mabraham
Deity
So I was reading Duckweeds article again and thinking about our overall strategy and it got me to thinking.
My thinking is that we will probably need an early expansion phase, a heavy tech phase, and then a heavy hammers phase. We conquer the world during the final one.
??? What wonders do we REALLY need to get us up and running and off of Elba ASAP?
As normal, we only want wonders that give us a serious ROI by substantially enhancing our chosen game strategy. IMO that should be falling into place by about T70 when we have information about our location, what land is available and where the AIs are/are not. So we should go for Pyramids only if we're wanting to run substantial quantities of specialists, Colossus if we can see ourselves working many coast tiles, Oracle if it leverages access to the foregoing or an important tech (e.g. CoL for religion+Caste)
??? What will allow us to GROW ASAP, and stay financially solvent while we do it?
IMO one of Pyramids, Colossus, early AI KO, or early Currency will be necessary. However we don't want to start to limit our thinking until about 60 turns in.
??? If we need Astronomy, how best to get there ASAP?
IMO bulbing to Liberalism running the first city as a GP farm shortly after we get CoL.
??? Domination or Conquest?
That might depend how monstrous the GLH-bearing AI is. In some scenarios, they have to be the first target, and that won't lend itself to Conquest. Neither will millions of little islands, unless they don't all get settled.
??? How far into the Military tree do we need to go?
I can't see us overcoming our slow start with anything sooner than our UU musketmen and trebs. They may need Astronomy or Steel backing them up. None of my test games have (looked like) been getting a war machine rolling until 1000AD.
GLH is not an option of course, so what do we have to work with? I think we need to assume that we won't have stone or marble at least in the very beginning. We know we have seafood and lots of it. This means working coastal tiles almost all the time. I think The Colossus could prove to be the most valuable early wonder especially if we get copper on 1 of those grass hills.
Yep, Colossus could easily be best, and works with our cheap lighthouses. We use the whip for hammers, and while re-growing we have each 2 returning 23 working a coast tile. My reservation is that we need a plan for during the war phase.
Colossus+whipping
Suppose we have a city at size 8 with lighthouse and granary on two clams and six more coast tiles. That returns 2+2*5+6*2-16=8 food, 1 hammer and 25 commerce each turn. That's more than enough food to whip 4 population and regrow in a 15-turn cycle (23+24+26+27 < 15*8). At size 4 it returns 2+2*5+2*2-8=8 food, 1 hammer and 13 commerce. Interpolating linearly, we get 8 food, 1 hammer and 19 commerce on average. We get 180 from the whip (assuming we have a military unit of that size to whip) every 15 turns, so the total return is 8 food, 13 hammers and 15 commerce per turn. (That might be a bit high on the commerce - not all cities can have two clams and six more coast!)
Caste workshops
Suppose we have a city at size 8 with lighthouse on two clams, 4 grassland and two plains tiles which have all been workshopped. That returns 2+2*5+4*1+2*0-16=0 food, 1+4*3+2*4=21 hammers and 5 commerce per turn. If/when Chemistry comes online, this goes up by 6 hammers. We also don't need to worry how large the unit is and the whip-timing when we choose to build it. We've had to spend six lots of 8-9 turns workshopping (I forget how many) during the earlier -push when this city was probably running specialists with the food.
In either scenario we might be running HR/Rep/Police or Nationhood or have a forge and I think those effects are about the same in each case, where relevant.
Caste seems to return higher relevant yields during the -phase, if we have the land available. We'll need to organize more than 1 worker per such city to get the infrastructure built before war-time. Caste is a bit sucky while we're growing the population to the size where we want to run our pile of specialists - especially if it's been pillaged by whipping. Here's where the 3-wonder idea comes into its own - but it's not a wide window of gain.
During the -phase, the Colossus+whipping strategy between size 8 and size 4 returns the same amount as above. Caste at size 6 running four specialists returns 2+5*2-12=0 food, 1 hammer, 5 commerce, 4*3=12 gold/beakers and 4*3=12 (these may or may not become a Great Person some time). That is vaguely comparable Colossus+whipping (more , light on ), but we haven't considered the extra 4*3=12 from Rep, or the value of the Great People that pop, or maybe Pacificism or the National Epic. IMO, Caste gives clearly higher returns than Colossus+whipping provided we arrange for suitable multipliers (NE, Rep, Pacifism), if we don't need to build much infrastructure during the -phase. What kind of infrastructure support do a million UU musketmen, Galleons and siege really need? Barracks. Granary to get up to size. Forge if the city is bored. Courthouse if it's far enough away. Theatre to get the Globe Theatre. Some of those will get whipped before the switch the Caste, too.
We could cottage that land instead, which will give a commerce return that starts low and may never reaches its maximum (Democracy and PPr may never be on our tech list, FS doesn't rate to be better than Slavery), requires a bunch of worker turns before it gets going, and really doesn't synergize with whipping. Cottaging a massive Bureaucratic capital can only happen if we can find/capture a good site, and build the Palace and all the infrastructure fast enough.
The bottom line (IMO)
To my mind, all that adds up to running Caste System from about T150 onwards for the rest of the game. It also synergizes with Nationhood during war, because you run poly-artists in the city, first to get a border pop, and then until you get 10% culture to enable drafting out of the captured city. Given the desire to use Caste System, Pyramids offers better prospects than Colossus. Note that there were prereqs - there has to be land to workshop, and workers to do it. As I've said before, if our available land is a pile of 2-tile islands, then Colossus plus maybe Moai-Bureaucracy capital is the way to go.
Do we really NEED the Oracle? Could those hammers be better spent on galleys and units as we work our way out into the islands?
Yep. The Oracle would have to fit a plan, delivering faster access to the piles of stuff we need - or
Pyramids? We are going to be whipping like mad. We may not have the population to actually run very many specialists, especially early. The Pyramids are only really valuable if you are planning on running a specialist economy, is that our plan? I am not convinced.
Well, there's some numbers for you to consider above. If there's counter-arguments I've not considered, or under-weighted, please raise them I think we should whip up to T150-180 or so, then spam specialists for a while to create our tech lead, then conquer the world.
I have been convinced after more play testing that settling in place and getting city #2 up ASAP is a better option than settling on the plains hill UNLESS there is room to settle north on the island somewhere.
Yeah, if it extends north, further consideration might be required. I still like the early extra hammers from working the PFH, however.
What about bypassing the religious techs all together, Mysticism possibly excluded because of our trait.
Tech path something like Fishing>Mining>BW>Pottery>Sailing>MC>Writing>CoL>Math....CS
Plausible - if Bureaucracy synergizes with the rest of the plan. Sailing should precede Pottery IMO - our organized Lighthouse is half the size of our Granary. Writing may need to be earlier if we've got 3 trade routes to pick up.
The problem I see is if we do indeed need Astronomy. Once we get CS, we lose the opportunity to bulb our way to Astronomy.
If "bulbing" means more than one GS on Education (or whatever)... where are those going to come from, if not a pile of scientists running Caste (and preferably Rep)? You probably spent one on an Academy too?