The real downside to fulfilling our Stored Food target is that GDI's food is going to be way more bland until after we get through all of it5. We're going to be pumping out bulk calories and not much else for the rest of the Plan, it looks like.
It was fairly likely that without the target, we'd just have been doing stuff that isn't even technically edible, like caffeinated kudzu and poulticeplants. We
might have gone for Ranching Domes, though.
Infrastructure now requires the completion of three phases of Apartments.
Required Projects:
-Complete at least three more phases of Blue Zone Apartments: 28/480 Progress ~6 dice median
--Requires 4 Logistics
Semi Required Projects:
-None
Infrastructure Total = 6 dice
36 Infrastructure dice for the rest of the Plan, ~30 dice available, no free dice required.
Uh...
@doruma1920 , it's 30 not 36; we have five turns left.
But yeah, 30-6 = 24 Infrastructure dice to play with, so there's room to hit all the stuff I really want (
Suborbital Shuttles Phase 1, Blue Zone Arcologies Phase 4, Chicago Phase 4 with progress on Phase 5)
Heavy Industry now requires the completion of the Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr and the Industrial Lasers, along with the completion of two phases of Fusion to power the Military Factories.
Required Projects:
-Crystal Beam Industrial Laser Development: 0/80, 1 die 70%
-Crystal Beam Industrial Laser Deployment: ??? Not Yet Developed (Going off of past refits and wild guesses, ~4 dice median)
-Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr: 0/320 Progress, ~4 dice median
--Requires 2 Energy
--Provides 4 Capital Goods
Semi Required Projects:
-Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant Phase 7-8: 153/600 Progress, ~6 dice median
--Requires 2 Labor
--Provides 32 Energy
Heavy Industry Total = 15 dice
25 Heavy Industry dice for the rest of the Plan, 10 dice available, 0 free dice required
Yeah, that's pretty good. I want to push out the fusion plants early, mind you, because we're trying to build the shipyards they power quickly, but we've definitely got room to keep our promises.
Light and Chemical Industry does not have anything that is explicitly required by the Plan, however, it does have multiple progress efficient way to provide Consumer Goods.
Required Projects:
-None
Semi Required Projects:
-Chemical Fertilizer Plants Phase 2: 65/240 Progress, ~3 dice median
--Requires 1 Energy
--Provides 4 Food
--Provides 4 Consumer Goods
-Civilian Drone Factories: 0/380 Progress, ~5 dice median
--Requires 2 Energy
--Provides 4 Consumer Goods
--Provides 2 Logistics
Light and Chemical Industry Total = 8 dice
25 Light and Chemical Industry dice for the rest of the Plant, 17 dice available, 0 free dice required
It also seems likely that some other Light Industry options for +Consumer Goods may open up in the future. The co-ops have filled a lot of the available demand, but there's some industries that never rebounded and could turn into projects for us.
One note is that while we don't have hard numbers, we've been told that
Chicago Planned City is now going to provide +Consumer Goods and +Capital Goods instead of +Abatement. That means we have an additional source that also uses areas where hitting our mandatory targets isn't much of a stretch (Heavy Industry and Infrastructure)
Agriculture requires an 18 point increase in the Food Reserve.
-Food: 18 additional points in reserve:
--Strategic Food Stockpile Construction Phase 2-6: 38/1000 Progress ~13 dice median
---Requires 20 Food
---Provides 10 Food in reserve
---Note: Assumes Phase 5 and 6 continue the progress increasing pattern of Phase 2-4 and are 225 and 250 Progress respectively.
--Extra Large Food Stockpiles: 1 die 100%
---Requires 16 Food
---Provides 8 Food in reserve
---Note: This is a single die, autocomplete project and as such we should use an Administrative Assistance or Erewhon die when we have the spare Food available.
