Why defer your Education? MP only.

What techs do people go for before getting Education?

Will Education mean you found your religion sooner? This seems a no brainer for the expensive religions, but I'm not sure about the cheap three.

Are Gold or good accessible (no jungle) Calendar resources the only reason to put off Education?

How much does initial tech influence this? Ie. if you don't have Ancient Chants is Education not such a rush?

Agriculture or Ancient Chants as your starting tech (or early hut pop) generally means that you should go for Education first. I'd only not go for education on the way to an early religion if there was, say, gold nearby and I was going for Runes. Even then, it delays the growth of your economy.

Technically speaking, you might get the religion earlier if you go straight for it. However, since you'll have less cottages and less developed cottages for a good portion of the game if you don't get Edu first, I don't think it's worth it.

If you are coastal (and preferably a Financial civ), Fishing might be a first tech. Which obviously might lead to the OO choice of religion. And if you have tiles already that give gold, it can be good to get God King ASAP. The tech it requires is also necessary for all the 3 first religions.

Nah, Fishing isn't nearly as useful as education. It's a choice between 1/0/3 tiles and either 2/0/x or 1/1/x tiles, where x increases way above 3, and quite often starts there. Plus, it requires Exploration. I might go for it if I were the Lanun, but even then it's not likely.

Sea tiles are very useless in this game. A farmed plain or two under agriculture beats the effort required to get clam or fish with a lighthouse and a workboat.

Chandrasekhar said:

Nah, Fishing isn't nearly as useful as education. It's a choice between 1/0/3 tiles and either 2/0/x or 1/1/x tiles, where x increases way above 3, and quite often starts there. Plus, it requires Exploration. I might go for it if I were the Lanun, but even then it's not likely.

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I generally don't go for Education early, for a number of reasons with the first being aggressive barbarians and the kind of map I most of the times play (Highlands). In such scenario, production and expansion are more important, so techs like Animal Husbandry, Festivals, Mysticism and Mining are for me more important than Education.

edit: you two are forgetting that Fishing is needed to use Lake tiles too. Which are 2 food 2 commerce and unpillageable by barbarians. In Highalands with much water and raging barbs they are much better than a cottage improvement. I don't mean to say it's better than Education (since this one gives access to Apprenticeship) but I wouldn't say it's a no-brainer, especially if you want OO.

Yeah but it can be faster, fast enough to win a religion by some turns. Which is important in MP. Cottages requires more techs (atleast when I play as Flauros I can go for fishing as first tech), and they require a worker. It takes time to build the worker and while it is being built your city wont grow. Once the worker is complete, it needs to travel to the location where its gonna build the cottage which can take 0-2 turns depending on terrain. And then it needs to build the cottage.

Also, if you got fresh water lakes, they start with 2 food.

I'm not saying its the whole solution, but in some starts it can help.

EDIT: And yeah, Cottages needs protection more.

Semi-OT: I really like that you guys are discussing something like this and I'd definitely encourage many more threads on decisions like this one, because once we get to fine-tuning the expert system in the AI, this kind of reasoning will be very helpful.

And I usually do go for Mysticism first, both for God King and the Elder Council (early great sage helps a LOT), but I never really did the math.

Bringa said:

And I usually do go for Mysticism first, both for God King and the Elder Council (early great sage helps a LOT), but I never really did the math.

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And yeah, we Calabim cant build the Elder Council. But we do start with a Vampiric Governor which adds 1 commerce, 1 hammer and 2 culture.

2 food, 2 commerce. Maybe a quick edge to be the first to get a tech but these are very weak compared to cottages.

What difficulty are you playing? Is this single player only? I have put MP only in the title so that we know what people are using against each other. Your feedback is still good but I would just like to know if this is single player only.

By the way does a prolific poster such as yourself get a chance to play multiplayer?

If you can't defend the fat cross of your cities from pillaging most of the time you are not playing the game well and will be beaten by the players that are.

The higher difficulty levels also mean your cities aren't getting to high populations quickly where you want to use all squares. If you are running Agriculture I would have a few farms (next to that fresh water) and run a specialist with that extra population if I was trying to maximise it.

onedreamer said:

I generally don't go for Education early, for a number of reasons with the first being aggressive barbarians and the kind of map I most of the times play (Highlands). In such scenario, production and expansion are more important, so techs like Animal Husbandry, Festivals, Mysticism and Mining are for me more important than Education.

edit: you two are forgetting that Fishing is needed to use Lake tiles too. Which are 2 food 2 commerce and unpillageable by barbarians. In Highalands with much water and raging barbs they are much better than a cottage improvement. I don't mean to say it's better than Education (since this one gives access to Apprenticeship) but I wouldn't say it's a no-brainer, especially if you want OO.

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I play mixed (multiplayer with AI), and I post when at "work"
And I experienced that most of the times there's no point in having early improvements if you're playing with the settings I mentioned (did you actually try raging barbarians on Highlands ? Enemy players trying to pillage would be a help !!). Cottages are an investment, they take time to be built and to grow, and they show their real potential if you have the rest of infrastructure. Also, as you pointed out higher difficulty means less population, and the less I have the less I'll be prone to dedicate them to such a specialized improvement like a cottage. In short I mean that I start to consisently use cottages when I have the infrastructure to support them, like enuogh defenders, buildings to take exploit of increased commerce, etc. And this means that I won't beeline for Education right from the start in most of my games. There are cases in which I will, for example if there really isn't any commerce-yelding resource (if I start with gold you'll have an hard time convincing me to research Education before Mining ), no river, etc... no commerce around in general.

onedreamer said:

I play mixed (multiplayer with AI), and I post when at "work"
And I experienced that most of the times there's no point in having early improvements if you're playing with the settings I mentioned (did you actually try raging barbarians on Highlands ?

