Strategic directions - long-term planning

[kjn]

Anyway, I thought some more about getting an academy in AO, and the opportunity cost for it, and I think we should delay it a little.

It all comes down to if we want to ride our early economic advantage into profit (tech) or market share (land), to borrow an analogy from business.
I think we should go for more land and more cities first. One reason is psychological. I think most players react more strongly to a high GNP or a tech advantage than to a large empire. Another is that land and pop don't impact score as much as tech. A third is that more cities makes us more resilient and makes it easier to get more land, units, and later tech.

Earlier I estimated the cost of an Academy to two or three settlers (in direct production and in the opportunity cost of running the specialists). If we can peel off corn and deer from AO's on other cities and let them run the settler and worker builds, then we minimise the opportunity cost of putting AO off growth and expansion duties for 20-25 turns.

I'd put up two criteria here for when we are to start our GS run:

• Five cities founded or settlers for them on the way (AO, MM, and tentatively Fish, Pigs, and Clams)
  
• Military security, ie we've built a few axes or WCs
  

(Yes, this is me changing my mind from earlier.)

My quick-and-sloppy tests has shown that we can reach that around T70, and get the academy around T90.

Another thing is the balance between growing AO and getting new cities once we are in HR. Effectively, every new pop point in AO will cost 2F 2g, and an investment of 15-30H. Giving it both the corn and the deer in that case might be a case of overkill and hurt the founding of new cities - I can imagine us passing those tiles around between three cities depending on builds, whipping, and need. That will allow MM and Jesus city to go into a very food-heavy configuration while building settlers and after whipping.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I personally don't like the idea of an early academy, as academies are weakened by a low slider rate. And by god will we have a low slider rate if we want enough cities to provide production, and a decent military to hold off our diplomatic missteps. So simple, moar citizens, moar cottages, moar units to sentry our stake of the land.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I think the real point of contention is what we should tech after Animal Husbandry. If the next wave of settlers require immediate border pops, then Mysticism. And if we are doing Priesthood before Writing, then I'd rather get Priesthood via Polytheism because that gives the option of Organised Religion, and Monasteries are worthless.

[fluffyflyingpig]

AH and BW are in, so let's revisit this discussion. What's the plan for the near term here? We are still aren't in slavery. No religions claimed yet. Copper, but no horses

Looks like the consensus is to push for Monarchy. Questions appear to center on when we get Writing/Fishing and if we get Priesthood or Monotheism. Wonders are all on the table as well for the time being.

[Sullla]

Stonehenge would be absolutely amazing for our team, but I fear that with so many other teams starting with Mysticism, it would be a massive risk to pursue it. There's an excellent chance that someone will be building it in the next 5-10 turns.

We are a lock to land Judaism first, and have a decent shot to land Polytheism/Hindusim. (We will have the tech on T51 according to current plan, and could get it T50 if we hold off on Slavery revolt.)

With a self-founded religion extremely likely in our future, one potential option would be turning all those forests at copper city location into the Oracle. We're already heading to Monarchy tech via Priesthood, so we could potentially turn 3-4 forest chops + whip overflow into a fairly easy Oracle. Why bother researching Monarchy when you can slingshot it, eh? Then it's a double-revolt into both OR and HR civics together, and we have a massive advantage of unlimited happy cap very early in this game. Run two Priest specialists via obelisk in Oracle city for +7 GPP/turn = early shrine for our religion = more horizontal expansion, etc. Under this plan, our second Great Person would be a Scientist for the Academy in the capital, as we won't be going straight vertical there for a little bit longer in any case.

Obviously just throwing out ideas here at the moment, thoughts?

[kjn]

Agree on that Stonehenge would be great, though I think it shouldn't come at the cost of further REX. Maybe start it in Third, and if we reach size 4 in the city we can double-whip something, overflow into Stonehenge and have a couple of pre-chopped forests ready?

The Oracle for HR would also be nice, and we have a better feel of the timing on it since we get notices once religions are starting to be founded. I think I'd prefer the Oracle over Stonehenge.

As for city founding order, Copper obviously comes first, then Jesus city, then clams. Jesus city should get two work boats out quickly, one for the fish, and the second to first scout and then net the clams. Once the clams settler is out, I think we should begin the GS run in AO.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm not used to normal speed - is 2 civics the limit for a 1t swap? (We may want slavery, OR and HR soon.)

I don't see the draw of oracle. Monarchy is pretty cheap for an oracle target, and assuming OR + priesthood (as seems to be suggested by the oracle build and OR/HR civic swap), we would even be getting double prereq bonus on it. I see oracle as strong primarily for an IND leader slinging metal casting for discounted forges, or at least for someone with marble.

Regarding stonehenge, and the worry that we would lose a race: surely we can do better than vague worries? We're doing a lot of C&D. Someone spending 100h on non-warrior growth should show up. Unlike oracle, stonehenge would be quite strong for us (though somewhat redundant with OR).

I think I still favor heading up to monotheism and then monarchy (no priesthood) and ignoring wonders. Keep copper unroaded a bit longer and try to pump out some HR garrison warriors first. But I could easily be convinced of the value of other plans.

A possible alternative (helped if we find some nearby happiness resources) would be to stop at monotheism (no monarchy), double revolt to OR and slavery, and then ignore that branch for a while in favor of writing - math. I do think religion and specifically OR is a very high value proposition for us (+1 happy, +1 culture, +25% buildings) if we don't get stonehenge.

