Why are CoL and CS important techs?

[ajsciri4]

Title.
Also, what techs help your economy?

 

[GGracchus]

CoL for courthouses/caste system, CS for bureaucracy/irrigation spread.

Help your economy...currency+worker techs, as these boost your economy with improved tiles/trade routes and markets.

 

[Ghpstage]

CoL both helps your economy by enabling courthouses and the more useful Caste System. Courthouses obviously reduce your maintenance in cities, but their value is often overestimated while Caste allows you to get major GP farms up and running.
Secondly CoL is a gateway to a bunch of important techs including CS and Philo!

CS allows irrigation spread by farms and Bureacracy, which is one of the most powerful midgame civics. While it only afffects your capital this is the city which will be most developed during the midgame.
Its also unique in boosting base commerce (a boost which is then further boosted by multipliers), making it very popular and effective for cottage spam super science Oxford capitals.


There are a lot of techs that help your economy, including the two you have asked about!
Early on the most important ones will be the ones to get your resource tiles improved, writing (foreign trade, Libraries!), pottery (granaries+cottages) monarchy (you need for growth) and Currency (Building Wealth and the trade route mostly, the Markets less so).
Of these make sure you get at least one of Writing or Pottery before you strain your economy too much, then Currency is the one that digs you out of just about anything you can accomplish.

Later CoL and CS are important for the reasons mentioned above, Philosophy can have a significant impact from Pacifism, Education allows the ever important Oxford.

Beyond this the relative values of techs that can be useful economically can change drastically depending on your empire setup,, i.e. communism is fantastic for workshop heavy empires or ones where you want to use State Property, but much less useful if your using corps.... Bio and Assembly Line tend to be very useful routinely however.

 

[Orion071]

CoL and Currency are really when you can start expanding for real. Bureaucracy makes your capitol 50% better and can really jumpstart your teching and economy.

 

[shulec]

Trade routes traderouteprovide a huge boost to your economy. Sailing and the Wheel are very beneficial. I try to build a road to settler site before I settle a city. Also, try to build a road to your neighbors' road network, the will help open up foreign trade routes that provide more commerce. You can get trade routes to cities without roads with sailing if you have a coastal city on the trade network and no coastal fog between your new city and the one on the trade network.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

CH is a bit overrated as an econ boost, but it IS a pre-req for bureaucracy which is generally underrated by rookie-to-decent players.

Courthouses are obviously better if you factor the espionage though. Palace + 6-8 courthouses will allow you to steal a classical era tech in about 20-30 turns w/o slider investment. If you can actually use this properly and do so then they look a bit better.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

CH = courthouse?

CoL would make a bit more sense in that first sentence.

 

[G-Max]

CH is a bit overrated as an econ boost, but it IS a pre-req for bureaucracy

I thought Civil Service was the prereq for Bureaucracy...

 

[elohssa]

I think CoL isn't that important. I much prefer currency which is a big boost. Courthouses are expensive and libraries usually give more benefit early game. Obviously if you like Caste then you'd want CoL.

 

[Higher Game]

People don't spy enough. Code of laws > currency, for the courthouses, caste system, possible religion, paths to civil service and philosophy, and trade value (from itself, and its paths!). Marketplaces, trade routes, and gold trading are good, but just not as good.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

People don't spy enough. Code of laws > currency, for the courthouses, caste system, possible religion, paths to civil service and philosophy, and trade value (from itself, and its paths!). Marketplaces, trade routes, and gold trading are good, but just not as good.

Well, at least the spy part is accurate .

The availability of build wealth, instant 0 hammer investment access to trade routes, and a situational building (markets are VERY good with 3 or 4 of the resources) are enough to start being competitive already.

What makes currency obliterate basically everything else is the gold trade game though. You start yoinking 1000's of gold off the AI over time, and all of a sudden that academy capitol starts putting up major resource. You can argue that it's not as big a deal in isolation, but then neither is espionage!

Currency will get you to CoL much faster than vice versa. It just carries too many sheer benefits for CoL to beat it.

CoL is useful though. Sometimes I will even use the spy slot on the courthouse...but it's not good enough to beat ripping 1000 gold off the AI sooner.

 

[Higher Game]

The availability of build wealth, instant 0 hammer investment access to trade routes, and a situational building (markets are VERY good with 3 or 4 of the resources) are enough to start being competitive already.

