Technology beelining

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I'm obviously doing something wrong as you guys are all picking up the Pyramids on the Oracle-CS beeline without breaking sweat, it seems.

For me, it most of the times is a choice: either I have a superb position (e.g. stone within reach of the capital), or I don't go for the pyramids and focus on the Oracle instead. Getting both is not only a matter of focussing on it to the extreme (meaning no military protection), but also requires a excellent start.

The Oracle is something you'll be able to build if you focus on it, the Pyramids are most of the times built before I even consider starting on them.

DeepO

[Arrian]

Yes, we should be looking at other, perhaps more warmongerish, beelines.

WE's are situational, though, b/c they require ivory. Cats are obviously no-resource and key to conquest.

I'd imagine this is where Fried's (it was him, right?) "Farseer" comes into play. Use of the Oracle to grab Metal Casting. Forges + barracks + copper/iron = war machine.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Oh, and the timing of masonry: depends on possible improvements. If you can keep your worker busy with the starting techs, or with e.g. mining, masonry comes after writing. Otherwise, it's just before writing. The problem is that if you don't get Stone/Marble on a river, you'll also need the wheel to get the bonus. Normally during a CS beeline, I will get the wheel from trade, or at least after CoL.

DeepO

[Arrian]

Normally during a CS beeline, I will get the wheel from trade, or at least after CoL.

So you research alphabet during or right after the CS beeline, then? It's a pretty big detour if you're doing in the midst of the beeline...

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
I'd imagine this is where Fried's (it was him, right?) "Farseer" comes into play. Use of the Oracle to grab Metal Casting. Forges + barracks + copper/iron = war machine.

farseer start? Link perhaps?

As to what to grab with the Oracle: it very much depends on what you want, and what your situation is. Metal Casting can be a very good one, Alphabet too (go for Priesthood immediately, build the Oracle while you're researching writing). Construction is another option, and Monarchy or Theology as well.

In high-diffuculty games as a non-industrious civ not starting with mysticism, there will otherwise be a big chance you will lose the Oracle. You could choose not to go for it (low-risk solution), or decide to grab it asap. The beaker cost of the free tech is at such point less important, but the GPp the Oracle generates as well is what you don't want to leave in AI hands.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian


So you research alphabet during or right after the CS beeline, then? It's a pretty big detour if you're doing in the midst of the beeline...

-Arrian

Yes, normally I would. Only exception being where I don't need worker techs, and have time between the completion of the Oracle, and discovering of CoL. It wouldn't be the first time I get to CS before building my first worker...

DeepO

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DeepO

farseer start? Link perhaps?

As to what to grab with the Oracle: it very much depends on what you want, and what your situation is. Metal Casting can be a very good one, Alphabet too (go for Priesthood immediately, build the Oracle while you're researching writing). Construction is another option, and Monarchy or Theology as well.

In high-diffuculty games as a non-industrious civ not starting with mysticism, there will otherwise be a big chance you will lose the Oracle. You could choose not to go for it (low-risk solution), or decide to grab it asap. The beaker cost of the free tech is at such point less important, but the GPp the Oracle generates as well is what you don't want to leave in AI hands.

DeepO

It was early on in Vel's strategy thread. I'll hunt it down in a sec...

edit: link - http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...0&pagenumber=5

The original post:

Extra thought - there's something to be said for this strategy as well...

Go straight for Priesthood, start Oracle, snag pottery and bronze working while Oracle is being completed, use Oracle to grab Metal Casting.

This strategy DOES expand considerably slower, but a capital full of forests and fueled by a forge at a very early level can explode with production as the game continues. I've used this strategy repeatedly to "come back" from being down early on.

Mowing down your forests early with the Oracle-based strategy is a bad move, for obvious reasons. You can usually sneak a settler out early with this strategy, but those forests need to stay intact.

-Arrian

[khumak]

I've been focusing more on Pyramids than the Oracle in my games because IMO getting Representation extremely early is more important than getting Beaurocracy for free. I generally build the Oracle in my 2nd city and I get beat to it about 25% of the time on Prince so far.

