13-02-2003 00:10									#31
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO One last comment, in case we have a trustful, long term relation with any team at the moment the GL wears out, we can still get a considerable advantage out of it if the other team is willing to not research are acquire education for a while. We could e.g. focus on one path, and after 30 or 40 turns offer our city to our ally for 1 turn, at which point he will get all current techs known to 2 teams. If we play it right, that team will thus be able to stockpile gold, which they later can share with

Yet another plan that only works if we commit to being a tech follower rather than a tech leader. If we're the one with the most techs, we have nothing to gain by seizing the Great Library or arranging for a partner to do so and pass us the techs.

	13-02-2003 00:37									#32
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO Shiber, that won't be possible right now, it's much too early for that. If a war does break out on the main continent, tech rates are going to drop extremely, the middle age could be far away. We're very decent research wise, but we can only discover techs in 10 or more turns even after we build libraries, and if nobody is doing the same the Sistine Chapel can be many centuries away.

I'm fully aware of that. I suggested that we prepare for building the Sistine Chapel, not begin to prebuild it already.
If we choose Hurricane as our wonder city, I suggest that we improve the terrain around it for production, while increasing the population in Hurricane, so that when it's time to start stockpiling shields, we'll have a real wonder city ready for the job.

	13-02-2003 00:48									#33
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Longer-term, EotS and Cyclone are our two top wonder cities. The time will come when Hurricane needs to move most of its workforce to coast and sea tiles. Edit: and Tempest, probably more so than either of the others, with all the hills it can work.

	13-02-2003 00:55									#34
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I agree. IMHO we need to start drafting plans for a wonder city, or even two, if we want to get Leo's Workshop or JS Bach's as well as the Chapel*.

* I may be working with a false assumption here, but I think that the Sistine Chapel is the best wonder of the medieval age if your civ is not on the mainland.

	13-02-2003 01:02									#35
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I'm in love with Leo's for cheap upgrades to cavalry. Sistine and Bach's are a lot less valuable on lower levels where happiness is less of an issue. Just a temple, cathedral, and the two luxuries on our home continent would support size 10 with no happiness problems. Add a marketplace and an imported lux, or two imported luxes without a marketplace, and size 12 is fine. So there's not really that much need for Sistine (which doesn't even kick in until you have a cathedral), and Bach's is of relatively limited value as well.

	13-02-2003 01:16									#36
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Bah, we could get both Leo's and Sistine in Hurricane after we used it once already for a wonder. True, there might be other locations god for wonderbuilding, Cyclone certainly, but EotS will not make a good city because we can't prebuild there as long a palace there. In comparison, Hurricane can use more shields at size 12 than EotS can, so as long as EotS doesn't need the tiles, I would rather have them go to Hurricane (wonder or not).

As to being a tech follower: maybe. But I doubt it will be far behind, and I doubt that we don't find a good way of securing a tech lead immediately after education. Having lots of cash to spend on upgrades or rushes certainly helps...

DeepO

	13-02-2003 01:17									#37
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If someone gets the GL - we try to pull a "anti-GL" alliance with one or two teams-like the one we hated to think about when we were more enthusiastic regarding the GL project. We won't have to deviate that badly if someone helps us, we can gain diplomatic support for this venture quite easily- there has to be someone who won't benefit from any GL tech trade deals - and we'll find him/them. I don't see the fact that someone will get the GL as a good case in this argument, because we are primarily talking about the benefits against the costs for us, and i don't see how we differ from anyone else in the cost of GL falling into someone else's hands- i'd say it falls into the "global cost" of slowing worldwide research (exceot maybe a beeline towards education...)

As for an alliance with Vox- first i'll have to say something about the fun in the game- straying for a moment from in game "how to win calculations" personally, i see no fun in allying with Vox- on the contrary, it will be a pain in the ass "do this and do that" and "how many times i have to tell you not to...(insert your in-game folly here)", i'd rather focus on plotting schemes of war-mongering in the mainland or something...

Now for in-game arguments: we really don't need Vox as an ally- they are a liabilty- they will slow us down if we tie ourselves to them, and i don't want to be responsible for this team's action.
A combined assault on the mainland with them having a bigger share on the Luxian lands will give them a foothold- not us, where will we place the palace then?

