23-06-2003 11:00									#1
	GSIA Special Investigation Put an end to popups!

It would seem that GS is in a much stronger position than we (or at least I) realized. During our golden age, the Gathering Storm Intelligence Agency (GSIA) essentially suspended its spying operations because trying to compare our economy in a golden age with other economies not in golden ages would be tricky at best. But now that our golden age has ended, the GSIA has launched a new investigation to find out exactly how close our competition really is. The results are a bit staggering:

Manufactured Goods
GS 109
#2 70
#3 53
#4 46
#5 45

GNP
GS 241
#2 184
#3 133
#4 126
#5 85

Productivity
GS 324
#2 232
#3 181
#4 167
#5 144

These results just about floored me. Even without a GA, Gathering Storm is very nearly a match for what any other civ could do with a GA.

	23-06-2003 13:26									#2
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* FrustratedPoet gives a huge round of applause to the Economy guys.



It's true that other teams still have their GA to come, and have more potential land to expand into than us. However, we're only using half our available territory right now - and Vox's grassland is better than our large areas of mountains/desert. It's looking VERY good.

Also, the GA's of ND and GoW at least are going to be during war-time, so they won't be able to build economic improvements. The only real danger to our economic dominance is a large Lego empire (with Vox as a vassal) having a wonder-fueled peaceful GA.

	23-06-2003 13:55									#3
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I assume that the method of doing this is to progressively remove workers and make them entertainers, and see at what point our productivity etc. drops to the next rank? Cunning plan. The nice thing for us is that it only lets civs test out the civs below them in rank, so for the categories we are first in, they have no way of telling how far ahead we actually are (aside from a rough guess on the powergraph, but that's a convolution of lots of things).

	23-06-2003 14:16									#4
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quote: Originally posted by vulture I assume that the method of doing this is to progressively remove workers and make them entertainers, and see at what point our productivity etc. drops to the next rank?

Exactly.

	23-06-2003 17:00									#5
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* alva pushes the economists back on stage for another curtain call

Truelly amazing!!!

I guess part of these rusult are because of us being industrial, but we are not the only ones are we. Very impressive work indeed.

	23-06-2003 17:11									#6
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

WOW!!

Even before the Vox dust-up, I knew something special was going on...

	23-06-2003 19:43									#7
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That is pretty amazing, Nathan.

Shocking, even.

It makes me feel better about our chances... but let's not get cocky about it.

-Arrian

	23-06-2003 20:56									#8
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

It's kind of a slanted result, though. I have to say it is in itself wonderful to be so good, but this comes from being maxed out in pop in a couple of cities, in which we favor shields over food. If we want to keep this, we should really start to invest in food, so that our coastal cities can grow...

Otherwise, the moment the other teams are building enough workers, they are going to catch up. Lego for sure, but also RP and ND have more potential then us in terms of land, and even GoW will come close. Also note that corruption is going to get worse for us, we settled our core (except in case we could build a FP asap, which should be our priority anyhow)

Anyone want to guess at specific positions? We know Vox is last, but who is the one so close to them in shields? RP, with their non-industrial workers?

DeepO

	23-06-2003 21:06									#9
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I think that Vox aren't even on the list. Aside from us, we have to account for RP, GoW, ND and Lego, as well as Vox, so the #6 civ isn't on the lists at all, and that is almost certainly Vox at this point. But guessing that Lego is #2 in most things, that leaves us at pretty much double the capacity of any of the Bob civs, so us weighing in on a fight can potentially supply as many troops as 2 Bob civs, although that is probably way optimistic giving we are fighting off our home turf and they'll be hitting GAs (for two civs).

	23-06-2003 21:23									#10
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I'd say it's pretty much GS, Lego, RP, GoW/ND in order on production and mfg. In gnp, RP is the one in last, but they aren't paying support costs (or not as much), so it's not as bad as it looks. I wouldn't be suprised if they are or above the gpt we are at with 100% tax, as we are only at +50 ourselves.

I agree with DeepO, we need to start focusing back on growing population. Worker pumps are what got us into this position in the first place. Cyclone by itself isn't enough, maybe we should get a couple builds (Market, Library) out of the way in EotS at high pop, and then liquidate it's pop back to under size 7 to set it back into a Worker/Settler pump to help out. That, along with a Granary in SS, and we should be able to at least keep up with Lego's population growth.

Arashi, Hurricane, and Tempest should be able to handle the production we need while EotS is off building population.

	23-06-2003 21:48									#11
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Yeah, I was also thinking on a granary in SS... seems a worthy goal to spend money on. As to getting EotS to under size 7 again: Hmmm.... I know we could use the pop, however it is one of our best cities. If it is needed we should do it asap, but it will be a hard thing to decide on.

DeepO

	23-06-2003 21:49									#12
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Oh, and good catch on Vox not being in the list

DeepO

	23-06-2003 21:57									#13
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The more I think about putting EotS back in settler/worker pump mode after a marketplace and library, the more I like it. Once we get aqueducts in Bolderberg and Tornado, we can get back a lot of the production it costs us by boosting their sizes and having them take over tiles EotS is currently working, and having the production there instead of EotS would be useful for building the other improvements those cities need (including harbors so they can give the tiles back to EotS when we're done).

