Brainstorming: The Golden Halls of GS

[vondrack]

Well... the forum has been becoming more lively lately, due to various important issues being discussed...

So, what about some brainstorming talk? No need to run any spreadsheets, just talking wild ideas... the wilder, the better.

Few turns ago (in 1050AD), when we investigated Cyclone, we found out GS was sitting on an appaling pile of gold. 7189 gold, to be precise. Now, if we were GS, what would we do with THAT much of gold?

The gold is not for buying techs. GS is a very fast researcher, second only to us. They can easily get anything they need from GoW through tech-for-tech deals...

If the gold was to be used for rushing ordinary stuff... well, we would not be sitting on it, but we'd be using it, right? So it's probably not meant for rushing ordinary stuff...

If it was to be used to fund extra-fast research... well, we'd be doing 4t techs, right? With the GNP of 1000+/t, one must be able to do Combustion or Mass Production in 4t. But GS needed more than 4t per tech... so they're NOT going as fast as they probably could... they ARE using some of that gold to fund deficit research, that's for sure, but certainly not all of it.

Now... this, IMHO, leaves only one really reasonable option. Military. But right now, there is not that much you can spend on upgrades... GS lacks both saltpeter and rubber on Stormia (we can trade it to them). There is no conveniently placed rubber anywhere (all world deposits are quite deep inland). Saltpeter is no longer a problem, as rifles do not need it and cavalries are soon to be made obsolete by tanks.

So... even though some of the gold may be meant to upgrade rifles to infantries (assuming GS gets rubber through trade when they really need it) and artillery upgrades, I still do not see, why GS would keep a treasury of 7000+ gold, unless...

...unless they plan something unconventional.

Their only valuable strategic resource ATM is oil. Allows tanks. GS shall be the first researcher to discover motorized transport. Cool. But we are just ~12-15t behind them and they must know that - once WE get tanks, it's a stalemate again. Sounds like GS' window of opportunity to successfully attack us with tanks (against infantry) is 15t max. That's hardly enough to assemble a large enough tank force and ferry it over to Legos... GS needs 3t just to cross the ocean, which leaves them with ~10t to build those tanks...

If they simply build 2t tanks in their 50+spt cities, they aren't going to get anywhere. Too few cities generating spt enough. But they can use extensive shortrushing to make almost all of their cities useful... just use a cheap unit (say, explorer) as a "basis" (to get the per shield rush cost down to 4gps), then shortrush to 80S (using arty or rifles) and let a city finish the remaining 20S in a single turn.

This way, they could be cranking tanks from almost all their cities one per turn.

How much does that cost?

1) disband rifle (explorer), get 20S (5S)
2) spend 4*60(75)=240(300) gold, shortrush to 80S
3) let the city finish the build

So, basically, a tank would cost them 240-300g this way. With 7000+ gold, they can build about 25 this way, since they will always want to keep those 1000g to let their Wall Street operate optimally.

Let's assume they can build 5 tanks per turn the normal, "hard" way and they are able to get some more gold out of ND... that's some 50 tanks the normal way and ~30 the shortrush way. 80 tanks.

80 tanks. That's we could see at our doorsteps in about 15t. We better prepare for that, I'd say.

I will try to disband as few cannons and rifles as possible, so that in case we really ARE attacked, we have units enough to bombard and defend.

Also, I believe that the Intelligence Agency and a spy with GS should become our priority.

But let's get back to the topic... what ELSE you can think of GS could do with their gold?

[redstar1]

Investigate cities.

[vondrack]

Hmm, that's a good point. With most of our cities at pop 12 minimum, their investagions are 200+ gold a piece.

[rendelnep]

What about Infantry upgrades?

[vondrack]

Well, yes, but we can safely neglect those, since a rifle-to-infantry upgrade is just 2*(90-80)=20S. You do not need that much gold to upgrade a swarm of rifles.

[rendelnep]

But that woud lower the expect tanks incoming wouldn't it? And you need infantry to support tanks.

[vondrack]

For every 12-15 infantry upgrades, you subtract one rushed tank - that's ~5-6 tanks at most, which we better neglect, I believe.

[Tiberius]

What you describe here is one possibility. Good thinking

OK, my guess:

Since they are tech-embargoing us, they don't really need to attack us. Our advantage coming from our size is counterbalanced with the tech embargo. IMHO GS doesn't hope for a military win, which is almost impossible in this game. Therefore they have a different agenda.

IMHO, GS is preparing to research a few 4 turns techs, and I mean Fission, Rocketry, Space Flight and all the other techs needed for the Spaceship. There is of course the problem with the resources, which they may lack, but we don't know it yet. Of course, they may mass build tanks in the meantime and then invade us or anyone else for uranium or aluminium.

[Tiberius]

Anyway, I agree that the Intelligence Agency and a spy with GS (and maybe GoW) should become our priority right now. If for nothing else, to know when to launch our nukes against their spaceship building cities

[Kloreep]

I think the two main possibilities have been outlined by Tiberius and Vondrack. Either they're going to use their tech advantage to invade someone, likely us, or they're going to try to race ahead in the Modern Era and build the SS.

The second option could fit in with their less-than-4-per-turn techs: Everyone else is researching along too. If GS tries to outpace us as much as is possible at any one moment, everyone else gets to ride along behind their tech wave. By slowing down and trading with some of the other powers like GoW and ND, they get the benefits of tech trading AND GoW and ND don't get the benefit of riding behind on any tech they instead trade with GS for.

