Caravan vs Library + NC Deity

Just wondering, which one is better finished first. I've just won my first Deity game as Venice and I've found that early on Caravan gives like 5 beakers on top of the gold and costs 75 production where as NC gives 3 beakers + 50% science but costs 125 production on top of the 75 production required to build Library (if you have more than one city it's even worse), so if your capital has like 6 pops that combo's gonna give you 3 from Lib + 3 + 0.5*(3 + 3 + 6) = 12 and minus gold maintenance. Considering researching time, rushing Philo doesn't seem as profitable as going Sailing + Animal H (especially true for Venice). I've seen a Marbozir game and he rushed Lib + NC and ignored caravan for like 200 turns (epic speed btw) which doesn't seem to me to be that wise. What do you think ?

one caravan first, then lib + NC. u have time to do both anyway. and mabozirs games are joke anyway

There's a lot more to consider. You gotta remember that rapid early growth is better for science than libraries or NC which only act on the current base. On Deity early trade routes are very powerful too. So yes, raising that base by trade routes and growth is better to do first. I actually did something different in my Deity game:

Went sailing-->optics. This is a good choice if venice is growing slowly. The free MoV allows you to purchase a really early CS on the coast and start feeding your capital with a food ship t40 or so which will make you start growing like gang-bangers. Library is only a couple beakers anyway until you have higher pop, so best to put it off. While you're waiting on optics crank out two ships for the beakers from trade routes and early gold as ships give a better gold return. Then pick up animal husbandry (should be real cheap now like 3-4 turns) and the timing should be right to buy a 3rd ship in your puppet you just bought and feed venice. Then get library tech. At this point your city should have high enough pop library will be significant. Build 1 more ship & library while you research NC tech. Now you have a food ship growing venice like crazy, a puppet, some free units, 3 trade routes that are ships yielding good gold and science and still finish NC fairly early and now it is multiplying the science from 3 trade routes and a rapidly growing city--so they yield should be better than going another route. This also means the trade ship yields a lot of gold and allows you to start buying things. You shouldn't have workers in your build order at all. I'm always able to steal a couple from an AI DOW and the CS gives you another free one.

I didn't do all this perfectly, but was still able to reach tech parity with the AI by early medieval and became the tech leader for the rest of the game. Early trade routes and food ship are essential to a rapid venice start. If you had gone straight for NC like Marbozir it would've turned out far worse, reason being you have no science from trade routes and venice is not growing fast so getting to the NC tech takes a long time by beeline. By getting all those first NC tech comes quite fast. So you lose far less turns than you think and will still get NC by a quite reasonable time.

It's tempting to wait to buy your first CS as they are still kinda weak early with only 1 unit and a single worker, however, I think mine already had a granary and mostly improved terrain. Also a library. Regardless, don't wait too long. Having Venice fed with your first food ship is essential as it is your master city.

That's exactly how I played my Venice game. Just wondering if for other civs it's better to go sailing (even w/o coast border) animal husbandry and crank out 2 caravans/cargo ships first than to beeline for Philo and go for Lib + NC. Just to emphasize this is in the context of Deity difficulty where caravans/cargo ships are relatively safe and yield a lot of science early on. I've read quite a lot of guides and it seems like they don't emphasize caravans a lot so that's why i'm wondering.

But one thing, I don't get how you were able to get to tech parity by medieval and stay ahead for the rest of the game. I had 2 food routes to venice very early on (no other cs nearby, by the time there were i figured it's better to save MoV for +3600 gold + 60 influence), completed every WLTK quests + focused on food pretty much the entire game and I was only around 3rd in tech. Them germans and indians cranked out techs like crazy . But i had enough cash to win Diplo straight away the first turn it was available so there's that (which is what I always do when playing Venice anyhow, so easy with like 40k gold in the bank).

Good job! Yeah, Venice is not built for science. having mostly puppets that often refuse to run more than gold slots plus MoV sharing the pool with scientists hurts them.

I was trying for a speed SV with Venice so I really tried to keep things cranking optimally science-wise. I also had 2 CS for food quite early. One thing that helped me with science was not running the merchant slots in venice in the beginning. Your CS do this anyway so you'll eventually get your 2nd & 3rd MoV but the problem is they share the pool with scientists. I instead didn't run them in venice and rushed for universities. I ran both these slots and managed to pick up a quick early scientist which I planted for academy. I also had a nearby mountain (observatory) and 5 jungle tiles so I got kinda lucky in that respect. Then I spammed scientists and RA's all end game like crazy to stay ahead, taking advantage of my gold, and picked up the science from CS allies tenet--and of course rationalism immediately. I also learned if you feed your puppets with a ship each they will switch to the scientist slots which ups your science and scientist spawn rate. They often won't run them and will instead focus on coast tiles instead which is really annoying. I did okay, but finally decided venice is just not meant for competitive science. I don't think I can get under t270 without an exceptional start and near-perfect playing. But they are extremely fun and can beat the stupid AI at least.

