EDIT: Not shown in these pictures, but I'm at base 80 bpt, and -30 gpt. Fishing and Sailing will be done in 3 turns total.
I wonder, is this a reasonable city to build the GL in? Probably, given marble.
Beware the labourer positions, they are all messed up for this series of screen shots. It's nice to have that wine hooked though.
Nothing more boring to MM than a city building a settler without slavery.
Still waiting for something interesting to happen.
Oh, missing RVC. Well, whatever, nothing special there this turn. But yeah, a pop growth (helps) puts me back into the score lead yay. Granaries FTW.
Dat GNP...
CHM is pretty nice if you have the tiles to work, it seems. And Pingo have Henge culture that has doubled in their GNP. I have 10 culture total between religion, monument and barracks. I really need to figure out a way to play that doesn't involve huge crop yields.
Vaguely interesting turn. I am about 4 beakers short of one turning Archery and then Sailing, so I'm going to just tech Sailing in 2 at 100% and then finish Archery on the third turn whilst saving gold.
Moved 1 worker onto the plains forest to chop/cottage, the other to road the wheat. The worker making the winery to the east is going to make the plains river cottage. I don't mind if I use the hill for a turn or two, the monastery which I'm going to build next (at about 22/60 already) is a decent hammer investment IMO. The chariot was probably not a great build, but it means I've got 3 chariots total instead of just two, so the intangible benefit isn't to be sneered at.
OK, I could have delayed the chop for a turn, but why? Dropping the overflow into a galley doesn't appeal to me, as the galley is only useful if I want to go settle that 1 tile island, but I can scout that out with a work boat for seafood. IF there isn't any seafood I'm not interested in getting it asap. If there is I probably ought to rush it with 2 archers for the +1 commerce/city from trade routes. The next question is do I work a priest or not? If I'm going to beeline Aesthetics then the GL is on my to do list for sure, and tht means the second GP is a GS for an academy for sure.
Next turn it gets the winery, swapping from the silk, and it will give up the grass hill on the last possible turn, so GNAP can use it whilst at pop 3. Might build another settler here, or go balls deep on attacking Pingo. 7 Chariots would be my aim for an attack, which would take another 8 turns to make.
This is probably the better site for a settler build at size 6. About 10 turns from there?
...We interrupt this build to bring you a galley...
Yay for making use of otherwise unused tiles.
2 more turns until 100 CY is broken...and I still have a chuckle when I see DF that high in the list.
Point to consider: out of those 32 costs, the only costs I have much control over are unit cost, supply and city maintenance. The former I deal with by not building units...which I can do in a limited amount, I still need units for barb busting and protection, unit supply I can deal with by bringing units back into my lands but I need them out to barb bust again so not really possible to deal with. And city maintenance needs CoL and my UB, which isn't on the cards. So...forget about lowering costs atm, just keep on making more commerce. GROWTH!
hehe.
Hmmm. OK, Cekor have Currency. So that's Writing, Maths and Currency they have on me, which is a good 1K beakers. I need to keep an eye on their gold levels, I don't want to see them steal Aesthetics from me.
It only has one more pop size to grow...so 4 turns working the corn, and one turn working a grassland, and it's size 9 and nothing else decent to work. The corn is only useful if it wants to work a couple of specialists.
OK, thoughts: OMFG tech is going to be slow. Even with 5 cottages down at DF, I won't be above 30 bpt. The only reasonable cottage cities I have are DF, Crapital, and the pigs city. That's one of the reasons I'm going to settle the junk desert city, to take the hills from Crapital so it can work more cottages.
I don't need to get the HE up and running quickly, it doesn't exactly help worker spam. That means that Lit can wait. The SoZ is now 200 hammers, so not an unreasonable build, but for Aesthetics to really make sense I need to build two wonders. Parth is expensive even with Marble, SP I don't have a good production front city to build it right now, so I want Aesthetics to wait just a little bit.
Monarchy needs minimum of 244 base beakers to be researched, then it costs 403 adjusted beakers. If I get all of the techs before hand, that costs 548 base beakers and then Monarchy itself costs 345 adjusted beakers. I'm looking at spending at least 800 adjusted beakers just to get Monarchy down with all of the religious techs, but without a religion.
HR though will let me grow my three good cottage cities up to about size 10 with just the happy resources connected. I can get to size 12 with health resources though, which is a good amount of cottages worked. But do I need HR that much? The furs and gold alone get the capital to size 9.
Maths...I don't have enough cities to make HG worth it. I don't have that many forests left to chop either. Calendar gives me 1 resource to hook up now, but makes it easier to grow cities in the jungle. IW though lets me at least improve the grassland tiles, and actually Calendar is useless for the jungle without that, so might as well get IW first, it does give me my UU.
I don't see a pressing need for any of these techs, so I think I'm going to have to focus on making my tech rate stronger. That means Writing first, and then on to Monarchy. I spent last turn on Writing because I wasn't sure if I wanted to gamble on Meditation, but that's a decision I need to be 100% sure of before tonight. A religion would be rather nice, I suppose. At least, with strong enough hammer cities with a monastery in Crapital.
