2640 bc

[PJayTycy]

I'm with Impaler on city placement:



I really hope the bananas let us place our cities on B and C. We better find their settler moving south and not west.

As for techs, animal husbandry is not of immediate use, but it will reveal horses (although we know from the banana screenshot there are probably none where we'll build our second city).

The collossus is now clearly our primary goal (instead of great lighthouse), so fishing and sailing are not so important anymore. Well, fishing is, if we want to actually benefit from the collossus (we can't work water tiles without fishing). Going to machinery without iron working is kind of pointless, because we need iron for the cho-ko-nu's. I think it's good to know where the iron is anyway before we setlle our 4th or 5th village.

If everything goes as planned, we should now have:
-> 6 turns finishing the settler
-> 9 turns building a forge (and growing to pop 5 in the mean time)
-> 14 turns building the collossus
after that, a new settler will become usefull.

We will need units, our second city will have to build them, so building barracks first (instead of an obelisk) might be usefull there. I estimate it will take about 10 turns if we can mine the copper immediately after founding the city. In 19 turns from now (9:settling+ 10:barracks), this second city can start cranking out military units.

If animal husbandry shows us horses, archery and horseback riding are interesting tech choices. If not, I'd go for fishing (so we can actually use our improved water tiles), iron working and archery.


As a last remark, we need to get our scout back to base to protect our settler from the animals. Currently the bear is at strenght 1.2, next turn this might be 1.5 (maximum). If he attacks us, we should still win the fight, even if we are not on a hill or in the forest. If the bear has not gained a lot of health miraculously, I'd move our scout north of the mountains.

[binTravkin]

As for techs, animal husbandry is not of immediate use

It is - pasture for the second city. Will be usable 4 turns after completion.

Actually here we might have mistaked, it could've been good to take meditation first to get Buddhism for us (doubt we're gonna get it anymore).


Our available techs (except for polyteism and monoteism) and their costs:

Fishing - 3
Masonry - 4
Archery - 4
Meditation - 5
Priesthood - 5
Writing - 8
Sailing - 8
Iron Working - 13
Machinery - 47

Usability disclaimer (comments welcome):
Fishing and Sailing - to use these techs we need to actually build a lighthouse (will net 2food/4gold per sea square) which is 60h, which means that we're not going to use them in the closest 25 turns (settler completion + forge + colossus) or so, as we're also not going to have another coastal city that soon (if we aim for marble).
Summary:
usable in no sooner than 25 turns
research starting no sooner than 15turns from now.

Masonry - to use this tech, we must hook up the marble site, which, provided we shoot for colossus is at least 30 turns away (colossus + settler build time), the second city aint gonna get settler that soon aswell, as it's 9 turns from settling + 10 turns for barracks + a few military units (2 axes recommended which would be 6-7 turns) + potential settler build time.
Summary:
usable in no sooner than 30 turns
research starting no sooner than 25turns from now.

Archery - we should only be using this tech as a prereq to chukonus, relying on 2-3 axes for home defense.
There's another use for this tech - if we discover horses after animal husbandry, we could try building up a horse archer force, but I would rather rely on our UU unless there's no iron nearby.
Summary:
usable in no sooner than 47turns
research starting - ? (recommended - right before or right after machinery)

Iron Working - this is a very important tech to us, as of revealing a required resource for chukonus, it should be done at the time we have our next settler built, so we can decide where to put it effectively (if iron is out of our current territory and too far to be secure from others, we should shoot our settler at it and secure it).
Summary:
usable in no sooner than 30 turns
research starting - anytime from now to 15-20 turns from now

Meditation and Priesthood - - if we manage to get meditation before anyone else (which is higly unlikely atm), we can get a religion, other than that this beeline is only useful for oracle, which in turn depends on:
- our decision if we really want to pursue it (it might happen that someone else is already closer to the goal, even bananas themselves, in which case it would be lost effort which we could've put into either lighthouse or military or whatnot)
- the location of iron - if we happen to discover that iron is not in our range, nor close enough to our borders to not worry about contest on it, we will need to put our 3rd city on it, effectively delaying marble hookup plans to 4th city, in which case oracle will be impossible to get.
Summary:
usable in no sooner than 30+ turns
research starting - after iron working

