As I tried to say elsewhere, I don't see how the math isn't going to prove it, because you forfeit much of your GA by putting in the Pyramids. On lower levels, I agree this isn't so much of a big deal. But, here you need
vast military production. You can get 4-6 cities without too much trouble to produce 1 turn horse-knights, or 1 turn horse-calvary (you zoom to the city and upgrade them, and they are ready to go immediately) with the resource trick getting you scores of gpt and lump sums. In my current game at 400 AD I currently have 99 calvary, 21 armies (1 knight, 1 4 calvary army, the rest 3 calvary armies), 70 cannons, 48 rifles (these are for later to use as combat settlers via an RoP agreement... this is a possible weak spot), 4 knights, 4 muskets and other units. This isn't even much with the disconnect-reconnect/Emsworth agreements going on, as I have too much tundra nearby my capital. In my other game, I feel sure I would soon have over 150 calvary by 430 AD, though not so many armies, as I got later to Military Tradition. In that game I had even hand-built banks into my core before putting in units, so I could have amassed even greater numbers, with a good stash of cash for rushing armies, and I had 15 opponents. But, I'm not so sure that all would have happened had I not had 4-6 cities producing 1 turn horse-knights, and a slew of my other cities producing 2 turn horse-knights during my GA for either just enough gold to get to 20 shields in 10 shield cities plus the upgrade cost, or just the upgrade cost in 15 shield cities.
Hence, I want to know what things look like later on. Moonsinger's number 1 game in fact indicates that an early start doesn't make or break things by any means, at the very least. If you haven't compared scores of her # 1 game with Kuningas game, and her # 2 game I advise you do so. Here's some numbers (Moon3-Moonsinger 3, Kuni-Kuningas, Moon1-Moonsinger 1):
Year Moon3 Kuni Moon1
250 4069 3169 2861
330 4754 3651 3274
610 7634 6460 6515 (she passes Kuningas at this point)
760 10,674 9335 10,689 (she finally passes her number 3 game)
How do the games differ? Moonsinger's number 1 game plays capture and keep rather consistently, as does Kuningas's game (though perhaps not as much), while her number 3 game more-or-less plays raze and replace with settlers immediately in place of a razed city. The number 1 game captures The Pyramids in 310 AD, hundreds of years before the other two, with Kuningas capturing it in 760 AD. No one has reached the domination limit by 760 AD.
Additionally, Moonsinger has far more tiles under her control by that point. She hadn't passed Kuningas in terms of the tile count until 550, and trailed significantly early on. It might come as interesting to check the victory status screen... it seems that even with as many happy citizens as you can get, territory tiles count for over half of your score, at least from my current game going on. And the more cities you capture earlier, the more citizens you have for even more points once you can quell them safely. The AIs also grow far faster than you can hope for in most cases.
The question I have here comes as will the benefits of the earlier Pyramids combined with a basically forfeited GA result in an equivalent, or near equivalent creep towards the domination limit and conquering of the AIs? You don't need to just conquer, but you need to conquer
fast. If the forfeited GA doesn't affect your conquering
speed, then you are right, you need to build the Pyramids early. If it does affect your conquering speed significantly, then you just want to conquer The Pyramids very early. If you can prove something here, I'd like to see it, but I'm not so sure this is easy to prove one way or the other.
killercane said:
You dont build them in the second city due to happiness concerns. 2 settlers first is usually optimal depending on the map since you want settlers from all 3 when Pyramids are complete.
I find it especially strange that you say this. Happiness concerns? You just take the luxury slider up as needed, or beyond that point. You only really need 10% on Alphabet, if even that. Just pick up everything else via the resource trick. 3 cities by the time you complete the Pyramids? That's no problem at all by the time the Pyramids finish if you use the second city. See my HoF 20k Sid games (except the one with the Byzantines... I handbuild the Oracle in some of them, but in others the Pyramids in the 2nd city and have at least 3 if not 4 cities out by that point), or
this thread.
That said, when I think about it, the capital will work will better. But why put out 2 settlers from the capital? Why not put out 1, and then start on the Pyramids? I'd expect the second city can put out a worker soon enough in any case such that if you have some decent BGs around, without Masonry tribes, you can get the Pyramids. The second city can rather handily put out a settler soon enough and found a 3rd city by the time you have the Pyramids up after the 2nd worker. I don't see why you would need anything more than 4 turn growth in the capital really. I also don't see why you need workers to add in... in my 20k games I rarely have had any add ins by that point, maybe 1 or 2, but not much, and I wasn't agricultural in those games.
Heck, you could probably forget the settler, go for them right away, or put out a worker and then the Pyramids.
This presupposes, of course, that it comes as easy to build the Pyramids on an 80% archipelago wet, warm, 3 billion map, vs. a 60% wet, warm, 5 billion map. I guess there could exist some significant difference there. But, even so, I didn't play with an agricultural tribe in those 20k games there, and that can make a significant difference in terms of how fast you can build something early.