Tweet
OK, guys, you better get a bottle of beer, this is going to be very long... I whipped myself to an insane amount of spreadsheet calculations and simulations using Tibi's Lego simulator (btw, great tool! what about updating it once we know all of Legos Major? 
). All the numbers listed below are verified to be precise.
I will start by explaining what lead me to preparing the plan, continue with the simulation data collected, and finish with listing pros and cons of this plan.
Current Geopolitical Situation
There are three landmasses in our world. Presumably the biggest one is shared by GoW, ND, LI, & RPers. GoW is very small, ND is big and likely to get bigger, RPers are also quite big and doing fine. LI is currently in big troubles, being on the verge of war with ND. Another landmass, which is separated from the first one by a narrow one-tile strait, is hosting Voxes (closer to the big landmass) and GS (currently being unable to go beyond a certain chokepoint held by Voxes). All these teams have direct or indirect contacts, allowing them to share their technologies.
Legoland ended up on its own landmass, which is admittedly unbelievably large. Unfortunately, we are separated from everybody else by ocean, most likely too wide to be safely crossed by an ordinary galley. This is both a blessing and a curse. We do not need to worry about any wars for many many turns, as overseas invasions are extremely costly at all times, but especially in the ancient era. We have the luxury of being able to REX at will, picking the best city sites, distributing the cities so as to maximize our future output. A builder's paradise.
OTOH, and this is very important, we are in great danger of getting seriously behind in the technology race, because with no contacts and no tech trading, we cannot match the combined research power of the rest of the world. We are likely to have tough times once getting to the others. A major annoyance would also be if another civ reached our continent and started colonizing it before we fully grab all the land that is here for us.
How to Address Possible Threats
Considering what we know about our landmass and about starting spots of other teams, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to get to them safely with an ordinary galley, having to resort to suicide galleys... which is both unreliable and costly.
My personal belief is that even if we did our best and got very lucky, we would finally make contact when all other teams are well (2-3 techs) ahead of us, whatever we do. We would have to be very lucky to have a tech others would be interested in trading for, which would likely force us into an unpleasant position of big, but weak empire.
The only solution to this is, IMHO, to get the Great Library. With the Great Library, we would not have to fear lagging behind in tech, as any tech deficit would be quickly fixed once we make contacts with others. We would not need to beg for technologies of others, we would not have to accept deals involving express or implied getting "indebted" to another team that would help us to catch up (like RPers). Our own research would be enough to keep us busy improving our cities with the basic stuff, patiently waiting until we finally meet someone else. Fortunately, our defenders will be useful up until knights and even later on.
The problem of another team settling on our landmass also has an elegant solution. Considering the fact that we are unable to get to others (safely) without the Great Lighthouse, it must apply vice versa, too. Others are (or would be) unable to get to us without the Great Lighthouse until Navigation. So, IMHO, the best way to keep our opponents off the lands given to us by the grace of God Almighty, is to build the Great Lighthouse ourselves, denying its effects to others.
Now, this is two great wonders. Has vondrack gone mad, you ask? Well, maybe he has, maybe he hasn't... It seems obvious to me that the combination of these two wonders would be unbelievably powerful and could largely win the game for us very early. If others are unable to reach us, giving us time enough to get a good grip on all of the great land and resources, while not being able to force us behind in technology, we would get so powerful that there would be no power strong enough to defeat us later. After successfully settling the whole of our continent, we'd be practically invincible, happily resorting to frantic building, grabbing the key wonders, while watching others desperately try to think up something to stop us... I may be too optimistic, but if you look at the latest minimap data, I believe you will agree that the area we have at our disposal is unbelievably large.
So, the basics of my grand plan, which I named Operation Double Edge (to refer to the two "edges" of the Great Library and the Great Lighthouse, while also reminding of possible "double-edgedness" of this plan), is building the Great Library and the Great Lighthouse. My simulations show that there is a very good chance we could do it without actually betting everything on a single card.
How to build the Two Edges
We would have to set two of our core cities, namely Jackson and Panama, to build the wonders. Jackson would go for the Great Library and would finish it on turn #93 (710BC). Panama would go for the Great Lighthouse and finish it on turn 105 (470BC).
