(October 16th, 2012, 13:46)Sullla Wrote: Oracle itself is fine. I simply think that we should slingshot something more useful. Metal Casting and early forges (combined with early Organized Religion civic) would be stupidly good. Wouldn't we want to Oracle Metal Casting tech instead? I think we'd get far, far more value there compared to Feudalism.
Didn't we have some kind of analysis somewhere suggesting that forges are more useful than any other city improvement other than granaries?
I don't disagree. I think that I like the idea of trying to get the Oracle if we can and if it doesn't require excessive sacrifice, that is, our expansion. We will get good value imo and we also deny it.
On second thought, MC and the Colossus is something quite interesting for us being financial. Unfortunately there's not that much water but there is some... This is probably getting a bit ahead of myself though.
I agree that the first civic swap should be OR/HR. Oracle --> Feudalism is great from the perspective of maximizing the number of free beakers, but I agree that we would get more benefit from MC. I like forges a lot, and we already have a gold resource. CoL would be good too, but I think the production advantage would be worth more at this point. We already have a religion and, while I love courthouses, I think we can continue to invest hammers in workers/settlers and pay for cities with cottages.
If, however, geopolitics change significantly, LBs as a deterrent would be a godsend. I just don't see that being necessary so soon. As pointed out, we haven't met many of our opponents yet. And, regardless of how good we do, I think (hope) that the German team is building enough PYFT aggro from everyone that we can sail clear for a minute or two. Wishful thinking, that.
If we can defend ourselves, then sure, metal casting would be a lot more valuable, imo. I'm personally not a huge fan of vassalage myself, especially when we are still growing peacefully.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(October 16th, 2012, 02:19)luddite Wrote: It really doesn't seem like there's much opportunity to build libraries in the near future. The defense right now is minimal (two warriors?) and there are barbs running around, so any extra hammers would be much better spent on units than on libraries.
On the contrary, I think going for a library in AO once we have settled Jesus City and Clams would be excellent. By peeling off the corn to the Jesus City and the deer to MM, AO still has enough food surplus to run two scientists while working all its cottages.
Ie, we use MM and FP to take care of the units. We have three warriors right now, in 3t we will have a spear, and FP is building an axe.
Hmm ok I could see that. I'd have to see the micro though. Don't we want to produce a prophet as our first great person? And how long would it take to actually finish the library? Until it's finished, all those hammers are worthless.
I don't think oracling feudalism would be a good move. We'd need an extra turn of anarchy to switch into vassalage, and the free units wouldn't really pay off until it's time to switch into bureaucracy anyway. I also think longbows are highly overrated- give me catapults for defense any day, or even just cheap axemen. MC isn't ideal either- we're not industrious and our only luxury is gold- but it's at least somewhat helpful.
On another subject, even if we're going for monotheism, is it a good idea for us to get Judaism? The problem is, we already have Hinduism. With one early religion and (later) a shrine, we can just let it spread passively to all cities, especially on a huge map like this. But with two religions, we'd end up with a lot of cities getting Judaism instead, and then we'd have to build missionaries if we wanted to get the full benefits of Hinduism everywhere. Although there's also value in denying it to all the other teams.
Feudalism is not bad. Longbows are good. But MC is probably better. I don't think forges will have much value for quite a while because of their cost (although they may make decent overflow dumps), but Colossus would undoubtedly be good for us.
If we get Stonehenge I'd probably be in favor of chopping out Oracle at FP, lots of forests there once we get the second ring of tiles.
I don't see much downside to getting both Judaism and Hinduism. Judaism gets the natural spread upper hand, so we might be better off adopting it over Hinduism, depending on how many spreads we've gotten by that time. But anyway, an additional monastery in the capital later will make up for having to pay for a couple extra missionaries, so I wouldn't worry about getting a second religion at all.
The religions are indeed all the same, except that when the game checks for natural spread, it does so in the order listed on the city screen: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. This means that the religions on the left have a very slightly higher chance of spreading naturally, and Judaism always gets top billing in this order. Overall though the effects are pretty minor, just a few percentage points different.
I went ahead and ended our turn. Warrior onto the gold tile, workers in position for Stonehenge chopping, research on Fishing tech at 0% science.
(October 16th, 2012, 17:16)kalin Wrote: Quick thought and question, will try to elaborate later: under what conditions will a prophet bulb... civil service?
Kalin
Meditation
Polytheism
Priesthood
Monotheism
Theology
Divine Right
Mysticism
Masonry (Warlords patch & BTS)
Code of Laws
Civil Service
Monarchy
Literature
Music
Writing
Philosophy
Printing Press
Drama
Aesthetics (BTS)
Alphabet
Paper
Education
Liberalism
Calendar
Masonry (Vanilla & unpatched Warlords)
Animal Husbandry
Construction
Future Tech
So ... you need to be able to research CS (Writing, Maths, Code of Laws) and you need to have cleared Mysticism, Masonry, Meditation, Polytheism, Priesthood, Monotheism, Theology and Divine Right (but you can block this by not getting Monarchy).
I have finally decided to put down some cash and register a website. It is www.ruffhi.com. Now I remain free to move the hosting options without having to change the name of the site.
(October 22nd, 2014, 10:52)Caledorn Wrote: And ruff is officially banned from playing in my games as a reward for ruining my big surprise by posting silly and correct theories in the PB18 tech thread.
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
and, while I love courthouses, I think we can continue to invest hammers in workers/settlers and pay for cities with cottages.
