Here are some lessons learned, as that was my second runthrough:
1. Jungles are our ENEMY! They are nasty! If we are isolated with only Mansa as a neighbour, we won't have Iron Working at all. Period, end of story. It doesn't matter if we go for Math or Monarchy. If he goes for Alphabet, he won't have Iron Working to trade. Grabbing Alphabet from him will be helpful, as it will lead to Currency, but that's about all that it will do if it's just us and him, as Jastrow has predicted. So, in my first runthrough, I settled in heavily-Jungled areas without Cities to work. The second time through, I settled on top of Jungled 3-Food Resources in at least one, possibly more cases, to turn a 1-Food-square into a 3-Food City Centre (+1 free Food for all time, without needing a citizen).
2. I also had to settle by some "cleared out" land... either near Forests or non-Jungled Grassland squares, so that after I worked the initial non-Jungled Resources, I could still have squares to work (Cottages).
3. The Barbs can be NASTY if we don't REX hard. In the first runthrough, since I settled deep in the Jungle with no improvable Resources, the Barbs came at us hard and razed two of my Cities. We are going to be DESPERATE for Hammers to build Archers, the odd Axeman, and Cities that will Culture-bust for us
4. If Mansa gets a Religion, there's a good chance that he'll send Missionaries our way, which means that the more Cities we have, the longer he'll stay in peaceful Missionary mode and the more free Cultural Border expansions that we'll get
Basically, without a test game to prove otherwise, I see Math doing a few things for us:
a) Allowing the Barbs to swarm us, which means losing Cities or at least valuable improvements
b) Getting squeezed-in... if it's just us and Mansa, maybe not squeezed-in on all sides, but certainly the good City locations will be gone before we feel that our economy is strong enough to expand
c) We end up doing things in the wrong order... a City settled earlier is much more productive than a City settled later. It also has more time to pay for itself, by getting more infrastructure and more citizens working more improved squares. In the Math-first approach, we're relying heavily on a few bonus Hammers from Chops (they are literally a drop in the bucket compared to Whipping) to carry us through. The biggest issue is that at a time when we want some of our Cities to be building Wealth while other Cities either keep up the REX or go into war mode or hire a ton of Specialists--whatever we decide to do--we don't have enough Cities to do so effectively. Wealth is powerful when you have 8 Cities but isn't as great when you only have 5 Cities and are competing with an AI that has 6 Cities for land
This test game is the proof that was asked for. There are other ways to play it, but I did what was asked and still that's not enough?
Before we go ahead with Math, do you think that it's fair for me to ask for evidence of a similar nature, that shows how that tech gets us a great empire? Perhaps you can find a way... if so, great! But, as was stated, it will be nice to have a longer-term plan that is proven to work.
More than ever, I am convinced that if a Jungle grows on the G Riv Pig, it will hurt us really badly. Look at how strong City #2 is with all of its worked Cottages and hired Scientists. This City still did quite a lot of whipping, but because of the G Riv Pig Pasture, that City just powered us into being able to whip, build Military Police Units, and work a ton of Riverside Cottages that are contributing to our empire from Turn 0, and even more so after 10 turns when they turn into 3-Commerce Hamlets. You can't do that without a lot of Happiness to play with. City 2 was one of the keys to this approach.
No amount of early exploration with the Archer can make up for us losing that G Riv Pig until Turn 89 or so, when we can hopefully count on being able to trade for Iron Working. That one square makes or breaks our entire economy, which would be true regardless of which tech we went for first, as it's being able to grow into those Riverside Cottages that brought our economy out of the hole; but Monarchy definitely got us there much faster than any other tech will.
Now, I will say it again: getting Alphabet in trade means that going for Math first hardly contributes to us getting to Currency. Are we really going to research a tech just because of the 20% bonus it offers to Research on another tech (that bonus usually works out to be between 17% and 18% in practice, since bonuses do not carry-over across turns)?
If we don't think that Mansa will go for Alphabet, then Alphabet is a better starting tech than Math. Why? Because you can build Research! That means that instead of working Cottages, you can work Mines. Building Research can get you to Currency.
So... I posit that if we honestly want to beeline Currency, Alphabet is the fastest way there.
I did Chop some Forests. Let's say that I Chopped 15 of them. That's 150 Hammers. If you simply use Hereditary Rule for +1 Whipping action in every City and don't stack multiple Military Police Units, that gives you the stated ratio listed earlier of:
So, would we value 10 Food + 101 Hammers more than the cost of 29 Commerce
per City.
Hammers in the early game are what drive your Civ... you need Cities, you need Workers so that you can work improved squares with your citizens, you need Roads to some Cities, you need infrastructure to make the relative contribution of each City higher (such as the Libraries that I was building and using to hire Scientists on our way to Currency).
