130BC: Of course Monotheism is cheaper than Engineering: some of the AI's possess it, meaning its cost to us is deflated both for purchase/trade and for self-research. The real question is, can we parley some of our other assets into a cheap tech purchase, such as Right of Passage, spare luxuries/resources, or even peace renegotiations? If we can use those options to lower the tech cost, we might buy this tech on the cheap (as I did in the official turn) while we are researching something else.
Sometimes the wisest thing you can possibly do is to follow the AI's up the tree with your own research, making them bear the heavy costs of 1st-civ research while you research at cheaper rates. On the other hand, those RoP and Peace assets are just going to waste because the AI's don't have the cash to pay for them at market value. Check out how I handled this whole tech scheme, including the one round of high research and the one round of no research, during the official turn. There are lots of ways to get successful tech results, but some moves and tricks are more subtle than others.
Also, you may miss being able to set research to 80%, but fact is, under this government we still have much more net research taking place. Libraries are boosting research while increasing costs, but they boost more than they cost. Units now cost money, but less than the increase we get from stronger commerce. You should ignore the percentage values of the slider and focus only on the REAL values, the totals, as the bottom line is what counts, not the form and appearance.
110BC: Aha. So you did figure out how to run a good tech trade here! Very well done on using Republic at low-civ prices to buy us into Monotheism. Chivalry's not a bad idea, although the sooner you get it, the sooner you need SEVENTY shields to built a unit instead of thirty. It's much cheaper to ugrade units than to rushbuy the later unit. That is, it takes 80 gold per horseman to upgrade to knight, but it takes 160 gold for the same number of shields difference to rushbuy. So if you are going to need to rushbuy ANY knights at any point, it's cheaper to build horses first, then upgrade them. You can get more out of it.
For the cost to build five knights from scratch (350 shields) you can train eleven horsemen. Eleven horsemen will upgrade to knights for 880 gold. So with 350 shields and 880 gold, you get yourself eleven vet knights. Compare to spending that 350 shields on training five knights from scratch, then divide 280 gold apiece (the cost to rush a knight with ONE shield or more in the box already), you can't even get four knights out of the gold. So if you compare, you see you get eleven knights one way, and only eight and a half knights the other way. So depending on just how many knights you plan to build, and how soon you want them (are you going to war right away??) it may pay off to delay Chivalry. Then look even beyond the math. You can train horsemen easily in between other projects, while training a knight is a large undertaking even for a core city.
Finally, just how much threat are we really under? What can wait, should wait. We can train horsemen as we go, and further our infrastructure, delaying the investment of shields into knights. If we maintain some cash surplus, we can upgrade to knights later when we need to.
Also, one more thing to keep in mind. Upgradability is important but often overrated. The longbow unit is almost half the cost of a knight, but the same offensive punch. Longbows are much maligned, but I have found them to be very useful units to reduce losses among my knights, especially for defensive value or in large stacks of assaults on enemy territory. In the always war variant, you can get two longbows almost for the cost of one knight, and that be a very good deal in many situations. Like the horse-to-knight upgrade, where you can increase your total force, so with longbows. And now that the new patch is SLOWING tech progression at higher difficulty, ancient and especially midieval warfare are going to come more to the fore.
If you just want a few knights for defensive value, going right to Chivalry makes sense. If you want to build a larger force of knights for an invasion, the horseman upgrade may make more sense, and ESPECIALLY if you have a prebuild going for Leo's Workshop and finish it soon after gaining Invention. The moment you finish it, a mass upgrade of horses at half price can have your hordes sweeping across the continent in a way far stronger than beelining to Chivalry. I know that's a lot to consider, but it's the type of resource management you may need to undertake to succeed consistently on high difficulty.
50BC: Lot of marketplaces starting. Well, that's three for three. Three shadow players, and not a single one of them built or started a single granary among the whole lot of them.
Why not? All that fancy new technology going to your heads?
First things first. The most wasteful aspects of the game are lack of granaries (wasting half the food) and lack of courthouses (wasting shields and commerce at non-core cities, often MOST of the shields and commerce). A cultural building is important to claim territory, and that usually means a temple. Which order do you build these in? Depends on the land, the amount of corruption, and the priorities that allow or do not allow for support in the form of rushbuys. Any city wasting more than a third of its shields is badly corrupt. Anything wasting more than half desperately needs corruption relief. Anything wasting more than two thirds (like Warwick) is a "project", and only worth pouring cash into if it's in a key strategic location.
Without a granary, everything else is slowed a LOT. A lot. It's only when food is so much more abundant than shields (like where pulling in just one or two shields per turn) that the granary is a low priority (behind a courthouse).
