Startup research strategy

Which strategical direction do you prefer for research in the starting phase?


  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .

Blkbird

King
Joined
Oct 29, 2005
Messages
860
With Game Session 1 being just a bit over 2 days away and no obvious consensus regarding the startup research strategy in the discussion thread (here), the Ministry of Science decides to set up this poll to help reaching a decision.

All options here are formulated rather vaguely. First, it's simply impossible to list all possibilities, or even all sequence of the first three, four Technologies ever suggested by all citizens after the game has been created. Second, this poll is about the strategical direction of our startup research, not about the technical implementation thereof.

Please be advised this poll is informative and non-binding. The Ministry promises to put the result of this poll strongly into consideration, but ultimately reserves the right to reach a deviating administrative decision.

What will count just as much as the numbers of votes here are reasonable, logical and detailed argumentations for each options. It is recommended to post your arguments in the aforementioned discussion thread (here) instead of this poll thread.

This poll is public and will be open for 2 days, closing about 1 hour before Game Session 1 starts.
 
I hate to be vague but I think a mix of stratigies is important right now. Getting an early religion is not critical, but it does help. I think we have to have animal husbandry for both the horse potential and the pigs. Then hitting religion for monotheism would help. But we can't go too long without hunting becuase of the scout and exploration benefits.

I started a test game on Prince with Egypt just to play around with the civ and get a feel for its strengths and weaknesses and I found that getting to Monotheism in time for Judiaism is doable. I went Hunting, then religion to Mono then other stuff.
 
I think we should hold off on the religious start, because we won't win the race for it. Wee should go the agricultural root, because it allows us an early lead, and after that we can get confucianism easily. This allows us to use our techonlogical power to spread our rellgion, not our religion limiting our technological power
 
Blkbird, are you going to vote? I see no problem with you voting. Since you were elcted Minster of Sceince, then it is obvoius the people have faith in your sceintific judgement!
 
Bengeance said:
I hate to be vague but I think a mix of stratigies is important right now. Getting an early religion is not critical, but it does help. I think we have to have animal husbandry for both the horse potential and the pigs. Then hitting religion for monotheism would help. But we can't go too long without hunting becuase of the scout and exploration benefits.

I started a test game on Prince with Egypt just to play around with the civ and get a feel for its strengths and weaknesses and I found that getting to Monotheism in time for Judiaism is doable. I went Hunting, then religion to Mono then other stuff.

It doesn't sound very solid. You sure you were playing Prince on a Large Continental map with 8 players total at Epic speed?
 
I was researching egypt on wikipedia, and, talk about ironic, they went almost he same route as agriculture provides!
 
Swissempire said:
Blkbird, are you going to vote? I see no problem with you voting. Since you were elcted Minster of Sceince, then it is obvoius the people have faith in your sceintific judgement!

I am not completely convienced of any particular strategy yet. I will base my opinion on this poll and the discussion during it. So I'm going to wait until the last minute and even then eventually abstain. The Ministry will however post an official instruction in time, that's for sure.

So, please, decide for yourself, without any influence from my side.
 
If we can spread a religion far and wide, and build the shrine, the gold we will pick up will be huge. I think that we should aim for Poly, and if we miss Hinduism, we can go for Mono and hope to pick up Judaism. The commerce from shrines is extremely useful.
 
Excuse me, but I don't get this. People are saying over and over that Shrines generates huge incoming. But isn't it just 1 Gold per city per turn? You call that huge? One single well developed city can generate more than that.

Also, even if something is jucy doesn't mean we should go for it. It has to be realistically applicable, too. Please try to prove it when you suggest something.
 
The X shrine gives 1 gold for every city (including foreign) that has X religion. If you spread a religion well enough, maintanance costs are virtually nullifeid. And the happiness bonus from having a religion is very useful.
 
I agree with the dark-colored avian on that one!
 
azzaman333 said:
The X shrine gives 1 gold for every city (including foreign) that has X religion. If you spread a religion well enough, maintanance costs are virtually nullifeid. And the happiness bonus from having a religion is very useful.

Sorry, this is *way* to vage. You need to come with concrete numbers. The way I play my personal games, city maintanance costs can never be "nullified" because I build so many city, often so far away from the Capital. Say you spread your state religion to 30 cities on a Large map (that would be pretty impressive, I'd say), that's just 30 Golds per turn. As I said, a well developed city generates more.

