Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXII: Wang Kon

[vicawoo]

I went lib before astro and didn't have any tech problems.

Problems isn't the same as being inefficiently slow. Played to optics today. 500 AD immortal (not great, but I failed pyramids and got great lighthouse and got 3 more cities than one would get in some deity race) with one great scientist and another in 10. Should have timed the 3rd earlier, but I have to scout most of the AI anyway so I don't immediately open borders with a someone's worst enemy.

I think astronomy is better in the same way people like currency more than code of laws, only with probably twice the value and you get to trade earlier. Also if you want to go bureaucracy, you'll have to waste beakers getting calendar, monarchy, or metal casting.

You also have to tech alphabet and math

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Problems isn't the same as being inefficiently slow. Played to optics today. 500 AD immortal (not great, but I failed pyramids and got great lighthouse and got 3 more cities than one would get in some deity race) with one great scientist and another in 10. Should have timed the 3rd earlier, but I have to scout most of the AI anyway so I don't immediately open borders with a someone's worst enemy.

I think astronomy is better in the same way people like currency more than code of laws, only with probably twice the value and you get to trade earlier. Also if you want to go bureaucracy, you'll have to waste beakers getting calendar, monarchy, or metal casting.

You also have to tech alphabet and math

It depends when you meet people from them finding you, picking up taj, etc.

Bur is very powerful. It's not out of the question to get ~25 just from this civic (palace + 10 FIN hamlets is almost there, without factoring any trade routes at all or passive commerce tiles); non-GLH trade route yield @ astro is worth more than that but you wait longer too and can't spread irrigation (less important to wang but still).

When you throw in taj ----> golden age, AI tech path tendencies, etc it's not clear cut at all and even somewhat depends on luck (you can know with religion screens likelihood of worst enemy map hack and/or have vassals that are met etc. Hell, it's possible to meet people with espionage sometimes).

When you go optics ----> astro you overlap on machinery and everything before it, and probably can't trade optics much. When you go lib----nat---->optics you have a fair bit of trade bait once you meet AI and depending on pacing a chance to trade for astro even.

In other words I'm asserting the potential for the lib bulb path to gain a trade advantage because more of it is likely to be brokered. Indeed, when I met the AI I was around parity with everyone but one civ almost instantly (5-10 turns of trades/gold broker/etc).

I have doubts this decision is clear-cut at all, and certainly nobody has ever run the #'s...

You say you "got great lighthouse". That is a gamble unto itself. It can go ~1800's BC on these maps. If you don't get that and sell out on astro the benefit isn't anywhere near what you assert...

 

[vranasm]

really surprised so many people got GLH on Immortal safely.
I said it as comment in AZ video, but in my run the GLH went 1400 BC.
Totally killed my gameplan and had to go with Colossus.

would be interesting to hear the dates of GLH in peoples attempts for comparison

 

[vicawoo]

It depends when you meet people from them finding you, picking up taj, etc.

Bur is very powerful. It's not out of the question to get ~25 just from this civic (palace + 10 FIN hamlets is almost there, without factoring any trade routes at all or passive commerce tiles); non-GLH trade route yield @ astro is worth more than that but you wait longer too and can't spread irrigation (less important to wang but still).

When you throw in taj ----> golden age, AI tech path tendencies, etc it's not clear cut at all and even somewhat depends on luck (you can know with religion screens likelihood of worst enemy map hack and/or have vassals that are met etc. Hell, it's possible to meet people with espionage sometimes).

When you go optics ----> astro you overlap on machinery and everything before it, and probably can't trade optics much. When you go lib----nat---->optics you have a fair bit of trade bait once you meet AI and depending on pacing a chance to trade for astro even.

In other words I'm asserting the potential for the lib bulb path to gain a trade advantage because more of it is likely to be brokered. Indeed, when I met the AI I was around parity with everyone but one civ almost instantly (5-10 turns of trades/gold broker/etc).

I have doubts this decision is clear-cut at all, and certainly nobody has ever run the #'s...

You say you "got great lighthouse". That is a gamble unto itself. It can go ~1800's BC on these maps. If you don't get that and sell out on astro the benefit isn't anywhere near what you assert...

I usually get optics early enough to regularly trade compass around on immortal.

