Vote on Operation Double Edge Plan

[Sharpe]

We have never had a vote on this and think that it is about time that we did.

A lot has changed since the O2E was first proposed. At that time we thought we were fairly isolated with no easy way to reach the other civs.

It made sense to try to address the major isolation problems that we might be facing: falling behind in tech and reaching the other civs. Solution: Go after the Gr Library and Gr Lighthouse. Great idea! (at the time)

Now we know that RP's area is very close and now with the possible discovery of Mystery Isle - and the extreme likelihood that it may be the same "island" that Glory of War was talking about, it doesn't appear that we are nearly as isolated as we first thought. (And that is without seeing yet what is beyond our western coastline)

So it makes sense now that the Gr Lighthouse is dropped, and admittedly Pyramids make a lot of sense for us builders.

But can we afford to build 2 wonders at once? Jackson is well on its way, but Panama seems to be draining our precious resources from the other cities. We could really use those 2 workers that are being used there now (and are going to be joined to Panama in the O2E plan) and perhaps even another REXing city for our expansion.

Right now nearly half of our current cities are working on these 2 wonders or in preparation for building these wonders. And what is our backup plan if we miss one - or even worse both of our planned wonders?

Oracle - not worth it plus I dislike expiring wonders as much as Vondrack dislikes warriors

Great Wall - useless, especially for us being on our own

Great Lighthouse - really not needed anymore with the Bob continent so close

Pyramids - very good wonder, but very good chance of not getting it either

Colossus - good but limited wonder

Great Library - how many techs are we really going to get out of this wonder? Probably the monarchy path mostly and perhaps a few others - but once it was revealed that we had the Gr Library - I bet all the others will zoom toward Education as soon as possible and may stop trading as much to prevent us from gobbling up their techs.

plus we can't get Pyramids + Colossus or we will get an early Golden Age

[Sharpe]

I voted for Wonder in Jackson but delay Panama - I am not sure about Panama but I don't want to drop the idea completely yet. But we really do need the workers and resources shifted elsewhere.

[Tiberius]

Sharpe, I can't vote because the option I'd choose is not there. That would be:

Continue building wonders in both cities, but not "full speed ahead". I mean, I wouldn't use all of our resources for this purpose; I wouldn't send all of our workers there and wouldn't add any to Panama. If that means 2 or 3 truns delay, so be it.

In case we lose one of the wonders it will be the Pyramids, and I'd be content building the Colossus instead (a wonder I like and almost always build) or the Oracle (for its cultural value).

Edit: rereading the options again, I could vote "delay in Panama", but I wasn't sure what do you understand by this. I thought you would delay it by building something else first, this is why I didn't vote it.

[lmtoops]

If we miss one wonder, the back-up plan is build Colossus. I prefer Colosus over the Pyramid (but I'm crazy).

I we miss both wonders, than sh*t. This is very unlikely, but it could happen. We would get a less useful early wonder, but it won't be a total loss.

From reading Sharpe's argument, his only objection is using the workers exclusively for the wonder cities. Since the Pyr or Col would be fine, for the second wonder, we could use only one worker. I don't support this, but it's an option. I support full steam ahead with Operation Vondr....ahhh...I mean Operation Double Edge.

[Tiberius]

Supposing that the "delay" thing means not sacrificing all our workers for Panama, I voted "delay wonder building in Panama".

[redstar1]

I voted to continue with the plan....

I'd rather not lose the workers but I see it as a simple matter of gambling on a couple of very useful wonders. I prefer the Pyramid over the Glh by a long shot because it is going to help us expand so much and I'd even go as far as to say we should try and finish the Pyramids as early as possible.

I don't think the plan is going to slow down our REX by too much more. We will soon have 2 cities working on Settlers and from what Vondrack says we will have a settler every 4 or 5 turns. Thats more than enough IMHO. The lost workers will also soon be replaced.

In 3 turns we will have Iron Working and we will be able to see where our iron deposits are (lets hope there are some!). If we find iron around Panama or Jackson then that will speed up the plans somewhat.

I'm also not convinced that we need another Galley yet. Lets see if theres an island or not then we can worry about what sort of Navy we are going to need.

[vondrack]

my 2 cents about O2E

Ahhh, Steve... you are giving me tough time...

