I wanted to hear few more opinions on where we go from here before posting my opinion to not influence other's opinion, but here it is what I think on the mater.
I am glad we start to think and look in one direction with vranasm. Slowly, and with surprising turn, but our positions are closing
What I have in mind - I will comment on your questions/statements, which very nice lead the discussion in the direction which I want to introduce to the team.
How does it work in MP? is it good strategy to open borders for trade routes income with neighbors?
At least my belief is that in a more than 2 players setup, what helps you is good even if it helps someone else too. The idea is you share benefit on different areas with different nations. At the end, you end up with say 100% benefit (you made deals with 5 nations where you and your partner gain 20% each) but the others (who supposedly were not that active/open to mutually beneficial deals) have each only 20% gain, as they dealt only with you. So yes, mutually beneficial deals are not only OK, but highly desirable (with the exception where another strategic lema comes in power - someone is the clear leader and if he is not stopped all others will simply lose the game to him. Then it is exactly the opposite - you accept to even harm yourself if this harms the leader, so hopefully when all 5 nations make the leader 20% harm each, then the leader is hurt 100%, while the other nations have at least slight chance to win the game.)
One of very attractive things about writing aside from libraries is usually open borders for good diplo (obviously not needed)
Generally it is still needed. I rarely deny OBs to people and if I deny, there must be some really good reason. Why not make good beginning of relationships, which comes for free? What so much you have to hide which cant be guessed otherwise?
spread of AI missionaries (obviously not needed)
Yes, at least for 2 more turns before we know if we get Judaism or not, we dont want opponents with own religion have the chance to spread it to us. If we lose the religion, it becomes the opposite.
and trade route income (obviously needed :-D) which in such early part of game can increase your commerce by 20-25% percent easily.
25% is much in my opinion, but yes, it is true that every little thing counts at this stage. I just dont see trade routes any soon. Maybe if we settle the Stone city?
very happy to hear about 23 gold surplus on 0%, I wouldn't say 4 cities, but very safe estimate is 2 cities. If I remember right we play toroidal and it has some distance maintenance spikes.
Yes, I dont have much experience with toroidal, but I hear from everywhere it is mean thing. I said 4 because the next city Lana will give us very strong commerce tiles, which will pay for the city itself and even turn profit I think.
As per direction of expansion. I like to go circular and I think that our west is too close to capital without any other cities.
Generally I would do the same - secure the reach to the capitol in each direction, but now we have a NAP with RB and if I want a city in the west it is only for stone. Otherwise we need to settle the good cottageable land. I really dont feel like someone try to grab land. Who will risk to get involved in early war which will means ruined chances to win in the long run?
there is spot cca 3W from capital with pigs first ring which should be good to overlap to work cottages for capital (flood plains, plains cottages etc)
Yes, the pig spot is nice in my opinion too. I hope there is some additional sweetener like whales or whatever.
Well I am on the side of Writing. (I still would like some answers to the question I posted in the 51-100 turn thread from you metra, I hope you didn't miss my post since it was last on the page)
Right now, I am on the side of Writing too. My reasons are two:
1. It is quicker to get the tech, thus we can start get the benefits earlier and most of the times in civ earlier is better (Writing in 5 turns at 100% science slider and Monarchy in 15 turns at 100%, and we cannot sustain 100% slider all the time at all)
and
2. We can comfortably skip Monarchy at all for the foreseable future if we get The Pyramids to run Representation! And even if we fail at getting The Pyramids, we will be postponed teching Monarchy (as vranasm suggested) to get libraries to use the 25% bonus. Also, in case we lose The Pyramids, we will have some very very nice failgold, which will allow us to tech Monarchy at 100%. Monarchy is 550 beakers if I am not mistaken. With few whips and chops worth 225 hammers (hopefully we get Judaism in Terasvin and switch to OR for additional bonus or otherwise we make 1 priest. I will make step-by-step plan how we will get the Pyramids to see it is not that hard) we will either get the wonder and save ourselves the need to invest 550 commerce in beakers, or we will get failgold which will be give us again Monarchy at half price! Failgold with resource is just too powerful that early.
Monarchy is much higher tier tech, basically on the par with alpha, aesth and is really big investment in the sense and opens only HR (very important civic though), where as writing opens math, aesth, alpha and indirectly currency which is very important tech.
Going for the Pyramids will allow us to go after Writing and Math (hopefully Math powered 3 last chops) and then after Currency without detouring in to otherwise (beside HR) so-so tech path.
Last...some players advocate for Pyramids. Choosing Monarchy will basically close the Pyramids doors unless we want to make some good fail gold.
My idea was exactly the opposite when advocating so much for the Pyramids - to close the door for Monarchy instead and go for the way more useful Writing-Math-Currency route.
Pyramids is a big no-no, we don't have stone yet and no ind...
I think that we are in not worst position to get the Pyramids than anyone else I can think of. There are no IND leaders in the game. And we dont know anyone else to have stone connected yet. RB we believe were after Oracle, so no stone for them. CP took the Oracle, so no stone for them. Uciv just settled their stone city with stone in the second ring - we can be faster than them to connect stone. WPC are arming for a rush, so no big probability of wonder pursuing. SPAP - I just dont know - AGG/CHA Zulu does not seems much like Pyramids to me. We are even not remotely prepared to start building The Pyramids right now, but this can change quickly.
Another VERY important thing is ... we discuss here Monarchy for HR and WANT TO BUILD MIDS AT THE SAME TIME???? THAT DOESN'T make sense at all... that would be seirously one of the worst decision I saw.
to be clear on this...I once tried it and it just doesn't work. If you build Mids, you run Rep. end...
I really don't see the need for us to go for Pyramids unless we are definitely going to be going for SE otherwise it would be extremely handy to get.
Here comes the most sweet side of my idea about the Pyramids. If we decide and get the Pyramids, no need to tech Monarchy!!! We want the Monarchy to be able to run HR and MP big cities. But if we get the Pyramids, no need for that! We will run Representation even if only for the +3 happy faces in each city! No need for SE or whatever (however Rep still gives us a tool to convert food in beakers at very good rate if we so desire). Well, we wont be able to connect wines, but who cares for +1 if you have +3 happy faces? We will get to the wines too at some point.
doesn't look like we will get many happy resources.
This is true. We have furs in the southern tundra and thats about it I think. But when we run Representation, this will have +3 happy faces exactly where we need them - in our biggest cities.
My pure guess is that we would get more overall beakers if we go writing->monarchy, banking gold until 2 libraries are built (capital+ scientists city -mantra?) and then steam through monarchy with banked gold.
Either this, or we steam outright to Math-Currency after Writing if we get The Pyramids. Or if we lose them, we still get nice failgold and we steam confidently trough Monarchy.
From the looks at the map my pure gusto says we need both techs and I think going writing->monarchy will yield better results even if monarchy will be slightly delayed.
Yes, you are absolutely right that we need the benefits from both techs, but with choosing to go after Pyramids, we actually get the benefit (even better) of Monarchy while teching the Writing tech path in the same time.
I think this is a win-win situation.
Yossarian had pointed out first the discount we get on Temples.
