Cornflakes Goes Classical ... or Quantum?!

[Cornflakes]

Classical start era ... what themes are related to classical? I'm not into classic cars. I enjoy classical music but am by no means a music aficionado. Classical mechanics though, that is a starting point that I can work with to spin off a theme. Physics is fun! Classical mechanics is interesting, but since it was solved a couple hundred years ago, let's go Quantum! Clearly the capital must be Aether.

And I'll start you off with this video ... yes it's 6 years old, yes it's 40 minutes long, yes it's worth watching if you are at all interested in physics, electricity, magnetism, optics:

[Cornflakes]

Initial pick thoughts:

My reason for the game setup is that I want room to develop in peace for a while, before going cut throat. But I know that I will have to go cut throat in order to peacefully claim my portion of the land. Roomy map and emperor difficulty will require a balancing act to manage expansion and claiming territory, with the tech pace to not fall behind in military. I'm happy to have Mongols and Byzantines banned since that is not how I want this game to be played out anyway.

One side effect of the setup is that culture has extra value, since crushing the neighbors in culture makes it easy to pick off cities towards the 3-city elimination limit. Border cities are not crumple zones this game, they are liabilities! This has implications offensively as well as defensively. Sistine Chapel is boosted in priority, and thus along with it the accompanying suite of religious wonders.

I'm strongly leaning towards Spiritual for one of my traits this game. In part because the classical start gives SPI a running start with a guaranteed religion, immediate access to Slavery and Organized Religion civics, and quick access to HR/Serfdom at Monarchy (which can be researched from T0). Another part is that Spiritual is just plain flexible. Another part is that happiness on a BtS Pangaea script is tight, and cheap temples can help. And another part is the boost from pursuit of the religious wonders.

For 2nd tech I'm considering ... well, everything else actually they all can be useful in their own way, but I want to see the starting screenshot first. If it's brown and dry, then I'm leaning IND for pyramids. If it's a green river valley then I'm leaning FIN. If river valley with poor food, then I'm leaning EXP for quick granary. If river valley with tons of food then CHA to stack early whip anger. Lower priorities are PHI (played several times recently), PRO (may not have islands to boost domestic routes), AGG (spiritual covers the promotions OK with civics swaps).

For civ I'm considering:
India - fast workers will help convert the jungle belt into a green cottage wonderland
Greece - seriously, that UU is custom designed to get us through the knights rush vulnerability period. We can chase all the wonders while laughing at our neighbors behind our Phalanx spears.
Rome - especially paired with IND, the Forum will help power through the early game commerce crunch during the expansion phase, and the Legion is nice deterrent as a universal defender.
Germany - earliest 12str unit available (and easily bulb-able). Factories available 10k beakers earlier, and unlocked at same tech as Creative Construction. Sneakily good for a culture victory?
Native America - barb defense without having to settle for copper or horses ASAP (barbs start with BW and will start spawning axes and spears T20). The +1 XP to melee/gunpowder guarantees the 3rd promotion everywhere with CHA+civics,

[shallow_thought]

Classical mechanics though, that is a starting point that I can work with to spin off a theme. Physics is fun! Classical mechanics is interesting, but since it was solved a couple hundred years ago, let's go Quantum! Clearly the capital must be Aether.

It may have been solved for true experts, but there's plenty of Classical Mechanics that baffled my undergraduate brain (more so than a lot of quantum, frankly). I'd support celebrating the great Classical theories - thermodynamics (still not properly integrated with Quantum), fluid dynamics (horrific mess that I personally found it), Hamiltonians, Lagranagians and (above all), Maxwell's work - the first great unification, sadly unrecognised these days (partly because the concepts and some of the maths is actually harder than a lot of Special Relativity).

Anyway, great theme whichever path you take, will lurk.

[RefSteel]

I love the theme! Here's your starting screenshot. The fog is probably accurate since this is meant to be a minimally-edited map, but I suppose if there's enough time before the game starts, it's possible something more substantive than tree color (as fog-gazing might suggest, the map generator put snowless conifers on tundra and I haven't decided what I think of that) might change for mostly-aesthetic reasons, so maybe don't trust the fog too far!

Good luck!

[Cornflakes]

Classic plains cow/wines start

The wines start is significantly buffed on Classical era start because the winery can be unlocked very quickly. Those tiles will become juicy 2/1/4 yields, like a village with a bonus hammer, without having to wait 30 turns for the cottage to mature and they also offer a buff to Financial since the FIN +1c will take effect immediately. Plenty of river as well to boost the value of FIN, with either a 3rd river peeking out in the northeast or the river we spawned on makes a wide sweeping loop. This is a cottage dreamland

I see tundra bleeding through from the south so we spawned just outside the Antarctic circle. There’s a decent chance that at least one of copper or horses will be in the tundra, but there’s also a chance for silver or furs.

[Cornflakes]

In thinking about the start more and in particular the random map setup I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t be valuing EXP higher. Food can be scarce and far between, and thus granaries more important for multiplying what we have. The capital has enough food to not need a granary ASAP, but if I split off either the cows or deer to aid 2nd city development then food gets down to the point where a granary would really shine. But FIN just looks so appealing with all this river available, and especially the immediate boost to the wines. And I don’t want to give up SPI … so maybe I can compromise with the Incan 45h terrace. 16h can easily be picked up by the time a new city grows to size 2 with a half full food box, for a 1-pop whip. And with Organized Religion if I can get a missionary lined up for later cities I can chop the Terrace to completion in time to take effect for the 1st pop growth, same as if I had EXP. Inca is a guaranteed 15h savings per city, it takes effect early, and it synergizes with FIN’s bias towards working cottages and whipping/regrowing.

