Epic 12 - Uberfish

[uberfish]

In which after commenting that the start isn't actually hard, I crash my economy below zero and then lose Karakorum.

http://uberfish.atspace.com/ep12.html

Add after reading other reports: I did NOT do any early chop rushing because I despise it, I only removed forests when clearing space for other improvements

[T-hawk]

Well played. You recovered the economy faster than anyone else, and in time to grab the Liberalism slingshot. 1816 AD is great for space under any game configuration, and stellar for the Gauntlet.

The only quibble I'd have is in trying to make Delhi a hybrid cottage / specialist city. I think it was much stronger running pure cottages with both Oxford and Wall Street (we both had our shrines there too), rather than giving up one of those for the National Epic. Another city with lots of food could run specialists and the NE. My endgame Delhi had over 500 research, and your screenshot listing the cities shows only 287.

[darrelljs]

Uber,

Dude, you are one good player. That is a great launch date...I don't see anything in your opening turns that made me jealous (I even did the same slingshot for the same reason, all those resource trades are the cat's meow on a Continents map). I think I traded techs and had a good research path. Somehow you still launched dozens of turns before me :mad:. I think the biggest difference was your diplomatic acumen gave you an additional useful trading partner (the only useful late game techs I got from the AI were Combustion and Plastics, your list was quite a bit more impressive). Also, you went Biology before Democracy. It still isn't apparent to me that farms in the south are a more important need than 100% cottage growth in the tiles you can work, especially given that I was close to the happy cap in most of my heavy cottage cities, but results don't lie.

Another thing...you had probably the same number of specialists I had (despite not getting the SoL) and ran Representation. I went through the analysis in my report, and for a "nearly big" empire like ours concluded Mercantilism helped more than Free Market. Care to share your thought process on this one?

Darrell

[uberfish]

My strategy is to build my national wonders for short to medium term effect. I actually had no good GP farm location other than Delhi, and sacrificing some cottage growth and beaker output to run scientists with NE was beneficial to the civilization as a whole by getting more shrines and academies.

Then with Oxford, I knew Delhi was a better location long term, but Madras could finish Oxford before Delhi was even done with a regular university, and I want the research boost now to get the midgame techs that boost my whole empire like Biology, Computers, Assembly Line. Wall Street, I built in a different shrine city that had good production, again while Delhi was still working on a bank.

I obviously got somewhat lucky with all the trades available because of the AIs sharing a religion, since each tech traded for saves a couple of turns at the end and there's no risk involved in the trading. (If your base tech rate is higher, being 3 techs ahead at the endgame is just as guaranteed a victory as 10 techs ahead) Also, a benefit of tackling the Scientific Method branch of the tech tree first is that the AIs generally like Democracy and Rifling as renaissance tech goals and you get more trades.

Overseas trade routes are more lucrative than mercantilism if the AI is willing to trade. My coastal cities are typically pulling in trade routes of 7/7/6/6 with harbours. If there's about 30 foreign trade routes and you lose (conservatively) 4 commerce from each dropping to a domestic trade route, you're out 120c. Mercantilism only gets you back the equivalent of 90 of that for a 15 city empire. Then of course free market gets you 15 more domestic trade routes worth about 2 each, so I think it's easily ahead here.