Alternate CS Slingshot

[Arrian]

Interesting. Very interesting. Could one modify plan B to make a run at Machinery w/the Oracle? Then you have Macemen

-Arrian

[Shaka II]

Some excellent strategies The_Paladin .

Now, can some of these work for the nonphilosophical civs? Can a great prophet be generated in time?

The Oracle seems like it's too risky at emperor, unless it's used just to get CoL. I'm wondering if Bronze Working should be a higher priority to chop in Stonehenge to get the Great Prophet going sooner? I suppose one could assign a scientist after researching library, but that would introduce some risk in producing a Great Prophet. From a plus side, if you fail and get a scientist, then an academy would still be very nice in the capital to accelerate research of CS. So, in the end, having CS and an academy a bit later than having CS earlier without the academy may be a wash.

[xxFlukexx]

Nah, you pretty much need a Philosophical leader to pull off the really deep Oracle shots like The_Paladin posted.

Arrian: You can get Machinery without using any Great People, in fact that was the original slingshot idea with the oracle on these forums. Problem is that Machinery doesn't give you anything that useful so slingshotting for Machinery isn't that popular.

I've tried B too (just messing around on Prince seeing how far I could go) Actually I used my second great scientist for Education, I was about 8 turns away from completing a gunpowder slingshot, hehe. Exotic slingshots like this are more fun then they are useful, really.

[uberfish]

Oracle to nationalism... hehe. I don't think it's really happening on emperor and beyond though. Tested doing some reloads from a trial game on immortal and the best approach seems to be getting a quick oracle out to take CoL + confucianism and generate prophet points, alphabet to backfill some with tech trading, prophet gets CS, then research towards catapults and then macemen.

I'm not sure immortal/deity are winnable at all on continents/pangaea without going on a massive war of conquest starting at or before catapults

[Arrian]

I think the original Oracle strat (Farseer) was aimed at Metal Casting, not Machinery.

And both of those techs give you interesting toys:

Metal Casting: forges/Colossus
Machinery: crossbows/macemen (with CS), windmills

-Arrian

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by Arrian
I think the original Oracle strat (Farseer) was aimed at Metal Casting, not Machinery.

And both of those techs give you interesting toys:

Metal Casting: forges/Colossus
Machinery: crossbows/macemen (with CS), windmills

-Arrian

It would seem as though a Machinery slingshot is more attractive for Japan and possibly China.

[Arrian]

Sure, for the UUs. But any civ can do baaaad things to neighbors if they have macemen vs. archers/axes.

-Arrian

[The_Paladin]

I decided to do a test of one of the more exotic extensions to this strategy. I ran a test game at prince level to try to grab nationalism with the oracle.

It should be said though before I describe it, there is a significant risk associated with this method even at the prince level. You need a good start and you need practice to get the order of everything down perfectly. No mistakes allowed in other words.

For those of you who want to try your own attempt I've attached the initial save file I managed this with. I'm playing as Lizzie, prince difficulty, normal speed... all other things normal I believe. I can't include pics as I didn't think of them while going through the game. Sorry . You'll just have to load the file for the landscape if you want it.

4000BC - An initial look at the landscape shows that this place is great for commerce... rather poor for production. Its coastal with a river, two seafood sources an an oasis. Hardly any forests though... That could be a problem as we need stonehenge fast but we will try anyways.

Found London. The plan with London is to make it a research powerhouse so it starts a work boat. Start researching the wheel.

3600BC - Wheel completed. Research pottery.

3400BC - London completes workboat, starts worker.

3160BC - Pottery done for worker to spam cottages... now get bronze working. My thinking here is to attempt to get stonehenge in the second city by chopping / slavery.

2960BC - London completes worker, start settler.

2760BC - Bronze working completed. Start Mysticism and revolt to slavery.

2520BC - Mysticism completed, start writing.

2240BC - Settler finally done. Little worried we are getting too late to start stonehenge but will proceed anyways. We have one thing going in our favour... to be mentioned momentarily. London starts working on warrior.

2160BC - York founded 3 squares up, 3 squares west of London, right in a patch of forest. Its start stonehenge. Our worker has been pre-chopping some forests for us (the ace in our pocket) knowing that our second city was going to produce stonehenge ASAP.

2120BC - Writing finished, start medidation.

1880BC - London completes warrior, starts worker. Also medidation is done, start priesthood.

1760BC - Priesthood done, code of laws started. Thanks to our pre-chopping and slave rushing, stonehenge just got done. Better late than never. York stars on the oracle now.

1520BC - London completes a second worker, starts on a library (to be chopped mostly since its production is fairly poor and I love working those river cottages)

1240BC - Library done in London. It assings some scientists to start generating great scientist points... but remember we must make sure to guarentee great prophet done first.

1200BC - Code of laws done. Start polytheism and revolt to caste system.

1000BC - Polytheism done... ready to go for civil service if only our prophet was out... start it anyway and the prophet can finish when he's done.

