Following some IM discussion with hw, oyzar etc my thoughts on current position and overall strategy are as follows. Apologies in advance for the length...
Victory Condition
No question in my mind here that Domination will be best, since it'll give us more control over our end date than a diplo win, and we'll want to kill most of the AI anyway to capture the missing wonders.
I agree with oyzar's metric of roughly 5 turns per wonder, assuming we tech up to at least Mass Media (giving 59 of the 62 available wonders - missing out the three higlighted in italics by aj above) and win domination around turn 300 or so. (We are currently turn 166/500).
There's obviously scope to play beyond MM - for example, Industrialism + Plastics gives two more wonders (3gorges + standard ethanol) and computers + robotics gives 1 more (space elevator). However, since it's probably unlikely we'll be able to tech much faster than 5 turns per tech towards the end, we may do better to skip some of the later wonders and just finish earlier. (Artillery + Rocketry for aluminium co. might be another one to skip, depending on whether we want art. for military reasons).
Obviously we can better decide what will maximise our score once we get closer to winning (and maybe end earlier, assuming we're in a position to do so by taking the win), but to keep our options fully open here we should start fighting sooner rather than later.
So overall I would say we're still aiming for a domination win, probably around turn 300 with Mass Media, but maybe earlier if we can pull it off with a better ratio.
Economy
Again, no question in my mind - with all the overseas conquest we plan to do,
and the need to keep our tech rate healthy - that the best way to do both together will be with State Property.
So given that we'll be in SP anyway... the workshop economy (bureau + caste system) does become more attractive. With Oxford Uni in our capital, bureau is probably worth another 100-150 beakers, and using workshops to build wealth allows us to skip expensive markets, grocers, banks etc in favour of factories and power that are way quicker to build (given that we will be building them in high hammer workshop cities). Except for the 6 banks we need for Wall Street.
This also lets us keep the science slider high to maximise the benefit of the high % science buildings that we are going to build regardless, and finally it also gives a modest hammer boost to pure production cities as well, where workshops are used for building military and wonders.
But all that said, in the long term - and we are still likely to play another 100-150 turns - I just can't see 4hammer workshops building wealth competing with the 7G per town that we'll get from running free speech / emancipation (even after allowing for the 100-150 beakers we'll lose from bureau). And after all, we'll still be State Property, so workshops still won't be bad - we can still get a lot of the benefits mentioned above (especially in any newer captured cities that won't have time to develop their cottages) just with one less hammer that we would have got from caste system. And to some extent this will be offset anyway by getting +1 hammer per town from democracy towards the end.
So in summary - I'm in favour of a cottage economy. 7
towns are going to trump 4 hammer workshops in the long run. Given how big we are going to get, this should easily make up for the 100-150 beakers we'll lose from bureaucracy. Especially since the multipler buildings for a workshop economy (factories and coal plants) are quite a way off our current tech path, whereas the science multiplers are not. (After astro, commerce cities can be getting average multiplier for gold / science of +50% easily assuming science slider at about 60%; whereas workshops will be multipying +25% only from forge). I.e. that's 10 coins per town compared to 5 coins per cottage.... At 30 cities (us + joao) that's only 1-2 towns per citywhen the cottage economy would outperform the workshop + bureau economy.. and we'll obviously have many more cities (and towns) than that.
So with all that said... (and if others agree) the rest of the decisions get a lot easier I think.
Techs
I would suggest the following tech order:
- Democracy (4000) - for emancipation and SoL; and gives us time to start buildinbg more workers and cottages before getting..
- Astro (3000) - overseas trade routes will be huge, as will all the resource trades, which would come just as we start having real happiness and health issues; obsoletes colossus so worth having a few cottages ready to work at this point (and prob start a Golden Age switch to emancipation about his time to get the 100% growth for them) - hence democracy first
- (optional?) Economics (2000) - not really needed yet but after astro, the +1 trade routes from Free Market are very attractive, and it's a cheap tech (2000 beakers) that could pay for itself quickly; researching it now would also allow us to switch to Free Market for free during the emancipation / Astro golden age; custom houses go really nicely with our current setup too (5 trade routes per city, all coastal, lots of AIs to trade with... nice
)
- Sci Method (3500) - obsoletes GL;
- Physics (6000) - this is about 14 turns at our current tech rate (so maybe 8-9 turns by the time we get to this stage), but getting it earlier allows us to attack Joao several turns earlier (see below) and it's such an expensive tech for its time that it could be worth taking with liberalism (or of course if we think another AI is in danger of taking liberalism); or alternatively may be worth bulbing a GS here instead since it now sounds like we are going to have comfortably enough Great People
- ... tbd (either take a break for gunpowder and military trad. at this point to speed up post-joao conquests, or plough on towards electricity / radio if we are still saving liberalism for radio).
The question on whether to use liberalism on physics (6000 beakers) or radio (9000 beakers) is obviously one to take nearer the time - it doesn't affect the next turnset anyway, but I'd assume we'd spend it on one of those.
Military
As noted above, I think we should get started on this soon. With Astro so important anyway (for the happy resource trades and overseas foreign trades) we'll have galleons for speedy transport, so no need for 2 move units like curassiers. Although maces are a bit weak, with maces and trebs (engineering from pericles) they'll do just fine. Joao doesn't even have that many longbows yet. And since he doesn't even have metal casting yet, we don't have to worry about crossbows.
The biggest problem is our lack of production. We don't actually have that many decent production sites. Though we can still probably churn out 2-3 units per tun (mix of maces and cats) a few turns from now which should be enough to get started against joao about 15 turns from now (when we get astro) with a stack of about 30.. So I think it is probably time.
This means fewer workers in the short term of course (building troops instead) so the alternative is to use that production building workers instead and wait until physics (when airships will make things easier) to attack with maces, trebs and airships instead. Obviously that means Joao will be stronger and it'll be later in the game before his cities are contributing to our economy (and ditto for subsequent victims) so I could be persuaded either way. Personally I think we go for it now rather than waiting for physics - I think we can find places to squeeze in the wokers we need and do both. (Plenty of ciites that don';t have barracks anyway). Also, I am leaning strongly towards inserting Economics for the big +1 trade route and custom house boost (and to switch to FM during the emancipation golden age) which makes waiting for physics even less attractive..
So in summary:
- cottage economy
- demo > astro > economics? > sci meth > physics (from lib?)
- attack joao with maces / cats / trebs / galleons
- aiming for domination win around turn 300 with MM and 59/62 wonders (unless we see an opportunity nearer the time to win earlier with a better ratio..)
BTW - I agree with pretty much all of oyzar's notes about city MM and trades.
