Tech Discussion

[regoarrarr]

Ah true - and if we trade for Monarchy we won't be able to re-trade it. We could see if PAL was interested in the same HBR or Drama / Music / Lit trade.

Or we could just continue researching Monarchy.

I'm not a great strategist - I am just bringing it up as an option to talk about

[Swiss Pauli]

I think we need to research Monarchy ourselves as trying to change the deal with PAL could lead to them nixing the deal, and trading Alpha for Monarchy with Imperio.

One thing I was wondering about was whether it's worth our while bulbing Philosophy instead of building an Academy?

We could use Philo to get in a 'big ticket' tech from PAL, maybe even asking him to throw in HBR to balance the beakers. If we trade in HBR it may look like a trade balancing tech and therefore seem less threatening to Templars than learning it ourselves.

[sunrise089]

I think that's a good idea Swiss, plus we'd get our own religion. Of course we'd want to keep running scientists as well, as I imagine we want an academy ASAP.

[regoarrarr]

Philosophy is an 800 base beaker tech, or 1144 of our beakers (adjusted for game speed and size).

If we assume that we are running 2 scientists for now until we generate our 2nd great scientist (which is not necessarily a great assumption), then it will take 200 / 6 or 34 turns from the time we get our first scientist to generate the 2nd scientist.

During that time we would miss out on 11 bpt from the capital. That's 22 base commerce and the difference between multiplying by 1.25 and 1.75. Actually it will be slightly less than that since we won't be in full cottage mode all the time and we can't sustain 100% research at all times either.

But it will also be more than that because our cottages will mature and we will grow (working additional sources of commerce).

So let's just say 11 bpt just since this is a rough estimate.

So we would lose 374 beakers by not building an academy right away. So it does seem like it might be worth it.

Things I am not considering in this analysis:

The effects of (potentially) founding Taoism, including the free missionary.
The "time value of beakers"
The culture of the Academy
Whether or not we can afford to run 2 scientists for 34 more turns.
If we get the Great Library

[mostly-harmless]

What do we want with yet another religion? We have access to Islam and are planning to capture Jerusalem.

I also doubt Templars will notice the difference between us trading for HBR or researching it.
Also PAL won't be too eager to research HBR as far as we can tell, as they lack horses (or so it seems from the trading screen).

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

More religions = more happiness (and will be great for culture multipliers if we go that way).

And PAL have Jumbos so HBR is a must have for them, though they may need a bit of arm-twisting to research it so early.

[sooooo]

OK everyone, we've committed to a great library grab. That means that our immediate techs will be aesthetics and literature. That still leaves the happiness problem in our cities: How are we going to get monarchy. We really need it, really quickly.

[regoarrarr]

We could probably plan on trading Aesthetics for it once the GL is in the bag. Isn't there a team (or two) that already has Monarchy?

[Swiss Pauli]

Sadly, only Imperio has researched Monarchy, and I'm not convinced any other teams will have done so. If Imperio doesn't go for Great Library then we can trade it to them. Worst case is that they start Aesthetics before we complete it...

[regoarrarr]

Perhaps I am getting my team's confused, but didn't Imperio tell us they were going for Maths next?

[Zeviz]

Originally posted by regoarrarr
Perhaps I am getting my team's confused, but didn't Imperio tell us they were going for Maths next?

They did. However, it's still possible for them to finish Math and start Aestetics before we are ready to sell it.

[regoarrarr]

Well, we're not going to start MOnarchy for ~15 turns, right? And then say another 8 turns to research it.

So. I see these as our options

a) We trade for Monarchy sometime between now and then
b) We suck it up and find other happiness sources (temple in A1?)
c) We abandon our GL attempt

Right? Is that accurate?

[Sullla]

Pretty much. We hope to be able to trade something (Aesthetics?) to Imperio for Monarchy down the road. Researching it ourselves would be a waste of resources. One thing we can do during this period of happiness crunch is build settlers and workers (then have an extended period of growth post-Monarchy). We're kind of doing that already...

Another possibility is trading for Monarchy with Rabbits or Banana, should we find them in the next 10-15 turns. Since they're behind in tech, we could offer them a sweetheart deal to research Monarchy for us. Of course, we have to find them first!

[regoarrarr]

Do we know if anyone else but Imperio has Math? Where is the RBS discovery - will we meet the other continent in the next few turns?

[mostly-harmless]

We will reach distant shores in ~3 turns. Whether we actually meet anyone, no one knows.
Math should be only available to Imperio.

mh