If they're going to try to speed ahead in tech, I would guess they've picked some crucial point at which they'll stop trading and slam on their tech accellerator to 4-turn everything. Perhaps that will be soon as they approach Motorized Transport, perhaps they'll wait a little longer.

One bad possibility if they use their gold advantage soon: They could conceivably be to fission very quickly, and build MP soon after using a pre-build. If they then have uranium and some pre-built nukes and nuke subs, they can nuke us while we're still fissionless.

It would take a lot of nukes to do siginifigant damage to Legos, but I'd say it is a technically feasible worse-case scenario.

[Tiberius]

Hmm, this worst-case scenario really scares me

[Kloreep]

Again, it would take a lot of nukes. Two per grassland city if they wanted to a lot of permanent damage (plains are essentially the same as regular grassland, but desert means a sharp drop in shield production as compared to grass and plains). I'm not sure they could pull off any siginifigant amount of damage without allies; though I suppose that's a possibility, too.

Another chilling thought in all of this... it only takes one nuke to signifigantly damage the units on a tile. A nuke followed up by Marines could take a city. The only good thing is that the rails around the city, and all the other terrain improvements, would vanish, hopefully preventing that one city's fall from leading to a donutting. (This should hold especially true with our loose city spacing. Even a cav probably wouldn't be able to reach the next city, much less a tank.)

[Tiberius]

Which means we need to defend apparently not threatened inner cities as well.

[vondrack]

Great stuff, guys, keep it coming!

Sorry for leaving this thread a bit orphaned today - I have spent awful many hours figuring our build queues out...

Originally posted by Tiberius
OK, my guess:

Since they are tech-embargoing us, they don't really need to attack us. Our advantage coming from our size is counterbalanced with the tech embargo. IMHO GS doesn't hope for a military win, which is almost impossible in this game. Therefore they have a different agenda.

Well, I will agree that nobody is going to win this game via domination or conquest. But while a military action can hardly win someone this game, it can prevent someone else from winning it (or at least delay it). See my coments below.

Originally posted by Tiberius
IMHO, GS is preparing to research a few 4 turns techs, and I mean Fission, Rocketry, Space Flight and all the other techs needed for the Spaceship. There is of course the problem with the resources, which they may lack, but we don't know it yet. Of course, they may mass build tanks in the meantime and then invade us or anyone else for uranium or aluminium.

The problem is that "preparing" is all GS can do. They do not have a chance to research any modern techs in 4t. Their total GNP (and we are talking gross product here, before corruption) is ~1150/t - and as mentioned in my last demographics analysis in the turn plan thread, GS is losing their breath in this department, adding about 1/2 of what we or GoW/ND have added over the last 10t.

Now, subtract:

corruption
say, conservatively, just 10% (that's about what we are losing - but then, we are commercial) = -115gpt
military upkeep
they've grown from weak to average vs. us last turn, so it's definitely at least -100gpt, more likely -150gpt
maintenance costs
we pay 200+gpt - granted, we have 7 more cities, but Pyramids save us granary maintenance (more than balanced by GS' Sun Tzu's) and Smith's saves us maintenance on marketplaces, harbours, banks, and stock exchanges (balanced by GS' Hoover and their abundance of luxuries).

On top of that, The Colossus will soon expire (with the discovery of Flight), which will bite at least 40gpt out of their GNP:

1150-(115+100+200+40)=~700

And that, gentlemen, should be their beaker output at 100% very soon. It roughly corresponds to them doing most techs in 5-6t lately.

Now, the cheapest Tier 1 modern techs are ~5800 beakers. No way they could do 4t research. They will hardly be able to do 7t research, I believe.

We, OTOH, are only starting to speed up... our current research output at 100% is over 1200bpt (well over 900bpt at 80%). And we still have a number of GNP-improving facilities not built, even in large cities - our South is only getting to the "entry" metropolis level.

Nope, if GS have any brains, they will not bet on the SS race. They'd lose it. Even if they grabbed The Internet, they'd still stand no chance against us, since research labs are generally going to improve their research output by 25% at most. Commercial docks will help them big time, but still - that's 10 modern techs at about 6000 beakers each you need to build an SS. 11 if you go for The Internet. Losing an average of 2t per tech on us, we'd get them before their SS would be completed.

I believe they know that much. The more I am thinking about it, the more I am fearing a military action within 15-20 turns.

Oh, BTW - I am really glad to see the brainstorming in action! Do not get discouraged by any (counter)arguments of mine and throw more hypothesis in!

[vondrack]

Jesus... I should have gone to bed instead of posting such crap at 1am. That build queue thing had sucked all my brains out.

The maintenance/upkeep costs must not be subtracted, since that's exactly what you can fund with savings. It's actually:

1150-(115+40)=~1000 with ~-300gpt deficit.

Now, with commercial docks & research labs everywhere, they could actually get to ~1500 which is what is needed for 4t modern techs. The problem is their savings would not be enough. At ~-300gpt, they would run out of money in ~20t (5 techs out of 10-11 needed). They could keep selling the techs to ND/GoW, getting extra funds, but then they would risk keeping their competition in business.

But agreed that this makes the hypothesis a real option, which we should keep checking for.