From A to Z: #3 Augustus

Since we're industrious anyway, the time spent on Masonry plus Wheel to get a quarry hooked up would only delay Oracle...

Absolutely! I'd say that would be correct even if we were not Ind.
 
Having Marble near is something nice, but for Oracle MC it's not needed. Oracle CS would be something different, but for that you lack the Commerce. Of course, also Forges help more when having Praets than early Buro would.

SIP is probably your best bet, because there are some tiles that could still yield something valuable (Gems, Gold, etc.) , and there are tiles that could reveal something (3 tiles are unforrested, maybe you're lucky and get Bronze to defend early, Iron of course also wouldn't be too bad but then you'd have to find a way to deal with the Barbs somehow else) .

If you find Gold / Gems you can think about Masonry, waiting for the 2nd pop and then chop-whip the Oracle on T50. What you want is 2 cities at that turn and a Settler on hold if you saw anyone go Writing -> Alphabet early (watch for the possibility of Open Borders agreement) or 3 good cities + a Settler when you'll be able to get IW through trade (probably MC vs Alpha and Alpha vs IW) .

I'd not think too much about going for a 2-city-Praet-rush with self-teching IW because it leaves one just in a such desperate situation afterwards. If you go 2 to 3 cities + Oracle, you can stay in the tech-race forever just by trading the Oracle tech, but if you tech IW, something that AI techs very reliably while ignoring your economy completely but then also build up a large force of soldiers, you'll learn that CIV is not always trivial and requires often more than simply building units and spamming them.

Of course, you can go the 2nd route too. 2000 BC Praet-rushes are quite fun and you can always simply play a civilization that squeezes out the technologies it itself could not discover via peacedeals.

I think the Oracle option is stronger over the long run too though, there's basically nothing that one can do wrong with being IND and going for Oracle MC, especially on Immortal.
 
99% chance of getting the Oracle at 2000BC on IMM. Probably 90% at 1800BC, which is my usual target date on IMM unless it's a high :commerce: start. Obviously CS is out. Discussion is between CoL and MC.

CoL gives us a future shrine, a missionary to try and start a religious war with and most importantly sets us down the aesthetics/Lib beeline path in a situation where we are IND and have marble. Parthenon, GLib and NE almost build themselves.

Cheap forges are cool, but MC is a dead-end tech path beyond that in this situation. As for trade bait, MC costs more :science:...but there's not much to choose between them really. I guess it depends if we want to praet stomp or play the Lib MT/Steel waiting game.

I'd SIP and go Agri -> BW -> Myst -> Poly -> Priest -> Writing. Obv Poly is more expensive than Med, but we want it for aesthetics path. Skip AH early. We can irrigate the pigs if necessary, there's hills to improve for our settler :hammers: boost and we're likely going to end up working the lake for :commerce: as much as possible if we want to hit the Oracle by 1800BC.

Of course, what we can find as we explore may change our plans completely. We could be isolated, have somebody aggressive in our faces, barbs could be a problem etc. Will give this a go at the weekend.
 
Carp. I just realized MC requires Pottery. With TW and Pottery required before completing the Oracle, I'm not sure it's possible to do it at a safe date.
I guess we might as well get TW before the religious branch, give our workers something to do, and Pottery while building.

I'm not convinced CoL is a good idea to oracle. For the Literature wonders, it doesn't add anything at all. Caste isn't important early, and we surely won't waste our early :hammers: on courthouses. Trying to spread our own religion is a big hammer sink, too. I don't really see any benefit to getting CoL other than trade bait...
 
CoL is an ok choice for Julius but as Augustus, MC is clearly better. 2pop-Forges are amazing buildings. 2pop-Courthouses are also, but we don't have them.
Building any Wonders besides Oracle is not needed or even hindering as Agustus, though the Hanging Gardens (and of course the usual as TM or Kremlin should the game go that long) will probably be worth it too.
 
I would be hesitant to assume a Praet rush is in the cards here with all of the jungle to the immediate north. It depends on what the rest of the land looks like and where the AI are located.
 
