The reason I included the total production amount is that you have to do something with those hammers while you're building this infra. You can have 26 gold for however many turns it takes to build this infrastructure, or you can have 65 gold after the infrastructure gets built.
To your point: 17 turns to payback 580 hammers is still a really good return on investment; it's like a 4% return each turn.
Yours is the more accurate analysis, too. Mine was more back-of-the-envelope.
So, this is how I calculate "payback", taking the levee as an example.
Levee = 180 hammers in 7t, which implies SMB had ~26 hpt, or ~20 base hpt. The levee grants 10 extra base hpt.
Let's assume that what we actually want out of SMB is wealth, so that's 1h->1g.
In timeline A, we build a levee, then put the hammers into wealth. So we start with zero gold, and (ignoring overflow) we still have none at the end of turn 7. After that, our hammers are ~38pt so 38gpt.
In timeline B we just build wealth, at 26 h/gpt.
So, 22 turns in, we have 572 gold in timeline A. In timeline B, we have 570 gold (15x38, as we get no gold for the first 7t). After that, timeline B is ahead. So I would say that it takes the levee 22t to pay back, or 15t after completion.
That's ... a while; and just for the levee! I do wonder if we're simply talking about very different things as "payback", but this seems to me to the be point at which one is strictly better off having built the levee.
My back-of-the-envelope was "10 extra hammers, 180 cost, so at least 18t for payback" which was hellishly crude but enough for me to feel that it was probably not worth it in this game.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
I've managed to play another three turns tonight, it took me an hour and 3/4 to get that far. Took Umma, Kish and Dorestad. Managed to lose Metroid through my own stupidity in the interturn of 344-345 but won her back the next turn.
It's a slow slog so I'll take another night at it and post the save tomorrow.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
(July 16th, 2018, 14:41)Brian Shanahan Wrote: I've managed to play another three turns tonight, it took me an hour and 3/4 to get that far. Took Umma, Kish and Dorestad. Managed to lose Metroid through my own stupidity in the interturn of 344-345 but won her back the next turn.
It's a slow slog so I'll take another night at it and post the save tomorrow.
Wow, Willem had a stack? That would probably have caught me by surprise too.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
(July 16th, 2018, 14:41)Brian Shanahan Wrote: I've managed to play another three turns tonight, it took me an hour and 3/4 to get that far. Took Umma, Kish and Dorestad. Managed to lose Metroid through my own stupidity in the interturn of 344-345 but won her back the next turn.
It's a slow slog so I'll take another night at it and post the save tomorrow.
Wow, Willem had a stack? That would probably have caught me by surprise too.
I'd hardly call two knigechts a stack. I just sent all the units in the city, bar one longbow off on a silly adventure, and the rest is, as they say, history.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Ok the save is played. After Dorestad I've only taken over Ur in a bloodbath which wiped the remains of Gilgamesh's mobile power. There's a defensive stack in Zimbir and about a dozen units in the capital, but after that it's thin defences.
Our war weariness has spiked (up to twelve unhappy in the Capital), so I've raised culture to 30% to compensate, which'll probably bring domination a turn or two quicker.
In military terms, we're near Artillery, and have a couple of airships off the production lines already (I pinged my weaker cannon builders to airships because they're cheaper).
We've a GSci at Rome and Advanced Wars is 3 turns from a GP. A third will give us a Golden Age.
Sorry for the lack of a detailed report, but it'd have read as a series of build unit X, move unit Y, attack with stack A and so on for the ten turns.
Highlights were me losing Metroid due to moving units out, me losing a Cavalry to an explorer at 97% odds, me losing a rifle to a knight at the same odds and me beating a Machine Gun (oh yeah, Gilgamesh has them now, maybe one or two in the better defended cities) with an Infantry at 27% odds.
The only picture that really matters.
Expect that to go up a few percent when the former Sumerian captures come out of revolt. There's c 100 tiles we control with no culture on them yet.
The save.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Even with our production edge, we're still close to tech parity with Gilgamesh - slogging through his heartland was always going to be tough. I don't know if Brian was able to make use of our commando units, but we didn't have that many. So yes, progress, measured in kilo-buckets of blood .
Good luck Zalson.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Lots of fighting and destruction, but that is what is required at this point.
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