07-02-2005 22:22									#1
	Discussion: What should we reserach first? Inflate your Upload Space

I would go with Pottery myself. It's very valuable for building Graneries. This would mean more cities, and this early on, more cities -> more science reserach.

	08-02-2005 00:05									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

(edit: added tech costs & other info)

Hmmm ... our starting techs should be Ceremonial Burial & Bronze Working...

That leaves us with:

• Iron Working (cost: 6)
  Swordsman, Iron becomes visible
  
• Masonry (4)
  Palace, City Walls, Pyramids, Outpost
  
• Alphabet (5)
  Curragh
  
• Pottery (2)
  Granary
  
• The Wheel (4)
  Chariot, Horses become visible
  
• Warrior Code (3)
  Bowman
  
• Mysticism (4)
  Oracle
  

Last edited by BigFurryMonster on 09-02-2005 at 13:28

	08-02-2005 00:34									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

We know nothing about who might be our neighbors other than which civs are in the game at all. The map maker is unlikely to place by culture group.

If we started with Alphabet, I would be inclined to go with Writing but taking 100 turns and just having Alphabet & Writting to show for it would be bad.

(Alphabet is most expensive starting tech & Writing is also if not the most expensive 2nd level tech, tied for it)

I'm not so sure that Spearmen would fall off the build charts. It would certainely not make much sense to build SM if we could build BM given their identical costs other than avoiding GA.

Spear Men upgrade to Pikes.

Bow Men upgrade to Long Bowmen.

	08-02-2005 13:18									#4
	Increase Your PM Length

I wonder if the mapmaker places the seafaring civ, Carthage, near or on the coast.

When making the map for the 'coloured' PBEMs, I counted on the computer to do so (but it didn't).

	08-02-2005 17:59									#5
	Got spare money?

I am thinking iron working. We are going with stock c3c resource settings - so iron will be valauble. Only us and the Persians start with bronze working - so the sooner we can get IW, identify the iron sources befor ethe others, and possibly get a city near to the site, the better.

And, if we have iron available to us already, we have a very valuable trade tech.

I'm with jon regarding Alpha and writing. We be trading for those I think.

Pottery I am always a bit reluctant to start with (but I have many times in both SP and MP games) - you often get it from a goody hut. Or it can be had as a thrown in on another trade. That being said, the early granary is a powerful base from which to rex on - but this is a 3 settler start, so that strategy is somewhat mitigated, IMO. But still something we should try for.

The intriguing one is warrior code and bowmen. The good thing here is that with a plethora of mil civs in the game, we can easily trade for it.

	08-02-2005 19:03									#6
	Increase Your PM Length

Hmmm... since we'll be having 3 cities to work from, securing Iron may be easier (compared to the 1-city start) but we must know where it is...

Trouble is, it's 3 times as expensive as Pottery. It means low flexibility in the research department for quite a while. OTOH, we start with 3 cities, so (almost) triple researching power...

	08-02-2005 20:26									#7
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Beta is right that if we research anything other than Pottery, then the first tech we'd get from a GH would indeed be Pottery.

But it's worth noting that since we are NOT expaniontic, there's also a significant chance of barbs, and so we really can't rely on GH to give us techs at all.

To me, the real choice is between Iron Working & Pottery. And it may well come down to how much hills & mountains we see.

	08-02-2005 21:52									#8
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Yup, jon, I agree about the mountains. We should be able to guage that from the first turn.

I've been thinking about this some more. Another point is that iron is not critcal for us in the early days. That is one of the advantages of the bowman UU. Maybe the early investment in pottery and then granaries would be better.

Say we did research IW first - and the one nearby source would mean that we would have to place a city quite some ditance from our core to obtain it. Would it be worth it to weaken our growth plan to get iron - when we already have a pretty good, and cheap, military unit. Also, if we had to stretch our civ to get it, it may just paint a big bulls-eye target on us for those civs that do need it. In other words, it may actually be safer not to get in a scramble for a limited resource.

Am I making sense here?

	08-02-2005 21:53									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

On the other hand - IW would have significant trade value. We will just have to make sure we wrap up deals early - before the Persians do.

Last edited by Beta on 08-02-2005 at 21:59

	08-02-2005 22:55									#10
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Scampling for a far flung city site in a MP would be the wrong thing to do. It basically tells humans without IW, hey that's where the closest Iron to their capital is.

I wasn't envisioning connecting Iron early in any case, in the event that IW is our first tech, the knowlege of iron would be used to place cities near it properly so it's very convient to connect when we want it connected and disconnected when we don't want it. In MP games there's a lot of disconnecting and reconnecting of Iron to build Warriors quickly and upgrade them to Swords / MI.

