TP+Rationalism

[BuilderFTW]

Personally, I rarely build trading posts. I feel like 1 food = 1 hammer = between 1 and 2 gold. Since most of the time I am not in a golden age, the trading is a worse tile improvement since one gold is worth less than one food or one hammer, and by the time you can get 2 gold from a tp, you are getting +1 hammers from mines and +1 food from farms. I do build trading posts in puppet cities to keep them from growing too much, but otherwise I don't build them at all. However, with rationalism, you can get +1 science from a trading post, I feel like this might make tp more worthwhile. In a long game, where you go down rationalism, how much, and where do you build trading posts?

 

[Adreno]

I go down Rationalism in every game so obviously I like TPs a lot. I often struggle with gold so that might be another reason I value gold more than you.

I think in early game 1 food = 2-3 gold, in mid game when you need to do unit upgrades 1 gold > 1 food, and in late game 1 gold ~ 1 food depending on the overall gold output. In late game you need production, not growth or gold.

Posts help specialize tiles so you can more easily alternate between growth and unhappiness. You work citizens on farmed river tiles during happy times and work the trading posts/mines when you want to avoid growth.

Mines vs trading posts is another question. I guess mines are better in early game, but after you get the rationalism boost posts are better. Game theory wise it would make sense to simply rework tiles, but that's really really boring. When you rework you temporarily have an unimproved tile for 3-4 turns, so you have to assign a citizen to work something else, then assign it back when the rework completes. Boring.

Every now and then you get a city on a river surrounded by jungle. That's a real sweet spot for trading posts (one of the few occasions I don't chop around river tiles). If you had a mountain as well you would get insane science output from all the posts, university, observatory, rationalism.

 

[BuilderFTW]

Thanks for the reply, very helpful. Now that I think of it, I do try to build trading posts on jungles- makes a very nice science tile. I also see that they are good for controlling growth- working extra farms can be a waste while .

btw, What do you mean by early, mid, and late game?

 

[Adreno]

btw, What do you mean by early, mid, and late game?

In my terminology early game is the time period when your primary goal is expansion and growing cities. If you settle a city near Cerro De Potosi, the governor will work a 2food grasslands tile instead of the 10g tile. The game programmers obviously thought food is way more important than gold while you're expanding (it is, altho I would work the 10g tile as soon as the city hits 2 pop)

Mid game is the era when your primary concerns are things like tech or defense, but you're not actively trying to end the game.

When you're building a spaceship or planning genocide, you're in late game and you don't care about city growth anymore.

 

[Adreno]

The utility of gold goes down as you get more of it (same in real life as in civ btw). If you are at negative gold, you will get a science penalty and start to disband units, so gold is far more valuable than food or production. Once you are above water, the utility of gold is primarily in unit upgrades, but also emergency purchasing, trading, and bribing CS. A few times I've been in modern era with 4000+ gold, then I'm just buying nukes and submarines and stuff. You can see how "+1 gold" is worth less and less the more gold you have.

So whether you build trading posts or mines should depend primarily on how many rivers and lux you have.

 

[BuilderFTW]

units don't disband in mp from negative gold. If they did, I would often have no army...

 

[Adreno]

units don't disband in mp from negative gold. If they did, I would often have no army...

Oh? When I get to negative gold in MP I get a little notification that says if I go beyond something (-5 gold I think) units will start to disband. So at that point I always choose what to disband instead of let the game do it for me. You sure about this? I don't mean negative gold per turn, I mean negative absolute gold.

 

[BuilderFTW]

Watch my vid (around 37m I go into serious negative with zero gold): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51w...DvjVQa1PpcFP_hoAloObjKQNaGOGQ6WOS9V6oH3WcaF4=

I played terribly, and I was very lucky to win the game.

 

[Tabarnak]

I never go through Rationalism in mp games. I will go Piety before the ren.era or go for Freedom instead. Rationalism is way more powerful when playing with RAs. When i reach the industrial era i often go through Autocracy. The free 8 units maintenance with Freedom is HUGE. This can give you instantly +40 gpt.

 

[BuilderFTW]

How many cities would you have when you go piety?

 

[Tabarnak]

As most as i can

Puppets like to build temples. Good synergy with puppets overall. The free ga from 3rd policy of Piety is another good incentive for me to go for that tree.