godotnut said:
I think that the Lighthouse is more powerful long term for sure. Pretty much every city in this game is going to be a coastal city. With the Lighthouse, you can expand like mad and not worry about your economy one bit.
I'm going for the Lighthouse and the Colossus. These are the "money" wonder for this game.
With all that extra gold, I'm confident that the tech advantage will swamp the one Oracle tech in no time at all. It would be possible to get all three, but I think that would cripple early production too much.
Personally, I think this one is going to be all about the early land grab. I'm going to focus my attention on spawing massive amounts of settlers ASAP. The gold hill and the the money wonders will take care of me.
I totally agree GL & Colossus are better than the CS slingshot. But, can you have your cake and eat it too?
Here's what I'm thinking I will be doing... I tried this with the same starting set-up the was posted earlier in the thread, and managed to get two settlers produced along with a workboat to circumnavigate the globe.
Build the Oracle and grab Metalcasting with it. Build a cheap forge while researching the Great Lighthouse techs, and build that. Then, build the Colossus. I was able to accomplish all of this at completely safe dates (I think I had Oracle in 1600 BC, GL around 1000 BC, Colossus 600 BC, give or take a few centuries.) That was with no copper.
Building the Oracle for Metalcasting does two important things: a) it lets you get an early forge that speeds up everything in your capital and gives +1 happy, and b) it denies any other AI the ability to grab Metalcasting with it and beat you to the Oracle. I've never seen the Colossus built in the BC's by the AI except when an industrious civ takes Metalcasting from the Oracle.
The problem with this is that the great prophet you'll more than likely get from the Oracle isn't so hot... especially since you need to take Masonry and can't burn him on CS. However, if it's possible to build the Oracle in your second city you could manage your GP's to ensure your first person is a Great Merchant, who will discover CS in that tech path if you research Monarchy & Code of Laws & don't research Math. I've yet to try that, though, as you can't really predict what the second city terrain is going to look like.
All of this assumes your two other cities can handle the military & expansion needs until your capital is done building wonders... still, it seems very powerful.
My tech path in the sample game was something along the lines of (off the top of my head, I hadn't planned it out):
Fishing -> Animal Husbandry -> Wheel -> Bronzeworking -> Mysticism -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Pottery -> (free Metalcasting somewhere around here) -> Sailing -> Masonry -> Writing -> Code of Laws
If you can get a Great Merchant, then Monarchy will give you a CS Slingshot in the BC's.
There really aren't that many techs in there you wouldn't find in a normal CS slingshot (Sailing, Masonry, and maybe Pottery, and then Monarchy), and you don't need CoL before building the Oracle. I'm just not sure how well you can build the Oracle in a second city to ensure you get a GM.
Build order was something along the lines of Worker -> Workboat -> Workboat -> Warrior -> Warrior -> Settler -> Oracle -> Settler -> Forge -> Great Lighthouse -> Colossus. I can't remember the ordering of the Settlers & Oracle, I was switching them around so city could grow to max while building Oracle & maybe Forge. I think I could have slipped in 2-3 settlers after GL or a Library and still gotten the Colossus safely, which would give a pretty decent empire by 1AD.
Of course, it all depends on the starting island, as well. If there's a need for an early axe war, or galleys to transport settlers/defend, some of this might go out the window.
I think I'm going to play around with some variations on this.
What do you all think?