Research strategy discussion #2

[Chillaxation]

First, there is a contradiction: If you want to chop, you need Bronze Working. Second, you need to elaborate why the other benefits of Currency (plus the other benefits of Math) can wait.

Yes, going for the Oracle might best be done while researching Bronze Working, and I think the two are of a piece with a longer term goal I've read people writing about - shooting for Confucianism. They also synergize well with Metal Casting, which should be, if I may say, our real goal. But it's off in the future, so I'm a little leery of making huge predictions. What if it turns out there are Horses in the nearby south? Being the first civ with a working force of Horse Archers, to say nothing of our capacity for War Chariots, would be even more desirable. In either case, I really think mining will be useful in the short term.

As for Math/Currency, it's a tossup, but I think Bronzeworking/Metalcasting win out following Priesthood - having gotten whatever land development techs we think are essential. Personally from the map, I think Mining's the only essential one left. To me, Masonry and Fishing can wait. We'll have the capacity - with careful planning - to get an extra happiness out of Gems in Forges a ways down the line. Math allows us aqueducts and forts, but it seems to me like even with a Forge, Boaring Wallow will still have the forests, fresh water, and food capacity necessary to sustain growth without unhealthiness before unhappiness sets in. Currency...well, I think it benefits us more when there are more trade routes.

You might well respond that early trade routes = early raw commerce - which is a valid argument. But I think that gunning for a resource/building combination to net us +2 happiness in cities with Forges will do us more good. Early happiness and population increase = early raw -everything-.

 

[Blkbird]

Chillaxation, you're thinking to far ahead. I like to discuss two, three techs at a time, and then adopt to the progress of the game.

If you really want to play for the next 5, 6 techs, I wouldn't rule out Fishing that easily, because our next city should be coastal, so we can start exploring the see early.

 

[Strider]

Simple, except it might not work. As some people have pointed out, the AI may be very, very unwilling to trade Techs with you, especially on handicapped levels (such as Prince, which we're playing on).

Thus why the Research part is there.

 

[Swissempire]

Cultural because thats what i thought we were doing from the start. Even on prince Ai's are willing to trade techs at least the first time around, and the benefit is enourmous!

 

[Chillaxation]

Chillaxation, you're thinking to far ahead. I like to discuss two, three techs at a time, and then adopt to the progress of the game.

If you really want to play for the next 5, 6 techs, I wouldn't rule out Fishing that easily, because our next city should be coastal, so we can start exploring the see early.

I don't know if advocating an opportunity that I'm fairly certain we can exploit is thinking too far ahead. I did say that other oppurtunities might arise.

You -did- ask about the relative merits of paths to Code of Laws. I meant both to respond to that call for debate and to provide another voice on immediate research goals. I'd hardly -rule out- fishing when we have a isthmus chokepoint directly to our south.

 

[Sigma]

First of all, I'd like to state that in most all of games where I researched Bronze Working early, I was significantly more ahead than my opponents. Compare that to when I waited longer to research it, and I lost most of the time or won only by a small margin. But since there could be other variables, and I have no concrete data, I'll provide some reasoning.

Here is a more in-depth analysis of the 5 different tracks you suggested:

The water techs are unnecessary because we don't have any coastal cities, and may not for a while. We can save them for when they will take less time to research.

Archery would be important if we started close to a Civ (especially an aggressive one), were playing on a higher difficulty level, or had Raging Barbarians enabled. None of these are true, so we can wait on this one for a little while. Horseback riding is also not important because there are no horses in our vicinity.

Writing is an important technology, but not this early. It will take a while to research (120 pts), the same number of points as Bronze Working, but frankly not as useful. All it really gives us is Libraries, which would take a long time to build themselves. Open borders is useless because not only have we not found any other Civs' borders yet, but we wouldn't be able to trade with them, nor would we have a good reason to enter their territory. This tech would be more useful to research while we were building the Oracle so we could pick up Code of Laws (or maybe even Theology).

