CS Slingshot help?

[couerdelion]

Or is it +2 for windmills :rolleyes

How did this thread start talking about lumbermills?

I will have to admit being a little inexperienced in this matter but I can confidently state that these will not help you with a slingshot.

Things that will:
Financial trait (and working cottages, coastal tiles or improved commerce resource tiles)
Any trait working cottages, coastal tiles and improved commerce resources
A library
A linked second city
Industrious trait will speed up Oracle
Philosophical trait might get you an early Academy
Aggressive trait will make your attempt a little more secure (more so with Quecha)

[Gherald]

Originally posted by couerdelion
How did this thread start talking about lumbermills?

I mentioned that I don't like to chop all the forests in my capital, as some people do.

Things that will [help slingshot]:

Financial trait (and working cottages, coastal tiles or improved commerce resource tiles)
Any trait working cottages, coastal tiles and improved commerce resources
A library
A linked second city
Industrious trait will speed up Oracle
Philosophical trait might get you an early Academy
Aggressive trait will make your attempt a little more secure (more so with Quecha)

Library and linked second city will only slow you down, in my opinion.

Industrious for oracle is really only useful if you plan to waste time building a library or a settler first.

Philosophical for early academy requires a library, so I think it is slower than Fin cottages. But if you are not Fin, it is a good option.

Does anyone have regular success building a library and slingshotting at or around 1950 BC? I wouldn't think so...

[Ijuin]

Well, I know that mills (wind, water, or lumber) would be useless for a CS slingshot, mainly because you wouldn't even have the technology to build them yet.

[Gherald]

Originally posted by Ijuin
Well, I know that mills (wind, water, or lumber) would be useless for a CS slingshot, mainly because you wouldn't even have the technology to build them yet.

Right, the main point I was making in bringing this up is it's really not necessary to chop everything in sight as some people seem to think

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Gherald

Right, the main point I was making in bringing this up is it's really not necessary to chop everything in sight as some people seem to think

If chopping everything is the difference between getting you the slingshot and losing it then it IS worthwhile.

The library and settler will usually speed up the sling simply because the science bonuses will get you to CoL faster. Same goes for Phi and the chance of an early academy.

It is possible that, for some of the easier levels, you might actually be slower building libraries, settlers and workers for the sling but I hardly think it makes all that much difference because the race is a bit too easy anyway. I’d rather have a stronger slingshot than end up just with bureaucracy and no science multipliers.

[Gherald]

Originally posted by couerdelion
If chopping everything is the difference between getting you the slingshot and losing it then it IS worthwhile.

It shouldn't make the difference if you do things right.

The library and settler will usually speed up the sling simply because the science bonuses will get you to CoL faster. Same goes for Phi and the chance of an early academy.

CoL will take about 9-16 turns (quick speed) with my strategy. Also, I research CoL very early, immediately after writing, so I don't even have time to build a Library usually.

It is possible that, for some of the easier levels, you might actually be slower building libraries, settlers and workers for the sling but I hardly think it makes all that much difference because the race is a bit too easy anyway. I’d rather have a stronger slingshot than end up just with bureaucracy and no science multipliers.

Building a library under Bureau should only take 3-6 turns (quick speed). If you do a chop -- by then your culture should be very large -- the library will take about 2-3 turns.
Sometimes you can have the Library about half finished while waiting for CoL.

If your treasury is low, one interesting option is to run 0% science while your libary is being built (though I prefer the tech lead)

If you really want an Academy, beeline to Literature... AI gets alphabet very late as we all know. But I'd rather get Iron Working and perhaps Theology first, so I know where to put my second city and have good culture in it. Capital is better off building a few workers or military while waiting for Literature, anyway.

[couerdelion]

Bureaucracy without multipliers is not very strong

I guess one of the problems with this thread is that we do not know what difficulty level is played and it seems that this can have effect the optimal route to the CS sling. At the lower difficulty levels, I don’t think there is any serious risk of losing the race to CoL + Oracle and consequently there is no reason to delay getting a library and academy which together make the slingshot so powerful a force for future research.

When you’re playing at levels below Monarchy, you don’t need to worry too much about selecting optimal (or near) paths and it’s not easy to notice where you don’t choose those routes. Once you’re playing against the AI at the higher levels, the bonuses make your competition bigger (though still as stupid) and small delays can make a big difference. This is very noticeable when it comes to the question of bureaucracy. The civic is not really all that big a deal if your capital doesn’t have any “commerce” multipliers.

Let’s assume that you have a capital working two flood plains and you have a sister city (financial civ at 100% research)

Base commerce = 8 (palace) + 2 (tiles) + 1 (trade) = 11
With Bureau = 11+ 50% = 16
With two villages on flood plains = 8 + 10 + 1 = 19 + 50% = 28
With Bureau/Library = 16 + 25% = 20
With Bureau/Library and Academy = 16 + 75% = 28
With Library/Academy and Two Village = 28 + 75% = 49.

Just one extra cottage on a Bureaucratic capital with library and academy will add 5.25 research once you have that academy.

In a “closed” environment, you’ll usually find that science buildings in the capital are your best investment for some time (apart maybe from happiness and health modifiers).

Assuming 100% research still and with two villages. You then get the following research benefits
Bureaucracy is 9 beakers
Library is 4 beakers
Bureaucracy+Library is 16 beakers
Bur/Lib/Acad is 30 beakers

Looking at this another way, getting a library and academy just 3 turns earlier will make up any research loss from having delayed bureaucracy by 10 turns!!