I'm surprised of the lack of GLH related comment ITT :/
 
I guess I'm of the opinion that no amount of seafood is moving me off that starting spot. I'd bring the warrior back through the capital and see if you can't steal a worker from some close by neighbor.
 
I agree with Seraiel that with Augustus, Oracling Metal Casting is probably the way to go due to his forges being cheap. Having cheap forges early mean you effectively make every buildings and units cheaper.... normally Praets will cost 45 hammers... with forges they should be less expensive than the regular swordsmen (since by default, Praets cost 5 more hammers than the regular swords I believe?) with some care, you may even be able to 2-pop whip 2 Praetorians on a back to back turn with good overflow! ^_^

The only reason why I pondered about settling closer to the marble wasn't necessarily because I wanted to hook it up before working on the Oracle (I learned that lesson from Asoka game, if anyone remembers that!), but because it just seems to me that food might be poorer near the marble area, so there might not be suitable area to settle to work the marble in the 1st/2nd ring of a 2nd/3rd city there. Marble has decent hammer and commerce output, so it isn't a bad tile to work either.

The downside of doing this is that I lose a turn to settle on a tile that doesn't give me hammer boost from the city tile directly, and that I will be losing a grassland hill and adding jungle tiles in the 2nd ring.

Bah... too much thinking. I will probably settle in place anyway!

I'm surprised of the lack of GLH related comment ITT :/

Maybe.... if there were bunch of seafoods in the coastal area.... but now that I look at it, this map doesn't look GLH-friendly somehow....

not sure why i would ever think about the Oracle with this start..

Would you rather go for the Pyramids instead? Or perhaps Great Wall even? I am actually surprised that you don't sound all that enthusiastic about building the Oracle. I'd like to know why~ ^_^

If there is also stone nearby.... hmmm....

I would be hesitant to assume a Praet rush is in the cards here with all of the jungle to the immediate north. It depends on what the rest of the land looks like and where the AI are located.

We might have nothing but jungle to the north, while to the straight away west and east, might be less-than-desirable lands... while the closest AIs may be too far away to pull off a "rush" of sort with the Praetorians....
 
I think the Oracle is a very bad play here ;)
You have no commerce, let's see all those techs you would need for MC..
Agri, PH Med and Myst, wheel and pottery.
Means you also skip BW and AH with river pigs around.

You can lose the Oracle easily if you need so many turns.
Praets if you must (thou i think it's rather cheesy as usual) or Pyramids are way better.
With that Cap and no Fin you should probably not cottage, and Rep. will give you so much more than the Oracle. And advantage of Imp. and so much food would be, that you can easily get out settlers as well..so many forests too.

Wait you even need BW for MC lol, nopes no way i would try that.
 
I think the Oracle is a very bad play here ;)
You have no commerce, let's see all those techs you would need for MC..
Agri, PH Med and Myst, wheel and pottery.
Means you also skip BW and AH with river pigs around.

You can lose the Oracle easily if you need so many turns.
Praets if you must (thou i think it's rather cheesy as usual) or Pyramids are way better.
With that Cap and no Fin you should probably not cottage, and Rep. will give you so much more than the Oracle. And advantage of Imp. and so much food would be, that you can easily get out settlers as well..so many forests too.

Wait you even need BW for MC lol, nopes no way i would try that.

I had a feeling you were gonna say that....

With the Oracle, it isn't necessarily how fast you can build it, but how fast you can research the techs necessarily in order for you to get that free tech you want... in this case, it is Metal Casting, but to get it, yeah, you will need all those techs.... In my Alex game, I Oracled Horseback Riding, which only requires Animal Husbandry, so it wasn't a lot of problem. But then again, my Asoka game wasn't exactly started with a lot of commerce either... it had a whole lot of food though, but the difference was that the foods were mainly seafood, so it was 2 commerce per fish and clams on the coast while working them. The logistics of getting the work boats out quickly complicated matters, and I also was trying for the Great Lighthouse, which meant Masonry and Sailing were required on top of whatever techs I needed for Oracling Metal Casting, which was what I did in that game too.

