SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

[bobrath]

Hey, if I'm up past 3am local time... don't expect much from me beyond a minor attempt at wit!

Tok's borders have already stopped our scouting galley once, lets just hope there's another passage. In my personal games, I've been lucky to get an OB with Tok just once and it was short lived. He takes Xenophobia to a whole new level. I don't know what the circumstances are that will have him OB with a player (mainly because my only success was early enough on that I wasn't aware it was an oddity).


Passage placement - putting us on top of the gems gives us the tiel benefits right away, but we can never benefit from the mine upgrade of that tile. I'm very happy to settle on the original passage site.


I'd rather not cut off OB with Alex for two reasons - he's notoriously spiteful and this would give the perfect tip in the wrong direction for us AND we need those OB so that our second galley can head east!
Re putting a scout on the galley - easy enough if delaying the maiden voyage of our second ship is acceptable.

Trading - I'm always in favor of NOT trading away a monopoly tech until someone else researches it naturally. The tricky part is to make sure you check the Tech screen every turn to see when you've lost the monopoly and to strike fast to maximize your return. I'll deal with Hatty for the ways of making cows STAY.

 

[namliaM]

Hey, if I'm up past 3am local time... don't expect much from me beyond a minor attempt at wit!

What the **** do I know about local times? what are you doing up at such an hour? *just one more turn* ??

I'd rather not cut off OB with Alex for two reasons - he's notoriously spiteful and this would give the perfect tip in the wrong direction for us AND we need those OB so that our second galley can head east!
Re putting a scout on the galley - easy enough if delaying the maiden voyage of our second ship is acceptable.

I am just tossing up ideas... Its up to the team to jump on or reject them...

The scout is just a personal hickup of mine... To many times have I sailed across the globe with a galley only to find a nice hut someplace and me without a unit/scout. I dont suppose in a SGOTM there will be any huts left to pop??? So... do we actually need the scout?? I dont know... Atleast he can help scout some land for us....??? Can we build a scout in 3 turns in St Petes? I think it has like 4 hammers/turn = 6 turn build *if only*

I dont know if closing borders will give a diplo minus, which will last and last (eventually who cares as Alex allready has a target painted on him, if only because he stands between us and the Mids ). We have a passage south of his city and North thru hatty land... So I dont know if this will be an issue. Fact is .... It will delay him knowing other AI (and vice versa) giving us a power seat.
On the other hand, if he keeps his borders closed. We cannot use his lands as a staging area for our invation of China. It can go either way IMHO, but if we get the negative diplo we can be sure he keeps his borders closed.

I'll deal with Hatty for the ways of making cows STAY.

I had to read this a couple of times to get your meaning....

Thanks for your more indepth pickup, what about the techpath tho?

 

[bobrath]

Turns done, so next player can go crazy with the playing or can sit back and watch the discussion between Namliam and himself fly!

Initial turns were fairly routine. I got two settlers out asap whipped: applied for both). In 580, we were officially fog free on all parts of our land. Novgorod was founded in 625BC, but has very little hammers or food in its LFC.

Going to be rough until we can get a monument finished (and then 15 turns later get the needed border pop). Man a religion would help us a ton here.

Over the many years we met a few more leaders:

It was a good set of turns if you enjoy techs starting with the letter A. Here's what we managed to learn/discover:

Traded writing to Hatty for AH, waited one turn and the presto! We have horses.... one south of Novogorod! The monument will complete much faster (hooray). I found Rostov on the passage and Yarsolavl on site B.

One turn later, Hatty was willing to give us IW for Math. So I took that nice trade and then foun Ghandi willing to part with the most techs in exchange for Math - picked up Agri and Archery for that. Also completed a clam for crab deal with Mansa.

One problem... We have Iron, but its not in any BFC and is placed where it would be stupid/tough to get into a good city location. We'll have iron, but its not going to help a city directly. Here's all our resource locations as of the end up my turns:

The workers will have finished the pasture when the next player hits enter.

The turn after I traded techs with Ghandi, we met JC... and have an instant -4 because he HATES Ghandi. The very next turn after that Alex comes calling asking us to drop our OB with Ghandi. I refused - keeping us at +3 with Ghandi and 0 with Alex.

