Alternate CS Slingshot

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by fed1943
Reading what The Paladin,Arrian and Aeson wrote...
And what about if the first Prophet builds the Holy Shrine? Then,we can have until 4 priests (if we have the food and willing to pay the cost).
Well,I think the question arrives to the point that only numbers,not words,work.And I don't know mathematic.
Best regards,

Well in order to build the holy shrine you already need a great prophet, so the question is: Are the benefits from bureaucracy better for me than the benefits of the holy shrine, because at that point you could go for either?

My leanings would in general be toward bureaucracy but it does depend on your situation. Early on in the game, a religion would only have spread to say 4-5 cities of your own at the most (and likely maybe at most 1 - 2 of another nation). That means the shrine would give you around 5-7 gold a turn (gold not commerce). Other than allowing you to keep your reseearch up, gold does very little at the beginning of the game (with the pyraminds at least). So the only benefit, then, of the holy shrine is to keep your research higher.

OTOH, bureaucracy gives you a 50% bonus to your capital's commerce. So, say, your capital makes 20 commerce of which 16 (80%) goes to science. I'm not going to bother discussing the effects of the library / academy because in both cases (shrine or bureau) the extra commerce will go through the same laundering buildings anyways.

If you built a holy shrine and it allowed you to increase your science to 100%, you would get an extra 4 commerce in your capital that would go to science. There may be a little extra from other cities as well but probably not too much more than a point or 2 (and those points likely wouldn't go through an academy or library to be increased).

Now if you used bureaucracy, that would become a total of 30 commerce coming from the capital, of which, say 80% still can be taken to science. This results in 8 extra commerce in the capital going to science. So in this case bureaucracy resulted in more extra research than the holy shrine. This did not include the extra bonus of extra production in the capital.

So in general you have to take into account the amount of extra gold you will get from the shrine and compare it to the amount of extra commerce you would get from the capital. If you have a relatively large number of cities with your religion and a weak commerce capital then the shrine is probably the way to go. You can probably tell this if your science setting is low (like 60% or below). If, on the other hand, you have a strong commerce capital and only a few cities (4 or so) you are probably much better off with bureaucracy.

I think the typical game would favour bureau... but that's just a feeling more than an analysis.

[Alkis2]

I think his main point is that with the Shrine built, you can assign more than one priest and get the second GP fast.

(if we have the food and are willing to pay the cost)

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by Alkis2
I think his main point is that with the Shrine built, you can assign more than one priest and get the second GP fast.

(if we have the food and are willing to pay the cost)

That's a good point. The alternate slingshot, at least as I originally proposed it, only requires one GP but if you did want to get both the shrine and CS via a GP then this is certainly a good way to go about it.

[Blake]

I've been playing with the Prophet -> Code of Laws then slingshot to CS or Philo. As for which to slingshot too...

Philo: You can easily found both conf and tao in the same city. You can then generate a 2nd GP sooner, and use THAT GP to pick up CS, why choose! Philo is also a very good civic that early since it's No Upkeep.

CS: You get an uber capital earlier, and there's less need to burn yet more GP's on techs.

At the moment I'm favoring the Philo slingshot followed by propheteering CS, seems to be a good emperor-calibre strategy.

It's essential to use a Philo civ and build Stonehenge. My general strategy looks like this:

In capital, either settler-first, or build the capital up then build stonehenge, THEN settler, then Oracle.

All these events are timed to nearly co-incide:
Stonehenge prophet comes out, the oracle is nearly done, polytheism&meditation are researched and city 2 is founded.
The prophet pops Code of Laws.
The oracle completes, Philo is selected.
In the Capital, I build a Library OR Temple, and run a Scientist OR Priest, depending on whether I want to gamble. Also okay would be using a Caste Scientist.

Assuming a prophet pops out, I then lightbulb CS and finish researching it. if I'm going with a non-gambler prophet then I'll pre-research on CS.

If a great scientist pops out instead, I'll create the Acadamy and probably research masonary and forget about propheting CS, with the acadamy I can research it anyway.

