Alternate Pyramind Grab

[The_Paladin]

I was playing around with some PHI leaders again last night and was seeing what nice things I could do with some of the great people early. I was doing some tests for the alternate CS slingshot thread and noticed something interesting that I thought I'd post in case someone hasn't yet.

This is kind of... Farseer + Pyraminds approach. Now you might think this is pretty darn hard to pull of on Emperor but I've tried it a few times and have had some luck but even if you fail your still in good shape. You should start with whatever leader you want as long as they have PHI. My favourite leader for this would be Lizzy but anyone will do in a pinch.

Here's the general plan:

1) Start researching towards pottery grabbing whatever worker techs you want (fishing/ agr, wheel).

2) Once you get pottery change research paths and now grab priesthood as we are going for the oracle.

3) Get one of your cities (ideally not your capital but you can use it if you want to) to get that oracle ASAP while you quickly research bronze working to speed up its production by chopping.

4) Take Metal Casting as your free tech (standard farseer so far). Now get masonry and rush (I mean rush!!!!) a forge into a city that you did not build the oracle in (that's why I usually like to put the oracle in another city as I want my capital to have the forge).

5) As soon as forge is done assign an engineer. Now all you have to do is wait 17 turns for that great engineer... and when you get him build the pyramids instantly with him.

I've done this a few times on Emperor and its worked. A lot depends on if the AI's have stone or not to speed up the pyramids. I've got the oracle done as early as 1860 or so then go the forge done around 1520-1600. That puts the pyramids via the engineer done at 900-950BC. That's pretty good... often times the pyramids are not built yet at that point.

The other bonus though is say you lose the pyramids... you've still got an engineer and you can grab whatever wonder you want with him (or machinery for a tech if you really want it that bad for some reason). The times I missed the pyramids I grabbed the great lighthouse in a little coastal city. I love that wonder if you are on the coast! Also you could of course get the colossus... no one will beat you to that considering how you got metal casting.

I like this method simply because I don't have to cripple my capital by building the pyramids for hundreds of turns. And it lets non-industrious, non-stone finding leaders have a chance of getting the pyramids too.

[Blake]

Interesting, I'll definitely put this on my things to try for Philo leaders. Gotta love philo.

I've also seen the gamblers version for Ind civs, you do normal farseer then mix the GE points with prophet/scientist points and pray for an Engineer, but if you get another type you can use it for whatever, like an Acadamy or lightbulbing a tech, or even settling to subsidize expansion.

(or machinery for a tech if you really want it that bad for some reason).

Like maybe you're Mao .

[Shaka II]

Looks like another cool philosophical stategy Palladin. Also there's the Great Library if the Pyramids are built. Next game I'll have to be philosophical to try out some of these fun strats.

[Manuel]

One of the reasons why I build the Pyramids is for the Great Engineer it produces. I never thought one could produce a Great Engineer to build the Pyramids.

Thanks, Paladin. That's one more strategy to try this weekend.

[Alkis2]

Thanks Paladin for yet another great idea. I tried it in my recent Emperor game and it worked.

For those who want to try it, be sure to rush the forge otherwise your other city (the one with the Oracle) will produce a Prophet before the Engineer. You have 7 turns to build the forge. I had two workers there prechopping trees.

A problem with this strategy is that you may end up without a religion. Therefore I chose Saladin and researched Polytheism first. Found Hinduism,
then Agriculture, (there was rice nearby)
then mining (for mines obviously),
then Priesthood (settler was about to come in 7-8 turns)
then Bronze (for slavery and tree cutting)
and then Pottery.

[Blake]

If you have Pyramids you don't need a religion quite so badly because the rep happiness is goodness. I mean you'll want a religion, but you can pick it up from a neighbour. Rep gives the happy/commerce edge needed to compete.

edit: Not that Saladin wouldn't rule for this strat, having a religion for lots of gold and then being able to flip around the civics with spiritual, yeah, that's good. But Saladin rules .

[The keeper]

Just curious if this has happened to anyone:


Use an engineer to rush a wonder. It isn't built right away, just gives it only 1 turn left.

Before your next turn, someone completes the wonder - and then your engineer has been turned into a token ammount of gold.

[Blake]

I believe in single player you are player 1 and thus it shouldn't happen. It could surely happen in multiplayer though.

[Alkis2]

This won't happen. If you and the AI build a wonder on the same turn, it is you who will get the wonder. At least they gave us that advantage.

[JackRudd]

I tried it earlier with Saladin, and it worked pretty well.

(My position wasn't great afterwards, but it did work.)

[The_Paladin]

I've refined this start a bit since I posted it originally just to perhaps speed things up and not run into the exact problem Alkis2 mentioned - that you have to get that forge ASAP or else you get a prophet.