The progress of the Great Library construction (and several possible later builds) in Jackson is illustrated in the following table:
There is nothing really tricky about this build. The only problem I can see would be if another team was already building a prebuild now and eventually beat us to the Great Library. The only thing we can do is to hope that nobody started a prebuild yet... and even if someone did, that their city will not be as strong shield-wise as Jackson. My personal opinion is that it is unlikely that anyone else would be able to set aside a soon-to-be-11-shield city (one mined cow + 3 mined bonus grasslands + two mined hills!) for a wonder build this early.
However, if we eventually lose the race to someone else, we could still get Pyramids, which would admittedly be also of great use to us, speeding up our REXing, allowing us to catch up slowly, but steadily by researching the cheapest techs in 4 turns each, using the sheer raw research power of all those cities of ours.
Much tougher is Panama... after trying countless variants, I have been able to fine-tune the process as illustrated by the following table:
EDIT: table removed due to an embarrasing mistake I did, resulting the whole schedule go out of sync... you will find a revised, correct schedule later in this thread (timing remains the same).
As you can see, we would have to use the worker being currently built in Red Bricks (yeah, that's the Robbie guy), eventually adding him and Leopold to Panama in order to speed up the build as much as possible, delaying any improvements in the Red Bricks area effectively for ten turns. Two workers are certainly not that little in this time, but considering the fact that we will be able to "spit them out" in just two turns after completing the wonder, if needed, makes this temporary sacrifice justified, IMHO.
As you can see, there is a couple of tricks involved (like adding the workers at some time, mining a non-horse hill first, juggling with the worked tiles - that's the green line - etc.). However, I have personally tested that what this table shows is correct and that this way is most probably optimal. There is another way to build the Great Lighthouse 1 turn earlier, but that one unfortunately largely rules out the possibility of making use of any extra resources we may yet to discover (iron, bonus shields under the jungle tiles).
Once we discover iron (probably on turn 65), we may find out one of the hills near Panama has iron - that would help us complete The Lighthouse 3 turns earlier. Similarly, bonus shield under the riverbank jungle tile would speed up the completion by 4 turns and a bonus shield under the other jungle tile by 1 turn (coupled with any of the other two extras, it would be even 2 turns less). Completing the wonder on turn 105 is the worst case scenario, completing it on turn 96 is the best case scenario (an iron + 2 bonus grasslands under the jungle tiles).
The timing is done in such a way that we would be able to make full use of any iron hills available - the worker is scheduled to go mining a hill shortly after the discovery of the Iron Working (on condition we research IW first, Literature second - see later on).
Research
I have not put exact figures together, but it is very obvious that even with the current beaker output, we will be able to research Literature in about 13 turns and Iron Working in 8 turns. As there is no hurry to have Literature long before completing the Great Library (we can use Pyramids as a prebuild if needed), I would - contrary to what I stated earlier in the Enlightened thread - suggest going for the Iron Working first. Not because of Swordsmen... but to reveal iron resources. If we are lucky again, one of our wonders might be done a bit ahead of the schedule.
Literature would be next.
I would then suggest beelining for Republic, tentatively planning to switch to Republic shortly after finishing our two wonders. That would further speed us up. But this part does not really belong to the Operation Double Edge - we can choose a different path as well... due to the high beaker outputs from the wonder building cities, we should be doing quite well.
We may also decide to slow our research down (since we will get the techs eventually anyway), saving money later helping us to mass-upgrade our military or run a Republic on a deficit spending for some time... choices would be plentiful.
Contacts with Other Teams
Even though it may sound like a heresy, I would hope we'd not make any contacts prior to completing both wonders. The reason is simple - until others have contact with us, they are "blind"... they can't se if we are building any wonders and which ones they are. Besides, if we succed to get the Great Library, we will not need to worry about contacts. We would get those techs eventally anyway...
Thus, I would only build one Galley that would make a roundtrip around our landmass, looking for possible ways to others, helping us to speed making contacts later on, after we get our wonder combo. I would not press the galley too far - just to get a bit better picture of our coastal waters.
