To build the ToD, we need:
Research taxation to completion (7 turns, depending a bit on gold from AIs when selling techs)
Build 3 nodes (or trade for mana, I didn't check if we can) - spirit, law and sun. Spirit will be good for spirit II mages down the line, the others we might dispel later on. Should take about 15 turns with 1 adept, perhaps 12 or so if we build another.
Start building the tower. If we decide on a location now, and configure it for max hammers in 12 turns...IND bonus helps, right?
Gather gold. If we go into consumption we'll have +30% in gold gain. Capital is building a money changer. Other core cities might be better off building wealth. We'll need about 2000 or so, depending when we get mana up and can start the build.
Researching mercantilism gives a 20% bonus on beakers due to prereq bonus. We'll need 5000 beakers.
If any AI gathers up cash, we can sell techs, speeding up tower build/buy. Generally I'll say we keep the line towards mercantilism our own secret, and trade freely away all the rest. Even drama won't help the poor AIs much... Just don't sell currency, math or especially taxation.
I'm not really sure how much income we have at breakeven...if we go conservative and say 200 raw commerce is available, merc. will take 21 turns to research. We can gather 2000 gold in 8 turns, perhaps less due to AI. So I actually think we need either to trade for mana or buy a second adept.
I think we will make decent gold and tech after revolt, getting the cool toys when we need them. Bowyers perhaps first, build a nightwatch and spread Esus. then go for gibbon to start exping him up and/or shadowriders. Get sorcery so we can get metamagic and play around with nodes. Water mana for springs, nature for vitality, rest air for rod of winds. However none of these are very costly and worth delaying the tower - best to get to mercantilism faster.
My math is wrong, or rather I was working under the idea that tower was 500 hammer build. It is 800. It will cost 3600 gold, less 4.5 per hammer put into it. So about 200 gold less each turn we build (if we are still IND).
(September 23rd, 2013, 20:26)akatosh Wrote: Wait, if we are going to research Mercantilism for the prereq bonus (to what?) then what are we bulbing with the Tower?
Pretty sure that Molach meant we'd get a prereq bonus on researching it, if we researched it directly. So that he could have an accurate comparison of direct research vs tower. Still worth using the tower, just try to get a lot of the hammers built directly, please.
1) Founded 2 more cities and stole two in the southeastern ice portion. I couldn't raze the one marked for razing because Faeryl had a settler and a disciple of leaves nearby. In fact the disciple was on the way to probably culture bomb Domir, Loki beat him there by 1 turn.
2) Empyrean was founded in this crappy southeastern ice city. Khazad culture bombed it, but it has no cpt source. Loki has drained culture for the last 2 turns, we can steal the city if he can drain it 8 more times before Khazad culture bombs it again.
(This is a picture of Decius circumnavigating and Empyrean being founded. This is not the holy city)
3) Got the smuggling ring resolution. Can build them in our coastal cities for some extra gold soon
4) Finished taxation, revolted into Republic and Consumption. Not sure it was a good move--our GPT fell from ~+120 to ~+75 at 0% research. It might pay off in the long run as our towns develop however, and we get more buildings out.
5) Have an adept out, law node should be up. Next is sun node. Building a 2nd adept to help scorch the southeastern ice area.
6) We have an abundance of workers now. We can probably delete some to save on maintenance costs, and send a few to help develop the crappy ice area SE of Svarts and SW of Khazad.
7) we have 2 settlers. One is sitting around in the north near the clan area. THe other is waiting for a military escort and a galley to bring him to the ice area SE of Bannor.
8) I think we need to focus on getting some economic infrastructure up. We have tons of cities and are paying a ton in maintenance. Would be nice if we can get moneychangers, libraries, courthouses up... a switch to Organized would be a godsend right now
9) Building pillar of chains in the capital, it has a lot of hammers already and we can use it to power out wonders later on, saving gold for research.
Good progress on cities! Pat on the back to you and Loki.
We want these workers, soon (now?) we bulldoze anything that isn't a farm (unless in core areas). As you say, we can scortch the ice and enable farming down south. Also we could even trade for elementalism and start springing deserts (after nodes are up).
Ugh, we definately wanted Aristo while teching to mercantilism. Both reduced upkeep and TONS of cash. If we do switch to mercantilism/liberty then we lose agranism, and therefore we need to drop Aristo because we'd need +1 food on farms to run specs. That is when republic is better choice. So probably worth it to revolt back and make the cash for the tower. However then we might delay being able to switch to merc on time. Sim it out.
New Ljos city Girona should run a citizen spec, at least 1 turn to pop borders. Probably just keep running them.
I suggest buying the adept in Coombe, and send him to make the final node faster. (Send the live one to the 2nd. closest node first, new guy to the closest. Remember, each turn building the tower is worth 200 gold. But a toss-up whether to build the pillar of chains first - It can be built in 12 turns, and gives 16 raw hammers. Nodes should take 6-7 turns to complete. Ultigar can build just as fast as capital, so building both is not too bad idea. It can probably be solved mathematically where to build the tower.
And perhaps close borders with clan. I think they are after the dragon. Our dragon.
Clan are BAR
Agree that republic was a bit of a blunder, but we do want cottages regardless - possibly no new ones, but we are going to be in republic soon.
BTW tundra doesn't spread irrigation.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Agreed, we still need most/all of the workers. First we'll want to turn the push cities to farms - then after we get revolts, we'll want to turn the push cities back to cottages and the new frontline cities to farms. I do think it's still worth building cottages where we don't need massive artist colonies, even though they take 70 turns to mature, because nothing about a culture push is fast. And now that we've Taxation and Republic, Towns are awesome tiles.
Looks a tad early on Republic, true, but I don't think it's worth going back. We've 7 turns before we could possibly revolt, and that would start another 10 turn counter - which gets uncomfortably close to the time of Mercantilism. Plus, we have a good number of cottages in various states, and will be getting more - so the plus side of Republic will keep improving. And we do gain more food and hammers in exchange for that gold - not nicely totalled up like GNP, but still there. Extra food and hammers that we can turn into economy. It'll be especially handy to have the food in the border cities, to grow them ridiculously fast in prepration for massive artist counts.
Just means we'll have to work at improving the economy. Fortunately we're mostly done with the settler pushes, at least until we get some more tiles taken. Our core cities ought to be pretty much free to focus on econ. I'll aim to get the in progress settler teams where they need to go, and I'll aim to have a settler or two extra on hand to take advantage of future opportunities, but otherwise my focus will be on econ.
On further teching plans: I'm torn. For the time being I'll use just Elder Councils and Inspirations for tech, of course, but that's still enough to pay attention to. The biggest question is where to go next, now that we've got everything but Mercantilism on our beeline and a Tower play in progress. I see Sorcery queued, and I understand why: Gibbon could be extremely valuable to us, as a unit who can easily get Vitalize, and also a good hammer unit for when we go after Acheron. And getting a Metamagic node before we use up all our nodes would also be a very good thing - let us get all the various economy benefits from magic - spring, scorch, inspiration at a minimum. For that matter, Mages seem like the best approach to Acheron in general.
On the other hand, we could really use Priesthood to improve the efficiency of spreading temples around, and Way of the Forests for another set of temples to spread. Temples will really get valuable once we're running a lot of boosted bards. And both of those can come sooner than Sorcery.
I guess it's a question of whether we're more focused on improving the current cities production potential or culture potential.
I should be able to play tonight, at least to start the turnset.
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