Tech Discussion

[sooooo]

Well, I'm still convinced that going for paper/education before astronomy would be a big mistake. We'll have to agree to disagree. I just hate games in which my opponents have a better navy than us. We can fight better ground troops by sheer weight of numbers, but being out-navied is so frustrating.

But we don't have to make that decision for a long while yet. Once we get nationalism we will run 0% science for quite a while. We need to pay Banana back the 120 gold loan, then wait and see what great person we get from Airstrip One (currently 88% odds for a scientist).

We should pick either theology or paper to research at 0% science.

[Zeviz]

Another argument against Astronomy is that Banana is likely to be destroyed by PAL in a few turns, leaving us with nobody to trade on another continent. So unless we plan to make a play for New World, Astronomy isn't going to be useful for anything by Galeons and Labs.

[Swiss Pauli]

Well, I was arguing that (a) it might be quicker to let Banana get Astro for us, and (b) even if it were longer we could afford the wait as Imperio weren't interested in boats. However, the galley in Chichen means that Imperio is likely developing a post-Astro navy (if not they'd have sailed this turn) and plans to upgrade to Galleon(s). (It could be a cunning bluff, but that doesn't seem like Imperio's style.) Thus we're forced to get Optics sooner than I'd hoped to stand a chance to defend our seafood.

Putting the beakers towards Paper seems the best option to me, as we're going to have to go down that path: Imperio is improving its research infrastructure, so we can't afford to ignore techs like Edu & PP for too long.

[sunrise089]

Swiss - I suspect Imperio is starting to build a small stack of boats to threaten our coastal cities. I'd look for them to get 2-3 more and then set sail. Their northern stack is larger than ours, so while they cannot attack Cape Town safely they definitely can divert 6-8 units to naval duty.

[Swiss Pauli]

If they were planning a harassing navy then caravels and triremes would be the way forward. Galley first is just plain weird. And having trained the galley they should have set sail into their ocean to feint at Red: we have no ocean-going ships so we couldn't have attacked the galley whilst it was in their culturally controlled ocean, so we'd have had to potentially scramble defenders into the area. They couldn't lose.

Remember that it's a looong way round from their east coast, so Chichen is their only short term shipyard as far as we're concerned.

[T-hawk]

This topic came up in the Banana thread but I think this is a better place for it. Here's some hard numbers regarding time to Astronomy research.

We can currently sustain about 35% science, making 105 beakers/turn. Astronomy has no prereq discount and costs 2860 beakers. So that's a 27 turn baseline right now. I'm going to assume no city growth, since any additional pop is probably just going to get whipped or drafted.

Next GP will be available on T158. This is after saving 8 turns worth of cash, which we can burn off in 4 turns of max research. So the timing of the GP doesn't matter; research to Astronomy is the limiting factor.

If the National Epic misfires us an Artist, we must research 858 beakers of Optics manually. 105 base beakers turns into 141 with prereq bonus and 3 civs of devaluation. This would take an extra 6 turns.

The Taj Golden Age, if we get it, and assume that all the commerce goes into beakers (since costs don't change) is worth 80 per turn. 80 x 8 = 640 beakers, saving 6 turns from the baseline.

The Taj refund, if we get it, is worth ~700 gold. We currently have a gold:beaker skew of 1:1.35 (mostly because of A1's Academy) so this is worth 945 beakers. Subtract 105 beakers for the turn of anarchy and that's 840 beakers, saving 8 turns from the baseline. We can burn off 700 cash in 6-7 turns so this gold does convert fully to beakers.

Mercantilism would add only 7 scientists (with Red Herring's library) for 28 beakers total. That would bring the baseline down to 21.5 turns.

Changing Bureaucracy for Nationhood would save 7/turn in upkeep (6 + 17% inflation) (10 beakers via skew) but cost 22 commerce (40 beakers) at A1. The exact turn impact depends on the other factors, but from the baseline, -30 beakers would add +11 turns to Astronomy. 2860 / (105 - 30) = 38.

In short:
Baseline 27 turns
Great Artist: +6 turns
Taj Golden Age: -6 turns
Taj refund: -8 turns
Mercantilism: -6.5 turns
Nationhood (no Bureaucracy): +11 turns

[ruff_hi]

Another spanner / wrench to throw into the works is 'funds from city capture'. That should give us more $ to play with but will cost us $ in maintenance.

[kjara]

Astronomy would also help us help banana if/when pal does declare if we can get peace with imperio if we go the mutual defense route.

Edit: How many turns does a bank in A1 save us(without bureacracy).

[mostly-harmless]

Argh. Basically these things cancel each other out and we are looking at ~25turns. We will get some more beakers from cottage maturity, but we will also lose more money from military upkeep.

mh

[sooooo]

If PAL land the Taj on T153, the same turn as the forests are chopped, do the hammers from the chops convert into gold or into overflow?

[T-hawk]

If PAL land the Taj on T153, the same turn as the forests are chopped, do the hammers from the chops convert into gold or into overflow?

In single player, gold. IIRC, the build order stays there for a turn beyond the rival completing the wonder, and is only force-changed at the next upkeep. Don't know if simultaneous MP behaves differently.

[sooooo]

I think we've still got to go ahead with Operation Bloodbath. We've been planning this for ages and Imperio we clearly need to stomp in the mid-term even if they go with our peace deal. Drafting was supposed to be our main advantage over the other teams and it still is. We've got nationhood and the globe now - let's go to town.

Next turn when we hire scientists from mercantilism it does matter what we research at 0%. I think we should put it on gunpowder and stomp on this continent. We'll have an eta next turn once we get a golden age and get out of bureucracy and into mercantilism. At the moment it's about 8 turns. That should become less from the golden age (the loss of bureaucracy is similiar to the gain from mercantilism).

IMO we spend T154 at 0% on gunpowder on the off-chance that we can wrangle the tech out of Imperio. Then starting on T155 we go and get the tech.

[Sullla]

If we wanted to be uber-b@stards, we could sign peace with Imperio, wait for them to send their forces into Templar territory, and then race a Mounted column straight for Mutal and Lakamha. That would ruin our reputation permanently, and I don't know if I would be comfortable with it, but I'll throw it out there as a possibility.

[Kodii]

What reputation?

PAL already recognizes us as a threat
Rabbits and Templars are essentially non-players

Our only "friend" is Banana and they just screwed us over. I'm sure if we explained our plan to them, we could hold them on our side, arguing that this will help us better defend them.

In other words, the entire game screwed us over. We should get a chance to screw everyone else over.

[regoarrarr]

In my mind, it all depends on whether or not Imperio gives us gunpowder next turn. If they don't, then in my mind we can sign whatever peace we want, and then do whatever we want, while still at least claiming the moral high ground