Strategic directions - long-term planning

[luddite]

So, in the micromanagement thread, Seven wrote this:

With the early golden age I don't think we could justify any further revolts (to a religion or new civic) before we kick it off. We already have 2 happy in vision (accessible at calendar + iron working), 1 more from building markets, and probably we will find 1-2 more once we, you know, actually explore a bit. Meanwhile with math and currency we'll pretty much have chosen the horizontal expansion path; even being stuck with mostly size 7 cities pre-golden age would be acceptable IMO.

and I thought this might be something we can discuss here, while waiting for the hurricane to pass.

Basically, how long can we wait before getting extra happiness? It would be nice to skip the two turns of revolt into HR/OR and Hinduism. Also, with a shrine and currency, each new city is worth 3 cpt right off the bat, so we can afford to just spam smaller cities all over the place. And until we trade away our copper or pillage it, we're stuck building axemen for HR happiness, which isn't nearly as good a deal as warriors.

But on the other hand, it would be really nice to grow some bigger cities, especially our capital. And it may be a while before we can even hook up the two calendar resources, so we'll be stuck at size 5 everywhere until then. Even longer until we can get any markets built.

Another possibility might be to get the first golden age earlier. We could run 2 priests in MM, and get a 2nd prophet around turn 85, and hopefully start the golden age right after finishing the MoM. Then we could get an early-ish HR and OR without the revolt. But, it might be hurt our growth to run those priests, and it would make it harder to leverage the golden age into getting more and more great people for a marathon golden age.

[darrelljs]

Pop is pop until certain cities have multiplier buildings others lack. Well, almost...growing vertically requires more food. I'm sure our micro team can plan around horizontal expansion until the happy cap restrictions go away (and like 7 said, we won't know our free happy cap until we've explored our environs more thoroughly).

Darrell

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

One good thing about the lower happy cap is that we won't have any difficulties finding cities to build workers/settlers. I'm thinking particularly of the clam city, which at size 5 will be working it's best food tiles for a very nice surplus, or give up the clams for the river grass if we are able to plant on the tile on our inland sea/ocean we can glimpse through the fog (see here). That tile would give at minimum 11 coast tiles for a very good Moai city, plus likely others in the fog, IF there is another food resource in the BFC. Fish/Corn city will also be very helpful in this regard. We just have to uncover more tiles.

[Sullla]

It depends on how long we find ourselves waiting for a Golden Age. A dozen turns wouldn't be much of an issue. If we're planning on waiting 30 or more turns though, when we have the techs/civics in place to take Hereditary Rule, I would estimate offhand that waiting is probably not worth it. This map doesn't look to have much happiness on it pre-Calendar, and while we certainly can artificially cap our pop at lower sizes - wouldn't that be a waste? I thought the whole reason we were keying in on the Monarchy/Monotheism path was so that we could make use of HR and OR. Anarchy turns suck, but so does not taking advantage of your tech lead. If we can get into HR civic 20 turns earlier than any other team, shouldn't we be making use of that to grow horizontally and vertically at the same time?

Here's another suggestion: do a civics revolt (HR/OR) but not a religious revolt. Save that for a free Golden Age change. The civics are likely worth a turn of Anarchy. Having a state religion likely not. (OR still worth it so we can build missionaries without monasteries.)

[kjn]

There are at least two more land tiles in the western sea right now, from Boldly's scouting of the area. Once SF expands borders or we get our second work boat out we should know far more.

Also, as for placing the Maoi, raw numbers of sea tiles isn't the main criterion. The two main criteria are IMO the ability to build the wonder relatively happy and the presence of high-quality water tiles. That's why Something Fishy is a good Maoi candidate - it has a decent number of sea tiles, it has two high-quality sea tiles that we want to work as much as possible, and the city can build the wonder relatively quickly.

[luddite]

It depends on how long we find ourselves waiting for a Golden Age. A dozen turns wouldn't be much of an issue. If we're planning on waiting 30 or more turns though, when we have the techs/civics in place to take Hereditary Rule, I would estimate offhand that waiting is probably not worth it. This map doesn't look to have much happiness on it pre-Calendar, and while we certainly can artificially cap our pop at lower sizes - wouldn't that be a waste? I thought the whole reason we were keying in on the Monarchy/Monotheism path was so that we could make use of HR and OR. Anarchy turns suck, but so does not taking advantage of your tech lead. If we can get into HR civic 20 turns earlier than any other team, shouldn't we be making use of that to grow horizontally and vertically at the same time?