There is another variant, and that is to not expand at all, and found both Conf and Tao in the capital. This is sweet for one reason: The settled Prophet's 2 hammers are multiplied by bureaucracy. Well actually it's sweet for another reason too: Concentration of Prophet Points, you get Henge, Oracle and the 2 shrines all in the same city, and can use the shrines to assign priests rather than building temples (you'll want the temples anyway though).
I think doing this is feasible (and possibly smart) on Emperor assuming certain starting conditions, like the capital is a sweet site with many resources improvable with little worker tech, seafood would be a definite plus. And of course no uber site for a secondary city.

It's also sometimes possible to go settler-first and chop the stonehenge & oracle in the 2nd city, thus having the benefit of concentration of prophet points and freeing up the capital to be uber-science rather than uber-gold. The largest benefit of founding religions in city#2 is probably the culture, not only does it create impervious culture defense, it's also more likely to flip neighbours cities.

[The_Paladin]

Seems like its a pretty good alternate route as well. I just tried it out. On marathon/emperor speed I failed to get the oracle by 2 turns... they seem to produce it faster on that speed than normal.

Anyways re-attempted on normal and everything went fine. Got both tao and conf religions (even got hinduism I beleive) and finished my way up to CS no problems.

I love having pacifism early as well - lots of uses of great people early and almost all of them quite good - plus the no upkeep thing is nice (though org. religion is tempting). So having both is a great benefit!

The only issue I have with this approach, and others that involve the oracle in any way, is that I don't think that it actually gives you a huge research benefit, which to me at least was its main selling point. I think this is what others have mentioned elsewhere.

I mean that yes it does improve your research by increasing capital commerce by 50%. However in order to get the oracle fast enough you must research priesthood (and other necessary prerequisites) fast. Now that essentially means that until those techs are obtained there will be no pottery - no cottages. That further means that, unless you have a gold mine or lots of seafood, you probably have no great extra source of commerce for your capital.

Say you don't have a gold mine or seafood, but you were lucky enough to start on a river (so a typical land start in other words). Now say your capital is size 4 (emperor happiness limit) and all 4 squares you are working are on the river. That means you have 13 commerce coming into the capital. So that's pretty much it... and its pretty much going to stay that way until after you get CS, if you are using a CS slingshot that involves the oracle.

So what did you actually get by doing the slingshot? Let's look at the methods in question:

Prophet + Oracle to get CS
---------------

Well lets assume that you have a library in the capital. Before CS you would have 13 * 1.25 = 16.25 research from the capital. After CS you would have 13 * 1.5 * 1.25 = 24.375. So what did you gain? 8.125 research points. Doesn't seem very good to me. If instead cottages were used you could very easily get 8.125 research without doing this.

Now you might be thinking... why no academy? Well if you are using a prophet to get CoL or CS, you simply don't have time to get a second great person (scientist) to generate the academy.

Traditional CS via oracle
---------------------------

If you are using the traditional CS method then you can get an academy too (though that's a 50/50 shot at best on emperor). If we have an academy, what do we gain by CS? Well we would have 13 * 1.75 = 22.75 before CS and 13 * 1.5 * 1.75 = 34.125 afterwards. This is a gain of 11.375 research. That's better than without an academy but still not much... and its really only doable on Monarchy and below easily.

Cottage method (No CS at all)
----------------

Consider instead I decide to build my empire by getting writing through the agr/fishing, wheel, pottery techline. Now I'm on the same river starting spot and I build just 2 cottages. I'm also going to build a library and generate a great scientist for an academy. By the time a CS slingshot attempt could be done, those cottages would've grown to hamlets and I would also have an academy. So what commerce would I be getting in the capital? Well 4 more than before for non-financial civs (6 for financials). So for non-financials I'm getting at least 17 base commerce. How much research is that? 17 * 1.75 = 29.75. That's already better than a prophet + oracle based CS slingshot without an academy (24.375) but a little worse than a traditional CS method with an academy (34.125). For financials, I'm getting 19 commerce and that results in 33.25, practically the same as the traditional method.

So by that analysis, the obvious conclusion is that traditional gives you the best overall research... with a close second being financial civs cottage approach. However that is incorrect, I believe. The problem is that, whereas the CS methods get a boost to research as soon as CS is obtained, the cottage method gets a series of minor boosts much earlier than this. So whereas the CS method ultimately gets 34.125 research once complete, it is stuck at a much lower level until that is achieved. The cottage method, however, gets boosts much earlier each time a cottage is built and grows. The faster you put them down the better.
So, yes, ultimately CS results in more research per turn (by a little, approx 5) once its obtained, the cottage method has had an extra research for many turns before that.

