R&T - New research goals

Military tradition is learned. What now ?

Option 1 is to beeline to the Naval side. Astronomy -> Nav or Astronomy -> physics -> Tog or Mag.

Option 2 is to beeline to Democracy (and/or Free Artistry).

Option 3 is to beeline to Economics (banking -> Eco)

Option 4 is to race to the new age (Banking + Astronomy -> Physics -> ToG + Mag).

Astronomy (and also Music Theory) are known to some civs, so researching that might not be needed in case we want option 1 or 4.

Attached is the techtree at 100% science.

Since we focusing on Culture, there won't be another city improvement for culture until Computer. So I recommend looking for wonders with high culture and start building them. My best choice will be Free Artistry and build Shakespeare Theatre. This is extremely useful for us in term of Culture.

Option 5 is not to research at all. Wait for the other civs to research stuff, then trade for it, or extort it for peace. We don't need any of these techs, and I think we should delay the advance to the next age (for all civs) as long as possible, but at least until we've finished our expansion (no riflemen!).

We should also start thinking about our victory goal. We will need to cashrush a lot of temples and libraries in hopelessly corrupt cities. The amount of money needed is tremendous (in the range of 50K gold or so). I think we should pour our money into that, and do research on the cheap, i.e., buy/trade/extort.

EDIT: in tech acquisition, we should focus on the 5 required techs and economics. The other optional techs are not worth it IMO.

The value of railroads in economic and production terms should drive us towards at least entering the next age and getting Steam Power before we shut research off completely.

Another aspect in C3C is getting to Engineer specialists, which allow otherwise unproductive, hopelessly corrupt cities to gain some production capability. At that point the core can fill in any gaps in cultural buildings and then switch to unit production to keep us strong enough to repel attacks, and the outskirts can MM for food and use a horde of specialists to build improvements.

A third aspect is that we should not ignore commerce producing buildings, because we will want to cash rush some culture buildings and we need a veritable mountain of gold to do that.

DaveShack said:

The value of railroads in economic and production terms should drive us towards at least entering the next age and getting Steam Power before we shut research off completely.

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Good point. It is all a matter of timing I think. We are going very very slow in our expansion, mainly because of a lack of focus: you cannot expand very fast with an attack force of ~10 knights . My biggest fear is that we will go too fast to the IA, and have to face rifles. If that happens, we need to divert an enormous amount of production and income to military to expand at all.

DaveShack said:

Another aspect in C3C is getting to Engineer specialists, which allow otherwise unproductive, hopelessly corrupt cities to gain some production capability. At that point the core can fill in any gaps in cultural buildings and then switch to unit production to keep us strong enough to repel attacks, and the outskirts can MM for food and use a horde of specialists to build improvements.

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Another good point. When do we get engineers? Another way to make outlying cities productive is by drafting (infantry, preferably).

DaveShack said:

A third aspect is that we should not ignore commerce producing buildings, because we will want to cash rush some culture buildings and we need a veritable mountain of gold to do that.

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best way to achieve that is not to research, but spend money on cashrushing those markets, courts, settlers and banks (and after that, culture buildings).

FYI: here is a list of strategies for 100K that I found. Interesting read. (It doesn't apply exactly to our game because of variant rules and civ traits.)

I think we should research straight to economics and get Smith's built. We could even use the pre-build to grab this wonder.

zyxy said:

Option 5 is not to research at all. Wait for the other civs to research stuff, then trade for it, or extort it for peace. We don't need any of these techs, and I think we should delay the advance to the next age (for all civs) as long as possible, but at least until we've finished our expansion (no riflemen!).

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We have to choose something. The %-age of research investments is a different discussion. I'll start that discussion soon.

Rik Meleet said:

We have to choose something. The %-age of research investments is a different discussion. I'll start that discussion soon.

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Ok, sorry for jumping the gun.

MOTH's idea is also quite nice. Can we make it to Economics before our current prebuild (Leo's) finishes?

zyxy said:

(..)MOTH's idea is also quite nice. Can we make it to Economics before our current prebuild (Leo's) finishes?

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Donsignia build it in 14 turns. We need bout 9 to 11 turns before we get Economics. So we can.

I very much agree that we should head towards Economics and build Smith's. However, I wouldn't be in a hurry to get there. Why?

First, remember that building Smith's triggers our Golden Age. This is a good thing! However, it's a better thing if we can trigger it when we're finished with our wars, so our increased production capacity builds cultural infrastructure and not troops. Thus I'd delay it somewhat.

Second, triggering our Golden Age about the same time we acquire Steam Power (and the ability to build railroads) will boost our production even more. I'd prefer we figure we figure out how to do both.

Third, we don't want to rush production too much IMO so we can generate cash for rushing troops and culture (particularly rushing culture in corrupt cities that won't benefit much from our Golden Age) and also so we don't feed the tech pace of the other civs. We actually have all the tech advances now that we need in order to win; but as I've described above, I would like to get to Steam Power just for the railroads.

Anyway, I'd get Economics first and start building Smith's, then research at whatever pace is necessary so that we can acquire Steam Power & build Smith's about the same time.

If we're going to hold off on researching Economics (to build Smith's) until we're ready to leap into the next age, then Option 1 (Physics -> Theory of Gravity and Magnitism) is the way to go. All the other research topics are optional.

We have just completed a tech and need to start another. Astronomy is available for Trade, so there's no point in researching that, but we do need it for Physics. So we either trade for Astronomy this turn, or start Banking. I would prefer to research something the AI isn't so I think going for the Banking route now gives us more flexibility. We can trade for Astronomy either now or when the price comes down and for other techs the AI research along the path to the next age. We don't have to race to Banking/Ecomics either, we need money for upgrades and a few culture rushes in the frontier areas around Delft and Beijing would be very useful both to expand our borders to keep enemy troops futher away and to help with flipping. We don't have to build Smiths immediately either, it is building Smiths that will trigger our golden age, that is what we need to time for the completion of our conquest and railroad network, not researching Economics. We can research Economics first and build Smith when we need it.

I like Bertie's plan. Didn't even think of it, but the combination of rails and golden age may lift a few hopelessly corrupt towns out of the hopelessly corrupt zone, better than each effect individually would.
Of course that would mean starting the GA somewhat after we learn steam power (building rails takes time). It also means we have to plan the number of workers.

I don't know if we can pull this off. In part it depends on what prebuilds the AI have going, and whether they will be killed before they get to Economics (probably not).

zyxy said:

I don't know if we can pull this off. In part it depends on what prebuilds the AI have going, and whether they will be killed before they get to Economics (probably not).

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In order to pull this off we may have to attack & raze some AI cities that are building wonders so they don't get Smith's before we do. Something to keep our military occupied while we're an otherwise peaceful, culture-building civ.

Bertie: we will cerainly need to raze some high culture AI civs to reduce their culture and their culture-rate.