D. Hmmm... I'm not sure that I want an early GPro and if we/when get one, it may make more sense to build an early shrine to help auto-spread our religion, bring in some additional gold per turn, and help fulfill the requirement of owning 3 shrines.
Well, assuming that we only have 2 or 3 Cities at the time of building The Oracle and The Great Lighthouse, we may have to risk getting a Great Prophet or a Great Merchant instead of a Great Scientist.
Theoretically, if we can spam Great People fast enough, we can tech Polytheism -> Montheism -> Lightbulb Theology -> Paper -> double Lightbulb Education
It's hard to get 4 Great People quickly, but if you can try for either a Great Scientist or a Great Prophet, then you can slightly speed up the rate of generating Great People.
E. Early Education and Oxford is never a bad thing. However, I'm still uncertain which will lead to a faster "global" tech rate: early Optics to enable massive tech trading or early Education.
Again, it comes down to what's more important: having key techs that are deeper in the tech tree far in advance of when we'd get the AIs to research them or slowly progressing through the tech tree but getting many techs along the way by having more tech trading going on.
For a late-game teching game, a capital with a decent amount of Commerce (aka all the River squares that we have might have) plus Oxford University plus an Academy plus Bureaucracy is going to give us the vast majority of our Science output and a strong tech rate, which we can again then focus on deep teching, such as beelining Sid's Sushi.
The theory behind my idea is that by gifting Metal Casting to a neighbour, we'll see said neighbour teching Machinery for us relatively quickly. Whether we trade for or steal that tech, it puts us ahead of self-teching it ourselves. We certainly can't rely on an AI to tech Paper for us, as the AIs avoid that tech like the plague, but the vast majority of them love teching Machinery. So, the idea is that we leverage our neighbour for the important tech on the beelines to Education + Optics that they are most likely to help us with, and that's Machinery, and could also include Compass. We can't expect any help on Civil Service, Paper, or Education, so we're on our own for researching those techs, regardless of whether we meet overseas AIs or not.
We'll want Astronomy -> Scientific Method soon enough to make building The Great Library not necessarily a strong move (Scientific Method obsoletes it); in fact, if an AI manages to build it, said AI could spam a bunch of Academies that would be worth capturing later in the game.
If we're seriously considering gifting techs to AIs, then we won't be warring much early on, so getting The Heroic Epic, while nice, won't be an early priority, either.
If we're planning to "play nice" with most of the AI in our game (other than the one we must eliminate and any we need to attack to own three shrines/corporate HQs), on the surface it seems that earlier "liberal" tech trading will get us to FT1 sooner than earlier Education. Not only will we be able to quickly backfill any skipped techs, we'll also be able to greatly speed up the AI research, getting them to research new techs and opening up even more tech trading options.
Not only do we have to wait for the AIs to know enough other AIs for them not to consider each tech as a monopoly tech, we also have to worry about running up against We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced limits. The less techs like Monarchy, Calendar, Aesthetics, etc that we get in trade after knowing most or all of the AIs on the map, the better. It's only the AIs that know you at the time of you making a tech trade that start to write little tick marks on their chalkboards, counting just how many techs you received and shaking their heads "no, no more there buddy" once you've reached their comfort limit.
We can bypass We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced limits by getting AIs to Friendly status, but it's not going to be easy to keep a lot of such friends around.
Pre-Astronomy, we can't even get the bonus for trading them Resources, and we're almost certainly going to start accumulating negative Diplo as soon as we meet the AIs due to conflicting State Religions.
It can actually be quite useful to put off meeting some of the overseas AIs until we've gotten some tech trades from our local neighbour or neighbours, and it will also be nice to have Astronomy being a tech that we can obtain in the near future shortly after we meet some of the overseas AIs.
If we beeline Optics, it doesn't really make sense to push on to Astronomy without having either of Civil Service or Education, particularly not if we're going to be gifting techs away instead of trying to conquest the AIs when we meet them.
What's more important? Having earlier Happiness from Calendar + Monarchy, so that our Cities can work a few more marginal squares (Grassland River Cottages, say) or to get our 100% Oxford University multiplier being multiplied against our 50% Commerce multiplier from Bureaucracy? With an Academy and a Library, every Commerce from the capital going to Science would be valued at 1 * 1.5 * 2.75 = 4.125.
The more additional Cities that we have trying to work marginal squares will bring up our Maintenance Costs, which means lowering our effective Science Slider rate.
There is a point in the game where "more is better" in terms of Cities and population, but that point in the game doesn't come very early on and the best tech games tend to be those that get 6 or a couple of more than 6 Cities which can whip Universities and pump out Oxford University early on in the game, and then spamming more Cities once Oxford is in place.