Actually, I think I'm going to go for Meditation. If I don't get the Religion don't have any reason to go for Mono for OR, so can just beeline Monarchy after swapping back to Writing.
Writing 193
Aesthetics 483
Literature 322
Maths 401
HBR 401 Fishing 64 Sailing 161
Calendar 562 Meditation 128 Priesthood 96
Polytheism 161 Masonry 128
Monotheism 193 Monarchy 483
Metal Casting 723
Machinery 1127
Fuedalism 1127
Alphabet 483
Currency 644
Construction 562
Iron Working 322
Archery 64
OK, tech paths...I finish Sailing next turn, and that leaves me with a number of choices afterwards. I will have to save gold first for a number of turns. The following are tech paths considered from start to end, instead on a per tech basis. I think we all have enough experience with the effects of each tech.
Archery>HBR
Iron Working
Writing
Maths>Calendar
Maths>Currency
Alphabet>Currency
Alphabet>Maths>Currency (might as well consider it...)
Code of Laws
Metal Casting
Aesthetics
Archery>HBR 465
I need these techs for defensive purposes, but do I need them ASAP? Not really. Archery would be nice for cheap city defenders out of WTF? whilst growing the city, but HBR is 401 adjusted beakers, slightly less than Aesthetics, and unless I can make use of the HA, not a good investment. But I could attack Pingo and take that city. OTOH, it has a single axe, I could take it with chariots and hold with archers, but it would change the focus of my game.
Iron Working 322 beakers
Gives me my UU, a 5 strength sword that doesn’t need iron, and starts with W1. Pretty nice unit to defend the jungle area, and as I need IW to unlock those resources, nice bit of synergy. But it doesn’t help me tech, or pay for those cities, and I could probably hold them with HA, chariots and archers anyway. Probably more useful to hold any land against Pingo, but as I need HBR to take it effectively anyway, I’m not paying almost 800 beakers, 16+ turns worth of research just to stage an attack. I’d try to hold with just the HA and archers. After all, I only want that lone city to hold a border, not starting tha crusade..
Writing 193 beakers
I need this for pretty much everything else on this list that is focussed on improving the economy, so it’s pretty much a no brainer. I could always try to get the library down in RVC and push out a GS, but I would likely have to delay it to get the GP out first.
Maths>Calendar 963 beakers
Need Maths to unlock Calendar, but Calendar doesn’t let me hook anything but silks until I get IW to chop jungle. I don’t need extra happiness, so that’s a hefty additional cost to this tech route.
Maths>Currency 1045 beakers
Currency is probably worth about 10 commerce/turn by the time I reach it. Maths would be the quickest way there, but I don’t really have many more forests to chop. Do I really need an aquaduct that badly? Not if I’m settling new cities to get clams and fish. Markets would be useful in DF and Crapital though. And Wealth would let me continue to tech whilst I settled hte southern jungle. It’s not a bad tech path...
Alphabet>Currency 1127 beakers
...but I think this one is better. More trade routes are good, but with open boders the profit would be much larger. If I could get OB, anyway. And I can use Alphabet to continue teching even if I were to settle one or two cities in the jungle. The cost though, is that those southern cities don’t have any food to grow, so I’d only want to settle that border city with Cekor that has a cow, and that pigs/clams city. It also opens up spies which I’m tempted to use a couple of for the hell of it
Alphabet>Maths>Currency (might as well consider it...) 1528 beakers
I think this makes sense only if I want to ignore Aesthetics and definitely get Calendar or Constructon after Currency. It delays everything by a good 8-10 turns, and I’m not sure if hte beakers saved on Currency overcome the advantage of trade routes sooner.
Code of Laws 523
Um, it has the plus points. SA for 5 turn unhappiness from slaving isn’t bad, and it lowers the costs so I can more easily expand down south without my whole tech ability going to hell. And it only costs 90 hammers...which actually means that it would take a new city ages before any of that actually happened. Oh well. Court houses are still junk without forests to chop. OTOH, Caste System should be useful for popping borders without the missionary (though I still want the missionary as I’m aiming for that shrine in 35 turns), and they do enable merchants to pay the bills...and Merchants bulb CS under the right conditions...right? Actually, no, I’d need Maths, Currency and Alphabet before I could get CS with a GM bulb, so that isn’t exactly a beeline. But a trade mission could work out. Still, turning food into gold is not great for me, when I’m lackign in food. Would give me some way to make the clams/pig city pay off very quickly.
But I don’t think this is particularly viable.
Metal Casting 723
Hard tech this. I want forges, they give me +2 happy with cilver and gold, but what do I build with the extra production? Same holds for workshops, do I want them, when I don’t have any food to support them? And Collosus is a waste, nevermind some team Oracling this, I don’t have any good coastal cities. I need this to get to Machinery, but Machinery is no where on my immediate tech path. I’ll get this when I can, but that time is not now.