Early Representation would be really powerful too. And Augustus' UB makes it even more interesting~~

I want to see what others have to say about this. I am just not sure, in a case where stone is not readily available, that building the Pyramids without the stone would be a good move though... hmm.
 
Many peoples will say otherwise, but Pyramids for me are always #1 if i can get them, and with many forests + Ind it's not hard.
You get everything..happiness, teching, great peoples boosted cos you will run more specialists, and for war +25% units via Police State.
Even if i have only 4 good cities, i can always do something with them.
 
I think there's no need to decide until you have a clearer view of the surroundings (starting with all the tiles of your BFC lol)

Agree with this. Many things could influence the path here including non-jungled gems, gold, stone, or more AH resources.
 
Many peoples will say otherwise, but Pyramids for me are always #1 if i can get them, and with many forests + Ind it's not hard.
You get everything..happiness, teching, great peoples boosted cos you will run more specialists, and for war +25% units via Police State.
Even if i have only 4 good cities, i can always do something with them.
I agree it's #1 (edit: most of the time), but the question is more will my neighbour build it for me right?
 
Mids are a silly play here IMO, unless there's nearby stone and the AI + :) situation makes it stronger. I'd rather see failgold wonders ---> bulb/trade ---> math chop noobtorians and flatten anyone who happens to be nearby.

Unless, of course, there is nobody nearby. But we'll know that one way or another long before most things require a heavy commitment.

As for Oracle:

AG: 60
TW: 60
Myst: 50
Med: 80
PH: 60
POT: 80
BW: 120
AH: 100

That's 390 :science: before any other modifiers to start on oracle while researching BW. 390/8 = 48.75, so without factoring pre-req bonuses or researching techs of AI's met (IE partial discount on AG if we meet someone soon, possibly on mysticism, definitely on the wheel), we can have PH on turn 49 at the latest. Still limited to palace :commerce: and some cost on a 2nd city, it's reasonable to have all of the :commerce: required of every tech listed except AH by turn 64 even in a bad scenario, with oracle started t49.

What do we build?

- Worker x2 = 120 :hammers:
- Settler x1 = 100 :hammers: --> ~50 :hammers: (IMP), maybe a bit more since with this tech pathing we probably aren't whipping this first one, though it could conceivably get one chop.
- Warrior x6 (extra super careful lul) = 90 :hammers:
- Oracle x1 = 150 :hammers: --> ~ 100 :hammers: (I think? 50% IND stuff and rounding etc)

We'd need around 410 :hammers: for this. Once the mines are up, we get 11/turn without the whip or chops just in the capitol; we'd need all of a chop or two to hit MC by turn 60. If this many :hammers: isn't feasible, you can probably remove a worker and still easily improve the hills, corn, and pig + some power tile in a 2nd city.

I'm not saying oracle is necessarily the best play, but turn 60 seems doable without huge risk, especially if we get discounts of any kind. Also my numbers are very conservative; for example palace :commerce: is 8 and the city :commerce: is 1. On top of that, we'd get an additional 1 :commerce: from working the forest spice tile while building a worker. It makes sense to get BW sooner based on this actually, because you can easily complete oracle inside of 10 turns (more like inside 5) with pre-chops, and it looks reasonable to hit everything but AH pre-t60. BW will allow some whips for better :hammers:, which actually seem a bit more limiting here.

MC is pretty easy to get by T60 if industrious it seems.
 
It's 310 beakers without BW and AH. The way you present that is a bit misleading.
 
It's 310 beakers without BW and AH. The way you present that is a bit misleading.

I had 310 at first, but I forgot pottery. You need 390 AFAIK: AG, TW, Myst, Med, PH, Pottery.

Still, even the extra 1-2 :commerce: from city tile + working some passive commerce + pre-req discount + AI knowledge discount (if we get it) will let us easily make the cut. I think BW earlier in the queue is advisable with a t60 oracle goal. I'd probably make pottery the last tech researched here; we don't have the :hammers: for sneaking in a granary pre-oracle I don't think (and if we did, I'd probably pick a worker or additional settler) and I don't see any tiles I'd particularly want to cottage without being able to chop either.
 
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