[SPOILERS]The Serdoa way of civ

[SevenSpirits]

Nice attempt at something different, taking advantage of the turn handicap setup by picking "free" things.

What were you teching near the end?

[Serdoa]

Thanks Seven. I did ignore commerce for too long though, so despite me looking strong in the demos, I was actually falling behind quite a bit. I was teching Mathematic at the end I think. I just had no research at all left, break-even at ~20 beakers / turn. Sure that would have improved within the next few turns to probably 40 maybe. But that was not nearly enough to be competetive. My GNP was just extremely inflated by culture (around 45 of it I think). With FIN I might have had more chances to actually stay competetive. Not only by having stronger (riverside) cottages from the start. I think FIN also has a psychological effect, as, at least for me, I don't want to switch away from 2/0/4 tiles or even 2/0/3. But 2/0/2? Yeah, I'll work the hill rather. Or whip the pop simply away.

Also, my last city was really planted dumb. I was fearing novice trying to settle up on me and therefore I settled my marble city. I should have settled my silver-city of course, as I had forges in 4 (nearly 5) of my cities. With that silver I would have had 2 pop more to work cottages, per city. And 8 cottages more certainly would have helped a great deal.

Still, I think you clearly had the right approach to this map, concentrating much more on commerce first as without it you simply can't keep up in settling in the long run. Btw: Do you have the formula for distance maintenance at hand? I tried to get it from CFC but the one in the war academy seems to be wrong (probably they changed it with some patch?).

[novice]

It's comforting that I wasn't the only one crashing my economy.
With no financial trait I figured I'd try to dominate in land area and foodhammers, and stay somewhat competitive economically. But the map was big enough that you couldn't really steal land.

Were you building TGLH, Serdoa? I was going to chop it two turns from now in my copper city.

[Serdoa]

No. I was not trying to build it. I figured I would need more infrastructure to stay competetive for now (especially Courthouses). I was planning on building / finishing Pyramids in a few turns. I guessed that would be the best for me, considering that I expected that I somehow could limp to CoL and switch to Caste. And then I would have had the possibility to keep a somewhat sane tech-rate AND expand again. Tbh I should have built those much earlier but I realised to late how badly I had crashed my economy (really that last city was the final nail in the coffin, but even before I had invested an awful lot of time, just to get Monotheism for Org.Rel).