So....Gandhi of France Anyone? (Leader/Civ Picking Thread)

[WarriorKnight]

Thinking about it, I'm starting to come around to the thinking that early CoL is not worth 2 Prophets since we have to waste time researching all the early religion techs as well, and scientists in general are much better to be running early with Rep. Problem is, after an early academy what do I do with a early GS? and when do we get CoL?

[WarriorKnight]

Triple post, but I've figured out a new plan:

Last plan was basically just figuring out how to get CoL ASAP while ignoring pretty much everything else. Instead let's try going back to a tried and true method of SE, focusing primarily on Scientists, and figure out how to get CoL later. Engineers would be perfectly alright to get as well, may be tempted to run one in every city that's run out of scientist slots, and a Prophet may be good for a shrine as well at some point, but otherwise strictly Scientists. I'm tempted to use 2 Scientists for Academies (one for each civ), one for Philo and one for Edu at least. After that I'm not sure, but that is quite some time away regardless and we may not even get pure GS's anyway.

With HC doing a CE, it should work out very well for the two of us. The big reason is being able to split gold and research in a SE more easily, so I should be able to both tech and fund Shoot at the same time. (although for a number of reasons it won't be as simple as that). We can also vary our strengths depending on how useful each economy is at the time (SE early, CE late) not to mention I can use double speed Uni's for our benefit.

However, we absolutely need Mids for this to work. Doubling the effectiveness of Scientists is not something we can afford to lose. Additionally, the Great Library is also highly desirable, we should prioritize Lit fairly highly. Since Smackdown have the game's only other PHI leader, I wonder if we have to race them for any of this?

[Ceiliazul]

Philosophy is always nice to bulb (req meditation/alphabet), or line up the Lib race real well by running balanced scientists in 3ish cities and pop them in rapid order.

And really, after you sacrifice expansion for the Oracle and an early forge/GE, you almost have to take a break from the specialists and catch up in foodhammers. So it all works out ok.

[oledavy]

I still think bulbing CoL is best [insert repeated argument that maintenance is going to be crippling on this map], besides, running all those scientists will be difficult without CS.

Also, when is this game going to get off the ground?

[WarriorKnight]

We aren't risking much for Mids I think. Shoot needs to build a cheapish wonder he gets a boost on ASAP while I need to build one reasonable expensive building that boosts production ASAP then keep only 1 pop on effectively a 2 hammer tile for some time. We'd probably be risking more building it with stone. As mentioned before my biggest concern is ensuring we land Oracle (and ensuring someone doesn't build Mids before we get our GE, but I don't think that's very likely).

I still think bulbing CoL is best [insert repeated argument that maintenance is going to be crippling on this map], besides, running all those scientists will be difficult without CS.

Also, when is this game going to get off the ground?

Forge + Library + Obelisk + temple allows 6 specialists without Caste, but without a Lighthouse we can only have 5 specialists unless we build farms and if we get a Prophet it's not a great idea to work Priests anymore (unless we want a Theo bulb, but Theo sucks by itself...), plus being my capital means it will have to build starting workers/settlers. Courthouses are too expensive for new cities without ORG, I'd rather get currency for markets instead of courthouses ASAP if Caste wasn't a factor, since it is it's tough to say.

Wish I knew the answer to the second question. Can someone contact sunrise? (assuming he's still hosting this game)

[WarriorKnight]

Incidentally dave, I'm curious how important you think courthouses really are. Assume you are playing for me in this game (Gandhi of Egypt, duh) and you plant a new city under no military threat but it's some distance from the capital (assume 10 tiles which should be fairly reasonable). You want to build a courthouse, forge, granary and library ASAP before anything else. Which order would you build them in and why? Would being ORG/Sumeria/both change your ordering in any way?

Really I'm just trying to see if I can resolve this difference in opinions through unconventional methods (and the increase in post count doesn't hurt either ). The rest of you guys can join in if you want.

[oledavy]

On a map like PB6 my ordering would be:

Granary -> Forge -> Library -> Courthouse

Here, it would be:

Granary -> Courthouse -> Forge -> Library

ORG/Sumeria would allow for getting the courthouse up quicker, and getting to the forge and library sooner/saving more gold on maintenance costs. Not factoring in 'number of cities' cost, a Size 1 city costs 3.27 in distance maintenance at size 1.

[WarriorKnight]

OK, do we have any idea how the number of cities costs work? Perhaps someone can chime in on that.

Assuming that it's the same cost as distance maintenance, I'm still not seeing what's so great about courthouse as 2nd build. By the time we have CoL and are settling 10 tiles from cap (second ring group of cities), we should have a good enough economy so that gaining back 3-4gpt ASAP shouldn't really matter too much.

I'm trying to compare the gold increase to something else, but I can't think of any in the base game off the top of my head. In FFH, you can build markets reasonably early which gives +3 gold and -1 research (no +25% gold), good early on but starting from mid-game kinda meh as the bonus starts to get smaller compared to your economy. I suppose technically the further the game goes on, the further you settle from your cap and so higher costs but in the same vain the economy is generally much better equipped to handle higher costs. But in the above scenario, it's just not enough of a increase to build so early compared to other things.

[superjm]

If you look at the spreadsheet you can see the formula. Num cities maintenance is significantly lower than distance maintenance, but shouldn't be ignored as the cost applies to every city in the empire at flatly increases each one with each city placed. It's also modified by how large the city is, but not by nearly the same amount as distance maintenance (basically, the num cities maintenance at size 1 is eventually doubled by size 18, increasing linearly through each pop point)

[WarriorKnight]

Whoops, missed that.

Still, number of cities is less then distance maintenance, so I overestimated the amount of gold that a courthouse would save. Since the game has started though we can put this discussion on hold for now.