Vicki has researched Alphabet, but only knows Ghandi. So for now our "monopoly" on that tech is still fairly secure. Be sure to keep an eye on it and as soon as anyone else gets the tech, trade it around for whatever profit we can get.

The new cities are going to grow freakishly slow, mainly because our "ideal" sites don't have anything in the LFC that promotes production to pop a monument faster. Novgorod got the lucky Horse pop and Rostov will be able to whip soon (building a workboat there to get Clams more productive). Yarsolavl will benefit from chops (jungle just grew 1W of it even!). Started on farming the rice since Moscow's extended cultural borders means its in range for Yarsolavl and that will help.

I'd suggest our worker in Novogorod moves to mine the gems next - this will chop that forest there AND give us +1 happy which will make the entire nation more profitable. We're at the happy limit right now. Once the gem mine finishes, the borders should have popped and we can move to the copper. I'm not sure about the time line on hooking up iron. Its in border now, but as I said above won't directly benefit a city with its mine.

Covering our island with culture... is starting, but that's the best term I can use... better would be to say the snail has left the starting gate - I think:

Current game stuff:

So it looks as if we'll be able to finish off Currency and still have some cash. OH YEAH, we have JD Rockefeller sleeping in our capital. Currently he wants to teach us about Currency, but well - we have better things planned I suspect.

The Autolog

Spoiler :

Turn 135, 475 BC: You have discovered Animal Husbandry!

Turn 136, 460 BC: Rostov has been founded.
Turn 136, 460 BC: Yaroslavl has been founded.
Turn 136, 460 BC: You have discovered Iron Working!
Turn 136, 460 BC: You have discovered Agriculture!
Turn 136, 460 BC: You have discovered Archery!
Turn 136, 460 BC: John D. Rockefeller (Great Merchant) has been born in Moscow (VQ)!

The Save

 

[namliaM]

GRRRRR why did you grow that jungle near Yaroslavl??

Picking up that Gem is #1 priority! The +1 happy will help greatly!

We have Iron, Copper and Horses??? Geez... What is the catch? All AI have them as well???

That workboat at Rostov does that have any hammers in? Maybe we should have Moscow produce that for Rostov? While it starts on a library?

Wow 13 GPT that is quite more than I had hoped for, but less than 15

Moscow IMHO should allways be working the hills for the hammers, we need hammers & units and plenty off them. Moscow and Novgorod are the only place we can get some decent hammers in....

I would have waited on the Gandhi deal and would have gone for MC instead of Currency. Then burned the Merchant on Currency, we would have been able to pick up some extra cash from Gandhi on that trade.

watch the discussion between Namliam and himself fly!

Come on guys, where are you??

 

[bobrath]

True that I could have waited to trade to Ghandi, but having Agri means we get that rice hooked up sooner and that helps as well.

I misread your thoughts on GPs. I thought you put forward using the GM on MC if we need to otherwise holding him off. Bygones at this point. Ideally other AIs hold off completing research on Alpha until we get currency - means we can maximize the sale of Alpha to the lesser AIs.

One important note for folks - DO NOT pick up Calendar until we've got our borders popped by the monuments under construction (unless we want to wait for the even slower building libraries...)

 

[GreyFox]

Good turns .. and nice trade. I am just happy that there is iron ... one cannot ask too much.

Abt namliaM's monologue , hmm ... seriously, I am just overwhelmed with by the extensive information put forth by you, and don't even fathom how to start comprehending it ... lest commenting on it. Give the slower ones like myself some time to graze over the save and read your post 3 times ... ok?

Now roster ... well, pretty auspicious, we haven't even completed one round and 2 players are already on autoskip:

Roster
namliaM == On Deck
Dot
Greyfox
Furrie
Bobrath == Great 'O Good Trading
Scowler == UP

Robo Kai == autoskip by his own request ... because CFC is slow for him?
Cosmichail == autoskip by absence ... hope he is all well and good, just too busy with work

--

 

[bobrath]

Couple post playing / hand off notes:

Galleys should be pretty obvious in their "round the world in a century or two" paths. Western is trying to find the end of Vicky's lands while the eastern is just now approaching Hatty's lands as Alex is closed off to us (yes per suggestion I dropped OB with him).

