Civ 6 SG2 - Duty Free Egypt

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Hey all this was fun, but skip over my remaining turns. I won't have the time to be able to play any further turnsets. Standard play to feeling an inevitable win!

[Sareln]

So the game's current status then is:

Gaspar -- On Deck
ReallyEvilMuffin
Sareln
Pindicator
Ruined Everything -- Just played, un-reported.

[Ruined Everything]

So a very belated set of turns - sorry about that guys!

The three rough objectives for the turn set: prepare spaceship cities, boost Great Scientist points as much as possible, hit all remaining Eurkeas.

Spaceship city preparation

Silk Road
If I configure Silk Road for hammers, we can hit nearly 100 hammers/turn. After some calculation, however, I decide that a better strategy is to build its spaceport while growing, and then to replace its farm with lumber mills at a later date.



BP
BP is also in need of growth. The plan is to mine the two hills I marked as farm, build its space port on the only flatlands desert tile around, and slowly grow out onto the very good land around it.



Madrid
It took me a while to decide whether to grow Hudson’s Bay or Madrid. Hudson actually has slightly more base hammer potential than Madrid - it can get 43 hammers out of its land to Madrid’s 40. Madrid’s much stronger state of development and growth, on the other hand, compensates for much of this. BP needs some work before building its spaceport - it’ll probably build a shipyard and sewers first, and is probably going to be the recipient of a boost.



The plan for growth and boosting great scientist points is just building campuses and neighborhoods wherever possible. The state of our land is pretty good now - I’ll keep running builder labor, but that’s mostly on automatic.

Culture-wise, the plan has got to be Cold War -> Space Race for the Integrated Space Cell (+15% production to Space Race projects for seaports and then Rapid Deployment -> Globalization) for the ungodly: Ecommerce (+5 production, +10 gold for international trade routs) and International Space Agency (+ 10% science for each city state you are suzerain of.)

ISA should be worth 40%, because when Cold War comes in I’m using the containment trick to snipe two city states off Greece.

Science-wise, I’m going rocketry -> electricity before running through some old junk techs to grab steel (+1 lumber mill production) and combustion. We don’t need the satellite space race project anytime soon, and this maximizes our time to get Eurkeas and boosts through great scientists.

Eurkeas planning:
Advanced Ballistics: (2 Power plants) Two factory towns to churn out power plants
Combined Arms: (Air strip) Columbian Exchange will build an encampment, which will buy a military engineer who will build an airstrip.
Plastics: (Oil Well): Tech combustion ASAP
Synthetic Materials: (2 Aerodromes) Market Peaks and TPP can both build them in 11 turns.
Advanced Flight: (3 Biplanes) To be purchased from Market Peaks and TPP
Robotics: (Globalization) Culture path set to Globalization
Nanotech: (Aluminum mine) Get synthetic materials.
Rapid Deployment: (Airstrip on a foreign continent): Settle a throwaway island, build airstrip there.
Composites: (3 Tanks) Build ‘em.
That’s all folks!

With that, let’s begin!

T210
Bought a worker in Madrid to speed development and a research lab in Columbian exchange.

Columbian exchange will start on its encampment next. In the West, Madrid begins a zoo. It needs to grow to size 16 before it can build its space port, so more amenities are good. I disagree with Pindicator’s plans for Oxford - we need to get this city ready for churning out spaceship parts. Let the rest of the empire concern itself with tech.

While I’m being contrary, I also decide to send Nikola Tesla to Silk Road. By far the biggest space race bottle neck will be Moon Landing, which only costs 300 less hammers than a Mars part and will be the deciding factor on when we can start building our space race parts. Speeding through that its probably more important than speeding up the production of the slowest space race part - especially because we’ll likely be able to boost that part.

Also, Madrid doesn’t have a factory. This is actually really bad - we have to grow to size 16 if we want a factory now.

T211
I start building farms all around Madrid. If it wants to be a space race city, it needs to grow, grow, grow.

T212
We enter the atomic era. We Eureka Synthetic materials, making my earlier investment into aerodromes more or less useless. Crap. I guess we can build biplanes from them? TPP returns to building the colossus. We set forth for electricity. Silk Road and BP put a turn into their spaceports. I *think* its worth it to build power plants first. Need to decide next turn.