Markets almost always scream "pound me"; I probably gained a full difficulty level when I learned to not make them! If you have 3+ happiness resources, they look weak (you probably have enough! Forges, monarchy, and religion also help...). They look weak if you just have 1 too, because you almost always want WAR in that case, not stupid buildings. Maybe if you have 2. And lots of cottage spots. And friendly neighbors. And you really want those merchant slots, because you have 3+ good whipping spots...

Very situational. Wealth building, even more so. Courthouses, on the other hand, are virtually always useful, the heart of the midgame.

What makes currency obliterate basically everything else is the gold trade game though. You start yoinking 1000's of gold off the AI over time, and all of a sudden that academy capitol starts putting up major resource. You can argue that it's not as big a deal in isolation, but then neither is espionage!

It's not like code of laws, philosophy, and civil service are *that* much further away. We're not talking about 1000's of gold here. Unless we mean the value of trading the code of laws path.

CoL is useful though. Sometimes I will even use the spy slot on the courthouse...but it's not good enough to beat ripping 1000 gold off the AI sooner.

If you're next to some of the AI uber techers, a spy economy just demands those spy slots. The kind of AIs that are *HARD* to get ahead of, and you beat them with a contemporary or even backwards army, are made for this. You shift gears into research late, after you've submitted a couple.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Unless you play deity exclusively, I'm not buying most of these arguments. Even then, better players than I can get ahead of the likes of Pacal and company on deity.

More importantly, you do want those markets. Pop is power in cities with good multipliers. If you throw down +25% gold +3 for the hammer cost of a market in a heavily cottaged capitol and grow it up those 3 pop, the next benefit to an econ is huge. It's not like you want or need markets everywhere.

CoL just doesn't match it on average. There's a reason so many players advocate currency.

Besides, you can't broker CoL (which non-religion founders tend to get late) until AFTER you pick up currency, and below deity an even marginal effort to reach currency soonish will get you there such that you can trade it.

 

[Higher Game]

Unless you play deity exclusively, I'm not buying most of these arguments. Even then, better players than I can get ahead of the likes of Pacal and company on deity.

Immortal continents, usually.

More importantly, you do want those markets. Pop is power in cities with good multipliers. If you throw down +25% gold +3 for the hammer cost of a market in a heavily cottaged capitol and grow it up those 3 pop, the next benefit to an econ is huge. It's not like you want or need markets everywhere.

You do, however, want courthouses everywhere. Besides forges, they're the closest normal building that comes close to the same "weight" as AP religion buildings, giving you a universally good bonus at a good time and for the whole game.

We're talking about size 12+ cities if you're talking about 3 happiness resources. That's getting to the point where you should try to get wider, not taller, except perhaps a bureaucracy capital (which wants CoL first anyway).

CoL just doesn't match it on average. There's a reason so many players advocate currency.

Besides, you can't broker CoL (which non-religion founders tend to get late) until AFTER you pick up currency, and below deity an even marginal effort to reach currency soonish will get you there such that you can trade it.

Currency is cheaper when you let AIs research it. CoL has better beeline value. Former newbies like currency to stop economic crashes, but when you find better timing it's just not as appealing.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah, because deity players who take careful turns planned and suffer over details on 10 turn PPP are definitely newbies who would totally benefit more from grabbing CoL sooner.....

 

[Rubio]

I'm not as good a player as either of you, but I don't understand how one would justify courthouses in EVERY last city... I usually only build them at the point they return me 5gpt or more.. or if I'm really going to go heavy EE....

 

[Akbarthegreat]

I'm not as good a player as either of you, but I don't understand how one would justify courthouses in EVERY last city... I usually only build them at the point they return me 5gpt or more.. or if I'm really going to go heavy EE....

If you have the organized trait, it's much better. Darius is actually the best,cuz of financial also.
That may explain why Darius, with Zara is always a winner in most games.

 

[elohssa]

If you have the organized trait, it's much better. Darius is actually the best,cuz of financial also.
That may explain why Darius, with Zara is always a winner in most games.

Darius -> Unrestricted leaders -> Holy Rome -> Rathaus spam with corps. I used to do that but it just makes for a very easy and boring modern era win. Nonetheless it's fun to try it once.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Currency definitely > CoL. Both is better.

 

[Tristan_C]

I'm not as good a player as either of you, but I don't understand how one would justify courthouses in EVERY last city... I usually only build them at the point they return me 5gpt or more.. or if I'm really going to go heavy EE....

And I don't even see any use for them at all before corporations. Pick up that money 1000 years earlier on a temp Wealth rather than wait for a damn building, and use the rest of the time to bang out more strategic things.

I play emp/imm marathon— I'm far, far away from being a deity player— perhaps my speed makes it so that courthouses look like nonsense.