Worker near Novogorod (Copper Site) should go mine the gems.
Worker on Rice between Moscow and Yarsolavl should complete rice and then either do some chopping to improve Yarsolavl (builds AND land improvements) OR head over to hook up Iron.
Worker near Moscow can mine the forested hill to get Moscow improved further.

1st Gem Mine is the only real requirement - rest is up to your best judgement.

I'd suggest watching the F4 screen every turn to see when either Vicky meets some other AIs OR someone else learns Alphabet. At that point trade the heck out of Alphabet to get what we can for it. I'd say Poly would be nice to have since it opens Lit. Beyond that get what you can.

Keep an eye on city growth as it matches up to happy limits. I Moscow and St. Pete during my turns, so the unhappy should wear off soon for you.

The Greeks don't really like us (Alex AND JC) so keep an eye on them. Our cities are defended IF AT ALL by a single warrior.

No idea on the next tech after Currency. Perhaps Lit (if we get Poly) so we can explore building the Great Library (that way we have both TGLs and it will be really confusing!).

Oh yeah, and relax and enjoy it.

 

[Scowler]

Thanks Bob

This is my pre-got-it got-it

...meaning I'll be looking back over the posts, making notes, taking a look at the save and, if necessary, posting some screenshots and some thoughts about what I am intending to do for approval and / or detection purposes.

I'll do this hopefully later today when I have more time, with the actual turnset following tomorrow.

 

[namliaM]

I think the hooking up of the Iron can wait, we dont even have barracks yet... and should be able to build Axemen pretty soon anyway.... (copper) Edit: actually copper is quite some turns away... 2 for the monument to finish + 15 to pop + some turns to mine+road. 25-30 turns atleast
Moscow IMHO should currently be building a Library, as it is quite some time before we can seriously start thinking about mounting an army.

I wouldnt go for TGL personaly since we dont have Marble and we can use the hammers towards our backdoor diplo win? (i.e. units to take out Mao).

Alex is going to die soon? If so, why keep him happy?

Lets try and time a workboat from StPetes or Moscow to arrive at Novgorod when the border expands.
This way Novgorod can focus on a granary/Lighthouse/Barracks (in that order??? I dont know)

Re: The farming of the Rice. In this case I think it may have been better to Chop first farm later. We would have had a 3 food tile sooner. How long has the worker been farming? Are the turns farming retained when you start a farm without the jungle?

Re: Mining the Gem, Same routine I think. Chop first, mine second. This makes the tile workable earlier which in the case of Novgorod is a big plus.

Yaroslavl should be working the Jungle rice none the less. it is a 2 food tile vs 1 food from the coast. We can whip the Obelisk 15 turns earlier if we do this

We want/need one more settler from either Moscow or St. Petes to settle E.
Do we need another worker? We have 3 right now. St.Petes doesnt have much left to do at this moment.
Moscow can use 2 more mines on the forrest and Jungle grass hills. Maybe chop that Jungle just East of Moscow to stop it from growing a new one.
Mining = 11 chopping = 7. So in ~30 turns we wont "need" a worker at either moscow of Petes for a while.

Leaves us with 3 workers on 4 cities, where Rostov doesnt have more than 4 or 5 (land) tiles.

Re: Currency it doesnt much matter which way we go... I just never reconned on getting the Merchant this early! Whe should have considered burning him on Currency way earlier... goes to show you cannot plan everything (like the Mids!)

 

[Cosmichail]

Apologies for my absence but during the last week there was a cable disruption in my building. Although it appeared that there should be a connection, there wasn’t and it took a considerable amount of time to correct it. Back online hopefully with no problems. There was recently some construction done in the building and caused the cable disruption.

Of course very busy with work as well. Will need a few days to see where we are at.

