R&T - Longterm research goals

[Rik Meleet]

We'll soon be having Monotheism, Engineering, The Republic and Feudalism. ook HERE if you don't believe me.

We then need to define long term goals.

They can be:
1 - race for Military tradition.
2 - race for Astronomy / Navigation.
3 - race for Democracy or Free Artistry.
4 - race for Economics.
5 - race for the Industrial age.
6 - Go slow and research Chivalry and perform a "follow the tech-leader" approach.

There are alternatives, which can be seen as part of these choices. For instance; a race to Banking is partly a race to Democracy; only with earlier goals.

I prefer the race to Astronomy; as it gets us Monotheism + Education (cultural buildings (Universities + cathedrals) and allows a good wonder in Copernicus and is a neccesary tech for our UU. On top of that it allows trade over sea-tiles, which means that no traderoutes are easily broken if we are at war with a nation that is geographically between us and our trading partner.

Your opinion also counts, so please express your opinions on long term research goals.

 

[RegentMan]

I'm a sucker for Smith's (economics) and map knowledge (navigation). Either of those would be my pick.

 

[greekguy]

I'd go for 2 or 4. I would say we should rule out 3 and 6.

 

[mastertyguy]

2 and 3. Free Arts is gives us high culture, Astronomy gives us Cop's (culture+help to build tech. Would be nice to get Cop's + Newton's in the same city.

 

[GenMarshall]

We should make an attempt to go for the Smith wonder. For he will make our building cheaper .

 

[Bertie]

I believe our long-term research goal should be Economics so we can build Smith’s and trigger our Golden Age.

However, I do not advocate that we head directly towards that tech. Rather, I suggest we beeline towards Military Tradition. Why?

Before we fall in love with a particular technological goal we need to remember our overall goals and decide how best to achieve them. We’re planning to win a 130,000 point Cultural Victory. In order to achieve this we need to acquire sufficient land just short of the domination limit and stuff it with as many cities as possible, each one chockfull of cultural buildings. A city with a library, temple, and university will generate 9 points of culture each turn. Multiply that by 200 cities, and you’ll see that generating 130,000 points doesn’t take that long. Indeed, 200 cities with those 3 improvements will generate 18,000 cultural points during a turnchat. We can generate all the culture we need to win in a term (although it will take more than a term to build all those cities and all that culture!).

First, though, we need to get those 200 cities. We’ll need to expand approximately to the current Persian city of Gordium. In order to do so we need to, um, annex virtually all of the territory belonging to the Dutch, the Indians, the Chinese, the Persians, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish. We can’t do that with horses and swords alone. We need Knights, at a minimum; preferably Calvary. Indeed, if we revolt to Republic – which seems to be our intent – we need to keep our wars as short as possible. This means we need maximum firepower: Calvary. This also means we need Military Tradition, and as quickly as possible.

So as soon as we revolt to the Republic we will want to increase our research spending (and build markets and libraries to help) so we can get to Military Tradition rapidly. The sooner we can annex all the territory we need, the sooner we can concentrate on building culture and realizing our victory.

But by heading towards Military Tradition, aren’t we allowing other Civs to learn all of the top-tier techs? Of course. But we’ll catch up in a hurry. We’ll have all of the bottom-tier techs to trade; and don’t forget that Persepolis built the Great Library. We’ll capture that last, enabling just a bit of catch up there.

Don’t forget that by triggering our Golden Age after we’ve finished with our conquests means that 100% of our GA-enhanced production goes into building culture not into building military; and that’s the whole point of trying to achieve a cultural victory.

Heading towards Military Tradition is a double win: we conquer our foes, and in the long run we’ll actually learn more techs faster than we otherwise would have, and achieve our victory condition faster and easier.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Economics will allow us to trigger our golden age if we have a prebuild for Smith's Trading Company ready.

edit: Crosspost with Bertie.

 

[zyxy]

Thanks for starting this thread!

Research policy is a complicated thing....
Bertie has made an excellent analysis, and I generally agree with him.

A 130K culture goal requires lots and lots of culture generating improvements. A single Wonder, no matter how nice, helps very little in achieving a 130K culture victory.
(Exception may be those that generate temples or labs or so in every city). Even the best wonder will generate only a few thousand in the entire game (and the Persians already have it).
Universities and cathedrals are very expensive. I don't think we'll be able to build them in any large quantities for a long time to come. No need to research fast towards them.

We need more land, and cavalry is the best way to get it. This works best if you can get cavalry before the other civs get muskets. (Even if they have gunpowder it may take a while before there are muskets everywhere.) Wordt case, cavalry is useful until riflemen, and that would be the main reason to concentrate on the lower branch of the techtree first.

Another question is when we should start high speed research. I think we should wait a bit with that. At the moment our economy is still quite pathetic, with a net income of about 70 gpt. Switching to republic or monarchy won't change much at this moment. Our first priorities should be to get our economy in shape. That means decide on the palace and the FP, get some markets going, and start filling up the land that we have. Banks will also help; unfortunately, Banking is in the upper half of the tech tree, and expensive to get. I think we won't need banks for a while (we don't have a single market yet!), but we'll probably want them before we can get them...
Crappy cities in high food locations can hire lots of taxmen and contribute quite a bit to our income. (And cavalry will help to get those crappy cities!)