In the case of the prophet + oracle to get CS method the cottage method blows it away in research in every aspect. In the traditional oracle CS case they are about equal.

Now you might say, well, I can get cottages set up after I get CS and I can get an academy so my science will improve vastly then. Yes I agree with that. However I don't know as it really benefited you. It will probably take you, say, X turns to get cottages and an academy set up. But the cottage method can simply research CS, probably in the same X turns approximately, and once its obtained it, it will be on equal terms again.

So what's better? Well the cottage method gives you a lot more freedom of what to research (monarchy anyone? oracle CS method - no way... cottage - sure. However on the other hand oracle CS methods give you a bonus to production as well (and the farm spread irrigation bonus, another nice benefit). So again it depends on what you actually want. There is no really better / worse... just more shades of what you actually want.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to use one method over the other. The point I'm trying to make is simply that the assumption that CS slingshots give you the best research possible the fastest is not necessarily true. My impression is that in most cases it isn't true.

There is one other method - the one I posted originally. That is to use a prophet to get CS - no oracle. I'm not just trying to promote my own method, but it seems to me that I failed to explain the reason I like it very well and I'm trying to correct that mistake.

My typical approach to this no-oracle method is this. Get mysticism, then grab writing through the pottery techline. Build stonehenge and set up cottages ASAP. Research other pre-reqs for CS then use prophet to speed its research. Now notice that we get the benefits of the cottage method in that we get boosts to our research much earlier (whenever a cottage is built or grows) and we still get civil service. Admittedly though we will still not have an academy done likely until after CS. So again consider the same situation as before, a size 4 city working 4 river tiles, 2 of them with hamlets. Again for a non-financial civ this results in 17 base commerce in the capital. Now having got CS via a prophet, our research becomes 17 * 1.5 (bureau) * 1.25 (library) = 31.875. This is comparable to what you get from other CS methods and has the benefits of getting earlier boosts by cottages as well... so in that sense its actually better, overall research wise.

Now this is conservative, we are only assuming growth to hamlets and we only have 2 cottages being worked. Say instead we get 3 cottages set up early and we are financial. This gives us 13 + 9 = 22 base commerce. Now how much research do we have after CS? 22 * 1.5 * 1.25 = 41.25. That's much better ultimately than oracle CS methods and gives you the benefits of the early cottage boosts.

So my point is that getting civil service without having cottages set up is NOT the best start possible for research. Many people, myself included, have posted here suggesting that CS slingshot = great early research... and its true if you realize that you must obtain a good source of commerce in the capital first. If you do not have a good, natural commerce start (gold mines, gems, seafood) you need cottages to make CS useful. Otherwise the commerce benefit from CS is really not going to help you and if you've sacrificed other areas of your empire to get CS for this benefit you may have just crippled your empire.

CS + commerce in capital = great research.

CS + average commerce in capital = average research, could've got the same using much cheaper cottages though

Like I said before there are other benefits of getting CS. However anyone trying to get it ASAP for just the research benefits should consider that there may be other methods to get the same (or better) research just as soon if not sooner and, in those cases, delaying CS in favour of other methods is probably the better choice.

Of course one thing I didn't mention was that the oracle itself gives an instant, one-time gain of research beakers. That should be considered as a good bonus for oracle methods but there are other ways of getting a one time research injection that are just as powerful (great people to burn techs are the most obvious). It all comes down to trade offs - i.e., what do you want more?

Now I'm not criticizing Blake's (or anyone else's approach at all). In fact I would encourage you to try Blake's method. It gives you lots of early happiness benefits, pacifism, lots of great prophets (for tons o' production / gold) and other benefits. It is a good approach and I personally like it. It, however, does not allow you to set up cottages very early like all other oracle CS methods and again without a good commerce start it won't result in more than just average research.

[rjmatsleepers]

I have found this discussion interesting and useful. I shall experiment with the different approaches to see how the theory works out in practise.

