Well, there isn't much. We have contact with America and Egypt.

America: They have all techs that we already know, plus masonry. America won't even consider selling masonry to us.

Egypt: They have Masonry, The Wheel, and Ceremonial Burial, and don't know Iron Working. We can purchase Masonry OR Ceremonial Burial for our Iron Working and 11 gold.

Personally, I'd go ahead and make the deal for Ceremonial Burial, just so we can make a trade before Egypt gets it from someone else. I chose Ceremonial Burial over Masonry for temples and a path to monarchy.

Thoughts? Comments?

I would say, Go ahread with the Cerimonial Burial. We can build temples to Eliviate any Unhappynesses we may encounder.

I would like access to ceremonial burial, as it will allow us to more quickly fill in our borders.

FA likes the Cer. Building trade. We should then see if we can directly sell it to Abe.
If you do these, FA will sign off on it.

Let's go with ceremonial burial.

I like Ceremonial Burial. It can help our culture (and thius expand our borders) and also keep unhappiness to a minimum.

Lastly, it could give some great new ideas to the RPG. :)

Ceremonial burial will gain us the most immediately; filling space and fighting unhappiness. Although it's not our first priority now I think this outweighs at this point in time the building of the Pyramids. None of our cities is ready for Wonders now. I say Ceremonial Burial.

Doesn't everyone know the cost of Cer Bur.? It's very low, a cost value of 4. We already have a lux, and could get another (dyes). If we keep expanding, and build up our infrastructure, we won't have to worry about unhappiness yet. I've provided a chart of the techs. This is what Science SHOULD be doing - figuring out who has what, and what is at Xciv price.

Here's what it shows. America HAS Iron Working. How do we know? Because we can't sell it to them. Since they are the only known civs to us, it's best to sell IW to Egypt. Now, what for?

We could get CB, which is @1st civ price in our group (value of 2), or get Masonry @2nd civ price (which is devaluated).

This is why we need a comprehensive plan, and there is none. We've got our cities at one point all building granaries about 40-50 turns into the game. We're talking a little about prebuilds, but not thinking about masonry, which is required to build the Palace. So, this is why I think we should go for masonry instead. The price is devalued, so it's sort of like CB's cost.

Tech Cost Rome Americans Egypt
Cer. Burial 2 X
Pottery 2
Bronze Working 3 X X X
Warrior Code 3
Masonry 4 X X
Mysticism 4
The Wheel 4 X
Alphabet 5 X
Horseback Rid. 5
Iron Working 6 X X


Also notice a pattern - Everyone has Bronze Working! This is why I wanted to go with the writing path. We're acting very much like the AI right now. (even worse, as the AI actualyl builds workers). Anyway, the trader in me says go with masonry! With it, we can prebuild for The Great Library, and won't have to worry about science output for a while.

if we want to prebuild for great library, we should consider the acquisition of Masonry.

Great work, CT, but I'll be honest. I have no idea what the cost value of any tech is beyond seeing the amount of turns we have to complete it. I suspect that digging into Civ3's matrix for answers would demystify the game for me.

But I agree. Masonry is definitely the way to go. However, a Palace pre-build now could throw a wrench into our plans somewhat. You said yourself that we need to expand, and we need Settlers to do that. I would like to get 1 or 2 more cities founded before we consider a pre-build.

Finally, we needed to take the Bronze/Iron path to take advantage of our Unique Unit. And the workers will come, CT. Let's settle a few more sites and then roll out the workforce.

I don't know whether this would work, and in fact it didn't the last time I tried it, but here goes...

If we trade IW to Cleo for CB, then we could trade CB to Abe for Masonry. :) Trouble is, no guarantee that Abe will go for the 2nd trade. :crazyeye:

For this to work, we would have to do it right away, in case Abe and Cleo know each other.

Originally posted by d8575
I don't know whether this would work, and in fact it didn't the last time I tried it, but here goes...

If we trade IW to Cleo for CB, then we could trade CB to Abe for Masonry. :) Trouble is, no guarantee that Abe will go for the 2nd trade. :crazyeye:

For this to work, we would have to do it right away, in case Abe and Cleo know each other.

I can tell you for a fact that they won't.

At 2nd civ price, Cerimonial burial becomes worthless (think of it as a price of 1, minus if anyone is researching it). Masonry has a tech cost of 4, but is devalued at 2. Had we been researching Masonry, we MIGHT have been able to get it for cerimonial burial.

We'll need a palace prebuild sooner than later. A temple is 60 shields. (We don't have the religious attribute, or even the scientific one, so it won't be cheap - which is what made DG1 easy. In DG1, Fox Nest was building the Pyramids, but was beaten, and was able to switch to The Great Library. We also had a lot of cheap library builds).

Personally, I think we're almost in a bind since we didn't expand enough at first, but we also had a start on the plains. Gorina does have a river, so that's a city we could get past size 6 to start cranking out some wonders, or alteast a prebuild.. Penguinuadia could be a good settler factory too. Nar Shaddaa has cattle on plains (2.2.0), so they can be a worker factory. It can alternate between warriors and workers.

If we build our next settler north of Gorina (In West Noshuret), then Gorina will be able to use some more tiles.

Anyway, enough of my babble. :) I say we trade for masonry. It gives us a palace prebuild. Cerimonial Burial will be cheap enough to research soon. It's already down to 7 turns at our current rate of research (90% - 6 at 100%). Who knows, we might even find another goody hut with Cerimonial Burial in it (doubtful now).

We should trade for ceremonial burial on the off chance that we can trade it to America for masonry, thus ending up with both techs. I would remind those in power that by lowering our science rate, thus generating more gpt, more trading possibilities may open up.

I would also like to point out that this is the exact scenario that calls for some off-line action by the president. Assuming we go for the ceremonial burial trade, wouldn't it be nice to just have that done so we can take a little time to see if other trades are possible?

I agree

Bah! I wouldn't trade IW for a tech we could research in a short time. And there's no guarantee Abe will turn around and trade us Masonry, so I think the off chance of getting two techs for one is really off. I also don't believe what CT is saying is "fact". On top of that, our national priorities out weigh any mathematical manipulation of Tech values. We should not reduce this game to calculator usage. Hang on to IW.

Hanging on to IW and researching things on our own means we will have little gold for warrior to legion upgrades. If we're not going to upgrade warriors we shouldn't be producing them. Besides, America already has IW and will trade it to Egypt once they meet - unless we get something for it now. I agree we shouldn't reduce the game to calculator usage. But I'm not so sure I know what our *national priorities* are...

Do we even have a set goal? I remember I started a thread in citizens of last game, but it seemed to die down. Do we have any idea what we plan on doing here? Any master agenda? War? Peace? What!

The time may be limited, but there is a poll (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53572) now to settle the matter. Please vote ASAP!