G. It's possible that an AI on our continent will build the AP without us doing anything. Unless we "Stone Age" every AI by stealing workers, rushing, etc. I'm not sure that I'd put too much focus on encouraging the AP to be built on our continent, but I'm open to team agreement here.
It's also possible that a neighbour will build The Pyramids for us. If either of those things happens, great! In that case, we could certainly use a Great Prophet on a Holy Shrine. But, we can't really rely on this kind of luck. Being the first to Theology in Beyond the Sword can give you a monopoly on building the Apostolic Palace for a long, long time, and the same can be said of any AI to whom you gift Theology.
Even self-building the AP, while not a great option, is somewhat offset by being Industrious and having an early Forge + early Organized Religion = the AP's cost is half price.
Further, by aiming to try and Lightbulb Theology, it frees us from having to beeline Code of Laws to secure ourselves a Religion on our continent. Again, we may get lucky and Isabella, our neighbour, will found all 3 early Religions for us, but gain, we shouldn't rely on this kind of luck for our plans. By delaying Code of Laws (since, as you say, Courthouses are expensive and won't be a priority until after we've built our University for Oxford University), we can get a bonus on researching it by learning Currency first, and we can also self-tech Currency earlier, for all of the benefits that doing so entails.
H. Do you think we can get an AI to Friendly soon enough to get Machinery and Compass in trade in a reasonable timeframe?
We'd be sharing their Religion (either Christianity or a Religion that they founded early in the game and which we can take steps to obtain, such as building a City close to the AI, getting the Religion, and Liberating said City), trading Resources, sharing Open Borders, would have given them techs (recall that 10 techs = +1 Shared Your Technological Discoveries With Us Attitude bonus, in addition to the +4 Fair and Forthright Trading Attitude bonus), and could have given into any Demands or Requests that may have been made by said AI for bonus positive Attitude points (although we can't rely on any such Demands or Requests coming our way), and we're unlikely to suffer from Close Border Tensions on this map type. So, yes, I think that it's quite feasible to pull off.
I. I'm not sure what you're referring to regarding forges, but it seems that your suggesting gifting MC to our neighbors. A lot of this depends on whether we plan to play nice with the AI on our continent or take them out early. This will be better defined as the game unfolds.
Early war, particularly against an opponent that isn't as close as you'll see when you overload a map with AIs and play as Huayna Capac, comes at a cost of Hammers going into Military instead of into Buildings or Wealth, and also comes at a cost of increased Maintenance from keeping relatively under-developed AI Cities.
I'd rather give an AI a chance to build us some Granaries, Forges, Courthouses, Work Boats, Improvements, possibly a Wonder, etc, than take them out early, unless they are on our doorstep and thus owning their Cities won't be a huge Maintenance hit.
K. Why make a half-hearted attempt at the Hanging Gardens.
My reasoning for saying "low priority" was that I was simply trying to keep our focus on which Wonders we have already discussed are the most important. Sure, The Pyramids are great, but they come at a heavy cost due to the timing of when you often need to build them in order to secure owning them. Some games, you can luck out and they won't be built until after 500 AD, but sometimes 500 BC is too late to complete them.
We can't build every Wonder, so it's good to decide which ones are more important and which ones are of lower priority value.
I could say that The Parthenon and The Temple of Artemis are also nice Wonders to own, and they are, but they don't seem to be the Wonders that the team is even going to consider trying to build.
The Hanging Gardens IS on the table, it's just that according to the lack of discussion on the subject up until my message, it has been a low enough in priority that if we miss it, we won't be nearly as upset as if we miss building The Great Lighthouse.
I think we should definitely go for them and I place more than a "low priority" on them. They typically tend to go late so are not that hard to get. The +1 pop in all cities quickly pay back any hammers spent building the wonder. Plus, we absolutely have to start generating GE points early if we want 100% chance of getting a GE to found Mining Inc. GE points from the HG plus an early forge-enabled engineering specialist should get us a GE about when we need one. Other GE-producing wonders to consider include 'Mids (if we have stone) and Hagia Sophia. I'd rather have one 100% chance of getting a GE than two 67% chances of getting one. I've been burned too many times on this...
And that's fine; if we want to say that our 3rd most-desired Wonder to build is The Hanging Gardens, then we can make it so. I don't really see us getting both The Great Lighthouse and The Pyramids, though. It'll be one or the other for those two Wonders, as we'll need a production-heavy second City for either one of those Wonders, so we can't really plan to build both of them.
The Hanging Gardens comes at a later enough time not to directly compete with The Great Lighthouse, so building The Hanging Gardens can certainly be one of our next Wonder goals.
ingentingg said:
I've tested wonder dates.