I'm having sort of a strange game this time. Playing Large/Epic/Continents/Prince and started on the tip of a long thin peninsula. I was very happy to see that I had all the strategic resources I've wanted so far. I had stone, marble, copper, and iron. Don't know about coal yet, haven't gotten that far. The wierd thing for me is that I don't have a single happyness resource and I have a grand total of 2 food resources, fish and pigs. That's it. No rice, no wheat, etc, just lots of fish and pigs. That's not what's so strange about it though. The strange thing is that once I explored the rest of the continent I found out the whole stupid continent is like that. Ridiculous amounts of exactly the same resources I have and nothing else.

All 3 of my neighbors on my continent like me and almost everyone on the other continents where all the other resources are hates me. I guess for once I'll leave my next door neighbors alone and start building ships... One way or another I'm getting some of those happiness resources that Montezuma has been hoarding. If only that bastard Washington hadn't beaten me on the circumnavigation thing

Incidently even with both marble and stone I got beat to the Oracle this time so I just continued my beeline to the Great Library and researched Code of Laws the old fashioned way. I could have grabbed the Oracle but the way the map was set up I really needed Stonehenge or I would have had to build my second 2 cities in VERY inconvenient places. So far I've grabbed every wonder except Oracle and Hague Sophia. The Great Lighthouse and the Colossus were both huge boosts in this game since every single city I have is a coastal city. If I had built the Oracle I would have missed Stonehenge and that would have crippled my wonder building capacity.

It dawned on me that the reason I've been able to build almost all of the wonders is because the AI beat me to most of the religions. Instead of using prophets for shrines I just added them to my first city so it can crank out most wonders in about 10 turns which is pretty nice in an epic game. Having all 3 of the resources that cut wonder building times in half helps too but all 3 of the AI civs on my continent also have all 3 of those. I eventually managed to found Islam but the AI snagged all of the others. I suspect via prophets. That's fine though, Ghandi gave me Buddhism so i adopted that. If I want more shrines I'll have to get them via conquest.

[PBN]

My issue and possible extension to it all....

Instead of the backfill, I've been toying with the following:

I noted by the time I start to settle down, I'm running 3 big cities rather than 5-6 that I do with the settler chopping method. The 3 however, are performing much better. My biggest issue is with the "thin" military that I end up running. I'm still working on it, and it seems VERY situational, but what I've noticed is that another quick beeline to Machinery, then Liberalism helps ease a lot of tensions. The timing, however, is a bit tricky. After founding Confucianism, I can usually use the immediate boost from OR to start catching up with ALL the new improvements that I can make. My next jump however, is to machinery. This gets me a few nice trinkets along the way. With the mega science being pumped out at the capital, it doesn't take as long as you would think, and everyone will want to trade techs with you as you do this, which helps (as an example, mid game, I get to see a lot of 1-3 turn techs). Anyhow, the path will get you more land improvements, macemen, and your metal resources exposed. By now, however, you are sitting at some major negative diplomacy with most of your neighbors. (only once did I manage to get a neighbor over to confucianism, and maintain the science lead) The next jump to liberalism, if made fast enough alleviates it all, and lets you use culture to gain your cities.

That's my take.

[Dimension]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Go straight for Priesthood, start Oracle, snag pottery and bronze working while Oracle is being completed, use Oracle to grab Metal Casting.

I saw that, and plenty people were talking about it without giving any further explanation. If you're going to wait till you're building The Oracle to get Bronze Working, I suppose you want to start right off with building a Settler. Without chopping, you definitely want to build your city on a Hills/Plains, too. If you take a turn to move your Settler, though, someone's going to beat you to founding Buddhism, so you need to be researching Polytheism, which takes a couple more turns.

As Gandhi, I got a pretty good start like that. I finished The Oracle in 2160 BC, but I didn't found my 3rd city until 2000 BC. It's probably more than made up for by the fact that my capitol was already size 4 and almost done with a Forge, though.