 

[namliaM]

Welcome back Cosmic, I for one have missed you

Warning
To all not really familiar with an SE. Our maintenance will raise considerably and science will fall as a result.
With our 6 current cities we can have 4 cities with 2 scientists each (more on this later) 2 scientists produce 12 beakers + 25% for the lib = 15 beakers.
4 cities = 60 beakers. Which is more than our current beaker count. Anything we get from the slider should be considered a bonus.
The real science will and should come from specialists and Great persons.

Warning 2
Scowler and I were chatting on Skype earlier (saturday) and we agreed that we might need to put down some kind of summary of all that has passed allready. And start to make some comprehensive plans for where we are going in the (near) future. Not all the information is as clear as it might need to be.
So I had a bit of time to sit down today and tried to do a write up of our plans as I see/understand them from the previous pages. It has become quite a long story. I hope all will read/follow and comment on my work. I hope this will help all of us understand better and/or put together a few peaces of the puzzle. I know it made some things for me much clearer.
I tried not putting my oppinion into the peaces, but rather state facts and let the team point the finger to where we go (or not) and plan from there.

edit:

I will try and "monolog" all subjects to start the (hopefully) discussion(s)

Lets just start here with the outline of the short term and longterm goals of our game.

I think we reached at some point a decision/consensus that we would go for a Specialist economy (SE), as it seems logical in a limited tech game on an archipelo world with most likely high food and low hammers.
To that goal we desided to try for Pyramids + TGLight. The Mids fell thru and appearently fell to Mao.
So the game plan, as far as I can see it, for the immediate future setup the SE in Mother Russia and capture the Mids in the meanwhile. In the process taking out Mao probably.

Because Alex is between us and Mao he seems a logical target #2 + we all love to hate him.

Longer term target is to get a backdoor(-ish) Diplo win where we carry atleast most of the votes with maybe a carefully selected AI or 2.

 

[dot]

namliaM: Thanx in advance!

Cosmic: Glad to have you back!

Scowler: Nice to see a post from you again!

Regards, .

 

[namliaM]

Lets start with a short/mid term city analysis:

Setting up the SE means getting food and Libraries or atleast specialist enabling buildings into some cities. A rundown of our 6 (planned) cities:
1) Moscow

Our capitol, too good a producer (IMHO) to make to many specialists. But it allready has TGLight, which means it is spawning Merchants at the moment. Maybe we can use some specialists to limit growth if needed.

2) St Peters

2 clams means +6 food. Add the (Cottage) FP and CC, we have +9 food. Plenty off food to sustain 2 scientists and an Engineer and still grow to be able to whip it once in a while.
Once we have Calander we get 2 grass spices to add 2 food to the city, making 11 food total.
Question: Do we feel 3 specialists is enough for our GP farm? Basicaly with SE we dont need 1 GP Farm in particular...
Question: Do we want to cut down the forrests surrounding Petes? If so for what purpose? Cottage or Farm? And to what end, meaning what kind of building(s) or unit(s)?

3) Novgorod

Our copper city, and military production centre. No specialists here just production, production and more production.
It is WAY low on food and is simply put the only place capable of some sort of sustainable production that we currently have. If we really try offcourse it can hold 2 specialists with the Fish, but ...
A (cheap) granary, Lighthouse, the monument and a barracks (+ instructors and maybe later the Military Academy) is all this city really needs.
At size 6 (Size 6 = Default size 4 + Gems + Spice) working Fish (6/0), Horses (1/4), Plains forrest (Dont chop this I think) (1/2), Plains (hopefully grow a forrest so dont road or anything for a while!) (1/1), Copper Grass hill (1/5), Plains hill (mined?) (0/4) and cc (2/1) it will be stagnant producing 17 raw hammers/turn (= Axe every 3 turns)
We could let it grow a little to size 7. Allow it to pick up the grass tile due NW which we can cottage so we pick up some more $$$. Workshop(s) unfortunatly are not a real option due to the lack of food.