Look, I do understand your concerns about slowed REXing (even though I hardly share your feeling that we are "losing drive" - just the contrary... after a thorough preparation, we are now going for sort of a Big Bang). But your objections are presented in a way that is at least biased:

1) Workers

One of your primary objections seems to be the loss of two workers added to Panama. Well, workers are what we have no problem with, actually. They are damn cheap! Even the most corrupt distant cities will be able to keep producing 1 worker every 10 turns, unless they have NO grassland (or other 2-food source) in their inner ring. We will soon have lots of them, since the S/SE cities will be able to produce workers very efficiently (unlike anything else). Plus, a golden rule says that you should keep one worker per city. Well, keep in mind that it actually means one worker per every city you are still improving! Both Jackson and Panama will be - until the end of O2E - fully developed and will need NO workers at all. Jackson will, as an added benefit, spit out a worker right after finishing the first wonder, making great use of the food accumulated while at pop 6 (which would otherwise be wasted).

So, while I can see that a road connecting Legopolis to Red Bricks would be nice, its importance is negligible in comparison with the effect of, say, The Pyramids. Sacrificing such a huge opportunity to keep one or two expendable workers alive is just insane, IMHO...

2) Great Library

It is 100% true that I presented The Great Library as our guarantee to catch up on techs quickly once we make contacts. However, it certainly is not just that. The civilization enjoying the benefits of GLib has a very high degree of freedom as far as preferences and flexibility of play is concerned.

You can press full speed ahead in the non-Education branch, leaving others to fill in the techs from the Education branch, gaining a tech lead. You can shut your research mostly down and save money for unit upgrades or whatever...

You can research only the wonder-enabling techs, granting yourself the convenience of being the first able to build the key early medieval wonders (and there are several of them - Sistine Chapel, SunTzu's, Leo's... every one of these wonders is worth a fortune. Sistine will be crucial for us, since we got screwed on luxuries (and will need every bit of happiness boosting stuff). SunTzu's AoW would make our defenses unbelievably strong since we would have barracks in every city of ours (and our units, if attacked, would fully heal between turns). And Leonardo's Workshop would save us thousands of gold on future unit upgrades. Do you realize how great an advantage it is to be able to research Engineering, knowing that you will get Feudalism and Monotheism through the Great Library?

So, The Great Library is much more of an advantage than just a guarantee against lagging behind tech-wise.

Plus, keep in mind that if we are two or three techs behind NOW, it does not mean we would be doing as well in 10 turns (which would probably be the earliest moment we could make our first contact). While our research huts are used up (maybe one more in the shrouded part of Legos Minor, but that's it...), others keep researching. Within 10 turns, we may find ourselves lagging by as much as 5-6 techs. And what would we offer for them? We will have no exclusive to tech-whore around... so we would have to use our money, workers, we would be pressed for maps...

No, I will do my best to prevent meeting others in the inferior role of an "orphan" civilization needing help of their more fortunate rivals to get back into the main race. I will do anything and everything to emerge as a true superpower, setting the pace rather than desperately trying to keep it...

Your assumption that other civs will "unite" in order to bring our scientific superiority to an early end... do you really believe this? Especially the Bob continent seem to be just overcrowded with civilizations eager to cooperate... And if they stop trading? Even better! Since we will get those techs anyway, sooner or later. But if every one of them researches all of the techs the hard way (in the futile effort to prevent us from getting them through GLib), we will be able to gain even bigger lead tech-wise, since we will be able to focus on the non-Edu branch and press full speed ahead, while leaving others bogged down... Do not overestimate their desire to stop us. They primarily have to follow their own proactive strategy rather than just focus on defensively stopping us. Every one of them will have lots of more important things to do. Especially the Bob continent civs will no doubt go after military techs, rather then wasting time on Monotheism, Theology, and Education.

3) The Second Wonder

I 100% agree that The Great Lighthouse is now out of question. The Great Lighthouse was meant as our means to get to the others while preventing others from getting to us. Well, we now know that there is no easy way to prevent others from getting to us. So the only defense against anyone trying to settle our lands is - to settle it faster. But that's exactly what The Pyramids are for! With faster growth, we would be able to produce more workers, more settlers, we would have higher population and thus higher shield output. That is now our best way to secure Legos Major against outsiders.

At the same time, I am not really fearing anyone else settling and being able to keep their settlements on our landmass. We would sure be able to wipe anyone out with quite little efforts. But we would have to go to war and that's something we would rather avoid... wouldn't we?