Basically there's the safe approach... pretty much guarantee’s you'll get something good but not necessarily the pyramids... and the I want everything my way and I want it now approach. Of course naturally we all favour the second one (at least I certainly do) but it can harder to pull off. These approaches assume emperor or above difficulty.

Safe Approach:

1) Start by researching towards priesthood

2) At some point get a worker for your capital

3) When you capital reaches size 4 (happiness limit) you get a settler out there and found a second city (ideally in a high food or lots of forests area)

4) Get bronze working and, if you aren't organized, revolt to slavery instantly (if you are ORG you still should at some point but not necessarily immediately if it isn’t convenient - just if you aren't it saves you a commerce / turn upkeep with 2 cities)


5) Now start going for pottery while building the oracle in the capital.

6) Get your second city pumping out an extra worker

7) Pre-chop some trees around your second city to help with the forge (when you are ready to build it)

8) As soon as you get the oracle done in the capital, grab metal casting, switch the second city to the forge, and finishing chopping the trees. You can even slave rush the forge to the finish if you want.

9) Get a great wonder (ideally the pyramids) with your engineer you get from the forge.

This is the "safe" method because the capital is generally higher production and can ensure you get the oracle. Also you can usually choose either a high food or lots of forests spot for a second city whereas you might not get one for a capital (usually but not guaranteed). Also you start by researching towards the oracle... making sure you won't lose it.

Now on to the fun method. Your limiting factor in this method is commerce. You need commerce. You have to become a miser - every single coin needs to be gathered. If you are working a square that doesn't generate as many coins as another square... you better have an awfully good reason for doing so because you are risking everything by doing that.

I was also considering calling this method that anti-Ghandi method... that guy always gets stone in my games and tries to beat me to the pyramids.

1) Start by researching towards pottery ideally only getting the wheel + pottery itself - that is you should start with either fishing or agriculture... I prefer the later as you can generally do more on a larger percentage of the starts with it. Plus fishing is cheaper so if you absolutely have to get it, you might still be able to. Also water tiles generate nice commerce... and we love the commerce ! So if you have to get fishing it actually might result in an overall speed up of the approach.

2) Found you capital and make sure you have at least 2-3spots that will generate good commerce via some method. That means either coastal squares, a gold mine, or some empty places to plunk down cottages. A financial leader tends to need two good spots... a non-financial leader needs 3. If you don't have them don't despair but you might be cutting things pretty close.

3) Get a worker in your capital ASAP and then let it grow to size 4.

4) As soon as you can get those commerce tiles being worked. I don't care if there's 3 cows in your radius... if there's a flood plains, grassland, or coastal tile free you get a cottage on it (ok obviously not the coastal tile) and you work it. Like I said work at least 2 for financials.. 3 for others.

5) Once your research to pottery is done, grab bronze working.

6) Get a settler when your city is size 4. Ideally again found that settler in a high food, good forest area.

7) Capital should build another worker now.

8) Once bronze working is done, go for priesthood. Revolt to slavery. You can kind of tell already if you are going to be guaranteed the pyramids or not based on how close you are to priesthood at this point. Try it a few times and you'll get a feel for this.

9) Go to your second city with your workers and pre-chop trees. Also farm the place up to get it as large as possible. Even if you want to run it into unhappiness you can (although I've never actually had to / or was able to get it that large in time)

10) Send one worker back to the capital and start pre-chopping some trees there too. The capital should be building another settler and founding a third city with it.

11) As soon as priesthood is out, rush that oracle into the second city (you know the routine - chop... pop if needed)

12) Grab metal casting as the free tech.

13) Now get those workers to the capital and chop that forge. Get it done!!! You only have 7 turns on normal speed (as Alkis2 pointed out).

14) Obviously assign that engineer and wait.

15) Once you get the great engineer use em to get your pyramids where you want

For me this is the ideal situation - you get three cities, a powered up capital and everything happens fast enough (if you have enough commerce) to almost always get the pyramids. Now for me, I like segregating my GP points, scientists in the capital, prophets in the second city, and engineers in the third (by putting the pyramids there). Thus I can pretty much pick and choose who I want, when I want by assigning more or less specialists to those cities. Of course you could put the pyramids in the capital... combine that with the national epic and pacifism and get lots of great engineer points but I tend to want a scientist for an academy and with the pyramids in the capital that becomes kind of hard.

Anyways glad people are enjoying this .

[uberfish]

The leader to do this strat with is definitely Mao - if someone else beats you to the pyramids it's not a problem since you can use the engineer to get machinery and build early Chu-ko-nu to kill someone - preferably the offending pyramid builder.