850BC - Prophet finally done - use him to finish civil service immediately. Pump capital full of scientists again to finish generating great scientist. Revolt to bureaucracy. Research mathematics.

725BC - Mathematics done. Scientist generated. Use scientist to get philosophy immediately.

700BC - Finished oracle. Grab nationalism for free!

So what's the moral of this example? We'll I was very lucky to get the oracle first, and this is prince. I had to delay it so much waiting for the great prophet that I barely beat the AI's to it. Ultimately I was able to get nationalism however.

In retrospect, I should've got stonehenge in the capital to speed up the prophet. It would've helped immensly and sped up practically every other aspect of the approach. I have achieved this same result earlier, around 1000BC, which is much, much better.

Although this start was great for Lizzie, it isn't really great for this approach. A more forested area would've helped a lot more. I could've chopped things outside the borders but I was saving them for the oracle later, just in case. So what can we learn from this attempt at an extreme deep tech grab with the oracle?

1) You have to produce a prophet and a scientist ASAP. That essentially means you have to be philosophical.

2) Connected to 1, you must produce stonehenge ASAP

3) You have to empasize research after getting stonehenge

4) Don't ever try this at Monarch+. You will only achieve it by extreme luck.

5) Its really nice if it works .

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by uberfish
I'm not sure immortal/deity are winnable at all on continents/pangaea without going on a massive war of conquest starting at or before catapults

Why the sad face? That's what swordsmen and axemen are for. Can't wait for catapults to arrive on the scene.

[Arrian]

Paladin - nice!

I may play around with the same idea (as Lizzy) and shoot for Machinery instead, if I have time to play tonight.

-Arrian

[The_Paladin]

Didn't realize you couldn't attach save files directly and it got rejected on my above post. So here's the save file I mentioned, zipped up.

[Dactyl]

I just tried this alternative method for getting CS at Monarch difficulty, Marathon speed. However, I was on a continent alone, which meant that the barbarians were a particularly big problem and, even though I turned out nothing but warriors at my second city, the barbs overwhelmed me and took my capital just after I had built Stonehenge. So, how do you keep the barbs off of you long enough to bring this strategy to fruition?

[uberfish]

Originally posted by Shaka II
Why the sad face? That's what swordsmen and axemen are for. Can't wait for catapults to arrive on the scene.

Because I think it really detracts from variety to be forced into going down the warmonger path every game.

[The_Paladin]

Dactyl - The basic motivation behind this approach is to deal with the problem you just mentioned. Some of the other exotic extensions to it (i.e., any of them involving the oracle) do have significant problems with barbarians often times.

Just to clarify because I've mentioned a few other alternate approaches here and people might be confused, the basic premise of this method is to use a great prophet to get civil service. Once you have secured a method of getting the prophet, there is no actual timeline required. That is when you feel you are ready, you can research code of laws and use the prophet to accelerate civil service. This is the main difference between this and oracle based CS slingshot methods.

So to your particular question. Try this build / research order out. This is general one I use with some modifications depending on the capital landscape.

Capital:

1) Build worker.
2) Build warrior while waiting to grow to size 2
3) After getting warrior or growing to size 2, whatever happens later, build a settler
4) Build stonehenge
5) Do whatever you want to either expand / build up

2nd City:

1) Build as many warriors as you can until you discover better unit. Then build as many of them as needed to suit your style
2) Do whatever you want to either expand / build up

Research Order:

1) Choose a worker tech you need and research it.
2) Research mysticism
3) Research bronze working
4) If you have copper, try to form your second city around it and connect it up. Otherwise research hunting+archery
5) Reseach towards writing (via whatever direction suits you best)
6) Research towards code of laws when you want
7) Use prophet when ready to grab civil service

I find that method I can usually be safe. If you want to be extra careful you can research archery before bronze working (or skip it all together) but I like bronze to rush stonehenge along.

Give that a try and let me know if you still have problems.

Shaka II - You can get civil service easily enough without using a PHI leader via a prohpet. It isn't necessarily even that much slower. Often times in my games its the research to code of laws that's the liminting factor, not getting the prophet.

Really the biggist issue for non-PHI's is to get stonehenge fast enough. A PHI civ can generate a prophet in 25 turns, non-PHI 50, via stone henge. However often times stonehenge can be done fairly early, especially with the chop or the IND trait. So you lose some time generating the GP but you save some on the build.

Also if instead of building a settler early you build stonehenge first you are probably saving more time and would almost be equal to a PHI leader. Thus I would suspect IND leaders are good for this too, though anyone can do it I imagine.

The other more deep plunges require a PHI leader to be really effective and some, the ones based on the oracle, aren't really doable no matter what leader you play on harder difficuties.

[uberfish]

Originally posted by Dactyl
So, how do you keep the barbs off of you long enough to bring this strategy to fruition?

Warrior sentries, fortified on forest hills or forest riverbend if terrain permits. 75% defence bonus makes the odds in your favour even against Archers and it reduces the fog of war that barbs can spawn in.