21-06-2003 01:34									#31
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

The Best use for a Golden Age is something that builds up the economy assuming of course the war ends soon enough for the GA to be spent peacefuly.

This is generally for cities without Temples, Market Places, and Libaries those structures.

If we happen to have one or two cities that already have those structrues, then of course wonders.

Naturally as long as we are at war during the GA, we will be spending it on military units & Temples.

	21-06-2003 03:05									#32
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Dominae, (or someone else)
can you please explain the high priority of harbours on your list? As I normally only build harbours after temples, marketplaces and libraries, I don't really understand why. Maybe one, for trading, but certainly not more.
Thanks

Tarquinius

	21-06-2003 03:24									#33
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Temples versus Markets, continued:

It seem to me that this is not a one or the other debate.

For smaller cities, Temples are fine. For larger cities (say, pumped up to 11-12 pop), we will probably want both. This may be expensive in gold and / or shields, but probably well worth it.

	21-06-2003 21:03									#34
	Increase Your PM Length

Temples in all but the smallest cities is a virtual requirement for running a successful Republic / Democracy.

Market places pay for themselves at 3 trade arrows post-corruption. Under a Republic/Democracy with +1 trade in every tile already producing one, even small cities benifit if corruption/waste isn't too high.

In the ancient and early middle age era, Court House tend to pay for themselves in terms of reduced waste outside the first immedate ring of the Palace. It doesn't take too many cities to reach the point where a Court House is more useful than the Market Place. Evenually Court Houses become desirable even in the inner ring in the middle ages as Banks are built.

On Harbors, about the only time you want Harbors before Temples is if the city has very little grassland/plains and you need the Harbor to reach a population that a Temple is needed to keep order. Harbors are a build when needed improvement, sometimes they are needed right after the Temple, other times right after the Aquduct, sometimes right after the Hospital, and sometimes they aren't needed until the city reaches size 16.

	21-06-2003 22:07									#35
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Can you please explain the high priority of harbours on your list?

With our tight city-spacing, we'll need Harbors in all our coastal cities in order to have enough workable tiles for each city (consider Incensity). Think of Harbors as an 80-Shield lump cost to put "tile improvements" on all those Coast and Sea squares. Of course, we do not have many coastal cities, but those that we do need those Harbors ASAP (that is, directly before or after Temples, depending on the happiness situation).

quote: For smaller cities, Temples are fine. For larger cities (say, pumped up to 11-12 pop), we will probably want both. This may be expensive in gold and / or shields, but probably well worth it.

Certainly. My suggestions for improvements were meant as relative priorities, meaning that Temples, Aqueducts and other things on my list should be built before Libraries or Marketplaces. I'm not saying Marketplaces are not good; I'm saying they're not good enough to be pushed too far up in our queue.

joncnunn has the right ideas concerning the various improvements (see his last post). But, in the cast of Marketplaces, it "paying off" in terms of Gold is not the only consideration: there's that 100-Shield price tag to take into account. Almost every improvement is worth building eventually. The tricky part is the order in which you build them.


Dominae

	21-06-2003 22:34									#36
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: Originally posted by Dominae joncnunn has the right ideas concerning the various improvements (see his last post). But, in the cast of Marketplaces, it "paying off" in terms of Gold is not the only consideration: there's that 100-Shield price tag to take into account. Almost every improvement is worth building eventually. The tricky part is the order in which you build them.

Agreed re joncnunn's post.

And yes, Markets may be 100 shields, but in addition to the 'pay-off' in gold, there is the happiness and WLT?D. I guess I'm saying I'd rather make sure of those benefits in our larger cities before gambling on GWs.

	21-06-2003 22:49									#37
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: Originally posted by Theseus And yes, Markets may be 100 shields, but in addition to the 'pay-off' in gold, there is the happiness and WLT?D.

We currently have access to two Luxuries, and I doubt we'll get any more within our borders for quite some time. If we find that we can reliably trade Luxs with another team, then Marketplaces definitely go up in priority (just an extra Lux will make Marketplaces essentially equivalent to a Temple in terms of combating unhappiness). But the key word is "reliably". Personally I would rather have the "sure thing" in Temples...not to mention the fact that they help us during our growth, and not only near the end.


Dominae

	22-06-2003 18:00									#38
	Increase Your PM Length

Markets (and in fact ALL improvements) will add to our upkeep costs, which ATM are minimal. This game is so competitive that we are running at max science for as long as possible to get techs and trade ASAP. The amount of time we can do this for will decrease the more improvements we have, or, if we are to run at near 0 loss, the more improvements we have will decrease the science rate we can maintain, possibly making us slip behind the tech stage for a time.

Harbours will, as stated above, effectively add terrain improvements to sea/coastal squares, which will benefit coastal cities enough to make everywhere possible where there is insufficient decent land to grow.

Temples will of course be needed when each city gets to a certain size, so we should build these whenever we plan on increasing a city's pop to that point and not at any other time except when attempting to push the borders outwards for resources (doesn't apply except in one possible place ATM) or to establish a border with a civ (again, only applies in a few places).

Markets will be nice in large cities if we have the lux trades, but otherwise they will be more a liability than an advantage unless we have a city or two with LOTS of trade or we have Libraries at the same time. The reason is that, whenever we run at high science the markets do almost nothing for us, but add to upkeep. If we were to run at high science for a time then lower science on the last turn or two, we will run out of money FAST with so many improvements. Especially when we make it to the Medieval Era, there is a BIG jump in tech costs, and we will have longer times in our max science regime before getting anything, unless at the same time we have some Libraries up to help us.

From what I can see our GA should not be used to bulk-build improvements all over the place, but rather we should go a little begging for improvements leading up to it and use the GA for one or two key improvements in the cities that really need them.

Remember too when our GA is - during a CDG war, ideally. Our top priority will be breaking their backs and keeping enough troops around to ward off GCA/CFC if need be. It may well be that we need reinforcements, and with a GA we can reasonably expect many cities to have 10 or fewer shields even then. This is because we will be a Republic, no longer able to use Military Police, and the only happiness improvements we can build are Temples. With a lux rate we can expect cities of size 7 with a Temple and 5 without (if I get this right!). Thus let's assume we can expect shields during GAs for most of our cities (no Temples) to be 10-15 per turn. It will take 2-3 turns for these cities to give us another 30SMU, which is what we will need in the war as reinforcements. Each time this cuts down the GA time for improvements. Assuming again (I am drawing numbers out of the air here, though I guess I can do that!) that these cities need to build two reinforcements each, this leaves 14 or so turns in a GA. Thus 140-210 shields whilst in a GA, which amounts to a Temple + Harbour + a couple of workers/settler to keep pop at an acceptable level and to keep the terraforming going. Each additional 30SMU cuts down further on this.

My point is that the GA will be great, but it will be very likely we can only build a few improvements - at most two in some cities, due to the need to win the war foremost. So we must look at the GA not as a time to build everything we can, but a time to quickly build those things we need to push ourselves further when we are out of the GA. We can give no priority building here except perhaps the humble Temple. We have to, as time builds up, concoct a "wish-list" for each individual city, and satisfy the top wishes per city.

Another thought... when we are in our GA and Republic, we can aid matters somewhat with low science and rushbuilding. We may fall behind in science at the time (hell - we'll be at WAR), but this sounds to me to be a better idea than my mumblings above. If we zero (or near zero) science for most of our GA, we will be able to make our GA count the most for building the improvements we need to stay competitive in the future as well as providing the troops to take the land off CDG.

But I leave my rant above for interest's sake.