For the religious techs, these would be the second best option, simply because of the Oracle. We are pretty much out of the race for all of the 3 early religions, but the religious techs are definitely a better path to take if we're trying to get to Code of Laws first - (50+80+60=190), vs. getting Mathematics and Currency (250+400=650). This isn't necessarily a bad path, but it is risky. Other than getting the Oracle, this tech line serves no other early purpose, as we can't build temples without a religion, organized religion is useless without a religion, we're out of the race for the first 3 religions, and obelisks aren't important since we have the Creative trait.

Finally, my preference would be Mining and then Bronze Working (50+120=170). We'd finish these two techs before we could finish the chain of 3 to get to Priesthood. We could then chop rush a settler or 2, giving us an advantage over our opponents. My reasoning for chop rushing settlers is it minimizes the amount of time our city is in zero growth. We have plenty of forests around our capital so it wouldn't hurt to chop a few down and bump our production back up with a few mines. Also if we get lucky enough to have some copper nearby, we can build axemen early, obsoleting Archery. If it's a little further away it may provide a reason to expand in that direction.

After we get Bronze Working, we could possibly pursue the Religious tech line, and chop rush the Oracle. We could have a chance at beating someone who focused strictly on the religious technologies, but we'd have to wait and see how things go before making that call. I definitely think we should focus on Mining and Bronze Working first though.

If any of my points are unclear, feel free to challenge me on them and I'll try to provide more explanation.

 

[Blkbird]

A very well done analysis, exemplary even. Thanks, Sigma.

 

[Swissempire]

Here is my opinion (hope it will be exemplry )

Sigma makes good points, but htey are purely circumstantial. I have only won two games on Prince, and i went this path on both of them. Bronze and Iron working are good technologies, but civs are usually willing to trade them for writign or alphabet. Also Writing opens up more dimplomatic and futurebuilding oppurtunities, while bronze working is maybe as good, but depends SOLEY on use haveing copper in our borders. Also, while writing is good, Aphabet is even better. I think that any arguement that Bronze Working is better than alphabet, both in the short and long term, will be seriusly lacking. The technological boost of being the first on our continent to discover alphabet will be astounding.

Some will argue that wrting only allows libraries and open borders. That and it leads to alphabet. But Open Borders allows us to build early relatons with our neighbors, and Libraries will speed up both our growth and our technoligal expansion. While researchin Bronze Working is good, i urge you to look to the better choice. Writing and alphabet will lets grow both now and later, aloow ust to get bronze working as well as writing and alphabet and many other techs, and will allow us to grow and expand more and more quickly!

 

[Sigma]

Here is my opinion (hope it will be exemplry )

Sigma makes good points, but htey are purely circumstantial. I have only won two games on Prince, and i went this path on both of them. Bronze and Iron working are good technologies, but civs are usually willing to trade them for writign or alphabet. Also Writing opens up more dimplomatic and futurebuilding oppurtunities, while bronze working is maybe as good, but depends SOLEY on use haveing copper in our borders. Also, while writing is good, Aphabet is even better. I think that any arguement that Bronze Working is better than alphabet, both in the short and long term, will be seriusly lacking. The technological boost of being the first on our continent to discover alphabet will be astounding.

Some will argue that wrting only allows libraries and open borders. That and it leads to alphabet. But Open Borders allows us to build early relatons with our neighbors, and Libraries will speed up both our growth and our technoligal expansion. While researchin Bronze Working is good, i urge you to look to the better choice. Writing and alphabet will lets grow both now and later, aloow ust to get bronze working as well as writing and alphabet and many other techs, and will allow us to grow and expand more and more quickly!

