Tech path decision - Writing vs Monarchy

So, we finish Monotheism in 2 turns (hopefully getting Judaism) and we need to decide where we go from there. Have in mind that this is not simply 1 tech decision, but more it is a civilization choice of development path.

Please, everyone have his say with arguments for/against each of the choices, so everyone on the team to consider too and help the team form an opinion so we can make an informed choice. Then we can have a poll after 48 hours to decide where we go.

 

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)

Libraries are right after granary the most important buildings in game and we really should be making progress on generating fist GS already, it usually is important to start working 2 scientists before 1k BC.

other bonuses from writing (which I asked about in the mentioned thread) are questionable from MP side of view (that's why I would like to hear some answers!)

Teching writing for libraries and building library will offer us some time to bank gold (since we will need some gold to burn through on increased bpt from library maybe even multiple libraries!)

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.

Last...some players advocate for Pyramids. Choosing Monarchy will basically close the Pyramids doors unless we want to make some good fail gold.

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.

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.

 

I am think we should go for Priesthood then Writing. Assuming we get the religion we get cheap temples, which is better than nothing and researching Priesthood will make Writing cheaper. Getting the research bonus from those libraries will help us to improve our

BTW, I think we should have the tech tree uploaded into this thread to help make our decision.

 

Of course I am not missing your posts vranasm (do this comes from the Slavic word for "Crow"?), I read them and as surprising it may sound at first as they seems like critique, I actually like the direction of your thoughts and most of your statements and conclusions. I am writing a scratch on my case/idea but want to see more opinions with arguments. Will wait for some more input.

BTW, very good catch, CH - we are SPI and for us the temples are half price making them viable... Hmmm... that combined with the discount on the Writing we can get can make us consider this opportunity. It is on the Writing AND Monarchy path anyway, so it is not deviation, but an option before any of those despite what we decide we want do tech.

edit: Actually I did missed few posts early in the morning Yossarian had pointed out first the discount we get on Temples.

 

Will comment a bit more on the Priesthood. Priesthood is 50% the beakers of the Writing and gives 20% discount on Writing. This means that we will get 15 % discount on the lot. Not bad, it is like getting Priesthood for only 60% beakers. And if we decide to tech Monarchy soon it will be like we get Priesthood for free (the discount for both Writing and Monarchy is more than the beakers needed to get PH)

 

Since it is 20 percentage points on top of 40 % bonus we already have, the total bonus is not quite as good (we'll get the priesthood for 75% of beakers). Add to that the fact that we'll also get 20 percentage point bonus for Monarchy as well. If we get Priesthood last the price for the whole package (Priesthood, Writing & Monarchy) is 8 times the price of Priesthood. On the other hand, if we get Priesthood first, the price is about 7.035 times the price of Priesthood. So assuming we'll get both Writing and Monarchy soonish, we'd get Priesthood practically for free as long as we research it first. I'm still a bit undecided on the big question of Writing vs. Monarchy, but I strongly advocate getting Priesthood discount first. That conviniently also gives us more time to discuss the big issue as well

 

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.

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.)

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

Yes, the pig spot is nice in my opinion too. I hope there is some additional sweetener like whales or whatever.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

Seems I'm out of my league in this discussion, but at the very least you guys are making sense to me, so I can get behind what you're suggesting.

 

maybe best would be to play conservative, let options open. get writing as next tech and give us some more time to think about it.

seems to me like this aims a bit more to the side of decision about Mids and I hope it's clear we can't build them without connecting the stone (500 true hammers is a LOT) and the stone in most optimistic scenario looks like at least 15-20 turns away
(the optimistic scenario here is we settle on stone to spare 8 worker turns and connect with fast worker towards spot which i guess is something like 8-10 tiles away and we have yet to build somewhere the settler).

 

Assuming we are not going for Pyramids, I like PH-->Writing-->Monarchy. It sounds like Priesthood first saves more on Writing and Monarchy than the tech itself costs. Also, half-price temples from PH can act as a stop-gap for cities with happy cap issues until we can complete Monarchy. Writing next makes sense to me because libraries and scientists will make it a lot easier to research the expensive Monarchy tech. We can really start building up our cities in anticipation of the extra HR and Winery happiness that will come when we finish Monarchy. This just seems like the best all-around move for us right now.

If we finish Writing and discover that happiness isn’t so much of an issue, then we can always detour to Maths->Currency at this point, so this path also gives us some flexibility.

If we are going for Pyramids, then obviously Monarchy can be delayed for quite some time, and therefore PH also loses a lot of it's appeal.

 

Very good analyze, Yossa

 

Thanks for making a thread of its own for this discussion. Much better to read and give input for me than if it is mixed with other discussions.

I also strongly agree with Priesthood->Writing, then analysing again.

 

This isn't the full tech tree, but here's our tech picture at breakeven:

Spoiler :

 

The actual time for Monarchy should be around 22 turns when we get Mono. It'll be 19 turns if we get also PH before starting Monarchy. An writing would be 7 turns with PH. Assuming constant science output, which obviously is not true. So with PH, all will take one turn more than taking only Writing and Mono with current output and no micro. And if we are lucky, someone else will find Writing while we're doing PH and we get even more extra beakers for it.

So yeah, I still support getting PH first strongly. Only drawback is postponing Writing about 3-4 turns later. I'm also starting to lean towards taking Writing before Monarchy.

 

We are not in position to build libraries soon anyway, so that wont be a problem I think.

 

well in the sandbox i got library in capital around T77 (maybe sooner, not sure now) running 2 scientists at size 5 at T79

that isn't that far away... i would delay writing too much. this will mean first GS at T96

 

I'm kinda late but I really like priesthood as the next tech. It is on the path to both writing and monarchy so we are still flexable (although I still lean toward Monarchy) but it also gives us temples to build in our cities which will help pop borders and improve city defence. More importantly it gives us more happyness.

 

Hmm, temples are built in cities already having a religion, thus their borders will pop in 10 anyway. I look at temples as a slight 1-happy resource.

 

Okay so the border pop issue is minor, but happiness means more worked tiles which is the foundation of the whole game.

 

but very cheap for us.... 40 hammers...almost the same as axe, but no maintenance cost and actually with OR even less...