And yet again, you need to come up with some feasability arguments, too. "If we're lucky, we can win the race for this religion; if not, we can try the other" isn't good enough - in fact it's pretty bad.
 
Pottery, Mining, Animal Husbandry

I'd like to see some production in our capital early on, so we'd need a seizable population and mined hills. By then we might get into health trouble and connect the pigs.
 
In order to grow strong, we must first build a solid foundataion. That is why I choose the general agricultural path over military.
 
The race for one or several Religioins is not without risk. I'd like to ask those who support the religious strategy to present a risk accessment, best including "Plan B", "Plan C" and such.
 
Do you mean how we could use the Religion tree to our advantage should we fail in the first push? A diversion to Priesthood for Oracle. This could go two ways if we succeed:
1. Research Monarchy while we build the Oracle, and nab Feudalism as our free tech.
2. Research Monotheism while we build the Oracle, and nab Theology as our free tech (and found Christianity).

Although I support the religious race, I still want to take care of Animal Husbandry & Pottery first. Early cottages will give us a great advantage in the research pace and put us in the running for Judaism.
 
No, Mike. A risk assessment with best response plans goes like:

If we research Myth and Poly, our chance of founding Hinduism should be about 85% if there is no other civ starting with Myth, 60% if there is one such civ, 25% if there are two...

If we lose Hinduism by no more than 4 turns, we can still try racing for Judaism, our chance being 50% with 4 turns lag, 65% with 3 turn lag...​

That, plus explaination about how the numbers are calculated, would be a risk assessment with best response plans. Of course I can't expect something like that because our situation is rather complicated, and none of us is likely to be an industrial, financial or intelligence analyst with enough time to do such a work. However I definitely need more than "we could get Hinduism if we're lucky, how lucky I don't know, but I have the feeling it's worth a shot" - because that's all I've heard so far.
 
I can't provide that, sir. I would say we have a better chance of discovering Judaism with a solid cottage base than we do of discovering Hinduism or Buddhism off the bat. Perhaps a 75% chance if we concentrate on commerce, compared with a 25% chance of researching Hinduism/Buddhism right off the bat.
 
risk assesment for pursuing a religion based path compared to agriculture -

chance of hooking up pigs:

agriculture 100%

religion 100%

chance of having a worker ready to build the infrastructure to the pigs by the time the required techs are researched:

agriculture <100%

religion 100%

chance of needing pigs for health reasons by the time we have them hooked up:

agriculture 0%

religion 0%

chance of having the pigs within our cutural borders by the time we can build the infrastructure to hook them up:

agriculture <100%

religion 100%

chance of getting buddism:

agriculture: 0%

religion 0% (if we go for poly rather then med)

chance of getting hindu:

agriculture 0%

religion >0% (if we go for poly instead of med)

chance of getting judiasm:

agriculture 0%

religion >0%

the question should not be 'what is the risk?' it should be 'what is the reward?'

if we pursue religion prior to agriculture, we do not lose the reward of agriculture. it will still be there when we need it.
if we pursue agriculture before religion, we will lose the reward of early religion.

personally i think the risk is worth the potential reward. it is more then just the simple extra gold from a shrine. its the cultural benefit of having a religion early and spreading it throughout the nation. its the potential intelligence gains of having a homegrown state religion. its the diplomatic advantage of having a homegrown state religion in foriegn nations that adopt it. it is more difficult to achieve these advantages with a later religion such as confucianism. its the early start on generating great leaders.

I don't see the reward of an agricultural pursuit before religion. i would in fact almost prefer picking up hunting before animal husbandry.
 
I have to agree with our self-proclaimed Mischief Maker that the rewards of an early religion are great. Although we can indeed first go for any other tech (whichever it may be) if we do that we will not have (one of) the first religion for sure (that's 100% sure losing early religion), while if we turn it around the agriculture bonus will still be there, plus we might have an early religion (say, 50-75% chance). Also, we can switch to agriculture the MOMENT another civ founds a religion, we don't have to wait until the said religious tech is finished, and we don't lose the research either.
I say go with religion first, the chance for a greater reward is within our grasp, but only if we do this NOW.
 
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