Aesthetics(>Polytheism>Literature) 483 (961)
This is the risky strategy IMO. I want SoZ, and I have the doubler for the GL and SP. I would have to get hte GL or this to work, to give me the extra 6 bpt, and deny it to the Vikings. It would give me an academy from the GS that would be the second GP I pop. And a method of using OR, or Pacifism without teching to the required techs. I could use the hammers I’m making to support my economy in a round about fashion...And really, the SoZ means with theo or a stable I can make the HE unit, so the HE would be in the bag, and that would allow every other city to focus on navy, or infrastructure, or settlers and workers. I just wouldn’t have a method of paying for anything short of mass cottages. OTOH, minus Writing, these three techs cost an adjusted 961 beakers. Not too expensive if I get the wonders. If I miss though...it's a worse path that Archer>HBR>IW.
TL;DR? I hate my tech path choices. I'm probably going to go Archery>Writing and then just stockpile gold.
I like alot your analises.I have 3 questions:
1.Do you think its worth to get writint this late? for me always cames after workers tech.
2.Why do you consider a prophet its beter than an academy?I dont know in what city you plan to get that but you dont think its worth the gamble and build a libraie there and get one of another?(Here talksa guy which in pbem 23 took some gambles and got a just bad resuts but still loves those..)
3.Wife called ,and forgot that question.I wil return if remeber later.
I often tech Writing late, because I usually head over to the religious branch first. I tend to consider techs after the worker techs as something you really have to abuse to make worthwhile. Writing I tend to dislike because I don't think it's particularly easy to use: here it gives map trading instead of OB, which does weaken it, but libraries I think are not a good investment early.
It costs 90 hammers, which isn't easy to slave (consider, I didn't have a granary in Crapital) and the early Academy would have been less effective as I started to expand and drop the slider. It's only now that the slider has recovered...and break even is about 60%. But the cost of running the scientists for 17 turns would have destroyed Crapital's output. For instance, I couldn't have gone for Writing until after Pottery, so would likely have finished it about T62ish. I'd have had to delay settling the gold city to build the library, and then run scientists, which drops the city from 3fpt and 15 hpt working 2 cottages to 1fpt and 9hpt, but making 7.5bpt from the scientists and probably 4 bpt from other commerce at 100%.
If I started to build the Library on T62, it would be finished eot T67. GS due eot T84. I'd envisage having the Monarchy by this point, but the gold city couldn't have been settled until T71. Borders wouldn't pop until eot T85, gold not hooked until T87. The furs wouldn't be hooked at all, I imagine. GNAPs would only be a minor consideration for the future.
So I'd actually get the Academy around about the time when I'd want to throw down a few new cities for resources. To compare it to where I am now, I'd be working much fewer cottages so I'd have a lower base output. I'd have continued to pay for units outside my borders that were barb busting, and that's ignoring the other point that I might not have had a religion for popping borders with lucky spreads.
Of course, I'm ignoring other options, such as not building the library, and just teching Writing>Maths>Currency as Cekor have done. I'd probably be getting close to finishing Currency now myself, and it wouldn't have had an impact on my tech pace. And I could even have built the Library around about now.
So, I'd say that Writing itself isn't particularly strong (for me), so to really make use of it I would have to beeline another tech to really justify it. Currency is the only one that makes any sense, IMO, for this start, anyway. So the run for religion, the potential Oracle build, and the early HR/wines seemed more appropriate, and this feeds into the next point.
The decision about what GP you want first is something that is answered by what early wonders you go for. If you get an early wonder such as Oracle and Henge, you get the GP unless you do the Oracle>Forge>GE trick. If you don't get the wonder I think it comes down to either GP, GS, or waiting until the mid game to decide. That third option is one that I think is a real option, to make it easier to trigger an early GA if needed or make a bulb to CS or to GA bomb someone in a war viable, but you have to design a strategy around some of them to work. Anyway...
...the choice between a GS and a GP is always contingent on you getting a religion to shrine. If you do get a religion, you know you want that shrine at some point. The GP is hard to get later on, and you can get lucky/unlucky with GP pops. It's particularly hard to get a GP due to there being very few buildings that give slots, whereas the scientist can be rushed out with CoL. This is one of the reasons I like to get the GP early, it's the harder one to get, and I can run the scientists concurrently, getting them to 99/100 gpp the turn the GP is popped. That speeds up the GS, but I can't do that trick to push out the GP quicker.
The other reasons to get the shrine early, which doesn't really apply to a priest GP, but does to a Henge or Oracle GP, is that the presence of the Shrine increases the %age chance of random religion spreads. The extra gold is also useful in funding an extra city or two which is the opposite of the Academy.
Now, to bring this back around, now I've expanded to 6 cities, I can use one of the less important cities, RVC for example, to build a library after the galley, and use this city to push out the GS. DF should get a far enough head start that RVC just sits there for 34 turns and pushes out the GS. RVC has nothing better to do, but Crapital I still need to grow and work a billion cottages.