Diplomacy
While getting the Great Library will be primarily a matter of raw shield output/power, getting the Lighthouse will actually be also a matter of smart diplomacy. We need other teams to believe/realize that they do not need it and that they would be wasting shields building it. It should not be that difficult, as most of them have established ingame contacts with one another anyway... thus feeling little need to go overseas, hoping to meet our lost civilization. In order to make sure that even Gathering Storm know they need just an ordinary galley to get to the others, redstar1 has already started arranging a meeting with their ambassador...
Caveats
1) We will risk wasting some shields if beaten to the wonders we'd be after. However, Pyramids would be also very useful to us, and the extra commerce of the Colossus wouldn't hurt either.
2) We will slightly delay the development of the Red Brick area, plus we will consume two workers in the process.
3) We will stretch our military power. As both of our super productive cities would be building wonders, we would have to rely on the new cities (not yet founded) to provide escorts for some of the Farmeville settlers. Hopefully, our exploring units will be coming back home by that time, taking care of the most urgent assignements. As it is highly unlikely that anyone else would directly attack us, I believe that this risk is acceptable - once we are done with the wonders, we will quickly catch up, as Jackson and Panama will both be able to crank out troops at a very high rate.
Final Comments
Be so kind and carefully think this plan over. It is a major thing. It definitely is not risk-free, that I admit. But to win this game, we will have to risk at one time or another. There is no such possibility like playing it safe all the time and winning eventually. There are some outstanding players in other teams and there is hardly anything we could do so much better. Our isolation may turn out to be our ultimate advantage... we just have to make the best use of it.
IMHO, the risk posed by this plan is well calculated and pretty much acceptable. Possible gains (which are enormous) far outweigh possible losses (which would be better described as "annoyances" - like having to let someone else settle on our continent because of weak military).
One lovely thing about this plan is that it has almost no negative effect on our REXing. Farmerville will be able to build one settler every 10 turns, Legopolis will be building a Merc+Settler combo every 8 turns (I have done calcs for both these cities similar to what I did for Jackson and Panama... but as they are not really related to the wonder building stuff, I am not posting them here). Before the Operation Double Edge is over, we will be able to build 11 settlers! That's 11 more cities... and I am not considering the new cities that might actually build something, too...
OK, that's it. Your comments, please.
). All the numbers listed below are verified to be precise.I will start by explaining what lead me to preparing the plan, continue with the simulation data collected, and finish with listing pros and cons of this plan.
Current Geopolitical Situation
There are three landmasses in our world. Presumably the biggest one is shared by GoW, ND, LI, & RPers. GoW is very small, ND is big and likely to get bigger, RPers are also quite big and doing fine. LI is currently in big troubles, being on the verge of war with ND. Another landmass, which is separated from the first one by a narrow one-tile strait, is hosting Voxes (closer to the big landmass) and GS (currently being unable to go beyond a certain chokepoint held by Voxes). All these teams have direct or indirect contacts, allowing them to share their technologies.
Legoland ended up on its own landmass, which is admittedly unbelievably large. Unfortunately, we are separated from everybody else by ocean, most likely too wide to be safely crossed by an ordinary galley. This is both a blessing and a curse. We do not need to worry about any wars for many many turns, as overseas invasions are extremely costly at all times, but especially in the ancient era. We have the luxury of being able to REX at will, picking the best city sites, distributing the cities so as to maximize our future output. A builder's paradise.
OTOH, and this is very important, we are in great danger of getting seriously behind in the technology race, because with no contacts and no tech trading, we cannot match the combined research power of the rest of the world. We are likely to have tough times once getting to the others. A major annoyance would also be if another civ reached our continent and started colonizing it before we fully grab all the land that is here for us.
How to Address Possible Threats
Considering what we know about our landmass and about starting spots of other teams, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to get to them safely with an ordinary galley, having to resort to suicide galleys... which is both unreliable and costly.
My personal belief is that even if we did our best and got very lucky, we would finally make contact when all other teams are well (2-3 techs) ahead of us, whatever we do. We would have to be very lucky to have a tech others would be interested in trading for, which would likely force us into an unpleasant position of big, but weak empire.
