capital floodplains

[Jet]

I could see Agr -> BW -> no Copper -> Archery -> Wheel -> Mysticism -> Pottery.

or

Agr -> BW -> no Copper, close second city -> Wheel -> Mysticism -> Archery -> Pottery.


You're not going to go broke with that gold tile, and you have some nice hills to work instead of cottages, right at first.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Okay, so we've confirmed the proper tech path is:

Agr - BW - Wheel - Pottery

(or what Dave said about 20 posts ago)

So true... as is the usual case

 

[Dirk1302]

I'm not so convinced about all this, i agree if the land is crowded, if not agr->wheel->pottery is better imo. Early cottages amount to a snowball effect that'll give you other techs faster. Time flies by in the early years, having those cottages ~15 turns earlier means you have towns 15 turns earlier in the ad's.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Well, I like to unlock chopping/whipping before laying down cottages (which you don't want to whip off). With a lot of room, I like to expand a bit even if there isn't pressure to do so. Once I've chopped/whipped a few settlers/workers, then I'll start laying down cottages. In the end, I'll be working more cottages sooner than later (3 cities working cottaged land instead of just the capital). It evens out in the end since your capital cottages are worked earlier but settlers are out later, but I prefer to claim the good land first.

 

[Dirk1302]

Indeed the idea is not to whip the capital if you lay down the early cottages. The idea is to grow to 6 soon, you're working corn + gold + fp's so that won't take too long. By that time bw is in anyway and you now build the mines which are delayed by ~10 turns now as pottery is somewhat cheaper than bw and you have the benefit of your first cottage. This is more attractive in this case since our happy cap is 6 instead of 5. If it was 5 i would be more inclined to go bw first.

Mind you scouting needs to reveal there is enough room to expand, otherwise bw after agr is a nobrainer.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Gotcha. Also, slaving/chopping settlers sooner is less necessary with room to expand. Can just use the food heavy tiles (FP/resource/and that gold mine for hammers) to slow build settlers until BW is in. 2nd city can be the whipping beotch for workers/settlers. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the tips.

 

[Monsterzuma]

You can complete two techs in the time it takes to build a Worker + build Farm (23 + 9) 32 turns. Which I guess is just as good since you can't build two improvements at the sametime with one worker.

Yes, but this can be countered by farming over at least 1 floodplain tile.

Mind you scouting needs to reveal there is enough room to expand, otherwise bw after agr is a nobrainer.

That's not even necessarily true, imo. Cottaged bureaucracy capitals are ridiculously powerful in small empires with low maintenance costs. If you can make your maintenance slider drop below 0% by building wealth, the multipliers applied to your cottages' output will amount to 325% * 150% = 537.5% (not even accounting for monasteries). A quick beeline to Rifles later and the world is yours.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

the multipliers applied to your cottages' output will amount to 325% * 150%

??? Assuming 100% science
Library 25 + Univ 25 + Observ 25 + Academy 50 + Oxford 100 + Bureau Capital 50 = 275%

Where is 325% * 150%?

Not trying to be a jerk. I want to learn. U guys know a lot more of the inner mechanics of this game than i do.

 

[Lansky]

Base commerce is taken and multiplied by 1.5 (150%) for the bureaucracy bonus. If the base city has 100 commerce then a bureaucracy capital will have 150 commerce

This new commerce figure is then used to calculate the research (or anything else) output.
Library - (25%)
University - (25%)
Academy - (50%)
Oxford - (100%)
Observatory - (25%) I tend to not get this in a timely fashion for bureaucracy but we'll leave it here.
So you then take your base commerce, apply the bureaucracy bonus, take the bureaucratic commerce total and multiply by 2.25 to get the research output at 100%.

No clue where 3.25 came from. I would assume to show a 100% research bar, however for these purposes that would just be a flat multiplication by 1 and would not be added in. Anything less than 100% research would be shown by a corresponding drop from 1.0 (i.e. 80% would be multiplied by .8). The bureaucratic multiplier is applied in a slightly misleading way - though it makes no difference at 100% research.



Short answer. I think he included the research bar at 100% multiplier and you just didn't add properly

 

[Lansky]

Wait I'm a moron. At 100% you of course get the base commerce into research and I completely overlooked that focusing on the multiplier buildings. That's where 325 came from.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Monsterzuma, Blitzkrieg
^
Monsterzuma is right that 100% science in a small empire is doable. At least on deity with all the gold trading it is after ~1 AD until 1000 AD. I'm a rexer at heart though so if scouting reveals very good but rather far away land that needs early settlers or there's a risk of getting limited to 3-4 cities i'd go the bw/chop route.

About multipliers, the 50% buro is a multiplicator of commerce. Oxford should be counted but not astro since you won't research it if going rifling. That's 200% on pure science. Then it gets tricky since commerce is multiplied but not specs. Don't forget monasteries for extra 10%, it's variable but these buildings should always be build asap in capital. 4 monasteries = 40%, almost another academy.

 

[Silu]

So what you guys were thinking was, if you have Library&Uni&Academy, your research gets multiplied by 1.0 ?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I guess my confusion is that multiplication happened between bureaucracy bonus and multiplier buildings (150% * 325%). Just seemed weird to do it that way. I always just take half of the incoming commerce and add it to itself then figure in the multipliers (+225% or *3.25). It's all the same, I just never saw it presented that way before my bad.

Regardless, cottage-spammed bureaucracy capitals with oxford can pretty much run the research for your empire. Of course, having a couple cottage spammed city with academy is nice, too. 1 GPFarm for merchants and 2 production cities makes for a damn fine 6 city empire.

 

[JBossch]

Indeed the idea is not to whip the capital if you lay down the early cottages. The idea is to grow to 6 soon, you're working corn + gold + fp's so that won't take too long. By that time bw is in anyway and you now build the mines which are delayed by ~10 turns now as pottery is somewhat cheaper than bw and you have the benefit of your first cottage. This is more attractive in this case since our happy cap is 6 instead of 5. If it was 5 i would be more inclined to go bw first.

Mind you scouting needs to reveal there is enough room to expand, otherwise bw after agr is a nobrainer.

One could make the same argument about the benefits of chopping 15 turns earlier. I like early BW in these cases exactly because of its ability to promote growth. Being able to chop hammers for workers/settlers means a reduced number of turns spent in non-growth.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I think the difference lays in earlier horizontal vs. earlier vertical growth. With BW first putting off pottery until later, whipping/chopping settlers/workers allows for earlier horizontal growth while going for pottery first and laying down cottages discourages whipping and encourages growing onto those cottage tiles therefore earlier vertical growth.

At least, that's how it sounds to me. You can still build settlers while working cottages but you will not be able to whip-finish them (or you will not want to)

 

[ppciv4]

what's the health cap for this, two?

it's food poor under pop 5, I won't settle there.