Alternate CS Slingshot

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by Blake

Here's something interesting, if you further delay Masonary you can go on to snag Monarchy with a Great Prophet.

That's an interesting option as well. Usually I'm in no big hurry to get masonry (unless I want the pyraminds or great lighthouse) so the delay in masonry isn't much of a penatly.

I also noticed that an artist will give it to you fairly easily if you either don't have access to or already have drama and literature. I was playing around with the idea of rushing to get the great library using drama to increase my city sizes a while back. Then once you actually do get music you can instantly grab monarchy with your free artist and lower your culture spending having already larger cities and a fairly nice research boost because you have the great library.

It wasn't a bad option... I'm just not a big fan of using drama / culture slider to get happiness that early. Just like civ3 you can get more total output from your cities by using the culture slider (total research output / production goes up) and its even more effecient than civ3 since you can have buildings that grant "bonus" happiness to each 10% of the slider (e.g. theatre). However it seems like an awful expensive approach to happiness when you compare it to using military to keep you happy. I mean after all you need the military anyways to keep the neighbours / barbs off your back.. might at well put them to good use.

Something to try for those creative civ players out there. The cheap theatres make this approach a bit more appealing. I still don't like creative much... but I do like the traits buildings.

I think more people would use the culture slider if monarchy didn't grant infinite happiness (up to say 3 extra happiness). As it stands I use luxury resources + monarchy to keep me happy until later on when a better government comes around and by that time trading for resources (+bonus happiness from buildings for those resources) can practically get you to whatever size you want anyways. The culture slider is still good... just not as good as it was in Civ3 (now its more for actual culture )

Anyway back on track...

Originally posted by Blake
It might make for a good comparison save since it's a good balanced, fairly rich start, with a flexible leader.

Indeed it does seem more along the lines of something you could get some decent production out of with just mining / bronze.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by The_Paladin
rjmatsleepers:

You mentioned learning a bit from the cottage game I played. Not sure it would help you out but some general things I do that tend to help me get going a bit faster:

Thanks for the comments. I think you missed one - be lucky! I tried retracing your steps, but I fell behind after a while. I suspect the problem was that I got a couple of scouts from huts. Since I didn't get any money, I had to reduce my research rate.

I may need to be a bit more ambitious about founding cities. I'm trying to run at 100% science (or 90% in extremis). As a result, I don't found cities until I have secured the cash flow. I'd probably be better of to take the hit on my research rate in order to get the combined benefits of the extra city.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Alkis2]

Permit me to be a little out of subject, but since we are comparing strategies on the same starting position, how about this approach:

Don't go for any slingshots and build the Pyramids instead.

The idea is that a Phi civilization benefits more from Wonders' GP points and with the Pyramids you can get engineers and build many of them.

Do you think it's winnable building Pyramids with this start? I mean alone on a continent on Emperor diff. is not a good start, right?

[The_Paladin]

Originally posted by Alkis2
Permit me to be a little out of subject, but since we are comparing strategies on the same starting position, how about this approach:

Don't go for any slingshots and build the Pyramids instead.

The idea is that a Phi civilization benefits more from Wonders' GP points and with the Pyramids you can get engineers and build many of them.

Do you think it's winnable building Pyramids with this start? I mean alone on a continent on Emperor diff. is not a good start, right?

I imagine actually it would be a fairly decent approach. Probably what I would do would be something like get the pyramids (right now since I'm playing around with the idea I posted in the other thread so that's how I'd get the pyramids).

Then try to find a high food city, and pump it full of scientists (probably with the aid of the caste system to get more than 2 early). That should power your research for a while. It also wouldn't hurt to use the great scientists generated to get some academies. Probably this would allow you to stay ahead of the comp - at least in the tech path of your choice.

Now I'd start gearing your tech choices towards optics and the calendar for the obvious goal of getting to astronomy fast. The other nice thing is that great scientists love to grant optics so that could speed up your research if you want to use one for that purpose.

Once you have optics you should try to meet the AI asap. In the meantime I would probably grab liberalism (even though you could go directly for astronomy at this point) and get liberalism to grant astronomy for free. That way you have some more techs to trade with the AI. If this goes as planned you should be able to start trading with the AI now and hopefully backfill a lot of techs by trading astronomy and / or liberalism.

You're also in a good spot to research gunpowder if you want to launch an invasion at that point. This is just theory at this point... I might go back and try that start again and see how a pyramids build would work.

[Alkis2]

Actually I played that position building Pyramids but I did it the hard way. I mean not with your plan which you posted on the other thread.

Our peninsula is bad, desert and a lot of jungle to the south and east. They met me very early, I was far away from optics when they did. Also I cut too many forests and my capital had health problems. Several troubles as you can imagine.

Fortunately, I had Philosophy and CS to trade with Alexander and Washington who were the first to find me. Alex was the first to circumvate the world.

Anyway, in the end I won a space victory without doing any conquest. The only battle I did was to take a barb village to the NW.

[The_Paladin]

I might give it a shot too some time. It is indeed very hard to be all alone and try to compete. It sounds like you pulled things off in the end anyway so congrats .

For example today I played a MP game (myself and a friend against a full map of emperor AIs) and I managed to pull of the pyramids easily enough, grab representation, and fill a high food city full of those +6 beaker scientists. Great research. However I was on an island with one other person... Tokugawa... I hate that guy. I might as well been by myself. He hated me the whole time. I founded Confucianism and got him to covert to it (we shared a common river and it spread to his city) but he still would never trade anything with me or give me open borders... he sat at cautious the whole time. Anyways... so essentially I was alone on an island.

Now my friend was on an island populated by peaceful AI's and managed to pull off building the great lighthouse. So whereas I was getting like +2 commerce from trade / city, he was getting +15 easily. That's an incredible bonus to overcome. So its definitely no piece of cake to be on your own and try to compete on emperor or above. Even without tech trading things can get problematic (although I did manage to still win the game - just took over Tokugawa with knights and used my resulting production advantage to launch an invasion a bit later with redcoats).

[couerdelion]

Two different approaches with Saladin

I had a very frustrating time attempting the Philo/CS slingshot with Saladin. With a reasonably good starting position I initially went for Buddhism but failed to get this. Subsequently moving through a pop-rushed worker to finish Stonehenge. Finally beaten by around three turns to the Oracle in 900 BC.

I had felt the initially gamble for a religion was going to slow development down so then tried again but bee-lining bronze-working. This time I got Henge completed a lot sooner but once again missed out on the Oracle by three turns in 1000 BC. Arguably, finding a couple of barbarian archers wandering around the site of my second city and harassing my workers might have slowed down the Oracle by the decisive three turns although the call here is marginal. It was as much frustrating to find the AI quicker the second time round where I had selected a more optimal line of development.

What this does suggest is that Bronze-Working is likely to be the safer option for the Philo/CS slingshot. It allows the worker to be rushed sooner thus speeding up the Henge and other buildings/units that you need to help you on your way. While the early religion is definitely a big bonus, this is a risky shot and the early diversion is likely to jeopardise the whole operation.

Btw, this experiment threw up some interesting results from different pop-rushing examples but to avoid diverting the thread I will start a new one on that particular theme