Two variations of perfectionism

[Adam Smith]

Valmont:
Right you are. The opportunity cost of a marketplace and a bank is four caravans, or half a mid-game wonder. If I have eight cities, six are building caravans for wonders (Copernicus, Shakespeare, Newton) and the other two are building trade caravans to finance the whole operation. By the time Newton gets built, Democrary is right around the corner, and science goes to 100 percent.

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Old posters never die, they just f.a.d.e..a..w..a..y . . .

[Hodad]

i am a new type of perfectionist: the expansive-like-hell perfectionist.
untill i have at least 50-75 cities, i expand while building wonders. then i perfectionise ond only found new cities if they are strategically good

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Alien Infiltrate

[jpk]

Adam Smith, you mention that after you get Democracy you set science to 100%. Don't you lose out on happiness growth in your cites. I will assume the strategy is to get all the advances as fast as possible.

With a high caravan production and delivery taxes can safely be set to 0%.

It strikes me that there are two cases: either you can get more than one advance per turn or you can't. In the first case you probably want your science to be sufficiently high that you get two advances. In the second case why not lower the science rate some, raise the luxury rate so that cities can have "We Love The President Days", and count on the delivery of caravans to research the next advance so that on your next turn the first city discovers the advance?

If every city has a settler or engineer improving the land, then, over time, every city can use "We Love The President Days" to grow and thereby increase the value of the caravans or freight units. When you finally switch to a space ship building mode or conquer the world mode the larger value of the freight units means you can use fewer units and still complete the research of the current science. This allows more cities to divert production from freight to space ship pieces or military units, depending upon what you want to do.

Your comments will be be appreciated.

[Adam Smith]

JPC:
I should have been a bit more specific. After I get democracy, the first thing I do is celebrate to whatever city size I want, then switch to 100% science. Later celebration costs too much in terms of foregone science, but I keep my science city growing with food caravans. That way a population point only costs 50 shields.

In order to make the game go faster I usually limit myself to eight or ten cities and rehome caravans to the science city. If you did not limit the number of cities or rehome caravans, then the strategy you suggest would be better.

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Old posters never die, they just f.a.d.e..a..w..a..y . . .


[This message has been edited by Adam Smith (edited December 02, 1999).]

[Havelock Vetinari]

Hodad: a player after my own heart an expanding perfectionist.
jpk: and of course, capitilization can be used to boost funds

Adam Smith: "Later celebrations cost to much in terms of science"
I found the reverse (admittedly I go for a large, sprawling empire)...I had a fair science output (4 turns with rate on zero), but because I was still expanding, quicker future techs weren't worth it...each future tech is worth less that a size 3 or 4 city

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May you live in Interesting Times...