Writing - the upside of this tech is that with library we could boost all other techs to sooner completion.
Seeing how our capital is very likely to make up >90% of our research funds until we get the 3rd city, having built a library in capital we could get 15-20% off the research time.
However, unless we build library before or after forge, thus disturbing our colossus run a bit, it won't be any use until 30 turns from now.
Summary:
usable either in 6 turns(settler done)/15turns(forge done)/25turns(colossus done)
research starting now(can't do that!)/in 7 turns/in 19 turns

Machinery - it's a crucial tech for us, however before starting on it, we need to get to know where iron is and secure a few cheaper techs for our well being
Summary
usable in no sooner than 30 turns
research starting - after iron working, fishing+sailing, writing (for faster research) and probably a few other techs.

So, most reasonable tech choices as of now:
Iron working
Writing (but only if we plan a library, in which case it should be built asap, probably before colossus)
and an adventurous approach:
switch to meditation next turn to try and get a religion


My vote would go with Iron Working if we decide not to interrupt colossus rush, and with Writing if we decide more research is needed sooner.

EDIT: actually I would advocate that we go for library after forge and only then colossus, which is writing and then iron working techwise.
Reasons:
- it would have taken 30 turns to get to metal casting if we researched, and we aint the worst researchers.
- we are industrious + have copper + can have forge faster than most others = even if someone already has metal casting, it's highly unlikely they are gonna get colossus first.
- even if some other civ has a good shot at completing colossus it's not said that they can have so much gain from it as we do, thus they would most likely prioritise something else.


EDIT2:
I noticed we haven't instituted slavery yet.
We should do it while the settler is travelling to city site, for minimum disturbal in production. After that we could have library 2-3 turns faster by whipping and colossus 1-2 faster for a little tradeoff of 1 turn of anarchy and practically no turns of lost production due to lost population because we're gonna have max happy pop - 5 in 4 turns after settler done, after that it will be some 8 turns for next, unhappy citizen (unless we try to shoot for religion and succeed, which will anyway give us 1 surplus turn of anarchy).

[Lacero]

that looks well thought out, yes I can see what you mean about fishing (I said sailing but I meant fishing) being useless until our colossus is done. I'd be tempted to get iron working first as it allows us to see what we need to do to secure iron, it may be we need to do something drastic and the time spent on writing could be better used getting iron.

[binTravkin]

I'd be tempted to get iron working first as it allows us to see what we need to do to secure iron, it may be we need to do something drastic and the time spent on writing could be better used getting iron.

Well, there's little drastic we could be doing, at least on the moment when we get iron working and find out where iron is:
- our first settler will be settled and next coming not so soon unless we postpone the forge
- our military practically nonexistant, at least not as good as to scare anyone away from iron
- little chance for diplomatical agreement on borders, if it happens to be next to Bananas, as we don't have anything to trade to them and wont be having so soon and they have too little land to afford trading it anyway, also they would definitely see it as a suspicious, militarily oriented move.

But I can see your point and would agree that our next tech be iron working jsut to be sure where it is.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I was thinking we would go for 2 settlers in rapid succession and Settler A and B with perhaps a warrior between to act as an escort. Then we would Whip the Forge and use some overflow for a Library. Follow that with perhaps another Unit then onto the Collosus which we can Chop for.

Second City should go for an Archer for quick defence, then Barracks then Ax for an offensive unit and continuing Ax production for most of the forseeable future, pausing only to whip a forge.

Thus I would put Archery after Masonry and just prior to IronWorking in out overall plan. That would make it ready just as the Copper City is placed, neadless to say we can skip Oblisk in that city.