I attach a start that may be useful if others want to experiment. It is Emperor level and you are Lizzy, so not all of the various strategies will be available. You are alone on an island, so no tech trading, but you only have to worry about barbs. I suggest not popping any huts since that could have an impact on the results.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Blake]

Actually Paladin, you might be guilty of belittling hammers and also the benefit of founding the religions, along with the sheer lump-sum value of the free techs.

I'm not sure what else exactly I NEED to research after bagging Col, philo and civil service (all with nearly no actual research investment, as they are popped). Good civics in 3 out of possible 4 categories (economics are much later game), Axemen for defense. A giant stash of trade-fodder.

After blasting through some of the most powerful early techs there doesn't seem to be much research imperative, in fact it seems to be a good time to kick back and start focusing on spreading outwards, using the cracy-powered capital to pump settlers and garrisons . Add shrines, an Academy and spam cottages everywhere. Research the easy stuff, do some trading. If tech "falls" too far behind, the big ticket techs can be traded away, really there is plenty of time to “catch up”.

I think the MAJOR risk in the Slingshots is in FAILING, leaving you with a half-arsed set of research, no religion. However assuming Stonehenge is snagged the chance of failing seems really quite low. One of the worst things that can go wrong though is barbarians, for some civs more so than others it can be hard to mount a proper defense if no copper is found (for those starting with Hunting it’s not such a big deal to research archery).

Basically my opinion is:
Pure Oracle Slingshot: Weak. Chance of failure is much too high, you can't build the Oracle as quickly as possible, it must be delayed. Research is tied up in CoL for a very long time making it difficult to get anti-barb techs. You can miss out on the Oracle or founding Conf (or both), huge disappointments.
Pure Great person slingshot: Kind of a waste of Great People, delaying Academy, Shrine etc quite significantly.
Mixed slingshot: Enough “free” techs to quickly and reliably get CoL, Philo and CS. Research isn't tied up beyond Meditation, priesthood and Polytheism, all cheap techs. MUCH faster than the other approaches, the Oracle isn’t significantly delayed. Pacifism makes up for burnt GP's.

I reckon that the different approaches are a bit weak taken separately, but they combine together beautifully.

However I have always been a bit biased against Cottages, with the attitude that I should build as few as I need to get by. I’m inclined to take the hammers and specialists approach, subsidize my economy with shrine income (and missionary spam), reduce expenses with courthouses, acquire more territory with force of arms and sell the resources for gpt. The food & hammer-fired economy can get by just fine.
Granted I still build as many cottages as I NEED to, but my NEED threshold is a bit different from the average cottage-spammer . I kind of think of the cottages as just another way to subsidize my economy, rather than being the backbone of my economy.

[gus_smedstad]

I have to agree about the flat value of getting Civil Service or Philosophy for the cost of building the Oracle. Whatever other benefits you get, like +50% beakers and +50% hammers in your capitol or +100% GPP, you've just traded hammers for beakers on a 10:1 basis. That's a bargain. Burning a Great Person for a tech like Code of Laws isn't a great exchange, but it's not terrible if it enables other nice effects.

- Gus

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Blake
I kind of think of the cottages as just another way to subsidize my economy, rather than being the backbone of my economy.

The only thing wrong with cottages is that you cannot build them on sea tiles. Must be a glitch in the program code.

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by Blake
Actually Paladin, you might be guilty of belittling hammers and also the benefit of founding the religions, along with the sheer lump-sum value of the free techs.

Agreed. I didn't value hammers at all or religions. I think I just mentioned someplace that there is a trade-off - that your method is giving up some research for some hammers and religion benefits. Its up to the individual and their situation to determine whether that's what they want or not.

I wasn't actually complaining about your approach. In fact it is quite good. I just was trying to warn people against just using a slingshot (any of them - mine included) just because its a 'trick' and therefore must be good... in some cases it really isn't.

I agree with you that a pure oracle slingshot is pretty weak.

I'm not sure a pure GP slingshot is really a 'waste of GPs' and I'm not sure it delays the academy or shrine all that much. You only need 1 prophet to burn on CS in this method whereas the combined oracle + CS method requires 1 for CoL and 1 for CS (if you also want Philo). Your second GP can be a prophet (if you want a shrine) or an scientist (if you want an academy). This is the exact same as the combined method.

