rome: yup, but chariots are just fine for a choke in case they're not in the tech alliance. and we have to assume they'll be beelining IW so maintenance costs etc aren't going to really bite them until that's already researched. we have to hope they single out one person who's outside the alliance to target, otherwise i would consider us to be at significant risk of attack. i'd like to meet rome sooner rather than later in order to decide for ourselves whether they're likely to be in or out, and if the latter take pre-emptive action i.e. choke.
rome cont: i'd like to get a unit up there right now. they will find our approximate location out in the negotiation process regardless of whether they end up in the alliance or not. if they're in the alliance we need to meet them before techs are traded anyway. if they're not in the alliance and we haven't met them we'll have absolutely no idea whether they're coming for us or not + they might be more likely to attack us if they've met all their other neighbours and not us. all our plans are for naught is rome does turn out to be our N/NE neighbour and they come after us.
rsch costs: i went through the tech rsch mechanics many pages back
"tech discount" is not a discount but a multiplier and depends on number of starting civs (the 4% rule of thumb applies to standard 7-civ start). for 17 starting civs the multiplier to base beakers per civ is 0.0176. so if we've met 4 civs who've rschd the tech, we get a 7% boost to (base beakers + 1). unfortunately this is rounded down so even running binary science @ 20 beakers/turn we only get a 1 beaker/turn boost. you then get an additional multiplier to beakers based on pre-requisites, but that's applied to the rounded-down figure and itself then rounded down. on the + side, we'll zoom through pottery: @ 100% science it'l take us ~5 turns. great news as we get those cottages up + running sooner.
scouting: yup my main worry is barbs. we're going to start seeing them very soon & need to factor in not just it might take longer to move over safe terrain (i.e. not necessarily a straight path), and time spent healing. it looks like we should be ok to meet carthage + aztec, what about if rome is in the alliance as well? we'd need to meet them too. i can't recall whether we have a spare warrior available to scout towards france.
marble site: ottoman blue dot will get a library very quickly, half-priced too. it'll take ~30 turns for borders to pop but after that the wheat tile is toast until we hit 100 culture ourselves. i walked through the culture mechanics i think on the previous page because of the concern you first raised and rightly so as we need to take action or end up with a badly stunted city. religion is fine but we'd need to get it in there first, and it would only add 1 culture per turn. we could build a monastery + pump out missionaries but that depends on what our military situation looks like. and we'd need meditation. again, the discussion is either 1 page back or 2, but the bottom line is we need culture in marble city ASAP if we expect blue dot to be a near-term priority for the ottomans.
rome cont: i'd like to get a unit up there right now. they will find our approximate location out in the negotiation process regardless of whether they end up in the alliance or not. if they're in the alliance we need to meet them before techs are traded anyway. if they're not in the alliance and we haven't met them we'll have absolutely no idea whether they're coming for us or not + they might be more likely to attack us if they've met all their other neighbours and not us. all our plans are for naught is rome does turn out to be our N/NE neighbour and they come after us.
rsch costs: i went through the tech rsch mechanics many pages back
"tech discount" is not a discount but a multiplier and depends on number of starting civs (the 4% rule of thumb applies to standard 7-civ start). for 17 starting civs the multiplier to base beakers per civ is 0.0176. so if we've met 4 civs who've rschd the tech, we get a 7% boost to (base beakers + 1). unfortunately this is rounded down so even running binary science @ 20 beakers/turn we only get a 1 beaker/turn boost. you then get an additional multiplier to beakers based on pre-requisites, but that's applied to the rounded-down figure and itself then rounded down. on the + side, we'll zoom through pottery: @ 100% science it'l take us ~5 turns. great news as we get those cottages up + running sooner.scouting: yup my main worry is barbs. we're going to start seeing them very soon & need to factor in not just it might take longer to move over safe terrain (i.e. not necessarily a straight path), and time spent healing. it looks like we should be ok to meet carthage + aztec, what about if rome is in the alliance as well? we'd need to meet them too. i can't recall whether we have a spare warrior available to scout towards france.
marble site: ottoman blue dot will get a library very quickly, half-priced too. it'll take ~30 turns for borders to pop but after that the wheat tile is toast until we hit 100 culture ourselves. i walked through the culture mechanics i think on the previous page because of the concern you first raised
and rightly so as we need to take action or end up with a badly stunted city. religion is fine but we'd need to get it in there first, and it would only add 1 culture per turn. we could build a monastery + pump out missionaries but that depends on what our military situation looks like. and we'd need meditation. again, the discussion is either 1 page back or 2, but the bottom line is we need culture in marble city ASAP if we expect blue dot to be a near-term priority for the ottomans.