Alternatively:
Not working the Plains hill and the 2 plains tiles will give the city a food surplus of 4.
At size 7 we need 30 + 7*2 = 44/2 = 22 food to grow to 8 (5.50 turns at +4 food)
At size 8 we need 30 + 8*2 = 46/2 = 23 food to grow to 9 (5.75 turns at +4 food)
Or with a food surplus of 4 we grow 2 pop and have room to spare inside of 12 turns and we can whip it for 2 pop (or 90 hammers). This at the cost of 4 + 1 + 2 = 7 hammers/turn 7 * 12 = 84 hammers, while we gain 12 turns of commerce on the coastal tiles. This tho drops the raw hammers to 10 per turn which is bad for having a Forge, 12 or 16 would be much better.
So if we re-add the plains forrest we have a food surplus of 3 and have 12 hammers/turn, which is good for the forge.
Size 7: 22/3 = 7.333
Size 8: 23/3 = 7.666 = 15 turns exactly again gaining 90 hammers for the 2 pop whip. This time losing 4+1=5 hammers/turn * 15 = 75 hammers. The gain beeing 8*2+7*4= 44 commerce in 15 turns or 3gpt.
i.e. by whipping it and growing it, we gain 15 hammers and 44 commerce every 15 turns.
Dont know if the 1 hammer and 3 commerce per turn is worth the hasle.
A forge will slightly change this. The whips will get 90 + 25% = 22 hammers extra. The cost will raise by 1 hammer per turn (total 15), making it even more (slightly) advantagious to whip instead of work the plains + plains hill. For a total of 22 hammers and 44 commerce every 15 turns. Not huge but noticable.

4) Rostov (aka The Passage)

2 gems tiles, 2 grass tiles, clams and coast. Will not amount to much in the production department, but will contribute nice commerce.
Clams + CC makes for 5 food surplus good for 2 specialists (Scientists?) while beeing stagnant (the grass hill Gem takes the 5th food) Maybe we can borrow the Rice from "E" to grow the city to work all the coastals and stagnate there? Or allow it to whip something every now and again.

5) "E"
The city still to be settled (ASAP?), utterly useless when it comes to specialists or production but good commerce wise. 5 grassland cottages and 2 grassland gems. Eventualy with the rice it may also support 2 specialists, but mainly this city could concentrate on financing our SE... I think... This would then be the place to add a market, etc post haste instead of library and stuff.
It is hardly whippable due to the lowish food. Unfortunatly this is the dry part of our island => No Farms
This city also really doesnt need the culture of the Library. Popping the borders will pick up 3 Coastal tiles that otherwize would not be workable. But other than that... No real hurry in getting any culture here.

6) Yaroslavl (aka "B")

I saved this one for last on purpose. This one is a little complex, or atleast there are some real choices/options...
With Fish, Cow and (irrigated) Rice, it has a natural 8 surplus food. Or 3 specialists (2 sci and 1 engineer?) and still growing.
We can go 3 ways with this city....
1) Flood the place with farms
8 farms make for 8 more surplus food = better than St Petes
2) Cottage it up
Much like "E" it can help support our SE.
3) Workshop it
With allready 8 food surplus comming naturaly we can put workshops on every grassland (except for the resource tiles offcourse). That is 8 workshops, with Guilds and Chemistry thats 8*3 = 24 hammers which beats Rostov "by a mile" not even counting CC, Gem or Cow yet.

 

[namliaM]

I used the techtree I numbered earlier and "red lined" a beeline to UN

Edit 20 dec 2006: Corrected the tree to have the scientist bulb Sci Meth, which is actually tech #3 for a scientist, where Physics is #4.

Spoiler Old One :

Tho there may be some points where we may want to compromise... This is beaker counting the fastest way to get to the UN.

Some intresting points come from this, which we need to make a decision on.
Assuming we will spawn quite a few Great Persons we will be bulbing with them.
Great Scientists

Philosophy
An important decision we need to make is Philosphy. It is NOT on the beeline but it gives Pacifism => 100% GPP generation (or actually 50% for us cause of our traits).
If we want to block Philo (not research/bulb it) we cannot have CoL (courthouses & FP & Civil Service) or Drama (Theatres). Alternatively we can have both without problems IF we dont pick up Meditation (monastaries)

Without Philo we can use Scientist bulbs on Paper (first) and Astronomy (after paper). We do however have to get Education out of the way once we have paper to get to Astronomy or Electricity. And with cheap Universities.... it may be smart to pick it up anyway regardless of need or not... Tho
1) Hammers are at a premium
2) Astronomy enables Observatories, which give +1 scientist if we want....