What's interesting is that via this Whipping versus stagnating to build Settlers, we come out AHEAD in growth. Yes, although we whipped away population points, by focusing on putting the Food where it belongs--growing our Cities that have Granaries, we actually end up with more Food than what we started with.
So, even if Monarchy had us whipping in TWO CITES ONE TIME EACH, we would make more Food + Hammers - Commerce (20 + 202 - 58 = 222 - 58 = 164 ) than we would from Chopping ( 150 Hammers ).
I don't see any possible way that Math can compete. But, pull out a test game and dazzle us. If not, then where's the short-to-medium term plan that gets us from Math to the really nice empire that we can have with a sloppily-played Monarch-first approach by Turn 89?
Interestingly, I built The Great Lighthouse simply by using the Hammers from the P Copper Railroad Mine, hahahahahahahaha. No Forests or other Hammer-based squares were worked during the process, although I think that I one-pop-whipped the pre-requisite Lighthouse.
-Find 10 foreign trade routes (I expect we will have 5 in the real game)
We can't have it both ways. Either we have Foreign Trade Routes from another AI or else grabbing Currency earlier offers us half the number of Flasks that I listed earlier.
How much earlier can you get Currency and what cost do we pay in terms of not getting up Cities that are contributing to our empire?
Jastrow said:
Yes, I am hoping to pick up monarch in a trade, but my point is really simple in the end.... When do you think we can get city 6 down? Using whatever MP scheme you think is appropriate, do you see our economy support 6 cities, in the Monarchy first plan, before we get to Currency, and are at least close to COL?? If yes, can you explain what configuration you are viewing there?
If no, then currency and COL are the gating path to cities 6 and beyond, since it is my contention that no matter what the first tech is, we can always produce enough to get to 6 cities before these come in. That being true, I direct path to them is actual the fastest way to rex past city 6 (and maybe 4).
Okay, I accepted your challenge and proved that this claim: "currency and COL are the gating path to cities 6 and beyond" is false.
Do you have the time to run a test runthrough with the Math-first approach? At least SOMEONE on the team should do so before blindly proceeding with it as our tech selection--we really do get 1 tech to pick, not the 5 or so that you normally get with an Ancient Era start, so it has to be the right choice. Can someone show us such a game with Math?
Jastrow said:
and I think investing into that many cottages is a big price to pay. (Actually, I half like this plan if we are heading for space... At least that would make the 18 cottages a great investment.)
Actually, I disagree with your assertion. I know that you love Space games and you're very good at them, so I will accept your claim that a lot of Cottages help a Space game. But, they will also help a Conquest game.
Let's think about it: WE HAVE RATHAUSES. This Conquest game will be quite unique. Normally, unless you are playing as Shaka (who also gets a Maintenance reduction from his Unique Building), you have to burn and slash AI empires. As Shaka, you can keep your conquested Cities and keep on rolling, thanks to the reduced Maintenance Costs associated with the Ikhanda. Here, we'll have a solid Commerce base that will allow us to capture and keep 4+ Cities in Revolt until we can build Rathauses in them, at which point they'll contribute more to our empire than if we'd razed them (a claim that might not be true without this Unique Building with a different Civ).
These Cottages are going to be the foundation for us being able to spread across the map like the Borg, assimilating as we go. If we go razing everywhere, we'll find Barb Cities popping up left, right, and centre, which will block our Roads, cost us valuable Hammers and turns, and we'll either have to keep razing the Barb Cities or else leave a lot of costly spawn-busters throughout the map.
Early Cottages take away this problem, as we'll be starting to get some Villages by the time that we're beating down on Mansa and we'll be able to afford to keep his entire empire (minus Tundra-like Cities) and use our double-sized empire to just keep expanding and pushing out our influence further and further.
In fact, all that we need for that effort will be:
Monarchy -> Alphabet/Math (hopefully Alphabet in trade, but if not, Cottages will still get us one of these techs) -> Currency -> Horseback Riding -> get Code of Laws in trade from Mansa
Iron Working would be "nice" to have (and required if we don't guard the G Riv Pig and we get bad luck with a Jungle growing on it), but we can also be smart about where we settle to avoid the heavily-Jungled areas. kcd_swede gave us a map with enough cleared-out Jungle squares to make it work.
Once we've got a solid empire of 16 Cities with Rathauses, we can do whatever we want. THAT's what the Ducks did last game (used Monarchy to REX and then doubled the size of their empire by capturing a neighbour's lands--they used The Great Lighthouse to pay for it) and that's what we'll do here (we'll use Rathauses to pay for it). The large number of Cottages on a Food-heavy map is what will carry through to this longer-term objective.
Jastrow said:
So, yes, I have seen the save. It does nothing to change my vote.
So, let's see your saved game with Math that allows us to do the same, and please outline the plan that goes along with it.
and 1
? What would be the best we could hope to bulb in the near future since bulbing Math makes little sense here?