Vox will be a very easy target, if they keep on playing as they do, and if we keep them off guard- it will be quick and painless (for us, that is... ), so there it won't be an overkill- just a quick and (fairly) easy one.
If we find an unsettled isle by then we can make a palace relocation then, and make some purely destructive assaults on the mainland, to make sure our supremecy is assured- our coast will be relatively easy to defend, and the mainland's one will be pretty vulnerable (the Vikings' UU could have been useful...)

If we make it to the GL despite our conservative investment, then we can avoid the overkill, leave Vox alone (not before trying to squeeze money for the techs), and focus on a mainland fall scale invasion- i wouldn't want to share our land grab with Vox, but maybe some deal (like X gold for every Immortal or something) can be arranged without further commitment, if not, then- tough luck, we'll just have to do it ourselves...


I think some really good arguments are hurled around in this thread- i wonder how long will the upcoming "winning" strategy of this debate would last, given the dynamic nature of the game.

	13-02-2003 07:46									#38
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Colossus is better then GL i think because it lasts longer and gives us more flexibility. The GL only gives us techs, which we will then need to trade to other civs (assuming that they dont already have it) Colossus gives us money, which we can funnel into techs, army, or city improvments. And it costs only 200 shields.

	13-02-2003 21:14									#39
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LoA.

-Arrian

	13-02-2003 21:21									#40
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If going for the Collosus, I would especially get its size up quickly, and keep it high. A city with a river and the collosus is better then 2 small cities of half its size...

DeepO

	13-02-2003 22:19									#41
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If we go for the Colossus in Hurricane, we may want to pump up its size and take a shot at another wonder shortly after if the F7 screen doesn't look like there's a lot of competition for wonders. (A library and marketplace first might not be bad ideas, though, considering how those complement the Colossus.)

In regard to an absence of prebuild possibilities in EotS, once we get Mysticism and until someone builds it in a cascade for lack of anything better to do, the Oracle is likely to be available as a prebuild. It's hard to imagine a human player targeting it deliberately! Another oddball trick would be to use a palace as a prebuild for the Forbidden Palace wherever we decide to put that and use the Forbidden Palace as a prebuild in EotS. Of course we'd have to be extremely careful with the timing if we'd try that trick.

Nathan

	13-02-2003 23:03									#42
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Nathan, FPs can't be built in cities that have the palace allready... I tried it numerous times

It seems there isn't enough support anymore for the GL, do we need to poll for its existence or not? And if we definately are changing the direction Hurricane is going, do we need to start discussing what to do with it instead?

For me, the choice is rather clear: I would like it if we still make it a supersized city, and prebuild another wonder there. The Collosus sounds good, but the Lighthouse is fine as well. (and the GL is better )

DeepO

	13-02-2003 23:22									#43
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My real objection is less to the Great Library (after all, we chould change wonder targets if we decide something else would be better) than to adding a bunch of workers to Hurricane now at the expense of our REXing. I could probably go for a plan for two more settlers from EotS, then three workers, then a chop-assisted settler, and then having EotS focus on workers for a while (assuming we get decent luck with disease for a change). By the time we get a couple settlers from EotS, Cyclone should be almost ready to go online as a settler pump, so there wouldn't be a major delay in founding the cities closer to home. But the idea of having EotS crank out a bunch of workers now and then waste growth building settlers later when it is production-constrained rather than food-constrained doesn't thrill me - especially when there are a couple sites with wheat fairly close to our capital waiting for settlers.

Edit: Looking back, if we make proper use of Hurricane's worker, he can get to the last fur forest and chop it a little sooner, so there wouldn't need to be as many workers between the second and third settlers (I think just one, maybe two, assuming he improves the tiles along his way).


Nathan

Last edited by nbarclay on 13-02-2003 at 23:38

	14-02-2003 11:14									#44
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quote: I even think the pyramids could be more usefull, even from a denial point of view. If someone on the "main" continent is able to get his hands on it, is likely to become the most powerfull civ on it.

We are going to have 14 initial cities right? As of now we have 1? Granary. 13 x 60 = 780 shields. The Pyramids cost 400. 14gpt + 19 WC's. Not that we'd build a Granary in every city normally, but the benefit is still there.

The problem is timing the build so that we are in a Republic and have most of our cities founded by the time it is finished. I think we should build one settler from Hurricane before starting though, as judging from the world's top cities list, no one is making a major play for a wonder yet.

