Lizzy's rise to greatness

[Calanthian]

Mz, I have looked around in more detail:

Comments:

* we really have too little workers (5) for 5 cities. My normal level is about 1,5 workers per city.
As a result our land is less developed as could be.
And soon we will have 7 cities, while we are not building any workers right now.

At this moment the following tiles are not developed, while the cities could work it:
Istanbul: deer +
Aurora: floodplain cottage +
Edirne: cow
Furthermore we have a wheat and a deer which are not yet hooked up to our roads (we have a little more time for that).

We had this discussion about workers before, but I really think we are hurting now for having too little of them!


* we have a lot of scientists, while I would emphasize growth first (hammams, workers).
(In my opinion you choose scientists, partly because land is not developed enough)


* if we have excess food put it into more workers


* furthermore we've spend quite some energy in researching hammams, while we are not building any.
Apolyton and Aurora could have 2 more POP than they have now (and then we can build those settlers faster).



* CURRENCY should be the next tech (actually I think we need it before monarchy, considering our research level)

[mzprox]

I kinda agree we could use more workers.. maybe we should build one in the cap. (but any extra unit costs 1g/turn aswell)

The reason we are not building hammams and partly for the scientists we have is that we can't grow our cities because they are at happyness cap. (and we couldn't avoid growth)
However in 4 turns we revolt into slavery/monarchy and in that moment our four bigger cities will slave a granary and next a hammam. we will ahve much better control on happyness, so we just need to endure a little bit. The reason we are not in slavery yet is that we can get both slavery and monarchy in one turn of revolution, otherwise it would be 1-1. I'm not sure the wait worth it, but I think so.

The other reason I run scientists is to get a second one for an academy in the capital and get a third not much later to bulb philosophy.

I agree about the need to improve those resources, hooking up health resources though are not a big priority (after hammams are coming anyway and most of our cities next to fresh water)

[Dinner]

I like MZ's approach as long as we switch to currency after monarchy. Cal is right though that we need more workers and should be aiming for 1.5 workers per city. I suggest the following path Monarchy (should take 4 turns), currency, and then CoL (bulbing philo when one of the great scientist). That gets us a religion more money and the ability to get our support costs under control by building courthouses.

[mzprox]

I've adjusted production a bit so we will have a 6th worker ready next turn in the capital. This should be enough for now, we will start slaving soon anyway.
I see we have open border with he Inca, did they offer it or it was you, Cal?

[Calanthian]

It was me who offered

Good they accepted.. this will bring in extra cash in a couple of turns

[mzprox]

It was me who offered

Good they accepted.. this will bring in extra cash in a couple of turns

but only if we have sailing so we have to get it before currency

[Dinner]

Hmm, how long would it take to get sailing and how much of a boost would it really give us?

[mzprox]

Sailing is 3 turns research, optimally would give us 5 commerce/turn (we can't really know that we will find an incan port city and that all their citis are connected.. or they won't get exterminated very oon by the natives)
Currency 12 turns of research, it would give us 1commerce/city (6), ability to use hammers to produce money, and we could start building marketplaces.

Also:to bulb philo we need alphabet, alphabet gives 20% discount on currency so we might do better if we get alphabet first.
I made some calculations:
alpha costs 540
currency:720
alpha would save us 122 research on currency
if we first go for alpha we would get currency 6-7 tuns later.
to make it comparable:currency would give us about 10 research/turn, but alphabet provides us 17-20 extra research/turn during that 6-7 turns while we are researching currency.
conclusion: I think we should go for (monachy)->Sailing->alphabet->currency->code of laws--bulb->philo

at current research rate it would take 32 turns to get there, but we will be slowed down by new cities/slaving a bit. (later we can grow our cities bigger ofc, so 32 turn is a good estimate) (also note that at current rate it would be 25 turns of research to get philo (not counting the prerequisites) the only way we could lose the race to get this tech first if an other civ would decide to bulb it without getting currency first.

[Ben Kenobi]

Why do we keep pushing off religion? If MZ prox and Cala don't want a religion, you might as well come out now and say so. Let's stick to the path, going for Monarchy -> Alphabet -> Currency -> COL -> Philo.

[mzprox]

We want religion, but first of all we want a well working economy. This game is very different from those we are normally playing. The maintenance cost is about +50-100% higher and that's a lot. I can imagine that some civs will go straigth bankrupt. (Inca for example: they have the same number of cities, but not financial and have twice as many soldiers due to the war.)

[Ben Kenobi]

I hear you, but I don't think that sailing gives us enough to make up for delaying Philo for 3 turns. We can always pick up Sailing later.

[Dinner]

MZ makes a good case. It is very possible we will lose the religion race but we could adapt to that. It would hurt us economically to not get a religion but we could still eventually get someone else's religion so we'd still get the additional happiness. If we don't get a religion though we will have to REX that much more to make up for the lost income and we can't really do until we get CoL and build courthouses.

I'm not much for second guessing so we should lock in MZ's proposal and not change it. Either we get the religion or we don't but we should maximize our minimum gain for the long term.

[Hercules]

I agree to go with Mzprox proposals.

[mzprox]

Some pictures. We founded the copper city. in 3 turns we will have the copper connected, I thought maybe we should build some warrior as cheap police force while we can (after we have copper we can't build warriors.-what do you think? they are not strong defenders but the cheapest +1 happyness under monarchy.

In the SW the barb did not attack our chariot, and I did not attack it either, it was on a hill, I did not want to risk and probably it will attack this time anyway.

[Dinner]

I'm still very worried about not getting a religion will hurt us and I don't think we'll get Taoism with this tech order but that ship has sailed. We could rearrange everything to get Philo in the shortest possible time but we'd probably still lose that race so sadly we should consider that ship as having sailed. If by some miracle Taoism or Islam are still out there when we have a great person then great but I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that we're not going to have our own religion.