Getting Alphabet first would be great if we were on a Pangaea or Terra map and could meet all the other civs early, but we're on a continents map. This means we're probably sharing a continent with 2 or 3 opponents - maybe 4 but this would imply that there are only 2 continents, which I seriously doubt. If there were more civs for us to meet and trade with, I agree that Alphabet would be a good choice. However there there just aren't enough civs to make it worth delaying Bronze Working. Getting Bronze Working earlier will allow us to chop rush some settlers, letting us secure the best resources and best spots on the map. We can also chop rush workers, which will allow us to improve resources and tiles faster, as well as build roads. And we can also chop rush wonders, so we can grab the Oracle for a free tech, or the Pyramids for all Gov't civics. The benefits of getting Bronze Working are just too good to pass up.

 

[Blkbird]

The technological boost of being the first on our continent to discover alphabet will be astounding.

Please do elaborate what's special about being the first to discover Alphabet.

 

[Blkbird]

What is the typical number of continents on a Large continent map?

 

[Sigma]

I ran some tests by creating a bunch of Large Continents (with medium sea level), and though I was short on time and couldn't get as many as I would've liked, I noticed a grab bag of results. There were anything from 3-5 continents, though I remember in one of the times where there were 3 continents, one of them was really small and only had one civ on it. Also, there were a couple of times where there was one "supercontinent" with a lot of civs on it. But we ended up not being on this supercontinent about half the time I believe.

I could spend more time and try to get more conclusive results, but I think that they'll just be all across the board no matter how many maps I generate. So there's not any good evidence to go on to support researching Alphabet this early.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

As the (recently appointed) scientific representative of the idiot community, I propose we follow strictly the following research order, in that order:

1- Top to bottom
2- Right to left
3- as availability comes and goes

Sincerely, B.

 

[DaveShack]

Animal Husbandry *has* already been researched (not paying attention, eh, DS?)

If you're trying to troll me, you're going to have to do a lot better than that. If you're trying to make yourself look better, you're doing a marvelous job of digging your own political grave. We're discussing strategy, not tactics, right? What I wrote is a strategy for how you decide on a tech.

Since our decision doesn't have to be made *before* that (Pottery won't finish within the next Session), we should consider both cases - when we or do not find Horses somewhere close.

Which is, of course, part of the point I was trying to make.

If we have access to horses, what should we do?
If we don't have access to horses, what should we do?

 

[Blkbird]

1- Top to bottom
2- Right to left
3- as availability comes and goes

Fascinating, really. That way, we can get to Liberalism before even bothering with Mining!

However, your proposal must be declined, with an idiot-proof reason: We have already failed to follow that pattern so far, and no idiot can get that back on track any more.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

No reason not to start already !

[EDIT] And btw, in reverse order, there's Liberalism - Education - Paper - Theology - Monotheism - Masonry - Mining. Best we get before mining are Philo and Music.

 

[Blkbird]

No reason not to start already !

Sorry, that's too deep for me to grasp.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Demogames need order and rigor in order to get anywhere at all, because a lot of people just shovel no's and shouldn't's and don't's at everything and everyone. So it takes a lot of time that it could use to play kebaba (TM some idiot).

So here's a concise, clear, simple research plan that would help everyone focus on playing kebaba (TM some idiot) rather than just deliberate for the (questionnable, and which I don't personnally share) fun of it.

 

[GeorgeOP]

I think the real question should be how we expect to treat the Mongols. Are we planning to eventually bring them under our rule, or do we want to make them our lifetime friends? If we want to learn to live peacefully with our neighbors, then we should probably go after Alphabet. If we want to eventually rule Mongol cities, we should probably go after Iron Working. Going after the Oracle would give us a boost in technology leaving both avenues open, but not pursuing either one right away. Also, we must consider what we think the Mongols want with us.

I don't play on Prince level to suggest one is better than the other, I'm just throwing out what I think the underlying questions are. I will say that I'm partial to BW simply because I want slaves to make breakfast for me.

 

[Tubby Rower]

I've played (and won) a few games on Prince. From what I've seen of the screenshots, we are somewhat removed from the Mongloid race. So they will be focusing on expansion and if we don't do the same, we *could* be left behind.


I would research up to BW then if we don't have copper in the immediate vicinity, continue on to IW. Otherwise head to Alpha.