Research

We rush try to rush to Islam.

 

i do not c how that helps on the short term.

 

We need pottery as early as possible. Our traits are financial and expansive, so this technology is perfect for us.


@HUSch
Why shouldn't we run cottages at CERN? They would boost our research very much.

 

Hummel
Look at CC and show me the cottage tiles. We build hillmines (6), faster than growing, so we 've no pop for cottages. Clam gives +2 , rice (irrigate) also, so with city tile, we can work 6 mines without growing, and long time we 'll need production in CERN.
The other way is, we build less hillmines but cottages, but then you must try to persuade the team (and yourself) not me. btw you must say, when we 'll build the first cottage. Growing (food surplus) is the limit-factor for CERN.

 

I hope you all noticed the importance of the decision the next research goal sets!

potential goals:

1.) improve commerce (and growth) (-> go for (agri) - TW - pottery )
- our research will mainly improve with cottages, because there are no high-commerce resources close by (besides the gems, but we need IW to chop the jungle first)
- river-cottages give initially 3 commerce which is good...
- CERN does not have a great growth-rate -> granery and a rice-farm would help a lot
- makes good use of fin and exp-trait (early river-cottages and cheap granery)
- rice-farm improves CERN's growth rate
- farms (esp. at the other rice) will give our second city a very solid start

2.) race for religion (and the oracle) (-> go for Meditation/Polytheism -> Priesthood)
- gives us more culture, +1 when adopting religion and enables religious civics
- ... with the problem: religion will be founded in capital ... don't need culture there ... have no religious civics to use...
- I would prefer founding a religion in our second or third city so we don't need a monument there (missio with foundation only after conf. and christ.; build missio needs monastry ... lots of early hammers)
- we won't be able to get a decent free pick from the oracle, because that would require pottery or writing
- religion/oracle now will delay economic improvement and our expansion
- don't need the happiness right now, because CERN grows slowly and with the ivory and 1 or 2 warriors we'll have enough happiness until we build a ballcourt (lots of workers and settlers won't give CERN the time to grow too much...)
- HUSch said, that he believes that SANCTA went for myst. first... they are creative (-> don't need monuments)... so they are probably planning to go for a religion (and/or a WW). Their research is better, so they can outtech us to the first religion and they get a ~2-3 turns headstart. ... we might loose reli-race, because we have to gamble on their tech-project (medi or poly) ... at worst we invested 10-12 turns into an useless tech and not get an religion...

3.) go for horses (-> go for agri+hunting - AH)
- hunting will enable our UU -> we are save from barbs for some time, but we can't build warriors any more (warriors are cheap happiness in cities (MP) and explorers)
- can improve the rice -> better growth for CERN
- ivory-camp, rice-farm or pigs-pasture in second city give it a better start
- see horses ... we don't have copper...
- don't think this path is good for us now...

4.) go for iron
- see iron
- we don't see copper right now...
- chop the jungle on the gems for a huge commerce tile


Every path takes about the same time... (~20 turns)

I think we should go for pottery (+agri) now. This will improve our growth and our commerce.
By the time we have pottery, we probably are just founding our second city. So that would be a good timing.
Then we can go for a religion (and maybe for the oracle if nobody shot for it before). This way our 2nd or 3rd city becomes holy city and we tech a lot faster because of the first cottages. -> speed up religious path
After religion+priest we can either go for writing or IW or hunting+AH ... depending on our 2nd/3rd cities' requests.
(maybe we should try to omit some of the basic techs as long as possible without loosing too much potential in our cities, and priorize alpha instead in order to get these techs via trades?)

 

Very persuasive post, Topas.

I was only thinking of Pottery for the cottage benefit - I wasn't thinking of the granary benefit for the growth of CERN.

I'm now convinced that Pottery is the better choice.

 

I've gone back to the religion thing again

I'm of the opinion that we should get a religion now. If we miss the religion now, we may not get one later. That will really hurt us - especially since we already started out with Mysticism. Besides, getting a religion now denies the religion to another team. That's almost as powerful as the first reason.

We aren't likely to be working a riverside cottage for at least 10 turns, in which time we can go back and get Pottery after Meditation (or Poly??)

We have to decide this before we next play, which is almost certain to be in around 24 hours

 

We shouldn't forget Iron Working, for two reasons:
- We can't see any copper anywere.
- The quare 6 to our capital has a good change of being Iron resource.

 

The religion (medi) is researched in few turns and perhaps we get it (hope!).
There is the cow in our second city Perimeter and for that we need AH (149)
with ~20 :coomerce: we need ~6 turns, but if we researched hunting (59) first, we get the better factor 1,4 instead of 1,2. Hunting we need allways for our UU, so I prefer hunting and then AH, the difference in factor makes 4 every turn.

 

Sounds good - Med -> Hunting -> AH. But what if we miss Buddhism? Should we switch to Poly?

 

Now that buddhism is gone, I would switch to Polytheism to try to grab hinduism.

The 2 missing turns on meditation we can research whenever we might need a monastry -> much later...

Concerning future research I'm not totally sure.
It seems wise to go for an strategic ressource -> AH or IW
So the questionis, which tech path is better:

a) (hunting) -> AH
- hunting gives us our UU
- with our UU we should be safe against the upcoming barbs until barb-axes show up
- AH lets us pasture the grasland-cows of peri (great tile: 4+2)
- shows horses

b) IW
- shows iron
- enables cutting the jungle
- cutting the jungle enables mining the gems (great tile: 2+1+8, +1) and irrigating the bananas
(- I think iron is more likely in CERN-BFC than horses)

Probably I would go hunting -> AH, but then we need to expand mainly eastward:
1) one cottage-city at the river -> commerce
2) maybe grab ivory for happyiness after that (1 city "behind" a possible ivory-city there are 2 more jungle-gems!)

I think we need some commerce, a better unit than warriors and some happiness next. IW can give us all 3 in 1 tech, but it is extremely expensive...
Hunting -> AH -> IW seem faster over all, but I am not totally convinced yet.


Another option would be:
- go for hunting -> AH now and chop stonehenge NOW
- grab christianity with SH-Phrophet


(I expect Cav to go straight for priesthood and the oracle, so no need for preisthood after poly (whatever result the reli-race gets). (I would have strongly voted for priesthood -> oracle if we had won buddha-race))

 

For our chances to get poly first.
SAN has the last research at 2560, Sat and Kaz at 2200 BC.
2560 is now 11 turns, so I think it 'll be more likely iron (299) than Poly. What Sat and Kaz now reseach, nobody knows. They can both to poly and then get it before us. If not there is a chance for us.