Strategic directions - long-term planning

[Zargon]

Cristo Redentor seems almost required in the very long run, if we value having things like a state religion or reasonable civics.

[Ruff_Hi]

I saw some discussion about market v uni in the T150 stream. Before I get to that question, do we have any critical techs that we need in the next few rounds? Engineering is one. Are there any others?

If there are no critical techs that we need in the short term, then I would suggest that we save gold for an extended period of time while we build beaker multipliers ... then run 100% for an extended time while we build gold multipliers.

[kjn]

Alphabet and Printing Press. The latter will be worth at least 40 commerce per turn, far more than any commerce multiplier building.

[antisocialmunky]

We're still going for the standard Rifle thing right, not the Grenadier route?

[sooooo]

Printing press is required for both routes and is the most important tech for us right now for our economy.

[pindicator]

I think Optics needs to be under consideration. Maybe not necessary before Printing Press, but we are going to have naval battles when we fight CFC

[kjn]

Alphabet > Printing Press or Gunpowder next?

In my mind the tradeoff is 7t faster PP vs 10t faster gunpowder.

7t of PP is apparently worth about 280 gold.
10t of gunpowder means an entire additional round of drafting is muskets instead of maces.

Don't forget that Printing Press gives a direct boost to our economy, and that the 280g is an absolute minimum - we get more and more villages. Thus Printing Press speeds up Gunpowder, while the reverse isn't true.

Checking the latest budget figure I have (from when we started T151), PP would increase our economy with circa 7.5% (we make 623 raw beakers in that report), so the tech path Alpha > PP > Gunpowder is likely to go 1 or 2t faster than Gunpowder > Alpha > PP.

Muskets are way better than maces at defending against knights. (Or at least, a mix is way better - shock knights are a big pain but pinch knights are annoying too.) Depending on the political situation this could be the way to go.

My take is that if we went for gunpowder right now, it would come in precisely too late to make a difference in the german war, but earlier than necessary for t175. So I guess I'd favor PP.

Agree. As I wrote earlier in the turn discussion thread, I think we should generally go for the economic butter techs first, and only pick up the military techs as and when they are needed.

[SevenSpirits]

Don't forget that Printing Press gives a direct boost to our economy

I could have sworn I mentioned somewhere in the one-item-long list of benefits of printing press that getting it earlier would give us extra economy.

[Cyneheard]

Checking the latest budget figure I have (from when we started T151), PP would increase our economy with circa 7.5% (we make 623 raw beakers in that report), so the tech path Alpha > PP > Gunpowder is likely to go 1 or 2t faster than Gunpowder > Alpha > PP.

We should use our break-even beaker rate, not our 100% raw beaker rate, as our point of analysis. I think that's about 200 beakers @ break-even, so really a ~20-25% (don't forget multipliers!) boost to our tech rate.

[Zargon]

Checking the latest budget figure I have (from when we started T151), PP would increase our economy with circa 7.5% (we make 623 raw beakers in that report), so the tech path Alpha > PP > Gunpowder is likely to go 1 or 2t faster than Gunpowder > Alpha > PP.

Isn't the effect larger than that? The number that matters is the breakeven tech rate, not the 100% tech rate. I'm not sure what our tech rate is, but we make about 180 gold at max tax, so adding 40 on top of that would suggest a 22% improvement. And even that's probably low-balling it a bit, since the extra commerce would get pushed through multipliers. The effect as a percentage will drop as our economy recovers.