@shaka
If we count the return rate of "paper + sankre", it's lower. (800 beakers+ 275h for 20 beakers per turn: all normalized and 10 religious building assumed at that time)This is why we go MC after CS, not paper.
We agreed CS first was better for research. Thus we had Paper earlier no matter how many techs we squeezed between CS and Paper. That gives more time to UoS to pay for itself in any case. Qualitative assessment is just enough.
We also could have gotten MC in trade if we had some luck with AIs and also one more reason to go CS before MC. One more unmeasurable parameter (since you can't replay the same map and take samples to do statistics mumbo-jumbo). But it is obvious MC is cheaper if gotten for free and that's why we, humans, will always try that with no need of 1000000 iterations. Delaying MC had high opportunity costs plus we didn't have any more buildings to produce in main land cities.
Building wealth is just to invest on techs. The return rate depends on what the tech is and how many beakers are left to research the tech.
Building wealth to get military tech earlier can be dozens of times better than building, let's say CH. Building CH can be considered a local optimum in a way while earlier war with better units can lead to global optimum although your cities will bleed money at the start of conquering. Also, CH before wealth is better for later war and can generate more research later. Knowing exactly when to do which is what makes a good player. Maths can't give you exact answers/boundaries, especially in changing environment. That's why we lean towards short-term benefits. They are usually war oriented. And we are good at war and can actually assume control over the game then, making it predictable. PD always win via war, more or less limited.
I don't say that the calculation is all. It's just reference. However, I don't trust feeling, even it's my own. This game is eventually a game of operational research. When my model fails, I need to figure out what is the reason behind and polish it.
If you try to have a reason for everything you do in a game, you'll soon realize your faults and way to go. That's why SGOTM games are so much better. No move is just to hit end turn.
Definitely a lot of events and rating will change the result, but that's beyond our control. It is something like statistics and risk control, but it can still be calculated IMO.
Going back to talk about TC, I don't think it's a weak wonder---from my instinct with so many watertiles and 50 turns before Astro. The gain from TC and the pop is linear correlated, and the return rate of pop increase itself is usually high. However, the calculation shows that it still cannot win over the CS approach. You cannot look too far because both paths will be finished in 20 turns. What we need to decide is just to choose which path first and the marginal increase is the one we need to measure.
We actually agree on this. What I wanted to say we could have had profit from later Colossus too (after CS). I think we even had forests to chop. MoM was nice, but it is usually easy to capture.
PR's session is better for TC. They have less cities but more pop. They oracle MC if my memory is correct. However, they have no interest on islands, water and Hereditary rules. They invest too many on GPs(a kind of Tech), but the return rate of a lot of Techs are lower than island cities.