Chemistry
Another important point is Chemistry, because having Chemistry enables Biology. Biology will bulb before Electricity, getting in the way. Chemistry itself also bulbs before Electricity.
So we need to block Chemistry all together if we want to bulb on Electricity (using Scientists).
There are 2 ways to do this, by not researching
1) Gunpowder
No Gunpowder = no Cossacks (should we happen into MT)
And no Muskets, a small step up from Macemen
2) Engineering
No Engineering = no castles... We have cheap walls due to the stone. Castles give an extra trade route, I dont know if this trade route expires when the castle does.
On the beeline to UN we are passing up Riffling which obsoleets the castles so we may have a long lasting benifit from the castles.

Neither tech will get in the way of bulbing on Electricity.
Alltho not having Chemistry does mean a couple of things
1) No Grenadiers
Grenadiers are a nice step up from Macemen (+50% strength), in particular upgraded with CR. Not having Grenadiers may halt our progress in maxing the war effort.
2) No Frigates
No frigates (in the long term) leaves our Galleons semi under defended should the AI field frigates. Tho hopefully/possibly we should be able to start and end a turn in a city when land hopping units.
3) Workshops
Workshops (should we build them) will be less effective.
4) Parthenon
Should we luck into capturing it, Chemistry will obsoleet it. Delaying Chemistry obviously gives us this advantage longer.

Great Merchant
The merchant we currently have will bulb currency, which we are allready researching and thus will not do.
After currency we can pick up Metal Casting which is nicely on our beeline.
After Metal Casting any Merchant will follow these techs:

Economics => Corporation (obsoleets TGLight) => Banking => Code of Law => Monarchy => Machinery => Civil Service => Guilds

Two techs (bolded) are on our beeline, tho blocked by CoL, see Philo above! CS might be a nice target as well.

Great Enigineer
I think we will safe any spawned Engineer for the UN build. Tho if we want... we can bulb too...
Machinery is the #1 tech for the engineer, but is a little early for spawning an engineer (whitout the mids).
The next bulb for a while will be Engineering, in particular if we deside to delay that for blocking Chemistry.

Great Artist
A great artis may be usefull... Tho I dont know about willingly shooting for one...
Literature => Drama => Music => Ploytheism => Monarch => Radio => Mass Media (UN)
Assuming we can backtrade (if needed) for the first 5 techs, very usefull indeed. Tho I dont know how much beakers an Artist will add.

Shorter term tech targets
Currency => Metal casting (merchant bulb) => Compass => (Trade for) CoL => Civil Service (Merchant bulb?)
Compass would be nice to pick up due to our Harbors. We are getting 8gpt from trade per city. 50% bonus to that is nice to say the least.

 

[namliaM]

For all wonders it is true that hammers come at a premium... but... here goes...

A couple of wonders may be of intrest
The Great library
Pro:
- Adds two scientists to a city (Moscow/St Petes?) gives 12 "free" beakers with the Mids
- Will hasten GS generation (from that city) greatly, adding 15 gpp.
Con:
- Literature is not on the beeline
- We dont have Marble
- Timing... we may just want to use the hammers towards units (axemen/Cata) instead.
- Obsoleets with Scientific Method, which is on our beeline. Lifetime may not be that long?

Colossus
Pro:
- We have copper, its relatively cheap
- We will gain ~10 coins from our 6 cities
- When build in Moscow adds to the Merchant pool
Con:
- Obsoleets with Astronomy, on our beeline. Lifetime may not be that long?
- Timing... we may just want to use the hammers towards units (axemen/Cata) instead.

Sistine Chapel
Pro:
- We get free culture with our specialists
- Great artist points
Con:
- We dont have marble

Well atleast these are the 3 closest wonders.
I will post more tomorrow (or actually later today) on Civics...