[PJayTycy]

Impaler, a second settler between the forge and the collossus might be a good thing, but I'm not sure if we need a library before the collossus.

Building an archer defense in the second city is a good idea too, but we can't research masonry and archery before we'll place the Copper City.

So, some choices to be made:
=> Our first city:
In what order do we want a forge (9) / the collossus (14) / a third settler (9) / a library (13) in our first city ?
We need to research writing (8 turns) before we can start the library. We'd better have iron working (13 turns) before our third settler is built.

=> Our second city:
Do we want a quick archer defense before starting a barracks ? We would need to research archery (4 turns) before the city is settled, which means we have to start it immediately after animal husbandry. Building the archer would take us 6 turns (a barracks is 10 turns).


My opinion:

=> first city : current settler (6) -> forge (9) -> new settler (9) -> collossus (14) -> library (13) -> ...
=> second city : not yet settled (9) -> archer (6) -> barracks (10) -> ...
=> research : animal husbandry (5) -> archery (4) -> iron working (13) -> fishing (3) -> writing (8) -> ...

In that order we have the archery the moment we settle our second village and can build an archer. We have iron working before our third settler is completed. We have writing before we need to start the library.

[Maniac]

What's so good about archers when we have axemen?

[PJayTycy]

We need copper to build axemen. So we can't train one in the first 5 turns after our second city is built anyway, which is the time it takes to build an archer. I don't think we'll be building much archers besides this one unit anyway.

If we are ok with leaving our second city undefended for 13 turns, we can start a barracks there immediately instead, but that might be too tempting for the bananas.

[Maniac]

How about just building a warrior?

[Impaler[WrG]]

Thats better then nothing. Also main use of Archers is to stay behind as the defender when the Axes go off to you know...

[binTravkin]

I think we shouldn't clump our research right now with archery and should build a warrior in the 2nd city at first, it will take some 5 turns to build a mine (road should already be in place before settling takes place), which is also approximate time to build warrior, after that we will have 6+ hammers for that city and can output both barracks and an axe quickly.
Road link between both our cities would also secure us in the situation overhelming barbarians come in and give us time to build more warriors/axes.

I think we should go Iron Working now just for the sole reason of seeing where iron is and our build order would then be:
- finish settler (5 turns from 2600BC)
- build forge (10 turns) (while building forge there should be 1 turn of anarchy, so we switch to slavery before settling 2nd city to not disrupt production of 2 cities)
- build another settler (will be some 5 turns with our increased output
- build library (8-7 turns, we might skip this one for now though)
- build colossus(10-9 turns)

In total those are production orders for 29 - 38 turns (the big diference lies in building library or not), which is 25-34 turns research time after AH finished, during which we would be able to research:
Iron working - 12-11 turns
Writing 8-7 turns
Masonry 4 turns (to hook up marble at last)
Fishing - 3 turns
Sailing - 8-7 turns

which would also be our initially needed techs before committing for a long run to Machinery.
At this point we would also be able to see if we need Archery->Horseback Riding and include them if needed.

[Impaler[WrG]]

The Building process will be considerably faster then that once Whipping is factored in, once the Mine/Pasture are up and running for the second city we can use the worker for chopping. Who knows the crazy Whipping math that lets us get a crazy number of Hammers for the Forge? I'd like to see some calculations, I bet we can shave 10 turns off that build list.

[binTravkin]

The Building process will be considerably faster then that once Whipping is factored in, once the Mine/Pasture are up and running for the second city we can use the worker for chopping. Who knows the crazy Whipping math that lets us get a crazy number of Hammers for the Forge? I'd like to see some calculations, I bet we can shave 10 turns off that build list.

Is there some exploit related to hammer modifiers and whipping/chopping?
I was unaware but would like to hear more

We should switch to slavery as soon as it can be used, if it indeed is as you say.

[PJayTycy]

bt: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=152415

[binTravkin]

Looking at this I have only one question, why don't we have slavery and are not using this already!?!