All these are false assumptions which is exactly my point.
"All these" refers to only 2 suppositions. First, that you're going to start building NC as soon as you discover philo, which can't really be argued is a
bad strategy. Some may argue that it's always the best, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not go that far , but it's rather difficult to make the argument that its a bad strategy. Second, I only insinuated that production was about the same (from game to game in the capital) to be able to state that it would finish at
about the same time. If production isn't about the same, then the result may be finishing a turn or two later, maybe 5 if there's a considerable change in production of the capital. But that hardly makes it a sweeping statement that is negated by the "false assumption.," rather a slight change in the data.
The trade routes do not accelerates your settler production
I beg to differ. 5 trade routes at 10 gold apiece buys an extra settler every 10 turns, and you don't even have to halt the production of your capital, which by the way helps out your food=research argument. You need an awful lot of extra food to compensate for shutting down growth entirely in your capital for 8-10 turns
they do not make it easier to get your Libraries online
libraries can also be bought. see above.
they do not accelerate anything beyond your science
yes they do, your GPT. which negates all your other arguments except Tradition finisher.
And your core science is mostly a product of food, not science itself
?? NO, your core science is a function of beakers. True, beakers in turn are often primarily a function of population which can be accelerated by extra food, but that brings us to the argument of whether it's more effective to have a 4F/2B tile or a 6F tile (the classic argument of whether or not to cut down and plantation banana/jungle tiles) and that argument can go on until we're both blue in the face.
(at least until industrial/modern era, at which point your biggest increase is indeed the last 2 science techs but at that point TR science is irrelevant).
very true. Also very irrelevant to the point.
If I gave you Education on turn 0 it is unlikely it would lead to a big difference in finishing times (of course it'd help)
And this summarizes my point: Having more gold and especially beakers will help you achieve victory and probably earlier. Even more so, having these bonuses come earlier in the game has a much bigger impact than if they came later.
Want evidence that Immortal is not slower ?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=549792
Now if you have even a 10 turn faster deity science victory I'm all willing to see it.
Um... evidence yes, but not even remotely close to
proof. All this says is that the guy that finished the game quickest on immortal did so 10 turns earlier than the guy who finished the game quickest on deity. And there's about 10,000,000,000 factors that established when they achieved victory other than the difficulty level.
And with that I'm going to digress. I've made my point, and that is trade routes can potentially increase your early BPT considerably, possibly 4 or 5 times over. This increase can lead to big game milestones happening earlier, significantly earlier. But I also admit that it's complete and utter luck having those trade options be available. I also have found that because of this, deity games finish at about the same time as immortal, and you're evidence supports this as the diety game and immortal game finished 10 turns apart, less than a 5% difference, which could be considered "about the same time."
If you want to argue that having 5 BPT at turn 40 has the same effect as having 25 BPT at turn 40, then I guess you can play your way and I'll play mine. I guess you also shouldn't build academies early on because you could have 2 extra food from that tile instead of 8, 10, or 12 extra beakers.
It's a positive factor on deity. Deity also has to deal with other negative factors.
No need to leave the discussion in a tantrum.
