Science Ministry's recommendations leaked! Scandal! Government rocked!

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

As there's no time to post a poll, I felt that in the interests of open government and democracy, that I would post the Science Ministry's private and extremely secret recommendations to the President here.

I'm expecting the secret police to be at my door at any moment... quick, read this and discuss, before the inevitable government crackdown!

**********************

El Presidente,

Your Science Minister and his cabal of mad scientists present this, their recommendation to the new government:

Our goal is global conquest, not city growth or the conquest of space. We cannot build wonders or caravans. So only some of the techs are useful. Techs useful in themselves are:

Advanced Flight
Combined Arms
Communism
Espionage
Flight
Labour Union
Machine Tools
Mobile Warfare
Robotics
Rocketry
Stealth

The remaining techs allow us to build improvements (Superhighways, Supermarket), Wonders (Cure for Cancer), spacecraft parts, or other non-relevant items (Freight, any ships).

Out of all these techs, only Communism stands out as a non-military tech. It would allow us to have a government option other than Fundy. It would allow us a better science rate than Fundy. It allows vet spies. It allows some free unit support (3) but no cheap Fundamentalist units. Mike's Chapel would keep most of our cities happy, and martial law would do the rest.

Out of the military techs, Combined Arms, Advanced Flight, Labour Union, Rocketry, Robotics and Stealth are too far out of reach to worry about now.

So our real choices are:

Communism (1 tech away)
Espionage (2 techs away)
Flight (4 techs away)
Machine Tools (3 techs away)
Mobile Warfare (7 techs away )

Luckily, all of these have Industrialization as a prerequisite... which we are now researching.

Communism is a direct prerequisite to Espionage.

Flight requires Corporation (useless tech) Refining (pretty useless) and Combustion (useless tech).

Machine Tools requires Electricity and Steel, both useless unless we want to build a battle fleet out of Vetkovia

Mobile Warfare requires Corporation, Refining, and Combustion (like Flight) as well as Electricity, Steel and Automobile (much like Machine Tools). It will also take, obviously, a long time to research, and we could easily be forced to deviate from the tech path (techs not being offered to research) or distracted by other options (Machine Tools and/or Flight). MW therefore to me, seems a poor goal, as some other equally useful techs are available sooner.

Therefore, I recommend Communism be our next choice, followed by Espionage. Communism gives us options, and Espionage will be useful soonest (since we have Diplos which will auto-upgrade).

If we really want to get Machine Tools (or Flight, which I would consider useful only for scouting hidden AI cities - and we'd have to build Fighters from scratch), it would probably be faster to get Communism and then switch governments, which would speed our science rate, than to try and research the 3 (or 4) extra techs in Fundy.

If Communism is unavailable for research, either Steel or Electricity would be recommended, on the path to Machine Tools (our SMC has indicated a desire for big machines that go 'boom').

As to whether we do research:

Currently, our science rate is 0%, meaning we will learn Industrialization approximately never.

Well, the Science Ministry recommends a science rate of 40% science (40% luxuries, 20% tax). Yes, that cuts our income per turn from about 1500 to about 900. But what do we do with the income? We bribe cities. Spies bribe cities cheaper than Diplomats do (at 5/6 the cost). Vet spies do it even cheaper (2/3 the cost). Thus, the lessened income is almost completely offset by the savings in bribery. I shouldn't even mention the other advantages Spies have, but I will: they get a free 'Investigate City' (helps when planning an attack), they can sabotage specific improvements (go after those walls!), can survive after attempting an action (we won't run out of them as fast), they look great in a cocktail dress ...

So boost the Science rate, already! And we may yet get Spies and Artillery.

-Six

[Ben Kenobi]

/me feels this is an excellent compromise between playing the turn and allowing for public input.



As for your recommendations, I agree wholeheartedly with spies since it looks like we will be sabatoging many city walls.

And I am not an El Presidente. WE are a Fundamentalist government, not some Heathen democracy. The people need someone to look after them, would you prefer that they dictate the terms?

For this grave insult to my personage, I leave you to the mercy of this thread and whatever suggestions come to the minds of our concerned citizens.

[duke o' york]

Damn!
I was hoping the recommendations would be rubbish and we'd see the guilty parties publically humiliated.
I'd saved loads of mature tomatoes especially.

I like your style o scientific fogey.
But I'm also tempted to take a useless tech that will kill the Great Library. I realise that most of the other civs will be sharing techs like nobody's business but the death of the GL would be an advantage.

