There comes a point in these games where everyone sits down and works out what they need from techs, often after they've crippled their economy. I've already done that after we missed Oracle: Alphabet, build Research, Currency, shove Academy in Capital, reassess. Mids is a back up plan.
Once Cities 3 (Mack the Knife) and 4 (Tuxedo Junction) finish their libraries and work 2 scientists (T76 and T77 respectively) we should have a breakeven base bpt of about 35-37, and a max bpt of around 80. I think it's actually 85 if we don't whip city 7 and work both furs, which would give Alphabet in 4 turns. We have 2 settlers built but unsettled as well by T78 (could just settle one of the cities) and should have around 180 gold saved, enough for 5 turns of max research if we don't settle another city. Theoretically we could just grab Alphabet by eot81 if I've worked these figures out correctly, but I'm not sure we should do that.
Right now the north is unfogbusted. The south is a dead end, and the south west is about to become the barb spawning ground from hell without any military cover at all. I need 2 units for MP to the north, 2 units to fogbust the north (above and beyond what we already have built, and one to fogbust the west. The SW ideally needs 2 chariots for cover. I count 6 more military units needed there, 150 hammers of archers up to 210 hammers of axe/spears. This is not counting what we would need to cover a southern land grab city to set up the front city against OH, which I reckon to be 2 archers and a following axe with a chariot in the vicinity.
Given I am about to put two cities onto scientist duty, neither can build military units effectively. MtK (City 3) can slow build an archer or chariot with no real difficulty, and city 4 was crap anyway at building anything. Kalamazoo is on Mids (and taking up a hefty 40% of our hammers to put this into perspective, the remaining hammers we generate puts is 1 hpt over average opponent production), so that leaves city 2 (LittleBrownJug) and the capital to build units. The capital is caught between growing cottages and stagnating to do that, and making up to 17hpt if it sits on the hammer tiles (with one grass mine built). Whipping away pop points that it can't easily regrow without the pig is also a damper on this (NB, I can make this work though, given Kalamazoo is supposed to spend 14 turns working deer+grass hill rather than pig+plains hill to speed up Pyramids slightly).
To bring this back to tech, as much as I want Alphabet and I've portrayed it as a solution, it's not really. I've gone with the option of Mids for Rep or fail gold, and two libraries. It is going to have to wait until after Archery, which at an adjusted cost of 64 isn't even a turn of max research and shouldn't really delay Alphabet past T81. The real question is do we grab Sailing.
I think we do, because I think we need to be greedy. We have 2 settlers we are about to finish, and we don't know when we are going to finish any more. One of these I've earmarked for the OH front city. I know we have no military, however the capital (In The Mood) can put 4 hammers into an axe by working sheep and cottages, double whip and regrow to size 5 by stealing the pig for a single turn. It can overflow 26 hammers from the axe whip, so it can easily finish an archer on the following turn. The cost is growing one fewer cottage for 10 turns. I think this is necessary, and the axe can reach the forwards grass hill tile T83, the same turn the settler from LBJ can reach there, if I can make the workers get the road down in time. If we use one settler for an island city, there are two workers that I have not allocated to anything as yet, and they could get the road down with no trouble. The capital would need to follow up with a further archer, but if we prioritized it, we could have axe>archer>archer completing on consecutive turns.
The settler from the capital can be used to settle the island city (the AintMisbehavin location is back up). There is no coastal seafood, and I don't think we need to send over a military unit with the settler because the shitty tundra islands with nothing interesting is only 16 tiles so I don't think barbs can generate on it (lurkers, please correct me if I am wrong: explicit question: what is the smallest sized land mass that barbs can spawn on?) This is good, because we have no military unit to send.
I think we use city 2 as the other city to double whip units out from: after the settler double whip, it regrows to size 3 in 2 turns with avoid growth. So whip settler T77, T78 dump overflow into an archer (minimum 13 hammers, can be finished in 2 turns), T79 dump 3 hammers into an axe and growth to size 3 then swap back to the archer, and double whip the axe on growth to size 4, T82. It should be enough to ensure give us a further 2 archers and an axe (maybe even swap an archer for a chariot) over those 5 turns. City 2 will be crippled and stuck at size 3 but fuck it: it can then sit on another settler.
This would give us an island city around T81. To do this we need a galley in place T79 (2N1E of city 7), which means it would need whipping T77 to keep to the fastest speed. That would mean we need to start research now, and I don't think we can get both Sailing and Archery in that timeframe with the amount of gold we have (the galley is via a whip and a chop).