In my experience the AI's are usually pretty quick about getting to Invention and even Gunpowder, so I would prefer not to research those techs. Trading or getting them in peace settlements is cheaper than researching. Just look at our current situation: we are about to get 5 expensive techs for almost nothing, just by a peace deal, trading, and a minscience run.

On top of that, we have better things to do with our money. Bertie is talking about 200 cities. How many of those will be able to build improvements themselves? Maybe 50? That means cashrushing temples and libraries in 150 cities. (I am not so sure about universities, they are awfully expensive; colosseums might be better). Cost per city is about 500 gold, that's 150 x 500 = 75 000 gold. At our current income we need quite a few turns to get that together . Again, getting the economy in shape should be first priority, and we should spend our money on rushing moneymaking improvements and upgrading military rather than on science. We really need to get our income up to the 1000gpt range to have a chance at this.

Then there is the GA. When would be the best time for it? I think as soon as we have set up our core region (and have switched to a better government with low corruption). Outlying cities that are hopelessly corrupt will profit little from a GA, and so we do not need to be fully expanded before the GA starts.
If Smith is the only way to trigger the GA (is it?) then that's not so good, because it may take fairly long to get there, and I would prefer to get the GA earlyish in the MA.

 

[classical_hero]

Option 2 is the one that will get us to our goal best, but are e actually aiming for that. We seem to be such a warfaring nation, that we have lost sight of our cultural goals. The only aim for now is to get cutlre and culture fast.

 

[zyxy]

We need to generate a lot of culture. 130000 culture points are hard to get with 25-30 cities. That's why we are expanding, by war. The reason it took so long is that the Dutch War was difficult. We had to defeat the strongest civ on the planet (and made a few mistakes in doing that).

We still need more room (and more settlers to fill it up). Simply building libraries and temples and universities and cathedrals in all the cities we have will not generate a lot of culture. It would be 2+3+4+3 = 12 per turn per city I think, so with 30 cities that is less than 400 per turn. At that rate we still have 300-400 turns to go once we have all these improvements...

I fail to see why Astronomy and Navigation would help. If you said Education, then I could understand (but not agree ), as it gives a culture building. Astronomy gives Copernicus, which is nice-to-have, but not a big culture generator. All civs are on our home continent, so why do we need Navigation at all?
Our UU arrives with Magnetism, which is with any research path one of the three last nonoptional techs of the MA.

The other civs will be researching too. It is much cheaper for us to let them research, and then buy or extort or trade for techs. We should only research if we need the benefits of a certain tech as soon as possible, and we think we can outresearch the AI. For this reason, I would not research at all at this moment (min science only). Use the money for increasing our economic power, and after that we might start our own research.

 

[mad-bax]

I thought I had posted in this thread. Oh well, better late than never

Go straight to military tradition. Do not pass GO! do not collect 200 dollars.

MT is useful for the acreage. We can also time our GA (Smiths) for rails... It's all good. We are on our way to an impressive result.

 

[Furiey]

We have not lost sight of our cultural goals at all, but in order to achieve our culture goals we need lots of cities and for lots of cities we need territory.

This leads to the discussion here. We have got a lot of Temples and Libraries to build as it is, we will get Monotheism for Cathedrals in the next session, so we'll have plenty of cultural buildings to build before we run out, so there is not the urgency for universities. By heading for Military Tradition we will be able to complete our expansion phase as quickly as possible, we will gain the other techs as a result of our wars or perhaps by capturing the Great Library. Then we will be in the position to play the peaceful nation, trigger our golden age and push our culture to the limit.

Oh and Universities not Coliseums please; 4 culture for 200 shields, 2 gpt upkeep compared to 2 culture for 120 shields and 2 gpt upkeep. Double the culture for less than double the cost at the same upkeep. The one happy citizen from a Coliseum is not worth it.

 

[mad-bax]

We need a separate thread for Culture Accumulation Methodology.

For me, we need a library and temple in every town. If we run out of towns to do this we build more towns. Once at he domination limit we can then build cathederals and then universities. These come a VERY poor second though as the shield cost and Maintenance cost together are so inefficient.

 

[Rik Meleet]

There isn't enough time left for a poll; so I interpret the posts here.

In general I get the idea that our goals should be to go for Astronomy, but only after we get Military tradition. So the longterm research path =

- Beeline to Military Tradition, then beeline to Astronomy.

Right ?

 

[Chieftess]

Agree - Military Tradition first. We're on a pangaea, so astronomy should be a low priority.

 

[GenMarshall]

What in the world are we going to do with Astronomy?

 

[Nobody]

What in the world are we going to do with Astronomy?

Look at the stars, anyway i think we should go the democracy way before the military way, we want to win a cultural victory and all the culture is on the upper line of the middle ages.

 

[RegentMan]

[mini rant]I think someone needs to make a huge, page-topping post stating that we are building up our military so that we can possess 200 cities. These cities will each have a temple, library, and university. This means nine culture points per city per turn. 9 * 200 = 1800 culture points per turn. It'll take us 73 turns at this rate to generate 130,000 culture.

Maybe that'll stop a post in every thread saying "We need to build/research culture buildings. Why get a military?" [/mini rant]

 

[classical_hero]

We should make a beelinne to Astronomy and Navigation first, then the other side of the techs.

 

[mad-bax]

Beeline to military tradition. Slow run to Economics. Build Smiths, put our feet up and wait for the finish. That would be my plan.