T213
We grab electricity, and then begin to research… Castles. Heh.

Adam Smith comes in, and gives us our 5th economic policy slot.  We go craftsmen to boost our spaceports (largely for Silk Road, really.) Here’s what our government looks like now.



Common Market begins a power plant for Silk Road, and Hudson begins a power plant for BP. The extra +2 production per turn will never be worth the cost of giving up 525 production into a space race project at Silk Road. Cobden-Chavalier starts a campus that it will likely never finish, as opposed to a shipyard it will likely never finish. C’est la vie.

T215
I buy a factory at Hudson Bay to get the bonus into BP and Silk Road a little quicker. It occurs to me that Hudson now has more production potential than Madrid. I decide to start building a space port here - we’ll only lose 5 turns of production if we want to switch it back to Madrid later. (It also occurs to me that I can *buy* seaports in Silk Road and BP to get the 15% bonus without giving up any production. Good to know.)

[Ruined Everything]

T217
We purchase a seaport in Silk Road. I wonder if Integrated Space Cell works on Spaceports? 

Steel lumbermill's have an extra point of production! This changes the calculus between Hudson and Madrid entirely. I suspect Madrid will be able to churn out a spaceship part faster than Hudson, but Gaspar will have to be the final arbiter of that.

T218
The containment trick isn’t going to work, since we went to the government we want to stay in first (Democracy), and I’m not eating the anarchy. Alas.

T219
In other news, Scythia hates us.



T220
We build Colossus. Success. For health and safety reasons, the flame in his hand is replaced by a holographic version with our newly researched ‘Computers’.

Some final thoughts:
Gaspar, once we get the land around Madrid upgraded, I suspect it will, in fact, be a stronger spaceport city than Hudson. I leave the final decision up to you though - don’t feel bad about nixing the space port if I misjudged this initially (I am pretty tired) - its only been going for 5 turns.

Any thoughts on which Eurkeas to go for welcomed.

Tech-wise, we've nearly finished our run on junk techs. There isn't really an order that we need to get techs anymore - I would just prioritize efficiency.

Here are pictures of our 4 candidate spaceship cities for team discussion.

Silk Road


BP


Hudson's Bay


Madrid


Apologies for any weed. Have not been getting a lot of sleep recently. 

Save is attached. Good luck!

[Rowain]

I don't know if you considered it but while the patch reduced the hammercost for the space-parts greatly, the hammers the GP give are still on the old values (example 3000 hammers from Sagan).

It is possible to produce 2 parts in one turn in one city that way especially if you have the 100% boost.

[Gaspar]

See it. I'll try to comment later and play tomorrow.

[Gaspar]

Ok, so the main puzzle for the beginning of turnset here is to optimize completing Silk Road's Spaceport and Space Race civic so that basically the Silk Road Spaceport completes to finish Space Race so we can adopt Integrated Space Cell civic and start the Earth Satellite all on the same turn. We're basically done growing Silk Road - its 31t to grow and moving it to a growth configuration isn't really much of an option when it will basically spend the rest of the game on a build queue of space projects. The Satellite only takes 900 production now, so the main clock on techs is to make sure Satellites is completed within 8t of starting Sputnik. Satellites is one of the no boost techs so nothing to worry about there.

Remaining techs needed for modules:

Satellites (Moon Landing) - Can research now, no boost
Robotics (Mars Habitation) - Need Computers (boosted). Boost is Globalization civic, which requires Space Race, Rapid Deployment and Globalization. With no boosts, that's 33t of culture. Obviously the Moon Landing will provide a large boost there, so I'm not sure its really worth the Airstrip/Aerodrome on foreign continent plan. Getting Robotics fastish does improve pastures, so its not without merit just to forgo the boosts and hard tech it, since its only a 7t research at current rates.
Nuclear Fusion (Mars Reactor) - Needs Combined Arms (Airstrip), Nuclear Fission (no boost), Lasers (no boost.) This one is basically a hard tech all the way through. CE has 7t to go on its Encampment, then we need to buy an Armory and a Military Engineer to lay one of these down on flatland somewhere. I'll continue this path, though we're talking an awful lot of garbage to get 2.5t of research boosted. I guess its better if we try to get the Airstrip on Foreign Continent plan but I'm not actually sure we can get a Settler and the Military Engineer to said FC fast enough to actually boost Rapid Deployment. Maybe.
Nanotechnology (Mars Hydro) - Needs Combustion (boosted), Plastics (Oil Well), Synthetic Mats (boosted), Composites (3 tanks). Boost is Aluminum Mine, which adds Advanced Flight to the tech list, which needs 3 biplanes as a boost. We have a Aerodrome in Market Peak, which can build the Biplanes. Currently a 10t build, so probably we build one and buy two.

