The Great Library vs CS Slingshot

[Vynd]

Obviously it's best to get both. Others have pointed out that this is entirely possible. To that I would add that the Great Library makes a decent consolation prize if your attempt at a CS Slingshot fails.

If someone gets the Oracle done before you, or if you have to interrupt building it for some reason and conclude it is a lost cause, then it's easy to redirect your research to Literature. The pre-reqs are the same as those for Civil Service, except Alphabet instead of Code of Laws. So you were 90% beelining towards it already.

Once you get Literature, the Great Library will almost certainly be yours. I can't remember ever seeing the AI get Literature until they are already far along the tech tree. Just make sure to get a Library built in the appropriate city while you're researching the tech and you should be golden.

Is this as good as the CS Slingshot? Heck no! It takes longer and the rewards are smaller. But only relative to the awesome power of cheap, early Bureaucracy. Compared to anything else, especially anything else down the "Writing" side of the research tree, the GL rocks.

[fed1943]

Just to make it clear:first,I got the Oracle CS slingshot and Pyramids;Bureaucracy and Representation;then the GL.No stone or marble,but industrious.
Best regards,

[uberfish]

I find building GL is close to a necessity after doing a prophet assisted slingshot, the great scientist points it generates are invaluable.

[Yosho]

(shrug) I'd rather get the GL then get an early civil service slingshot. I'll get beurocrcacy eventually, of course, but I'd rather have the great library producing science and science points all the way though to scientific method then have civil service 30-40 turns earlier with a slingshot and not get the GL at all.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Yosho
(shrug) I'd rather get the GL then get an early civil service slingshot. I'll get beurocrcacy eventually, of course, but I'd rather have the great library producing science and science points all the way though to scientific method then have civil service 30-40 turns earlier with a slingshot and not get the GL at all.

I think Yosho's point is pretty important. If researching CS (for bureaucracy) will lose you the GL then over the lifetime of the GL you will get more beakers by researching literature and delaying bureaucracy. However, delaying bureaucracy costs you beakers and hammers in the short term. It's your call whether this is important in your game

If you have time enough to research CS followed by literature without losing the GL, the early switch to bureaucracy will give you more beakers.

This assumes that you need to research both literature and CS. If you have CS already, switching to bureaucracy will help you research literature. If you have literature, building the GL will help you research CS.

If you already have both CS and literature, switching to bureaucracy while you build the GL will give you the benefit of the extra hammers even if you lose a turn during the revolution - assuming you're building the GL in your capital.

All of this assumes you actually want to build the GL and want to adopt bureaucracy. There may be perfectly good reasons why you don't want to do these things.

And it is still quite difficult to envisage a real game situation where you are faced with a strategic choice between the GL and bureaucracy. Perhaps the question should be to compare the combination of researching alphabet followed by literature with researching CS.

RJM at Sleeper's

[couerdelion]

So does anyone know when Urbanranger is going to come back to his thread and clarify the question?.

I have to disagree with the contrast in which, where there is a straight choice between the two, an early CS will lead to a short term gain while the GL benefits are for a long time. If we are talking about a CS slingshot then the CS tech is not short term until the slingshot is completed. If you take a roundabout way via Alphabet, Literature and GL, the CS tech is still quite some distance.

If we are talking about a difficulty level where taking both is likely to be risky then I guess we can forget Pyramids from the equation.

So the basic GL gives 6 beakers and 8 GP. Bureaucracy gives +50% commerce and hammers in the capital so will be a much stronger driving force for the period in which a GL civ needs to acquire the CS tech. In that time, I could well imagine that the CS civ would have acquired at least 2-3 more techs anyway and that sort of tech difference would take a long time for a mere 6 beakers to recover.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by couerdelion

I have to disagree with the contrast in which, where there is a straight choice between the two, an early CS will lead to a short term gain while the GL benefits are for a long time. If we are talking about a CS slingshot then the CS tech is not short term until the slingshot is completed. If you take a roundabout way via Alphabet, Literature and GL, the CS tech is still quite some distance.

I'm not quite sure what you are disagreeing with. The question as posed by Urban Ranger tries to compare bureaucracy with the GL. But one comes from a revolution after research and the other comes from a build. To make them directly comparable, it seems appropriate to assume that both the enabling technologies need to be researched and the question is about which to research first. If this is the case, the more interesting choice is the one raised by Yosho where researching CS will mean someone else builds the GL.

You raised an interesting point that the GL gives you GP points whereas bureaucracy gives you hammers. On the other hand, the original question was about their respective impact on research.

RJM at Sleeper's

[ben_sphynx]

I can very much see that this is a choice that one might have to make, if playing multiplayer.

Getting the oracle or great libary are both strongly contested wonders, due to their power; it seems unlikly that one could sucessfully build both.

Personally, I would much prefer the great libary - it keeps on giving for longer, as one can even the burocracy gap simply by more research.
The G. libary, though, produces significant amounts of gp points for scientists, which can be realy useful.