As far as the beeline is concerned:

Gandhi: starts with Mining/Mysticism

1st tech = Polytheism (slower than Meditation but better chance of founding a religion)
2nd tech = Priesthood
3rd tech = Bronze Working
4th tech = The Wheel
5th tech = Agriculture (slower than Fishing, but gives you farms)
6th tech = Pottery

Then you can get Metal Casting from The Oracle. I'm not sure what the best way is to go after that, though. You're certainly not going to be able to found Judaism in time, but Masonry can give you the bonus to build The Pyramids. You'd probably be better off going pure military, though.

[PBN]

I forgot to add one thing to what I wrote above... Beyond free religion to ease the tension, the combination of free speech and free religion make those 3 (sometimes 4 or 5 based on the cultural flips I get by the time I hit liberalism) cities scientific AND cultural powerhouses. Some of my better units tend to be those I "inherit" when an opposing city flips.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Dimension
As far as the beeline is concerned:

Gandhi: starts with Mining/Mysticism

1st tech = Polytheism (slower than Meditation but better chance of founding a religion)
2nd tech = Priesthood
3rd tech = Bronze Working
4th tech = The Wheel
5th tech = Agriculture (slower than Fishing, but gives you farms)
6th tech = Pottery

The term beelining indicates you are forcing your way trhough one deep path into the tech tree, leaving all lower techs for much later. The farthest 'beeline' I can see in your example is 2 techs (Priesthood being a level 3, when you start at level 1), which isn't exactly a lot.

A beeline would be like the polytheism / priesthood / writing / CoL / CS one: that's straigth to a level 6 tech. Then you start on level 1's...

DeepO

[DeepO]

V3nom,

I tried the save you posted a couple of times. Whew! That's a hard start to get a decent CS beeline going!

I tried two approaches: settling on the sugar like you said, and settling on the plains to get the clams .

Your approach works best: the problem of this start is the lack of hammers. You need that hill (already have mining), and later on, you need the plains as well. You are sacrificing commerce (and some food too, but that's less important), but at least you can build something else than settlers and workers!

When settling the plains, I lost 2 times out of 3: the AI built the Oracle sooner (1240 BC, quite late). One of those times, I even got Masonry for free from one of the huts, but couldn't use it as my second city still needed to expand before opening up the marble source. The one time I was able to get it, was by using forest chopping workers outside of my capital's reach.

When settling the sugar, it is doable, but still hard. I applaud you for both building the Oracle and Pyramids there, I couldn't even get near.

There's one thing I still want to try (but later, first some other games), and that is to go for bronze asap, and slavery. With so much food and no shields, pop-rushing a way to a lib might very well be worth it.

The nice thing about this start, is that you are relatively isolated. The others won't bother you much, and by settling the right city sites early on, you seal of a decent chunk of territory which is relatively safe (and thus needs less military). But I think that this map calls more for rapid expansion, instead of vertical growth: your capital has so much food it's crazy. Also, seeing the resources, I would definately have gone for calender asap, and placed that high on my wishlist. The CS beeline is not really suited here.

DeepO

[Aeson]

Originally posted by DeepO
Yeah, maybe we're too much focusing on CS in this thread, beelining to Construction is in some cases much more helpful.

That was just a response to khumak's post where he had Ivory, but no Horses, Copper, or Iron. Going for Construction post-CS would be a much safer bet than going for Alphabet, BW, and IW when Ivory is around.

I wasn't saying beelining to Construction should be a topic of discussion. (Though it's a good topic. )

[Dimension]

Originally posted by DeepO

The term beelining indicates you are forcing your way trhough one deep path into the tech tree, leaving all lower techs for much later. The farthest 'beeline' I can see in your example is 2 techs (Priesthood being a level 3, when you start at level 1), which isn't exactly a lot.

A beeline would be like the polytheism / priesthood / writing / CoL / CS one: that's straigth to a level 6 tech. Then you start on level 1's...

DeepO

Excuse me? Even if it was a little off-topic, such a picky/rude post is uncalled for, not to mention the fact that if you scroll up you'll see that you are the one who asked for an explanation of the Farseer strategy to begin with.

Are you this friendly with all the people who try to answer your questions?