Great Engineer

[UnOrthOdOx]

It's time to make a choice on the Great Engineer.

We have the following possibilities:

1. Build the Heroic Epic in FS.

Advantage: FS is our production house. With the HE, it's capable of 11 axe/spear every 12 turns at current production levels. However, it will take us 13 turns to manually build the HE there (Possibly as little as 9 turns, see below). Taking our primary troop production facility offline for 13 turns in the middle of a war will be difficult at best.

Disadvantage: It's a national wonder, one that CAN wait.

2. Attempt to build the Hanging Gardens in AB.

Advantage: Wonder of the World. +1 pop everywhere can be translated to an immediate rush of units and/or improvements. +1 health helps over the long run.

Disadvantage: We're 7 turns from getting Math, and a minimum of 9 turns from being capable of rushing the Hanging Gardens. With AC hording wonders like they are, would we be capable of getting it?

3. Discover Machinery.

Advantage: In 5 turns, AB grows. In 8 we could have iron hooked up and begin production of crossbows. A large part of our success to date has been the fact that the Horde/Sarantium expected us to counter their assault largely with axes/spears, and were unprepared for cavalry units in numbers. Crossbows could have a similar surpise impact in the future.

Disadvantage: Inability to rush either wonder.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Personally...

I'm torn between Machinery and the Heroic Epic.

Machinery offers us more flexibility with our troops. However, it's a minimum of 8 turns down the road to being able to help us. But, crossbows in numbers would have a similar impact as the horse archers have had. That said, at 60 hammers each, getting those numbers will be difficult without popping...which we need to start becoming more carefull of for support reasons. Our cities are needing some vertical growth.

The Heroic Epic allows us to become more aggressive with our units, risking and sacrificing more units. It would also allow us to ease off production in FS and Lima a bit to get them both infrastructure.

There is some limited opportunity to chop assist the HE build if we do it manually, but pop rushing should be limited to keeping the city at size 5 or better. I'm guessing best case at being 9 turns to build. And it's hard to justify rushing a 9 turn build you are in no danger of losing.

[OzzyKP]

My preference is for the hanging gardens. We have a pretty good handle on the war at the moment. I would have been persuaded to go for Machinery a few turns ago when the invasion began and things looked a bit dicey, but now I think we need to be thinking long term. HG isn't my favorite wonder, but it does give us an immediate pop bonus that can be turned into units, plus another source of GE points that we can leverage with our Philo trait to get more wonders long term. And of course the health bonus, but that rarely seems to be significant.

If we get beat... well that sucks, but I still wouldn't want to use it on Heroic Epic, it seems like a huge waste. For all the reasons you outlined, I am strongly against wasting it on a national wonder.

Machinery... eh.. a better option than the HE, but personally if we can't build the hanging gardens my vote goes to keeping the GE around for another wonder (start planning our tech path to beeline something good) or just settle him in a city for the production bonus.

[UnOrthOdOx]

My problem with the Hanging gardens lies mostly with the difficulty level.

Currently, with a granary, we can already support 12 healthy. With an aqueduct, we'ld support 14. We're really not in need of the healthy except in the LONG LONG scheme of things.

So, the extra pop. Currently, the only cities that would benefit from the pop boost would be FS, AB, and Jump City (which really needs a renaming).

Further, going for the Hanging gardens requires us to keep AB big, not rushing workers or settlers, but rather attempting to triple, or even perhaps quadruple pop a aqueduct there. Yes, we would immediately regain 1-2 of those pop from the gardens and perhaps another from food storage, but it delays a worker/settler out of there by at least a few turns.

Lima and Foxtrot are at happy caps as is, and are being managed to grow as soon as they can from happiness anyway.

Machinery not only gives us crossbows, but is an EXPENSIVE tech, 27 turns for our current research. It also is on the line to caravels for us to seek out other contacts.

Keeping the GE around. We're unlikely to be in a position to get another world wonder. Our tech is going to lag well behind AC, who seems gunning for all the wonders. Instant-building the global theater in AB does present a certain charm, however.