Speaking of our chances to build the two wonders we want... let me include a brief summary:

Luxes (Ottomans - sci, ind): out of race
Voxes (Persians - sci, ind): AFAIK, they do not have that much land at their disposal, so going after The Pyramids would certainly be less than effective for them, plus there is the threat of GS - they will have to compete for their continent and I am sure Voxes realize that and prepare for war (that will make best use of their awesome UU) instead of wasting efforts on a wonder they may never get a chance to benefit from.
Gathering Storm (Egyptians - rel, ind): this is most probably our biggest competitor as far as wonder building is concerned. However, I somehow believe that they will not be very eager to pursue wonders very much, as they have a big threat in the neighbourhood (Persians). They are likely to work on their defenses first.
Glory of War (China - mil, ind): too small to be able to focus on any 400-shield wonder. Building any of them would be just sheer nonsense.
RPers (Spain - comm, rel): severely hampered by the lack of the industrial trait. Just think of how tight our schedule is regarding the improvements being built for the wonder building cities - and our workers are industrious. There is no way RPers could have two cities as productive as we have. I very much doubt them having even one such city. Besides, if they do not lie, the only wonder they are interested in is The Great Wall.
Neu Demogyptica (Arabs - exp, rel): ditto plus they were warring, so no chance to enter the race, IMHO.

So, what our chances to build both our edges are? Consider me naive or overly optimistic, but I believe that they are very good. Very good, if we use all we have to build them as fast as possible.

If building two wonders would slow our REXing, it would be something to seriously consider. But in several turns, we will begin a REX phase none of other teams will be able to half-match! A settler every 4-5 turns!

The only drawback of the O2E plan is that we will get a little bit thin on military. But due to our isolation, that is a risk we can take, I believe.

So, my vote is naturally: full speed ahead on O2E.

[Tiberius]

If the plan continues unmodified (as it seems right now) I request a worker in Legopolis after the settler.

It would be used to:
1. Connect a luxury
2. Build a river-mine for Legopolis
3. Connect Legopolis to the southern cities
4. Starts roading "the southern highway". the road supposed to make our REXing faster, by moving settlers on already built roads to their destination.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Tiberius
If the plan continues unmodified (as it seems right now) I request a worker in Legopolis after the settler.

It would be used to:
1. Connect a luxury
2. Build a river-mine for Legopolis
3. Connect Legopolis to the southern cities
4. Starts roading "the southern highway". the road supposed to make our REXing faster, by moving settlers on already built roads to their destination.

Well, the problem is that producing a worker in Legopolis would seriously mess with the flow of our Merc+Settler combos from there... the current balance is very precious and taking one pop out would mean throwing this balance away...

ad 1. connecting the luxury is not urgent, we can use the luxury slider to handle unhapiness, when it becomes a problem

ad 2. a river-mine for Legopolis would actually be just wasting the worker's time. Legopolis operates smoothly without it and has no need for it. With production of 7-8 shields per turn, it is able to produce 30-shield builds in 4 turns (7+7+8+8). Increasing it to 8-9 shields would not change anything. Also, with alternating +2/+3 food surplus, Legopolis is growing every 4 turns (3+3+2+2) - it would not grow faster if +3 all the time (as 3+3+3<10). You were the first to verify this, Tibi!

ad 3.+4. well, we would save how much, two turns per every combo? considering how much it would mess with the production queue in Legopolis and how long it would take before the road was actually finished and thus effective (1+12+2+1+12+2=30 turns, if clearing the jungle first, 1+5+1+5=12 turns, if building a road only), I doubt it would be worth the hassle. Besides, our new Red Bricks worker shall be assigned exactly to this task, I suppose - first finishing the road between Red Bricks and Farmerville, then connecting Red Bricks to Legopolis.

[ZargonX]

I feel very strongly that we should do everything in our power to get the GLib, though I am less attached to the Pyramids. That said, I still think we should continue on with the plan as-is, not withstanding any future world changes. While we could be doing other things with the workers, granted, having wonders will not only confer the benefit of hte wonder onto us, but also give us a good cultural base, which we have been ignoring up to this point.

Regarding the worker in RedBrick, I would not want him to start roading Lego-RedBrick at this time. A road system from RB to the future site of Karina is a much more useful investment in energy as I see it. Once we have another few workers running around, then we can engage in some jungle clearing up around the capital.

Regarding galleys, once we find out how the continents line up, it is possible that if it is only a small gap, that we could indeed blockade it. Whether we need to, or want to, is something we can decide once we see the situation.

On a side note, just got Master of Orion III and like you may have heard, you better read the manual

[redstar1]

Got MOO3 too, its damn hard going. Don't really see the point yet but i'll read the manual later.

[lmtoops]

Workers should come exclusively from our wasteful Southern towns.

[Tiberius]

And who will clear the jungle? You have already taken away one worker that should have worked Red Bricks and cleared the jungle. Now if the next worker will road to the south, who will actually improve Red Bricks?

Also this "we would save how much, two turns per every combo" is flawed. For a merc+settler combo the trip to Zargonia or Karina will take 12 to 15 turns without a road, while 4 to 5 turns with roads. We would gain just 2 turns maybe for the first combo, but Legopolis is supposed to build 4 or 5, is it not?

