Spaceship comparison game

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by mdbill
it's 1000 AD.

I've already finished the Oxford. I have Gunpowder, Printing Press, and I'm half way thru Astronomy. ( I plan to use liberalism's free tech for something bigger like Computers or Industrialsim depending on which path I take.) Once any AI gets Education and Philosophy I'll grab something. Maybe that's a mistake. I'd like to go Free Religion, but I dont' even have philosophy so I'll wait to trade it.

An interesting idea.

Presumably you have met all the AI civs and you will use the tech trading screen to recognise when an AI gets education. (Or is it when an AI civ starts researching education.)

I must say I'd be a bit nervous about getting the timing right on this. Are you already 1 turn away from discovering liberalism?

I find the whole idea intriguing. Can you post a save?

RJM at Sleeper's

[mdbill]

Yes, I'm just 1 turn from Liberalism.

Yes, I monitor the trade screen.

I don't trade away education.

Physics? not bad, but Electricity is next. And Radio is a huge jump over those.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by mdbill
Physics? not bad, but Electricity is next. And Radio is a huge jump over those.

How far do you think you'll get before you need to decide?

[mdbill]

Hey zabrak,

Thanks for doing "the study" its interesting to know more about these two approaches. However, I think there are some flaws in your plan.

1) I don't think it's fair to the GP strategy to have to run mercantilism. No foreign trade routes is too severe, especially with the Great Lighthouse.

2) It's also not fair to the cash strategy have to run Univ. Suff. until later when you have a few towns. I'd say 10 +.

3) The GP strategy again was handicapped with your use of golden ages. I think it is well known that GAs are a horrible waste of GP, especially when most of your people are working farms and are specialists! Maybe a late golden age when building space parts and your scientists have moved into the mines.

4) Communism. I assume this is for the Kremlin. Is it really that important? Couldn't you get it later? I woudn't bother researching this myself. Since they nerfed the Kremlin in patch 1.61, it must be a good thing.

Why can't the GP game switch to U.Suff for 10 turns or so to buy a ton of factories/labs too?

5) In the cash game, wouldn't you use Free Speech? Once you have enough towns to make it better than bureaucracy?

6) Unified strategy. Fair enough conclusion, however, a few exceptions to the rule might be worth it. For example, the GP strategy will run Bureaucracy, true?. It is far better for the capitol to have towns over farms/specialists.

Let's not forget this is Tokugawa too. As you mentioned, a financial civ would throw off your results.

[mdbill]

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli


How far do you think you'll get before you need to decide?

If I go straight to Computers from Astron. I should get Radio or Computers free.

If I get things like Steel first before obsoleting the Great Lib, I'll probably only get to Electricity.

I doubt I could get Industrialism. Maybe Assembly Line if I headed there straight from Astronomy.

[solo]

Originally posted by mdbill
it's 1000 AD.

I've already finished the Oxford. I have Gunpowder, Printing Press, and I'm half way thru Astronomy. ( I plan to use liberalism's free tech for something bigger like Computers or Industrialsim depending on which path I take.) Once any AI gets Education and Philosophy I'll grab something. Maybe that's a mistake. I'd like to go Free Religion, but I dont' even have philosophy so I'll wait to trade it.

What a good idea! You can even wait a few turns after the first AI gets Education. You got off to a very fast start with Oracle and the other wonders and may yet vindicate the minimal peaceful approach. Good luck!

How many cities do you have so far, and what is the situation with the AI on the home continent?

In my game Louis became so dominant, I considered an attack by him to be inevitable, so was slowed down by building up an adequate defense.

[mdbill]

My approach isn't entirely minimal. I have about 12 cities. Two on the "island". I conquered 4 earlier from Capac. I don't expect any more wars. I own the bottom 1/3 of the continent. I'm in big trouble if there is no aluminum there. Louis is doing OK, but not as well as Washington and Peter. Peter is a nice trader, so I'm feeding him tech.

I'm taking the GP approach over the cash one, so I got Biology and then took Radio free with liberalism.

[mdbill]

Launched! 1756 AD

Note to self: Don't build Nuclear plants for the health savings. I had my first meltdown. It was in the city I had saved up for the final space part. Fortunately there was a backup. Then don't get me started on global warming.

I finished research -- Ecology in 1730

After I got Computers around 1400AD, I switched to U. Suff. for about 12-15 turns and maxed my cash. 0% reasearch for 15 turns sounds bad, but I was waiting on the AI to trade banking and Econ anyway, so I would have been researching something I could get for free. I bought mostly labs, and a few observatories. I knew Economics was coming, so I'd have to switch to Free market anyway. I figured I could share the Anarchy. I also needed to turn on Caste System. Seemed late to switch to that, but I didn't really need it yet. Biology kicked in and my cities needed to work the farms.

Lucky to get Aluminum (and coal) on the Island.