An added benefit of early caravans/trade routes is the (almost?) guaranteed friendship declaration of the recipient. Getting straight gold instead of gpt is not as good for venice as for others (no settler-buying), but still solid.

I tried watching some of Mabozirs games lately (as LC seems to be on a break), but i often have issues not to shout at the monitor when there are so obvious issues
He has other strengths, i am sure

I guess with a NC, you might get beaten to the punch by another Civ, wasting your precious early production.

dragonxxx said:

one caravan first, then lib + NC. u have time to do both anyway. and mabozirs games are joke anyway

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Why do you criticise him? He still wins the game on Deity. Do you think there should be an even higher difficulty level?

In Marbozir's defense (since I don't think he comments on or reads these forums), he likes late game war so his strategy is not based on fast finish times. Yes, he misses things but before you are quick to criticize think about how difficult it must be to try to play at a fast pace (to keep episode numbers down) and provide commentary while playing. It is easy to Monday morning quarterback. His LP's are entertaining and there are plenty of things that a novice player can learn from them. He is winning on Deity after all, so he can't be playing that poorly.

dragonxxx said:

one caravan first, then lib + NC. u have time to do both anyway. and mabozirs games are joke anyway

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Where is your let's play? Also i think he's actually making money with playing computer games^^ Playing on video means making relatively fast turns, commenting at the same time and be somewhat entertaining(which is of course a matter of taste)

alciefrederic said:

What do you think ?

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Ignoring caravans for 200 turns is certainly dumb. Don't do that.

Use caravans for food and make libraries/NC, you'll quickly get the 4bpt through food and it's just overall a better long term strategy.
Only real exception is if you really need an early tech fast, like for CB/XB domination game, in which case the bpt from caravans is interesting and you'll probably even skip NC if you intend to finish with XB.

Strickl3r said:

Where is your let's play? Also i think he's actually making money with playing computer games^^ Playing on video means making relatively fast turns, commenting at the same time and be somewhat entertaining(which is of course a matter of taste)

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I don't do let's plays because my spoken english is not great. At least not in the level I feel comfortable with it, so I can make decent comentary for hours.

His videos are entertaining to some extent, but he is making way too many mistakes, misses a lot of stuff happening because he talks way too much. I know he is making money out of this - but see , thats the problem - its definitely possible to play a close to perfect game while doing all this, especially when you get paid for that.

After all , his doing one video a day, thats 30 mins and half of it is recap of what has happened last episode.

I don't like em, and I don't think they are good way for someone to learn things, because he is playing very far from optimal most of the time.

dragonxxx said:

I don't do let's plays because my spoken english is not great. At least not in the level I feel comfortable with it, so I can make decent comentary for hours.

His videos are entertaining to some extent, but he is making way too many mistakes, misses a lot of stuff happening because he talks way too much. I know he is making money out of this - but see , thats the problem - its definitely possible to play a close to perfect game while doing all this, especially when you get paid for that.

After all , his doing one video a day, thats 30 mins and half of it is recap of what has happened last episode.

I don't like em, and I don't think they are good way for someone to learn things, because he is playing very far from optimal most of the time.

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Still he is playing several games at one time. i have a lot of respect and he also has a pretty big accent so his english is far from beeing optimal in my opinion. But i cannot understand how you can point out his let's play as a joke. His time investment in the game is probably lower than most of the deity players and he still does an ok job and helps lot of players while making money which he deserves, because it's a pretty damn good thing that people can make money this way.

with Civ 4 it's the same thing unlike there is only one player who does civ 4 deity let's plays(civ 4 is by far more difficult than civ 5) still people complaining he has bad micro, but nobody actually make videos. Write up's are usefull, but you never know how much the guy reloaded or in civ 4 you can even use the worldbuilder. YOutube Videos are by far more valuable.

Caravans first (AH and Sailing). Sometimes Engineering or Compass one, depend of the map.
Mainly food, sometimes gold and friendship with neighbors if I won't be able to sustain a pre T100assault.

Here you are, with video : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=523371

After reading this thread I went out to find a lets play video by Mabozir. Haven't watched one game through yet, but looks awesome to me. When reading a lot of the threads here there's little to backup any of the claims people come with. A lot of players seems to want their statements of what is smart stand without needing to reason as to why they are smart.

When they say you should have this and that by turn X, and when trying you always come up lacking, who knows if the statements are just bollocks, or a perfect game created by a very suitable map and lots of replayed turns.

Of course you don't end up doing the smartest moves when playing so fast and having to think about presentation too. What I love is that I see the game unfolding real time so one can see there's no hidden tricks, and you can hear his thoughts on what he's doing.

I usually play on emperor and have started testing out a bit on immortal. (Not gotten used to all the mechanic changes since civ4 and civ5 vanilla yet) While the most addicted civ5 geeks might not get anything new out of these videos there's certainly information in them for me.

my only problem with early caravans on diety are them getting pillaged. making sure the path is cleared isnt always a given on deity. theyd have to take my city to ruin library/NC bonuses. but i also use them for food/CS quest since i dont play Venice that often. but for Venice, i can see the science can be great until you get a merchant puppet.