGN and dtay, 36-8, to keep pace with the former and keep visibility on the latter.

Fintourist pointed out that by running down the food box in Gertie the third golden age can come earlier (looking like t210 at the moment). That will involve one turn of actually starving Marmalade down a size too. I wonder if two turns of starving might get another turn off the total?

We'll have about 10 Rifles and 10 Cavalry completing in the turns straight after Rifling comes in (about t187ish). If we can just look unappetizing until then then we can actually become unappetizing .

Finally I'm stumped by these two cities - does paying the rush-buy price on the basic infrastructure ever pay off?

[TheHumanHydra]

(You posted the same city twice.)

[Old Harry]

Fixed. Not that it makes a difference, they're pretty much identical. If they make about 10 commerce profit each now I guess they could grow onto Rep specialists later with a granary and lighthouse. Is that worth 120 gold now?

[Old Harry]

I had a bit of down time at work so I tweaked the GP plan to be the most aggressive I could and put it onto google docs. It involves a lot of starvation which may not be ideal, but I thought it was a good start to tone things down from:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...id=5660521

- eot190 Artist from Kirby
- eot203 Scientist from Marmalade (involves starving down 12-11)
- eot209 Mix Merch/Spy/Engy from Gertie
t210 3-man pacifism golden age starts
- eot212 ? from Kirby
- eot220 Scientist from My Finger (involves starving down 8-7)
- eot229 Merchant from Lucky (involves starving down 10-9)
- eot235 ? from Kirby (involves starving down 13-12)
Another golden age?
- eot263 ? from Marmalade (involves starving down 11-10)
- eot271 spy/engineer from Gertie
- eot277 ? from Kirby

[Old Harry]

Just had a look in-game, I moved everything in the dtay arena so that Krill can play and I checked through cities as far as Domino. Things to note:
- Either corporation or known tech bonus, or both are amazing - we can complete RP at 50% science this turn. That might even mean Rifling next turn...
- Two other civs are completing RP this turn. We could use Theology to delay RP to next turn and get 16% more beakers
- dtay switched from saving cash on steel to spending it on Sci Meth. He's got a few thousand in the bank, so is he heading for Physics for airships and the great scientist? It won't be Communism or Biology, will it?
- We should make a decision on the number of specialists in Gertie this turn or the next...

[Fintourist]

- Either corporation or known tech bonus, or both are amazing - we can complete RP at 50% science this turn. That might even mean Rifling next turn...

Yeah, we are making (during this GA) ~2400 beakers break-even or 2200 gold per turn when saving gold.. That's kind of a lot

- Two other civs are completing RP this turn. We could use Theology to delay RP to next turn and get 16% more beakers

I did a fast calculation and we should postpone RP. RP brings us 40 hammers per turn, which is valuable, but that 16 % extra bonus is worth 325 base beakers, which is clearly more.. Only reason why we should get RP immediately is if it speeds up SoL by a turn. If you haven't done it, now is the time to calculate exactly how the production will be done

[Later Addition] Working on it..

- dtay switched from saving cash on steel to spending it on Sci Meth. He's got a few thousand in the bank, so is he heading for Physics for airships and the great scientist? It won't be Communism or Biology, will it?

Biology I doubt, but Communism is an option, dtay's economy is more workshop-heavy than ours so SP might make sense. Free Market is just awesome though

- We should make a decision on the number of specialists in Gertie this turn or the next...

Yeah, it all really depends when do we want that 3rd GA.. For lurkers, we had a long chat with OH where we discussed the option of Assembly Line beeline combined with a wave of drafted infantry. Drafting obviously needs Nationhood and civic switch has to happen during the GA.. And if we beeline Assembly Line we don't want to wait 10 turns so that we actually can draft an invasion army.. So the options are: Going into Nationhood at the end of this GA, during our 3rd GA or just ditching the plan (basically this all is about speculation whether we have a chance of winning this game with our current amount of land if we spend our resources well, or do we simply need more land and how can we get it efficiently and early enough that it actually helps us to win).

It's already close to midnight in Helsinki and I need to sleep. So I say we postpone the decision. I don't think we are in a hurry here reg Gertie. --> Gertie can run 16 specialists in a turn instead of 16 coastal tiles, which leads to food decrease of -20. We have currently 42 food in the box so we can practically just burn our food (and get max. amount of specialist turns without starving) in 2 turns.

GP plan

I did not check this carefully, but Gertie's spy/engineer for 4th GA possibly comes a bit too late? I really need to model when we are going to space... In principle I hate starving, but I'm sure you have your reasons in the plan.



Other Stuff
- BGN has Liberalism selected, that's kind of interesting. I don't see him doing that for Civics so that is an announcement that he wants Communism. BGN also has a workshop-heavy economy so I guess it makes sense. Currently I think we trust Free Market and skip Liberalism + Communism altogether. If it comes to space race that's 13000 adjusted beakers saved..
- I've ment to comment this earlier, but I've just lately figure our how the Free Market really works in this mod.. I've always thought that after the +25 % trade route yield is calculated you have your trade route commerce visible in the left side of city green and that those numbers are rounded down and exact... Well they are not.. It is possible that you have e.g. three 3.75 commerce routes that are shown as 3 commerce routes, but you really see the full impact when you look at your commerce going into science/gold/espionage in the particular city. --> There you see that the total commerce production matches when trade routes bring in 3*3.75=11.25=11 commerce. I'm sure I should have realized this earlier, but I just haven't. This hasn't really affected my decision making, free market is just a little bit better than I thought and I have overvalued routes that are worth 4 commerce before free market bonus compared to 3 commerce routes.. This all has the positive that previously I thought that with corporation and free market our weakest cities produce at minimum 4*3=12 commerce from trade routes. But the fact is that 4*3.75=15 is the current minimum.
- I feel we should take the hammer hit soonish and grow Nina and Izzy couple of sizes. Those cities have some unused financial coast + that extra can be turned into a drafted infantry too
- Should Domino complete SA first instead of Frigate? I'm not sure we are in an urgent need of ships in the east?
- Juniper is about to complete a frigate, I'm fine with it if you want it for the west, but leaving into the queue for an auto-upgrade into destroyer is an option

- I love the city micro and the pre-builds BGN is snowballing ahead as hard as he can, but I have a feeling that this will still become a good show..

[Old Harry]

Turn 184

BGN researching Liberalism could just be for Environmentalism, as his Civ is named the National Park Service. If he's going for Communism he's in a race with dtay and for the first time this game I want dtay to get that first-to bonus... Still no sign of Democracy for Plako, GermanJoey or TBS (getting research visibility on GJ might be interesting, but I don't think we can spare the EPs. I can't tell if William of Mongolia or TBS of Native America is the one shadowing us, but you can see BGN is starting to compete.


Currently my favourite city. What will it be like with the Ironworks?


Second favourite city - needs to work the engineer to get WS in six turns.


Third favourite city - it'll reduce costs by maybe 150 gpt...


The empire


At its golden best.


Demos and power