Accelerated Production: The Questions

[jshelr]

Accelerated Production: The Questions

For multiplayer, accelerated production speeds up the game. My question is how it changes strategy.

· Civ choice – are early UU’s out of date before they hit the streets?

· Movement – Building and tech research are much faster. Movement of units on the map is unchanged. Does this mean more compact city spacing is rewarded? Does this mean that builders have an advantage relative to warmongers, or, at least, that the warmongers advantage is materially reduced?

· Timelines are radically altered. Choose the right civ and you can probably research Literature before you are ready to build the GL. That early archer rush had better be early indeed.

Any thoughts on how the balance of the game changes at higher production and tech speeds would be appreciated.

[DaveMcW]

Settlers should be turned into cities ASAP, since the opportunity cost of not building a city is doubled.

You need double the amount of workers to keep up. A large road network should be built as early as possible.

Build timelines are unchanged since all costs are halved. Early rushes are much riskier due to slow movement.

[jshelr]

I believe the worker speed question is a particularly big change from normal production. Do you think roading shielded grassland, but not mining right away, is a reasonable way to use the first worker?

While I'm at it, does accelerated production rule out the warrior upgrade strat or the chariot upgrad strat? Or, is the gold versus shields tradeoff unaffected?

(The upgrade strats really depended on extorting tech from the AI. If you try to extort tech from humans, they will probably committ civ suicide instead.)

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by jshelr
While I'm at it, does accelerated production rule out... the chariot upgrad strat?

I doubt it, at least in MP or on Regent (ie. no advantages). You can always wait and upgrade directly to knights. Even cavalry, I guess. I would imagine you'd have quite a lot of cash and have halved costs. Lord help'em if you've got Leo's.

[jshelr]

That's what I'm asking: are upgrade costs halved or are they the same? I guess you answered it for me

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by jshelr
That's what I'm asking: are upgrade costs halved or are they the same? I guess you answered it for me

Oh, I thought you were asking if they were too slow. Actually, I'm not 100% sure that upgrades are halved, but given that they're based on shields and shields are halved, I would assume so.

[jshelr]

ok, but you might be hasty in that assumption. Huts are still 25 gold, for example, even though that's worth twice as much in the early game now with research speed doubled.

The trouble with accelerated production is that it is not uniform and disrupts the timing of the game materially.

[DrFell]

Adding a doubled moves option might have helped. The upgrade costs are halved, btw, as they're based on the number of shields difference between the old and new unit.

[jshelr]

Thanks for the advice DRF.