[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

....ohhhh. well, that completely breaks that plan then not exactly intuitive behavior either..... how in the world does it make sense for past bombardment affect FUTURE walls that weren't even under construction yet when the bombardment took place

[xist10]

I don't think you can expect to raise walls when the city is getting bombarded

[ljubljana]

yeah but... AFTER bombardment is finished, should we not be able to raise NEW walls around the rubble?

lol in civ6 you totally could do this though.... for ONLY the first layer of walls.... so you can't upgrade existing walls while the city is being bombarded but you CAN build totally new ones

[williams482]

I just straight up do not think crippling a core city for 30 turns in order to guarantee a golden age is a good idea here. 75% of the time you get your GA, the remaining 25% of the time you find some other useful way to spend two great scientist lightbulbs. Pushing for early Biology in that 25% scenario could be quite powerful on this map, for example.

I could be persuaded, but this feels like tunnel vision on a good-but-not-critical plan for how to spend resources that isn't guaranteed to come off perfectly. I think you're better off just living with that 25% downside risk and working out how to mitigate it if and when you get there.

If it helps, think of this as a variance play. crippling a core city for 30 turns in order to guarantee the next GA leaves you much worse off in the 75% of cases where you get the GP you wanted without that. I think you'd much rather be appreciably stronger 75% of the time and somewhat more at risk 25% of the time than to guarantee a position somewhere in between those two states. Especially with the game's current favorite on your eastern border.

As for the city defenses, does anyone know if they start going up immediately (if invisibly), or only after the city is out of resistance? And how long are they likely to take to recover?

[ljubljana]

well, kirishima is a core city too (maybe an even better one than mitakeumi with its higher cottage count), and it's just as crippled by running 4 specialists to get a great person. it's further behind on infra too since it generated the LAST (two) great people (no courthouse, for instance). i think freeing kirishima in exchange for shutting down mita (and guaranteeing the GA via the spy/merchant/engineer plan) is not too bad.... we have to run a spy which is of dubious value as a specialist, and the forge is a dubious build during wartime as well (though mita IS among our strongest hammer cities and can expect it to pay off before the end of the game), but i think that's not too high a price to pay for guaranteeing a GA. but i agree about not trying for a THIRD great person and feel pretty good about rejecting that idea.

though there is a question about whether it's even worth it to go for the first two great people for the second golden age this early.... i think it's probably worth it for safety reasons but i'm not really sure we'll have that many useful civics to swap into by that point. i guess we could pick up banking for mercantilism? we'd also probably need philosophy to work on the THIRD GA gp during the second golden age via pacificism, and i suppose we'd want to end the GA in theocracy to help out our strongest military producing cities. all that adds up to perhaps wanting to delay actually launching the GA a bit after we spawn the GP, so while we have to START making them now if we ever want a second GA in this game (to take advantage of the +100% generation rate from the current GA) i suppose the only reason not to pause them afterwards is for safety in case of an attack, and to broadcast to the neighbors that we COULD swap to slavery if attacked. that's.... a pretty good reason though i think. certainly there is a major hit to the growth curve from starting to work on the second GA during the first GA but it seems like the meta here typically favors doing so? idk, this great person stuff is pretty complex and still hard for me to accurately parse the value of

[aetryn]

well, kirishima is a core city too (maybe an even better one than mitakeumi with its higher cottage count), and it's just as crippled by running 4 specialists to get a great person. it's further behind on infra too since it generated the LAST (two) great people (no courthouse, for instance). i think freeing kirishima in exchange for shutting down mita (and guaranteeing the GA via the spy/merchant/engineer plan) is not too bad.... we have to run a spy which is of dubious value as a specialist, and the forge is a dubious build during wartime as well (though mita IS among our strongest hammer cities and can expect it to pay off before the end of the game), but i think that's not too high a price to pay for guaranteeing a GA. but i agree about not trying for a THIRD great person and feel pretty good about rejecting that idea.

though there is a question about whether it's even worth it to go for the first two great people for the second golden age this early.... i think it's probably worth it for safety reasons but i'm not really sure we'll have that many useful civics to swap into by that point. i guess we could pick up banking for mercantilism? we'd also probably need philosophy to work on the THIRD GA gp during the second golden age via pacificism, and i suppose we'd want to end the GA in theocracy to help out our strongest military producing cities. all that adds up to perhaps wanting to delay actually launching the GA a bit after we spawn the GP, so while we have to START making them now if we ever want a second GA in this game (to take advantage of the +100% generation rate from the current GA) i suppose the only reason not to pause them afterwards is for safety in case of an attack, and to broadcast to the neighbors that we COULD swap to slavery if attacked. that's.... a pretty good reason though i think. certainly there is a major hit to the growth curve from starting to work on the second GA during the first GA but it seems like the meta here typically favors doing so?  idk, this great person stuff is pretty complex and still hard for me to accurately parse the value of

Feels too early for second Golden Age - it's probably more important to maximize the bonus production yields (which are considerable) and have the right civics to swap into than to protect against the need to slip back into Slavery. In particular, I'd definitely get CS AND a bunch of farms built so that more cities can grow before the second GA, so you have more pop getting those Commerce/Hammer bonuses. If that needs to be later, that's fine. If we need to be in Serfdom, we need to take more care at the borders but we CAN eat the Anarchy turn if we have to. In my opinion at least, it's more important to be in position to use the second GA well if all goes well and we have a shot at winning or competing long-term than to protect ourselves from losing less hard if we do get attacked. Basically, I don't think we can afford a "safety GA" and stay competitive.