I also agree that pacifism is powerful... but not with just 2 cities. You can't use specialists with just two cities really... or else you cripple one of them (1/2 your empire) at a time that, in the combined method, you need to expand and build a military. So by the time pacifism is actually giving you more than just an extra +4 great prophet points from your henge+oracle the cottage method I would suggest can probably already have pacifism as well... so whereas an extra 4 GP points is ok - having it so early when you can't use it isn't just that great.

Anyways I think what I'm going to do, to confirm for myself and others, is to grab the save that rjmatsleepers posted and try two separate methods: Blake's method and pure cottage, no burn for CS method. I'll try both of them twice to be fair so that one doesn't get the advantage of knowing the map and I won't pop any huts that give tech (I re-load if I get tech) again to be fair to both methods. I'll post my results later on - I've got a presentation to prepare ATM unfortunately so Civ will have to wait a couple of hours at least.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the ultimate goal of this test for both methodsis to ultimately get CS and Philo. I will play till I get both, in both methods.

[Cort Haus]

Congrats Paladin - you beat me to posting the GP-slingshot strategy by a few days.

My ISP screwed up my connection on the 12th Jan, and I've been offline until the end of the month. Whilst offline and starved of 'poly, I was hammering OCC science strategies until I eventually got sick of it all, but not before I'd found out how Civil Service and Philosophy could be popped with Great Persons. I was using Peter, and maybe Saladin.

I didn't know how long I was going to be offline (if I'd known I would have sorted out a temp dialup much sooner) but I had a feeling that someone else would also find this out and post it before me.

Anyway - some good discussion here, though I haven't studied the thread fully, but when I do I'll type up my notes here if they've got anything to add.

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Congrats Paladin - you beat me to posting the GP-slingshot strategy by a few days.

My ISP screwed up my connection on the 12th Jan, and I've been offline until the end of the month. Whilst offline and starved of 'poly, I was hammering OCC science strategies until I eventually got sick of it all, but not before I'd found out how Civil Service and Philosophy could be popped with Great Persons. I was using Peter, and maybe Saladin.

I didn't know how long I was going to be offline (if I'd known I would have sorted out a temp dialup much sooner) but I had a feeling that someone else would also find this out and post it before me.

Anyway - some good discussion here, though I haven't studied the thread fully, but when I do I'll type up my notes here if they've got anything to add.

Hey no problem. I've been reading the other threads on similar approachs too with some good points there as well.

My discovery of this came from thoughts of what is better? Instant reward from GS burning or joining a town. I stumbled across this method that way.

So welcome back then .

[Blake]

I also agree that pacifism is powerful... but not with just 2 cities. You can't use specialists with just two cities really... or else you cripple one of them (1/2 your empire) at a time that, in the combined method, you need to expand and build a military. So by the time pacifism is actually giving you more than just an extra +4 great prophet points from your henge+oracle the cottage method I would suggest can probably already have pacifism as well... so whereas an extra 4 GP points is ok - having it so early when you can't use it isn't just that great.

It's amusing how wrong you are here. Pacifism is OPTIMAL with only 2 cities creating GPP, and conf and tao both come with a missionary so the religion city and the other GPP city can both have the bonus, it doesn't matter much what religion spreads to other cities (granted the culture/happy helps, but it's not as important as Org.Rel or Theo). Pacifism is also unique in being the only religion civic to not actually require a religion to be beneficial, as in some cases, the no upkeep exceeds the increased unit upkeep.

In my slingshots I'll have Stonehenge, Oracle and a single Priest. This is 7 GPP, which becomes a whopping 21 with Phi and Pacifism, sometimes I'll add a 2nd priest for a nearly mind-boggling 30 GPP, which is a lot in the BC's.

It's my opinion that Phi and Pacifism are actually MOST useful for when you want to minimize specialist usage, since small GPP numbers become vastly more useful and with large GPP numbers the GP's can be cranked out extremely quickly (allowing the city to get back to whatever it was doing). The only thing is I don't really like creating specialists in the capital because they aren't multipled (much) by the big B. However 1 specialist is definitely affordable. And it's not a problem if all the prophet points get stuffed in City#2.

[KerThud]

Does Caste System have use here?

If you find yourself alone on an (emperor level) island with a philosophical leader, the Philo slingshot is very appealing.