The only solution to this is, IMHO, to get the Great Library. With the Great Library, we would not have to fear lagging behind in tech, as any tech deficit would be quickly fixed once we make contacts with others. We would not need to beg for technologies of others, we would not have to accept deals involving express or implied getting "indebted" to another team that would help us to catch up (like RPers). Our own research would be enough to keep us busy improving our cities with the basic stuff, patiently waiting until we finally meet someone else. Fortunately, our defenders will be useful up until knights and even later on.
The problem of another team settling on our landmass also has an elegant solution. Considering the fact that we are unable to get to others (safely) without the Great Lighthouse, it must apply vice versa, too. Others are (or would be) unable to get to us without the Great Lighthouse until Navigation. So, IMHO, the best way to keep our opponents off the lands given to us by the grace of God Almighty, is to build the Great Lighthouse ourselves, denying its effects to others.
Now, this is two great wonders. Has vondrack gone mad, you ask? Well, maybe he has, maybe he hasn't... It seems obvious to me that the combination of these two wonders would be unbelievably powerful and could largely win the game for us very early. If others are unable to reach us, giving us time enough to get a good grip on all of the great land and resources, while not being able to force us behind in technology, we would get so powerful that there would be no power strong enough to defeat us later. After successfully settling the whole of our continent, we'd be practically invincible, happily resorting to frantic building, grabbing the key wonders, while watching others desperately try to think up something to stop us... I may be too optimistic, but if you look at the latest minimap data, I believe you will agree that the area we have at our disposal is unbelievably large.
So, the basics of my grand plan, which I named Operation Double Edge (to refer to the two "edges" of the Great Library and the Great Lighthouse, while also reminding of possible "double-edgedness" of this plan), is building the Great Library and the Great Lighthouse. My simulations show that there is a very good chance we could do it without actually betting everything on a single card.
How to build the Two Edges
We would have to set two of our core cities, namely Jackson and Panama, to build the wonders. Jackson would go for the Great Library and would finish it on turn #93 (710BC). Panama would go for the Great Lighthouse and finish it on turn 105 (470BC).
The progress of the Great Library construction (and several possible later builds) in Jackson is illustrated in the following table:
There is nothing really tricky about this build. The only problem I can see would be if another team was already building a prebuild now and eventually beat us to the Great Library. The only thing we can do is to hope that nobody started a prebuild yet... and even if someone did, that their city will not be as strong shield-wise as Jackson. My personal opinion is that it is unlikely that anyone else would be able to set aside a soon-to-be-11-shield city (one mined cow + 3 mined bonus grasslands + two mined hills!) for a wonder build this early.
However, if we eventually lose the race to someone else, we could still get Pyramids, which would admittedly be also of great use to us, speeding up our REXing, allowing us to catch up slowly, but steadily by researching the cheapest techs in 4 turns each, using the sheer raw research power of all those cities of ours.
Much tougher is Panama... after trying countless variants, I have been able to fine-tune the process as illustrated by the following table:
EDIT: table removed due to an embarrasing mistake I did, resulting the whole schedule go out of sync... you will find a revised, correct schedule later in this thread (timing remains the same).
As you can see, we would have to use the worker being currently built in Red Bricks (yeah, that's the Robbie guy), eventually adding him and Leopold to Panama in order to speed up the build as much as possible, delaying any improvements in the Red Bricks area effectively for ten turns. Two workers are certainly not that little in this time, but considering the fact that we will be able to "spit them out" in just two turns after completing the wonder, if needed, makes this temporary sacrifice justified, IMHO.
As you can see, there is a couple of tricks involved (like adding the workers at some time, mining a non-horse hill first, juggling with the worked tiles - that's the green line - etc.). However, I have personally tested that what this table shows is correct and that this way is most probably optimal. There is another way to build the Great Lighthouse 1 turn earlier, but that one unfortunately largely rules out the possibility of making use of any extra resources we may yet to discover (iron, bonus shields under the jungle tiles).
Once we discover iron (probably on turn 65), we may find out one of the hills near Panama has iron - that would help us complete The Lighthouse 3 turns earlier. Similarly, bonus shield under the riverbank jungle tile would speed up the completion by 4 turns and a bonus shield under the other jungle tile by 1 turn (coupled with any of the other two extras, it would be even 2 turns less). Completing the wonder on turn 105 is the worst case scenario, completing it on turn 96 is the best case scenario (an iron + 2 bonus grasslands under the jungle tiles).
