It may just be my playstyle, but I value early free culture highly. I tend to build at least a couple of campuses fairly early (wanting the Recorded History boost, if nothing else), and reasonable science trickles in from pop. Culture I struggle with - I may be too relucant to build monuments. Getting even 2 extra a turn to push through to Code of Laws and start running cards is huge - if you can get a second or third city near Pantanal, it may be possible to cruise through the early game without too much specific culture building.
Shame the city site is so poor - would have made a good chariot target to capture. May still be worth it? As a "free" city it may still be worth it - the only direct cost is it taking up a luxury. If there's enough production to get it a granary to make size 4 then it could be OK; looks very flat round there though. Perhaps depends how close you are to wanting an aqueduct for Military Engineering by the time you conquer it.
As for scouting, looking for water near the Natural Wonder seems sensible to me. I'm not sure about checking out the desert ahead of scouting E/N/S first. Depends what you think the priorities for scouting are, but I'd suggest leaving the gap until later.
Anyway, taking "the Pyramids are nice" as a temporary working assumption, what do you need to get it remotely efficiently?
1) Desert/Floodplains (yay Iteru!) tile - Yep.
2) Masonry.
3) 220 Production.
Masonry => Mining (no boost) + Quarry for the boost => a builder. All of that is easy enough in this start.
So, it's all about the production. Some rough thinking:
Corvee => State Workforce => Craftsmanship + a district for the boost
Craftsmanship => Code of Laws + three builder charges for the boost, one of which can be for the quarry
District => one of Astrology (hey, boosted now) or Writing (can probably boost); BW seems expensive and early Encampment dubious to me. YMMV.
Ideally you also want Monument to the Gods as a Pantheon, which requires 25t in God King (
) after reaching CoL.
Also, you want to be chopping for the wonder, so you need a second builder, which you probably want to build in Ilkum, which you can't switch to until the Pantheon is in; an you then need another switch to get Corvee.
And it would be insane to build the Pyramids before at least one settler. It could well be pretty
to build it before at least two, the second of which you probably want to be in Colonization to build, so you want EE - in an ideal world, boosted EE.
And, of course, you need scouts and barb-killers
.
That's quite a lot of moving parts. Running through an Egypt SP game (only King difficulty, but turned out to be barb heavy) I couldn't really manage to make an "early" Pyramids make sense (by comparison to say, China in a couple of other PBEMs). Right now I'd suggest playing "normally" and seeing if a window opens to make a fast run as chop/harvest values increase (which I think is what you probably had in mind). It's possible that no-one else will even have a decent site for it. The first key decision point then becomes the Pantheon, and that's still a little way off.
Meh. Quite possible that you can do better. What other wonders do you think may be worth considering? It's not the Pyramids is a "must have", nice though it would be to deny the Aztecs...
Shame the city site is so poor - would have made a good chariot target to capture. May still be worth it? As a "free" city it may still be worth it - the only direct cost is it taking up a luxury. If there's enough production to get it a granary to make size 4 then it could be OK; looks very flat round there though. Perhaps depends how close you are to wanting an aqueduct for Military Engineering by the time you conquer it.
As for scouting, looking for water near the Natural Wonder seems sensible to me. I'm not sure about checking out the desert ahead of scouting E/N/S first. Depends what you think the priorities for scouting are, but I'd suggest leaving the gap until later.
Anyway, taking "the Pyramids are nice" as a temporary working assumption, what do you need to get it remotely efficiently?
1) Desert/Floodplains (yay Iteru!) tile - Yep.
2) Masonry.
3) 220 Production.
Masonry => Mining (no boost) + Quarry for the boost => a builder. All of that is easy enough in this start.
So, it's all about the production. Some rough thinking:
Corvee => State Workforce => Craftsmanship + a district for the boost
Craftsmanship => Code of Laws + three builder charges for the boost, one of which can be for the quarry
District => one of Astrology (hey, boosted now) or Writing (can probably boost); BW seems expensive and early Encampment dubious to me. YMMV.
Ideally you also want Monument to the Gods as a Pantheon, which requires 25t in God King (
) after reaching CoL.Also, you want to be chopping for the wonder, so you need a second builder, which you probably want to build in Ilkum, which you can't switch to until the Pantheon is in; an you then need another switch to get Corvee.
And it would be insane to build the Pyramids before at least one settler. It could well be pretty
to build it before at least two, the second of which you probably want to be in Colonization to build, so you want EE - in an ideal world, boosted EE.And, of course, you need scouts and barb-killers
.That's quite a lot of moving parts. Running through an Egypt SP game (only King difficulty, but turned out to be barb heavy) I couldn't really manage to make an "early" Pyramids make sense (by comparison to say, China in a couple of other PBEMs). Right now I'd suggest playing "normally" and seeing if a window opens to make a fast run as chop/harvest values increase (which I think is what you probably had in mind). It's possible that no-one else will even have a decent site for it. The first key decision point then becomes the Pantheon, and that's still a little way off.
Meh. Quite possible that you can do better. What other wonders do you think may be worth considering? It's not the Pyramids is a "must have", nice though it would be to deny the Aztecs...
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore