[*] I'll trade for MC right now (?) with churchill, throwing in 165g.
As I said above I think it's better to wait until we can partially research MC (after CS and possibly Maso+Mono if/because we kick off the GA at this point) since he's not researching Currency. If it turns out he starts researching Currency then trade right away. Getting it right now isn't bad either though and it's an "insurance" if Church decides to DoW us after all (which he shouldn't, though). Dunno. No strong feelings here. Getting it now wastes some sci potential but gains faster Forges. Maybe it's better to get it ASAP after all.
[*] GA: to me it's unclear when to start it. Not right now as we want to spend the GA under buerocracy and also want to adopt OR. Neither just after finishing CS as our treasury will be quite empty and we'll want to run 100% science during most of the GA. So I'm in favour of kicking off the GA after my set, I'll tech CS, masonry and monotheism while accumulating some gold for a decent GA in the next set. Sounds ok?
GA and gold reserves don't have anything to do with each other, the commerce and thus wealth/research gained is the same. Numerically it boosts 100% sci more than 100% gold but the proportions are the same so it won't affect a thing. Or am I missing something?
IMO we should start it when we finish CS to get Bureu insta, then get Mono during GA and adopt Hindu+OR at the end of the GA.
[*] We have crappy trade opportunities. Mao's in WFYABTA and gandhi won't talk to us. We could broker MC to both of them. I'll eventually sell MC to mao if there's a decent amount of gold available. Also, churchill has nothing to offer us really (for CS). An option would be trade CS for MC and junk, but we'd get MC a few turns later but save a considerable amount of gold. Opinions?
Yes, my opinion as well is that we have crappy trading opportunities
I agree we shouldn't trade CS to Church. Most important thing to note is to not sell lopsidedly for gold to Civs that are someones WE, that's a surefire way to get -4 WE hate instantly.
As said I'd rather get MC with partial teching + Currency than with CS, if we want to postpone it.
[*] I'll try to make a move on the barb city down south. Extra cash is always nice and a pre-war 9-city-empire is great.
Yes, this is the biggest priority IMO. As a side note we could go Paper after CS&Mono&MC for double-sped UoS, that should give decent returns with 9 cities with many of them prod (or at least not cottage) oriented.
[*] IMO we started some CHs a bit early. 4g upkeep means it only saves us 2gpt... and CHs are quite expensive. I'll slot in forges here and there, they do not only add
but also make
more effective (as well as normal production ofc...)
Yeah when we get MC then deffo Forges first. I don't think starting them was a bad idea, better to put hammers into them than useless maintenance-eaters or crap (for now) like Aqueducts. IIRC hammer decay isn't scaled so hammers stay for a long long time on Quick (30 turns for buildings?).
[*] Especially if we don't start the GA just now we might consider switching to caste during the GA (and back to slavery afterwards). 2 specs slots is crap and we have the food to run way more specs. We should focus some more on GPP imo. Bulbing our way to lib really helps getting the renaissance war techs early. I'd double-bulb edu and use one more GS on lib.... while selfresearching paper and philo. When we need to wait for a GS to arrive we can fill our treasury or research other prereq techs on the way to MT.
Yes definitely Caste during the GA, I think this was agreed upon already and is one of the biggest incentives for using the GA here in the first place.
St. P sounds like a good defense point - don't forget to build some HA and catapults to soften the offensive stack. Maybe we can grab a city or two from him if we can build enough troops. And yes, that means trading currency for HBR with Churchill. Heck, we should probably field some elephants too. Sounds like lots of whipping coming up!
It's a far cry from certain we're the target - Gandhi is also a LT and was Annoyed vs us at Cautious at the time. I estimated about a 25% chance we're the target so shouldn't bust our balls to whip defense. Anyway a scout should verify the spot where his SoD is gathering in a few turns to know better.
I think deviating tech towards that end (HA/Cat/Jumbo) would be useless since that's a very offensive oriented setup and we really don't need to go on the (esp. 1-move) offense here, also none of those benefit from Agg. I still think aiming for MC&Mono-> maybe Paper is best. If we indeed are the target defense should be easy with just a couple of Agg Axes without sacrificing tech towards relatively useless stuff.