When you switch to pacifism, what about also switching to caste system at the same time? Then you could choose from merchants, scientists and artists in your capital while your second city generated great prophets. You could adjust the assignment of your specialists to get any of the four in the order you'd want.

I've briefly glanced at the tech tree and the great people preferences, but haven't studied it enough to find a way to optimize using your (now cheap) great people (of any desired type) to quickly work your way up the tree.

Also, since an island start (where you can control hostilities by posting fog-busting sentries) is a great place to try a slingshot, how do you best leverage the slingshot advantage into a win? I haven't tried for cultural victories, but with two founded early religions, that seems like a possibility. Also, where would you head next? Settle out your island quickly? Or get just a couple more cities and really go for quality over quantity?

Great thread, btw.

[The_Paladin]

I've completed my tests I've talked about earlier. I tested a couple of methods on the save file posted by rjmatsleepers and have some finishing pics, times, and numbers, and play-by-plays to describe.

In no particular order, I'll start with the non-CS slingshot, cottage approach:

4000 BC - I moved my city right one square. Now some may ask looking at the pic why I didn't move left to get the gold mine - well because I wanted a "standard" start - not a gold mine start - which is quite different. Besides I want to put my second city there and not have so much overlap then.

Begin by researching agriculture (with the goal to get animal husbandry) and have the capital start on a worker.

3560 - Agriculture done - start animal husbandry

3400 - Worker complete - start warrior

3360 - Have worker mine the grassland hill

3080 - Animal Husbandry done - start wheel, have worker pasture the cows. We got a nice bonus too - capital has horses in its radius!! Chariots for defence are always better than mere warriors .

3040 - Warrior done - start settler now that we are size 2

2920 - Pasture those new horses we found with worker

2760 - Wheel done - start pottery and get our worker running a road to the east - towards our 2nd city site - and along the way catch the horse pasture on the road so we can build chariots.

2520 - Our settler is done, start on a chariot

2440 - Worker farm the wheat near 2nd city site (capital already has it in its borders)

2420 - Second city founded (had to wait for an escort... stupid panther)

2400 - Pottery done - start Writing

2320 - Chariot done in capital - start a Granary

2200 - Worker mines the gold hill

2000 - Writing done, start Mysticism, the capital has finished the granary... has enough left over production for a warrior in 1 turn so we start on one

1960 - Done warrior - start library and the worker starts his first cottage on the flood plains

1840 - Mysticism done, start Meditation

1760 - Another cottage for the worker

1640 - Meditation done, start Priesthood

1600 - Library done in capital, assign 2 scientists, build chariot, remaining citizens work the flood plain cottages

1560 - Yet more cottages from my workers (I have 2 workers - the second city built one)

1520 - Priesthood done, start Code of Laws

1480 - Enough cottages for now - start a road towards 3rd city

1240 - Great scientist generated in capital - build an academy but leave those scientists there - love the research we are getting from them (and we don’t have cottages set up to assign the extra people to yet anyways).

1200 - Pasture cows near 3rd city site in advance

1040 - Code of laws is complete - we founded Confucianism. Start researching mathematics

975 - The second city generated a settler a few turns back so we built a third city this turn. Now start roading towards a 4th city with one worker and build a farm for the third

875 - Mathematics is complete - start civil service

700 - We got a 2nd great scientist this turn so use him to grab philosophy and found taoism. Revolt to Confucianism.

675 - Revolt to pacifism

625 - Another settler is out and ready to go so found a 4th city

350 - Civil service is done researching. Revolt to bureaucracy and, since we have philo and CS, our ultimate goal is achieved so our test is done.

Final Stats:

Well in the end we resulted in getting 4 cities by the year 325 BC. In the order of their founding they are sizes 6, 4, 4, and 2 respectively.

On the economy side of things we have a nice 91 research in our empire, 63 of which is coming from our library, academy, bureau capital.

We also have 27 production, 16 of which is coming from our bureau capital.

In next post I will go over the second method. Below is the pic of my empire at the end of this method.



Edit: I forgot to mention that our third city has already completed a temple and is working towards getting a GP for the holy city site. It has 154 / 300 GPP, 100% prophet points currently and is getting 9/turn from an assigned priest so it shouldn't be too long to get that.