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What size map? How many AI players. What difficulty do I and they play on? I'll play and beeline education and post the result here? Raging barbs no problem. I will show you what I mean about stopping pillaging (unless Orthus turns up, then all bets are off). Can you pick a Civ and leader for me? If you have a favourite I'd like to demo with that.

And if you'd like a friendly challenge we can both post saved games of how our civs are going after a certain number of turns. If you like we can start from the same position?

I think you're missing something... you asked "What techs do people go for before getting Education?", and I gave you an answer with reasons why my tactics are so and so... I have no doubts that your tactics are better for you, but we most probably have different styles of play. I don't believe in absolute best strategies and guides on predetermined tech/building lines in a game like Civ where already from turn 1 there are so many variables that can influence said strategies.

And I'm glad you've replied. I AM interested in your strategy. And I AM being adversarial and flopping it out on to the table.

I want to prove your statement wrong. And I would like it if YOU set the benchmark and I will try to show you how it can be done better. This is me trying to find someone who will be my Devil's Advocate eh?

onedreamer said:

I think you're missing something... you asked "What techs do people go for before getting Education?", and I gave you an answer with reasons why my tactics are so and so... I have no doubts that your tactics are better for you, but we most probably have different styles of play. I don't believe in absolute best strategies and guides on predetermined tech/building lines in a game like Civ where already from turn 1 there are so many variables that can influence said strategies.

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Standard Highlands, with Scattered Thin Mountain ranges and Seas. Difficulty Emperor.
But I don't have a predetermined strategy, nor a fav. civ (it's not Civ4, each civ is a different experience to play, so I like them all in a different way). As I said I may also beeline for Education (in that case I'll also try to get my hands on Writing before the others). I'm unlikely to restart, unless laughable starts -not uncommon in Highlands map, such as at the edge of a tundra, with 4 sea resources and the Sailors Dirge next to them. So the very first techs to research I decide them based on my starting place and civ.
To go about proving what you want to, I would probably choose Ethne the White. If you start in Tundra with lakes around, good luck with your cottages

much2much said:

2 food, 2 commerce. Maybe a quick edge to be the first to get a tech but these are very weak compared to cottages.

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I'm not saying its better than cottages, and it's 3 commerce if you are financial. But it might help. And yeah I agree it's been a while since I played MP. (Although I remember I got a Religion first of all in record time once on a map where I mostly used water tiles to get my gold, but then I got Fishing in a hut)

And as I said, its MUCH faster to get Fishing, than it is to get Education->Build a Worker->Build a Cottage->Grow to Size 2 or 3 (for same amount of gold as a 2-0-3 tile). (It wouldn't need to grow if you place it on a tile which already got a gold tile for same amount)
And then Orthus might just come and eat your cottages for dinner.

But a Cottage eventually grow larger, and I usually use both. Until I replace my cottages with farms, with the Agriculture/Aristocracy combo. (Unless I save some)

EDIT: And yea, that I usually pick OO as first religion kinda helps with the choice.

I think for all of us who advocate rushing education in general, it is at least for me because I want the most important thing of all increasing right away especially in ffh2 where everything takes longer (techs need more beakers, building and units need more prod, etc.) than in civ4. The most important thing of all is commerce and cotages over the long term are outright THEE improvment for commerce. Also cotages provide a big boost to commerce as soon as u build them unless u got commerce resources.

Commerce is the most important thing because it is your gold amount and research rate. I don't think i need to explain the importance of gold and tech.

This is of course in general. Start conditions can change all your plans of course. If u start with 5 fish/clams you are gonna go for fishing instead of education, and than probably lords religion cuz u already just got fishing, etc. etc.

Without cotages, at best, your land tiles only give 1 commerce and water tiles 2-4? commerce depending on fin leader or not. The land tiles +1 commerce means super slow tech rate and barely any gold. (water tiles are great for comerce: 2-4 per water tile is much better than 0-1 per land tile)

There is only one other way to get commerce other than cotages and thats commerce resources like wine and gold (and the sea resources I mentioned). This however you can't control. If you have these in your capitol location u r very lucky and should go buy a lotery ticket. However u dont always get this.

My problem is whether to go for edu (for cotages) or myst (for god king civic) first.

I usually always go get myst and god king first because god king lets u build units or buildings faster and more of them than some one who doesnt go for god king. This helps a lot with nationhood civic to make units to fend off raging barbs and with expansion. Also myst is a prequisite for all the religions (I think) not just the first 3 though the last two and cult are much farther of.

However, myst-god king is much less useful once u get past a single city. Long term edu is better but your first 50 turns determines whether u survive and protect the improvements u might make from raging barbs, survive orthos on turn 51-52, and having multiple cities being protected or one city. But once you get past this, onward, god king usefulness is over and your growing cotages surpass god king from your more cities expanding empire. So you can see my difficulty with myst vs edu. Though getting edu makes the first 50 turns very hard especially trying to fend off barbs from your cotages with the less units u have since u got edu and not myst-god king

OK here is an example of a start where I definitely wouldn't go for Education first:

but great googly moogly, what a sweet start it is.

oh, um... I say: food first, then commerce. If you can get a decent amount of both with wine, or seafood, go for crafting or fishing (sugar is meh). if you get a decent start(after you have some food and commerce) and there's marble near by, beeline writing and get that library up w/ an academy. forget about the nature cults and set sights on the veil, after all, you'll soon have another sage to build the stigmata. otherwise, everything depends on the conditions.