 

[Scowler]

Thanks for putting these together, namliaM. These are exactly the kind of clear, comprehensive analyses that we need.

As you've started posting this already I think it is probably better that I wait until you've finished and we've had a chance to discuss some of the points you've raised before I play my turnset.

EDIT: And welcome back, Cosmic!

 

[dot]

Yep. I'll withhold myself from commenting until your report/thoughts are complete, too. so far, too.

 

[namliaM]

OK Civics... For starters I am not as comfirtable with civics and civic changes as I am with other stuff... But here goes....

lets start with the easy one...
Goverment civics
Representation
+3 beakers per specialist, this is what we want the Mids for.

Universal Suffrage
If things do actually work out with us selling techs to the AI we may well be swimming in cash at some points in the game.
It may be usefull to revolt to US where we can buy buildings and Units to polish up our economy or expand our Army without bounds of hammers.
Before revolting to this tho, I would pre-build a few building/units that we want to buy to limit the time we need to spend in US and maximize the yield from it.
Is it worth the 2 turns of anarchy getting in and out? I dont know.

Legal Civics
Vassalage
+2XP for any units produced + more free units. May well be worth addopting in particular if we can time builds, i.e. que up units.
Units tho start decaying after 10 turns of beeing queed...
Bureaucracy
NOT part of the beeline...
+50% hammers and 50% commerce in Moscow. With hammers comming at a premium this is a verry nice to have.
Moscow can work 3 grass hills (9), Stone (4), 2 plains (2), CC (2) at a food surplus of 3 (adding in Clams and Fish) at size 8.
Size 8 = 4 Natural + palace + Gems + Spice + Forge or +3 for Representation.
So at size 8, Moscow is growing and producing 17 hammers. That is either 1 to much or 3 to little for the maximum yield from the Forge.
- Adding 3 hammers
Three options:
1) We can leave the forrest on the Plains tile and the Grass. + one more has to grow on one of the thee left over tiles (luck?).
2) We could add Lumber mills to 2 forrests with Replaceble Parts, but that is not on the beeline to UN and in any case is a while away.
3) Add an early workshop to a grass or Plains. This reduces food surplus to 2, but adds the needed hammer plus the 2 allready excisting forrests. With guilds and chemistry we can remove the forrests and replace them with something more usefull.

- Remove 1 hammer
Simply leave the plains tile unworked or give it to St. Petes. Which can use it dearly.
+ we can cottage/farm up 2 tiles that would otherwize be needed as forrests.

Adding 8, maybe 10 hammers in a hammer poor environment is a good thing.

Free speech
Comes with Liberalism and is not part of the beeline. The 10% extra research may be nice, but is it worth sacrificing the production in Moscow?
This will depend on a lot of things once the time is there that we can addopt this Civic.
The 100% culture bonus is quite useless, as culture wars will be unlikely with the 2 tiles cap on culture across water.
The speed up from 4 to 2 turns to pop the borders with Sistine chapel and Caste system is not spectacular either.

Labor civics
Slavery
In a world where hammers are at a premium, the is/can be the main staple of production. Tho we have to be carefull that the whip doesnt work to hard so that it messes with our SE.
Caste System
Gives unlimited Artists, Merchants and Scientists in our cities, this now is only limitted by food.
Going back to our city list above. There seem to be 2 cities that could benifit from this.
Yaroslavl and St. Petes, each could add maybe 1 or 2 specialists without the building beeing needed. While it may well hurt the 4 other cities.
This civic however does have some synergy with a wonder, The Sistine Chappel.
Beeing able to run i.e. 2 scientists the minute a captured city comes out of revolt will add 12 beakers but also 4 culture per turn. Which means that in just 4 turns the borders pop and any precious resourses are pulled within our borders.