[Gherald]

+ 2 (tiles)

How about +30 (tiles) ?

Obviously that's one extreme. But I almost always have at least +20 commerce from tiles.

Library can be immediately built after Oracle, people.

Ultra-early Academy is the only thing you miss out on. But that's okay, there are other routes to it, as I've explained.

Getting Bureaucracy that early also gives you a lot of extra hammers to spare, so after taking care of library/military/settlers/workers you can build things like monastaries while waiting for Literature (or whatever it is you are going for)

[uberfish]

Every time you go up a level the difficulty of executing a slingshot increases significantly since you get the double whammy of tech costs going up, while the time it takes the AI to build oracle goes down. So, both the commerce required for the start and the focus required of your research and build orders are progressively higher.

At noble or prince you can do more or less whatever you feel like.

At monarch you can still get both a library and settler out before oracle usually, but if you make only one of the two it's pretty safe.

At emperor you must choose. Library or 2nd city before oracle. Most of the time I choose the 2nd city, it makes the horizontal expansion or conquest phase after the slingshot finishes a lot smoother as your capital rapidly has a lot of things to build.

On immortal I wouldn't even try without having Gold, and then even researching bronze working slows you down too much IMO if the goal is to get civil service.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

If you try a slingshot on monarch with only one city and no library, you will fall behind very quickly. You will most likely, run out of space to expand into or get eliminated by barbarians on certain maps.

There is little point in neglecting expansion / and units for protection just to get to CS a little sooner. By the time you see iron and bronze it may be too late to grab them. As couerd pointed out in the previous post it is the multipliers that make the CS sling so attractive. The sooner you get those in place the better. It is precisely this reason that I often choose not to sling to CS on monarch. I would rather secure a few cities, get those crucial buildings up and running, and build a few axemen before trying for CS. Even if you fail the slingshot on monarch, you will still grab COL which you can trade for a ton of stuff and then prophet sling to CS.

On noble, level it doesn't really matter when you complete the sling as you can easily dominate the competition with only one city. You can completely ignore defense early and you have plenty of time to build up and crush the comp afterward. On higher levels this is often not the case. Try out your one city sling on monarch to compare. I bet you will notice a big difference in you performance compared to the AI.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky Try out your one city sling on monarch to compare. I bet you will notice a big difference in you performance compared to the AI.

A good example is Vel's game in the Devel's Workshop I thread. He completes the Sling at Monarch but the resulting position isn't a very stable base for continuing the game, and that's from a very favorable start. In contrast, the two-city Sling in the Workshop Ia thread is quite viable.

[fed1943]

Yes,the capital tryes to build everything needed,even the garrison and worker for 2nd city,while this one bulds the Oracle.
Best regards,

[Gherald]

Does no one here fully grasp how EARLY a 1950 BC slingshot (without gold) is, and how easy it is to build your settler/library immediately after? You may, and I say again, may occasionally lose a good expansion slot to an AI. But that's just an excuse to get maces early.

[couerdelion]

1950AD is very early and the one city sling could certainly catch up on expansion with a little time spent building settlers/workers. The only problem here is that the difficulty level makes the game too easy for most people so that getting CS at such an early stage makes little practical difference. All that happens is that you have translated a comfortable tech lead into a huge tech lead. For me personally, winning a game with this sort of disparity in tech and production is unlikely to be much fun. I’d be inclined to stop the game at the time of getting CS, confident that the game was won and that conquest and expansion were something I could take for granted.

With regards to the viability of a one-city sling, I’d don’t believe that having a second city is always critical to the strategy. You may end up losing a useful city site but that might just be the price you have to pay for getting Civil Service and Bureaucracy. It’s not a particularly high price given the benefits that you end up with from the one city. Having said that, I normally find that a second city often makes the sling faster and usually makes it more secure. This is particularly the case with copper which I try to acquire during the slingshot attempt. – I spent too many games defending with warriors against barbarian archers not to take any copper they give me.

[rjmatsleepers]

I have been experimenting with different versions of the CS slingshot from the same start. I used the start from the space ship comparison game. This is at Monarch and the leader is Lizzie - financial and philosophical. In all cases, I went on to AD 1 after choosing Civil Service as my free tech - trying to build the GL in my capital and also trying to get a Great Scientist to build an Academy. I tried three different ways of getting Code of Laws - research, from a prophet obtained from Stonehenge and from a prophet obtained from a specialist priest. (This start is unusual in that it is possible to found an early religion despite not starting with Mysticism. I also varied whether I built the Oracle in a second city and whether I chopped to complete buildings.

My best results were using the specialist priest in a second city with limited chopping to complete the Oracle (and later the Great Library). Chopping has to be limited for the Oracle in order not to complete before the Great Prophet appears and for the Great Library because of health problems. I left my cities under-defended compared with a normal game, but my brave warriors beat off attacks by barbarian archers!

The benefits of this approach seem to come mainly from specialisation. The capital is free to start on the Library, scientist, GS, GL route without interfering with Temple, priest, Oracle developments in the second city. My initial build was a settler, who founded the second city which immediately started a Temple. The second build in my capital was a settler. The research order was Mysticism, Polytheism, Priesthood, Bronze Working.

It was unusual to be able to found an early religion (and in this case important, since I had no neighbours on my island.) The approach would probably work well with Saladin - philosophical, spiritual. Ideal would be a philosophical financial leader for a civ that started with Mysticism - we can all dream can't we.

RJM at Sleeper's