[cavebear]

Since the Science Minister's recommendation to seek Communism and Spies mirrors my own suggestions of the past, I think I will speakup in support of it.

[atawa]

The War Ministry supports the drive for Expionage

[Ljube]

Yes, I support 40% lux, 40% sci, 20% tax.

I was an advocate of zero science while I was city planner, but at that time no democracy existed in the world. I would like to see more libraries and an occasional university to speed up our science even more.

Keep building tax/lux improvements, forget about colosseums (banks and stock exchanges are much more efficient now). Build roads in grass and plains squares. Work trade specials.

If we do this way, we should be able to improve our science to 6 maybe even 5 turns. Impressive for a fundy.

Even though I command the diplomats, the bribery of Pharsalos, my long lost quest, is just a distant dream now.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well, perhaps we won't get to bribe Pharsalos, we can certainly attempt to capture the city by force.



I'm looking forward to playing my turn tomorrow, so I want to see all my reports by then.

[Sparrowhawk]

/me the office of the City Planner agrees with these plans, but votes that the Science Minister be asked to resign his term effective November 30.

(actually the change in rates to 20/40/40 is one I have voted for in the past...if we can't bribe, we won't need the money)

Thanks for the thread STYOM, it made me laugh after a long day

[cavebear]

We should take Pharsalos *only* when the city becomes available to taking in the normal course of absorbing the Greek cities into our empire.

It made sense to get at Stuttgart because it was at the edge of the German civ (and turned out to be oddly isolated - a strange place to build a Wonder) and we could defend it once taken. The same is not true for Pharsalos.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by ljcvetko

If we do this way, we should be able to improve our science to 6 maybe even 5 turns. Impressive for a fundy.

Or science every 4-5 turns in Communism, without any additional improvements (science every 3 turns if we instituted a crash library/university building program, which I don't feel is absolutely necessary).

If we want to get Machine Tools before the war is over, we won't get there in Fundy. Even at 40% science, we're talking another 40-50 years to get to Machine Tools (9 turns/tech). Detour to Communism first, and we could probably get Espionage as well as Machine Tools in about half that time (6 techs in 25-30 years).

If we plan to stay in Fundy there really isn't much point in researching anything beyond Espionage... by the time we learned MT the game would be over.

/me quickly abandons the safe house from which this was posted, before the secret police arrive.

[Ljube]

On the second thought, hold that slider!!!

We need exceptional amount of money to bribe Hannover!!!! Around 9000!!!!!

So save the money, stop the research, until we can switch to communism for better science.

[MrWhereItsAt]

But surely stopping research stops us from getting Communism too?

We don't need to bribe everything, and that's a HELL of a lot of cash. Unless we can do it in a few turns, surely there's a way we can take them on with, oh, I don't know... perhaps the Imperium's glorious and heavily decorated military?

[Ben Kenobi]

Our discoveries under a celebrating Fundy is at a decent rate, so I don't really see the need for communism.

I just need sparrowhawk's report and then I can head to bed to play tomorrow.

[Ljube]

Yes, but I would like a poll on this.

Everybody voted for the bribery of Hannover. We must accept the will of the people and bribe it. But as soon as we get Hannover, an issue arises: Are we staying fundi or not, since we have the statue and can experiment.

I think we should boost our science switching to communism, produce vet spies and have relatively smaller army which can do the job more quickly.

And bloody most importantly: Settlers eat one food!!!

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Our discoveries under a celebrating Fundy is at a decent rate, so I don't really see the need for communism.

9 turns per tech isn't a decent rate, IMO.

Re Hannover:

Frankly, I wouldn't bribe anything that costs 9000 g... I mean, we could rushbuy 15 diplomats with half that money (@ 300 each), and be assured of taking out the walls that way, and then just walk in. It might take a few turns to prepare an attack that way, but it'll also take a few turns to collect 9K in gold.

For that matter, if we dip-bombed the city, we'd probably a) destroy a courthouse or b) throw the city into disorder or c) both. Any of these eventualities would cut the cost of bribing the city dramatically.

And as I noted before... with a vet spy, the cost of Hannover would drop by 1/3. So why not wait until Communism/Espionage, if we're going to be bribing people?

9000 g is 6 years tax surplus!

With all the existing military resources we have, and an excellent SMC, it makes no sense to spend 9000 g on one city.

Maybe we do need a poll on this.