With Chieftain settings, 2 luxuries, a Republic GA, and the Pyramids we could really pop/infrastructure boom to set ourselves up for a good Middle Ages.

	14-02-2003 11:53									#45
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Edit: Wow, it's 2am here and I just realised my first post makes almost no sense. Here's the gist of what I think I'm trying to say:

For maximum benefit from our GA, we need big cities. So the early-growth (size 1-5) Food bonus from Granaries is downplayed. Now, the growth in size 6+ cities will be useful as well, no doubt. But like you said we would probably want to produce Granaries in those cities anyway to help earlier growth, and pump out Settlers/Workers.

If only the Pyramids did not trigger our GA!


Dominae

Last edited by Dominae on 14-02-2003 at 12:16

	14-02-2003 12:57									#46
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Yes, our GA will be less than it would be later.

The Pyramids + GA + Republic has a synergy to it that really speeds everything up though, and the advances made in population growth still pay off after the GA is finished.

With the Pyramids we should be able to have about half again the population we normally would have going into the Middle Ages. With 14 cities in a Republic (Chieftain?/Standard), that's like having half a GA effect on overall production and commerce without the GA.

I think the advantages to the Pyramids outweigh those for any other Ancient Era wonder in our situation. The free Granaries give more gpt advantage than the Collossus would up until Hospitals at least.

How many turns are we from the Republic? We get Writing next turn, and have Code of Laws + Republic to research. I think someone mentioned it would take 30 turns to research Republic at our current capacity, so CoD being 10/28ths of that would take roughly 10 turns. That gives 42 turns (probably a bit less if we're done with the disease) before we can be in a Republic.

It sounds like the timing will be able to be worked out well. We shouldn't be afraid of a GA while in a Republic. The advantages early in a game tend to compound, and so even though it's less advantage directly, indirectly it can be as much or more than if we wait.

	14-02-2003 13:05									#47
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Fifteen cities, but we'll have a second granary online in Cyclone long before the Pyramids would be finished. So the Pyramids would give us thirteen.

Actually, I view the advantage of the Pyramids as more than just the 380 net shields savings because some of the granaries would come in cities that are good at generating commerce but not so good with shields. The Pyramids provide a way to build in a high-shield city and have the benefit go to cities that generate fewer shields, freeing those cities to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Aeson, how would you tell from the list of top cities whether someone's making a major play for a wonder? If they're doing it in their capital, their capital would obviously keep growing instead of shrinking from settler or worker production every now and then. (Of course disease could still shrink the capital along the way, if anyone else has any in their capital.) But a city other than a capital wouldn't bump a capital from the list just because it's in the middle of working on a wonder, would it?

Nathan

	14-02-2003 13:14									#48
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Keep in mind that the benefits of the Colossus are in raw commerce subject to multiplicative benefits of libraries, marketplaces, etc., while those of the Pyramids are in terms of after-multipliers gold. So the Colossus would provide a little more financial benefit than the Pyramids, but not a huge amount more.

In terms of timing, I anticipate that Vox's research of Philosophy, not ours of Code of Laws, will be the bottleneck. On the other hand, as long as the bottleneck doesn't force us to stockpile more gold than we'll spend on our city improvements along the way, that won't really slow us down in terms of when we actually get Republic.

Nathan

	14-02-2003 13:34									#49
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You're right about the top cities. I never noticed that population played such a little role in what city gets listed until I tested it just now. As for the Colossus, Marketplaces, Libraries, ect. will also work on the added commerce from pop points. Those improvements will also be built sooner in most cities with the free Granary than without.

Is Vox really that hard up on commerce? Philosophy is only 60% the cost of Code of Laws.

	14-02-2003 13:48									#50
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Recently, they were estimating 20 turns for Mathematics, which is cost 8. Vox doesn't have a river, so they're on the low side of commerce, while we have a river, a capital that tends toward large sizes when it isn't plagued by disase, some furs (Vox just has a single instance of one luxury), and, most recently, a city sitting on top of a gold hill. We also have either one or two more cities than they do, depending on whether they built a fourth city where we can't see it.

I will say, though, that I've been misremembering the cost of Philosophy as 7 rather than 6, so the risk of our being delayed significantly isn't what I was afraid it might be.

	14-02-2003 13:56									#51
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Does the research cost default to Chieftain level for the player in MP?

