Money or Shields?

[Ljube]

Shields are great if you want to have a big army, but our enemies have big armies too. Sending armies to crush the other civs is an uncertain enterprise at best. It involves loss of time in moving hosts of our units across the wilderness where roads are scarce.

The easiest and the fastest possible way to deal with our enemies is to build a financial empire and bribe them all. To meat this end, I suggest we put all workers to roaded/trade special squares and don't care about the shields. Also, we should instruct our engineers to build roads around cities first and irrigation later (if ever).

What is the popular vote on this subject?

[Ben Kenobi]

Where's the option:

Let's build railroads, then roads? Railroads connecting cities ought to be a higher priority than building roads in the city radii.

[CannonFodder]

I second Ben Kenobi. We should be building RRs so that our armies can more easily crush our enemies.

[Ljube]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Where's the option:

Let's build railroads, then roads? Railroads connecting cities ought to be a higher priority than building roads in the city radii.

I see your point, but that's distant future for the time being.

I have already suggested that we should move our focus from the military to the trade infastructure. So we don't need the communication between our cities to be at the premium for now.

In fact we need more money, so I am planning to post another poll to see if the citizens agree to stop the production of military units and to start with temples / marketplaces / colosseums / banks / stock exchanges.

[Ben Kenobi]

I see your point, but that's distant future for the time being.

Well it will be if we don't get started building the railroads.

I understand that we need trade income, but the income will come with a fundamentalist government if we decide not to push for tactics.

The majority of trade improvements will not come from roadbuilding, but rather construction of city infrastructure, banks, temples and marketplaces.

Also remember, that we will not be bribing all of the cities in one turn. We will also need to construct diplomats, since we do not have enough diplomats to bribe all of the cities.

[CannonFodder]

If we don't construct railroads now, then when WILL we construct them?

Here's my suggestion: build roads around cities that already have good infrastructure (marketplaces/banks/libraries/etc) and that have large populations. Use only a few engineers to do this, and let the rest construct the RR system.

[Ljube]

OK
Your suggestions are reasonable.
We should dedicate more engineers to railroad communications.
And given that banana option is winning, that seems to be the popular opinion too.

[shade]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Where's the option:

Let's build railroads, then roads? Railroads connecting cities ought to be a higher priority than building roads in the city radii.

what's the use of a huge army if we can't move it

Also remember, that we will not be bribing all of the cities in one turn.

It looks like I have the same impression. Anything for the money now will kill us longterm.

Shade

[atawa]

I also agree with Ben on this one, we need a decent railroad network so all our produced units get to the battlefield on the same turn.

Other then this I would say go for the big money

[Sparrowhawk]

Agreed with the above...we wanted Explosives and Railroad so that we could quickly build railroads, let us now make use of the technology and build those railroads, at a minimum connecting our accessible cities.

/me Citizen of the Apolyton Imperium

[cavebear]

Railroads between major groups of cities and toward the heart of the enemy civs, and improving specials within the city borders.

We really have not paid much attention to getting the best value out of many of our cities. It sure would be nice to pump up shield production so that we can then build *whatever* we need faster.