Philo slingshot

[kiky]

Blake mention about Philo slingshot on some other thread.
Now, I'm not aware of what benefit of Philo slingshot and how it actually be done.
I've done CS slingshot, but it is almost impossible now (after patch).

I must have been missing something here. Comment from Blake or others?

[JackRudd]

If you're the first to research Philosophy, you'll be the founder of Taoism. Also, you'll be able to run Pacifism to rake in the Great People.

It doesn't look totally unmanageable: the cheapest way (using my original chart), given that you're going to be building the Oracle anyway, involves researching Mysticism (cost 50), Meditation (80), Priesthood (60), Writing (120) and Code Of Laws (350). Probably have to go via Pottery as well, just to get enough research to complete Code Of Laws before building the Oracle.

[kiky]

I would imagine there would be good chance on founding Budhism or Confusiunism. One or two religion would be enough most of time, or no?

So the main benefit is the ability to run Pacifism early? It is not as 'general' benefit compare to CS because your playstyle should revolve around Great Person.

[Blake]

The Philo slingshot is simple enough.

With Oracle:
Research CoL via Meditation.
Pick Philo with the Oracle.

With Great Scientist:
Build a library fast, OR use the Oracle to grab Code of Laws and run Caste System.
Run scientists to Generate a Great Scientist while researching Mathematics.

Once you have Meditation (pre-req), Mathematics (blocking tech) and Code of Laws or Drama (CoL is cheaper) the Great Scientist will lightbulb philo.

Philo is a VERY powerful civic in the early game as it halves the time to generate great people, you can either use the bonus to generate absurd GPP (like 45/turn with philo trait and 5 caste scientists) or you can use it to amplify smaller base amounts - like maybe 5 base priest GPP from Oracle+temple Priest.

Generally speaking you want to settle most of the generated Great People - you get them so early that they have time for the settling to pay off many, many times over, the main exception is Academy in the capital and a Shrine. Once you've generated around half a dozen Great People you might want to switch to out of Pacifism and let the National Epic pick up the slack, or even ignore Great People for a while, the idea is to quickly milk the system of the cheaper GP's and settle them for a game-long benefit.

Fast Pacifism is a very dominating opening and the only time when it's an absoutely terrible idea is with Raging Barbs on Highlands (or equally adverse settings), since the unit upkeep of Pacifism DOES add up quickly if you have a large army.

Lets list off the benefits of Philo Slingshot:
1) One or Two guaranteed religions. Usually you'll get Conf, you'll always get Taoism. This can be exceedingly useful when isolated, and when not isolated.
2) A very high GPP multiplier lets you easily use polluted pools - since you'll generate ~5 GP's in rapid succession you can rely on a 33% prophet chance (for example).
3) It doesn't rely on a good quality start - you can perform the slingshot and reap the benefits as long as you can afford food for 2 scientists, settled GP's turn a wasteland city into a powerhouse. It works well with faster expansion since it's less time sensitive than other slingshots.
4) It gets the GP generation out of the way quickly, allowing you to later focus 100% of your empire's production on building military or whatever (that pacifism thing? just really wasn't us...). In the early game the unit upkeep doesn't matter much.
5) Having a core of half a dozen settled GP's is a blank check for expansion, 0% science rate? No worries. You'll still research a classical-medieval tech in 10 turns.
6) Since AI's will no longer see the Taoism goody, they will refuse to reserach Philo, making it great trading fodder.
7) It's a head start on Liberalism - just as much as Civil Service is.

IMHO the Philo slingshot is very often more powerful than CS Slingshot, especially for more marginal starts.

[JackRudd]

Buddhism - unlikely on higher difficulty levels; the AI all scramble for it. Confucianism - yes, you'll probably pick it up.

The main benefits of running more than one religion are:
(a) Denial - there's one fewer AI who can spam his religion everywhere and make loads of cash off it
(b) Cash - the more religious shrines you control, the more cash you yourself can get by spreading the religions in question everywhere. Particularly so if you get the much-heralded Double Shrine City. (I once got a Triple Shrine City. Which was nice.)

