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[NFP] Ancient Era Policy Elimination Thread

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Agoge (9) (8+1)
Colonization (14) (17-3)

Urban Planning (16)

Agoge (9) (8+1) Agoge can double as Colonization and Ilcum cards. Meaning your army that you've built with this card can capture you settlers, builders and cities that you won't need to build yourself.
Colonization (14) (17-3) It is not vanilla days anymore. There are games where I do not slot this card at all. Golden Monumentality does the job and you don't even need any modes for this to work.
 
Agoge (6) (9-3)
Colonization (15) (14+1)

Urban Planning (16)

You all keep talking about faith buying settlers... a lot of time I just spend gold on whatever army I need (*especially* in the new barbarians game mode, which I know we're not counting but it just makes it even more pronounced). Even if I *can* faith buy settlers in a golden age (which is no guarantee for me) I'll still more than likely end up producing a handful myself 9 times out of 10.
 
Agoge (6)
Colonization (16) (15+1)
Urban Planning (13) (16-3) By far the least useful. I really don't see how there is any question here: it is literally just one production. One! That becomes irrelevant within 10 turns of a city being founded. Colonization, on the other hand, scales as you advance — as does Agoge, but settling is universal whereas fighting is not.
 
Moderator Action: Reminder that you should only be posting in an elimination game thread if you are voting or correcting a vote total. Additional comments are acceptable only in those two instances. Several non-voting posts have been deleted. ~ LK
 
Agoge (4)
Colonization (14)
Urban Planning (13)

Agoge +1
Colonsation -3

Agoge would grant you more cities than colonisation - archers + few melee, and those cities would already have districts
Agoge applies to all cities and you can always pair it with urban planning, colonisation applies typically to 1 city with ancestor hall, maximum 3 cities with mas builders for chopping. building settlers in more cities at the same time is ineffective and conflicts with other yelow - violet cards in many governments if kept too long

UP> Agoge > Colonisation
 
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Agoge (1) I find myself usually not slotting this one, I sort of buy the army and hard build the districts and buildings.
Colonization (14)
Urban Planning (14) I almost always slot this one first.
 
Agoge (1)
Colonization (14-3=11)
Urban Planning (14+1=15)


I might rank Colonization first if it unlocked at the same time as Urban Planning and could be used more easily for your first settler. As is, it's hard to do so without significantly delaying your expansion. There's also some awkwardness with Colonization encouraging you to build several settlers at once while Ancestral Hall and Magnus encourage you to specialize one city for settler production. And Monumentality does decrease its value somewhat relative to the vanilla game. It's still deserving of a high rank, but I don't think it provides quite as much value over the course of a game as Urban Planning's universal production boost
 
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Agoge (-2) (1-3) ELIMINATED
Colonization (11)
Urban Planning (16) (11+1)

Let’s say you build 5 warriors to upgrade to swords, 5 hard built swordsmen, and 10 archers. This is a massive number of early game units and overkill in almost every situation. The total hammer cost is 1250, and agoge will save you 433 hammers.

Peacefully settling 12 cities is pretty common for me (and if I’m on a map script like lakes it can be 20+). Typically I will have three cities pre EE, a few will be bought, and the rest will be built / chopped with the settler card in. Eight settlers built post EE cost 1960 hammers. If you’re pushing to 20 cities like I frequently am this cost is more than double that. Colonization saves 16.7% of the cost when building in the city with AH, and 33.3% otherwise. Assuming half the hammers for settlers are produced in the AH city. Colonization will save you 490 hammers in the eight settler case, although can easily climb over 1000 if you’re going super wide.

Urban planning is used until the enlightenment which for me typically comes online t130-ish. Let’s say you run urban planning starting on t40 with three cities, and cities come online every eight turns after that until you reach twelve cities on t112. If you run urban planning for the entire 90 turn period (not that unreasonable to run it at least almost always), it will be worth 660 hammers. Note it will be worth more if going wider.

