Micro Thread

[zakalwe]

If we want HN to work 6 specialists, it needs the corn. So Bitter will only have the cow, and can't work a lot of specialists.

But if we get Bitter to size 10 or so, with the aid of HG perhaps, it might be an option to starve it down. Then we could perhaps manage to get 5 GP during the GA. I'm open to that idea. We would need to spread a religion around to 4 cities, then. That's probably going to take some time to set up.

Let's see:

10+9+8+7+6 = 40, so in 5 turns it could pull 40 * 3 * 3.5 = 420 GPPs.

If we start at 11, it's 45 * 3 * 3.5 = 472 GPPs. It currently has 17 GPPs, so if it puts in a few more before the GA, it could then pop the 500 GP in 5 turns, starting at size 11.

So maybe:
300 - capital
400 - HN
500 - Bitter
600 - HN or WIFOM
700 - WIFOM or HN

I do kind of like the idea of popping 5 GPs and settling ALL of them in the capital. If we think we can still get liberalism and Taj while doing this, that would be my preference. For style points if nothing else.

Founding Taoism in WIFOM would be ideal. Though I guess that isn't so likely to happen. I guess we'll have to see what the situation looks like once Taoism is founded and then decide how to spread religion. Whipping a monastery and some Hindu missionaries out of Bitter is a decent fallback option, although that would probably take it out of the running as a GP city of its own.

[plako]

I do kind of like the idea of popping 5 GPs and settling ALL of them in the capital. If we think we can still get liberalism and Taj while doing this, that would be my preference. For style points if nothing else.

hmm. If we expect/want this game to last a long time, this is a very powerful option.

We could consider not bulbing Philo and just normally researching it. This way we could skip Alpha and make more efficient Education bulb a bit later with one of those Scientists coming later. Especially if it ends up being a race (harder to judge without alpha though). This will delay Golden Age a couple of turns, but would make our current Scientist useful right now.

[zakalwe]

That might make sense, depending on how long it takes us to research philosophy. We would have to spread hinduism from Bitter, then, so we're ready to go immediately when we get philosophy.

[zakalwe]

Sandbox T111: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49396026/rb/tro...dSwordSave

[plako]

Roughly we need ~2-3T longer research time at 100%. That means we need 200-300 more gold and with current accumulation rate that is 4-6T. We get some benefit from settled Scientist probably ~1/2T advantage. Taking into account that our economy will develop and potential optimizations we could make I suspect 5T delay. Might be too much unless we get fail gold from HG. We've 1 more turn in transit before we could settle. HG landing to others would make this plan more viable.

[zakalwe]

I tried playing ahead a bit, landing the HG and settling our current scientist.

Got philosophy EOT 121. Whipped a monastery and 3 missionaries out of Bitter. Should have been 4 missionaries, but I miscounted, so I cheated using worldbuilder. 4 missionaries should be possible with more aggressive whipping though. Meanwhile grew OTR to size 10. Popped and settled a third great scientist "naturally" from the capital EOT121, could and probably should have been a few turns earlier. It needs to stagnate its growth a bit, anyway, waiting for its market to complete.

Started the golden age on T122. OTR working 10 scientists and starving down to 7, then stagnating with 4 scientists. (No idea if this is optimal, but that's what I did.) HN working 6 scientist and stagnant. WIFOM working four scientists and stagnant. I also worked a bunch of scientists in the capital in the second half of the golden age, emptying most of its food box at size 14.

Here's what I popped:

EOT123: scientist from HN @ 400
EOT127: scientist from OTR @ 500
EOT129: scientist/engineer from WIFOM @ 600 (roughly 50/50 chance)
EOT131: scientist from capital @ 700 (taking predence from city order)
EOT132: scientist from HN @ 800
T133 is the final turn of the golden age, doing the final civic switch.

So that gives us one scientist before starting the GA, and another 5 during it. If we settle everything, we'll have 7 settled great scientists. (Or 6, plus an engineer on ice.) I think that's pretty solid, and we should be pretty close to finishing liberalism at the end of the GA.

We could also grab alphabet just to keep a closer tab on the competition. Though we'd still need to watch out for overflow tricks and bulbing.

[zakalwe]

On the other hand, it's still hard to justify not bulbing into techs like education, liberalism and printing press, where we get full value from the bulbs. In the sandbox on T111 I get 1680 beakers per bulb. That's a lot, when a settled scientist just gives ~18 beakers per turn (assumes library, academy, two monasteries).

We probably should bulb philosophy too, to be honest.

Edit - Iron Working, Metal Casting, and Compass all come before Liberalism in bulb preferences. Something to be aware of.

[plako]

I like most of it. Utilising OTR for this seems quite wasteful. In golden Age we would want to work as many tiles as possible. Maybe BM would be better candidate to provide us @500 Scientist or some later one. If it gets to size 13 it could work its mature cottages and resources and still work also 5 Scientists. If nescessary starving a turn or 2 there could be option also.

I also think we're better of putting at least 1 bulb to Education. It is safer concerning Liberalism, speeding up Oxford and as efficient as it gets in terms of bulbing. Printing Press is another good candidate, but then we need Alpha and Machinery.

[zakalwe]

I only used OTR for 5 turns or so, then it was able to work its tiles. BM will be starving 3fpt just to work 5 scientists, and that's really not enough. OTR looks like our only city that can really grow large enough fast enough to contribute. And it can do so without any worker attention at all, which is a great plus.

[zakalwe]

Ok, I tried holding on to the scientist while researching CoL and Alphabet, and I don't like that option so much. It will probably take us until EOT117 to get alphabet, so it doesn't speed up philosophy all that much. (We can bulb philosophy on T118, which is like getting it EOT117.) And I think the bottleneck for starting the golden age will be to get religion spread.

So I think I favor settling our current scientist, researching philosophy ASAP, and switching immediately to a hindu monastery in Bitter. Then whip Bitter like crazy, and send some workers there too to build some mines. Spread hinduism to the farthest cities first; so send the first missionary towards WIFOM and then we can debate whether or not that one should keep going to OTR.

Then we can bulb at least once towards education during the GA, and maybe settle the others.