[...]yea, i know about the beakers beeing the bottleneck here, [...]
[...]
i simply cant see, how the currency pick can keep up with that. we are crunching numbers like mad here and basically we all agree that on this map, production is the limiting factor. working coasts with lighthouses will bring in enough gold to keep research going really fine up to having 6 cities[...]
What truly is the bottleneck?
Being able to produce an army to take out the map OR achieve the techs necessary to produce said army?
My feeling is that if we expand fast without any economic benefit, we will fall behind on the techs compared to slower expansion+tech heavy focus.
However, there is a way to decide.
First, we have to decide what kind of army we want. Duckweed mentioned Catapult based and I think we can agree this is pretty much a requirement.
I'd say we can use the SGOTM12 approach once again, Macemen+catapults.
Therefore key techs are:
1-Civil Service
2-Machinery
3-Construction
4-Engineering (mainly for the +1 movement)
5-Steel (mop-up phase possibly if the game drags that long)
6-Astronomy (faster shuttling of troops and possibly required to access enough land)
We could also consider horse-based techs later on for cleaning up although it's quite off path from this point.
The first 3 techs are the key to this approach. How fast can we acquire them?
Is Oracle>Metal Casting going to achieve this faster?
or
Is Oracle>Currency going to achieve this faster?
Undoubtedly, Currency first - the difference in tech cost is marginal but the additional traderoutes will pay off nicely.
Remains to be seen by how many turns!
Second, on the production side of things... how many hammers ahead does Oracle>Metal Casting put us vs Oracle>Currency.
Two things to consider:
a) Metal Casting first will give more production available from t100~t110. However at around 6 cities, we will be fishing for an income resource until we manage to crawl to Currency, presumably. Therefore we will stagnate expansion for a little while. You also get the 25% extra bonus from the Forge but since it costs 180H, we will not see benefits from it until the city produces 720H after the Forge. The only immediate uses of a Forge at this point are Colossus and +1
from gold.
b) Currency OTOH gets a delay in production from t100~t110 as the capital is tied down with a longer build of The Oracle and cities try to maximize their commerce output. But, we can keep expanding! CoL is only 1~3 tech further and a 2-pop whip of a CH means we can keep expanding for a long time without worrying. How many more turns of populations will we be getting after t110 compared to Metal Casting?
If this is higher than the a) approach, then clearly Currency>MC. If not, then we will need to see how soon we can materialize an army to start attacking the AI.
How can we test this???
-longer tests. Really, we are at a deciding point in our strategy so we need to see how SOON we can start attacking an AI.
-let's try testing until Civil Service+Machinery+Construction are researched. Keep tabs on city population points (not total - a size 4 city is much better than 2 size 2)every 10 turns and note the turns techs are discovered.
-infrastructure priorities: granaries, lighthouses, courthouses, barracks. Everything else is just bonus although Monuments might be necessary in some cases.
I'll try adding some more random land in the test game later today so we can keep expanding while testing.
I've had my share of completing the Oracle in the past 2 SGs...
for madviking playing the set
. its a close call on timing, but with our gold city it MAY work (needs to be tested)