	08-02-2005 22:59									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Desolation Row - Persians - Immortals (4/2/1) - Bronze Working & Alphabet - Scientific & Commercial

Persians are Scientific & Industrious and start with Bronze Working & Masonry

The two Scienific & Commerial civs are Greek & Korea.

	09-02-2005 02:46									#12
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Pottery

	09-02-2005 13:29									#13
	Got spare money?

quote: Originally posted by joncnunn Persians are Scientific & Industrious and start with Bronze Working & Masonry The two Scienific & Commerial civs are Greek & Korea.

Thanks! Edited that now.

	09-02-2005 13:30									#14
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by joncnunn Scampling for a far flung city site in a MP would be the wrong thing to do. It basically tells humans without IW, hey that's where the closest Iron to their capital is.

Quite right. And not only for the reason you provide, but also since that city will be quite worthless production-wise. It's a waste of Settler.

We outstretched with Lux Invicta (in the PTW Demo Game I) and found ourselves lagging in production quite early.

	09-02-2005 21:05									#15
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Pottery is looking extremely advantous with our river start.

	10-02-2005 05:14									#16
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by BigFurryMonster Quite right. And not only for the reason you provide, but also since that city will be quite worthless production-wise. It's a waste of Settler. We outstretched with Lux Invicta (in the PTW Demo Game I) and found ourselves lagging in production quite early.

And we did the same with Vox - with negative consequences as well.

So yup - pottery is looking very good.

How do you spell REX?

	10-02-2005 05:30									#17
	Tired of ads?

What are rules on rushing in this game? I do not want to be caught up building grannaries but having regular spears/warriors for protection. Remember it is SMALL map! Millitaristic Civs might go for Rush (and might not trade us WC early)

Unless there is 30-40 turn no attack rule we must go for WC! And even if it is building granaries first without adequate defences (~2 units per city not counting "explorers") might be not good idea. Getting this millitary might eat up all this 30 turns.

We could set pottery and do not invest anything untill hut is popped and if it WC then research pottery.

Bowman are great units: if we have them we can control barbarians from huts and otherwise, and other civs will be less inclined to attack us since they are better than spears when stacked and will give us GA to fight-back. If somebody attack us in despotism we MUST kill these bastards with our GA.

Call me paranoid but I would go for WC.

Edit 1: and get at least one if not two of 3 starting cities working on barrack ASAP to build a few of vet-Bowmen as soon as we get WC.

Edit 2: in general our research should be towards Monarchy to be more flexible with GA timing and to get rid of tile penalty ASAP it is our main advantage as religious. I am not sure about bonus tech mechanics in PBEM, but I suspect that you get whatever advisor think is best to research next as bonus, since we are not there at the research turn. Thus phylosophy bee-line is not all that great, and having no Alphabet we can safely forget about it, IMHO

Last edited by pvzh on 10-02-2005 at 06:43

	10-02-2005 13:15									#18
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Good point about the hut popping. Here is a plan:

Turn 2:
Found Babylon
Set research to Pottery, 0%
Pay upkeep with gold from the city
Move settlers in place

Turn 3:
Found NW city
Found E city, popping the hut - 0% barbs, positive chance of new settler since we have 0 left, we're researching Pottery, so we have a chance at Warrior Code
Set research to 90%
Decide what to research


Also, good point on the map size. REXing is nice, but how close are our neighbours?

And another good point on the Monarchy advantages. With our nice core of good tiles, the bonuses of Monarchy will work well for us.

By the way, Pottery gives us some flexibility in deciding what to research next, since it only has a tech cost of 2.

We should secure a trade partner and work out a really good long-term deal in that department!

Last edited by BigFurryMonster on 10-02-2005 at 13:22

	10-02-2005 17:41									#19
	Suffering from ads?

If we are agreed on pottery as our first tech, why would we set the slider to 0% to start with. Regardless of what we get from the hut, we are researching pottery.

	10-02-2005 17:51									#20
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

To pay for our units in turn 2.

	10-02-2005 19:44									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Run a deficit on turn 2, we get 10 gold

	10-02-2005 20:34									#22
	Put an end to popups!

We do ? As starting capital, you mean?

I agree that if we agree on Pottery, we can set research to 100%.

	10-02-2005 20:39									#23
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Yes, all civs start with 10 gold in all Civ series games.

One Exception: In SMAC, the Morgons [only] started with 100 energy (= gold for all purposes) as a faction advantage.

quote: Originally posted by BigFurryMonster We do ? As starting capital, you mean? I agree that if we agree on Pottery, we can set research to 100%.

	12-02-2005 07:41									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Yep - we start with 10 and can run a deficit for one turn. We will start pottery.