Semi Required Projects:
-Freeze Dried Food Plants: 126/200 ~1 die median (Increases efficiency of Strategic Food Stockpile Construction and Extra Large Food Stockpiles)
--Requires 1 Energy
--Currently Provides 5 Food
--Note: Currently we have 18 Food, if we committed to producing an additional 18 Food we would not require Freeze Dried Food Plants. However, if we completed Freeze Dried Food Plants we would receive an additional 5 Food for a total of 23 Food, and we would require less Food for the stockpiles. If the Food provided by Freeze Dried Food Plants is the Food freed up by more efficient stockpiling, then it follows that the required Food per Food Reserve changes from 2 Food per Food Reserved to 1.5 Food per Food Reserved. This means we would require 27 Food for the remaining 18 Food Reserve. IE requiring us to produce 4 Food.
Note: This analysis will continue with the understanding that Freeze Dried Food Plants will be completed for minimal dice as this requires 1 die, combined with 2 dice for one phase of Vertical Farming Projects (which was chosen over Blue Zone Aquaponics and Agriculture Mechanization as it provides sufficient Food for the Food Reserve Goal and some Consumer Goods for that goal), not completing Freeze Dried Food Plants would require 5 dice (assuming the use of two phases of Blue Zone Aquaponics and one phase of Agriculture Mechanization).
Note2: Assuming an AA die is used for Extra Large Food Stockpiles and thus not wasting the Agricultural die bonus on an autocompletion project
Agricultural Total = 16
20 Agricultural Dice for the rest of the Plan, 4 dice available, no free dice required.
If we get our Consumer Goods from Chicago or a separate as-yet unknown Light Industry project, of course, it makes more sense to just keep hammering up the
Aquaponics line for more +Food at the same dice cost. But yeah, we can do this if we push.
Tiberium is the source of the most efficient means of achieving our Processing goal, Tiberium Processing Plants. It is technically possible to achieve the processing goal by completing the Chicago Planned City, or by completing Phase 4 of the same along with Tiberium Processing Refits. However, the latter is 5 times as much progress as the Tiberium Processing Plants, while the former is 8 times as much. Still, because it's possible, Tiberium Processing Plants is technically only Semi Required.
Because Chicago
also helps us with Consumer Goods and Capital Goods (where we want to have a comfortable surplus even after the war emergency allocations are taken away), we may well want to push ahead with it anyway.
But yeah, we have a lot of flexibility in how we use Tiberium dice. I just don't want to waste any.
Anyway, Agriculture and Orbital are the ones that are actually tight, especially Orbital; Military and Heavy Industry are feeling a bit of strain but their goals are doable as long as we focus them down. The main reasons we need or 'need' to spend further Free dice on Military are:
1) Because we do have two
strictly optional Military projects (Zone Armor and SADN) that it would be highly desirable to start work on during the current Plan.
2) Because we want to complete the shipyards quickly, as there will be a major strategic impact on the military situation as soon as their ships start hitting the water. Having our first wave of escort carriers ready to go six months sooner could make a big difference somewhere in the world, so finishing those before the last minute is very desirable.
But you're right,
@doruma1920 , that there is no
formal need to continue extremely aggressive Free dice spending on Heavy Industry
in and of itself. The problem I see is that unless we're content to let Anadyr simmer along for several quarters and finish in 2061Q3 or 'Q4, we have a strong incentive to surge spending on it
now because the Resource budget will be tighter in 'Q1 and 'Q2 with the research gachas opening up again.
My issue with food politics is that GDI is so corrupt that large swathes of our food just outright disappears when we move it to long term food storage. A 50% loss is redicously high. We need to fix the corruption inherent in the system before we actually grow the field.
It doesn't help that agriculture by far has the lowest number of dice in the entire quest despite how apparently important the industry is to the people. And yet we cannot grow it any further? Something is inherently funky with the system.
Long term food storage doesn't degrade like this man. So that must mean people are stealing it.
You're ignoring some very important facts.
1a) GDI's total food consumption is very large. Not the relatively small amounts any one of our projects deals in, but something like a hundred points, maybe more. Our
surplus is limited, but that's a very large production (much of which we didn't build in-game, as demonstrated by everyone not having starved to death in 2049 before game start) balanced against a slightly smaller consumption. Therefore, and this is important:
1b) +1 Food is only enough to feed, roughly speaking, a few million people for a quarter. Might be more like one million, might be more like ten million, but it's not
that many. My bet would be somewhere between two and five million; speculating too hard on this gives Ithillid migraines, though, so we are NOT getting a hard number on this and I don't even want one.
