Since both the duke and I were in strong favor of Monarchy first, and nobody challenged us in the elections, I firmly support Mordheims row of techs.
Just be aware that it is not possible to research them in the order Mordheim listed
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I do not agree on the value of the colossos however, but that will be discussed in other threads I suppose. I find it very usefull to have the Colossus in foreign hands, and then get all my caravans over there! that makes great use of vthe extra trade, and ALL our cities may be able to draw th rewards.
That is some very interesting and creative thinking & strategy! In fact, if it were possible to direct the specific AI civ to build the Colossus in the proper place & on the right terrain, it would be of more practical use. Unfortunately, the AI can neither grow cities fast enough, nor can they add the correct improvements fast enough to make good use of the Colossus.
There is another huge downside to allowing the AI to build it... the demand of the colossus city will likely be met, and most subsequent caravans & freight will be non-demanded, which means you don't get diddly, relative to a demanded cargo.... and if every city is delivering diddly cargos, it will take a minimum of 3 times the number of C/F to get the same result.... and in the era of triremes & even Caravels & Galleons, that will (for practical purposes) increase the required sealift capacity by 200% to 300%, which will cripple shield production and prevent a successful Republic, and maybe even prohibit any early Democracy (the gov't, that is) consideration, at least until all of the required 40 to 70 caravels are upgraded to galleons (galleons=no unhappiness).
Naturally, I don't even need to review how loss of Colossus in the SSC would be a crippling blow, so without Colossus, a non-SSC strategy would be the best science route. We would definitely need Naval Superiority and Magellan's Expedition, and probably Lighthouse to balance this from our (the Human's) perspective.
There is one more much less obvious consequence to letting the AI get the Colossus, with the intent that all our cities trade with it. Assuming the AI builds it properly, grows the city, gets rid of non-trade squares, removes overlap of it's nearby cities, etc. etc., then we still have an issue: The location of Colossus is fixed.... e.g., it does not move. We want the Colossus to progressively move further and further from our cities as teh game progresses, to increase trade bonus value (which is heavily distance dependent). If the AI colossus is far away, it is worthless to us in early & maybe even mid game. If it is close, it is worthless to us in Late and very likely even mid game.
So.... how to get the Colossus to increase in distance from us as time goes by??? The answer was learned in the American West, a long time ago: If you can't bring the horse to the water, then bring the water to the horse. What does this mean? It means that if you can't move the colossus city, then you must move the cities the colossus trades with! If the AI has the Colossus, we cannot move the Colossus, and we cannot move out own cities.... hence we cannot take the horse to water, and even worse, we cannot bring the water to the horse.
Therefore,
we need to build the Colossus... and then we select the AI cities with which to trade: in early game, our colossus trade partners will be relatively closeby... as time goes passes, we will squash those AI trading partner cities like insects (and have domestic routes alread working), and bring the water (trade) to the horse (our Colossus) by sending our rehomed colossus caravans (the water) to progressively more and more distant cities, with porgressively faster (and higher capacity) sealift!
So the Colossus is one of the few wonders that is actually critical to build in a city that can commit to using all, or almost all, workers in Ocean and other trade squares! And the Colossus city must grow, with higher priority status than almost anything in the Empire, except for things that actually affect survival. If done right, the Colossus can be the dominate wonder for much of the first 5,000 years or so.