Seems like the right path is to go ahead and tick off Combustion first, to see if the Plastics boost is achievable. Fusion is the hardest path, so no reason to not wait for that until after we have our boost for Combined Arms, since its the only available boost in the line. Satellites is a 6t tech, but that doesn't really need to be done for another 18t-ish but it must be done at that point because we want to start Apollo in the capital as soon as Sputnik is done. Apollo is roughly a 14t build and ideally, we'd like to be ready to start all 3 parts as soon as that's done so assuming some tech and production acceleration, we're looking at needing to have everything teched in approximately 30t. All three of the Mars parts are 1800 production but none can be started until Apollo is completed. It is entirely plausible that we only need to have one of the parts ready at that point, but we'll have to see what the Great People situation is at that point. If we can get a part rushed, then we really only need two Spaceport cities.

Anyway, the long and short here is that I'll aim to get Sputnik started and start down the Nanotechnology line. We should probably start Satellites the same turn we start Sputnik, so basically we'll grab Combustion and Plastics and if there's a doable oil well, Synthetic Materials, after which we'll research Satellites. I'll tech do 4t of Space Race, then knock out Class Struggle, then swap back to Space Race the turn before we finish Silk Road's Spaceport.

After inspecting the game, I realize we already revealed oil and the only land based oil in our territory is under Big N Large's IZone. So we won't be getting the plastics boost. The only unsettled land oil visibile is in an iceball north of Kabul. If we buy a Settler in Barcelona, it would take 24 moves to get to the city spot. We gain a movement point on embarkation after we complete Combustion which I believe gets us to 4 points. So we could settle Iceball Techboost city in ~8t if I buy the Settler now. We could then buy builder immediately and get Plastics boost in 10t. This does not help the Airstrip boost for Rapid Deployment because this is still on Avalonia (our home continent.) There is no visible land oil on Euramerica, the Norway/Greece continent. I could sail one of our Retainers scouts over there to search the north which is the most likely location for said oil, but that means delaying the settler by roughly the 8-10t it would take me to locate said oil and even then, of course we could get there and realize there's no accessible oil.

I guess that all seems like a lot for big fat maybe. Unfortunately, I've wasted too much time on analysis here to actually get the set played this AM, so I'm going to make a few more comments on other gamestate related things and open it up for commentary before playing tonight/tomorrow morning.

Great People


Nobel is maybe worth it but the next Engy and Merchant are definite junk. Unfortunately, I think we probably have to take them and just grit our teeth because the other Civs are accumulating GPP so slowly that I suppose we just have to take every guy for the rest of the game. If we enact the Plastics boost plan, we could basically sit on Nobel until we've nailed all the other boosts and force him to boost Nuclear Fission as the only option. Or we could skip the Plastics iceball plan and do the same and he either boosts Plastics or Fission and either one saves us basically the same amount of time.

Anyway, I'll leave this there. If anyone has any other thoughts on the tech path, boost priorities, great people scenarios or otherwise, I'd appreciate it. I will play and report at some point in the next 24 hours for sure.

[Sareln]

Nothing to disagree with there. Settling for a plastics well is worth what? +3 turns off the tech at the opportunity cost of the production going into the settler, is there a strong Production city that isn't doing space or prep for space stuff that could do it?

[Gaspar]

So after all that, I decide to just bite the bullet and buy the Settler in Barcelona.



Colossus completes on 221. Mostly just letting current stuff go on. Start a Power Plant in East India Company, Trader in TPP.

