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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire
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Ren era starts only get the Medieval techs on T0; they don't get PP for the same reason they don't get Gunpowder, Education, etc.
I think how many cities SoL needs to pay back quickly depends on how late you get Democracy and how fast you can build the thing... we're almost 50 turns into the game and nobody even has Constitution yet. I can't see anyone getting to Demo faster than 20 turns from now, and that's assuming they beeline it (ignoring Gunpowder and Astro at their own peril) and blow a bulb on PP. I can't see either of those happening. Then there's building the damn thing... assuming they get half of it with an Engineer, it's still another 10T maybe. So uh, realistically we're not looking at the SoL being online until at least T90? At that point, Rep is a given and you'll def have your city count up to par, but... and PB33 only lasted until T95 IIRC...
OTOH, this game is has a slower start, feels more buildery, and the map is a bit more spacious, so I think it'll definitely last longer, but I think an SoL beeline, like the Kremlin rush, is fundamentally a gamble on how long you think the game will last.
The only unknown strategy is Plako's, right? No one else has mentioned a rifles beeline?
To be fair, the PB33 concession was contributed to by the SoL; combined with his city count, it gave REM an seemingly-unstoppable war machine.
What does it mean "it is worth to"? Is it worth 1350 hammers or is it worth teching Democracy just for SoL?
It cant be really measured by one simple metric like number of cities. It requires special overall situation, stable balance where you know the game will last long.... for you. Democracy costs same as Rifling and brings you nothing in terms of military. The next tech you get significant military advantage is Assembly Line or Railroad, so you must be sure you survive till then. Quote:To be fair, the PB33 concession was contributed to by the SoL; combined with his city count, it gave REM an seemingly-unstoppable war machine. Yes, but he didn't have to tech Democracy in PB33. If you assume the rest of the tech is useless then that makes the SoL ~2.5 times more expensive. It's not nearly such a good deal. Anyway, you guys are right that it's not as simple as looking at the number of cities, you need to decide how long the game will last and what your other options are. My thinking was that a 25t payback period(for both Demo+Statue) would be about average and by some rules of thumb you'd need about 20 cities on the same landmass for that. Quote:Well, isn't the religious trio that REM is getting better than the SoL? Yeah, it's a lot better value IMO. This is the perfect storm for the religious trio, with not having to tech Divine Right.
October 7th, 2016, 05:58
(This post was last modified: October 7th, 2016, 06:01 by GermanJoey.)
Just looking at the yields, the religious trio brings in ~5h, ~6b at least, and 4g, vs the SoL's Rep scientist bringing in ~7.5b - so the religious trio is roughly double yield. Looking at the costs, the SoL itself costs about the same as the 3 religious wonders together, so that's a wash. OTOH, each have an additional cost. For the SoL, the Democracy tech costs 2930 beakers, which is 2442 raw beakers when you factor out the prereq bonus. For the religious trio, each temple+monastery pair costs 76 raw hammers for a Spi civ (without figuring on OR), which is 95g worth of wealth, which we can translate into maybe about ~120b. Thus, 20 cities worth of those turns out to be 2400 raw beakers, almost exactly the same as Democracy's cost.
So, about double yield for about the same cost. There's three big differences though: 1.) you get the trio piecemeal, paying as you go to get as much benefit as you pay for, allowing you to adapt as your situation changes, 2.) you get the trio and its benefits waaaay earlier in the game, and finally 3.) monasteries obsolete at Sci Meth. This last one would be a big downside if Nick/REM weren't Org Asoka, as they'll be more interested in AL and Steel than they will be in the Sci-Meth branch of the tech tree once they're knee deep into the Industrial era. 
I really like REMs assessments of possible outcomes.
To expand on what he was thinking, it will be interesting to see what happens after Scooter kills Mack's LB and plants a city. Do they sign peace? If not, I can see one of them declaring on Al, then the other declaring the next turn. Al loses several cities and spams a bunch of jans, Sculla and Mack are at war, and the entire area becomes a quagmire. It would almost a race to see who could get Al to sign peace first and perhaps no one comes out ahead. On the other hand all the players involved would surely see that outcome as well and try to prevent it. REMs plan to just sit tight and hope no one bothers you until you're in a winning position sounds really solid here. They're playing an almost magically awesome game, pun midly intended. Why bother to do anything dangerous if you can just play awesomely enough to win via concession?  Quote:On a related note, I am still a little dumbfounded as to how REM and Nic are doing as well as they are. They are SPI, yet lead the board in cities (11) and have the TM and AP. They're playing a blinder over there.
Alhazard starting to come online now it seems. I've been waiting for this since I first read their plan. I'm really hoping they can see it come to fruition. It's also interesting to see the reactions of literally every other team from "er, what?" to "hmm, maybe
 ."It was an interesting gambit, and could possibly pay off with the builder's map. Very interesting game. I'm still picking REM/Nic. |