And getting great people faster is a tremendous benefit early on - their effects are just so good. (Great Engineers are my favourite, but all early GPs have their uses.)

[kiky]

Wow, thanks Blake and JackRudd for explaining this very quick.

Post-patch, this would definitely the key. Gonna try it out soon, or should I wait for the coming patch?

[binTravkin]

Generally speaking you want to settle most of the generated Great People - you get them so early that they have time for the settling to pay off many, many times over, the main exception is Academy in the capital and a Shrine. Once you've generated around half a dozen Great People you might want to switch to out of Pacifism and let the National Epic pick up the slack, or even ignore Great People for a while, the idea is to quickly milk the system of the cheaper GP's and settle them for a game-long benefit.

Plus you can get any wonder that you have tech for and is not already claimed.
I guess it couldn't be a bad idea to make engineers at first and build Pyramids with the first one, so that you get maximum out of those settled peeps (with +3 research per each).
Great Lib is also appealing at this moment adding even more to your GP generating ability and research.

So a well done philo slingshot can offset your opponents industrial trait (if you make engineers for the wonders you need) and philosophical trait (+100% GP rate) as well as boosting your own philosophical trait to great heights (+9 GPP per specialist with some 5-6 specialists running is damn powerful).

[DirtyMartini]

I've tried this in a couple of starts recently. I'm wondering--

1) How much do you deviate from pure beelineing in order to flesh out your techs?
2) What year do you aim to finish the slingshot?

I'd pretty much gotten the hang of CS slingshot, then abandoned it because it got boring.

My issues with the Philo slingshot are these -- both CoL and Mathematics are expensive techs:

If you beeline to writing (for library/GS) you still must research CoL and Math before you can lightbulb Philo with the GS. That is a long time to spend on deep research in my opinon

If you beeline priesthood for Oracle, you've probably got to use oracle on CoL so that no one else completes the Oracle first, then research Math and Philo by brute force. This takes too long too.

The only way to go it seems is to beeline Priesthood, build oracle while researching to writing (prereq), take CoL with Oracle, run as many priests as you can afford while researching Math by brute force (takes forever), and lightbulb Philo with the GS. (Alternatively, I guess you could burn two GS on Math and Philo.) This is the fastest route I can think of, but is still very long and the earliest I completed it was in the 500s AD, I think. While performing this double slingshot, you have done little to nothing else with your empire. You're probably infrastructure, terrain improvement and militarily deficient. If you had a marginal start, you've now dug yourself an even deeper hole out of which you must dig.

Is this a "patience grasshopper" issue? Am I just in too big a hurry to get to Philosophy? Even the above research lines are an oversimplification -- I realize you can't purely beeline and completely ignore all military tech. If you stray too much from beelining, though, it seems like you're losing the turn advantage of pulling off the slingshot.

Thoughts? I guess basically, I don't think waiting until I complete CoL conventionally to finish the Oracle is a reliable tactic -- that's pushing my Oracle completion date back too far

[Blake]

Basically yeah. When it comes to Philo Slingshot time isn't of the essence. For sure you want to use your first GS to build an Academy.

You definitely want all your main worker techs and probably Bronze Working - unless you have plenty of mines and want to run Oracle Caste for a while. You also want to train 2 or 3 settlers, unless it's OCC...

I don't really get why it could possibly take until 500AD. Did you mean 500BC? That's about when it should be landing.

edit:
TO clarify. IF you generate a GS beore researching Mathematics, you want to build an Academy. However if you are NOT in a position with strong food / Philo trait you wont be able to generate a GS that quickly, in that case you use your first GS for Philo and your second for an Academy.

Using a traditional Philo Slingshot via Oracle (no maths research needed) you should be able to do it by 1240BC, having expanded to about 3 cities.
Via Scientist lightbulb you should be aiming at about 700BC, having expanded to about 4 cities. Having full powered chops is very nice if you choose to go with Caste System during that period.
If I do go Caste I usually switch back to slavery along with Pacifism. (heheh Pacifist Slavers....)