2a) By contrast we are explicitly told that having a total of 58 or 68 Stored Food (targets offered for us to hit by 2065 in renegotiation) allow a situation where "with these levels, even the rapidly increasing population of GDI can eat well for months, even assuming a near total cease in food production." So in short, 58-68 Stored Food is enough to feed 600 million people well for "months," that is to say,
at least a full quarter, very possibly two quarters or even more.
2b) +1 Stored Food is enough to feed, roughly speaking, 10-20 million people for a quarter.
3) This is the critical point to understand. One point of Stored Food is not precisely interchangeable, necessarily, with having +1 Food for one quarter. It is
objectively false to claim that when we convert +3 or +4 Food to +2 Stored Food, the total quantity of food is 'shrinking' and a bunch is going away.
No, what is happening is that we're pushing, say, "enough calories to feed forty million people for the quarter" into the storage system
continuously, and that eventually stabilizes us at "enough food in the granary to feed 240 million people for the quarter" or something, with the limit being that we try to keep the food from staying in storage for more than eighteen months for fear that it'll start to spoil, so we're having to continuously replace it and can't just pile up infinity food to the sky forever. This is especially because it requires careful maintenance and continuous power to maintain things like gargantuan mega-refrigerators and climate-controlled storage.
The trick is that "enough calories to feed forty million people for the quarter" could easily be +20 or +24 Food taken away from our surplus, while "enough food in the granary to feed 240 million people for the quarter" is probably somewhere around +10 or +12 Stored Food.
Your attempts to crudely track the food and 'prove' that massive embezzlement is going on fall flat.
Gotta say, the idea of corruption in a global hegemonic government with no real competition is not really that far-fetched.
GDI is under enough urgent external survival pressure from Nod and tiberium that the lack of internal competition doesn't
necessarily lead to serious corruption problems. Honestly, they're under more pressure to be corruption-free than most real life governments, with occasional exceptions like "we are being invaded by a vastly larger enemy" Ukraine.
The lack of free dice needed for our plan goals means we can continue to use them in HI and Mil to provide needed power and mil factory rollouts.
Yes, though we should plan to consider pivoting
away from that in 2061Q1 or 'Q2 and shift some of our Free dice to Orbital and Agriculture so that we can actually get any passion projects done there and/or have some margin of error.
We have a lot of flex in infra in terms of plan goals which is nice since I want to finish 1 more phase of fortress towns as part of the wind down to hold onto the gains we have made with a few phases of rails to fil in gaps and extend coverage to our newly claimed areas.
I think we should ease off on the railroads until we're given more in-character implication that they are needed. They've gotten
very Progress-intensive, and we have a lot else to do. Among other things, +18 Housing from the current apartment target doesn't really address our Housing problems.
Remember, right now we've got +35 Housing. +20 of that is in existing fortress towns (literally the last place we want to put refugees), and what's left over is spaces in a bunch of hastily constructed 2051-vintage commieblocks and those ghastly communal housing projects we did.
+18 Housing only begins to cover our problems, and we have strong reasons to want to do the arcologies anyway even if we're not
sworn to do them, because it's the key to more efficient +Housing trickles in the next Plan, apparently.
We have about 30 Infrastructure dice to play with. That breaks down:
6 dice on mandatory apartments,
3 dice on finishing the current phase of fortress towns (188 Progress left to go, two dice is a bit optimistic)
3 dice on
Suborbital Shuttles Phase 1
~7 dice on
Chicago Phase 4 (likely to be mostly Infrastructure, not Heavy Industry, if we're trying to spend dice efficiently)
8 dice on
Blue Zone Arcologies Phase 4...
This is already getting to add up to most of the dice we have. Now, we can wiggle around with that, there may be room to squeeze in a phase of railroads, but not
now unless we want to compromise one or more of the above listed priorities.