The Quechua will help vs. wandering barb archers and warriors, and the fresh water bonus my come in handy for all the dry rice that the map script likes to throw in and around the jungle belt.

At the moment I’m leaning leader with first pick (SPI/FIN), and flexible with options for Civ on the 2nd pick.

It may have been solved for true experts, but there's plenty of Classical Mechanics that baffled my undergraduate brain (more so than a lot of quantum, frankly). I'd support celebrating the great Classical theories - thermodynamics (still not properly integrated with Quantum), fluid dynamics (horrific mess that I personally found it), Hamiltonians, Lagranagians and (above all), Maxwell's work - the first great unification, sadly unrecognised these days (partly because the concepts and some of the maths is actually harder than a lot of Special Relativity).

Thanks for following along! I don't mean to make light of these. In fact I am in awe of the genius of those who unraveled the mysteries of physics by observation and experimentation, and who developed the theories that we now rely on daily for our technology today.

The thing about the classical theories is that they are solved empirically, but not fundamentally. That is, experimentally-derived values and equations can be used to great effect ... but why does it work that way? Quantum attempts to go to the fundamentals, but to my level of understanding gets lost in a quagmire of mathematics and statistics without actually describing the physical world.

Although I have always been fascinated with electricity and magnetism, the sticking point for me in the electricity/magnetism/optics portion of undergraduate Physics, was that I could "do the math" and was top of the class from a grade perspective but had virtually no understanding of the "why". Therefore chose the Civil path rather than Electrical path. It wasn't until I found FractalWoman's YouTube channel that I started to grasp an inkling of an understanding of where to get started in understanding. She introduced me to Maxwell.

Fluid dynamics oddly enough has shocking parallels with electricity. Water pipeline systems of which I am more familiar with, have the functional equivalent of capacitors, resistors, switches, voltage, amperage, batteries, short circuiting, etc., etc., etc.

[Cornflakes]

One thing I’ve been overlooking with FIN is that classical era starts miss out on the boost that FIN gives to the early research rates. The FIN bonus is especially useful early on, and drops off later as a percentage of overall commerce.

PHI starts to shine in the classical, and gives a rocket boost into the renaissance. I know I’ve played PHI a lot, but it just feels so good to see Great People flock to your empire! PHI/SPI?

[DaveV]

Fluid dynamics oddly enough has shocking parallels with electricity.

I see what you did there.

[Cornflakes]

Fluid dynamics oddly enough has shocking parallels with electricity.

I see what you did there.

Despite Scooter scooping up a FIN leader with the #1 overall draft, I decided that I love PHI too much. Turns out Yuri’s and Commodore cast their votes in favor of PHI rather than FIN as well.

Germany was really growing on me. I went to double check how many beakers earlier Steam Power can come than Assembly line … and on a true beeline the entire top of the tree can be ignored. That is Philosophy, Nationalism, Constitution (prerequisites to Corporation), plus Economics and Corporation, and Assembly Line itself. In total over 21,000 beakers of additional prerequisites on a large Emperor map, out of a total of 60,000 beakers. That is, Assembly line takes a full 50% more cumulative beakers to reach, if ignoring the top of the tree pair that with an incredibly easy 12str unit that lets you sit back and laugh at your neighbors while you industrialize early. That sounded fun. But alas, Yuri’s had to go and steal Germany with the #2 overall pick.

In the end I settled on Greece, because of the Phalanx’s longevity. Phalanx soundly beat Knights, and can make do against Cuirassier. Enough at least to “outrun your friends, not the bear”. An extra happiness on the UU makes the colosseum situationally valuable, and the artist slots might be valuable, on a mainline defensive tech instead of researching up to Drama. (Discounted though since I’m SPI and can more easily run Caste). I value the UU highly though for the land grab.

Commodore’s Arabia is a slight surprise, although not shocking. The priest slots are nice, and he is a strong contender to contest the religious trifecta wonders. Since he’s IND I may let him build the AP while I bypass and go straight for UoS. Commodore has a lock on the Pyramids though if he chooses to chase it. I’m starting with Monarchy tech first due to Wines, and HR/Serfdom civics (as Spiritual). He can go Metal Casting, whip a cheap Forge, and run a PHI engineer (15 turns for the GEngineer). I’m tentatively planning to follow up with the same plan after Monarchy. But will be at least 15 turns slower than he could do it.

[Cornflakes]

Snow in the tundra pine trees

   

Scout makes the obvious move to the hill 2NW, revealing horses and stone. Hmmm ... decision, decisions. I could move and settled the capital on the plains hill, picking up horses and stone in exchange for deer. But that leave the deer in an awkward position for a 2nd city to grab the wines. The plains hill doesn't really speed up this start because we don't have the usual first worker built gate, and our speed out of the gate is limited by our growth rate (which would be hurt by missing the deer). I'm SPI so I don't need to waste a turn at the start on a revolt. So I settled in place with a tentative city location 1S of horses. This way we grab all the resources with two cities much more comfortably.

My first build is a scout, because knowledge is power ... and Known Tech Bonus ... and huts! Scout is a 6 turn build, and by that time my starting scout should have identified whether we spawned near the west or the east coast.

Commodore didn't settle which makes sense for all the non-SPI players while revolting on the first turn.