Good points!
Ok, maybe we'll have a few more workers and fewer military. Total unit costs will still be in the same ballpark, I think.
In a normal SP game I don't even consider the Chapel. But the shortage of luxes is a rather compelling argument for it IMO. And with human opponents instead of AIs we can count on getting a fair share of the wonders. So yes, this is definitely out of the box.
donsig, if we have corrupt towns then of course we can keep them small, so they don't need temples/cathedrals. I don't want to see any lazy citizens that don't bring in gold or shields
. Any food surplus in such a town can be used to hire specialists.
I think it would definitely be a good idea to settle the islands, for the reasons you mention. With the GLight we can reach them safely. Otherwise we can use ship hopping to keep our settlers safe (but not the ships).
ETAs on FP and Torch are hard to give, because the towns are still growing. But ok, here's my guess:
The Torch (300 shields)
The Admiralty has 14% waste, so the 4th and 11th shield are wasted. Currently (turn 64) it does 5 spt and has gathered 52 shields.
The Admiralty cannot grow beyond size 6, and at size 6, with the tiles visible now, it could do 10 spt (net), as follows:
we mine the two plains and the grass in range of The Admiralty (this destroys the irrigation on one of the plains). We work the sugar and the bg in the S, the bg in the NE, the two plains and the grass, for 12 raw shields, which means 10 net shields.
To get to size 6 we grow once and add two workers. The improvements will take 3*6 = 18 worker turns, excluding movement, roading and the bg mine under construction. With the workers we'll build from TC we should be able to do all this in under 10 turns. In those 10 turns we'll get to about 110 shields I think, so after that it's another 19 turns, for
29 turns total.
This suggests btw not to start jungle operations with the new workers, but rather to improve the tiles we have. So good question!
FP (200 shields)
The Silo has 44% waste, so the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 11th shields will be lost to corruption. Currently at size 2 we produce 3 raw spt, for 2 net spt, with 12 shields in the bin. At size 6, if we work 2 mined bg's, the wheat, the forest and 2 mined plains we will make 12 raw spt for 7 net spt. To construct 4 mines will take 24 worker turns excluding movement and roading.
I think we could grow the town to size 4 (this will take 13 turns), and then join two workers to bring it to size 6. The three workers in the area should be able to complete all 4 mines in roughly the same time period, and then two of them can join the town. In these 13 turns we can expect to generate about 2.5 spt on average, so 13 turns from now there'll be about 44 shields in the bin. It then takes another 22 or 23 turns to finish the FP, for
35-36 turns total.
The more we talk about different things we'd like to do, the more important the Torch seems. Keeps us safe, keeps Republic costs down, secures us for some nice Wonder builds... it's a must have!
