[SPOILERS] scooter's thread: how to finish second

[pindicator]

I'm pretty sure my response was "I'm bulbing Astro early, no way I'm building Colossus"

Just a response to the theory at work here. I agree with the growing consensus that the Colossus can become a trap, but I think that it is a mental trap only. Even with a relatively early Astro, it'd be really interesting to do a hammer:gold analysis. I'd imagine that on a water map like this with a reasonable sized empire, it wouldn't take many turns to make colossus a pretty good investment since it's a relatively cheap wonder. Disclaimer, I haven't done the math so this is just guestimating.

One thing that affected us with having Colossus, was that we didn't want to improve tiles. Some people were wondering why we were talking so much about bee-lining Communism: it was exactly this reason. We weren't maturing cottages because we had 4c coast tiles to work. Why would you want to start working a brand-new cottage in that case? But getting to Communism fast and letting us get some production down would have been nice.

So I'm actually leaning toward thinking it is a bit of a trap for this reason. At least, you need to have a plan, or just continue to develop and view the Colossus tiles as bonus. Or perhaps riding the Colossus bonus tiles as long as you can and then starting from scratch when it expires is the best way to go? I really don't have an idea...

[scooter]

I'm pretty sure my response was "I'm bulbing Astro early, no way I'm building Colossus"

Just a response to the theory at work here. I agree with the growing consensus that the Colossus can become a trap, but I think that it is a mental trap only. Even with a relatively early Astro, it'd be really interesting to do a hammer:gold analysis. I'd imagine that on a water map like this with a reasonable sized empire, it wouldn't take many turns to make colossus a pretty good investment since it's a relatively cheap wonder. Disclaimer, I haven't done the math so this is just guestimating.

I don't have a great mental sense of what the "proper" hammer trade-off would be, but I think the decision is impacted by other issues too. From my perspective, on this map hammers were exceedingly scarce/precious, and commerce was not. My tech pace was already vastly out-stripping what I had enough hammers to produce as-is, so it seemed like a lousy trade-off to begin with.

[Qgqqqqq]

I meant it in the way dazed took it, and more generally, the idea that anything with wonders is a race, so the question is appropriate (and again, I hadn't IIRC read your thread at the time, nor do I even remember when the collosus fell).
I would take a vague question about wonders worse tbh, as it would seem more contrived and out of the blue, rather then something which is a mere extension of the thinking he'd already outlined.
Its the obvious association everyone makes with MC anyway (like nationalism/Taj Mahal), so its hardly new territory.

If scooter did take it like that, (and wasn't beelining astro ) I would expect he'd post for clarification anyway, so I don't think anything would come of it.

[NobleHelium]

It really doesn't matter whether you were specifically reading our thread at the time or not - you have multiple replies in all but one of the threads. I would be saying the same thing regardless of whether we wanted the wonder or not. If the wonder in question had been say Temple of Artemis which nobody built (or probably even mentioned all game), I would still be saying the same thing.