The timing is done in such a way that we would be able to make full use of any iron hills available - the worker is scheduled to go mining a hill shortly after the discovery of the Iron Working (on condition we research IW first, Literature second - see later on).
Research
I have not put exact figures together, but it is very obvious that even with the current beaker output, we will be able to research Literature in about 13 turns and Iron Working in 8 turns. As there is no hurry to have Literature long before completing the Great Library (we can use Pyramids as a prebuild if needed), I would - contrary to what I stated earlier in the Enlightened thread - suggest going for the Iron Working first. Not because of Swordsmen...
but to reveal iron resources. If we are lucky again, one of our wonders might be done a bit ahead of the schedule.Literature would be next.
I would then suggest beelining for Republic, tentatively planning to switch to Republic shortly after finishing our two wonders. That would further speed us up. But this part does not really belong to the Operation Double Edge - we can choose a different path as well... due to the high beaker outputs from the wonder building cities, we should be doing quite well.
We may also decide to slow our research down (since we will get the techs eventually anyway), saving money later helping us to mass-upgrade our military or run a Republic on a deficit spending for some time... choices would be plentiful.
Contacts with Other Teams
Even though it may sound like a heresy, I would hope we'd not make any contacts prior to completing both wonders. The reason is simple - until others have contact with us, they are "blind"... they can't se if we are building any wonders and which ones they are. Besides, if we succed to get the Great Library, we will not need to worry about contacts. We would get those techs eventally anyway...
Thus, I would only build one Galley that would make a roundtrip around our landmass, looking for possible ways to others, helping us to speed making contacts later on, after we get our wonder combo. I would not press the galley too far - just to get a bit better picture of our coastal waters.
Diplomacy
While getting the Great Library will be primarily a matter of raw shield output/power, getting the Lighthouse will actually be also a matter of smart diplomacy. We need other teams to believe/realize that they do not need it and that they would be wasting shields building it. It should not be that difficult, as most of them have established ingame contacts with one another anyway... thus feeling little need to go overseas, hoping to meet our lost civilization. In order to make sure that even Gathering Storm know they need just an ordinary galley to get to the others, redstar1 has already started arranging a meeting with their ambassador...
Caveats
1) We will risk wasting some shields if beaten to the wonders we'd be after. However, Pyramids would be also very useful to us, and the extra commerce of the Colossus wouldn't hurt either.
2) We will slightly delay the development of the Red Brick area, plus we will consume two workers in the process.
3) We will stretch our military power. As both of our super productive cities would be building wonders, we would have to rely on the new cities (not yet founded) to provide escorts for some of the Farmeville settlers. Hopefully, our exploring units will be coming back home by that time, taking care of the most urgent assignements. As it is highly unlikely that anyone else would directly attack us, I believe that this risk is acceptable - once we are done with the wonders, we will quickly catch up, as Jackson and Panama will both be able to crank out troops at a very high rate.
Final Comments
Be so kind and carefully think this plan over. It is a major thing. It definitely is not risk-free, that I admit. But to win this game, we will have to risk at one time or another. There is no such possibility like playing it safe all the time and winning eventually. There are some outstanding players in other teams and there is hardly anything we could do so much better. Our isolation may turn out to be our ultimate advantage... we just have to make the best use of it.
IMHO, the risk posed by this plan is well calculated and pretty much acceptable. Possible gains (which are enormous) far outweigh possible losses (which would be better described as "annoyances" - like having to let someone else settle on our continent because of weak military).
One lovely thing about this plan is that it has almost no negative effect on our REXing. Farmerville will be able to build one settler every 10 turns, Legopolis will be building a Merc+Settler combo every 8 turns (I have done calcs for both these cities similar to what I did for Jackson and Panama... but as they are not really related to the wonder building stuff, I am not posting them here). Before the Operation Double Edge is over, we will be able to build 11 settlers! That's 11 more cities... and I am not considering the new cities that might actually build something, too...
OK, that's it. Your comments, please.
I somehow got confused and thought that once having the Great Lighthouse (a commercial wonder), The Pyramids (an industrial wonder) would trigger our GA, missing the fact that we consider building the Pyramids instead of the Great Lighthouse... 
Comment