[ljubljana]

got it got it, i can be convinced on this. so do you think we shouldn't run specialists during the current golden age at all, or we should run them now to take advantage of the +100% but then come off them for growth post-GA?

also, when do you think we should swap to serfdom? we're only working 15 or so farms now but if the current plan is to pick up CS soon and grow all our cities, that number will rise rapidly. if we are delaying the second GA past what its eta would be if we start now (late t160s) and stick to slavery, there will probably be a lot of turns when we are working 40+ farms in that timespan and not getting the serfdom bonus. or should the plan NOT be to grow our cities now and instead (after the GA boost wears off) whip off farms into troops continuously at least until GT is finished? but we are very far down the growth curve already and at SOME point in the near future i think that will have to stop if we want to stay competitive...

[aetryn]

got it got it, i can be convinced on this. so do you think we shouldn't run specialists during the current golden age at all, or we should run them now to take advantage of the +100% but then come off them for growth post-GA?

also, when do you think we should swap to serfdom? we're only working 15 or so farms now but if the current plan is to pick up CS soon and grow all our cities, that number will rise rapidly. if we are delaying the second GA past what its eta would be if we start now (late t160s) and stick to slavery, there will probably be a lot of turns when we are working 40+ farms in that timespan and not getting the serfdom bonus. or should the plan NOT be to grow our cities now and instead (after the GA boost wears off) whip off farms into troops continuously at least until GT is finished? but we are very far down the growth curve already and at SOME point in the near future i think that will have to stop if we want to stay competitive...

I'd still strive to run specialists during the GA to get the free bonus. Food is the one thing you don't get any more of during GAs, so it's generally time to work pop, not grow pop.

I wouldn't delay growth for anything. The timing on Serfdom is harder to figure out. With our land, I tend to think "as soon as we can be reasonable secure without slavery", but of course "reasonable" is a tough thing to measure. Serfdom also speeds up our workers, so building all those slooow farms will be slightly less slow.

[ljubljana]

hmm.... well, if we're not delaying growth for anything, then the only reason to whip during the next 20-30 turns or thereabouts would be if we are under attack, or immediately anticipate an attack. ginger's drafted janissary timing is coming up pretty soon though.... if they go for it i imagine they'll research up to gunpowder after this and finish taj around the same time, then they can be all over SOMEone with drafted jans in maybe 20-30 turns (with the low end assuming they get a great engineer or have some kind of Commodore-esque overflow chain set up for taj). so i guess the question is, do we think we think the lack of slavery will be enough to shift the best-looking target of that push from dreylin to us, or to make them go for that push in the first place when otherwise they might wait for rifles? idk really.... other than that, the diplo situation looks good for a serfdom swap with both drey and nauf having good reasons not to attack us, but being locked into slavery when it's time for ginger to push would be a serious problem. of course if we wait for the next GA to swap, then we'd be locked into slavery around when a RIFLE push could happen, but maybe that's late enough that we wouldn't want to swap to slavery in response to that anyways...? i guess the nice thing about the plan where we generate the next two great people asap, but don't immediately USE them for a GA, is that as long as we have them sitting around, we can be in serfdom while still conveying to ginger that we are NOT locked into it, which isn't the case for any "swap into serfdom at the end of a GA" plan that does not involve such a step...

[aetryn]

hmm.... well, if we're not delaying growth for anything, then the only reason to whip during the next 20-30 turns or thereabouts would be if we are under attack, or immediately anticipate an attack. ginger's drafted janissary timing is coming up pretty soon though.... if they go for it i imagine they'll research up to gunpowder after this and finish taj around the same time, then they can be all over SOMEone with drafted jans in maybe 20-30 turns (with the low end assuming they get a great engineer or have some kind of Commodore-esque overflow chain set up for taj). so i guess the question is, do we think we think the lack of slavery will be enough to shift the best-looking target of that push from dreylin to us, or to make them go for that push in the first place when otherwise they might wait for rifles? idk really.... other than that, the diplo situation looks good for a serfdom swap with both drey and nauf having good reasons not to attack us, but being locked into slavery when it's time for ginger to push would be a serious problem. of course if we wait for the next GA to swap, then we'd be locked into slavery around when a RIFLE push could happen, but maybe that's late enough that we wouldn't want to swap to slavery in response to that anyways...? i guess the nice thing about the plan where we generate the next two great people asap, but don't immediately USE them for a GA, is that as long as we have them sitting around, we can be in serfdom while still conveying to ginger that we are NOT locked into it, which isn't the case for any "swap into serfdom at the end of a GA" plan that does not involve such a step...

How can you convey that to Ginger? Park them in a border city where he MIGHT see them? Hope he's scouted both cities we produce them in, so can identify us as having them from the event log, and then assumes we're holding onto them for a possible civic swap? That's a pretty tough distinction to get across in AI Diplo. Of course, everyone is different, but I'd imagine when he gets around to saying "Okay, it's time to go kill someone, who should I attack first", he's probably not going to have been tracking historical Great Person usage and have any idea. He MIGHT look at the current Civic screen to make that decision, especially if he thinks a surprise attack will make a difference (i.e. the one turn lost from swapping back to Slavery will somehow make a key difference). In a war of outright conquest, unless there's a really key chokepoint, I don't personally think it makes that much difference to the conquerer if the target is currently in slavery, especially if they aren't barred from changing by a recent revolution. The person being conquered is still going to whip to the bone, and unless I'm blitzing a bunch of cities down in the first couple turns to deny him build queues taking my first city slightly easier by him missing a turn of whipping isn't THAT valuable. Being able to strike while the target isn't in slavery seems more valuable to me in a border raid scenario, where you really only want to grab 1 or 2 cities and the speed of response can make a critical difference. It's really important to the TARGET of a war of total conquest not to have to eat a turn of Anarchy, but let's face it, if Ginger decides to go straight to Gunpowder and then rush us with Janissaries, one more or less turn of Anarchy isn't going to change the overall situation much for us - it'll be very bad.