In all truth, I'd rather ignore more railroad expansions in 2060Q4 and focus on actually getting the apartments built. The existing refugees are being funneled into worse and worse housing options and it's not long before they're back down to "this is literally a bunker" or "what do you mean I have to share a kitchen with fifteen other people."
We are no longer pushing the front lines much farther; further rail line extensions may be desirable but should not be the focus of our efforts right now compared to the refugee crisis.
I'm pretty certain I made some kind of mistake with this plan and I fully expect
@Simon_Jester to have something critical to say about it.
[cracks knuckles]
[] Plan
-[]Infrastructure 6/6 90R
-[] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 6) 3 dice 60R 95%
(Supports Yellow Zone Intensification) (Supports Operation Steel Vanguard)
(Progress 112/300: 20 resources per die) (+4 Housing)(-1 Yellow Zone Water)
-[] Blue Zone Apartment Complexes (Phase 2) 3 dice 30R 99%
(Progress 28/160: 10 resources per die) (-1 Logistics, +6 Housing)
If it was me, I'd shift one die from fortresses to apartments and save Resources. We need a lot of adequate housing, and we're probably not going to build the
seventh phase of fortress towns literally right away. Therefore, accepting more like a 50/50 chance of completing the phase, in exchange for not risking the waste of that third die (which could have gone to building apartments for refugees, seems slightly better.
With that said, this isn't a
bad balance, especially if you're thinking about us maybe doing Phase 7 of the fortresses before end of Plan, which might even be a good idea though I'm not personally a big fan.
-[]Heavy Industry 5/5 200R
-[] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 7) 4 dice 80R 100%
(Progress 153/300: 20 resources per Die) (+16 Energy) (-1 Labor)
-[] Crystal Beam Industrial Laser Development 1 die + 1 Erewhon die 20R 94%
(Progress 0/80: 10 resources per die)
-[] Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr 2 free dice 100R 0%
(Progress 0/320: 50 resources per die) (+4 Capital Goods) (-2 Energy)
Not bad.
My one thing is... I think Erewhon's talents are better used elsewhere; we're not actually in a hurry to unlock the lasers and this isn't a field where we need to rush Free dice, or the Chibi Free dice that are AA/Erewhon dice. I'd rather have Erewhon working on something where we
need the die rolls, preferably Orbital or Agriculture. The obvious thing to have Erewhon do in Agriculture is expand the granaries (the autosuccess option), though, and we're not ready to do that yet, so I'd say Orbital.
-[]Light and Chemical Industry 3/5 75R
-[] Chemical Fertilizer Plants (Phase 2) 1 die 15R 0%
(Progress 94/300: 15 resources per die) (+4 Consumer Goods, +4 Food, -1 Energy)
-[] Bergen Superconductor Foundry (Phase 1) 2 dice 60R 100%
(Progress 71/95: 30 resources per die) (+1 Energy)
-[] Security Reviews 1 die
One of the advantages of doing as I suggest with Apartments is that we can afford to put two dice on
Civilian Drone Factories instead of one on
Fertilizers. If we can shake anything loose elsewhere, we can even fully activate Light Industry, which would be nice.
I think it would be better to review Bureaucracy than Light Industry this turn, too. Bureaucracy has gone much longer, 14 turns instead of 8, without a review, and remember, "who watches the watchmen?"
-[]Agriculture 4/4 90R
-[] Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays (Phase 3) 3 dice 30R 96%
(Progress 30/140: 10 resources per die) (+6 Food) (-1 Labor)
-[] Poulticeplant Development 1 die 20 95%
(Progress 0/50: 20 resources per die)
-[] Freeze Dried Food Plants 2 free die 40R 99%
(Progress 126/200: 20 resources per die) (+5 Food, increases efficiency of stockpile actions, -1 Energy)
Given the extreme urgency of getting the Stored Food target, I think we won't be able to afford to actually roll out poulticeplant plantations anyway, but I can see the idea of wanting to do this. It's not something I agree with, but I respect it.
