Macro Thread

[novice]

Let's whip the Aqueduct in WIFOM just to have insurance against someone getting an absurdly late HG.

I wouldn't bomb the centre, and it seems like we could grab a fair bit of it without bombing, too.

[zakalwe]

I agree, but no point in whipping it before it's at 39/100, unless we are short on good tiles. Which I guess we are. So maybe whip it right away and regrow onto newly improved mines. Will have to look at the specifics.

[plako]

I agree not culture bombing.

Concerning WIFOM we can also wait for 39/100. That city has enough tiles to work and working 1 Scientist isn't that bad. However I would prefer whipping next turn. We would secure little overflow gold instead of just leaving unfinished Aqueduct in the queue. I'm already stunned it hasn't landed yet so I would be surprised if it isn't finished soon.

[plako]

I'd like to raise discussion concerning Liberalism race. We should be easily winning it so I think we definately should go for it. Now the question is how are we going to get there and what techs to bulb. Straightforward Nationalism run is probably for the best. However we could also be a bit more ambitious and try to get Astronomy. Astronomy would be nice since I've a gut feeling there are islands that we could reach with Galleons, we could also win circumnavigation and Pirates are behind the sea without a NAP with us .

Straightforward Nationalism:
CoL - Alpha - bulb Philo (with spared Scientist) - Civil Service - Paper - bulb or 2*bulb Education - Liberalism and take Nationalism

Ambitious Astronomy:
CoL - Alpha - bulb Philo - Civil Service - Paper - 2*bulb Education - IW - MC - Machinery - (bulb Printing Press, if we've Scientist around) - Compass - Optics - Liberalism and take Astronomy

This might take too long. However it is almost the same plan up to Education and we'll have Alpha to monitor progress of others. Big negative in this plan is that Nationalism is delayed a long way back and we're in danger of losing Taj.

[zakalwe]

My gut reaction is to just go for nationalism and get the Taj ASAP. Even if we're a lock for liberalism, there's the chance that TEAM just goes straight for nationalism.

Nationalism is 2574 beakers, or 2145 when you factor out a 1.2 prerequisite bonus. Astronomy is 2860 beakers. It's not a HUGE difference. And Astronomy may be bulbable?

[pling]

Astronomy feels like a loooong detour, and like it might be trying to be too clever. I guess if we can get an Engineer we could research Liberalism up to one turn left, and then if any team gets Nationalism we can build the Taj the next turn which minimises the risk (until the window of time where we're having to research Nationalism ourselves post-Liberalism). But it still feels like there's a high chance on missing out on everything we wanted.

[plako]

edit. Accidental message

[zakalwe]

TEAM does not have ma

That's good. If they had Modern Armor we might be in trouble.

[darrelljs]

I like the Nationalism plan.

Darrell

[zakalwe]

It's dawning on me (I can be pretty slow) that our upcoming golden age will be a 24-turn golden age, if everything goes according to plan. In my earlier playthrough I got liberalism->nationalism with about 5 turns to go of the golden age, and we will defenitely be aiming to spit out the Taj in that timeframe.

So we really should be planning for a 24-turn golden age. I think that means we'll want to run a period of organized religion and slavery in there. 24 turns without infrastructure builds is too much. So we could try running OR/slavery in the middle, and construct the Taj during that period. I think we could easily build the Taj using two whip overflows and five chops, if the first of those whips is a forge. So I also think we should try to slot in metal casting as our next tech after civil service, unless we think the race for liberalism will be tight. Then, we could start building forges, and whip them to completion during our OR/slavery stint, sinking the overflow and perhaps another whip into another infrastructure build before changing civics again.

Ideally we time it so that we get the first four GPs during our first period of caste/pacifism. We might even do without caste in the whole second half of the golden age. HN might be our only major GP source during those turns, and it could run two scientists (library) + two merchants (market) + an engineer (forge). That's assuming it gets a forge and a market, of course, and it might not have enough pop for that.