Turn Discussion Thread

[Irgy]

So, it looks like the next big question we need to discuss is what to research after Alphabet. I think it's best and easiest to leave Monarchy to AMAZON, which leaves us with two main options as I see it:
* Head for Code of Laws (Math->Currency->CoL)
* Make a detour to Iron Working to reveal the missing strategic resources.

In favour of Code of Laws:
* Chance at Confucianism, to give us a religion. Actually the best chance of that would be to go after Code of Laws as soon as we get Priesthood from AMAZON, but Math and Currency have mayn benefits and getting them first is a lot more efficient with pre-requisite bonuses.
* Also gives us a backup plan to bulb Philosophy with our great scientist, to get Taoism. We could then run Philosophy (and possibly caste system) to get the Academy from a second scientist (possibly from Canopus instead of Sirius?).
* Currency comes in at about the same time we settle on Andromeda, giving us very profitable trade routes.
* We could try and talk AMAZON into getting Iron Working for us to trade (whereas we don't want to talk them into getting the religion from CoL instead of us )
* Opens up the possibility to go after Civil Service next, which will really blast our research forwards.

In favour of Iron Working:
* We have no strategic resources, and have a chance of finding one on our island this way (that plains hill in the centre in particular is very suspicious).
* Also 50% more chance of finding a strategic resouce on Andromeda.
* Reduced chance of settling badly relative to iron's location on Andromeda.

 

[azzaman333]

IW is a safer option, as we still don't have any strategic resources as far as I'm aware?

 

[Irgy]

Another thing to consider:
AMAZON have hunting (they start with it), although they don't have archery (they claim). Should we consider getting hunting in trade? It would make the first trade come out closer as well.

The argument against having hunting was so we could build warriors for happiness (by not having the tech for spears). However, we have no metal, we have little need for a large number of happiness warriors with our low health cap, and with no resources archery is quite a good option for protecting ourselves from barbarians. At least we're sure to be able to build archers, whereas Iron Working could be another complete waste of beakers like Animal Handling has so far turned out to be.

 

[azzaman333]

I'd rather find out we don't have metal after researching IW than not researching IW and finding out we do.

 

[pindicator]

I'm for IW. This lack of resources is making me nervous. (Although it'd be funny if there were zero strategic resources on the map -- ha! take that resource-based UU civs! Oh, you popped iron from a mine? You win!)

Just by eye-balling it, I'm guessing we would pick up Iron Working around turn 55 or 56 since it is 200 base beakers vs. 250 for Maths. At that point we should have a good part of the trade for CoL done.... why not just skip Maths & Currency at that point and go straight for CoL?

Speaking of which, has AMAZON given any indication about when they expect to have Monarchy researched?

 

[Trystero]

I am sympathetic to the "no strategic resources" argument. However, apart from barbs, I don't see an immediate need for them either. In the test game I ran we were 7 turns from CoL by the time we sent a settler to Andromeda. That was without the discount from obtaining Priesthood in trade. IW would take 4 turns to research at that point. If we delayed IW until after CoL, we would have at most one city founded on Andromeda. Since that city is likely going to be at the "I" site, the resources wouldn't effect it's placement that much.

What if we offer Team AMAZON Math(250 beakers) for IW (200 beakers) + Hunting (40 beakers)?

 

[grant2004]

I'd avoid hunting until we need it or can use it, getting it early throws away the option for MP warriors, which we may find useful in the future. With the timing Trystero is talking about it seems like we can wait for IW, a few turns without a strong barbarian fighting unit on the mainland won't be the end of the world, I doubt there will be powerful barbarians yet. It makes more sense to get CoL quickly and get the religion.

 

[T. Claudius]

I'm personally all for CoL. I think everybody is intelligent enough to realize that war at this point is stupid and wasteful, and that peace is by far the best option.

Besides, CoL is on the path to CS and then of course Bureaucracy, which would be great with out capital, as would be a shrine.

We could also ask our Amazonian friends to point out any iron for us.

 

[AlphaShard]

I say we go for the CoL and let the Amazons get IW for us.

 

[azzaman333]

I'd feel much more comfortable letting Amazons get CoL and we go IW>Math>Currency.

 

[pindicator]

I'd feel much more comfortable letting Amazons get CoL and we go IW>Math>Currency.

Likewise.