	14-02-2003 14:00									#52
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Unfortunately, the game seems to be entirely on Chieftain, including happiness and most likely research too, due to a bug in the loading procedure.

EDIT: How can we check this? All we know at this point is, that 1 research point costs exactly 24 beakers.

	14-02-2003 14:09									#53
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If I remember how score works correctly, it looks like score is behaving as would be expected for Regent level - a score of 30 for 9 tiles and 1 content citizen for civs that founded their capital on the first turn.

	14-02-2003 17:13									#54
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Nathan, if you have a link to a score calculation thread, I'm interested.

Pyramids: strange that after a while, all discussions pass the starting point again, the first ever idea for Hurricane was to let it build the Pyramids... I think it's certainly a nice thing to go for, but am a bit worried that if we are first of all going to build a settler from Hurricane, we will never get anywhere close to being first to get it. I still think we should aim to supersize Hurricane, instead of limiting it's growth... the two pumps should be enough to get our settlers fast enough, without disease EotS can get to 5 turns per settler, Cyclone can get to 4 turns per settler, that should mean that we can more or less build the 15 cities before the Pyramids are completed. (we've got 5 already)

Timing: we're going to need some 40 turns to build the pyramids if we add workers, which, if Vox can get to Philosophy, should be enough for us to reach Republic. Indeed, I said it currently takes about 30 turns for republic, because we were making some 17(?) research, and needed 28*24 beakers. Of course, this will get better over time, as cities will grow, and others will be founded, so we should be able to get to republic well within 40 turns, even if there are a couple of turns delay from Vox. And, if we somehow would be 1 turn late, it won't be ideal, but not that bad either, we're religious after all.

Re: other cities building wonders: we could check on the F7 screen if other capitals are prebuilding, but can't see other cities (not on the F11 anyway). I think it's better to judge the diplomatic situation of other teams, to see if there is a risk for wonderbuilding. As far as I can see, there are only 2 other teams in a position to build, first of all legoland, as they are completely isolated, second RPG as they are neutral. The other teams have other things to focus on...

BTW: Vox has settled its fourth city, if I see the power graph.

DeepO

	14-02-2003 17:27									#55
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We could 'trade' the GL for Pyramids with RP...

This would increase the likelyhood of getting it.

	14-02-2003 18:36									#56
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I've been thinking about the Colossus recently, and though I'm still not convinced it is a good choice in comparison to the GL or Pyramids, it does have something going for it. Since we're playing on Chieftain, the reduced cost of techs means that the Commerce generated by the Colossus is that much more useful for gaining techs, discounting the effect of free techs gained by the GL (which cost less due to difficulty). Whether this difference is significant compared to Emperor difficulty, I'm not sure.


Dominae

	14-02-2003 22:09									#57
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Re: Pyramids or GL <--> Colossus:
I think all options have their advantages, but need long term planning to get most out of it. We shouldn't wait too long before deciding, so we can also adjust our diplomatic objectives.
Apart from diplomatic relation, I feel the most important point on deciding which to go for is the amount of effort we're willing to put into building a wonder: the Colossus is only half as costly as the other two, it's effects will be smaller, but when used right certainly an asset. Sure, the Pyarmids or the GL can have more benefits, but also cost more... it's kind of balanced. I feel like we have the possibility to spend more on wonder building, hence I would like to wait and build a bigger wonder, but if we need Hurricane's production back faster the Colossus will be fine as well.

Alva, trading Pyramids for GL with RPG: very good idea, with but one problem: if we would get into a war before completing the Pyramids, and we would gain a leader, we can't use it to rush. Or, if a leader is used by someone else to build the Pyramids, we're screwed as well. It's risky... I would wait, as we should be able to do it without a deal with RPG. If Lux and ND get into a fight, it's probably going to be a long one, so lots of elite promotions possibilities.

DeepO

Last edited by DeepO on 14-02-2003 at 23:25

	14-02-2003 23:47									#58
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How far along is the prebuild? The shield cost for a Palace is 300 at that empire size on regent, so either we're 75 shields in or the Palace cost is modified to Chieftain level as well. (I'm guessing the latter)

	14-02-2003 23:49									#59
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There is no prebuild as of yet (under 20 Shields).


Dominae

	14-02-2003 23:53									#60
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It has 4 shields, next turn (once we'll get it) 8.

DeepO