However, I think putting two dice (one of them a Free die) on
Freeze Dried Food Plants is a very bad idea. No rollover, so there's a 56% chance of that die (and the 20 R that activated it) being effectively thrown away. We can ill afford that. If you're going to commit Free dice to Agriculture, I suggest you put them on the aquaponics bays (freeing up more Resources to activate more dice elsewhere). It's not like we can't use the Food.
-[]Tiberium 7/7 125R
-[] Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting (Phase 10) 4 dice 80R 100%
(Progress 174/350: 20 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (3 points of Yellow Zone Mitigation)
-[] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 6) 3 dice 45R 100%
(Stage 7 82%)
(Progress 46/100: 15 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (1 point of yellow zone mitigation) (2 Stages available)
Four dice on
Yellow Zone Harvesting probably overcommits us and puts us part way into the next phase, when each phase represents expansion into territory and our military's capacity to seize new ground is starting to hit its limits. I recommend dialing back to 2-3
Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting dice and then spending the freed-up dice on... basically whatever you please.
-[]Orbital 6/6 120R
-[] Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2) 3 dice 60R 32%
(Progress 50/330: 20 resources per die) (+15 resources per turn)
-[] Lunar Heavy Metals Mines (Phase 3) 3 dice 60R 96%
(Progress 217/375: 20 resources per die) (+20 resources per turn)
It is a
bad idea to put a third die on
Lunar Heavy Metals Mines right now. Rollover in that area won't help us hit our target of "you must complete four more moon mine projects by the end of 2061." Thus, there is a 60% chance that the third die will be effectively wasted, unless we roll
insanely well and get so much rollover that it's actually more cost-effective to finish a
fourth phase of
Heavy Metals than to finish the second phase of
Rare Metals. Not likely.
I recommend diverting the third
Heavy Metals die to
Rare Metals or even
Enterprise Phase 5.
-[]Services 4/5 75R
-[] Automatic Medical Assistants 3 dice 60R 83%
(Progress 101/300: 20 resources per die) (+5 Health, +4 Labor, -4 Capital Goods, -2 Energy)
-[] Hallucinogen Development 1 die 15R 88%
(Progress 0/60: 15 resources per die)
No complaints here.
-[]Military 8/8 200R
-[] Wingman Drone Deployment
--[] Firehawk Wingmen 4 dice 80R 93%
(Progress 215/450: 20 resources per die) (-1 Labor, -6 Energy, -2 Capital Goods)
-[] Railgun Munitions Development 1 die 10R 87%
(Progress 0/60: 10 resources per die) (High Priority)
-[] Escort Carrier Shipyards
-[] Dublin 3 dice 60R 54%
(Progress 0/240: 20 resources per die) (-5 Energy, -2 Capital Goods)
-[] Shark Class Frigate Shipyards
--[] Melbourne 2 free dice 40R 82%
(Progress 172/300: 20 resources per die) (-6 Energy, -2 Capital Goods)
-[] Mastodon Heavy Assault Walker Development 1 free die 10R 100%
(Progress 0/30 : 10 resources per die)
With the war winding down, it's probably acceptable to demote
Firehawk Wingman Drones to three dice for greater efficiency and put the fourth die on another project (such as starting a second escort carrier yard or working on the big OSRCT target).
On the other hand, if you really want to mash the DRONES NOW DAMMIT button as soon as possible and are willing to accept a 57% chance of wasting that fourth die to make that happen... That's a respectable decision and I won't tell you you're wrong; I've thought long and hard about it myself.
-[]Bureaucracy 2/4
-[] Security Reviews (Light and Chemical Industry) 1 LCI die + 2 dice 100%
(DC 50 + 1 operations die)
I have no idea what to do with those last two bureaucracy dice though I am tempted to take a minor gamble and use them to put an admin die on the extra large food stockpiles.
I recommend doing a security review on the much longer-awaiting
Bureuacracy itself, and putting the fourth and final Bureaucracy die on
Interdepartmental Favors (to see if we can get any good out of that) or just leaving it fallow.