A few notes:

-Agoge and colonization save fewer hammers if combined with Magnus chops
-If you’re gaining cities through war, colonization becomes worse

Basically agoge, while great, saves fewer hammers than the other two cards. In all but the widest peaceful games, urban planning is worth more than colonization.
 
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Colonization (12) (11+1)
Urban Planning (13) (16-3)

Tis amusing how dichotomous the views on Urban Planning are:

I would never keep this plugged in beyond turn 30 or 40

you can justify using Urban Planning multiple eras after it was unlocked

becomes irrelevant within 10 turns of a city being founded

Urban planning is used until the enlightenment

Personally, I agree with the view that keeping Urban Planning plugged in is a huge waste. I’d much rather plug a card that powers my better, more productive cities than giving one meagre production to a newly founded city. Therefore, my vote goes to Colonization (even though I do often faith-purchase my settlers).


EDIT: thinking over this further, I think it's a question of core cities vs. new cities. From my perspective, the game is won by your 'core' cities: the first four or five cities you found. I want these cities to produce the most yields they can, be it science, faith, culture or gold. With these yields, I can make my later cities instantly useful: e.g. I can purchase a serfdom-builder in a new city, purchase a few new tiles with land surveyor, chop out the new city's district immediately with Magnus, and then use trade routes to get it up and running. Urban Planning has minimal use for this; it doesn't help my core cities produce the yields I want, and the effect on the new city is a meagre +1 production. So I'd much rather run basically any other policy card if it helps my core cities out, because I can transfer those yields to my new city.
 
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Colonization (9) (12-3)
Urban Planning (14) (13+1)

Well I guess I'm in the opposite camp. I feel in most situations, my core cities function pretty well on their own once they get started, so I just feel the boost to my new cities is more significant. Further more, it's not like I have a lot of choices that actually help my core cities a lot. What would they be? Production to military and civilian units? Sure, if I produce them and don't faith buy them. More gold? Yes, if I'm in a situation where I have many gold districts or traders, certainly, but that only happens at the time of the game where I also have several economic slots available, so in the end, I still default back to Urban Planning in one of my slots. More science? Well, frankly I hardly think I've used Rationalism since they nerfed it, the yields just seem so low.
 
Colonization (6) (9-3)
Urban Planning (15) (14+1)

After reading many strong arguments in this intriguing discussion, I view the pro-UP arguments as stronger. Moreover, from a practical point of view, I think it is easier to benefit from UP than from C, since the latter requires better planning and timing.
 
Colonization (7)
Urban Planning (12)


Urban planning is good... And I probably keep it slotted in longer than I should, but I suspect it's being overrated here, at least compared to getting those crucial settlers out...
 
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Colonization (8) (7+1)
Urban Planning (9) (12-3)

For me to be able to take full advantage of Urban Planning when the card is at it's best (in the early game to speed growth of your 2nd to 6th cities) I need to have those cities in the first place asap. I'll be settling most of those cities myself at Immortal difficulty, so I need colonization.
 
Colonization (5)
Urban Planning (10)

This is shaping up to be a rightfully competitive finish. For me, I give the edge to UP because it has a longer shelf life. Colonization is key for knocking out a third and fourth city (I usually get my first settler out before I get it), but once those cities are up, they need to do something, and at that point any of the following may be true: (i) my capital is big enough to quickly produce settlers without the 50%, (ii) I'm moving into a monumentality golden age to buy settlers, (iii) I have a government plaza with ancestral hall somewhere which speeds settler production, or (iv) I'm pausing rapid expansion to build infrastructure (I've run out of peaceful room, I have a good choke point in place, I want to rush a wonder or something, etc.). While I'm still growing my empire, I want my other cities to be able to contribute something, and a +1 across the board in every city really helps get them up and off the ground.
 
Colonization (6)
Urban Planning (7)

A city built earlier will, generally, be better.
 
Colonization (6-3=3)
Urban Planning (7+1=8)

Production can build anything. Cities don't do much without a district, which needs production. No point in having new cities if they don't make anything.
 
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