Thank you, kindly!
ingentingg said:
I think Oracle by turn 75, and Great Lighthouse by 85 is reasonable safe.
Does it still make sense to unlock Sailing and Masonry before Priesthood? I think that the answer is "yes," since The Great Lighthouse requires that we build a Lighthouse, and requires us to get a lot of production out of a Coastal location, which usually means taking a longer amount of time to build a Wonder, since we can't count on having a lot of high-production squares and thus need to use a few high-production squares being worked over a long period of time.
The Oracle could even be Chopped into a recently-founded 3rd City that has a decent amount of Forests.
Forest Chops are strong in build items that give you production bonuses, since you get less bonus-Hammer losses due to roundoff than if you, say, made 3 Hammers per turn in a City (or 4x + 3 Hammers, where x is a positive integer).
Forests can theoretically even be pre-Chopped before a City is founded, which contrasts with the fact that you can't Mine a Hills square until after it is without your Cultural Borders.
ingentingg said:
Aesthetics - Maybe if we have marble.
Given the choice, which Aesthetics Wonder or Wonders would you want to build, say, in place of building a Wonder like The Hanging Gardens?
ingentingg said:
Failgold is also an option
That's a great point to keep in mind. Indeed, being Industrious, it will always be stronger to build Failure Gold build items than to build Wealth, with or without Resource bonuses from Resources like Marble and Stone.
The only exception comes to us needing Gold "right now," as opposed to the turn after a National Wonder or World Wonder gets completed. So, we'll want to try and plan our Failure Gold builds earlier on.
Since Failure Gold is stronger than normal, that fact actually puts a higher opportunity cost on building Military Units. In other words, every 40-Hammer Swordsman will mean a minimum of 60 Gold that we won't get from Failure Gold, in addition to Unit Supply Costs. While some Military Units will be requires for stopping the Barbs and for replacing the spawn-busters that die, going to war has a higher-than-normal cost due to us having a Trait like Industrious and not having Traits like Aggressive or Protective.
Military should not be discounted as an option entirely, as you can also gain Gold from Pillaging or capturing Cities, but if we can even get 1 more tech at the cost of Calendar or Aesthetics by playing nicely and trading for it, that tech's value will exceed the Gold obtained from capturing 2 AI Cities, assuming that we take 0 battle losses, which is also an unfair assumption to make (we have to expect some units to die).
What people don't often realise is that the strength of a militaristic approach usually comes from unit REUSE. I.e. The Swordsmen (or whatever units you use) which survive the first battle get stronger and are essentially "free units" (in terms of their Hammer cost and not their Gold per Turn cost) for the next battle... so, every successive battle that they fight in, win or lose (as long as their death leads to other units capturing yet another AI City), will drive down the actual cost of the unit.
If we only have 1 or 2 neighbours, the Military Units therefore will max out in terms of their value, since we can't really expect to get much use out of Swordsmen in an overseas battle and thus their usefulness will be outlived after only a minimal amount of warring compared to, say, a Pangaea-like map, where their usefulness is quite long-lived and thus their actual cost keeps going down over time.
ingentingg said:
might have to pick up archery depending on the surrounding land.
With us building 2 early Wonders and an early Library, we may be wise to PLAN to self-tech Hunting + Archery after we learn Priesthood + Masonry, with us only skipping those techs if we are lucky enough to have snagged an early Strategic Resource.
There's no sense "saving the Flasks on Archery" if we end up losing a City to the Barbs as part of the bargain, with no way to retake said City (capturing a City with Warriors is a total no-go in almost all cases).
ingentingg said:
With semi aggressive chopping i build Oracle on turn 60 with 3 cities, and GLH on turn 83...
A barbarian spearman appeared on turn 80...
My techpath went mining - bronze working - fishing - mysticism - meditation - priesthood - pottery - Metal Casting (Oracle) - Sailing - Masonry.
Would be nice to fit in Writing somewhere...
Hmmm, no Animal Husbandry, no Writing, and no units stronger than Warriors. It's certainly not going to be an easy feat. We're going to need to have our spawn-busters quite carefully positioned and we won't be able to afford to lose too many of them.
I'm also not sure whether it makes sense or not to go for Masonry before Priesthood; it'll be definitely something that we'll want to try out.
In the real game, if we see the early Religions (Buddhism and Hinduism) both being founded quite quickly, we may have to stick with Priesthood before Masonry, but we might do something like Sailing -> Priesthood -> Masonry, then use a whipped Lighthouse to overflow Hammers into The Great Lighthouse on the turn that we learn Masonry.
from the two free scientists. In addition, the culture generated from this wonder will be very useful in our capital, which will be one of our two (three?) legendary cities at the end.
), then we'll have to self-research Machinery.
. From what I saw, it should be at least 5,000,000 