This was basically my thinking too. I think this map will really reward finding a way to grow horizontally and vertically at the same time. And yes, we *might* find some more happiness by exploring, but it's not certain, and even if we do it'll take a while to expand far enough to hook it up.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

There are at least two more land tiles in the western sea right now, from Boldly's scouting of the area. Once SF expands borders or we get our second work boat out we should know far more.

Also, as for placing the Maoi, raw numbers of sea tiles isn't the main criterion. The two main criteria are IMO the ability to build the wonder relatively happy and the presence of high-quality water tiles. That's why Something Fishy is a good Maoi candidate - it has a decent number of sea tiles, it has two high-quality sea tiles that we want to work as much as possible, and the city can build the wonder relatively quickly.

As long as we have two food resources, we can whip/overflow to get it built fairly quickly. SF may be a good location, but I'm not convinced. I'll take a ton of 2/1/3 tiles in my Moai city. 10, 11, 12 of those would make an otherwise marginal location very useful. Think of these financial water tiles as ghetto commerce. Yeah, they never get better, unlike cottages, but it's steady income. You can grind a living wage out of a city like that.

I really hope it is an island, we're going to have a lot of trade routes pretty soon (fingers crossed on the Oracle), and I'd love for one of them to be an early overseas route.

[SevenSpirits]

But on the other hand, it would be really nice to grow some bigger cities, especially our capital. And it may be a while before we can even hook up the two calendar resources, so we'll be stuck at size 5 everywhere until then. Even longer until we can get any markets built.

Let's figure this out. Best techs after currency (to me) look like sailing -> calendar. That is 675 base beakers or pessimistically 13 turns of research. At that point we can hook up silk and spices. (Spices require a jungle area city, but not IW.)

Other possible paths to happiness include:

* Monarchy. 450 base beakers so pessimistically 9 turns of research. Then 1t of revolt. And at that point it's only providing 1 happiness unless we are willing to build extra units - which at this point in the game (no academy, for one thing...) is not worth it unless we need the units for other purposes too.

* Another option: Monotheism + Monarchy for 566 base beakers (11t research). Revolt to both civics and hinduism over two turns. Now we have +1-2 happy, almost as good as from calendar, plus the OR bonus, but we just spent two turns revolting and don't want to build a lot of buildings yet anyway.

* Third option which I honestly like better than the last two: simply revolt to hinduism. Maybe get Meditation and build a monastery to spread it. Worth about 0.5 happy since it's not even in every city.

I'm really underwhelmed by these compared to just teching Calendar immediately. If you consider the full cost of revolt turn I think it's actually cheaper, since we can get the civic-based happiness in the golden age for free! Plus it enables MoM nice and early, comes with sailing too, and lets us continue on to other important techs like Aesthetics and Literature sooner, giving us a better shot at the associated wonders. Plus, waiting a bit on switching to OR mode after getting the shrine gives more time for us to get free spreads.

[NobleHelium]

If teching Calendar takes 13 turns compared to Mono + Monarchy at 11 turns, I think it's a no-brainer to tech Calendar after Currency. Sailing is a highly desirable tech due to that possible island to the west, and we want Calendar early so we can leisurely build MoM with no competition. I thought Calendar would take a lot longer or I would have pushed a lot harder for it already. And given our lack of exploration we don't have many good city sites available - the northeast spices location 2E of the gold and one offshore are easily the best choices out of what we can see right now IMO.

We could even slowish build MoM in MM to stack the artist points for a faster golden age, should that be desirable. It has plenty of hills available and could easily be a conventional hammer city for wonders. The increased happy cap from the Calendar resources would let FP work the southern cottages that it can't work.

[SevenSpirits]

It depends on how long we find ourselves waiting for a Golden Age. A dozen turns wouldn't be much of an issue. If we're planning on waiting 30 or more turns though, when we have the techs/civics in place to take Hereditary Rule, I would estimate offhand that waiting is probably not worth it.

That seems quite certain... but why are you assuming we will have those techs? It's true that we discussed getting them earlier, and I argued quite heavily in their favor, too. But since then, we've not only landed hinduism, but revised our immediate-term tech plans over to writing-math and oracling currency. Having come this far without them, and being close enough to a more efficient happy tech (calendar), and quite a bit closer to a golden age, I don't see the appeal of them anymore.

Here's another suggestion: do a civics revolt (HR/OR) but not a religious revolt. Save that for a free Golden Age change. The civics are likely worth a turn of Anarchy. Having a state religion likely not. (OR still worth it so we can build missionaries without monasteries.)

Doesn't OR only let you build missionaries of your state religion?