Marketplaces are what you build AFTER you have basic infrastructure. The same applies to libraries. You need both population and corruption control before commerce boosters do you any good. You also need a cultural building. So the usual priority is temple, granary, courthouse, in some kind of order. A spot like Leeds, on the back lines, is not in a cultural fight and isn't missing out on good tiles for lack of border reach. In its case, courthouse, then granary, then temple, then other buildings, makes the most sense. A city like Warwick needs the courthouse first, OR it needs rushbuy help. One or the other. If you wait for it to build a temple, then do the courthouse, it will take so long, you can forget about it. Often at corrupt cities, the best buy is to get the courthouse first. You immediately pull in more commerce and shields, and the place can start to take care of itself after that. This presuming its not so badly corrupt that the courthouse makes too little difference. Even so, courthouse PLUS "we love the king day" can pull a half-decent number of shields out of even some pretty badly corrupt cities, in the latest patches (since 1.21).
What can wait, should wait. The order in which improvements are built makes a HUGE difference. You can't afford to spend your whole civ's treasury on "projects", distant and insecure colonies, but a key purchase here or there can make a big difference. If you expect a border to hold for a long time, as you have no plans to invade and can be strong enough to deter or repel invaders, then a rushed cultural building can make a big difference. If not, the courthouse is a better buy.
Market before granary is just something I never do at this stage of the game. Only post-railroad, where food supplies rise off the charts while shields remain in short supply due to distance and number of cities, and lack of cash to buy courthouses everywhere, then granaries become an afterthought. At this stage of the game, though, they are your lifeline to better times.
I specifically kept us away from the Pyramids to show you guys what it's like to build your own granaries. Coordinating projects and sacrificing growth curve at some cities to meet civ-wide demands (settlers, workers, military) is a necessary task. But don't lose sight of the importance of keeping cities growing and improving whenever they AREN'T needed for such jobs. Markets are appropriate in some cities, but definitely NOT in all.
30AD: Cultural control works in "levels". A city starts at level 1, then at ten culture moves to level 2, at a hundred it moves to 3, at 1000 it moves to level 4, and at 10000 it moves to level 5. One thing to keep in mind is that no city can impose its culture on another city at a lower level of control. The level 1 tiles right around a city can ONLY be overcome by settling two tiles away and then having the stronger culture in your city, and then you only pull away their level 1 tiles that fall under your level 1 range. The others you can't touch. If cities are three or more tiles apart, they will NEVER lose control of their level 1 tiles no matter how much culturer difference there is. Level 2 from your 18k culture city cannot overcome level 1 tiles from their 0 culture city. That's a fact. Nothing is ever going to impose on Uruk unless you build another city closer to it.
This is important to understand for managing city flips. If there is no level 1 or 2 overlap with YOUR city's level 2 tiles, you are 100% insulated from any chance of city flip (unless you have foreign nationals inside your city). This can be important for high difficulty levels in situating your border cities in a way where they will be safe from flipping, no matter how far behind you are in culture. Of course, then the AI cities are also safe from flipping to you. It's a two way street. Usually it's Range 2 tiles that overlap and lead to flip risks. The AI's are programmed not to settle within two tiles, so unless you force the issue, there won't ever BE any overlap of range1 tiles. Range3 hardly matters, except perhaps for control over some wasted tiles that may have resources on them. Still, there is only ever cultural pressure and clash over SAME-RANGE tiles. Range 3 vs Range 3, the city with more total culture will control the overlap.
For this reason, your city spot near Leipzig is a loser. You will NEVER gain control of the tiles in Leipzig's inner circle, and the city will suffer GREAT pressure from the Germans and may even flip to them. (Maybe not, down here on Regent, but it certainly would on Emperor unless you destroyed or captured Leipzig). That's a bad bad spot. Very bad.
![[pimp]](/images/smilies/pimp.gif "Pimp [pimp]")
One south of there would have been OK, but something along the coast would have been better.]
You did a good job on roads in the southwest, but neglected the southeast and any lines to other civs. Everyone had a mixed bag on workers this turn. You also neglected irrigations at London, which is running low food now. Bad, very bad. No irrigations in the northeast either.
And one more thing. Like all the others this round, your Exeter location surrenders all cultural claim to the furs. Not good. Three for three on opting out of the fur business, and three for three on avoiding all contact with granaries. And... I'm not sure why. I thought I did a better job of communicating their importance.
Overall Grade: C
count: Two. (Tech Trade, Diplomacy)
count: Four. (Settlements, Workers, Lack of Granary, Fringe Markets Too Soon)
- Sirian
London finishes horseman (future knight) and starts a pikeman. We will shuffle spears around to upgrade them. York finishes sword and also starts a pike. The French are building the Great Wall. The French city of Paris completed the Pyramids. The Babylonians are building the Oracle and the Great Wall. The Babylonian city of Babylon completes the Oracle. The Bab settler has built Nippur on top of the iron hill on the SW coast west of Warwick.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
[dance] (And yes, you all do love the Trainer, right? ... Right? 