T222: Combustion completes, start Computers. Get crappy Great Admiral.

T223: Nothing really.

T224: China builds Great Lighthouse. We lose Suzerainship of Nan Madol. I'm not sure how critical that really is but I grab it back along with Jakarta. Space Race is halfway done so I swap to Class Struggle.

T225: Complete Power Plant and earn Advanced Ballistics boost. Complete Computers tech. At this point realize we need Advanced Flight for Satellites because I'm an idiot. Market Peak will complete the one we're hand-building in 5t. So I'll do Advanced Ballistics at 3t, then swap over to Advanced Flight which I should be able to boost to completion with purchases. Buy first Biplane in Market Peak.

T226: Lose Jakarta back to Greece.

T227: Settle Iceball Oil Project.



Buy builder. Columbian Exchange completes Encampment. Buy Barracks. Buy Armory. Buy Military Engineer.

On IT, Scythia and China yell at us for settling too close. I tell them we'll chill, since I don't anticipate any future settlements. I also re-up deal for Silk with Harald.

T228: Advanced Ballistics comes in, as does Class Struggle. I drop in 5-year plan and I also swap in New Deal for Public Works as we're mostly chill on Builders. I also figure since we're getting Space Race next turn if it absolutely torpedoes gold I can swap it right back out. At first glance, definitely seems a positive change. Buy another Biplane in Market Peak. Decide to do an IZone logistics project in NAFTA because it doesn't really need anything it can build and we probably want to keep churning through GEngys until we get the space project boosters. Oil Well at Iceball Oil Project is complete and we boost Plastics.

T229: Space Race in, swap out Levee En Masse for Integrated Space Cell. Start Sputnik in Silk Road, due in 7t. We earn both the shitty Engy and shitty Merchant this turn. Goddard is the next Engineer and he offers 20% production towards projects. I suggest we buy him as soon as we can. Buy Uni in Big N Large. Start Rapid Deployment Civic. I fire off the Merchant and move the Engy to Madrid where the appeal will boost housing at least.

T230: Biplane completes, finishing Advanced Flight. It was pretty bumbling, but Satellites, started now will complete on exactly the turn Silk Road completes Sputnik so we can start Apollo. Military Engy completes Airstrip, boosting Combined Arms. There are three Aluminum on map. All one tile outside borders. We'll need to buy one, any of the three costing 305 gold, when we have a Builder charge available. No rush, since Nanotechnology is one of the last techs.



I think we probably want to save gold for Goddard at this point. I have two Izone logistics projects going right now, when they complete I'd rush him for whatever it costs. That will sync up perfectly with the Satellite finishing and the Moon Landing project starting.

Here's where we are on tech boosts at this point:

Combined Arms (yes), Plastics (yes), Nuclear Fission (none avail), Synthetic Mats (yes), Satellites (none avail), Lasers (none avail), Composites (2 tanks in production, due in 5t, can either build another somewhere or buy the 3rd when we're ready to tech this), Robotics (Globalization, I don't realistically think we can get either civic boosted, so its ~21t away. If someone wants to figure out logistics to get the 3 Airports done, by all means), Nuclear Fusion (none avail), Nanotech (see above regarding aluminum mine.)

So realistically, we're set to hit every boost available except Robotics. Nobel can boost Fission, he's due in 6t which doesn't really need to be rushed since Satellites has to be the next tech and is due in 6t though he's relatively inexpensive to buy at this point if we're worried China might snipe him from us, at either 1090g or 1470faith.

FWIW, Nan Madol is pretty critical and Jakarta really isn't. Nan Madol is about 35% of our culture production at this point. So I'd probably hang onto the envoys we just earned in case China snipes it again and live without Jakarta, at least until Globalization is in.

Sorry for the crappy wall of text report, I was a bit pressed for time this AM. I think we're probably about 40-45t from bringing this one home.

Sareln, you're up.

SAVE

[Sareln]

Cool, I see it.

Game plan - finish 2 izone logistics projects, buy Goddard, use leftover gold on worker and aluminum tile purchase & build, consider how to get 3 airports/airstrips down in the next 10 turns, save envoys for if Nan Madol goes out of control.