 

[Irgy]

I'd feel much more comfortable letting Amazons get CoL and we go IW>Math>Currency.

The trouble with this is that they get the religion. Plus, unless we plan to give them Currency, they'll be researching CoL with less pre-requisites than under the other plan.

I don't think AMAZON researching IW but refusing to give it to us is really likely to be the problem.

 

[azzaman333]

That's the point, they get the religion which we don't really need to help foster relations between us. Once we have Monarchy we'll have more than enough , and CoL just for the religion isn't worthwhile.

 

[Irgy]

Well at least I understand one of the points of difference - you put no value in getting a religion.

I see it as almost compulsory for us to manage to get at least one religion. Religious civics are good, and without a religion we can't run one. If we have our own, we can make good income from spreading it, while if we have to get one that another team founds then we end up spreading their religion and giving them additional income for nothing.

 

[azzaman333]

Religion income isn't significant. And we can get Amazon to give us a missonary, or it'll spread some other way. Either way we'll be able to run a religious civic.

 

[Trystero]

But, it's not just the potential shrine income and happiness, although I think I agree with Irgy that you are undervaluing those potential benefits, it is denying those benefits to our opponents. Also, IW is also no guarantee that they'll be iron anywhere nearby. Again, given this map, I think the risks of delaying IW are minimized.

 

[Irgy]

Religion income isn't significant. And we can get Amazon to give us a missonary, or it'll spread some other way. Either way we'll be able to run a religious civic.

Isn't it? I always thought it was quite significant actually, late in the game at least. And I don't think this game is going to be decided all that early.

Here's a back of the envelope estimate for you. Lets say we have 10 cities, all running our state religion. That's only 10gpt that we're missing out on by not using our own religion right? Well, it's not that simple.

The city the religion is founded in quickly becomes the best place to use as our gold centre. That means building market, grocer, bank, and eventually Wall Street. With all these in place, it becomes 30gpt.

Gold from non-commerce sources is also worth more than beakers. Why? Because to generate gold using the commerce sliders, we will in general put our commerce through very few multipliers. Because the slider is generally much higher up the research end of the scale, libraries, universities, observatories are much better value for hammers than markets and grocers, so we should have more of them. Not to mention the Academy, for which there is no gold equivalent. So, there's an exchange rate between gold and beakers, which is the ratio between the change in gold and the change in beakers when moving the slider from 100% to 0%. About 2:3 is a conservative guess at what the exchange rate might turn out to be. So, those 30gpt will let us keep the slider higher, and effectively pay for about 45 beakers per turn of research.

At the stage of the game I'm talking about it would be reasonable to expect of the order of 1000 beakers per turn as our research rate, maybe up to 2000. So those 45 or so beakers comes to somewhere in the ballpark of a 2 to 5 percent increase in our research rate. It's probably not the difference between winning and losing, but it's far from insignificant.

And this is without even considering the possibility of spreading our religion to other teams (which may have their own religion anyway) for even more income.

Also account for the fact that the alternative is to spread another team's religion, which would give them the same benefit, so everything we get by having our own religion we deny another team as well by not using theirs.

Of course we also need to consider the cost of getting the great prophet to actually build the money building, compared to other things we might do with a great person (such as even just settling one for a raw 5gpt and 2 raw hammers), which reduces the benefits somewhat, but it's still certainly not something to just dismiss.

 

[azzaman333]

10gpt is barely better than 1 gold mine.

 

[Irgy]

10gpt is barely better than 1 gold mine.

Aside from the very long explanation I just gave as to why 10gpt is actually about three times as good as 1 gold mine, you're saying then that you would give another team one of our gold mines in exchange for... well what exactly anyway?

If we go back to where this conversation started, you're saying you'd give AMAZON a (late game) gold mine in preference to letting them be the ones to research Iron Working and relying on them to trade it to us?

Even if AMAZON breaks all of their word and DOWs us off the mainland, we have plenty of capacity to make their life difficult, for a long time yet. It's not likely to be in their interests at all even if they pull it off. And they know it - in fact I told them as much, in a roundabout way, in one of our first correspondences.

 

[azzaman333]

We waste a great person on generating the shrine. This requires either temples, which we won't have enough of to generate a Prophet in reasonable time, or wonders, which we don't want polluting the GP points after we have one prophet. It's not worth the investment.