Economic Civics
Mercantalism
This may be a usefull civic in the future. Tho it comes with banking which is not part of the beeline. And has a stiff penalty, no foreign trade routes.
The point where this may become usefull is if we start to get over the 20% mark of ownership of the map (the number of cities) or if a lot of civs (i.e. Toku) have closed borders with us.
Each one of our cities has 4 trade routes, therefor 1 city needs 4 foreign cities to route to. Giving a ratio of 1:4, making 1 in 5 cities (20%) our city.
Foreign trade routes are generaly worth double that of domestic, plus the AI cities are likely to be bigger. So maybe treble it?
Also trade routes are used in cities where they ultimately produce the most beakers/Gold. This will most likely be in mother Russia.
Each city with the free specialist will be able to work an extra tile or keep working the same tiles and add 6 gpp and (probably) 3 beakers to our SE, while running representation.

Free market
Comes with Economics, again not on the beeline.
It adds an extra traderoute giving a total of 5 traderoutes, moving up the good traderoutes to mother russia which can pull just that little more out of the commerce.
Gives good synerchy with TGL

Religious civic
[some personal notes]
I think this game for a long while it may be worth while to NOT addopt a state religion, maybe only at the request of a selected few AI that we want to keep as friends.
Addopting a state religion will give a positive modifier to a selected few AI. Whereas it will give negatives to probably quite considerably more AI, which will as a result close their borders. Costing us trade routes.
That beeing said...
[/Personal notes]

Organised Religion
Part of they beeline (YAY)
Adding 25% production to any buildings we are building is great. But we need to have the same religion in each of our cities.

Theocracy
Part of they beeline (YAY), if not going thru CoL => CS
+2xp for produced units.

Pacifism
Giving 100% to GPP. Tho due to our traits it actually is a bonus of 50% not 100% and it only works in cities with our state religion.
Also it comes with Philo, which is not on the Beeline.

Free religion
Comes with Liberalism which is not part of the Beeline (like so many)
This seems to fit well with above idea of not addopting a state religion in the first place. Adding a happy face for each religion (1 per city?) in a world where happiness may be a problem (both resources and War Weariness may be a problem) is a nice bonus.
Also the added 10% research is a good bonus over Paganism.

 

[namliaM]

If we want to burn Scientists on Astronomy we cannot research either CoL => CS or Theocracy.

CoL will open up Philo after which the burn will return to Astro.

CS or Theocracy will open up Paper, after which we need to research both Paper and Printing press.
Maybe we can try and do: Research PP, trade for Education. Burn 2 scientists on Astronomy, while researching Liberalism and get Sci Meth as a freebee?

On GP Generation (and then I will shut up)...
If we wait till running 2 scientists anywhere untill moscow has reached 210GPP (taking 50 or so turns). The next GP will be a merchant that can be burned on CS.
If we dont add the Colossus it will take ~75 turns from the start... Adding the colossus will offcourse hasten this by a considerable number of turns (depending on when we get it) and allow us to start Scientists....
Can/will we wait 75 turns to CS? Do we build Colossus?

Because I guestimate the other cities to have (atleast) Libraries in 50 turns we can start running 2 scientists in all 3 right away.
To get the first scientist after the Merchant will take a total of about 75 turns after starting him. 90 turns after the merchant started (or just 15 after the Merchant generated) scientist #2 is generated and #3 follows just 12 turns after that, assuming we start with 3 cities (Yaroslavl, St. Petes and Novgorod) at the same time with just 2 scientists not adding i.e. an engineer to hasten and polute? the GPP pool.
So it will take a 100 turns to generate the 2 scientists needed to burn away on Astronomy...

If we do start 2 scientists in Petes ASAP and follow with 2 Scientists elsewhere pretty soon our 2nd, 3rd and 4th GPs will be scientists. IF... we start St. Petes before Moscow reaches 200 GPP.
Basicaly due to the scientists generating 12 GPP vs the 4 of TGLight we will never see another merchant from Moscow.
Starting 3 cities
St. Petes before 200
Yaro starting 15 turns later
Rostov following another 15 turn later (to allow for libs to be build and such).
The first will take ~25 turns.
Second ~51 turns (~26 later, from the second city, from Yaroslavl).
Depending on when we start, it is a total of somewhere between a 60 and 70 turns for 2 Great Scientists to burn on Astronomy.

 

[dot]

Just for those who don't check the OoP-Thread:

Robo Kai

Regards, .