Another alternative is to get mysticism and stonehenge, maybe land hinduism, but then ignore the religious path and (with culture under control) head up writing-math and look for resource-based ways to increase happiness.

A further option would be writing next, set science to zero, get a library in the capital and pop a great scientist for an academy, and then power up through mono and monarchy.

[kjn]

I'm not used to normal speed - is 2 civics the limit for a 1t swap? (We may want slavery, OR and HR soon.)

I've pre-calculated this in the C&D spread sheet (the sheet Helper tables):

We get 1-turn anarchy with 2 civics changes as long as we have no more than 16 cities. With 3 civics changes we will get a 2t anarchy.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Sullla EDIT: End of Turn 54 screenshot:



Current city/worker plan:

It appears that Stonehenge is the plan.

I'm not used to normal speed - is 2 civics the limit for a 1t swap? (We may want slavery, OR and HR soon.)

I don't see the draw of oracle. Monarchy is pretty cheap for an oracle target, and assuming OR + priesthood (as seems to be suggested by the oracle build and OR/HR civic swap), we would even be getting double prereq bonus on it. I see oracle as strong primarily for an IND leader slinging metal casting for discounted forges, or at least for someone with marble.

Regarding stonehenge, and the worry that we would lose a race: surely we can do better than vague worries? We're doing a lot of C&D. Someone spending 100h on non-warrior growth should show up. Unlike oracle, stonehenge would be quite strong for us (though somewhat redundant with OR).

I think I still favor heading up to monotheism and then monarchy (no priesthood) and ignoring wonders. Keep copper unroaded a bit longer and try to pump out some HR garrison warriors first. But I could easily be convinced of the value of other plans.

A possible alternative (helped if we find some nearby happiness resources) would be to stop at monotheism (no monarchy), double revolt to OR and slavery, and then ignore that branch for a while in favor of writing - math. I do think religion and specifically OR is a very high value proposition for us (+1 happy, +1 culture, +25% buildings) if we don't get stonehenge.

Another alternative is to get mysticism and stonehenge, maybe land hinduism, but then ignore the religious path and (with culture under control) head up writing-math and look for resource-based ways to increase happiness.

A further option would be writing next, set science to zero, get a library in the capital and pop a great scientist for an academy, and then power up through mono and monarchy.

I don't see a lot of discussion on Seven's points. I do not know if I support a play for the Oracle. Hammers into more cities seems better to me at this point. BUT, Oracle would be better on this map, as we have identified commerce as the limiting factor early. More discussion would help here, but I think I'm still against Oracle. However, an early prophet would be divine (sorry...) for the reasons Sullla mentions, especially fueling our horizontal expansion.

I like the idea of delaying copper hookups for the HR garrison, but it appears that we'll have to hook copper to overflow for Novice's Stonehenge micro plan. For now, to me it appears that our biggest weakness is scouting. We need to find our horses for deep scouting to make contact with other teams. What is our short term plan on local scouting?

Commenting on tech path, I don't think a trek to writing at this moment is the thing to do. I believe we get more benefit from HR garrisons for our super-capital, and I've always been a strong believer in OR early on. I see few options in our local scouting for resource-based happy cap increases. A temple (hammer sink) + religion would get the capital to 8, religion only to 7. HR seems imperative.

Lastly, and this is a stretch given the uncertainties between now and T54-57 when our settler is due, if we should found Judaism, if it is in our 4th city (that would be the likely spot at that point, right? Smallest city without a religion?) we could consider a city plant 1, 1, 1 of AO with a quick border pop from founding the religion (obviously Stonehenge means this isn't a worry anyway). That would be clams + 3 FPs and lots of rivers for a very strong commerce site. Probably slow getting off the ground, though, with only one forest to chop. Too far to get mired into this, but the thought occurred to me thinking about our next moves.

[Sullla]

The fourth city will almost certainly be located at the fish spot in the northwest, preferrably in a spot where it can share the corn tile from the capital. We can get it started much faster, and it can build a work boat for a future city at floodplains/clams. We will hopefully also have a religion or Stonehenge for cultural spread at that point for border popping.

Right now we have 3 warriors for 3 cities, which makes it a bit tough to do any real scouting. The tradeoff that we have made so far is fewer warriors for max growth / workers. Losing our initial warrior was a real kick in the nuts, since that was the ideal unit to use for deep scouting. As for more scouting units down the road... uh... we have a spear getting whipped for Stonehenge purposes - use that guy? More seriously, both Mansa's Muse and Copper city will have fairly strong production capability. We can build a pair of axes and send them off on scouting missions in the near future. War chariots would be better, naturally, if we could somehow find some horses to settle.

I am happy to entertain alternate strategic plans, but no one has proposed anything better than our current Stonehenge run. I tried to do better than the novice/SevenSpirits plan we currently have, and I couldn't do it. If Stonehenge falls, we'll re-evaluate and shift some worker actions around.

[kjn]

Yeah, not much to what has been said.

Regarding Oracle or Stonehenge, they support radically different ways of empire development. Oracle is usually for vertical development, to get a key tech for large cities. Stonehenge is the horizontal development wonder, to help new cities to quickly gain land.

With a large map the latter wonder gets more powerful, even with high tech costs.