What to research now?

[Gilgamensch]

IW,

and we will build a strong economy that can run catapults efficiently

So you agree that we need a strong economy to build/support catapults. We would have 14 turns to push our economy to be ready to 'rush' catapults, if we take it now. We don't have a strong need to build units, so we could invest our production into mines and really increase our production and therefore again the economy.

With this extra production achieved in those turns we can build catapults and trade-posts at the same time. If we follow your suggestion, we won't be able to do it, as we will be missing the extra-economy, provided by the mines..........

In the moment we mainly need production and not commerce. One we have catapults we can/need to switch. But first I think we need the mines/roads and not the trade-post. They won't give us any benefit in the moment. It takes already couple of turns for them to finish. OK, same for the mines, but they would be latest ready AFTER researching catapult.

[Immortal Wombat]

As I see it thus:

a) spend 14 turns without trading posts and get catapults

b) spend 19 turns before catapults, 14 of them with trading posts. Surely the choice is obvious?

5 turns is not a huge delay.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
I must remind you that we already have plenty of gold (more than 5,000) so we dont need Trade post. We can concentrate on Production with the mines.

Gold is abundant even without Trading Posts, we build them for the science boost firstly and rush-buying second. On the subject of mines, theyre overpriced, 300PW alone to build on flat land, 400 on hills and a whopping 500 on mountains, where only mines can be built right now. Even on mountains they only give +15 prod, 500PW for an extra 15 production? Whereas we can build 2 trading posts for 500PW for 20 commerce. Comes down to that choice and we dont have alot of mountains...

[Gilgamensch]

DoT,

Our proud wooden catapults have the same defensive value as a brown paper bag, and a movement rate to match. So, IIRC, we’ll have to park our catapults next to their stacks and defend them before we can use them. Can I maybe see what’s behind door number 2 ? Catapults are only useful as siege weapons.

If they are combined with hoplites, they easily match up with far stronger units.
A stack 6C 6H is even deadly against 'modern' troups. The catapult is a 'protection' device, when used in conjunction with a good defence unit. The defence unit takes the full blast and the catapult kills from the distance. It is a far better combination than any archer. IIRC archer have bombard of 1 and catapult 4.

So there isn't any comparision between archer or catapult. Archer any from off, doesn't matter if mounted ot foot.

So HB doesn't bring us any advantage for this.
The mobile units aren't worth anything as our defence units are not faster as a catapult, meaning 1 MP. So where is your mobile force?

Maq,

Yes, trade post will allow faster research, but in the moment I think we need more production.
Plus the extra production would mean, either faster unit-production or same length and constant PW income, which would allow us, to constantly increase tradeposts/roads/mines. So where do you win more? The 'cheap' shot or........?

[Maquiladora]

It seems strange using Hoplites and Catapults to attack if the enemy has any Pikemen at all (not unlikely), concentrate on using Catapults to bombard first, think about attacking stacks later. Mostly i use Catapults in siege then Knights/Samurai and Mounted Archers to mop up.

Re: Mines
In SAP Production is copious compared to Commerce on land tiles, and all collected resources increase largely naturally (not by tile imps) by increasing city size and # of cities, Production will increase at a much faster rate naturally than commerce ever will, so Trading Posts become more important than mines even in these Ancient times.

[Gilgamensch]

Maq,

you never used hoblites and catapults for attack?

As our best attack unit (warrior) has attack 1 and defense 1, it would be better to use a hoplite as he has defense of 2, so he can substaine far more damage. The catapult is there to actually kill/damage the oponent. A 6C 6H is a threat/killer even against pikemen(Samurai)/archer-combo.

And Yes, the main purpose is to use it as a siege-weapon, but as our offensive units are weak, you have to counter it with a better bombard (catapult).

General:

For the production:
Yes, it mainly depends on city size, but to make it easy, let's asume all fields are worked upon (correct me if I am wrong):

the town has the 8 surrounding fields.
If we have a city with mountain fields, we would produce 80 (not counting the city itself) resources. With mines we would produce 160. Assuming we only have mountains.
This would like double the production..........
Yes mines are expensive, but only increasing the commerce will slow our production, unless you want to rush every single item.

But again with the added resources we would have more PW for the trade-posts afterwards........

IW,

I just see the 14 turns as a chance for us to improve the roadnetwork/mines BEFORE we have to build trading posts........

For the trading posts they take 2-3 turns tu build, so it wouldn't really increase the advance of GEO, maybe 1 turn..........
The other way round we can increase production by 10-30%.

But again some thoughts for discussion/understanding

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch
DoT,

you might have not seen it, but we have couple of 12 stacks walking around in our territory:

1 Hebrew
1 German

+ 1 8-stack Austrian (?)

And I think there was one more (English?)

There is only one additional stack near our territory, it is a Scottish size 12 stack between Wien and Graz. The Austrian 8 size stack was killed by the Lemurian army near Linz, in the first turn thread.

-Martin

[Tamerlin]

I agree we need more production power but we also dramatically need to improve our science rate if we don't want to fight with out of date units. We need Trade Posts and I thus voted for Horse Riding.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
Shipbuilding is just stupid and Mansory isnt good enough since the Great Wall wall was built by the Germans and we still need to build Theater in order to build arenas.

Shipbuilding is not stupid it just does not make sense to research it now, it the long term it leads to gun powder. Well until then there is still a number of advances to research first. It just does not make sense to research it now.

Our science output is growing and growing. So there comes a time when this advance costs just one turn. If we research it before we have to or we need it, should depend on the fact if science is carried to the next advance.

-Martin