Growing your economy efficiently
I've been puzzling over this for awhile, but have not yet decided on a definite answer: What's the most efficient method for expanding your economy? Assume for a moment that there is no real danger of any type of rush (e.g., peace for 10 minutes, or FFA, or something). In this situation, I am currently doing:

1. SCI1
2. CIV1
3. COM1

At this point I have tried all of the different options (in descending order of practice):

-CLASSICAL - adds an extra +200 to economy (+100 for 2 new resources), but you need to spend wood, food, and wealth to get start gathering metal and knowledge. Usually followed by SCI2, COM2, and CIV2

-COM2 - adds an extra +150 to economy (+50 for 3 resources), but really requires a 3rd city to maximize, usually followed by CIV2, to get econ up to +150, or by CLASSICAL.

-SCI2 - increases ruin bonuses and makes subsequent researching cheaper by an extra 10% (plus you are likely to be getting the 10% bonus for researching a later classical) - while not my first choice, I seem to have the best success when using this method

-CIV2 - enables 3rd city, but you can't really make good use of it until you research COM2

-MIL1 - not really used. I don't research mil1 unless I am rushing, and then I don't usually wait this long.

In watching films, I've seen a wide variety in choices.

My best success so far has come with two economic strategies (insert MIL1 somewhere as required based on scouting):

1. Variation on this: SCI2 -> COM2 -> CIV2 -> CLASSICAL -> COM3. This puts you at +180-200 food, based on rares, and it enables military expansion as well as continued booming.

2. CLASSICAL -> SCI2 -> COM2 -> CIV2. The early classical enables me to continue pumping continuous villagers and gathering other resources (metal and knowledge) without regard for cap. Subsequent techs are also cheaper in the other resources - timber & knowledge for COM2 seems better than spending tons of food. Food that can be beter spent making villagers and getting CIV2.

Of course, what I usually do is just rush a MIL1 and hit both of their towns. I either win outright or keep their econ down at +20 for 3-4 minutes. Despite the defensive resoruces available, most players I have seen cannot handle a well-executed ancient rush at all.

posted by Tim at 1:05 PM