Buttercup, I apologise for my patronising tone. If Writing costs 320 beakers, at 13 BPT you should indeed get it in well under 50T, so now I've no clue what's happening in your game(s).
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Well, even though you got the numbers wrong by a factor of 10, I think you were not too far from the truth?! If we assume that research went with like 5 beakers per turn for the first 30 turns, there are still 170 beakers left. So with 13bpt, we would still need 14 turns to finish it, giving a total of 44 turns.
True, it wouldn't explain it on Regent, but perhaps on Monarch: on Huge, Writing is so expensive, that right from the start it can't be done in less than 50 turns. (Only later, when more towns are up and running.)
BTW jkk, regarding the question "when to build" settlers: this is one of the very few points where justanick and me have a different opinion. (You may find other threads where we have already discussed this in detail...
) I think that it is usually better to first let towns grow, before spitting out a settler, at least the fully productive first-ring towns. Of course there are exceptions, e.g. if a nearby food- or lux-resource needs to be utilized asap. Or when playing on a small map on Sid level (where all available town spots may already be taken by the time you finish a granary...
)
Hey, no problem, I'll reply with an apology in return. It seems my game has stopped whatever glitch it used to do (maybe I did just imagine it anyway, quite possible either way, I mean, I must have noticed it in the first place for a reason, right??? Lol) as I just re-ran a more optimised start on a river and got Writing in 35/6 turns:
0-5 .... 13-6 .... 26-13
1-5 .... 14-6 .... 27-13
2-5 .... 15-8 .... 28-13
3-5 .... 16-8 .... 29-13
4-5 .... 17-8 .... 30-13
5-5 .... 18-8 .... 31-15
6-5 .... 19-8 .... 32-15
7-5 .... 20-11 ... 33-15
8-7 .... 21-11 ... 34-15
9-7 .... 22-11 ... 35-3
10-7 ... 23-11
11-6 ... 24-11
12-6 ... 25-11
To leave 1 turn left at the end of turn 35 with just 3 more beakers, which is spot on the 320 (give or take 1 beaker). I believe this could be optimised even better with Corn on Grassland next to a River as you might not need a second Worker (that's where I dropped from 7 to 6 bpt at turn 10/11), as it was I was slightly delayed by my bonus food on the River being a Game in a Forest. I was, however, benefited by having an Ivory in Forest for the extra 1 Gold that gives.
So when talking about optimised starts there's certainly options available at Huge Regent to warrant starting with Writing and going 100%, but, in terms of keeping you're Victory Condition options as open as possible, I still find it preferable to take either Bronze Working or Masonry first as going Writing first, with a civ that starts with no Wonder capability, spending so many early turns in just Writing leaves you fairly devoid of stuff to build and feels like a waste of shields, especially as money is quite abundant in the Ancient Age, what with everyone picking up 25/50G huts and 25G Barbs and not needing to spend much on Units with 4 free per town. Just building Settlers would negate you're optimisation of beakers and you'd be back to 50 turns.
That may be true to some degree, but i disagree on your conclusion to try chieftain. jkk has won some regent games and in my opinion lifting him to emperor is very doable. Emperor is the level to learn the basics. On chieftain and regent AI is so weak that one gets used to too many bad habits. Emperor is easy enough to learn but challenging enought not to learn too much wrong.
I vaguely recall we had a similar argument before.
Well you're whole shtick is that you want people to play only Diety and above and, therefore, playing differently on lower levels is learning bad habits when the reality is that they're simply different games that have different specialisations to optimise their conditions. For example, the lower the level the slower the AI expands, the lower the level the less need for money you have, how beakers are more OP at lower levels but almost useless at higher levels. If someone only learnt how to play on a very high level and then went into a Regent game then they'd be as clueless as someone who just learnt Regent and then jumped to Diety.
Once you're fully familiar with how both systems work then they are both equally easy (depending on start position). That's why most people's idea of a 'chilled game' is whichever one they learn to the best perfection. And, in terms of this whole idea of learning bad habits, it goes without saying that the higher level you go, the more you reduce the power of the AI by pre-game systems, such as taking Barbs out the game and giving yourself the weakest AI aggression option, which, to me, is developing bad habits, because anything less than Raging Barbarians and Normal AI aggression is just wrong, so wrong, akin to cheating/modding in my mind. When you move the Difficulty Slider along it's axis, this makes you feel superior, but reducing other axises doesn't effect this mindset for some reason...