	23-06-2003 22:04									#14
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO Oh, and good catch on Vox not being in the list

Sorry about not mentioning that explicitly. I figured that with how far behind they are and with them in the process of packing up and moving, there wasn't a lot of point to running down data on them.

	23-06-2003 22:08									#15
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I think we could conceivably have EotS at a 4 turn Settler pump (with some spare production) at size 10-12. It would probably limit Tempest to size 10 during that time, and they'd be 40 food Settlers.

EotS could produce 7 straight 1 turn workers, which would allow us to give tiles to Cyclone and Bolderberg, and some of Cyclone's tiles to Tornado, while re-irrigating the Plains we need rather quickly. Then those Workers could help clear out the Jungle faster, which with an FP up about the same time is going to be very nice land from a food standpoint. Once we have enough Workers (15-20 out of EotS), we can then regrow EotS, max out it's food at size 12, and then set it up for 20 shields per turn production for 40 turns. That will be about the time Hurricane runs out of food most likely, and has to drop down to under 20 shields per turn.

Given that we have Aquaducts coming online in Bolderberg and Tornado, we have a lot of Jungle to clear out, that Tempest can be very productive with a few Workers added, and our FP is going to come online in an undeveloped area soon, I think the population in Workers pays off more than the population in EotS.

	23-06-2003 22:26									#16
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Well, I agree on EotS... but still, it hurts. It's one of those cases where objective analysis proves intuition to be wrong

(although intuition tells me there is one thing you never can have enough off in civ: workers)

Can we (short)rush in EotS, to get this going faster? Or would a rushed granary in SS be more worth it? (Or perhaps we simply have to save our money for the time being, we're going to spend 200 gold on Chivalry soon)

Other idea: do we still have reg med-infs left which we could disband usefully? If we don't get into a war very soon, those med infs are not going to be worth a lot of gold in upkeep. And we're going to need a lot of extra workers we also need to support.

Oh, 40 food settlers: Nah... I prefer 2-turn workers over that (we can't get to 1-turn on size 6, can we?), it would take a lot of production other cities could use in the mean time.

DeepO

	23-06-2003 22:41									#17
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Outside a GA, it would take something on the order of three cattle on grasslands (two irrigated) and two or three grasslands with shield (depending on whether a shield is lost to corruption at size 10) for a city to crank out one-turn workers.

I don't like the idea of disbanding regular MedInfs just because they're regulars rather than vets. They would have trouble against most types of healthy units, but could be quite useful against wounded units (including knights/riders/ansars that retreat with one hit point left). And they're eligible for promotion if they succeed in combat.

	23-06-2003 23:33									#18
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I don't know about the med infs, Nathan. I'm not saying that we need to disband them, but unless we build a lot of cities very soon, upkeep will be our biggest expense. If we're not planning on fighting the next 10 turns, each unit less will be another 1 gpt (currently a 2% increase)... and in case we have to chose, med infs are better to disband then pikes.

Very soon, we want to have knights, and we want to have a lot more workers. Further, we're building a lot of improvements we need to pay... it won't take long before we're going to want to disband med infs anyway, so I'd rather do this soonish.

As to disbanding regs: It's not because they're regs I want to disband them, it's because if we want to disband med infs, the regs will be the first to go. And I certainly don't want to disband everything right now, only those we can afford to lose!

DeepO

	24-06-2003 00:08									#19
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Given the likelihood of war on Bob, I think disbanding any forces right now would be a mistake. I hate losing so much gold on upkeep, but I'd hate having to scramble to replace disbanded units more.

Further, in MP, I view MedInfs as definitely worthwhile units. In SP, it's standard operating procedure for knights to operate independently without pike protection, but in MP, it would be a whole lot more dangerous. And if knights don't operate independently, it negates a lot of their advantage, making MedInfs a lot more attractive by comparison in MP.

	24-06-2003 03:50									#20
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Please don't disband any units.

We are walking around in North Stormia with a big red X painted on our backs...

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

	24-06-2003 04:11									#21
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From the Lego chat, it sounds like they have several Libraries in place right now. The culture graph would support it too. Vondrack gave a 6-7 turn estimate on Education (24x44=1056 beakers), and their commerce isn't as high as ours. Can we go back through the saves and find out exactly when Lego finished Theology?

In any case, we have some catching up to do in regards to research capacity. The Collosus sounds like it's ours for the taking, and that will help, as will Libraries in Tempest, EotS, and later Hurricane, along with the FP being finished.

	24-06-2003 04:25									#22
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Agree... I was also wondering how mauch of their border expanse were temples. Vondrack made it sound like it was only temples, but that doesn't mean that the core cities are already on libraries.

Also note they have 2 rushes to do before wonder building: very strange sentence, I'm still trying to figure out what they meant.

DeepO

	24-06-2003 20:15									#23
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It does look like we need some decent research boost- if an opening on Bob doesn't present itself, a continous cold-war is our chance to be true tech leaders...

OTOH, our large unit count is quite a burden. I wonder if we can find some use to it soon...

	24-06-2003 20:22									#24
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO Also note they have 2 rushes to do before wonder building: very strange sentence, I'm still trying to figure out what they meant. DeepO

At a guess, they want to rush a courthouse or some happiness wonders (or a granary) in a city that will then be set to build a wonder, so they can let it grow to get the best productivity without having to worry about happiness (or using the luxury slider to keep that city happy while wasting gold in other cities).