I can't say that conquering the continent is the wrong master plan though. It may still be best. I may have just micromanaged my game better. uberfish had an amazing tech rate at the end. I think I saw Robotics was 3 turns--is that right? It was 8 turns for me. Like solo, I thought 6-8 cities could compete. I learned it can't in a long space game. If we were racing to Mass Media for the UN diplo victory, it would be another story. The internet could not have helped. I got plenty of old techs thru trading. The Internet would have done nothing this game. As solo says, it is essential on Diety.

I fed tech to the AI and got a few late ones. Nationalism, Constitution, Corporation, Rifling, Railroad, Combustion were all free. But I guess that's the advantage of staying on peaceful terms and letting them grow.

I made one golden age with the free Fusion engineer and one of my many scientists. I threw 2 scientists into satellites. It was too late to add them to a city and have it pay off. I built 3 Academies- one in each of my best tech cities--never did more than one of those before.
Other early scientists/merchants were added to the capitol. One prophet (thankfully) for a shrine.

[Swiss Pauli]

Excellent game, mdbill!

[uberfish]

Very well played mdbill, getting all that free tech makes a huge difference. I've been proved wrong about the AI being able to keep up, but I guess you had to keep giving away most of your tech for them to do that? I just don't like giving tech away to potential enemies such as Louis when I'm in infrastructure building mode, it always feels like a huge risk.

And yes, robotics really was 3 turns. I think my end game did play out well apart from the late Apollo which probably cost me a couple of turns, but I had a pretty slow start and it would have been better to take Capac's cottage cities first than Louis' GP farms. However I felt that if I didn't take Louis out first he would have declared on me anyway.

[mdbill]

Actually, I didn't give away too many for free. I usually had to trade something really nice, say Astronomy, for Feudalism + cash. I probably gave Peter 2-3 techs free. Example: I give him steel and Steam Power so he'll get railroad and combustion. When Washington demanded Biology, I gave in and then figured I should give him Electricity too so he'd get refigeration. He never did though. Their natural research speed is fast enough to deliver quite a few old techs, especially since I dig so deep into the tree. By going for Biology and Computers, they have plenty of time to get Monarchy, Feudalism, Guilds and Banking for me. I can't recall the last time I researched Math, Currency, or Calendar. Even on Noble difficulty they'll get those for you early.

uberfish, Did you just give this game one try or have you gone again? I think 25+ cities can be the best strategy. You can get off to a faster start, then conquer the continent from 300-1000AD. It can be done that fast, right? I don't think you'll see many longbowmen if you can finish by then. Just attack the civ with monarchy first.
Stay friendly with Washington, Bismark, and Peter. The fact that you spend time conquering should let them contribute more when you meet them around 1200 AD.

I'm tempted to go again and fine tune my peaceful strategy. Take the whole Island, skip the Statue of Liberty, maybe skip pyramids. Definitely try RJM's CS slingshot. Probably skip the rush-buying. I built way too many forges, factories and power plants too. The SS casings can be built in time without these. I think you only need 3 really good production cities.

[uberfish]

Right, I see what you mean. I place a high priority on the midgame economic techs like Democracy, Replaceable Parts, Corporation, Biology and so on to kick my economy into overdrive. But maybe it is faster in the long run to skip some or all of these and go straight to Computers to increase the chance that the AI will research some of this stuff and have it available for trade. For some reason the 3 overseas AIs were pretty backwards when they made contact in my game.

I only played through once, because managing 30 cities and especially reassigning specialists gets pretty tedious. One thing if anyone does replay this, it was a particularly good scenario for chop rushing which has been toned down in 1.61 so that'll affect things a bit too.

I think the 2GP and 3GP golden ages are well worth it with a big empire, that's +1 commerce and hammer over 200-300 squares that go through the city multipliers which adds up to a lot more than what cashing a couple of scientists in would get you. I don't think the 3GP one is worth the extra GP management you have to do with less than 20 cities though.

[solo]

Excellent result, Mdbill! I'd be interested in more details about the early part of your game.

I think your experience in OCC, where diplomacy plays such a big part, made you much more willing to trade current techs in order to maximize trading opportunities.

Now that the new patch is out, it might be interesting for our group to try this game again, using 1.61! It would also be a good way to compare how the patch changes our approaches to finding a way for a fast launch. What do others think? Does this sound like a good idea?

[uberfish]

I'm not really a fan of replaying the same map from start to finish, I think it gets a bit skewed because with foreknowledge of where the resources were for example, I would have done a CS slingshot.

I was thinking maybe we could try the next one in SG format and get more discussion at each stage of the game if people were interested?

[mdbill]

It would be a good way to compare 1.52 with 1.61, but a little boring and yes, skewed. I'd go either way.

We should play like "best shot" in golf. We all drive the ball off the tee, pick the favorite one and everyone hits from there. Something like SG format.