[DirtyMartini]

No I meant AD -- it was my first attempt and I hadn't given myself enough workers and cities before "going deep". Also, while running 2-3 scientists in the cap, I had to stop working high commerce (cottaged) tiles in favor of food specials/farmed floodplains, which hurt my research rate. I ended up spending 30+ turns researching math (Epic).

That's a problem I run into often when I go specialist heavy early on -- I stagnate due to lost production/research/growth from the capital. Often, the capital is the only city in the early empire with a sufficient food surplus to allow multiple specialists. Unfortunately, it is often also the best production city, so you have to sacrifice one for the other (or alternate between the two). I guess I'm curious how you can generate enough science/production while attempting this slingshot when given a poor start (deer and rice, for example).

My general feeling has been that the only time slingshots really seem monstrously effective and reliable to me is when you have the no brainer, corn-and-a-gold-mine start. But then again, just about any start is easy with corn and a gold mine. That being said, I think I'll try this a couple more times, it's an elegant concept and it's quite different from my usual approach. Perhaps I just need to slow down and consider things more carefully before blasting full speed ahead though every game.

edit: I appreciate the help , by the way.

[Blake]

Poor food starts are not ideal for specialist-based Slingshots.

Also don't use your capital unless it has much better food than any other city or you are running Caste System and can thus combine the GS and GP (from Oracle) pools, still having a good chance to get a GS (an unwanted GP will have to build a shrine or be settled or something).

What I prefer to do is use another city to generate the GS, it doesn't need to have great food, even a rice tile (+4 food) is enough to run 2 Scientists. Obviously you wont be creating an Academy unless ur Philo, but once you have Pacifism the low food wont matter nearly as much because you'll be effectively running twice as many specialists. Pacifism is equally useful on both high and low food starts.

In doing the slingshot, you DON'T want to have to farm floodplains or grasslands to run more specialists, if that really is your only way to get food, skip the slingshot, because cottages are just a better use of worker time. But I've never encountered a start where I can't afford to run 2 scientists in some city - Caste can be a huge help here if the city is so bad it can't easily build a library.

Also the more cottages you have, the more quickly you can research all the supporting techs and Mathematics.

The exact approach taken is going to vary by start, if you're ind or have marble and/or excellent production the Oracle will definitely be a part of it. If you have oodles of food you'll want to get a fast Academy. If you have a gold mine you'll definitely want to try and research CoL and Oracle Philo.

[couerdelion]

binTravkin,

The fastest way to generate an early GE is probably to use the Oracle for Metal Casting, quickly build a forge and appoint one engineer. Caste System won't help you here. You could also try to build GWall but this normally gets snagged quite early by the AI and getting both Oracle and GWall is difficult at any reasonable level of difficulty.

By the time you get a GE to rush the Pyramids, the Philo element would be way behind schedule.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by Blake

In doing the slingshot, you DON'T want to have to farm floodplains or grasslands to run more specialists, if that really is your only way to get food, skip the slingshot, because cottages are just a better use of worker time. But I've never encountered a start where I can't afford to run 2 scientists in some city - Caste can be a huge help here if the city is so bad it can't easily build a library.

My rationale for farming the floodplains is that I'd assumed that with this strategy, you'd want to maximize specialist use post-acquisition of Philosophy. Since my capital is usually the best food producing city of the first 3 or 4 cities, I've been farming floodplains in order to max out the number of scientists (aiming for 4-5) I can run after switching to Pacifism. Sounds like you'd suggest cottaging in the capital and running relatively fewer scientists in a second city (like 2-3) to get the unpolluted scientist pool and generate more cottage income in the capital, even if that strategy will generate the specialists somewhat more slowly. Sounds reasonable enough. The problem I can run into, is that if I build a wonder or two in the capital -- before long that polluted pool is outrunning a marginal specialist-driven GP farm pretty significantly. I guess that 's not a terrible thing -- engineers are nice, but more than one prophet isn't really a good thing.

[Blake]

I usually generate a prophet in my capital with Oracle + single priest.

Scientists are generated in other cities.

Sometimes though if the capital has good food I'll go with a polluted pool and rely on sheer number of great people generated to eventually get a prophet.