If I missed great lighthouse, I probably would have just expanded a little bit more, teched a little bit faster earlier, or started on my great scientists a little bit early, with the extra gold. Once you have the close cities settled, there's no rush to settle the further ones anytime soon, so wonders are pretty safe then.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Interesting. I usually cut some expansion for a while w/o FIN, but with it I just carpeted the continent in FIN cottages since when it comes to cottages you want to start growing them early.

I'll give fast astro another look in the next LHC probably, since I micro better these days and might see better results.

 

[vicawoo]

Best way to know is to replay the same map with different expansion speeds.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^

If you're bulbing astro it's not too hard to plan out the bulbs though (2 for astro, maybe 1 for optics though I think I'd prefer an academy). Merchant from GLH would be pretty bad so one would have to micro against it or pray for luck.

Bottleneck will probably be hard research then, and it shouldn't be to hard to run #'s or test iterations to get a decent expansion timing put together. Probably the most daunting tech is machinery unless you also want to bulb that (but bulbing that means you must have math/aesthetics/alpha/MC/compass and still block the more common bulbs...and coming up with 4 GS to bulb mach + optics + 2x astro seems a bit rough; you'd probably need caste to put that up by the early AD; great library after GLH would delay the self-research timings though I suppose so would caste :/).

It takes 67 normal speed turns to put out a 4th great scientist using basic library + 2 scientists if you start from scratch on GPP (assuming this city does not generate one before that point). In other words, if you have 4 cities lined up all running 2 scientists you can put up the 4th 67 turns after starting it in the last city...1 AD is t115 so I feel the timing for 4x library + scientists unrealistic.

Is it worth teching for caste here? It might be. Some cities can even double up on it. Hell, if you found confuc. or taoism you can drastically improve GPP. Philo bulb would still leave astro open if you ignore civil service and is a likely viable trade chip in the process...you could push even the 5th and 6th gsci faster than with just library + 2 scientists that way, and possibly without infra investment.

That would make the only things you'd need to hard-tech stuff like calendar, compass, and metal casting.

Now I'm starting to wonder how oracle + pacifism GPP grinding compares to GLH, because the latter probably reaches astro faster.

Baseline research is still a bottleneck though. You can't bulb it all. I also still wonder if this is conducive to relying on cottages; probably not though FIN could still benefit from other 2c+ tiles (coast, specials on land, etc).

But yes, running "test save" iterations is extremely effective and even I will use it these days in games I *really* care about.

 

[vicawoo]

Relative tech costs:
Optics:600
Math: 250
Alphabet: 300
Code of Laws: 350
Aesthetics: 300
Polytheism: 100
Literature: 200
Machinery: 700

I'm not big on bulbing machinery. 850 beakers to bulb a 700 beaker tech, extra great people points not included.

I don't like bulbing optics either (550 for 600), although I suppose you can run a hammer economy with alphabet and skip the academy.

I usually just set to 0 while waiting for my academy (depending on how much I'm losing to expansion), which is pretty nice.

If you want 3 great people with just libraries, you have to start the last 50 turns ahead of time, 67 if you're double dipping off one city.
I think great library/national epic is ok with marble, because you're dumping hammers for great people points, so you only have to run scientists in maybe one other city.

Code of laws is ok for similar reasons, you can concentrate your great scientist production into the end. It all really depends on happiness/food, caste is obviously worthless without any happiness. This is probably a reasonably good caste system map.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I guess you just get alpha (needed for the bulb anyway) early-ish then and dump hammers into research? It would certainly help power you towards the end astro bulb faster.

 

[vicawoo]

I prefer to trade for alphabet/math/calendar/currency (or usually possibly tech math while waiting for my caravels).

If you're not overly hammer heavy (plains cows, metals) and have code of laws, you can redistribute your mines into scientists, so hammers don't mean much. If you have aesthetics, you've been dumping a lot of hammers into your wonders while relying on the rest of the cities to build the workers, settlers and other units.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So you're just hard-teching optics ASAP and then trading it + compass. Interesting.

 

[Lewarks]

Finally finished mine ...
Immortal, 1927 AD Diplo victory.

Spoiler :

I have just developed my island until I have reached Artillery. I vassaled Toku with Art+Rifleman. Then Sury, Jules (and his vassal Victoria) and Qin with Art+Infantry.

I didn't build the GLH. Just cottaged the capital and use the coastal tiles. I went for Astro. Got Lib and went to Communism. Then I used Nationalism and Workshop to produce units.

Some screen-shots:

Ofc, THIS tile ... :