Why is ancient era stalling?

[Arrian]

Personally, I think the opportunity cost of ancient era warfare makes it pretty attractive for most civs. Your analysis doesn't take into account the potential bonuses:

Great Leaders
resource and luxury gains
technology gains, and gold gains due to reduced science rate (why research when you are gonna beat tech out of the AI anyway?)
gold gains
map gains
any new (productive) cities - this primarily applies if you can get a forbidden palace down
damage inflicted on AI

oh - another negative for ancient war: the reputation hit. I try to avoid this by wiping out my neighbors. Once civs learn that you attacked and destroyed other civs... they won't like you much.

-Arrian

[planetfall]

Agreed, never used to use ancient war, but now it seems dumb not to. The benefits are just too great to miss out on. My "opportunity cost" was just the lost production of moving from builder to build-war-build method. What I learned is if not builder thru the ancient era, then must adjust government and not switch to monarchy or republic too soon. You have more gross income but the expenses are so high you loose out on some wonders and momentum. Before I used to beeline to republic, now I will change my research path as it is not necessary to get republic early. More important is to build up enough military to wipe out at least one civ before communications are established. Doesn't sound like 1.29 will change this.

--PF

[Fitz]

Monarchy has no war weariness (like Despotism) and outstrips Despotism in most other areas. If you have both Monarchy and Republic, the choice should be between Monarchy and Republic, not Despotism and Republic.

[planetfall]

Originally posted by Fitz
Monarchy has no war weariness (like Despotism) and outstrips Despotism in most other areas. If you have both Monarchy and Republic, the choice should be between Monarchy and Republic, not Despotism and Republic.

Thanks for the clarification. Even though it costs 4 turns, looks like will have to go despot->monarch->republic. That is better than going despot to avoid WW and much better than communist.