Something to mull over.
Once Cities 3 (Mack the Knife) and 4 (Tuxedo Junction) finish their libraries and work 2 scientists (T76 and T77 respectively) we should have a breakeven base bpt of about 35-37, and a max bpt of around 80. I think it's actually 85 if we don't whip city 7 and work both furs, which would give Alphabet in 4 turns. We have 2 settlers built but unsettled as well by T78 (could just settle one of the cities) and should have around 180 gold saved, enough for 5 turns of max research if we don't settle another city. Theoretically we could just grab Alphabet by eot81 if I've worked these figures out correctly, but I'm not sure we should do that.
Right now the north is unfogbusted. The south is a dead end, and the south west is about to become the barb spawning ground from hell without any military cover at all. I need 2 units for MP to the north, 2 units to fogbust the north (above and beyond what we already have built, and one to fogbust the west. The SW ideally needs 2 chariots for cover. I count 6 more military units needed there, 150 hammers of archers up to 210 hammers of axe/spears. This is not counting what we would need to cover a southern land grab city to set up the front city against OH, which I reckon to be 2 archers and a following axe with a chariot in the vicinity.
Given I am about to put two cities onto scientist duty, neither can build military units effectively. MtK (City 3) can slow build an archer or chariot with no real difficulty, and city 4 was crap anyway at building anything. Kalamazoo is on Mids (and taking up a hefty 40% of our hammers to put this into perspective, the remaining hammers we generate puts is 1 hpt over average opponent production), so that leaves city 2 (LittleBrownJug) and the capital to build units. The capital is caught between growing cottages and stagnating to do that, and making up to 17hpt if it sits on the hammer tiles (with one grass mine built). Whipping away pop points that it can't easily regrow without the pig is also a damper on this (NB, I can make this work though, given Kalamazoo is supposed to spend 14 turns working deer+grass hill rather than pig+plains hill to speed up Pyramids slightly).
To bring this back to tech, as much as I want Alphabet and I've portrayed it as a solution, it's not really. I've gone with the option of Mids for Rep or fail gold, and two libraries. It is going to have to wait until after Archery, which at an adjusted cost of 64 isn't even a turn of max research and shouldn't really delay Alphabet past T81. The real question is do we grab Sailing.
I think we do, because I think we need to be greedy. We have 2 settlers we are about to finish, and we don't know when we are going to finish any more. One of these I've earmarked for the OH front city. I know we have no military, however the capital (In The Mood) can put 4 hammers into an axe by working sheep and cottages, double whip and regrow to size 5 by stealing the pig for a single turn. It can overflow 26 hammers from the axe whip, so it can easily finish an archer on the following turn. The cost is growing one fewer cottage for 10 turns. I think this is necessary, and the axe can reach the forwards grass hill tile T83, the same turn the settler from LBJ can reach there, if I can make the workers get the road down in time. If we use one settler for an island city, there are two workers that I have not allocated to anything as yet, and they could get the road down with no trouble. The capital would need to follow up with a further archer, but if we prioritized it, we could have axe>archer>archer completing on consecutive turns.
The settler from the capital can be used to settle the island city (the AintMisbehavin location is back up). There is no coastal seafood, and I don't think we need to send over a military unit with the settler because the shitty tundra islands with nothing interesting is only 16 tiles so I don't think barbs can generate on it (lurkers, please correct me if I am wrong: explicit question: what is the smallest sized land mass that barbs can spawn on?) This is good, because we have no military unit to send.
I think we use city 2 as the other city to double whip units out from: after the settler double whip, it regrows to size 3 in 2 turns with avoid growth. So whip settler T77, T78 dump overflow into an archer (minimum 13 hammers, can be finished in 2 turns), T79 dump 3 hammers into an axe and growth to size 3 then swap back to the archer, and double whip the axe on growth to size 4, T82. It should be enough to ensure give us a further 2 archers and an axe (maybe even swap an archer for a chariot) over those 5 turns. City 2 will be crippled and stuck at size 3 but fuck it: it can then sit on another settler.
This would give us an island city around T81. To do this we need a galley in place T79 (2N1E of city 7), which means it would need whipping T77 to keep to the fastest speed. That would mean we need to start research now, and I don't think we can get both Sailing and Archery in that timeframe with the amount of gold we have (the galley is via a whip and a chop).
Something to mull over.