What is this sudden "we don't need workers elsewhere than Panama" philosophy? So before ODE the 2 workers we are adding to Panama were useful, but now that we are going to dispose them, they don't need to be replaced ?!

Don't want to build it in Legopolis? OK, let's build it in Farmerville. Or do you know some other city that could build a worker in a reasonable time (less than 5 turns)?

[vondrack]

Oh, oh, oh... Tibi, mate... take it easy, please. I did not mean to sound harsh - if I did, I honestly apologize.

Let me explain:

Originally posted by Tiberius
And who will clear the jungle? You have already taken away one worker that should have worked Red Bricks and cleared the jungle. Now if the next worker will road to the south, who will actually improve Red Bricks?

As for the jungle below Panama-Legopolis-Jackson city belt, we do not need to clear this RIGHT NOW. These cities are having (or will have) improved tiles enough. Keep in mind that we shall be adding the two workers to Panama on turns 77-78. That's 16-17 turns from now! By that time, we will have two more workers from Red Brick and yet another one from Forkmouth. That's three for two we will add to Panama. Then there will be Rover and Jason and Jimbo... that's no lack of workers!

As for the next Red Brick worker roading to the South...

Originally posted by Tiberius
Also this "we would save how much, two turns per every combo" is flawed. For a merc+settler combo the trip to Zargonia or Karina will take 12 to 15 turns without a road, while 4 to 5 turns with roads. We would gain just 2 turns maybe for the first combo, but Legopolis is supposed to build 4 or 5, is it not?

It's not flawed, I just did not fully explain. By roading the two jungle tiles, our worker will use 12 turns, if not clearing them first (30 if clearing them first), resulting in speeding the combos by two turns - I am talking about the jungle part of the road ONLY.

Using the same 12 turns that the worker would need to road the two jungle tiles (1+5 + 1+5), he will be able to road 4 non-jungle tiles (1+2 + 1+2 + 1+2 + 1+2), speeding the movement of our combos twice as much. That's why I suggested to use the new Red Brick worker to work on the southern "below jungle" part of our "North-to-South highway" first rather than starting with the much shorter, but quite difficult part between Legopolis and R.B. I believe that it's also exactly what Zargon mentioned.

Originally posted by Tiberius
What is this sudden "we don't need workers elsewhere than Panama" philosophy? So before ODE the 2 workers we are adding to Panama were useful, but now that we are going to dispose them, they don't need to be replaced ?!

Now I'm totally lost. I have never said anything like that. The philosophy is "we need the workers primarily in Jackson/Panama now". Until we have more to assign to other tasks, Leopold, Robbie, and Jason shall focus on that area. If you closely look at my initial plans for O2E, you will see that all the worker moves I am now insisting on were planned exactly this way. There is no "sudden" philosophy change, I am just following the plan, trying to prevent it to be slowed down by detours that might bring visible short-term effects, but would (seriously) threaten the O2E goals.

Originally posted by Tiberius
Don't want to build it in Legopolis? OK, let's build it in Farmerville. Or do you know some other city that could build a worker in a reasonable time (less than 5 turns)?

The workers would come from the new, quite corrupt cities being plopped over the S/SE of Legos Major. Out of the cities we currently have, Panama & Jackson are building wonders, Legopolis & Farmerville have shield output too good to waste it on workers, so that leaves Red Bricks for building workers. But most future S/SE cities will start as 1 shield, +2 or +3 food surplus cities. Such cities are great for producing workers, as they build a worker in 10 turns, the same time they need to grow pop+1. That way, they are useful... however, to build a Temple takes them eternity.

I guess it would be a good idea to summarize our priorites as I see them ATM:

1) Operation Double Edge (includes Jason, Leopold, and Robbie)
2) REXing (producing settlers & some escorts; uses Legopolis & Farmerville)
3) building a "highway" between Legopolis and Karina area, starting with the easiest parts first (uses pretty much the rest of our resources)

4) checking our coastal waters (G.G.)
5) charting Legos Minor (Angus)

Hopes this clarifies my previous posts.

[Tiberius]

I did not want to sound harsh, either. Sorry for that.

I really don't have the time to react in detail to all this, but I can tell you that it just botheres me that you (well, not you, but the plan) took away 3 workers to work only Panama, while we would need them elsewhere, too; and now, you object building new ones, too. Building a southern route would greatly incease our settler deployment time, and honestly I don't want to wait until some not even built city will build in the unforseen future a worker.

Maybe the difference lyes in the perspective about this wonder building plan; I don't see this O2E as our saviour; it is great plan, yes, but we won't win the game with it; it would be great to build both wonders, but it isn't more of a priority for me than settling and improving our continent.

Edit: I wouldn't put in your 1-2-3 list in a specific order; for me, all 3 of them are equally important.