[The_Paladin]

I've been playing around with a couple of follow-ups to the pyramid grab here and they have proven to be rather interesting, IMHO. I've got two of them but both are similar in many ways. Here they are:

1) Build both your forge and resulting pyramids in the capital via the method described in this thread. Switch to representation.

2) Keep your engineer assigned in the capital - that way you get +10 great engineer points a turn and generate another great engineer in 20 turns. Note that you will still get an engineer before that prophet from your oracle city. The oracle only gives +4 GPP / turn and it is at least 100 GPP away from generating a prophet, on normal.

3) Research CoL, writing, and archery (in whatever order you want)

4) Let your capital grow and use your second and third cities to expand like mad (get both workers and settlers). Don't worry too much about upkeep. You are gonna be just fine - trust me. Try to settle your cities near any source of food - you want to pick a spot such that a size 3 or 4 city could support 2 specialists.

5) After expanding a bit, get one of your cities to produce lots of archers for defence

6) Get all your new cities to grow and farm their land such that they can support 2 specialists. If you can, build a library in them... but you don't have to if you need other things.

7) When its available, switch to the caste system and start researching mathematics.

8) In every city beyond the first 3, get them to their proper size to support those specialists and assign specialists... which one? Well here's where we get a split in the paths...

Option 1: Scientists

8 continued) Make those specialists scientists. That means each of these new cities generates 12 research / turn... if you managed to get a library in them you get 15 research / turn. This is regardless of upkeep. That's pretty impressive for a size 3 or 4 city you just created.

9) Since upkeep doesn't matter, continue to expand and defend your expansions using your 2nd and 3rd city.

10) As soon as mathematics is available, use the great engineer generated from your capital to insta-build the hanging gardens giving you nice shiny new cities a boost. Start researching literature.

11) Rinse and repeat with the new cities - even if you drive your science rate down to 20% it doesn't matter - each new city you get, if its high enough on food, will give you +12 research. You have no research problems.

12) When literature is ready either build or rush (depending on what you want to do) the great library in your capital. Research civil service.

13) You should be generating loads of great scientists soon... all those new cities generating +12 GPP / turn. Sure its spread out over 5+ cities... but once they start coming, they should continue approx 1 every 9 turns for the first 5 at least.

14) You can use the GS's as you wish... though I would recommend grabbing philo fast - to use pacifism to speed up further your GS generation (and lighten that upkeep load). Another popular option - use the others, after you've got CS, to get paper and education... it only takes 3 and then you've got universities... very nice grab. It also puts you in place to grab liberalism with your powered research... and get yourself gunpowder for free.

15) At some point you have to stop this mad expansion and switch to more normal production in your cities. Knowing when is just about getting a feel for when you are "big enough". Practice will help there. You can either go cold turkey meaning you un-assign all your scientists in one turn and get those cities producing normal stuff or you can do it slowly... half you cities at a time.

This takes practice to perfect - to expand fast but remember to defend and it can be hard to get your research down to the right order to get everything you want... but once you get it ordered... you should have a very nice time with this strat, IMHO.

Option 2: Merchants

The second variation involves assigning merchants instead. In this variation instead of getting +12 research / city you get +6 research and +6 gold / city. This allows you to much more easily run high percent science rates even when expanding as fast as possible. This starts out slower... as you don't get as much research as fast as possible, but allows you to set up a much easier transition to normal builds. You aren't going to be getting practically 0 science for a while this way, as you would with the scientist method.

This works well too and the generated great merchants can help your empire with gold problems for years to come by settling them in the city you intend to put wallstreet in. If you get 5 GM's, that's +30 / turn gold (Not to mention an extra 5 food)! That's a lot of upkeep saved this early on!

Give these a try - I'm enjoying playing with both methods in my games right now.

[gus_smedstad]

I finished one game with the Engineered Pyramid and did pretty well. I decided I'd do a Vel-style walkthrough of it using Alexander... and couldn't succeed because the Chinese built the Pyramids in 1080 BC. Try as I might, I couldn't get the Forge built before 1560 BC, and thus my great Engineer done before 880 BC. My assessment is that this gambit has a much greater chance of failure than the Civil Service slingshot.

If you do get the Pyramids this way, I think that going for another Great Engineer at +10 GPP / turn is definitely the way to go.

- Gus

[gus_smedstad]

A follow up - I tried simply building the Pyramids, and I got them done around 1200 BC, much earlier than I could get them via an Engineer. It helped that I had a lot of forests available to chop, of course, and decent (10 hammers / turn) production in my capitol. I then built the Oracle in my second city and got Metal Casting and followed the rest of the path.

- Gus